Communication – Page 6 – mardihumphreys.com

Communication is Key

I love it when people ask me if I’m worried about robots taking my job. They think Artificial Intelligence will be faster, smarter, and cheaper at creating content than I am. They’re right. But instead of displacing me, AI has promoted me. I am now a Prompt Engineer. How can you protect yourself from being replaced by AI?

Embrace

We fear what we don’t know, so get to know at least one AI chatbot. Here are a few you can try for free. Use AI to help you speed up your process. It’s like washing your car. When you drive through an automatic carwash there are no humans with buckets, sponges, and hand-held vacuums employed to hand wash your vehicle. Technology changed the way you wash your car. Just like technology changes the way most work gets done. Take control and upskill yourself.

Engage

The more work AI can do, the more important the human touch becomes. Use communication to:

Build Trust – Is there a coworker you avoid because the only time they speak to you is when they want something? Don’t be that coworker. Up your interpersonal communication efforts. If you get into the habit of engaging your team in conversation every day, then they will be more open when you ask them for help.

Make it Easy – Use tools like Google Drive to keep KPIs, planning notes, task assignments, etc., in one place so it is easy for your team to check the status of your joint projects. Keep meetings to a minimum. If a meeting is the best way to communicate, then invite one representative per project and let them brief their teams.

Spread Positivity – Take every opportunity to be a cheerleader. Whether it’s your direct report, coworker, or manager, when someone does a good job let them know. Reference a specific action they took and sincerely tell them why you think they rocked it. When someone helps you, thank them in front of their manager, if possible. Even people who do not enjoy the spotlight appreciate praise in the presence of someone who impacts their career.

Enhance

AI does not eliminate customer service. It enables you to be better at it. A human still needs to communicate:

Empathy – Clients want to know that you hear them, understand their challenges, and have experience solving the problem they are facing. After actively listening, you achieve that through what you say and how you say it. Customer service is warm, soothing, and personal.

Subject Matter Expertise – Your clients trust you to give them the tools they need to grow their businesses. You are their guide. You cut through the noise surrounding them. Use AI to research and evaluate options, then present them with the best plans for spending their time, energy, attention, and money.

Emotional Intelligence – It takes a human to figure out how a client likes to communicate then tailor the message to the medium they are most comfortable with. Slack? Email? Phone call? Zoom? Clients want to know someone is taking care of them. Ask them what their business needs beyond what your company provides. When you find out, introduce them to someone in your network who can help.

How has AI impacted your job so far? Please share in the comments.

Lead Me On

The first leader you ever followed was your mother. From the time you were born she managed, coached, and developed you. It may have felt restrictive, nagging, and painful for both of you while growing up, but today those behaviors she modeled will pay off for you on the job. If you are hiring managerial positions, what qualities should you look for in a candidate that will help you retain your individual contributors? If you are an individual contributor looking to move up, what skills should you hone to supervise direct reports?

Empathy

Mothers learn active listening and how to connect with people on a personal level. These qualities help them understand both the needs of their direct reports and the concerns of their stakeholders. This creates a positive and supportive work environment where employees feel valued and motivated to succeed. These feelings make them want to keep working for your organization. This research says relationships with colleagues is one of the top reasons employees stay with a company. Empathy is considered a soft skill which masks the reality that it requires a thick skin. A leader has to make hard decisions that are best for the company, and may be unpopular with the staff. For example, at home Mom stands firm on her decision prohibiting her teenager from riding in a car with a driver who only has their temps. At work, this is the leader who prohibits her team from delivering a subpar-quality project to the client. Both situations require Mom to get comfortable with people’s disappointment.

Coaching

Whether the piano, your volleyball serve, or multiplication tables, a coach makes you practice. Repetition not only increases muscle memory, but also reveals where processes need improved. For example, Mom trains her child to take out the trash every week. Not only does her child learn the chore needs done, but also if once a week is enough. At work, Mom trains her team to meet for a status update every week. Not only does the team learn what progress was made, but also if meeting once a week is enough. A coaching manager knows you need not only hard skills like learning a second language, profit forecasting, and SEO, but also soft skills like communication, conflict management, and critical thinking. Mothers have years of practice training their children to have a growth mindset. They develop strong communication skills enabling them to constructively articulate their expectations. In the workplace this translates into guidance and encouragement which builds trust and respect with their staff.

