A recent Workhuman survey of more than 3,000 U.S. workers reveals a workforce in trouble. The data show 48 percent of employees agree they've experienced burnout, 61 percent feel elevated stress levels, and 32 percent agree that they have felt lonely at work.
 
Writing in Inc., Marcel Schwartes, founder and Chief Human Officer of Leadership From the Core, says that to ease the toll of the crisis, leaders will need a more human-centered approach to management. In order to increase a sense of psychological safety and encourage cooperation and collaboration:

• Say “thank you” more often: Recognition builds connections between people. Naturally, receiving a "thank you" makes an employee feel appreciated. But showing appreciation for someone's efforts also improves positive feelings for the giver. “Mutual recognition and gratitude help people take off their emotional armor. When employees do that, they feel safer as well as more connected.”
• Check in with employees more frequently:  Only 29 percent of respondents in the Workhuman survey said they check in with their manager every week. But a weekly check-in increases a sense of psychological safety. More frequent feedback heightens growth, innovation, and inclusion.
• Build resilience Into your culture:  The “new normal” is an opportunity for a fresh start, and an increased emphasis on psychological safety. Consider formalizing appreciation and thank-you’s with a data-rich social recognition system.

 
What are you doing to lessen employee stress in your workplace? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

Videoconferencing might not be your favorite way to relate to others. But, even post-pandemic, it looks like Zooming will be here to stay. So, we might as well do everything we can to make it enjoyable and valuable.

Writing in Inc., contributing editor Bill Murphy Jr. offered some suggestions for phrases that increase your likeability in a videoconference setting:

• “Why don't you take this one?” This phrase is designed to be a positive springboard for someone else. Use this phrase when you're asked something a colleague would want to answer—especially if your colleague is less likely, due to temperament or position, to speak up in front of others.
• “I did what you suggested. Thank you.” People love being listened to and getting credit for their ideas. These seven words offer validation and appreciation for someone else’s contribution.
• “Congratulations.” Seek out opportunities to say this. If you learn positive things about people--milestones, accomplishments--write them down and then remember to congratulate them, especially in front of other people.
• “I want to introduce you to…” Not everyone on a Zoom call may know each other, and that can be disconcerting. Tell people who you want to connect them with, get their agreement, and then do so.
• “Here’s what I think.” Be as brief as you can on video calls, but if you can offer an opinion, it implies that you're paying attention and have something worthwhile to add.

Use these phrases often and they will become a habit. Until then, as a memory aid, Murphy suggests writing them on Post-It notes and pasting those around the perimeter of your computer screen.
 
Do you have any favorite phrases you use to facilitate Zoom calls? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

“We look for three things when we hire people. We look for intelligence, we look for initiative or energy, and we look for integrity. And if they don't have the latter, the first two will kill you, because if you're going to get someone without integrity, you want them lazy and dumb.”  — Warren Buffet
 
Investment icon Warren Buffet largely attributes his success to hiring the right people. And integrity is the one trait he values above all others. But, hiring managers “must dig hard in the interview process to get the answers they need to feel confident someone has the non-negotiable trait of integrity,” says executive coach Marcel Schwantes, writing in Inc.. Here are some suggested questions he proposes to get to the core of a person’s character:

1. Tell me about a specific time when you had to handle a tough problem that challenged fairness or ethical issues. What happened?
   
   
2. When was the last time you "broke the rules"?
   
   
3. Describe a situation where you saw an employee or co‐worker do something you thought was inappropriate. What did you do?
   
   
4. What values do you appreciate the most in a team environment?
   
   
5. What would your current/past manager say makes you most valuable to them? (Besides intelligence, skills, and qualifications for the job, listen for clues that point to integrity.)

How do you evaluate whether a potential hire has integrity? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. 

Most of us have been in meetings that have gotten tense—maybe even gone off the rails. We've seen dueling monologues, hidden agendas and, sometimes, pure pandemonium as participants compete for attention and struggle for validation. But, according to Joseph Grenny, bestselling author and co-founder of VitalSmarts corporate training, “It can be surprisingly easy to bring order to a chaotic meeting — and to turn conflict back into conversation — if you know how.”
 
