OG Tuesday Issue #207

🧠 Mental Health: Timely tips for managing political stress.

📊 HR: Can leaders do anything about the rising negativity of individual workers?

🏖️ Work/Life: ‘Appropriate’ workplace boundaries look different to different generations.

📈 Growth: A less-is-more argument for managing professional development opportunities.

Remember being a kid? At one point, everything was new. You had to learn, learn, and learn some more just to make basic sense of the world.

While education paths vary widely, most of them follow the same general trajectory, more or less: You start small and gradually work your way up to more complex and abstract concepts.

Most kiddos don’t tackle ethics, morality, and philosophy until they possess enough knowledge and life experience to make sense of it all.

While AI technology can learn virtually indefinitely, we have yet to determine if it can translate vast stores of acquired knowledge into wisdom equivalent to human life experiences. Oversight is essential as long as we remain uncertain it can behave as responsibly and ethically as a human.

“AI is rapidly transforming industries worldwide, creating incredible opportunities—and some challenges,” say the experts at workplace training group Traliant. “From streamlining processes to enhancing decision-making, its impact on everyday work tasks and business operations is profound. But with these advancements come ethical considerations, potential biases, and cybersecurity risks that can’t be ignored.”

The astronomical speed of AI tech development and workplace adoption makes it nearly impossible for human leaders to keep up with the entire landscape, let alone develop, refine, and communicate rules, guidelines, and policies.

In the meantime…

Individuals, teams, and orgs can establish a standardized list of questions to consider before using AI—as a stopgap measure to promote the responsible use of AI in day-to-day operations.

Here’s a comprehensive set to bookmark from Mindful Marketing:

• Ownership: Are we properly compensating property owners?
• Attribution: Are we giving due credit to the creator?
• Employment: What’s AI’s impact on peoples’ work?
• Accuracy: Is the information we’re sharing correct?
• Deception: Are we leading people to believe an untruth?
• Transparency: Are we informing people when we’re using AI?
• Privacy: Are we protecting peoples’ personal information?
• Bias: Are we (inadvertently) promoting bias?
• Relationships: Are we encouraging AI as a relationship substitute?
• Skills: How will AI impact creativity and critical thinking?
• Stewardship: Are we using resources efficiently?
• Indecency: Are we (inadvertently) promoting crudeness, vulgarity, or obscenity?

While no list of questions can prevent all issues, thinking through these will help us all make sound, well-considered, and responsible AI decisions.

Did you know that three in four employees bring AI tools to work and keep them secret from bosses? And while more than 75% of businesses are using AI, only 30% have provided employees with training on how to use it responsibly.

Effective training is key to ensuring employees use AI responsibly. Traliant’s AI in the Workplace training helps your employees understand the risks and benefits of using Generative AI (GenAI).

The 30-minute course covers:

• What is GenAI
• Common misperceptions, risks and benefits
• 5 questions to ask before using GenAI at work
• Reinforces your AI acceptable use policy
• Checking GenAI output for accuracy, quality and bias
• Examples of unacceptable use cases, such as automated decision-making
• Realistic workplace scenarios and interactive knowledge checks

Created by Traliant’s in-house team of legal experts, this course helps your workforce use AI ethically to drive your company’s growth and success while avoiding unintended consequences.

Access the AI in the Workplace Course for free.

Many TA Subscribers want to know:

How do you break down communication barriers between departments/units at work?

There’s a good reason so many people express this concern: It’s a tough one without a clear-cut solution.

While we’re all about optimism, we also recognize the difference between healthy positivity and sugar coating. That said, we’re not going to lie. This is a hard concern to address.

Why? Because communication barriers dissolve at work only when people—all the people communicating—want them to.

We’ve probably all had an experience, maybe with a close friend living internationally or working insanely restrictive hours, where we’ve put Herculean effort into keeping in contact despite all the systems and circumstances stacked against us. If we want to stay in touch, we do. When there’s no clear way to do that, we find one.

There’s the fundamental truth to keep in mind when approaching this challenge: When people want to communicate and collaborate, they find a way.

More often than not, an organization’s infrastructure—all your systems and processes—reinforce communication barriers, but they don’t create or cause them. That’s why focusing on infrastructure alone rarely solves the true, underlying problem. We recommend looking instead at your people and your culture when trying to solve org-wide communication problems.

This line of thinking demonstrates what makes this challenge so…tricky. To break down communication barriers, you need to make people across departments truly want to interface with each other, and there’s simply no way to make people want to do things they don’t actually want to do.

You can, however, create opportunities for everyone to develop strong relationships across different departments. This won’t necessarily make people want to communicate with each other, but it can make people more familiar with each other and more comfortable reaching out across organizational divisions.

And that, friends, can go a long way.

Here are some low-maintenance strategies for strengthening relationships and familiarity across different workplace units:

📅 Daily

Encourage yourself and your team to focus on three simple habits:

• Listen
• Share
• Be present

🕰️ When time allows

Offer to help an individual or team outside your department with…something.

The specific something you offer to help with and what kind of help you offer depends, of course, on how much energy and time you can realistically offer. It doesn’t have to be big to have meaning and to help build closeness, comfort, and familiarity. For example, if you know one entire team is swamped, you could offer to pick up their lunch and bring it to the conference room they’re all piled in.

⭐ Tip: Depending on your company culture, it might be a good idea to discuss this strategy with your direct manager before you set anything in motion. This helps expose any wrinkles in your plan, such as overtaxing yourself and falling behind on your own work. It can also be a way to demonstrate your relational initiative and promotability.

🤝 Reach out to someone outside your department in a meaningful way

For example, you might compliment them on excellent work they did or ask them to grab coffee, even if all you do is walk together to pick up the coffee.

💬 Commit to sharing a personal story or detail with at least one person outside your department

Sharing personal stories and details doesn’t dissolve interpersonal differences, but it can create the kind of familiarity and understanding that makes differences easier to navigate.

If your entire company gathers regularly, then plan to share something at the next event. If group events are few and far between, then you might just try to strike up a brief but powerful conversation in a common area—including digital common areas you might find on Slack or Teams.

Remember that sharing something personal is not the same as airing all your dirty laundry. If you’re uncomfortable sharing in general, ease into it by talking about foods you enjoy or places you like to travel.

Having managed close to $1M in swag budgets for marketing events, employee gifts, client gifts, and holiday gifting, I can tell you one thing: now is the time to start planning.

Whether you’re gearing up for the holiday season or prepping for upcoming conferences, early planning is crucial—vendors need extra lead time due to high demand.

Keep in mind:

Here are some of my go-tos when it comes to events:

And some trending holiday gifts:

Don’t wait—work with swag.com to create unforgettable, high-quality swag.

 

 

 

 

Joanna (TA Co-Founder)

“In today’s competitive market, success hinges on precision. Instead of aiming broadly for ‘red,’ pinpoint ‘crimson.’

Instead of simply seeking a ‘yellow’ role, focus on ‘xanthic’ opportunities. The clearer you are about your goals, the more focused your efforts will be.

This precision will fuel your motivation and guide your leadership journey.” — Kristine S., Freelance Podcast Content Creator

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

🧠 Level up your skills with Brilliant’s bite-sized interactive lessons.

💬 Manage meetings like a pro using Fellow’s intuitive tool for meeting agendas, feedback, and more.

🦶 Upgrade your workspace comfort with this under-desk foot rest for better posture and relief.

📚 Dive into a powerful memoir with What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo — a must-read on trauma and healing.

🚨 Job Ops: Visit our job board here.