Emotional Intelligence – Page 16

Cultural Competency

Feedback is a gift. It’s usually one I want to return. But a few days ago I received feedback that I want to keep. I had the privilege of finding out how privileged I am by spending the day in diversity and inclusion training. When I tell people this, they usually wince and ask, “How did THAT go?” I get it. While mentally preparing for the day I braced for difficult conversations, sore toes, and conflict. What I experienced was respectful dialogue, open minds, and advocacy.

It had a great deal to do with the intentional way the day was facilitated. (Shout out to Dr. Karen. If your organization wants help with diversity education, contact her at DrKaren@DrKarenTownsend.com). Dr. Karen both coached and invited us to co-facilitate the learning with her. There was a rhythm of a truth presented, illustrated, a question asked about it, then discussed amongst the group. For example: What would the world look like if it was a village of 100 people? Here is a summary:

Nationalities: 61 Asians (of the 61, 20 would be Chinese and 17 would be Indian), 13 Africans, 12 Europeans, 9 Latin or South Americans, 5 North Americans (Missing: Australia, Oceana, and Antarctica)
Gender: 50 male, 50 female
Age: 26 would be under 15 years old, 74 would be adults – 8 of whom would be over 64 years old
Health: 1 would have AIDS, 26 would smoke, 14 would be obese
Living Conditions: 87 villagers would have access to safe drinking water; 13 villagers would not. 77 people would have shelter to live in; 23 would not
Religion: 33 people would be Christian, 20 would be Islamic, 13 would be Hindus, 6 would be Buddhists, 2 would be atheists, 12 would be non-religious, and 14 would be other religions
Education: 1 villager would have a college degree while 18 people would be illiterate
Technology: 33 villagers would have cell phones, 18 would have cars, 16 would have computers
Employment: 28 would work in Agriculture, 14 would work for Industry, 28 would have service jobs, and 30 would be unemployed
Income: 53 people would live on less than $2 (US currency) a day

The world is big and interconnected. You want everyone in it to use your product or service. You have a better chance of appealing to customers of various ages, races, genders, sexual orientation, military service, physical abilities, and religions if your staff represents those demographics. The trick is, you can’t stop at just hiring for diversity. You also have to promote diversity up the organizational chart. You have to fairly compensate every employee for their work. You have to be inclusive by listening to, and being influenced by, diverse viewpoints.You have to intentionally create a culture where all employees feel safe to share their experiences and backgrounds.Your staff needs to be both seen and heard in order to reap the benefits of both employee retention and market expansion.

How do you foster a welcoming and supportive environment at your business? Please share in the comments.

Going off the Rails

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln

How do you know when the axe is sharp enough? Overthinking is a pattern of behavior where your thoughts swirl in an endless negative loop. These thoughts produce fear that clouds your judgement. Instead of preparing you for positive next steps, you get stuck. How thin is the line between preparation and overthinking?

Why It’s Bad

Your brain is trying to reduce the anxiety caused by your situation’s uncertainty, but overthinking typically just produces more questions to worry about.
It may deter you from making rash decisions, but as a habit, overthinking is a gateway to excessive worry which can lead to stress, anxiety, depression, OCD, and/or PTSD.
Pondering all the possible outcomes to a decision is fine, but when it prevents you from choosing one of them, that’s a problem.
Do not confuse overthinking with self-reflection. Self-reflection results in learning, insight, and gaining perspective. Overthinking results in dwelling on everything you don’t have control over and feeling bad about it.
Overthinking projects that are on a deadline gives you less time to complete the project. For example: taking so much time deciding what you’re going to wear to your client presentation that you run out of time to adequately rehearse the presentation.
If you are busy overthinking a situation, then you are too distracted to notice new opportunities.

What It Feels Like

You lose sleep because of the repeated negative thoughts of how you feel about the problem instead of how you’re going to solve it.
You have trouble making easy decisions (e.g., where to go for lunch).
You second guess your decisions (e.g., I should have known in the interview that Joe Sixpack was a bad hire).

