Category: Learning and Development

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What’s Your Coping Style: How to Manage Stress the Right Way

Reading Time: 3 minutesStress is at an all-time high around the globe. The time is right to reevaluate whether you are coping appropriately. This post will help you self-assess and self-reflect on whether you’re doing it right. But first, consider taking my assessment, “What Is Your Coping Style?” This free, nine-question assessment will automatically generate your scores and a comparison to your peers. Problem-Focused Coping Problem-focused coping entails attempting to solve the source of the problem. The goal is to stop the stressor altogether. The challenge, though, is that engaging in such behaviors can be hard, time-consuming, and even introduce new types of stress. Thus, problem-focused coping is a productive, long-term fix, but it takes effort. Examples Taking stock of the situation and coming up with a plan. Focusing one’s efforts and attention on doing things that improve the situation. Seeking out resources (e.g., people, processes, services) that can help solve the issue at hand. Download the Cloverleaf Assessment Guide This guide contains: A comprehensive list of the assessments that Cloverleaf offers Summary of each assessment and what insights you get Anticipated time commitments for each assessment Emotion-Focused Coping Emotion-focused coping entails managing the emotions associated with the situation. The goal is to minimize the negative physiological and psychological reactions stemming from the stressor. The challenge here is that emotions can be hard to control. It’s worth the effort, though, because you’ll be more successful at problem-focused coping when you’re emotionally balanced. Emotion-focused coping is not a long-term fix, because it doesn’t solve the source of the problem, but it’s an important part of the coping process. Examples Seeking out social support by finding someone to talk to about how you’re feeling. Pinpointing, out loud or in writing, exactly what emotions you’re feeling. Reminding yourself that you’ll be okay, things could be worse, or that you should be appreciative of what you have. Reappraising the stressor as an opportunity to learn, grow, or develop. Avoidance-Focused Coping Avoidance-focused coping entails distancing oneself from the stressor or the feelings of stress. This is an unproductive form of coping. Unfortunately, people do it all the time. Distracting ourselves from how we are feeling, or refusing to think through how to make things better, only delays the stressor. When it does resurface, it’s typically worse.   Examples Distracting yourself with something pleasurable, like entertainment (e.g., social media), sleep, or substances (e.g., drugs, alcohol). Convincing yourself that everything will be fine and work itself out. Acting as though nothing really happened. Telling yourself you’ll deal with it when the time is right. The Right Way to Cope with Stress Given what we know about stress and coping, here’s what you should or shouldn’t be doing: Don’t avoid stress. If you’re experiencing stress, your brain and your body are trying to tell you something. Avoidance-focused coping doesn’t work. Express your emotions. Seek out people or mechanisms (e.g., journaling, meditation) that allow you to acknowledge and accept your feelings. Emotion-focused coping is part of being human. Let it happen. Start getting organized. Outline the problem, start brainstorming ideas, talk to others to get new perspectives, and then get to work. When it doesn’t work out as planned, iterate, and try again. Problem-focused coping is the primary solution to long-term stress reduction. Visit www.scottdust.com for more free resources for human capital enthusiasts, including a free e-book titled “A Field Guide to Human Capital Assessments.”  HUMAN SKILL PROGRAMS ARE HITTING LIMITATIONS…​ 5 THINGS THIS FREE RESOURCE WILL TEACH YOU Close the widening gap between learning and on-the-job application Overcome the tension of pausing productivity for development opportunities Integrate learning so it is actually in the flow of work The evolution of human skill development What Automated Coaching™ is and how it works. Try a Demo

