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FastCompany: 3 Essential Types of Conversations Managers Should Have With Their People

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FastCompany: 3 Essential Types of Conversations Managers Should Have With Their People

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How Helping Others Could Make You Feel Less Rushed

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GreaterGood: How Helping Others Could make You Feel Less Rushed

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GreaterGood: How Helping Others Could make You Feel Less Rushed

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At 10:00 a.m. on December 14, 1970, a sunny day in Princeton, New Jersey, the first batch of volunteers arrived for a psychology experiment. The participants were seminary students at Princeton Theological, studying religion in preparation for a life of spiritual service.

Upon arrival at the study administrator's office, the participants were told that the experiment would examine career paths of seminarians. Each was asked to prepare a short talk on the topic and given some reading material for inspiration. Half the participants received a sheet of paper with questions and ideas about the best use of a seminary education. The other half received a copy of the famous New Testament parable of the Good Samaritan, who stops on the road to help someone in need.

All of this, unbeknownst to the volunteers, was mere prelude.

The administrator then informed each volunteer that, due to space constraints, they would have to walk over to a different building to share their talk. The participants were handed a map outlining a route that took them through an alley to the next building. One by one, the participants set out. Entering the alley, each participant encountered a startling sight: a pile of a man, slumped and motionless in a dark doorway, moaning in distress.

Here was the experiment: Who would stop to help, like the Good Samaritan, and who would pass him by?

The groaning man, a disguised member of the research team, noted the reactions of each seminarian. Some hurried past without noticing him. Others looked or nodded but didn't stop. Some paused briefly to ask if the man was all right. And then there were a few "superhelpers" who guided the suffering man inside, refusing to leave until care had arrived.

Who stopped? Who rushed past? What determined whether a person took the time to help another human in need? Study directors John Darley and C. Daniel Batson had hypothesized that priming the students to think about the Good Samaritan would make them more likely to help-a demonstration of the power of scripture to inspire moral behavior.

However, analysis showed no statistically significant difference. Students who hadn't read the parable helped (or neglected to help) in similar numbers to those that had. None of the other variables Darley and Batson tested-such as what type of religious beliefs the participants held-made a difference, either.

All except one: time. Students who were told to hurry to their destination were significantly less likely to stop to help a man in pain. Students who were told they had a bit of spare time to make the walk stopped more frequently and offered more substantial forms of help.

We are hard-pressed to imagine people more likely to stay and help than seminary students. And yet, even among those who devote their lives to serving others, the perception of being short on time kept them from helping someone in obvious need.

Decades later, with life moving faster than ever, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Time is one of the most significant barriers to social connection today. We believe ourselves to be suffering from a "time famine": always with too much to do, and never enough time to get it done. The modern corporation enshrines this famine mindset. Workplace systems monitor how and where employees spend their days. Employees keep "time pies" to track their allocation of this scarce resource against specific projects. The perennial struggle for work-life balance often comes down to one problem: I simply don't have enough hours in the day to do well at both work and home. Seventy percent of Americans eat lunch at their desks or don't eat lunch at all. Lack of time-or our perception of lack of time-keeps us from connecting.

Our brains, like those of the Princeton seminary students rushing to another building, treat time as a central factor in deciding whether to spend time helping others. Hunger, fatigue, and injury are some of the other determinants of how generous we are willing to be, but time is the resource most precious today.

Ask doctors whether they have the time to interact with patients in the manner they'd most desire, and more than half -56%-will tell you they lack the time to treat them with compassion. Importantly, it's often not objective lack of time but rather our subjective experience of a "time famine" that drives this mindset. Connecting rapidly requires addressing and overcoming that perception.

Building rapid rapport

Seminarians rushing from one building to the next didn't stop to help a crumpled man in an alley because they had been told to hurry. That instruction-"hurry"-triggers a mental script. Our focus narrows. We move quickly, ignoring stimuli that could deter us from our goal-including social distractions. Hurrying is not inherently bad, but a never-ending time famine diminishes our quality of life and causes us to miss important opportunities. The trick is to disrupt this script to restore our sense of equilibrium. How?

Two distinct strategies can help us here. First, while we cannot add more hours to the day, we can make it feel like we did exactly that. A famous 2010 study by a trio of professors from Wharton, Yale, and Harvard examined four strategies for reducing our sense of time famine:

Giving people time back in their day that had previously been committed to a task

Asking people to spend that same amount of time on a task helping others

Asking people to waste the time

Asking people to spend that time on themselves

Only one of these interventions gave people the feeling of having time to spare-what the authors call "time affluence." Want to guess which one?

The title of the article sums up its conclusion: " Giving Time Gives You Time." When we help others-for just 30 or even 15 minutes-we experience that as time added to our day, rather than lost. Helping ourselves, by comparison, does nothing.

Internalizing this lesson takes practice. Start by challenging yourself to give time to others in moments when you feel time pressure not to do so. Afterwards, reflect on the experience by noticing the increased sense of time affluence that results. Start small and build-but start. Fight through the "hurry worry," because it's precisely when we feel least capable of helping others that doing so can do us the most good.

The second strategy addressing time famine does so by quantifying how long it actually takes to help. We have an unfortunate tendency to overestimate the amount of time needed, and therefore not to help at all. This is a particularly intractable problem in medicine: Healthcare clinics are so understaffed that workers there feel they can't adequately care for any one patient, let alone all of them.

A number of interventions have been tested to teach physicians how to efficiently, but effectively, show compassion. Researchers at Johns Hopkins, for example, tested a script that cancer doctors can use to bookend their patient encounters.

At the start of the appointment, the oncologists say, "I know this is a tough experience to go through and I want you to know that I am here with you. Some of the things that I say to you today may be difficult to understand, so I want you to feel comfortable stopping me if I say something that is confusing or doesn't make sense. We are here together, and we will go through this together."

Then, at the end of the appointment, the doctors said: "I know this is a tough time for you, and I want to emphasize again that we are in this together. I will be with you each step along the way."

Patients whose doctors share these words with them rated their doctors as warmer, more compassionate, and more caring. Perhaps more important, these patients have demonstrably lower levels of anxiety than patients whose doctors did not say these things.