How To Stop

Distract Yourself: Your brain will come up with possible solutions when you leave it alone for a while. Take a break and listen to a few minutes of your favorite podcast.
Journal: Stop and write down what triggered the overthink. After a week, read what you wrote. Do you see any patterns? Make a plan to deactivate the trigger the next time it happens.
The Practical Test: When you are spiraling, ask yourself, “What evidence are these thoughts based on? Is it legitimate? Is there someone I trust that I can ask?” If your thoughts are illogical, unreasonable or impractical, they are overthink.
Change Your Environment: Enlist your endorphins in the battle. Get outside and go for a run or walk the dog or ride your bike.
Worry Time: Schedule a recurring weekly appointment on your calendar for worrying and limit it to fifteen minutes. This accomplishes three things: you control when you allow the worried thoughts, you limit the time you allow yourself to worry, and by the time the appointment comes, you may no longer have anything to worry about. Begin your worry time with this question, “Can I do anything to change this situation in the next twenty-four hours?” If yes, then stop thinking and take action. If no, then put the thought on the agenda for the next scheduled worry appointment.

If you can’t stop ruminating on your own, it can damage your mental health. A trained therapist can give you exercises and accountability to pull yourself out of the overthinking doom loop. Learning how to flip your negative, repetitive thoughts into positive ones is a skill worth developing.

What do you do to pull yourself out of overthinking? Please share in the comments.

Sleep On It

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” is the hustler’s motto. There are at least a couple of movies and a couple of songs with that statement as the title. It implies that strong people don’t need sleep. In reality, getting adequate sleep not only makes us stronger, but also smarter, and not getting enough sleep can eventually kill you.

How Much is Enough?

A recent study by the CDC found that 41 million Americans in the workforce are sleep deprived. How many hours an adult needs varies by person; it can be anywhere between six and ten. When you don’t get enough, you accumulate a sleep debt that sooner or later your body will force you to pay. If you feel moody, are making more mistakes than usual, or falling asleep in meetings, then you aren’t getting enough. That lack of sleep can lead to poor decision-making, depression, and/or burnout. If you deny your brain the time it needs to recharge, then it will punish you with poor functioning, like trouble focusing on tasks, misunderstanding communication with your team, and difficulty controlling stress. These indicators can manifest in as few as three consecutive nights of sleeping six hours or less.

Why is it Important?

You need to be physically healthy to do your best work, and getting enough sleep is key to your physical health. Your body repairs its tissues, manufactures hormones to fight infections and viruses, and lowers your blood pressure while you sleep. Also during sleep, your brain constructs and reinforces neural pathways that help you remember things you’ve learned, which strengthens your ability to solve complex challenges at work.

Best Practices

Get on a schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same times every day. Then, before bedtime:

Three hours: Finish eating, and drinking caffeine and/or alcohol
90 minutes: Finish vigorous exercise
60 minutes: Turn off the TV, cell phone, and laptop. Read a real book, listen to soothing music, or meditate instead
At bedtime: Eliminate light and noise and adjust the room temperature; cooler is more conducive to sleeping

Damage Control

After a sleepless night:

Try to begin your day with exercise, outside if possible. You could go for a run or ride your bike, but a brisk walk through nature while breathing in fresh morning air and listening to your favorite songs followed by gentle stretching will also put you in a good mindset to face the day.
Your body may try to rest at an inopportune time later in the day. If that happens, it’s more productive to take a 15-30 minute break to let your brain rest than to keep plowing through your to-do list.
Caffeine may get you through the morning, but the crash could have you zoning out during your afternoon Zooms. If you can’t grab a 15 minute nap, then take 10 minutes to either meditate or eat a healthy snack and chase it with a glass of water while watching an uplifting video; maybe this one. If you don’t have 10 minutes, then take one or two minutes to either stretch or take a few deep breaths.

Many of us have trouble sleeping since the advent of COVID-19. What are some things you do to get a good night’s sleep? Please share in the comments.

It’s About Time

When did the United States know it was time to bring workers from the fields to the factories? Who decided working eight hours a day for five days in a row was the best schedule for optimum productivity? The 40-hour workweek became a law in the United States in 1940. If we haven’t thought about how long it should be since then, may we please use COVID-19 as the trigger for redefining how long it is now?

Not News

How long both the workweek and the workday should be is not a new conversation. One of my favorite thinkers is organizational psychologist Adam Grant. He has lobbied for the death of the five-day workweek for at least a couple of years. There is plenty of evidence to support his position from respected sources like The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The Huffington Post.

