(Really)
Impactful Communication Practices

We're intentionally building great and we're recording. And we are also passionate about not doing it alone. We are passionate about coming together as a community in order to make really positive change. Can anyone guess how many years Culture Community has been meeting?

Four?

Diana says seven. Next month is actually our eighth anniversary. Culture Community has been around for eight years. Next August. I actually I'm going to go on my LinkedIn today and be like, When did we start this? Eight years we've been getting together on a monthly basis. Again, open to everyone, open to the community to talk about leadership, to talk about culture. This is a space. We've intentionally designed this as a space to learn, develop, and grow, a safe place to connect with each other, and also a space to be inspired and activated to make positive change in the world. We always talk about how it's not enough to just come and consume the content. Let's all take action afterwards. Let's make a commitment. How are we to take what we've learned, put it into action to positively impact our cultures, positively impact our team, positively impact our leadership, positively impact our personal lives. When, where, and why we meet, we meet online monthly. We used to meet in person, and then COVID shifted us online. I'm so grateful for that because now we get to spend time with people all across the country, all across the world.

So we meet on a monthly basis. This is awkward that I'm introing today. Usually Emily intros, but she's on vacation this So who's talking next month? Me. I'm talking about resilience. We're going to talk about from setbacks to comebacks, mastering resilience against all odds. August 22nd, 8:30 AM. I would love to see you here next month. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Cori to talk a little bit about the perk.

Hello, everybody. So good to see some new faces, some familiar faces. For those of you that don't know who I am, my name is Cori, and I get to be on this amazing perk team. I have the pleasure of telling you a little bit more about who we are and what we do. We are a Premier Leadership and Culture Development Studio. We're based out of Madison, Wisconsin, and we are on a mission to build the world's best leaders. We work with companies big and small all across the United States to achieve their leadership and culture objectives. While the industries are all across the board, the one thing they have in common is that they are all growth-minded and ready to take their teams, leadership, organization to the next level. We know there are a lot of companies out there that do what we do. They probably have the same mission as us to build the world's best leaders. But what sets us apart is how we do what we do. We make it fun. We believe that learning and growth should be something that people are excited to participate in. We bring the confetti, we bring the positive energy, and we bring activities to keep people engaged in learning and growing.

We make it human and we make it safe. We create safe and courageous spaces where people can show up as their best self and really learn and grow to the best of their abilities. We make it custom. We love connecting with our clients on what success means for them, learning about their vision, mission, values, and making sure the content and activities and workshops that we bring are in alignment with all of those things. And we make it last. We're not here for shots of inspiration. We are here for long-term sustainable growth. We do a variety of things with all of our clients, some really cool things all across the board. But what we are really known for is our custom leadership development programs, which include live training, group coaching, and one-on-one coaching, team workshops that span anywhere from 2 hours to full series, exec retreats, and our CLEAR Leadership Training program, which is a seven-month certification program that distills leadership down to its core elements and equips your leaders with the skills they need to be a world's best leader. We also get to do amazing things like Culture Community, which is why you are all here today.

I'll turn it back over to Leah to introduce our amazing speaker.

Yay. Awesome. Thanks, Cori. I am I'm so pumped to have Michelle Ventcherini. Back at Culture Community, she is always one of our highest rated speakers. People just love Michelle and ask, When is Michelle going to speak again? I want to give you a little bit about Michelle's background. Michelle is an independent consultant providing HR Consulting Services and Coaching. Her background includes more than 25 years of leadership and operations experience across all HR functions. So safe to say you are definitely an expert. And prior to establishing her coaching and consulting practice, Michelle worked in several industries, including telecommunications, software, and biotechnology. She is an adjunct faculty member of the Master's in Biotech program at University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a frequent presenter at local events. Michelle, when do you sleep? Is our question. She has a wide range of HR topics, including leadership and talent development, strategic staffing, and employee relations. This isn't in her bio, but I want to say, Michelle is one of the most genuine, warm, welcoming, kindest humans you will ever meet. If you ever get the opportunity to have coffee with her, take her up on it. It is feeling so seen, so heard, so valued.

And one of the things Michelle taught us the last time she spoke at Culture Community, something she taught us that we at The Perk have taken as a mantra as an intention, we bring it into every workshop that we do. And we always give Michelle credit. She shared that everyone here has something to teach, and everyone here has something to learn. And hearing her say that has really shifted how we look at things, and again, the intention that we bring into the workshops that do. So without further ado, I will stop talking and turn it over to you, the amazing Michelle.

Oh, my gosh, Leah. If that isn't a shot in the arm to start my day, I don't know what is. Although I have to say, I did start my day with my granddaughter. My son has COVID, and my daughter-in-law starts work at... She has to be at work at seven. So she's been dropping my granddaughter off in the morning, and I've been taking her to daycare. So that is a fantastic way to start my day. But this just It's like icing on the cake. I am looking for... How do I share my screen? I don't see that at the bottom. Did you give me permission to share? Yes, I believe so. You should have. So while we're working this out, folks, think about this question. Why is good communication so hard? Just jot in the chat, why do you think it's so hard? Because it shows up all the time in surveys. We hear about it in 360 reviews. What makes it so difficult? It's been difficult for decades, and so we still hear about it, but why? You'd think we would have mastered it by now. Am I...

Michelle, do you not see share on the bottom of your screen with the green arrow?