Grenny offers four steps for getting a derailed meeting back on track:
 

1. Interrupt the chaos: As you attempt to intervene, decelerate the pace of your speech. You may need to raise your voice a decibel or two to be heard, but once you’ve attracted attention, lower your voice and speed. For example, you might say, slowly and calmly, “Hey, team, let me take a moment to point out something I’m noticing.”
2. Shift to process: Lay out what appears to be happening, without assigning blame, and the consequences of continuing down the current path. Once you’ve described the situation, it's important to ask the group to confirm your observation. Once participants explicitly acknowledge the process problem, they become more likely to support the solution.
3. Propose a structure: Offer a process that ensures all will be heard and that slows the pace in order to quell the emotions. Then ask all participants to commit to it.
4. Honor the agreement: Lingering emotions may ignite a few attempts to breach boundaries. If this happens, point out the discrepancy, and ask participants if they want to continue with their commitment.

 
How did you handle the last tense meeting you were in? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

Even before the pandemic, job skills were evolving. Gartner Data found that the number of skills required for a single job was increasing by 10% per year. But what skills are most needed now, as many of us transition back from fully remote mode to what is likely to be some hybrid workplace?
 
Writing in Fast Company, Gwen Moran, creator of the website Bloom Anywhere, specifies essential skills that experts say employees will need:
 

• Self-direction: Amidst of so much change, employees are going to have to “captain their own careers.”
• Digital Capabilities: Employees will need to be comfortable using digital technologies, ranging from collaboration software to videoconferencing.
• Empathy: Sensitivity to what colleagues may be experiencing through this time of accelerated change is mandatory.
• Communication Management: Given the variety of platforms available, it's more critical than ever to get thoughts and concepts across with brevity and levity.
• Motivational Skills: Being able to both self-motivate, and inspire others to see your vision, could be the antidote to inertia in the face of uncertainty.
• Adaptability: Being able to carry on, even when you’re a little uncomfortable, is important in a time when so many things may be in flux.

 
Have you honed any of your skills over the past year, and which ones do you still need to work on? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. 

Values are core beliefs that affect our behavior and worldview. We tend to  choose friends with similar values, but at work it can be more complicated. Writing in Fast Company, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzik, PhD and Becky Frankiewicz, both leaders at Manpower Group, say, ”If you want to live in an inclusive world that harnesses the power of psychological diversity, then you have to learn to accept, tolerate, and perhaps even embrace those who don’t share your values.” 
 
Wondering how? The authors offer these tips:

• Choose to Learn: Think about the conversation as an opportunity to learn versus the need to defend—a dialogue, not a debate.
• Know that Seeking to Understand Doesn’t Mean Agreement: It’s okay to want to listen and learn and still hold onto your own beliefs and values.
• Embrace Curiosity and Patience: Curiosity seeks out understanding and acknowledges and often embraces difference. Emotion is unlikely to disappear from values conversations, yet acknowledging it and choosing to lead with curiosity keeps communication lines open.
• Stay Active in the Conversation: By staying in the dialogue, you demonstrate respect, even if there is absolutely no agreement. Wanting to be heard is a value we all desire, yet it requires reciprocal listening and staying engaged. 

 
Do you have co-workers who have values divergent from yours? How do you dialogue? To join the conversation, click "comments"​ above.

There is no shortage of management experts telling us that leaders need to show
their vulnerability, being open and honest about who they are and how they feel.

But there is a limit to this advice, writes Jessica Stillman, in Fast Company. “Even just a little time in the business world is enough to reveal that over-sharing personal struggles can get you labeled unprofessional, and being too open with your worries just breeds useless fear.”

So how do you walk the line between being forthcoming and genuine, but not
burdening others with your problems or fears? Researcher, author, therapist and
TED speaker Brené Brown offered a succinct answer while speaking with Adam
Grant on the Worklife podcast: "Vulnerability minus boundaries is not
vulnerability."

​It’s constructive to share your own struggles to make others feel safer sharing theirs. It’s unhealthy if you want to unburden yourself and dump your worries and concerns on others. She suggests that before you decide to open up at work, you ask yourself if you are sharing your emotions and experiences to move your work, connections, or relationships forward? Or are you over-sharing by working your private stuff out with an audience? If the latter, stop talking.

Make sure professional sharing is always aimed at constructive goals and you'll walk the line between authenticity and self-absorption. Have you ever encountered an over-sharer at work, and how did you handle the situation? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. 

An influential study on management and leadership was conducted by Amy Edmondson, who researched hospital charge nurses. Edmondson found that high performance teams and well-respected nurse leaders reported more errors because the team felt psychologically safe to do so. On the teams led by less respected leaders, nurses hid their error rates out of fear. David Burkus, associate professor of leadership and innovation at Oral Roberts University and author of Under New Management, offers these strategies for ensuring that team members experience psychological safety.

