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AI to Enhance Humans...Not Replace Them at Work

Emotional intelligence at work has become a cornerstone for effective professional interactions in modern society. As workplaces become more complex and diverse, the ability to understand and manage

17 Oct, 2024

The Future of L&D: How AI & Technology Can Improve Talent Development & Support More Employees

2025 is just a few months away, so now is the perfect time to start planning what your learning and development programming should look like for employees next year. This might be a hard pill to swallow, but if you’re thinking workshops and consultants, you’re going to miss the mark! Mandatory one-time workshops, expensive external consultants, certifications, and traditional classroom learning are simply dead on arrival. They don’t deliver sustained results. You can’t track them well. They don’t take your learners into consideration. And they’re counter intuitive to today’s need for personalized learning. The amount of people who work remotely at least once per week has grown by 400% since 2010, and as many teams now settle into remote or hybrid work models, a much-needed transformation in traditional learning & development is underway. This shift better supports people in how they now learn today, as reskilling, upskilling, cross training, and internal mobility continue to prove new and up until now, often untapped, sources of power for companies. Research from Lighthouse Research & Advisory shows that 88% of employees said they would stay at a job if they had career and growth opportunities ahead, but more than 60% have left a job in the past because they didn't see any way to advance. In addition, nearly 50% of talent professionals who responded to a LinkedIn survey said they expect their recruiting budget to continue to decrease, while 66% anticipate their L&D budget to increase or stay the same. This suggests employers will continue relying on building their workforce through internal mobility programs tied to reskilling initiatives and/or engage contingent talent instead of hiring externally. In this post, we’ll share suggestions--through the lens of pandemic-driven shifts--for leveraging technology and AI to implement and scale development programs with new ways of learning that aren’t just customized, but that also cross silos and aid in retaining and motivating employees to want to learn more. Yes, technology that improves training efficiency, results, adoption of concepts, and on-going usage within workflows of employees. Key Features of the Modern Corporate Learning Experience Operating a successful business boils down to ensuring your workers are productive, happy, and actively engaged with activities that move the business forward. Chief Learning Officer at Allencomm -- a global learning developer and provider of custom content -- Anna Sargsyan recently told Human Resource Executive: These new demands of hybrid and remote work are tasking us with being much more intentional about learning design. Employee expectations around more human-centered learning are creating a need for more personalization within L&D, while leaders also have to be proactive to help distributed employees learn from one another despite the distance, create innovative approaches to non-classroom learning and ensure learning is accessible everywhere—in different formats and to all employees. In addition to supporting the employee experience, there’s enough evidence now to demonstrate that companies that promote a culture of learning perform better. Take this LinkedIn Learning course (quoting a McKinsey report) that shows companies offering comprehensive training programs have higher income per employee by as much as 200 percent. And for millennials, learning opportunities at a company are now the top metric in their likelihood to stay at a company. A PwC study found the same -- that “the current workforce is more motivated by personal and professional growth than they are by earning more money.” Critical to the success of any L&D program today, new digital tools have dramatically altered how, when and where we learn. Here’s a handful of the key features you should consider when launching or leveling up to a modern corporate learning experience. On-demand learning The brick and mortar professional development course is done. Instead of the rigid classroom model, learning should be part of employees’ daily workflow - at their desks, on their mobile phones, or from wherever they work. They’re much more likely to develop and retain information when they decide on the timing of their training, not when it is dictated by a mass group class. Let’s look at some statistics. Employees who have more control over the learning process and the opportunity to revisit training demonstrate retention rates of up to 60% vs that of 8% for in-person training. In addition, research shows that bite-sized learning makes the transfer of learning from the classroom to the desk 17% more efficient -- encouraging employees to further develop and retain the training, which maximizes effectiveness and value of the training you have delivered. Consumerization of learning Just as apps have changed the way we call cabs or watch movies, new digital learning tools also offer the same intuitive, engaging, and easy-to-use experience for people at work. Agile, cost-effective learning In an era of rapid technological change, learning has become critical for companies to stay up to speed. A modern learning platform accelerates learning program delivery to ensure the most up-to-date training reaches your employees quickly and efficiently. Self-awareness & coaching With a better awareness of team dynamics (aka a team’s culture), L&D leaders are working to understand individuals -- and ultimately creating and delivering programming that leverages a psychometrics-based platform to improve managers’ coaching, increase understanding of their teams, pave a pathway to building a stronger, better-connected team for purposes of more meaningful collaboration -- which leads to increased productivity and strong employee engagement. Consider this:66% of all employees are disengaged (Source: Gallup) 87% of highly engaged employees are less likely to leave (Source: The Muse) Only 25% of employers have an active engagement strategy (Source: The Muse)According to Smarp, companies that do have a high level of employee engagement are more profitable by a factor of 21%. So to more deeply understand what drives the engagement of your people, aside from skill building and growth opportunities, you also need to provide people with a centralized place to both give feedback to others and better understand themselves. Consider employee engagement suites that incorporate self-assessments designed to empower people with a better understanding of their work behaviors, motivators, and work energizers. When investing in engagement solutions, look for a centralized solution that consolidates key feedback-focused areas, such as: Career & development feedback Knowing that coaching and feedback are key to ongoing performance management and engagement, provide an easy way for employees to obtain and manage peer, 360-degree, subordinate and manager feedback more frequently. Pulse survey feedback Pulse your employees on important topics and get instant and consistent feedback to help you make informed operational, policy, programming, or strategy decisions. Be sure you can analyze data by different populations, as well as product, territory, and functional groups. Performance management tracking Use a centralized learning or action management system to track performance and provide actionable content and assignments to help employees track performance, growth, and any new performance management processes. When you have psychometrics behind your AMS -- that is, a clear understanding of what motivates each and every team member and how he or she learns best -- you’re able to further individualize the content and activities, as you align employees around specific strategic goals, tasks, and actions. You can do this by company, by division, by territory, or by function – enabling you to deliver fast, measurable business results. Scalability & sustained results Finally, let’s talk results. How often have your employees come back from training only to pin some certificate in their cube without ever implementing what they learned in a meaningful way? The answer is a lot! In fact, within one hour of any training, most people retain less than half of what was presented. Then you spend your time figuring out ways to reinforce and re-engage those team members in what they already learned. It can feel like an exhausting never-ending cycle--making it difficult to scale your programming. The truth is, if participants can’t flex their muscles and practice what they have learned on an on-going basis after the training, they will most certainly forget it and revert to their old ways. But technology exists today that can bring your team’s development program learnings into the participants’ daily workflows, allowing them to practice what they have learned in a real live work situation without breaking away from their work. This ability is a game changer for post-program adoption and retention. It's AI that operationalizes the application of what has been an in-person, workshop-based, self-service eLibrary model into each employee's day-to-day work. The result: watch ROI go from 1-2 uses per year of content to 200-300 times per year. Think what Grammarly did to vocabulary and grammar usage for individuals, but with insights within workflows for self-development, understanding, and all the soft-skills needed for better leadership, training, and team effectiveness. The needs of the global corporate training and learning market will continue to evolve, and in the increasingly complex world of the Future of Work, individualized, adaptive training journeys, including tailored and scalable micro-courses with real-world practice opportunities built into employees' everyday workflows, will help people thrive in remote and hybrid work environments.

