Posted on

Building An inclusive Culture in a Remote Environment

Inclusive Culture in a Remote Environment

Creating an inclusive environment at work yields a wide array of benefits for both employees and organizations. There is now a body of research on the topic suggesting that companies with an inclusive culture and diverse teams have seen a substantial boost in revenue and value creation.

However, it’s safe to say that the COVID-19 pandemic and the remote-first work that came as a result have affected businesses’ efforts to create a more inclusive workspace.

During such trying times, ensuring that people work in an inclusive space is more important than ever, and addressing this need isn’t necessarily a straightforward task. In this article, we’ll discuss exactly how organizations can embrace their employees and help them feel cared for and included at work.

Let’s dive right in, shall we?

What does an inclusive workplace look like?

The end goal of creating an inclusive workspace is to make every employee feel appreciated while also taking their differences into account. Similarly, it’s crucial to understand how these differences contribute to the organization’s success. To achieve this, businesses must aim to negate any bias towards their least represented workers.

As a result of successfully implementing inclusion practices, all employees will feel that they can bring a valuable contribution to the company’s success. Plus, an inclusive workspace should foster a sense of mindfulness regarding the type of issues that different people might have to deal with, as well as how these issues impact their quality of life and performance at work.

Inclusive Workplace

Why inclusion matters more than ever

The global pandemic ushered in a new world of remote work, which has forced unprecedented changes in all of our lives. However, it’s important to mention that various groups of people have felt these effects more than others.

Now is the time when organizations should take care of all of their employees, especially the ones from underrepresented communities.

In an office setting, taking care of each other is more seamless than in remote environments. It’s much more effortless to speak to people, ask them about how they are, and observe their behavior for signs of stress or depression. Working remotely has made these interactions more challenging, which means that both individuals and organizations should take the necessary steps to express care and support.

Inclusion can’t be backed exclusively by systemic or individual efforts; it must always be a combination of both. This way, a company can rid itself of both conscious and unconscious biases in formal and informal processes.

Below, we’ll take a closer look at the steps you can take to contribute to establishing an inclusive environment at work, both from an individual and a systemic standpoint.

1. Create space for non-work chat

Creating an inclusive environment strongly depends on building meaningful relationships. To do this, it’s essential to build trust with the people who work with you, understand their struggles, and share more about your own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. This will enable your employees to express themselves freely and feel understood. While it does seem like a very broad task, there are quite a few things you can do to express care.

Embrace the opportunity to share

Speaking about your vulnerabilities as a leader, manager, or C-suite officer is meant to inform your colleagues that they should feel free to do the same.

People from underrepresented communities have most likely had to deal with indifference, misunderstanding, discrimination, and microaggressions, which often makes them reluctant to speak about their issues. It’s extremely important to let them know that you’re willing to learn about their experiences and take them seriously.

Doing so also provides you with the opportunity to learn more about them and get to know them on a personal level. People enjoy speaking about the things that drive them, they also love feeling heard when they can open up about their vulnerabilities.

It’s also essential to learn about the effects of the pandemic and self-isolation on their wellbeing, which brings us to PEI check-ins.

Embrace the opportunity to share

Physical, Emotional, Intellectual (PEI) check-ins

As we mentioned above, it’s much easier to interact with your colleagues in an office. A work-from-home setting strips us of a wide array of interactions with our coworkers, making it harder to learn about how a person is feeling—this is why it’s imperative to have regular PEI check-ins.

Asking people about how they feel in a casual way is an important tenet of an inclusive environment. As a leader, you should allot time every week to learn how people feel physically, emotionally, and intellectually. These check-ins should be less of a formality and more of an opportunity to remind people that it’s okay to feel unwell during such trying times.

PEI check-ins can be held during work-related one-on-ones or outside them. If you opt for the former, make sure to start your call with the PEI update rather than leaving it for the end of the meeting. Avoid talking about work altogether, place the person’s wellbeing at the center of your focus, and listen intently. Being genuine during these conversations is paramount. If these check-ins feel like a mere formality, they’ll defeat the purpose of building a connection with your coworkers.

Bear in mind that open-ended questions are much more efficient in understanding how a person feels compared to close-ended ones:

  • Are you feeling okay?
  • How are you feeling?

Notice how the first question can only be answered with “yes” or “no,” and it’s at the person’s discretion whether they’d like to elaborate on their answer. By asking an open-ended question, we express our willingness to learn about how a person is doing.

Give people what they need

Aside from learning how people feel, it’s important to understand how you can help improve their wellbeing both within work and outside it. It’s safe to say that as a leader, you can’t effectively create an inclusive environment if you don’t really understand the issues that your colleagues are dealing with.

Consider making some thoughtful changes to your workflow that will make everyone just a little happier collectively, but don’t hesitate to learn about every individual’s needs and make adjustments accordingly:

  • Ask your colleagues about the things that distract them or about the challenges that prevent them from being present at work;
  • Consider making your meetings a few minutes shorter. Many people find social interactions hard in general. A bit of extra time will help them decompress and allow them to prepare for the next call. While this doesn’t seem like much, it means a lot to the people that need it;
  • There’s a chance that there are people among your employees or team members who are “onlys” (the only person from a particular community). Often, they may feel left out or demotivated to speak about their issues or challenges. Make sure to spend some time chatting with them to learn more about their experience and how you can help them feel included and safe at work;
  • As a leader, it’s essential to be willing to have challenging conversations about the mistakes you’ve made when interacting with underrepresented communities at work if you’ve done so. State your desire to learn and invite people from these communities to share their perspective and teach their colleagues how they can improve in this regard;

Communities that are most vulnerable to remote work

2. Identify communities that are most vulnerable to remote work

While supporting employee mental wellbeing is central to an inclusive workspace, it’s important to identify other ways of improving your colleague’s quality of life. Both short-term and long-term improvements can contribute to this goal.

Financial support

There is a variety of reasons why particular employees might need financial assistance during the pandemic—it’s important to learn about every person’s struggles and understand how you can be of assistance. Take a moment to think about the people that don’t really need extra income, but rather need reassurance that they won’t unexpectedly lose their jobs.

Here are a few suggestions:

  • Offer hazard pay for your most vulnerable employees;
  • Make a commitment to protect your employees’ jobs and income for as long as possible via flexible hours or shorter work weeks;
  • Offer additional paid time off for the employees that need it most, like seniors, for instance;
  • Join forces with other businesses or industries to help your employees find additional income sources;

Adjusted workflows

For many people, working remotely means that there will be a significant overlap between their professional and domestic responsibilities, and dealing with both can be pretty challenging. There is a variety of things an employer can do to assist them:

  • Allow children to participate in meetings to relieve the stress some parents experience;
  • Allow employees to define their own work schedules, so they can juggle both domestic and work-related responsibilities more efficiently;
  • Offer logistic assistance to provide the right software and hardware for employees with disabilities;
  • Offer flexible hours or extended paid care for people with care responsibilities;

Mental wellbeing through tech

Mental wellbeing through tech

Never hesitate to provide your colleagues with psychological support through apps and online resources. While expressing care personally is an essential part of an inclusive workplace, people will benefit greatly from additional resources that will help them deal with anxiety, depression, and solitude.

  • Offer a package of mental wellbeing products like meditation or psychological support apps. A great addition to this would be tools and webinars on dealing with anxiety and depression;
  • Ensure that your colleague’s work schedules are respected at all times to avoid remote burnout;
  • Focus on maintaining your team’s spirits up via virtual happy hours and similar activities;

Adjusting jobs to individuals

We can’t really predict how long the COVID-19 pandemic will continue affecting our lives. Therefore, it’s essential to think about longer-term strategies to protect the vulnerable communities in your workforce. Here are a few things you should consider:

  • Stay committed to remote work. Working from home is gradually becoming the new standard for the vast majority of office workers. Committing to continued remote work will allow your company to reduce the gender pay gap, create a better environment for people in the LGBTQ+ community, and grow your representation of people with disabilities;
  • Consider offering non-transferable paternity leave. Remote work has made substantial changes in family roles. As an employer, you can help support this shift in perspective by allowing both parents to take paternity leave so that children can have the support they need. This enables both men and women to take their caregiving responsibilities seriously, as well as stimulate men’s participation in care work;
  • Continue investing in your employees’ mental and psychological wellbeing through PEI check-ins and technology;

Better HR processes

As your company invests more time and effort into creating an inclusive culture in a remote environment, it’s essential to make changes in a wide array of human resources processes:

  • Reevaluate hiring, pay, promotion, and termination. Your employees’ quality of life has changed drastically since the beginning of the pandemic, so has yours. Approach any decision regarding their employment and pay with this in mind and make the necessary adjustments to evaluate their work with their mental and psychological wellbeing in mind;
  • When reevaluating these facets, make sure to have a diverse crowd voice its opinion on these changes;

Lead by example

3. Lead by example

It’s essential to take into account that your efforts in building an inclusive culture won’t automatically translate onto the rest of the company. The results of your inclusion policies will rely heavily on your leaders and higher management. A study published by Gartner suggests that about seven out of 10 employees think that the companies they work in fail to inform them about the means of promoting inclusion.

It is essential that everyone in the company is encouraged to value every employee’s contribution by expressing care for one another, advocating for respect and equality, as well as playing an active part in their colleagues’ growth and success.

To ensure that the inclusion strategy is successful, it’s important also to visualize what success exactly means in this regard. HR leaders should invest quite a bit of time and effort into translating what inclusion means on both a theoretical and a practical level.

There is a wide array of things that an inclusive management can do to promote these values in the rest of the company:

  • Make open commitments towards inclusion and ask your colleagues to hold you accountable. This will help promote the cause and motivate fellow workers to take part in such commitments;
  • Motivate your colleagues to participate in various inclusive practices, which they will commit to on a weekly basis;
  • Promote fairness within your team. Make sure to give credit to the people that came up with a solution to a problem and always return the conversation to the person that was interrupted. It’s also important to spot people that are typically passive during meetings and help them join the conversation to make their voice heard;
  • Set an example by becoming a true ally of members of underrepresented communities at work. Consider calling out male-centric work culture and language, as well as instances of non-inclusive and unfair behavior;
  • Be curious about other people’s experiences and seek to learn from them. While this may sound like a straightforward thing to do, it does demand a fair amount of mindfulness and intention. Listen carefully to what your colleagues have to say and prevent interruptions, especially when it comes to members of underrepresented communities. Actively seek out their opinions on work-related matters so that they can share their perspective on things;

4. Remain committed to the cause

The focus of our article revolves around building a long-lasting inclusive culture in your organization, and it’s important to underline that a mere one-shot diversity training simply won’t cut it. As a leader, it’s essential to opt for changing behavior rather than just informing your coworkers about inclusion. Your efforts should be organization-wide and conducted over a long period of time.

Committed to the cause

  • Your company’s C-suite officers and board members must show their public support for inclusion policies, incorporate diversity and inclusion in the company’s purpose, and take responsibility for the success of these changes;
  • Aside from showing its support for the cause, the higher management itself should become a diverse and inclusive space. Increasing the number of people from underrepresented communities that are part of the strategy process is instrumental in building and maintaining a diverse and inclusive culture;
  • It’s essential to rethink and reform the hiring and selection processes since they can often increase bias. For instance, often, jobs are advertised exclusively to graduates of certain universities. Another common issue is that managers very rarely select people from minority groups for client-facing or revenue-generating positions;
  • Set clear and measurable inclusion-related objectives for your managers. A few examples of such goals are employee engagement, equity, and psychological safety. To ensure that these objectives can be measured, consider setting KPIs for each of them;

The bottom line

The vast majority of businesses around the world have suffered from the uncertainty that was brought upon us by the global pandemic. However, there’s no doubt that employee experience should be at the very top of your organization’s priorities.

