Let's face it: The last year has been disruptive for many, and universal stressors may have taken tolls on your relationships. We cannot always change circumstances, but we can change our responses. Instead of navigating through important moments of communication on automatic pilot, reacting from emotion rather than intention, we can transform our relationships by being proactive with positive communication. As we approach 2022, consider making a resolution to practice 12 months of healthy communication.

As communication researchers and partners in work and marriage for decades, we’ve experienced both the joy and challenge of personal and business communication and have found some simple steps to resolve conflict and build trust in relationships:

• Listen when your impulse is to argue.
• Edit accusations that might make someone feel put down, and instead describe your feelings.
• If you have a grievance, pinpoint details with specific examples and without loaded words.
• Acknowledge your role in any problem.
• Reach explicit, collaborative solutions that specify what each person will do differently in the future.

Confronting issues is never an easy matter, but avoidance can be hazardous not just to our relationships, but also to our personal well-being.

Here’s wishing you a happy, healthy, communicative 2022!

Do you have a New Year’s resolution that involves communication?  To join the conversation, click "comments" located just below the photo for this article.  We'd love to hear your feedback!

Ranjay Gulati is a Harvard Business School professor, a consultant, and a parent of two children. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, he contends that the challenges parents face at work and home are not that different, and that “both contexts leave leaders struggling between their desire to control others and their need to let go.” Strong leadership is about threading that needle.
 
Research psychologist Diana Baumrind observed that parents often behave in ways that are either authoritarian (exerting too much control), permissive (giving children too much autonomy), or negligent. An option better suited to parenting (and to managing, says Gulati) is the authoritative approach, which strikes a middle ground between control and autonomy.
To become a more authoritative leader, Gulati suggests taking two basic steps. First, communicate a clear, durable framework of guidelines consisting of both positive ("thou shalt") and negative ("thou shalt not") statements. Second, reinforce the framework and hold people accountable.

As Gulati’s research with innovative organizations has shown, allowing employees to exercise autonomy within clear guardrails can yield favorable results. Citing companies with such approaches, such as Netflix and Alaska Airlines, the author notes that, “maintaining the tension between control and autonomy isn't easy, and you might find yourself veering too far at times in one direction or the other. But with a solid, well-articulated framework in place, you'll be able to correct for excesses and stay more or less in the middle zone over time. At home and at work, a blend of control and autonomy is usually the winning formula.”

What lessons from your parenting life do you think are applicable to the workplace? To join the conversation, click "comments" just above the photo.  We'd really like to hear from you!

Research on resilience —our ability to bounce back from adversity — has shown that giving support to others has a significant impact on our well-being. Our bodies and minds benefit in a variety of ways when we help others, sometimes even generating a “helper’s high”.
 
In fact, the act of giving advice has been shown to be even more beneficial than receiving it. In a series of studies of 2,274 people, researchers found that after middle-school students gave younger students help with studying, they ended up spending more time on their own homework. Overweight people who counseled others on weight loss were more motivated to lose weight themselves.
 
In a New York Times article, Wharton organizational psychologist Adam Grant explained that we often are better at giving advice to people other than ourselves. “One of the best things you can do is call someone else facing a similar problem and talk them through it,” he said. Grant, who co-founded an online networking platform call Givitas, which connects people asking for or offering support and advice, added, “When you talk other people through their problems, you come up with wiser perspectives and solutions for yourself.”
 
When was the last time you gave advice, and how did it make you feel? Did it benefit you, or the receiver, or both? To join the conversation, click "comments" just above this article, under the photo. We'd love to hear your thoughts!

Conversations around diversity, equity and inclusion are actually just conversations about people. And storytelling, one of the most universal human experiences, gives us a chance to look through new lenses and gain new perspectives from co-workers who may have had different life experiences. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, inclusion consultants Selena Rezvani and Stacey A. Gordon offer steps to implement a story-based approach to DEI.
 
In this approach, employees are encouraged to tell and own their stories, and consider how they impact their experiences at work. For those who are unsure how to unearth their own diversity stories, the authors offer some possible prompts:

• Has your privilege afforded you different treatment than someone else?
• Did someone ever advocate for you? (Did someone with privilege help you?)
• Did you ever struggle to find your own sense of belonging?
• Did you discover a bias/privilege you had, and how did you overcome it?
• Have you ever felt pressure to conform or fit in?
• Did you ever witness an unconscious bias play out in the workplace?

“The best way to create a cascading inclusion effect in an organization is to offer safe spaces where stories can be heard without judgment,” say Rezvani and Gordon. To this end, they suggest round-robin questions in meetings, listening sessions, discussion-heavy book clubs, storytelling town halls, social forums and meet-ups, and social media campaigns that feature stories. Stories can also be included as a component of onboading.

As the authors say: “In our attempts to create more awake and aware environments, we’re forgetting that numbers typically don’t inspire us to change our behavior — people and stories do.”
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How might storytelling based on DEI benefit your organization? Do you have a story you would care to share?  To join the conversation, click "comments" above this article, just under the photo.