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The fallacy of work-life balance

Over a decade ago, a survey from Harvard Business School showed 94% of people in professional services were putting in over 50 hours of work a week, with nearly half of the survey participants working over 65 hours a week [1]. The article later mentions that these individuals are also spending an extra 20-25 hours a week working outside the office monitoring their—nostalgic moment ahead in… 3,2,1—BlackBerrys.

One would think that with the multitude of studies showing the health hazards of not adhering to work-life balance [2], we would see a significant shift in organizations and employees’ behaviors by now. But a recent survey shows that things have not improved at all. In the wake of Covid-19, when the boundaries have blurred to such an extent where it is hard to ascertain if one is currently “at work” or “at home”, employees are putting in an extra 48.5 minutes per day on average [3] while taking less time off, even when they feel unwell [4].

Although the concept of work-life balance is often discussed, as far back as the early ’80s [5], it is no nearer to being resolved.

Why is work-life balance not working?

One of the reasons is that the concept itself is flawed.

When we talk about work-life balance, we are actually pitching two important and integral parts of our lives, one against the other; Is it really either work or life? Is work not an important and richly rewarding part of our life? (if your answer is ‘No’, we need to discuss Work Restructuring). This misleading juxtaposition of work vs. life creates an unnecessary inner conflict as if one must yield for the other to succeed instead of aiming towards a peaceful and empowering resolution, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Some researchers [6] are now referring to this field by calling it work-life integration. This is indeed an improvement but still emphasizes an artificial duality and inner split between two opposing parts that now need to be somehow integrated.

Additionally, the attempt to achieve a state of balance is doomed to fail. Firstly, any attempt to stay perfectly balanced while trying to navigate our lives in an unstable, unpredictable world will incur energy, extra work and frustration. Moreover, there is no growth in balance; we need imbalance in order to grow. For example, it is impossible to develop a muscle without moving it out of balance; this imbalance creates those microscopic tears that allow the muscle to grow.

What is it that we really want?

The fact is that most people are not interested in balance at all. They want to grow, expand, learn and succeed professionally and personally.

Think about it, weren’t some of your most meaningful times during or after a period that you worked hard and gave it your all? I for one can say that most of my greatest achievements were done while working long hours for weeks on end. Moreover, research shows that we experience many more moments of “flow” when we are at work rather than at home [7]. Should we set aside these feelings of accomplishment and fulfillment for the sake of an imaginary balance?

So, what are you looking for? Fulfillment or balance? I am guessing most if not all of you would choose the former rather than the latter.

We still need work and life balance, but not the static one, and not the one that pitches an imaginary good against evil. Rather than focusing on balancing work vs. life, we need to focus on the energy and the engagement we bring into all aspects of our life. We need to create what I call an Engaged Living.

An Engaged Living emphasizes the energy we create and the engagement we feel and expend throughout the day, in both our personal and professional lives. While time is a limited resource that causes the all so familiar conflicts of personal vs. professional, research on work with athletes shows that energy can be much more malleable. We can create energy, maintain it and utilize it more efficiently once we understand the basic rules of sustainable living.

When I started my business, my kids were very young. Being an entrepreneur, I would come home every day exhausted from a long day of work. Although I had more control and flexibility over my work schedule, I still worked so hard that when I finally met my kids, I was either too tired or too distracted and usually both to actually be present with them. I literally “gave at the office,” and I had nothing more to give at home.

Interestingly, even during those instances where I came home earlier, I still carried my heavy bag of worries and distractions with me. I was spending more time with my kids, but not in a meaningful way; I was simply not fully there.

One day, after a painful marketing failure I experienced at work, I dragged myself from work to pick up my kids from kindergarten. As I was looking at them running around in the playground, I realized I was totally drained. My focus on succeeding at work had left me no energy for anything else. I was physically with them, but I did not, so to speak, bring any fertile soil for us to grow and engage in. I was sitting there like an empty shell. I was burnt out.

