Relationships and Communication

“Fine.” If you’ve ever used that word to end a conversation, then you have enough experience dealing with difficult people to know it isn’t enjoyable. It’s no secret that one of the most cited reasons for disliking a job is the people we work with. But instead of leaving one job just to encounter the same type of people at the next one, your efforts could be better spent learning how to get through to anybody. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to persuade someone at work or diffuse a volatile exchange between coworkers, your success will be determined by...

Editor's Note: You can't expect every person you work with to be a ray of sunshine every day of the work week. But there is a special group of coworkers who make that 9-5 life more of a grind than it really should be. Negative coworkers can make your work life annoying at best and unbearable at worst. You may have tried ignoring and avoiding the negative people at your office. You may have also been surprised by how much effort it actually takes to ignore and avoid someone. What if there were other options for dealing with negative coworkers?...

Like most people at work and in their personal lives, you probably spend many hours a day conversing with others informally or in meetings, face-to-face interactions, telephone calls, and so forth. These conversations can either strengthen or weaken work and other interpersonal relationships, including ties to friends and loved ones. Listening lies at the heart of just about everything we do with people. The average person spends about 50 percent more time listening than speaking. In fact, the typical person listens about a book’s worth a day. The cost of ineffective listening is most clear in your relationships. Poor work...

The news of Kate Spade’s suicide in 2018 made one thing crystal clear to author and podcaster Elayne Fluker: working women need strong support systems. Fluker, like Spade, struggled with depression and anxiety. Fluker has managed it for years using a variety of tools and techniques, but she says none have been as effective as asking for support. “Getting support for myself in whatever ways that looks like, without judging myself for needing it, and knowing without a doubt that I deserve it, has been a game changer for me,” Fluker wrote in Get Over “I Got It”. Studies show...

Editor's Note: You’ve reached a decision. It’s finally time to figure out how to deal with a bad boss. Call it a battle of wills or a case of being at odds with your boss… whatever delicate turn of phrase you use, you’re in a real pickle. Even if you aren’t currently embroiled in a conflict with the person who signs your paychecks, chances are there’s been at least one boss you could never see eye to eye with. What if you could make mole hills out of mountains and actually transform your relationship with your supervisor for the better?...

Once the immediate crisis has passed—you’ve ensured everyone’s safety, put steps in place for the future, gotten leaders aligned in their messaging, and so on—your work is not done. Trauma is outside the norm, and this phase, moving into stability, is when trouble often arises. At this point, it’s important not to fall prey to hubris (“We’ve got this under control!”) or resort to the stiff upper lip approach (“Stop whining! We’ve just got to tough this out!”). Also, we need to be careful not to let the traumatic event become taboo. Most companies need help facilitating this part because...

Paul Falcone Paul Falcone is CHRO of the Motion Picture & Television Fund in Woodland Hills, CA, and he's held senior-level HR positions with Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures, and City of Hope. Paul is the author of a number of bestselling HarperCollins, AMACOM, and SHRM Books, many of which have been ranked as bestsellers in the categories of human resources management, labor & employment law, business mentoring & coaching, communication in management, and business decision-making and problem-solving. Where do communication, effective leadership, and motivation usually fall apart? Once a manager starts sweeping things under the rug or leaves ongoing challenges unaddressed....

The Power of Humor in Public Speaking by Allison Shapiraauthor of Speak with Impact Do you think of yourself as a naturally funny person? Are you able to tell jokes that leave people rolling around on the floor in laughter? That’s not me. And that’s not the kind of humor you need in a speech. Humor is an incredibly powerful tool. The moment the audience laughs with you, they connect with you. When you use humor in a speech, you demonstrate that you’re confident enough to laugh and that you don’t take yourself too seriously. It can lighten up a...

How to Spot a Traumatized Coworker by Mark Goulstonauthor of Trauma to Triumph Trauma is different from stress. While stress upsets our balance in the moment, we still maintain a feeling of control over our lives. Most of us deal with routine stress daily and are able to manage it (up to a point, anyway). Trauma, on the other hand, overwhelms our self-protective structure and sends us scrambling for survival. It leaves us vulnerable, helpless, groundless. It shatters our sense of safety and security and changes how we look at the world. And unaddressed, it can result in long-term harm....