Oh, there it is. Okay, there it is. All right, there we go. Perfect. Let's see what some of our chat answers are. Our brains take in information differently. Very true. And I'm so, so glad that that came up because that is what we're going to talk about. It's literally how our brain processes information. Only 10% of people are self-aware. It is so complex. Absolutely. Style vary from person to person. I was talking to someone just yesterday who is... She's a serious person. She's analytical. She's an introvert. She's very focused. She comes in, puts her earphones in, does her work, and she gets criticized for it. You don't communicate enough. You're not friendly. You're not open. And I'm not listening to her. I'm saying, You're totally open. You just have a different style. You have a different way that you prefer. So styles are so different from person to person. Audiences interpret the message differently. And when you think about communication, that is where it matters. It's not what we say, it's what is heard and how it's applied. People aren't listening. They're multitasking. We communicate what we want to know and may not communicate what others want to know.

Very true. I see Courtney said that. That's such a Courtney thing to say. She's so thoughtful. But you need to know what is important to my receiver, not what's important to me. We're seeing a lot of things here in what makes communication so difficult. All true. And things we're going to talk about. So thank you for that. All right. So Leah talked about this. I put this at the start of every talk I give, every class I teach. Every single person here has something to teach. Don't think that because you don't have specific experience or a lot of experience, that you don't have something to share. Absolutely, you have something to share. And if you have a lot of experience and you've been doing this forever, you still have something to learn. That is true across the board, including me. I have the slides, I don't have the answers. So don't hesitate to speak up, to offer a different opinion, to share an experience. That's what culture community is. It really is a community. It's probably what makes this one of the most unique learning opportunities. Let's jump in. This is the communication process. If you ever thought of taking something as vague as communication and break it down into a boring flowchart, this is roughly what it would look like.

You have somebody that has a thought. They have something they want to communicate, something to get across. They encode this thought, which usually means they put it into words, might take a little bit of time deciding what words, and then they send this encoded thought off. It might be in a conversation, it might be an email, it might be a text message, it could be smoke signals, whatever the case may be. Then it arrives at the receiver, and receiver decodes this message. This is where some of the comments about, It's not what's said, it's what's heard that matters. People here think differently, they interpret things differently. 100% true. But it gets decoded, and then the receiver applies meaning to it, and the receiver sends feedback back to the sender. This is one of the most complex things that happens, broken down into really five easy steps. But there are blind spots that come up along the way of this process. We all have them. We all do them. The first is that we assume that what we see, feel, and think is what the other person sees, feels, and thinks. That goes back to the what you are encoding is not the same as what the receiver is decoding.

We can't make that assumption. We have to constantly be checking in on what's the message that you're receiving, how is it landing? Second blind spot. We think that we remember what people say. They said this, they said that. What we actually remember is what we think about what they say. It goes back to that decoding step. It's not the words, it's not exactly what's said, but it's what I thought about what you said. This one is really It's understandable and pretty common, but especially when we are fearful or upset, we are unable. It's not that we're unwilling, it's not that we don't try, but when we reach a certain level of fear and upset, it is physically not possible for our brains to process and stand in the other person's shoes. And so it's important as the communicator and the communicateee to remember this, that we're not at our best right now. We forget the speaker, the deliverer, forgets that the meaning rests with the listener. And then we fail to think about and realize that fear, trust, and distrust change how we interpret and talk about reality. This goes back to a little bit about we don't remember what people say.

We remember how people made us feel. We've all I've seen that quote. It's very true. When fear, trust, and distrust are playing a role in that conversation, it changes the communication. It changes how it happens. When we think about communication training, what are the topics that usually come up? What are the topics that we usually think about? You can just add them to the chat or just go off mute and say, What do you What do we think? When we think about communication training, what comes up? Listening skills? Yeah. Style? Absolutely. They are usually focused around either that decoding step, that what are the words that we use, how do we deliver a message, or training focuses around this decoding. How do we respond? How do we receive information non-defensively? How do we accept feedback? I did a quick Google search, and this is just some of the top reactions to the Google search that I did. When you enter communication skills or how to improve communication skills. This is what shows up, and it's a lot of what you all are talking about, non-violent communication style and tips, talking slowly, clearly. Exactly. But this is not what we're going to talk about today.

There is a step before the process where we are going to focus because great communication starts before you have something to say. And that is what we are going to talk about today. But first, an anatomy lesson. It will be a short anatomy lesson because I don't know a lot about it, but I do know this. We have about 100 We have about 200 billion neurons in our brains. We have about 500 million neurons in our gut, in our stomach, our intestines, our gall bladder, our intestinal tract. And these two parts of our body are connected. There are nerves, including the vagus nerve, which is the largest nerve in the body, that has a direct connection between our head and our guts. And so So all day long, our brain is sending neural messages to our gut. Our gut is sending hormonal messages back to our brain. And this is something called the gut-brain axis. And if you Google it, there's a ton of research about this. It's really called gut-brain axis. It talks about how there is this connection between what we think and what we feel. And it's a real physical, electronic, neurotransmitted connection.