After that day, I started researching and gradually testing and applying a more sustainable way of living, one that allows me to create a high-performance sustainable living, a life of engagement, in both my professional and personal life.

I realized through this process that my energy can be fuelled by my actions, decisions and internal motivation, and more importantly, that energy was much more pliable than time.

While time is unchangeable and finite, energy levels are not. We all had this experience where we were exhausted and felt like sleeping, but suddenly experienced an interesting occurrence, which woke us up immediately. These kinds of quick transitions from low to high energy can occur spontaneously, but they could also be designed and planned throughout the day by using a few basic practices.

In addition, while awareness of time creates a sense of conflict due to its limited nature, the awareness of energy is a dynamic flow. As humans, we were never meant to set our lives according to the strict ticking of a mechanical clock but the gentle wave of our inner rhythmic cycle.

“We live in a world”, writes Jim Loehr, “that celebrates work and activity, ignores renewal and recovery, and fails to recognize that both are necessary for sustained high performance.” [8]

Just like riding a wave, one can use the high end of our energy, the crest, to tackle the difficult obstacles of our day while being aware and allowing ourselves to rest and regenerate energy when it is time for the crest to become a trough. This cycle is much more natural to us as opposed to the strict and unbending characteristics of time. Once we become aware of this inner rhythm, we can choose to ride the waves skillfully and use their power to allow us more energy for longer stretches of time without exhausting ourselves.

A few years ago, I created an eight-dimensional course that teaches a step-by-step process of tapping into the internal reservoirs of energy and designing and implementing an Engaged Living.

While it is impossible to squeeze such a comprehensive course into a quick list of tips, in the following article, I wrote a shortlist of five principles to quickly get you started on designing your own Engaged Living.

Instead of focusing our energy on work, life and the balance between them, I invite you to take the first steps to a kinder and more sustainable personal and professional living, one that is based on managing and growing energy, not time, which in turn can lead to a greater feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment.

What is your method of managing your energy at work and in life? Feel free to share your questions, thoughts and ideas below in the comments.

References

[1] Perlow, L. A., & Porter, J. L. (2009). Making time off predictable–and required. Harvard business review, 87(10), 102-9.

[2] Virtanen, M., & Kivimäki, M. (2018). Long working hours and risk of cardiovascular disease. Current cardiology reports, 20(11), 1-7.

[3] Dembe, A. E., Erickson, J. B., Delbos, R. G., & Banks, S. M. (2005). The impact of overtime and long work hours on occupational injuries and illnesses: new evidence from the United States. Occupational and environmental medicine, 62(9), 588-597.

[4] Caruso, C. C. (2004). Overtime and extended work shifts; recent findings on illnesses, injuries, and health behaviors.

[5] Sadun R. et al. (2020). You’re Right! You Are Working Longer and Attending More Meetings, Harvard business school working knowledge.

[6] Work/Life Integration (n.d), Berkely Haas.

[7] Csikszentmihalyi, M., & LeFevre, J. (1989). Optimal experience in work and leisure. Journal of personality and social psychology, 56(5), 815.

[8] Loehr, J., Loehr, J. E., & Schwartz, T. (2005). The power of full engagement: Managing energy, not time, is the key to high performance and personal renewal. Simon and Schuster.

Stop following your bliss! Follow this instead

During the summers of 1985, and 1986, Bill Moyers interviewed the legendary Prof. Joseph Campbell on myths, life, heroes and bliss. These twenty four hours of raw footage filmed at George Lucas’s Skywalker ranch were cut into six one-hour episodes that aired on PBS in 1988, shortly after Campbell’s death, in what proved to be the most popular series in the history of public television.

During this interview, Campbell talks extensively on the subject of following your bliss:

“Follow your bliss!” He said.
“If you do follow your bliss,
you put yourself on a kind of track
that has been there all the while waiting for you,
and the life you ought to be living
is the one you are living.
When you can see that,
you begin to meet people
who are in the field of your bliss,
and they open the doors to you.