• Celebrate Failure: Take time after a failure to reflect and discover its lessons. People are less likely to admit mistakes if failures are treated as losses. People are emboldened to explore new solutions if they know it’s okay to fail.
  
  
• Encourage Dissent: When someone on your team disagrees with you, it doesn’t make you less of a leader. On the contrary, it demonstrates your commitment to the open exchange of ideas. It also gives you an opportunity to see another perspective, or an opening to explain yours and instruct your team.
  
  
• Build Civility: Incivility permeates a team when the leader isn’t modelling civility. Incivility destroys psychological safety, yet many leaders don’t recognize the impact of their own actions. Consider asking a trusted teammate to watch your behavior during meetings and share any insights about how you might encourage greater psychological safety. 

 
Do you believe the people on your team feel safe? What have you done to help to contribute to psychological safety on your team?  To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

There is no such thing as overcommunication, argue Adam Bryant, managing director of Merryck & Co. and Kevin Sharer, former president, CEO, and chairman of Amgen. They describe overcommunication as a “key leadership lesson” in their new book, The CEO Test, an excerpt of which appears in Fast Company.
 
Across hundreds of interviews with CEOs, one of the most consistent themes the authors heard is a “growing recognition that they must make an extra effort to close the gap between how much they think they need to communicate and what their employees want and need from them.” The more people you are addressing the simpler and shorter your message needs to be.
 
Although saying the same thing over and over can seem tedious to the one saying it, don't stop! It’s important to feed people’s desire to know…not just their need. If leaders aren’t sharing much, then employees will supply their own narrative.
“Leaders must be prepared to be teased for endlessly repeating the strategy,” the authors advise. “If your employees roll their eyes and say what you’re going to say before you open your mouth, consider that a victory because they have internalized the message.”

Is there a message that you repeatedly share with employees? Are there messages you could be sharing more often? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

Most people would deny indulging in workplace gossip. However, Deborah Grayson Riegel, a communication coach and instructor at Wharton Business School, says people engage in this destructive practice without realizing it. If you have ever participated in a “confirmation expedition” by asking a colleague to confirm your negative experience of a third party (”Have you noticed Sam in accounting never replies to emails?”), or welcomed a similar inquiry from a coworker, you could be contributing to a climate of eroding trust, hurt feelings, damaged reputations, and divisiveness—in other words, you might be gossiping.
 
Gossip is a way of bonding by excluding others, of venting, and of validating our own beliefs, so the urge to engage in it is strong. But talking behind backs undermines an open, honest culture. How can we stop doing something wrong that feels so right?  Riegel has this advice:

• Name it; then pivot. Label gossip “gossip.” Then pivot the conversation by asking, “How can I help you get a better outcome?” Engage in coaching, brainstorming, and problem-solving— not in problem-confirming.
• Ask yourself why you need someone else’s confirmation about a behavior that you’re noticing in a third party. If it’s to confirm you’re right, don’t bring someone else into the conversation. If it’s to understand how you might be contributing to the dynamic or to brainstorm helpful solutions, then it might be workable.
• Let people know your policy is, “if you have a problem with me, tell me first.” Adopt the “tell them first” policy with your colleagues, too. When someone approaches you with gossip about someone else, ask, “Have you already told her?”
• Create a feedback-rich environment around you. The more you normalize feedback —positive and negative, giving and receiving — the less likely people will be to look for alternative means to express their frustrations and concerns.

 
Have you ever interacted with a colleague regarding negative impressions about a coworker? How might that conversation have been more productive? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. 

Much of the job hunt process involves waiting. After you score an interview, you might feel the urge to follow-up, so be smart about it. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Art Markman, Ph.D. professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Texas, Austin and author of Bring Your Brain to Work: Using Cognitive Science to Get a Job, Do it Well, and Advance Your Career, posits four situations where it may be in your best interest to send the hiring manager a note:

1. The thank you note: One day post-interview, you can send a short email thanking the hiring manager for their time.  Mention one specific element of the interview or what you learned about the organization. Finally, mention how much you are looking forward to hearing from them. One caveat: This isn’t an opportunity to add more content about yourself.
2. The follow-up note: You may not hear back from the hiring manager by the date they mentioned for making an offer, but don’t panic. Sit tight for another week and then, if no word, send a brief note restating your interest. Ask if there’s anything additional you can provide.
3. The exception: The one time you can reach out in between the interview and the date the hiring manager gave you is if there is a significant change in your situation or portfolio, e.g. if you have published an article, secured a patent, or had another job offer.
4. The feedback note: If you feel like the interview went well, but aren’t offered the job, you can send one additional note to ask for feedback. Again, be brief. Thank the interviewer again, say you enjoyed the interview and would appreciate some constructive feedback on what you can do in the future to improve your chances.