05 Sep, 2024

13 Ways to Work Effectively Across Teams

While it makes introverts and everyone who hated group projects in school cringe at the thought, collaboration in the workplace is essential. Still, working effectively across teams can sometimes be a challenge. Different teams may have varying priorities, communication styles, and work methods, all of which can impact how smoothly they work together. However, with the right strategies in place, teams can overcome these obstacles and work together harmoniously towards a common goal. In this article, we will explore the importance of working effectively across teams and share our top 13 tips for achieving success in cross-team collaboration. Why Cross-Team Collaboration is Important No team operates in isolation. In fact, many businesses are supported by distributed teams spread across different states or even around the world. According to a study conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity and Rob Cross, the Edward A. Madden Professor of Global Business at Babson College, high-performance organizations are up to 5.5x more likely than lower-performers to incentivize individual, team, and leader effectiveness in collaboration. The study of more than 1,100 companies—two-thirds of which include collaboration as a stated organizational value—found that the difference between productive and unproductive collaboration can be summed up in one word: purpose. It’s the purposeful pursuit of collaboration that is the primary reason high-performance organizations, such as Patagonia, one of four companies highlighted in the study, can leverage collaboration to achieve desired business outcomes. Effective collaboration results from an effective company culture that is supported by management and embraces the entire organization. Simply think about the best team of which you’ve ever been a part. What made that team work? Was it the project? The people? The interpersonal dynamics? Did you enjoy being part of it? Did it bring out the best in you? Now think about the worst team you’ve ever been on. What made those experiences different? Collaborative teams equal enhanced productivity and results. When teams work, they work in the best of ways. But teamwork takes effort, and the reality is that teams can fall apart, break down and experience disruption for myriad reasons. In this post, we’ve combined the best ways to work within and across teams and put them all in one place so let's get to it. Be Strategic About Meetings to Improve Collaboration at WorkPrepare formal meeting agendas & keep communication styles in mind. If you’re leading a meeting or part of the team that called the meeting, keep in mind that some attendees might have a more reflective communication style, so if you want your meeting to be valuable and productive, proactively reach out to those team members ahead of the meeting to share specific topics in which you'd like them to contribute. Defining a clear agenda for each meeting and considering the role of each person who is attending will help everyone involved understand how they can participate and what individual expectations entail. Not sure how to determine communication style? No worries, there are tools for that.Observe and Model Best Practices for Building an Environment to Support Collaboration 2. Collaborate on the issue of collaboration. If the company culture dictates strong teams, take a look at the organization and see who else is doing it well. Talk to other managers about team dynamics, how they get people to collaborate and the behaviors they encourage. And make sure that you return the favor, sharing your own best practices and lessons learned. Don’t forget to look outside your company as well, talking with colleagues and mentors. You’d be surprised at how similar situations seem to come up across industries. 3. Create accountability around team performance, not just individual performance. This helps draw out the lone ranger team member and forces the team to work collaboratively toward common goals. If one person isn’t participating as a team member, the others won’t carry that person and a shift will start to take place. If there is one particular cynic, take that person aside and discover why there is conflict, too much independent work, or general derailing of teamwork. Depending on personality, you can either be very direct here or ask a series of “why” questions to get to the bottom of the situation. 4. Prioritize the employee experience. Seeing things from employees’ perspectives can help you learn a lot about work culture and some of the communication challenges that your company may be facing. Dedicating some time to explore employee experience and finding ways to improve both digital and physical work environments can go a long way towards making employees feel more satisfied and comfortable at work. 5. Create tech-driven collaboration spaces. Internet speeds and improvements in technology have made audio and video conferencing remarkably convenient these days. To foster more meaningful communication among employees, consider adding personalized communication insights to your meeting tools so everyone knows how best to communicate with one another. Making meetings more valuable for everyone involved goes a long way toward developing a strong collaborative work culture. 6. Promote learning and development.** **Many employees desire career advancement for the chance to apply their skills to new projects and learning opportunities, all of which contributes to effective and collaborative relationship building within the company. In fact, companies that encourage mindful risk-taking and learning from mistakes often realize greater innovation and workplace effectiveness. According to the July 2021 Monster Job Index:80% of professionals don’t think their current employer provides growth opportunities. 54% of employees fear they don’t have the skills they need to thrive in a workforce that emphasizes collaboration using technology. 49% of employees expect their employer to support career growth.How Leaders Can Improve Collaboration at Work 7. Set clear goals. Employees are more likely to collaborate with each other when they clearly understand their individual roles and the team goals that everyone is working toward. Well-defined goals give the entire team a sense of shared purpose and can help foster innovation and problem-solving. One clear sign of an effective team is one that can self-assess and identify issues that lead to meaningful improvements over time. 8. Provide team incentives. “The lack of incentives and rewards is the most common and powerful barrier to effective collaboration. Yet, most talent management systems are designed to reward individual achievement, not team accomplishments,” says Kevin Martin, Chief Research Officer, i4cp. “Finding ways to recognize and reward individuals, leaders, and teams who engage in productive collaborative behaviors can pay off in a big way.” 9. Communicate expectations for collaboration. It’s easy to be a cheerleader for collaboration, but without clear direction, it can be challenging for employees to understand what to do. From the start, set your expectation for collaboration as a minimum standard. Even better, it should be part of your onboarding process so that potential recruits know you prioritize teamwork. Employees' job descriptions should include details about their own individual roles, as well as roles they're expected to carry out collaboratively. By differentiating these, you're setting clear boundaries between what they should be taking personal responsibility for, and what they need to work on collectively. 10. Celebrate wins often. Especially when dealing with long-term or complex projects, it’s not always easy for employees to appreciate the achievements they are making along the way. Teams can benefit from taking time to celebrate wins and milestones together in a formal or informal setting. These celebrations can be small, as any chance to recognize and appreciate effective team collaboration is valuable. Focus on Communication to Improve Collaboration at Work 11. Encourage active listening. Part of the challenge in facilitating effective workplace communication is balancing discussions among different team members. This can be particularly difficult when dealing with different cultures, personalities, and challenging topics. Helping employees, and especially managers, develop their active listening skills can help everyone feel heard and more involved. 12. Don’t neglect asynchronous communication. Asynchronous communication involves information that is shared at different times. One example would be a post made on a company message board that others can respond to at any time. Many collaboration platforms include features that enable this form of communication. Asynchronous communication can be particularly effective for remote teams and those working across multiple time zones. 13. Adopt hybrid communication models. One of the best ways to foster communication and enhance collaboration is to give employees a number of tools to communicate with each other. Utilizing several tools such as email, chat or messaging, video, and a company intranet will allow employees to communicate information in a way that is effective for them. And if you have plug-in tools that provide specific tips or suggestions for collaborating with particular teammates, even better! This makes it easier for everyone to share insights at any time and contribute to an individual, team, or corporate discussion. In the end, whether your working within or across teams, following these tips will help you implement the right processes and technologies to enhance collaboration and incentivize effective collaboration among individuals, teams, and leaders. By establishing clear communication channels, fostering a culture of trust and mutual respect, and defining clear roles and responsibilities, organizations can leverage the unique strengths of each team, enhance collaboration, and achieve better results.

02 Jul, 2024

Mastering Collaboration: Your Guide for Working Effectively with Gen Z

In today's workforce, collaboration -- specifically collaborating with Gen Z -- is key to achieving success. And as organizations become more diverse, it is essential to understand and effectively work with team members from different generations. In particular, Generation Z (Gen Z), which refers to individuals born between 1997 and 2012, has unique characteristics and work styles that require HR professionals and team leaders to adapt their strategies. From embracing AI tools to providing training tailored to Gen Z, this article will help you navigate the challenges of working with Gen Z team members and foster intergenerational dynamics for a more collaborative and productive workplace. Understanding the Gen Z mindset Understanding the Gen Z mindset in the workplace is crucial when it comes to collaborating with Gen Z. As digital natives, Gen Z individuals have grown up surrounded by technology, which has had a profound impact on their thoughts and behaviors. This generation values instant gratification, diversity, and individuality. They are known for their entrepreneurial spirit and desire for meaningful work. Understanding these characteristics will enable HR professionals and team leaders to tailor their approach and create a collaborative environment that resonates with Gen Z team members. One way to understand the Gen Z mindset is by recognizing their desire for continuous learning and growth. This generation thrives on new challenges and opportunities to acquire new skills. By providing ongoing training and development programs, organizations can harness the full potential of Gen Z team members. Moreover, acknowledging their preference for a diverse workplace will foster an inclusive and collaborative environment. In the next section, we will delve deeper into strategies for effectively communicating with Gen Z team members and how to leverage their digital skills to drive collaboration. Stay tuned for an in-depth exploration of the Gen Z mindset and practical tips for working collaboratively with this generation. How to create a collaborative work environment Creating a collaborative work environment is essential for effectively working with Gen Z team members. This generation thrives in environments that promote teamwork, communication, and collaboration. Here are some strategies to foster collaboration: 1. Encourage open communication: Gen Z team members appreciate transparency and value open communication. Create an environment where they feel comfortable sharing their ideas, opinions, and concerns. Regularly schedule team meetings, brainstorming sessions, and one-on-one check-ins to facilitate open dialogue. 2. Embrace flexible work arrangements: Gen Z individuals value work-life balance and appreciate flexibility. Consider implementing flexible work arrangements, such as remote work options or flexible working hours. This will help them feel empowered and motivated to contribute their best work. 3. Utilize technology tools: Gen Z team members are tech-savvy and comfortable with various digital tools. Leverage technology platforms and collaborative software to streamline communication, project management, and document sharing. This will enhance productivity and efficiency. 4. Foster a supportive culture: Create a culture of support and empowerment, in which team members feel valued and encouraged to contribute their unique perspectives. Recognize and reward their achievements, and provide constructive feedback to help them grow professionally. By leading with these strategies, you can create a collaborative work environment that engages and motivates Gen Z team members, leading to increased productivity and better outcomes for your organization. Leveraging technology for collaborating with Gen Z Leveraging technology is paramount for effective collaboration with Gen Z team members. This generation is highly skilled in utilizing digital tools and expects to have access to the latest technology in the workplace. By incorporating technology into your collaboration efforts, you can enhance communication, streamline project management, and foster a sense of connectedness among team members. For example, it is wise to invest in a psychometric-based tool that helps teams better understand each other so they can collaborate and connect more meaningfully in meetings, on Slack, or via email. Utilizing technology doesn’t only bridge the generation gap but also makes the younger generation feel valued and needed in the workplace. Investing in collaboration platforms and applications will also enable real-time communication and document sharing, eliminating the need for back-and-forth emails and increasing efficiency. Gen Zers are accustomed to instant messaging and video conferencing, so consider implementing tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams for seamless communication. Fortunately, it’s also easy to leverage AI tools to kick your training and internal communication up a notch. Say you have a new Gen Z hire that needs to email the head of sales, John, every week with reported leads. The problem is, they hardly know John, and have no idea how John likes to consume information. With an AI tool that utilizes your company's previously recorded psychometric data, the new hire can use pre-supplemented suggestions to ensure their emails are comprehensive and useful for John, despite having never interacted with him before. This AI-fueled approach to “on-the-fly” training can extend beyond emails to all communications, ultimately helping Gen Z employees learn new skills and making their contributions to the business more impactful. Additionally, project management tools such as Trello or Asana can help keep everyone on track, assign tasks, and monitor progress. By utilizing technology in these ways, you can create a collaborative work environment that aligns with the preferences and expectations of Gen Z, ultimately leading to improved teamwork and successful outcomes. Communication strategies with Gen Z team members Effective communication is essential for successful collaboration with Gen Z team members. This generation has grown up with instant messaging and social media, and they prefer quick and concise communication methods. Here are some strategies to enhance collaboration through communication: First, establish clear expectations regarding communication channels. Discuss with your Gen Z team members which platforms they prefer for specific types of communication, such as formal emails for official updates and instant messaging for quick questions or updates. Second, encourage open and transparent communication. Gen Z team members value authenticity and appreciate when their opinions and ideas are heard. Create a safe and inclusive space where they can freely express themselves. Lastly, don’t underestimate the power of visuals and multimedia in your communication. This is, after all, the video generation! Gen Z team members respond well to visual content, so consider incorporating infographics, videos, and images to convey information in a more engaging way. By implementing these communication strategies, you can foster a collaborative environment where Gen Z team members feel valued and can contribute their best work. Nurturing a culture of inclusivity and diversity Nurturing a culture of inclusivity and diversity is crucial when working effectively with Gen Z team members. This generation values equality and appreciates a diverse and inclusive work environment. Here are some ways to promote inclusivity and diversity within your team: First, educate yourself and your team on the importance of inclusivity and diversity. Understand the different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences that each team member brings to the table. Encourage open dialogue and discussions about diversity-related topics. Second, establish inclusive policies and practices. Consider implementing initiatives such as unconscious bias training, diverse recruitment strategies, and equal representation in decision-making processes. Celebrate and recognize the contributions of every team member. Encourage a culture of appreciation and respect for diversity by giving credit where it is due and acknowledging the unique skills and perspectives that Gen Z team members bring. By creating an inclusive and diverse work environment, you can foster collaboration with and innovation among Gen Z team members, leading to better overall team performance. Recognizing and appreciating Gen Z contributions Gen Z team members are incredibly talented and innovative individuals who bring fresh perspectives and ideas to the table. Recognizing and appreciating their contributions is essential for fostering collaboration and maintaining a positive work environment. Here are some ways to ensure that Gen Z team members feel valued and appreciated: Firstly, provide regular feedback and recognition. Gen Z employees thrive on feedback and appreciation for their work. Take the time to acknowledge their achievements and skills, whether it's through a simple thank you note or a public commendation in team meetings. By doing so, you are not only boosting their morale but also motivating them to continue delivering exceptional results. Next, provide opportunities for growth and development. Gen Z employees are keen on continuous learning and professional development. Offer them opportunities to attend workshops, conferences, or training programs. This investment in their growth will show that you value their career advancement and are committed to their long-term success. Lastly, involve Gen Z team members in decision-making processes. Their fresh perspectives can offer valuable insights and innovative solutions. Encourage them to participate in brainstorming sessions or include them in projects that require creative thinking and problem-solving. By doing so, you are empowering them to contribute to the team's success and instilling a sense of ownership in their work. Acknowledging Gen Z team members for their contributions is crucial for creating a collaborative and productive work environment. By offering feedback, providing growth opportunities, and involving them in decision-making, you are not only fostering their professional development but also maximizing their potential to drive innovation within the team. Overcoming challenges working with Gen Z While Gen Z team members bring immense talent and a fresh perspective to the table, it's important to acknowledge that there may be some challenges in working with them – just like any generation that’s entered the workforce. Understanding and addressing these challenges can significantly enhance collaboration and teamwork. One common challenge is the need for constant feedback and validation. In fact, new studies show that at least a couple of times a week, more than half of Gen Z, 54%, want praise from bosses for their efforts at work, according to data by Australian research firm McCrindle. Almost three in five Gen Zers seek constructive feedback about how they can improve in their role at least a couple of times per week. Gen Z is also accustomed to receiving instant gratification and may expect constant praise for their work. As a leader, it's crucial to set clear expectations and provide constructive feedback regularly while balancing praise to maintain motivation. Another challenge lies in effectively managing their technological reliance. Gen Z employees are highly tech-savvy and prefer digital communication channels. It's important to establish clear boundaries and guidelines for communication to ensure effective collaboration while also providing opportunities for face-to-face interactions to foster stronger relationships within the team. Additionally, Gen Z employees value work-life balance and prioritize flexibility. To ensure their productivity and satisfaction, consider offering flexible work hours or remote work options whenever possible. By addressing these areas, leaders can create a collaborative environment that maximizes the potential of Gen Z team members while maintaining productivity and teamwork. The benefits of effectively collaborating with Gen Z In the end, collaborating effectively with Gen Z team members can bring numerous benefits to an organization. Harnessing their unique skills and perspectives can lead to innovative solutions and fresh ideas. Gen Z employees are often tech-savvy and can offer valuable insights into utilizing digital tools and platforms to streamline processes and enhance productivity. By encouraging collaboration, leaders can tap into the creativity and resourcefulness of Gen Z team members, leading to increased efficiency and problem-solving capabilities. Furthermore, effective collaboration with Gen Z team members fosters a positive and inclusive work culture. By embracing their need for constant feedback and validation, leaders can build a supportive environment where individuals feel heard and valued. This, in turn, boosts morale, motivation, and engagement among Gen Z employees, resulting in higher job satisfaction and decreased turnover rates. Embracing collaborating with Gen Z for organizational success Collaboration is an essential component for organizational success in today's fast-paced and evolving business landscape. This is especially true when it comes to working effectively with Gen Z team members. In this article, we have explored the numerous benefits that come from collaborating with Gen Zers in the workplace, along with different tactics that can empower you to build successful partnerships with this talented generation. From their tech-savviness and ability to offer valuable insights into digital tools and platforms, to their creativity and resourcefulness, Gen Z team members bring a fresh perspective that can enhance productivity and problem-solving capabilities. By embracing their need for constant feedback and validation, leaders can create a positive and inclusive work culture that fosters high morale, motivation, and engagement. We have also discussed the challenges that may arise when collaborating with Gen Z employees. However, armed with the actionable strategies and techniques, you will be well-equipped to overcome these challenges and unlock the full potential of collaboration with Gen Z team members. If you’re looking for ways to tailor your onboarding, training, and collaboration strategies for Gen Z, we can help.

