Dawn Metcalfe's Blog, page 6

Quit whinging at work… or just consider quitting, period

We all know what it’s like to feel ‘trapped’ in a situation at work. When we are locked in a tricky scenario – a difficult manager, an underperforming colleague, issues with office culture – it can very easily become frustrating. Especially when it’s really not our fault!

In HardTalk, participants learn they always have a choice – to do nothing, or do something. But whatever they opt for, there will always be the same five possible outcomes…

It’s essentially down to us to undertake a cost benefit analysis and decide whether it’s worth us speaking up. If we decide against it, what we really need to do is let it go. But it’s harder than you may realise and unfortunately we often end up feeling miserable. And what do we do when we are miserable? According to our survey results, almost 40% of us complain to others. It’s not productive.

We say: Don’t be that person. Whether a situation is your ‘fault’ or not, we know that nothing changes without a conversation. The problem with whingeing to your coworkers is that it breeds negativity and can make a bad situation worse. Don’t be the one to bring yourself and others down. If you have chosen not to speak up, if you truly can’t let it go… it could be time for you to go.

It turns out there are a lot of interesting reads on this out there, so we’ve combed through them to bring you three of the most illuminating articles on workplace whinging…

 

Alison Green, aka Ask a Manager, offers advice on how to deal with a complaining coworker in The Cut.
FastCompany’s Jessica Hullinger asks: What’s it like to go without complaining for a month?
Peter Bregen suggests that most people have more power in a situation than they believe they have, so they should speak up in this piece for Harvard Business Review.

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Stop self-sabotaging: What is bias against yourself and why is it killing your career?

How many of your ideas have you shared today? How many decisions have you made? Many of us fear making a decision, as it might be the wrong one. Our decision-making is influenced heavily by our unconscious bias – the attitudes and beliefs we don’t know we have. It is an automatic mental shortcut and it happens when we allow our own feelings, stereotypes, or beliefs to impact our judgment or understanding of other people. 

I’d like you to take a look at the unconscious biases that you might have that are possibly limiting your success [see more on HardTalk here].

Bias against yourself can take many forms including: not taking up opportunities, putting things off or not facing up to problems. Bias is keeping us from speaking up, seeking feedback or from being more creative. It can shape our attitudes toward our colleagues in ways that can undermine our own credibility.  

As thoughts create emotions, flawed negative thinking can bring on the feelings associated with anxiety. Anxious individuals are usually dismissive of anything they do well and overly worried about other people and their reactions.

How is bias impacting our work? 

A business mostly thrives when every person is invited to bring their distinct viewpoint to the table. Yet, between a third and a half of your employees are not fulfilling their potential and this could be due to an introverted personality, imposter syndrome or unconscious bias. McKinsey found unconscious biases are holding women back. Women receive less credit and give themselves less credit, which can lead to a ruined self-confidence and to a significant amount of stress.  

Have you ever felt like you’re a fraud? Like you don’t actually deserve your job and accomplishments? Imposter syndrome is probably something we’ve all encountered at some point in our lives. A whole range of career-related factors are negatively impacted by it, resulting in people who suffer from it failing to fulfil their potential. And yet contrary to popular belief, impostor syndrome is not a ‘women’s thing’ and isn’t reserved for the overly accomplished.

My Superpower?

As an introvert I prefer one-on-one conversations to group activities. Meetings with 5 people can be a real challenge. Does this ring a bell? Before a meeting or a presentation, I will often find myself thinking through what’s going to happen.  

Why is introversion viewed as bad? It’s because people are led to believe that introversion is a problem. In reality, this is just a personality trait. Introverts gain energy while being alone.   

“… 65% of senior corporate executives viewed introversion as a barrier to leadership…” (Grant et al. 2010 “The Hidden Advantages of Quiet Bosses”)

Introverts have just as much to offer as extroverts. Because they are good listeners, they are good in many business roles. In a changing environment, introverts are often more effective leaders. To quote Susan Cain: “Remember: There is zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”

Why worrying is costly?  