I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid,
and doors will open
where you didn’t know they were going to be.
If you follow your bliss,
doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”

The importance of finding your bliss and passion and the path to its realization is also the goal of one of the most famous career self-help books, “What Color Is Your Parachute?” by Richard Bolles. The book’s premise is that if you follow a thorough battery of self-inventory questionnaires (called “The flower of seven petals” exercise), you will find your inner calling and passion.

Another famous advocate of the finding your bliss movement was the late Steve Jobs. In 2005 towards the end of his Stanford commencement speech, Jobs urged the new graduates, saying: “…and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Yet more and more voices today claim that the now-famous-quote-turned-bumper-sticker “follow your bliss” is not the right way to finding your calling, job satisfaction or even happiness.

Hermina Ibarra, formerly a Prof. at Insead, now teaching in LBS London, rejects the idea that your career decisions should focus on filling out self-inquiry questionnaires. Instead, she claims in her book “Working Identities” that people should start by first taking action and finding out from real-life experience what their work-related preferences really are, later using those experiences and hard-earned knowledge to work backward to find their true working identity.

Similarly, billionaire Marc Cuban emphasizes the importance of following your effort and not your passion, claiming that: “One of the great lies of life is ‘Follow your passion’”. Cuban claims that we become good at the things we put effort into, so we should focus on finding those things we already invest time in. Ask yourself, says Cuban: “Where am I putting in my time?”

In 2012, Cal Newport wrote a book titled “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, where he repeatedly discusses the importance of focusing on improving your skills over attempts to finding your passion”. Interestingly, he uses Steve Jobs as an example of his method. Newport argues that you should not do what Jobs says, but instead do what Jobs did. According to Newport, if Jobs had followed his passion, he would have been a great Zen meditation teacher today, as his biography clearly shows he was very passionate about spirituality, but presented no passion for technology and entrepreneurship just before he built Apple.

So, which path should one choose?
Should we follow our hearts or follow our heads?
Should we make an effort to learn or learn to make an effort?

I have been in the field of what I call “Career Restructuring” for over two decades now, working with professionals in their late forties and above, helping them find their way in this very confusing and destabilizing period of their life.

During my work with these very talented individuals, I noticed that contrary to many books, thought leaders and bloggers, there is no one single answer. Life is just more complicated than that, and career choices are no exception.

Following your bliss is a wonderful and heart-opening concept, yet if you follow it too closely, it does pose a danger of oversimplifying the process. By seeking the single most important thing that “I am meant to be doing,” you risk creating unnecessary stress and anxiety in your life. Moreover, following your bliss may also create a false belief that once you find that one thing, then and only then, will all the doors open, leaving you in a state of constant bliss and success. This endless wait for that unreachable moment is often frustrating and disheartening.

On the other hand, I find the advice to “Follow your effort” or “Follow your time” cold and shallow. Yes, it is essential to persist and persevere in times of difficulty and trouble, but do we really want to continue doing something just because we already invested many years of our life in it? Should we really persevere just because we are good at something? Even if we no longer derive any meaning or depth from it?

So, where do we go from here?

I find that the easiest way to start the process of Career Restructuring is by following an integrative approach I call Feel-Think-Act (see figure 1 below).

Figure 1

The Feel-Think-Act process is an iterative model that I find most effective with my clients. The model brings together the best of both worlds merging “Follow your passion” with “Follow you Effort”.

In this section, I will elaborate more on each step of the Feel-Think-Act process.

Feel

When I take the first step of helping people in the process of Career Restructuring, I find that the head is the worse place to start. We tend to begin the process with so many fears, worries, confusion and misconceptions, that our rational thoughts become an impediment to our progress. Instead, I always prefer to go back to our hearts and more accurately, if we have to follow anything, my preference would be to “Follow your Energy”.

