Researchers have found that naps can result in improved energy and performance for employees and may be especially important following long periods of continuous work or during non-standard work schedules.

Ofcourse, taking a nap in the middle of a workday was easier during the pandemic while working from home. Going back to the office has its many advantages, but taking care of our mental health is not one of them. Unless the environment is fertile for such efficient daily recovery tool, we need to redesign the going back to work routines.  

If you’re in charge of a team or oversee operations of a company, keep in mind that employees will be hesitant to take breaks if they are not encouraged to do so. It is the top management’s role if they wish to see high productivity levels in their teams to highlight and encourage taking breaks. This can be set up in a corner or an office and communicated in staff meetings and policies. You might need to directly tell your teammate it is time to take a 10 or 15-minute break when the stress is high so that he or she ca return to the task with a higher level of energy. This is not a lunch or coffee break. This is mental rest with no work involved.

Randah

p.s. If you found yourself continuously napping at work, it’s time to find another not-so-boring job for your mind

Everyday you get to make new decisions.

You get to choose whether yesterday’s – or last year’s – decision is still valid for the time being and can be used given all the new insights you have.

We hold on too close for past decisions that don’t serve us anymore.

We grow and we flourish and yet some of our decisions don’t grow with us.

You have the right, and the responsibility, to tell your former self you made the best decision at that time. Thank you. But now I know better and I need to change. It doesn’t matter how much time or money we spent on this, we paid for learning.

The hardest ones are the emotional things that keep us from doing things our way, in today’s world. So don’t cover your eyes because your heart is aching. You’re actually being kind to it by letting all these non-needed decisions go.

It’s impossible to learn something if you think you already know it.
If you find yourself responding to every question asked, commenting on all conversation topics, or talking about your experiences without a breathing moment, you’re manifesting ignorance more than anything else.

When we pretend to know what we think we know, we ignore anything that will contradict our beliefs. When we strive to give others the impression that we know-it-all, we portray the image of being better, more important and smarter. We also shut off incoming signals from outside sources that can greatly educate us, leaving us less smarter than what we thought we were.

There’s nothing more powerful than a leader who says eloquently “I don’t know.”
This is the ultimate wisdom from those who know.
It opens mind, ears and attention to what might be the answer. It grounds the person and connects with others who are eager to explore the question together.
Are you open for knowledge?

Organizations pay heavily for a big desk and a washed wall paint, yet little attention is paid for hallway interaction. How many ideas have sprung from the corner where the water cooler existed to host so many conversations with hidden opportunities of intra-departments idea collaboration? This is where creative ideas from different corners of the office floor emerge.

The situation of intra-disciplinary (or intra-departmentally) collaboration worsened is when we moved our work remotely and didn’t design for such interaction. Those non-essential conversations that don’t usually fall nicely into our over-crowded meeting schedules are the essence of creative ideas.

Some of us moved back into offices after long months of silo survival work. Others chose a hybrid situation, and some decided to move entirely online. Yet the question remains: How to design spaces that promote inter-department impromptu conversations? How to have more chance encounters and welcome serendipity into our manicured meeting schedules?

There are many ideas on this subject. Some with proven track record and others that don’t fit every situation. Back to you:

What have you done to design randomness into your daily work life?
How are you creating chance encounters with your team members?
What norms are you building to nurture a culture of innovation?
What have you done to create such spaces of loosely fit connections?

Start with your intention. Now that we’re passing over the survival mode and going into designing the new norm, How engaged do you want your team to be, even if they were not “in the room”?

Being fully present or engaged has always been a problem with teams, not only remotely. But the virtual part adds salt to the wound. Now if the intrinsic motivation is not addressed, your efforts might just be as disconnected as your wifi last month.

What are the communication norms that you have for yourself and the people you’re collaborating with? How are you intentionally designing moments of connection with your team? How are you taking your virtual leadership to the next level?

Start with the thought process, the mindset, then you can figure out what technology can help you arrive there. Most organizations start with the technology, and that’s not the best way to tackle this new mode of thinking and working.

Here are some tips on designing virtual moments and clarifying your communication methods and purposes:

• Email is for relaying information, NOT for making decisions or convincing someone of your idea (cannot be used to influence someone).
• Consider using video emails to share your thought process or explain where to find certain information on your intranet or cloud folders (using loom.com makes sense). Avoid long emails at all costs (I used to be super guilty of those long emails, now I know why they never accomplished anything).
• The chat function and instant messengers are meant for chatting. To bounce off ideas, thoughts on ways to celebrate and suggestions to fix quick problems. They do not include everyone in the conversation and information shared there are often lost.
• Meetings (zoom, MS teams, etc.) are for making decisions together and sharing points of views. Not for sending out information (this can be done in advance). Keep them short and focused. Always start with a setting of intention and getting everyone on board with a fun short exercise (1-2 minutes ice-breakers are also designed for teams who know each other).
• Find the right space for your team to engage in the process and organize their work collaboratively. Slack and Trello can be used when there’s a lot of different parts of your work that go in parallel or when you have a lot of sequential work spread over a diverse team. Chose the tool that fits you best.
• Ideation and product/service design happens best when each person has had the chance to come up with ideas on their own before building on each other’s. So, a brainstorming session online won’t work well if there was no preparation in advance by members. To offset this, send in the challenge (send physical items if needed), have them think of ideas and share them on a digital board (i.e. Miro or its cousin Mural) and then the ideation session can take off from there. Never kick-start your ideation process with a meeting. It is not productive that way.

Preparation is key in the virtual and hybrid world. It will take you probably 3 times more to prepare for an event, a process, or a meeting because it’s going to be hybrid or virtual. Taking this needed time makes sure that the event is an actual success.

Consider using here the analogy:  “Measure twice, Cut once”

What other tips do you have moving forward?

Cheers,

Randah

We miss running into people in the hallway. We miss meeting friends of friends or as academics call them our ‘weak connections’. Those moments of serendipity sparked some amusing conversations and interesting people to meet. How can we replicate that feeling?

What if you planned virtual ‘watercooler’ moments to help energize a hybrid workforce?

Last year I ran a daily coffee break with one zoom room and an open invitation for anyone to pop in. I shared the link with my groups and contacts and those people shared it with theirs. During this 30-minutes meetup, we joined, met new people, had a quick coffee chat, got inspired and connected with old friends.

Some even scheduled their working hours and meetings around our coffee break! It was that important during time of no-socializing in 2020.

Find a time and place for chance meeting and side learning to happen. Create a remote coffee break room, invite colleagues to an online game before work, have a daily check-in routine with random employees just to say hi or run a simply storytelling session daily. Basic rules applies in any such interaction: No agenda, no job titles, welcome random conversations, and most importantly, listen. Perhaps this is the greatest gift of online communication, we are forced to listen to speakers one at a time.  

Consistently matters. This is the best connection you can create without much planning ahead or getting permission from anyone.

Stay playful,

Randah