What’s the best way to respond when a co-worker makes a suggestion you didn’t ask for and don’t want? Try these 4 specific replies. Everybody has an opinion. But what if you don’t want to hear it? Maybe you are in the middle of a meeting or a presentation detailing a carefully crafted plan when a co-worker derails you. Maybe you want a specific piece of information from your boss, but they take the opportunity to turn a simple query into an impromptu coaching session. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Melody Wilding, executive coach and author of Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work, offers strategies for setting boundaries around unsolicited input with tact, respect, and a comfortable level of assertiveness.
When was the last time you received unsolicited advice at work and how did you respond? To join the conversation, click "comments" below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022.
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Nobody likes a blowhard, but the fear of being an obnoxious bragger may be holding you back... Talking yourself up has the potential to make your team look impressive, shed light on what it is you do, and maybe even propel you toward a promotion. But many of us are afraid to blow our own horn. Even if someone complements us, we often deflect it, with self-deprecating humor or false humility. Meredith Fineman, publicist and author of Brag Better, was astounded by how many talented professionals were reluctant to acknowledge their most impressive accomplishments. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Rachel Feintzeig offers some tips for overcoming the fear of self-praise:
When was the last time you bragged a little, and how did it feel? To join the conversation, click on "comments" comments below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Research suggests that asking questions that show you're listening is a great way to make conversations click. Since not all questions are equal, here are 3 tips. Conversations help us forge and deepen connections. And they are essential to our well being. Sometimes, though, we avoid conversations because we fear they may become tedious, awkward, or even confrontational. Writing in the Journal of the American Psychological Association, Zara Abrams notes that one of the best ways to make conversations click is to ask questions. But be conscious of how you do this:
Do you have a go-to conversational style that works for you? And what do you do to show you're listening? To join the conversation, click "comments" below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Being asked a question does not mean you are required to answer. Here are 4 options to get you off the hook when a question feels invasive. At some point, we have all been plagued with intrusive questions: Why are you still working? Why don't you have more kids? How come you’re still single? It’s one thing to be curious about someone because you want to understand them but another to pose agenda-laden questions because you want to change them. Scott Shigeoka, a fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and author of Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World, calls this “predatory curiosity.” Writing in The New York Times, Jancee Dunn spoke with him and other experts about how to deflect nosy questions:
What is your least favorite invasive question and how do you respond to it? To join the conversation, click on "comments" below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning Courses of 2022. Have you noticed how many successful people just keep racking up more wins? Here’s the secret to that kind of serial success… When researchers wanted to test the accuracy of the old adage “success breeds success”, they designed a study that randomly assigned “rewards” to certain subjects. In all scenarios, receiving a modest reward early on “triggered a self-propelling cascade of success” for those participants. The study's author reasoned that when people receive early success, it raises their expectations for future success. Here’s how that works:
Have you, or someone you know, experienced early success, and how did that impact reputations and fortunes going forward? To join the conversation, click "comments" below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. What makes a leader more relatable, more approachable, and more successful? The surprising answer: humility “Strong cultures can only happen when team members feel safe enough to tell one another the truth -- and that starts with leaders being willing to show they're fallible,” writes Jeff Haden in Inc.. Citing numerous research studies, Haden explains why vulnerability and humility are central to strong leadership:
