Why does it matter? What does communication do (beyond making basic conversation)?

With more companies moving to remote-forward or hybrid working models, there are some things that get lost in translation. Those smaller interactions in the office are easily dismissed, but they play an important role in maintaining employee engagement and building bonds. Companies don’t need to keep workers in the office to ensure engagement. Instead, focus on offering opportunities to work collaboratively, whether that’s in the office or over a video-conferencing platform, and bringing everyone together on a consistent basis.

Digital body language and how it changes how we talk, how to shift to a more virtual plane of existence – a good article from the BBC.  

When we communicate, we don’t read people based only on what they say. We’re looking at their body language, paying attention to their tone, and receiving a variety of other cues that may be subconscious. Shifting to a more virtual plane requires better communication to avoid misunderstanding and a loss of camaraderie.

Digital communication and the effect on interpersonal/business relationships, how to improve your comms. So we all understand the content is important for every brief or presentation but hey, much more is the way we deliver (!) – another demo? Do we have a presentation? Or a one-pager? Maybe a digital catalog? It is all important.

So how do you make sure that your communication is stellar? Aim for clarity and consistency. Building trust when working remotely can be difficult, but if you’re reliable in how and when you communicate, a little can go a long way. 

Quala’s Conclusion: Importance of communication in times of uncertainty and virtual-world is crucial. How can you make sure you’re sending the right message? Not easy but with simple, direct, clear, consistent and concise communication – this should help.

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Play is making its way back into the hearts and workplaces of adults everywhere. Strategy and computer games have seen an upswing in the number of adult players, gamification techniques are taking hold at companies and learning insitutitions across sectors, social media allows us to reconnect with our sillier selves, and research is focusing on what the benefits of fun and play can be.

More and more, adults are working to incorporate play into their lives to lower stress levels, escape from their everyday lives, and build stronger relationships. Spoiler alert: play can also make you a more productive worker. More importantly, it helps us reignite contact with parts of ourselves we may have forgotten as we’ve grown up. Most importantly, we are evolutionarily programmed to do it, and we need at least a little in our lives. If our monkey cousins still feel the need to play to socialize, learn new skills, and just let loose, why shouldn’t we?

How Do We Play?

There are a number of different types of play and ways to define it. It can be structured or free, individual or shared, competitive or cooperative, and the list just keeps going. Another difficulty for many is distinguishing between play, fun, and games.

At its simplest, play is an intrinsically-motivated and self-directed activity that involves elements of imagination or freedom of thought. Fun is the joy, excitement, amusement, or other positive emotions that are generated through different types of play. And games are a more bounded type of fun that comes with a specific set of rules, and usually with a specific end result in mind. Games can be fun or a type of play, play should be fun, and fun can be experienced in a multitude of ways. For some, cleaning can become a fun game, but we wouldn’t necessarily call it play. For others, board games may not be play or fun. And for many, play isn’t something we plan for. 

Plan To Play

According to this article from The New York Times, we should be planning to play. Scheduling time to be spontaneous can allow us to let go of our everyday life and feel more free in that allotted time. If you’re struggling to even figure out what you enjoy, a list could be incredibly helpful. Write down what you used to enjoy as a kid and then try that! Or something similar.

Rather than climbing trees or making mud pies, you might want to join a climbing gym and try a ceramics class. Or climb a tree and make a mud pie. There’s something uniquely satisfying about scaling your way up a natural obstacle and squishing together the perfect mix of dirt and water. Creative activities like art classes, more physical options like team sports or dance, intellectual challenges like board games, or even watching other people perform are a good place to start. And if you’re not having fun, pick something else!

Why We Play

The reasons we engage in play as adults and as children aren’t a one to one match, but they do overlap. The most important reason? It’s fun. We want to have fun. Our bodies and our brains can let go of the stresses we face far too often, and we get a huge boost of endorphins and dopamine, both good things. These hormones not only help optimize our brain functionality and help our nervous systems reset, but also assist in building deeper bonds between individuals. Parents play with their children, people play with their partners, and if coworkers also play, it can help build trust on the team. We recently wrote an article giving some more details about how to build trust on teams, and we also offer online escape rooms to help teams reconnect and play, no matter where in the world they are. 