The purpose of this study was not to demonstrate that compassion matters, however. It was to show just how quickly one can display compassion to a patient. All told, the script took an average of only forty seconds to deliver. Just ninety-nine words yielded significantly less anxiety for each patient.

Several other studies have reached similar conclusions. A Netherlands study on delivering bad news to patients found it takes only thirty-eight seconds to express compassion in a way that will lower the patient's anxiety. A 2017 study found that every compassionate statement a doctor made, in increments as short as ten seconds, reduced patient anxiety by 4.2%, with a cumulative effect for each additional statement.

It's difficult to imagine a scenario more consequential than delivering bad medical news. If harried doctors reciting a prewritten script can move the needle in just ten seconds, it follows that managers, call center agents, hosts, and airline stewards could expect similar results.

Try it for yourself, ten seconds at a time. As time starved as we may feel, the sad truth is that we waste anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours at work each day surfing the web or in other ways. Who among us cannot actually spare a few seconds to connect with a peer or customer or neighbor, with simple words of compassion?

Great job today. I know it's been tough this past week. I see how hard you are working and I'm proud to be working alongside you.

I really admire how you are rolling with the punches. I want you to know you're not in it alone. I'm here, too, and we'll figure it out together.

Achieving time affluence requires challenging your own perception of time famine. Remind yourself to give just a few minutes or even seconds to someone else. Then notice-and enjoy!-the sense of expanded time that results.

We need each other. We need to matter to each other. We need each other to feel well, to be well, to live well, to work well. We need each other to succeed personally and professionally.

The barriers to connection presented by the modern way of life-lack of time, chief among them-are significant and will become even more so in the decades to come.

Overcoming this barrier requires that we fight our own perception of being starved for time, so that we can pursue the social behaviors that will, in fact, help us feel that we have time to spare. The work is challenging, but it is its own reward.

Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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How Helping Others Could Make You Feel Less Rushed

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Overcoming barriers to compassion and social connection could entail changing our relationship to time.

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Fast Company: 5 Traits That Separate Hi-Po Employees From Hi-Perf Employees 

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Fast Company: 5 Traits That Separate Hi-Po Employees From Hi-Perf Employees 

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HBR: Office Politics Don’t Have to Be Toxic

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HBR: Office Politics Don’t Have to Be Toxic

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Office politics might seem unpleasant, but the ability to build relationships, access opportunities, and influence others is critical for anyone’s professional development. Unfortunately, research has shown that employees from underrepresented groups are often excluded from the informal mechanisms o…

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Listen to this episode from HBR IdeaCast on Spotify. We all know that leaders need to captivate audiences and effectively convey their ideas. But not every speaking opportunity can be prepared and practiced.

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Inc: Finding & Nurturing Superpowers in Your Workers 

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Inc: Finding & Nurturing Superpowers in Your Workers 

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Finding and Nurturing the Superpowers in Your Workers

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This entrepreneur hires subject matter experts and then encourages humility

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WSJ: "How Do I Do That?" The New Hires of 2023 Are Unprepared for Work"

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WSJ: "How Do I Do That?" The New Hires of 2023 Are Unprepared for Work"

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Douglas Belkin, Ben Chapman and Ben Kesling

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‘How Do I Do That?’ The New Hires of 2023 Are Unprepared for Work

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Remote learning during the pandemic left students short of basic skills. Now companies are trying to teach them on the job.

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The Second City Works: Getting to Yes, And...

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The Second City Works: Getting to Yes, And...

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Second City Works presents "Getting to Yes, And"

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Listen to Second City Works presents "Getting to Yes, And" on Spotify. Second City Works presents "Getting to Yes, And" on WGN Plus from WGN Radio in Chicago.

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HBR: How to Keep Working When You're Just Not Feeling It

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HBR: How to Keep Working When You're Just Not Feeling It

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Motivating yourself is one of the main things that sets high achievers apart, and it's hard. How do you keep pushing onward when your heart isn't in it? In her research, Fishbach has identified some simple tactics: Set goals that are intrinsically rewarding, and make them very specific. If a task isn't satisfying, focus on aspects of it that are or combine it with pleasant activities. Reward yourself in the right way for getting things done. To avoid slumps, break objectives into subgoals; look at how much you've accomplished until you're halfway there; and then count down what you have left to do. And use social influence: Let high performers inspire you, boost your get-up-and-go by giving advice, and keep the people you want to succeed for front of mind.

Motivating yourself is hard. In fact, I often compare it to one of the exploits of the fictional German hero Baron Munchausen: Trying to sustain your drive through a task, a project, or even a career can sometimes feel like pulling yourself out of a swamp by your own hair. We seem to have a natural aversion to persistent effort that no amount of caffeine or inspirational posters can fix.

A version of this article appeared in the November-December 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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How to Keep Working When You're Just Not Feeling It

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Motivating yourself is one of the main things that sets high achievers apart, and it's hard. How do you keep pushing onward when your heart isn't in it? In her research, Fishbach has identified some simple tactics: Set goals that are intrinsically rewarding, and make them very specific.

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Idea in Brief

The Problem

Many managers are given first aid training in the office. But very few receive any training for dealing with mental health crises that may arise in the workplace.

The Background

Amidst heightened stressors, including the lingering effects of the pandemic and economic uncertainty, more employees than ever are experiencing issues such as anxiety and depression at work. And increasingly, employees are open to having-and even expect to have-conversations about mental health challenges that are affecting their performance.

A Helpful Response

This article introduces the basic tenets of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a mental-health first-aid tool to help employees address emotional distress and negative behavioral patterns.

Ahmed could tell his team was on edge. Recent layoffs in the industry and poor company performance had his people worried about job security. But he was most concerned about Melia, one of his direct reports. She had been taking more sick days than usual, and when she was in the office, she seemed distracted. In meetings, she lacked focus. Once a high-performing, enthusiastic colleague, she now seemed low-energy, and her productivity was suffering. Offhand remarks from other team members suggested she was struggling with eldercare for her ailing mother. One day, Ahmed found Melia weeping in an empty conference room. He apologized awkwardly and retreated to his desk, unsure of how to proceed.