Mother Knows Best

The catch is, if employees spend less time on the job, isn’t it logical that the job should pay less? Mothers have struggled with this prevalent employer attitude for years. In Mika Brzezinski’s book, Know Your Value: Women, Money, and Getting What You’re Worth, Carol Smith, former publisher of Elle magazine told Mika, “I love hiring women (for) four days a week because they actually will produce at least five days’ worth of work for four days’ worth of pay.” As an employer that’s a benefit to her, but as a woman, it is a detriment. Her story in the book goes on to note that the moms of young children who work for her are willing to do anything to have a four-day workweek including accepting 60% of their salary.

Proof of Concept

Of course, employees do not want to make less money, but why should employers shorten the week without also shortening the paycheck? Here are two examples. This article talks about a four-day-workweek-no-pay-reduction experiment the company Buffer offered its employees. To shorten their workweek, they cut back on meetings and social events, sped up the pace of their day, and improved their focus (e.g., employees reported spending 35% less time surfing the web). The experiment was so successful, it’s still running. Buffer made $21 million in revenue in 2020. Also, American businesses should vet the plan Iceland commissioned from Alda (Association for Sustainable Democracy), an Icelandic non-profit, and Autonomy, a British think tank, to condense the workweek. These two organizations partnered to run two large-scale trials of a four-day workweek from 2015-2019. They published their results in June 2021. In addition to productivity remaining the same or improving in their test-subject companies, the study also concluded that employee welfare markedly increased (e.g., less burnout). Even if employers prioritize revenue over employee well-being, these studies prove a four-day workweek is profitable.

Life always holds an element of uncertainty. Did we really need a pandemic to remind us of what our priorities should be and how far we’ve strayed from them? Let’s rethink the current workweek model and consider what compensation for productivity could look like in 2022.

Would you rather be paid for your time or your productivity? Please share in the comments.

The Talk

It’s time for “the talk.” Not THAT talk; you need to talk to your family about retirement savings-both theirs and yours. Yes, the economy is suffering right now and it’s tempting to push pause on long-term savings, but the future keeps coming and everyone from Baby Boomers to Gen Z should continue to plan for it.

Don’t Count on It

Do not make the mistake of counting on the United States government to fully fund your golden years. Social Security is intended for use as an emergency resource, not your main source of income after you leave the workforce. Plus, by 2034, projections reveal that the Social Security Administration will be paying out more benefits than they are taking in through payroll taxes because there will be more retirees than employees. If Congress steps in then it probably won’t run out. But if you want to live the rest of your life comfortably, then you should fund your own retirement.

It’s Not About the Money

When talking to your family about future finances, you’re not really discussing money. Whether it’s your adult children who want you to carry them on your insurance or your parents who want you to be the executor of their wills, money is just a representative. What you’re really talking about is both expectations and emotions. Whether fear, resentment, kindness or generosity, feelings are attached to financial conversations. These discussions are not one-and-done. For example, when your parents began telling you about the birds and the bees, it wasn’t just one talk, was it? When our daughter was three years old she asked me where babies came from. I told her Cleveland. That satisfied her for two years. As she grew older, her questions grew more specific. It’s the same for the money talk. As everyone in your circle of care ages, the questions you ask them should become more specific. For example, when speaking with:

Gen Z – Do you have an emergency fund with at least $1000 saved? If not, they should think about automating their savings. Here is how to create a plan
Millennial – Are you aggressively paying off debt? Here are some pros and cons
Gen X – Are you taking advantage of catch-up retirement savings? Here is how they work
Baby Boomer – Have you thought about where you want your assets to go after you’re gone? Here is what they need to know if they live in the great state of Ohio

Awkward

How you manage your money is a very personal choice. When it has the potential to impact, either positively or negatively, the people you care about, you must talk to them about it no matter how awkward it feels. Opening up a dialogue before a financial emergency happens allows you to remain calm when the crisis hits. It may even prevent the crisis. The result of uncomfortable money conversations with your loved ones is it becomes more comfortable the more you do it. The result is peace of mind, and you can’t put a price tag on that.

What stops you from talking to your people about their and your future finances? Please share in the comments.