Go With The Flow

Flow, a state studied extensively by the great positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is when we lose track of time while engaging in a task we enjoy that is just challenging enough to hold our attention without frustrating us too much. And guess what’s a great way to enter this state? We’ll trust you know the answer. Flow is a meditative state that lowers our stress levels and emotional dysregulation while raising our creativity, internal motivation, and happiness. People with more flow at the workplace are less likely to leave, feel dissatisfied at their job, or burn out. The biggest barrier we face to entering a flow state is often the distractions that surround us: emails or texts or people coming over to say hi or another unexpected meeting….so build time for flow by scheduling time for deep work. We promise it’s worth it.

Step Up Your Game

Beyond helping us reach a flow state for our more demanding and creative work, play is a great way to hone skills we need for the more serious parts of our lives, from creative thinking to communication. Having fun means we’re less worried about doing something the right way or looking dumb, and thus more likely to make mistakes and learn from them.

Research over the past few decades has shown that we learn more when we’re having fun. This is due to the hormones that are released, including norepinephrine and dopamine, which help cement any new skills or facts we pick up while playing. Games can also build our confidence by allowing us to step into the role of an “other”. This other can be a facet of our personalities we don’t often acknowledge or show the public, or it could be a character we’re playing for a very specific instance. Either way, once in that role, we aren’t ourselves anymore, and thus any mistakes or trips of the tongue are far less embarrassing. At the end of the day, it’s all in good fun.

How To Play At Work

Increasingly, workplaces are shifting how they engage with their employees as employees change how they view their workplaces. More than ever before, we’re integrating more parts of ourselves into our professional identities and swapping jobs with unheard of regularity. And companies are focusing on how to increase employee well being, engagement, and fun at work. Professionals know what they want from a position, and for many, it isn’t just a solid paycheck and the promise of a decades-long career. So how do you bring play into the workplace? That depends on whether you’re the employer or employee, but we’ll offer suggestions for both.

New generations are moving up the corporate ladder. That’s the thing about time, it really does march on. And that means workplaces have been restructured, and executives have heard that they need to have some fun at the office! Most sling a ping-pong table or pinball machine into a corner, schedule team bonding days with clockwork regularity, and put up a funny poster. Or they schedule online games for virtual teams. That’s fun, right? That will make employees jump for joy, right?? And now that employer has a great reputation and more productive workers, right???

Fun for Employees

If you’re in charge of a team or company, the best way to let people play at work is to schedule blocks of time for that purpose, but not to dictate it. You can’t order people to have fun at a team bonding day, so don’t try. Just allow everyone an opportunity to let loose, whether that’s scheduling an office happy hour or an offsite weekend, and don’t be afraid to participate yourself.

As we wrote earlier, play can lead to bonding, and a round of charades or in-office dance off can be invaluable in building bonds. You can also schedule fun team building activities, like an online game for virtual teams or an in-person escape room. These are a great way to celebrate after reaching a milestone, like the end of a draining project, because competitive play and a shared goal allows for fun while simultaneously allowing for vulnerability and connection building.

Fun for Colleagues

If you’re not at the top of the food chain and have some great ideas for how to help your team play, don’t be afraid to approach a colleague or your manager. Follow in the footsteps of Zappos with a weird talent show, check with HR to see if the quarterly budget could cover a game night, or poll your teammates to see how they want to play. People who don’t want to play are the rare exception but you may have to work to find something that fits your entire team. What’s the worst that can happen, you have too much fun together?

