OG Tuesday Issue #196

🔮 Futurist: Experts guess the most in-demand workforce skills in the next decade.

🌱 Growth: How managers can inspire a growth mindset.

🗓️ Meetings: Mastering the art of the informal meeting, aka the “lean coffee” meeting.

💡 Focus: How much novelty should you be seeking at work?

👑 Leadership: How establishing a leadership definition can enhance your impact.

In a recent interview with Washington D.C. news outfit WTOP, a financial expert and venture capitalist spilled her secret for maintaining optimal productivity: microdosing psilocybin, the primary compound that gives magic mushrooms their seemingly magical psychedelic effects.

“So when you take a microdose, you don’t feel any high,” she told WTOP. “You only get the benefit of a psychedelic, which is rewiring your brain, neuroplasticity, lowering and calming your nervous system, which you need very much when you have a busy career.”

She says her microdosing strategy made her feel less distracted, more creative, and more capable of maintaining healthy relationships.

We’re by no means recommending microdosing to improve productivity. We’re simply sharing that it’s a topic gaining more and more interest in work management and mental health discussions.

The venture capitalist interviewed by WTOP felt so inspired by her productivity discovery that she wrote a book and launched a comprehensive initiative to spread awareness.

Major academic centers—including Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley, NYU, and the University of Maryland—have launched research initiatives focused on psychedelic compounds.

🍄 The bottom line: How psilocybin impacts our work and our mental health will be a fascinating topic to follow over the next several years.

Employees who are recognized and rewarded for outstanding performance are more likely to repeat it!

Resulting in greater job satisfaction, motivation, and improved service quality for customers.

And if all of your employees experience that, then the positive effects are multiplied.

The sad reality is…it’s nearly impossible for busy managers and HR to manually and consistently reward employees.

That’s why over 3,400 companies use a revolutionary program—Bonusly—to automatically recognize and reward employees for exceptional performance…

The results?

• Boosted morale
• Maximized team alignment
• Strengthened company culture
• Superior service to customers
• Increased employee motivation

Bonusly is easy to set up, even easier to use AND runs mostly on autopilot.

See how it works and try it out for yourself at zero cost👇.

Get your 14-day free trial of Bonusly right now.

One TA reader wants to move on already:

I made a lateral move in my organization, and my biggest challenge is offloading the tasks associated with my old position so that I can really focus on my new one.

On paper, the transition looks so clean. Your start and end dates are clearly outlined on all the paperwork everyone signed. Everything looks so official, so organized, and so manageable.

In reality, job transitions are messy and uncertain. Switching to a different role in the same company can lead to the messiest and most uncertain job transitions. Yours doesn’t have to be like that.

Here are some tips for making your transition as clean, painless, and seamless as possible:

Instead of waiting and reacting…

• Create a proactive transition plan. It’s never too late to be proactive—even if you’ve already started your new role, and your replacement has already stepped into your old role.

No matter how long ago the switch happened, if you’re finding yourself shouldering any of your old responsibilities, then you might benefit from a retroactive transition and training plan.

• • Who to involve?
    • Your replacement
    • Your replacement’s manager
    • Your new manager
    • In a perfect world, the managers will already be involved in the transition. If they’re not, then don’t be shy about getting them involved. They should be just as, if not more so, invested in a smooth transition as you are.
• • What to cover?
    • A list of core resources including access instructions
    • Your contact information and preferences
    • A training checklist
    • A training and transition timeline
    • A list of important, recurring tasks
    • A list of important, recurring meetings

• Create or collate documentation around your former role’s essential responsibilities. Even if you jot down rough how-tos from memory, you might still be nipping some of your replacement’s burning questions in the bud.

Instead of silently shouldering the burden of training your replacement…

• Be open and transparent with your new manager about how much you’re helping your replacement. Update them every week. Provide an overview of how you’re helping and how much time you’re spending.

If the transitional training becomes too much for you to handle on top of your new responsibilities, then your new manager will have the context necessary to support you. (They might even speak to your replacement’s manager on your behalf.)

Instead of offering to support your replacement as needed…

• Establish reasonable boundaries. For example, you might propose weekly recurring office hours for the first three months following the transition. You can block off the time and answer all your replacement’s questions at once instead of fielding questions and requests at inconvenient or distracting times.
• Set clear expectations based on what you’re comfortable with. For example, you might communicate being happy to answer questions occasionally via email but also that you’d prefer not to receive any phone calls or instant messages.

Bonus: This tip only applies to situations where people are having a hard time letting go of their old responsibilities.

Instead of keeping an eye on your replacement…

• Let go of your old job and put all your attention into your new one. Alison from the online Ask a Manager column acknowledges letting go can be hard, especially if your replacement wants to blaze a new trail instead of following the path you worked hard to forge with your own footsteps.

“This work feels like ‘yours.’ But it’s not anymore,” she writes. Keep those words in mind the next time you feel yourself grasping for the old instead of embracing the new.

California teams: Have you completed the annual employee training requirement under the state’s new Workplace Violence Law? The deadline is July 1, 2024.

Traliant’s California Workplace Violence Prevention training will help you comply with this rapidly approaching mandate. Created by their in-house team of legal experts, the course fulfills CA requirements to equip your employees with the essential knowledge to address potential workplace violence threats.

The 25-minute training covers:

• Types of workplace violence
• How to recognize potentially violent behavior and report concerns
• Techniques for de-escalation
• What to do if workplace violence occurs
• How to stay safe during a workplace violence incident

The course can be tailored to include your employer-specific workplace violence prevention plan and reporting protocols—elements required under CA law.

Don’t miss this critical compliance deadline!

Preview the course here.

Don’t be afraid to change jobs. The company you are at would lay you off in a heartbeat if they needed to, so no need to be blindly loyal.

If there’s a good opportunity that comes your way—take it.

Marcie C. (Sr. HR Manager)

⭐️ We want to hear from you! Share your best career advice here.

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• Sage Search Partners is hiring for a Sr. Program Financial Analyst (Dallas, TX/Hybrid).
• A-C Electric Company is hiring for a People Operations Manager (Bakersfield, CA).
• hireneXus is hiring for a Chief Financial Officer (Alabama, US).
• Kenneth Cole Productions is hiring for a Brand Marketing Manager (New York, NY).
• The Intersect Group is hiring for a Technical Product Manager (Denver, CO/Hybrid).