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HBR: Coding Isn't a Necessary Leadership Skill - But Digital Literacy Is

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HBR: Coding Isn't a Necessary Leadership Skill - But Digital Literacy Is

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When former Microsoft U.S. chief technology officer Jennifer Byrne was offered her role, she worried that she didn't know enough about technology. After all, Microsoft's suite of tech products is just so vast.

If even one of the world's top technologists worries about not having enough tech knowledge, what hope is there for those of us who have never written a line of code?

Digital transformation is everywhere - even your local coffee shop has an app. When done right, it brings impressive business outcomes. But sadly, success is not a likely outcome: According to McKinsey 70% of all digital transformation initiatives do not reach their goals.

While most leaders now know that tech is a vital part of business, many are wondering what they really need to know about technology to succeed in the digital age. Coding bootcamps may appeal to some, but for many leaders, learning to code is simply not the best investment. It takes a long time to become a proficient coder, and it still doesn't give you a holistic overview of how digital technologies get made - even if you learn Python, you still won't understand how product goals relate to business goals, why user experience research matters, or how to assess your product's success.

The good news is that most leaders don't need to learn to code. Instead, they need to learn how to work with people who code. This means becoming a digital collaborator and learning how to work with developers, data scientists, user experience designers, and product managers - not completely retraining.

For example, when non-technical, customer-facing teams in the planning and development department at Santa Clara County collaborated with external technology consultants, they created a process to improve efficiency by 33%. The software specialists were experts in their fields, but only by combining forces with non-technical professionals could they make useful products.

Most ambitious leaders are working under severe time constraints, so the time they do have must be used effectively. What's the best return on your time investment, given your opportunity costs? The best and most efficient use of a leader's time is to become a digital collaborator by learning how to get a holistic view of how a software product gets made and who does what on a tech team. Here are four ways to do it.

Remove choice.

The best way to learn anything quickly is to put yourself in a situation where not doing it isn't an option.

Set up a weekly meeting with technical specialists and your team to discuss what they're working on and how it impacts scale, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. This public commitment to collaboration removes your choice to delay.

Catherine Breslin, a machine learning scientist with a PhD in automatic speech recognition from the University of Cambridge, told me that, while she is a technical specialist, she needs the insights of domain experts to do impactful work. She notes that non-digital professionals often don't know that some problems can be solved easily by technology because they've never discussed them with a technologist. This is why regular communication is vital.

For example, if you work in marketing, understanding consumer behavior is your top priority. This is where a regular meeting of the marketing team and data scientists can help both become more productive.

This weekly event doesn't have to be longer than 30 minutes. In the first meeting, begin by outlining your goals for the year and where you see the biggest bottlenecks. Is there something you wish you knew about your customers? Are there sales spikes or sudden drops that mystify you? What concerns you about your next advertising campaign?

While the data science team might not have solutions right away, this conversation will lay the foundation for effective collaboration. In turn, ask the technical team to tell you what problems they're working on, how they measure success, and who is involved. Seeing how engineers and data scientists solve problems will educate you on what's possible for you.

Remember that while your team may be concerned that they don't "speak tech," technical teams are often concerned that they don't understand the business side. See these meetings as a coming together of two equal partners sharing knowledge, not one Luddite seeking the wisdom of an oracle.

Learn how other people did it.

The myth of coders in a garage creating a billion-dollar company is persistent. The story of non-technical professionals driving technological change is not often told, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

For example, non-technical founders like Katrina Lake of Stitch Fix and Brian Chesky of Airbnb have created innovations and massive shareholder value driven by technology. Colin Beirne, a liberal arts graduate, has had more impact on deep tech than many computer scientists, because he founded Two Sigma Ventures, a deep tech investor that has funded 100 startups, 10 of which are now valued at over $1 billion. Bruce Daisley, who started his career selling radio advertising, had more influence on social media than most developers when he helped take Twitter global as its vice president for Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

Each of these people had to learn how to collaborate with technology teams, make the right investments, and lead people who did jobs they themselves could not do. Learning how they did it - and what they had to learn about technology on their path - will give you the knowledge and confidence to apply their lessons to your career.

However, the current cultural zeitgeist focuses on the story of engineers-turned-developers, and if you passively consume most technology-focused media, you'll mostly hear the stories of the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. Seeking out the stories of non-technical professionals who have succeeded in tech is an effort, but well worth it.

Understand different working styles.

The biggest difference between how technical and non-technical teams work is that the former iterates and learns, while the latter focuses on perfection. This difference can create tension and misunderstanding if not addressed head-on.

One of the core concepts of software development is releasing new features, seeing how people use them, and then iterating based on results. Thus, the aim of releasing something new is to test a hypothesis, rather than to create a perfect end product for a customer. On the other hand, non-technical teams usually focus on creating a perfect end product for a customer. This difference makes sense: Digital products can be changed quickly when customers already have them, while traditional products cannot. For example, developers can release a new feature once an app is already on your phone, but a chocolate bar can't become less sweet or more nutty after you buy it.

Thus, traditional products require more planning and forecasting before release than digital products. Tension often arises when non-technical teams want to discuss and plan every feature for every possible outcome, which frustrates technical teams, who want to "move fast and break things." Both approaches are right for their own specialty; the key is not to mix them up.

If you're working on a digital product for the first time, understand that apps, sites, and algorithms are built using an experimental "build - measure - learn" cycle. The product team simply cannot tell you what features are going to be released in a year because they don't know yet.

This can cause frustration, especially in the finance department, which understandably wants to forecast spend and revenues. This is where it helps to learn from startups. Early-stage technology companies are by nature experimental, but they have a very clear deadline: the amount of cash left in the bank. The question they're answering is: What can we learn given the amount of funding we have? Given our runway, what experiments can we do to get closer to our goal?

Thinking in terms of experimentation within a certain budget or time frame helps bring business realities to the scientific method used in digital innovation.

Learn concepts rather than skills.

While you don't need to learn to code a product with your bare hands, you do need to learn core tech terminology. As Jennifer Byrne told me: "You have to understand the difference between acquiring digital context versus digital fluency. Context means seeing the bigger picture of how things connect together, but not necessarily understanding the detail."

Concepts such as user-centric design, APIs, and cloud computing are pervasive, but many non-technical leaders don't fully understand them. Taking a course on technology for non-technical professionals or creating a learning program at your organization is a great way to invest in your leadership capital.

For example, according to Tsedal Neeley and Paul Leonardi, the Digital Transformation Factory program at French IT company Atos trained both technical and non-technical employees in digital technologies and artificial intelligence. Within three years, more than 70,000 Atos employees completed their digital certification and helped contribute to revenue reaching close to $13 billion.

Neeley and Leonardi argue that most people can become digitally savvy if they follow the "30% rule" : "You only need about 30% fluency in a handful of technical topics to develop your digital mindset." In other words, that's the minimum threshold that gives you enough digital literacy to be an active participant in digital transformation.

When many of today's leaders graduated from college, the technology sector simply wasn't what it is today. The typical jobs that the smartest graduates considered were in investment banking, consultancy, or advertising. The world has since changed, and the skills we learned are no longer enough. Today, Amazon (founded 1994) and Google (1998) are in the top five recruiters of MBAs, while they weren't even in the top 10 in 2002.

. . .

To succeed in this new tech-enabled world, learning how to work with people who make tech products is simply a core leadership skill.

For example, Starbucks is a coffee chain. Its core focus is selling coffee and snacks and running coffee shops. But its app-based rewards program represents 53% of the spend in their stores, and AI-based personalization drives customer loyalty. Thus, understanding how digital technology works and how to embed it into business strategy has had to become a core leadership skill for people running a coffee company.

Making the best use of digital technologies is what propels organizations into the future. To lead successfully in the digital age, leaders have to go beyond their usual training and learn to become digital collaborators.

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Coding Isn't a Necessary Leadership Skill - But Digital Literacy Is

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While most leaders now know that tech is a vital part of business, many are wondering what they really need to know about technology to succeed in the digital age. Coding bootcamps may appeal to some, but for many leaders, learning to code is simply not the best investment.

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WSJ: How to Say No to Busywork & Supercharge Your Career

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WSJ: How to Say No to Busywork & Supercharge Your Career

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Join that committee. Plan a lunch for the summer interns. And while you're at it, can you help that guy in marketing prep for next week's presentation? He'll be delivering it, of course.

The chorus of asks has always been there, demanding our time. But as we head back to offices, it's harder to hide from the busywork. Colleagues are eager to unload administrative tasks once absorbed by a shrinking population of executive assistants. Bosses feel pressure to check off requests from their superiors for yet another report or spreadsheet. And you're just the person to do it.

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How to Say No to Busywork and Supercharge Your Career

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Join that committee. Plan a lunch for the summer interns. And while you're at it, can you help that guy in marketing prep for next week's presentation? He'll be delivering it, of course. The chorus of asks has always been there, demanding our time.

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WSJ: The "Great Resignation" Started Long Ago

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WSJ: The "Great Resignation" Started Long Ago

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We're in the midst of breath-catching revolutions in how America lives and works. Working from home, as an issue, is still shaking itself out, but its implications are huge. If an entire class of people who used to go to the office stay home, it will upend the commuter model on which modern cities are built, and on which they depend for revenue.

Another great question has to do with the shortage of workers. You see this all around you. There aren't enough people to fill available jobs.

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Opinion | The 'Great Resignation' Started Long Ago

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We're in the midst of breath-catching revolutions in how America lives and works. Working from home, as an issue, is still shaking itself out, but its implications are huge. If an entire class of people who used to go to the office stay home, it will upend the commuter model on which modern cities are built, and on which they depend for revenue.

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We asked readers of CIO Journal's Morning Download newsletter to share some of their favorite summer books.

Their recommendations, which range from best practices on managing people to tales of grifters and rogues, don't exactly qualify as typical beach reads. But for the discriminating information-technology expert, whose professional value rests on the ability to ingest and distill information from a range of sources, these books deserve space alongside the lounge chair and laptop. Contributions have been edited for clarity.
Elaine Montilla, assistant vice president and CIO, the Graduate Center, City University of New York
"Inclusion Revolution: The Essential Guide to Dismantling Racial Inequity in the Workplace" by Daisy Auger-Domínguez

As a CIO, I see the enormous need for leaders to pay more attention to our teams and the people working with us. To that point, diversity, equity and inclusion are crucial for any leader who wants to retain talent in the coming years. Racial inequity in the workplace is a problem we can all solve, and the tools are all included in this gem for us to follow.

Susan Lilly Gerock, senior vice president of IT and CIO, Washington Real Estate Investment Trust

"From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees Into Lifelong Fans" by Jon Picoult

It should be required reading for anyone wanting to marry people, process and technology into positive memorable experiences. The real-life stories from familiar (and some less familiar) companies will change the way you approach design.

"Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" by David Allen
Arthur Hu, SVP and CIO, Lenovo Group Ltd. and chief technology officer of the company's solutions and services unit
I recommend this book to everyone. Strategy is only as good as its execution and great execution starts with pristine personal productivity.

"The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket" by Benjamin Lorr
Bob Ferry, associate vice president, information technology, Securities Investor Protection Corp.
A fascinating look at something most of us take for granted-how the food that we consume got to us in the first place. It's an amazing tour that takes the reader from grocery shelves to the rules behind who gets to stock the shelves, to how the food gets there. At each step of the way, it is a reminder of the surprising complexity and integration involved in this seemingly quotidian activity and demonstrates the limits of visibility and even knowability for business operations at the edges of far-flung supply webs.

"Life Is Simple: How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe" by Johnjoe McFadden
Aaron Levie, chief executive, Box Inc.
Part history book, part science lesson, part theological discussion, this book is both a great narrative covering some of the greatest discoveries in the history of the world, but also a study of how one man, William of Occam, and his "razor" upended the thinking of his day and was in large part responsible for laying a framework for how scientific research has been conducted since. Highly recommended for the beach.

"Play Nice But Win: A CEO's Journey From Founder to Leader" by Michael Dell
Jeremy King, SVP and head of engineering, Pinterest Inc.
It's pretty hard to make tech infrastructure stories exciting, but Michael Dell does an amazing job of it in his memoir-highlighting the many different chapters and changes of the Dell story.

"Termination Shock: A Novel" by Neal Stephenson
Christian Heller, AI success director, DataRobot Inc.
What technologist doesn't love a little Neal Stephenson? This book has it all: environmental do-gooders, global climate change, geopolitical consequences, a bit of human connection and a few technology-related twists.

"Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942" by Ian W. Toll
Ram Venkatesh, CTO, Cloudera Inc.
No other military history book I've read so seamlessly attracts both hard-core history nerds and casual readers. The real beauty of the book is how it lays out how innovation happens in a military during war. Toll shows throughout the book how technology changes (e.g., new types of torpedoes, radar), policy changes (submarine engagements and campaign movements), advanced manufacturing (mass growth in new types of aircraft from American builders), and human ingenuity (submarine captains figuring out new tactics by trial and error) led to widespread defense innovation that helped the U.S. win the war in the Pacific. It's a must-read for national security professionals, especially those working with digital transformations and new technologies today, and shows how all these moving pieces need to come together for success in war.

"Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men" by Caroline Criado Perez
Tom Murphy, SVP and university CIO, University of Pennsylvania
As someone who has worked in the data space for many years, it was really sobering for me to read how systematic the gender data gap is and how widespread the consequences are reflected in the world we live in today. At the same time, the tremendous amount of research and detail Caroline Criado Perez shared helped me feel informed and hopeful that I can be more mindful of the need to address this gap proactively.

"Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks" by Patrick Radden Keefe
Bryan Schulte, chief data janitor, Leaf Logistics Inc.
For enterprise CIOs and technologists, this is a handbook for dealing with the politics and dangers of C-level life with colleagues and unscrupulous vendors.

"Where Is My Flying Car?" by J. Storrs Hall
Rajin Chauhan, senior customer value architect, Celonis Inc.
In the bibliography, on the FAA's regulation of airspace: "They make a desert, and they call it peace." I won't read any book just because it quotes Tacitus...but I'll read this one.

Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity" by Frank Slootman [CEO of Snowflake Inc. ]
Amit Prakash, co-founder and CTO, ThoughtSpot Inc.
You get to understand how he enabled wild growth and successful IPOs at ServiceNow and Snowflake; the journeys the companies took; Slootman's leadership tactics and values; the fundamentals of the cloud business.

"Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life" by Rory Sutherland
Tom Bianculli, CTO, Zebra Technologies Corp.
As an engineer, I am really good at taking real-world problems, abstracting it and then using a bag of techniques collected over the years to solve it. Naturally that's the bag of tools I often reach for. It was quite educational and fun to see a diametrically opposite point of view that is also quite complementary. Rory Sutherland makes a very convincing case in this book that this kind of reductive thinking, while effective, often leaves out the possibility for a bit of magic. Instead of taking a problem and reducing it to something tractable, a little bit of lateral thinking and application of human psychology can result in magical solutions that are often inexpensive, delightful and very effective.

"Digital Business Transformation: How Established Companies Sustain Competitive Advantage From Now to Next" by Nigel Vaz
Krishna Subramanian, president and chief operating officer, Komprise Inc.
This book is a great read for those who are on the journey to digitally transform their business. It tackles how companies can drive change at the pace of business, enhance decision-making and create the culture necessary to deliver on ever-increasing customer expectations.

"Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike " by Phil Knight

It's a fascinating story of entrepreneurship told by a founder. The details are vivid and feel very authentic, and there are valuable lessons to be learned, only they don't come across in a dry or pedantic way.

Write to Thomas Loftus at Thomas.Loftus@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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We asked readers of CIO Journal's Morning Download newsletter to share some of their favorite summer books. Their recommendations, which range from best practices on managing people to tales of grifters and rogues, don't exactly qualify as typical beach reads.

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WSJ: The New Benefits Employers Could Offer to Make You Stay

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WSJ: The New Benefits Employers Could Offer to Make You Stay

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"Emotionally aware managers will be rewarded and promoted, and transactional managers who may have coasted by in the past will now need to learn new skills or else risk their people leaving in droves." - Dorie Clark

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During the pandemic, many workers have shown they aren't afraid to head for the exit. That's causing employers to rethink work policies and management styles, looking for ways to keep employees on board and attract new ones.

The problems are daunting. There's the existential angst felt by some employees stuck at home toiling on tasks they see as being of little value. Burned-out workers are seeking healthier work-life balance, demanding companies provide more flexible arrangements. Managers are struggling to adapt their styles after a sudden and unexpected experiment in remote work. On top of that, the sluggish pace of demographic growth in the U.S. means that the pool of working-age labor is shrinking, compounding worker shortages.

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The New Benefits Employers Could Offer to Make You Stay

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During the pandemic, many workers have shown they aren't afraid to head for the exit. That's causing employers to rethink work policies and management styles, looking for ways to keep employees on board and attract new ones. The problems are daunting.

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LifeLabs Learning: How to Improve Your Storytelling Skills

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LifeLabs Learning: How to Improve Your Storytelling Skills

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Why stories are one of the most effective ways to transmit knowledge | LifeLabs Learning

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Stories are one of the most effective ways to transmit knowledge. Compelling stories cause people to be more understanding, trusting, and open to ideas.

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NYTimes: How Software Is Stifling Competition and Slowing Innovation

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NYTimes: How Software Is Stifling Competition and Slowing Innovation

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"Software isn't accelerating creative destruction today, software is suppressing it," James Bessen says. Credit... Greta Rybus for The New York Times

A tech entrepreneur turned academic takes on the "disruption myth." Big companies, he argues, have built software moats against rivals.

"Software isn't accelerating creative destruction today, software is suppressing it," James Bessen says. Credit... Greta Rybus for The New York Times

More than a decade ago, Marc Andreessen, the internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist, famously declared, "Software is eating the world."

The winners, Mr. Andreessen wrote in The Wall Street Journal, would be mainly "entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures."

His essay was a distillation of a long-held article of faith in Silicon Valley.

Clearly, some traditional businesses such as advertising and retailing have been upended by software-fueled companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon, the new giants on the corporate landscape.

But there is also a very different software story, according to James Bessen, executive director of the Technology & Policy Research Initiative at the Boston University School of Law.

In a new book, Mr. Bessen challenges what he terms the "disruption myth." He makes the case that big companies in one industry after another have built complex software systems for managing their sales, marketing, operations and product offerings that are essentially moats against competitors.

This mastery of software by major corporations, he argues, helps explain rising economic concentration, increasing inequality and slowing innovation.

"This is a broad swath of the economy - way beyond a handful of big tech companies in Silicon Valley," Mr. Bessen said. "There is an advantage to software that economists haven't really reckoned with yet. Software isn't accelerating creative destruction today. Software is suppressing it."

Mr. Bessen brings an unusual perspective to his economic analysis. He is a former software entrepreneur from the personal computer era who founded an early desktop publishing software company, which he ran for a decade. When he sold his venture to a larger company in 1993, he made millions. It was pocket change by the standards of today's tech start-ups, but it meant career freedom for Mr. Bessen.

Mr. Bessen then got in touch with his former roommate at Harvard University, Eric Maskin, who had become an economics professor at their alma mater. Mr. Bessen explained that he had ideas about the software industry that might be of interest to economists, Mr. Maskin recalled. The two went on to write a research paper on why patents often worked against innovation in software, an industry that prospered when information was shared.

The joint study helped start Mr. Bessen's career as an academic. His research has focused mainly on the economics of innovation and the broad impact of technology. The title of his book, " The New Goliaths: How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation" (Yale University Press), suggests a strident critic. But his past research has also come down on the side of technology.

In 2015, amid rising concerns that automation was a job killer, Mr. Bessen published a paper that examined the impact of computer automation on 317 occupations from 1980 through 2013. His summary conclusion: "Employment grows significantly faster in occupations that use computers more."

Mr. Bessen himself is an entrepreneurial outsider to the field of economics. He has forged an unorthodox career in academia, rising to prominence gradually over the years, one intriguing research project at a time. He has become respected in economic circles without a Ph.D.

"Jim's not a professionally trained economist, so he has an original take," said Mr. Maskin, his former college roommate, who won a Nobel Prize in economics in 2007. "That's played to his advantage and to the profession's advantage."

Blending data analysis with narrative case studies is the hallmark of Mr. Bessen's research. He is a business historian and a fluid writer. His book contains accounts of the evolving use of software in many industries, including autos, banking, retailing, insurance, garbage hauling, logistics and trucking.

Mr. Bessen's observations about increasing market concentration, rising inequality, and slowing innovation and productivity echo those of other researchers. Most of those studies, though, are high-level economic research.

His focus is a more detailed look within industries and at individual companies, seeking the underlying technology engine behind the broad economic trends.

"He has a new, complementary perspective on what we're seeing," said Chiara Criscuolo, an economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. "It gives you much more of the mechanism for why we got to where we got."

That mechanism is what Mr. Bessen calls "proprietary software." He defines it broadly as not only code but also the data that companies collect on their customers and operations, the skills of their workers and the organizational changes they have made to exploit the technology.

His measure of proprietary software does not include spending on the standard business software from companies like Oracle, SAP and Salesforce. Instead, it is the investment that companies make in custom software from those suppliers and others, and in their own in-house applications. Some of the software may be freely available open-source code, he notes, but the overall system is closed.

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Mr. Bessen at home in Harpswell, Maine. He wants to see dominant companies pushed to open up, as IBM did when it was pressured to unbundle its software from its hardware business in 1969. Credit... Greta Rybus for The New York Times

Mr. Bessen's analysis is based on government and industry data, supplemented by information on jobs and salary estimates from Lightcast, a labor market research firm, which recently changed its name from Emsi Burning Glass. The total investment in proprietary software grew 74 percent to $239 billion over the decade that ended in 2019, the most recent government statistics. The big companies use this technology to manage complexity and gain competitive advantage, according to Mr. Bessen.

The big banks use their software and customer data to customize credit card offerings to individuals in a way that smaller rivals cannot. Walmart and Amazon use their proprietary software to streamline logistics and personalize marketing. Google and Facebook use it to target ads.

Insurers use it to tailor and market health plans to individuals. Pharmacy benefit management companies use it to navigate the complexity of drug reimbursement plans. And the list goes on. Evidence of the proprietary software advantage is abundant and convincing, in Mr. Bessen's view.

The software-enabled winners in industries are more productive than their smaller rivals, and they pay more - 17 percent more on average for the same jobs, Mr. Bessen estimates.

But their success, he argues, has come at too great a price. Competition has suffered. Since the late 1990s, the chances of unseating a dominant firm - typically, one of the top four by sales in an industry - has declined by half. And technology, he contends, is spreading and being adopted across industries more slowly than in the past, which exacerbates the trends of inequality and market concentration.

His policy answer is not to break up dominant companies, but to nudge or force them to open up. For example, IBM, under antitrust pressure, unbundled its software from its hardware business in 1969. That move, Mr. Bessen writes, led to a flourishing software industry.

Today's proprietary platforms, he asserts, could be opened through access to their software platforms or to customer data they have harvested - a prescription that policymakers in Europe and America are considering.

Mr. Bessen points to a seemingly unlikely protagonist: Amazon. Opening its computing infrastructure, he said, created the cloud computing industry. "In some ways," he said, "Amazon is a model of what I'd like to see other firms do," though with appropriate regulatory oversight.

One critique of Mr. Bessen's analysis is that he is observing a wave of technology adoption that still has a long way to run, and that his concerns are overstated.

"These superstar firms are very productive," said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a policy research group. "The question is why aren't other companies as productive yet?" He added that they were likely to catch up.

And seemingly entrenched companies are not immune to truly innovative, technology-powered newcomers: Amazon challenging Walmart in retailing, and Tesla taking on the Detroit automakers, for example.

Both are exceptions, but ones that partly support his argument, Mr. Bessen insists. Both have become powerhouse corporations, he said, largely because of their prowess in designing and exploiting complex software.

"Technology," Mr. Bessen said, "is playing a different role than it has in the past - less to disrupt than entrench."

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How Software Is Stifling Competition and Slowing Innovation

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A tech entrepreneur turned academic takes on the "disruption myth." Big companies, he argues, have built software moats against rivals. "Software isn't accelerating creative destruction today, software is suppressing it," James Bessen says. Credit... Greta Rybus for The New York Times More than a decade ago, Marc Andreessen, the internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist, famously declared, "Software is eating the world."

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Inc.: 3 Marketing Lessons from Gen Z's Favorite Brands

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Inc.: 3 Marketing Lessons from Gen Z's Favorite Brands

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As the first generation that's fully digitally native Gen Zers--those born between 1996 to 2012--take the center stage in online shopping. Gen Z's spending power has reached $360 billion and over 55 percent of those in the cohort, between 18 and 24 years old, has shopped online last month, according to a May survey of 1,117 individuals. That survey of U.S. Gen Zers is from the advertising design automation platform Creatopy.

So what do you need to know about this tech-savvy generation? Chiefly, they hold brands to very high standards. According to the report, e-commerce platform Amazon, sports brand Nike, and fashion retailer Shein take the lead as Gen Z's top choices in terms of brands. Here are reasons why these brands attract Gen Z shoppers:

1. Prioritize speed and efficiency

Gen Z shoppers are born in a fast-paced world--so get on board. "Amazon appeals to these young consumers by offering a large variety of products available to order from the same website, with short delivery times," Creatopy's VP of Marketing Bogdan Carlescu tells Inc. "They expect technology to make their lives easier and their shopping experience more convenient."

In addition, gen Z has a shorter attention span, which means "If the same ad is repeatedly targeted at the same users, it will create more apathy toward your product and brand than anything else," says Truman Rae, account manager of consultancy agency that focuses on Gen Z marketing strategies NinetyEighth.

2. Advocate for social change

Carlescu explains that Nike landed at the top because it has been advocating for social change and taking a stand on various issues, which members of Gen Z deeply care about. Carlescu adds that the iconic Colin Kaepernick campaign is just one example of such actions. Gen Z prefers brands that are inspiring and not afraid to get involved in issues that impact society.

"This is the generation that believes companies have a role in improving society, so you need to show them you're doing more than just selling a product," says Carlescu. "However, the messaging that you're putting forward has to match your company's beliefs and values. Gen Z will not accept performative actions and will call you out if you try to monetize on social issues."

3. Skip the overly polished marketing messages

Shein manages tocapture Gen Z not only with their affordable prices but their presence on social media--YouTube, Instagram, TikTok--and collaborations with various influencers.

"Gen Z wants authenticity, brands that speak--not mimic--their language, especially when it comes to marketing on social media," Creatopy's digital media manager Laura Trif tells Inc. "To avoid awkward interactions, brands need to partner with members of the Gen Z community, nano- and micro-influencers that are closer to their followers, not only with celebrities and models. What Gen Z wants to see on social media is relatable content, content that looks and feels spontaneous and raw, rather than extremely polished."