Why Play At Work Is Important

Play is something we can build into our lives, even as adults, and is now seen as a necessity that’s been neglected for too long. Fun has many benefits we can reap as individuals, including a release of tension and strengthening of skills, and as groups, like increased vulnerability and deeper connections. Our brains are built to play, and the longer we put it off, the worse we feel. Living in a culture where someone is constantly vying for our attention and energy can be draining at the least, and lead to burnout at its worst. Play is one way to let go, connect with other humans, and learn those new skills you want to have. Go forth and have some fun, for all our sakes.

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So, Why Bother?

It’s common to wonder why it’s called “team building” if it’s happening with an established team. Part of that is because it’s just simpler to use a catch-all term, and part of it is because teams are made up of humans. And humans change. Often. Relationships shift and move as we do, and companies are more agile than ever, meaning teams must remain dynamic.

All of these factors mean that we need to consistently check in, reevaluate, and rebuild. You may have someone that just returned from mat leave that doesn’t know a new team member, a promotion may have shifted dynamics, or you may have more remote workers than before. No matter the reason, taking a team out for bowling or hitting the trails together gives everyone the chance to learn more about themselves and each other. The more consistently you’re tearing down walls and building up connections, the better your team is going to perform.

More than ever, companies are trying to add engagement and enrichment activities to increase productivity. That’s been a trend in recent years. After the pandemic, and the great resignation, more companies are trying to make work better for their own sake. Nobody wants an unhappy team, and nobody wants to work at a company where everyone is just going through the motions. While there are often collective groans when an event called “Team Building OOO” hits everyone’s calendars, almost anything that gets everyone out of the office and doing something new together can add opportunities to build engagement and enrichment. That’s why team building is so important. But there’s no need to schedule time to undo a human knot or take a bunch of people who thrive indoors on a forced outdoor adventure- poll your team to see what they want to do!

Prioritize Team Time

Putting aside the time and budget for team building may be one of the best things you can do. Asking teams for input what they want to do for a team building activity is the best thing you can do. At Quala, we’re all about making joint decisions and inviting comments from our team to build a better workplace, which is how we know it’s an effective way to work. We’re using this space to help companies across the globe work better. If there’s something you want us to write about or any comments you have for us, let us know in the comments, and we look forward to seeing you here again soon.

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On the most basic level, if team members don’t trust one another, team development can be inhibited. This can lead to communication gaps, lowered productivity, stunted creative thinking, and a huge drop in morale. This may be why team building activities are so important, and they certainly have their place in a team leader or HR professional’s roster of tools. Although online team building or out of office retreats can be good team building activities, there are also other ways to build trust and maximize potential as well. But we should probably start by clarifying what trust is.

What Exactly Is Trust?

Ask a few people to define trust and you’ll get a slew of answers. It can mean you’re able to rely on someone, take them at their word, confide in them, or lean on them even when you can’t watch what they’re doing. There are 2 main types that we think of: practical trust and emotional trust. The first is knowing that someone is reliable in work situations, and the second is knowing you can speak to someone about sensitive subjects. Neither type can be built overnight. They both require repeated interactions, consistency, and good communication. You don’t need to be someone’s best friend to trust them or work well together. You don’t even need to like someone to be able to trust them, though it certainly doesn’t hurt.

And What Does It Do For Teams?

Trust affects a team by empowering individuals to create deeper interpersonal connections and betters professional outcomes for the entire team. It helps you both give and receive more meaningful feedback. Projects are simpler, efficiency skyrockets, burnout is easier to beat, turnover drops, everyone feels more engaged and energetic. And the list of benefits goes on and on. What happens if there’s no trust in a team is annoying at best, and paralyzing at worst.

Build It And They Will Trust

So, how do you build it into your team? There are multiple approaches, but some general guidelines can be helpful. The most important is allowing people to connect both through work tasks and outside activities. Team bonding activities, like a virtual escape room or a cooking workshop, can help people open up in a different way outside of the normal office confines. Make sure there is space for clear and consistent communication in every direction. That means allowing team members to speak freely with one another, and make sure everyone knows what’s happening in the company at large. Give people their autonomy: if someone is being micromanaged, they won’t trust their supervisor and they’ll feel as though they aren’t trusted, which quickly leads to a downward spiral. Last and not even close to least, don’t be afraid to acknowledge mistakes. When your culture allows people to admit they’ve done wrong, whether they didn’t proof a presentation or lost a big deal, it discourages a culture of error avoidance and encourages both growth and trust.