Investing time, money, and effort into keeping your employees happy and cared for is essential for talent retention, higher productivity, and overall business success.

Let’s do a quick recap of the steps higher management, leaders, and individuals should commit to in order to create a more inclusive environment at work:

  • Make some space for non-work chat. Even providing people with the most basic emotional support can be extremely useful when done genuinely. Ask people about how they feel, and listen carefully. Learn more about the troubles they’re going through, understand how you can help, and don’t hesitate to normalize sharing by telling people about your own vulnerabilities;
  • Identify the people that need extra support and provide them with the additional financial, emotional, and technological assistance to improve their quality of life;
  • Call out exclusive behavior and lead by example. Inclusion is more than just company-wide memos and seminars. It relies on the dedication and mindfulness of individuals;
  • Inclusion is not an end goal. It’s a continuous and long-lasting transformation process.
Posted on

Want a Healthier Workplace? Begin With Gratitude

Healthy Workspace

Gratitude is having a moment. Practicing it is a topic of conversation everywhere, and you wouldn’t be wrong to believe that the attention is deserved. A principle of self-care, practicing gratitude involves taking the time to notice and reflect upon the things you’re thankful for.

Appreciation can be for anything – as simple as a Youtube video that made you laugh or as significant as a promotion at work. Research shows that practicing gratefulness has positive effects on our minds, health, and wellbeing, so regularly taking a moment to count our blessings is becoming even more compelling.

At work, expressing gratitude is how we acknowledge our team’s efforts and celebrate their wins. Receiving appreciation at work makes us feel good about our performance and motivates us to keep it up. While some leaders believe that expressing gratitude may undermine their authority, this is far from the truth. There’s nothing worse than working for someone who thinks your paycheck is the only ‘thanks’ needed. A little TLC here and there goes a long way to your team and organization’s benefit.

Ways that gratitude transforms an organization

Some of the ways that gratitude transforms an organization

1. Increases job satisfaction, decreases employee turnover

If a company would like employee satisfaction to grow, a culture of gratitude is an excellent way to accomplish this. Without consistent and authentic recognition, employees are more likely to quit. Employee turnover is a massive drainer on company resources, and it’s pricey, costing up to $160 billion per year in the US alone. Since lack of appreciation is one of the top reasons people are ditching their jobs, implementing a culture of gratitude can help keep your team satisfied and stick around for longer.

2. Encourages employees to feel motivated, engaged, and productive

Expressing gratitude and appreciation correlates to increased employee motivation, engagement, and productivity. Some research shows that gratitude can actually be a better motivator than pay. It also causes employees to be more concerned about social responsibility in the workplace, performing more organizational citizenship behaviors such as making new employees feel welcome and filling in for coworkers.

3. Drives greater organizational innovation and performance

As mentioned, when employees feel appreciated, their job satisfaction, motivation, engagement, and productivity improve. Meaning that they are more likely to be productive performers, ultimately driving more significant organizational innovation and performance.

4. Transcends beyond the workplace

Gratitude’s positive effects in the workplace spill over into other areas of employee lives. Examples include increased happiness, greater satisfaction with life, higher resilience to stress, and even fewer headaches and illnesses.

Gratitude can be a pathway to achieving bigger goals

5. Gratitude can be a pathway to achieving bigger goals

Gratitude is important, but it isn’t the only emotional skill valuable to a modern business. Emotional intelligence and empathy encourage employees to practice compassion and forgiveness. Gratitude can act as an excellent gateway to these more challenging goals.

6. It’s beneficial to everyone involved

According to research conducted by Harvard Medical School, practicing gratefulness is just as beneficial as receiving it. Giving thanks boosts happiness and fosters hope for the future. It also reduces stress, burnout, symptoms of PTSD and increases resilience. All are benefits critical to the health of your employees.

Clearly, gratitude has an important place at work. But implementing a culture of gratitude is a little bit more complicated than just saying “thank you” here and there. A culture of gratitude ensures that appreciation is practiced, followed, and established in every space within the organization.

Characteristics of an effective gratitude culture

Effective gratitude culture

It’s prevalent

For gratitude to be part of an organization’s culture, it has to be consistent. A tokenistic event once a year (employee awards we’re looking at you) isn’t enough. A study on recognition in the workplace by Kyle Luthans found that employees value personalized, specific, and instant social awards such as attention, praise, and sincere appreciation. Luthans study infers the importance of consistent and authentic recognition at the time of action. It is making practicing gratitude front of mind so that when a team member does something worth applauding, it is second nature to give them that recognition immediately.

A culture of gratitude must also start from the top and trickle down. This can be explained by ‘upstream reciprocity’: the tendency of those who themselves have received help or support to be more likely to pay it forward or give assistance to someone else in need. Having your management team start a chain of gratitude will result in a ripple of positive effects throughout the organization. If the organization isn’t practicing it at every level, it’s pretty unlikely that it will be prevalent enough to become part of the integral culture of the organization.

Your familiar with your team’s appreciation language

You may have heard of the five love languages theory. They are words of affirmation, quality time, giving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. Each love language represents a different preference for an expression of affection. Well, it turns out that the love languages theorist, Gary Chapman, found a natural application for the theory in the workplace. Here are Chapman’s five languages of appreciation in the workplace:

  • Words of affirmation – Team members who prefer words of affirmation feel most appreciated when receiving affirming words and praise.
  • Acts of service – These team members are a fan of actions.
  • Receiving gifts – Tokens of appreciation make these team members feel most appreciated.
  • Quality time – Undivided attention is this team member’s bread and butter.
  • Physical touch – appropriate physical contact, such as pats on the back, a high five, or a handshake, is most wanted here.

Gratitude isn’t one-size-fits-all, so knowing your team’s preferred way to receive appreciation in the workplace can help ensure that you’re meeting their needs. There are a few things that you can do to help determine someone’s preferred appreciation language. You can simply ask them, get everyone to take a personality quiz, or gauge how they respond to different appreciative acts. Keep in mind; the appreciation language may not tell the whole story. While a team member might love words of affirmation, some may prefer to receive in private, and others may prefer public acknowledgment.

Appreciation goes beyond meeting workplace goals

Appreciation goes beyond meeting workplace goals.

While employees love acknowledgment for their contributions in meeting the organization’s strategic goals, it’s essential to go beyond that as well. There’s more to us than how we help meet the bottom line, and our personalities contribute to our achievements at work. An example of showing your employees you value them as a whole person could be thanking a team member for their sense of humor, acknowledging that they keep the team feeling light and cheerful despite challenges. Gratitude for the whole person also includes showing your team members that you care about their lives outside of work, appreciating them by caring about who they are and what’s going on in their world.

So now that we have a deeper understanding of why gratitude is essential at work and how we can embed it into workplace culture, how should you express your thankfulness?

Some fun ways that you can say thank you to your team:

1. Create an employee of the month award on LinkedIn

People who love public praise will appreciate this expression of gratitude. It’s something that employees can share with their public network, showing their communities what they’ve accomplished at work!

2. Use a recognition and rewards platform like Bonusly

Bonusly is a platform that empowers those closest to the work to recognize their peers—allowing team members to motivate and appreciate their employees through meaningful rewards such as gift cards, donations, and more. The platform makes recognition visible to everyone, encouraging appreciation, and building stronger relationships.

3. Celebratory email

Send a company or department-wide email that celebrates your employees for the fantastic job that they’re doing.

Handwritten note

4. Handwritten note

Sometimes it’s nice to go a bit old school and send a heartfelt handwritten note that celebrates your team member’s wins.

5. Pull them aside

Take some time to speak to your teammate with the specific purpose of saying thank you. Keep it to appreciation only to reinforce the importance of gratitude!

6. Promotion

If your employee is consistently standing out, going above and beyond, and killing it at work, give them a promotion. Upgrade their job title to truly represent their role and make sure you increase the pay to match.

7. Tickets for an event

Who doesn’t like getting tickets to something special? Tickets to a movie premiere, sports game, or concert are all ways to show your team you think they’re doing an excellent job. Bonus points if you choose something that caters to an employee’s unique interests.

8. Take a task off their hands

Thank your teammate for a time when they’ve helped you out by lightening their load in return. You could offer to help them with admin tasks, grab them lunch when they’re slammed, or join in on a brainstorming session for their big project coming up.

9. Provide educational and career development opportunities

Show your team that you appreciate their hard work and believe in their abilities by helping them develop their skills and knowledge. This could look like purchasing a corporate membership to LinkedIn Learning, a conference ticket, or bringing in a guest speaker.

High five or handshake

10. Give them a high five or handshake

This is a great way to show those who appreciate physical touch that you acknowledge their contributions. It’s something that you can initiate spontaneously and immediately after a team member does something worth celebrating to show them that you’re paying attention and care about them.

11. Add an appreciation element to your weekly stand-up meeting

Having each employee reflect and acknowledge a teammate in a regular meeting encourages awareness, appreciation, and thoughtfulness. It helps employees feel grateful for their team and recognized for their accomplishments.

12. Look after their wellness

Health is wealth, so what better way to appreciate your employees by helping them achieve greater wellbeing. You can do this by giving out yoga class passes, meditation app memberships, or mental health days off.

13. Team outings

Make your team feel appreciated and encourage team bonding all at once! Head out to a bowling game, corporate getaway, escape room, or cooking class. Telling your team that you care about who they are outside of work too.

14. Ask for their opinion or advice

Valuing your employee or teammate’s insights shows them that you appreciate their skill and expertise. Asking someone to do a favor for you has also been shown to make them like you more – so it’s a win-win!

Conclusion

Embracing a culture of gratitude at work can help develop an environment where employees feel valued, acknowledged, and appreciated. Gratitude has a business case and a human case, with the positive effects reaching far beyond the bottom line. Have fun with gratitude and get creative! We spend a lot of time at work so let’s make it a place where everyone wants to be.

Posted on

Tired of Slackers at Work? The Secrets Behind Social Loafing: and What to Do About it

Social Loafing

Have you ever shown up to a potluck with a liter of soda and a bag of chips, then helped yourself to a plateful of baby back ribs? Or participated in a book group discussion without having read the book?

If we’re honest, we do things like this every day. These are examples of a phenomenon called social loafing.

What is social loafing, exactly? University of Washington management professor Michael Johnson defines it as:

“A phenomenon where people exert less effort when working in groups than they do when working alone. In general, the greater the number of people who are working on a group task, the less effort any one member of the group will put forth toward accomplishing the task. We’ve probably all worked with people who free-ride on the work of others, but the interesting thing about social loafing is that virtually everyone does it to some extent.”

Johnson points out that as a group size grows, so does the productivity output of each individual.

Social loafing comes with a cost. It reduces the productivity and potential of a group, and creates animosity in the workplace.

Whether you’re a project manager or working with a team, fortunately there’s a lot you can do to minimize social loafing in your work environment.

Let’s look at the history of social loafing, break down what causes it, and look at ways both managers and team members can keep it in check.

The Ringelmann Effect

In France in the late 1800s, agricultural professor Max Ringelmann happened upon an insightful discovery. He measured the power of one ox pulling a cart, and of two oxen pulling the cart together. When pulling together, each ox pulled with slightly less power than when they pulled individually.