One of the most effective exercises to following your energy is an exercise I call “Moments of Light”. This exercise helps participants focus on their most successful moments in life and at work. Through a short analysis process, we distill these essential parts in each one of us that make us feel good, energetic and blissful.

The “Moments of Light” process does not narrow our field of vision to a single vocational path but gives us the intuition and a connection to whom we have the potential to become when we are at our best.

This is arguably one of my favorite exercises, as it creates an immediate shift in the participants and raises the energy and enthusiasm in the room almost instantly.

Think

Once we were able to clear some of the fears by raising our inner awareness and connecting to our “best selves”, it is much easier to start planning where we want to go.

This is when the thinking and focusing come in. It requires us to let go of both previous fears as well as expectations, hopes and dreams that are weighing us down. While the Feel stage was characterized by opening up to dreaming and visioning, the Think stage focuses on planning, narrowing and choosing. This stage also demands shutting down what I refer to as “Emergency Exit Doors”, so we could commit for a predetermined uninterrupted period of time.

Act

At this stage, we turn our focus to action and effort and make small but tangible actions to get immediate empirical results.

During this stage, our resolve is tested by crossing the bridges of our fears and hesitations, as many people prefer to feel and think but are fearful of taking the first step, lest it will lead to failure.

This Feel-Think-Act process is an iterative one. We start by focusing on our feelings, move to employing our minds to focus and select and finally push ourselves forward into action. This, in turn, brings in new feelings that we can process, think, select and act upon over and over again.

When going through the Act stage, it is important to remind ourselves that small steps are so much better than no steps. Following the rules of inertia, it is much easier to change the course of a car while it is driving on a freeway rather than when it is stuck, immovable, in a parking lot. Therefore, it is important to commence with a short process of feel-think, but then use the already obtained data and act, rather than wait forever for the perfect moment or situation to present itself.

Final words

In today’s world, it is not clear what is the best path to take when you go through a Career Restructuring process. But choose to follow your bliss while also being very practical and following your effort, and you will find that although the path is not always smooth or easy, it will lead you to where you want to be. Focusing your efforts on making the best, most meaningful work you possibly can, and more importantly, becoming happier and more fulfilled as you progress forward in your journey.

The missing chapter

For years this poem was my favorite, but then I realized it had a chapter missing. This week, I finally set down to write the missing chapter

Simple Wonders

It was a harsh cold winter in Pittsburgh, 2008. My eldest was just born, and both of us had just about enough of staying home, but with a wind chill as cold as -20°C degrees, there was not much we could do.

So every weekend, I would wrap her tiny body with lots of layers, put her in her favorite baby carrier, and like two snuggling kangaroos we would walk down to the Carnegie Museum of Art.

I have to confess that I have never visited a museum as often and as thoroughly as I did during that winter. There wasn’t a single exhibition that I skipped or a guided tour that I missed. It only took the guards once or twice before they started waiving us in without presenting our membership pass (I guess I was the only crazy dad they knew carrying a baby inside his coat during these insane snowstorms).

One of my favorite exhibitions in the museum was called “I Wish Your Wish”. It was a perforated wall, with strips of cotton ribbons coming out of each hole, each ribbon holding a wish in many different languages. Visitors were urged to select and take home a ribbon with their most coveted wish. The creator, a Brazilian artist (Rivane Neuenschwander), also placed a small table with pen and paper and encouraged visitors to add their own wishes and insert them into the vacant holes, de facto creating a technicolor Wailing Wall. She later collected these suggestions and updated the current list of wishes throughout the exhibition.

I recall visiting this exhibition every week, reading and re-reading the ribbons. Sometimes adding my own wishes but mostly asking myself: “What is it that we humans really deeply wish for?”, as for me, these constantly changing ribbons were tracking people’s wishes at different times and places around the world, just like a wish seismograph.