23 Apr, 2024

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Teams at over 300 companies run on SaaS from Humantelligence

Why Improving Emotional Intelligence and Team Dynamics Go Hand in Hand

21 Oct, 2024
Collaboration

Psychology Today explains that emotional intelligence (EQ or EI) refers to the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as understand and navigate the emotional responses of others. For managers and people leaders -- where the stakes are high -- having EQ can spell the difference between effectively driving performance or losing valuable talent. In this article, we'll share some tips and strategies for improving emotional intelligence. Why Emotional Intelligence is Important for Team Leaders Emotional intelligence is generally said to include a few key areas:Emotional awareness, or the ability to identify and name one’s own emotions; The ability to harness those emotions and apply them to tasks like thinking and problem solving; and The ability to manage emotions while interacting with others, which includes both regulating one’s own emotions when necessary and helping others to do the same.When applied in a business setting, high EQ helps all employees communicate and collaborate effectively, empathize with others, and defuse conflict. When you do that, you build stronger relationships, turn intention into action, and make informed decisions about what matters most. Add to this, the remote & hybrid context we now work in, and EQ becomes even more important, useful, and necessary for the success of distributed teams. Leaders who possess high emotional intelligence are able to build strong rapport with their team members, inspire and motivate them, and handle conflicts or setbacks in a positive and constructive manner. Further, emotional intelligence enables leaders to demonstrate empathy, which is essential for creating a supportive and inclusive team dynamic. By understanding the emotions and perspectives of their team members, leaders can better communicate, collaborate, and provide the necessary support for personal and professional growth. This not only fosters a sense of trust and loyalty within the team, but also leads to improved performance, innovation, and overall success for the organization. So let's get started on how we all can be improving emotional intelligence at work. Key Elements of Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace According to American psychologist Daniel Goleman, who helped popularize emotional intelligence, there are five foundational components of emotional intelligence -- all of which are essential for better performance in the workplace:Self-management– You’re able to control impulsive feelings and behaviors, manage your emotions in healthy ways, take initiative, follow through on commitments, and adapt to changing circumstances. When you can put self-management into practice, you display an ability to redirect disruptive moods and impulses, reframe your feelings with positivity. Self-awareness – You recognize your own emotions and how they affect your thoughts and behavior. You know your strengths and weaknesses, as well as the impressions you leave on others. When you’re self-aware, you often appear confident and receptive to constructive criticism. Social awareness – You can understand the emotions, needs, and concerns of other people, pick up on emotional cues, feel comfortable socially, and recognize the power dynamics in a group or organization. These social skills are necessary to guide people effectively in a specific direction and influence them in any particular way. Motivation: You work with passion and portray an optimistic attitude. There is intrinsic energy to continue improving oneself and the business. With motivation, there is a sense of accomplishment, and reaching goals is enjoyed for the sake of the achievement alone. Empathy & relationship management – You have insight into the emotional state of others. You know how to develop and maintain good relationships, communicate clearly, inspire and influence others, work well in a team, and manage conflict. In business, showing empathy means you’re sensitive to cross-cultural differences, and are more inclined to support others and be open to collaborating more meaningfully with others.The Impact of High Emotional Intelligence at Work So let’s get down to business. It’s widely known that intellectual ability or your intelligence quotient (IQ) isn’t enough on its own to achieve success in life or in business. In fact, experts agree that IQ explains only about 30 percent predictive performance, whereas EQ explains 60 percent of predictive performance. (The other 10 percent correlates to varying factors based on situation/circumstance, culture, and location of the business.) For those aspiring to lead teams, it’s also well-known that emotional intelligence is a key element of effective leadership. The ability to be perceptively in tune with yourself and your emotions, as well as having sound situational awareness can be a powerful tool for leading teams -- at the organizational, business unit, or functional levels. As one of the leading management training grounds that has produced more Fortune 500 CEOs, Procter & Gamble has proven that the best leaders, managers, and employees are agile in their behaviors and work styles, especially in learning how to adapt to each team member differently. Communication is Key No matter your role, improving emotional intelligence is directly related to your communication. It's how you internally and externally possess, express, and impact others. There have been a number of studies on the complex topic of nonverbal communication with varying results. However, most experts agree that 70 to 93 percent of all communication is nonverbal. This study showed that effective communication is 7% the words we say and 93% tone and body language. How do these findings translate at work? Well, think about your colleagues. One of the most common factors leading to resignation is communication deficiencies, which create disengagement, doubt, and mistrust. Misunderstandings and lack of or poorly regulated communication are usually the basis of problems between most people. When people have high EQ, then they’re better able to understand another’s point of view and/or context, and thus connect, communicate, and collaborate in a more powerful way. An inability to do so at work often causes frustration, bitterness, and confusion between employees. While effective communication can eliminate obstacles and encourage stronger workplace relationships. When employees know their role within a company and understand how they benefit the overall direction and vision, there is a sense of value and accomplishment. Good communication results in alignment and a shared sense of purpose. Improving Emotional Intelligence at Work: The Impact Some of the most respected CEOs are well-adjusted leaders who know how to harness their emotional intelligence as a way to bring out the best in others. There’s a fairly well-known story out there about American business executive, chemical engineer, and writer Jack Welch, that’s worth a re-tell. In his mid-twenties, Welch was the manufacturing head of a pilot plant focused on producing a new plastic. He was sitting in his office across from the plant when he heard a huge explosion. He looked out his window and saw nothing but smoke...the roof destroyed and shattered glass everywhere. Incredibly, no one was hurt. He was called to New York to explain what had happened to the higher ups and says (in a podcast) that this drive was the longest ride of his life. Mentally prepared for the worst, he thought he was going to get fired. But instead of being raked over the coals, Welch says the executive — a chemical engineer and former MIT professor — calmly asked him what had happened and if he knew how to fix it. “He took the Socratic Method with me and did an incredible job of engaging me in learning about what I did wrong in the process. I learned to never kick anybody when they’re down. No one would ever say that I was soft by any means. But they would never say that I beat on anybody when they were down.” Welch would eventually become chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001. The workplace encounter was filled with empathy, turning an expensive mistake into both a lesson for Welch and an opportunity to innovate. In the end, the failed project resulted in a better product than GE’s more risk-averse competitors. Benefits of Improving Emotional Intelligence When there is low EQ in the workplace, people tend to not take responsibility for mistakes. It’s harder for people to work together as a team. When communicating, people are either passive or aggressive and not assertive. Another noticeable characteristic of weak emotional intelligence at work is an inability to accept constructive criticism. Problem Solve & Self Manage However, with high EQ, they solve problems better and make suitable decisions. People with high emotional intelligence tend to keep a level head under pressure, display greater empathy and listen, reflect and react appropriately to the opinions of others. Strong self-management means you can adapt effectively to situations as they change. You don’t hold anything in or bottle up your emotions, but at the same time, you don’t react impulsively. The benefit of emotional intelligence at work is that you can express feelings appropriately in constructive ways. Combined with excellent social skills, teams often find themselves working together with more cohesion and better communication. With empathy, you’re not only acknowledging how others feel, which values their feelings, but you’re also recognizing your own reactions to expressions of emotion. Emotional insight reveals dynamics between employees. Empathy allows you to see how those power dynamics affect interactions and behaviors within those relationships. Emotional intelligence is also essential to conflict management in the workplace. The benefit of emotional intelligence in situations of conflict is that you can often establish a middle ground in disagreements. By paying attention to how others respond to you, you can try to help people feel heard, which in turn, will help them be more willing to compromise. All of these critical EQ components tie together and work in harmony, and as every individual team member focuses on improving emotional intelligence at work, the sum of this work creates better company cultures. How to Improve Your Emotional Intelligence as a Team Leader It takes time to develop and practice emotional intelligence, but here are a few tried and true tips for improving emotional intelligence at work. Self-awarenessKeep a journal – Journaling helps you improve your self-awareness. If you spend just a few minutes each day writing down your thoughts, this can move you to a higher degree of self-awareness. Slow down – When you experience anger or other strong emotions, slow down to examine why. Remember, no matter what the situation, you can always choose how you react to it.Self-regulationKnow your values – Do you have a clear idea of where you absolutely will not compromise? Do you know what values are most important to you? Hold yourself accountable – Make a commitment to admit to your mistakes and to face the consequences, whatever they are. You'll probably sleep better at night, and you'll quickly earn the respect of those around you. Practice being calm – The next time you're in a challenging situation, be very aware of how you act. Do you relieve your stress by shouting at someone else? Practice deep-breathing exercises to calm yourself.MotivationRe-examine why you're doing your job – It's easy to forget what you really love about your career. So, take some time to remember why you wanted this job. If you're unhappy in your role and you're struggling to remember why you wanted it, try the Five Whys technique to find the root of the problem. Be hopeful and find something good – Motivated leaders are usually optimistic. Adopting this perspective puts you into a growth mindset. Every time you face a challenge, or even a failure, try to find at least one good thing about the situation. It might be something small, like a new contact, or something with long-term effects, like an important lesson learned.EmpathyPut yourself in someone else's position – It's easy to support your own point of view. But take the time to look at situations from other people's perspectives. Pay attention to body language – Remember that 93% of communication isn’t what you say! Perhaps when you listen to someone, you cross your arms, move your feet back and forth, or bite your lip. This body language tells others how you really feel about a situation, and the message you're giving isn't positive. And learning to read body language can be a real asset in a leadership role, because you'll be better able to determine how someone truly feels. This gives you the opportunity to respond appropriately.Social SkillsLearn conflict resolution – You must know how to resolve conflicts with others and among team members, customers, or vendors. Learning conflict resolution skills is vital if you want to succeed. Learn how to praise others – To be an excellent teammate and inspire others to act the same, give praise when it's earned. Learning how to praise others is a fine art, but well worth the effort.Want more tips and strategies for improving emotional intelligence...check out Tony Robbins’ six steps to developing emotional intelligence. Finally, it’s important to know where you stand on all of this -- to take stock of your own behaviors, motivators, and work energizers. Using a quick psychometric self-assessment, you can uncover the why, how and what of your work. When you couple that with an EQ-based communication tool in your toolkit, you’re fast-tracking EQ development because it infuses actionable EQ insights into your daily communication workflows -- helping you to interact with and collaborate better with others on the spot. At the end of the day, as colleagues, we have the responsibility more than ever to work on our own personal and professional development. And emotional intelligence is a powerful tool critical for exceeding goals, improving critical work relationships, and creating a healthy, productive workplace and organizational culture. To learn how you can improve emotional intelligence at work, visit humantelligence.com.