Ringelmann then performed a similar study on humans pulling ropes, and discovered the same pattern. When two people pulled together, each person pulled with 93% of the power they exerted when pulling the rope individually. When three pulled, this output decreased to 85%. A group of 8 pulled at only 49%: individual output decreased by more than a half!

What does this discovery mean for you and me? Well, if you’re working with a small company and feel burnt out, then obviously it’s time to move to a bigger team!

Ha ha, but seriously. This discovery of what’s now known as “social loafing”, or “The Ringelmann Effect” has been widely studied and identified in all areas of life: in audiences, for example, people will clap loudly when there’s a small audience, but more softly as the size of the audience grows.

It’s very real and a part of our everyday life.

Causes of Social Loafing

Causes of Social Loafing

What causes this dramatic decline in output as group sizes increase? Ringelmann determined social loafing is caused by two main reasons: a loss of motivation, and a loss of coordination within a group as the numbers increase.

  • Diffusion of Responsibility

In The Art of Thinking Clearly, author Rolf Dobelli noted that social loafing exists with rowers, but not in relay races.

This distinction highlights a key cause of social loafing: motivation and personal responsibility.

When a person doesn’t feel individually responsible to perform a task, e.g. rowers in a boat, they’re less motivated to perform to their potential. Whereas, when a performance is singled out, e.g. one leg in a relay race, the individual feels personally responsible to run at maximum speed.

  • Coordination

Have you ever wondered why a football team with the best quarterback and wide receiver in the league never seems to make it past the first round of playoffs? Or why a coach with a seemingly average group of athletes secures a trophy every season?

According to Ringelmann, social loafing may be the cause of this apparent inconsistency.

The productivity of a team depends as much on the coordination within the team as on the skill sets of individual members. Various group dynamics trigger social loafing. If team members see others slacking off, they follow suit. A member with high initiative and leadership skills may cause others to dawdle and loaf. A team without a clear sense of goals, objectives, and individual responsibilities flails and produces little at all.

Solutions to Social Loafing

Now that we know about social loafing and what causes it, let’s discuss some ways to reduce this phenomenon in the workplace. Whether you’re a member of a team, or overseeing a project, your experience of social loafing and how to remedy it will be a little different, so we’ll look at solutions from each perspective.

Solutions for Givers and Receivers

Solutions for Givers and Receivers

Did you ever get stuck with a group of loafers in college, and find yourself madly typing an abstract or bibliography at 4 am, while everyone else binged on pizza and beer?

Not a trauma that bears repeating!

We’ve all had our fair share of being on the receiving end of loafing, where no one else assumes ownership, and we have to tie up the loose ends ourselves.

In the interest of balancing your work load and building good social capital, social loafing is something you certainly want to keep in check in the work environment. On both the receiving and giving end, there are definitely things you can do to minimize it.

  • Bystander Effect

The funny thing about social loafing is that oftentimes people don’t even realize they’re engaging in it.

Have you ever heard of the bystander effect? It’s another social phenomenon (we’ll be discussing several of these!) where if someone has a health emergency in public, the people mingling around don’t immediately step in to offer assistance.

Robert Cialdini, in his book Influence, calls this “witness apathy”. It is caused, he says, not because people are unwilling to help, but simply because they’re uncertain what to do in the situation.

Social loafing, in part, occurs for the same reason. People don’t give their all simply because they’re hesitant to take initiative, or not sure what tasks should be done by whom. Back to the potluck example: people may show up with a bag of chips because they’re uncertain what to bring.

How does Cialdini suggest a victim of the bystander effect should respond? If you’re, say, having a stroke in public, he advises you to “call out clearly your need for assistance….isolate one individual from the crowds and say ‘You, sir, I need help. Call an ambulance.’”

Studies on the bystander effect show that this singled out person almost always responds immediately.

This method to remedy bystander effect also works to reduce social loafing. If you’re doing the lion’s share of a project at work, ask that duties be specifically assigned to individual members.

Chances are, your coworkers are behaving like a bystander: happy to help, just in need of clarity about what to do.

Social Capital Incentive

  • Social Capital Incentive

As previously discussed, we all engage in social loafing from time to time. Perhaps we’re unenthusiastic about a project or don’t gel with the personalities on the team.

Although we may not see it in the short term, we pay a price for not carrying our full load.

Many business experts believe that building social capital is more crucial for career success than skill or productivity.

What is social capital? Don Cohen and Laurence Prusak, authors of In Good Company: How Social Capital Makes Organizations Work, define it as:

“The stock of active connections among people: the trust, mutual understanding, and shared values and behaviors that bind members of human networks and communities and make cooperative action possible.”

Team environments provide fertile ground for building this network and trust. When businesses look to promote or hire, they want someone who interacts well with others. This is particularly true of careers such as real estate or public relations, where communication and personal relationships are key.

This is to say, you have a real incentive to build up good social capital in your workplace. If you’re not feeling it with a project, find clarity around exactly what your role is. Using metrics to define your tasks will give you the focus you need to see the project through.

Solutions for Bosses and Project Managers

If you’re a boss or project manager, you’re in a key position to monitor and reduce social loafing.

Here are a few specific areas that will foster a productive work environment.

  • Social Facilitation

Did you ever find that when your grandparents came to watch your little league games, you were suddenly able to knock it out of the park?

This is an example of (yet another) social phenomenon called social facilitation. It’s the idea that performance improves by the presence or perceived presence of others.

Social Facilitation

In the workplace, you can maximize the effects of social facilitation in three key ways.

1. Highlight Accomplishments

Acknowledging jobs well done and milestones reached goes a long way toward boosting employee productivity. Some effective ways to pat employees on the back include recognition at weekly meetings, personal lunches out with the boss, and monetary incentives and prizes.

2. Visualize Tasks

Make sure everyone, collectively, sees the work that needs to be done, and who is expected to do it. This can be as simple as creating a bubble chart that lists tasks, with employees assigned to each. When everyone knows whose job it is to do what, there really is no place to hide!

3. Solicit Feedback

Provide opportunities for employees to give feedback on their experience working with a team. To ensure the feedback is honest and constructive, make it anonymous.

Note that one key aspect of social facilitation is that improved performance occurs only when the audience is supportive, not critical. Additionally, the tasks need to be reasonable and within a person’s skill range. If they’re too challenging, it causes discouragement and productivity declines.

  • Goals with Metrics

If a team doesn’t know where the finish line is, chances are they’re never going to cross it. Establishing clear goals and objectives ensures everyone works efficiently and diligently towards the same end.

Goals with Metrics

When creating goals, meet these three criteria:

  • Make the goal quantifiable
  • Make it very specific
  • Make it challenging

For example, a quarterly goal to improve online advertising could be broken down into:

  • Start newsletter and grow list to 100.
  • Create weekly Google ads and test metrics for specific keywords.
  • Guest post on five industry-related blogs.
  • Post to all social media accounts 3 times a week.

With metrics, employees know the precise bar that needs to be reached. By making the goal challenging, everyone will feel pressured and motivated to get on board.

  • Communication and Coordination

There really is an art to being a manager; you need to know the task at hand, the skill sets of your employees, and what skills are needed when and where. Plus, you need to know group dynamics.
While there’s no simple way to finesse all of this, communication and coordination are key to maximizing the potential of your team.

As discussed earlier, putting three brilliant musicians together doesn’t necessarily create a killer rock band. Here are three ways to coordinate skills and personality dynamics for maximum productivity:

  • Delineate the skills required to complete each task, and the person best suited to complete them.
  • Map out the project’s timeline to efficiently use everyone on the team.
  • Clearly assign tasks to ensure one or two eager beavers don’t assume all the work.

The need for certain skills will ebb and flow as the project progresses. You probably won’t need everyone working at full steam, 100% of the time. This is in fact a recipe for burnout!

It’s important to communicate major deadlines so everyone knows when heavy lifting is required. Likewise, give employees permission to loaf during lighter weeks. If everyone knows what is expected of them and when, it undercuts animosity within the team.

Communication and Coordination

  • Social Capital

Cialidni pointed out that the bystander effect is strongest in large cities where social bonds are weak. In the same way, when people feel weak social bonds within a work environment or team, they’re less likely to take initiative.

In order to foster a sense of responsibility within a team, then, it’s crucial to build social capital within your business.

One way to build social capital is by having employees spend time together outside of work–say meeting for weekly “Attitude Adjustment” happy hours.

Within the work environment, strengthen relationships by having employees work interdependently. Structure tasks so people interact with each other daily.

When they like who they’re working with, employees want to give 100%.

As Old as Sliced Bread

Q: What did one loaf of bread say to the other?

A: The boss is coming; we butter look busy or we’ll be toast!

Ho, ho. The moral of this post is: save the slacking for Saturday. As we can see, social loafing is something we encounter everywhere we go.

Whether you’re overseeing a project or working on a team, understanding the phenomenon of social loafing—and how to remedy it—goes a long way toward improving productivity and overall well-being in the workplace.

Posted on

How Limiting Beliefs Are Holding You Back (And What You Can Do To Change Them!)

Limiting Beliefs

“Life has no limitations, except the ones you make” – Les Brown

Self-limiting beliefs and negative thought patterns are interrupting your day and hijacking your mind more often than you’d like to believe…

A recent study by Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario has led researchers to estimate that each person experiences an average of 6200 thoughts per day! How often throughout the day those thoughts directly relate to something negative about yourself?

Everyone experiences them. Those nagging statements that invade the mind, listing reasons certain things can’t be done, or why success isn’t possible and failure is ‘inevitable’ (so why even try?).

Why is it that some people seem to be able to push past these thoughts, while others are held back by them?

Limiting beliefs are not easy to combat, but it can be done. Read on to find out how!

What Are Limiting Beliefs?

What Are Limiting Beliefs

Limiting beliefs are essentially the perceptions and assumptions someone makes about themselves, often paired with beliefs about the world around them. These beliefs are formed over many years and create barriers between us and the things we want most. Some of the most common ones people experience include:

  • “I’m not good enough at A, B, C and never will be.”
  • “Someone can do this better than I can (so why even try?)”
  • “What if I fail? Everyone would know.”
  • “I don’t have enough experience/knowledge.”
  • “I’ve already tried everything and still can’t do it.”
  • “I don’t deserve it.”

While these thoughts are detrimental on their own, they become increasingly damaging the longer they exist. Each time these thoughts occur and are reinforced when accepted as truth, they begin manifesting more often, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy over time.

Think of it like this:

When you buy a new car, all of a sudden you begin seeing that exact car everywhere. Same model. Same make. Same color. Before buying the car there were the same amount of those cars on the road, you just never noticed them because they’re not a current part of your life. However, once you own that car, it’s a real aspect of your life and suddenly you’re aware of them every time you see them. Our limiting beliefs are exactly the same. The more we embrace them as fact, the more often they begin appearing.

What Causes Limiting Beliefs

Limiting beliefs are developed over many years, in a variety of ways. Some are much more deeply ingrained than others, but each one can be challenged and reframed over time (we’re telling you how at the end of this blog!). The most common ways limiting beliefs form include:

1. Family Beliefs

These are often the beliefs that have the strongest impact and are the most difficult to change because they have developed over many years. They are often part of your foundational belief system learned from your parents and closest family members.

2. Education System

The school system teaches a wide array of topics, but also can inadvertently instill limiting beliefs along the way. Often we hear stories about teachers telling people they’ll never amount to anything (Albert Einstein was told this!). This is a perfect example of the limiting beliefs that can be formed through education. If those teaching you don’t believe in you, it plants the seed that you shouldn’t believe in yourself either.

