Categories
Engagement

Favorite Quotes on Pandemic-Related Changes in the Workplace

Last year’s disruption by COVID-19 led to copious content on its impact on the workplace discussing how leaders could navigate, cope, innovate, sustain and/or continue to grow in anxious and uncertain times.

As an advocate for a positive and engaged organizational culture, I was fascinated with the discussions and resulting responses to the pandemic. And I’m excited that aspects of the workplace have actually changed for the better. Here are some of my favorite quotes that reflect these changes.

Collaboration

“While no organization has the exact answer yet (that we know of), many are seeing the office of the future as a meeting place for collaboration, connection, and innovation and much less as a heads-down cubical farm for individual work.” Aaron De Smet, Laura Tegelber, Rob Theunissen, and Tiffany Vogel, Overcoming pandemic fatigue: How to reenergize organizations for the long run

“If there’s a silver lining to crisis, it’s that it shakes up structure … Many teams have seen people across functions step up and speak up with effective results — and now that they’ve found their voices, taking them away would be both difficult and wrong. Leaders and teams alike need to learn a new style of collaborative decision making.” Lolly Daskal, How to Prepare Your People for the New Normal

Employee wellness

“This crisis has presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent the workplace. Things that might once have seemed impossible have proved surprisingly workable … Focusing on well-being and social connectivity will serve [an] important purpose: helping employees to recover faster from what, for so many people, has been a traumatic, painful, and stressful period. And that is not only good for business—it is good for people.” Adriana Dahik, Deborah Lovich, Caroline Kreafle, Allison Bailey, Julie Kilmann, Derek Kennedy, Prateek Roongta, Felix Schuler, Leo Tomlin, and John Wenstrup, What 12,000 Employees Have to Say About the Future of Remote Work

“In unprecedented, rapidly changing situations, play is a critical capability. As well as providing much-needed stress relief – how many of us are currently working from dawn to dusk? – play can end up being counterintuitively, very productive. We can make interesting, new connections between ideas when we allow ourselves to loosen up from our regular goal-driven, laser-focused, instrumental approach.” Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller, We Need Imagination Now More than Ever

Leadership

“This is a time for leaders to try to invoke or provoke a degree of reflection, spending the time to talk about a shared sense of purpose and core values while also spending the time to emotionally check in. In fact, it will have the dual benefit of helping people move past the present suffering and begin to envision and create their new future together.” Richard Boyatzis interviewed in Psychological safety, emotional intelligence, and leadership in a time of flux

Better Workplace Culture

“… companies are waking up to the need for greater empathy and compassion to create a workplace that can unleash the full potential of their people even beyond the crisis … introducing new, more human-centered principles that truly put talent and people at the heart of organizational success. [These principles] all have one thing in common: a vision of successful organizations that are intensely human, nurturing the very best elements of emotion, creativity, human connection, and empathy and inspiring emergent leadership at every level.” Aaron De Smet, Laura Tegelber, Rob Theunissen, and Tiffany Vogel, Overcoming pandemic fatigue: How to reenergize organizations for the long run

[Image by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash]
Categories
Musings

What R-R-Resonated with Me in 2020

Like most people, I’m looking forward to putting 2020 behind us.

Reflecting on the year, I noticed many words starting with “r” used to describe the pandemic’s immediate, near- and long-term impacts. Here are the r-words that most resonated with me and why.

  • Response and recovery
    How healthcare professionals, scientists, leaders, and communities acted to help those affected. How business and educators adapted/adopted technology to enable people to work and learn virtually. People who also helped include manufacturers who revamped their facilities to make sanitizer; volunteers who made masks; mental health experts who made themselves available for counseling; restauranteurs and volunteers who provided food for people on the front lines and those in need. [This list is not exhaustive.]
  • Recognition 
    How people celebrated the heroic efforts of healthcare workers, “essential” front-line workers, food service, and others who continued to serve while at risk themselves.
  • Reset, reframe
    Coming to grips with the situation and putting it in perspective. Like other major natural and man-made disruptions that significantly change our behaviors and priorities (e.g., earthquakes, fires, epidemics, wars, etc.), COVID-19 is a societal reset that will affect how we live and work.
  • Resilience
    This is our ability to face adversity, bounce back from it, and learn and grow from the experience. I’m continually amazed how people manage to cope and adapt. Getting through a traumatic situation involves persevering and building on what works and what doesn’t.
  • Renew, reimagine
    Changes in how we live and work in response to the pandemic created opportunities to re-think how we live and work.
  • Reality
    The need to be realistic while trying to be positive also resonated with me as turning the calendar page to a new year doesn’t mean an automatic refresh.

