OG Tuesday Issue #201

🎙️ Work/Life: Hilarious podcast hosts tackle the challenge of setting boundaries at work.

🤖 Human Resources: Maybe AI and HR don’t mix well, after all?

🚀 Leadership: A few reasons talented leaders may be stuck in “survival mode.”

🤝 Teamwork: The principles of radical candor might just be the building blocks of workplace trust.

🎉 Engagement: A boon to workplace morale and retention involves working for outside orgs…for free.

Life would get pretty boring pretty fast if everyone liked to drink coffee the same way. It would make every barista’s life much easier, certainly, but even they might get bored after a few days or weeks of making the same drink again and again.

The same general idea applies to different workplace communication styles and preferences. The differences create day-to-day friction and stress but ultimately enrich your work experience and the results it leads to.

Here are some tips for getting through the friction and stress and finding harmony between all the different people you work with and for.

The strategy: Focus not on what the other person is saying but on how they are saying it.

• Why it works: It gets to the root of a classic problem: You’re too keen on the details to realize you and the person you’re arguing with are actually saying the same thing. Different people often perceive the same thing in different ways.
• Instead of just listening to the words, also consider the other person’s body language and tone of voice as another way to gauge how close you are to consensus.

The strategy: Pay attention to context.

• Why it works: Busy work schedules might limit communication to when it’s convenient, which doesn’t necessarily equate to effective. By “reading the room” and strategically timing when to say what you need to say, you can increase the chances of being heard.
• If you want to talk to your manager about something important, for example, check in on what you know about their day. What meetings might they need to prepare for? What projects might be wearing them down?
• If you know nothing about their daily schedule, you might consider what sort of mood they’re indicating via posture, speech, and behavior.

The strategy: Get in the habit of considering needs before responding to anything.

For example, before you enter into a collaboration, you might…

• Establish an informed guess about your collaborators’ needs and expectations.
• Validate your guess by presenting it in the form of a question. (I’m hearing that our most important goal is fixing the problem with XYZ before we present our results to leadership. Does that resonate with you?)
• Discuss until everyone is on the same page.
• Why it works: So many miscommunications start as misunderstandings. Two people can work on the same “issue” for weeks and never realize they’re each driven by different needs, wants, and expectations. Best to nip those differences and conflicts in the bud and early.

Today (July 30th) is International Friendship Day…the perfect reason to reach out to a friend! 💕

Whether they’re facing health issues, family problems, or just need some encouragement, they’ll value the support from friends and colleagues through a meaningful group card.

GroupTogether makes it easy to put together a group card for any occasion.

How It Works:

1. 🤔 Pick a Card: Choose one that fits your friend’s personality.
2. 🔗 Share a Link: Let your group sign and leave messages online.
3. 💌 Send the Card: Deliver the card digitally or print it & hand it to them in person.

It’s simple and so meaningful.

Try GroupTogether today!

One TA Subscriber is growing increasingly frustrated about being one of the few women on a male-dominated leadership team. She’s constantly struggling to get them to listen.

Speaking to a group of leaders in a boardroom may not appear to have anything in common with singing on a stage. However, they’re both performances at the core. Perfect your performance, and watch your audience respond.

Why put in all the effort? Because unfortunately, that’s what it takes. While everyone deserves to be heard, that truth alone is rarely enough to get people to listen.

To tackle this all-too-relatable challenge, we turned to an expert on getting people to listen.

Julian Treasure is something of a guru on sound, specifically how the sounds of our voices and environments impact our feelings and behaviors.

In one of his famous Ted Talks—How to speak so that people want to listen—Julian shared some juicy tidbits on vocal mechanics. Understand them, practice modulating them, and with hope, start noticing how well your voice can command a room.

Register

Vocal cords produce a range of tones—a register.

Julian keeps his register guidance simple: Work on speaking in your lowest possible register to command more attention. Focus on nudging your voice’s epicenter, where you speak from most often, downward. (The highest pitches tend to vibrate in and radiate from the nose and the lowest from deep in the throat or chest.)

Timbre

This one’s a bit nebulous, but most experts describe it as the unique feeling or tonal quality in a voice. You may not hear any kind of timbre in your own voice, but it’s probably the thing others subconsciously detect when they recognize your voice on an audio recording.

Deepen the uniqueness of your own timbre by doing simple vocal warm-up exercises before big meetings and events.

Pace

Slow down to increase the odds of being heard.

This may be the hardest recommendation to follow. Speech tends to quicken when we’re excited or passionate.

Work toward…

• Taking deep, full breaths while you’re speaking.
• Pausing after key points to emphasize ideas.
• Finding your ideal rhythm, a pace that consistently feels natural.

Extra Credit!

We imagine you, dear reader, don’t have to worry about any of what Julian calls the “seven deadly sins of speaking.” (They might, however, perfectly define some of the behaviors of the poor listeners you work with.)

1. Gossiping.
Speaking unfavorably about people who aren’t around is a recipe for turning ears away from your mouth.

2. Judging.
“We know people who are like this in conversation,” Julian says. “And it’s very hard to listen to somebody if you know that you’re being judged and found wanting at the same time.”

3. Being overwhelmingly negative.

4. Complaining.
Complaints and other negative thoughts can be cleansing to release from time to time. Let too much out, and the ears around you may shy away, even when you’re trying to be positive.

5. Making excuses or casting blame.
People tend to avoid those who refuse to take responsibility for anything. (It’s exhausting.)

6. Exaggerating.
Exaggeration is kind of like a lie with a really solid foundation, but…still a lie. It destroys others’ valuation of your credibility.

7. Dogmatism, or the flawed practice of expressing thoughts, beliefs, and opinions as facts.

You’ve heard us rave about Armoire, a woman-founded clothing rental service, and we’re still riding strong on the hype train.

Even more so today because they’re offering one lucky TA reader a free year subscription to their 4-item plan—that’s over $1,000 in value!

All you have to do is take their free style quiz by Monday 11:59PM PT. We’ll announce the winner next week, so stay tuned.

What we ❤️ about Armoire:

From a career counselor (whom I babysat for while I was in college): You want to look for roles/your next role to be one where you will be adding to your skill set.

Teri M., Senior Product Operations Analyst

⭐️ Want to be featured? Share your best career advice here.

🗓️ Don’t forget to sign up for the free webinar tomorrow Wed 7/31—”Mastering Event Strategy in a Hybrid Workplace: Programming, Costs, and ROI”.

📚 Get inspired by Emotion by Design—basically a masterclass in using storytelling to make brands unforgettable.

🎥 Love efficient communication? Loom is your go-to tool for creating and sharing video messages effortlessly.

🌿 Add a stylish touch to your home decor with these 2 modern vases, perfect for showcasing your favorite flowers or greenery

• Anchor International is hiring for Marketing Assistant (New York, NY).
• Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits is hiring for ER/LR Manager – Operations (Cerritos, CA).
• ZoomInfo is hiring for Sales Operations Business Partner (Waltham, Massachusetts).
• Synergy Business Consulting, Inc. is hiring for Accounts Payable and Risk Management Specialist (Miami, FL).