3. Life Experiences

The things someone goes through in their life have a strong influence on how they feel about themselves and their fundamental beliefs about what they are worth. If someone has been told often enough that they aren’t smart, they begin to believe it and often stop trying to reach higher. If someone has experienced gaslighting behavior after going through traumatic experiences, they believe they can’t trust themselves. Life experiences significantly shape how our brain views the world and the limits within.

4. Societal Influences

These are the beliefs that create pressure on a person to achieve certain things, or define what success ‘should’ look like. Often, this takes the form of owning a home, getting married and having children, working a white-collar job because it’s associated with a ‘higher intellect’, and more money. These are the thoughts that often end with “but what will they think?” or “how will this make me look?”.

What Effects Do Limiting Beliefs Have On A Person Or Team?

The effects limiting beliefs can have on a person come in many forms, but the one thing they all have in common is that they all have a consequence that comes with them.

Personally
Limiting beliefs can hold a person back from applying for their dream job because they feel they aren’t skilled enough to get it. They can cause a person to choose not to pursue a career they’re passionate about because they were told they wouldn’t be successful at it. It can cause people to struggle significantly in their personal relationships and everyday life, leaving them feeling they aren’t good enough or worthy of achieving what they want, ultimately leading to a halt in personal development.

Effect of Limiting Beliefs

Professionally
Each time limiting beliefs are accepted and ‘proven’ correct, the stronger they get. In a Forbes article discussing confidence in the workplace, executive coach, author and speaker Bonnie Marcus explained “negative self-talk erodes their confidence as they look for proof that they will ultimately not succeed. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Not only do limiting beliefs reduce confidence, but they affect motivation, drive and passion as confidence plays a significant role in each aspect. It can also cause people to miss opportunities for growth in the workplace as well. When confidence has been diminished, people struggle to ask for well-deserved raises or go after a promotion they want because they don’t think they deserve it or are ‘worth’ the raise.

Cooperatively
Limiting beliefs can also affect teams as a whole in the workplace. This often takes the form of leaders failing to believe in their team (or certain individuals on their team), making it difficult for them to provide support to those members. It can lead to other people picking up extra work, or changing work someone else has already done because they don’t believe in them, leaving them with an unnecessary amount of work that leads to burn out. It can manifest as an expectation for perfection, leaving the team struggling to get the work completed and reducing productivity.

Limiting beliefs have deep effects on the individual experiencing them and on each member of their team as well.

How To Identify Limiting Beliefs

Limiting beliefs can be difficult to identify, as they are often tied to self-judgement just for having them (this is normal!). Limiting beliefs are experienced by everyone, and by removing the shame surrounding them, we can overcome them to achieve greater things. Here’s how you can identify your limiting beliefs:

  • Make a list of the beliefs that make you feel uncomfortable. The more uncomfortable it makes you, the bigger impact it will have on you.
  • Make a list of the things that challenge you. Maybe it’s a colleague at work, saying “No” when someone asks you for something, or applying for that new job you found.
  • Try to trace each one back to where the belief may have come from. Understand each one. Do you struggle with that colleague’s personality because it reminds you of someone in your life who hurt you? Are you putting off applying for that job because you don’t think you’re good enough to get it (or maybe you’re worried you would get it…and fail at it). Could you be scared of saying “No” when someone asks you to do something you don’t want to do because it makes you feel rude or selfish?

Working through these beliefs and labelling them is essential in creating a plan to combat them and push yourself to grow beyond what you currently think capable.

How To Overcome Limiting Beliefs

How To Overcome Limiting Beliefs

Now that you know what self-limiting beliefs you have and want to work through, it’s time to create an action plan to find success. Begin with just one of the beliefs you want to change, and ask yourself:

1. What limiting belief do you want to change?

  • Feeling like you’re not good enough
  • Feeling like you’re not worthy
  • Believing you can’t learn new things
  • Believing you’re too old to learn something new
  • Believing you’re too young to be promoted/start a business

2. Where did this belief come from?

  • Was it something you learned from your parents?
  • Did someone say something that triggered it? (maybe a childhood bully?)
  • Was it instilled through a religion?
  • Was it something you developed through school?

3. What does this belief look like?

  • Do you view things through the filter of them being hard and fail to consider if or how you would overcome them?
  • Do you say things like: “I’m not smart enough” or “I’m not good enough”?
  • Do you create stories that reinforce the belief, like: “ABC happened because I’m not smart and people don’t believe in me”.

4. How does this belief hinder you?

  • Personally
  • Emotionally
  • Professionally

5. What have you given up because of it?

  • Have you given up opportunities at work?
  • Have you given up friends that have challenged it?
  • Have you missed experiences by avoiding trying new things?

6. What do you think would happen if you didn’t have this belief?

  • Would you go after your dream job?
  • Would you get a promotion?
  • Would you create meaningful connections with others?
  • Would you find a boost in confidence?

What do you think would happen if you didn’t have this belief

Once you’ve answered all these questions and have a clear understanding of the belief, reframe it in a way that combats the negative thoughts that occur when you start challenging it. By reframing the belief, you’ll have a direct response to the initial feeling or thought that holds you back, making it easier (over time) to change that inherent response to something more positive that pushes you forward, instead of holding you back.

For example, if you saw a job posting that’s not in your field but is something you’ve been learning and truly want to do, and when you consider applying for it you suddenly think:

“I don’t have enough education for that job”

Change that thought to:

“I may not know everything about this job yet, but I am capable of learning as I go and know I’d be great at it!”

You can do this with every limiting belief, and in time, you’ll notice you begin combatting the original belief with the new, positive belief! To make this easier, write it down each time you reframe a limiting belief and keep it with you so you can reference it every time you notice a limiting belief begin to form.

Changing Limiting Beliefs In The Workplace

Changing limiting beliefs in the workplace can be done in a similar way, and can create growth throughout the entire workplace.

1. Have affirmations listed throughout the workplace

These can be posters or even fancy writing on the walls that provide your team with powerful affirmations they see regularly. Affirmations are a proven way to retrain the mind and banish negative thoughts that create unnecessary barriers, while also enhancing performance!

2. Keep an organized workplace

Having an organized workplace allows every member to easily navigate the workspace and creates a sense of predictability. This minimizes the probability of negative thoughts members will experience because confidence will be built through the structured environment that creates a feeling of success and stability.

3. Implement collaboration in the workplace

By creating a workspace that promotes collaboration, employees are expanding their knowledge by learning from the other members of their team while also finding confidence in their abilities by providing quality work that aids in the success of a project. Group success has the same confidence-boosting effects as when it’s individual, leaving each employee feeling accomplished and able.

Collaboration in the workplace

Conclusion

Identifying and combating limiting beliefs is essential to grow both personally and professionally. By breaking beliefs down and tracing them back to find their roots, they can be combated much easier and reframed for success.

As Brandon Burchard once said, “I’m not interested in your limiting beliefs; I’m interested in what makes you limitless.”

Don’t let your limiting beliefs get in the way of finding success. Challenge them and create confidence in each choice you make!

Posted on

How To Create A Weekly Work Plan That Works For You

Weekly Work Plan

It can often seem like there just aren’t enough hours in a day. Schedules get overwhelmingly full and demands seem to grow in intensity, elevating stress levels. Without a weekly work plan, it’s easy for project deadlines or important meetings to slip through the cracks.

This is a cycle that’s not uncommon, however, it is one that comes with an easy fix (if implemented correctly). When you get in the habit of creating a weekly work plan, forgetting team meetings or finishing your tasks behind schedule will become a thing of the past.

Technology has given us a wide array of options to help plan our days and weeks, providing a variety of organizational tools to fit any work style and to help boost productivity while also encouraging efficiency in your daily routines.

What Is A Weekly Work Plan?

A weekly work plan is essentially a schedule for your week that’s created in a way that is tailored specifically to your individual work style. It incorporates the events for the whole week, clearly labelling each day’s tasks and each week’s end goal.

They can be created in a variety of ways but most often will come in the form of a calendar or a list, and can be either physical or electronic. Ultimately, how your weekly work plan looks will depend on what works best for you, and how you customize it to fit your needs.

Benefits Of Having A Weekly Work Plan?

What Are The Benefits Of Having A Weekly Work Plan?

Having a weekly work plan comes with a range of benefits that not only affect your working relationships, project quality, and daily stressors, but also the company’s success as a whole.

Stay Organized

By implementing a weekly work plan, you’re creating a workspace that is centered around organization. Staying organized at work is closely linked to increased productivity, workplace efficiency, and reduced rates of stress experienced throughout the work day.

Become a Better Team Player

Weekly work plans allow you to become a more dependable member of your team while working collaboratively. Not only will your assigned tasks be clearly laid out for you to understand and schedule around, but you’ll also be much less likely to forget meetings or important task completion dates, setting your whole team up for success (while establishing yourself as a leader).

Increased Productivity

Once you’ve successfully created a weekly work plan, each aspect of your week will be accounted for and scheduled appropriately, leading to a more productive use of your working hours. You’ll find yourself completing higher quality work in less time because you’ve effectively removed the wasted time previously spent guessing what you need to do next (since you’ve already accounted for it in your work plan for that week!).

Decreased Stress

Stress often stems from the unknown or from factors outside of your control, especially when it comes to your job and the effect it has on your life. By creating a work plan, you’ll remove those worries by creating a space that’s predictable and structured specifically for your work style, making each day easier to navigate. This will also allow you to manage the challenges and unforeseen changes that do come up much more efficiently because you’ll now have created an environment that allows for clearer viewpoints that aren’t clouded by stressors.

Create A Successful Weekly Work Plan

5 Ways To Create A Successful Weekly Work Plan

A weekly work plan reflects the work style of the person who creates it and therefore can look different for each person. For example, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter has been known to divide his week in a way that assigns each day a theme, such as management and meetings on Mondays and marketing and growth on Wednesdays, while allotting himself recreation and hiking time on Saturdays.

While we encourage you to experiment with different styles, there are some steps you can take that will make the process of creating your work plan much easier (and more effective!)

1. Incorporate Both Weekly and Daily Goals

By incorporating goals into each week, you’re providing yourself with a way to measure your success, while also giving yourself something to work towards each week. It’s best not to set too many goals at once, but rather assign one or two goals that align with your expectations for that time period.

2. Schedule Everything

Meetings, calls, uninterrupted work time, breaks, and highly desirable activities must all be scheduled into your weekly work plan. Not only will this ensure you take breaks and have aspects of your day or week you can look forward to, but it also provides you with an easy way to navigate each day without worrying that you’ll miss something important (like that team meeting!). If you need to, start by breaking your days up by the hour and plan each one intentionally. This will help you get a feel for how your day can flow depending on the scheduled tasks and the time required for each.

3. Define Milestones for Larger Projects

Larger projects can be harder to plan for because they span out over longer timeframes. By setting key milestones and incorporating them into your weekly schedule, it will: keep you on track to complete the project on time, create a natural way for you to measure your progress, and review the efficiency of your work habits if you’re not able to meet those milestones.

4. Match Your Schedule to Your Work Style

Consider what times you work best throughout the day, and arrange your schedule in a way that works to your strengths during each hour. If you’re a morning person and find you have the most drive during the first half of your workday, schedule your most intensive tasks during that portion of the day and your easier ones in the afternoon when your energy levels deplete and you find it harder to focus or complete tasks in a reasonable time. If you’re someone who finds their energy peaks in the afternoon, simply switch this schedule to reflect that. When you schedule your daily tasks around your personal energy fluctuations, you’ll maximize your workflow for efficiency and productivity.