It's not just a feeling. This is what they talk about all day. There's a lot of talk about hunger, intestinal tract, how am I feeling, what you might expect. But there's also a lot of communication that happens about behaviors. How am I acting? What am I seeing? What's my stress level? What does that mean? Pain. It's a Am I foggy today? Am I having a hard time recalling things? Or today, sharp, and I'm on it. We also talked about immunity. There's a lot that's going on in our bodies. The question is, what does this to do with communication. Really interesting, Michelle, but let's get to the point. So gut instinct, this thing that we casually talk about, Oh, my gut instinct is, is instant. It is real and it is incredibly accurate. It happens every time contact is made. So it can be with your manager who you reported to for five years. When you see an email from them, you see them coming, approaching your desk to talk, you have gut instinct reaction, no matter if it's the first time that it's happened or the thousandth time that it has happened. It resets every time.

It happens in 60 milliseconds, so 61 thousands of a second. We have this gut reaction. We have a feeling before we even have the words to describe it. If it feels good, we're going to be open to whatever they have to say. If it feels bad, we go into self-protection. Again, this happens every time. Even if it's the 20th time in the day that someone has come to talk to you, you have this gut instinct reaction. It's impossible to overwrite it. Our brains are so amazing. I found this beautiful clip art for brains. I used to have this pretty boring basic clip art that I had here, but I went out to find something better, and I found this on Etsy, and this artist has these gorgeous images of the brain. So I had to include it because Our Brains are amazing. They're unbelievable what they do and just how they function. However, 80% of our brains, so 80% of the physical part of our brain, so if your brain weighs 10 pounds, 8 pounds of it is dedicated to coping with stress. So we are predisposed to have a negative or defensive or a protective reaction.

This goes back hundreds of millions of years when humans lived in communities and tribes and If you, for some reason, got kicked out of the tribe, it was a real threat to your life because the world was wild. You wouldn't have food, you wouldn't have protection, you wouldn't have community, you wouldn't have people in your life. Our brains evolved to be very very, very protective to assume the worst. We have a limbic system, which is made up of the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the hypothalmus, a couple of others, but those are the big ones. As we go through life and we experience things, our limbic system is making a recording, and it remembers everything. Even the things that you're like, I don't remember that, somewhere, your limbic system remembers that. Our limbic system, as part of our defense, trying to keep us alive, is constantly scanning our environment, and it compares what we see in front of us to the experiences that we have had in the past. If a past experience is negative or we find ourselves in unknown circumstances, the amygdala kicks in and responds with fight or flight. When we feel threatened, the fight or flight, some people say fight, flight, or free.

If a past experience is thought to be... Sorry. If a past experience is positive and the current experience are as expected, the amygdala turns things over to a prefrontal cortex, which is the largest part of the brain. It's the part of our brain that does rational thought, that's creative, that can have a healthy debate, that can resolve conflict. We're all pretty familiar with it. It's the biggest part of our brain, and our brain is pretty efficient and sometimes pretty lazy. Using your prefrontal cortex takes a lot of energy. It's why at the end of the day, or even after a few hours, if you've just been really focused on something and you feel exhausted, this is why it takes a lot of energy. So our brains are not predisposed to hand things over to the prefrontal cortex. We'd much rather keep it with our limbic system where things are automatic. We don't think about it. It doesn't take as much energy. But if there's no reason to be concerned, our amygdala turns it over to the prefrontal cortex, and the prefrontal cortex now does a rational assessment of our current circumstances and the threat level of our current circumstances.

If our current circumstances match what is expected, our prefrontal cortex engages, and we go on to have a very pleasant conversation. If our current circumstances don't match our expectations, the prefrontal cortex disengages and control goes back to our amygdala. For example, I met my very good friend, Diana in Toronto for coffee yesterday. We went to the same place we always go to. We sat on the same couch that we always sat on. There was nothing unexpected or unpleasant, no bad memories about this interaction. But I've been I've had pneumonia, and so this is actually the first week that I've gotten out and about. I had a little piece of current circumstances don't match what I always expect here. I had a little bit of anxiety about, am I going to have a coughing fit? Is someone going to ask me to put a mask on because I'm coughing? Which I don't have any problem if somebody asked me to do that. I'm happy to put a mask on. So even in this event that is something I've looked forward to, it happens often. I still I had this little bit of, This isn't exactly what I expected.

So when this happens and our past experience is negative, or the current circumstances are unknown, or if what we're experiencing doesn't match what we expect, we go into something that's called an amygdala hijack, which is a pretty common term. Most people have probably heard of it. When you are in an amygdala hijack, you have a physical response. You feel it in your body. Your heart beats faster, your skin gets clammy, your hands and your feet might get cold. And your hands and your feet get cold in these situations because our blood is rushing to our trunk, to the core of our body, to protect our vital organs. And that's why your hands and your feet get cold when this happens. We also have a psychological response. We might get angry, we have really strong emotions, we might be irrational, even panic and anxiety. So all of this happens before there's eye contact, body language, or active listening. And this is why we have to start our communication before we have something to say, because all people are having this reaction before we've even actually said something to them. So this is how this snowballs in organizations and on teams.

8:30, Senior leader sends a meeting invitation that says, Please arrange to attend a mandatory company meeting at 2:00 this afternoon. You can imagine there's a typical response. By 9:30, people have talked about this. They've analyzed it. They've compared every observation that they've made over the last week, and they've said, The HR director has been in their office a lot. I bet there's going to be layoff. Remember, our brains assume the worst. It's a defensive mechanism. The survival mechanism. There's not a lot of information in this email. So this is where the chatter takes people. We've all been here. We've been part of it. We've heard it. We've been on the receiving end. We've been on the leader end of it. Of course, there's And of course, this invitation is set at 8:30. So people have all day to think about this. And it's clear that people have taken long lunches, that people are chatting in small groups, that when you walk by, the group space break up and conversation stops. We've all been here. We I can imagine the dynamics of it. So the 2:00 comes around and the senior leader announces that the company has closed some significant business.

