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This article from Harvard is a great additive to this lesson, in which it speaks on team building when working with a collective of people with different back grounds and personalities.

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Over the years, as teams have grown more diverse, dispersed, digital, and dynamic, collaboration has become more complex. But though teams face new challenges, their success still depends on a core set of fundamentals. As J. Richard Hackman, who began researching teams in the 1970s, discovered, what…

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As someone who works with customers on a daily basis and constantly has to deal with customers who are upset about things out of our hands, I find this video extremely helpful and informational.

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How to Deal With Angry Customers – 8 Tips and Examples

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Alan Iny had some great points in his Ted Talk that I believe goes great combing the points in the article "Unshackling the creative business" and Ted Talk by Ethan Hawke.

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Creativity has never been more essential to competitiveness in the business world, but the critical approach to practical originality in organizations is often lacking. Alan Iny offers a key to think outside the box: apply doubt to the very models and philosophies that make up the box itself.

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This interview on the Senior Vice President of Citrix Systems, Catherine Courage was extremely interesting to read. She talks about the process of implementing design thinking within the company and how to continue the process until it is second nature.

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As senior vice president of customer experience at Citrix Systems-which develops a range of cloud-computing and enterprise-software solutions-Catherine Courage is in her fifth year of permeating the company's products and functions, such as IT and sales, with the user-centered approach known as design thinking. In this interview, she shares lessons learned during the ongoing transformation.

McKinsey: What is design thinking?

Catherine Courage: It's interesting: when we really started to pursue design thinking four years ago, one of the biggest hurdles was that people tend to think of design as being about aesthetic qualities-colors, pixels, fonts, and the like. Absolutely, the aesthetic appearance of products is important, but design as a "big D" word means more than that. So we've invested a great deal of time to help people understand that design is about simplicity and delighting customers and other users. It's about an absolute focus on the user, and it's about constant innovation.

Traditionally, many of our product organizations would start with a problem and then-based on intuition about what our customers want-race toward a solution. Today, they actively engage customers along the way, with an iterative process of failing and learning fast as part of the journey. Getting to this point has required big process changes and a new mind-set across the company.

McKinsey: Why did you choose the design-thinking approach to get closer to your company's customers?

Catherine Courage: The main purpose of my team's charter is to ensure that we're delivering a great experience across all customer touchpoints-from the website to trying our products, using them, and all the way through to support and renewal of contracts. This requires a company-wide focus on the customer.

Design thinking is an ideal framework for us to use because it focuses on developing deep empathy for customers and creating solutions that will match their needs-as opposed to just dreaming up and delivering technology for technology's sake.

McKinsey: How did you get started?

Catherine Courage: We started by training our product organizations and built a team of design professionals and researchers who could go out and understand what was on our consumers' minds and the opportunities that we had in the areas where we compete. However, we soon found that a customer-centric approach was applicable to everything we do, and we wanted to scale it across the business. As we started to do that, we realized that Citrix, like many companies, has different subcultures, and the approaches that we tried in the product-development area didn't necessarily apply to other parts of the organization. This was an important lesson as we started working with different teams across the business. To date, we've trained almost half of our 9,800 employees in a customer-centric approach to problem solving that makes design thinking meaningful and relevant to everyone, regardless of division.

McKinsey: IT is often not that used to experimenting to deliver new enterprise applications. How did you get the IT function on board?

Catherine Courage: It's important to bring design to life by giving people many examples of how it works-not just the principles but also examples throughout the company where colleagues are exhibiting design-thinking behavior. What helped us be successful with IT was that we did have these proof points where IT staff could see the successes their colleagues were having. As a result, IT was quite keen to engage in this new approach.

For example, when we're choosing what products to procure and deploy to our users, IT does trials and proof of concepts. That's critical, because IT can't simply deploy technology. It needs to understand its users. Our IT department has also taken to heart that design thinking is not only about products and services; it can be about processes as well. For example, IT has transformed the way it does project retrospectives. The department now has a redesigned process that uses a different framework than before. There are subtle changes in how questions are framed that reflect empathy for the person next to you-who may have given the project his heart and soul even though things didn't go as planned. This approach has made a positive change in how team members learn from mistakes and do a better job the next time. Being open to failure, learning, and iteration is a critical part of the process.