TL;DR

Trust is especially important in virtual teams. The connections and communication that arise more naturally when people work in a physical space together are gone, so make sure that you’re doing group and personal meetings at least bi-weekly. All teams need trust and accountability to function properly, so be sure to give everyone the attention they need. TL;DR trust in teams is important. We’ll be expanding on how to build better teams all across the blog, so check back here for more. We’re also giving you some important links on the neuroscience of trust And feel free to ask us to write about anything that strikes your fancy.

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Ask people what they dread most about work, and giving or getting feedback is likely to snag a spot in the top 10. It’s so unpleasant that people often find themselves asking “What is feedback and why is it important?”. Basically, feedback is an evaluation to help someone grow. Why it’s important depends on the circumstances in which it is being given and received.

Feedback freaks us out, both on a psychological and physical level. Giving it is often hard because you’re simultaneously balancing office and interpersonal politics, as well as tempering your personal opinion with objective facts. Getting it is hard because you get defensive, your heart starts racing, and suddenly the room feels hotter than Gwyneth’s infrared sauna. Even if you trust your team, it’s terrifying. That’s not a personal foible, it’s an evolutionary response. 

Companies have been giving feedback for so long that it’s built into the foundation of most organizations. But how and why we give it is often flawed, the tools we use are outdated and not one-size-fits-all, and here’s the kicker: not everyone knows exactly what it is. Feedback is, at its most simple, information provided to individuals about their performance when there is a specific goal in mind. This is “constructive feedback”. This is the most common conception of the word and what is often necessary in a corporate setting, but not what is always used.

For years, companies have needed to shake up the process, but change is often slow, although it doesn’t have to be. If Corona has taught us anything, it’s that dramatic changes can be made quickly when they need to be. And with feedback, they need to be. We need to stop offering criticism or observations with no room for growth and labeling it feedback. 

What It Is, And Is Not

Feedback is not advice, but it can help people figure out their future direction. It is not(usually) an objective fact, but it can offer insights to spur growth. It is not criticism, but it may critique what someone has done. So what is it? Feedback is an evaluation of a skill or performance that examines whether or not that action met the intended goal. If not, the observer offers direction on how to achieve that goal. it’s also an avenue to help employees, managers, and even CEOs examine what they’re doing and do it better. At least, that’s ostensibly what it is. Assessments, rubrics, evaluations, and ratings all fall under this enormous umbrella, though not all of them meet the criteria.

Why It Matters

Putting aside the importance of personal development for a second, feedback can have huge implications for your job. This is because it’s embedded in most organizations. Rarely do we find an established organization without an HR process built around giving, getting, or evaluating it. It’s used to determine raises, your future at the company, and how your performance is viewed by upper management. So you need to care about feedback because your company does. On a more personal level, as difficult as the process of getting it can be, it can be a great opportunity for learning and development. Personal growth and career development helps you stay engaged, active in your career, and honestly, happier. 

Why It’s So Terrible

At the most basic level, criticism is terrifying because it automatically puts our bodies in a fight-flight-freeze framework. Your body becomes physically primed for conflict. Getting criticism triggers the same parts of your nervous system as a physical attack. Your body and brain can’t tell the difference between being chased by a hungry tiger and hearing that your presentation skills could use some polishing.

You may automatically go on the defensive without hearing what’s being said to you. The words may be “I know the point of the presentation was to clarify our company values, and I think that most of them were clear. The slide on communication was a bit unclear; I think you could cut down the amount of text to make the main points more obvious. Overall, it was a good presentation.” What you’re(usually) hearing is some version of “I’ve made a horrible mistake, I’m not good enough.” Knowing that the person across from you or the report you’re reading is to try and help you grow as a professional doesn’t always temper those uncomfortable emotions.

