 Suddenly working from home is not optional for millions of us. And even for those who might have wished they could do this in the past, being compelled to do it—all or most of the time—can be daunting. Writing in The New York Times, Melanie Pinola, a staff writer for Wirecutter offers some advice:
Are you new to working from home? What are some of your greatest challenges and how are you coping with them? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.
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 Suddenly, nearly all of us will rethink the way we conduct meetings, moving many encounters with co-workers, customers, and suppliers to online forums. Some of us are more practiced at virtual meetings than others, but pretty much everyone agrees they present unique challenges-especially in terms of keeping participants engaged.
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Bob Frisch and Cary Greene, partners at the Boston consultancy Strategic Offsites Group, offer best practices for running meetings virtually. Among them:
What did you learn from your most recent virtual meeting in terms of pitfalls and improvements you might make for the next one? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.  Whether you are a morning person or a night owl, your circadian rhythms affect your energy levels throughout the workday. But most workplaces have a mix of chronotypes – larks, owls and in-betweens – who need to co-exist and collaborate. (If you are not sure of your type, take this questionnaire).
Your chronotype is not something you pick, and none is inherently good or bad. Being in sync with your chronotype can significantly up your productivity, but how do you function effectively with co-workers who have drastically different notions about the best time to get things accomplished? Writing in The New York Times, time-management coach Elizabeth Grace Saunders offers some advice:
What is your chronotype and how does it impact your work? How does it impact your interactions with co-workers? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.  Jargon, clichés, technical terms, acronyms, abbreviations: Writers may find them helpful, but readers do not. For Harvard linguist Stephen Pinker, the source of overusing such potentially confounding devices is something called “the curse of knowledge.” He defines this as "a difficulty in imagining what it is like for someone else not to know something that you know”.
As Pinker says in his new book, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, the more proficient people become at a job or hobby, the more they get caught up in the lexicon of that world. The problem arises when they forget that not everyone else is attuned to the same catchwords. Business school grads, he says, can be the worst offenders—transporting their academic buzzwords into the workplace. To combat the curse of knowledge, Pinker urges writers to become more “considerate” of readers. They can do so by adding a few words of explanation to a technical term, and by offering examples. For instance, a financial advisor mentioning index funds might say…“Index funds are mutual funds that mirror the components of a particular market—for example, Standard and Poor’s 500 stocks. They can limit risk exposure.” In sum, Pinker advises: “Before sending your writing out to the world, it's better to be honest with yourself about how much your reader is likely to understand a given passage or sentence. Before you commit your writing to print-- or to the internet-- take a few moments to make sure that what you write is clear and understandable by as many of your intended readers as possible.” (Tweet it!) Do you wish your writing could be clearer? How often do you use explanations, examples, and analogies? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.  Managerial incompetence can take many forms, but research shows that one insidious kind is “absentee leadership”, sometimes known as avoidant leadership. Absentee leaders inhabit the roles of leaders, accepting the perks and rewards, but they avoid meaningful engagement with their teams and add little or no value.
Absentee leaders take a laissez-faire approach to leadership, but if you think having a boss who ignores you might have its upsides, think again. A 2015 survey of 1,000 employees showed that eight out of nine complaints were about what bosses didn't do. In fact, being ignored by your boss can be more alienating than being treated poorly. The impact of absentee leadership degrades employee satisfaction over a long period of time. It also leads to role ambiguity (with no one sure who is responsible for what) and increased bullying by team members. Absentee leaders can be hard to weed out: Many organizations don’t confront them because they have other bad managers whose behavior is more egregious. However, Scott Gregory, CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems, calls avoidant leaders “silent organizational killers.” Left unchecked, he adds, “absentee leaders clog an organization’s succession arteries, blocking potentially more effective people from moving into important roles while adding little to productivity”. Your organization may be unaware of its absentee leaders because they are good at flying under the radar. But over time, organizations with the best leaders will win. (Tweet it!) Reviewing your organization’s management positions for absentee leaders, and doing something about them, can improve your talent arsenal. Have you ever experienced an absentee leader? What, if anything, did your organization do about them? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs. |
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