What makes hospital patients feel better?  Medical interventions aside, a 2015 Johns Hopkins study revealed simple things hospitals do to improve the patient experience.
 


Based on responses to questionnaires and letters sent to CEOs and medical personnel from a nationwide sample of 53 hospitals, researchers concluded that successful interventions included:


* Proactive nurse rounds, where nurses regularly visited patients’ bedsides, asking questions about their care;
 
* Leader rounds where hospital leaders, including executives, visited patients and staff members to check on concerns or issues;
 
* Always making eye contact with patients;
 
* Sitting at patients’ bedsides, rather than standing or hovering over them
 
Note that these practices all fall under one essentially important category:  respectful, engaged human contact.  Patients are hospital “customers”, and customers want to feel valued. What applies to hospital staff applies to us all: Listen to customers and treat them with respect, and they will give you high marks.
 
We want to hear. Can you give an example of when you, as a customer. were treated as a valued human being?  What do you do to make your own customers feel this way? To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

If you would like to read more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our book: Be Quiet, Be Heard: The Paradox of Persuasion.

We hear so much about machines or artificial intelligence replacing workers. Perhaps that is why some uniquely human skills—like empathy, flexibility, and collaboration—are increasingly valued. Occupations requiring strong social skills have grown far more than others since 1980, according to new research. In fact, the only occupations that have shown consistent wage growth since 2000 require both cognitive and social skills.

David Deming, associate professor of education and economics at Harvard and author of a new study cited in The New York Times says that adjusting behavior during the course of conversations is “a hard thing to program.” Jobs that require both socializing and thinking have fared best in employment and pay.

Social and emotional skills have not fared as well when it comes to being taught at school, but now many schools—including business and medical schools—are experimenting with how to add social skills to the curriculum.  In our opinion, this is a much-needed supplement. The value of communicating with clarity, sensitivity, and respect cannot be over-estimated.

We want to hear. Does your job or profession value and remunerate social skills? How are social skills being taught to newcomers in your field?  To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

Would you like to read more about creating a habit around masterful communication? Check out our book: Be Quiet, Be Heard: The Paradox of Persuasion.

In a 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, 89 percent of cellphone owners said they had used their phones during the last social gathering they attended. But they weren’t proud of it; 82 percent of adults felt that the way they used their phones in social settings hurt their conversations.

Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and author of the new book, Reclaiming Conversation, has been studying the impact of online connectivity on face-to-face conversation for the last five years. In a recent New York Times Op Ed, she noted that the benefits of dropping in and out of conversation to be online—such as never being bored, staying connected with work, and always being heard somewhere—are offset by a sense of loss.

Studies of conversation both in the lab and natural settings show that when two people are talking, the mere presence of a phone on a table between them or in their visual periphery changes both what they talk about and the degree of connection they experience. People keep the conversation lighter, on topics where they won’t mind being interrupted., and they don’t feel as invested in each other. “Even silent phones disconnect us,” writes Turkle.
What to do? Turkle says we face a choice. “It is not about giving up our phones but about using them with greater intention. Conversation is there for us to reclaim. For the failing connections of our digital world, it is the talking cure.”

We want to hear. How do you react when people use their phones while talking to you? Do you use your phone this way? How does it affect the quality of your conversation?  To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

Would you like to read more about creating a habit around masterful communication? Check out our book: Be Quiet, Be Heard: The Paradox of Persuasion.

What’s the difference between a high-functioning remote team and one whose performance is below average?  The under performing team may feel out of step with corporate culture. Tsedal Neeley, associate professor at Harvard Business School, has focused on this subject for over 15 years. Talking with Inc. magazine, he shared a framework to help leaders manage long-distance employee relationships. The framework is called SPLIT: structure, process, language, identity, and technology. In brief:
 


Structure: Emphasize that the team is a single entity with common goals, regardless of locales. Make frequent contact.
 
Process: Give frequent feedback. Factor in time for small talk in call-in meetings. Solicit team members’ views, beginning with those with the lowest status in the group.
 
Language: To minimize international language gaps, reduce the use of idioms and cultural references (e.g. baseball analogies). Make sure less fluent speakers are contributing.
 
Identity: Don’t leap to conclusions about what someone else’s body language or behavior might mean. Allow for cultural differences.
 