McKinsey: How does design thinking affect the role of the CIO?

Catherine Courage: Design thinking is key for CIOs today. Consumerization has raised the expectations of all users. They are exposed to a new breed of technology that is more powerful and more intuitive. They want to be delighted with the applications, tools, and devices they use-which need to be simple and should not require a lot of training-just like the technology experiences in their personal life. The good news for CIOs is that the design-thinking principles that product organizations have adopted can also be used by IT organizations. IT should think of its users not as stakeholders but as customers, and the department needs to move from building applications that meet functionality requirements to designing intuitive user experiences that empower customers. The move to agile development is a parallel evolution in IT that is reinforcing many design principles. IT organizations apply agile work through sprints and rapid iterations. Design thinking is similar; you rapidly iterate with customers to get a better product or application. The focus is on the user experience and on building deep customer empathy for what makes these experiences delightful.

McKinsey: What have been the biggest obstacles to adopting design thinking at Citrix?

Catherine Courage: Change is always hard, and it can be scary if you're not sure if your executive team supports the changes. When we started working outside the product organizations, we discovered that many teams were very risk averse. They would come up with great ideas for different ways to do things, but when the rubber hit the road, they would revert back to their old ways. However, some teams found it easier to embrace change, and what they had in common was that they received explicit support and encouragement from their executive managers. It didn't require much to make a difference-just that an executive on the team would come in and say, "Guys, fantastic ideas. This is the behavior I want to see. Keep pushing forward!" Another challenge has been that some teams simply haven't been ready to embrace change from the start, despite our best efforts, which taught us to be patient when there isn't traction. In one case, it took a year until a team that hadn't been interested before called on us for help on a project. We've learned to help fuel the team with relatable examples of success for sources both internal and external.

McKinsey: Selling change to sales teams can sometimes be a challenge. How did it go at Citrix?

Catherine Courage: The sales organization, with its natural focus on meeting sales quotas and numbers, was the last area we touched because we thought it would be the hardest to engage. We were wrong. Sales leaders very much embraced design thinking. When we described what it can do with respect to innovation and problem solving, they realized that there were many problem areas in their own world. The systems they used, for example, were getting in the way of them understanding how to sell to their customers. We created a team of sales leaders empowered to define their own problems and solutions within a design-thinking framework, and we made participation optional. It was surprising how many leaders took part and came up with solutions that we want to scale across our sales teams.

McKinsey: How do you make design thinking stick?

Catherine Courage: You need to make it part of all processes and not just something you do on select projects. Starting by looking through the customer lens has to be ingrained in everything you do. Developing that foundation and creating that cultural change across all projects and initiatives is what it takes.

McKinsey: How do you monitor and measure the traction and results you're getting from design thinking?

Catherine Courage: We look at a variety of facets. One is the adoption of design thinking across the company. We haven't made this a mandate. We've made it something that we want people to organically embrace. In fact, it has become a viral movement; our classes and seminars fill immediately. In addition, starting this year, we've made "design driven" one of our leadership blueprint competencies. Now, every employee needs to describe, at the end of the year, what she or he did to contribute to the customer experience. In other words, everybody in the company needs to be thinking about this and measuring themselves against it.

Another metric is to look at how our products have changed over the past four years. The answer is that we're releasing products that are of better quality, and we're releasing them faster and receiving more customer and industry awards than before. We're also seeing improvements in our customer feedback-customers are noticing and acknowledging our end-user focus.

McKinsey: What metrics should a CIO consider if he or she is embarking on a design-thinking journey?

Catherine Courage: It depends a little on the business that you're in. But the CIO should always be looking at a variety of metrics-ones that come from the customer, as well as internal productivity and efficiency metrics-to understand if you're really making improvements by taking this approach. Benchmarks of customer satisfaction, such as Net Promoter Score, are important. Talking to employees about their satisfaction and productivity is helpful as well. Time to market is also an important component.

