Hi Reader,
I hope you have been finding some joy during this month - perhaps for you it's watching some Olympics coverage on TV or enjoying cozy time inside if it's rainy or snowy where you are. I'm here with some practical resources for your leadership at work.
Let’s get to your Monthly Management Memo - as always with something bold, something new, something borrowed, and something to pursue.
🔥Something Bold - Appreciate Your Peers More
In a conversation with Joyfully Managed Worklife alumna Ashley, we talked about how critical appreciation is at work and she reminded all of us about how we often miss a key group: our peers. Managers often take care to recognize and appreciate their team members (if you need to do this better, get this free toolkit on my website), but we often forget to take time to appreciate our lateral colleagues for their contributions. Nothing improves company culture faster than appreciation, so take a moment today and say thanks to someone who you don't manage but whose work you're grateful for right now.
🆕 Something New - Worse Than Being High at Work
"Maybe you should encourage your employees to smoke weed more often," I posted last week on LinkedIn.
Research done by Hewlett-Packard found that the IQs of employees who were interrupted by email, calls, or messaging were reduced by more than 10 points, which is twice the impact of smoking marijuana.
I'm kidding about the weed, but seriously - if your team (or you as their leader) is getting Slack notifications all damn day, or being notified with pings about new emails, your effectiveness is SO much lower than it could be.
Turn them off. Or at the VERY least, go in and get those settings more specific so you're only getting pings about the truly important things. You do not need a sound to alert you of a new email newsletter or a random response in a fun Slack channel. Those things can be great, but the notifications about them are tanking your productivity.
It takes 5 minutes to make these notifications more specific or turn them off. It will save you literal hours a day moving forward.
🤝🏼 Something Borrowed - Repair a Work Relationship
A tense or strained working relationship with a colleague is one of the most devastating things for our mental health, productivity, and effectiveness. If you have a working relationship that needs to be repaired, I think this guidance from The Management Center about how to have a reset conversation is so helpful.
🏃🏾♀️Something to Pursue - Asana Tips and Templates
If you happen to be using Asana at work, hit reply and I'll get back to you (it's really me on the other side of these emails) with some resources that might help. I do a lot of workshops for teams on how to use Asana well so I've got some templates, quick how-to videos for things folks have asked me to explain, and some additional tips I've written over the years that I'm happy to send your way.
Last Month's Most-Clicked Management Memo Link: Sample policy language for more equitable and family-friendly workplaces
Bring your team; I’ll bring my A-game. I love helping teams with workshops on productivity, team culture, and effectiveness at work. Find out more and book a free chat to see if I can be helpful to your organization.