5. Be Realistic!

Only so much can fit into one day. Start timing yourself when completing more focused tasks and use that to help plan your week. Don’t try to overfill each day with tasks that will leave you with items being pushed into the next day. Assign tasks intentionally, considering the time it will take to complete them while also allotting time for breaks throughout your day.

Make Your Weekly Work Plan A Habit

How To Make Your Weekly Work Plan A Habit

Habits take time to develop, so it is essential to assign a time for you to create your weekly work plan each week. It needs to be intentional and reoccurring, while also taking into account the many factors that will influence it over time.

Schedule a time to create your plan each week
Preferably, create your weekly work plan each Sunday evening. By doing it at this time, you’re ensuring it won’t cut into your weekend plans and personal time, while also providing you a time to look at your week just before it begins and plan for it with more intention.

Schedule your weekends as well
When you add your weekends into your weekly work plan, it serves as a reminder throughout the week that you’ve provided yourself with downtime away from work, and naturally gives you something to look forward to as you progress through each day of the week.

Audit your calendars and previous work plans
Review how many items (if any) were left incomplete at the end of the previous week, as well as the tasks that were more difficult than expected or took more time to complete than you scheduled for. Use this to influence how you set up your plan for the next week. Each time you audit your previous work plans and reshape them to better fit your abilities, you’ll get closer to optimizing your workflow in a way that is most efficient for you, while also identifying those areas that could use improvement (and those that you thrive in).

A Weekly Work Plan Increases Productivity

In conclusion, by creating a weekly work plan that plays to your strengths and is formed with your personal work style in mind, you’ll be able to cultivate a work environment where you can thrive. The stress caused by a disorganized schedule can easily be replaced with high efficiency and increased productivity when a structured schedule has been implemented successfully. If you follow the steps above and create your individualized weekly work plan, you’ll begin to find success in the workplace by achieving both your goals and the goals of your team and company as well.

Posted on

20 Management Books Every Great Leader Should Read

Management Books

Highly effective leaders read highly effective books, right? Even natural-born leaders need help and guidance to get maximum results from themselves and their team.

Have you ever had a bad boss? Someone whose so out of synchronicity with the members of the team. Or a boss who can’t separate themselves from the situation in order to lead effectively? Well, books can help by teaching management techniques and help you avoid the errors of bad bosses.

If you plan to step into leadership these books can help prepare you for the role. Don’t be like your bad boss, be smarter, stronger, and braver. There are thousands of management books available but finding the right one can be hard. In fact, many hold little value and aren’t worth the investment.

Take the guesswork out of which book you should buy and check out these recommendations:

1. The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You. By Julie Zhuo

The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You. By Julie Zhuo

Julie Zhuo thinks leaders are not born but forged through their experiences. She was Facebook’s first intern and by the age of 25, she was selected to lead a team at one of the fastest-growing tech companies ever. In the blink of an eye, her colleagues were now her employees and they looked to her to lead.

Zhuo had to deal with a lot of first such as who to hire and what to do when you have to fire a friend. Facebook was growing fast which meant its managers needed to grow fast too. Julie Zhuo is now the Vice-President of Product Design and has shared everything she’s learned about leadership in her book.

2. Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World With OKRs. By John Doerr

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World With OKRs. By John Doerr

John Doerr is a venture capitalist and he’s a billionaire. In 1999 he met with a small but ambitious tech company called Google. He staked his biggest investment to date with them and today Google has a market cap of over $1 trillion. Doerr helped steer the ship by teaching Larry Page and Sergey Brin the management technique known as Objectives and Key Results.

It’s a goal-setting system that helps businesses reach the results they seek. In his book, John Doerr shares how to implement this system in your company. The book contains first-person narratives from people like Bill Gates and U2’s Bono. Through case studies and first-hand knowledge, you’ll learn how to define objectives and key results (which are the milestones you’ll need to reach).

3. Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. By Brene Brown

Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts. By Brene Brown

Brene Brown wants to inspire the next generation of leaders to take charge and her book is going to teach you how to do that. She believes that good leadership is broken down into 4 skill sets and they can be observed, measured, and then taught. She describes those 4 skill sets as the ability to rumble with vulnerability, live into your values, building trust, and resetting after failure.

The good news is Brene Brown believes that we’re all leaders but that we need to be braver to lead well. Her book is the result of years of research including interviews with leaders at non-profits, startups, family-owned, and other businesses of all sizes.

4. The One Minute Manager. By Kenneth Blanchard Ph.D. and Spencer Johnson M.D.

The One Minute Manager.By Kenneth Blanchard Ph.D. and Spencer Johnson M.D.

The One Minute Manager is a very popular book with managers and leaders because it is short and to the point. The book is broken down into three different pieces of advice to become an effective manager. These are the One Minute Goals, One Minute Praise, and One Minute Reprimand.

Managers who read this book are taught how to be precise with their intentions. Set clear objectives with a clear timeframe, but allow your employees the autonomy in deciding how their job is done. Issues should be dealt with when they arise and never allowed to accumulate and fester. The One Minute Manager is a great tool for leaders to use in their office.

5. Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers Into Leaders. By L. David Marquet

Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers Into Leaders. By L. David Marquet

Marquet took on the Navy and changed the rulebook it had been following for centuries. When Marquet was assigned leadership of the Santa Fe he found the crew to be miserable. The Santa Fe is a nuclear submarine and the margin for error is virtually nonexistent. When he unknowingly gave an impossible order Marquet was shocked that his crew followed it.

It was time for a change and Marquet developed a new system that encouraged every crew member to take responsibility and lead. This turned the fortunes of the Santa Fe around as it went from the least to the most desirable submarine in the Naval fleet. The crew was engaged at every level and Marquet changed tradition forever.

6. Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t. By Simon Sinek

Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t. By Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek wants to challenge the ideas behind what leadership is. Instead of thinking about being in charge, he wants leaders to think of those in his charge. Essentially this book is not about what your team can do for you, but what you can do for your team.

Sinek draws on the experiences of leaders within the Marine Corps as well as those at the head of big businesses and world governments. It’s a deep look into why members of the Marine Corps willingly sacrifice their lives and how businesses can adopt this model to bring out the best in their team.

7. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. By Nir Eyal

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. By Nir Eyal

This is a world built on distractions. Distractions are a billion-dollar industry and companies like YouTube and Netflix thrive when we’re distracted. Indistractable is the toolkit you need to battle the pull of distractions and focus more on the things that matter in your life.

Nir Eyal’s book focuses on the psychology behind getting distracted. It’s not a simple do this, get that template but rather an empowering guide to help you make plans and see them through. You can achieve this by learning how to best use the technology available instead of letting technology get the better of you.

8. How to Win Friends and Influence People. By Dale Carnegie

How to Win Friends and Influence People. By Dale Carnegie

The most discussed book on leadership is How to Win Friends and Influence People. And despite being written in 1936 it’s still an excellent template to model yourself after. The book has sold over 30 million copies making it one of the all-time best-selling books. The advice shared is flawless as well as timeless.

One of Carnegie’s core beliefs is that changing another’s behavior can be achieved by changing your behavior towards them. The book is broken down into six ways of making people like you, twelve different ways to influence someone to your way of thinking, and nine methods of changing people without causing any resentment. Any person, whether in a leadership role or not, can learn from Dale Carnegie’s book.

9. First, Break All the Rules. By Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman

First, Break All the Rules. By Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman

This book is the sum of 80,000 interviews with management at leaders from all sizes of business and in different kinds of positions. From C-Suite leaders to supervisors, First, Break All the Rules looks at how companies create employee satisfaction to take them to the next level.

Some of the advice found in this book include treating employees as individuals and not fixing weaknesses but focusing on strengths instead. The book covers what these managers do differently and gives practical advice for implementing these strategies in your organization.

10. The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier

The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier

Michael Bungay has compiled a series of questions that you can share with your team so you’re saying less and asking more. Learn how to get to the point during a conversation with the kickstart question. Or save yourself time with the lazy question.

The Coaching Habit is backed up by neuroscience research and behavioral economics. Stainer has included interactive elements to turn his advice into habits. There are seven questions in the Coaching Habit that will help you make positive changes in the way you lead.

11. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. By Stephen R. Covey

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. By Stephen R. Covey

In Stephen Covey’s book, you’ll learn how to be more effective with goals by focusing on what he describes as the “true north” principles based on a moral character he believes is timeless. The book has sold over 25 million copies and is hailed for being a simple model to follow.

In this book, Covey introduces the maturity continuum which details the stages of maturity as dependence, independence, and interdependence. He focuses on the latter two to help turn leaders into highly effective people. You’ll learn how to be principled and develop strong, healthy relationships with this book.

12. Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. By Harvey B. Mackay

Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. By Harvey B. Mackay

Self-made millionaire, Harvey Mackay, shares everything he’s learned about the road to success. This book is a must-have for leaders in sales teams and particularly for people stepping up into management. Despite being released in the 1980s, the advice Mackay has to share is enduring and still relevant today.

Mackay shares his story and imparts his wisdom through chapters known as “lessons” and “quickies.” His lessons aren’t just good for a sales team but can be put into practice in your everyday life. For example, he talks about how you need to be willing to say “no” and walk away; practical advice that’s always worth remembering.

13. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. By Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. By Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D.

Dr. Robert Cialdini is one of the foremost experts on the topics of influence and persuasion. His book is a detailed look into why people say yes to things and is based on over 35 years of research. There are 6 principles examined in this book: reciprocation, commitment & consistency, social proof, authority, liking, and scarcity.

The book aims to turn you into a skilled persuader but will also teach you how to protect yourself from influence. It’s a great read for marketing professionals as well as team leaders to help influence good work from their team.

14. Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action. By Simon Sinek

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action. By Simon Sinek

The second book on this list by Simon Sinek looks at the two main ways of influencing human behavior; manipulation and inspiration. Sinek’s book suggests that the more powerful and sustainable choice is inspiration. He looks at how leadership and purpose can drive success. He says to get the best results you need to start with “why?”

Sinek believes that the “why” helps teams to understand the purpose and that “why” should be communicated before other questions like how or what. This framework is named the Golden Circle. It can help business leaders to build their organization from the ground up.

15. The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons in Creative Leadership from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Robert Iger

The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons in Creative Leadership from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company by Robert Iger

What does it take to lead one of the largest media companies in the world? A job that overseas film and television production, radio, theme parks, cruises, and other industries. Well, Robert Iger who was in charge of the Disney beast for 15 years has detailed his time at the top.

The Ride of a Lifetime is a must-read for anyone in the creative industry. It can also anyone to learn new leadership skills born from creative minds. Iger breaks down his belief that the core principles leaders need are optimism, courage, decisiveness, and fairness.

16. Nudge: The Final Edition. By Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

Nudge: The Final Edition. By Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

Nudge has changed the way businesses and governments operate. This is a new edition that has been completely rewritten and updated with the latest information. The book focuses on choice architecture to help you to make better decisions that benefit business, family, and society.

Nudging is a behavioral science method of influencing decisions through positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions. The core principle of nudging is that you should make it fun. Everything you need to learn about this concept is contained within this book.

17. Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter By Liz Wiseman & Greg McKeown

Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter By Liz Wiseman & Greg McKeown

This book is about two different types of leaders and how you can become the right kind. The first type of leader is called the Idea Killer, the one you don’t want to be. These leaders drain motivation, intelligence, and capability from their team and always try to position themselves as the most important person in the room.

Be a Multiplier instead suggests Liz Wideman and Greg McKeown. A Multiplier is the type of leader who brings out the intelligence and capability from their team. If you want to be the type of leader that can inspire ideas, collaboration, and get problems solved then Multipliers can help teach you that.

18. Your Brain At Work. By David Rock

Your Brain At Work. By David Rock

Your Brain At Work details the life of a couple and their demanding careers. It gives first-hand information on how to better handle day-to-day stimulation. Rock shows the couple, as well as the reader, how they can better prioritize and organize their life. This is a guide on how to excel in today’s modern work landscape.

Rock teaches the brain’s limitations, how to be mindful of them and how to act on them in the moment. By reading this book you’ll be able to understand yourself better and learn valuable skills along the way. Arm yourself with the knowledge to overcome distractions and thrive at work.

19. Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. By Kim Scott

Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. By Kim Scott

Radical Candor is a book for managers to learn how to effectively speak to and manage their team. It doesn’t shy away from the fact that sometimes you need to criticize work and it shares ideas on how to do that constructively. Alongside criticism, the book discusses how praise should be factored into work relationships.

Relationships are key to creating a thriving work environment and that’s what Kim Scott’s book is all about. Scott shares her three guiding principles; make it personal, get it done, and understand why it matters.

20. The Ordinary Leader: 10 Key Insights for Building and Leading a Thriving Organization. By Randy Grieser

The Ordinary Leader: 10 Key Insights for Building and Leading a Thriving Organization. By Randy Grieser

The Ordinary Leader takes the focus away from the Fortune 100 CEOs and looks at the leaders at small organizations. Rarely are these leaders discussed in the national press but they represent far more of the workforce. How they work is vital to business success and Randy Grieser has taken the conversation to them.

Grieser’s work was surveyed by over 1,700 leaders and the book contains the perspective of 10 people from a range of professions. His findings are distilled through 10 principles that he believes will make you a more passionate, productive, and visionary leader.

Conclusion

The world needs leaders of all shapes and sizes and if these books teach us anything it’s that anyone can become one. It’s not just businesses that need leaders and these books can help you to develop skills that are useful in everyday life. Community leaders can inspire change, teachers can teach independence, and parents can encourage ideas.

We indeed live in a world full of distractions but there are brain techniques you can learn to increase your focus and productivity. Don’t hold yourself back if there are things you want to achieve. The books on this list have helped millions to be the best version of themselves. It can happen for you too if you apply the lessons in these books.

Posted on

5 Useful Collaboration Skills to Take Your Team to the Next Level

Collaboration Skills

No one looked forward to presentations at school. It was embarrassing standing in front of the class trying to explain something you barely understood. The teacher’s eyes laser focussed on you, sweat dripping down your face while you pray for it to be over.

Team presentations were even worse. There’s always that one person who didn’t do the work and tries to make it up as they go. But team assignments and presentations can teach us very valuable lessons about collaboration. When one person doesn’t pull their weight, the whole team suffers.

When tasks are delegated properly and expectations clearly defined the whole team benefits. At work, good collaboration is even more important because poor teamwork can affect the bottom line. Teams that have excellent collaboration skills set a good example to the rest of the company and can lead to increased sales and productivity.

Let’s take a look at some valuable collaboration skills and how they fit into a team environment.

5 Collaboration Skills Every Team Needs

1. Self-Awareness

Understanding how you fit into the team is the first step to creating an environment where collaboration can thrive. Your past experiences are a big part of what you bring to the table. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

When discussing project deadlines you need to be realistic about timings. You need to understand your skills and abilities and how much work you’re capable of handling. Hubris will get in the way and can harm team efforts. Be honest with yourself and your coworkers.

Another thing to understand is that your perspective will be different from your teammate’s. It’s important to create an atmosphere where every member of the team is heard and questions can be asked if necessary.

Some people are critical thinkers and others are creative thinkers. It’s common for the two types to clash when it comes to new ideas. However, the team needs to be encouraged to examine all possibilities as open-mindedness is key to successful collaboration. If there is resistance from one member of the team let them speak their concerns and ask any questions they have.

2. Communication

Self-awareness is the basis for effective communication. If you can appreciate that people communicate differently then you’ll foster better collaboration. Some people naturally gravitate towards leading group discussions while others may be shy or nervous. While that’s not a bad thing, it can lead to only one opinion being heard.

Communication

Quiet people often have great ideas but if stronger personalities are stealing the limelight, they may not speak up. Sometimes they need to be nudged to take the floor and it’s important to give people space to talk without being interrupted. The team leader should mediate and intervene if someone is being talked over.

Having a social component at work can help the different types of people be identified. Leaders especially should know how their different team members like to communicate so they can get the best out of people.

There are three types of communication to be aware of:

Verbal communication: What you say and how you say it is very important for teams. If there are disagreements they should be handled with respect. Your words can hurt or offend, regardless of intention, so you need to be considerate with your words.

Written communication: Misunderstandings can stem from written communication because the intent is harder to grasp. Without non-verbal cues, a lot of the nuance is lost. Coworkers can interpret sarcasm as being rude, for example. Be mindful of what you’re writing and how it can be interrupted, especially with remote working.

Non-verbal communication: The way our body acts when we’re talking gives off non-verbal cues that can share our sentiment. Someone who is slouching or facing away from the conversation isn’t fully engaged. Your tone of voice can alter how people interpret what you’re saying is.

Group decision making

3. Group decision making

Making decisions as a group is crucial for maintaining a collaborative spirit. Ultimately delegation lies with the team leader but it’s beneficial to include the team in these decisions. By having your staff help to coordinate projects they will have a deeper understanding of everyone’s workload.

This helps to keep staff organized and focussed because they will be more aware of the impact they have on their colleagues. It’s also a great opportunity for peer learning as your people will be able to share experiences, tips, and shortcuts.

Leaders should encourage debate among team members in a constructive manner. Hold debates when discussing new ideas but avoid the conversation becoming personal. It’s a helpful collaborative tool to share perspectives and move ideas forward as a team.

4. Adaptability

If only every collaborative project could work out as planned and right on schedule. The brutal reality is that things can and will go wrong which is where your team’s collaborative muscles are really put to the test. Adapting to change is crucial. You can’t predict what could go wrong but you need to be able to react when it does.

A team member could fall ill, or part of the project takes longer than expected, or an unavoidable technical issue occurs. If your people are good at collaborating they will be able to take control of the situation, mind map potential solutions, and get to work on them.

Adaptability is something that comes with experience. The more your team collaborates the better they will get at responding to changes. When things go wrong they provide a valuable learning experience. Encourage your team to discuss what happened and what could be improved next time.

5. Feedback

Feedback plays an important role in professional growth. Peer-to-peer feedback is when your team can praise or criticize one another in a constructive way. Most feedback from this source is informal feedback and coworkers do this without realizing it. It’s sharing knowledge, or shortcuts, or advice.

Team members need to be able to provide this feedback to each other and a team leader should encourage it. Everyone benefits when knowledge is being shared. However, how people share feedback is important. If someone feels talked down to or targeted it can create a hostile work environment. The same can be said for excessive positive feedback.

Collaboration thrives when coworkers can share feedback with each other productively. Team members grow professionally and the next project will benefit from added insights. Team leaders should be wary of negative feedback that doesn’t provide value and help their people to rephrase things in a constructive way.

Feedback

Conclusion

A team that works well together is a boon for any business. Coworkers who are in sync can bounce ideas off each other and keep projects moving smoothly. Teams that don’t gel well together can have a harder time meeting deadlines and creating solid work.

Collaboration is a soft skill but many elements can be taught. Every team leader should take the time to learn how each of their employees prefers to work. Observe and understand how to get the best out of everyone. Then when your team comes together for collaboration you can help to ensure project success.

Posted on

It’s Crunch Time: How Eating the Frog Cures the Loafer in Us All

Eat That Frog

Renew license plate tabs, schedule dentist appointment, empty inbox, go to gym, call air-conditioner repair, purchase light bulbs: if you’re like everybody else, your daily to-do list includes at least one or two pesky tasks you’d just as soon save for tomorrow.

The problem is, when we delay these things, the issue compounds. And we may find ourselves paying fines for expired car tabs, or facing a crushing inbox on Monday morning.

But juggling the myriad of things to do in our life is no small feat. It’s so easy to become stymied by a difficult task, or else exhaust ourselves playing whack-a-mole without making any real progress towards achieving long-term goals.

Beloved author Mark Twain provided an incisive method for overcoming this tendency to procrastinate:

“Start each morning by eating a live frog, and nothing worse will happen to you that day.”

That is to say, get this dreaded chore over with right out of the gate.

Is this simple practice the elixir to our productivity woes? Perhaps there’s no single cure-all, but eating the frog certainly provides an effective strategy towards prioritizing our to-do lists, bringing balance to our lives, and helping us achieve our goals.

Here are some tips on how and why you want to eat that frog!

Shuffling Priorities

It’s a fact of life that you’ll never get it all done. We’ll always have a stack of books to read, e-mails to send, laundry to fold, and yard work to do. Attempting to pound out every last thing means you’re squeaking in just a few hours of sleep a night.

Eat That Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

Brian Tracy, author of “Eat That Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time” tells us we need to take a step back from the pile of tasks, and look at the bigger picture.

What are our overall objectives? We can separate these into long-term (five-year) and short term (90-day) goals. He suggests writing the goals down, then identifying each task that needs to be completed in order to achieve them.

This litany of tasks, then, provides the framework for choosing how we spend our time each day.

In looking at the day-to-day, think long-term. Tracy says: “In your work, having a clear idea of what is really important to you in the long term makes it much easier for you to make better decisions about your priorities in the short term.”

For example, if you have a quarterly goal to increase your social media following by 20%, then a daily frog might be writing Instagram captions, or networking on Twitter.

All the other things on your list, unrelated to your long-term goals, are tadpoles. Get them done if you have time, but they’re not critical. The biggest waste of time is to do something well that doesn’t need to be done at all. So no more spending 45 minutes picking out the perfect screensaver!

Maximize the Morning

Maximize the Morning

Eat that frog bright and early. For several reasons, the first hours of the day provide a delightfully breezy window for making decisions, minimizing work-stress, and building a foundation for a productive, fruitful day.

1. Utilize that “Super Brain”

Have you ever been to the grocery store when it first opens? The aisles are empty, and there’s just one or two people at the check out. It feels almost…meditative (ok, I said almost). Come four hours later, it’s bustling with grocery carts and people picking up lunch, talking on phones, and carrying babies.

Our brains are a little bit the same. During the first 2-3 hours of the day, they’re still empty from the quiet of the night.

Business magazine Inc. advises us to save “important decisions for when you feel most alert, generally within one to three hours after waking up.”

By mid-day we have seventeen tabs open in two different browsers, are halfway through two articles, and have notifications going off on our phone and inbox. Not the best state for closing a big deal.

2. Keep Your Output Stress-free

Maximizing this quiet window in the morning keeps us productive without the harry or stress work deadlines bring.

Interruptions, according to the research, are no good. A study on interruptions at work conducted through UC Irvine found that “people compensate for interruptions by working faster, but this comes at a price: experiencing more stress, higher frustration, time pressure and effort.”

That’s not to say you’re not productive at busier times of the day, but that you’re way more taxed getting the same amount of work done.