Foresight

Mothers have a long-term perspective when it comes to their children’s well-being. This skill can be applied to leading a team, where it’s essential to make decisions that benefit the organization’s future growth and success while balancing competing staffing demands and prioritizing tasks effectively, especially when it comes to crisis management. Mothers put systems in place to handle unexpected challenges such as a sick child. In the workplace, these are the leaders who anticipate what complex emotions from stakeholders they may have to face if they make a certain decision.

Mothers are adept at communicating, motivating, forecasting, navigating conflicts, and fostering relationships. All these are signs of a good manager.

What leadership qualities did I forget? Please share in the comments.

Happy Endings

With Mother’s Day and Father’s Day coming up, you may be celebrating your parents over the next few weeks. Maybe you will get together and relive memories of their past as you grew up. Are you also thinking about their future and how it may impact yours?

Once your parents retire Social Security and Medicare will help with living expenses, but it’s likely they will outlive those funds. You need to know if they have savings and safeguards in place to protect the money they worked so hard for. Here are some things to consider.

Fraud

Since older adults have had more time on the planet to save up their money, they are logical targets for fraud and not just by strangers. When talking to your parents listen for stories of any new friends coming into their lives and how they spend time together. For example, when they go out to lunch, does your parent always pay the check? Here are some other things to watch for. Also talk about the latest cybersecurity scams. Criminals are employing the latest capabilities of AI to do scary things like enhance family emergency schemes.

Finances

Always a touchy subject, but the economy is perpetually uncertain. Everyone wants to ensure they have all the resources they need to live the rest of their lives the way they want to. Here are a few questions to ask.

Do they have savings (e.g., IRAs, pensions, etc.) in place?
Do they have outstanding debts?
Do they have the necessary documents (like these ) filed?
Not to be morbid, but have they thought about funeral arrangements? Do they want their remains to be buried or cremated? Are they organ donors? If they haven’t thought about it yet, encourage them to document their preferences so you can carry out their wishes after they are gone.

Fulfillment

Mostly, you want to know that if you die before they do they have a plan for living out the rest of their lives in safety and comfort. Here are some questions to ponder together.

Is the interior of the house okay? Accessories like grab bars in the shower, a chairlift for the stairs, and adequate lighting throughout the house will help prevent falls.
Do they have any chronic conditions? Are the names and contact information for their healthcare providers written down somewhere that you can access if necessary?
Do they have a community? Social engagement is important for mental and emotional health no matter how old you are. Do they volunteer with their church? Does their city have a senior center?
Do they feel safe driving? Are they open to public transportation, ride-sharing, or a nonprofit’s transportation program?
When they eventually need help aging in place, should you live together? If so, who is financially responsible for what expenses? How much physical help will they need before it’s beyond your capabilities? Should you get advice from an eldercare attorney to prepare yourselves for what the future may bring?
If they ultimately need an assisted living community, how do you find a trustworthy one? Here’s some information on where to begin.

The future and money are both emotional conversation topics. If you approach them with empathy, respect, and active listening, they will be more productive. Be aware this is not a one and done. You will revisit these issues as long as you are blessed to still be on the same planet as your parents.

What resources do you recommend for aging in place? Please share in the comments.

Don’t Let Me Down

I had to take a class in small group communication in college. It was there that I learned one of my all-time favorite jokes: I want the members of my small group to be the pall bearers at my funeral so they can let me down one last time.

The absence of collaboration on a team makes you feel let down. One challenging element of collaboration is group goal setting. In this, Part Two of our Before and After series, let’s think about the traditional approach to setting work goals as Before, and how that approach can be improved as After. The Before approach is a systematic and disciplined process for success, but your team can waste a lot of energy using it. It typically goes like this:

Define the Objective – Identify what you want to achieve. The objective should be clear, specific, measurable, and aligned with the company’s overall business goals, vision, and mission.