Founder of Gen Z-led social media agency The Z Link, Erifili Gounari, agrees that brands should not take themselves too seriously or try too hard on social media. Gounari advises brands to engage with Gen Z users on the app in a fun and casual way and take a community-driven approach to the app. Gounari adds that user-generated content beats traditional advertising in terms of brand engagement.

As the first generation that's fully digitally native Gen Zers--those born between 1996 to 2012--take the center stage in online shopping. Gen Z's spending power has reached $360 billion and over 55 percent of those in the cohort, between 18 and 24 years old, has shopped online last month, according to a May survey of 1,117 individuals. That survey of U.S. Gen Zers is from the advertising design automation platform Creatopy.

So what do you need to know about this tech-savvy generation? Chiefly, they hold brands to very high standards. According to the report, e-commerce platform Amazon, sports brand Nike, and fashion retailer Shein take the lead as Gen Z's top choices in terms of brands. Here are reasons why these brands attract Gen Z shoppers:

1. Prioritize speed and efficiency

Gen Z shoppers are born in a fast-paced world--so get on board. "Amazon appeals to these young consumers by offering a large variety of products available to order from the same website, with short delivery times," Creatopy's VP of Marketing Bogdan Carlescu tells Inc. "They expect technology to make their lives easier and their shopping experience more convenient."

In addition, gen Z has a shorter attention span, which means "If the same ad is repeatedly targeted at the same users, it will create more apathy toward your product and brand than anything else," says Truman Rae, account manager of consultancy agency that focuses on Gen Z marketing strategies NinetyEighth.

2. Advocate for social change

Carlescu explains that Nike landed at the top because it has been advocating for social change and taking a stand on various issues, which members of Gen Z deeply care about. Carlescu adds that the iconic Colin Kaepernick campaign is just one example of such actions. Gen Z prefers brands that are inspiring and not afraid to get involved in issues that impact society.

"This is the generation that believes companies have a role in improving society, so you need to show them you're doing more than just selling a product," says Carlescu. "However, the messaging that you're putting forward has to match your company's beliefs and values. Gen Z will not accept performative actions and will call you out if you try to monetize on social issues."

3. Skip the overly polished marketing messages

Shein manages tocapture Gen Z not only with their affordable prices but their presence on social media--YouTube, Instagram, TikTok--and collaborations with various influencers.

"Gen Z wants authenticity, brands that speak--not mimic--their language, especially when it comes to marketing on social media," Creatopy's digital media manager Laura Trif tells Inc. "To avoid awkward interactions, brands need to partner with members of the Gen Z community, nano- and micro-influencers that are closer to their followers, not only with celebrities and models. What Gen Z wants to see on social media is relatable content, content that looks and feels spontaneous and raw, rather than extremely polished."

Founder of Gen Z-led social media agency The Z Link, Erifili Gounari, agrees that brands should not take themselves too seriously or try too hard on social media. Gounari advises brands to engage with Gen Z users on the app in a fun and casual way and take a community-driven approach to the app. Gounari adds that user-generated content beats traditional advertising in terms of brand engagement.

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3 Marketing Lessons From Gen Z's Favorite Brands

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As the first generation that's fully digitally native Gen Zers--those born between 1996 to 2012--take the center stage in online shopping. Gen Z's spending power has reached $360 billion and over 55 percent of those in the cohort, between 18 and 24 years old, has shopped online last month, according to a May survey of 1,117 individuals.

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HBR: How Leaders Can Escape Their Echo Chambers

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HBR: How Leaders Can Escape Their Echo Chambers

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The higher leaders go, the more likely they are to find themselves in an echo chamber, surrounded by people who think like them and agree with them. This occurs partly because of the affinity bias, which leads us to favor, associate with, and hire the people to whom we feel most similar. This dearth of diverse perspectives is further compounded by a couple of issues: problem-solving methods that lead to groupthink and the difficulty of establishing psychological safety. Collectively, these forces can result in leaders getting stuck in an echo chamber.

And while most leaders are aware of these forces and work to create a team culture that fosters voice and candor, subtle leadership behaviors can get in the way of their intentions.

For example, take my client Aviral, whose overly Socratic method of communication resulted in team members hesitating to bring ideas to him until they were "fully baked." Or Michael, whose pacesetting style caused people to feel like they were imposing on his time and shouldn't bother him with questions and concerns. Or Melissa, whose habit of frequently saying "no," "but," or "however" discouraged her team from providing feedback or offering dissenting opinions at meetings.

To guard against the strategic disadvantages of being stuck in an echo chamber, practice the following behaviors:

Continuously solicit feedback and ideas.

No matter how egalitarian and open you are as a leader, chances are high that many of your people withhold valuable information, ideas, and concerns from you.

You might tell your team, "We all have blind spots, myself included. I need your help to see mine and want you to question and disagree with me if you think I am off base." Regularly repeat this request and follow up directly with your team members to specifically solicit their feedback and input.

Additionally, consistently ask your team for their ideas. Assure them they don't need to build an ironclad case for every idea. Or, like Aviral's team, they might hold back for fear of not having the answers to all your questions and looking dumb.

Finally, publicly acknowledge and thank independent voices that share a dissenting opinion, question your logic, or disagree with you. When your team sees that you meet challenging comments with gratitude, you'll encourage more fearful employees to also speak up.

Demonstrate curiosity and listen.

Suppose you neglect to balance a drive for results with nurturing your relationships, as Michael did. This tendency can degrade trust, motivation, and engagement on your team - and cut you off from valuable information.

Instead, commit to holding time and space for your team and colleagues. For example, do not cancel your one-on-ones if there is no agenda; rather, repurpose the time to check in more holistically on the person. You might also use the time to solicit feedback and ideas and inquire if there are any issues you should be aware of. Be fully present, whether it's a scheduled one-on-one or someone on your team asks for five minutes. Multi-tasking, showing impatience, and failing to listen well signals that you're not interested in that person and what they have to say.

When someone disagrees with you or challenges your opinion, override the natural urge to resist or discount. Confirmation bias makes you adept at spotting the weaknesses in someone else's position or argument but blind to the flaws or holes in your beliefs. Sometimes, exposure to counterevidence can even increase our confidence that our cherished beliefs are true.

Instead, adopt an attitude of curiosity and ask questions to understand their perspective better. For example, you might ask: "What led you to that conclusion?" or say, "Tell me more."

Practice "yes, and."

"Yes, and" is a foundational improv technique, but it's also a practical philosophy for generating ideas and building relationships.

Imagine you're at a meeting and sharing ideas. Each time, someone replies to your idea with a "no," "but," "however," or "well, actually." Naturally, you're less inclined to share additional thoughts after a few of these discounting responses. Well, if you use these phrases when others share their ideas or feedback with you, you too will shut down potential contributions of valuable information.

Instead, use "yes, and" to acknowledge and build on someone's idea. Of course, you won't be able to use every contribution. But by acknowledging someone's ideas, you help them feel listened to, considered, and encouraged to share ideas in the future.

Speak last.

Build a habit of speaking last in meetings to hear a more diverse set of ideas and mitigate groupthink. You already know what you know. What you need to do in meetings is discover what others know. Speaking last encourages your team to put their ideas and suggestions on the table, helps them feel listened to, and boosts ownership and team morale.

Speaking last doesn't mean being entirely quiet. Instead, it means that you focus your initial comments on gathering and clarifying information through questions such as: "Why do you think that's the right direction?"

When you finally share your perspective or render an opinion, you will have had the benefit of hearing what others know and think first. As it did for one CEO that I coached, this one shift alone can dramatically improve the quality of your meetings.

Seed different perspectives.

Intentionally interject unique perspectives or styles of problem-solving into your team and network.

For example, invite people from other parts of the company to team meetings to share alternate perspectives and views on a situation. You might also appoint a devil's advocate to take an opposing viewpoint and raise contrary evidence and perspectives. The point of this role is to improve team decisions and results, not to encourage baseless argumentativeness. So be sure that the designee attacks the ideas, not the people, and offers solid logic and new alternatives.

Over the longer term, mitigate against affinity bias in hiring by ensuring ample diversity in your panel of interviewers. And work to build a non-insular network with diverse perspectives, values, and expertise.

Walk the talk.

While your team pays attention to what you say, they are more keenly attuned to what you do. As the aphorism goes, "Actions speak louder than words."

As a leader, you must be the change you ask of others. Not "walking the talk" undercuts your professed commitment and trust in your leadership. Walking the talk may not always be easy, but it's essential if you want to inspire others to follow you. By modeling the behaviors you're asking your team to display, such as sharing feedback and ideas with your superiors, you build trust in your message and encourage others to behave similarly.

Taking the actions outlined here will help you step outside the bubble of agreement where many leaders unwittingly exist. You'll generate stronger connection and communication with your team and colleagues, encourage fresh and creative perspectives, and make better decisions. Building these new habits may be challenging at first, but in these fast-paced and uncertain times, now more than ever it's worth the effort.

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How Leaders Can Escape Their Echo Chambers

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While leaders are broadly aware of the importance of creating a psychologically safe culture to encourage candor, they are less cognizant of how subtle leadership behaviors can get in the way of people speaking up. In this article, the author shares behaviors that leaders might not realize shut down dissenting perspectives and offers guidance about what to do instead.

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HBR: Motivating People Starts with Building Emotional Connections

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HBR: Motivating People Starts with Building Emotional Connections

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Motivating People Starts with Building Emotional Connections

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Thousands of years ago, Aristotle identified pathos as a critical element in communication and persuasion. As the maxim suggests, logic makes us think, but emotions make us act. In this piece, the author offers three ways to harness the power of emotion to motivate your team: 1) Cultivate the energy that flows from enthusiasm.

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If you haven't had a great deal of experience with formulating a strategy for your business or unit, you're in good company. It's not an everyday activity. Some firms coast along for years with the same strategy and address that strategy only when it is obviously obsolete.

Even then, many turn to strategy consultants to do the job. Strategic thinking is not a core managerial competence at most companies, says Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. "Executives hone their management capabilities by tackling problems over and over again," he writes in "Making Strategy: Learning by Doing" ( Harvard Business Review, November-December 1997). "Changing strategy, however, is not usually a task that managers face repeatedly. Once companies have found a strategy that works, they want to use it, not change it. Consequently, most management teams do not develop a competence in strategic thinking."

So if you are not highly practiced at formulating strategy-or you want to give a helping hand to someone on your team who is tackling strategy for the first time-here are steps to follow. They involve looking both outside and inside the organization, since the market to be served is outside the organization and the capabilities for making the strategy work are within it.
1. Look outside to identify threats and opportunities
At the highest level, strategy is concerned with the external market and how the firm's resources should be allocated to create an exploitable advantage. There are always threats: new entrants, demographic changes, suppliers who might cut you off, substitute products that could undermine your business, and macroeconomic trends that may reduce your customers' ability to pay.

The business may be threatened by a competitor that can produce the same quality goods at a much lower price-or a much better product at the same price.

A strategy must be able to cope with these threats. The outer environment also harbors opportunities: a new-to-the-world technology, an un-served customer base, and so forth. Thus, the first job of strategists is to scan the outer environment for threats and opportunities. Here's a proven approach: Form a team of executives, a department manager, and individuals with special insights. The team's job is to identify the core threats and opportunities. Avoid having anyone on the team who appears complacent or wedded to the status quo.

Gather the views of customers, suppliers, and industry experts. These outside views can be powerful. Some firms, particularly those in technological fields, enlist teams of scientists and engineers to look outward to markets, competitors, and technical developments. It's their job to find anything that could threaten a firm's current business or point toward new directions in the industry or market.
2. Look inside at resources, capabilities, and practices
Resources and internal capabilities can constrain your choice of strategy. A strategy to exploit an un-served market in the electronics industry might not be feasible if your firm lacks the necessary financial capital and human know-how.

Likewise, a strategy that would require substantial entrepreneurial behavior on the part of employees, for example, would seem doomed from the beginning if your people practices reward years of service over individual performance.

These internal capabilities-especially the human ones-matter greatly and are too often overlooked by strategists. A strategy can succeed only if it has the backing of the right set of people and other resources; these must be properly aligned with the strategy.
3. Consider strategies for addressing threats and opportunities
Christensen has advocated that strategy teams first prioritize the threats and opportunities they find (he calls them "driving forces" of competition), and then discuss each in broad strokes. As you follow this advice when developing strategies that focus on each core threat and opportunity, be sure to do the following:

* Create many alternatives. There is seldom one way to do things. In some cases, the best parts of two different strategies can be combined to make a stronger third strategy.

* Check all facts, and question all assumptions.

* Look for missing information; there is bound to be some. Determine what data you need to better assess a particular strategy. Then get it.

* Vet the leading strategy choices among the wisest heads you know. Doing so will help you avoid "groupthink" within the strategy team.
4. Build a good "fit" among strategy-supporting activities
Michael Porter, the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School, has made the point that strategy is more than just a blueprint for winning customers; it is also about combining company activities into a chain whose links are mutually supporting and effective in locking out imitators.

He uses Southwest Airlines to illustrate his notion of "fit." Southwest's strategy is based on rapid gate turnaround. Rapid turnaround allows Southwest to make frequent departures and better utilize its expensive aircraft assets. This, in turn, supports the low-cost, high-convenience proposition it offers customers. Thus, each activity supports the other and the higher goal. That goal, Porter points out, is further supported by other critical activities, which include highly motivated and effective gate personnel and ground crews, a no meals policy, and no interline baggage transfers. Those activities make rapid turnarounds possible.

"Southwest's strategy," writes Porter, "involves a whole system of activities, not a collection of parts. Its competitive advantage comes from the way its activities fit and reinforce one another."
5. Create alignment
Once you've developed a satisfactory strategy, your job is only half done. Now you have to create alignment between the people and the activities of the organization and its strategy. Alignment is a condition in which every employee at every level understands the strategy, and understands her role in making the strategy work. As a manager, your role in creating alignment is twofold:

* Communicating. You must help people understand the strategy and how their jobs contribute to it. You want to create a situation in which even the lowest-ranking employees can articulate the goals of the organization and explain how what they do every day furthers them.

* Coordinating work processes. You must align people's activities with the business's strategic intentions.
Be prepared for change
Create a winning strategy and implement it well, and you might cruise along for years without any problems. But no strategy is effective forever. Something in the external environment eventually changes-new technology appears, customer needs shift, new competitors emerge-rendering it ineffective. Unfortunately, many management teams cannot recognize when their strategies have become obsolete.

The temporary nature of successful strategy should caution you to continually scan the external environment for threats and new opportunities, as described in Step 1. Does your company do this already? If it doesn't, who would be the people to conduct this duty?

Strategy formulation, then, is an ongoing requirement of good management. It is, to quote Michael Porter, "a process of perceiving new positions that woo customers from established positions or draw new customers into the market." This is a process you must permanently embed in your organization.

This article appeared in the January 2006 issue of Harvard Management Update.

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If you haven't had a great deal of experience with formulating a strategy for your business or unit, you're in good company. It's not an everyday activity. Some firms coast along for years with the same strategy and address that strategy only when it is obviously obsolete.

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When you set a goal to change something about yourself, like meeting deadlines at work, it requires a change in your behavior. That is how you gauge your success at meeting the goal. However, behavioral change is the most challenging step in obtaining that goal. For example, I know I want to meet my deadlines but what are the steps to get me there? Left to your own devices, you are 80% likely to fail. Why? Our brains are built that way.

Behavioral change that requires both new high-level skills and high motivation to implement those skills is in fact the hardest behavioral change to achieve (The Neuroscience of Goals and Behavioral Change, March 2018).
Two strategies improve the success of behavioral change:

acknowledging and rewarding small steps in achieving the goal

linking the goal to a person's core values and sense of self

Executive coaches help you do just that! Coaches develop the scaffolding needed to achieve successful behavioral change. During scheduled one-on-one meetings, coaches encourage self-awareness, they break down their client's goals and desired behavioral outcomes into bite-sized steps in order to identify and provide input for a shift in strategy to meet their goals. The shift in the client's strategy is ultimately based on their core values and sense of self.

As a result, organizations that offer training alone experience 22% increase in productivity, but when combined with coaching that figure rises to 88% (Gerald Olivero, Denise Bane & Richard Kopelman, Public Personnel Management).

Take a look at what successful behavioral change looks like in the real-life coaching example below.

Scenario: A client has difficulty building an inclusive and results-oriented environment during team meetings.

1. Coach: What would it mean to actively listen to your direct reports at a team meeting?

Coach asks a powerful question that deepens the client's self-awareness.

Result:The client reflects on the question. As her awareness grows, she begins to experiment with different strategies.

2. Client: I tried to listen, but I can't help offering strong opinions.
Result:With self-reflection and the coach's feedback, the client begins to process what worked/didn't work and the reason behind it. The client admits that she felt a loss of control because she's used to driving meetings and strategy.

3. Client: I tried again, and this time asked what each person thought before weighing in with my opinion.

Result: A successful meeting is the result of my team's perspectives as well as mine.

4. Client: Repeat the successful strategy.

Result: Behavioral change based on a change in core value: What does success look like?

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When you set a goal to change something about yourself, like meeting deadlines at work, it requires a change in your behavior. That is how you gauge your success at meeting the goal. However, behavioral change is the most challenging step in obtaining that goal.

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Forbes: 12 Advantages of a Growth Mindset That Could Accelerate Your Career

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Forbes: 12 Advantages of a Growth Mindset That Could Accelerate Your Career

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You were born with curiosity and creativity. Get it back with a growth mindset.
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Adopting a growth mindset is not just essential in your life, it's critical. Those people with a growth mindset understand that knowledge can be acquired and intelligence can be developed. With a growth mindset, people focus on improvement instead of worrying about how smart they are. They work hard to learn more and get smarter. A "growth mindset," thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities.

A "fixed mindset," on the other hand, assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens, its what we were born with, which we can't change in any meaningful way. Out of these two mindsets, which we manifest from a very early age, comes our belief about whether or not we believe we can succeed at whatever we want to be. We are not what other people said we were at a young age. Ever had a parent or teacher say this to you as a child," You're drawing is terrible. You just don't have math skills. You are not athletic." They were wrong. Here's the good news. No matter your current mindset, you can adopt and nurture a growth mindset but you have work to do.

Most people have one mindset or the other. Some have a combination. The good news is that we can all adopt a growth mindset, simply by putting ourselves in one. It's easy to change. Just knowing about the two mindsets can make us think and act in new ways. Once we can spot the thoughts, words, and actions that go with the fixed and growth mindsets, we start catching ourselves in fixed mode and we can learn to switch into growth mode. And once you know how to switch from a fixed to growth mindset, you can eventually stay there.

People with growth mindsets believe that intelligence, and qualities we're born with are just the foundation for future development. They can be improved through learning and hard work. Some people can do certain things well with little or no training or practice, but others can learn to do those same things, just as well or better, with training and practice. As a result, they say things such as:"I have the rest of the week to get the project done." "I realized I had a choice. I could sit in my misery or I could do something about it." "All my life I've been playing up, meaning I've challenged myself with players who were older, bigger, more skillful, more experienced." "I don't walk on water. I just run faster than a lot of people."

And here's what they do: try new things. Experiment. Make mistakes and correct them along the way. Reject what doesn't work after trying to see what might. Tweak, iterate, and maintain an upward trajectory in effort and progress. Here are some tips on transitioning from a fixed to growth mindset, all to drive your career potential:

Acknowledge and embrace imperfections: Hiding from your weaknesses means you'll never overcome them. Pick a weakness and improve it to at least neutral and to, at best, a strength.

View challenges as opportunities: Having a growth mindset means relishing opportunities for self-improvement. Learn more about how to fail well. Attack a small challenge until you succeed. Learn how to code or cook.

Try different learning tactics: There's no one-size-fits-all model for learning. What works for one person may not work for you. Take an online course and learn a new language or skill.

Replace the word "failing" with the word "learning: When you make a mistake or fall short of a goal, you haven't failed; you've learned. Instead of regretting a failure, study it for strategies to win in the future.

Stop seeking approval: When you prioritize approval over learning, you sacrifice your own potential for growth. Do something well at work and don't tell anyone. Let the recognition come to you.

Value the process over the end result: Intelligent people enjoy the learning process, and don't mind when it continues beyond an expected time frame. I returned to school and got my MBA at the age of 52 so that I could teach at a university.

Emphasize growth over speed: Learning fast isn't the same as learning well, and learning well sometimes requires allowing time for mistakes.

Reward actions, not traits: Tell employees or colleagues when they're doing something smart, not just being smart.

Utilize criticism as a positive: You don't have to use that hackneyed term, "constructive criticism" but you do have to believe in the concept of being positive leads to learning.

Cultivate some grit: People with that extra bit of determination and effort will be more likely to seek approval from themselves rather than others.

Take risks in front of others: Stop trying to save face all the time and just let yourself admit that you're imperfect. It will make it easier to take risks in the future.

Own your attitude: Once you develop a growth mindset, own it. Acknowledge yourself as someone who possesses a growth mentality and be proud to let it guide you throughout your career.

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12 Advantages Of A Growth Mindset That Could Accelerate Your Career

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Adopting a growth mindset is not just essential in your life, it's critical. Those people with a growth mindset understand that knowledge can be acquired and intelligence can be developed. With a growth mindset, people focus on improvement instead of worrying about how smart they are.

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HBR: Act Like a Scientist [Great leaders challenge assumptions, run experiments, and follow the evidence.}

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HBR: Act Like a Scientist [Great leaders challenge assumptions, run experiments, and follow the evidence.}

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Though they’ve been warned for decades about the dangers of overrelying on gut instinct and personal experience, managers keep failing to critically examine—much less challenge—the ideas their decisions are based on. To correct this problem they need to think and act like scientists. That requires d…

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HBR: How to Tactfully Interject in a Virtual Meeting

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HBR: How to Tactfully Interject in a Virtual Meeting

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Picture it - you're on a call with a few colleagues and your boss, discussing a project you're heavily involved with. Although you have thoughts to share, you can't seem to get a word in edgewise. Dialogue ping-pongs between your manager and coworkers until the meeting ends. Despite your intentions, you couldn't seem to politely interject. You log off feeling defeated and frustrated with yourself for failing to insert your ideas.

This is a common occurrence, especially in the age of distributed teams. Because for all its benefits, remote work can pose challenges. Studies have found that virtual communication has caused collaboration to become more siloed and has reduced idea generation. The impact is even more profound for certain groups. In a survey of over 1,100 working professionals, 45 percent of women said it's difficult to speak up in virtual meetings and one in five said they've felt ignored or overlooked by colleagues during video calls.

My client, Heidi, a marketing director at a sports company, found herself in this predicament when her team switched back to working in the office, while she remained working from home. Despite her deep subject matter expertise, Heidi would overthink and put a lot of pressure on herself to make a "high value" contribution, which often held her back from speaking at all. Heidi was also exceedingly courteous. She never wanted to be perceived as pushy or rude. These tendencies, combined with being remote, led Heidi to getting overlooked for a promotion, because she wasn't seen and heard as much as her counterparts.

There are many reasons why you may want to interject during a virtual meeting. You may be offering a perspective, providing an update, correcting a perception, asking for clarification, or trying to keep your team on track. Here are some ideas I shared with Heidi that can help you interject with tact, too.

Signal your interest.

The average professional spends over half of their working hours in meetings, making it all the more critical to master new ways of drawing attention to yourself when you have something to share. As Erica Dhawan, author of Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection No Matter The Distance says, "communication, specifically via digital mediums, is no longer a 'soft skill' - it is the new power skill that will define your success."

But it can be a challenge to get noticed, especially when typical, in-person, non-verbal signals are limited. To avoid coming off as disruptive, signal your desire to contribute by:

Using the "raise hand" feature on your meeting software

Unmuting yourself or coming on camera if you're not on video

Typing in the chat to say you'd like to chime in

Gently raise your physical hand if you're on video

Try the "pass the baton" strategy.

You can circumvent the need to interrupt altogether by preparing in advance. I call this the "pass the baton" strategy. The way it works is simple: in advance of the video meeting, review the agenda and let the organizer know where you'd like to contribute. That way, the organizer can call on you (i.e. "pass the baton" to you) at the appropriate time.

There's two important side benefits of this approach. First, it holds you accountable to actually speaking up, because you know you will be called on. Second, it can provide you with an air of authority, since the meeting organizer is deferring to you for your point-of-view.

Look for natural transition points.

Talking over each other in a virtual meeting is both common and annoying. It will feel like a smoother transition for you and your audience if you wait to speak between agenda points topics, but make a point to interject faster than you would during an in-person meeting. You can use phrases like:

Great point. Before we move on, let me add...

Actually, there's something I need to say here...

I'm glad you brought that up. I'd like to add...

If you've already spoken or need to be more deferential (such as when interrupting someone who is more senior than you), you can phrase your interjection as a question. For example, "Do you mind if I jump in? I have an idea that builds on what you just said," or "Could I use this opportunity to share something that relates to your point?" Asking permission in this way doesn't make you appear weak, rather it shows you're thoughtful and considerate of others.

Keep it brief.

Once you have the floor, be as concise as possible. Start by stating your purpose for interrupting (i.e. "This is a key data point for our strategy..."). After you're finished, politely hand the conversation back to the meeting facilitator or the next speaker. For instance, "Thanks for allowing me to jump in. Greg - I'll pass it back to you now."

Be assertive when necessary.

There may be times where you need to take back the conversation from an overtalker. In these cases, one strategy to employ is the "broken record technique," where you calmly repeat a word or phrase in an even-handed tone. Try saying the person's name repeatedly ("John, John, John - let me jump in here") or an expression like "I'm speaking" or "we need to move on."

You can also jump in and redirect a long-winded colleague with pointed questions like, "I'm not sure how this relates to our topic. Can you explain the connection?" or "If you had to summarize your approach in one sentence, what would it be?"

Interjecting during virtual meetings may not come naturally to you at first, but it's a skill worth cultivating. Consider that a 2022 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that, "employees who learn to speak with confidence and clarity will be more likely to be seen as leaders when working in teams. In turn, they'll have more opportunities to make a positive difference on their team and organization - and to advance their own career."

Use these strategies to begin speaking up for yourself with strength, and less shame.

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How to Tactfully Interject in a Virtual Meeting

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Interjecting during virtual meetings can be challenging when working on a distributed team, but it's a skill worth cultivating. The author offers strategies to help you interject with tact: 1) signal your interest. 2) try the "pass the baton" strategy, 3) look for natural transition points, 4) keep it brief, and 5) be assertive when necessary.

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Zapier Blog: Not Auditory Learner? Here's How to Make Meetings Work for You

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Zapier Blog: Not Auditory Learner? Here's How to Make Meetings Work for You

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Growing up, I had the hardest time focusing on classroom lectures. No matter how good my intentions were, my brain would inevitably wander. But I mostly did ok in school because what I am good at is learning by reading.