Managers like Ahmed (a composite of clients we have worked with) often receive first aid training to address physical injuries in the workplace, but very few are armed with the skills to respond effectively to mental health crises that might arise within their teams. The need for such training is acute. Managers today are leading anxious workforces, with many employees grappling with stressors such as social isolation, inflation, an uncertain economic outlook, the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and rapid technological advances.

In addition to lacking training with regard to emotional well-being, many managers have been taught that employees' personal problems are none of their business. However, younger Millennials and Gen Zs have grown up in a culture that increasingly recognizes the importance of mental health and generally views therapy as a normal and accepted part of life. Not only are younger employees more open to discussing mental health, they also are experiencing anxiety disorders at higher rates since the Covid pandemic, further indicating a need for managers to be equipped with mental-health first-aid training.

Fortunately, the principles of frontline intervention are not as complex as one might think and can be readily learned by nonclinicians. Specifically, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a talking treatment that focuses on the connection between thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and behaviors, is increasingly being taught to managers as part of mental-health first-aid courses. This is especially the case in the United Kingdom, where one of us is a counseling psychologist (Bhatti) and the other is a professor of leadership (Roulet).

No one expects bosses to conduct therapy sessions with subordinates; as the phrase "first aid" suggests, the goal is to provide rudimentary, on-the-spot care until the individual can get professional help, if it's necessary. This kind of support is particularly valuable right now, considering the difficulty many face in accessing adequate, timely, and affordable mental-health care. With the right training and tools, good managers can help reduce the gaps in treatment.

In this article, we outline how managers can use principles from CBT in a three-step process to help employees improve their emotional well-being and to build a more supportive organization.

What Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Over the past half century, cognitive behavioral therapy has emerged as the preferred evidence-based treatment for many mild psychological issues. For example, a 2016 meta-analysis of 144 studies found CBT to be an effective treatment for depression and anxiety disorders. And a 2019 systematic review of 34 randomized controlled trials confirmed its effectiveness in combating depression and recommended it for use in primary care. (Researchers agree that CBT is not an appropriate treatment for severe psychoses such as schizophrenia.) In the UK, cognitive behavioral therapy is considered the gold standard and is recommended by the country's globally respected National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines as the first line of treatment for low mood and anxiety, which are the most common mental-health difficulties reported by people of working age. In the United States, many medical bodies, insurance companies, and government health providers recommend CBT as a first-line treatment for disorders such as insomnia, PTSD, and anxiety.

The efficacy of CBT in the workplace has also been well-documented. For instance, a 2020 review by Deloitte of numerous academic studies found CBT sessions with a therapist to be a cost-effective way to help employees manage issues such as absenteeism, stress, and anxiety. What's less understood is whether CBT retains its effectiveness when administered by managers, but evidence suggests that it might.

CBT is already being used safely by nonspecialists in many low- and middle-income countries experiencing severe shortages of trained clinicians. A 2020 academic review found that delivery of CBT-based interventions by nonspecialists in such environments was "acceptable, appropriate, and feasible" for a range of common mental disorders, though the study found that more research was needed to better evaluate their outcomes.

One of the core tenets of CBT is that it can be self-administered once its principles are understood. This is backed by evidence from mental health nonprofits, such as MIND, that promote self-directed CBT learning and practice. A recent study found that CBT self-help materials were effective in supporting primary care nurses in treating patients' low-level depression.

The use of CBT-based mental-health apps by employees of major corporations further attests to the treatment's potential effectiveness outside the therapist's office. Companies such as KPMG, Uber, Bank of America, Microsoft, and Salesforce all offer online CBT-based tools to their employees. Some organizations and even national health systems, such as the UK's NHS, are experimenting with AI chatbots to deliver CBT, demonstrating growing confidence in its deliverability without a trained clinician's direct involvement.

Many companies in the UK and elsewhere are already offering mental-health first-aid training to managers and employees. In the United States, more than 3,100 companies have offered the training, which more than 3 million people have completed, according to the National Council for Mental Wellbeing. Companies that have offered the coursework include Bank of America, Gillette, Starbucks, and Unilever.

Despite this evidence base, however, many managers remain unfamiliar with CBT's principles and how simple workplace support can draw upon them. Recognizing this, let's now explore those principles and their practical applications in more depth.

How to Administer Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

CBT is far more straightforward than traditional psychoanalysis methods used by trained professionals who probe childhood memories. CBT emphasizes the specific condition being treated without delving into any underlying trauma or psychoses. It is typically conducted within a predetermined time frame, unlike other open-ended therapeutic approaches. CBT's proscribed scope and time frame not only contribute to its effectiveness but also make it more attractive to insurance companies, which favor modalities that do not necessitate long, potentially indefinite, courses of treatment.

CBT focuses on the interconnections between someone's cognitive state (thoughts and thought processes), mood state (emotions and feelings), physiological state (physical sensations in the body), and behavioral state (actions and behaviors). Using CBT, individuals take control of what they think and do, which can positively affect their emotional state and thus change their behavior, leading to a virtuous cycle.

As an example, consider a person with social anxiety who consistently avoids social situations for fear of being judged or criticized. CBT helps the person examine the way the states interconnect:

Cognitive state:

The person has negative thought patterns such as "Everyone will laugh at me" or "I'll say something embarrassing."

Mood state:

The thoughts lead to feelings of anxiety, fear, or embarrassment.

Physiological state:

The mood state triggers physical sensations such as a racing heart, sweating, and shaking.

Behavioral state:

To cope with these feelings and sensations, the person avoids social situations entirely, reinforcing the negative thought patterns.

CBT can help individuals identify and challenge their negative thoughts and develop alternative, balanced, and often more-realistic perspectives (thinking, for example, "Some people might find what I have to say interesting" or "It's OK to make mistakes"). At the same time, CBT encourages people to gradually challenge themselves by facing triggering social situations, allowing them to experience new thought patterns and behaviors and thereby gain confidence. By addressing the cognitive and behavioral aspects together rather than in isolation, individuals can experience an improvement in their mood and physiological states, ultimately reducing anxiety and enhancing emotional well-being.

So how can managers put these principles into action? We've developed a CBT-based approach we call the ARC model, which equips managers to acknowledge, respond, and help change detrimental patterns for employees struggling with poor mental health. Let's now look at how managers can use our ARC approach to provide effective mental-health first aid.