It's going to bring stability, it's going to bring new opportunities, and it's going to bring growth for the company. And you think, great, wow, wow. But we all know that for most employees by now, they're like, and they're just waiting for the other shoes to drop. And then the senior leader gets upset because I gave them this great news. Nobody had any questions. No one even talked about it. It didn't seem like they even cared. Meanwhile, employees remain skeptical and they're negative because they keep waiting for something to happen. So we've all been there. We've all seen this. So this is what is happening on the employee side of this scenario. This email comes off, mandatory meeting at 2:00. When we threatened, we hear threats. Even if there is not a threat there, we feel threatened. This gut-brain axis has said, Uh-oh, this is not what I expected. Something's happening. Get ready. Even though we have no reason to believe that it's going to be bad news. We start to interpret from this position of fear. Everything that we see, and hear, and talk about after we have this initial potential gut reaction looks like fear, looks like something to be afraid of.

People will retreat for self-protection. They also go into their community, and this is where gossiping happens. This is where we see these wild stories take off that have no validity whatsoever. But there's safety in these numbers. It goes back to, as I said, when hundreds of millions of years ago, when we lived in tribes and we had to for protection for survival. So we have not lost these instincts. They have not gone away, even though we don't need to live in tribes to survive in the same way. When there's a difference between what we expect and what we are experiencing or what we believe and what we are experiencing, we make up stories to explain that difference. Most of the time, those stories are inaccurate. But this is what's happening. I start to assign blame. At this point, your prefrontal cortex shuts down. Rational thought is not even a possibility. Takes too much energy. We don't believe it anyway. And so we get into, we and the people receiving this message, get into this cycle of of doom is really what it is. And we think something bad is going to happen. We see something that reinforces the bad, even if what we see actually really disprove the bad, our brains go, No, it's bad, it's bad, it's bad.

So this is how it happens. This is how it snowballs across the entire organization. And when an employee is experiencing even a mild amygdala hijack, listening skills and body language don't matter. So this is why what we do before we even had something to say is so important. So what do we do with this? What is the antidote to this? As an organization, when you get employee survey results that constantly say, Communication is poor. We need more communication, the first reaction is Usually, I'll have more meetings, I'll send more emails. And that often is the exact opposite of what would be effective. As our friends at the Perk like to say, trust is the core of everything. When trust is high, your amygdala hijack is going to be low. When trust is low, your amygdala hijack is going to be extreme. But it's a very specific trust. Trust is integrity, trust is authenticity, trust is reliability. In this case, the trust that matters is the trust that's built on certainty. The trust that's built on, I can count on you. If you say the apple is going to to fall from the tree, I can count that the apple is going to fall from the tree.

So as a manager, as a communicator, as a member of an organization, or a member of a family, or any a group, certainty is the key. It's the tipping point that influences if someone has an amygdala hijacked and how extreme that amygdala hijack is. But really, the card is against us. When we receive information that we trust and our previous experience with this person or this piece of information is positive, and if the circumstances match our expectations, our trust and certainty are high. But all three have to be there. Information that we trust, previous positive experience, and circumstances that match expectations. Our gut-burring axes And the cross talk goes into effect. Our prefrontal cortex says, It's okay. There's nothing to worry about here. I've seen this before. We're good. Our gut says, Cool. We're good here. Go ahead and send us those hormones. Our brains release the good hormones, the happy hormones, the bonding hormone, the hormone that makes us connect to other humans, the well-being hormone, the reward hormone. So when trust is high and certainty is high, it sets the stage for a very productive, enjoyable conversation. On the other hand, if it's information we don't trust, or we think it's not all the information that there is to be had, or we have a previous negative experience, or circumstances are what we expect, trust and certainty are low.

So when it came to trust and certainty being high, it had to have all three to reach that level. On the low end, it's only one of these that has to be there, and we're going to be at the low end of certainty and trust. Again, our brains are stacked, have evolved to stay at this low end. Our gut and our brain are talking. In this case, it's the amygdala. Our prefrontal cortex is not engaged. It is our reaction. It's our instincts. It's the amygdala saying, something's happening, it's going to be bad. Even if it's not going to be bad, the amygdala says, it's going to be bad. Our gut says, Oh, no, I'm turning already. Send me those flight or fight hormones. This is when a brain releases testosterone, cortisol, and epinephrine. These are the hormones that you see there. There are aggression hormones, the stress hormones, the fight or flight hormone. Zones. When we have the amygdala hijacked, this is what's happening. This is what causes us to be irrational. This is what causes us to be emotional. This is what causes us to be defensive and angry. It's not a choice that people make.

Now, just a little bit, emotional intelligence has a role here. When there is a pause between getting an initial contact and a pause before the contact actually happens, we do have emotional intelligence, and we have the opportunity to choose to engage the prefrontal cortex and say, Maybe it's not bad news. Let's wait Wait, let's hear what they have to say. Let's listen. Not everybody has that level of emotional intelligence. It takes practice. It takes a lot of experience. It takes a lot of experience where doing that has been productive, which not everybody has had that experience. There is some choice. Once you have the initial reaction, there's choice between that and how you actually physically react to the conversation. But our master history of that skill is different for everybody. Here's another. How about the, do you have a minute? I don't care how experienced you are, what level of the organization you are. When you get a message from your manager that says, do you have a minute, our guts react, and it's not positive. My husband works at American Family, and last fall, they went through all their layoffs, and it was complicated.