 
How do you like job applicants to follow up with you after an interview? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

Being a leader involves getting buy-in for your decisions, even from those who may not agree with you. In recent research by Harvard Business School professor Laura Huang and Harvard MBA student Ryan Yu for Huang’s new book, Edge: Turning Adversity Into Advantage, 60 leaders were observed and interviewed as they tried to change minds of people who initially disagreed with them. Depending on what was driving their detractor’s resistance, they approached the situation with one of the following three targeted strategies:

• The Cognitive Conversation: If someone opposes your idea with analytical reasoning, offer up sound arguments with a strong presentation. The goal is to show the person that, on an objective and factual basis, their initial stance on the situation is less reasonable than your argument. Be cautious about not introducing emotions into the discussion, and avoid broad generalizations.
• The Champion Conversation: When the detractor isn’t easily persuaded through cognitive arguments, or when they harbor a grievance in your relationship, debates can be futile. Instead, invest time in personally learning about them and building rapport. Gradually convert this detractor into someone who is your champion or advocate, perhaps by shedding more light on the qualities that you value in them and how your values align.
• The Credible Colleague Approach: If the detractor’s deeply held personal beliefs make them fundamentally opposed to your proposal, then—rather than trying to change their mind yourself—bring in a credible colleague. A champion of your position from another part of the organization, whether a peer or manager, may be better suited to convince this individual. A credible colleague allows your challenger to disentangle who you are from what your argument is, and then to evaluate your idea based on its objective merits. If you and the detractor are at an impasse, the credible colleague might just tip the scales in your favor.

 
What strategies have you used to identify the source of a colleague’s objections to your ideas and change their mind? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

We only know one thing for sure about post-pandemic workplaces: They will be different. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Laura Empson, professor at London’s Case Business School and Jennifer Howard- Grenville, professor at the Cambridge Judge Business School, define this pandemic as a liminal experience, an “in between” occurrence that disrupts normal life for a prolonged time and from which those who have survived return transformed. Such experiences are disturbing, but “also represent potent opportunities for reflection, discovery, and even reinvention.”

​In the post-Covid world, leaders should not try to recreate their pre-Covid cultures, say the authors. Since people will return with unanswered questions and potentially incompatible expectations, leaders need to recognize this and consider how to respond. They suggest steps leaders can take now to prepare their organizations to emerge stronger in the post-pandemic world.

• Emerge gradually: Some employees may be “gung ho” to return to normal; others may be exhausted or confused. All will need time to adjust and to process what they have experienced.
• Identify what to retain and what to discard: Identify which long-established pre-pandemic practices should be reinstated, which pandemic-driven practices should be retained, and which pandemic-era practices should be discarded.
• Don't lose the liminal altogether: The pandemic has taken a toll socially and economically, yet many people and organizations discovered new strengths and identified new opportunities. Show that you value the spirit of experimentation and adaptability that the last year engendered.

How do you think your workplace might alter after the pandemic, and how do you
plan to sustain the best changes? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

Employees in high-trust organizations are more productive, more energetic, collaborate better, suffer less stress and stay with their employers longer. So affirms research conducted by Paul J. Zak, founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, Professor of Economics, Psychology, and Management at Claremont Graduate University, and CEO of Immersion Neuroscience. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Zak identifies eight measurable behaviors that foster trust:

1. Recognize excellence: Neuroscience shows this has most impact on trust when it occurs right after a goal has been met, when it comes from peers, and when it’s tangible, unexpected, personal, and public.
2. Induce “challenge stress”: When a team tackles a difficult but achievable task, the moderate stress releases neurochemicals that intensify focus and strengthen social connections.
3. Give people discretion: Once trained, allow employees the opportunity to manage people and execute projects on their own.
4. Enable job crafting: Trust employees to choose which projects they’ll work on—focusing energies on what they care about most.
5. Share information broadly: Organizations that share their plans with employees reduce uncertainty about where they are headed and why.
6. Intentionally build relationships: When people intentionally build social ties at work, their performance improves.
7. Facilitate whole-person growth: Acquiring new work skills is a plus, but investing in the whole person has a powerful effect on engagement and retention.
8. Show vulnerability: Ask for help from colleagues instead of continually being the one with the answers.

 
“Ultimately,” Zak says, “you cultivate trust by setting a clear direction, giving people what they need…and getting out of their way.”
 
Does your organization inspire trust, and how does that affect performance? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.