“We are in this for the long haul. Expecting that a single day will come when we are liberated from the stresses and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic will, sadly, be an exercise in frustration. We will likely never go back to the same “normal” in which we operated in January of 2020.” Beth Steinhorn, Redefining Leadership: Finding Balance in Recovery and Renewal

Ready to move forward
It’s too early to predict what the world will look like post-pandemic, except that we are profoundly changed. I’m hopeful that at some point we’ll experience the eventual return of in-person collaborative meetings that co-exist with virtual ones; unrestricted in-person dining; attendance at cultural, entertainment, and sports venues; group celebrations; and handshakes and hugs — especially hugs!

I wish you all a better, safer, and more sane New Year!

[Image credits: Goodbye 2020 by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash. 2021 Stay healthy by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.]

 

 

Categories
Engagement Training & Development

“Hands down, face-to-face is the best” (pun intentional)

Confession: I have as much fun talking about LEGO® bricks as I do working with them.

I actually use these colorful plastic building blocks in team development as a Certified Facilitator in LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) – a novel approach that enables participants to “think with their hands and listen with their eyes.”

I had a special opportunity to share why I find this hands-on method so powerful with fellow LSP facilitator, Peter Tonge, host of “LSP – Face-to-Face,” a podcast produced primarily for the global LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitator community. Peter is a member of the Brickstorming team whose founder, the brilliant Kristen Klassen, trained me in LSP.

In our conversation we discuss some of my favorite early participant LSP models (shown here in this post) to illustrate the power of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® in people’s hands. I’m amazed how deeply participants engage in individual and collective discovery as they create and share their models with each other. That’s why this hands-on approach must be held in-person — LSP’s potent immersive experience cannot be duplicated in a virtual setting.

One of my takeaways from our discussion was this insightful quote from Peter, “The [LSP] Method doesn’t require it to be complicated. The Method requires it to be thoughtful.” This quote ties in with why I cite the single grey brick as one of my favorites. Take a listen to learn more, including what the models included in this post mean.

A special thank you to Peter for allowing me to post our conversation here.

 

Categories
Musings

“Hi, this is a truly candid auto-reply you wish you’d thought of first”

“Find lightness and humor in each day. There is a lot to be worried about, and with good reason. Counterbalance this heaviness with something funny each day …” Margie Donlon, psychologist

This is why I’m sharing this post from Vu Le, a respected nonprofit professional, writer, speaker, and founder of Nonprofit AF. I love his bio that says, “Vu’s passion to make the world better, combined with a low score on the Law School Admission Test, drove him into the field of nonprofit work, where he learned that we should take the work seriously, but not ourselves. There’s tons of humor in the nonprofit world, and someone needs to document it.”

Fortunately for us, that someone is Vu. Here is his post, shared with permission, and abridged for space. Enjoy!

Honest email auto-replies you can use during these challenging times by Vu Le

Hi everyone. The past few months have been ridiculous. If you’ve emailed me, you literally got this auto-response back:

“Hi. This is an automatic reply. Due to parenting and homeschooling two small children, I will be slow to respond to emails. And I’ll be honest, I may forget to respond completely. If something is urgent, please call or text me. Thank you. Vu.”

This has actually been extremely helpful to have in place, as folks have been a lot more understanding when they hear from me three months after they email. Things are not normal. We all need to be a little more honest with one another in our communications. With that in mind, here are some auto-responses I drafted to serve as inspiration for you all. Feel free to adapt them to suit your needs:

General: “Hi, thank you for your message. This auto-response is to let you know that due to the pandemic, election anxiety, and other factors, it may take me some time to respond if I ever get around to it. If you need immediate assistance, I hope you find it somewhere.”