McKinsey: Do you have any final thoughts?

Catherine Courage: One additional thing that we've learned along this journey is to not go it alone. There are many companies embracing design thinking today, and even though there is no single blueprint for success, it's been helpful to hear the stories shared in that open community to understand what worked and what didn't work for other companies. We've tried to return that favor by letting companies visit us to understand what Citrix is doing with design thinking. I'm more than happy to do that. I learn just as much from these organizations as they may learn from us.

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Applying design thinking across the business: An interview with Citrix’s Catherine Courage

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As senior vice president of customer experience at Citrix Systems-which develops a range of cloud-computing and enterprise-software solutions-Catherine Courage is in her fifth year of permeating the company's products and functions, such as IT and sales, with the user-centered approach known as design thinking. In this interview, she shares lessons learned during the ongoing transformation.

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This article has actually helped me in the past, when it came to finding my voice in my work environment.

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The modern workplace comprises all sorts of individuals with varied backgrounds, personalities, and communication styles. These differences can make it difficult for you to communicate effectively by finding and owning your voice.

Add onto this challenge layers of difficulty based on positional hierarchy, experience, age, and gender that can affect your ability to communicate effectively with others in the workplace. As an employee, a woman, and a leader, the failure to communicate at work can allow your organization to miss critical information or overlook growing issues that need to be addressed. A failure in communication also can negatively affect you personally by impacting your performance, hampering your career aspirations, and impacting your mental health.

Without a doubt, finding and owning your voice is crucial to cultivating your professional success. An excellent place to start on the road to finding and owning your voice is to think of the people you admire with strong voices. How do they communicate? What do they do that you like and admire? Chances are they share many of these characteristics that are critical to finding and owning your voice.

Know When to Speak, Know When to Listen

We're all familiar with the idea that, as a society, we should talk less and listen more. We don't want to prove the adage, "that they talk most who have the least to say," true. However, part of finding and owning your voice is developing your perception to know when to speak up and when to listen.

It can help to think of a discussion as a routine, and all the participants in the discussion serve different roles in that routine. Is your role in the discussion to intake the information, present the information, provide feedback or clarity, or make a decision? Each of those roles is very different in the volume and timing of when one speaks in the discussion.

When it is time for your role to listen, it's important to remember that listening is not the absence of talking. When you aren't talking, make sure you are engaged, listening is the only way to intake information in a discussion. Effective listening will give you the critical information you need to understand the topic, plus help you to know what gaps of knowledge you need to fill. In addition to intaking information, effectively listening enables you to develop an informed opinion on the subject while providing other participants the space to interject to fill in their knowledge gaps or provide clarification-practice finding and owning your voice by using active listening techniques to show your engagement.

Listening is only part of the discussion. Each role in a discussion has the potential need to speak as well, whether that's clarifying your understanding, providing a correction or additional context, asking questions to make an informed decision, or you're filling the role of the information presenter. It can feel intimidating when people look to you for input, or you need to interject before the subject changes. However, when it's your time to speak, speak up, and don't let it pass by.

Present your information, ask your questions, make your decisions, and strive for conciseness in your speech. Keep your message on target and as short and straightforward as possible while providing all the necessary information. It's important not to let yourself be intimidated by the volume or force of other voices or eyes looking to you for your expertise or to make a big decision. Remember that you have worth and provide value; that's why you are part of the discussion.

Stand Up for Your Worth & Value

As part of developing your professional career, you will nurture relationships with people who will support, promote, and advocate for you. But, the truth is you should never rely on someone else to stand up for your worth and value. Part of finding and owning your voice is to empower you to be your best advocate. That means not just self-worth, but by expressing your value and reinforcing to others your worth as a valuable member of the organization. As career women and female leaders, we often hold a precarious position in expressing our stance and worth. Still, you cannot be afraid to stand up for yourself and, when necessary, be loud to be heard.