How To Make It Less Terrible

Observations from our peers are inherently flawed, and more companies than ever are basing someone’s future path, the possibility of promotion, and pay raises all on distorted feedback from colleagues. Even saying that, feedback can be helpful as long as you understand its limitations. Performance reviews and other tools cannot dramatically change the way someone works overnight. They can help build a framework for future development. Even though giving and getting it is hard, it’s much more effective when done on a consistent basis. An annual review isn’t going to cut it. While there’s some debate about how often it should be given, the sweet spot seems to be between every 2-3 months, with check-ins on progress every few weeks. 

In a nutshell: make feedback less awful by giving it consistently, supporting whomever has received it in their growth, and remember that it is not the end-all be-all of developmental tools. We offer tips on how to give and get feedback below.

Giving Feedback

First things first, feedback should always be given in a face-to-face setting. It helps clarify what’s being said, and turns the process into a conversation rather than a critique. You’re trying to help someone, and offering on the spot clarification makes that much easier.

Surveys show we tend to be “nicer” when we’re giving feedback that may lead to a promotion, but “harsher” when giving feedback to help someone improve their skill set. Just being aware of this bias can help us improve what we’re saying and how we’re saying it.

Optimizing feedback means understanding why the feedback is being given. Is it to help someone improve a specific skill? Then it needs to be given with suggestions to improve. Make sure that you’re offering clarity on how to achieve a goal. Just saying “Your presentation wasn’t great” is not going to help. Saying “Your presentation wasn’t well-designed; I think it would be more effective if you started with Point A, and then moved to Points B and C.” 

Finally, don’t try to manage the emotions of the person receiving notes from you, but do be aware of how they’re feeling. Asking if they’re ok likely won’t help; it may even come off as condescending. We often want to make others more comfortable, but you cannot always fix how someone feels, nor should you. Uncomfortable emotions are part of the process. Your job is not to act as a therapist, especially if you are not close with the person you’re speaking with. You can be empathetic without overstepping your bounds.

Getting Feedback

The paragraph above emphasizes that we should be aware that we carry biases into every part of our lives. The feedback you’re getting will be biased because humans are biased. Our experiences build our brains, and that means that every person sees the world a little differently. It doesn’t mean you should discount what’s being said to you. It does mean that you should take what you’re hearing with a grain of salt.

Unless you’re being graded on an objective skill, like your ability to speak Spanish or build a website from scratch, you’ll be hearing an opinion on how you work. A good general rule matches up with an old adage: 3 times told and you believe it. If you’ve heard from 3 different people that your language is abrasive or that your final reports could use another round of polishing, it may be time for some self-reflection.

When you’re on your way to hear how you’ve been doing, try to go in with a growth mindset. Every “mistake” you make at work is an opportunity to learn and grow rather than a complete failure. Rather than focusing on what you’re not doing well and dwelling, you view criticism or failures as learning opportunities and ways to improve. Keeping an open mind and remaining non-judgmental, both about what you’re receiving feedback on and what you’re hearing, helps you leave with a more positive experience. This will bring up uncomfortable emotions. That’s also an avenue where you can grow. Most importantly, separate your personal identity from your work: your work is not your worth. 

Final Notes

After all this, you have a better understanding of what feedback means. At Quala, we like to build our processes based on best practices, and help others improve how they work. While our ultimate goal is to reconnect teams, we also like to reconnect individuals to who they are at work. Our virtual events help teams reconnect and reset. Quala also offers observations and evaluations on personal and group performance.

With regards to the deeper dive into feedback, now you know what it is, and what it isn’t. We didn’t do a deep dive into the different types of feedback, or why we refer to it as such. Hint: it may be the focus on past actions. Keep an eye out for a future blog on the different types of feedback! Or read this advice from HBR on how to give better feedback in the meantime. We can’t wait to talk with you again.

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