Break it Down – Divide the objective into small steps to create projects. Assign projects to team members.

Prioritize – Determine the order in which the projects need to be done. For example, if Jane needs data from Joe’s project to complete hers, then Joe’s project is due first. Set deadlines, figure out what resources each team member needs to complete their project, and brainstorm possible obstacles to completing projects on time.

Track Progress – Schedule regular meetings to track the team’s progress towards meeting the objective. Identify who is falling behind and why. Adjust their resources to stay on track.

Evaluate – After achieving the objective, gather feedback from the team. What worked well? What didn’t? What do they wish they’d done differently? Put these notes in a folder in a shared drive as a reference for the next objective.

The traditional method dictates that you set a goal, reach it, then begin to identify another one. Sounds logical, right? But, in the quickly evolving world of work, Before methods of goal-setting are no longer working. This happens for several reasons, all having to do with a lack of something:

Flexibility – Traditional goal-setting methods often involve setting long-term goals and sticking to them, but that ignores the pace at which the work environment moves.

Employee Input – In the world of Before, your manager hands an objective to the team leader who doles out assignments. Lack of employee input produces both a lack of buy-in and a lack of motivation to achieve the objective. Employees are more engaged and motivated when we understand the broader purpose and meaning behind our work.

Learning – Traditional goal-setting methods tend to focus solely on achieving specific outcomes and not on the value of experimentation. In today’s knowledge-based economy, failing fast supports figuring out the best ways not to do something. These learnings are evergreen and the processes of elimination can be applied to achieving future goals.

The changing nature of both work and the workforce means that Before goal-setting methods may be ineffective in achieving your objectives. Instead, organizations should consider adopting the After approach. It relies on flexibility and employee-driven input to goal setting. This prioritizes learning, development, purpose, and adaptability.

How can you integrate the After approach to goal setting into your workforce retention plan?

Atomic Habits Stacking

Before and After is a recurring category on the game show, Jeopardy! For example, one of the clues was, “C.S. Lewis’ Narnia book that showed off a little too much skin at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.” The correct response was, “What is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe malfunction?”

The Before and After category has me thinking about goals because I have a theory for goal setting inspired by the Before and After category. I call it Atomic Habits Stacking. It combines two systems: Atomic Habits and Habit Stacking.

We talked a bit about the book, Atomic Habits, back in November. A major takeaway from the book is author James Clear’s statement, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Clear suggests creating a system to initiate and integrate a new habit by making it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. For example, let’s say your company adopted new project management software. To adjust to using it, you could begin the workday by logging in to your account, seeing what you accomplished the day before, what work has come in since you last checked it, save urgent tasks to your favorites, and give yourself an Atta Baby! for taking another step to try something new.

What’s Next

Add Habit Stacking to Atomic Habits and you exponentially increase your ability to reach your goals. Building on the example above, after completing those steps, if you choose one of those projects you flagged urgent and begin working on it, then you are Habit Stacking. With Atomic Habits Stacking, you get incrementally closer to reaching multiple goals everyday.

Identify New Goals

A side effect of this process is the identification of future goals. For example, let’s pretend the project you flagged as urgent is data collection for a quarterly report. The future goal that may occur to you is creating a PowerPoint slide for visualizing that data while you have it in front of you. It does not take long to start evaluating new assignments through the filter of, “How can I make this project obvious, attractive, easy, satisfying, and link it to another project?”

Team Atomic Habits Stacking

Your team can implement Atomic Habits Stacking. Continuing our example, when you finish data analysis and create a slide, then tag the person who is writing the report. They Atomic Habits Stack by also writing a rough draft of the Executive Summary. Then they notify the person who has to present. That team member updates what information is gathered and what still needs done. Then their Atomic Habits Stack is sending everyone a Slack message with an updated agenda for the next check-in meeting. It can get complicated so make sure everyone knows what the completion of their event means for triggering the next person. With practice, cooperation, and trust your team will find many cases for Atomic Habits Stacking.

