 Coworkers can be irritating…maybe sometimes infuriating. But even if we feel justifiably angry with someone who casts unwarranted blame on us or undermines our objectives, angry outbursts at work almost always backfire—and rarely solve the problems that incited them. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Peter Bregman, CEO of Bregman Partners and author of Leading With Emotional Courage, says you can “outsmart” your next angry outburst by asking yourself these four questions before communicating:
What techniques do you use to restrain yourself from an angry outburst? 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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 If you’re looking for signs that a married couple is about to split, “not talking” is a better indicator than “fighting a lot.” The same is true at work. Disagreements can actually be productive, whereas fear of conflict and a “culture of silence” can eat away at your company. Unfortunately, says Shane Snow, author of Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart, most of us don't disagree productively. Busy trying to “win”, we ignore logic and evidence that gets in our way. However, he contends, we can change this dynamic, exchange diverse ideas, and argue for and against the merits of those ideas, by training people to adopt key habits:
Do you and your co-workers abide by such rules when issues are debated? If so, which do you find the most useful? If not, which ones do you most wish could be implemented? 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.  It’s understandable to want to delay, or even avoid, difficult conversations—especially if you dread conflict. But doing so can actually damage relationships. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Joel Garfinkel, author of Difficult Conversations, Practical Tactics for Crucial Conversation, offers this advice for making tough conversations more palatable:
Have you initiated a difficult conversation? What strategies did you use, and how did they affect the outcome? Did the relationship improve afterward? 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.  Anywhere from 25 to 50 percent of Americans feel lonely much of the time, writes Kasley Killam in Scientific American. This puts them at risk for developing a range of physical and mental ailments, from heart disease, cancer, and diabetes to cognitive decline and depression. (Tweet it!)
Loneliness is a public health problem, but at the individual level, Killam, who drives community engagement in health research for Project Baseline at Verily and is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, says we can take action to counter loneliness. One strategy is to volunteer. In a recent survey of over 10,000 people in the UK two-thirds reported that volunteering helped them feel less isolated. Similarly, a 2018 study of nearly 6,000 people across the US examined widows who, unsurprisingly, felt lonelier than married adults. After starting to volunteer for two or more hours per week, their average level of loneliness subsided to match that of married adults, even after controlling for demographics, personality traits, and other variables. These benefits may be especially strong the older you are and the more often you volunteer. Volunteering can obviously provide the opportunity to make new friends and feel a sense of belonging. But it can also compensate for the loss of meaning that commonly occurs with loneliness. (Research using the UCLA Loneliness Scale and Meaning in Life Questionnaire has shown that more loneliness is associated with less meaning.) Volunteering for causes that are important to us engenders a sense of purpose, which is tied to psychological well-being. If you volunteer, can you describe the impact volunteering has on your frame of mind and on your relationships? 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.  Debate and disagreements at work are productive; fighting is not. (Click to Tweet!) Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Annie McKee, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and author of How to be Happy at Work, says, “We each bring our own baggage to work each day. And, some of our issues rear their heads again and again.”
Topping McKee’s list of sources of work conflict are personal insecurity (fear of admitting we are imperfect), the desire for power and control (attempting to position oneself above others), and habitual victimhood (relinquishing control to avoid accountability). What can we do about conflict at work? McKee suggests the following:
What causes fighting in your workplace? Do you think you can play a role in transforming it? 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.  Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki has researched what he calls “positive conformity.” In his research, he notes, “participants who believed others were more generous became more generous themselves.” This suggests, “kindness is contagious, and that it can cascade across people, taking on new forms along the way.” (Tweet it!)
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company, says, “Zaki’s insight is vital for improving society, but it applies to companies too.” However, instead of treating kindness as a “directive,” he suggests treating it like a contagion and creating “the conditions under which everybody catches it.” Taylor cites a case study detailing customer service transformation at Mercedes Benz USA. When Stephen Cannon became president and CEO, he understood that almost every customer transaction “came down to a personal encounter with a human being in a dealership who could either act in ways that were memorable or could act the rote way most people in most dealerships act.” He set about creating a grassroots movement to encourage and empower customer-facing employees to rise to any occasion. “There was one dealer who’d closed a sale and noticed from the documents that it was the customer’s birthday. So he ordered a cake, and when the customer came in to pick up the car, had a celebration. Then there was the customer who got a flat tire on the way to her son’s graduation. She pulled into a Mercedes dealership in a panic and explained the problem. Unfortunately, there were no replacement tires in stock for her model. The service manager ran to the showroom, jacked up a new car, removed one of its tires, and sent the mother on her way.” Taylor believes that this bottom-up, peer-to-peer commitment to customers at Mercedes-Benz USA is “a reminder for leaders in all sorts of fields: You can’t order people to be kind, but you can spark a kindness contagion.” Can you share an instance of kindness in your organization that sparked others to act similarly? 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.  We all complain at times. Some just do it more often than others. Some seek attention by complaining; some use complaints to badger others; but many complainers are ruminators, repetitively worrying about problems.