As you grow and practice owning your voice, your value will be inherent to your communication. If you comport yourself well while communicating valuable insight, you impress on recipients you are someone worth listening to and will, over time, naturally become regarded as that person. It's helpful to remember that even high-level communicators still get nervous; that sometimes they're unprepared. And know that innovative ideas and value additions regularly originate from all organizational levels.

Being Assertive & Confident

In your career, you likely know someone who is assertive and confident. You probably know someone loud and overbearing as well. These identifiers are rarely used for the same person. That's because being assertive and confident is often created by a strong belief backed by preparation. The other is often driven by emotion and defensiveness.

Being prepared can help you find and own your voice because it gives you concrete examples, statistics, and facts to frame and strengthens your communication. In addition, this preparation allows you the confidence to be well-put-together in making your points and remain unflustered when answering questions and defending your stance. The confidence and assertion you gain from preparing beforehand are especially helpful when using your voice to express beliefs and ideas contrary to the leading opinion or status quo.

Because you have the preparation and the belief in your point, be assertive. If you don't believe it, don't assert it. It's likely to come off as inauthentic and damage the trust you've started to create with those around you. Take pride in what you say, be firm, but be polite. Avoid raising your voice, interrupting others, or using confrontational language. If things start to get heated, take a break to re-center instead of throwing gas on the fire. Losing your head isn't going to help get your points across or persuade anyone to your point of view.

One of the best ways to improve your ability to exude confidence and be more assertive is to ask for help. You can grow these skills by coordinating with your peers, mentors, or an outside group of leaders like EWF International's Executive Peer Advisory Forum. They can help review your communication style to provide insight and identify areas for improvement. They can also help you gain a better bird's-eye understanding of your situation, which can help you adjust your communication to ensure it matches expectations and addresses the correct issues to be effective and influential.

Effective Expression & Building Influence

There are concrete, physical skills you can improve upon to help you find your voice and use it to full effect. Foremost, the point of finding and owning your voice is that you can effectively express yourself. Effective expression comes down to three parts: what you say, how you say it, and your non-verbal communication or body language.

In addition to being polite and respectful, the easiest way to improve the quality of what you say is to refine your language. One area where you can show immediate improvement is by working to reduce the number of filler words (like, um, basically) you use to fill pauses in your speech. Another is to reduce the use of weasel words (sometimes, might, probably) that create ambiguity and weaken what you're saying.

When it comes to how you speak, think of your words' pitch, volume, and rhythm. A high-pitched answer that's hurriedly spoken at a too loud/quiet volume sounds very nervous. A monotone voice sounds like the speaker's uninterested. Speaking with a lower pitch, with enough volume for everyone to hear, at a steady or even slightly slower voice inspires attention and exudes the aura that you are measure in thought and confident in what you're saying.

For non-verbal communication, proper posture is a key foundation. For example, sitting or standing tall with your head up and forward and keeping your shoulders back. On top of that, keep your body "open" by not crossing your lower legs or arms, keeping your hands open, turning away from who you're communicating with, or pointing your toes inward. Also, try mirroring the posture and body language of the person you're speaking.

Mirroring a person's body language is a way to help create a connection with the person and build your influence. Finding your voice and adjusting it to meet your audience is key to building influence. You need to understand your audience and their concerns so your words and view can resonate with them. Often this means meeting them where they are and then working them back to your position.

A large part of finding your voice and developing your influence is building a level of trust with those around you. You can help build the relationship by being willing to step outside your comfort zone, being vulnerable, owning up to your mistakes, and learning from them. Showing that you are willing to own your mistakes and spend the time to grow from the experience engenders a lot of trust from those who witness you go through the experience. It also helps by showing you believe in pursuing excellence, not being perfect. As a result, you become relatable to people, making them want to listen to you more.

Continue down the path, and you will even start inspiring them.