“If you don’t understand people,  you don’t understand business.” –  Simon Sinek

Hiding and not sharing our thoughts so that we’re less vulnerable to criticism can lead to Dominant Group – Think. And that can have enormous consequences – individuals are afraid to ask questions or challenge decision-making. A study from the Frankfurt School of Management found that managers who suffer from imposter syndrome are more likely to recruit and promote others of a similar mindset. That can lead to “Similar to Me” bias – managers see something of themselves in the candidate, and therefore choose those that are most like them. It can set this mindset throughout the organisation, which is perhaps not what we’d like to see.  

When you don’t feel psychologically safe within your workplace, a team’s success rate drastically lowers. Our capacity to think logically and reflectively diminishes. That robs us of the freedom to create and add value. Leaders need to build an environment that makes people feel emotionally safe and valued. Psychological safety is vital to success in uncertain environments.  

What do you do when you realise you have a bias, even against yourself? 

A real eye-opener for me was the TEDx talk by Kristen Pressner – “Are you biased? I am”. Kristen explores how we can recognise our own hidden biases – and keep them from limiting us. Her message “Flip it to test it” is tremendously important. Challenging the biases against ourselves can also help us clear out some of the biases we hold toward others. Sometimes the most difficult conversations are those with ourselves. These are the HardTalks. 

Here are some ways to address bias and anxiety: 

Acknowledge your own biases – are you basing your decisions on 30 second judgments? Assess where your biases may be impacting your beliefs.  
Change your perspective: “Flip it to test it” – try using an unconscious bias perspective when considering job promotions or how you interact in teams.  
View failure as a growth opportunity – look at your achievements, consider the concrete evidence of how much you’ve done and learned – and talk about it. 
Actively work to be thoughtful and present in the moment, instead of bringing baggage or distraction from another experience or task.  
Learn about different personality types – this will help you to get to know your team members and understand how to work with them better. It is important to understand other people’s value and appreciate their working styles.  

What leaders can do?  

Focus on people – give your team a voice and be open to feedback. Take the time to listen to their feelings and opinions and act on them when it makes business sense.  
Promote a safe environment – when conducting group discussions, you may find that some team members will dominate the discussion. Develop a practice where everyone gets the chance to voice their perspective or ideas.  
Use language that is inclusive and clear – lack of clarity can cause confusion and create openings for bias to rise. 
Show appreciation and look for opportunities to publicly acknowledge accomplishments.  

Bias and worrying keep us from thriving. But if we accept it as a challenge to address, not a personal failing, we make it possible to move forward in any new direction we choose. Vulnerability has an invaluable superpower – it allows us to build trust between people. When people feel safe enough to risk sharing their ideas, groups thrive. In order to fully use the diversity of its employees, organisations need to be flexible. Otherwise the result is overlooked talent, fewer ideas put forward and reduced problem-solving abilities. Skills that businesses cannot afford to lose.  

Let’s change things! Choose to behave differently. What if you are missing an opportunity to see the world differently? 

Rafaela Rafailova is an HR professional, committed to supporting companies by linking people strategies to business strategies. Her expertise includes talent acquisition and talent management, leadership and employee relations. Rafaela’s recruitment experience covers human resources, management, sales, and business support and office administration, among others. She is also a member of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and also holds a Master in Business (Human Resources) and a Bachelor in Business Economics. A diversity and equal opportunity advocate by day, a reader by night, she also tries in vain to catch up on all those travel TV shows. Find her on Twitter here: @R_RafailovaMCMI

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Why victory means focusing on the long term, not winning in the moment

Victory in HardTalk isn’t ‘winning’ the argument and glowing in the immediate aftermath, even though it feels good. To truly emerge victorious, you should be able to achieve your long-term result – and chances are, despite some bumps on the road to victory, your HardTalk partner likely shares the same goal.  