For parents of small children: “Hello, this is an auto-response. I am a parent with small children, so I am constantly exhausted and frazzled and it may take some time before I get back to you. My kids are a joy and it is so wonderful to get to spend so much time with them. It’s like getting to eat your favorite ice cream! But a whole gallon of it! Every day! If something is urgent, it’s best to call me, but keep in mind that there will be screaming and crying and the smoke alarm might go off during our chat because Chloe might be trying to set the couch on fire again. I look forward to a conversation with an actual human adult, so please call me! Especially if you understand these new ways that kids are being taught how to do second-grade math!”

For exasperated BIPOC folks: “Hi, this is an auto-reply letting you know that as a [Black, Indigenous, woman of color, etc.] I am exhausted by the relentless assault on my safety and chance at happiness these past four years, and also since always. It might take me a while to get back to you because I’m tired of fighting and deserve a break so I am just going to be growing hybrid flowers on Animal Crossing New Horizons and making them into hats. If you are white, especially if you are a cisgender straight white dude, here’s my Venmo and Cash App so you can pay for some of the emotional labor I’ve had to do to educate you about various stuff over the years.”

For grantwriters putting up with BS: “Thank you for emailing me. This is an auto-reply. I will get back to you as soon as I finish these 18 grant proposals that for some reason are all due next week. Despite the pandemic and the threats to our communities, many funders continue to operate as if things are completely normal. Which is why I still have to answer inane-ass questions like ‘please explain your organization’s history, mission, vision, values, evaluation strategies, and recent successes in 100 words or less.’ Thank you for your patience…unless, you’re one of these funders who are forcing nonprofits to waste our time, in which case, screw you. (Haha, just kidding. You know, grantwriter humor and all. Please give us money!)”

For nonprofit directors: “Thank you so much for your message. This auto-reply is to let you know that I received your email and that I will get back to you as soon as possible. However, right now we are dealing with multiple challenges, including cashflow issues, Zoom fatigue, and general stress and chaos. Half the team is gone due to furlough and layoffs. Also, since the office has been empty, there is a mice infestation that started attracting rattlesnakes. Thank you for your understanding. If you would like to donate to our Rattlesnake Relocation Fund, please click the donate button on our website.”

For overwhelmed DEI consultants: “Hi, this is an automatic reply. If you are contacting me for a training or facilitation on undoing racism, advancing equity, etc., there is a 6-to-12-month waiting period. Y’all should have done this way before it was popular to do so. Feel free to contact another consultant, or else let me know you want to be on this waiting list. Meanwhile, use this time to find money, because this is exhausting for me so it’s not going to be cheap for you.”

For existentialists: “This is an auto-response. I will try to get back to you as soon as I can. But what exactly is the point of doing so? Life is a loose collection of primal screams echoing in the Void. As Heinrich Böll once said, ‘I am a clown…and I collect moments.’ Are we not all clowns putting on the makeup of professionalism, collecting moments of productivity and meaning to display in gaudy curiosity cabinets for other clowns to gawk at? Your email and my response are nothing but a series of ritualized actions to distract us from the horrors of inevitable oblivion.”

—
Thank you, Vu! You can read more of his posts at Nonprofit AF. [Image by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash]

 

 

 

 

Categories
Engagement Training & Development

What I Enjoy about My “Work” as a Facilitator

How many people do you know who truly love what they do? Well, you can count me as one of them.

Combining multiple roles of “catalyst, conductor, and coach,” my work as a facilitator is complex, challenging, and gratifying. Projects may appear to be similar, yet each facilitated session is unique.

I enjoy my work on two parallel levels.

Working with people to ensure a meaningful experience:

  • helping clients create the appropriate space (i.e., opportunity) for groups of employees, customers, partners, volunteers, board members, and other stakeholders to purposefully be together
  • developing and applying the appropriate questions and flow that safely enable individual and collective discovery, shared understanding, focused discussion, problem-solving, planning, ideation, etc.
  • sharing outcomes and observed insights with clients + keeping in touch with them about their progress.

Working on myself for ongoing professional and personal development:

When it comes to my work, I’m fortunate to enjoy both what I do and how I do it.

“People don’t choose their careers; they are engulfed by them.” John Dos Passos

[Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay]
Categories
Engagement Training & Development

Boss’s Day 2020 – Appreciating the Best and Worst Bosses

Seeing the selection of Boss’s Day cards for October 16th reminded me of the bosses I previously worked for who ranged from great to toxic. [See my suggestion below for observing Boss’s Day this year.]