Simply waking up one hour earlier creates a power hour to produce quality work with minimal stress.

3. Build Momentum

If you’re lucky enough to have a restful night of sleep, then every morning you awaken to sixteen hours of living potential: your day, for the most part anyway, is what you make of it.

The first few hours provide a foundation for what happens later. Your morning sets the tone for the day, and you can see your productivity flourish because of it!

Spending the morning tackling e-mails, for example, can set the ball rolling for a new project. Tasks that require input from several people can be completed in just one day!

Get ‘er Done

Sure it makes sense to eat the frog. But then actually doing it? That’s a different ballgame. It’s pretty jarring to go from a cozy bed to eating a hairy, warty frog in the space of an hour. Even with a few cups of coffee inside you.

Here are a few strategies and tricks to seeing yourself through a difficult task.

Spin that Frog

1. Spin that Frog

A task like “call landscaper” or “answer emails” sounds rote and deadly dull. However, identifying what you’re accomplishing puts it in a whole new light. “Beautify my garden” or “build positive client relationships” gives the work more meaning and makes it easier to accomplish.

2. Treat Yourself

Life won’t always give you a pat on the back. Even if you’ve decluttered the desk drawer bulging with bills going back a decade. So take the initiative yourself. Do a little retail therapy on your lunch break. Or shut off the laptop an hour early and make your way to happy hour. Incentives give you the extra push you need to get that annoying task done.

3. Block Time

If you have a certain task to do, schedule out a specific period of time to do it. Plan this time a day or even a week in advance, and add an extra 15-20 minutes so you won’t feel rushed completing it.

4. Create a Distraction-Free Zone

Distractions really zap the precious time we’re allotted each day. Eating the frog isn’t the time for cranking up Pearl Jam or listening to Howard Stern in the background. When you’re buckling down, close your tabs, turn off notifications, and put on noise-cancelling headphones, so you’re laser focused on the work at hand.

5. Bookend Your Day

Close out the night looking over what you have going on the next day. Identify the most important things to get accomplished. This gives you focus right away in the morning. Your brain may even work through some issues while you sleep!

6. Delegate a Few Frogs

You don’t have to eat all the frogs yourself! When deciding what tasks to take on, business management expert Peter Drucker says to ask yourself: “What can I and only I do that if done well will make a real difference?”

You have plenty of critical tasks that require your personal touch. And others, that, well, just aren’t high on your skill set. Determine what only you can do. As for everything else, consider “Upworking” it out!

Set a Timer

7. Set a Timer

How long does it really take to change that flight reservation you’ve spent the past three weeks putting off? Set the timer for 15-20 minutes then say “go”. You’ll be crossing it off your to-do list and breathing a sigh of relief before you can say “ribbit”.

8. Just Jump In

For certain tasks, there’s no real fix: you just have to leap off the lily pad and into the icy water. The first few minutes are the worst; but after a while you might actually find you enjoy something about even the most mundane activity.

Utilizing these strategies to eat the frog are so worth it. We’ve all had workdays where all we seemed to do was chat away with coworkers. But there’s nothing worse than spending a Saturday afternoon balancing the books when all you really want to do is veg on the couch, binge-watch a Netflix series and eat cheese taquitos.

If you knock off crucial tasks on Friday morning, you’ll feel a flood of dopamine throughout the day that carries you through the weekend.

Eat a Frog a Day?

This all sounds wonderful in theory, but let’s get real. Some mornings, just getting out of bed before 7 am takes an act of God. And we’re not about to change a flat tire, even if we’ve coddled ourselves with a donut and a salted caramel latte.

Eat a Frog a Day

Maybe our system just isn’t designed to consume a frog every day. David Stiernholm of the podcast “Done” suggests an alternative theory of productivity. By completing some small simple tasks (tadpoles) first thing, we lighten our work load and are able to give undivided attention to the bigger, more daunting task of the day.

He suggests putting two images at your desk: one of a frog, the other of several tadpoles. Then, as you’re starting your day, gauge your mood and the work at hand to determine which approach suits the moment.

Finished in Two Bites

Finished in Two Bites

From frog legs, to alligator tails, to escargot, barbecued beetles or chicken feet, what is the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten?

The good news about eating a frog is that it’s over in just a few bites!

And as Mark Twain suggested, for the rest of the day you’re on a downhill slope. It’s easy to see why he’s a national gem. Eating the frog is certainly one nugget of wisdom we can all benefit from incorporating into our daily lives.

Posted on

10 Types of Essential Work Meetings And Why They Matter

Types of Work Meetings

We’ve all been there: stuck in yet another painful work meeting that could have simply been an email.

Meetings have become such a frequent activity in the workplace that it’s easy to joke about why have them in the first place, especially if they’re virtually ineffective and a drain on time and energy. Since 2020, we have experienced a surge in our time spent in meetings. According to Small Business Trends, we now average around 4 meetings per day.

Choosing the right type of meeting and structuring it carefully can save precious time and ensures everyone is working towards the same goal in an innovative manner. Here are the 10 essential meetings you need in the workplace and how they can work for you.

Orientation Meeting

An orientation meeting is one piece of a company’s onboarding procedures to help officially welcome a new employee to the team. This meeting can make a powerful first-day impression, so it needs to have a positive impact on the employee by being organized and informative, but not too overwhelming. According to Indeed, there are three main benefits of orientation meetings:

1. Boosts employee confidence
2. Improve long-term retention
3. Introduces new employees to a team’s expectations and company culture

Newly hired employees are likely feeling nervous on their first day and anxious to get started with their new responsibilities. An onboarding meeting can help reduce some of their stress and replace it with excitement about joining a team that is welcoming, thorough, and helpful. In order to cultivate a positive work environment with a thriving team that sticks around, the employees should feel like they’ve been taken care of from the beginning.

Performance Review Meetings

Performance Review Meetings

These meetings can nurture a supportive culture. Let’s first define a performance review.

A performance review is a written evaluation of an employee’s performance and is given on a quarterly or annual basis. A meeting is then scheduled to:

  • Do a high-level overview of the evaluation
  • Praise successful milestones
  • Encourage the employee’s continued growth
  • Address areas for improvement
  • Get feedback on the level of support needed
  • Review future goals
  • Ask clarifying questions
  • Have collaborative discussions about pending matters

Some companies favor the 30/60/90- day review periods (with an annual review) as a way to support new employees during their first year and make sure they’re on the right track. For managers, this means three performance-related meetings within the first three months.

Others opt for a more traditional annual performance review only, usually around the time of a fiscal year-end (May-July).

Performance reviews are opportunities to see how an employee is improving, which can create possibilities for promotion and advanced training.

One-on-One Meetings

Regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings are essential for manager-employee relationships and performance management. A Gallup study showed that out of 7,272 adults, 1 in 2 left their positions because of their boss, which was a direct result of poor communication.

A one-on-one meeting should not be a checklist of topics to go over with the employee. It must be an organized, yet organic conversation that supports the employee professionally and personally.

One-on-One Meetings

According to Quantum Workplace, 55% of highly engaged organizations said employees expect a monthly or quarterly check-in meeting. Establishing expectations on how often the check-in meetings will be, creating a structured agenda, and setting up a designated time for employees and managers is an important part of fostering a supportive environment. Consistent and productive communication can establish a healthy working relationship and gives the employee an opportunity to own their performance, which results in higher engagement. Every one-on-one meeting should follow a similar structure:

  • Casual open – Employees are shown to have higher levels of engagement if their manager has shown interest in them as people, not just as work colleagues. (Source: Gallup) Try to open the meeting casually to build a connection.
  • Relevant updates– Find a natural point in the conversation to begin discussing work-related updates about upcoming projects/events or status reports.
  • Action items to Identify/discuss/solve – After relevant updates, continue with action items that have been identified as potential issues, engage in a collaborative discussion on possible solutions, and come to a decision together.
  • Open discussion – Once all the action items for the meeting have been completed, open up the floor for questions or further comments before closing out the meeting.

Kick-off Meeting

The purpose of a Kick-Off meeting is to set the team up for success and establish structure. When the group is about to start a new project or implement a new process, it’s important to establish:

  • Goals – What are the goals of this project? What do we want the end result to be?
  • Roles and responsibilities – Does everyone have a task assigned to them?
  • Timelines – Are we aligned on the vision for the project and when it’s supposed to be complete?
  • Due dates – Do we have clear deliverable due dates for each assigned task?
  • Methods of communication – Where do we communicate any updates, delays, or questions?

Without a Kick-Off meeting, there is more room for miscommunication, confusion, and setbacks in workflow and delivery.

All-Hands Meetings

All-Hands Meetings

An All-Hands Meeting, or otherwise known as a Townhall, gathers everyone from the organization to listen to their leadership speak about important updates. These work meetings should be scheduled regularly and only when leadership is sharing news company-wide. This is a chance to address several key areas:

  • An inspiring welcome message that sets the tone for the rest of the meeting
  • The current state of affairs including successes and challenges
  • Celebration and recognition of different individuals and teams
  • Updates on the future to remind the team of the vision and goals
  • Q&A that invites everyone to ask questions

All-hands meetings create alignment within the organization, show that the leadership is thinking of the collective group, and build trust by being transparent.

Retrospective Meeting

A Retrospective meeting is typically held after major project implementation. In these meetings, the team has a chance to reflect on their success, the challenges that came up and identify areas for improvement. However, only 4% of companies measure and manage their documented processes per BP Trends.

The inability to perform this type of evaluation can stall a team’s creativity and effectiveness for future projects. This is an opportunity to improve processes so that over time, the changes are efficient and contribute to more successful outcomes.

A Retrospective meeting is another way to foster an employee’s growth by giving them an additional platform to provide their insights, experiences, and suggestions for the next project. It also acts as a way to keep the momentum flowing and properly see to the project’s completion.

Brainstorming Meeting

Meetings specifically scheduled for problem-solving and brainstorming can produce innovative results. If conducted properly, the team will leave the meeting feeling energized, ready for the next steps, and feeling like a valued member of the process. Here’s why a brainstorming meeting is needed in the workplace:

Brainstorming Meeting

  • Inspires creativity and diverse ideas – Whenever the team needs new ways of approaching different issues or reinventing established processes, a brainstorming meeting will help trigger new ideas. To have a successful brainstorm, the team must identify, discuss, and solve the issue(s) at hand. Everyone should be prepared beforehand by having an agenda of the various topics for discussion. Expectations must be set at the beginning so that the participants feel like they have the room to contribute freely.
  • Develops soft skills – Effective brainstorming meetings typically improve communication, teamwork, collaboration, leadership, and emotional intelligence skills. The more productive the meeting, the more opportunity there is to refine soft skills for everyone on the team.
  • Improves morale – When a team is actively involved in the creation of new solutions, they feel appreciated and valued. This helps boost their overall morale, commitment to the organization, and results in high productivity as they are empowered to voice their ideas or concerns without repercussion.

Conflict-Resolution Work Meeting

There are two types of conflict-resolution meetings that help ensure operations continue to run smoothly even when disagreement arises.