Acknowledging Poor Mental Health

Managers should start by acknowledging employees' distress, thereby increasing the individuals' own awareness of their mood and validating their feelings. If Ahmed signals to Melia (also a composite of people we've worked with) that he is aware that something is bothering her, he creates an opportunity for her to open up. So how should he engage further with her about her mental health?

We recommend that managers use a well-established tool (a four-section diagram referred to in CBT as the hot-cross-bun map) to help employees describe the key features of their emotional and mental states. A manager can encourage employees to consider questions in each area privately if they are not comfortable sharing. For example:

Emotions: What am I feeling right now? How would I describe my mood?

Body: What's happening physiologically? Am I holding tension in my body (clenched jaw, high shoulders)? Am I breathing faster or harder than usual? Is my heart racing?

Thoughts: What is going through my head at the moment? What thoughts am I having? Can I make them stop for a while or is my mind always racing?

Behavior: What am I doing? Why am I doing it? How am I reacting to my thoughts, feelings, or bodily sensations? Am I avoiding anything?

As the exhibit "One Approach to Understanding Behavior" shows, people can consider the connections among the states in any order. Hot-cross-bun maps are helpful in identifying what psychologists call maintenance cycles: patterns of behavior or thinking that fuel emotional distress. By discussing maintenance cycles, managers and employees can begin to recognize when they or someone else may be feeling stuck or repeating unhelpful patterns.

Within the workplace, typical maintenance cycles include:

Avoidance.

This is common when experiencing anxiety. Many people worry about making presentations, for example, possibly because of how they will be perceived or because they have a fear of public speaking. Therefore, they may request not to present. In the short term, this alleviates their worry, but over the long term, it perpetuates their anxiety. The next time they have to speak to an audience they will be just as anxious-and often the anxiety, fed by avoidance, is more intense.

Reduction of activity.

This is typical when experiencing depression and low mood. A manager may notice that an employee is not attending team meetings-or is regularly arriving late for work-and is disengaging socially. The maintenance cycle looks like this: An employee feels unappreciated or unfairly treated. The person decides to do less, reinforcing feelings of lethargy and disconnection.

Perfectionism.

The need to perform at the highest level is associated with anxiety. When we believe that a task must be done perfectly, we might abandon tasks that we realize we cannot finish to that standard. Or we avoid even starting a task for fear of doing a subpar job. We get paralyzed and become even more concerned that only perfection is acceptable.

Ahmed can help Melia break her unhealthy maintenance cycles by creating a safe space and encouraging her to articulate her feelings and thought processes. To increase her comfort, he might apply the principle of "reciprocation," sharing his own experiences of feeling inadequate or demotivated at work and explaining how avoidance only contributed to that feeling. In doing so, he offers her a lens for seeing that her current struggles could become a self-perpetuating cycle.

Ahmed should not pry beyond what Melia is willing to share. But let's imagine that Melia is forthcoming and talks about her feelings of inadequacy, the increased tension in her body, negative self-talk about her abilities, and problematic behaviors such as procrastination or disengagement from colleagues. By examining each of these components, Ahmed and Melia can identify the maintenance cycles that are feeding Melia's distress: For instance, her feelings of being spread too thin might cause thoughts about not being good enough at her job. This might lead her to avoid taking on new responsibilities, which in turn reinforces her negative self-perception and hurts her performance.

Responding to Signs of Emotional Distress

Once a manager has acknowledged that an employee is in mental distress and has identified the maintenance cycles that feed it, the manager should facilitate a conversation about emotional well-being and help the employee recognize the sources of common mental-health issues in addition to the symptoms of them. Although managers do not provide therapy or counseling, they can learn to apply therapeutic relationship skills. The most important of these is empathy, which is a strong guiding principle in building up relationships.

Empathy is not about offering sympathy but rather about being committed to fully understanding someone's experience. It requires a conscious effort of perspective taking. Empathy can help a person in distress feel less alone and more understood. In initiating a conversation with Melia, Ahmed could say something like, "I can only imagine how difficult it must be to balance your work here with care responsibilities for your mother. That must be incredibly stressful." In this statement, Ahmed is acknowledging Melia's distress, validating her feelings, and expressing his understanding of her situation-all of which is a demonstration of empathy.

When Melia speaks, Ahmed should engage in active listening, and by doing so build trust so that she feels heard and understood. Active listening takes effort and practice. Ahmed needs to give Melia his full attention, allowing her to express her thoughts and feelings without interruption, and then reflect back what he's heard to make sure he understands. For example, he might say, "What I hear you telling me is that you're feeling overwhelmed and unsure about your ability to meet all your responsibilities. Is that correct?"

As Ahmed responds to Melia, he needs to adopt a nonjudgmental stance: He should be careful not to offer his own opinions but rather accept that Melia's thoughts and feelings are valid. Suppose Melia admits to feeling like an impostor or doubting her abilities. Even if Ahmed considers her to be a very high performer, he should respond with, "It's not unusual to feel that way. Many of us have moments of self-doubt, especially when we're under stress. I can understand why this is what you are experiencing."

In keeping a nonjudgmental tone, managers reduce the stigma and shame often associated with poor mental health and provide an opportunity to change the narrative and the perception of mental distress at work. Instead of focusing on an employee's productivity or problems coping, managers can emphasize how the workplace can be a source of support and encouragement for employees through their distress. If enough managers adopt this approach, they may spark a culture shift in the organization.

Changing Behavior

When managers initiate conversations with employees about their well-being, they can introduce techniques that facilitate and encourage changes to employees' mental health. One tool is cognitive reframing, a process of replacing unhelpful thoughts with a more realistic and balanced view of a situation. Cognitive reframing can be an excellent tool when employees (and managers) feel stuck. There are three key steps to this process.

First, identify the unhelpful thoughts. For example, suppose Ahmed learns that Melia is resisting the idea of taking a two-week paid leave for eldercare. In his conversations with her, he realizes that she is feeling worried about how time off would affect workflow. In this step, Ahmed's first task is to help Melia identify anxiety-producing thoughts, such as: "If I go on family leave, no work will get done, and I'll have so much to do when I return!"