How Introverts Gain Confidence During Conversations by Matthew Pollardauthor of The Introvert's Guide to Networking We introverts tend to overthink things. I know I sure do! We get stuck in our own heads trying to work out what to say. By the time we do, the moment has passed. Think about it: When do you usually mess up? When you’re the most nervous, right? When we don’t know what to say or how to respond. Imagine if you could have the same conversation a hundred times though. Don’t you think you’d be even better at it the hundred and first?...

Executive Summary Some managers may wonder what they should motivate your team to do. Brian Tracy covers motivation in a brief book included in his Success Library, and suggests that quality work is the primary goal of motivating employees. One of his leadership theories is that employees will match the boss's attitude toward quality work and excellent performance. Using a story about Henry Kissinger's intern, Tracy reveals a few easy ways managers can demonstrate their affinity for quality work so that it motivates their team to strive for the absolute best result they can produce. Fully 90 percent of business...

In an age of perceived entitlement, saying “thank you” graciously seems to be on the back burner. We live in an era of increasingly demanding customers, coworkers, and clients. We believe that we deserve to get what we want, when we want it. And to a certain extent, that’s fine—as long as this attitude doesn’t diminish our sense of gratitude when we should express thanks to those who are generous to us or serve us in any way. Saying thank you can take time and effort, and we’ve all probably had lapses in expressing gratitude. Sometimes we might even question...

All good interactions between people are based on relationships. People go along with people they get along with. I often teach leaders that it is their responsibility to connect with the people they lead. In an ideal world, that’s the way it should be. But the reality is that if someone is a bad boss or leader, he probably does little to connect with the people. That means you must take it upon yourself to connect with your boss. Productive Relationships with a Bad Boss Require flexibility The key to developing a productive relationship with your boss is good chemistry....

Summary: A reminder that your role as a leader doesn't end when you leave the office. The power of storytelling is a useful tool for teaching your children valuable character traits that could mold them into future leaders, too. Let’s turn our attention to a particular form of kindness: charity. Learning to be generous with what we have is difficult for most people. By nature we’re selfish. Our instincts drive us to find food, shelter, and clothing—not for other people, but for ourselves. Nurturing compassion and generosity for others means demonstrating it through your own behavior, but also celebrating it...

Executive Summary If you want to build trust with your boss, it’s going to take more than just doing your job well—it’s going to take building a relationship. In order to gain the trust of your leader, they have to know that you not only respect them, but that you’ll support and carry on their vision. Not only can building a relationship with your boss enrich both of your lives, but the quality of that relationship may be the determining factor in the success or failure of your career. Work hard to genuinely connect with those around you in your...

Executive Summary Learning to navigate and adjust to different personalities and habits is essential if you want to have healthy relationships. Going into a relationship looking to change the other person is a sure-fire way to ruin the relationship and miss an opportunity for personal growth. If your employees are not responding to you the way you would like, you may have unwittingly become “tone deaf” to the way they prefer to be treated. When people differences threaten to stand in the way of interpersonal communication, it may be time to step back and evaluate what you can do to...

Years ago, someone gave me the following advice about how to react if a dog sinks its teeth into your hand: If you give in to your instincts and try to pull your hand out, the dog will stick its teeth in deeper. But if you counterintuitively push your hand deeper into the dog’s mouth, the dog will release it. Why? Because, in order to do what it wants to do next—swallow—it has to release its jaw. And that’s when you can pull your hand out. This exact same rule applies to talking to irrational people. If you treat them...

Executive Summary It's no secret that the key to getting ahead in business lies in your ability to build professional relationships.   But, it takes time and many people emerge into the workplace with condensed timelines for when they aspire to achieve new levels of success. Michelle Lederman learned firsthand the value of patience when you're just starting out building a relationship at work when over the course of one year and six proposals she finally acquired a new client. How do keep faith that new relationships will develop over time? Lederman suggests ditching the idea that "quid pro quo"...

