The Tingley Advantage Inc.

Improving the Way You Do Business

Rituals for Businesspeople

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Quick Facts

  • Anxiety is always a challenge, and it may be heightened during times of uncertainty and rapid change.
  • Anxious circumstances can make stress-inducing tasks like giving presentations or having difficult conversations even more stressful.
  • Rituals can be used as a tool to create feelings of calm and control.
  • Rituals can be empathy-, exertion-, spiritual-, or mantra-based, depending on what works for your personality and preferences.

Detailed Analysis

We’ve heard again and again that anxiety levels are high, and the shift to remote work has only exacerbated the problem. Consider some scenarios: a manager who already finds giving presentations nerve-wracking now has to give them via video, adding a layer of technical difficulty and making it harder to connect with the audience; a leader has to give bad news or difficult feedback to an employee over the phone rather than in person; a businessperson whose children are now at home full-time is trying to interview for a new job with the noise of play in the background.

In the remote world, even just starting your workday in what may be a less-than-conducive work environment can be stress-inducing. Any of these scenarios would be stressful under normal circumstances; add some of the current complications to the mix, and for some they become downright daunting. How can we boost our confidence and re-claim our calm in these situations?

Science suggests that using rituals is a natural human propensity that we can consciously leverage to manage stressful situations, likely because they give us a sense of control and predictability when things feel overwhelming or scary. Although not a panacea, using rituals before stressful situations can boost confidence and calm.

What ritual you choose will depend on your personality and preferences, and there is no one-size-fits all ritual for everyone. Effective rituals can include things as different as performing vigorous jumping jacks, to sitting in stillness and breathing deeply.

The important feature seems to be that it is planned and predictable – so you do the jumping jacks or the deep breathing 10 minutes before your presentation, every time you present, for example. Again, it’s the sense of familiarity and predictability that seems to have the calming effect. An HBR report on this phenomenon suggests that there are four basic types of ritual you can try:

  1. Empathy-based rituals focus on connecting with others. Examples could include taking some time to speak with meeting or presentation attendees before your formal presentation (on a video conference, this could mean opening the call 5 or 10 minutes early for some informal chat) or visualizing things from the audience’s point of view (for example, before a difficult phone conversation, visualizing the other person’s perspective).
  2. Exertion rituals focus on moving your body and expelling some of the excess energy and tension that can build prior to a stressful conversation or event. A quick walk, jumping up and down, dancing around – anything that utilizes your body’s movement counts as an exertion ritual.
  3. Spiritual rituals can connect us with whatever it is that grounds us – our beliefs, values, or even just our connection to our breath. Prayer, meditation, and deep breathing can all be used as spiritual rituals.
  4. Mantra rituals involve repetition of a meaningful phrase or word – for example “I am present to this moment” or something as simple as “Breathe”.  There is no magic to any set of words – the repetition itself seems to be what is soothing, and the words can give you a positive focal point to direct your energy towards

Whatever ritual you choose to try, it is not a replacement for other important steps – for example, practicing your presentation and being really familiar with its content, or preparing for your difficult conversation. However, a ritual can give us a sense of calm and control in difficult situations, enabling the hard work and preparation we’ve done to shine in its best light.  

Digital Communication 101

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Quick Facts

  • The remote work world means that virtual meetings and communications are now commonplace.
  • It’s crucial to remember that our professional brands are at stake when we use this medium ineffectively.
  • Ultimately, our soft skills, and how we apply them in this specific context, will contribute to our professional success.

Detailed Analysis

As the work world has shifted online and Zoom and similar platforms replace boardrooms, for the most part, business has adapted well. Most of us have integrated some level of video calling into our daily work and personal lives with success. When learning a new skill and technology, mistakes and failures are inevitable (and sometimes, entertaining). However, our professional brands are at stake, so it’s worth revisiting some of the essentials of digital communication.

Dress for business:  Protect your brand by visually presenting what you want to be seen. It’s natural that things have become more casual as people work primarily from home, but this does not mean we should be wearing pajamas on business calls. Casual business attire is a must. You may with to think beyond your personal appearance to the visuals surrounding you. This doesn’t mean you need to have a perfect office; however, it’s worth keeping your workplace at home as neat and organized as is professional – just as you would in the office.

Minimize distraction. Yes, some is unavoidable, and hopefully most workplaces and colleagues are sympathetic to the unavoidable noise of children in the home, construction outdoors, or other unavoidable interruptions. Still, there are things you can do to minimize their impact – mute your microphone when you aren’t speaking, choose the most quiet space available to you, and don’t walk around unnecessarily with your device while you’re in a meeting to prevent the moving background effect.