At some point, I ended up choosing one of the ribbons, and following the Brazilian popular belief, I tied it firmly three times across my wrist. The Brazilians believe that doing so will grant you your wish, but only when the ribbon is so weak that it tears and falls off on its own accord.

Which ribbon did I choose? was my wish granted? that is a story for a different post.. but one of my all-time favorite ribbons that kept on calling on me to be plucked from the wall was this one:

“To find pleasure in things as much as I used to as a child”

Going back to the Simple Wonders

For me, this last year of confinement is an invitation to stop and go back to finding pleasure in things as much as we used to as a child, these simple, magical moments: my children growing, nature, raindrops, the smell of wet grass, wind, cloud, silence, becoming aware of the simple wonders.

“Wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why,
but we are all like that.”

– From: “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”, by Robert Fulghum

This week, I invite you to stop,
breathe, take it in, and ask yourselves:
Isn’t it time we start noticing our simple wonders?

Feel free to share your simple wonders here below, and see you all next week

The mask not taken

Act 1:

When I picked my son from school the first day after our vacation, I immediately saw something was off.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“It was a rough day…” he sighed, “The kids at school mocked me because of my mask.”,

“Why!?” I asked,

“They said it was pink, and pink is for girls…”

Act 2:

The next day as I was about to drop my son off at school, I realized he was wearing a pink mask again. “Son, I said, I especially brought you a blue mask this morning. Did you not see it?”

“I did”

“So why did you take the pink one?”

“Well, I thought about it, and realized pink is just as nice as blue, and who says boys need to wear a blue mask anyway?”

“Are you sure? you know, the other kids might make fun of you again.”

“They might…but I don’t think I need to listen to them, and I definitely don’t think I should behave differently just to please them.”

Act 3:

I like this picture—shown above (taken during our last trip to the French Alps).

I like it because although there is a perfectly comfortable and well-trodden path just to our right, my kids preferred that we all walk knee-deep in the gushing stream running over black pebbles, enjoying the coolness of the water, smiling as we carefully take one step at a time.

So often we follow the beaten path, try to fit in or fear what others will say, think or do if we follow our own authentic path.

Yet, sometimes, it could be so freeing to choose to step off the path into the cool, gushing river.

It may not be the easiest path or the most common one.

Some may even think it is just plain weird or crazy, but in our lives, we often choose to take the path that is adventurous and fun and OURS,

And that has made all the difference.

Maybe it’s time to change the way we look at change?

Why do we change? How do we change? and What is the outcome of change?
Despite decades of research, we still can’t answer some of these most fundamental questions. What are we missing in order to solve this puzzle?

Finding your Change Pattern

In the previous post I raised a critical question: Do we all change the same way?
Today we will learn that the answer is No…but also Yes…
It turns out we have 4 basic change patters: Learners, Actors, Reactors, and Reflectors and we tend to be pretty consistent in using them when we change.

What is your Core Change Process Theme?

In this post, we go even deeper into the change process’s rabbit hole to find out what is our unique Core Change Process Theme in life. These themes are deeply-rooted, participant-specific change themes that triggers or induces our change processes.

The Princess who wanted the Moon

Long long ago, in a land far far away, lived a young princess.
One day the princess fell ill and told her father: “If I can have the moon, I will be well again”.

The worried king brought all the sages, wizards, and scientists, and they all debated and argued for hours on end, proving, again and again, their wondrous and endless wisdom. Yet, none of them knew how to bring down the moon for the princess, for it was so far and so heavy and so big.