AI to Enhance Humans...Not Replace Them at Work

17 Oct, 2024
AI

Emotional intelligence at work has become a cornerstone for effective professional interactions in modern society. As workplaces become more complex and diverse, the ability to understand and manage emotions—both one’s own and those of others—has become essential for fostering productive and integrated work environments. The World Economic Forum's "Future of Jobs Survey" highlights that by 2025, emotional intelligence will be one of the top skills required in business, highlighting its growing importance in the professional sphere. Despite its recognized value, developing and applying emotional intelligence at work present numerous challenges. Traditional training methods, which are often costly and difficult to scale, fail to provide the practical, real-time application necessary for true skill acquisition. Of the employees who received traditional training, 43% considered it ineffective. Furthermore, identifying and recruiting talent with high emotional intelligence is a complex process, often relying on subjective measures and lengthy evaluation periods. Enter artificial intelligence (AI). By leveraging AI technologies, organizations can improve emotional intelligence in the workplace and overcome potential hurdles by offering scalable, personalized, and effective solutions. How Can AI Help Individuals Develop Emotional Intelligence? AI technologies can play a pivotal role in overcoming the challenges associated with developing and applying emotional intelligence in the workplace. At Humantelligence, I've seen firsthand how AI-powered assessments can scan entire companies and enhance collaboration. By analyzing communication patterns in meetings and written interactions (both offline and virtual), these tools provide real-time, personalized feedback on how to improve emotional interactions. Employees then receive insights on how to adapt their communication to better suit their audience's preferences and motivations, ensuring more effective and empathetic exchanges. In our own workplace, we use AI tools to rewrite communication at the push of a button, tailoring messages to the emotional preferences of the recipients. This feature enhances day-to-day interactions and fosters a more emotionally intelligent workplace culture. In meetings, our AI engine scans the dynamics and provides the emotional intelligence insights needed to improve productivity and collaboration. This proactive approach integrates emotional intelligence into everyday workflows, rather than letting it be a neglected aspect of professional development. We also address the challenge of scalability in emotional intelligence training. While traditional training methods are often focused on a small percentage of leaders and managers, all employees receive personalized training up to 20 times a month, equating to 240 interactions a year. This consistent use makes the training more impactful and transformational across the organization. During recruitment, we utilize advanced psychometric evaluations and behavioral analysis to assess candidates' emotional competencies. This approach allows us to identify high emotional intelligence candidates early in the hiring process, leading to better team dynamics and performance. 3 Best Practices to Integrate AI with Emotional Intelligence Training for Improved Professional Interactions Integrating AI with emotional intelligence training can significantly enhance professional interactions and workplace dynamics. The following are just a few of the best practices we've learned while integrating AI across our organization and navigating the challenges that arose along the way. 1. Look for Personalized Learning Opportunities Seventy-five percent of Fortune 500 companies use emotional intelligence training, and for good reason. These AI tools can analyze individual learning styles and preferences to deliver tailored training programs that meet the specific needs of each employee. At Humantelligence, we've seen how AI tools can adapt training content with a click of a button to meet the needs of each user. For example, if an employee struggles with a particular aspect of emotional intelligence, AI can provide additional resources and exercises to address that specific area. An effective AI-driven platform should provide personalized insights and training modules that help employees develop their emotional intelligence skills in a way that is most effective for them. This approach ensures that employees are more engaged and can apply what they learn sooner rather than later. 2. Implement Real-Time Feedback Mechanisms Real-time feedback is crucial for the practical application of emotional intelligence skills. AI technologies can provide immediate insights and suggestions based on an employee's interactions and communications. In fact, Gallup data show that when employees receive meaningful feedback within the last week, they’re almost four times more likely to be engaged. To meet this need at Humantelligence, we implemented a tool that offers real-time feedback on email communications and meeting dynamics. These real-time insights are surfaced within an employee’s workflow, which helps them adjust their behavior and improve their emotional intelligence in the moment. This continuous feedback loop is essential for reinforcing learning and promoting ongoing development. 3. Integrate Emotional Intelligence Training into Daily Workflows Emotional intelligence training should be seamlessly integrated into the daily workflows of your employees. In our daily workflows, we use AI tools that can be embedded into existing work processes, such as communication platforms and meeting tools. This integration makes it easier for employees to access and apply their training in real-world scenarios. For those who struggle with soft skills, AI-driven training insights can also be an essential resource for enhanced productivity and job satisfaction. According to research from IDC, organizations stand to benefit up to $1 trillion in productivity gains worldwide over the next two years by implementing skills development powered by generative AI and automation. AI can significantly improve collaboration among teams by providing real-time insights into their communications, helping them work better and faster together. This ensures that emotional intelligence training is not an isolated event but a continuous part of their everyday interactions. As emotional intelligence becomes increasingly important in the workplace, leveraging AI to provide scalable, personalized, and real-time training can address many of the challenges associated with traditional emotional intelligence development methods. By adopting best practices for integrating AI and emotional intelligence, organizations can foster a more emotionally intelligent workforce, leading to better communication, stronger teamwork, and improved overall performance.

