 Social distancing, isolation, and uncertainty create new communication breakdowns, and can intensify relationship issues at home and at work. We’re in close quarters at home, with more chances to get on each other’s nerves. At the same time, we’re working remotely, with the unique challenges of virtual teams. In our recent Webinar, Communication in a Time of Social Distancing: Deepening Connections at Home and at Work, we shared five evidence-based micro-communication behaviors to strengthen your communication with significant others, family members, and work teams:
What have been your biggest quarantine communication challenges at home and at work? How are you handling them? To join the conversation, click "comments" above.
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 Like many of us, you may be facing the challenge of working remotely or managing a newly virtual team. If so, Vlada Bortnik, Co-founder and CEO of Marco Polo, the popular video messaging app, has some advice based on best practices of her company, which has been operating fully remotely since its establishment in 2012.
What are the key lessons you have already learned from working remotely during this time of social distancing? 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.  Many leaders have crossed the first hurdles of ensuring that their remote team members have set up their tech tools and defined their processes. The next step is keeping everyone engaged and motivated. Though academic research on remote productivity is mixed, with some studies saying it declines while others promising it increases, Lindsay McGregor, co-author of The New York Times bestseller Primed to Perform and co-founder and CEO of Vega Factor, a technology and consulting firm, says success depends on how you do it:
Motivators that lead to increased productivity, says McGregor, include play (the joy of problem-solving with a colleague), purpose (visibility into one’s impact on clients or colleagues), and potential (access to colleagues that teach and mentor). What can leaders do to try to keep these elements present in remote work? McGregor suggests the following weekly rhythm:
If you are suddenly working remotely, do you feel more or less motivated in your role, and why? 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.  The coronavirus lockdown in China has had many repercussions—one of which is a spike in the divorce rate. Now, millions of dual career couples around the globe are navigating uncharted waters, with both partners working full-time from home—often caring for children at the same time.
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Jennifer Petriglieri, an associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD and the author of Couples That Work: How Dual-Career Couples Can Thrive in Love and Work, says that couples who survive stressful times, even crises, make it a priority to discuss and agree on certain practical principles. Among the issues couples should address now:
Are you part of a dual career couple working from home? What are some of your challenges and how do you navigate them? Is there an upside to your situation? 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 the midst of one public health threat, we should not ignore a secondary one: Loneliness and social isolation take both a physical and mental toll. As noted by Scientific American, “the long-term harm caused by loneliness is similar to smoking or obesity.”
Social distancing and quarantining are the correct responses to a pandemic, so how can we cultivate social well-being while in isolation? Kalsey Killam, a World Economic Forum Global Shaper who specializes in social health and well-being, offers these suggestions:
How have you been reaching out to others, and how have others been reaching out to you during this extraordinary time? 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 we planned to or not, many of us now work in virtual teams. Adapting to this format presents countless challenges—not the least of which is maintaining strong interpersonal relationships. In the absence of lunchtime get-togethers, water cooler conversations, or even random encounters in hallways or elevators, a certain amount of bonding may be sacrificed.
Sebastian Reiche, Professor of Managing People in Organizations at IESE Business School, offers this advice for fostering virtual team bonds:
Are you leading or participating in a virtual team? What tips do you have for keeping spirit and cohesiveness strong? 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 we planned to or not, many of us now work in virtual teams. Adapting to this format presents countless challenges—not the least of which is maintaining strong interpersonal relationships. In the absence of lunchtime get-togethers, water cooler conversations, or even random encounters in hallways or elevators, a certain amount of bonding may be sacrificed.
Sebastian Reiche, Professor of Managing People in Organizations at IESE Business School, offers this advice for fostering virtual team bonds:
Are you leading or participating in a virtual team? What tips do you have for keeping spirit and cohesiveness strong? To join the conversation, click "comments" on our Community of Practice Forum. If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.  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.  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.  Few of us like confrontation, and having to confront an underperforming employee about their performance can be a daunting prospect. Writing in the Harvard Business Review global CEO coach Sabina Nawaz offers some guidelines to de-pressurize this difficult situation:
Have you ever had to confront an underperforming employee? Did your talk lead to productive 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.  When journalist Kate Murphy was writing her book, You’re Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters, few people she asked could define what it meant to be a good listener—but they did know how a bad listener behaved: interrupting, checking their phones, responding in a self-involved way. “The sad truth,” she says, "is that people have more experience being cut off, ignored and misunderstood than heard to their satisfaction”.
How to reclaim the lost art of listening? After years studying the neuroscience, psychology and sociology of listening, as well as consulting numerous professional listeners (including a C.I.A. agent, focus group moderator, radio producer, priest, and bartender), Murphy “discovered that listening goes beyond simply hearing what people say. It also involves paying attention to how they say it and what they do while they are saying it, in what context, and how what they say resonates within you.” Some pointers:
Good listening has many rewards. Your relationships will be stronger, you will gain more knowledge, and you will certainly have more interesting conversations. Do you consider yourself a good listener? How do you keep your attention focused on your conversation partner? 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.  Human beings have a fundamental need to belong; yet 40 percent of us say we feel isolated at work. To better understand this basic need to belong, the career and life coaching platform BetterUp conducted research to investigate the role of belonging at work and “the outsized consequences of its absence”. Here’s what the research showed:
Organizations are not powerless in the face of exclusion, but leadership must ensure that recruiting for diversity is not an end in itself. To ensure that no one feels left out, regular feedback should be solicited and attended to. Have you ever felt excluded at work? What have you done to make others feel they belong? 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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