My Way or the Highway

I keep stumbling over the word agency because it’s a contributing factor to The Great Resignation. It’s trending in the context of one of its lesser meanings (check out #9). As I struggled to visualize it, I received an unexpected email of encouragement from my manager. In reassuring me that I am achieving our goals, his email helped me label how I achieve them. It also woke me to the fact that not everyone has this freedom in their work. Employers had to give up a certain amount of control over their workforces at the height of COVID-19 when they weren’t allowed to have employees work under their watchful eyes. An employer who has issues with employees working remotely is not a logistics problem, it’s a trust problem.

Control

If it’s not enough to complete the task correctly and on time, but it also has to be done the way the manager prefers, then you have a lack of agency. For example: toward the end of her life, our grandmother was not physically strong enough to wash the windows on her house herself. During a visit, my husband offered to do it. She immediately pointed out what equipment to pull from where, gave him a recipe for the cleaner, dictated while he mixed it, and window by window instructed him on how to clean them. Kudos to him for his patience. There were 13 windows on that house. It was a long afternoon. Haven’t we all had a micromanager? Or one who insisted we be available to them 24/7/365 like Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada? If this is your current situation, can you set boundaries on when you’re available to your manager? Can you transfer to another department that allows you more freedom? Is having agency important enough to you to find a different job? Whatever you decide, take time to think about how you got into this situation. Are you habitually involved with people (managers, people you date, etc.) who want to control you? If you determine that you’re the common denominator in these relationship equations, talk about them with a trusted friend, therapist, or coach to help you identify red flags in both your behavior and your manager’s. Otherwise, the lack of agency is likely to follow you to your next role.

Trust

Your lack of agency means your manager doesn’t entirely trust you. Some things to consider:

Have you done something to lose their trust?
Are they micromanaging everyone, or just you?
Is your relationship strong enough that you can ask them what they are afraid of?
Is there a way you can reduce their insecurities?
If you do what you’re told the way you’re told to do it every single time, there’s no learning. Would your manager let you experiment, fail, then learn from the result? For example: Can you do a project how, where, and when you want to, successfully complete it, deliver a report of the results to your manager, then ask for this process to become your standard operating procedure?
Have you had success on your own initiative that you can remind them of to prove your credibility?
Would more communication (e.g., weekly status reports) on projects give them more confidence in you?

You train people how to treat you. You cannot change other people’s behavior, you can only change what behavior you will accept from them. If you can’t achieve the autonomy you need at your current position, then your decision is whether to stay or go.

What do you do when you experience a lack of agency at work? Please share in the comments.

No Labor Today

Our wedding anniversary typically falls around Labor Day. My husband and I usually schedule time off work around the holiday weekend to celebrate by traveling a bit. This year marks our 30th wedding anniversary, so we decided to do something special. We visited Grand Teton National Park. We not only needed a grand gesture to celebrate our milestone, but also to get as far away from our day-to-day as possible. Pre-COVID-19, I wrote about how it benefits your job when you take a break from it. Mid-COVID-19, a break feels mandatory. With the blurred boundaries between work, home, school, etc., how can you process what you just lived through (and continue to live through) and use those learnings to iterate the next version of your life post-COVID-19? You don’t have to go all the way to Wyoming, but you should unplug, reset, and filter.

Unplug

We chose to get away to a place with little to no cell service, mostly because I can’t be trusted to enforce my OOO boundary. But maybe your children are in the throes of the beginning of both the school year and their fall extracurriculars so you need to stick close to home. Get creative about taking time to recharge. For example, take half-days off for a week. While the rest of your household is doing their things, turn off your phone, laptop, Xbox, etc., and change your scenery. If your job is sedentary, go to a Metropark and bike, walk, or kayak. If your job is physical, go to the library and read, journal, or listen to music. Whichever you choose, commit to only answering your mobile if there is a life (not work) emergency.

Reset

Get out of your comfort zone. Choose one activity you’ve never done before and do it every day for the week. If you work by yourself, follow CDC guidelines and do a project with others. If you work with others, find a solitary pursuit. You could:

Volunteer at your local food bank, church, or YWCA
Study coding with Python
Learn to cook your favorite restaurant meal with YouTube videos
Listen to different music (e.g., rap if you’re a country fan)
Read a different genre (e.g., non-fiction if you normally read sci-fi)

By the end of the week, you’ll know whether or not your choice is an activity you enjoy. If it helps you reset your mindset, then make time in your schedule to keep doing it.