Repetition, however, is the mother of all learning. When we repeatedly focus on the negative by complaining, we’re firing and re-firing the neurons responsible for the negativity bias—and, as Rick Hanson, a neuroscientist and author of Buddha’s Brain, reminds us: What gets fired, gets wired. In other words, the more we complain, the more we notice things to complain about. (Click to Tweet!) Thanks to something called “neuroplasticity”, negative habits change our brains for the worse. But positive habits change them for the better. If you find yourself caught in a complaining loop, try breaking it by:
Have you ever noticed that complaining usually leads to more of a negative outlook? What happens when you try to break the cycle? 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.  It’s not easy to reign yourself in while in the grips of anger. This is particularly true for children, whose brains—and self-control abilities—are still developing. The answer? Instead of punishment, try rehearsal. (Tweet it!)
Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychologist at Northeastern University who studies how emotions work, says there's a big misconception that you can effortlessly stop yourself when you're already mad. But, she adds, "if you practice cultivating a different emotion or a different response when you're calm and peaceful, you have a better chance of managing your anger in those hot-button moments." The anthropologist, Jean Briggs, lived for a time in the Canadian Arctic with the Inuit people, known for valuing gentleness and even-temperedness. Briggs observed how this value was cultivated in that culture. When an Inuit child acted in anger, perhaps hitting someone or throwing a tantrum, there was no scolding, punishment, or time outs. Instead, the parents waited for a tranquil moment and put on a little drama. The parent would reenact what happened when the child misbehaved, including the consequences of that behavior. During the drama, the parent always kept a light, playful tone. Within the context of the play, the child had to think what to do; if they chose aggressive behavior the parent did not reprimand, but simply acted out the consequences. Myna Ishulutak, a language teacher and filmmaker in Iqaluit, Canada, who grew up with this system, says it “teaches kids to keep their cool.” Will this approach work in other cultures and settings? Laura Markham, a New York City psychologist who specializes in peaceful approaches to disciplining, recommends a similar strategy: Wait until everyone is calm and then go back over with the child what happened. "That develops cognitive capacity. And it develops self-control and self-regulation," she says. How do you respond to angry outbursts in the children you know? Do you ever review them in a calmer moment? 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.  Fearless organizations provide psychological safety, a culture where employees feel they can take interpersonal risks and express relevant ideas, questions, and concerns. (Click to Tweet!) In this kind of climate, co-workers trust and respect each other and feel empowered, perhaps even obligated, to be candid.
Yet, according to a 2017 Gallup poll, only three in 10 employees strongly agree with the statement that their opinions count at work. And Gallup calculated that by “moving the ratio to six in 10 employees, organizations could realize a 27% reduction in turnover, a 40% reduction in safety incidents, and a 12% increase in productivity.” According to Amy C. Edmondson, Harvard Business School professor and author of The Fearless Organization, organizations can take several steps to increase psychological safety:
Do you feel it’s safe to express yourself in your organization? If so, how does leadership communicate this? If not, what should change? 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.  Sooner or later we all experience rejection at work. Whether we are passed over for a promotion or simply have an idea of ours dismissed, we can’t help but experience a sting. (Click to Tweet!) Evolution programmed us to seek the acceptance of our tribe, and its inherent safety, so being rebuffed feels threatening.
However, we can learn to take rejection in stride. Writing in The New York Times, Wharton organizational psychologist Adam Grant says that in the face of rejection it helps to remember that each of us is composed of many selves. “When one of your identities is rejected,” he says, “resilience comes from turning to another that matters to you.“ We all assume multiple roles in our lives: manager, mentor, communicator, researcher, teacher, creator, collaborator... “When you’re insecure in one, you can lean on another one that’s doing better at that time…pliability is the definition of strength,” filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan said recently on Grant’s WorkLife podcast. As Grant sums up: Remember that what is being rejected is not you but a sample of your work…”sometimes only after seeing it through a foggy lens.” What did you do the last time you experienced a rejection at work? Did remembering one of your alternate strengths allow you to rebound? 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.  Rituals are small, meaningful acts that mark transitions and bind people together. Religions are thick with ritual, but secular society has relatively few left, says New York Times columnist David Brooks.