Technology: Before picking a means of communication, ask yourself: “Is it urgent, or can it wait?”  If your message recipient is across multiple time zones, email might be more appropriate than phone calls or Skype.
 
We want to hear. What are your best practices for keeping remote teams functioning smoothly?  If you are part of a remote team, what do you wish could be improved?  To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

Do you think you're more likely to have a misunderstanding or miscommunication with a close friend or partner or with a perfect stranger? If you’re like most of us, you probably assume you communicate most clearly with those closest to you. But that is often not the case.
 
Kenneth Savitsky of Williams College recently conducted an experiment that found people greatly overestimate the degree to which they imagine they are on the same page as close friends and partners.
As described on NPR, Savitsky and colleagues brought a group of couples into their lab: Some were married; some were strangers. People invariably predicted there would be less miscommunication with partners. In reality, people understood strangers about the same. But they anticipated they would have significantly better communication with those close to them—so there's actually a greater risk in communicating with loved ones because we assume we're going to understand what they mean and what they want. When it comes to strangers, we're much more likely to put effort into understanding what's happening in another person's mind.
 
The lesson: Even if you know someone really well, it is dangerous to ever make assumptions about what that person is thinking, feeling or wanting. So when in doubt – ask! 
 
We want to hear. Have you ever gotten into a sticky situation by misreading what someone close to you has said?  What would you do differently? To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

There is much research showing that jobs perceived as helpful to others yield greater satisfaction and less stress. For example, in 2014 two researchers published an article in the Journal of Positive Psychology examining the lives of lawyers, and found that attorneys in high-income fields like corporate law, tort, and malpractice were unhappier and less satisfied than their lower-paid counterparts in service roles such as public prosecutors or legal defenders.

Perhaps you don’t think your job is especially helpful to others, but Arthur C. Brooks president of the American Enterprise Institute, suggests you rethink your attitude.  Writing in The New York Times, Brooks says that “almost any work can be understood as a service job.” He illustrates the point with the parable of a traveler who happened upon two stonemasons. When he asked the workers what they were doing, one replied, “I am making a living.” But the other mason said: “I am building a cathedral.”

Brooks maintains that in our interconnected world, all work has an impact on the lives of others, and that “everyone, in every industry, affects the lives of co-workers, supervisors, customers, suppliers, donors or investors.” We endorse his suggestion of spending part of our morning commute considering how to improve the lives of others through our work, whatever it may be.

We want to hear. How does your work benefit others, and does considering its impact have a positive effect on you? To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

Are you reluctant to seek out advice for fear that doing so will make you seem incapable? In fact, people who ask for advice in academic and work settings are perceived as smarter and more competent than those who do not, according to a recent paper by Alison Wood Brooks and Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School, and Maurice E. Schweitzer of Wharton.


“Information sharing is very important in organizations,” said Professor Brooks in The New York Times.“If everyone sat in their separate silos and never interacted with each other, they wouldn’t learn anything from each other. By not seeking advice, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to learn from your co-workers.”

Researchers came to this conclusion by analyzing the responses of working adults and college students who were asked to give their impressions of people (a computer-simulated partner, in this case) who sought their advice on various written tasks and tests.

In another upside to advice-seeking, those who are asked for advice feel recognized. So by asking for input you may not only gain wisdom but also forge a stronger relationship with a potential mentor and colleague.

We want to hear. When was the last time you asked for advice?  What do you feel you gained? To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

According to a Gallup poll, nine out of ten American workers do not feel “engaged” with their jobs. Translation: Most of us would rather be doing something else—except we need our salaries.  But we all want more than money: We want opportunities to grow and we want respect. As Barry Schwartz, Swarthmore psychology professor and author of the forthcoming book Why We Work, recently wrote in The New York Times: We want above all, “work that is meaningful — that makes a difference to other people and thus ennobles us in at least some small way.”

Research consistently shows that workplaces are more profitable when they offer employees challenging and meaningful work over which they have some control. In his book, The Human Equation, Stanford organizational behavior professor Jeffrey Pfeffer cites a study of 136 IPO companies across different industries. The study found that companies placing a high value on human resources were almost 20 percent more likely to survive for at least five years than those that did not. Similar differences in success were found in studies that compared the management practices of steel mills, clothing manufacturers, semiconductor manufacturers, oil refiners, and various service industries.