9 Tips for Pursuing Your Goals in the New Year

Reading Time: 4 minutesTo realize your goals in the New Year, focus on goal pursuit, not goal setting. Researchers have conducted tens of thousands of experiments on goal setting, illustrating that things like difficulty and specificity are associated with better outcomes. Goal setting, however, is only half the battle. And arguably, it’s the easy half. Without proper “goal pursuit,” the well-set goal will never actually be achieved. It’s that time of year to set the agenda for the upcoming year. To ensure your goals are actually achieved, consider self-reflecting on each of the goal pursuit dimensions described below. But first, consider taking my free, validated, and theoretically grounded assessment, “The Right Way To Pursue Your Goals.” This 12-question assessment will automatically generate your scores and a comparison to your peers. Before discussing goal pursuit, it’s important to clarify the first step—goal setting—of which there are two primary frameworks. First is SMART goals, which stand for specific (S), measurable (M), actionable (A), realistic (R), and time-bound (T). The focus of the SMART framework is making goals clear, objective, and reasonable. The premise is that clarity is associated with action. Second is FAST goals, which stands for frequently discussed (F), ambitious (A), specific (S), and transparent (T). The FAST framework is relatively new and builds upon the weakness of the SMART framework. Namely, that individuals are embedded within collective systems such as teams or organizations. If goal setting is the beginning, goal pursuit is everything in-between the beginning and the end. Once a goal has been set, there are four behavioral approaches that should be pursued that increase the likelihood of goal achievement. Recognize that Goal Pursuit Involve Dynamic Iteration Frequent Reevaluation. Organizational change is inevitable. Sometimes it’s drastic and sudden (e.g., the pandemic) and sometimes it’s subtle and incremental (e.g., small mistakes over time). It’s also possible that personal circumstances or interests change over time. While it’s important to stick with your goals, it’s also important to update them based upon your circumstances. It’s pointless to accomplish a goal if it’s no longer relevant or fulfilling. Pinpoint Successes and Failures. Consider what challenges you’ve overcome and what obstacles remain. Such reflection will ensure that you are efficiently refocusing your efforts and coming up with new strategies for goal attainment. Create Systems. Create systems that make dynamic interaction part of your routine. For example, schedule time on your calendar for yourself or meeting with others, or add the goal reevaluation process to part of your daily or weekly task list. This reevaluation schedule should be commensurate with the timing of the goals (e.g., daily for short-term goals, monthly for annual goals, etc.). Create An Engaging Employee Experience even During Challenging Times Free Playbook: What The Future Workplace Looks Like​ How To Activate Emotional Intelligence Within Your Team Factors Of Employee Motivation Strategies For Employee Engagement A Hybrid Work Model For Collaboration, Flexibility, & Fulfillment The Power Of Coaching In The Workplace How To Reduce The Impact Of Labour Turnover Allow for Goal Pursuit Transparency Tell Somebody. You’re much more likely to stick with your goals when you verbalize them to friends, family, or colleagues. But go beyond the one-and-done goal reveal. When working with others, don’t “bury the lead.” Begin conversations by clearly explaining your goals and how the initiative at hand plays into those goals. Network Accountability. Use guilt to your advantage. Nobody enjoys letting others down. To increase your odds of sticking with something, figure out how to create some degree of interdependence between your goals and the goals of others. This forced accountability will inevitably lead to ongoing conversations about how to properly pursue the goals together. Know Your Why.  It’s not enough to simply have a goal. You need to be able to clearly explain why the goal is important to you. Along the way, there will be many people out there that chip away at your ability to stick with your goal. It is in those moments where you need to be able to clearly articulate your why. Embrace a Multi-Goal Mentality Reconcile Competing Goals. A glaring flaw of goal-setting frameworks is that they only consider one goal at a time. This is unrealistic. We typically have a list of several goals, some short-term and some long-term, some straightforward and some complex, and some work-related and some personal. It is therefore important to evaluate when and where conflicts manifest. In some cases, it will be necessary to choose one over another. In other cases, it’ll be necessary to make compromises. Goal Prioritization. Once we recognize the reality of having multiple, competing goals, it is necessary to continually reprioritize goals. Perhaps certain goals should get priority because they are more urgent or because they are tied to other important factors like our well-being or security. Additionally, these goal reprioritization decisions shouldn’t be tied to how we’re feeling in that moment. Instead, these decisions should be based on values and/or higher-order goals. Time Allocation. We get done what we spend time on. The same rules we follow with respect to time management can be integrated with goal pursuit. The tendency is to spend time focusing on easier, short-term goals. What we should be doing, however, is constantly evaluating our time expenditure on all of our goals, and regularly recalibrating to ensure we first satisfy our highest priority goals. Make Goal Pursuit Learning-Focused, Not Performance-Focused Learning First, Performance Second. Focusing on objective outcomes is great. But sometimes we focus on the end-goal without considering how we get there. If the goal is relatively difficult, by definition, we don’t yet have all of the ingredients for achieving the goal. Thus, the focus should be on learning, not performing. New Knowledge or Skills. It’s important to uncover what exactly we need to learn in order to obtain our goal. The first common category is knowledge, which entails the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. The second is skills, which entails proficiencies obtained through training or experience. Obtaining knowledge comes from asking the right