It was long and drawn out, and communication wasn't great. And his manager was fond of sending that, Do you have a minute? Messages. And he finally had to say to her, Can you please give some context when you send that message? Because things are so uncertain right now. I immediately think you're just calling me to lay me off. But what happens? A manager asks the employee to come into the office. If trust is high and the previous experience is positive, there will be an amygdala hijacked, but it's not going to be really extreme. They're going to overcome it and get past it pretty quickly, but it will still be there. If trust is unproven or this trust is high, there's a previous negative experience, the amygdala hijack that the employee is having or the person on the other end of the communication is having is going to be much stronger. Perhaps to the point where it's debilitating. And then it happens again when the employee enters the office and looks around and does a scan. Oh, Erica, let me finish this thought, and then I want to hear about this. Employee enters the office, and they go through this again.

And you've seen this. If you've called an employee into your office, they stop and they look. And the first thing I think is, it's HR here, right? But if circumstances are as expected, everything is good, prefrontal cortex engages, and you have a wonderful conversation. If the employee is in a magdala hijack, it's going to take a while to get to the point of having a good conversation. So as a leader, we have to be aware of this, and we have to know, Okay, they are going to come in here, and I'm going to have to spend some time just calming them down. Even if they don't feel a peer agitated, we know that they are. Erica, I want to hear what was the activity that you did with your staff?

I had a staff of 10, and I gave each of them a slip of paper with an emotion on it. Everything from happy, excited, angry, neutral, crying, all sorts of different emotions. Then I wrote on a whiteboard, I wrote, Come see me. I made them go around the circle and read, Come see me in each of those emotions. Because when you send a text or an email that says, Come see me, or, Do you have a minute, you don't know what the emotion is that it's been said in. Basically, I wanted them to realize that just because somebody says, Come see me, or, Do you have a minute? They could have something really exciting to say. I Right.

Yeah. I agree, Leah. I love that activity because it opens their mind up to the real possibility that this is not going to be a bad experience. It gives them a tool for expressing how they feel. Because remember, they're having these feelings really before they even have the words to explain how they're feeling. The other thing I really love about that is you're acknowledging, I know that this might be stressful. And you're creating a ritual where they know, Okay, she does this a lot. Most of the time, it's not bad news. So you're building up their own ability to cope with that.

It also reminds me when I get those emails from my boss to try and remember that it doesn't necessarily mean it's bad.

That's right. And so that's actually not a plan, but a perfect segue. Because what we do before we have something to say is we establish communication rituals. And the predictability, the dependability of a ritual really gives employees a way to cope with these unexpected messages, with this communication that we don't expect. When we have rituals and we can predict, it builds confidence, it builds belief in our ability to anticipate what's coming, and therefore to limit these strong amygdala reactions that we might have. So one of the things that I am really fond of as a communication ritual is what I call layered communication. And this just addresses the fact that if you send an email, you can't assume that everybody reads the email, that everybody interprets the email the same way, that everybody understands the email in the same way. And so you have to do more than send an email. You have to layer that maybe with a conversation, maybe it's something that you bring up at a team meeting, maybe it's something that you follow up with an message to a specific employee who you know might have a particular reaction to the email that you sent.

But it's this idea that communication is not one and done. You have to use multiple audiences, multiple formats. This is what I see as four different really powerful options that can be used together to layer and to make sure that all of the gaps get filled in. First, they're just these casual daily check-in. It's when as a manager, if you're in the office, you're walking back from filling up your coffee cup, you walk by the desk of your teammate, the desk where your teammates sit. Apparently, I'm not going to be able to say that word this morning. And you just say, Hey, how was the Little League game last night? How are the plans coming together for your daughter's birthday party this weekend? It's usually really casual, but you're making yourself visible, and people know that, Hey, they're going to walk through and just say hi. When you do this, you might have more detailed conversations. You might be walking by and somebody says, Hey, I want to ask you a question about this meeting yesterday, or I want to tell you something that happened, something that I heard. It's generally casual, but you might get some pretty important information as well.

Then we have one-on-one meetings. One-on-one meetings are so important. And I'll have to say, I really had to have my mind changed about that. Not too long ago, I was of the mind that one-on-one meetings have been overdone. They've become so cliché. Do they really matter anymore? It's just become another buzzword. And I have learned. I had some people say, No, you're wrong. One-on-ones are really important. I did some research and some books coming out, and I'm like, Okay, I'm back on team one-on-one. Really, really important. They're scheduled but casual, and it's the audience, usually the manager and the employee. All right. So there's a question, do you have suggestions for how to incorporate the daily check-in for remote? Oh, thank you for asking that. I should have mentioned. I would say it's harder with remote teams. It's even harder when you've got some people who are remote and some people who are in the office. I think use whatever chat function that you have. Maybe your chat function might allow you to set up a channel. Maybe all of your team, and maybe it's just our team check in, and maybe that's the name of the channel.