We appreciate the enormous role that communication plays in generating employee involvement, and we agree with Schwartz who says we can up engagement, “by giving employees more of a say in how they do their jobs…by encouraging them to suggest improvements to the work process and listening to what they say…[and by emphasizing] the ways in which an employee’s work makes other people’s lives at least a little bit better.”

We want to hear. What keeps you engaged at work, and how does your organization communicate in ways that generate employee involvement?  To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

Showing appreciation for a colleague at work (or even your boss!) is extremely powerful. A new report by TINYpulse--an app that sends weekly one-question surveys to employees--shows that frequent recognition increases the “fun” of work, and reduces turnover.

Drawing on survey results from over 500 clients, TINYpulse found that employees who reported getting lots of appreciation at work were the most likely to score highly on the question: On a scale of 1 to 10, how enthusiastic would you be about reapplying for your job? The report also revealed a strong correlation between recognition and workers describing work as “fun.” Additionally, workers were more likely to rate their bosses favorably if they got recognition when it was deserved.

Beyond all this, we want to point out another powerful benefit to praising others at work. As we write in our book, BE QUIET BE HEARD, tell people you like what they’re doing, and they’ll repeat it! Offering praise not only gets people to engage in the same behaviors again, but also to look for ways of improving them.

Give thanks for a little and you will get a lot!

We want to hear! Have you praised or been praised in the workplace recently?  What effect did it have? To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

A decade-long research study of work culture, work-life fit, and health, funded by the National Institute of Health, has found that workers in environments that support work-life balance show half the risk of cardiovascular disease, significantly lower levels of stress, improved physical and mental health—and higher job satisfaction.

In explaining the research Ellen Ernst Kossek, professor of management at Purdue University, said her own research supports that people are more depressed when they have “low boundary control,” i.e. that their home life and “time off” will be invaded by relentless work issues.”

Despite the well-known benefits of work-life balance, many organizations appear to have challenges implementing this type of support. Part of the problem may be that managers—many of whom have been conditioned to be workaholics themselves—simply don’t know how to facilitate employees’ work-life needs.

In one of Kossek’s research experiments, she and her team trained managers of a grocery store chain for 45 minutes to an hour on how to support employees’ work-life needs. They began to offer emotional support and instrumental support, helping employees get the right schedule. They learned not only how to be creative, but how to be role models. We agree with Kossek, when she says, “If you train the whole manager group…you change not just individual behavior, but the entire culture.”

We want to hear. Do you feel you have good work-life balance and how does that balance, or lack of it, affect the way you feel about your workplace? To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

The goal of feedback is to improve performance by increasing people’s self-awareness and understanding about how their actions affect others and how others perceive them. So feedback can provide a much-needed reality check.

But if the feedback you give seems to have little impact on behavior, maybe it’s because it’s not being given in the most effective way. Writing in The Harvard Business Review Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Professor of Business Psychology at University College London, offers ideas about what might be going wrong. Among them:

• You may not be giving enough negative feedback – A focus on strengths alone won’t illuminate gaps between how employees think of their performance versus actual measures of that performance.

• You don’t give people enough of a narrative – People need concrete examples of how their behavior is affecting others. As we have also long said, be specific.

• You are not speaking in a way that can be heard – Use your personal knowledge of the employee to craft a message that can be taken in. In other words, know your audience.

Finally, feedback shouldn’t begin and end with a performance review. As Chamorro-Premuzic says, “That’s just the beginning of the actual coaching, which requires follow through…”

We want to hear:  How do you offer feedback and how do you like to receive it? Do you feel the feedback you have received has altered your behavior? To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

With back-to-school excitement in the air, many parents are probably wondering how they can help their kids have a good year at school. The answer involves going back to basics. While there are many styles of parenting, one thing that consistently helps children is simply this: conversation.