The next step is to evaluate the thoughts. Ahmed should encourage Melia to scrutinize her negative thoughts for evidence that either corroborates or challenges them. This keeps her from automatically accepting the thoughts and being drawn into a cycle of negative worry.

As evidence of her concerns about work not getting done, Melia may point out that she has received no offers of assistance, that colleagues do not work up to her standards, or that other team members are also out on leave. But Ahmed can help her focus on evidence refuting negative thoughts: No one is indispensable; the organization's success does not solely hinge on her constant presence; her colleagues have demonstrated the ability to produce quality work; and she has gone on leave before without any dent to her overall performance or interruption to her projects.

The final step is to foster an alternative and more realistic perspective. Informed by Ahmed's evidence, Melia can begin to frame her situation in a different light: "There may be a lot of work to do when I return from a medical leave, but I need and deserve a break, and others are available to support me if I need them to." Holding on to unhelpful thoughts perpetuates the worry and triggers a maintenance cycle. However, by using cognitive reframing, we can develop an alternative perspective that is much more grounded in reality and allows us to shift our mood.

In addition to cognitive reframing, Ahmed could help Melia use behavioral activation, a tool that spurs change by increasing opportunities to experience joy. This involves deliberately engaging in pleasurable, productive, or social behaviors, all with the aim of activating a positive emotional state. Ahmed might suggest that Melia make time to get outside for a walk during a break, eat lunch with work friends, or block out time in her calendar to finish a report and feel the satisfaction that brings.

Managers can also use the principles of behavioral activation to reconsider an employee's job responsibilities and duties. Ahmed could steer Melia toward the kind of work that is most intrinsically rewarding to her. For instance, if she enjoys collaborating with others, he might suggest that she take the lead on a team project or participate in a cross-functional team. If she finds satisfaction in evidence-based problem-solving, he could assign her a challenging task that allows her to utilize analytical skills.

In addition to identifying rewarding tasks at work, Ahmed could also encourage Melia to do things outside of work that she enjoys or finds relaxing. Activities like reading a book or practicing yoga can help provide a sense of balance and positivity that can counteract feelings of stress or being overwhelmed.

Throughout the process, Ahmed should be supportive and nonjudgmental. He should express his faith in Melia's abilities and emphasize that the goal is not to increase her workload but rather to help her reconnect with the aspects of her job and her personal life that she finds meaningful and enjoyable.

It is essential to note that while Ahmed can provide support and encouragement, the critical agent in this process is Melia herself. Cognitive behavioral therapy operates on the premise of individual agency-that is, the person experiencing distress has the capacity and the responsibility to instigate change. This is not a passive process; quite the contrary. It requires motivation, active participation, and a time commitment from the individual involved.

Melia must recognize her own patterns of thinking and behaving and then start working on strategies to break the negative cycles. She should be proactive in communicating her needs and concerns to Ahmed. She should initiate regular and open conversations with Ahmed so that he can provide the right kind of support.

Making Sure Managers Don't Overstep

By no means do we expect managers to formally treat employees or provide therapy themselves. The goal is for them to encourage collaborative conversations around mental health at work and to educate employees about CBT and its benefits. This requires a relationship of trust in which confidentiality is maintained at all times and any personal information shared during discussions remains completely private. Exceptions may be made only when a disclosure indicates the potential for harm to the individual or others. This confidentiality protocol should be clearly communicated to employees, and managers should formally commit to it.

Managers should be guided by the employee in terms of the depth and detail of information shared. Indeed, a manager should not inquire about someone's life outside the office unless the employee broaches the topic. Some individuals might be willing to disclose personal details, while others might prefer discussing their feelings in more general terms.

Managers should also have a full understanding of what mental health services the company offers and be prepared to guide employees to relevant resources. This could involve counseling from internal or outsourced providers, mental health apps (which employers sometimes offer at a subsidized rate), or other tools. Mental-health first aid is often only the first step in an employee's mental health journey, which may involve further support from appropriate health care professionals.

While the guidance in this article is directed toward managers, we envision that CBT and the ARC approach will be equally relevant and beneficial for HR personnel and for employees from any organizational unit who are striving to support their coworkers. By adopting a more informed and empathetic approach to mental health in the workplace, managers, HR professionals, and individual employees can together build a supportive and understanding organizational culture.

. . .

Taking care of mental health in the workplace is as crucial as managing physical health-especially in today's postpandemic environment, when most employees are suffering from some form of anxiety or stress. Like having a first aid kit for physical emergencies, mental-health first aid should be a standard tool at every manager's disposal.

A version of this article appeared in the September-October 2023 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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Many managers are given first-aid training in the office. But very few receive any training for dealing with mental health crises that may arise in the workplace. Amid heightened stressors, including the lingering effects of the pandemic and economic uncertainty, more employees than ever are experiencing issues such as anxiety and depression at work.

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Do you keep postponing work you need to do? The problem probably stems from one of three things: your habits and systems (or lack thereof), your desire to avoid negative emotions (like anxiety and boredom), or your own flawed thinking patterns (which can make a task seem harder than it is). Luckily, there are simple strategies for managing each.

To develop good habits, for instance, do your important work in a consistent pattern daily: After I do this, I do my deep work. Devise a system for starting new tasks (drawing on one you've handled well); that will make it easier to get the ball rolling. When a task makes you anxious, do the easiest part first and progress from there; motivate yourself to do a boring task with a reward for completing it. And if you're cognitively blocked, consider what would make a task impossible-and then identify its opposite.

Novel work often is filled with friction. You must recognize that tension doesn't mean you're not making progress. And if a project still feels overwhelming, tackle it in small chunks of time, not big ones.

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Do you keep postponing work you need to do? The problem probably stems from one of three things: your habits and systems (or lack thereof), your desire to avoid negative emotions (like anxiety and boredom), or your own flawed thinking patterns (which can make a task seem harder than it is).

