Find Your Human Side

BursaSnipers

Publish date: Sun, 01 Dec 2019, 01:08 PM

3 Technology rewires how work gets done. But even in the days of telecommuting, real human connection can light up work productivity.

If you’re like most workers, you rely on emails, instant messaging and other online communications tools. But that means some of your ability to connect with coworkers and collaborators, at a human level, may have atrophied, says Melanie Katzman, author of “Connect First: 52 Simple Way to Ignite Success, Meaning, and Joy at Work.”

Good news: Katzman, a clinical psychologist for three decades, says time-tested science can help you relearn how to build lasting human connections with people you work with.

Her research surfaces some easyto-follow steps to put the human connection back into even the most digital office.

› Acknowledge receiving work. Always let coworkers know you got the work they sent you. Just two small words, “got it,” hold huge value with colleagues. Taking the time to say you received a person’s work, either in email or verbally, builds a human connection, Katzman says.

“Got it” only takes seconds to write or say, but saves hours of agitation for your coworkers, she adds. Your receipt tells them they can mentally put down the work and move to something else.

› Give back meeting time. What’s the best gift for a coworker? Time.

If a meeting goes faster than you expected, end it. Giving back time to workers lets them get other work done. And they’ll thank you mentally for helping them clear their to-do list. “Returning the unused meeting minutes rewards coworkers for their focus, allowing them to get other stuff done, socialize or, gasp, simply get out of work earlier,” Katzman said.

Ending meetings early is an easy, cost-effective way to ignite success, joy, and meaning at work, Katzman says.

Don’t believe it? Reports indicate Americans waste over $30 billion dollars annually in unproductive meetings. “Do you really need all those get-togethers, and do they have to be so long?” Katzman said.

› Be a gracious host. When someone arrives in your office or workspace, offer them a chair, a glass of water, a place to hang their coat, Katzman says. Also, make sure your computer screen is minimized and turn off notifications.

“These things seem simple, but if people aren’t comfortable they can’t tackle the hard conversations,” she said.

› Become a people magnet. Be the colleague everyone wants to work with. How? “Leave people feeling better about themselves because they interacted with you,” Katzman said.

She says when you’re a magnet for human connection, people feel relaxed and safe. People know you are on their side. It means you have “something interesting to say, eagerly engage others in discussion, are professional, reliable and dare to have some fun,” she said.

› Build up strengths. Pushing people to improve their weaknesses doesn’t lead to excellence. It generates inadequacy at best, says Ashley Goodall, who, with co-author Marcus Buckingham, wrote “Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World.”

Why? Excellence comes from enhancing an individual’s strengths to a top level, not building up weaknesses to average, finds Buckingham, head of people and performance research at the ADP Research Institute and Goodall, senior vice president of Leadership and Team Intelligence at Cisco SystemsCSCO .

In studying excellence, they found “no two humans, doing the same job really well in the same field, achieve excellence in the same way,” Goodall says.

Instead, he says, they achieve excellence by “figuring out their unique advantages and how to use those to the greatest extent.”

Uniqueness, not being wellrounded, is the foundation of excellence, he adds.

› Hire well and trust. The best plan doesn’t always win — the best business intelligence to make smart decisions does, Goodall has found.

Top organizations provide realtime intelligence to their people to make decisions rather trap them in a perpetual cycle of planning, he says. “They also spend much more time talking about the purpose and meaning of the work than on telling people how to do it.”

› Push excellence along. Leaders should notice people when they’re doing something brilliantly well at their job. When you see excellence, ask these top performers what they enjoy doing, either at work or outside of work. Then bring more of what these workers like doing to their jobs.

“And then help them make their essence and their loves a bigger and bigger part of their work,” Goodall said.

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