It's a matter of learning styles. Some people can focus and process information best when it's visual (that's me). Some people respond well to auditory information. And for others, hands-on learning is the way to go. But no matter which category you fall into, you'll face situations where you have to adapt to other people's preferences.

For people like me, who learn better through reading and writing than listening, business meetings present a serious challenge. You probably can't avoid them completely-but you can use some strategies to help you better process the information.

Regular meeting rules apply

When you're stuck in an unnecessary meeting that has no clear focus, there's very little you can do to make it a productive experience. So regardless of your learning style, start with these tips.

Confirm if it needs to be a meeting. The "meeting that could have been an email" is a cliché for a reason. If you can cover the same territory just as well in a brief email exchange or Slack thread, do it.

Set a clear agenda. Share the agenda with everyone who will be attending to make sure you're all on the same page. Then, if the discussion starts to veer off topic, you can point people back to the stated goals and get things back on track.

Figure out if you're a video-on or video-off person. Keeping video on can increase meeting fatigue and lead to less engagement, especially for people who spend a lot of time in meetings. If this is the case-or if you find yourself paying more attention to how you look than what the other person is saying-then video isn't doing you any favors. On the other hand, seeing facial expressions in addition to just hearing their voice might help a visual learner pay better attention or better remember what was said. Plus, it can help you feel more connected. Do some experimenting to see which option works best for you, and then face-mute when you need to.

5 meeting tips for visual learners

Excuses about why you don't like meetings won't get you very far in the professional world. Instead, you need strategies that enable you to get what you need from them. Here are some things I do to make meetings work for me.

1. Don't multitask

The temptation to click over to Twitter for a few minutes while your colleague is talking is real. And in some cases (and for some people), multitasking during a meeting makes sense. But for visual learners, multitasking is a recipe for disaster-you'll completely lose the thread of the meeting to the point where you might not realize if it's time to focus back in.

So try out some different tricks to avoid your usual temptations. Turn on a social media blocker (I use and recommend it for Mac users). Put your phone in another room until the meeting's over. And close out any tabs or programs likely to be a visual distraction during an auditory meeting.

2. Take notes

Trying to listen passively is when my mind always starts to wander. Taking notes makes listening more active: it forces you to pay attention to what the other person is saying, plus it gives you a record you can revisit later, even if you're not processing it totally in the moment.

Skip note-taking during the small talk portions of meetings for obvious reasons: you don't need notes on how your colleague's dog is doing (important as that may be). But for parts of the meeting that you'll want to remember, refer to, or learn from, be consistent in your note-taking.

I take notes in a Word doc because I type faster than I write. But a good friend who spends all day in meetings has found more success with handwritten notes. Plus, making notes by hand can shift your attention away from the screen and all the digital distractions that come with it.

3. Use closed captioning

Those of us who have an easier time processing information via reading rather than listening are lucky to live in a world of ridiculous technological advancements. Transcription technology has gotten so powerful that the most popular video conferencing tools can automatically transcribe meetings in real time (here's how to do it in , Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams). It doesn't get every single word correct, but it comes pretty close-and is getting better every day.

With closed captioning, you can combine listening and reading. It can help you catch things you might have missed if relying on your ears alone, and it can help you maintain focus on the meeting.

4. Use a transcription tool

Real-time closed captioning lets you read while you listen. But I find it even more useful to read the transcript after the fact.

Apps like and Microsoft Teams can automatically send you a meeting transcript after the meeting is over. I use , which will transcribe up to 600 minutes a month on the free plan and usually has a transcription ready within a few minutes after the call ends. That way, you get a written record that you can review at your own pace and refer back to as needed.

For important calls, like subject matter expert interviews I'm using to inform an article, I read back over the whole transcript to better process the information covered in the call and pull out key quotes I may want to use. But even for meetings where capturing everything covered isn't quite as important, a transcript is a great resource to refer back to.

Note: make sure you let everyone in the meeting know you're recording. It's both polite and legally required in some states. If you use the recording tool included with a video conferencing app, it will generally take care of this part for you.

5. Follow up with a summary in writing

The meeting transcript is a great resource on its own, but you also want to be sure you can distill the meeting down into its core takeaways: necessary next steps or important conclusions.

Creating a brief meeting summary with action items is good practice for everyone, and it's especially helpful for visual learners. Putting that information in writing will help you internalize it; plus, it will be helpful for the other visual learners who were on the call.

Bonus tip: Repurpose everything for documentation

Several of these tips create documentation. Use it!

Consider ways to put the information you've collected to good use. You could turn it into internal resources you add to your knowledge base or include it in the onboarding process for new hires. If you do content marketing, you could turn it into a blog post or use it as the basis of a video. Repurposing the information from your meetings gives you a way to wring extra value from them.

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5 meeting tips for visual learners | Zapier

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Growing up, I had the hardest time focusing on classroom lectures. No matter how good my intentions were, my brain would inevitably wander. But I mostly did ok in school because what I am good at is learning by reading. It's a matter of learning styles.

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Which do you think is the most effective?

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NYTimes: The Magic of Your First Work Friends

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NYTimes: The Magic of Your First Work Friends

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Credit...Lyndon French for The New York Times

Early-career connections can be life-defining. For young people entering the work force today, the connections over Zoom are shaky.

Lisa Degliantoni, left, and Ginny Cahill at Sussex Publishers in New York in 1998. Credit...Lyndon French for The New York Times

July 14, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

The things that Lisa Degliantoni learned at 22 from the two best friends she met at her New York City publishing job included but were not limited to:

How to take feedback from a boss without compromising on her ideas.

How to have fun at the office holiday party without getting too drunk.

When to take a summer off and teach white-water rafting to get perspective.

When she’d landed upon the perfect guy to marry.

Ms. Degliantoni, now 50, feels that she owes parts of her career, her family and her very sense of self in the workplace to those two first work friends, Ginny Cahill, 61, and Molly Miller, 56.

There’s an electricity to forming that first close friend at work. It’s the thrill of staying too late at drinks to keep giggling. It’s the delight of darting to someone’s desk and dragging her to the bathroom to gossip. It’s the tenderness of showing up to work on a rough morning and realizing a co-worker will know instantly that something is wrong.

Those early-career friendships have become something of an endangered species. For some young people, including those who work in industries like tech and law that have yet to fully return to the office, work life now means taking video calls from bed. They have yet to meet their co-workers in person — let alone form the relationships that feel most consequential at the start of a career. Ms. Degliantoni, for example, felt that her first work friends fell somewhere between pals and fairy godmothers.

“You’re a different person every minute when you’re in your 20s, but these friends really were crystallizing the person I wanted to become,” Ms. Degliantoni said.

Employers are trying their best to make up for lost in-person time, with office occupancy across the country still under 50 percent. Some three million professional roles went permanently remote at the end of 2021. So, managers have planned virtual trivia sessions, virtual cocktail hours, off-sites and on-sites. This year, Salesforce opened Trailblazer Ranch, where employees can come together for nature walks, yoga, cooking classes and meditation. Zillow, which says it is “headquartered in the cloud,” is renovating some of its office spaces to look more like living rooms, so workers will feel cozy spending time together there.

But, for many, there’s an irrefutable loneliness in all this talking through screens. Marin Callaway, 26, started her career in 2018 at a public defender’s office, where the stakes of the work seemed to heighten the stakes of the work friendships. She saw colleagues cry when a client lost a case. She, too, shared her grief with teammates when she lost a relative, knowing they would say all the right things.

Now, Ms. Callaway is completing a legal internship in a Los Angeles office that often feels empty. Sometimes the floor is so void of movement that the motion-sensor lights go out.

“I’m really just going in because my place has no air conditioning,” Ms. Callaway said. “People younger than me that haven’t had that full-time work experience in an office don’t really know what they’re missing out on.”

What you miss when Zoom is the water cooler

Every time he asked a colleague to have Zoom coffee last year, Abe Baker-Butler, 20, worried about Abilene.

When he was a kid, his parents talked through the family’s plans, like going to the mall or seeing a silly movie, by referring to the Abilene Paradox — that is, when the desire to be agreeable leads a group of people to do something that no one in the group wants to do. (The name comes from a regrettable trip the scholar who explained the paradox once took with his family to Abilene, Texas.)

That was what Mr. Baker-Butler thought about when, during a recent internship, he asked colleagues to have lunch with him virtually, knowing that nobody wanted one more hour of sitting in front of the computer eating leftover pasta. It wasn’t until nine months into his internship that he was finally able to enter the nonprofit’s office and realized what he’d been missing.

“When people were having relationship troubles or going to visit their families, I heard about that in person,” he said. “I could tell when my colleagues were frustrated, tired, excited, or who likes plain foods versus food with lots of spices and sauces.”

In 1993, Gallup published a list of the 12 elements that a workplace needed. According to Gallup’s chief workplace scientist, Jim Harter, one of the items surprised clients: Employees should be able to affirm, “I have a best friend at work.” Two in 10 U.S. workers tend to answer with a strong yes, and doing so can mean seven times higher job satisfaction and less cortisol in times of stress.

Executives devoting their energy to boosting friendships — through, say, off-sites or retreats — often talk about how workplace friendships benefit productivity. People with a best friend at work are more engaged in their jobs. Their organizations have fewer accidents, happier customers and higher profits. Workplace friendships, in other words, are good for business.

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Credit...Lyndon French for The New York Times

When the office slipped away for so many in March 2020, some opportunities for friend-making went with it. The share of hybrid employees who have a best friend at work dropped from 22 percent in 2019 to 18 percent this year, according to Gallup.

Businesses kept humming along anyway. Companies stayed productive even with their workers squirreled away at home and forming bonds rooted entirely in well-timed emojis.

Many have tried out extreme forms of long-distance bonding. Andrew Pauly, 32, who works at the Planetary Society, attended a virtual watch party of “2001: A Space Odyssey” with his teammates, in which they all cracked open beers and traded interpretations of the film, trying to replicate the joys of sitting around the office doing bits from “I Think You Should Leave.” It wasn’t quite the same.

“It looks like the real thing. It tastes like the real thing,” Mr. Pauly said. “But our brains know it’s not the real thing.”

For those who have spent decades working in an office, something has been lost in the transition to remote work. Way beyond the business case for work friends is a hunger for the type of relationships that transform everyone involved.

“I really made my best friends in publishing,” Ms. Degliantoni said. “Here I was becoming this person — taking the train, dressing up, having a real job — and they were helping guide me through it.”

Friendships as mirrors

Mollie West Duffy and Liz Fosslien, the authors of “Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay,” have created a typology of workplace friends. There’s the confidant, who can be entrusted with any secret; there’s the inspiration, also known as a platonic work crush; there’s the frenemy, who can stir up competitive feelings but also push for your success. (The authors’ own relationship, born of a mutual friend, was deepened when they realized how much they enjoyed writing and illustrating together.)

What holds true across all these types is the growth that a work friend can support. High school and college friends see each other through parties, family feuds, crushes and coming-of-age. But work friends see each other through the world of ideas. And they can be easier to find early in a career.

“The ties you make in your 20s tend to withstand the life changes that happen in your 30s,” Ms. West Duffy said.

On the flip side of all that growth and change, the absence of workplace friends can result in something simpler: loneliness.

Marisa G. Franco, 31, a psychologist and the author of the forthcoming book “Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make — and Keep — Friends,” started her first job at a university, about five years ago, determined not to focus on befriending her colleagues. She was the only Black assistant professor on the faculty, and she didn’t want to open herself up to her white colleagues and risk judgment.

“I felt the weight of being very different, and worried the more I exposed myself to them, the more I might experience racism and microaggressions,” Dr. Franco recalled.

She didn’t worry about being disconnected, because she spent her days surrounded by people. But randomly, one afternoon, she decided to measure herself on the U.C.L.A. Loneliness Scale, which gauges feelings of isolation. She realized that although she had colleagues all around her, she felt very much alone, because they knew nothing about her beyond her work.

So, when Dr. Franco started a new job in 2019 with the federal government, she decided to start revealing more about herself to the people around her. She talked about summer plans and vacations. She told them about microaggressions she’d experienced in the workplace, like being mistaken for a Black colleague.

For Dr. Franco, forming friendships at work helped her reshape the way she saw herself. “Friends mirror our identity back to us,” she said.

“Let’s say you just got promoted, and you’re taking on a new role, and you feel sort of insecure about it, but all your colleagues are looking to you as the leader,” she continued. “It can help you feel less like an impostor.”

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Credit...Lyndon French for The New York Times

Connecting through work

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman are renowned psychologists whose research has helped explain the way our minds work. But their collaboration also revealed something beyond the workings of the brain, which was the workings of the heart. Their early years together, before a fallout, which was chronicled in a book by the journalist Michael Lewis, offer a prime example of what can make a friendship formed over shared work so magical.

They cracked each other up, completed each other’s sentences and even shared a typewriter. When they first worked on a paper together, the partnership felt so seamless that they couldn’t decide who should be the lead author. They flipped a coin.

“We were quicker in understanding each other than we were in understanding ourselves,” Dr. Kahneman once said. “It still gives me goose bumps.”

Mr. Lewis, whose book about Dr. Kahneman and Dr. Tversky’s partnership is titled “The Undoing Project,” said what made collaborative friendships unique was their entanglement with personal ambitions.

“What distinguishes the work friendship is that there’s a product, that you’re actually creating something together,” Mr. Lewis said.

In conversations with dozens of people about remote work, many described a sense of loss when that creative process was confined to their laptops. It turns out that goose bumps-inducing closeness is hard to replicate online. Take Abigail Jacob, 21, a student at the University of Michigan, who is interning in a fairly empty Lower Manhattan office and sometimes taking video calls with colleagues who are working from home.

“I go in every day, sit there in professional clothes in front of the computer and keep going until I leave,” Ms. Jacob said. “I do wonder what a more full, lively office would be like.”

Ms. Degliantoni wonders how a younger version of herself would have turned out if she hadn’t shown up in an office for her first day of work back in 1995. That morning, she was sitting in her cubicle when she overheard two women talking about basketball.

“I totally interrupted them, and I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? What basketball game?’” she recalled. “You could tell they were like, ‘Who is this annoying intern talking to us?’”

One of those women was Ms. Cahill (an art director who once worked for The New York Times), and the other was Ms. Miller. More than 25 years later, they remain her best friends. Ms. Degliantoni sometimes thinks: Thank God I popped my head over that cubicle. If she hadn’t, she might have quit publishing altogether, as she’d intended to do at 26, before Ms. Cahill intervened. She might not have applied for certain promotions or spoken up in meetings. Also, all of it just wouldn’t have been as fun.

“It’s really important for people coming up to see examples of what their future could or could not look like,” Ms. Degliantoni said. “That’s one of the best things about office culture. You can learn who you want to be.”

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Early-career connections can be life-defining. For young people entering the work force today, the connections over Zoom are shaky.

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July 11, 2022 12:01 am ET

They hover over your shoulder, or send you a Slack every 10 minutes to ask about the report that’s not due until next week. They’re a screamer, a bully, an expert at lodging passive-aggressive jabs, generally in front of all your colleagues. Or maybe they’ve just ghosted you, leaving you to figure out the new gig on your own.

As long as there’s been work, there have been people who make it miserable for those underneath them. And the recent spate of job-switching has given rise to some job regret. Desperate for talent, many companies swiftly promoted new, sometimes unproven, managers and at the same time accelerated their hiring processes to snap up prospects before rival employers did, says Cate Luzio, the founder and CEO of professional development organization Luminary.

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A Survival Guide for Dealing With a Bad Boss

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Life is too short to work for jerks. Here’s what to do when your boss is a micromanager, bully or completely MIA.

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HBR: Make It Safe for Employees to Disclose Their Disabilities

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HBR: Make It Safe for Employees to Disclose Their Disabilities

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I'll start with the good news: Many organizations are employing a greater number of persons with disabilities than ever before. Many have committed to a deeper understanding of what inclusion means for persons with disabilities, subgroups therein (such as persons with neurological disorders), and other communities (race, gender, LGBTQ, and so on) and have been taking steps to create supportive business climates for all. Many are doing so because they're aware that there is a proven business case for hiring persons with disabilities. Many believe they've made significant progress: In Accenture's most recent global survey on the topic, 67% of the nearly 1,750 business executive respondents said they believe their companies support employees with disabilities, including having the right technologies in place to do so and the right environment.

Now here's the bad news: Despite this clear progress, our survey also found that just 20% of the 5,870 employees in the survey who had a disability agreed that their workplace culture is fully committed to helping them thrive and succeed. Meanwhile, 76% of employees with disabilities in the survey report not fully disclosing their disabilities at work (e.g., to HR, colleagues, supervisors/managers). And 80% of C-suite executives and their direct reports who have disabilities are also not disclosing them.

It's a debilitating circle. Business leaders need to learn more about what they can do to create a more inclusive climate for employees with disabilities in order to take effective action. Yet, as our research and related interviews revealed, employees with disabilities fear that disclosing will lead to outcomes such as retaliation, slower progression, and less meaningful roles. And for most, disclosing is a very personal and perhaps difficult decision even in supportive environments.

I understand why. In my case, I had been working at Accenture for about five years when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). And for almost 10 years after that, I kept the number of people who knew about it very small - mostly my closest family and friends and a few key colleagues at work who agreed to keep my secret. I didn't want my wider circle of family, friends, and colleagues to worry about me, and I especially didn't want to be treated differently than before they knew. On a professional level, I didn't want people at work to think of me as being suddenly "less capable" because of MS. I didn't want them thinking I was unable to take on challenging assignments and fully engage.

Fast-forward 17 years and what I've come to realize is that the act of concealing this neurological condition and its potential to do me harm was itself creating significant challenges for me at work. Over the years, my anxiety levels increased while my confidence and engagement levels sank. I found myself getting frustrated, for example, with coworkers for not understanding that sometimes I needed my schedule to flex in unusual ways.

I will grant you that when I was first diagnosed, I wasn't fully aware of the commitment Accenture had made to inclusion for persons with disabilities. And I can also say that since that time, I believe Accenture has also gone on a significant journey, striving to become a more inclusive company on all fronts. I'm fortunate to be here.

But here's the broader and more salient point: It's important for companies and for workers to change the way we think (and talk) about disabilities, permanently. Our research found that employees who do disclose their disability at work are 30% more engaged - in terms of career satisfaction and aspirations, confidence, and a sense of belonging - than those who don't.

What are the best steps a business can take to create a culture in which employees with disabilities feel safe to disclose? The answers emerged from our survey, in which we also examined more than 200 workplace culture factors to see which impact employee engagement most. Eight stood out in particular for employees with disabilities. Interestingly, five of these eight also correlate significantly with a climate in which persons with disabilities feel safe about disclosing their condition. These certainly resonated strongly with me. They are:

1. Bold Role Models

When employees with disabilities have role models at the leadership level who have disclosed their own disabilities, they are 15% more likely to have higher career aspirations than their peers in other organizations. And with this factor in place, employees are 26% more likely to be open about their disability.

Working alongside executives willing to share their lived experiences with areas such as disability, gender identity, race certainly has impacted my own willingness to disclose. And since I went public with my disability, a growing number of people at my company and beyond - many of them from the communities I mentioned - have told me that my disclosure has helped them feel more included, more willing to ask for what they need at work to thrive, and more confident in their own futures. I'm grateful that's the case. Knowing now how my experience has helped others, I often wish that I had opened up sooner.

2. Enterprise-Wide Training on Inclusive Practices

In organizations that have accessible training designed to advance awareness of inclusion and diversity topics and to help employees with disabilities to thrive and advance in their careers, employees are 35% more likely to disclose their disabilities than in other organizations.

India's Lemon Tree Hotels provides an example. The chain employs approximately 550 persons with a range of physical, intellectual/developmental, and special learning disabilities - 10% to 12% of its workforce. New recruits must take an introductory sign language course so they can communicate with non-hearing colleagues. Employees also undergo training on how to work with colleagues with disabilities; for example, they are taught to avoid making too many last-minute changes to schedules, since advance planning is often key to an employee with a disability's successful navigation of daily life and work. The results of this work have included tangible productivity gains among persons with disabilities, and a company-wide boost in morale.

3. The Space to Be Creative

Inclusion and the ability to bring your whole self to work (and not adopt a "work persona" that conceals your true identity) powers collaboration and innovation. Our survey further shows that leading organizations providing freedom to innovate are also seeing 26% higher career aspirations among their employees. Incredibly, they are also seeing a 48% higher likelihood of self-disclosure among employees with disabilities.

Japan-based Sony offers an example. The company is a member of the World Economic Forum's Valuable 500, the largest global network of CEOs committed to disability inclusion. As such, it has made a point of assessing its practices for potential barriers and asking for feedback on that front. As one employee with a disability has said, "I get the impression that Sony is a workplace where nobody pays attention to whether people have disabilities or not. Some 20 people joined the information systems division when I entered the company, but we all worked together naturally during training, and people provided support as a matter of course when I needed it... I was also impressed by efforts to establish facilities that took disabilities into consideration."

4. Formal Mental Wellness Policies and Programs

In organizations that have them, confidence among their employees is, on average, 31% higher than the employees of those that don't. In addition, the likeliness that employees of the former will disclose a disability is 38% higher than the employees of the latter.

Through Accenture, I have personally experienced the benefits of a tool called "Thriving Mind," which was created for companies by Thrive Global and Stanford Medicine; it has helped me better understand and mitigate the stress I feel related both to MS and to the pandemic. We also have a mental health ally program, through which more than 5,000 employees in 24,000 countries are volunteers trained to listen when a peer needs support; provide a safe, nonjudgmental space; and help colleagues access other resources as needed.

5. Supportive and Supported Employee Resource Groups

The best disability employee resource groups (ERGs) are those that foster open dialogue and networking not only among their own members but also with members of other ERGs. When a company fosters a range of such groups and offers its support (management interest and sponsorship and even modest financial backing), persons with disabilities benefit.

These groups (centered around ethnicity, religion, gender, LBGTQ status, military affiliation, and parenting, among others) provide their members a safe space to learn, grow, and share experiences. It's no wonder that organizations with this factor in place are seeing employee career aspirations that are, on average, 21% higher than in other organizations - and confidence levels that are 34% higher. Employees with disabilities are 26% more likely to disclose their disability to others in companies with active ERGs.

Ultimately, I fully disclosed my disability at work through an internal blog in the fall of 2018; I did the same externally through another blog in 2019. At that point, colleagues with disabilities began confiding in me, testing the waters as a prelude to their own disclosures. My engagement improved, and my desire to accomplish more increased - as did my ability to follow through on those new, higher aspirations. My anxieties lessened while my confidence and sense of belonging grew.

My employer helped me become a stronger employee when I felt comfortable enough to disclose my disability. Your organization can do the same for the members of its workforce who are on a similar journey.

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Make It Safe for Employees to Disclose Their Disabilities

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I'll start with the good news: Many organizations are employing a greater number of persons with disabilities than ever before. Many have committed to a deeper understanding of what inclusion means for persons with disabilities, subgroups therein (such as persons with neurological disorders), and other communities (race, gender, LGBTQ, and so on) and have been taking steps to create supportive business climates for all.

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HBR: Build Learning into Your Employees’ Workflow

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HBR: Build Learning into Your Employees’ Workflow

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Learning and Development (L&D) programs are critical for the success of any organization. These programs both ensure that employees have the skills and capabilities necessary to do their jobs well, and demonstrate to those employees that their employers believe they are worth investing in - ultimately boosting company culture and fostering greater commitment to the organization.

Unfortunately, many organizations struggle to demonstrate a return on their L&D investments. In fact, one estimate found that only 10% of the $200 billion spent every year on corporate training and development in the United States delivers real results. Why do so many organizations struggle to implement effective learning programs? Research has identified a few common challenges:

1. Trainings typically take place outside of the organization, making it difficult to translate what is learned in the classroom into real workplace applications.

2. Trainings tend to require the learner to invest a substantial amount of their own time, while still being expected to fulfill all their regular work duties.

3. The onus for applying the learning is typically placed on the learner, with minimal follow-up from the instructor once the training has concluded.

The good news is, experts have also developed an approach that can help address these challenges, known as learning in the flow of work. As Shelly Holt, chief people officer at PayScale, explains, "the way people learn has fundamentally changed...We need to create an environment where you learn, you practice, and you apply it. And it's bite-sized. It's not 7 hours of courses and then figure out how to do it."

To be sure, creating an integrated learning experience that's truly embedded into the flow of work is no small task. But through an extensive review of the literature as well as my own research and experience as an educator, including analyses of more than seven years of L&D programs conducted with a total of nearly 500 participants, I've identified five research-backed strategies that can help leaders better align employee development programs with key organizational outcomes, ultimately boosting ROI for both individual employees and for the entire organization.

1. Contextualize the Learning

Research has shown that the greater the distance between the context in which something is learned and the context in which it will be applied, the less likely the student is to retain and use what they've learned. However, many traditional L&D programs are conducted outside the workplace, forcing the learner to transfer what they've learned between two very different contexts. This substantially reduces the likelihood that they'll actually apply the new skills or knowledge in their jobs.

In contrast, when employees learn in the flow of work, the knowledge is contextualized within the employee's organization and typical workflows, thus boosting retention and application. One approach to achieve this is with custom training programs, in which instructors target specific requests on an individual or team level. These programs can be effective in contextualizing learning within the organization, but they are also often expensive and time-consuming.

An alternative option is "learning meetings." Rather than investing in a dedicated, customized learning program, managers can simply set aside a small amount of time for their teams to learn a new idea or framework, share what they have learned with their team, and discuss how it could be applied within the firm. For example, as part of my research, I conducted a training session on how to have difficult conversations (such as sharing negative feedback with a colleague) that utilized this method: I introduced a framework to facilitate the discussion, and then encouraged participants to share their own experiences with each other. The framework provided a foundation for how to approach these situations, but the group discussion helped the participants contextualize how the framework could be applied to actual conversations they were having within their organization. Just the act of sharing what they learned caused the learners to frame the information in the language of their organization, helping them to contextualize why it mattered and how it could be used in real-world contexts.

2. Nudge, Nudge, Nudge

Decades of research has demonstrated the power of nudges - small contextual factors that encourage people to take a certain action - in a wide variety of environments. In a learning context, short reminders sent via email or push notification can help to keep the ideas and frameworks learned at the top of the learner's mind and increase the likelihood that they'll actually be used. Of course, the specifics of implementation will vary, but in general, managers should stick to three basic ground rules to maximize the effectiveness of these nudges:

1. Keep the nudge brief and to the point - a good rule of thumb is no more than two or three sentences.

2. Clearly link the nudge to the idea or framework that was learned - use keywords the learner has already seen in the frameworks to reinforce a consistent message.

