BusinessDay 06 Feb 2018

Tuesday 06 February 2018 C002D5556 BUSINESS DAY 29
Harvard
Business
Review
Tips
&
Talking Points
TALKING POINTS
Fine Dining, Complex Recipes
40: Preparing a single component
for a plate at the Fat Duck restaurant
in the UK can take up to 40
steps.
+
The Automated Future
Half: In an interview with the
Financial Times last year, John
Cryan, the CEO of Deutsche Bank,
predicted that automation could
likely do the work of half of the
bank’s 97,000 employees.
+
Trusted Co-Workers
87%: About 87% of workers trust
their colleagues, according to a
recent survey conducted by Globoforce.
+
More Remote Workers
43%: In a 2016 survey of 15,000
American workers, about 43% said
that they spent some time working
remotely in the past year.
+
Wide Open Spaces at Facebook
430,000: At Facebook’s headquarters,
the open-space design
encompasses 430,000 square feet
of space and accommodates some
2,800 employees.
To keep your employees engaged, be curious and challenging
Leaders play a significant role in helping employees
understand why their jobs matter, but
it’s not just about connecting their work to a
larger purpose. You can also do it by demonstrating
curiosity:
— Explore, ask questions, and engage people
on their ideas about the future.
—Make clear that there is a wide range of possibilities
for how work gets done and that you
want your employees to try new things.
— At the same time, keep them focused on
meeting goals and making progress.
— Remain ambitious in the face of both failure
and success, and push your people to continually
accomplish more. You want employees to
feel a sense of progress, reinvention and growth,
which results in a more meaningful and positive
work experience.
(Adapted from “How to Make Work More
Meaningful for Your Team,” by Lewis Garrad
and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic.)
Don’t shy away from
making friends at work
Friendships in the office can
be tricky. When the boundaries
are blurred between the professional
and the personal, there’s
a chance for feelings and team
performance to be hurt. But just
because there is potential for
messy entanglements doesn’t
mean you should avoid chatting
with your colleagues. In fact,
research shows that people who
have friends at work have higher
levels of productivity, retention,
and job satisfaction. So take
time to get to know people and
forge bonds. You don’t necessarily
have to go out for drinks
or share tons of personal details.
Positive relationships are built
on vulnerability, authenticity
and compassion, so emphasize
those values in your interactions
with your co-workers. And don’t
assume it’s going to be easy. All
friendships have hard moments.
Work friendships just have different
ones.
(Adapted from “Having Work
Friends Can Be Tricky, but It’s
Worth It,” by Emma Seppala
and Marissa King.)
Scale back your work hours Exude calm as a new manager Set up ground rules for your next
difficult conversation
Stress and anxiety in the workplace
are not unusual. This may
not be too surprising, given
that working hours continue to
climb for the highest-paid workers.
Here are some tips to scale
back on the hours you put in:
— Be strategic: Any good strategy
involves setting goals, developing
a plan for achieving those
goals and tracking progress
toward those goals. The same is
true for productivity.
— Define a metric: Choose a
metric for sustainable productivity,
for example the number
of weekly hours worked. Then
track data on that metric, set
goals for improving and run
experiments to see what influences
it.
— Focus on one change at a
time: There’s a lot that goes into
becoming more productive.
But it’s too much to work on
too many skills at any one time.
Instead, figure out which one
thing is the biggest obstacle to
your productivity.
— Change your behavior: Becoming
more productive is more
like losing weight than memorizing
the presidents’ names
— it is the product of behavior
or lifestyle change, not (only)
knowledge. As a result, the key
to becoming more productive
is changing small behaviors
and sticking with those changes
over time.
— Find someone to hold you
accountable: It’s really hard to
change your behavior alone. So
find someone who wants to go
on this journey with you, and be
honest about your progress.
(Adapted from “How to Be More
Productive Without Burning
Out” at HBR.org.)
c
When you take on your
first manager role, people
will be watching. What
you think, what you say
and how you show up
can have a direct impact
on those you’re leading.
It’s important to project
calmness, confidence
and competence, even
if you feel stressed out.
Recognize that a fleeting
moment of anger or
impatience may end up
hurting your team’s morale.
Think about the kind
of manager you want to
be, and remind yourself of that
ideal in every interaction. Use
your self-awareness to sense
when you are getting wound
up. If you maintain a stable,
grounded presence, you’ll increase
the likelihood that your
team will feel comfortable
bringing you the important
information you need — even
when it’s bad news.
(Adapted from “How New
Managers Can Send the
Right Leadership Signals,”
by Amy Jen Su.)
Difficult conversations are challenging
in part because you don’t
know if or when the discussion
will go off the rails. To make sure
things go smoothly, agree on a code
of conduct with your counterpart
beforehand. At a minimum, suggest
no interrupting, no yelling and no
personal attacks. (Those are basics,
yes, but it’s helpful for everyone
to be reminded.) Then ask what
other rules are important to your
counterpart. If you’re concerned
your colleague won’t abide by the
2017 Harvard Business School Publishing Corp. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate
rules, write them down on a piece of
paper or a whiteboard. Then you can
gently refer to them if, for example,
your counterpart begins to raise his
voice: “We said we weren’t going to
yell. Can you lower your voice?” Having
ground rules in place can give
you the help you need to keep the
conversation on track.
(Adapted from the HBR Guide to
Dealing with Conflict, by Amy Gallo.)