But for the extravagant exceptions of weddings, bar mitzvahs, and quinceañeras, says Brooks, daily life goes unremarked. We lack the means to note and celebrate “doorway moments”—like when a new family moves onto a street, when the kids in a blended family move in together, or when we leave behind a house filled with memories. Rituals provide comfort because they remind us we’re not alone as we proceed through life. Symbolically, they can involve burying something (confronting loss), burning something (sacrifice), passing something around (creating community), anointing something (purification), putting something on (embracing a new role). They express things beyond words and force a pause in life’s hectic pace. (Click to Tweet!) Brooks says we need more personal rituals and also more collective ones. In 1620, colonists formed the Mayflower Compact, in which they publicly vowed to “combine ourselves into a civil body politic.” Maybe, he suggests, “neighborhoods and towns could come together to make town compacts. They would vow to be a community together and lay out the specific projects they are going to do together to address a challenge they face.” Rituals can help us make promises to each other and be inspired to keep them, to define life’s phases, and…to throw some fun parties. As Brooks asks, why deprive ourselves? What rituals have been particularly meaningful for you? Can you think of a life transition, community event, or work event for which you would like to create a new ritual? 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.  Preet Bharara, former U.S. attorney and author of the bestselling book Doing Justice, maintains that deep understanding of any subject involves asking questions. "Smart questions are good; dumb questions are even better." (Click to Tweet!)
So-called dumb questions, says Bharara, get to the bottom line. They "uncover superficial reasons, reveal bad logic, and expose fake experts." He says there is no exact right number of questions to ask, but he does know this: "Find the person in a new job who asks the fewest questions, and there’s your problem." Recounting a story from his own past, the author writes, "I can still remember the steely look of one of my early supervisors when I or others asked basic questions. Years later I still remember the chill of inadequacy I felt. But I didn’t let it stop me. I just took my inquiries elsewhere and asked incessant, annoying questions. And usually I got the answers I needed." What’s something useful you learned from asking a "dumb question"? Have you ever stopped yourself from asking a basic question and regretted it later? 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.  Conflict can tear a family business to shreds. Even if you’re not part of one, consider the T.V. series Dallas and Succession, whose dog-eat-dog plots are often only slightly exaggerated. “What’s less often recognized,” says Josh Baron, Columbia professor and co-founder of BanyanGlobal Family Business Advisors, “is that too little conflict in a family business can have an equally destructive impact.”
“The impact of too much or too little conflict on both the family and their enterprise are almost identical,” says Baron. In both cases, the business can suffer from limited growth, poor decision-making, a loss of competitive edge—or even complete dissolution. All this can be a result of external conflict (shouting), or internal conflict (quiet seething). Baron says conflict is a “Goldilocks problem.” Both ends of the spectrum are unsustainable–so the middle way is best. The earth itself is in what astronomers refer to as a Goldilocks Zone—far enough from the sun not to overheat, close enough to sustain life. In a healthy family business “difficult issues can be raised, addressed, and resolved without doing lasting damage to relationships or shared assets.” We have worked with family businesses for over three decades and we agree that conscious conflict is a key to success. Is your family business in the Goldilocks zone? Ask yourself: 1) Is there general satisfaction and belief that you do better together than apart? 2) Are decisions about critical issues being made? 3) Are family relationships good enough to work and celebrate together? Is your family business able to handle conflict in a healthy way? What are your best practices for doing so? 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.  In business, some wins are easy to spot—the big sale, the client-winning presentation. But many people work tirelessly behind the scenes to chalk up invaluable but less obvious wins. Thanking the employees who solved an IT glitch in time for that big presentation to take place, or the accountant whose number crunching enabled the terms of the big sale is just as important as acknowledging your “stars.” (Tweet it!)
Speaking to Inc, magazine, Tom Turner, CEO of Bitsight, shared four ways to uncover and recognize invisible wins:
Can you think of an invisible win your organization recently scored? What did you do, or what can you do, to thank the people responsible? 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.  Socializing at networking events can feel awkward, and we often fill the silence with the query, “What do you do?” But this may not be the best way to build rapport. (Tweet it!)
Research suggests we prefer relationships where we can relate to another in multiple contexts and that these “multiplex relationships” tend to be more trusting and longer lasting. If a co-worker takes the same yoga class as you or supports the same charity, your bond is likely to strengthen (https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3431176/). Writing in the Harvard Business Review, David Burkus, author of Friend of a Friend, and Oral Roberts University leadership professor, suggests questions that may begin the transition of a new acquaintance into a multiplex relationship. Among them:
What is an interesting icebreaker question that you’ve been asked? Did it lead to a stronger rapport? 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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