3. End each nudge with a call to action that encourages the learner to apply the idea as soon as possible - include a specific behavior that the recipient should undertake within a set time period to motivate near-term action based on what they've learned.

In my research, I implemented weekly nudges for a variety of training programs, and the learners in these programs consistently reported in follow-up surveys that the nudges helped them retain and apply the content they had learned. As one participant explained, "[the nudges] offered me quick reminders to take the time to do simple things to improve my management/leadership of my team." Another described how the nudges "reinforced the learning concept," while another shared that they "liked that the reminders put the information on the forefront." These short messages encouraged participants to use what they had learned in real-world workplace situations, cementing the information in their minds, and making it a lot more likely that they'd continue to apply it going forward.

3. Build in Time for Reflection

Reflection is a critical component of the learning process - and yet it is rarely built into traditional learning experiences. To create effective L&D programs, learners must be encouraged to reflect on how what they've learned can be embedded into the workday.

For instance, in the trainings I ran as part of my research, I always scheduled dedicated time for reflection at the end of each week. During these short meetings, I would ask the learners to think about and share how they used the information learned that week. I then asked them to describe the impact of those meetings, and I consistently heard that by forcing them to take a step back, slow down, and consider how they applied what was learned, these opportunities for reflection helped the participants better understand and apply the new information. "[Scheduled reflections] really increased the likelihood of me continuing to use what I learned," one participant explained, while another appreciated how "they got me to slow down and think about how I could use what I had learned."

4. Create Micro-Learning Experiences

Research suggests that breaking up training content into smaller chunks that can be interleaved into other activities both enhances learning and improves retention. Rather than asking employees to learn an entire subject all at once, effective L&D programs present the ideas from the subject in an easily digestible framework that can be served in bite-sized portions. For example, instead of requiring employees to take a day-long workshop, managers could encourage employees to sign up for short online courses that can be more easily woven into workers' weekly schedules.

This was supported by feedback from learners in the programs I conducted, in which content was chunked into 15-30 minute microlearning experiences. The participants reported that they strongly preferred these shorter lessons, and they believed they were more likely to employ what they learned when lessons covered just one core idea and how it could be used throughout the workday (rather than including many different ideas in a single training).

5. Measure Progress

Finally, to accurately assess the ROI of your organization's investment in L&D programs, you have to measure each learner's progress. This means conducting pre- and post-assessments, as well as tracking real-time changes in behavior, in order to capture the macro-level impact of a learning program. Especially when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of training programs for soft skills, which can be harder to quantify, it's critical to identify metrics that can help you determine when an L&D initiative is (or isn't) working.

Furthermore, it is important to remember that learning is an individual process and results can vary widely on a learner-by-learner basis, whether due to different people's unique needs and skillsets, or due to the impact of events outside of the learner's control, such as changes in workload or unexpected life events. As such, to assess the overall effectiveness of a learning program, it's often helpful to aggregate individual results at the team or organizational level. This analysis can help you determine organizational level outcomes, such as how employees' commitment levels or key competencies have changed as a result of the training. In my own work with organizations, I have found that the following assessment questions can help me identify when a program is working, and where there may be room for improvement:

Did you use the framework this week?

If so, how did you use the framework?

If not, how might you use the framework next week?

Analyzing participants' responses to these questions enabled me to identify changes in learners' behaviors that could be linked directly to application of the material they had learned. In addition, encouraging learners to track how they apply what they've learned also makes it easier for them to demonstrate the value of these learning programs within their organizations, ultimately increasing the chances that their managers will continue to invest in effective programs. For example, while learners typically list the trainings they have taken over the past year on their annual evaluations, providing mechanisms for learners to measure their progress enables them to provide not just a list of the programs they've completed, but also those programs' direct, measurable impact on the organization.

. . .

Learning and development programs give employees the tools they need to successfully carry out their jobs and advance their careers. Unfortunately, traditional programs often fall short, demanding unrealistic time commitments and failing to demonstrate a measurable impact on key organizational outcomes. To build L&D that works, employers must invest in programs that emphasize ROI, encouraging employees to learn not in the abstract, but directly in the flow of work.

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Build Learning into Your Employees' Workflow

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Effective Learning and Development (L&D) programs are critical for the success of both employees and their employers. But what does it take to develop initiatives that actually achieve substantial positive outcomes? Research suggests that an approach known as "learning in the flow of work" can help ensure that learners retain and apply new skills and concepts in their day-to-day workflows.

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Inc: Google CEO Sundar Pichai Uses This 4-Word Rule to Measure Success. It's the Best I've Seen Yet

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Inc: Google CEO Sundar Pichai Uses This 4-Word Rule to Measure Success. It's the Best I've Seen Yet

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Reward effort, not outcomes. Rewarding people using a criteria like "they do what I tell them to do" squeezes curiosity & innovation out of the culture. Rewarding risk-taking, innovation, & proactivity builds these behaviors in a culture which allows others to voice new ideas & try new things without fear of being ridiculed or rejected.

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One of the most important jobs of every leader is to define how you measure success. You've probably heard the phrase you get what you measure. More important, you get what you reward.

If you reward your team for success, they will try to do more things like whatever it was that got them the reward. So, be careful about what you measure, and be careful what you reward. Get it wrong, and your team will probably fail.

This all seems obvious, but in truth, it's pretty complicated. The reason is that the way most leaders define success misses one of the most important points. In an interview at Stanford University's "View From the Top" speaker series, Google CEO Sundar Pichai explained it like this:

You have to encourage innovation. ... You know, one of the counterintuitive things is companies become more conservative as they grow. You have a lot more cash, you have a lot more resources but, you know, companies tend to become more conservative in their decision-making.

As a result, Pichai says his job is "encouraging the company to take risks and innovate and be OK with failure--and reward effort, not outcomes."

That last part is really important. In fact, those four words are one of the most important lessons for every leader. As Pichai points out, that can be difficult since "people tend to reward outcomes."

If you measure people only on outcomes, they will do whatever it takes to avoid negative outcomes. They'll play it safe and fall back on whatever they already know that works. They'll keep giving you exactly what you've always gotten, nothing more or less.

The thing is, avoiding a negative outcome is not a great measure of success. Avoiding negative outcomes doesn't lead to greatness.

On the other hand, if you want people to work really hard, reward them for that. If you want people to take risks, try new things, and come up with new ways of doing things, incentivize them for their effort.

Those things don't always lead to what we think of traditionally as success. Sometimes they are messy. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes the effort will cost you a lot of money. The point is, that's not necessarily a bad thing if what you're trying to do is build something new.

If you're trying to do something worthwhile, you're going to fail a bunch of times anyway. You're going to break things and you're going to figure out how to put them back together. You might as well encourage people to learn from it all and reward them for their effort.

Obviously, this doesn't mean you don't expect a lot from your team. It doesn't mean outcomes don't matter. It just means that the outcome you're looking for might be less obvious than a 5 percent increase in your stock price year over year.

It really comes down to the type of culture--and, ultimately, the type of company you're trying to build. If what you want are incremental growth and a small but consistent increase in quarterly earnings, that's fine, but don't expect anything revolutionary to happen.

If, however, you want to build a team that is willing to do hard things, reward them for their effort. Reward them when they try and fail, and when they learn and succeed. Ultimately, that's the best possible outcome anyway.

One of the most important jobs of every leader is to define how you measure success. You've probably heard the phrase you get what you measure. More important, you get what you reward.

If you reward your team for success, they will try to do more things like whatever it was that got them the reward. So, be careful about what you measure, and be careful what you reward. Get it wrong, and your team will probably fail.

This all seems obvious, but in truth, it's pretty complicated. The reason is that the way most leaders define success misses one of the most important points. In an interview at Stanford University's "View From the Top" speaker series, Google CEO Sundar Pichai explained it like this:

You have to encourage innovation. ... You know, one of the counterintuitive things is companies become more conservative as they grow. You have a lot more cash, you have a lot more resources but, you know, companies tend to become more conservative in their decision-making.

As a result, Pichai says his job is "encouraging the company to take risks and innovate and be OK with failure--and reward effort, not outcomes."

That last part is really important. In fact, those four words are one of the most important lessons for every leader. As Pichai points out, that can be difficult since "people tend to reward outcomes."

If you measure people only on outcomes, they will do whatever it takes to avoid negative outcomes. They'll play it safe and fall back on whatever they already know that works. They'll keep giving you exactly what you've always gotten, nothing more or less.

The thing is, avoiding a negative outcome is not a great measure of success. Avoiding negative outcomes doesn't lead to greatness.

On the other hand, if you want people to work really hard, reward them for that. If you want people to take risks, try new things, and come up with new ways of doing things, incentivize them for their effort.

Those things don't always lead to what we think of traditionally as success. Sometimes they are messy. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes the effort will cost you a lot of money. The point is, that's not necessarily a bad thing if what you're trying to do is build something new.

If you're trying to do something worthwhile, you're going to fail a bunch of times anyway. You're going to break things and you're going to figure out how to put them back together. You might as well encourage people to learn from it all and reward them for their effort.

Obviously, this doesn't mean you don't expect a lot from your team. It doesn't mean outcomes don't matter. It just means that the outcome you're looking for might be less obvious than a 5 percent increase in your stock price year over year.

It really comes down to the type of culture--and, ultimately, the type of company you're trying to build. If what you want are incremental growth and a small but consistent increase in quarterly earnings, that's fine, but don't expect anything revolutionary to happen.

If, however, you want to build a team that is willing to do hard things, reward them for their effort. Reward them when they try and fail, and when they learn and succeed. Ultimately, that's the best possible outcome anyway.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai Uses This 4-Word Rule to Measure Success. It's the Best I've Seen Yet

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One of the most important jobs of every leader is to define how you measure success. You've probably heard the phrase you get what you measure. More important, you get what you reward. If you reward your team for success, they will try to do more things like whatever it was that got them the reward.

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Forbes: Iteration May Be Better Than Innovation When It Comes To Real Growth

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Forbes: Iteration May Be Better Than Innovation When It Comes To Real Growth

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In the words of Henry Ford, "Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently." This is an example of an iterative methodology.

The definition of iterate is "to perform or utter repeatedly." This idea has become a force in the business world. So much change can occur so quickly that by the time a product or project is completed, it's already behind the times. Final products are not designed in a vacuum, but they are rolled out quickly to get feedback, and then moved forward again to make sure they are still able to solve for a business need.

Whether you call it agility, being lean, Six Sigma or design thinking, it all comes back to a process that is iterative by nature. Iterative frameworks are being used often, and it is currently the primary way that companies are seeing success and growth. This makes it very important for leadership to understand and focus on iterative thinking.

To achieve an iterative methodology, there must be an environment of learning. By nature, these processes are about learning and progressing to the next level. For every new iteration, feedback must occur so that the next iteration is better and moving in the right direction.

This only cements the need to drive learning and thus iteration in all aspects of business. This needs to be done through and with leadership.

Companies generally focus their leadership development on emotional intelligence, situational awareness, communication and collaboration, but when an industry is facing disruption, leaders will need to think iteratively if they want to advance.Doing so might be the most profound movement a company makes.

The iterative mindset has been shown to drive some of the most successful companies in the world. It's been said that what has made Silicon Valley so successful isn't the innovation but the iterative nature of how they work. It means taking ideas and constantly evolving and testing them to develop a working product or service. From Yelp to Ford Motors, this methodology has found its way from IT and manufacturing to HR and marketing. So why don't we really see it ingrained in the cultures of all companies?

Here is how to create and promote iteration and learning in your corporate culture.
Communication
One of the most overlooked aspects of any successful culture is communication. Making sure to identify key people and expectations, and asking for feedback will make people want to be part of the process. Without solid communication, the feedback needed to progress will either be wrong or nonexistent. This can lead to missed deadlines and projects that miss the mark in the end.
Mentorship
Connect people at all levels, allowing them to share ideas, wins and feedback. This develops a safe environment where not only senior executives take risks but where junior-level people have confidence and try to continually push forward where they can.

Have assigned mentors who are a level or more ahead check in with another team member biweekly or monthly.

The ability to take risks makes a company more agile and potentially competitive so they can compete with smaller companies trying to disrupt them.

Great companies like Zynga have used mentorship not only to develop their newer and potential employees, but to open a dialogue on challenging ideas and ultimately to push new ideas and iterations forward.
A Consistent Feedback Loop
You could also create quarterly problem-solving sessions where groups of employees at every level are tasked with coming up with creative solutions to problems together. Have a strong working group with both senior and junior people share progress and feedback on the implementation of new ideas and skills.

Make sure any feedback is specific, explains the impact of the action, and focuses on what needs to be different next time around. New approaches for improvement allow not only for growth but for stronger ties among the team. This, in turn, creates a sense of camaraderie that improves engagement and loyalty.

A global survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that what set top-performing companies apart was the use of feedback loops, stating that effective feedback brings speed to delivering strategy.
Access To Tools And Technology
Once it is safe to explore, test and iterate, granting your employees access to the things that will allow for improved productivity and development is imperative. Whether it is technology or training, make sure it is readily and easily available. Some simple examples of this are communication platforms like Slack. Or maybe your team would benefit from document management and version control like Box or Sharepoint. For project management, there's Wrike or Asana. No matter the tools you use, make sure they align with the need and the ultimate objective.

With businesses growing so quickly, there is a great need to develop an iterative mentality and create a culture of learning. We can no longer wait or hope that leaders, managers and employees will somehow learn all of the needed skills that make them great. It's time to invest in their development. It may be the best investment your company makes.

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Council Post: Iteration May Be Better Than Innovation When It Comes To Real Growth

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In the words of Henry Ford, "Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently." This is an example of an iterative methodology. The definition of iterate is "to perform or utter repeatedly." This idea has become a force in the business world.

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Inc.: Are You A First-Time Manager? Here Are 5 Essential Tips for Success!

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Inc.: Are You A First-Time Manager? Here Are 5 Essential Tips for Success!

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Being promoted to your first management position is exciting--but it can be difficult. The transition from employee to first-time manager (FTM) is riddled with challenges, everything from establishing yourself as a strong but approachable leader to doing your own work and also managing a team efficiently. Studies have shown that 47 percent of managers don't receive any training when they take a new leadership role.

"Becoming a manager is one of the most stressful and challenging transitions in any career," writes William Gentry, author of Be the Boss Everyone Wants to Work For: A Guide for New Leaders. "But when you become a manager, everything about your job needs to change--your skill-set, the nature of your work relationships, your understanding of what "work" is, and how you see yourself and your organization. You have to operate from a brand new script, one that's about "we"--ensuring collective success," he concludes.

I agree completely. And I'd like to share five tips from my new book, The New Global Manager (available Summer 2018) to help first-time managers move into this new leadership role.

1.Give timely and constructive feedback.

A good manager provides employees with feedback about his or her performance. Learn to use your observational and communication skills to help your team understand what they do well and where they need to improve.

Tip: Keep two things in mind--first, make sure you're clear in your intention. Tell the recipient the purpose of your comments, whether it is to grow, improve their image, or protect them. Second, don't talk about hearsay or feelings. Stick to observable facts.

2. Empower the team and don't micromanage.

You empower your team when you establish clear communication and expectations. As Gordon Treegold, founder and CEO of Leadership Principles writes, "...empowering people and giving them the opportunity to contribute and to solve problems opens us up to the collective knowledge we have..."

Tip: Take the time to learn your team members' strengths and weaknesses and then let go. Begin to delegate work to them, and provide subtle direction if needed. But allow them to handle the project in their own way within the established parameters.

3. Express interest and concern for your team.

Showing an employee you care is an integral part of building rapport and stable working relationships with your team members. "Employees who feel valued and appreciated by their leaders are infinitely more likely to go above and beyond for the company and hold themselves accountable for their part of a project," writes John Hall in an article for Forbes.

Tip: "Listen with your full attention directed toward understanding what your coworker or staff member needs from you," writes Susan M. Heathfield, "Many managers, especially, are so used to helping people solve problems that their first course of action is to begin brainstorming solutions and giving advice."

Your team may need to know you are really hearing them before you supply solutions. Make sure you understand what the person is telling you and reflect back the information you believe you have heard during the conversation.

4. Model a productive and results-oriented mindset.

Developing a productive and results-oriented mindset in your organization can yield increased job satisfaction and engagement levels and reduce turnover. By modeling this mindset for your team, you start that process.

Tip: Create results-oriented goals for yourself and for your team and model what working on projects where you can measure results looks like. Turn everything you do into a case study and sit down with your team to review and measure the results you have obtained. Give your team results-oriented goals and encourage them to find ways to measure and report on their outcomes.

5. Be a good communicator and share information.

A manager doesn't have to be dynamic and charming--just highly communicative and transparent. Let your team know to anticipate changes, let them know what's happening in your management meetings, and provide company updates. The more you communicate, the more trust will be built and the team will see you as an ally instead of an authoritarian.

Tip: Use part of your team meetings to discuss strategy and bigger goals for the organization as a whole. Take questions from your team members. Don't be afraid to say you don't know the answer, but will do your best to find out.

If you are a first-time, newly-minted manager: Congratulations! You will be amazing. Take the five tips I have just described and use them in your new position. You will find each of them valuable as you negotiate this new chapter of your life.

And join my community to get first dibs on my new book for managers, due out later this year.

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Are You A First-Time Manager? Here Are 5 Essential Tips for Success!

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Make your transition from employee to first-time manager super seamless with these 5 tips.

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WSJ: Gen Z Workers Want Mission-Driven Jobs. A Big Paycheck Would Be Nicer.

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WSJ: Gen Z Workers Want Mission-Driven Jobs. A Big Paycheck Would Be Nicer.

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Benjamin Nitzani imagines a future doing legal work for clients and causes he's passionate about. The new law-school grad is a member of Generation Z or, as he describes it, "a generation of social-justice warriors."

First, though, he wants to get paid.

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Gen Z Workers Want Mission-Driven Jobs. A Big Paycheck Would Be Nicer.

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Benjamin Nitzani imagines a future doing legal work for clients and causes he's passionate about. The new law-school grad is a member of Generation Z or, as he describes it, "a generation of social-justice warriors." First, though, he wants to get paid.

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HBR: Employee Retention - With So Many People Quitting, Don’t Overlook Those Who Stay

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HBR: Employee Retention - With So Many People Quitting, Don’t Overlook Those Who Stay

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For anyone who doubted, the data is in. The Great Resignation is real and it's happening. The U.S. Department of Labor reports that during the months of April, May, and June 2021 a total of 11.5 million workers quit their jobs. And it's not over. According to Gallup research, 48 percent of employees are actively looking to make a change, and according to Personio research, nearly 1:4 will do so in the next six months. Those looking for new opportunities will find ripe opportunities; in June the U.S. hit an all-time high of 10.1 million job openings.

What does this all mean to your organization? You are likely juggling two pressing needs: hiring to backfill people who have left and hiring new people to support business growth. The scarcity is real - too few people for too many jobs. The imbalance of this supply-demand highlights more than ever that productivity is about people.

The best way to stabilize your business is to stem the tsunami of attrition and increase your retention. In the frantic need to hire more people, the group we often forget to attend to are the folks who stay - those showing up day-in and day-out shouldering the work that needs to get done. Think about what these people - the ones who are here, working for and with you - need now. The short answer is they need to be seen for who they are and what they are contributing. It's your job as the leader to make sure they're getting the recognition they deserve.

And we get it: As employers, leaders, managers, and HR professionals, you've been dealing with a lot of uncertainty and change. You have a lot on your plate. Not having the right people in the right quantities in the right seats to get the work done creates a hamster-wheel effect - you keep running, faster and faster, exhausted with forces outside your control. So let's control what you can control, and that is you. If you want to stem the rate of turnover in your organization or team, you must look inside yourself and decide what is possible. So, let's stick our finger in that proverbial hamster wheel and make it stop for a minute. Let's pause and see what is possible, what you can do to make a difference.

Here are four steps leaders can take now to best navigate the Great Resignation:

1. Be aware of your impact.

As leaders, people are watching you all the time whether you realize it or not. So, pause and consider how you are showing up in both your words and your actions. Let's say your company is experiencing record YTD turnover of 25% and hiring is falling 60% below target (real scenarios in far too many companies). Your people are worried and stressed. How do you message the realities of these pain points to your people? Are you aware of how your own concerns and frustrations are experienced by others? Are you unintentionally adding to their fear and uncertainty? When you become aware of your impact, you can control it and steer it in the right direction.

2. Focus on potential and possibility.

On the flip side, let's say your organization has 75% retention and you have attracted and welcomed a large number of new people to the organization. Consider what outcome you want to create out of this uniquely disruptive time. This is a time to be grounded in pragmatism blended with possibility, gratitude, and recognition of what your people, old and new, are going through. Get curious and ask:

What do you envision as the best possible outcome for this situation?

What excites you about that?

What does that give you/the team/the organization?

When you communicate to your people in this way, the impact is one of potential and possibility instead of fear and uncertainty.

3. Make it okay to leave.

Speaking about communication, let's look at one other area where you may be creating an unintended impact - how you and others in the organization treat people when they leave.

In far too many companies, when an employee gives notice the reaction is akin to an emotional breakup - you've been left and you feel rejected. This triggers some not great behavior like a tendency to make the person leaving "wrong" and doubt their trustworthiness or integrity - even though that was not the case before they gave notice. There is a penchant to dismiss their presence and devalue their contribution. Think deeply about what this type of behavior signals to the departing employee and remember, those that remain and are watching.

An alternative is to approach these transitions with gratitude. It's helpful to realize the era of lifelong employment is over and with rare exception, your employees are with your organization as a pit stop on their career journey. They've contributed and hopefully, they've learned some new things. They are not the same person they were when they joined and the same goes for you and for the organization. What would it be like to pause when a resignation occurs and give voice to these things from both sides of the relationship? What would be created if you paused to acknowledge how both sides of the relationship have grown and evolved? Rather than viewing a resignation as a rejection of the relationship, what could be possible if you began to view it as an inflection point in its evolution?

The talent pool is tight, and careers are long. End this phase of your time together with appreciation.

4. Give your employees the respect and attention they deserve

The marketplace for talent has shifted. You need to think of your employees like customers and put thoughtful attention into retaining them. This is the first step to slow attrition and regain your growth curve. And this does not happen when they feel ignored in the fever to hire new people or underappreciated for the effort they make to keep business moving forward. You cannot take your people for granted and expect them to stay - healthy relationships do not work that way. Here are three steps:

Re-recruit them.

Consider what conversations would be like if you were recruiting them to your company.

Spend time to understand their motivations and ambitions. With so much new hiring happening, identify where opportunities might exist inside the organization (even if it is outside of your team) to help them fulfill unrealized dreams and ambitions.

Help them see and claim the positive impact they are making in the organization. Acknowledge not just what they are doing, but why it matters. Let them know what you appreciate about how they are showing up during difficult times. People want to know they are making a difference.

Don't stop. These are not one-time conversations. You can't just wade in, have a talk, and think all is good. This should be the primary focus of each manager and leader in your company.

Reward them.

This may ignite the need for a systemic look at how and what is recognized and rewarded in your organization. Now may be the time to challenge the status quo if what you are seeing from your people and hearing from the talent marketplace is misaligned to your company's current reality. This is not just about paying people more - research tells us the motivational effect of pay raises is short-lived. Just as important is how you recognize and value the contributions and impact of your people.

Think about the DNA of your organization. If the old ways of doing things no longer serve the organization and its people, figure out what does.

Be willing to let go of the past ... it's gone.

Play the long game here. Be sure your company's compensation philosophy is clear and understood by all. (That starts with you.) Make sure accountability is in place so that those current employees are not shorted when new people are hired.

Equity starts in how you value contribution. You may not be the only one in your organization to fix the myriad of issues linked to recognition and rewarding your people, but you can lead. You can give voice to the issues and advocate for accountability.

Engage them.

Businesses are hurting and at the root of that pain for many today is a shortage of people to do the work. Your existing people feel that pain as they extend themselves to pick-up extra shifts to provide coverage, listen to customer complaints when they are helpless to fix the real issue, or witness one more colleague call it "quits" when their tipping point is reached. So, be bold and engage your people in helping you solve problems.

Ask for their help. This requires courage because admitting that you do not know all the answers is vulnerable work. It takes strength and confidence to appreciate that outcomes are better when more ideas are included, when fuller representation is present and diverse perspectives are heard.

Give them agency to help mitigate the day-to-day concerns they are faced with. Create space for them to step up, participate and inform the way forward. This sends the crucial message that they are trusted and valued.

Focus on the desired outcome. Actively seek the insights of diverse voices and points of view into what will help achieve it, especially insights and ideas different than your own. Remain open to being surprised and delighted.

Daring to be vulnerable and to not to know it all paves the path to creating deeper engagement and loyalty from all your stakeholders: teammates, peers, colleagues, and direct reports. You lead the way by opening the door.

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With So Many People Quitting, Don't Overlook Those Who Stay

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The marketplace for talent has shifted. You need to think of your employees like customers and put thoughtful attention into retaining them. This is the first step to slow attrition and regain your growth curve. And this does not happen when they feel ignored in the fever to hire new people or underappreciated for the effort they make to keep business moving forward.

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HBR: How to Conduct a Great Performance Review

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HBR: How to Conduct a Great Performance Review

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Dissatisfaction with performance appraisals is pervasive. They are seen as time-consuming, demotivating, inaccurate, biased, and unfair. A McKinsey survey indicates most CEOs don't find the appraisal process in their companies helps to identify top performers, while over half of employees think their managers don't get the performance review right. A Gallup study is more negative: Just one in five employees agreed that their company's performance practices motivated them.

These attitudes create a self-reinforcing dynamic. Managers do cursory reviews that are really up or down compensation announcements, not feedback. Employees then see the "appraisal" as non-existent or unfair and approach the next review with that attitude. Busy managers facing quarterly goals then try to avoid the unpleasantness and do even more cursory, drive-by reviews, and a downward spiral continues that promotes a culture of underperformance.

Some firms have stopped performance ratings entirely. As another McKinsey study notes, however, when "organizations scrapped the performance ratings, they found a need for a form of annual documented administrative evaluation to make employment decisions, such as promotions and raises. To address this need, these organizations often implemented 'ghost' ratings-a system of evaluation that is, ultimately, just another annual performance rating." In other words, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

In this article, I examine performance review best practices and attempt to help managers refine how the process is planned, conducted, and repeated. Following these recommendations can improve employee performance, while also giving managers a more effective structure for how to have these sometimes difficult, but necessary, conversations.

Rethinking Performance Reviews

Rethinking performance reviews should not mean getting rid of this essential managerial responsibility. So, what's the purpose and key components of an effective performance review process?