What work habits can you combine to increase your productivity?

The Big Reveal

When you ask for a raise and you’ve talked about how you have increased your responsibilities and your plans to either save the company money or bring in more revenue, that’s when your manager asks, “How much money do you need?” What if you’re a crew member at a fast food restaurant and your reply is, “How about $25 an hour?” Neither question seems helpful. Your manager should know (and be willing to disclose) the budget range for your position. Salary is not determined by how much the employee needs. It is based on how much the company is willing to pay an employee to get a job done on time, under budget, and with excellence. Does this seem weird to anyone else? No? Just me? K. Moving on.

One of the best ways to find out how to solve a challenge is to ask someone who has been through it. However, we’re trained early in our careers to not talk with our coworkers about compensation. Why?

Employers cannot forbid their employees to tell each other how much money they make. In fact, it’s a right protected by the National Labor Relations Act. Yet, we know we’re not supposed to and some employees have gotten fired for doing so. Authenticity at work means being open about who you are, your values, beliefs, and experiences. Your compensation is one of your experiences. Some state legislatures agree and have passed pay transparency laws to aid in reducing pay discrimination. This new authenticity has ramifications for both the employee and the employer.

For the Employee

Pay transparency laws require companies to disclose salary information to job seekers. These laws are supposed to make it easier for potential employees to negotiate salaries and feel confident they will receive fair compensation for their work. The fast food employee in our scenario above should get online, find the restaurant’s job postings, look for their job description, and see what pay range is offered. Then they will know how much of a raise to ask for. They should also look at other similar fast food restaurants’ job postings. Are they offering the same pay range?

For the Employer

Pay transparency laws should help you reduce turnover and avoid costly discrimination lawsuits. While adjusting to the new rules, be aware there may be hidden compliance costs. For example, you may need to invest in new systems or processes to collect and disclose salary information. This could increase your administrative costs. You may also need to raise your current employees’ salaries to prevent them from quitting. To do this at a sustainable pace, you can tie raises to job performance and give reviews twice a year. Before posting an open position, check to see what pay range your competitors are offering.

Negotiating terms of employment is where the foundation of trust gets built between an employer and employee. Pay transparency laws should produce a more competitive job market, better informed decisions, improved employee morale, and a more positive work environment for everyone.

How do you feel about pay transparency? Please share in the comments.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

You started out as friends. He came to rely on you more and more and you were happy to support him. You shared private jokes. You made him look good in front of others. You knew what he needed before he did. Now, he takes you for granted. What began as a sweet relationship has turned sour. You want a divorce. I’m not talking about your life’s partner. I’m talking about your work spouse.

Breaking up with a work spouse is neither an easy nor a quick decision. Maybe you were hired because you were friends. Seventy percent of Americans found their current job through their networks. This makes changing your relationship even more difficult. Here are five things you can do to handle the situation with both empathy and respect.

Be Honest and Grateful

Schedule a private meeting with your work spouse. Honestly and kindly communicate your feelings. Be clear and straightforward about your decision. Thank them for the positive impact they had on your professional life and assure them you will continue to support future collaboration. If you need some inspiration, then read the story of how Dolly Parton broke up with her work spouse, Porter Wagoner.

Set Boundaries

After breaking the news, set clear boundaries and expectations for moving forward. You are trying to prevent as much awkwardness and as many misunderstandings as possible. If your former work spouse decides to lash out and go low, then you need to go high. For example, if they start overly criticizing your ideas in weekly team meetings, then come to those meetings prepared to defend your ideas.

Prepare for Professionalism

Think about how you will control your reactions when you see your former work spouse every day. Keep any negative feelings to yourself and commit to remaining publicly amicable. This should help minimize the negative impact of your breakup on your coworkers. They will feel the new friction between the two of you even if you avoid talking about it and they will have questions. Can you and your work ex-spouse agree to deliver the same elevator speech to those inquiring minds? It’s essential to both your careers to maintain a professional attitude. For example, you still have to effectively collaborate on projects every day, but maybe you communicate more through email than face-to-face.