Take the consultant who had concerns around the new regime of regional travel required. She understood that, due to the client workload, it was necessary to have on-the-ground support in different territories in the coming weeks. But she was also worried about the impact it would have on the team – particularly among the more junior members who were still cutting their teeth in such a hands-on role. When she raised her concerns to her director, they were rebuffed – the work simply had to get done and that was that, it was all hands on deck. In fact, she was surprised at the somewhat rude reaction she received.  

Despite being angry, she stopped herself from calling him out.  

When we spoke with her, we asked her to consider her director’s ‘potential’. Was it really that he cared so little about the impact on the team? Or could it be that he was in fact under increasing pressure to deliver? Maybe he was simply having a bad day and as a result, his purpose had shifted off course.  

Considering this allowed her to reassess her response and put her emotions to one side. When she picked the conversation back up, she outlined her purpose and proposed a travel rota that ensured continuity of client servicing but also allowed the team a break from plane-hopping.  

Guess what? Her director agreed that it was a good solution. It’s already been implemented.

In the majority of cases people are ‘good’ in the context of HardTalk. They care about the organisation and their work but of course, because people are messy, the need for difficult conversations can arise. We ask you to consider what does victory mean to you? A more productive and collaborative team? A better bottom line? We’d be very surprised if your HardTalk partner has a different version of victory.

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HardTalk from the man behind the moniker: Dubai Name Shame

Feedback is a huge part of HardTalk. Without it, it just won’t work. Giving and receiving feedback isn’t always easy, which is why so often it gets avoided. And even on the occasions where it’s discussed and acknowledged, we have to do more than simply pay lip service to it. It’s an important part of the wider accountability framework which is why HardTalk participants are really put through their paces. 

But the same goes for us at Team HardTalk too – if we didn’t walk the walk, we’d be doing something seriously wrong as trainers. This year we published The HardTalk Handbook, we launched our blended learning platform and we’re on-boarding facilitators all around the world. It’s involved a lot of learning. We’re lucky to have a tight knit community whose feedback along the way has meant that this has been an iterative process and will continue to be. 

And there’s a certain someone in our close community who most certainly is never afraid of a difficult conversation – question is, has he learned a thing or two since reading HardTalk? We received some rather telling feedback from none other than himself and the man behind the moniker shares his thoughts with us here… 

 

I have always felt I possessed the experience, skills and personality to approach difficult situations both professionally and effectively. Well, that is what I thought and then I read HardTalk.

Interestingly enough I thought HardTalk was only about professional, corporate communication and situation management – how wrong! This book applies to virtually all aspects of personal and professional life and the situations most of us face daily.

I should also confess that I do not read many books. I have a very short span of attention, and I find some books do not offer a real workable model that you can easily adapt and use. Again, HardTalk has made understanding and implementing the model easy, even for someone like me!

Adapting HardTalk into my daily engagements has improved my levels of efficiency – things get done quicker because my messages and people’s understanding is clear and unquestionable. More so I feel better. I feel I have more control, more confidence in handling situations better and setting clear expectations.

Don’t get me wrong, I have read some good books over the years. But I’d count HardTalk as great book for giving me a model I can actually use. As country director for a global organisation [I know – I have a day job!] I have a ridiculously hectic schedule, back to back meetings, hundreds of emails, and decisions to make. HardTalk has given me a foundation and model to manage my workload, achieve results and guide others.

Throughout my working life I have used the same email signature that ends with a simple statement:

“Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”

In many ways HardTalk brings out the ability in people to use wisdom combined with knowledge to make the perfect fruit salad.

shares news, views and updates on life in the UAE and beyond. The blogger, speaker, panelist, country director and ex-police officer is known for his straight talking which has won him some fans – and foes – along the way. 

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How to find and use your voice when your coworker is driving you crazy

HardTalk isn’t just reserved for the crisis-level conversations that have the potential to send a business into a tailspin. In fact it’s designed to mitigate this where at all possible. But of course people are messy and are the root of most cultural and organisational issues – and given culture is simply an amalgam of behaviours, sometimes we need to nip ‘bad’ behaviour in the bud before it turns into a bigger problem.