Executive Summary We all know company culture makes a huge impact on an employee's satisfaction with their job. During this period of remote working, however, studies have shown that as much as one-third of employees are feeling disconnected from their friends at work. Shasta Nelson, author of The Business of Friendship and leading expert on establishing effective and fun workplace relationships, has been speaking on the value of having friends at work for years. But her insights take on particular relevance in an age where we can't physically interact with each other in ways we're used to interacting. According to...

You can find patterns everywhere: in nature, in families, in nations. They develop according to certain rules. Understanding the rules that govern them will help you grasp the way they work in organizations. Everything in nature follows a pattern you can see if you look closely enough. And once you see a pattern, you can figure out why and how it exists. Societal patterns can strongly influence organizational patterns. If you’re dealing with patterns held collectively in a societal or national culture, then the job to change company culture just got a whole lot tougher.  A Company Culture of Neglecting...

How does courage show up and what makes it so challenging to speak up at work? How can leaders build teams of Microinnovators, Problems Solvers, and Customer Advocates? It’s one thing to have an opinion, but let’s look at the data. The tendency towards “safe silence”  Any discussion about courage at work quickly leads to Amy Edmondson. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School and author of The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. She describes how courage at work shows up when someone speaks up,...

Adapted with permission from The Most Powerful You: 7 Bravery-Boosting Paths to Career Bliss by Kathy Caprino, copyright Kathy Caprino. I’ve seen firsthand that there is widespread gender bias, sexual harassment, and other forms of unfair and illegal behaviors at work. Could it be possible that you're being mistreated at work? The statistics argue "yes." Recent studies have shared that four in ten women have reported some form of gender discrimination at work. Other research reveals that as many as eight out of ten women will experience sexual harassment at work in their lifetimes. If we’ve worked for any length...

Tell me if your day looks a little bit like this: Wake up. Lead a team meeting to define objectives for the day. Have back-to-back meetings with each member of your team. Answer emails you neglected all morning. Lead a team meeting to recap the day’s progress. Somehow start and finish tasks that were on your to-do list. Does your calendar give you anxiety? Are you struggling to provide the feedback your employees need from you, especially as they try to maintain productivity when working from home, while also making strides on your own projects? Balancing your tasks with solving...

Executive Summary Emailing has been a reliable mode of communication for employees since its creation in the 1970s. With many companies transitioning physical teams to virtual ones, managers and employees are using email more than ever to organize tasks and monitor progress. The ease and speed of email communications is both beneficial in terms of efficiency and detrimental in terms of productivity. To fully utilize the capabilities of this powerful communication medium, professionals must realize the context of every email they send. Understand the universal tenets of email etiquette in order to send an effective email that is clear, actionable,...

Executive Summary Most of us complain to our friends or spouses when we’re dealing with toxic coworkers. If they ask, “well, what did you say to them?,” our answer is often, “...nothing.” Renée Evenson, author of Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Difficult People, encourages employees to start building a positive dialogue to use when managing conflicts. “You” phrases typically put people on the defensive, so incorporate “I” phrases into a confrontation conversation. With a few, simple phrases, you can navigate uncomfortable situations with coworkers, even if they’re bullies, criticizers, or negative Nellies. If you’re uncomfortable facing conflict, you’re not alone....

Executive Summary The “ok boomer” meme flickered across TikTok and spread like a wildfire across the Internet in November 2019. Although the meme is relatively new, the friction among millennials and Gen Z has been rearing its ugly head for a while. In the workplace, using the phrase can bring up interesting consequences for the offender, which HR expert Paul Falcone says should encourage managers to address the meme sooner rather than later. A conversation around millennials vs. boomers in the workplace must start by explaining the matter at hand, progress by creating a platform for open and honest discussion,...

Executive Summary Any day in the life of a manager likely includes addressing some variety of employee misconduct. While there is no way to account for every bad behavior you might encounter, there are a few that occur in workplaces across the nation and world. Manage employees with chronically debilitating behaviors by focusing on the what, why, and how. What are the issues? Why do they need to be fixed? How can the employee do better? Remember to remain positive when delivering your criticisms. Be prepared to confront the 8 most common types of difficult employees: The Attacker, Comic, Deserter,...