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You don’t need to be told why it matters to be transparent and honest at work–that much is a given. So is the overall usefulness of expressing yourself clearly, confidently, and with as few filler words as possible. But in the effort to do that, many of us fall back on common expressions that might sound totally fine in social situations but can do some quiet damage in the workplace. One of them is “I’m sorry.” Another is “to be honest.” The latter turn of phrase–and versions of it, like “honestly,” “frankly,” “if I can be honest with you,” or “let me be frank”–is easy to resort to when you want to cut through the crap, come clean, or offer your unvarnished opinion. But these expressions also tend to attach themselves to–and subtly encourage–certain messages that are either better left unsaid or ought to be rephrased. Here are times when “to be honest” can make you sound less authoritative around the office.
Via The Learning Factor
One in four American adults went to a healthcare provider for neck and back pain, according to a 2016 Gallup study. In addition, the report found 65% of adults sought care for neck and back pain at some point in their lives. When you factor in how many adults are hunched over computer desks, sitting for extended periods of time at work and bending their neck to read mobile devices, these statistics aren’t so surprising. Just about everyone has been told to “stand up straight” at some point in their lives—and it turns out that mom was right. Posture is a key element to good health. It is right up there with eating healthy, getting enough sleep and exercising. Bad posture can lead to back, neck and jaw pain, breathing difficulty, balance issues and joint problems. A recent study also found that good posture can improve your mental wellbeing.
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In any fast growing company, it's natural that conflict arises. It holds true at just about any company -- every type, every stage. Doesn't matter what market or size. You'll see it happen most between functional areas. Sometimes marketing and operations will be at odds. Sometimes, it's marketing and sales, or sales and finance. Technology may want to go one direction, marketing another. Finance might lean too conservative. It's why it's super important for your leadership team to have strong interpersonal skills and interactions. You can't rely on hiring great people alone. You also need to set the pace for solid interactions, help create and foster them. Nurture it at every turn. We accomplish it a few ways at my company.
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How you spend your night can have a huge impact on the day that follows. Do you spend your time ruminating over issues? Or maybe you stress over something that didn't quite go right during the day. There's no doubt, how you think affects how you feel. This is particularly important at night as you try to unwind and prepare for rest. This sets you up for sleep which serves many vital purposes. When I look at my clients who achieve the most during their days and are happiest, they are the ones who have a healthy routine at night. They set themselves up for success the following day by thinking and acting in a particular way.
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Technology has made it difficult to tell a trend from something that’s merely trendy because of the ways in which tech changes are often complicated, confusing, or invisible. It’s easy to fixate on what’s trendy—the latest app, gadget, or platform—but harder to track how technology is shaping our organizations, government, education, economy, and culture. At any moment, hundreds of small shifts are taking place in technology—beginning as developments on the fringe—that will impact our lives in the future. Not all of them will prove authentic trends, though. A real trend is a new manifestation of sustained change—whether it’s within an industry, the public sector, society, or in the ways we behave toward one another. Understanding trends can help us meet the demands of the present while planning for the future. They’re the analogies our minds make in order to grapple with change, but our minds can often mislead us. Here’s how to know when something that’s trending really is a trend worth paying attention to.
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You’d probably be lying to yourself if you said you’ve never gone into a new job and resolved to outperform your team’s expectations. You have plenty of good ideas and want everyone to know that you’re a genius of sorts. Most of the time, that mind-set’s great for your career—it pushes you to be your best day in and day out. But the problem is that some people think that motivating themselves this way gives them permission to push their teammates around. While your company hired you because you bring something unique to the table, that doesn’t give you license to be condescending about it. So if you want to convince your coworkers that you perform above your pay grade, here are a few mind-sets you should adopt ASAP.
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Whether you’re a CEO or a line manager, your team is just as important as a group as its members are as individuals. Today’s tech companies offer many perks to attract and retain the best employees. We offer competitive salaries, training and the promise of success—professionally and financially. But how we treat them as individuals can determine the way their DNA will impact the fabric of your organization. What are you doing, as their manager, to make sure they are satisfied and making the best contribution to your organization? Whether it’s an hour a week or 30 minutes once a month, making time for an individual says you give a damn about them as a person. The 1:1 is the only forum where you can have an honest, private, conversation with each other about what’s really going on—professionally and personally. This is a routine opportunity for you, as a manager, to assess the parts (your employees) that lead to the productive whole (your team)—which we all know is more powerful than the sum of said parts.
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It’s 9 p.m. and you suddenly remember that you wanted to ask your employee about an upcoming project. Before you fire off an email, ask yourself, "Is this urgent?" If you’re sending the email simply because you don’t want to forget, your employee may not know your response expectations, and this can cause stress that negatively impacts your staff’s productivity and performance. In a new report called "Exhausted But Unable to Disconnect," professors from Lehigh University, Virginia Tech, and Colorado State University found that an "always on" culture may prevent employees from fully disengaging from work, causing stress. "It’s easy to depersonalize people when you’re using email, because you don’t see the effect you’re having," says coauthor William Becker, associate professor of management at Virginia Tech. "When boundaries are blurred, it can create all kinds of problems. A lot of companies see the good parts of using email, and don’t think beyond that." In the study, participants reported spending an average of eight hours a week doing company-related emails after hours. The greater the amount of time spent on after-hours work, the less successful the employees were at detaching from work. This translated into poorer work-family balance, and even contributed to emotional exhaustion, which Becker says has been shown by prior research to negatively affect job performance.