The purpose of reviews is two-fold: an accurate and actionable evaluation of performance, and then development of that person's skills in line with job tasks. For recipients, feedback has intrinsic and extrinsic value. Across fields, research shows that people become high performers by identifying specific areas where they need to improve and then practicing those skills with performance feedback. Multiple career studies indicate the importance of on-the-job versus other types of experience. One study from as far back as 1988 (and updated 20 years later with similar results) found that work experience (job assignments, organizational relationships, and especially performance feedback) accounts for about 70% of the professional-development learning relevant to career advancement, with about 15% each for formal training courses and life experience (hobbies, interests, family: the other things you do and love outside work).

For the giver of feedback, the process is key to getting people to practice the right things, prioritize opportunities, and clarify accountabilities owned by the individual versus the manager or the company. It's also key to effective leadership. The higher you rise in any organization, the more dependent you are on subordinates' performance. This reality has implications for what managers must do before, during, and after a review.

What to Do Before the Review

In ongoing work with their employees, managers must first make clear the standards, including ethical standards, by which performance will be judged: what's important and how much you expect. This may seem obvious, but it's often not done because new managers are unsure or uninformed about how unit goals align with strategy; because experienced managers may have lost touch with market or strategy changes; or because over time turnover in management results in mixed signals about performance.

Second, performance reviews are about what people do for a living and often their pay and job assignments. These important topics take time to discuss. You must make time on your calendar to avoid quick reviews that leave people feeling confused or unvalued. Managers must also take the time to pay attention to peoples' behaviors far in advance of the actual review date if they're going to be helpful about the impact of those on-the-job behaviors on others in or outside the organization. You want people focused on the relevant causal relationships and not just enacting the natural human tendency to ascribe credit for good outcomes to oneself and the causes of bad outcomes to someone or something else.

Third, effective reviews require a judgment about causes of a person's performance. For example, are performance issues the consequence of deficiencies in motivation or ability? Some people may work hard, but lack certain capabilities: Can training and coaching enhance those capabilities? Others may have the abilities but lack motivation: Can different incentives or processes increase motivation? Still others may seemingly lack both motivation and relevant ability: Is this the right job for that person? Can a performance improvement plan help, or a different role where their abilities can be better utilized? Or is it time to replace this person?

Finally, stars often have both high motivation and ability: What can be done to reward, retain and learn from the stars' behaviors?

These are not easy judgments to make about human beings. But they're necessary and imply different action plans. Without them, it's difficult to be mutually productive during the review.

What to Convey During the Review

Here are five steps useful in guiding a performance review conversation:

Convey your positive intent.

A review is about feedback aimed at increasing the recipient's effectiveness. If you don't really have this intent- for example, if you believe that issues of motivation and/or ability overwhelm the potential contribution, then you're not really having a performance conversation, and you can ignore the following steps. The conversation you should have is one in which you discuss moving that person out of that job.

By contrast, consider a review with a promising employee with whom you have invested time. You might clarify your intent by noting, "You've done a good job settling into the role and orienting yourself to our firm. Your challenge now is to transition to more independent roles over the next year. That means less specific task direction or intervention is available for you when problems arise. So I'm counting on you to handle more on your own, and I'll be evaluating that at our next review."

That employee might respond, "I understand, but can you then sponsor me for training in areas where I'll be more independent and clarify the judgments and decisions where you want to stay involved versus those where I now have more say-so?" Both parties are now working on agreed-upon behaviors, not simply slogans like "be more strategic" or "demonstrate leadership qualities."

Describe specifically what you have observed.

The more specific and descriptive your feedback about strengths and weaknesses, the more likely the other person will understand. Describe illustrative or critical incidents which indicate the impact on performance. Too much performance feedback is of the "do good and avoid evil" variety. That may sound harmless, but overly general feedback increases feelings of defensiveness, rather than openness to behavior change, because it involves broad judgments and invites counterpunching rather than discussion.

For example, saying "Your presentation was bad" is little more than a perception and an exhortation to "get better." Saying, "Your presentation didn't include information on demographics, total life-cycle costs, and payment terms" makes it easier to receive negative comments and take corrective action because both manager and employee can now concentrate on elements that can be improved.

State the impact of the behavior or action.

Many employees are unaware of the impact of their actions on outcomes. That's why we have managers. But managing means discussing cause-and-effect linkages between behaviors and outcomes. For example, it's one thing to say to a salesperson, "You didn't connect with the buyer." It's quite another to say, "You interrupted people throughout the meeting, and this resulted in that buyer being less open to listening to your ideas."

Remember that people won't change their personality after a performance review. Focus on the behaviors within a person's control. This also helps to minimize a common cloning bias in organizations: Is there a problem with that person's performance or is their performance achieved using a style that their manager would not use to do the job? Always be clear about the difference.

Ask the other person to respond.

Effective reviews are a two-way transfer of information, not only directions from a manager. Most people want to know about their performance. But the Rashomon effect is alive and well in firms; two people can observe the same event or outcome yet interpret it differently.

Dialogue is important, therefore, not just because it's polite and typically characteristic of effective organizational cultures, but also, because it tests assumptions and reasoning. Does my view of your interactions with colleagues make sense? Here is the data or other input I'm using to make this assessment: What am I missing? Is it an issue of resources or something else? Here are the priorities in our unit: Do you understand, and do you agree? If not, why not?

Dialogue also opens other relevant purposes of a review: the possibility that the manager's behaviors, policies or management style may be part of the performance problem and opportunity.

So What? Now What?

A review is incomplete without a discussion of next steps in which both parties take appropriate responsibility for change options. But responsibility for this closure rests with the manager. On what assets can you capitalize to increase effectiveness? Are there assignments that can increase learning, deliberate practice, or other elements relevant to core tasks? Can HR help? What is the timetable and benchmarks to use in measuring progress after the review?

What to Do After the Review

The biggest impact from performance conversations is often what happens after the review. Too often, nothing happens: The review is an isolated annual event and therefore has little real impact. But research on behavioral change and the continuous improvement required for innovation highlights the importance of setting goals and providing ongoing feedback about progress toward goals.

Put regular follow-ups on the schedule.

Technology is lowering the costs of doing this. For example, a study of programs designed to increase peoples' savings find that follow-up text messages, simply informing the person of their savings rates versus others, are about 80% as effective as in-person meetings. Other studies, in areas ranging from health care to voting to energy usage to drinking habits, find that these reminders significantly affect behavior and improve outcomes.

Managers can use these technologies to provide regular feedback.The key is making follow-ups an iterative process from which individuals and the firm derive value.

Look for patterns.

Regular follow-up also provides managers with the opportunity to look for patterns and create a virtuous cycle of assessment and investment by potentially reallocating money, time and people to align better with strategic imperatives.

For example, in a firm facing a complex technical sale with a 24-to-30-month selling cycle, the VP of sales detected the following pattern that emerged from reviews: It was taking nine to 12 months to complete the trial or proof-of-concept portion of the selling task - a cash-drain for a VC-funded startup. He also saw commonalities in what reps said that customers wanted in trials. So, the firm developed a platform that took customers through the process with the assistance of the operations group, not salespeople. The result has been to reduce the selling cycle to 12 to 14 months and make better use of limited sales resources.

The venerable maxim still applies: "People join companies, but they leave managers," because feedback and coaching are crucial for professional growth and development. It's striking how many successful people, when asked about their careers, point to a manager who provided them with useful (even if initially unwanted) feedback. In turn, they come to realize that, as managers, they must demonstrate that they care about their people and are worthy of trust in assessing performance.

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How to Conduct a Great Performance Review.

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The purpose of performance reviews is two-fold: an accurate and actionable evaluation of performance, and then development of that person's skills in line with job tasks. For recipients, feedback has intrinsic and extrinsic value. Across fields, research shows that people become high performers by identifying specific areas where they need to improve and then practicing those skills with performance feedback.

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Forbes: 10 Ways To Stop Being A People Pleaser At Work

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Forbes: 10 Ways To Stop Being A People Pleaser At Work

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Are you someone who goes out of your way to be helpful and kind at work? For example, do you consistently say yes to taking on new projects even when you are overloaded? Do you find yourself agreeing with co-workers even though you may have a very different viewpoint? If that sounds like you, you may have people-pleasing tendencies.

Of course, doing nice things for others isn't a bad thing. But when this behavior causes you to disregard your feelings, suppress valuable opinions, and take on more responsibility than you can comfortably manage, that's a problem. People-pleasing behaviors are often disguised as positivity and camaraderie. But unfortunately, it can be a façade. What's more, people pleasers typically want to be liked and respected. But when you give up your power this way, it leads to a lack of respect. That's because when you don't acknowledge your boundaries, your colleagues follow suit. Before you know it, you're working 60 hours a week with no extra pay or recognition.

The reality is that you can't be all things to all people. And the costs of people-pleasing in the workplace can be high, including frustration, resentment, anxiety and burnout. Fortunately, there are strategies to mitigate these tendencies. Here are ten ways to stop being a people pleaser so you can become more confident, productive and fulfilled at work.

1. Increase your awareness

Awareness is the first step toward change. Begin by keeping track of how often you say yes to things. When it happens, write it down. Then in another column, describe how you feel in those moments. Look for patterns. For example, there may be some people, in particular, you have trouble saying no to. Then think about how you could have handled the situation differently to be better prepared for next time.

2. Understand your boundaries and limitations

As you increase your awareness, think about how much bandwidth you have. Then try to determine your limits and establish clear boundaries. Next, communicate those boundaries to the people around you. Finally, be clear and specific about what projects you can realistically take on.

3. Seek a supportive mentor

Seeking a supportive mentor, friend, coach, therapist, or co-worker can be very valuable during this time. First, explain how you want to change this habit and describe specific skills you want to work on. Then develop an action plan. That way, you can create detailed milestones and hold yourself accountable.

4. Start saying no in small ways

People pleasers have trouble saying no. But the more you practice, the easier it gets. You need to work to strengthen your no muscle the same as you would any other muscle in your body. Start doing it in small, easy ways like over text or chat. Rehearse responses that you can use frequently. For example, if you're too busy, you could say, "Thanks for thinking of me, but I'm really overscheduled right now." Or, if you're just not the right person, you could say, "That sounds really interesting, but I know there is someone who is a better fit for that project."

5. Set measurable goals

One thing to remember is to focus on progress, not perfection. Start small and don't feel you need to make major changes overnight. One goal could be to turn down one additional project a month. Another might be to speak up in every meeting when you'd like to share a different viewpoint.

6. Ask for help

Recognize that you're not alone. Instead of saying yes to every assignment that comes along, ask others for help. Even if you can delegate minor tasks, it's a step in the right direction.

7. Replace negative self-talk

Negative feelings need to be replaced with more positive behaviors. One worthwhile approach is replacing negative self-talk with positive mantras. It might feel strange in the beginning. But with practice, mantras can help you manage stress, boost confidence and increase productivity. Here are a few examples:

"If I spend all my time at work pleasing others, I surrender my power."

"I can only be true to myself if I stop trying to please others."

"Even if I say no, it is not my fault someone else is displeased."

"I am not responsible for the feelings of anyone except myself."

8. Pause before responding

Right now, you probably say yes to things immediately and regret it later. Instead, practice pausing to buy yourself time to assess the situation. For example, you could say, "let me check my calendar and get back to you." Studies have also found that even a short pause before making a choice increases decision-making accuracy.

9. Stop making excuses

When you say no, it's important to avoid making excuses. For one thing, it can give that person a way to adjust the request to ensure you can still do what they are requesting. The other reason is that you often don't need to offer a detailed explanation. Usually, it's enough to simply say that you have too much on your plate and leave it at that.

10. Be true to yourself

The most important thing to remember about your behavior is to stay true to yourself. Don't agree to do something that conflicts with your priorities or makes you uncomfortable just to please someone else. Know what is right for you and stick to it. By taking this approach, people will respect you more in the long run.

While being a people pleaser at work is a hard habit to break, you can do it. Use these strategies to take small, consistent steps towards setting healthy boundaries. Only then will you be able to truly listen to your inner voice, embrace your authentic self and regain your power.

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10 Ways To Stop Being A People Pleaser At Work

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Are you someone who goes out of your way to be helpful and kind at work? For example, do you consistently say yes to taking on new projects even when you are overloaded? Do you find yourself agreeing with co-workers even though you may have a very different viewpoint?

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Forbes: Small But Mighty: Why Micro-Credentials Are Huge For The Future Of Work

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Forbes: Small But Mighty: Why Micro-Credentials Are Huge For The Future Of Work

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Here are three big reasons why micro-credentials can be your secret to recruiting, retaining and upskilling workers for the future of work.
Today, the pressing talent shortage is hitting just about every business and organization in a big way. It's more than just a matter of sourcing people willing to work; they also have to possess the skills that match up with the role. Research by Robert Half indicates that 95% of executives say it's somewhat or very challenging to find employees with the appropriate skills and talents-a longstanding impasse that's come to be known as the " skills gap."

It's time to get creative not only with where we source new talent, but how we create it. More and more organizations are rethinking their approach to employee training and development programs capable of upskilling employees and candidates. Of course, there's a catch. Making big investments in employees can be risky. All it can take is a call from a single recruiter for that employee, in whom you've invested thousands of training dollars, to jump ship.

This is where micro-credentials come into play. As an emerging solution to this dilemma, micro-credentials are bite-sized qualifications that demonstrate skills, knowledge and/or experience in a specific subject area or capability.

Micro-credentials tend to be narrower in range and easier to acquire compared to traditional qualifications like degrees. At the same time, they can also be broad in focus. For example, employees can obtain micro-credentials in subjects as wide as data-driven marketing or as narrow as how to empower others in the workplace.

"Micro-credentials offer numerous benefits for employees, employers and organizations of all sizes," says Kyle Shea, EVP of Partnership Development at All Campus. "When designed correctly, micro-credentials are flexible, portable and cost-effective to implement. They can help boost employee engagement and support employers by promoting a culture of lifelong learning while providing a map for an employee's career path."

Put another way, micro-credentials can deliver win-win benefits to both employers and employees-both now and into the future. Here are three reasons why the small but mighty micro-credential is going to make such a huge impact on the future of work.

1. Scalable and cost-effective training

Investing in robust training programs, even in partnerships with universities, can come with a big price tag for companies looking to ensure their employees are competent, engaged and productive. Scalable training programs like micro-credentialing can offer a cost-effective way to maintain competitiveness and pivot to meet changing market demands.

Such pivots often need to happen quickly-and here again, micro-credentials deliver. "Whether it's industry-wide trends like the IT revolution and digitalization or market-specific changes you need to respond to, scaling up your training according to need is an invaluable way to outpace the competition," says Shea.

Because they're "stackable," meaning they build upon one another toward a larger qualification, micro-credentials are less intimidating to start than a traditional degree program. Employees can continually gain new knowledge to keep pace with changing business needs while also progressing toward a bigger goal.

2. On-demand, individualized learning

Compared to full-length courses, micro-credentials also offer a more personalized, on-demand learning experience. And, unlike traditional degrees, which take years to complete, micro-credentials can be completed in weeks or even days-which appeals to workers who want to quickly learn exactly what they need, apply it on the job and immediately have a credential to show for their effort.

"Micro-credentials benefit degree holders who want to add specific skills to their resume, as well as workers who do not yet have a degree," says Shea. "Many universities structure micro-credentials so students can earn degree credits, boosting the overall value for learners who want a degree in the long run."

In many ways, Shea says that pursuing micro-credentials mirrors the life experience of younger generations who have grown up with the internet, smartphones and social media.

"Employees from the younger generations have always been able to control when and how they gather information," says Shea. "Micro-credentials allow them to learn in a way that feels more natural and logical to them. But regardless of the learner's age, online learning offers the convenience and flexibility working professionals are seeking."

3. Business needs aligned with career aspirations

Developing a micro-credential training program not only can help organizations fill immediate gaps in their skill base, but it can also become part of a strategy to attract and retain top talent by addressing employee growth opportunities and career aspirations.

"By ensuring employees are continuing to develop new skills, businesses not only reskill their current employee population, but they also attract new workers who are eager to learn and advance within the company," says Shea. "Micro-credentials provide a way to map an employee's career paths and quantify any type of skill."

To support employee advancement, companies should build as much autonomy as possible into their micro-credential programs. "Employees achieve more when they are able to choose what, when and how they will learn," says Shea, who notes that some of the most successful micro-credential training programs have been created in collaboration with employees. Such programs allow for the creation of personalized development plans that address the individual's career aspirations as well as the organization's skill-building needs.

Getting started

To kick off a micro-credential program of their own, organizations should begin by identifying the critical skills and competencies they need to upskill and reskill their workforce. Once they have that data, says Shea, they can partner with universities that offer micro-credentials aligned with their needs.

"The course content developed by universities is high-quality and delivered by experienced subject matter experts," he says. "University partnerships also connect employers with a potential talent pipeline that includes interns, new hires and ongoing employee development opportunities. This approach appeals to employees because they know they are earning credentials backed by a reputable institution."

Meanwhile, universities can be proactive in partnering with companies by comparing the skills represented in their course offerings with the skills represented in an organization's job postings. "This type of analysis helps universities identify gaps between skills needed in the job market and skills they are currently teaching," says Shea.

Cultures of continuous learning

In the midst of a record talent shortage, micro-credentials offer an exciting and effective way to attract, train and recognize employees-to establish a culture of continuous learning. Whether your organization is seeking ways to supplement traditional credentials, train staff in professional skills or provide highly individualized programs to meet unique skill gaps, micro-credentialing has emerged as a valuable option for your team.

Micro-credentials prove the truth of the old saying: sometimes, the best things do come in small packages.

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Small But Mighty: Why Micro-Credentials Are Huge For The Future Of Work

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Here are three big reasons why micro-credentials can be your secret to recruiting, retaining and upskilling workers for the future of work. Today, the pressing talent shortage is hitting just about every business and organization in a big way.

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McKinsey & Co: How Organizations Can Build Healthy Employee Habits

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McKinsey & Co: How Organizations Can Build Healthy Employee Habits

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The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated many forces already in play over the last decade. One of the most significant shifts being the move to remote and distributed work. In this context, a frequent question we hear from leaders is: How do we promote healthy and performance-driving habits across our front-line teams, many of whom are more decentralized than ever before?

The good news is that there is no better time to build habits than during times of rapid change. Habits are automatic behaviors that occur in response to a recurring cue in the environment. Environmental cues are the key, but often an overlooked, component of habit formation. Fortunately, this means major transitions open the door for organizations to help their teams build positive and healthy workplace habits.
How habits work
In his best-selling book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg breaks down habits into three parts: a cue, a routine and a reward. We'll use the example of recognizing team members for exceptional work to illustrate each one.

In this case, the routine is recognizing a team member, for example publicly acknowledging their accomplishment. The cue is the prompt that causes the routine to happen. Cues may take many forms including location, time, an emotional state, other people, or an immediately preceding action. Here, the cue may be an immediately-preceding action - a team member doing something exceptional. The reward is the craving that is satisfied by the routine. In this example, the reward may be the emotional response. It feels good to make others feel good.
The role of individuals in habit-building
Individuals can choose the routine they want to start or stop based on the reward they're hoping to experience, and use best practices to do so sustainably, such as starting with micro-behaviors.

However, when it comes to cues, individuals have less control. Whereas a 2006 meta-analysis by Thomas Webb and Paschal Sheeran found that intentions to change behaviors are only modestly related to actual behavior change, several studies by habit expert, Wendy Wood, and her colleagues estimate that 45% of daily behavior happens in the same place at the same time - or location and time cues.
The role of organizations in habit-building
Organizations can help promote healthy employee habits in two ways: defining the routines to start and stop and changing cues in the environment.

1. Defining the routines to start and stop
Organizations can help employees develop habits by clearly defining what routines to start-and those to stop. One of the best ways for organizations to determine this is to disaggregate their strategic and cultural aspirations into individual-level goals and behaviors to work toward.

For example, a global steel company undergoing an agile transformation identified proactively sharing materials and discussing the company's vision as two core routines required to achieve its cultural pillar, collaboration.

2. Changing cues in the environment
One of the most powerful ways to disrupt old habits and empower new ones is to change the environment. Research suggests that organizations can proactively change the environment and cues through formal mechanisms or retroactively develop new cues in response to unavoidable environmental changes.

By changing formal mechanisms, organizations can both disrupt old habits and create new ones with one single shift. For example, Virgin Atlantic disrupted their flight captains' fuel usage habits and decreased fuel costs by 3.3 million pounds by providing monthly usage reports.

When inevitable changes occur, organizations can create cues in the new environment to support employees in building new habits. This can be done by offering personalized coaching, which, when tech-enabled, can provide cues in real-time.

As we continue into the unknown future of work, we can expect more shifts in context to disrupt employees' existing work habits. While this may seem daunting to organizations, it creates opportunities to support employees in building new, positive habits in their place.

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How organizations can build healthy employee habits

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The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated many forces already in play over the last decade. One of the most significant shifts being the move to remote and distributed work. In this context, a frequent question we hear from leaders is: How do we promote healthy and performance-driving habits across our front-line teams, many of whom are more decentralized than ever before?

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EU Approach to Micro-Credentials for Life-Long Learning & Employability

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EU Approach to Micro-Credentials for Life-Long Learning & Employability

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COUNCIL RECOMMENDATION

of 16 June 2022

on a European approach to micro-credentials for lifelong learning and employability

(2022/C 243/02)

THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and in particular Articles 149 and 292, 165 and 166 thereof,

Having regard to the proposal from the European Commission,

Whereas:

1.

Within Europe, a growing number of people need to update and improve their knowledge, skills and competences to fill the gap between their formal education and training and the needs of a fast-changing society and labour market. The recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and the digital and green transitions have accelerated the pace of change in how we live, learn and work. They have also highlighted the need for people to be better equipped to deal with current and future challenges. The pandemic has affected the career prospects of both young people and adults. It has also increased unemployment and damaged the physical, mental and emotional well-being of hundreds of millions of people in Europe.

2.

One of the major challenges facing European businesses and employers is an insufficient supply of relevant skills in the EU labour market. Simultaneously, workers are facing unprecedented changes in how work is organised. In addition, task profiles and skills requirements are changing fundamentally due to the digital and green transitions. As outlined in Council Decision (EU) 2021/1868 of 15 October 2021 on guidelines for the employment policies of the Member States (1), ‘Member States and the Union are to work towards developing a coordinated strategy for employment and particularly for promoting a skilled, trained and adaptable workforce, as well as labour markets that are future-oriented and responsive to economic change’. Continuous upskilling and reskilling are essential for workers to respond to the needs of their current job or to transition to new jobs and expanding sectors, such as the green and digital sectors, in particular in the context of demographic ageing.

3.

People need access to quality teaching and learning provided in different ways and settings, to develop their personal, social, cultural and professional knowledge, skills and competences. There have been calls for education and training systems to become more flexible and to find solutions to deliver more learner-centred, accessible and inclusive learning to a wider range of profiles. Non-formal providers of education and training are also addressing this need by providing new and innovative opportunities for upskilling and reskilling.

4.

An effective culture of lifelong learning is key to ensuring that everyone has the knowledge, skills and competences they need to thrive in society, the labour market and their personal lives. It is essential that people can access quality and relevant education and training, upskilling and reskilling throughout their lives. Lifelong learning opportunities should be part of the long-term strategy of education and training institutions to improve their responsiveness to the fast-changing needs of employers and learners. This would enable a more diverse body of learners (including graduates of these institutions and other adult learners) to upskill and reskill. It is recommended that higher education institutions, vocational education and training (VET) institutions, adult learning providers and other providers of micro-credentials, including employers, cooperate and integrate the latest research findings in the design and update of learning opportunities.

5.

Micro-credentials could help certify the outcomes of small, tailored learning experiences. They make possible the targeted, flexible acquisition of knowledge, skills and competences to meet new and emerging needs in society and the labour market and make it possible for individuals to fill the skill gaps they need to succeed in a fast-changing environment, while not replacing traditional qualifications. They can, where appropriate, complement existing qualifications, providing added value while not undermining the core principle of full degree programmes in initial education and training. Micro-credentials could be designed and issued by a variety of providers in different learning settings (formal, non-formal and informal learning settings).

6.

Despite their increasing use, there is no common definition of, or standards for, micro-credentials in Europe. This limits the understanding and uptake of micro-credentials, and therefore undermines the potential of micro-credentials to facilitate flexible learning and career pathways. This recommendation aims to support the building of trust in micro-credentials across Europe among all those involved, whether providers or beneficiaries.

7.

In its first principle, the European Pillar of Social Rights (2) states that everyone has the right to quality and inclusive education, training and lifelong learning in order to maintain and acquire skills that enable people to participate fully in society and successfully manage transitions in the labour market, everywhere in the European Union. The fourth principle of the European Pillar of Social Rights states that everyone has the right to timely and tailor-made assistance to improve their employment or self-employment prospects. This right to assistance includes the right to receive support for training and re-qualification. The European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan refers to micro-credentials as an innovative instrument that ‘can facilitate flexible learning pathways and support workers on their job or during professional transitions’. Micro-credentials can play a role in delivering on the EU’s headline targets to be achieved by 2030, including a target of 60 % of all adults participating in training every year and an employment rate of at least 78 %. Both these targets were welcomed by EU leaders, social partners and civil society, at the Porto Social Summit and then by the European Council at its meeting on 24-25 June 2021 (3).

8.

In parallel to the Action Plan, the Commission adopted a Recommendation on an effective active support to employment following the COVID-19 crisis (the ‘EASE’ Recommendation) (4). The Recommendation offers concrete policy guidance to Member States on developing coherent policy packages to ease job transitions and foster a job-rich recovery from COVID-19. The policy guidance covers upskilling and reskilling opportunities and support measures.

9.

The European Skills Agenda (5) announced, among its 12 flagship actions, a new initiative on a European approach to micro-credentials. This new initiative aims to support the quality, transparency and uptake of micro-credentials across the EU. The Skills Agenda also announced an initiative on individual learning accounts that could help close existing gaps in access to education and training for working age adults and enable people to manage labour market transitions successfully. Micro-credentials can be used as part of the education and training made available to people to underpin the operation of these individual learning accounts.

10.

The Commission Communication on achieving the European Education Area by 2025 (6) announced that the Commission will work to develop a European approach to micro-credentials to help widen learning opportunities and strengthen the role played in lifelong learning by both higher education institutions and VET institutions.

11.

The Council Recommendation on vocational education and training (VET) for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience (7) calls on the Commission to ‘explore the concept and use of micro-credentials’.

12.

The Council Resolution on a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training towards the European Education Area and beyond (2021-2030) (8) presents the exploration of the concept and use of micro-credentials as one of the concrete issues and actions for priority area 2 of the strategic framework (Lifelong learning and mobility).

13.