In our training, participants learn how to deal with pains, aches and emergencies…

The problem is that even the smallest, seemingly most inconsequential pains have the capacity to cause us unnecessary aches. Can you think of a time when a colleague has done something to annoy you? And then they’ve done something else and you find yourself irrationally irritated?

This piece in Fast Company offers up some advice on how to deal with the coworker who lacks self-awareness – the one who constantly interrupts, or isn’t pulling their weight. According to the article “Speaking up to a coworker who’s annoying or disruptive isn’t just a courageous act – it’s a risk in itself. It can either go over well or backfire on you, or – in the case of someone who’s not in tune with themselves – your feedback just doesn’t stick.”

Well, HardTalk is all about making it stick after all… we think this article is right on the mark: https://www.fastcompany.com/90256297/this-is-how-you-deal-with-that-coworker-who-drives-you-crazy

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Nothing changes without a conversation, so what’s stopping us from speaking up?

Did the Netflix CEO get it right? Dawn Metcalfe shares her analysis of the media giant’s crisis comms handling.

To read the full article click here

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Dear Dawn… how to handle a passive aggressive boss?

HardTalk founder Dawn Metcalfe helps you get a handle of those real life HardTalks giving you a headache. Have a ‘Dear Dawn’ of your own you’d like some advice on? Get in touch via dawn@hardtalk.info.

Dear Dawn, 

My boss is passive aggressive. There’s no other word for it. He never deals with issues directly and it’s causing havoc in the team.  How can I fix him?  

 KL 

Dear KL, 

When we talk to people about how to have difficult conversations or HardTalk more effectively there’s an interesting phenomenon: we never get to talk to the people who create the problems. We’re always talking to the person who has to put up with dreadful behaviour from others but is a paragon of all the virtues themselves.  

Of course this isn’t true. None of us are perfect. And none of us are ever entirely “blameless” in any situation. But it is true that we tend to ignore our role in the scenarios we find ourselves. So my first challenge to you is to consider what you might have done to allow or exacerbate the behaviours you don’t like.  

That’s not to say that there aren’t bad people out there. There are. But they aren’t the majority or even a significant minority. Most people aren’t “bad” but most people do have some kinds of bad behaviour that is holding them and others back. And one of the trickiest kinds of “bad behaviour”  is  passive aggression.  

There are many different types of passive aggressive behaviour. You might see a manager limiting access to needed information or giving you the cold shoulder when disappointed. But no matter the behaviour there are some things you can do to limit the impact on you and maybe even help your senior colleague to find a better way.   

1) Do the HardWork – the behaviours in a difficult conversation aren’t intrinsically difficult. What is hard is managing our own behaviour. Acknowledge that and work through the steps you need to make sure you are viewing the situation clearly and are ready to focus on your purpose (the DecisionTree is available online at www.hardtalk.info)  

2) Remember your Purpose – the key to successfully navigating a difficult conversation is self-control and the first step to that is self-awareness. Monitor your actual behaviour (not your intended behaviour!) against the result you’re trying to achieve and adjust as necessary.  

3) Don’t reciprocate – there’s a human tendency to give back what we get whether positive or negative. Don’t do that. Firstly it just legitimises the behaviour and makes behaving “well” a  lot harder. Secondly it assumes that the passive-aggressive person is doing it on purpose. They’re probably not as most people aren’t in as much control as they could be in difficult conversations.  

4) Stick to the Truths and watch out for the Potentials – there are effective ways to raise your concerns without triggering the very behaviour you’re trying to address. While it may feel imbalanced, going the extra mile to take the time to explain your purpose and reassure the other person will build trust and make it easier for them to hear you. Sticking to the Truths is a great tool for this.

For example you might say something like: 

“I’ve noticed in our last several meetings you’ve made sarcastic comments about my work, and I can’t tell if you’re just being funny, or if you actually have concerns about the quality of my work. I didn’t give it a thought after the first time, but now that it’s happened a few times, I just want to check in with you. If you have ideas on how I could improve, I’d really love to hear them.”  