It's just, Hey, how are you? How was your evening? I would use whatever remote tools you have for doing that. If it makes sense for your circumstances and the work you do, you can do the next thing, which is the huddle. I used to do it with my team. I started doing it twice a week, and then I cut it back to once a week. But what I used to do with my team is we would meet 10:00 on Monday morning, and it was conversational, but I did facilitate it. We went around. Everybody had a chance to talk about what were their priorities for the week, where might they need some help, what were they worried about, what questions did we have of each other, and we would go around. It was structured, but it wasn't stiff. I used to do this on Monday to start the week, and then I would do it on Thursday to talk about how the week went. The Thursday just was overkill, so I ended up dropping that. However, your team might be one where maybe it makes sense that you do this every morning? 15 minutes. Just going to have a huddle, see how it goes.

All right. Yes, Steph. Powerful one-on-ones. I'm sorry that I missed that. I know that you spoke about that last week. Yes, and Leah, 60% of employees say that one-on-ones build trust faster than any other action. But then there's the question, how do you handle when one-on-one meetings are perceived as overkill? There's a couple of rules. I'll say what I believe, and then Steph and Leah, if I say something that you don't agree with or that you think is wrong, please speak up. One-on-ones are the employee's meeting. They are owned by the employee. The employee brings the agenda. It's the employee I'm spending this time with you as the manager. I worked with a manager, this was many, many, many years ago, and another manager had quit. So this manager had absorbed that manager's team, and he all of a sudden had 15 direct reports, and he was losing his mind. He's like, I do not have time. I'm working till 10:00 every night. I can't keep this up. And I said, Okay, I have an idea. Then I'll take anything. I said, Schedule a 30-minute meeting with every employee once a week. He's like, Did you hear what I said?

I just said, I don't have time. Do you think I have time? Can I schedule eight hours of meetings? I said, Give it a try. Try it for a month and let me know how it goes. Three weeks later, he comes back and he said it was a game changer. Because what he experienced is when employees knew that they could count on having his time, when they could count on this communication ritual, they Stop the interruptions, the incidental, Hey, I just wanted to ask you this question, which we all know is more than the 45 seconds of the actual question. It's interrupting what you're doing, and then the time it takes to get back to what you were doing, et cetera. That's one thing that's really key. Now, if you have not done that, it's going to be awkward at first, and employees are not going to like it. But you can give them specific questions. I like questions about, So where are you most proud of from the last week? What would you do differently if you had to do over again? What do you want me to know? Not necessarily an update, but just what's something that happened that you think I should know about that you want me to know about.

Maybe it was something you're really proud of. What do you need from me? What can I do for you? It's questions like that. The one thing I will say about the one-on-one meeting, and this goes back to the trust and certainty, do not use the one-on-one meetings to deliver feedback. Because if you do this once, you're having a one-on-one meeting, the meeting is almost over and you're like, If you have just another minute, that's something I want to share with you. So and so mentioned that during the project meeting last week, this happened. You have just introduced such a huge amygdala hijack to every future one-on-one meeting. Because all of a sudden, this predictability and this certainty is gone. Oh, this meeting might turn into feedback. If you have feedback to share, schedule a separate meeting, or maybe it's just 5 or 10 minutes, but avoid delivering feedback during your one-on-one meetings. Positive feedback is probably okay. We still don't like positive feedback. Then when I think of my layered communication, I have this fourth where I talk about a formal meeting. I mean, formal meetings have their place. They're important when you are perhaps providing important updates to stakeholders, when it's a chance for employees to practice their presentation skills, to practice their ability to succinctly summarize something and then present it.

The formal meetings also have a place. But again, no matter what you are using, it's really important to layer them and to reinforce what's shared in one format with all the other formats. I've got a slide with each of these. I'm not going to go into it while we're here, but it goes into more detail about what each of these look like. I'll send these to the when we're done, and then they can send them out so you can see them when you would like. But put this on a calendar. When you do it first, you're going to be like, Whoa, that's a lot. It is a lot. Here I just mocked it up. If If you have a huddle every Monday, every Thursday, you have one-on-ones every day, Tuesday through Thursday, you have your check-ins, you might have once a month a town hall, once a month a team meeting, once a month a project in this meeting, it adds up. So put it on your calendar and give yourself time to do it right. And explain to your team members what you're doing. That's part of the predictability, saying, I saw this seminar, this crazy lady told me I should try this, so I'm going to try it.

But be transparent about it and say, If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but we're going to give it a shot. So people know why all of a sudden you're hanging out for five minutes, even five or 10 minutes with your coffee. You never did this before. So be clear about that. All right, here's another ritual. So there's this book called Six Conversations by Steve King. And Steve King lives here in Madison. He's a wonderful man. He used to run CPAD, which is the Fluno Center. And I mean, this book is short. It's like pamphlet size. But what he talks about is if a manager can successfully answer these six questions with their employees, Employees will be productive and engaged. And I will go further and just say, And you are creating communication rituals. So these six questions are what's expected of me. And again, I'm not going to go through I'll get all these details, but they'll be in the slides. This is where we talk about goals. To have a conversation about goals. You have a conversation about what skills do I need to develop? How am I doing? Which is more of an immediate in the moment feedback.

Then how did I do? Which is more of the more reflective performance, formal performance review. How am I going to be rewarded? What's my bonuses? What's Am I paying increase? What extra perks am I getting? Are you giving me some days off? Whatever. What's next for me? This is the career conversation. Let me talk about development. And again, if you put these out on a calendar, you might have the what's expected of me, the goal meeting twice a year, the skill development meeting, maybe every four months, the how am I doing? This should be happening all the time, at least once a month. It could be in person. This could be an email. This could be a conversation. Anything goes there. The how did I do conversation might be once a year, might be twice a year. Some organizations might do it more often. The reward conversation conversation. Maybe if you give out quarterly bonuses, you're having this conversation four times a year. And then the career conversation, maybe once or twice a year. Again, when you look at this, it's overwhelming. But what you are doing is you're establishing these rituals that employees know they can count on.