The Council conclusions on the European Universities initiative – Bridging higher education, research, innovation and society: Paving the way for a new dimension in European higher education (9) stress that ‘although not deviating from and undermining the core principle of full degree programmes, micro-credentials could help widen learning opportunities to accommodate non-traditional learners and the demand for new skills in the labour market; make the learning experience more flexible and modular; support access to higher education; and engage learners, regardless of their previous qualifications or backgrounds, promoting reskilling and upskilling opportunities, while ensuring quality education’.

14.

Ministers for Education of the European Higher Education Area committed in the Rome Communiqué of the inter-governmental Bologna Process (10) to help their higher education institutions to: (i) diversify their learning offer; and (ii) innovate in educational content and modes of delivery. In addition to full degree programmes, and while preserving their right to design study programmes and to regulate questions of credit transfer independently, many higher education institutions offer or plan to offer smaller units of learning. These smaller units can help learners to develop or update their cultural, professional, and transversal skills and competences at various stages in their lives. Cooperation under the Bologna Process will explore how, and to what extent, these smaller, flexible units of learning – including those leading to micro-credentials – can be defined, developed, implemented and recognised by using common tools.

15.

Education and training systems should cater for the diverse individual needs, abilities and capacities of all learners. They should also offer learning opportunities to all, including in non-formal and informal settings as underlined by the Council conclusions on equity and inclusion in education and training in order to promote educational success for all (11). Well-designed micro-credentials can be used as part of targeted measures to support inclusion and accessibility to education and training for a wider range of learners. This wider range of learners includes disadvantaged and vulnerable groups (such as people with disabilities, the elderly, low-qualified/skilled people, minorities, people with a migrant background, refugees and people with fewer opportunities because of their geographical location and/or their socio-economically disadvantaged situation). Micro-credentials can also be used to help better orient students and facilitate access to and success in learning and training and support the school-to-work transition. The expected growth in the number of refugees and asylum applicants will require the development of strategies to effectively integrate these groups into education, training and labour systems. Guidance and mutual learning across the EU in relation to the design and issuance of micro-credentials can foster inclusion and ensure that learners from all groups of society can access their benefits.

16.

Micro-credentials can also support the professional development and mobility of workers, including people in non-standard forms of work, such as those in the platform economy (12), who may have difficulties accessing training depending on their employment status (13).

17.

Micro-credentials could play an active role in delivering on EU policy initiatives to advance the digital and green transitions. Micro-credentials could: (i) underpin the goals of the Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027 (14) to help provide flexible, accessible learning opportunities for digital skills; and (ii) deliver on the targets of the Commission’s ‘2030 Digital Compass’ plan to develop a digitally skilled population and highly skilled digital professionals in Europe by 2030. Micro-credentials could also play a role in delivering on the European Green Deal (15), which is Europe’s growth strategy aiming to transform its economy and society and put them on a more sustainable path.

18.

The Council Recommendation on the European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning and repealing the recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2008 on the establishment of the European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning (16) provides a common reference framework to help people and organisations compare both different qualification systems and the levels of qualifications from those systems. As a European reference framework, the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) is open to all types and levels of qualifications and represents the common standard reference for transparency, portability and comparability. The EQF is also open to micro-credentials if and where they are first included in national qualifications frameworks.

19.

The Council Recommendation of 20 December 2012 on the validation of non-formal and informal learning (17) invited Member States to put in place by 2018 – according to national circumstances and specificities and as they deem appropriate – arrangements for validating non-formal and informal learning. These arrangements for validation mean that people can have validated the knowledge, skills and competences which they have acquired through non-formal and informal learning. These arrangements for validation also enable people to obtain a full qualification or, where applicable, a partial qualification. The 2020 evaluation of the Recommendation (18) called for greater development of the links between validation and micro-credentials.

20.

Decision (EU) 2018/646 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 April 2018 on a common framework for the provision of better services for skills and qualifications (Europass) and repealing Decision No 2241/2004/EC (19) sets out the basis for providing web-based tools enabling people to manage their career and lifelong learning with authentication services for credentials which make micro-credentials portable.

21.

The relevance, development and updating of micro-credentials depends on:

i)

cooperation and collaboration between regional and national authorities, education and training organisations and;

ii)

sectoral and cross-industry social dialogue (this social dialogue should involve organisations that represent workers and employers from both the private and public sectors, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and professional and managerial staff).

22.

This Recommendation fully respects the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, the principles of institutional autonomy and academic freedom, and the responsibility of the Member States for the content and organisation of education and vocational training in accordance with national circumstances, and in close cooperation with all relevant stakeholders.

23.

This Recommendation is without prejudice to Directive 2005/36/EC as amended by Directive 2013/55/EU on the recognition of professional qualifications and the regime of automatic recognition provided therein,

HAS ADOPTED THIS RECOMMENDATION to be implemented in accordance with regional, national and Union legislation and priorities, national circumstances and available resources, including the socio-economic situation and the characteristics of national education, training, lifelong learning and employment systems, and in close cooperation with all relevant stakeholders:

Objectives

1.

Member States are recommended to adopt a European approach to micro-credentials with the objective of:

a)

enabling individuals to acquire, update and improve the knowledge, skills and competences they need to thrive in an evolving labour market and society, to benefit fully from a socially fair recovery and just transitions to the green and digital economy and to be better equipped to deal with current and future challenges;

b)

supporting the preparedness of providers of micro-credentials to enhance the quality, transparency, accessibility and flexibility of the learning offering in order to empower individuals to forge personalised learning and career pathways;

c)

fostering inclusiveness, access and equal opportunities and contributing to the achievement of resilience, social fairness and prosperity for all, in a context of demographic and societal changes and throughout all phases of economic cycles.

2.

Member States are recommended to use micro-credentials, where appropriate, as a tool to strengthen and complement existing learning opportunities, increase participation in lifelong learning and help reach the target of 60 % of all adults participating in training every year as set out in the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan and as welcomed by EU leaders and approved by the Council Resolution on a new European agenda for adult learning 2021-2030 (20).

Scope

3.

This Recommendation covers micro-credentials, as well as policies that can support their effective design, issuance and use.

4.

Micro-credentials can be used to complement and enhance education, training, lifelong learning and employability ecosystems. The measures outlined in this Recommendation are aimed at strengthening opportunities for learning and employability without disrupting initial, higher education, vocational education and training (VET) systems, and without undermining and replacing existing qualifications and degrees. The measures recommend the establishment of a common European approach to the ongoing and emerging provision of micro-credentials in the European Union and set out a definition and guidance for the design, issuance and description of micro-credentials to improve their quality and transparency and facilitate their uptake.

Definitions

5.

For the purposes of this Recommendation, the following definitions apply:

a)

‘Micro-credential’ means the record of the learning outcomes that a learner has acquired following a small volume of learning. These learning outcomes will have been assessed against transparent and clearly defined criteria. Learning experiences leading to micro-credentials are designed to provide the learner with specific knowledge, skills and competences that respond to societal, personal, cultural or labour market needs. Micro-credentials are owned by the learner, can be shared and are portable. They may be stand-alone or combined into larger credentials. They are underpinned by quality assurance following agreed standards in the relevant sector or area of activity.

b)

‘Providers of micro-credentials’ means education and training institutions and organisations, social partners (i.e. organisations representing workers and employers), employers and industry, civil society organisations, public employment services (PES) and regional and national authorities, and other types of actors designing, delivering and issuing micro-credentials for formal, non-formal and informal learning. This is without prejudice to regional and national legislation and circumstances.

c)

‘Learning settings’ means the diverse, physical, online, blended (21), virtual and digital locations, contexts and cultures in which people learn, encompassing all settings in which formal, non-formal and informal learning can occur.

d)

‘Formal learning’ means learning which takes place in an organised and structured environment, specifically dedicated to learning, and typically leads to the award of a qualification, usually in the form of a certificate or a diploma; it includes systems of general education, initial, continuing and tertiary vocational education and training and higher education (22).

e)

‘Non-formal learning’ means learning which takes place outside formal education and training through planned activities in terms of learning objectives and learning time and where some form of learning support is present (23).

f)

‘Informal learning’ means learning resulting from daily activities and experiences which is not organised or structured in terms of objectives, time or learning support; it may be unintentional from the learner’s perspective (24). It does not automatically lead to a micro-credential but can be considered in the context of validation arrangements which may identify, document, assess and/or certify an individual’s learning outcomes.

g)

‘Portability’ means the ability for a credential-holder to store their micro-credentials in a system of their choice, to share the credential with a party of their choice (whether national or transnational) and for all parties in the exchange to be able to understand the content and verify the authenticity of the credentials. This enables portability between and within education and training sectors, in the labour market and across countries.

h)

‘Stackability’ means the possibility, where relevant, to combine different micro-credentials and build logically upon each other. Decisions to ‘stack’ or combine credentials lie with the receiving organisation (e.g. education and training institutions, employers, etc.) in line with their practices and should support the goals and needs of the learner. Stacking does not create an automatic entitlement to a qualification or a degree. Such decisions are made by regional and national authorities or institutions in line with their awarding processes.

i)

‘Assessment’ means the process or method used to evaluate, measure and eventually describe the learning outcomes acquired by individuals through formal, non-formal or informal settings. Assessment is performed by the provider or other recognised assessment providers.

Definition and European standard elements to describe a micro-credential

6.

Member States are recommended to adopt and promote the use of:

a)

the definition of micro-credentials as set out in paragraph 5(a);

b)

the European standard elements to describe a micro-credential (as described in Annex I) including the following mandatory elements:

i)

identification of the learner

ii)

title of the micro-credential

iii)

country(ies)/region(s) of the issuer

iv)

awarding body(ies)

v)

date of issuing

vi)

learning outcomes

vii)

notional workload needed to achieve the learning outcomes (in European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System – ECTS, wherever possible)

viii)

level (and cycle, if applicable) of the learning experience leading to the micro-credential (European Qualifications Framework, Qualifications Frameworks in the European Higher Education Area), if applicable

ix)

type of assessment

x)

form of participation in the learning activity

xi)

type of quality assurance used to underpin the micro-credential

c)

the European principles for the design and issuance of micro-credentials (as described in Annex II).

Development of the ecosystem for micro-credentials

7.

Member States are recommended, where appropriate, to facilitate the ongoing and emerging development of micro-credentials within formal learning settings, including by:

a)

supporting the exploration by higher education institutions of the role of micro-credentials in offering learning opportunities to diverse learners, in particular by widening an attractive, accessible, inclusive and learner-centred offer of lifelong learning activities, including through the activities of the alliances of ‘European Universities’ (25), where applicable;

b)

supporting the exploration by vocational education and training institutions and other VET providers of the role of micro-credentials in continuing vocational education and training in supporting upskilling and reskilling of adults, including through the activities of VET Centres of Vocational Excellence, where applicable;

c)

considering providing public funding, according to national circumstances, for the development and provision of small education and training activities leading to micro-credentials at all levels of education and training, while taking into account institutional autonomy to allow for diversity and creativity.

8.

Member States are recommended, where appropriate, to support the ongoing and emerging development of micro-credentials within non-formal and informal learning settings, including by:

a)

supporting the design and issuance of micro-credentials by providers other than those in paragraph 7 (these providers might include: companies, social partners, civil society organisations, local authorities, community centres, professional associations, research and innovation organisations and private providers), including promoting diversity of funding sources;

b)

promoting the development of micro-credentials designed and agreed by employers’ and workers’ representatives through social dialogue, where appropriate;

c)

considering adapting procedures for the recognition of prior learning and the validation of non-formal and informal learning to allow for the awarding of micro-credentials.

9.

Member States are encouraged to support the quality and transparency of micro-credentials, where appropriate, including by:

a)

applying, adapting and developing quality assurance mechanisms for micro-credentials issued by different types of providers, making use of existing mechanisms, wherever possible (see Annex 2);

b)

supporting the use of ‘skills-intelligence’ systems for analyses of labour market needs and demographic changes so they can identify any need to develop or update micro-credentials;

c)

encouraging providers to publish catalogues of micro-credentials they offer, including, where relevant, their policy on the recognition of micro-credentials issued by other providers;

d)

integrating micro-credentials in national qualifications frameworks and systems. Decisions to integrate micro-credentials in regional and national frameworks or systems are made by national authorities or institutions in line with national circumstances.

10.

Member States are encouraged to promote and support, where appropriate, effective experimentation, cooperation, governance and partnerships between:

i)

education and training institutions;

ii)

social partners;

iii)

employers and industry;

iv)

research and innovation organisations;

v)

civil society organisations;

vi)

employment and social inclusion services and;

vii)

local, regional and national authorities.

This experimentation, cooperation, governance and partnership is important for identifying needs for micro-credentials, co-developing micro-credentials, and updating micro-credentials, as well as for assessing the impact on upskilling and reskilling, lifelong learning and career development.

Delivering on the potential of micro-credentials

11.

Member States are recommended, where appropriate, to integrate micro-credentials into both education and training systems and skills policies, including by:

a)

encouraging the inclusion of education and training offers leading to micro-credentials in catalogues of education and training opportunities that are on offer;

b)

using micro-credentials to improve access to education and training for all learners, including disadvantaged and vulnerable groups (such as people with disabilities, the elderly, low-qualified/skilled people, minorities, people with a migrant background, refugees and people with fewer opportunities because of their geographical location and/or their socio-economically disadvantaged situation), where appropriate;

c)

using micro-credentials to support flexible learning pathways and the transition from upper secondary or VET to tertiary education and adult education where relevant;

d)

using micro-credentials that can be integrated in or that can complement degree programmes, where relevant;

e)

using micro-credentials as a further means to improve basic and advanced digital skills and competences of a wider range of learners, in line with the Digital Education Action Plan and the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan;

f)

using micro-credentials to support the development of learning for the green transition and sustainable development as part of the national implementation of the Council Recommendation on learning for the green transition and sustainable development;

g)

promoting the use of micro-credentials by education and training institutions and other providers – in cooperation with their surrounding knowledge and innovation ecosystem – to boost the relevance and increase the potential positive impact of micro-credentials on the economy at local and regional level;

h)

promoting the understanding and use of micro-credentials through continuing professional development for teachers and trainers, guidance counsellors (e.g. in the context of the Erasmus+ Teacher Academies), as well as academics, researchers and other related staff;

i)

promoting the use of micro-credentials for the prompt transfer of the latest research findings into learning opportunities, strengthening synergies between the European Education Area and the European Research Area;

j)

exploring the use of micro-credentials in the European Education Area to challenge gender and other discriminatory stereotypes concerning study choices and within educational practices and materials.

12.

Member States are recommended, where appropriate, to integrate micro-credentials into their employment policies and active labour market policies (i.e. employment services, training support and employment incentives), including by:

a)

using micro-credentials, as relevant, to:

i)

address skills mismatches and bottlenecks in given economic sectors and regions and

ii)

upskill and reskill workers for skills and jobs that are in demand on the labour market, in particular in the context of the digital and green transitions.

b)

including training leading to micro-credentials in recognised training opportunities that may be linked to individual learning accounts, where they exist, and other systems for training support;

c)

promoting the use of micro-credentials as a means of updating and upgrading the skills of self-employed and non-standard workers, including people working through platforms and SMEs;

d)

exploring the use of micro-credentials in targeted initiatives to support and motivate disadvantaged and vulnerable groups (such as minimum income recipients, people with disabilities, the long-term unemployed and the low-qualified) to re-enter the labour market or continue in employment;

e)

exploring a role for micro-credentials within systems for implementing the reinforced Youth Guarantee to support young people, including in preparatory training and good-quality offers of continued education or training;

f)

exploring the role of micro-credentials as part of the national implementation of the Recommendation on an effective active support to employment following the COVID-19 crisis (EASE);

g)

exploring the use of micro-credentials to support the professional development of workers and meet mandatory requirements for upskilling and reskilling in certain jobs and types of work (e.g. for licences, required training and permits).

13.

Member States are recommended, where appropriate, to encourage and support the European Network of National Information Centres and the National Academic Recognition Information Centres (ENIC-NARIC networks) or adequate bodies to develop, where relevant, transparent recognition procedures for micro-credentials issued by different types of providers. This should be done in cooperation with the relevant stakeholders mentioned in paragraph 10, including through exploring the possible feasibility of automatic recognition of micro-credentials (26).

14.

Member States are recommended, where relevant, to ensure that information and advice on identifying and selecting micro-credentials is incorporated into lifelong learning guidance services. This includes guidance services at higher education institution career centres, PES, private employment services, social services and other guidance services (employment, career, education and training, coaching). Incorporating guidance on micro-credentials in these services should serve the needs of all learners, including disadvantaged and vulnerable learners.

15.

Member States are recommended, where appropriate, to:

a)

define measures by building on relevant existing national arrangements and financial frameworks to implement this Recommendation. This could include links with individual learning accounts where they exist (with due regard for the responsibility and autonomy of education, training and labour-market organisations in the national context).

b)

make best use of Union funds and instruments to support the necessary reforms, from the enabling framework to the development and use of micro-credentials.

Commission support

The Council welcomes the Commission’s intention, with due regard for subsidiarity and national circumstances and in close cooperation with Member States, to:

16.

develop and adapt, where relevant, existing Union tools and services to support the development of micro-credentials by all types of providers, including by:

a)

supporting the development of guidelines on how to foster transparency and apply the current EU and Bologna instruments in the field of higher education to the internal and external quality assurance of micro-credentials;

b)

exploring how to adapt the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System user guide in the field of higher education to integrate micro-credentials;

c)

exploring how to adapt and develop EU tools for skills and qualifications to integrate micro-credentials into VET systems;

d)

fostering the role of ENIC-NARIC and other adequate bodies in the recognition of micro-credentials for further studies and/or employment purposes including by developing guidance and training;

e)

supporting structured discussion on the possibility to include micro-credentials in National Qualifications Frameworks (NQFs);

f)

exploring the development of the European Student Card initiative to allow students to share the outcomes of micro-credentials obtained abroad during their studies, in a secure way with other education and training institutions.

17.

support cooperation between Member States and stakeholders including by:

a)

supporting sharing of information between regional and national authorities on relevant regional and national policy initiatives and evidence on their impact, making best use of the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training towards the European Education Area and beyond;

b)

promoting European cooperation on quality assurance of micro-credentials, thus building reciprocal trust;

c)

incentivising experimentation with and use of micro-credentials by higher education institutions and vocational education and training institutions, including the alliances of ‘European Universities’ and VET Centres of Excellence to promote and encourage the uptake of micro-credentials by the wider education and training community;

d)

promoting engagement on micro-credentials in Erasmus+ Teacher Academies and other providers of teacher education and teacher training to address teachers’ needs for continuous professional development, where appropriate;

e)

exploring engagement on micro-credentials by social partners, employers and industry, including via the Pact for Skills and linked cooperation initiatives such as the Blueprint for sectoral cooperation on skills, the strengthened European Alliance for Apprenticeships and the Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition;

f)

supporting cooperation and exchange of best practices between PES and employers on how to use micro-credentials to support employability in the context of the PES Network;

g)

facilitating co-operation projects among social partners and education and training institutions on how to use and implement micro-credentials to meet skills needs at European, national, local and regional level, and across different sectors.

18.

support the technical implementation of the Recommendation by exploring further developments in the Europass platform to provide where relevant:

a)

information on learning opportunities leading to micro-credentials and on providers that adhere to the European approach to micro-credentials;

b)

support for authentication of micro-credentials through European digital credentials for learning;

c)

support for the portability, stackability, interoperability, exchange and sharing of information on micro-credentials through a European open standard which specifies a common format for micro-credentials.

19.

support further research on:

i)

the uptake of the European approach to micro-credentials, including on their use by education and training providers, employers and social partners;

ii)

particular outcomes and benefits for learners;

iii)

their added value compared to and as a complement to full degrees or qualifications and;

iv)

further evidence on the factors that influence people’s incentives and motivation to take up training.

20.

Member States and the Commission should jointly work on improving the scope and relevance of existing data collection on micro-credentials at Union level.

Reporting

21.

It is recommended that Member States implement this Recommendation as soon as possible. They are invited to inform the Commission by December 2023 of the corresponding measures to be taken at the appropriate level to support the objectives of this Recommendation.

22.

The Commission is invited to monitor the progress made in the implementation of this Recommendation via existing relevant Union monitoring and reporting frameworks, without any additional burden for Member States, in cooperation with them and after consulting the stakeholders concerned, and to report to the Council within five years from the date of its adoption.

Done at Luxembourg, 16 June 2022.

For the Council

The President

O. DUSSOPT

(1)  OJ L 379, 26.10.2021, p. 1.

(2)  OJ C 428, 13.12.2017, p. 10.

(3)  ‘[...] the European Council welcomes the EU headline targets of the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan, in line with the Porto Declaration’, European Council conclusions, 24-25 June 2021, EUCO 7/21.

(4)  C(2021) 1372 final.

(5)  COM(2020) 274 final.

(6)  COM(2020) 625 final.

(7)  OJ C 417, 2.12.2020, p. 1.

(8)  OJ C 66, 26.2.2021, p. 1.

(9)  OJ C 221, 10.6.2021, p. 14.

(10)  Rome Ministerial Communiqué of 19 November 2020.

(11)  OJ C 221, 10.6.2021, p. 3.

(12)  ‘[...] the notion of the online platform economy should be understood to cover all economic activity arising out of actual or intended commercial transactions in the internal market and facilitated directly or indirectly by online platforms, in particular online intermediation services and online search engines’, Commission Decision of 26 April 2018 on setting up the group of experts for the Observatory on the Online Platform Economy, C(2018) 2393 final, 26 April 2018, p. 1.

(13)  European Parliament resolution of 16 September 2021 on fair working conditions, rights and social protection for platform workers – new forms of employment linked to digital development (2019/2186(INI)) called for the education and training of platform workers to be addressed in the context of the EU approach to micro-credentials.

(14)  COM(2020) 624 final.

(15)  COM(2019) 640 final.

(16)  OJ C 189, 15.6.2017, p. 15.

(17)  OJ C 398, 22.12.2012, p. 1.

(18)  SWD (2020) 121 final.

(19)  OJ L 112, 2.5.2018, p. 42.

(20)  OJ C 504, 14.12.2021, p. 9.

(21)  ‘Blended learning’ in formal education and training is the term used to describe when a school, educator or student takes more than one approach to the learning process.

(22)  Definition based on Council Recommendation of 20 December 2012 on the validation of non-formal and informal learning, OJ C 398, 22.12.2012, p. 1.

(23)  Definition taken from Regulation (EU) 2021/817 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2021 establishing Erasmus+: the Union Programme for education and training, youth and sport and repealing Regulation (EU) No 1288/2013, OJ L 189, 28.05.2021, p. 1.

(24)  Definition taken from Regulation (EU) 2021/817 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2021 establishing Erasmus+: the Union Programme for education and training, youth and sport and repealing Regulation (EU) No 1288/2013, OJ L 189, 28.05.2021, p. 1.

(25)  OJ C 221, 10.6.2021, p. 14.

(26)  As defined in the Council Recommendation of 26 November 2018 on promoting automatic mutual recognition of higher education and upper secondary education and training qualifications and the outcomes of learning periods abroad, OJ C 444, 10.12.2018, p. 1.

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NYTimes: When Work Weighs You Down, Take a ‘Sad Day’

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NYTimes: When Work Weighs You Down, Take a ‘Sad Day’

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When Work Weighs You Down, Take a ‘Sad Day’

Here’s how to protect your mental health in a culture that values work over well-being.

Credit...Getty Images

July 29, 2021

Have you ever felt nervous or afraid to take time off from work to look after your mental health?

Marisa Kabas, a writer and political strategist who lives in New York City, recently posed a similar question on Twitter, inspired by Simone Biles, who bowed out of Olympic events this week to protect her mental health.

“It was so shocking to so many people,” Ms. Kabas said on Wednesday in an interview. “Because the whole mentality is be strong, and push through the pain.”

The tweet drew thousands of responses, many from employees who said they do not disclose the real reason they need time away from work, or feel pressured to lie about it because they are embarrassed. Others said they had never taken a mental health day.

As a freelancer who has written prolifically about her health problems, including anxiety and depression, Ms. Kabas said she sometimes wakes up and decides, “I can’t do it today,” and takes the day off, a luxury she didn’t feel she had as an employee.

About three-quarters of people in the United States who work for private industry, state or local government have paid sick leave, but surveys suggest that a number of these employees are unlikely to use sick days for mental health reasons or are scared of being punished for doing so.

If you’re among the hesitant, experts say it’s time to start thinking about how to protect and prioritize your mental well-being, especially as millions of employees who worked remotely during the pandemic start returning to the office.

“You wouldn’t feel bad about taking time off when sick. You shouldn’t feel bad about taking some time off when you’re sad,” said Natalie C. Dattilo, a clinical health psychologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “Your body needs a rest, your brain needs a break.”

How do you know if you need a ‘sad day’?

There’s no official definition for a “sad day,” also known as a mental health day. Typically, it is paid time off drawn from sick days (or personal days) to help employees who aren’t feeling like their usual selves, offering an opportunity to refresh their minds; do something meaningful; or simply take a break from daily stressors. The “sad day” is only a temporary fix, and not meant to address deeper problems, but sometimes a little time away can make a big difference.

Your company may not specify that sick days can be used for this purpose, but “mental health is health,” said Schroeder Stribling, the president and chief executive of the advocacy group Mental Health America. “The two are inseparable.”

The signs that you need to take time away from work may not necessarily be obvious, Ms. Stribling said. Indicators include changes in your mood, productivity or ability to concentrate. You may also notice that you are less patient and more irritable than usual, or are having trouble sleeping.

You might also have physical symptoms. For example, “if I start getting headaches, that’s a sign of stress for me, and I need to address that with a mental heath day,” Ms. Stribling said.

The bottom line: Given the extraordinary stressors of the last year and a half, regardless of your specific symptoms, “if you feel like you might benefit from a mental health day, you have earned one,” said Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school, whose recent podcast explored the benefits of the “sad day” and the importance of building a culture of compassion within the workplace.

Some companies may require employees to provide documentation, such as a doctor’s note, when they use sick days, so make sure you understand what the law says in your region. In New York City, for example, an employee is not required to provide documentation unless more than three consecutive days of sick leave have been used.

How do you ask for a mental health day?

Your workplace culture and your relationship with your manager will dictate how open you choose to be about why you’re taking time off. You should not feel compelled to divulge more than necessary.

“I think sometimes we over-share when we’re anxious or perhaps feel a little bad about having to take time,” Dr. Dattilo said.

In most situations, just say that you need to take a sick day, and leave it at that, the experts advised.

“I think the safe advice is not to be upfront,” said Andrew Kuller, a clinical psychologist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. Not everybody values mental health, he added, and “unless you’re close with your supervisor, it is a risk.”