Successful Collaboration

As discussed, knowing and showing your value through self-advocacy is an integral part of finding and owning your voice. But, it's also important you use your position and powers of communication and influence for good. It's crucial to find a balance of self-promotion without drowning out the voices of those around you. Use your voice to enhance collaboration by providing space for others and amplify the less-developed or overlooked voices around you.

People communicate very differently. For example, some people need to express their opinions and ask questions as soon as they come up, or they will forget them. Others won't have any questions until trying to implement it themselves. Some may have questions but don't want to interrupt, so they save them to ask later. Make an effort to be approachable and provide space and time for people to bring things to you in their own way.

Of course, you need to balance this opportunity for communication and feedback while ensuring things get accomplished. You need to be clear about how and when people can best communicate with you. And, always be sure to express appreciation for those you communicate and collaborate with, their contributions, and the difference they've made.

Continuing to Own and Refine Your Voice

Which of the traits do you see reflected in the leaders with strong voices you admire? Few career women are starting from a blank canvas when it comes to finding and refining their voice. You may have worked on it through formal training or just developed some critical insights from experience in your career.

What traits are strengths for you, on which of your strengths do people praise? If you don't know, ask. Peers, colleagues, and bosses can help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your personal voice and provide areas where you still need to develop your voice. In addition, early- to mid-career women can find formal training on owning their voice and more key areas essential to becoming a great leader in the workplace through EWF International's Emerging Leaders programs. And, for executive women leaders, EWF's Executive Forum is perfect for providing a safe, confidential, and non-compete environment where you can address the challenges you and your organization face.

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The modern workplace comprises all sorts of individuals with varied backgrounds, personalities, and communication styles. These differences can make it difficult for you to communicate effectively by finding and owning your voice. Add onto this challenge layers of difficulty based on positional hierarchy, experience, age, and gender that can affect

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With our first lesson starting with an amazing TEDx Talk from Mary Schaefer, she had made some amazing points on how people will grow when you treat them with respect and like actual human beings with lives and dreams. This article definitely coincides with her points.

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There's a reason why people call work a grind. Being at work can make you feel like a robot wedged between two metal gears, trying to break free or, worst case, survive.

But your employees are not robots; they are humans. In a data-driven world, it's easy to reduce your employees to numbers. This percentage of employees like their job. This percentage underperforms. Or this percentage would recommend us to their friends.

Well, here's some data we can get behind. Organizations that rank in the top 25% at delivering a positive work experience triple their return on assets and double their return on sales compared to those that rank in the bottom 25%. Talk about huge gains.

You can also accumulate savings by keeping your employees happy enough to stay. But there are some other, less expected areas where companies also benefit from happy employees. According to Gallup, the organizations with 80% of employees who feel like their job is important can also brag that their safety incidents decreased by 64%! In this case, happy humans make safer humans.

So how do you ensure that your employees feel like humans instead of cogs in the machine?

Three things every human needs

Direct managers have the biggest impact on whether employees are treated like humans at work or not. Their influence is responsible for 70% of the variance in their team's employee engagement scores.

So, what can managers do?

Humans feel. They feel like they belong, they feel recognized and appreciated, they feel purpose, they feel trust, they feel safe. If your managers can tap into these needs, your employees will feel more human at work.

Deloitte's Being Human in Times of Uncertainty study analyzed significant behavioral and emotional shifts across 28,000 participants due to the pandemic and national unrest. The study analyzed methods to convert the employee experience into a human experience inlight of these challenges. They found that today's humans need three things the most: trust, safety, and connection.

1. Trust

Deloitte's research revealed four main things that engender trust:

Humanity: In other words, managers who show they care about their employees and customers. Have your managers asked how life is going at home? Do they know the goals and aspirations of their team? Have they checked in on the mental health of their employees since the pandemic hit? You might also ask managers to prioritize informal, fun interactions with their team to strengthen their relationships. You can also suggest showing appreciation for hard work even in spite of obstacles. These are all important ways managers can come off as human and help their employees feel human as well.

Transparency: Managers who are honest about changes, feedback, and the current state of the business are trustworthy. Now is not the time to hide obstacles facing your business. Keep employees in the loop to reduce the potential for anxiety and encourage feelings of belonging.