Use gestures. Even though video conferences are, by definition, visual, it is still harder to communicate via body language as compared to being in the room with someone. Be intentional with your gestures. Smile when you greet someone or make a point of nodding to convey that you are actively listening. (side note: be sure to actively listen! It’s easy to get sidetracked by our phones or papers when on a video call, but this distraction will come across to other participants). A quick hand-raise can indicate you’d like to add something (see below).

Use the features of the technology. A simple tool which meeting moderators should use whenever possible is the ‘raised hand’ tool. Because it be difficult to ‘jump in’ with comments and be heard on video conferences, this feature allows participants to indicate that they have a point to add without interrupting other speakers. Other features such as chat can also be used to ease communication.

Revisit all the etiquette rules for digital communication. The platform may be new but at least the rules are essentially the same – actively listen, be polite, speak clearly, be professional. It’s worth extending the etiquette review to email and text, and these replace many face to face interactions. Compose professional texts and emails, be brief but polite, use spell check, and always pause before hitting ‘send’.

Ultimately, we need to nurture our soft skills, adapting them as needed to cope with the new world. Communication skills, adaptability, empathy, curiosity, problem-solving, humility – all of these are essential to thriving in the remote workplace and will serve you throughout your career.      

Working Remotely for the Long Term

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Quick Facts

  • Remote work is here to stay, at least in some capacity
  • Building and maintaining connections is critical to making remote work effective and sustainable
  • Creating connections and battling digital fatigue among teams will be an important managerial skill for the foreseeable future

Detailed Analysis

The last few weeks have seen a massive shift from office-based to home-based work. Of course, this has been driven by extraordinary circumstances, but the fact is, by many reports, remote work is proving an overall success. A recent Forbes article shows with the massive availability of remote technology, high levels of productivity are possible – despite our changed world, the work is getting done. Add to this that remote work provides benefits to both employees and employers (for example, more flexible work schedules and eliminated commute times, as well as reduced costs associated with providing physical workspaces), and it seem reasonable to assume that remote work – at least to some degree – is here to stay, and companies and managers need to be proactive about keeping teams engaged in the remote world.

Building Connections

It is a paradox – as we have become hyper-connected in digital terms, it takes more effort and intentionality to ensure human connection. What are some of the challenges?

  • It can be tough to understand what connection really is: just because a manager phones their employees once a week does not necessarily mean they are truly deepening relationships or connecting on a human level.
  • Digital connections can be effective but also fatiguing. The threat of burnout is real.
  • In person connections are ultimately irreplaceable for building trust and true relationship.

To create real connection and combat digital fatigue, managers need to:

  • Be intentional in connecting with employees. Simply saying “How are you” at the beginning of a work phone call is not connection. See your employees as individuals for whom work is one part of life. Take an (appropriate level of) interest in their personal lives and allow time and space to really listen when they talk.
  • Create opportunities for your team to connect as individuals. Offsites, team lunches and other social activities give people a chance to connect on a human level. These can be done virtually (side benefit: you can use virtual socializing to connect teams from different geographies that may never have had the chance in the past), but when circumstances allow, there is no replacement for face to face communication.
  • Create policies that balance the tendency for tech to take over people’s lives. Set the expectation that employees are not required to immediately respond to every email, text or notification they receive, and if necessary, establish appropriate service levels to clarify the parameters (e.g. an hour for a text, by end of day for email, or whatever is appropriate to your business).
  • Reinforce the value of periods of deep work, where distractions are minimized. This not only works against digital fatigue, but it can improve the quality of work performed.
  • Respect office hours. Employees (and you) are entitled to a private life that is not inundated with work interruptions. Recognize that it is just as appropriate for someone to turn off their work phone or laptop as it is for them to leave a physical office at the end of a workday.
  • Define expectations and create policies around remote work. What are the expectations in terms of work schedules? How will accountability be established, and productivity measured when you can’t see what employees are doing? By documenting the answer to some of these questions, you can prevent confusion, misunderstanding and unnecessary stress or conflict over what’s appropriate remote work behaviour.

When employees feel respected and connected, their engagement increases. When expectations are clear, reasonable, and well-defined, employees have an opportunity to meet and exceed them. This is as true (perhaps more so) in a remote environment, where traditional means of connection are limited or (as in the current moment) unavailable.

Focus on connecting with your team and enable them to connect with each other, and you will build a solid foundation for navigating the remote work world for the long-term.