Allow Time for Adjustment

Give your work ex-spouse some space and time to adjust to the new normal. It’s natural to feel disappointed when a close professional relationship ends. Be patient and allow them to process their emotions at their own pace. Meanwhile, you need to adjust to your new single status. Your former work spouse had input into your projects and now they won’t. For example, if you always ran your monthly report by them before submitting it to your manager, now you need a new proofreader.

Make New Friends

Connect with other people on your project team. Grab coffee with someone this week and lunch with someone else next week. Creating stronger relationships will help you get to know, like, and trust each other. Since business moves at the speed of trust, investing in key relationships helps your team work both faster and more efficiently.

What do you do when you need to set new boundaries around a work relationship? Please share in the comments.

The Eye of the Beholder

Photo by Elizaveta Dushechkina from Pexels

I frequently hear various versions of this story from my networks: “Operations told me they assigned a different analyst to our project team because they think we will get along better. I thought we got along just fine, but apparently I offended the last one. I have no idea what I did.” Honestly, efficiently, and politely asking for what you need from coworkers is tricky. The key is authenticity.

Authenticity in the workplace requires consistent and transparent communication, positive nonverbal cues, building trust, and seeking feedback. Here are five examples of what both authenticity and inauthenticity look like at work.

Consistency

You are perceived as authentic when you consistently behave in a way that matches your stated values and beliefs. For example, let’s say you are a project manager who preaches the importance of teamwork. When you are praised for the successful completion of a project, you habitually respond by insisting it was a team effort and list your team’s contributions. On the other hand, if you frequently take credit for your team’s work, then that inconsistency makes you inauthentic.

Transparency

When you communicate honestly and directly, you are often viewed as more authentic than someone who evades tough conversations. For example, if you claim to be a DEIB advocate, then you have a conversation with a colleague who keeps asking you to recruit employees with more diverse life experiences to your department. Open and transparent communication helps you to be perceived as authentic. On the other hand, if you keep avoiding a dialogue with that colleague, then you may be perceived as inauthentic.

Nonverbal Cues

Eye contact, tone of voice, and body language influence your perceived authenticity. For example, if you display positive nonverbal cues in meetings like looking the speaker in the eye, opening your body stance, and taking notes, then you seem authentic. On the other hand, if you look at your phone more than the speaker, cross your arms and legs, or interrupt their report, then you appear inauthentic.

Trust

This may be the most critical component of authenticity. People have to both know and like you before they learn to trust you. It takes time to prove your reliability and credibility. For example, if you routinely complete assignments by their deadlines, then you are perceived as authentic. On the other hand, if you routinely fail to meet deadlines, then your unreliability makes you seem inauthentic.

Feedback

Feedback is a useful tool for gauging your perceived authenticity. For example, at the end of your next 1:1, tell your manager you are working on being authentic. Say that you’d like to send them an email with three questions regarding their perception of your authenticity. Ask if you can discuss their answers at your next 1:1. Part of a manager’s job is to encourage their direct reports to continuously improve. On the other hand, if you do not ask your manager for specific feedback on how you are perceived, then you may never know. We concentrate on getting work done and not on honing the tools, like authenticity, that make getting work done easier.

Sometimes coworkers have legitimate reasons for their behavior or communication style. For example, maybe your relationship has changed. More on that next week in part two of this series.

How do you demonstrate authenticity at work? Please share in the comments.

Best Stressed

In my role of serving the local IT community, I get to eavesdrop on many conversations. A recurring theme is the challenge of recruitment and retention, as you may imagine. The recent mass layoffs at big tech companies have caused stress waves that are crashing over both employees and employers.

Stress Has Many Flavors

There are different kinds of stress. For example, there are hindrances. These are things you cannot control, like a pandemic. Hindrances cause bad stress. There are also challenges. These are things you can rise to meet with effort, like learning a new skill. Hindrances demotivate while challenges boost motivation. Hindrances make you feel like you can’t get over them no matter how hard you work. Challenges make you feel accomplished when you meet them.