The Best Team Assessment Tools Help You Understand Your Team Dynamic

02 Oct, 2024
Collaboration

Collaboration makes the world go round, and having teams that consist of people whose dynamics work well together and are constantly working to improve themselves are key to sustaining business success. As an L&D and people leader, you likely already have an overall perspective on your team’s productivity and how it impacts the company's financial goals, but do you truly know what motivates and empowers your team to succeed? Do you know your team dynamic? The best team assessment tools will help you answer those questions. The Best Team Assessment Tools Measure Your Team Dynamic Successful teams must be agile. However, it’s impossible to be an agile team without fully understanding employees' behaviors, motivators, work energizers and the kind of work that truly engages them. Without this baseline knowledge, you run the risk of having a team that lacks problem-solving, seems disengaged, and exhibits poor team dynamics. For example, let’s say you are onboarding a new executive team member. Everyone on your existing team is a self-starter and decisive in their actions. Your new team member, on the other hand, is more team-oriented and deliberate. While the rest of your team is independently working on their initiatives, your new team member is trying to get feedback and approval from others. This disconnect between the new hire and the existing team may cause the new person to feel like they don’t belong and that they can’t engage with the rest of the team. Because of this, the new hire may decide this isn’t the right role for them and leave, ultimately leading to lost time, resources, and finances for the rest of the team. Understanding a Team Dynamic Archetypes are universal, inborn models of people, behaviors, or personalities that play a role in influencing human behavior. They were introduced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who suggested that these archetypes were archaic forms of innate human knowledge passed down from our ancestors. In Jungian psychology, the archetypes represent universal patterns and images that are part of the collective unconscious. Jung believed that we inherit these archetypes much in the way we inherit instinctive patterns of behavior. He identified four major archetypes but also believed that there was no limit to the number that may exist. Of the four main archetypes described by Jung, one was the persona -- or how we present ourselves to the world. The word "persona" is derived from a Latin word that literally means "mask." It is not a literal mask, however. The persona represents all of the different social masks that we wear among various groups and situations. Over the course of development, we adapt and behave in certain ways in order to navigate society's expectations and norms. In practical application, an employee persona derives from this thinking and is the sum of one’s psychometric self-assessment. This sum is called a Humantelligence talent profile and details a team member’s behaviors, motivators or values, work energizers and life priorities -- using three primary business archetypes or personas. All together, the best team assessment tools take your team members' assessments into account and show you your team culture. The Benefits of Measuring Your Team's Dynamic Like the traditional customer/buyer persona, your employees’ talent profiles -- and their dominant personas -- are valuable on many levels -- and unlike the buyer’s persona, your employees’ persona summary is specific, personalized, and measured. As a result, use of this kind of data is nearly limitless. Here are just a few of the high-impact ways employee talent profiles are valuable. Greater Self-Awareness Once reserved for the executive level and requiring extensive consultation and workshops, deep insight into how you prefer to think, engage, and apply one's self is available for all employees. It’s that kind of self-awareness -- when people better understand their success factors and are more deeply engaged in their work -- that helps them leverage their strengths and more easily identify the kinds of opportunities that best align with their professional motivators and career goals. Accurate self-knowledge is the key to getting what you want out of life. And with a talent profile that goes deep into your behaviors, motivators, work energizers, and life priorities, employees can see their tendencies in real-life action and get the right guidance to help them achieve your goals. Improved Team Collaboration & Coaching So you’ve helped your team members become more aware of their tendencies. Great! Now, it’s time to leverage these predominant behavioral themes for your team to achieve better communication and collaboration -- and that starts with elevating emotional intelligence across your team. Imagine being able to take emotional intelligence insights from your team members’ profiles and put them right where employees communicate most often -- think meetings, chat, and email. You’re probably already using communication technology like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, and more! But you’re probably not optimizing your use of those tools by integrating emotional intelligence for your team. With a simple integrated plug-in, you can give your staff the kind of information needed to better communicate and collaborate with one another -- based on their talent profiles & personas -- taking all of the guesswork out of it and allowing them to spend time on the work that matters.For example, imagine giving every employee a collaboration coach that helps them work more effectively with anyone! We call it the HT Coach, and it uses assessment insights and applies AI to help team members work better together. With the HT Coach feature, all you have to do is ask a question (or use the pre-loaded questions) about your colleague, and like magic, you have a response that will help you communicate more effectively with your teammate. Imagine the day-to-day leadership training you could instill while encouraging better connection and collaboration among employees! You can do the same for a team and gain insights into the makeup of your team in order to drive productivity. You’ll see your team’s similarities and differences -- the overall team dynamic -- on a continuum with team strengths highlighted and potential gap identified. This kind of information can help you finally manage the dynamics in a way to drives team effectiveness:Map current vs. target cultures for teams or the entire organization Pinpoint strengths and gaps to identify necessary shifts -- what do we need more of or less of Understand what work motivators contribute most to your team’s cultureThen, take those team culture analytics and apply them to your hiring plans. Resumes, LinkedIn, and educational backgrounds only tell some of the story. Besides being self reported, they are limited to only showing past experiences — whereas leveraging a psychometric-based talent profile more clearly reveals a person’s fuller potential when it comes to situational behavior, actions, opportunities for improvement, communication styles, and values — now and in the future. Building Stronger Teams More Efficiently For each role, region/geography, and department within the same company, the needs will be different and there is no out-of-the-box formula or one size fits all approach. Each individual you add or remove from the team will play a part in your culture’s evolution. That means it’s imperative to hire and train individuals who share or have demonstrated the values you have identified as paramount, believe in your vision, and are excited about the work your team is doing. Consider employing technology designed to help you identify your team's strengths and blind spots so you can build stronger, more engaged teams.

The Future of L&D: How AI & Technology Can Improve Talent Development & Support More Employees

05 Sep, 2024
L&D

3 Ways Practicing Empathy Improves Team Effectiveness

20 Aug, 2024
Collaboration

In a previous post, we talked about toxic leadership, as the main culprit for why employees leave, and how to start fixing it. In this post, we're going to dive deeper into one of the key traits that leaders practice and strengthen in order to become exceptional -- empathy! Empathy is the ability to feel what another person is feeling. It is the ability to put yourself in the other person's shoes in a big and meaningful way. It is to experience their emotions. Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. Empathy is absolutely critical to emotional intelligence. But it involves more than just being able to recognize the emotional states of others. It also involves your responses to people based on this information. In this article, we’re going to focus on putting your empathy to work, at work, and the result will be better team effectiveness. Why Empathy is Important for Team Effectiveness We live in an era filled with information. Without emotions and the ability to sense, understand, and respond to these emotions, any level of understanding and connection is impossible. In today’s business world, we have tools and methods for the efficient exchange of information, but these leave out a massive amount of what makes people human. Research has shown that empathy is essential at work, and when it comes to remote work, the critical need for developing both emotional intelligence -- and expressing it in the form of empathy -- for your team is imperative to its success. When a workplace is capable of demonstrating empathy, there are plenty of studies that show it to increase happiness, productivity, and retention among employees. In fact, a telling brain-imaging study found that, when employees recalled a boss that had been unkind or un-empathic, they showed increased activation in areas of the brain associated with avoidance and negative emotion while the opposite was true when they recalled an empathic boss. We know what often follows avoidance...increasing levels of dis-engagement, poorer communication, ineffective collaboration -- and high likelihood of resignation. Improving and practicing empathy is further complicated by the rise of virtual and hybrid work -- where on any given day some of your team members may or may not be in the office, which removes crucial in-person interaction more regularly experienced in our traditional office environments. Remote working essentially eliminates the requirement for employees to be co-located in a single place. That means those small episodes of social interaction are not occurring organically, and that organizations and leaders must become much more deliberate in the practice of empathetic leadership for team effectiveness. How to Practice Empathy as a Team Leader 1. See the Whole Person As a leader of remote employees or distributed teams, the onus falls on you to set the example and develop the culture. In any team, remote or not, it is crucial to be mindful and considerate of your colleagues as whole people. While this may sound simple, we’re often not great at considering things outside our immediate range of experience. So here’s what you can do foster this in your team: Key Actions:Create regular virtual opportunities for your team to meet, both formally and informally, and encourage them to share more about themselves, their families and personal interests. As a team, create and nurture an environment where it is encouraged to express a more personal side of yourself. More social communication of this kind is related to higher levels of trust in remote teams. Ask questions...demonstrate that you have listened and that you care by asking questions because you want to learn more. In addition to asking the other person questions, ask yourself questions like, “How would I feel or what would I do in this situation? Use technology to infuse empathy into communication. One of the unfortunate down-sides of online communication is that empathy often goes missing in these digital interactions, and digital tools are not the best for expressing human emotions. So if you and your distributed team can’t see each other in person and simply can’t wait on those organic interactions, technology based on psychometrics can fast-track the process and make digital more human again. There are plug-ins available that can help your team better understand how to work with one another so that collaboration is more meaningful and effective.2. Assume Positive Intent Remote work and the endless flood of information and online communication can easily lead to misunderstandings, turning what was supposed to be fast and easy communication into a source of frustration. Assuming negative intentions where there are none will soon crush a team’s dynamic. Developing your empathy skills will help you escape these negative emotions and work towards better collaboration. Key Actions:Work closely with your team or direct reports to get a good idea of their day-to-day experience. By understanding how their workflows operate, you will get a good understanding of what may cause frustration. Listen more. Encourage open communication between yourself and your remote team and its members, and focus on listening to what your employees are saying -- not just waiting to speak. To be empathetic, you have to key in on what the other person is saying, both nonverbally and verbally. Emotions can be seen and heard. You can pick up on feelings based on what the other person says and how they say it, including their tone. Take this example shared by Founder & CEO of Gravity Payments, Dan Price. He recounts a life-changing interaction shared between him and one of his employees. And he says his biggest lesson and the most important thing he learned was to listen to his employees. Identify and challenge your biases. We are all biased. People tend to approach situations with preconceived notions. It helps people feel prepared for situations. It helps people to feel in control and more comfortable. But preconceived notions, assumptions or biases make it difficult to listen fully. Work on identifying them and challenging these biases to improve empathy and become more inclusive of different perspectives.3. Develop a Safe Space The highest performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety — the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake. Studies show that psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind, creativity, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off — just the types of behavior that lead to breakthroughs or innovations. So how can you increase psychological safety on your own team? Key Actions:Approach conflict as a collaborator, not an adversary. When conflicts come up, avoid triggering a fight-or-flight reaction by asking, “How could we achieve a mutually desirable outcome?” Speak human-to-human, but anticipate reactions, plan countermoves, and adopt a learning mindset, where you’re truly curious to hear the other person’s point of view. Ask for feedback to illuminate your own blind spots. Open up for suggestions and ideas from your team and take time to reflect on them. If you create this sense of psychological safety on your own team starting now, you can expect to see higher levels of engagement, increased motivation to tackle difficult problems, more learning and development opportunities, and better performance. Commit to developing a psychologically safe culture. Discuss shared “team rules” openly. Create a supportive environment and make a good example of yourself by talking about challenges and tough issues that you are facing. Consider using a team collaboration tool to build trust with team members quickly.In the end, one of the easiest ways to practice empathy is to offer your support and tangible help. Sometimes, it is not enough to say, “I’m sorry to hear this.” Instead, say, “I’d like to help.” Or, “How can I support you?” Or, “What can I take off your plate?” Showing that you are willing to take time and energy to do something for someone else can go a long way to demonstrate you’re an empathetic leader. It shows that you are willing to invest your time in them and will lead to greater team effectiveness. Empathy in the workplace allows employees to better understand each other. When employees understand each other, they can better work together, and teams can be effective and productive. Leaders have the ability to empathize, and by empathizing they inspire others to be caring, and that trickles down. The results: a healthier, more inclusive culture and better team effectiveness. We help teams become more emotionally intelligent, and as a result, they better understand each other and work together more effectively -- team collaboration!