Therefore, when they happen, this reaction that we have that makes us unable to hear what's being said and have a meaningful conversation about it, these reactions become really muted because we know that we can count on these conversations and these rituals. So let's go back to our leader who sent the email for the 2:00 o'clock predatory meeting. And thinking what we know now about the importance of rituals, what is something that the manager could have been doing before he even knew that he needed to send this email? What's something that he or she could have been doing beforehand to mitigate this negative reaction? You can either go off mute or share something in the chat. Thank you for sending those links out, Jess. Very helpful. Yeah, consider how people would take it, sharing context, provide more context in the initial invitation. Exactly. And before even sending this invitation, this leader might have Maybe he could have established a culture where he said, You know what? I am never going to surprise you with bad means. When there is something happening, even if it's bad, I will share what I can as soon as I can.

And if he says that and then he actually does it, employees know they can count on it. And then when they see an unexpected mandatory means, they're going to be like, I bet it's good news because he would never surprise us with that. Or it could be that he could have included other people in this decision making in planning what this communication is. So it's not so much, I have the information and I'm going to impart it on you. In the meeting invitation itself, as a lot of you said, provide some context. Now, even if you say this isn't bad news, people might believe you, but there's still going to be a part that's going to go, Is it really not bad news? What's not bad news to you might be bad news to me. But certainly, it could be, I have information about some new business with as much context as you can share. Often, when we communicate We're like, This is so great. I'm going to just surprise everybody. We're going to have a big party. And what to us is, Hey, great. Let me be the bearer of good news. By the time people get to that two o'clock meeting, it's still worked up.

It's not good news anymore. And then in that time in between, when you know, okay, people are talking, the rumor mill is in overdrive. People are taking long lunches, I see people in corners in groups of three and four. I don't know what's going on. This is where the leaders can build rituals around just circulating, being visible, stopping by and saying, How are you feeling? I just want to check in, being transparent and acknowledging. I know that might have upset you. There's a lot of things that people can do. Then after the announcement itself, I have been in situations where the employee response is so lukewarm, maybe even negative, that the senior leader ends up saying, That's it. I'm never rolling out anything new and good again because people only complain about it, and they always ask for something more, and it's never good enough. And of course, you try to get them off of that ledge. But even as a senior leader, senior leaders are having these same amygdala reactions that everybody is having. So we have to constantly be aware of that in those blind spots. So afterwards, a senior leader, depending on the scope and what you want to do is, you can have focus groups.

You can ask key people like, How do you think that went over? What should I do differently next time? There are lots of these rituals that leaders can establish to really minimize the amygdala hijack. And similar for the do you have a minute? As we've seen shared, you give people tools to say, I'm nervous about this. Oh, I'm really happy about this. Oh, terrified about this, whatever the range of emotions are. But you know what? If you can just eliminate the do you have a minute. Even just stopping by someone's desk without the do you have a minute is probably going to be better because they don't have time to dwell on it. But if you use the layered communication practices and you use those efficiently and thoroughly, the do you have a minute should really be minimized. When they do have to happen, employees are going to be far more comfortable with them. We've talked about this as we've gone along, but what communication rituals have you experienced that you think have really helped establish the expectations before there's even something to be said? Or what are you thinking about? You're like, I might try that because I think that might work.

A guy who's staffing in, say Bill, who's always started with rumor control. So what did that look like, Bill? What happened then? Can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Hi, Michelle. This is very You're good stuff.

I'm glad I joined.

Thank you. Well, over a period of time, we all got used to sharing whatever rumor was around that we wanted to check out. And over time, it got safer and safer and safer to put out what we were really hearing. So to your point, the certainty and the predictability and his candor and authenticity made a huge difference over time. It wasn't just inputting, and we all had our ways of testing it. How far can we go? How can we say that? But over time, it built quite a good communication practice. Yeah. So first of all, it's fun. I mean, we gossip and we're rumored for a reason because it's fun, and we get a little bit of an emotional payoff. But when everyone's in on it, it's also fun. And what that technique would do is it's really building this psychological face to it. It's okay to tell me what is on your mind, what you're hearing from other people. Now, of course, the key to this is that the manager reacts appropriately, and it sounds in this case like he absolutely did. Of It works. But that's a fantastic way to just, I just want to know what's going on.

I want to be able to help you work through it. What are you hearing? Yeah. Yeah. Great. What myth can I bust? Yeah, absolutely. Room, we round up. I love it. I love People are so clever. Anything else that people have experienced or are thinking about trying with their organization? Okay.

I can actually jump in. With a couple of companies I've worked with, we would hold time in the regular either town hall or staff meeting. It was an opportunity to just mention what our initiatives we're working on and what's progress look like for that and get people excited, even if it wasn't directly related to their department or their team, but so that they knew this is something that is strategically where the organization is and how it ties into that mission. Then when there was a big announcement, they might mention, Oh, this is related to our goal that we've seen, our objectives and key results. That was nice.