After attentively listening to the sage’s arguments, the court jester silently slipped out of the room and went to see the princess. He quietly went into her room as she was laying on her gigantic white bed. He sat next to her, and held her hand. “My dear princess,” said the Jester, tell me more about this moon you so long for.” The princess was so happy to find someone who cared about her needs and enthusiastically shared her dream and her wish of the moon she so desired. After listening for a long while, the Jester asked: “My dear princess, what is the size of the moon?” “When I look at the moon, I can hide it with my fingernail, so it must be smaller than the tip of my finger,” she said. “And how far is it?” asked the Jester, “When I look at the trees, I see that it is sometimes trapped in their branches, so it must be as high in the sky as the trees.”, “and what is it made of? ” asked the Jester, “Gold, of course,” laughed the princess. “Then,” said the Jester, “I will bring you the moon by tomorrow morning.”

The next morning the young princess was beside herself with joy as she woke up to find a beautiful round medallion, smaller than her fingertip, and made entirely of gold next to her bed. She finally got her moon!

Sometimes, we are so sure we know what others need and want that we don’t even bother to ask.
Sometimes, we become angry because people are asking for things that we believe we can not give.
Sometimes, we really want to help, but we just don’t know how.

Sometimes, all we need to do is ask.
Sometimes, all it takes is to be open.
And sometimes, all we need is simply to listen.

The transformative power of attentive listening

While managers can gain many advantages from listening attentively to their employees (e.g., increased trust, gathering valuable information, reduced conflict, and induced motivation and commitment from employees, just to name a few), research shows that most managers are not attentively listening most of the time. A study of 8000 participants showed that most people believe they are above average listeners¹ and a recent research² of 3600 participants found that 96% of the participants thought they were good listeners. Yet studies³ show that on average, we retain only 25% of what we hear, and technology just makes listening harder².

Moreover, the true power of listening, as the story of “the Princess who wanted the moon” so vividly demonstrates, is not merely about using our hearing faculties to collect and retain information for an extended period of time. It is about creating an environment where the speaker can receive a sense of openness and belonging that can actually transform who they are and how they feel.

Can Attentive Listening really help us change?

A recent study⁴tested this assumption by randomly pairing participants to attentive listeners and poor listeners. It turns out that attentive listening does change the way we perceive ourselves and the world. Participants who shared a problem with an attentive-listening partner were found to feel more relaxed and less anxious. They felt encouraged to share their ideas with others and were able to articulate their problem more clearly. After being listened to, the participants felt less defensive and more aware of their weaknesses and strengths. They also exhibited a broader and more complex perspective of their problem and a less extreme and one-sided approach to possible solutions.

So why don’t we listen attentively?

1. It’s plain hard

We have to admit the hard fact, attentive listening is hard. From a young age, we were brought up to be right, to win, to have the correct answer and opinions, and most of us have never been actually trained to listen.
When you believe you already understand or have the answer, the brain quickly disengages and wonders off moving away from the state of attentive listening, even if outwardly, you remain quiet.

Image Source: Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz, Credit: Peanuts Worldwide

2. It’s time-consuming

Telling people what they should do is easy and quick; listening attentively is not. During times when we are all overworked and overloaded, attentive listeners become a rare commodity.

3. It’s a question of power

Leaders talk, subordinates listen. Strong dominating managers tend to be decisive and hold strong opinions and control. Yet, when we listen, we need to give some of that control to the speaker, thus yielding some of our own power and authority. Research suggest⁷ that there is actually a trade-off and although managers that listen may be perceived as less powerful, they gain, in turn, a higher level of admiration and prestige from their employees.

4. It’s because of technology

Technology weakens attentive listening. Research² shows that 98% of participants multitask at work, and 64% claim that listening becomes significantly more difficult in today’s digital workplace. One research⁸ actually demonstrated that the mere presence of the participant’s smartphone in close proximity impairs available cognitive capacity even if no calls or messages come through.

So, what can we do as managers to improve our attentive listening capabilities? Here are a few tips:

Improving your attentive listening capabilities

1. Small steps go a long way

Contrary to common belief, listening attentively to someone, even for a short period of time, can make a whole lot of difference. If you are present, open, and curious, a quick check-in can go a long way. A survey of 1000 participants⁵ showed that managers and colleagues who listened attentively, even for short periods of time while checking-in on their employees and peers, induced a feeling of deeper belonging in the workplace. This feeling of belonging has been shown to increases job performance (by 56%⁶) and employee’s willingness to contribute (3.5 times more likely to contribute to their fullest potential⁶).