Filter

At the end of each day, journal about your new activity. You could write, doodle, voice memo, whatever is your choice for making notes. Think about:

What did you see, hear, touch, taste, and/or smell?
How did it make you feel?
What did you learn?
What does it make you want to change?
What does it make you want to keep doing?
How will you use these new insights to influence your work?
Are there priorities you have to reset? People to whom you have to communicate boundaries? Comfort zones you have to get out of?

Prioritizing your physical, mental, and emotional health gives you the energy you need to bring your best effort to work, life, and people in your circle of influence.

What are you going to do to recharge? Please share in the comments.

Tempting Talent

Last week we discussed how to retain your current employees during the Talent Tsunami. But despite your best efforts, it’s likely that some of them will still jump ship (cue Debbie Downer). From a financial perspective, hiring a new employee is an expensive process. You not only have to calculate salary, but also the cost of recruiting, training, and benefits. If you are a company of 0-500 people, this price could average $7645. How can you ensure you’re attracting trustworthy talent?

Congruity Through Change

It’s tempting to just increase the top of the salary range or offer a sign-on bonus and publish the “We’re Hiring!” post. But throwing money at the problem is not a long-term solution. The pandemic proved the workplace can function very differently than it’s been allowed to since the industrial age. This excited employees, but management not so much. COVID-19 fast-tracked the inevitable evolution of the way knowledge work gets done. Protocol that made factories run efficiently (e.g., all employees work five consecutive eight-hour days) are no longer in employees nor companies best interests here at the end of the digital revolution. If you make this an arbitrary rule, you risk losing out on valuable talent. Conversely, if you explore innovative alternatives for running your business, then you keep your company’s vision intact by taking advantage of modern methods to manifest it. For example: How many processes can you automate? Can you employ subcontractors? Can you upskill high-value individual contributors? Concepts like remote working and unlimited PTO that your company deemed impractical before COVID-19 are now your competitors’ widely advertised company perks. Ponder how implementing such changes may impact your business. A company that helps its workforce navigate work-life integration attracts employees who want to make that company thrive. Be a company that allows employees autonomy to get their projects done, advance in their career and life, and affiliate with both their coworkers and company. Prioritize being a great place to work; a place where employees are valued as human beings and not treated like cogs in a machine. When you do, that becomes part of your brand. In short order, you have an inspiring story to tell everyone and you will attract a workforce excited to invest in the company’s success.

Not Your First Rodeo

You’ve been short-handed before, so now is not the time to panic. Employment is a long-term prospect. You need to discern whether a new hire will be a loyal member of your team or if they are just riding a Talent Tsunami wave. Be as selective in choosing whom to add to your staff now as you were pre-pandemic. When hiring, consider:

Why are they changing jobs?
Did COVID-19 cause them to be laid off or furloughed?
What did they learn during the pandemic that will help them succeed in this role?
Are they looking for more purpose in their work?
What specifically drew them to your company?
Did someone you trust from your network connect you to this talent prospect?
Do they seem excited to meet with you?
Did they tailor their resume to the open position?
Did they ask you good questions about both the company and the job?

This power shift to job seekers won’t last forever. You’ll likely have the same pre-pandemic issues (e.g., finding employees with specific skills) you always had, but if you refresh your policies to create more win-win working conditions, you’ll attract quality talent.

What makes your organization attractive to talent? Please share in the comments.

The Tide is High

You kept your business solvent during the pandemic. Now vaccines are available and buildings are reopening. Both you and your workforce are deciding where to go from here. Pivots like switching the product you manufacture (e.g., making hand sanitizer instead of bourbon) or shifting your employees to working from home has not only burned everyone out, but also revealed work-life integration paradigm shifts. You need to both retain your current workforce and attract new employees, but how? This week, let’s focus on keeping the folks you have.