You can share your Potential of course i.e. the explanation you think most likely to explain the Truths but do so humbly and acknowledging that other explanations might be true.  

5) Share natural consequences – there are also consequences to our behaviour. These may be positive or negative and they can be either natural or official. Official consequences have a role to play but their use is usually a sign that something has gone very wrong. Instead, focus on the natural consequences and link these to something you know your HardTalk partner cares about, for example:

“When you make sarcastic comments it makes me hesitate to speak up and I know it’s important to you to hear all ideas.” 

6) Remember it’s about results – you may be thinking “but it’s not fair that I have to manage other people’s bad behaviour. This person earns more than me for goodness sake!” That’s fair enough on some level but you have to decide whether it’s worth the effort or not. We put in just as much effort as something seems important to us. And if it’s not then you have to either accept it or find a way of no longer dealing with that person.  

In that case, I’m sure your next job will only be full of the wonderful people we get to meet!  

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When we most need to understand, we speak to explain

In the HardTalk programme we address an all-too-common BrainDrain: When we most need to understand we seek to explain.

It’s a strange phenomenon, but when we try to influence others rather than listening to understand what they don’t agree with or why they feel a certain way, we speak more. If we can’t listen enough to understand people’s behaviour, we certainly can’t hope to change it to get the result we want by talking over them…

During HardTalk, participants learn several BrainTrains to help them combat this issue. In fact, we’ve dedicated an entire module in the programme rather aptly called ListenHard which explores our capacity to listen in a lot more depth. If you’d like to find out more about the nuts and bolts of this module, get in touch with us via letstalk@hardtalk.info.

In the meantime according to writer and coach Jennifer Underwood, listening has become a lost art in today’s world. She shares some excellent insight and top tips on just how we can reclaim this lost art and learn to listen, better. You can read it in full here: https://medium.com/the-mission/reclaiming-the-lost-art-of-listening-3b894d644ba7

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Nothing changes without a conversation, so what’s stopping us from speaking up?

“If you’re like most people then you shy away from difficult conversations. Especially when you have to talk about sensitive things like money, personal hygiene or “bad” behaviour. I have been paid eight times to tell people they smell bad – that’s right, eight different organisations have brought me in because they were unsure how to approach the conversation.

But with over 90% of people we surveyed experiencing behaviour at work they thought wasn’t right or appropriate, it seems counterproductive to business in this region for us to avoid these tough talks. Given the multicultural workforces driving the majority of the GCC’s economies, it’s little wonder that such nuanced or challenging conversations become even more difficult.

Telling somebody they are underperforming, asking for a raise, or sharing a difference in opinion with a co-worker may be necessary but it’s rarely fun. And because it’s not fun and it makes us feel emotions we’d prefer to avoid, we avoid the conversation. Cultural differences are a huge factor at play in our diverse workforces, too, making it even more complex to have these conversations…”

Dawn tells it like it is to Forbes Middle East – click the link to read on: https://www.forbesmiddleeast.com/en/nothing-changes-without-a-conversation-so-whats-stopping-us-from-speaking-up/

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What Google’s Project Aristotle teaches us about speaking up and trust

We’re not sure if you know this, but at Team HardTalk we love reading and research. We can’t get enough of it and we try our best to keep up with the very latest in areas including learning science and communication behaviour so that we can pass the most relevant onto you.

We’ve had a busy week of facilitating and in both the HardTalk book and programme, we look at the findings of Project Aristotle – a study undertaken by Google. Project Aristotle combined decades of data and research in order to try and uncover what makes the most successful teams, well… successful.

Given this topic often piques the interest of our clients, learners and community members, we wanted to share this in-depth look at the results from the New York Times Magazine: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html 

What becomes clear is the importance of psychological safety. It’s about ensuring that everyone on the team can hear and be heard – that they feel empowered to talk without fear of retribution or humiliation. And that trust is built on each and every day.

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