2. Be present, make it count

A high-level manager in a large multi-national company received this comment on his 360 prior to our workshop: “I need my manager’s help, but he is so busy that he is hardly ever there, it’s not enough bringing your body to a meeting, you need to actually be present!” (ouch…). After going through the workshop, he added a new ritual to his workday, he started checking-in with his employees by merely asking them: “How can I support you?” and simply listening. In a follow-up session, he shared with the group:” I couldn’t believe how such a simple question, and then silence and listening could make such a huge difference. Once the team felt I was really present, I was able to help them with issues that blocked them from doing their job in the last 4 years.”

3. Stop talking! (but don’t be silent either)

When you are listening, don’t interrupt, give advice, find solutions, or give feedback. Just listen.

But attentive listening is not about silently nodding your head and making “mmm” noises while your partner speaks. In a survey of over 3,492 participants⁹,the people that were ranked as the best listeners were those that asked good supporting questions that conveyed a sense of safety and openness as well as trust in the speaker’s abilities to solve the problem.

Interestingly, people that ranked high on listening skills did give feedback and advice but only after creating a safe rapport by listening attentively for an extended period of time.

“When you really listen to another person from their point of view and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.” – Stephen Covey

4. Use technology, don’t let it abuse you

While technology can impede our ability to listen attentively, it could also be a great resource, especially in times of Covid-19 and social distancing. I have recently noticed that when done correctly, managers I work with have been very successful in creating heart to heart meaningful conversations using virtual one-on-one meetings without ever leaving their offices.

5. Don’t forget the little princess

The next time you are meeting an employee that is struggling or a colleague that is stuck with a problem, instead of immediately telling them what to do, giving them advice or going into feedback mode. Remember the little princess and listen attentively.

Chances are, you may actually have a better shot of helping them find their moon.

References:

1. 1. Haney, W. V. (1979). Communication and interpersonal relations. Homewood, IL: Irwin.
  2. Accenture: #ListenLearnLead Global Research 2015. Retrieved 12.8.2020 from: website link
  3. Husman, R. C., Lahiff, J. M., & Penrose, J. M. (1988). Business communication: Strategies and skills. Chicago: Dryden Press.
  4. Itzchakov, G., DeMarree, K. G., Kluger, A. N., & Turjeman-Levi, Y. (2018). The listener sets the tone: High-quality listening increases attitude clarity and behavior-intention consequences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(5), 762-778.
  5. Twaronite, K. (2019). The surprising power of simply asking coworkers how they’re doing. Harvard Business Review.
  6. Carr et al. (2019). The Value of Belonging at Work. Harvard Business Review.
  7. Hurwitz, A., & Kluger, A. N. (2017, January). The power of listeners: How listeners transform status and co-create power. In 77th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, Atlanta, GA.
  8. Ward, A. F., Duke, K., Gneezy, A., & Bos, M. W. (2017). Brain drain: The mere presence of one’s own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2(2), 140-154.
  9. Zenger, J., & Folkman, J. (2016). What great listeners actually do. Harvard Business Review, 14.

It’s the culture, stupid!

In today’s VUCA world, no single person can be expected to have all the answers and solutions. The staggering amount of information, its complexity, and the rapid pace in which current knowledge becomes outdated, means that employees and teams, and not only managers, are now the organization’s most important asset for success.

Although this change is not new and is often researched and discussed, it seems there is a gap between the current understanding of the situation to the actual implementation of that understanding in the business world.
Indeed, there is a great need for a cultural shift that will empower employees and teams to work, grow and flourish both on the technical as well as on the personal level in order to achieve the new cutting-edge success in the industry.