What also could be really powerful with that is you might bring up a project that your team is working on that you think, No one else really cares about this, but you never know. I've worked at companies where another team had something that was tangential to that, and they were able to collaborate or to say, Hey, we're working on that, too, or something similar, or this is what I'm hearing. It really promotes this collaboration, and it helps to avoid roadblocks and difficulties down the road. This is just as important at home with your spouse and partner and/or children and parents, 100%, maybe even more so, because we all get into these habits and these routines Oh, they're going to be late again. They always said we're going to be at 5:30, but I know we won't eat till 6:00. We're in marriages and partnerships, and we do this. So being aware of, Oh, this is going to have this immediate reaction is really valuable. And to think about it and to think back to what are these blind spots that we bring with us? Just because I say I'll be home between 5:30 and 5:45, what they hear is I'll be home at 5:30.

So it's really impactful, no matter what the relationship is in classrooms and work and relationships, all of that. All right. So that's the end of my content. It really has been an honor. This is one of my favorite opportunities. I love what the perk has created with this. It started as Leah going, Wait, I'm alone in this. I need help. What are other people going? And now it has become this supportive, wide-reaching community that meets once a month and talks about very relevant and a range of topics. So it really has been an honor. My contact information is there. If you have any follow-up questions or anything specific, I'd be happy to spend some time and help you work through things.

Amazing. Thank you so much, Michelle. We have the space until... We have the virtual space until 9:45. So feel free to stick around if you have questions or anything else you want to discuss with Michelle. But Michelle, fantastic. I have a ridiculous amount of notes everywhere on my desk right now. So that being said, does anyone have a question or something you want to discuss with Michelle? Is Michelle still here? Did she drop off? Where'd she go? She just mic dropped? I'm out? She just went off camera. Oh. Does anyone have a question or any other area you wanted to dive into a little bit? I was thinking when I was listening to all these initial reactions, that this applies in so many categories, and I think it applies really strongly in unconscious bias. I was thinking about how that would impact people's awareness and self-awareness of what they're experiencing when they're feeling an unconscious bias against a coworker Oh, there she is. She's back. We were just talking about how amazing you are, Michelle. My laptop just crashed.

It just turned off. I'm so sorry.

Perfect timing. No, but I was just thinking. I was just saying, Michelle, that thinking about how the brain works is really good self-awareness when it comes to unconscious bias as well. And I was thinking about how that applies. In my line of conflict and unconscious bias as we feel towards people might not be anything to do with them. It's to do with somebody we experience something with long before. So I'm also thinking about all these microtraumas we experience in the workplace. And then we switched to a new job maybe, and we haven't had that level of support before. So very interesting, very good stuff. Thank you so much. I learned so much. Yeah. Going off of Diana, one question I had was, how How do we recover when we've had a negative communication interaction with somebody so that the next time, they're not an amygdala hijacked? Or is that definitely going to happen? How do we recover from an interaction that doesn't go well?

I'm a big believer in I'm sorry, in saying, That did not go the way I expected. I know that I surprised you. I didn't have a good setting for that conversation. I want to do better. I I just believe in that is really important. The other thing is if you say, I'm sorry, I don't want to do that again, don't do it again. When you say, I'm sorry, and you do the same thing over again, you're not really sorry, and you lose all credibility. But just being candid and vulnerable and transparent about how you're feeling, how it made you feel, and what would be better in the future. As people, and we experience this, when you think at your very first job, when your manager said, Do you have a minute? Of course, our reaction was like, Oh, my God, I'm going to get fired. I'm not going to lose my apartment. Can't afford my rent, what have you. By the time you've been 20 years in the workforce, you're like, I wonder what this is. Our reactions get muted as we get experience with it as well, which is another thing to keep in mind in the organization.

The person who does this is their first job out of college, it's going to have a very different reaction from the person who's been with your company for 15 years. We just need to be aware of that. Anything else from anybody? A question that just occurred to me. When we talk about the amygdala hijacked and someone's in a negative state, should we also be mindful if that hijacked occurred outside of the workplace? Somebody comes to work and they're having a bad day at home, it's always tough That can always have an influence on their ability to listen or express. Absolutely, it can. Now, we have to be careful because, of course, we can't know too much or we don't want to ask too much about personal information. But I think it is perfectly appropriate to say, You don't seem like yourself today. Is there something I can help you with? What's preventing you from being here? Acknowledge it and offer support. I always think that is appropriate. Somebody else.

One thing that came up, Michelle, talking about certainty and just how important it is to provide certainty, and often things are uncertain.

Uncertain, yes.

I think it's an important... I was thinking about having conversations with my team, but also for people to have with their teams in a world of uncertainty, sometimes, what can we be certain about? Things about, We can be certain that we will always work together to figure out a solution. Or where can there be certainty in that trust, even when things are uncertain in different aspects of the business.

Control what you can. I once had a student who was... She was very shy. She was very nervous. She was starting a new job in a few weeks. She said, This is exactly what I'm feeling already. It's two weeks until I What can I do? I said, Send an email to the recruiter and ask them if they can at least tell you what your agenda will look like for your first two days. At least then, you know something to expect. Now, not everyone is going to have that level of anxiety about it, but even as employers, whatever information we can provide, it may seem insignificant. It's going to introduce certainty where there is none. All right.

Well, I'm canceling the rest of my day. I'm just going to sit with my folks for Michelle. So much.

So fantastic. Thank you. My pleasure, as always. I just love it. All right. Thank you, everybody. Have a good day. All right. Have a good day. Bye.

Thank you, Michelle.