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Tell someone 'I'm sick' or 'I'm tired' and you're not really giving them much information. How sick? How tired? Do you have a mild cold or a dread disease? Are you a new parent who hasn't slept in months or did you just enjoy the party last night a little too much? Burnout is the same. It comes in different degrees, from your common 'I can't wait for happy hour' variety, to far more serious 'I need to take a six-month sabbatical and re-evaluate my life' burnout. The appropriate response for different stages is very different. So how do you know how burnt out you are exactly? Science, apparently, can help. Recently 99U's Hamza Khan dug up a classic Scientific American article (subscription required) that describes a 12-stage model of burnout developed by psychologists Herbert Freudenberger and Gail North. Here are the stages the scientists outline:
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Research has shown that when we receive an email, we’re predisposed to view the tone of that message negatively–or at least more negatively than the sender intended it. Given that everyone has this natural “negativity bias” against email, it’s important to pay close attention to your phrasing. For the most part, we use email either to remind people about things they said they’d do, or to ask them to do something for us. In the absence of social cues, this is a delicate task. With that in mind, here are a few tips for making your emails friendly and appealing—without running on too long or coming off as ingratiating.
Via The Learning Factor
Are you one of the never satisfied strivers? The type of person who, despite having some obvious successes in life--a solid career, a modicum of financial security, the respect of your peers--just never feels like you've quite made it? Are you always a little worried you could be accomplishing more? If so, you probably feel kind of crummy sometimes compared to your more easily contented competitors, but according to new research out of Stanford, all your ambition has a serious upside (hat tip to Science of Us for the pointer). Perpetually feeling like you're a bit unsuccessful, it turns out, is a pretty good sign you're going to go on to achieve even greater things.
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Of all our available resources, everyone has the same number of hours in a day. Some, however, happen to get more done. Are they faster or smarter? Do they have more help? Perhaps. But they’ve also learned tricks that can help them stretch time and eliminate the unimportant.
Here are six things super-productive people do every day to maximize their results and success.
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We all hear about the importance of injecting fun into the workplace, and research has proven the benefits of fun. One recent study of 2,000 employees, conducted by Professor Sir Cary Cooper with BrightHR, showed that integrating fun into the workplace reduces absences, increases productivity and reduces stress. Ditching the doldrums is becoming even more important as millennials continue to make up a larger percentage of the workforce. The Cooper/BrightHR study also showed that 79% of graduates believe fun at work is important. 44% believe it encourages a stronger work ethic. Dave Hemsath, author of 301 Ways To Have Fun At Work, believes fun may be the single most important trait of a highly effective and successful organization. In fact, companies with “fun policies” cite greater job satisfaction and increased employee loyalty as two major benefits. So the value is there. But how do you turn your workplace into a funplace? There are lots of ways to add play to work, ranging from the office environment to experiences beyond the office. In this post, I share some success stories.
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When the office is almost too much to stomach, music can deliver much-needed relief on the job. Before you press Play, however, have a handle on when your tunes will be most beneficial for you and your brain. Learning = Stop Learning requires your brain to analyze and remember instructions and facts. When music is on, however, your brain has to process auditory data on top of processing the instructions and facts. Because of this multitasking, the brain can interpret the instructions and facts improperly, either associating them in odd ways or making mistakes about what's important enough to store. Thus, if you have to learn something at work, it's best to turn off your music, especially if you're learning verbally or through reading and the music has lyrics. Noisy = Play If your workspace is noisy, the brain will try to handle all the individual pieces of data in the noise. All that data processing takes energy you otherwise could use to focus on your job. It also increases levels of the stress-hormone cortisol and decreases levels of dopamine. Those hormonal changes negatively affect the prefrontal cortex, hindering executive function. Thus, productivity can go down, even if doing your required task doesn't require you to learn. In this scenario, listening to music can actually help, because it blocks out the other excessive input that could overwhelm you and keeps you calm.
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Pay attention to what comes out of your mouth. The language you use affects how you experience your world, and how others experience you. Inevitably, things get "lost in translation." If you're familiar with cognitive distortion or cognitive bias, these psychology terms teach us that there are subtle ways that our mind can convince us of something that isn't really true. These inaccurate thoughts are usually used to reinforce negative thinking or emotions, thus holding us back. We all do this, both consciously and unconsciously, and how we do it provides pointers to our underlying beliefs about ourselves, our peers, partners and colleagues, and the immediate world around us.
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During the past two decades, learning executives have persuaded U.S. corporations to double their annual spending on various forms of leadership development to $14 billion. Yet over that same period, public confidence in leadership has dropped considerably. According to a 2012 poll by The Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University, 70 percent of Americans believe there is a leadership crisis that will lead to a national decline unless we find better leaders. Many leaders, including some in the learning profession, recognize the problem. A 2011 survey by consultancy Development Dimensions International Inc. of 14,320 executives reported that 38 percent of line leaders and 25 percent of HR leaders gave their organizations high ratings for leadership and only 32 percent and 18 percent, respectively, thought their organizations had the necessary bench strength to meet future business needs.
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Sounding confident, transparent, and truthful doesn’t require any prefaces.