But say you work at the type of organization where you can tell the truth without fear of being punished. In that case, you are still under no obligation to reveal why you want to take a sick day. However, if you want to share (or are interested in reducing some of the stigma around mental health) you might approach your manager and say, “I think I would really benefit from taking a day just to recharge a little bit,” Dr. Grant said. “I would like to come back to work with all of my energy.”

When employees are mentally and physically exhausted, it affects the quality of their work, their productivity and the people around them, Dr. Grant added.

“I think it’s easier to have a conversation about burnout than it is about feeling sad or depressed or anxious, so I would probably play it safe there, and highlight why this is good for the organization, not just good for you,” he said.

If you’re feeling up to it, you can also try to assemble a coalition of people within your department who are concerned about mental health fatigue, said Dr. Grant, whose latest book, “Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know,” challenges readers to shift long-held thought patterns. As a group, you can discuss concerns like missed deadlines or errors that might be compounded by burnout, then bring these issues to your manager, who may be motivated to find a solution. That way, you can try to change the system for everyone, including yourself.

What do you do during a ‘sad day’?

In deciding how to use a mental health day, it helps to think about what brought you to this point in the first place. Do your personal relationships need attention? Are you exhausted from your workload and desperate to disconnect from everything? Did you have a particularly stressful week and want to spend some time decompressing? Maybe it’s a combination of several things.

Thinking it through ahead of time will help you use your day in the most helpful way possible. While one person might benefit from a massage or a day of pampering, another person might want to paint or garden. Others will find the most value in reconnecting with friends or family members.

The day might also provide an opportunity to rethink your day-to-day activities. “Are they giving you pleasure or meaning?” Dr. Kuller asked.

Next, think about ways to take care of yourself on a regular basis, he added, like meditation, yoga or cooking a healthy meal. Make a plan to do more of those things going forward.

Whatever you do, don’t spend the day checking your messages or feeling guilty, the experts said.“Self-care is not a selfish act,” Dr. Grant said. “People who are selfless to the point of self-sacrifice end up burning out.”

So instead of thinking, “I should be at work right now,” try to reframe your thinking in a more positive way, Dr. Dattilo said. For example, she added, try saying: “It would be great if I could be at work right now. But today is a day that I need to take care of myself, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

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When Work Weighs You Down, Take a ‘Sad Day’

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Here’s how to protect your mental health in a culture that values work over well-being.

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Pulsely: Breaking the Glass Ceiling Through Visible DEI Leadership

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Pulsely: Breaking the Glass Ceiling Through Visible DEI Leadership

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Your leadership team sets the tone for the organization: from character to values to culture. But one DEI survey found that while 68% of businesses had company-wide diversity as a priority in their DEI strategy, only 25% had leadership diversity as a priority. If DEI is not a priority at the leadership level, are you truly committed to DEI? It’s a hard case to make.

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Top Leadership Visibly Lacks Diversity

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Among Fortune 500 companies, 86% of CEO seats were composed by white men in 2021. Those at the helm included 430 white men, 2 black men, 17 Latino men, 10 Asian women, 34 white women, 2 black women and 5 Asian women. From data so far released in 2022, some numbers have risen - for example, there are now 44 women CEOs and six black CEOs. Less than 1 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs publicly identify as LGBTQ.

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Ten years ago, less than 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs were female. And Ursula Burns, former CEO of Xerox, had been the only Black woman leading a Fortune 500 company. So today's representation is a progress from the starting point. The problem is that the starting point is so low, nearly non-existent.

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Lorraine Hariton, CEO Catalyst, said in 2021: "We're seeing more intentionality. We're seeing a focus on women of color. And we're seeing a recognition that diversity and women in leadership is even more important.”

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Still, diversity in top leadership remains well behind the pace of the ignited conversation around DEI. If the C-Suite of your organization isn’t visibly diverse, how do you shift momentum towards getting there? The short answer: you take direct responsibility for that momentum.

‍

Commitment Beyond Words

When DEI leadership is weak at the executive level, there’s no backbone to DEI efforts throughout the organization.

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Recent research by Harvard Business Review Analytics classified organizations as DEI Leader, DEI Follower, or DEI Laggard. They found that among companies who are DEI Laggard, 50% of people feel a lack of leadership commitment hinders their DEI efforts and 72% say they are held back by a lack of diversity at senior levels of the organization.

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When DEI is visibly important and championed at the top, it gains legs throughout the organization. DEI Leader organizations are more than twice as likely as Laggard organizations (77% relative to 34%) to have visible executive support. Among DEI Leader organizations, 44% say they set goals for diversity among senior executives, compared to only 17% of Laggards.

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The most successful DEI Leader organizations drive the DEI strategic priority from the top, with a senior leader visibly in charge, and make themselves  accountable. In DEI Leader organizations, 71% see the CEO as accountable to the DEI objectives. Further, when the CEO sets and communicates upon the DEI strategy frequently, the company is 6.3 times more likely to have a diverse leadership team and is more likely to be an industry leader. In other words, visible commitment turns into visible diversity in leadership.

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Importantly, C-Suite support isn’t just about creating a post. It’s not enough to add a D&I Leader post (CDO, CDIO) only to set the post up with unrealistic expectations, lack of executive team support, lack of budget and lack of resources and reports. The ability of the CDO to drive effective DEI is as strong as the integrated commitment of the C-Suite. Hiring a change agent post that takes on the DEI charge will fail if the rest of the C-Suite abdicates vision and responsibility for the change.

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Also, leaders need to mind the gap when it comes to the real impact of their commitment. Research has previously found that leaders were nearly twice as likely as their employees to perceive they were creating empowering environments from a DEI perspective.

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Beyond consistent and transparent communication, four ways individual leaders can show visible commitment to DEI include: investing time to grow personal competencies in DEI, making time and room in their schedule to support the achievement of DEI goals, allocating financial resource behind their commitment to DEI, and getting behind better data practices to measure DEI gaps and progress in the organization. Above all, it’s finding out how to remove barriers all along the talent pipeline to where you sit.

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The Power of Representation in Executive Leadership

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When the organizational commitment to DEI does show up visibly as diversity amidst executive leadership, it gains leverage and momentum. Research has shown that companies with executive teams in the first quartile of racial and ethnic diversity have a 36% greater chance of above-average profitability (relative to the fourth quartile), and those with executive teams in the first quartile of gender diversity have a 25% greater chance of above-average profitability.

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Reflecting more diversity in leadership also brings many advantages to leadership: including more depth and breadth of perspective, positive changes that benefit more people, increased awareness of the organizational culture, new ways of thinking, more unique and inclusive decisions, more talent attraction, more psychological safety, a stronger collective outlook and more innovation.

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Diversity in senior and C-suite leadership helps to create a culture where more people in the organization can envision their potential trajectories, feel supported, be able to fully contribute and feel free to be themselves. Also, when a group starts to enter into a space not previously available to them, they are often followed by others on the path, because breaking through a longstanding barrier opens the doors more broadly.

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What isn’t present is as visible and communicates as much as what is, when it comes to representation. It matters for people in underrepresented groups to visibly see leaders who they can relate to and identify with in senior leadership roles and even to know others are seeing them, too.

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It sets a different tone. In a genuinely inclusive organization, the tone is that every single individual has the opportunity to fulfill their potential and be supported in developing it - and there is no ceiling above which your potential cannot go - and when that is true, it becomes visible.

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Your leadership team sets the tone for the organization: from character to values to culture. But one DEI survey found that while 68% of businesses had company-wide diversity as a priority in their DEI strategy, only 25% had leadership diversity as a priority. If DEI is not a priority at the leaders…

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WSJ Podcast - The Future of Everything: Designing the Office for the Future: Building Serendipity

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WSJ Podcast - The Future of Everything: Designing the Office for the Future: Building Serendipity

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This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Kaitlyn Nicholas: Two years after the pandemic sent everyone home, the office is slowly but surely making a comeback. But after spending years working remotely, employees and employers are realizing we cannot go back to business as usual. From The Wall Street Journal, this is the Future of Everything. I'm Kaitlyn Nicholas. In this episode, we're bringing you a conversation from The WSJ's CEO Council Summit about just what role the office should play in our lives now. From the changing expectations of employees to the new demands from employers, what will it take to create a vibrant and productive working environment? And we're hearing answers to that question from two people who've been thinking a lot about the future of the office. Thomas Heatherwick is the founder of Heatherwick Studio. He and his firm have spearheaded big public projects around the world, including the Vessel and Little Island in New York City, and designed huge office complexes, like Google's new Charleston East headquarters in California. And Lynda Gratton is a Professor of Management Practice at the London Business School. She studies how people and organizations interact and says there are a lot of myths about the before times.

Lynda Gratton: So the idea that before the pandemic we spent all our time wandering around having water cooler conversations, that actually in most cases was not the case. We now need to go back and say how do we build serendipity?

Kaitlyn Nicholas: That's coming up after the break. Now to our conversation recorded live during the in- person WSJ CEO Council Summit in London. Wall Street Journal reporter Emily Glazer is the moderator. And she's talking to business professor Lynda Gratton and designer Thomas Heatherwick. We've edited this conversation for time and clarity.

Emily Glazer: Not all employees want to go back to the office, so how can the physical space help lure employees back in?

Thomas Heatherwick: Everyone is hungry for purpose.

Emily Glazer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Thomas Heatherwick: The stupid construct of the office I think is gone and suddenly we're down to human motivation. So you're designing places. Places. I wouldn't even use the word office. I think we should really think about how you make places. It's not about whether it's got a bean bag or a slide because everyone's offering that.

Emily Glazer: Okay. So bean bags, aren't the answer, folks.

Thomas Heatherwick: Nothing wrong with a good bean bag. But it's more precisely why is this organization meaningful? And how do you exude that? Because when someone was in the workplace five days a week, you could have a couple of crappy days. And as long as Friday rallied it together and everyone gave everyone some beer at the end, they went home telling their life that it's a good story. And I think any employer knows the danger of when people go off on holidays that's when they reevaluate their life. Now, people are reevaluating their life weekly.

Emily Glazer: Yes.

Thomas Heatherwick: So the place has to be something really meaningful.

Emily Glazer: Yes. And I want to ask a quick follow up. You and your firm are designing Google's new space. Obviously, this started years ago. But a big part of that, a big word in that is flexibility. So can you tell us about that space and what some of the features are?

Thomas Heatherwick: So we've been on a really great journey working with Google over the last eight years. And it started in Mountain View in the Bay Area in California. And then you were there thinking this is an organization where the story it tells itself is about engineering. But when you looked and analyzed, you could easily say this is desk space and existing buildings. Many, many buildings they were in were just the older office building. And yet, next door they've just got the lease for the NASA Moffett air base. And on their air base, there were three airship hangers, major flexible spaces. And we went and visited that. And then we looked at their requirement and the extreme flexibility of an organization as it became Alphabet, where there might be initiatives that are to make balloons, vehicles. And it seemed a chance to actually reaffirm values and build extreme flexibility. So we said to them, "You don't really want offices, do you? Why don't we build you hangers where you can then, in effect, build a town within that but that's flexible where we can give perfect daylight to everybody working, but also make something that's quicker to adapt and adjust."

Emily Glazer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Thomas Heatherwick: So it's all about trying to make flexibility, but make an authenticity.

Emily Glazer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Thomas Heatherwick: And I think we're just stuck decorating office spaces and the old models. I mean, so many times we were in meetings where people said it's about efficiency. And they forgot the efficiency you're really after is emotional efficiency and how do you make places mean something to people.

Emily Glazer: Right.

Thomas Heatherwick: We all have the illusion we're special, every single one of us, everyone. And you've got to make places that affirm that that's the truth. And we had a model which spoke of collaboration and all of these things, but actually made generic places.

Emily Glazer: Yes.

Thomas Heatherwick: And had a weird construct that infantalized people and didn't give them responsibility and respect.

Emily Glazer: I want to take that, and Lynda you've talked about how the average person spends 23 hours a week in meetings, probably more for this group right here, about 65% of their time. And the pandemic and the way we work is an opportunity to blow that model up. So going back to the flexibility that you just mentioned, Thomas, what are some of the ways that companies are blowing this up? And what kind of models do you see working, even though there isn't this exact one way of doing it that we're seeing?

Lynda Gratton: We learnt during the pandemic that actually people could work from home and still be productive. And that was, by the way, a massive insight for most organizations who hadn't done that. But what we also learnt is that when we start using platforms like Microsoft or Zoom, we double the number of meetings. So the reason that you and your senior executives are pretty exhausted right now is you are just going from one meeting to another. So what we're beginning to see is the redesign of work, where you actually ask yourself what is it that makes people productive and motivated in my organization? And for example, if your role is a focused role, and, Thomas, if you think about your own studio, a lot of your people are doing work where you just need them to have undisturbed time where you can do that amazing human activity of focusing on the task, writing reports, looking at what's happening in the world, and so on. That's the bit, by the way, that's disappeared during the pandemic. Your employees are not doing that focused work. So we need to redesign work so that that becomes a legitimate and celebrated piece of work. Now, that focused work could be on your own. And actually, that's why I do think hybrid work, certainly for knowledge workers is going to be here to stay. I think it's going to be very difficult for you to get employees back in the office full time, five days a week. I know some of you have asked for that, and I think that's a completely legitimate request. But you will find you'll lose people in doing that. So the focused work is going to be really important. But you may feel I think, as you probably do Thomas with your studio, that you want people also to be highly cooperative and to do that you want them face to face. If the office is a place of cooperation, then we need to design it for cooperation. And right now, I just came back from New York and I talked to one investment bank and she said, "I've just come into the office today. Took me one and a half hours to get here. I've been on Zoom calls all day. There's nobody around. Why am I here?"

Emily Glazer: There are CEOs certainly in London and New York, especially the financial industry, where CEOs have said, "Listen, we need employees back five days a week. This is what it is. If you don't like it, leave." What do you make of that requirement?

Lynda Gratton: So if you're an organization that says I want everybody back five days a week and I want really highly talented people, you're in the quadrant that says we want people who are highly talented and who have very low needs for flexibility. That's a very small group. There is enough of them by the way, but you'll notice you're having to pay them more. And that will only increase.

Emily Glazer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lynda Gratton: I think it's a perfectly legitimate thing for you to say, I want everybody back in the office. That's your role as a CEO to make that judgment call. And the question I would ask you as a CEO is who are you missing out on and who are you getting?

Kaitlyn Nicholas: When we come back, what Lynda Gratton and Thomas Heatherwick think about the evolving requirements that employees and employers have for their offices and what must happen to foster real collaboration and meaningful work.

Emily Glazer: I want to just turn back to Google's new campus. There's obviously an enormous amount of research that goes into these types of multi-year, major billion- dollar projects. Can you share a little bit more Thomas, what you and your team ask Google and the executives to try to learn more about their culture to help design that space?

Thomas Heatherwick: During this funny time, we've all, maybe if you can afford to, you've improved your home. So the competition got stiffer for a workplace. And so you've got to design somewhere that it's motivating to be there and people can come together in ways that the domestic setting could never offer you. We all hunger for the feeling of being together and provoked and pushed to be that better versions of ourselves and environments can do that. So with the Google work, there was an organization willing to have those conversations. They've got some very sophisticated teams that we could work with. So many teams. One of the things is start trying to do any work while managing a million teams of intelligent people coming at you with amazing questions. But when you can protect that time and then do that deep focus to really think how to respond to that and make something that feels like it's unique. And everywhere around the world, workspace has become more similar to everywhere else on the planet.

Emily Glazer: Yeah.

Thomas Heatherwick: Everyone wants to dodge the physical because it's easier to be virtual.

Emily Glazer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Thomas Heatherwick: We are physical beings.

Emily Glazer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Thomas Heatherwick: And so the workplace also, the construct was kind of show a shiny smile at the front, have an artwork in your lobby, and have a big kind of marble thing with a nice-looking person sitting at it.

Emily Glazer: Uh-huh (affirmative).

Thomas Heatherwick: And then behind it was all the placated chunking, placated desking, plastic lights, and all this (inaudible). And no windows you could open. And all these weird things, that we're like, "Well, that's not human."

Emily Glazer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). We had talked about how in Google the idea of maybe having a circular space where you can kind of open and shut doors because we have super-focused work, but then we also want to be human and socialize. So can you just share a little bit more about what that concept is?

Thomas Heatherwick: One of the tests that's been going on in one of our Google buildings, the challenge is coming together, that sociability. So there was an experiment that we've been doing there where there is a shared worktable where people can come together. But the challenge is always how you have the sharedness but also the focus work. And so there are spaces around and each of those spaces is enclosable with sliding doors. Close the door, I'm working. Don't disturb me, I'm on a Zoom call. Have it slightly open, like I could be available to talk, or slide the doors like here I am. And so there's differing amounts of being able to read your colleagues and have a togetherness or an individualized focus. And I think that's an interesting one. But within your experiments, don't jump for that it's, we have to do that everywhere.

Emily Glazer: One of the concepts here are that employees have more power than they've ever had before. You all in the crowd know that. I see a lot of heads nodding. So can we just focus a little bit more on the near future and what that could be.

Lynda Gratton: At the very beginning of the pandemic when we were all trying to imagine what was going to happen next, I don't think any of us thought that we would have the great resignation now. And the question is why are people resigning? And they're resigning, it comes again, Thomas you sort of mentioned it, this notion that we want to be human. And one part of being a human is that you think about possible selves. You think about your future and you can imagine what that future could be. And actually, during lockdown, when people were at home with their neighbors and their community, they began to imagine different futures. And some of those futures are now being played out now. They've decided to change the way that they work. Right now, highly talented people have a huge amount of power with regard to what they want from you. And of course, in the long term, you're going to see a great deal more balance.

Emily Glazer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lynda Gratton: But I do think that the way that you project yourself as a place where particular people want to work. And there are people in the world who want to work in an office full time. There are people who want to work at home full time. There were always virtual organizations, actually, even before the pandemic, who attracted some very talented people who never actually met each other. So the more that you can actually link what your purpose is with how you therefore build your space and your time, I think you're going to always be able to attract the best people. Will it be more difficult for people going forward? Without a doubt. I mean, without a doubt, you will see a rebalance between employees and employers, just as you're going to see so many rebalances happening.

Thomas Heatherwick: We all need to feel our life is progressing. And I think everyone held their breath quite a lot during COVID thinking what's going to happen.

Emily Glazer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Thomas Heatherwick: But nobody wants to go back.

Emily Glazer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Thomas Heatherwick: Psychologically, no one's going back to something. We're moving our studio after 15 years of being in one place.

Emily Glazer: You're redesigning your own space.

Thomas Heatherwick: Yes.

Emily Glazer: That's so Meta.

Thomas Heatherwick: Yes. We're making more of a temple to the team, but we're going to be on the street so people can look in and connect and see into our workshop. I was always wary, don't show off. You know, you bought it, don't show off. And there was a charm to being behind a gate, behind another gate, and then you find us. But how's that going to connect with teenager?

Emily Glazer: Right. You want to be more open.

Thomas Heatherwick: And so actually not to show that you're amazing, but to show you're actually ordinary.

Emily Glazer: Right. Accessible.

Thomas Heatherwick: And for people and therefore, oh, maybe extraordinary things come out of determination and ordinariness. In a sense, our old studio's great, but just change is a good thing sometimes.

Emily Glazer: Yes.

Thomas Heatherwick: Just for changes sake to move forward.

Kaitlyn Nicholas: Designer Thomas Heatherwick and London Business School Professor Lynda Gratton speaking with The Wall Street Journal's Emily Glazer at our Live CEO Council Summit. You can watch more sessions from that event at ceocouncil.wsj.com. And what do you think the office of the future should look like? Let us know, tweet us @WSJPodcasts. The Future of Everything is a production of The Wall Street Journal. Stephanie Ilgenfritz is the editorial director of the Future of Everything. This episode was produced by me, Kaitlyn Nicholas. Our sound designer is Jessica Fenton. Our fact-checker is Mattie Bender. Scott Saloway is our supervising producer. Kateri Jochum is The Wall Street Journal's executive producer of audio. Thanks for listening.

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Designing the Office of the Future: Building Serendipity - WSJ's The Future of Everything - WSJ Podcasts

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The pandemic has changed the way we work and where we work. Now, as companies try to coax their employees back to the office, they are encountering new demands and shifting expectations.

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WSJ: Six Ways To Get Inspired When You're Stuck

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WSJ: Six Ways To Get Inspired When You're Stuck

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We asked six of the executives, designers and thinkers who will be featured at The Future of Everything Festival May 17-19 what they do for inspiration when they need a spark. Here are their go-to methods.

Get Out for a Morning Run

I like to run. I'm not a fast runner-you can very publicly look up all my marathon times! But it does give me time to think, to plan out my day. If I have a challenging meeting ahead, that is my time. And it's like, I have to do it. I was out there this morning on the boardwalk and I'm out almost every day because it's the time that I get to innovate, think and let my mind free up. That's my thing.

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Six Ways to Get Inspired When You Are Stuck

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We asked six of the executives, designers and thinkers who will be featured at The Future of Everything Festival May 17-19 what they do for inspiration when they need a spark. Here are their go-to methods. Get Out for a Morning Run I like to run.

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Proof versus potential: Why women must work harder to move up

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When ‘potential’ is seen as crucial to moving up the career ladder, women seem to lose out. Why?

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TED: LeAnn Renninger - The Secret to Giving Great Feedback

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TED: LeAnn Renninger - The Secret to Giving Great Feedback

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The secret to giving great feedback | The Way We Work, a TED series

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Inc: How to Encourage Personal & Professional Development in the Workplace

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Inc: How to Encourage Personal & Professional Development in the Workplace

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High-performers often experience tunnel vision when it comes to their professional development. They long to learn, grow their expertise and climb the ladder in their careers. But something is often overlooked, and that's the importance of implementing personal development as a means of developing professionally. In fact, personal development is essential to the highest levels of professional development.

If leaders and businesses want to see progress toward new levels of success, they need to start treating their employees as people outside of their professions. A Social Market Foundation survey revealed that happy employees are 20% more productive than employees who are unhappy. However, a 2017 Gallup Report revealed that 51% of employees are not engaged at work. It is clear that businesses have to make a change.

One way to increase happiness in the workforce is to invest in personal development, both for leaders and their teams. When leaders invest in the personal development of their employees, they're investing in producing greatness within their companies. Picture a company culture where everyone feels like their best interests matter, where employees know those in leadership care about their dreams, goals, health and overall well-being. When this happens, employees respond by being committed and engaged.

If leaders find themselves frustrated with a lack of interest in professional development, remember that that disinterest is likely coming from employees not having a sense of direction. When people spend time understanding their personal values, needs and strengths, they'll have better focus. Sure, some people may not ever derive personal meaning from their work, but as long as they're fulfilled in their personal lives, they are more likely to see greater focus.

So, how can leaders provide personal development opportunities to their employees? Here are four ways:

1. Encourage self-awareness.

Our well-being dictates our performance, and we cannot tend to our well-being if we don't have an understanding of who we are. Consider offering your team members personality assessments, such as the CliftonStrengths assessment, Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Enneagram personality test. These assessments increase a person's awareness and provide a language for their unique personalities.

Encourage group discussions about assessment results so that employees can gain a better understanding of themselves and their coworkers. Through self-discovery and increased awareness, people can create opportunities for themselves to use their strengths in the workplace. They can also answer why they feel the way they feel at work.

For example, if an employee is in a position where they work alone most of the day, but they discover that most of their strengths are relationally focused, this employee could speak to their manager and request opportunities for more connection in the workplace. This change is likely to increase an employee's happiness and productivity.

2. Provide personal development resources.

Just like there are professional development resources at employee's fingertips, make tools available for personal development as well. Offer discount codes for your employees to take assessments. Consider giving employees access to life coaches just as you would career coaches.

Provide an online database that employees can go to full of development resources that are constantly updated -- this may include videos, articles, podcasts and more. The more resources available, the more likely your team members will find something that resonates.

3. Encourage personal goals alongside professional goals.

Employees are often encouraged to identify goals for themselves professionally. But if that's the case, personal goals should be included as well. Sit down with your employees individually to ask what skills they would like to develop both personally and professionally. Then, offer your support to help your team members reach them.

4. Schedule time for personal development.

Build scheduled time for self-discovery and personal development into the workday. If you claim personal development is important, but then don't allow time for your team members to invest in themselves, then your words and actions are not aligning.

Each employee should be given a certain amount of time each day to dabble in personal development. Maybe this is first thing in the morning, or it could be the last few minutes of the day before transitioning into home life. This time is an important long-term investment.

Showing your team how much you care about them as people and not just as employees will transform the way they start to approach their work. So, next time you implement a professional development plan, prioritize personal development strategies as well.
Kyle Goguen is the founder and president of Pawstruck.com, an online retailer and manufacturer of natural dog treats and chews.

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How to Encourage Personal and Professional Development in the Workplace

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High-performers often experience tunnel vision when it comes to their professional development. They long to learn, grow their expertise and climb the ladder in their careers. But something is often overlooked, and that's the importance of implementing personal development as a means of developing professionally.

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HBR: What Leadership Should Look Like in the Hybrid Era

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HBR: What Leadership Should Look Like in the Hybrid Era

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Traditional leadership development tells us that 70% of learning happens through on-the-job experience, 20% though feedback, and 10% through formal training. Research conducted over the past three years points to an alternative — and, we believe, more effective — framework for the process that emphasizes three actions: sensemaking, or understanding how the business world and the organization works around you; experimenting, or testing ideas; and self-discovery, or figuring out your own identity in the workplace. When implemented at HSBC this framework enhanced participants’ development. The experiment also pointed to new best practices for hybrid leadership development:  programs should be iterative and experimental, embedded in day-to-day work, supported by coaching, and span all modes of delivery from all-virtual to fully in person.

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As organizations and individuals around the world settle into a blend of in-person and virtual work, we’re learning more about the opportunities and risks hybrid brings. One key concern is leadership development. We know that some of the vital ways in which executives learn on the job — such as serendipitous interactions and informal feedback — suffer in virtual and hybrid contexts. At the same time, improvements in technology have expanded program design possibilities. Indeed, this might be just the right moment for leadership development to reinvent itself — moving beyond the week-in-a-classroom model of learning towards something more experiential and applied and partly virtual.

The first step is to first understand how leaders develop beyond the well-known theory that 70% of learning happens through doing (on-the-job experience), 20% though feedback and greater self-awareness (gained via interactions with others), and 10% through formal training. Our quantitative and qualitative research conducted over the past three years points to an alternative — and, we believe, more effective — framework for the process that emphasizes three actions:

Sensemaking, or understanding how the business world and the organization works around you and how others relate to you.

Experimenting, or testing ideas picked up in a classroom session, from colleagues, or from personal experience.

Self-discovery, or figuring out your own identity in the workplace.