  • External conflict: These types of meetings are created to resolve any breakdown in communication or expectations with the clients the organization serves. This could involve a deeper look into existing processes, clarification of any related discussions, and ways to establish and implement the solution. It’s important that every participant comes into this meeting willing to solve the problem instead of focusing on where to place the blame.
  • Interpersonal conflict: Conflict within the team is unavoidable, but structured meetings that are scheduled to address these issues are critical for a healthy workplace environment. Depending on the nature of the problem, there may be a need to involve the HR department or outside counsel for further guidance. However, if a manager feels comfortable facilitating the meeting and does not need HR intervention, the problem needs to be addressed quickly and professionally in order to avoid escalation and further tension, which can impact the rest of the team’s productivity. A constructive, non-accusatory discussion should be conducted in order to discover the root of the problem and the proposed next steps.

Training Meeting

Training Meeting

Professional growth is an important part of fostering a positive work environment, which means offering mandatory and specialized training meetings for the team. This not only prepares the employees for higher-level responsibilities but also exposes them to different skill sets. 74% of workers are willing to learn a new skill or be re-trained to remain highly competitive in the workplace, according to research done by Lorman.

Whether the organization is implementing a new system, service, or procedure, training meetings are a way of sharing knowledge and getting everyone up to speed. The different types of training are:

  • Onboarding training – This is designed for new hires who need to have designated times for training with managers and coworkers. Usually, an agenda is in place to identify the trainer, any other relevant participants, and the objectives of the meeting.
  • Procedural training – Any new procedures or changes to existing processes need to include the affected team members. This training allows for the team to effectively deliver on the implementation and streamline processes.
  • Technical skills training – This training allows for employees to further develop their skills so they can do the essentials of their position and stay current on any new skills that need to advance in the role.
  • Safety training – Crucial for any workplace, safety training must be available for everyone that joins an in-person team. This prepares them for any emergencies that may arise.
  • Service/Product training – If the organization is offering a new service or product, it’s important to keep the team members up to date so they understand its features, benefits, and how to use it.

Exit Meeting

The exit meeting is just as important as the onboarding meeting. Exit meetings are normally conducted when an employee leaves an organization. This type of meeting is used to close out any existing matters, complete any necessary paperwork, and gain overall feedback about their time with the company.

Most places usually treat the exit meeting as a formality — something that needs to be checked off as part of the offboarding process or HR requirement. According to Harvard Business Review, 70.9% of companies have their HR department conduct the exit interview and about 19% are performed by their direct supervisor. The overall results of the survey suggested that almost all companies don’t do anything with the data collected from these exit interviews. In some cases, exit meetings aren’t even done at all!

Exit Meeting

Exit meetings can be a powerful tool in gaining insights into the inner workings of your workplace environment, the processes or procedures that worked (or not), and how they truly felt about working for you.

It’s not always a comfortable situation. In some cases, employees leave because of poor leadership, lack of work-life balance, an uneven workload, or unresolved problems with colleagues or managers. The feedback may not be positive, but here’s why it’s important to take your employee’s experience seriously and use that data to assess and improve the current procedures implemented in the workplace:

  • Gain valuable feedback on the management team and staff as they currently operate.
  • Learn about the competition that’s attracting your team to another organization.
  • Gather insights on how to improve the current company culture.
  • Learn about the inner-workplace conflict that needs to be swiftly resolved before it becomes a recurring issue.
  • Avoid more turnover by listening to the real reasons why they’re leaving and how to improve existing procedures/behaviors.
  • Notice the positive and negative patterns consistently brought up by employees so that leadership can address and strategize accordingly.

Exit meetings need to be treated with the utmost care. The right interviewer, detailed notes, and active listening are all major factors in conducting a highly effective exit meeting. Keep in mind that depending on the work culture, some employees may feel they can’t be honest during their last meeting due to potential backlash or repercussions for any prospective opportunities. Organizations who take their workplace culture seriously will create an environment that makes their employees feel safe and heard.

The Type of Work Meeting Makes All The Difference

Work meetings are an essential part of the workplace, and if structured correctly, can give birth to creativity and boost morale within the team.

Choose the meeting types that work best for your organization’s needs. So long as you use time wisely, the right type of meeting can help ensure high productivity for everyone on the team.

Posted on

The Beginners Guide to Scrum Meetings and Best Practices

Scrum Meetings

Meetings are an important way for teams to share necessary information. It’s the backbone of project management and helps to keep things progressing smoothly.

Scrum meetings are considered to be a great way to collect information and gain feedback from development, management, and stakeholders. These types of meetings are held often and are face-to-face meetings – including virtual meetings.

The idea of frequent meetings might not sound appealing to all team members but the Scrum framework is tried and tested. It is an Agile framework and is an important component of the sixth principle of the Agile manifesto.

“The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”

There are 5 types of “Scrum ceremonies” (in layman’s terms – it’s a meeting) that this article will share with you alongside some best practices to get the most out of your team.

What Are the Types of Scrum Meetings?

Types of Scrum Meetings

Scrum is one of the methodologies development teams use which is based on the Agile framework. (Kanban is another popular style businesses can use.)

Agile is an entire framework and step-by-step process of approaching software development, although it can be used in a wide range of industries. Development teams that utilize an Agile methodology break their process into smaller chunks known as Sprints. Traditional methods would usually complete the project from start to finish,

Scrum meetings are held frequently during the development process so teams can reflect on their progress and streamline their process for future sprints.

There are 5 types of Scrum meetings and they all promote open communication between the team. Here’s are the different types you can use.

  • Sprint planning
  • Daily scrum
  • Sprint review
  • Sprint retrospective
  • Backlog refinement

The goal for each of these types of Sprints is to aid the development team with their goals and understand the objectives set out in the Sprint meetings. Below is a detailed look at each type and how they will benefit project development.

Sprint Planning

At the start of each Sprint, there should be a long meeting held to set out the objectives for this particular sprint. This meeting should be two hours for every week in the Sprint.

Sprint Planning

For example, if you are breaking Sprints down into two-week blocks, this initial meeting should last four hours.

The whole team should be present for this meeting including the development team, product owner, and the Scrum Master. The project owner needs to be present so they can address any ambiguities and cover the backlog of tasks the development team will be working on.

The Scrum Master’s role is to ensure that the agile principles are being followed. They are not the project leader or solely responsible for the output.

Sprint planning meetings should be collaborative in nature with the project owner sharing the backlog tasks and the companies goals for the upcoming Sprint. The development team should then predict how much work can be completed during this Sprint.

During this phase of the meeting, the team can discuss maximum or fixed times for upcoming tasks. A Sprint planning meeting should be consist of these phases:

1. The scope and size of the upcoming sprint.
2. An overall plan for how and when tasks will be delivered

This meeting should be used to make sure the development team knows exactly what is expected of them. The product owner and Scrum Master should support the team with any questions about ambiguities and the expectations that are being set.

Daily scrum

Daily scrum

The daily scrum is a very short meeting that happens every day. It’s sometimes referred to as the daily standup because this meeting often happens while standing.

The meeting is hosted by the Scrum Master whose role is to ensure the project is running smoothly and the principles of the Agile Framework are being followed.

The idea of daily meetings might sound extreme but these short 15 minute meetings play a vital role in the project development. It’s usual for this meeting to be the first one of the day but it can be held at any time. It works best, however, when it happens in the same block of time each day.

The goal of this meeting is for each team member to be able to answer the following three questions:

1. What work did they complete yesterday?
2. What work will they be doing today?
3. Have they discovered any hindrances?

The daily scrum is not the place to discuss planning as it should be time-boxed to last 15 minutes and no longer. By keeping the discussion to just these three questions the Scrum Master can help to deal with hindrances and maintain the workflow.

Sprint Review

At the end of the sprint, teams will host the sprint review for the development to present their work. This meeting can include outside stakeholders in attendance who provide feedback on this sprint.

The sprint review is a showcase of new functionality and details the work that has been done. Everyone should engage in an open discussion and provide feedback for the development team. This is key to the Agile methodology as frequent feedback leads to a better product.

At this meeting, the original sprint goals can be compared to the objectives that have been completed. The team will look at any discrepancies and consider how to make the next sprint better.

Meetings will need one hour for every week the sprint lasts. A two-week sprint should end with a two-hour sprint review. Add the feedback shared to the sprint backlog. This work will be included in the next or future sprint.

Sprint Retrospective

The Scrum Master will host the sprint retrospective. The development team and sometimes the product owner will attend this meeting. The Agile Framework involves continuous improvement and the sprint retrospective is when that happens.

The meetings should be held at the end of the sprint and are for the benefit of the scrum team. They last between 45 minutes to one hour per week of the sprint. The focus of the meeting should be on how to improve future sprints by asking these questions:

1. What went right in this sprint?
2. What went wrong in this sprint?
3. How can the next sprint be improved?

Sprint retrospective meetings don’t need a lot of preparation. They are more focused on what lessons were learned during the prior sprint. The goal of this meeting isn’t to assign blame to team members. It’s to encourage peer-to-peer feedback and constructive criticism.

Sprint Retrospective

Backlog Refinement

A backlog refinement meeting happens during the interval between sprints. The goal is to clean up the details of tasks in the backlog. Teams can rank tasks, work out the deliverables, and define the details for each task. Define and categorize backlog tasks and the next meeting will reap the benefits.

By hosting a backlog refinement meeting the team can ensure everything is ready for the next sprint planning meeting. Sometimes it’s worth hosting more than one in-between sprints.

Scrum Meetings Best Practices

To ensure your team appreciates scrum meetings there are a few tips to keep everyone happy. The idea of a lot of meetings can seem daunting and unnecessary. Team members don’t want to feel micromanaged. If these meetings aren’t held correctly it can affect team morale.

Let’s take a look at some of the best practices you can put to use during your scrum meetings. This is how to get the most out of each meeting and keep your team members happy and motivated.

  • Start and end meetings on time
    Punctuality is important for scrum meetings. You can end up wasting valuable time if you have to wait for people to arrive. When you set a time for these meetings they should start when stated.If you try to schedule around the entire team’s commitments then meetings can end up being unproductive. You’ll have to host multiple ones to make sure everyone is in attendance.Instead, start meetings on time as this will send a message to the team that the meetings won’t wait for anyone.Ending on time is also important because the team will have work they need to get on with. Meetings that overrun can be stressful and create a negative working environment.Start and end meetings on time
  • Keep daily scrums to 15 minutes
    Daily scrums are important but they serve a very specific purpose and should wrap up quickly. Stick to a simple agenda of the three questions mentioned earlier. Standing up during this meeting is a great way to keep things progressing. There’s a sense of urgency when standing up and it helps to ensure the meetings finish on time.
  • Stick to the ceremony
    As meetings progress it may feel necessary to deal with issues outside the scope of that particular meeting. Resist the urge and stick to the purpose of the meeting. There will be another opportunity scheduled where other issues will be addressed.This helps to keep meetings moving smoothly and avoids team members getting sidetracked.
  • Make sure objectives are clear
    Unplanned meetings can be a nightmare. It can make employees feel stressed and nervous which can affect their mood at work. Make sure that any meeting is clearly communicated and what the purpose of the meeting will be.Clear objectives help team members to prepare and be on time for the meeting. Since scrum meetings are going to start on time, every time, an advanced warning is great for team members.
  • Use a scrum board
    Scrum board is a visualization tool that can help your team with their tasks. The board is a quick reference guide on what tasks have already been completed, who’s working on what, and the tasks in the backlog.

In Conclusion

It sounds like a lot of meetings but they serve a useful purpose that keeps development on track. Continuous improvement is what the Agile Framework aims to deliver and each subsequent sprint will be more honed than the previous.

Team members will get a lot out of these meetings as there is ample opportunity to ask questions and gain feedback on work. As long as meetings follow the best practices outlined above team members should find the scrum framework to be empowering.