Cognitive Diversity

Reading Time: 6 minutesYou likely have reached a point at some time in your career when your team couldn’t agree on a solution, you reported to someone whose feedback felt outright harsh, or you didn’t feel heard by your co-workers. We likely all have, and may have thought, if they did everything like me, this wouldn’t be a problem. There would be no conflict in the office, decisions would be made faster, and we’d all arrive at the same solutions without outlandish ideas throwing us off track. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we all just thought exactly the same? Actually…no. It wouldn’t. It would probably make things a lot harder. And a lot less exciting. The truth is, it would create the product or solution that works for people like you… and not for the other 99% of the world. In these times, we see the situation all wrong, and as a “problem”, when it’s really an opportunity to leverage individual characteristics and unique traits to do something really great. All of the differences in how we think and communicate, how we’re motivated and lead, how we’re energized and triggered, and so many more, all make up cognitive diversity. What is cognitive diversity? This is not diversity based on age, gender, ethnicity, etc. It is the type of diversity that you can’t see. According to Harvard Business Review, “Cognitive diversity has been defined as differences in perspective or information processing styles.” Basically, everyone is different- the way we communicate, lead, process, what we are motivated and energized by, and so on. There is nothing wrong with these differences, they are what makes each of us so unique and valuable, and recognizing that is key to any team. Why is it important? Challenging and confusing as it can be, we need teammates to see things differently than we do. We need that person who slows us down to consider possible issues and that person who speeds us up to get something completed. We need the person who draws out ideas, and the person who tells us it’s time to stop talking and make a decision. The person who prioritizes relationships and the person who prioritizes hitting the numbers. Recognizing and fostering an environment of understanding cognitive diversity is so important in the workplace because it gives you insight into how and why your people work the way they do. Knowing how your people prefer to work and applying this can improve your company culture, and lead to happier employees. Cognitive diversity allows for a variety of thinking, energy, motivation, and leadership styles that will lead to a dynamic, effective, and creative team. How can you become more successful? Seek diversity and you will find more revenue, higher profitability, more innovation, more trust, and more engagement. Why? Well, according to this Harvard study, it’s actually strongly tied to things beneath the surface that we cannot see — cognitive diversity — the different ways of problem-solving, decision-making, working, and communicating. It is cognitively diverse teams that are the best at solving complex problems in the face of uncertainty. At the end of the day, it’s these different perspectives that create the work we’re most proud of. EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT According to Gallup®, “Only about one in three U.S. workers and 15% globally are engaged,” only one-third. Imagine that statistic representing your organization, maybe it does, kinda scary right? But let’s change that. It could be down to what kind of work your employee is doing when it might not be what they really prefer to do. Take a look at the insight on the right. If Devon is feeling suffocated in her current tasks, it might be because she was given a project that does not allow her to try creative ideas, or she’s on a team that has a bureaucratic environment. But, Devon does not prefer either of these things, causing her to dread her work. Learning how your employees prefer to work might be the difference between them loving and hating what they do. And ultimately when your people love their work, they will likely be a lot more engaged. PRODUCTIVITY We are likely a lot more productive when doing work that leans into our strengths. And, this work will likely be more enjoyable because we are good at it. Take a look at the top strengths of the Cloverleaf team. The team members in Executing will likely work best in checking tasks off a list and getting things done and may feel energized by completing projects. Someone in Influencing might prefer to spend their time telling customers about their product and describing why it would be good for them. A relationship-building team member might be in tune with, well- exactly that! They foster connections in the office and welcoming on new staff, but this does not mean that they don’t like strategic thinking like someone in the top right. They just might be stronger and prefer to spend more time building relationships than analyzing or checking off to-dos. With cognitive diversity, you will get a wide variety of strengths and viewpoints that will be beneficial and allow for balance and effectiveness. When your people work in areas that allow them to really exercise their strengths, they will likely feel more productive and be more valuable to the team.With cognitive diversity, you will get a wide variety of strengths and abilities that will be beneficial and allow for balance and effectiveness. When your people work in areas that allow them to really exercise their strengths, they will likely feel more productive and be more valuable to the team. PROBLEM SOLVING The more diverse your team is in thought, the more perspectives there will likely be, along with solutions to a problem. Harvard Business Review noted, “There is a familiar saying: “We recruit in our own image…Colleagues gravitate toward the people who think and express themselves in a similar way…organizations often end up with like-minded teams…what psychologists call functional bias — and low

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6 Do’s and Don’ts of Coaching In The Workplace