3 Ways to Power Employee Engagement Beyond the Survey

05 Aug, 2024
Employee Engagement

So you've rolled out your employee engagement survey and find yourself with some interesting insights! Now what? If you’re not sure what to do with that data, you’re not alone. Most companies don't know how to operationalize these insights to truly improve performance and the employee experience. But there’s not a moment to spare right now. In a trend that kicked off in 2021, more than 47 million people quit their jobs last year, and a record-breaking 4.5 million Americans quit in March alone (BLS), amounting to 3.0% of the workforce. Without a strategy for putting your employee engagement survey insights to work and a roadmap for operationalizing your culture , you may keep losing employees. The Problem with Employee Engagement Surveys Originally a human resources concept, employee engagement has taken on broader context and value in the modern workplace, serving as a measure of employees’ dedication and enthusiasm for their job, managers, co-workers, and the organization. However, HR departments often find it difficult to get employees to complete these employee engagement surveys. Sometimes, when workers do fill them out and HR discovers a department has a morale problem, it can be just as difficult to get those workers to speak up and explain why they're unhappy. There’s good reason for that. Employee engagement surveys, and the way they're administered, tend to have flaws that either prevent leaders from truly understanding morale at their companies, or from doing much to lift morale if it's low. Many surveys ask information about the respondent’s department, general title, compensation level, years with the company, and so on – making anonymity unlikely. Often, employees suspect that managers will easily figure out which replies were from whom, casting doubt on how honest a respondent might be. So if a survey reveals widespread discontent in a department or across the company, whether a leader will be able to address employee concerns will depend on how candid workers feel they can be with that leader. Surveys tend to serve as a poor substitute for daily face-to-face communication. The idea should be to create enough trust such that people can speak up without having to hide behind surveys. Your employee engagement survey will only be as successful as the effort and ability for post-survey culture change. When leaders do learn of morale problems through surveys, their reactions can range from denial and defensiveness to an embracing attitude that looks at the results as a baseline measure upon which improvements can be made. Better Ways to Foster a Culture of Feedback and Stronger Employee Engagement Use Shorter, Ongoing Feedback Channels: Use surveys to learn about your employees’ feelings on engagement. Let’s take a brief look at a couple of survey options:Pulse Survey Feedback: Organizations can frequently perform pulse surveys, which consist of 10-15 questions on a specific topic. These quick surveys don’t take much of your employees’ productivity time, but they give you a real-time reading of the mood throughout your organization. Career Mobility and Development Feedback: These types of surveys are typically peer-to-peer and subordinate-to-employee. They can help make the annual review process easier and more streamlined, but also provide valuable information on your employees’ career mobility plans. Employees now expect mobility and flexibility to move into different roles and to shape their workdays. But many employers do not create personalized progression plans for their employees.Conduct One-to-One Employee Interviews: Employee engagement interviews can be informal exchanges among managers or HR leaders and remote employees through phone calls or Zoom sessions. These might be helpful to conduct each month or quarter. They are an opportunity for employees to share any concerns, new ideas, comments, and for you to demonstrate that you hear and see the employee. These face-to-face check-ins can also help you nip problems in the bud – before they grow into mountains and this becomes an exit interview. Encourage Virtual Break: Employees naturally form relationships at the watercooler or taking 15-minute walks together. In today’s way of working, encourage your employees to make these breaks virtual. Recommend setting up a Zoom coffee break or a Zoom walk via social media posts. Thanks to smartphones, people can enjoy break time with co-workers just as easily and regularly as ever, which will help build trust and stronger relationships – translating into better engagement. Run Mood Meter Checks: Before the beginning of a meeting, ask everyone to respond with a quick phrase, single term, emoji, gif or meme to reflect a combination of their mood and personality – or ask for a rating between 1 to 10. These fun mood checks are low-key surveys without the intention of gathering feedback. Instead, these mood checks can be used to make sure everyone is having a good day and to see if you need to follow up with anyone after the meeting. Mix It Up With Games Thanks to today’s amazing technological tools, you can create a seamless work environment for everyone, no matter where they are. Suggest that employees participate in fun activities such as:Open mic sessions for singers, poets and comedians Scavenger hunts Gardening chats and seed-starting tutorials Interactive video games Team triviaReal-Time Communication & Collaboration Tools for Better Connection: One of the biggest sources of employee frustration and discontent is a lack of connection and ability to collaborate effectively with teammates. With a communication & collaboration plugin to your already existing daily communication tools – Gmail, Outlook, Zoom, Teams, and Slack, you have access in real time to:Tips to better understand team members’ learning styles, motivations, and values An ability to create a more equitable and engaging experience for remote team members Actionable emotional intelligence data that helps team members work better with one anotherThe Next Step: Operationalizing Engagement In addition to these tactics, consider what technology can do for you when it comes to putting your employee engagement survey insights to work. This means taking the challenges you uncovered during your employee engagement survey and identifying WHY employees feel this way and HOW to improve it. What are the behavior, motivators, and work energizers that have led to your survey results -- the why? Knowing if your team members are content or not, engaged or not, is not all that helpful. And it also does not help align your culture to business strategy, which is essential if you want to improve organizational performance. That's where Humantelligence comes in. We help you understand the why and then provide the insights needed to align culture to strategy for a team, a functional group, a division, or the entire organization. In the end, team members who are engaged and connected with their organization tend to feel that their position and efforts in the company make a difference. This feeling can inspire them to stay with the organization longer. They also want to work in a role that matches their values and builds their skills. The problem is, many employees are not in roles that match their skills or their values. Compounding that, employers are using a “warm body” approach to hiring, not considering the personality traits, motivations or skills of candidates. Because of that, employee frustration often comes through in the employee engagement survey results. Make sure employees are a fit for their role and that it aligns with their goals. As a result, your team's performance and productivity will improve.