I had the privilege of working for a few executives I highly respected. I also worked for execs who were inept, inconsistent, immature, and egotistical to the point of being intolerable.

Along my journey in the workplace, I did my best to practice the positive traits of the best bosses and avoid the negative behaviors of the bad ones. They all taught me how much influence those in charge have on engaging employees to do their best or causing them to disengage over time.

The Best Bosses taught me the value of working effectively with employees. Through their attitudes and actions they demonstrated:

  • honesty, transparency, and clarity in communicating what was happening in the organization and how it impacted people’s work
  • fairness in their dealings with employees by showing no favoritism
  • support for employees by providing the tools, training, and trust to do their jobs.

The Bad Bosses taught me the behaviors that frustrate employees and lead to a toxic work environment:

  • treating employees as minions whose function was to bolster the boss’s ego
  • assuming employees have no life outside of work and are available to be called upon 24/7. (The mantra of one boss could have been “Lack of planning on my part will constitute a constant emergency on your part.”)
  • assigning employees projects without all the proper information and/or support needed to accomplish them.  (I experienced this situation because one boss was into power trips. Another couldn’t make up his mind on what he wanted and waited until the project was near-completion. Then he’d shift gears so my team would have to start over – wasting precious resources in the process.)

I don’t know if anyone is ever fortunate to work with only the best bosses or cursed to work with only nightmare bosses; most likely it’s some combination. Regardless, each has something to teach us about what works and what doesn’t in managing and leading people.

How to Observe Boss’s Day 2020

COVID-19 restrictions and working remotely may preclude the usual celebration of taking the boss to lunch. If you’re fortunate to work for someone worth acknowledging on Oct. 16th, let that person know you appreciate working with her/him/them and offer specific feedback that compliments and reinforces why you like being part of that person’s team.

If you work for a bad boss, consider observing Boss’s Day discretely by updating your resume. It might turn out to be the best gift you give yourself.

[Photo by Ben White on Unsplash]

 

Categories
Customer service Engagement

Important Reminder for All Employers

It’s been several months since COVID-19 disrupted and changed the workplace. Regardless of where your employees now work – whether from home, at your place of business, on the road, or some hybrid approach – the following still applies.

“The way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel.
And if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers.”     
– Sybil F. Stershic

[Image by jessica45 from Pixabay]
Categories
Customer service Engagement Marketing

How to Better Engage Your Customers and Their Ideas

In the quest for product/service innovation, it’s easy to overlook an obvious source: your own customers. How to effectively involve and engage them – and make them feel valued in the process – can be found in Chip Bell‘s just-released book, Inside Your Customer’s Imagination: 5 Secrets for Creating Breakthrough Products, Services, and Solutions. Renowned customer service consultant, speaker, and author, Chip knows that customers can provide an “untapped resource for ideas and inspiration that can result in breakthroughs.” In this new book, he shares the secrets of “Curiosity, Grounding, Discovery, Trust, and Passion” that facilitate effective co-creation partnerships.

“Partnerships at their best are not about contracts, controls, and compromises; they are about respectful connections that enliven, ennoble, and enchant.” Chip R. Bell

Chip lays out the foundation of successful partnerships and illustrates them with applied examples from a variety of organizations. Equally important, he shares customer experiences from the customer’s perspective. (My favorites involve frustration with a computer part replacement and inconvenience at a fast food drive-thru window.) Examples also include employees and suppliers as important partners in the co-creation process.

“Breakthroughs come from an instinctive judgment of what customers might want if they knew to think about it.” Andrew Grove

Granted, customers may not always know what they want. It’s a poor excuse, however, to overlook them as partners in co-creation. Inside Your Customer’s Imagination gives you the insight and guidance needed to effectively engage both customers and employees in improving your products and services. Offering customers the opportunity to contribute their ideas and suggestions sends the message “we value you and want to know how we can better serve you.”

Truly, a win-win situation. That’s why I recommend this gem of a book along with Chip’s other best-sellers I proudly include in my business library:

  • Kaleidoscope: Delivering Innovative Service That Sparkles
  • Sprinkles: Creating Awesome Experiences Through Innovative Service
  • The 9 1/2 Principles of Innovative Service
  • Wired and Dangerous (with John Patterson)
  • Take Their Breath Away (with John Patterson).

