Planners’ Picks
A collection of resources from CSN planning committee members worth mentioning
Today is the Employee Resource Fair — please encourage your employees to visit this event for information on updating their benefits, as well as other groups on campus (CSN included!) showing their services there. The event runs 10-4 at Varsity Hall in Union South.
In the lyrics of Green Day: “Summer has come and passed / The innocent can never last / Wake me up when September ends.” Here’s your CSN alarm clock that October has begun, and we have under 100 days to finish the year strong. How will you do that? Through managing conflict, delivering kindness, and cultivating curiosity, of course! Enjoy this installment of Planners’ Picks.
:: Image of the Week
Rest is much more than sleeping when you’re tired. Reference this infographic for an excellent list of options to recharge your body’s battery in multiple ways.
:: Resources on Mental Health and Self-Care
The Butterfly Effect of Kindness
Do you believe in serendipity or are you in the other camp – the one that believes everything happens for a reason? That, good or bad, the events in our life are not random, that there is an underlying order to life that determines how everything turns out?
Learn about the “butterfly effect,” a mathematical construct that rests on the notion that the world is so deeply interconnected that one small occurrence can influence a much larger complex system. Dr. Melissa Hughes relates this concept to kindness, and how it can ripple with one small act.
https://www.melissahughes.rocks/post/the-butterfly-effect-of-kindness
:: Resources on Work Culture & Team Development
How to Stay Empathic Without Suffering So Much
Four steps to a healthier, more helpful, and more sustainable form of empathy. Empathy, or the capacity to “feel with” and share others’ emotions, can be a beautiful gift that connects us with each other. Yet it can also feel heart-wrenching and even unbearable at times. Researchers tell us that our initial empathic responses can shift in one of two directions—toward empathic distress or empathic concern. Learn more about these two directions, and how to effectively deal with situations with coworkers and others, in this article.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_stay_empathic_without_suffering_so_much
Managing Team Conflict
In any group of people, conflict is a natural part of the dynamic. How leaders choose to manage inevitable disagreements can make the difference between a dysfunctional team and a successful one. In this practical LinkedIn learning course, conflict expert Amy Gallo teaches you how to handle conflict as a people manager. Explore key skills, including: how to create the conditions for healthy conflict, how to coach your team through disagreements, how to manage yourself throughout the process, and how to follow up afterwards. Learn how to keep conversations collaborative and not combative, create psychological safety for your team, preempt future conflicts, encourage your team to repair relationships, and more.
“When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”― Maya Angelou
5 Ways to Be a Better Team Player
Working with others is a staple of modern work life. Employees spend 80% of their workday collaborating with coworkers, according to studies, underscoring the vital importance of teamwork skills. While remote work put in-person teamwork on the back burner for a while, the increasing prevalence of return-to-office mandates means it might be time for a refresher course or, for some young employees, new lessons in being a good team player. “It isn’t easy to manage, building and sustaining great teams, or being a great team member, but the results are worth it,” says Val Olson, a career coach at Korn Ferry Advance.
Being a better team player at work involves combining interpersonal skills, communication, collaboration, and a positive attitude. Team members who work well together increase both productivity and the chances of success. Experts say there are a few key steps employees can take to brush up on and improve collaboration skills.
https://www.kornferry.com/insights/this-week-in-leadership/5-ways-to-be-a-better-team-player
:: CSN’s Book of the Week Recommendation
DRIVE by Dan Pink
Today, we dive into Drive: the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink. This book has been out for several years and continues to gather steam with its audience. Pink challenges the old-school way of extrinsic motivation in the workplace as being outdated and stale. The carrot-and-stick approach to motivating staff and threatening discipline was tailored to assembly line factory jobs and is not suitable to the more heuristic thinking we employ in most roles today. Pink suggests that, in our twenty-first-century work environments, three components of intrinsic motivation are more effective: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. This holds true even more after COVID, and the higher acceptance of hybrid and remote work.
The Official Write-up for Drive:
Most people believe that the best way to motivate is with rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, says Daniel H. Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others). In this provocative and persuasive new book, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live.