Humility is a predictor of high performance among leaders. Employees want to work for a boss who is willing to admit their own weak spots, eager to work to strengthen them, and willing to help others do the same. In short, a good leader is one who wants to get things done, and knows they can't do it alone. Do you believe humility is one of your traits? How has it helped you in the workplace? How might you strengthen your humility habit? To join the conversation, click "comments" below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Do we reward, promote and respect ultra-confident people, or doubt and distrust them? The answer: It depends on how they express it! One way people express confidence is with words of faith in their own abilities. Another way is nonverbally, using body language and tone of voice. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Elizabeth R. Tenney, assistant professor at the Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, reports that In a series of studies, researchers found that overconfidence can damage your reputation — but only if you express that confidence verbally. When you express confidence nonverbally, those negative consequences fade away. Talking about your likelihood of success by making bold predictions can backfire when results don't meet your projections. When this happens, your reputation can suffer. But communicating confidence nonverbally, can be seen as powerful and compelling: Confident people tend to speak in a louder vs soft voice, offering their own opinions, and generally conveying a larger presence. So how should you communicate confidence in a way that garners positive attention and influence in groups? According to this new research, when you express confidence verbally, your credibility may suffer. However, your expression of confidence nonverbally can be a significant advantage. The reason: nonverbal behavior is not so clearly tied to a specific, falsifiable claim as are verbal expressions. How do you evaluate whether someone seems confident, and what is your response if their results are not what you expected? To join the conversation, click "comments" below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Have you ever received "feedback" that’s useless and annoying? Instead of asking for feedback, try asking for advice. Feedback is backward looking. It is anchored in past behavior. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Dr. Amantha Imber, author of Time Wise and host of the podcast How To Work, suggests asking for advice instead. Advice-giving is a form of guidance that leads to thinking about future actions. Imber offers 4 steps to getting advice that will really help you improve:
When was the last time you asked for advice, and how did you do it? To join the conversation, click "comments" below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Do you find unplanned phone calls delightful surprises or bothersome intrusions? Is it fine to call someone spontaneously, or is it impolite to call without texting first? Phone call etiquette has never been more complicated, and it is dividing friends, families and co-workers! According to The Wall Street Journal, the debate is raging. The more entrenched texting becomes, the more people find a phone call without warning, unacceptable. Yet others find the phone-call-phobic to be rigid and even ridiculous, claiming that phone calls are never “unannounced” — the ringing is the announcement, aided by caller ID. Although exceptions exist, attitudes toward phone calls tend to cluster generationally. Those who grew up with landlines tend to see no problems with spontaneous calls. But those who have been texting since high school, or earlier, feel differently. Preference for text messaging is highest among those 18 to 24, followed by those 25 to 34, according to a December survey from YouGov. Among 2,000 white-collar professionals surveyed by recruiting firm Robert Walters in March, a mere 16% of those who are Gen Z (born between 1997-2012) thought the phone was a productive form of professional communication. They use Zoom, Slack, email or text with ease, but they’re far less likely to make or answer a phone call. So, what should you do? If you have the urge to call, consider factors such as the relationship you have with the person and whether they have expressed a preference about how to communicate. And you might want to react differently to an unannounced phone call from a salesperson than a relative. Do you prefer to be texted before someone calls you, and do you do the same for others? To join the conversation, click "comments" below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Neuroscientist Glen Fox has spent his entire adult life studying gratitude. He is convinced that “grateful people tend to recover faster from trauma and injury, tend to have better and closer personal relationships and may even have improved health overall.” The study of gratitude is a relatively recent phenomenon, and emerged from the field of positive psychology. Yet the practice of gratitude has consistently been shown to lower stress, reduce pain, boost immunity, and improve blood pressure and heart function. To find out, Fox did an experiment using brain-imaging scans to map which circuits in the brain become active when we feel grateful. “We saw that the participants’ ratings of gratitude correlated with activity in a set of brain regions associated with interpersonal bonding and with relief from stress,” he said. To up your conscious gratitude, Fox suggests keeping a gratitude journal. On a regular basis, write down what you are grateful for, even if those things seem mundane. The positive effect is cumulative so it’s a good idea to make this a habit. He also suggests writing letters of gratitude to those who have helped you along your way. Says Fox, “I think that gratitude can be much more like a muscle, like a trained response or a skill that we can develop over time as we’ve learned to recognize abundance and gifts and things that we didn’t previously notice as being important,” he said. “And that itself is its own skill that can be practiced and manifested over time.” When was the last time you actively expressed gratitude, and how did it make you feel? And what experience have you had when people shared gratitude with you? To join the conversation, click on "comments" below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Gen Z can take criticism, but if you deliver it the wrong way, they might leave to find a workplace that connects with them better. Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012, is not composed of the sensitive “snowflakes” some say it is. Writing in The Washington Post, technology reporter Danielle April says, “Your youngest colleagues may be the newest to the workplace, but they have clear expectations about how they would like to receive feedback: It should be timely, collaborative, empathetic and balanced.” Experts who study the multigenerational workforce say things go awry when managers critique younger workers in ways that unintentionally alienate or discourage them. For example, it is often counterproductive to focus solely on what went wrong, fix their mistakes without a conversation, or deny them a chance to explain. Used to getting information with the speed of a click, a critique without explanation is likely to create self-doubt and engender the kind of burnout that increases turnover. Gen Zers who spoke to The Washington Post said they view work differently from other generations. They want to be themselves at work, feel that their voice matters, and that their managers are empathetic and will invest in relationships with them. Gen Z is only going to become a larger part of the workforce — they’re expected to comprise more than 32 percent by 2032, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And they’re asking employers to respect them. Have you noticed a difference in the attitudes and preferences of Gen Z workers, and how do you approach them to raise sensitive issues? To join the conversation, click "comments" below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. Employees crave respect, and most leaders agree it’s important. So why do so many employees feel disrespected? New research suggests that leaders don’t fully understand what respect entails. In a recent Georgetown University’s survey of nearly 20,000 employees worldwide, respondents ranked respect as the most important leadership behavior. Yet, employees report more disrespectful and uncivil behavior each year. What accounts for this disconnect? Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Kristie Rogers, an associate professor of management at Marquette University, draws on her extensive research into the subject and advises: “In all but the most toxic workplaces, building a respectful organization does not demand an overhaul of HR policies...What’s needed is ongoing consideration of the subtle but important ways [that] respect can be conveyed.” 7 Actionable Examples Of How Respect Can Be Conveyed:
Do you think your employees feel respected, and what might you do to enhance their sense of respect? To join the conversation, click "comments" below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. If you are considering a significant change in your organization, it is crucial to first take the emotional temperature of your members. But new research suggests that few leaders know how to do this. In her survey of over 200 leading company executives, Patti Sanchez, chief strategy officer at consulting firm Duarte, Inc., found that 69% of respondents said they were planning or currently conducting a change effort. Unfortunately, half of these same execs said they hadn’t fully considered their team’s sentiment about the change. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Sanchez offers strategies for ensuring your team is motivated and onboard:
Do you know how the members of your organization feel about any changes you plan to implement? And if not, how might you find out? To join the conversation, click "comments" on below. Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. The “real world” doesn’t care about your college GPA, and success is really based on three essential qualities. In a commencement speech at Kean University this May, Neil deGrasse Tyson, esteemed scientist, author, and educator, argued that five years into the future no one would give a thought to college grades, and he exhorted graduates to focus instead on three essential qualities:
What qualities do you think really matter most in one’s life and career? To join the conversation, click "comments" below because we would really like to get your feedback! Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. To get ahead, it’s good to be noticed by senior management, but how do you do it without antagonizing your own boss? If your boss isn't being particularly useful in helping you advance your ideas or take advantage of opportunities, you may be tempted to go over their head. But, needless to say, this can present risks. As recounted in the Harvard Business Review, Dave MacKeen, CEO of Eliassen Group, a strategic consulting and talent solutions provider, and Chuck Cohen, Managing Director of Benco Dental, the largest, privately-owned dental distributor in the U.S., offer suggestions for demonstrating your true potential without alienating your direct manager:
What have you done to raise your profile, and how did your boss react? To join the conversation, leave a reply below. We would love to hear from you! Learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication with our online learning courses awarded International Gold for Best Hybrid Learning of 2022. |
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