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HBR: Feedback Isn’t Enough to Help Your Employees Grow

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HBR: Feedback Isn’t Enough to Help Your Employees Grow

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Feedback Isn’t Enough to Help Your Employees Grow

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Of all forms of communication, feedback is perhaps the hardest to give and receive. The giver has to criticize, which might hurt someone’s feelings, so they avoid having the conversation in the first place. And if the conversation does occur, the recipient is likely to feel shame, hearing some versi…

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HBR: 5 Ways to Development Talent for an Unpredictable Future

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HBR: 5 Ways to Development Talent for an Unpredictable Future

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Despite the many clickbaity headlines and apocalyptic fearmongering around AI and job automation, the data are rather clear: As I highlight in my latest book, I, Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique, you are less likely to lose your job to AI than to another human using AI, especially if you don't use AI yourself. In that sense, there's nothing new about the AI age; just like previous disruptive technologies, AI is eliminating some jobs but creating many more new jobs in turn, which desperately require humans.

As illustrated in our recent ManpowerGroup report, 58% of employers see AI as a net creator of new jobs. The problem is that people who are displaced by job automation (for example, brick-and-mortar store managers) don't automatically have access to all the new jobs that are created by technology (for example, cybersecurity analyst, digital marketer, or AI ethicist). According to the World Economic Forum, half of employees will need reskilling by 2025 to keep up with new technologies, and this figure predates the current generative AI boom.

As Stanford's Erik Brynjolfsson estimates, for every dollar organizations spend on technology, they need to invest an additional nine dollars in talent and related processes, such as identifying people with the right skillsets and potential; developing the right skills; enabling proper change-management processes; and creating the conditions for people to live up to their potential. Indeed, as my colleague Becky Frankiewicz and I noted, what makes or breaks digital transformation is not the actual technology, but the human factor: talent.

So, what we need is not just re-skilling or up-skilling, but pre-skilling - that is, being able to future-proof talent and reinvent peoples' careers before we even know what tomorrow's jobs and in-demand skills will be.

Pre-Skilling Your Workforce for an Unknown Future

How can this be done? Although nobody has the exact recipe, not least because there's no data on the future, we can extrapolate from macro historical trends, as well as draw lessons from recent economic and human capital patterns, to make five broad recommendations:

1) Focus on potential

As the lifespan of current skills, expertise, and performance shrinks, it is advisable to hire and promote people for what they could do, rather than what they have done in the past. This means prioritizing soft skills - such as learning ability, curiosity, resilience, and adaptability - over hard skills - such as programming or data mining - focusing on the foundational ingredients of employability rather than current technical expertise or past employment history, both of which still dominate modern hiring approaches.

Simply put, we may not know what tomorrow's jobs will look like, but we can safely assume that when people are more curious, emotionally intelligent, resilient, driven, and intelligent, they will generally be better equipped to learn what is needed to perform those jobs and provide whatever human value technology cannot replace. One advantage with potential is that we have reliable and proven methods to measure it, notably psychological assessment tools, which can also be used to develop people's potential, particularly through normative and data-driven feedback that helps them identify gaps between where they are and where they need to be (see next point).

2) Provide crucial feedback

Even before AI's arrival, there was already a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding around aligning people's talents and potential with the best career choices. Things are even more complex now, and most employees (and managers) are rightly wondering what they will do in the future, whether their experience and expertise - and all the time and money they invested in their careers - will still be relevant, and if so, where.

Sharing data-driven feedback (from assessments, internal data, and peer-ratings) and helping people understand how their interests and skills can be a future asset to your organization is key. This means thinking of leaders as coaches or talent agents, where their main job is to proactively nurture people's talents, as well as harness their full potential. Remember: Most people are feedback-deprived, and a staggering two-thirds of feedback interventions fail to produce desirable results. The key is to tell people what they need to hear even when they don't want to hear it, and above all, that you tell them something they didn't know and that can motivate them to get better.

Crucially, it is not enough just to provide people with feedback on their skills gaps; organizations also need to incentivize them to develop the relevant skills while providing the most efficient, enticing, and impactful programs to develop them.

3) Focus on talent expansion

Rather than betting on specialists or forcing people into specific niches, focus on broadening or expanding people's talents. This means not playing to people's strengths, but rather, helping them develop new strengths, so they become a more versatile version of themselves.

We all have a natural tendency to adapt the world to our current skills so that we can do "more with less" and optimize for lazy efficiency rather than stretch goals or new skills acquisition. In reality, unless your employees are in the top 1% of any area of expertise (which, by definition, can only apply to a very small selection of individuals), they will be better served becoming a jack of all trades, not least because with every new task or skill you learn, there will be many new underlying skills with adjacencies to other tasks, jobs, and careers.

This will also increase diversity and inclusion. As Harvard's Joseph Fuller and Christina Langer and Burning Glass Institute's Matt Sigelman point out: "The shift to skills-based hiring will open opportunities to a large population of potential employees who in recent years have often been excluded from consideration because of degree inflation." If organizations complain about their inability to find diverse and creative talent, they should stop looking for talent in the same old places and ways.

4) Invest in mid-level managers

As Amy Edmondson and I recently noted, managers hold the key to unlocking human potential at work, especially when the challenge is to revitalize, reenergize, and reimagine talent. Even before the AI age, the role of middle managers was critical and accounted for 30 to 40% of team performance, but the role has increased massively in complexity.

Historically, a manager was someone with proven technical expertise and strong past performance as an individual contributor. Today, they need to understand not just the "classic" managerial tasks (hire the right people, give them the right tasks and direction, use feedback to motivate them, and enable team performance), but also some very complex specific new challenges, such as managing hybrid and virtual teams, creating psychological safety, boosting DEIB (which includes hiring and motivating people who are different from themselves), and helping people manage the human-AI age, including all the uncertainties and stress that evokes.

In short, there has never been a better time to invest in mid-level managers, especially harnessing the critical soft skills that will likely future-proof them by enabling them to keep up with technological advancements and drive the value realization their organizations expect from new innovations.

5) Invest in leadership skills

If you are worried about an AI-fueled future but still think humans will be part of the picture, then you should be worried about pre-skilling your leaders, for they will (still) be tasked with setting and selling the company's strategy, and driving the evolution of its culture, in tomorrow's uncertain time. In part, this is still about promoting individuals with the right soft skills (as per Step 1) and developing those skills. It is also about moving on and understanding that today's top leaders may be a poor fit for the future, not least because their success is based on replicating what has worked in the past, which is often an obstacle to changing or learning new things.