 

Categories
Engagement

What I’ve Learned During the Pandemic: A Facilitator’s Perspective

My most surprising discovery during the pandemic is the extraordinary sense of connection I feel with business colleagues around the globe, and it’s stronger than ever.

I’ve participated in numerous Zoom meetings the past five months with two international groups I’m part of: the all-volunteer Global Facilitators Serving Communities and the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Certified Facilitators community. I’m blown away by our sharing parallel experiences each time we meet online.

Regardless of geography or culture, we’re all grappling with similar concerns and emotions:

  • worrying about the health and welfare of our families, friends, neighbors, and communities
  • social distancing in lieu of socializing as we used to know it, especially missing in-person handshakes and hugs
  • the sudden shift to working virtually (even among those of us who have worked from home for many years) with evaporating boundaries between work and home
  • figuring out how and when we’ll be able to sustain our work and livelihoods
  • a roller coaster of emotional highs and lows while acknowledging it’s OK to not feel OK.

Each one of us is dealing with fatigue from being “hyper-engaged digitally, yet highly stressed emotionally,” according to HR industry analyst Josh Bersin. And while we have different ways of coping, I find comfort in knowing I’m not alone in this.

What hit home for me is how much I’ve come to value the strength of our connections. Even greater than being members in a professional community is our human bond in a global community.

[Image credit: photo by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay]

 

Categories
Engagement

Exploring the Work-from-Home Experience & Its Out-of-Office Toll

Employees who are used to working in an office environment have undergone an abrupt change to working from home the past several months due to COVID-19. Curious to learn how they were handling the absence of in-person communications, collaboration, and teamwork, I reached out to colleagues (executives and professionals in a variety of organizations where working from home is not the norm) to understand their experience.

Here are the qualitative highlights compiled from more than a dozen responses.

Describe your experience about working from home since COVID-19 impacted your workplace.
Similar to many articles exploring the pro’s and con’s of working from home, my colleagues confirmed it’s a “mixed bag” and a “means to an end.” They appreciate the convenience and time-saving of not having to commute, and many are grateful to have the opportunity to continue working. At the same time, they’re frustrated with distractions from other family members confined at home, insufficient and/or inconsistent bandwidth, and fatigue from meeting virtually.

“The lack of personal engagement has created more challenges than I would’ve guessed. I underestimated how much I benefit from organically ‘talking something through’ – the benefits of speaking out loud and receiving real time feedback.”

“Having always had a lot of interaction with others in the office, I now have to make an effort to keep this collaboration going.”

What stands out for you about working remotely compared with working in your office location with fellow employees?
Most notably, respondents commented on missing personal interaction.

“Emails have doubled or tripled as a result of not being able to casually talk to others in the office. And the virtual meetings are more tedious than those around the table.”

“Our work has intensified and what stands out most for me, as CEO, is a lingering concern about staff burnout and my inability to intercede. Working remotely reduces the opportunities to ‘check-in’ on staff and make sure they’re doing okay.”

“Working from home takes a lot more effort to stay connected. While in the office chats occur naturally, I now have to pick up the phone or setup a virtual meeting to run ideas by somebody or just chat about the weather. It’s easy to lose contact with an introverted person and difficult to find out how somebody is really coping with this new normal.”

What are you most looking forward to about returning to your workplace environment?
The act and impact of being with other employees is a major theme. Being together feeds the energy of working as a team.

“I am most looking forward to the sense of team momentum. I know we can all knock out our work independently but that feeling of striving and progress is different when we can’t work as a true team.”

“Collaboration! Seeing somebody in person and not through a screen.”

“I look forward to the camaraderie of my colleagues.” 

Takeaway: the Energy Toll
While coping as best they can under the circumstances, people who prefer the office environment find that working from home requires more emotional energy to connect, communicate, and collaborate with others. They look forward to returning to their respective workplaces to regain the strong sense of teamwork and esprit de corps that happens when being together.

Note: Special thanks to everyone who took the time to share their working from home experiences for this post.

[Image by You X Ventures on Unsplash]