It's Not All About You

Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash

Picture this. You recently promoted a team member for their hard work. Outside of seniority, your recently promoted member, let’s call this person Sal, has worked hard to accomplish a great quantity of projects. Recently, one of Sal’s direct reports put in their notice. The report has had trouble for over a year, struggling with personal challenges, something you’ve been very understanding about. 

In your effort to be innovative, you dream up a solution: By offering Sal’s subordinate flexibility to continue to work, albeit not full-time, you allow space for a person who is personally struggling. Your team is performing well and you’ve invested significant time into your team’s camaraderie. 

We often wish organizations would be creative about the “human element.” People are complicated: there must be some allowances. Typically these allowances are measured in policy to ensure folks don’t take advantage. I’m all for standards and policies, but I’m also a strong advocate for innovation. If a company can retain a team member, even if the role and scope look a little different than what they were doing previously, that’s a win for everyone. 

While I could focus on the monumental win here of problem-solving when dealing with personnel issues, I actually want to go back to Sal. 

Sal’s response to this solution was dismal, at best. When approached with the idea to offer this arrangement to the team member, you are met with disbelief. “What will other people think?” “I had a hard year too.” The general tone is negative. 

You decide to proceed, as you feel it reflects the values of the team as a whole, but are troubled by Sal’s self-focused response. What do you do? 

It’s apparent there’s an empathy gap. Everyone has their own “stuff.” And only we know what we go through. But when anyone is put into a managerial position, the truth is empathy must increase. You must try to put on their glasses and see the world through a different lens.  If Sal’s boss also looked at Sal and any direct report without empathy, there’s no way the aforementioned solution would have been dreamt up. So how can we increase empathy, one of the most important attributes for a leader? Stay tuned, as I’ll provide suggestions for you and your team in my next post.

Why Social Cues Matter

Understanding and interpreting social cues are an essential piece of communication skills. In fact, understanding social cues can help foster deeper interpersonal relationships, can establish trust, and can even aid in landing a promotion. 

By recognizing and utilizing social cues, individuals can navigate social situations with confidence by demonstrating social competence. Social cues are often nonverbal, which can include body language such as proxemics, eye contact, and gestures. Further, it’s important to also consider contextual cues and tone. 

Take a moment to consider your social cues IQ:

Proxemics: 

“The Close Talker,” one of the legendary episodes of Seinfeld, demonstrates proxemics perfectly. When someone continues to cut off or invade your space, it can feel suffocating. When people are hovering over you, or “pushing” you into the corner by moving their physical body toward yours, it is not a good feeling. It can feel intimidating, invasive, inconsiderate, or just plain idiotic. The problem is, that without feedback and self-reflection, proxemics will not improve. Take a moment to consider if people you speak with fidget often, or if you find yourself in a different location than when you started a discussion. If you’re unsure, think about the physical space between your body and someone else’s when you shake hands. This is an appropriate distance.

Eye Contact: 

Eye contact affirms people. It demonstrates listening and provides nonverbal validation. If you are working remotely, be sure to consider what screen you are looking at, and how often. Further, if you are taking notes, make it known, so as to not alienate attendees on the call. 

Contextual Cues:

Imagine you are invited to a company-wide meeting. The meeting is not marked as mandatory, but it’s apparent your colleagues are attending, and your manager urged your group to be present. At the last minute, you decline the meeting and say you have other priorities. In this context, how would that be seen? If your hunch is that it’s a less favorable call, you’d be right. 

Tone: 

A rapid pace and short breaths often indicate frustration or a need for urgency. A slow and steady tone demonstrates patience and time. Accusatory language often coincides with volume, and a lack of confidence often coincides with filler words and shakiness. 

Do you think your social cue skills are honed but want some feedback? Great idea. Seek feedback from a peer and a manager for some balanced views.

Can In-Office Policies Recreate Lost Community?

The Anti-Social Century is a recent piece in The Atlantic about how Americans are spending more time alone than ever. A fascinating element about this piece is the quantitative picture post covid: People are opting to be alone more now than even immediately following the pandemic. 

Presently, corporations have reinstated in-office policies: from a decrease in salary if you opt to work from home, to a strict four day a week in-office decree, the pandemic work from home (WFH) reality has vastly shifted. Companies want you to be in the brick-and-mortar they are paying for, and, some may argue, these companies want you to collaborate face-to-face. 

Rewind about seven years ago when I started my business. I was making a case for WFH. I argued companies would see value from offering this benefit, and would also see an increase in applicant pools. Not only would organizations receive a higher number of applicants, I surmised they would get a more diverse sample set. At the time, we really wanted to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion. And while it has now become taboo in certain circles, the research remains true: the more diverse the team, the more innovative. I digress, but I was marketing the list of benefits of remote work. 

Coming back to present day: We are all consumed by laptops, iPads/tablets, phones, smart watches, and the like. And, what researchers are finding is that a person's interest in spending time with people is decreasing. What’s more, there is a correlation between complete mental fatigue and constant stimulation, which does not seem surprising. But beyond the doom scroll (which is a valid call out and should be considered, even if not here), is a culture that is forgetting the essentiality of interacting with others. 

Social psychologists posit that our inability to compromise stems from rhetoric that can occur from behind the screen. When faced with community — at work, church, neighbors, and the like — our ability to have empathy increases. 

As an organizational communication specialist, this is deeply concerning to me. If we forget how to collaborate, and choose to not spend time with others, we stifle patience, tolerance, grace, and humility. For managers - and particularly their employees - that’s a big deal. Without empathy, we focus only on the task. Without humility, we alienate and separate, rather than unify. 

While my synopsis does not do The Atlantic piece justice (read it here), it certainly is food for thought and must be considered as we weigh the pros and cons of being in an office space. Might the in-office culture be our way to reestablish community? Or will it only fuel the prioritization of technology over people? 

Repairing the Relationship

Just as most things in life change, such as seasons or careers, our relationships change too. As some relationships evolve, this can be incredibly advantageous or fulfilling. Whether your network has expanded or you’ve been fortunate to make a lifelong friend, the dynamic of relationships will change. But in some cases, relationships may start to feel stagnant, especially in the workplace. This unwelcome change in interpersonal communication can cause conflict and be the thread that starts to unravel a functional team. 

I have written plenty about conflict but when a team’s cohesion is strong and then an interpersonal dynamic alters the course, it can be incredibly challenging to diagnose the issue and manage it appropriately. Some managers may be stumped. “Everything was going fine.” If you happen to be in this situation, ask yourself what has changed. Then, consider group feedback: take a temperature on the workgroup dynamics… Including how you may have changed in your recent engagements. Then, seek resolve. Is the conflict among team members, with you and another member of the group, or something else?

Signs of disengagement will tell you when you need to intervene and bring the team’s communication back to the forefront. (These signs include frequent mistakes in work, complaining regularly, hearsay and gossip, using time unwisely, entitled behavior, and more.) You may need to change how you motivate, or you may need to come up with an action plan with the member who is seemingly changing the dynamic with the team. 

The first step: get to the source and aim to connect before redirecting. What this entails is to aim to remove ego from the situation. Seek to understand, not yet “to fix.” Once a team member understands your interest in listening, he or she is more likely to open up. Then, reflect on that conversation and craft a plan for next steps.

These next steps might include the creation of a team charter, new accountabilities or a change in responsibility, a change in reporting structure, and/or a regular (not necessarily frequent) 1:1 to repair the damaged relationship.

People management is simply not easy. But, typically, there is a solution to combating disengagement and repairing the relationship. Not sure where to start? Let’s brainstorm.