Pivot Again

You regularly adapt your business to market conditions. This shift in the balance of power is a condition more abrupt than most, but it offers you a gift. It forces you to look at your mission, vision, values, policies, and procedures and sift them through the filter of The Platinum Rule. For example, employees hear the siren call of flexibility and autonomy in their jobs. Are your company’s paid time off policies amenable to employees with caregiving duties to young children, aging parents, chronically ill partners, etc.? If not, then it behooves you to reevaluate those policies. If your employees are being washed away by the Talent Tsunami, then you need to take a long, hard look at your company’s culture, protocols, and development paths. If your workforce was happy before the pandemic, then they would not be so tempted to leave now. You will be wise to shift your mindset to focus more on taking care of your employees and repeatedly communicating that commitment. People want to work in an environment where they feel valued. If your company has a vision the workforce can believe in, you coach them to share it, and demonstrate how their jobs are integral to realizing it, then employees get invested in meeting the company’s goals and want to stick around.

Engagement Brings Retention

The inconvenient truth is it’s cheaper to keep an employee than to hire a new one. If you don’t know what your employees need to achieve work-life integration, or to feel appreciated, now is the time to ask and actively listen to their answers. Individual contributors who feel they belong and have purpose are less likely to burn out. How do you know if your employees are burned out? Ask them. Company-wide email surveys are easy to create, send, and compile results. You can ask questions like: How do you think the company handled pivoting during COVID-19? How many days a week do you want to WFH? If the company reimburses you for upskilling, will you agree to work for us for a year? The answers will give you data that will not only help you to assess the risk of employees leaving, but also reveal what you can do to keep the good ones.

“Bye” the Way

Unless employees signed a contract saying they’d do one, they are not obligated to give exit interviews. A smart employee will not grant one if they don’t have anything nice to say. An exit interview is more of a benefit to you than to them. It’s an exiting employee’s gift of feedback to you. If the resigning employee grants one, stick to questions that will help you retain other employees. For example: What could the company have done to make it easier for your team to communicate with each other?

What are you doing to encourage your employees to join you in making your business succeed? Please share in the comments.

Making Waves

The pandemic made us take a hard look at our priorities. What is now most important to you? In terms of your job, if you were able to pivot (e.g., a restaurant moving from fine-dining in person to at home delivery) or to transition to WFH (e.g., software developing), you’re grateful to have found a way to continue making a living. But now that we’ve moved into COVID-19’s phase of vaccines and variants, do you want to keep this up?

What Do You Want?

It’s time to decide what aspects of the working-under-quarantine conditions you want to maintain. Has the way you had to work made you want a different job, maybe even a different career path? If so, you have loads of company. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 3.6 million Americans quit their jobs in May 2021. But before you start searching for a new situation, get clear on why you want to leave your current one. If you’re running away from this job instead of running to another one, your discontent is likely to follow you. Ask yourself:

Am I burned out?
Did the pandemic reveal a side of my company’s culture that I can’t support?
Were my manager’s expectations unreasonable?
Did I discover a remote position would be best for work-life integration?

During the work day, when you feel frustrated or stressed, write down what you’re working on or what’s happening. Is it a project, person, and/or PTO? The answers will help you define your non-starters when considering your next role.

Defining what you don’t want narrows your choices down to what you do want. Compensation (salary, PTO, insurance, retirement benefits), location, culture, and leadership development are all obvious details you need to consider. But also ask yourself:

What does your perfect job look like?
Where are you doing it?
When are you doing it?
Who are you doing it with?
Why are you doing it?
How are you doing it?

What values do the answers to these questions reveal (e.g., freedom, culture, growth)? Rank them in order of importance. For one work week, notice what you are doing when you lose track of time as well as what you are doing when time seems to drag. Write these down and analyze them. While looking for a new position, search for one that allows you to do more of the work you enjoy.

How Do You Get It?

Once you figure out what you want, make a list of companies whose mission, vision, and values match yours. LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Business Journals regularly identify great companies to work for. Target people in these companies you can reach out to for informational interviews. Notify your network that you are looking for a new role. Ask them not only for introductions to hiring managers you want to meet, but also ask how you can help connect them to the decision makers they want to meet. It’s tempting to apply for every job that looks like fun, thinking that eventually one will take, but that’s actually a time waster. It’s more effective to invest your time building relationships with your network. Insiders know a position is available before it gets publicly posted. A good rule of thumb is to network with five people for every one job application you submit.

Are you thinking about a new position? What are you looking for in a company? Please share in the comments.