In practice, this is a simple reorientation: rather than focus on the three components of leadership development, we focus on the pathways between them. For example, it’s possible to learn on the job through trial and error. But that learning is greatly enhanced if you also take time to reflect on what you have done with a colleague (linking the 70% to the 20%) or when the idea you’re trying was one that you were just introduced to in a classroom session (linking the 10% to the 70%).

A Test Case

We revamped an HSBC leadership development program in this way during the pandemic, a period in which both work processes and strategic priorities were shifting. The participants were 90 senior business and functional executives, and we ended up turning what had been a four-day face-to-face program with follow-up work into an 11-week learning journey that moved them through these three pathways.

Sense-making.

Weeks one to four were structured around faculty-led insights, with keynote talks on such topics as “bringing your best self to the transformation” and “closing the knowing-doing gap” live-streamed to the full group and recorded so anyone could also watch them asynchronously. These were perhaps slightly less enjoyable than the in-person equivalent but given that they involved a mostly one-way flow of information with a short Q&A at the end, we didn’t feel we lost much.

After each faculty talk there were virtual sense-making discussions in groups of 20 to 25 people, led by facilitators, who had met in advance to discuss how to review and create conversations around the lectures. These were smaller groups but big enough to ensure creative and divergent thinking. A day later, the faculty joined each group in turn for roundtable discussions. One participant did note that these talks might have worked better in person (“It’s rare to experience those wonderful a-ha moments of collective sense-making sitting on a Zoom call”), but with careful planning and skilled facilitation all participants were able to contribute in a meaningful way. We also observed that more introverted executives, who had rarely spoken up at pre-pandemic meetings in the office, made valuable contributions often using chat and virtual hand-raising functionality. Obviously, there are also lower costs and fewer logistics associated with getting geographically dispersed leaders together online, which means such sessions can happen in a more timely and regular manner.

Experimenting.

Next, participants were given guidance on how to construct experiments and asked to come up with ideas for ones they wanted to put into practice in weeks five to eight. Some opted for “business experiments”; they tested tangible changes in what their teams were doing (for example, simplifying an internal process or trying a new way of interacting with external customers). Others did “leadership experiments” in which they consciously altered their own behavior (for example, how they ran meetings or gave feedback).

In a purely virtual world, this experimenting phase yielded mixed results. Some tests were easily done online (e.g., conducting a design thinking workshop virtually or encouraging focused work by stopping email flow once a week). Those that were more social (for example, changing the flow of a meeting to make it more interactive) were harder to execute. As with sense-making, high-quality experimentation might be more effective in person. However, participants noted that the heavy emphasis on experimentation helped hold their interest as they returned to their “day jobs.”

Self-discovery.

In the final phase, weeks nine to 11, participants met virtually with an assigned coach in smaller groups (three to five people) twice a week to reflect on and share learning from the experiments, including takeaways on their style of working. The coaches also did one-on-one follow ups. Our last discussion module focused on how leaders get in their own way and the practices that might help them avoid reverting to less effective behaviors.

Despite a few reservations, these sessions were remarkably successful. “I found myself opening up to people I had never met in person,” said one participant. “We used to insist on doing this face-to-face, but the quality of video coaching was a real eye-opener for me.”

Post-program surveys indicated that, even though the program lacked any in-person component, the vast majority of participants derived value from it and considered it to be a worthwhile investment for HSBC. Comments included “It’s the best way to promote collaboration and initiate change in a fast-moving environment” and “it gave me the confidence to try something innovative.”

Our Takeaways

Our experience running this program and our involvement in others have led us to outline a set of leadership development design principles that we expect to become increasingly important in the years of hybrid work ahead. We believe organizations should adopt new approaches that are:

Iterative.

When lectures or classroom sessions are squeezed together across a day or several days and scheduled one after the other participants often find themselves overwhelmed and a lot of potentially valuable ideas get lost. We recommend a more back-and-forth approach in which new ideas are taught and then participants engage in sense-making and experimenting so the learning really sinks in.

Embedded.

Rather than ask executives to spend a few days to a week away at a program then a follow-up project on the side, we should embed programs into their day jobs. If participants can keep working and easily see how their leadership development efforts relate to their teams and results, they’ll be much more engaged in the process.

Experimental.

To help overcome the inertia and risk-aversion afflicting many established organizations and the individuals within them, experimentation is key. Instead of trying to change the system or the leader behaviors all at once, you want to break it down into manageable, more accessible steps.

Supported.

Our research highlights the vital role of self-discovery in any sort of leadership journey. While it is possible to do this on one’s own, it works much better with an experienced coach who can ask the right questions and provide independent feedback. And, thanks to the pandemic-era rise of remote work, we now know we don’t need to be in the same room as our peers or our coach.

Multi-mode.

It seems obvious to say that the mode of learning (face-to-face, hybrid, or all virtual) should be tailored to the activity in question, but since Covid we now have a much better understanding of the benefits and limitations of videoconference technology, which will allow us to construct a more sensible mix of physical get-togethers, virtual sessions in larger groups, and coaching sessions in one-to-one or smaller groups. The cost savings will be substantial – allowing learning and development activities to be conducted over longer periods of time and with greater impact.

Leadership development is due for a reset and hybrid work can be the catalyst. Many companies are trying new models already, and there is scope for much more experimentation. Let’s not waste this opportunity.

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What Leadership Development Should Look Like in the Hybrid Era

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Traditional leadership development tells us that 70% of learning happens through on-the-job experience, 20% though feedback, and 10% through formal training. Research conducted over the past three years points to an alternative — and, we believe, more effective — framework for the process that empha…

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Julie, an organic chemist, was doing drug research at a lab. Her boss, Gordon, was a well-regarded scientist but also very temperamental. One day she walked into Gordon's office to ask for his feedback on the draft of a research paper they were co-authoring. The paper represented months of arduous research. Gordon told her that it was the "worst piece of rubbish" he'd ever seen.

Julie replied, "Gordon, I'm not a bit surprised that you thought the paper was rubbish. To be honest, I had the exact same feeling when I was writing it. I felt like I was rambling on and on. I'm always amazed when I read your papers because they're so incredibly clear and lucid. That's actually one of the reasons I wanted to work with you and why I was so excited when you offered me a position last fall. The results of our research could be extremely important, and I know that if the paper were well-written, it might make a tremendous impact. The paper may be beyond repair, but I'm wondering if you might have any suggestions about how I could make it better. I want to learn as much from you as I possibly can."

Gordon's mood seemed to instantly improve. He looked the paper over, pointing out problems to be addressed and offering ideas. Julie went on to publish the paper in a top journal and received a major award for it. (This is a retelling of a true story from the writings of the preeminent psychotherapist Dr. David Burns.)

In this interaction between Julie and her boss, who was leading and who was following?

We occasionally witness remarkable acts of leadership from people like Julie who aren't formally trained in leadership. And in fact, many iconic leaders have apparently had even less such training than her: Abraham Lincoln received only one year of schooling, Mother Teresa and Eleanor Roosevelt did not attend college, and Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi were poor students by their own confessions. So how do ordinary people ascend to extraordinary leadership?

No question could be more central to organizations today. The wide-ranging disruptions that are upending business-as-usual make it impossible for a few leaders at the top to take on the full burden of envisioning the future and advancing change. A Gartner of more than 6,500 employees and over 100 CHROs around the globe found that "the best organizations rely on their workforce, not executives, to lead change."

Behaviors and Competencies

Experts have traditionally organized the discipline of leadership into behaviors like having difficult conversations, building trust, giving feedback, coaching, inspiring, influencing, and changing others' behavior. Aspiring leaders are invited to master each behavior separately. This can prove challenging, as each behavior comes with its own framework and checklist, making it hard for learners to master and execute all they have been prescribed to do. But in leadership workshops we've delivered for clients at Mentora Institute, an even more fundamental problem with this behavioral model has surfaced.

Let's go back to the way Julie interacted with Gordon. In responding to his remarks, was Julie having a difficult conversation with him? Building trust with him? Giving him feedback? Coaching him? Inspiring him? Influencing him? Changing his behavior?

Wasn't she doing all the above - and that, too, in a mere 35 seconds?

These behaviors, it seems, aren't separable. With that in mind, could we improve the architecture of leadership in a way that also makes it easier to learn?

Over the last 10 years, our research team at Mentora has compiled and analyzed 1,000+ exemplary leadership moments - conversations, meetings, conflicts, negotiations, and speeches that individuals have had with their colleagues, partners, opponents, audiences, and even friends and family, where they achieved extraordinary impact. On the surface, we observed numerous differences in the situations these individuals were thrust into, and how they responded. But when we dug deeper, we uncovered three common themes.

One, they bring the same intention to these moments: How can I bring out the best in myself and the best in others in the pursuit of our common positive purpose?

Two, to achieve this intention, they seek to activate one or more of five energies in themselves and others:

Purpose: A commitment to pursue a noble, uplifting cause.

Wisdom: A calm receptivity to the truth - with all its nuances - in every situation.

Growth: A continual striving to approach one's full potential.

Love: A fostering of warmth, understanding and connection.

Self-realization: A stirring of the human spirit that lies at one's core.

Three, they use simple actions to activate these energies in themselves and others. Julie, for instance, used five actions to activate wisdom, love, purpose and growth:

1. She started by affirming truth in what Gordon was saying - that the writing was not at his level.

2. Appreciate: She infused warmth in the interaction by appreciated Gordon for the quality of his writing.

3. Fuse opposites: While accepting that the writing in the paper was subpar, she observed that the research in it was excellent.

4. Appeal to values: She appealed to Gordon's values by highlighting how the paper, when published, would have great impact on the scientific community.

5. Develop a growth partnership: She invited Gordon to help her grow as a writer.

Every action starts as an action - directing your intentions, feelings and thoughts to activate the right energy within. You can then engage in the action of using the right facial expression, tone, and words in your dealings with others.

If Julie had chosen to appreciate Gordon's writing on the outside while feeling angry with him on the inside, Gordon may have noticed that she was faking it - or at the minimum, would have felt inauthentic. The inner action should precede the outer. In our experience at Mentora, leadership training that focuses solely on training people to say or do the right thing often leaves learners feeling inauthentic.

Ultimately, actions are the building blocks of behaviors. And countless leadership behaviors can be built from a small set of actions. This is how nature works: dazzling variety on the outside, a few building blocks on the inside. Countless liquids, solids, and gases are built from only 118 or so elements; countless books and words are written using only 26 letters of the English alphabet; and countless melodies are composed from just twelve notes in the Western musical scale.

This approach imposes one demand on us: the need to be humble, to recognize that regardless of what heights you have scaled in leadership, the next step in your advancement may lie in practicing a few simple actions that you don't presently use.

Three Benefits of Energy/Action Training

In our work with clients, we have transitioned to using the Energy/Action approach because it yields three benefits.

Attainable.

The science of learning shows that mastery in a discipline is attained only by breaking it down into simple elements and then learning and practicing these, first individually and later in combinations. Most actions take five to 10 seconds to execute, so they are much more learnable than a full-fledged behavior. A few weeks after going through Energy/Action training, an HR manager at Lululemon shared, "Because the actions are so simple, I find that I've already incorporated a lot of them into my day-to-day work and life."

Authentic.

In this approach, you pick the right action from one moment to the next, and you execute each action authentically by first harmonizing what you will say and do with what you are thinking and feeling. An engineering manager at SAP observed, "I don't have to go in search for different tools or frameworks from others. Instead, I'm focused on activating the five energies at my core and expressing them through the right actions."

Agile.

Since you can pick a new action every few seconds, your action-path can keep changing as conditions unfold, like when you encounter resistance or notice the other party pulling back a bit. An executive at United Health Group noted, "By working with energies and actions, I can adapt my behavioral style based on the unique situation I am in at a given moment."

The Energy/Action approach allows you to pursue leadership mastery in small steps, with each step becoming a big leap in expanding our behavioral repertoire. This "small steps, big leaps" approach may in fact be how Gandhi, Lincoln, Mother Teresa, Mandela and others went from being ordinary people to extraordinary leaders.

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Leadership has traditionally been taught as a set of larger actions, such as having a difficult conversation or coaching someone. In reality, leading well is an integrated activity, in which one is doing many things simultaneously.

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HBR: Supporting Your Team's Mental Health After a Violent News Event

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HBR: Supporting Your Team's Mental Health After a Violent News Event

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As the mom of a kindergartener and second grader, the devastating news about the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas hit close to home. Both of my kids' classrooms are close to their school's entrance, which has worried me more than once this year. Some called the tragedy unimaginable, but unfortunately, it has become all too imaginable.

This happened on the heels of the Laguna Woods church shooting and the Buffalo massacre targeted at the Black community. The weekend after Uvalde alone saw at least eight mass shootings in the United States. It's all too much.

After violent events like these, everyone's mental health is affected. Even if you weren't physically present, the trauma is still real. Combined with a constant news cycle and the tendency to doomscroll on social media, this can lead to increased stress and anxiety. Violence and the fear of violence causes both trauma and toxic stress, which are contributing factors to mental health conditions. All of that doesn't magically go away when we're at work.

As the founder and CEO of Mind Share Partners, a nonprofit driving culture change around workplace mental health, it's my job not only to help employers navigate mental health at work, but also to take care of my team. Here are ways that managers and leaders can support their people and themselves through violent, devastating events.

Acknowledge the tragedy immediately.

It's important that your team hears from you as quickly as possible. Simply naming that a tragedy occurred is a key first step that many leaders fail to do. I Slacked my team to share how devastated I was, especially as the mom of two kids in elementary school, to convey my sadness about the state of the world in general, and to encourage everyone to do what they needed to take care of themselves and support each other. Make a statement in whatever communication channel makes sense for your organization.

Make space for compassionate conversations.

Be intentional about carving out opportunities for both one-on-one and group conversations. First, consider your own identity as well as those to whom you're speaking. Are you speaking to a team member whose demographic group was the target of the violence? Are you part of a different community that has been targeted recently? Reflect on how you might tailor your approach accordingly. DEI and mental health are inextricably linked, and every tragedy affects us differently based on our intersectional identities. These experiences and emotions come to work with us.

When starting a conversation, lead with your own feelings and be vulnerable. Even if you're sharing something small, doing so can make others more comfortable opening up. Don't make assumptions about what your team members are feeling. Instead, be curious. Pair an observation statement with an open-ended question. In a one-on-one, you could say, "I realize that you have a lot of deadlines to juggle in the midst of everything going on." Follow that with a question like, "How can I support you?" Next, be an active listener and gently prompt the person to say more. You could simply say, "Tell me more about that." Finally, offer validation. Thank the person for sharing, affirm their experience, and offer up accommodations and resources as needed.

Depending on your organization's culture, it may feel unnatural to have a group discussion. Do it anyway. Try to build a culture of trust and connection over time so that these conversations get easier. Create as safe a space as possible. If people are remote, proactively give them the option to turn off their video. Despite having a close-knit team, our meeting in the wake of the Uvalde shootinghad moments of silence, which some may have construed as awkward. That's okay. Most important is to show up for your team with compassion and empathy.

Proactively offer specific solutions.

Everyone on your team will likely need or want something different. Some may tell you what that is, but most will likely be afraid to ask or not know what they need or the options available. In your initial message, suggest that people take time if they need it, as I did, but follow that up with questions and specific suggestions in your one-on-one conversations. Present the full menu of options, ideally including shifting priorities and deadlines, offering flexible work hours, and providing paid time off that doesn't come out of people's vacation or sick days. We also decided to give everyone a half day off, which in retrospect probably should have been longer given the weight of the world. All of this avoids placing the burden on your employee to make the ask or come up with a solution that they may not have. It also prevents making assumptions about what people need. For example, at least one of my team members usually finds work to be a positive distraction during challenging times.

Remind everyone of your company's mental health benefits. Frankly, this should be table stakes since employees often won't take advantage of even the best benefits if a culture supportive of mental health isn't in place. Even - and especially - as a workplace mental health organization, we communicated all our mental health benefits, and our people team lead offered to help anyone who had trouble navigating them. Ideally, your plan will have culturally competent providers.

In addition, share other resources available - both within and outside of your organization. Mental health employee resource groupsand other types of affinity groups can offer much-needed peer support for specific communities. Over the last couple years, Mind Share Partners has unfortunately had reason to curate a host of articles, organizations, and resources that we share widely, including when dealing with mass shootings and the war in Ukraine, as well as resources for Black, AAPI, and LGBTQ+ employees given violence and discrimination against these groups.

Continue to fight against stigma.

One unfortunate byproduct of mass shootings is that many are quick to blame them on the perpetrators' presumed mental health challenges. That couldn't be farther from the truth. According to MentalHealth.gov, "only 3% to 5% of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with a serious mental illness. In fact, people with severe mental illnesses are over 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime." Many other factors are actual predictors of violence against others.

To reiterate: Mental health challenges decidedly do not cause hate.

Using mental health challenges as a scapegoat for gun violence has the terrible side effect of exacerbating stigma and leading fewer people to seek treatment. Make sure that your employees know that mental health challenges are common - almost all of us will experience a diagnosable mental health condition at some point in our lives, whether we know it or not.

If you haven't already, invest in workplace mental health training with a proactive, preventive lens for leaders, managers, and individuals. This should allow for level setting around what mental health is and isn't, how it shows up at work, and how to address the workplace factors that can contribute to poor mental health. The tools and strategies around how to navigate mental health at work, such as how to show vulnerability, have difficult conversations, and create inclusive and sustainable cultures, are ultimately management best practices with a mental health and DEI angle.

Don't forget to take care of yourself and your own mental health at work.

The last several years - even before the pandemic - have been a lot. While it's been a privilege to be of service during these challenging times, it's also exhausting and a heavy load to carry while simultaneously processing my own feelings, fear, and upset. I'm tired.

I know that many leaders, educators, therapists, health care workers, and more can relate. My psychiatrist has reminded me at times that I should view my work as a marathon, not a sprint. After all, if I burn out or have an episode of debilitating anxiety or depression, where will that leave my efforts at social change?

Just as you support your teams, be sure to also support yourself. An added bonus is that modeling mentally healthy behaviors will also help your employees. Just as there's no one right way to feel after a violent current event, there's also no one right way to take care of yourself. I'm often relatively numb in the aftermath of a tragedy, albeit drained from ensuring that my kids and team members are okay. For me, self-care is usually as basic as getting enough sleep, keeping my regular therapy appointments, talking with friends, and watching feel-good TV shows.
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This quote from Mr. Rogers always gives me some comfort: "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'"

Please be a helper. Take care of yourselves and your teams today and every day, whether there's a tragedy or not. Genuinely ask how they're doing and be vulnerable in return. Give your direct reports time off and move priorities and meetings as needed. And don't forget to check in on your leaders, too - we're all just human and doing our best to stumble through.

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Supporting Your Team's Mental Health After a Violent News Event

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After violent events like the recent ones in Laguna Woods, Buffalo, and Uvalde, everyone's mental health is affected. Even if you weren't physically present, the trauma is still real. Combined with a constant news cycle and the tendency to doomscroll on social media, this can lead to increased stress and anxiety.

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Amy Cuddy: Your body language may shape who you are

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Amy Cuddy: Your body language may shape who you are

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TED TALK
20 minutes & 46 seconds

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Amy Cuddy: Your body language may shape who you are | TED Talk

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(NOTE: Some of the findings presented in this talk have been referenced in an ongoing debate among social scientists about robustness and reproducibility. Read “Corrections & Updates” below for more details as well as Amy Cuddy’s response.) Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy argues that “power posing” -- standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident -- can boost feelings of confidence, and might have an impact on our chances for success.

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HBR: Maya Angelou on Courage & Creativity

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HBR: Maya Angelou on Courage & Creativity

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Podcast 11 minutes & 36 seconds

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ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Alison Beard. I'm on the phone today with one of America's most beloved writers, Maya Angelou. Dr. Angelou, thanks so much for joining us.

MAYA ANGELOU: My pleasure, thank you, Ms. Beard.

ALISON BEARD: So your latest book is about your mother. What were the most important lessons she taught you?

MAYA ANGELOU: Well, I don't know if I can select one. I would say she encouraged me to develop courage. And she taught me by being courageous herself. And after years of leaving her and, I think, becoming courageous, I realized that one isn't born with courage. One develops it.

And you develop it by doing small, courageous things, in the same way that one wouldn't set out to pick up 100 pound bag of rice. If that was one's aim, the person would be advised to pick up a five pound bag, and then a ten pound, and then a 20 pound, and so forth, until one builds up enough muscle to actually pick up 100 pounds. And that's the same way with courage.

You develop courage by doing courageous things, small things, but things that cost you some exertion- mental and, I suppose, spiritual exertion.

ALISON BEARD: Both your mother and your grandmother were businesswomen.

MAYA ANGELOU: Yes.

ALISON BEARD: What did they teach you about good management?

MAYA ANGELOU: Well, that's it's wise to be fair. It's unwise to be a cheat. And both of them were really [INAUDIBLE] fair. And, of course, by teaching that, they also taught me, or I learned from them, not to lie. And that doesn't mean tell the truth and tell everything you know. You're never supposed to do that. But just make sure that what you do say is the truth.

I know there are people who say, I'm brutality frank. Well, one doesn't have to be brutal about anything. One can tell the truth and tell it in such a way that the listener hears it and really welcomes it. So I learned that from both of them.

ALISON BEARD: What you were just talking about sounds a lot like giving constructive criticism. So which critics do you listen to?

MAYA ANGELOU: You know, I've reached an age where many of the critics I respect have gone on to the next transition. But I've learned to listen to young people. And sometimes they're my students, here at Lake Forest, or students I encounter around the world who have something to tell me. And I'm reaffirmed, more often than not- that is to say, I don't learn something new from them. But I do find that what I have found to be true is still true.

ALISON BEARD: You've lived around the world, from Stamps, Arkansas, to San Francisco, later France, Egypt, Ghana, now North Carolina. And you have an incredibly diverse fan base. So what's the key to bridging cultural, racial, and other social divides?

MAYA ANGELOU: I just don't buy them. I don't buy the divides, the man-made differences between human beings. I don't accept them. And so I find, if human beings are there, I'm at home. I don't know what I'd do with zebras, or cockroaches, or elephants- I do know I'd ride an elephant. But in human company, whatever the culture is, I respect it. And I have respect for my own and would like to see my own respected.

ALISON BEARD: You've worked in so many different professions- - a streetcar conductor, singer, dancer, teacher, civil rights organizer before becoming a writer. So which has been most challenging for you and why?

MAYA ANGELOU: Well, writing poetry is the most challenging. And it's the one I love. When I come close to saying what I want to say, I'm over the moon. I pull out a bottle of campaign and treat myself, even if it's just six lines, and they come just close to what I meant to say- yes. But until they come that close, oh my goodness. They worry me like a mosquito in the ear.

ALISON BEARD: Tell me about your writing process. When and where do you do your best work?

MAYA ANGELOU: I keep a hotel room in my town wherever I am, although I live in a huge house, but I don't work in the house. I keep a hotel room. And I go to the room about 6:30 in the morning. I have a yellow pad and Roget's Thesaurus, and in the dictionary, and the Bible, Judeo-Christian Bible, a yellow pad and pens, and that's it. And I go to work. I encourage the housekeeping and then the management never to go into my room since I leave there about 1 o'clock in the afternoon. I've never used the bed or anything.

After a couple of months, the management will slip a note under my abilities, and ask me, please, Doc Angelou, let us change the bed. We think sheets may be molding. And I leave a note it's all right. But I feel, when I go in there, I'm going into my own place. And it's waiting for me. And I step away from the world, somehow, and step into a space.

ALISON BEARD: What do you do when you're faced with writer's block?

MAYA ANGELOU: Oh no, I don't know that. I don't know that at all. I just don't call it a block. I'm careful about the words I use because I know that my brain will remember and will tell it back to me. And so there are times when I sit at that, bed, on that bed, with Roget's Thesaurus, the dictionary, and the Bible, and a playing deck of cards. I play solitaire. And sometime in a month of writing, I might use up two or three decks of bicycle cars. Giving my "little mind" something to do.

I got that from my grandmother, who used to say, when something would come up, and it would surprises her she'd say sister, you know, that wasn't even on my littlest mind. So I really thought that there was a small mind and a large mind. And if I could occupy the small mind, I could then go more quickly down to the big mind.

So I play solitaire. And I've used up a deck of Bicycle cards, really good cards, in a week and a half. And sometimes, out of that week and a half, I've gotten two pages worth looking at. And sometimes, I've got 20.

ALISON BEARD: You're now 85 and still writing and teaching. So what's the secret to staying so productive? Where do you get your energy?

MAYA ANGELOU: Well, Mrs. Beard, you know, energy is what we all are. It's in this wire connecting me to you. That's energy. It's all over the place. And I just love what I'm doing. I have a passion about what I'm doing. I owe it to it, to it. I owe it to the muse, to the creator. So I don't mind. I don't mind working. I don't mind the struggle.

When it comes out, when it's good, a-ha! When it comes out just right, mmm, my goodness. It's such a blessing.

ALISON BEARD: I'd like to wrap up asking about leadership. You've worked with some exceptional political leaders, from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. So what you think makes a leader great?

MAYA ANGELOU: A leader sees greatness in other people. He nor she can be much of a leader if all she sees in herself.

ALISON BEARD: Given the success of Barack Obama and other African American leaders not only in politics, but also in business and the media, how would you rate the progress of minorities in the past few decades?

MAYA ANGELOU: Well, I think just knowing that we're about to celebrate, hist state of the union address, his second. Not that many white presidents have come in on the second term. And so I think our a country is healthier than we think it is. Many of the people who have the most raucous voices are heard. But the people who are really seen and counted are those who fill the ballot box. I think we're in better shape than we know we are.

ALISON BEARD: Well, that's a wonderful, optimistic note to end on. Dr. Angelou, thanks so much for your time.

MAYA ANGELOU: Thank you.

ALISON BEARD: That was the writer Maya Angelou. Her latest book, Mom and Me and Mom is out now. For more from this interview, pick up the May issue of Harvard Business Review or visit us online at hbr.org.

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ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Alison Beard. I'm on the phone today with one of America's most beloved writers, Maya Angelou. Dr. Angelou, thanks so much for joining us. MAYA ANGELOU: My pleasure, thank you, Ms. Beard. ALISON BEARD: So your latest book is about your mother.

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'I'm busy,' signals you don't have room for friends; be specific or cut back your calendar

I recently asked a friend I haven't seen in months if she wanted to get together and catch up. I envisioned us gabbing over cocktails at the new Vietnamese restaurant in our neighborhood. Or maybe I could fix her dinner.

Her reply: "Sure. Why don't you stop by for 45 minutes to an hour on Monday night around 8:30."

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'I'm busy' signals you don't want to make room for friends or family. Be specific about what's really taking up your time or cut back your calendar.