Help Instead of Hinder

In their book, Designing Your Work Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans say that humans have intrinsic, psychological needs: autonomy, relatedness, and competence (ARC). As an employer, if you can meet these needs for your employees, then you will have an easier time attracting and retaining talent.

Autonomy – This is controlling your own life. Employees want to feel like they have the freedom and trust to do their jobs the way they think they should be done. For example, let’s say you’re a manager at a home decor store. You have an employee who has ideas for how the store should be styled. Could you assign them to merchandise an end cap and a display table at the front of the store for one month? If the items on those displays keep getting sold, then you could assign them a whole section next month.

Relatedness – This is connecting to a community. Employees want a squad to belong to. This survey found nearly 57% of their respondents said they enjoyed work more because they made a friend there. For example, let’s say you’re a manager in charge of a fundraiser. You have to bring employees from different departments together to plan the event. If you facilitate a getting-to-know-you conversation at your kick-off meeting, then the diverse group can begin to develop empathy, camaraderie, and buy in for the mission. This not only makes collaboration between teammates possible, it may also start better collaboration between the various departments represented even after the fundraiser is over.

Competence – This is being good at what you do. Employees with a growth mindset look for ways to do more of what they like at work. For example, let’s say you’re the manager of a software development company. You have an employee who is really good at explaining one of your products to small groups of onboarding sales people. You’d like her to develop her onboarding talk into a presentation that she could deliver at an upcoming industry conference, but, she gets stage fright. If you record her next product demonstration, then you’re helping her take the next step in public speaking and you have a video that you can show during your conference presentation.

Motivating employees is a challenge as old as the organized workforce. As an employer, you cannot eliminate stress for every employee. The goal is to give them more good stress than bad stress in their jobs.

What are some ways your manager gives you good stress? Please share in the comments.

Uses Time Wisely

In Kindergarten, we weren’t graded on subjects like math or English and we did not receive letter grades on our report cards. Instead, we had a list of goals to meet. The teacher put a check mark next to the goal if it was reached or an X if it wasn’t. I received an X next to “Uses Time Wisely.” It’s haunted me ever since.

How do you determine your level of productivity at work? You compare yourself to your coworkers. You worry that everyone is using their time more wisely than you are, especially if you’re remote or hybrid. By the beginning of Q4 2020, I stopped saying that I work from home and started saying that I home from work. Technology allows us to work when and where we want so we work all the time. This phenomenon is the autonomy paradox. For example, how many times have you replied to work emails on your phone while waiting in line at the grocery? (Asking for a friend.)

Asynchronous work makes you very susceptible to what Brigid Schulte, Director of the Better Life Lab at New America, calls time confetti. These are the minutes scattered throughout your week spent on unproductive multitasking. Alone, the spent time is insignificant, but it adds up pretty quick. For example, would that PowerPoint presentation you’re working on be done right now if you had closed your direct message app for a couple of hours?

Even if your app is minimized, hearing the notifications breaks your concentration and now you know that someone is waiting for you to do something. Your brain is distracted by wondering what it is and figuring out how, when, and where to get everything done. It takes time to mentally shift from one task to another and back again. Before you know it, your time has shredded into confetti. How can you prevent being buried in it?

Protect – When you have a project that requires deep focus, schedule it on your calendar, close your door and put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on it, and turn off direct message and email alerts. Notice how quickly you get it done.

Train -You not only have to set boundaries, you have to show people where they are and hold them when people try to cross them. For example, those who contact me between 7:30pm and 8:00pm EST Monday – Saturday do not reach me. Jeopardy! is my boundary. I do not answer calls, emails, or texts during that time. I have communicated and held that boundary so many times that our daughter bought me a T-shirt.

Forgive – Don’t berate yourself for failing to complete every task on your to-do list every day. We treat time like it’s something we can control, and, to a certain extent, we can and should. However, days have varying rhythms. Stuff happens and we have to roll with it. Think about how many fire drills you have in a week. Checking off every task on your to-do list is not using your time wisely. Giving your best effort is.

What do you do to minimize time confetti? Please share in the comments.