Reading Time: 3 minutesWhether you want to get a new client started out successfully, or continue to sustain your current clientele, it’s important to have the right coaching skills to help them thrive. Therefore, we want to help you in your effective coaching journey by providing a list of the do’s and don’ts of coaching in the workplace. DO: ASK OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS One of our best coaching tips is that asking “yes” and “no” questions will not lead anywhere. If your client does not expand on what they are saying, the conversation may end too quickly and provide no meaningful context to work off or toward goals. Good example: Ask: what do you find challenging about that? This leaves the conversation open for your coachee to speak on challenges and  to expand as much as possible. This also may draw out more than one answer. Bad example: Ask: do you think that is challenging because of your schedule? Your client may respond yes or no and leave the conversation there. They also may feel as though you are leading them to an answer, causing them to answer favorably. This does not leave room for them to discover problems or solutions on their own. DO: Build Trust Without a solid foundation of trust, your client will likely not speak freely about issues and areas of improvement, which will have an impact on their well-being and overall job satisfaction. Good example: During coaching conversations, be an active listener, ask questions, be empathetic, don’t judge, and focus on your client (meaning don’t get distracted – no one likes meeting with someone who gets distracted by everything in the background and doesn’t make eye contact). Bad example: Don’t pry into their client’s personal life (unless they want to), and don’t socialize (this could be unprofessional and make you seem like you’re always available). Every person may need to be coached in a slightly different way. This is a learning process. Remember to be flexible and to tailor your approach so you don’t scare them off or underwhelm them. Using Cloverleaf for Coaches as a tool will prepare you with their preferred style of work, communication, conflict, etc. Good example: A good coach takes time to learn how new clients work, as they will likely all be different. Bad example: Jump in with the same attitude every time, as this will be accepted differently by different clients. DO: KNOW THAT EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT DON’T: TELL THEM WHAT TO DO You are not your client, so when they ask you what you would do, know how to change the direction, and act as a leader, don’t just give out directions. Good example: Client: “My manager told me to do x task, but that’s not in my job description, so I didn’t do it. Now we have a meeting on Monday. What would you do?” Coach: “Well, let’s dive deeper into this first. Why do you feel…?” Bad example: Client: “My manager told me to do x task, but that’s not in my job description, so I didn’t do it. Now we have a meeting on Monday. What would you do?” Coach: “I would have done…” DON’T: TALK MORE THAN YOUR CLIENT DOES Your coachee should never feel like they are in a lecture or being talked at. So make sure you are asking questions to guide the coaching sessions, but they should also be talking most of the time. Be an active listener and ask follow-up questions. This will allow them to be comfortable with you and reveal underlying issues they are having. DON’T: TALK ABOUT CLIENTS WITHOUT PERMISSION You should never be talking about Sally’s work issues with Ryan to mentor him on what he is going through, that’s not right. But, you can pull the same coaching tools from different experiences and use them across clients. Keep in mind this serves solely as a methodology in your backpack. If a client goes through a certain issue that you feel would serve as a good example, ASK them for permission before you do. If they say no, respect their boundaries. In summary, remember that to be a great coach you need to ask open-ended questions, build trust, and recognize that everyone is unique. HELP YOUR LEADERS MOVE FROM A BOSS TO COACH! Inside you’ll learn: Strategies for developing essential leadership skills within your managers Best practices for communicating and coaching your team Insight for navigating conflict and change Practical ideas for enhancing teamwork and motivating team members

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Understanding Commonalities within a Team

Reading Time: 2 minutesDavid DeSteno, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and the author of The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More wrote a recent story for the HBR about how identifying commonalities on a team can lead to effectiveness. This is a concept that Cloverleaf was founded on. The belief is that the first step towards building anything great is truly understanding the labor force that is working to accomplish the task. According to DeSteno: “For people to work together, they need to know that both labor and credit will be shared. In short, they need teammates who understand their feelings (i.e. empathy) and care about their wellbeing (i.e. compassion).” At Cloverleaf, we have built a platform that helps managers discover not only the commonalities but also how the differences that each team member brings to the table contribute to the whole. Cloverleaf also provides a common cultural language that helps team members from different backgrounds celebrate the parts of their collective selves that value the same things and understand the unique markers of their team. Coming back to Desteno, he says, “when it comes to empathy and compassion, the most powerful tool is a sense of similarity – a belief that people’s interests are joined and, thus, that they’re all on the same team and will benefit from supporting each other.” He encourages those teams interested in becoming more effective to “take time to learn about team members, find commonalities or shared interests and begin to highlight them in a discussion. Develop a team identity and encourage people to categorize themselves as part of it.“ Kevin Delaney, the co-founder of Quartz an online news site recently wrote about how something weird happened with their startup when they crossed the 150-employee mark in their growth. He mentions that this was an experience that many startups encounter. He writes that once the staff exceeds 150 people, employees are no longer the single, cohesive, culture-reinforcing unit they were during the company’s earliest days. According to Delaney, one of the more prominent examples of an organization that worked hard to prevent this erosion in commonality and group identity is W.L. Gore & Associates, the maker of Gore-Tex fabric. “[Gore] has an unconventional approach to managing the changing dynamics that come with growth. The privately held manufacturer, which has over 10,000 employees, generally doesn’t allow the staff at any of its factories to exceed 150 people before building another, self-contained factory next to it. That’s because founder Bill Gore felt that when a unit of workers got big enough, “we decided” became “they decided,” as management writer Gary Hamel, who has studied the company, explains it. Gore understood that workers in a 150-person unit could all know one another, and share a commitment to group goals and values—and that any growth beyond that would change those dynamics.” At Cloverleaf, we are building solutions to help you manage teams of 5, 150, or 1,000. We understand that teams are constantly evolving as is the culture and the ability to execute a plan. That is why an organizational design tool like Cloverleaf’s is critical to getting the most out of your talent investment. Ready To Solve The People Problems At Work? Try a Demo