Watch this RSA Animate Video on Drive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Check out the book at https://www.danpink.com/books/drive/
:: Resources on Self-Leadership Development
Cultivating Curiosity: The Art of Living a Learning Life
This article explains why being more curious will benefit you: Cultivating curiosity helps you get unstuck, and opens doors you never knew existed.
“Curiosity allows us to learn, grow, and be playful even in our work. It requires not only noticing but actively seeking out solutions. Nearly unstoppable once started, curiosity contains and creates its own perpetual motion, where one question leads inexorably to another, a never-ending path of learning and wonder.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cultivating-curiosity-art-living-learning-life-a-human-workplace/
6 Simple Steps to Start Believing in Yourself (They’ll Make You a Better Leader)
Every successful business leader has a strong sense of self-belief. It’s a precursor to success, no matter how you decide to define it–it’s the foundation of confidence–but let’s try to define it, anyway. Here’s my definition: Belief is the full acceptance and trust in something–self-belief is when you trust yourself.
“The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—that’s where it’s at.” —Jesse Owens
:: Resources on Communication
Ask 3 Simple Questions
As a leader, is it better to be respected than liked? Not really. Research shows likable people:
- tend to be more successful in sales (which matters, because every entrepreneur is in sales);
- are more likely to be promoted or hired;
- are more likely to build and maintain great professional (and personal) relationships;
- are better able to influence the people around them; and
- are better able to help other people feel better about themselves.
Likability is a driver of lasting connections and relationships. Likability is a driver of success.
So yeah: It’s better to be respected and liked. And while earning respect takes time, it’s surprisingly easy to be more likable, starting today.
“The person who tells the best story rules their corner of the world.” – James Clear
‘Courage Is the Mother Skill’—Why Leaders Must Learn to Be Brave
The Maya Angelou quote that opens this article supports my belief that leadership competence is contingent upon your ability to develop courage. Courage truly is the “mother” attribute, the “parent” to all the other virtues of success.
The magnitude of your courage is determined by the strength of your leadership Foundation. If you’re not firmly rooted in who you are and what you believe, you won’t be able to stand up for yourself and others when it matters most. And you won’t be able to make bold changes or hard choices. Read this article by Douglas Conant, former leadership professional at Kraft and author of several leadership books.
https://conantleadership.com/courage-mother-skill-leaders-must-be-brave/
:: Resources on Remote and Hybrid Work
How to Engage Remote Teams, with Tsedal Neeley
Tsedal Neeley is a professor at the Harvard Business School. Her work focuses on how leaders can scale their organizations by developing and implementing global and digital strategies. She has published extensively in leading scholarly and practitioner-oriented outlets and her work has been widely covered in media outlets such as the BBC, CNN, Financial Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist.
She was named to the Thinkers50 On the Radar list for making lasting contributions to management and is the recipient of many other awards and honors for her teaching and research. She is the author of Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere*.
In this Coaching for Leaders podcast, they explore what the research shows us about productivity and fear around remote work. We highlight three key principles that leaders can lean in on in order to engage remote teams better. Plus, Tsedal provides practical examples on how almost any leader can put these principles into action.
https://coachingforleaders.com/podcast/engage-remote-teams-tsedal-neeley/
:: Upcoming Events
Networks That Work!
Creating a culture of wellness and tools that encourage self-confidence and resilience to meet life’s challenges and transitions
CSN is taking over LMD! Some of the CSN planning committee members are partnering with Jamesetta from Employee Assistance and Carol from the Retirement Issues Committee to bring you a panel discussion on wellness at the LMD conference.
This panel discussion begins with an introduction to Campus Supervisors Network, the programs and resources it provides, and its impact developing a strong campus network that encourages strong relationships and wellness for supervisors and staff. Attendees are invited to ask questions throughout the session. Panelists from CSN, Retirement Issues Committee and the Employee Assistance Office will answer questions and provide guidance on having sensitive discussions, empowering employees to ask questions, and encouraging employees to advocate for their own financial/mental/emotional development to build resiliency and resources to manage inevitable transitions such as job changes, health issues and retirement.
If you’re attending LMD, please check out our panel discussion!
Date: October 18, 2023
Time: 9:45-11:00 am
https://hr.wisc.edu/leadership-and-management-development-conference/sessions/