Capability: Managers work to ensure that the employees have access to the technology, equipment, and people they need whether working remotely or in-office. If in-office, they make sure that there are tools provided to keep that environment as safe as possible for employees (e.g., masks, shields, and sanitization products).

Reliability: Employees can depend on managers to be consistent and keep their word. If a manager commits to holding 1 on 1s each month, they do. If a manager commits to Friday morning off because the team worked late on Thursday, the team gets Friday morning off.

2. Safety

Deloitte's research found interesting data surrounding three types of people and their various responses to the pandemic risks:

Prevailers: These people are less concerned about the pandemic, care about the economic impact on the common good, and want to resume daily life norms as soon as possible.

Pragmatists: People in this category are trying to stay calm and balanced in their response to the pandemic, willing to take an economic hit, and adjust their daily life norms for the common good.

Protectors: Employees who fall into this category are anxious and concerned about the pandemic's impact on their own health along with public health. They feel an economic hit is necessary and that their personal actions can help

These groups are pretty different from one another, and their responses to workplace and organizational changes due to the pandemic will also vary. As companies move forward, they can do a few specific things to help each group feel comfortable and safe in today's new environment as an employee or a customer.
Make visible changes
Customers and employees who are pragmatists or protectors will appreciate social distancing floor decals, plastic shields, and readily available sanitizer. The physical and visible signs help people feel safer.
Make the conscientious choice the easiest one
For the prevailers who are more skeptical of the impact of their choices, put masks at the entrance to your building along with signs stating that mask-wearing is expected. Have sanitizer handy and accessible so that it is easy to use. Rearrange the office to allow for proper spacing, if necessary. These steps will make it more convenient for people to follow your organization's safety guidelines.
Offer frequent communication
27% of customer-facing employees want daily communication from their employer about company-wide safety practices and solutions. This level of transparency helps employees trust their organization and feel safer.

3. Connection

Last, but possibly the most important factor to the humans in your organization, is connection to other people. Connection reduces stress. and worry while increasing feelings of trust. In the workplace, people with social connections are more engaged, productive, and have a lower mortality rate.

In some cases, virtual connections have become a superior way of doing business. For example, virtual doctor visits or DMV appointments are not just safer, but much more convenient than the physical alternative.

Companies have also succeeded in replacing some activities that help connect people (concerts, lunches, classes, etc.) with virtual varieties. However, with employees in Zoom meetings and possibly facilitating virtual school options, "digital fatigue" can become a real problem.

Even more, 48% of Deloitte's survey correspondents related that virtual social activities were subpar compared to in-person activities and 56% wanted that experience to feel more human.

Your company's situation will vary state by state and country by country. Some places are fully open, others are still in almost complete lockdown. As possible, though, it is clear that people want to interact.

When it becomes appropriate to resume in-person activities, keep in mind those visible markers that protect your employees and help them feel safer. Prevailers, and even pragmatists, will appreciate smaller group events, held outside, for shorter periods of time to satisfy the human needs for interaction along with the human need to feel safe.

Until then, keep your employees feeling like a valued part of your company by using that activities budget to offer rewards for a job well done, invest in a recognition product, or treat people to grab their favorite take-out for the Zoom party.

Sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmosley/2020/08/27/back-to-basics-employee-engagement-vs-employee-experience/?sh=5bfb8bbb3e77

https://www.deloittedigital.com/content/dam/deloittedigital/us/documents/offerings/offering-20200730-being-human.pdf

https://cardinalatwork.stanford.edu/engage/news/building-culture-connection

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmosley/2020/08/27/back-to-basics-employee-engagement-vs-employee-experience/?sh=4b7e81db3e77

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Do You Treat Your Employees Like Humans?

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There's a reason why people call work a grind. Being at work can make you feel like a robot wedged between two metal gears, trying to break free or, worst case, survive. But your employees are not robots; they are humans. In a data-driven world, it's easy to reduce your employees to numbers.