What You Might Be Getting Wrong with Personality Tests

09 Jul, 2024
Collaboration

In the fast-paced realm of modern work, where remote and hybrid work arrangements are commonplace, the intricacies of collaboration have taken on a whole new meaning. Traditional personality tests, once heralded as the solution to understanding personalities and team dynamics, find themselves woefully inadequate in this landscape. The primary problem is that they lack accessibility because they aren’t seamlessly integrated into teams’ daily workflows. Even when accessible, personality tests demand interpretation and lose the essence of quick, actionable insights. Moreover, they focus merely on behaviors, overlooking the vital motivators, values, and work styles that drive individuals and teams. Yet, a more significant concern looms large — the emergence of AI, blurring the lines between professional evaluation and personal privacy. This article will explore strategies on how to use personality tests in team building through leveraging technology and AI to create and sustain effective team collaboration. A Quick History in Personality Tests in the Workplace The world of pre-hire and employee self-assessments is age old. Based on historically recorded information, the first pre-employment cognitive testing may have been used during the imperial examination in China, dating back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD). Its use was standardized during the Song Dynasty (960 AD – 1279 AD) as a civil service exam for candidates wishing to enter the state bureaucracy. The imperial examination tested candidates’ knowledge on topics such as civil law and fiscal policy, and helped the nation transition from a military ruling class to a scholarly one. Objective personality testing began with Woodworth's Personal Data Sheet in 1917. That test was developed to identify soldiers prone to nervous breakdowns during enemy bombardment as well as shell shock during World War I. Soon after, many competing personality tests were developed for use in American industry. Many of these tests focused on the construct of employee maladjustment and were deemed important in screening out applicants who would create workplace disturbances. As time went on, many types of personality assessment tools were developed. One famous test used in the early 20th century was the MMPI, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Established as a way of determining psychopathology, it was used in some cases as a hiring assessment until the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission stopped its use as a violation of the standards of non-discrimination. Another, established in 1943, was the MBTI or Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, and it has served as a popular assessment for a number of purposes, including executive development. It was inspired by the work of renowned Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. While useful for staff development, it has demonstrated limitations in the selection of candidates. The use of other assessments and skills tests continues to proliferate the business world. Millions of workers take assessments each year as part of personnel selection, to improve collaboration and teamwork, and to identify next steps in a career path. On its own, personality testing is a $500 million industry, with an annual growth rate estimated at 10 to 15 percent. Employers are continuing to use hiring, leadership, and employee mobility assessments to gather data points that will enable more informed decisions in the area most critical to the company’s success – its people. Making the wrong decision can be very expensive, so HR departments, executives, and team leaders rely on these tests – some with more success than others – even though most of these tools have failed to keep pace with the changing needs of today’s workforce. 3 Limitations of Most of Today’s Personality Tests Thankfully, assessment tools have evolved significantly since their early days. For example, the ability to take an assessment online, from anywhere in the world, has made them much more attractive than they once were, and algorithms can score tests quickly and easily. A wide variety of instruments can be used this way: Cognitive Ability Tests, Integrity Tests, Interviews, Job Knowledge Tests, and Personality Tests. According to G2, there are 189 tools in the market – but that’s just a listing of pre-employment testing software! So while many of these tools are certainly continuing to evolve – albeit slowly – their limitations remain glaring, especially those in the personality assessment category. To get any kind of value from these tools, many require external consultants or facilitators who are certified in particular assessment methodology. This then requires a highly manual implementation process whereby data is collected, aggregated, and analyzed by that consultant – and that takes time. This is why employer assessments have required an intermediary and remained within the domain of costly certified consultants. Personality tests are supposed to help you understand your team, build trust, establish psychological safety, and create an inclusive workplace culture. In remote or hybrid work environments, they fail to carry out that purpose for a few reasons:The test only measures behaviors, not what motivates an individual or team. Most assessments only measure behaviors and are vulnerable to multiple biases, misunderstandings, and interpretations with no chance of clarification. They're not sensitive to the employee's state of mind when the test occurs and may be biased due to the timing of its findings. It fails to take into consideration change and adaptability. As an employee starts a job, they gain experience, try to develop every day, and subsequently adjust to correct previous shortcomings. These tests fail to allow room for that inevitable change and improvement. The results are not worth the expense. Assessments like the Myers-Briggs personality test and the Clifton Strengths test are costly and take a long time to be implemented. Additionally, further interpretation of the results can only be completed by a costly certified consultant or a psychologist.Common Challenges When Adapting to Remote or Hybrid Work Environments To complicate things, hybrid work environments are becoming the norm. This means employees must continue to get used to the mix of in-house and remote work and find ways to make virtual teamwork collaborative and successful. In trying to manage the hybrid workforce, here are some common challenges organizations encounter: Lack of connection: Remote teams mean personal and social connections are lost almost entirely. Members don't know their teammates, as there are no coffee breaks or lunch meetings where employees can sit together and break the ice. Mentorship and bonds between employees are hard to forge, and such a disconnect can make employees unhappy and less committed to the job. Lack of communication: Differences in how information should be relayed between workstations can be a big challenge. An example can be seen when a Gen Zer sends an email. Even if it contains lots of detail and information that a millennial recipient needs, it also has a lot of abbreviations and shorthand because that is how Gen Z likes to write. However, the millennial prefers more conceptual and formal communication and sees this email as unstructured, thereby ignoring it. The receiving person will likely delete the email and classify it as not worth reading, regardless of its vital information. Doing so leads to a loss in productivity and reaction time in completing that task. Lack of collaboration: Distributed team collaboration is a big issue within remote teams, as some employees might get left out of decision-making processes. Collaborating with remote teams takes more time and effort than with those who work together in person. This makes collaboration a big challenge in a hybrid work setting. It’s not all dismal though. Personality assessments can be very helpful in identifying the right kind of person for a role, to complement your existing team, or to help navigate conflict that currently exists on a team; and they can be particularly effective when aligning leadership teams. However, the most effective assessments are the one-stop shops that can serve multiple purposes at once: that is, use the data to hire and build more balanced teams, for leadership and team building, and to identify high potential employees and possible development and promotion paths. How Do Technology & AI Improve the Impact of Psychometrics in the Workplace? Psychometric testing in the workplace through technology and AI acts as the glue that holds together different teams in the organization by helping boost connectivity. The following are just some of the many examples of how psychometric questionnaires paired with AI can enhance distributed team collaboration.Technology and AI connect all employees whether or not you've physically met them. They can track phone calls, virtual meetings, and related data to summarize when and how often people need to meet and connect. This helps to foster and potentially identify cultural aspects of the organization that are associated with productivity and performance. AI helps rewrite emails in various communication styles, all based on how the recipient likes to receive information – which reduces the friction among team members of different generations or backgrounds, thereby improving communication and mutual understanding within your workforce. It is responsible for suggesting and influencing virtual meetings for training, onboarding new members, and building good relationships – all based on actionable psychometric insights. Psychometric testing in the workplace builds an inclusive spirit by showing that differences can do wonders for teams that are willing to be open-minded and enhance efficiency. This diversity of thought leads to innovation and better problem-solving.Using Psychometrics in Your Existing Collaboration Tools In the digital realm, psychometric assessments are not just tools; they're catalysts in transforming remote and hybrid team dynamics. Imagine having essential insights at your fingertips, bridging the gap between colleagues you've met and those you haven't. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination. Utilize them for personalized email communication and AI-driven suggestions, crafting impactful 1-to-1 interactions. Leverage personality insights in meeting invites, empowering you to prepare in advance, supported by AI's tailored prompts. In virtual settings, these psychometric insights about team members can guide training, influence strategies, aid in onboarding new members, and foster cross-functional collaboration in ways unlike ever before There are many assessment tools and plenty of hybrid work technology out there that can help you identify great candidates, opportunities for manager and leadership development, or areas of strength and improvement for teams. However, not every tool can do all of these things in the same amount of time – unless it captures data in three key areas: behaviors, motivators, and work energizers – and then aggregates that data into actionable insights you can use to improve your teams. And we can help.

13 Ways to Work Effectively Across Teams

02 Jul, 2024
Collaboration

Workplace Collaboration...a Problem Costing You More Than You Know

13 Jun, 2024
Collaboration

In a global survey of more than 2,000 workers, more than two-thirds of employees (64%) claim that poor workplace collaboration is wasting at least 3-5 hours of productivity per week -- and some even say more than 6 hours. As a result, nearly half of those employees have left or would consider leaving their job due to poor collaboration. “Collaboration, in terms of how we work together, and the tools we use to do so, is firmly under the spotlight at present,” said Scott Day, Chief People Officer at Corel. “Prior to the pandemic, we underappreciated how easy it was to collaborate. Now, with the shift to new hybrid models of working, cracks in how we work together have begun to show and the onus is on businesses to actively seek new models of collaboration that suit the way that their employees want to work.” In that same survey, 78% of employees claim their businesses’ leadership could be doing more to promote collaboration within the organization, with 27% claiming that their organization hasn’t invested in the right collaboration tools. But the companies that are promoting, encouraging and investing in workplace collaboration have been linked to reducing employee turnover rates by 50%. A workplace collaboration problem costing you money, time and resources can be fixed with a strategic approach to relationship building and a focus on team performance and the employee experience. Collaboration Powers Productivity We are now at the next stage of work where hybrid and remote working have moved from being an employee request, to an employee expectation. Business leaders need to embrace this change, making a concerted effort to create a working environment that makes it easy for employees to work together–and a critical part of this means investing in the right tools. Failure to do so will see businesses struggle to attract and retain their best talent and they will continue to be at a competitive disadvantage. In fact, it's a problem worth fixing when you consider that effective communication and collaboration sparks both creativity, innovation, and productivity -- all which leads to better team effectiveness and hence business outcomes.A recent American study of 1,100 companies carried out by the Institute for Corporate Productivity and Babson College found those that promoted collaborative working were five times more likely to be high performing. In 2008, a University of Maryland meta study of 72 different pieces of research highlighted significant benefits from using an agile software development approach – that is, a collaborative approach. It showed significant improvements in costs, reduced timescales, productivity and return on investment.How much does collaboration increase productivity? The benefits of using collaboration tools are real. Collaboration increases productivity by 25% or more. A comprehensive workplace study by McKinsey looked specifically at the effect of improving collaboration through improved internal social tools, so it’s likely that the total effect of collaboration increases productivity by even more than 25%. Source: Raconteur Employees Value Workplace Collaboration More Than You ThinkMore than 50% of workers in the United States say their jobs are reliant on collaboration. 86% of employees in leadership positions blame lack of collaboration as the top reason for workplace failures. About 75% of employees rate teamwork and collaboration as being very important. Employees are 17% more satisfied with their job when they engage in collaboration at work. Over the last 20 years, workplace collaboration has increased by at least 50%. Top-performing workers spend 45% of their time working collaboratively. Only 9% of surveyed employees in a Deloitte study reported that their place of employment had very effective sharing and collaboration tools. Collaborating on tasks and sharing ideas is valued at $1,660 per employee each year and that quality improvements made as a result of workplace collaboration are valued at $2,517 per employee each year. (Deloitte) Companies that promote collaboration at work have 5x better performance rates.Source: Zippia At the end of the day, focusing on workplace collaboration in the context of the employee experience doesn’t just help your people; it also helps the company. An employee who feels connection to others is an employee who is most likely to engage. And an employee who can fully engage is an employee who feels compelled to stay. That means you stave off the risk of the lost productivity, lower morale, and customer dissatisfaction that can arise when turnover is rampant. If you're looking for a more effective way your team can work together to meet goals, we can help. In the meantime, use these https://www.humantelligence.com/tips-guides/5-strategies-to-supercharge-team-collaboration/ to start improving collaboration on your team today!

Managing Distributed Teams: 5 Red Flags & 4 Ways to to Them Green

06 May, 2024
Collaboration

Managing distributed teams is challenging, but remote work has become the norm. Globally, more and more employers are embracing flexible schedules for their remote teams leading to new remote work trends and more remote work options. What many companies fail to pay attention to is the impact on culture. With a bevy of savvy job seekers and your current employees evaluating new opportunities everyday, let’s explore a few red flags when it comes to managing distributed teams and how you can turn them green. Managing Distributed Teams as the Norm According to TECLA, 85 percent of managers believe that having managing distributed teams and having remote workers is now the norm. What’s more, the share of online job searches for remote positions jumped 460 percent in the two years between June 2019 and June 2021, according to an analysis by Glassdoor. Trends show that businesses will continue to adopt a hybrid or remote-first approach to their working environment. In fact, 79 percent of the C-Suite would let their employees split their time between corporate offices and remote working if their job allows for it. These digital workplaces and location-agnostic arrangements will allow employees greater freedom and control over their schedules, giving them the power to decide where and when they work. It will also allow companies to save on overhead costs and free up budget to focus on other people-focused initiatives – like creating a more equitable remote work culture. 5 Warning Signs Your Distributed Team Might Be Suffering When it comes to remote work, it can be challenging to maintain or shift company culture in ways that empower all employees. Here are some warning signs or red flags that indicate you don’t have an empowering remote work culture.No onboarding program specific to remote new-hires or for a remote work culture: If your company hasn’t taken the time to learn how to train remote employees — from how to use their technology to best practices for communicating and collaborating with teams — it probably hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking about how to onboard new employees virtually. This signals a lack of investment and, potentially, a lack of support. No social events that mix remote and non-remote employees: If your company hasn’t figured out how to routinely host events that encourage remote and non-remote employees to get to know each other, it’s being the opposite of inclusive – that’s right, exclusive to its in-office employees. Loneliness and a lack of visibility are two commonly cited downsides of working remotely — but they’re issues that are pretty easily overcome with effort from employers. No procedures for meetings that mix remote and non-remote employees: If your team is made up of remote and non-remote employees, and you don’t have standards for how to make sure everyone is included and heard, you’re not valuing the remote experience. Employers who care about supporting their remote employees make sure that meeting rooms have the proper technology and that leaders know how to make the proper space — and they make sure these standards are followed every time. Digital communication tools are not prioritized: In managing distributed teams, people can't have impromptu conversations. However, there are plenty of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools to help address the gaps that can occur when some people are not physically present. If digital tools that support better communication and collaboration have not been set in place or prioritized by management, and teams haven't been advised on how to optimize them, then you’re not setting your teams up for success. No highly visible roles are held by remote employees: If an employer calls themselves “remote-friendly” but doesn’t have anyone in leadership roles working remotely, it’s worth asking why. If working remotely is reserved for roles with no upward mobility — or no organizational weight — you cannot claim to have an empowering remote work culture.Quick Improvements for Managing Distributed Team To turn your red flags green, here are some quick actions to start now. Start:Valuing behaviors, motivators, and competencies Praising innovative thinking and initiative Encouraging people to speak up and provide feedback Building traditions with your team Using team collaboration tools to help team members connect and communicate more effectivelyStop:Valuing titles and position Over-praising rules & punishing for broken rules Allowing information to flow via channels of gossip Creating silos of work and US vs. THEM situations Relying on engagement surveys to identify & measure cultureChange:Communication to a clearer, accountable, and more honest version of its former self. Allow people to ask for the “why” behind decisions, and be patient and open in explaining that. Double down on communication -- just when you think you’ve communicated enough, do more! The physical environment in ways that support your cultural values and help to shape the behavior of groups in a positive way -- now more than ever, this means enabling better remote and hybrid work environments that are rooted in trust. Any practices that are perceived as unfair. It might mean redesigning how you do things -- but remember bullet one...explaining the “why” can be game changing.Below are four long-term recommendations that will help you remove any remote work inequities, so that your remote work culture can thrive. Make Meetings a Place to Connect PWC’s Remote Work survey found that employees and employers alike prize aspects of virtual work, such as flexibility, as well as the office experience, such as in-person collaboration. Ideally, a distributed work environment can offer the best of both worlds. But just know that hybrid environments also carry the real risk of bias in favor of those who are physically working on site — and stigmatize those who are working remotely. As physical offices reopen, employees who come back to offices and prioritize in-person interactions could end up having an edge over others who remain working from home, either by choice or circumstances. It’s a subconscious bias that can lead to managers or other decision makers offering more or better opportunities to the people they see, rather than the employees on the phone or video. That said, meetings are a prime opportunity to level the playing field and create better inclusion. What follows is a short but immediately impactful list of some of the most effective ways you can start fostering a more inclusive approach to conducting meetings:Prep and send your agenda ahead of time: If you’re organizing a meeting, provide your meeting agenda one day ahead of time. By sending out an agenda in advance, you’re designing a more inclusive meeting. Be accessible: Some video conferencing solutions offer live closed captions, which appear as someone speaks, for users who are deaf or hard of hearing. There is also video meeting software available for people who are blind/have low vision and use screen readers that turn text, images, and other elements into audio or braille. Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and BlueJeans all offer live closed captions that are created by artificial intelligence. Zoom offers live closed captioning if you type them in yourself or use a third-party service. All of these programs are also screen reader accessible. Leverage all of the different features your video platform has to make it easier for everyone to contribute. For example, the hand raise feature can allow someone to signal when they have something to say, which can be useful for people who don’t like to interject. Break groups up so that people who have trouble speaking in larger settings have a chance to contribute ideas with just a few colleagues. For instance, if you’re having the team brainstorm for an upcoming project, you could split them up into smaller breakout groups for a set period of time, and then have a representative from each group report back with the ideas. The private chat function is also helpful for managers to help people who have trouble thinking on the spot. Rather than calling on someone without warning, chat them and let them know you’d like them to share XYZ in a few minutes. This will help them prepare, and they can also alert you if they need more time. As a meeting attendee, you can also use the chat feature to encourage a fellow colleague to share an important idea. Gather feedback: You could also deploy a survey that covers video meeting inclusivity. Afterwards, disaggregate the data to look at race, gender, and other demographics, and you might find larger quantities of feedback from particular groups, such as women of color or those who identify as LGBTQ+, common feedback themes or specific issues among particular identities on your team.Invest in Technology for Managing Distributed Teams In the coming year, companies will continue to rely on software solutions to improve engagement and company culture. In addition to the standard team communication and document-sharing solutions, HR teams are paying more attention to team collaboration solutions that integrate with their HRIS. Our list of top must-have tools to manage distributed teams include:Team Chat AppsWhile everyone has access to email and text messaging, businesses need to provide a special venue for spontaneous and seamless communications. Team chat software tools offer improved communication for everyone on your team. The best tools in this category allow for impromptu conversations and the ability to share messages, ideas, documents and videos.Remote Desktop SoftwareEmployees working at home might occasionally run into problems that only IT professionals can solve. It is much easier, efficient and cost-effective for IT team members to access desktops via remote software tools than visit employees’ homes for quick troubleshooting.Video Conferencing ToolsOver the past few years, video conferencing tools have become increasingly popular, helping businesses connect with remote-based and traveling workers. The remote revolution spurred by COVID-19 has brought even more businesses into the video conferencing mix. Business leaders have discovered that video conferencing tools enhance engagement, increase productivity, provide clarification in collaboration, and lower communication costs.Project Management AppsProject management apps are effective tools for in-house work as well as remote work. The best project management tools allow for improved communications and collaboration, better scheduling to keep the project on track, enhanced communication with clients, easier task delegation, standardized processes, and streamlined budget management.Screen-Recording SoftwareScreen-recording software has become an invaluable tool for employees in various contexts. For employees working in customer contact centers, screen recording instantly provides a record of every chat session with customers to help ensure quality service. Employees working collaboratively can share snapshots of online research material snippets to get to the point of an article quickly and carry on the discussion.Screen-Sharing ToolsScreen-sharing tools work in conjunction with several tools listed. Your employees can take screen recordings with screen-sharing capabilities and share them with colleagues and management in chat app sessions, video conferences, and direct communications via email and text.Cloud Storage ServicesCloud storage services help employees maintain more control over their off-site work environment, managing documents and files with more support and ease. Since employees are often responsible to help ensure data is secure and accessible, cloud storage benefits have become invaluable remote work tools.To-Do List ToolsMost of your employees have repetitive daily tasks or steps to complete multifaceted processes that can get lost in the mix without special attention. It’s easy to get distracted in any circumstance — but especially when working remotely. To-do list tools can provide prompts and reminders to keep employees on track.Wellbeing AppsMany companies interested in improving employee retention are focusing on workplace wellness. Why? Because improved health and wellness leads to increased productivity, better employee focus, and company health care savings. Regardless of whether or not your company has an official wellness program, you can still take steps toward healthier habits during your workday. Here are 7 seven wellness apps to consider providing for your team.Security ToolsNo matter how diligent your employees are about peak home security, they might need improved security tools — especially working with your organization’s confidential documents. Key security tools to consider include a VPN, PC threat monitoring, and secure file-sharing and cloud collaboration.Brainstorming and Mind-Mapping ToolsYou don’t want to lose your team’s brainstorming momentum because nearly everyone is working remotely. With online whiteboards and mind-mapping tools, your team can virtually maintain the collaborative nature of brainstorming.Inclusion & Emotional IntelligenceWhat most of these technologies do is connect devices and teams, but they do not build the person-to-person connection. And when your team is hybrid or remote, one of the most important critical components for a team's wellbeing and productivity is a sense of inclusion and belonging. An inclusive approach to communication requires emotional intelligence. That leads us to our next recommendation. Lead with Empathy As a leader charged with managing distributed teams, you set the example. In any team, remote or not, it is crucial to be mindful and considerate of your colleagues as whole people. While this may sound simple, we’re often not great at considering things outside our immediate range of experience. Here’s what you can do to foster this in your team.Create regular virtual opportunities for your team to meet, both formally and informally, and encourage them to share more about themselves, their families and personal interests. As a team, create and nurture an environment where it is encouraged to express a more personal side of yourself. More social communication of this kind is related to higher levels of trust in remote teams. Ask questions...demonstrate that you have listened and that you care by asking questions because you want to learn more. In addition to asking the other person questions, ask yourself questions like, “How would I feel or what would I do in this situation? Assume positive intent. Remote work and the endless flood of information and online communication can easily lead to misunderstandings, turning what was supposed to be fast and easy communication into a source of frustration. Assuming negative intentions where there are none will soon crush a team’s dynamic. Developing your empathy skills will help you escape these negative emotions and work towards better collaboration. Listen more. Encourage open communication between yourself and your remote team and its members, and focus on listening to what your employees are saying -- not just waiting to speak. To be empathetic, you have to key in on what the other person is saying, both nonverbally and verbally. Emotions can be seen and heard. You can pick up on feelings based on what the other person says and how they say it, including their tone. Identify and challenge your biases. We are all biased. People tend to approach situations with preconceived notions. It helps people feel prepared for situations. It helps people to feel in control and more comfortable. But preconceived notions, assumptions. or biases make it difficult to listen fully. Work on identifying them and challenging these biases to improve empathy and become more inclusive of different perspectives. Develop a safe space. The highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety — the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake. Studies show that psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind, creativity, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off — just the types of behavior that lead to breakthroughs or innovations. So how can you increase psychological safety on your own team?In the end, one of the easiest ways to practice empathy is to offer your support and tangible help. Sometimes, it is not enough to say, “I’m sorry to hear this.” Instead, say, “I’d like to help.” Or, “How can I support you?” Or, “What can I take off your plate?” Showing that you are willing to take time and energy to do something for someone else can go a long way to demonstrate you’re an empathetic leader. It shows that you are willing to invest your time in them. Empathy and emotional intelligence in the workplace allows employees to better understand each other. When employees understand each other, they can better work together, and teams can be effective and productive. Leaders have the ability to empathize, and by empathizing they inspire others to be caring, and that trickles down. The result: healthier, more inclusive, productive teams. To learn more about how Humantelligence can help you in managing distributed teams, contact us.

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