Importantly, investing in leadership means harnessing the skills that enable people to collaborate effectively and become a high-performing team. It is not about promoting individuals to senior positions or glorifying status, let alone about the popularity contest that often underpins "high-potential" nominations - rather, it is about the qualities people must have to inspire, motivate, and bring others along into a future that will surely include AI, but should ideally also be defined as the human-AI age. This is the critical leadership challenge of today. If organizations can upgrade their leadership-selection systems, shifting from replicating past success profiles to selecting and nurturing for future skills, all other challenges will become easier. In particular, this means de-emphasizing things like "culture fit," past performance, and technical expertise to focus more on learning ability, curiosity, integrity, and people skills. More importantly, if organizations are truly interested in harnessing diversity, they must prioritize inclusive leadership and cognitive diversity, breaking the homogeneity in leadership profiles.

. . .

Technology is always changing, but to ensure that those changes are actually an evolution (i.e., contributing to progress), we must make every possible effort to enable humans to develop and deploy the relevant talents to reap the potential benefits of technology. Although this is by no means a given, we should have faith and confidence in our species' ability to continue to adapt to its own technological inventions.

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5 Ways to Develop Talent for an Unpredictable Future

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We may not know what tomorrow's jobs will look like, but we can safely assume that when people are more curious, emotionally intelligent, resilient, driven, and intelligent, they will generally be better equipped to learn what is needed to perform those jobs, and provide whatever human value technology cannot replace.

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Fast Company: 5 Self-Sabotaging Career Moves & How to Avoid Them

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Fast Company: 5 Self-Sabotaging Career Moves & How to Avoid Them

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5 self-sabotaging career moves and how to avoid them

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Self-sabotage is the pattern of repeating unhealthy behavior—preventing us from making the changes required to reach our goals.

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Fast Company: How to Regain Focus & Re-find Your Motivation

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Fast Company: How to Regain Focus & Re-find Your Motivation

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How to regain focus and re-find your motivation

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Listen to this episode from The New Way We Work on Spotify. Find it difficult to focus at work? Is the environment the problem, or is it our own brain? In this special conversation from LinkedIn Audio, Fast Company's Work Life team breaks down what's really behind our inability to focus, how to deal with distractions and train your brain to concentrate, and how to find motivation in your work.

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Ignite your curiosity with these TED Talks certain to motivate the mind, reshape perspectives and inspire ideas worth spreading.

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MasterClass: James Clear | Getting 1% Better Every Day

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MasterClass: James Clear | Getting 1% Better Every Day

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MasterClass | James Clear Teaches Building Habits for Success

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Get ready to crush your goals. On @MasterClass, “Atomic Habits” author James Clear teaches you his acclaimed framework for designing smarter habits—updated for today’s challenges.

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Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

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Gloria Chan Packer: Work is not your family

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You may need to hear this (if you haven't already): your job is not your family. While you can develop meaningful relationships with your colleagues, calling work your family can actually breed burnout and be detrimental to your mental and emotional health.

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Forbes: The Power of Self-Awareness & Empathy in Leadership

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Forbes: The Power of Self-Awareness & Empathy in Leadership

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Council Post: The Power Of Self-Awareness And Empathy In Leadership

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As a leader, developing emotional intelligence (EI) can be life-changing.

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Forbes: The Greatest Leadership Challenge: Remembering Who You Are. 

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Forbes: The Greatest Leadership Challenge: Remembering Who You Are. 

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The Greatest Leadership Challenge: Remembering Who You Are.

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This article explores the common scenario of accomplished leaders feeling disconnected from their authentic selves.

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How do I coach a manager to give up some control?

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Inc:  Microsoft Just Announced Its Latest Performance Review System for Employees. I Hate Myself for Loving It

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Inc:  Microsoft Just Announced Its Latest Performance Review System for Employees. I Hate Myself for Loving It

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Curious about what L&D does? Click below!

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Curious about what L&D does? Click below!

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<aside> ❤️‍🔥 Fractional Director of Talent Development & Learning | Workplace Experience 🌱 Learning & Development 🌱 Talent Management & Performance Cycle 🌱 Pre- & Onboarding | Retention Strategy 🌱 Virtual & IRL Employee Experience | Engagement 🌱 DEIBA 🌱 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

</aside>

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Fractional Director of Talent Development & Learning | Workplace Experience 🌱 Learning & Development 🌱 Talent Management & Performance Cycle 🌱 Pre- & Onboarding | Retention Strategy 🌱 Virtual & IRL Employee Experience | Engagement 🌱 DEIBA 🌱 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

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In the news

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LA Times

Many New Year's resolutions are only half-intended from the get-go. But if you're serious about improving your health or fitness, a commitment contract can give you hundreds of reasons to see it through each week.

read more

Scientific American

To take one notable example, on the commitment contract website stickK.com, users put down some money (say, $200) and state a goal they want to achieve (such as to lose ten pounds in a month). They also need to state what will happen to the money if they don't stick to their commitments (eg, it'll go to a friend or to a charity they do not like).

read more

Inc.com

...stickK, the app that promises to help you achieve life, business, health, and career goals. Created by behavioral economists at Yale University, the free goal-setting platform influences behavior change through loss aversion and accountability.

read more

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Self-improvement. Powered by behavioral science.

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view more articles Many New Year's resolutions are only half-intended from the get-go. But if you're serious about improving your health or fitness, a commitment contract can give you hundreds of reasons to see it through each week.

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Unstuck: The Reluctant Person's Confrontation Playbook

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Unstuck: The Reluctant Person's Confrontation Playbook

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The Reluctant Person's Confrontation Playbook

When people behave in ways that bother us - a callous comment, an interruption, a self-appointed license to take what's ours without giving back - why do so many of us find it easier just to let it go? We make excuses for the other person. Or we pretend to shrug it off, though the behavior continues to niggle us, deep in our thoughts. Worse, we start avoiding the other person. Complaining behind her back, resenting her. But we never speak up.

Those negative feelings don't go away because we suppress them. Sometimes they poison a once-wonderful relationship. Or, our mind starts to run on a victim script: I'm always putting up with other people's bad behavior. People are so inconsiderate. I follow the rules, why don't they?

Here's the thing: When we're silent, we can become resentful, and then we don't live the best life we possibly could. We make our voices tinier, our expectations smaller. And, in those gaps, insecurity sprouts. Our reluctant manner tells others that we care less about our needs and feelings than we actually do. In short, we're cheating ourselves.

Yes, confrontation can be scary, but let's imagine we do speak up. Each time, it enhances our options, our confidence, our comfort in the world. It also demonstrates what we value and how we want to be treated. In short, we open up our possibilities.

Given the choice of shrinking or expanding your life, logic points to the latter. But our emotions might lean toward the former. (Trust us, we know the feeling!) That's why we put together this guide, to show us all how confrontation can lead to far better things than a black-eye.

WHEN TO CONFRONT AND HOW
Barbara Pachter wrote the book The Power of Positive Confrontation with strategies that work for everyone. The key to handling any confrontation - whether work- or home-related - Pachter says, is to use her WAC'em™ dialogue, which consists of three essential parts:

the What = a specific description of the behavior that bothers you

the Ask = a request to change it

the Check-in = a question to make sure you've been heard and understood.

"The first part is about not labeling the other person's behavior," she says. "We're so quick to label each other as jerks, and that can lead to aggression. But, when you choose to confront someone and get your words together in this way - what comes to your mind is going to be polite, calm, direct, and non-accusatory. You know what's bothering you, you know the other person's point of view, you know what you want. And you ask for it." She adds, "Then you have to turn it over, get the other person's response. Just because you're asking for something doesn't mean you're going to get it."

Our printable practice sheet, The Reluctant Person's Confrontation Playbook, gives examples of how to apply this formula in four common conflict situations, and also what to do when the other person's response is negative.

WHO YOU MAY BE CONFRONTING
1. The Takers: You're giving and they're taking.
Your friend doesn't pay you back for movie night. Your sister calls you daily to complain your ear off. This is the second time you cooked dinner for your roommate and she hasn't helped clean up. Your manager gives you all the work and takes all the credit...

2. The Rule-breakers: They think they're above the law.
Your coworker is consistently late with deadlines. The girl you're seeing texts 20 minutes before dinner to say that she can't make it. Someone jams the printer and doesn't fix it. He doesn't remember your anniversary...

3. The Self-involved: They're stuck on Planet Clueless.
Your mother insists on a Hawaiian family vacation, even though you can't afford it. No one's vegan but she's making a tofurkey for the "fun" of it. Your friend's Facebook post about your ex's fancy holiday shindig makes you feel bad. Your sister knows that you won't be in town that week, but guess when she schedules the baby shower? It's your meeting, but he takes it over...

4. The Insulters: They think rudeness is just being real.
That guy thinks dumb blonde jokes are really funny. She calls you an idiot because you didn't know how to work the coffee machine. Your dad puts you down at every family gathering. Your friend says you're too fat to wear a bathing suit. Every time she gets mad, she swears at you...

WHEN TO LET IT GO
Sometimes - not all the time - it's best not to confront. When you're faced with any of these four scenarios below, Pachter says to walk away:

The other person is out-of-control (angry, manic, tearful, etc), or at risk of becoming so.

The other person's offensive behavior is simply out-of-character. It's okay to dial up your empathy - everyone has off-days - and let it go.

You're in a bad mood. Even the littlest thing (an empty milk carton, a coworker correcting your grammar) feels like a huge deal. Save your words for when you're more in control.

This is one of those friendships where you give a little, you take a little. He puts up with your foibles, and you shrug it off when he invites himself over and drinks all your beer.

But in other situations where you're bothered and beleaguered, speaking up is often the best way to solve the problem. So let's practice with this worksheet.

INCLUDES:
PDF worksheet (1 page)

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The Reluctant Person's Confrontation Playbook

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The Reluctant Person's Confrontation Playbook

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Little Book of Coachable Questions by Ally Jones & Liz Whitney

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Little Book of Coachable Questions by Ally Jones & Liz Whitney

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Francesca Gino, a professor at Harvard Business School, shares a compelling business case for curiosity. Her research shows allowing employees to exercise their curiosity can lead to fewer conflicts and better outcomes. However, even managers who value inquisitive thinking often discourage curiosity…

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Coaching for Leaders: Help Your Team Embrace Growth Mindset

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Coaching for Leaders: Help Your Team Embrace Growth Mindset

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644: Help Your Team Embrace Growth Mindset, with Eduardo Briceño

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Listen to this episode from Coaching for Leaders on Spotify. Eduardo Briceño: The Performance Paradox Eduardo Briceño is a global keynote speaker and facilitator who guides many of the world's leading companies in developing cultures of learning and high performance.

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The Edge of Work Podcast: How Leaders Can Help Their People Thrive in a Constantly Changing World of Work

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S3:E17: How Leaders can to Help Their People Thrive in a Constantly Changing World of Work

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TED: The Secret to Successfully Pitching an Idea

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Have a great idea but not sure how to sell it? Investor and teacher Mar Hershenson has you covered. Whether it’s sharing a new product with a client or vying for a promotion, these three steps will help you tell an irresistible story and get the “yes” you’re looking for.

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Can we break bad habits by being more curious about them? Psychiatrist Judson Brewer studies the relationship between mindfulness and addiction -- from smoking to overeating to all those other things we do even though we know they’re bad for us. Learn more about the mechanism of habit development and discover a simple but profound tactic that might help you beat your next urge to smoke, snack or check a text while driving.

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LeeAnn Renninger: The secret to giving great feedback

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Humans have been coming up with ways to give constructive criticism for centuries, but somehow we’re still pretty terrible at it. Cognitive psychologist LeeAnn Renninger shares a scientifically proven method for giving effective feedback.

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The Culture Map: Own's Tier 1 Office Mapping (Cultural Awareness)

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NYTimes: Want to Believe in Yourself? "Mattering" is Key.

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NYTimes: Want to Believe in Yourself? "Mattering" is Key.

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Want to Believe in Yourself? ‘Mattering’ Is Key.

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This overlooked concept has been linked to better relationships — with oneself and others.

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HBR: 5 Types of Stories Leaders Need to Tell