Yes, just talking to your kids will help them emotionally, socially, and intellectually. And there appears to be a direct correlation between conversation length and reading ability. Speak often, speak wisely, and speak well:  Because 88 to 98 percent of the words children use by age 3 are from their parents’ vocabularies! (Hart and Riley, 2003)

Can’t think of what to chat about? Read the kids a book! Studies also show that kids whose parents read to them at least 20 minutes a day are at least a grade level above others in reading by the time they are 15 years old.(PISA 2009 Assessment)

We want to hear: What do you like to talk about with the children in your life? What tips do you have for keeping conversations with kids afloat? To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

It’s hard to top email for convenience. According to new research, however, we all sound smarter when we communicate verbally. Findings of a recent study cited in The New York Times suggest that phone conversations or face-to-face interactions may be more effective when trying to impress a prospective employer or to close a deal.

Vocal cues “show that we are alive inside — thoughtful, active…Text strips that out,” said Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and one of two co-authors of the paper, “The Sound of Intellect,” recently published in Psychological Science.

In an experiment presented in the paper, M.B.A. candidates were asked to prepare a pitch to a prospective employer — a two-minute proposal that the researchers recorded on video. Separately, the researchers recruited 162 people to evaluate these pitches. Some of the evaluators watched the video; a second group listened to the audio only; a third group read a transcript of the pitch. The evaluators who heard the pitch—via audio or video—rated the candidates’ intellect higher than those who read the transcript. In a second experiment, evaluators read a pitch specifically drafted by candidates to be read, rather than spoken. The result was the same.

 We are not surprised by the results of these experiments. Good writing is an excellent tool, but no writing can convey the nuances of the spoken word, which is embellished by tone and cadence and amplified by gestures and facial expressions. Remember this study the next time you ask yourself if you should press “send” or speak your piece.

We want to hear! What criteria do you use to decide whether to write or speak what you have to say? Do you prefer it when others email you or speak with you directly? Join the conversation and click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

It’s called “humblebragging” when someone makes a self-deprecating statement (often veiled in a faux complaint) with the true purpose of drawing attention to something they’re proud of (as in, “Darn, I lost so much weight I have to spring for a new wardrobe.”)  But studies show the humblebrag is not a good tool for self-promotion in business situations, especially job interviews.

According to recent research by Harvard Business School’s Ovul Sezer, Francesca Gino and Michael I. Norton, cited in Forbes, when given the option to brag or to humblebrag, the former is better. The researchers hypothesized that humblebrags create negative impressions because they seem insincere, compared with pure bragging or pure complaining. Their supposition was tested in a series of five studies, detailed in their paper, “Humblebragging:  A Distinct—and Ineffective—Self-Presentation Strategy.” The takeaway: By public perception, complainers are better than braggers. And humblebraggers are the worst.

Why do people humblebrag? “I think people have a tendency not to say something negative about themselves because that makes them vulnerable,” Gino says. But as we have said before, showing vulnerability can often have extremely positive results. We all appreciate honest people who can learn from their mistakes.  It’s fine to brag if the brag is merited, and it is also fine to admit you could improve—because we all can!

We want to hear! Can you share with us a humblebrag you heard lately? How did you feel about the person who made it? Join the conversation and click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.

In last week’s Capsule we wrote about the costs of Incivility to workers. But there is yet another group for whom incivility has a negative impact: customers.

Studies conducted by Georgetown business professor Christine Porath with marketing professors Deborah MacInnis and Valerie S. Folkes at USC found that people were less likely to patronize a business that has an employee they perceived as rude--whether the rudeness was directed at them or at other employees. “Witnessing a short negative interaction leads customers to generalize about other employees, the organization and even the brand,” writes Porath.

Why is respect, or disrespect, such a powerful motivator? Because even brief interactions affect our view of how others see us, which in turn can shape how we define ourselves. A smile, an acknowledgment, the sense that we are being heard can uplift us, while rude, dismissive behavior can leave us feeling devalued.

Sadly, Porath’s research shows incivility has soared over the past two decades: 25 percent of those surveyed in 1998 reported being treated rudely at work at least once a week. That rose to nearly 50 percent in 2005, and over 50 percent in 2011. Imagine how much lost employee and customer goodwill that adds up to!  It’s time to reverse the trend, starting with identifying small moments when a slight change in demeanor can raise people up instead of bringing them down.

We want to hear! Have you ever stopped patronizing a business because workers there were rude to you or to one another? Join the conversation and click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum.