Are you looking for solutions to your problems? Well, this is it, I have the answer. The universal one, actually.
Stop it!
My sis knows best. Shw was the one teaching me the saying 'An oak does not fell at one stroke'. And there are so many strikes...
Of the books I read in 2023, the ones below delighted me, and you may want to consider them if you are looking for "something good to read."
A Sweet Death - Simone de Beauvoir
Stela – Simona Goșu
The Invisible Woman and Other Stories – Slavenka
Drakulic
Origins - Saša Stanišić
Dominant Genes – Ștefania Mihalache
Who watches over the Watchers? – Dorel Vișan
Battles in the Desert – Jose Emilio Pacheco
Daniel Stein, translator – Lyudmila Ulitskaya
Strălucitor (Irradiant) – Viorel Ilișoi
Uprooting – Sașa Zare
Call me Esteban - Kalamujić, Lejla
Alice's murders – Guillermo Martinez
Emotional Intelligence in Leadership – Daniel
Goleman
The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles – Katherine Pancol
Whereabouts – Jhumpa Lahiri
Strung to the Ground – Lorina Bălteanu
Fresh Water for Flowers – Valerie Perrin
One of Us is Too Many - Sidonia Drăgușanu
Freedom – Virginia Woolf
Outgrowing God – Richard Dawkins
The Need for Memories – Gheorghe Filip
I never belonged to You – Horațiu Lașcu
Traveling through Babadag – Andrzej Stasiuk
The Dedauls Book of Slovak Literature – Peter
Karpinsky
Humans – Matt Haig
When We were Happy – Jiyoung Gong
The Winters of the Soul – Katherine May
Vorbe la purtător în izmene pe călător – Ohara
Donovetsky
The Bitch – Pilar Quintana
The Masks of Exile – Constantin Arcu
Killer Motive – Ann Girdharry
Echoes in the Memory of Time – Claude Spaak
About Woman's brain and Other Demons – Sofia
Nădejde
A Lot of Force and a Gramme of Gentleness – Andrei Dosa
The Lost Shadow – Carmen Firan
The Analysis of the Mind – Bertrand Russell
Mariana Trench – Jasmin Schreiber
Undoctored – Adam Kay
God is One Block of Flats Away – Ciprian Măceșaru
Lost on Planet China – J. Marteen Troost
Hatred – Anne Holt
Zen in the Art of Writing – Ray Bradbury
Purple Hibiscus – Chimamanda Adichie
The Physics of Sorrow – Gheorghi Gospodinov
The Sexual Life of Cannibals - J. Marteen Troost
The Queen – Liliana Nechita
The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
Cousins – Karen McManus
All My Colors – David Quantick
The Lady with Dark Sunglasses – Sidonia Drăgușanu
Well, all of my
recommendations gather under only one umbrella – a positive work environment.
What is a positive work
environment?
Firstly, a positive work environment is an environment where one is respected and respects. It may sound outdated, but I do believe that without respect nothing can be built. Absolutely nothing. For it is the base for understanding, empathy, and willing to help colleagues/ managers deliver a project.
Elements of a
positive work environment
To my mind, these
are the most important elements of a positive work environment:
When one knows who does what there is
no room for interpretations or misunderstandings. And, if I may, no room for
playing the to and fro game with the tasks.
Miscommunication. When
it comes to failure of delivery of projects or misunderstandings within the
company/ within the team, everybody points to miscommunication as the main
reason. Thus, the flow of information from executant to manager and the other
way around is paramount.
Whether one is new
or not in a company, one must deliver tasks according to procedures. If they
are not documented somewhere at everybody’s reach, chaos descends. I recommend
also documenting internal procedures for delivery of tasks within a department. We are human and we
can forget or make mistakes, and this is why it’s golden to have a document that
one can consult to make sure one follows the correct procedure. I have created
a Communication Handbook that my team and I use and we make sure to update it any
time a change in a procedure appears or new procedures appear.
Any work relationship
has at least two parties – manager and executant. Like any normal relationship,
both parties contribute with recommendations or they raise concerns to make the
relation work on the long term. Is the same case with professional
relationships, if feedback does not flow both ways, we fail to recognize what
we should improve. I know it’s hard for an executant to provide feedback to a manager, but if a manager understands the importance of bringing efficiency
into the relationship this should be encouraged. No one needs a yes-man if one
wants a working relationship.
I think there’s none
without the other. When an employee engages to deliver a task and for various
reasons that are under her/ his influence this task cannot be delivered, the
employee has several possibilities to manage the situation (inform in due time
about the delay so a solution can be agreed upon by the parties, use other resources,
skip some steps to finish in due time, etc.) – and this is accountability. When
someone is accountable, they show trust and will to find solutions, and this
is a long-term assurance for the management (and a definite con to continue to
micromanage).
This is not about
remote or hybrid work. Even though employers have realized in the past few
years that they have more to gain if they show more flexibility regarding this
aspect. This is in regards to flexibility when finding solutions, delivering
tasks and making compromises so that the parties can deliver.
At the start of my
career, I thought that I, as an executant, was not to ask questions because I
might disturb the manager. But with failures coming after not clarifying some
aspects, I understood that it is far better to bother/ annoy the managers with
questions so that I can clarify everything I needed, instead of delivering
something that can hurt us both or the company. A safe environment is where one
is not afraid to ask questions (because one knows that the manager understands that
this shows respect and the will to accurately deliver the tasks) or to address
concerns regarding aspects one considers that should be changed because they
have proven their inefficiency.
Every day we learn
something. Even the ones that do not go to trainings. Nowadays society is built
this way, given all the technical developments. But aside from this, one must
keep oneself up to date with what happens new in one’s domain, and also learn
about changes in the related fields. When we learn something new, dopamine is
released in our brain, and this makes us more optimistic and have more trust in
ourselves and the future.
According to a video I recently saw about the reasons why young talents tend to leave
faster than experienced talents, the conclusion is this – remember: if they don’t
grow, they go!
I do believe in my
very core that people are always searching to improve things (see what happens
in technology, and in the other sectors). All of the above are the result of
the conclusions I have drawn during my professional experience, corroborated
with ideas, conclusions, questions received from like-minded people that also
feel the need for change and want to support the perpetuation of the positive work environment. Only
together we can become strong enough to make this change come true.
If you have read this far, I want to thank you. And make you a gift consisting of a couple of questions. I invite you to answer them below or to simply ponder on them. Either way, talk about this with your friends, family, colleagues and find out what does a positive work environment mean to you. And they, in their own turn, can speak to others. And this is how change happens, because it is not enough to only talk about it, we must also act upon it.
Later addition
The other day, I spoke to a lady that used to work for an agency that I used to collaborate with while I was working somewhere else and that used to create visuals for us. The manager would only give one indication – it must be wow! Apparently, one would be tempted into believing that there’s a lot of creative spirit into this interjection. I beg to differ for an interjection cannot clarify what a person wants. And because the manager did not know what the final result should look like, the agency used to remake the visuals a lot. Until one day when the people from the agency realized how many resources they used in vain and how much time and effort was put into the remakes. So they added a new clause to the contract, stating that the first two remakes were free of charge, but starting with the third one the employer had to pay.
I remembered this aspect because, unfortunately, an employee cannot protect herself/ himself as an external collaborator can when it comes to rework. Or, how a dear friend calls it, the work-in-vain cooperative. As a general rule, managers display the attitude ‘all the remakes are contained within your salary’ because employees are captive and being part of the manager’s team they will remake something as many times as the manager wants, with no explanations whatsoever, most of the times. And so I turn again to the idea of a positive work environment and to the fact that a manager must see to their executants and keep their frustration at low levels. When one works in vain and everything is directed to a big black hole, one feels frustrated and loses the sense that their job can bring. I can’t stress enough how essential it is for an employee not to feel like this.
What elements
would you add to the list above?
What elements
would you add to your work environment (from the list above, but also others)
to make it (more) positive?
Who/ what impedes your work environment to become (more) positive?
Decree 402, the boss drinks and so do you!
How many times have you heard that?
Well, I’ve had my shares and still
take it personally. Because, you know what?!, your work is personal, too! Efforts,
results, time, attention, skills, all of this is you and yours. You put you
into everything.
Is there a time to provide feedback?
Yes, by all means, yes. There’s a
time and a place.
The where
Feedback should be given in a meeting,
whether online or face-to-face (and not in front of the entire team, if it’s
negative). This provides space for both parties to explain their points of
view, but more importantly, this is how an actual exchange of thoughts
regarding the points of view can be made. If feedback is seen just a one-way
street (only from manager to employee) then this is not a healthy work
relationship.
Managers might be trapped into
thinking that with the job title they are bestowed absolute correctness, but
managers are humans too and thus subject to error. A discussion is the perfect
space to get things cleared up and expectations right in the open.
If you can help it, don’t provide
feedback by email. An employee should feel encouraged to ask questions and
usually an email is never a space to clarify things. People would get defensive
or hurt and they would not show acceptance of the other party’s point of view.
Better to gather all feedback and
talk about it during a meeting. This shows care and respect.
Of course, time is a scarce
resource so if you are a manager with a large team is hard to set feedback
meetings with each member of the team, but you can make sure that this is a
constant point on your agenda for the 1x1 monthly meeting.
Feedback by email should be
provided only if a person can make sure to put it in simple and clear terms. Otherwise,
it could turn into an exchange of emails (or WhatsApp emails) that only makes the parties lose
time, energy, and leaves them frustrated.
The time
If it’s positive feedback,
then let nothing stop you (timewise or place-wise)! There is no limit for this
as we all love to hear positive feedback, anytime. Unfortunately, this does not
happen so often. Have you noticed how we insist on noticing or highlighting the
bad instead of the good?!
Sure, human nature has an
explanation for it. It’s not the good that keeps us safe from danger. But maybe
we should change this. Millions of years ago, our brains started focusing on
the negative because that was all that we needed in order to survive. But not
anymore. Even though the stress endured by some employees can be compared with
being chased by wild animals while holding a frail stick.
Have you noticed that in ‘The
where’ I only referred to negative feedback?! I haven’t. Until I started
writing about the positive here. See, this is what our brains do. Take a moment
to ponder upon that, please.
If you are giving negative
feedback – by meeting or by email – please do not provide it on a Friday
afternoon! Coming back to the beginning of this article, people take feedback
personally. Do you want to ruin their weekends, or do you want a long-term
relationship based on trust and support? Even if an employee is an aikido
disciple and has read The Art of Peace, they would still be troubled by the
feedback.
We talk a lot about caring for employees with mindfulness courses, we talk about equality and diversion and inclusion, but a lot is ignored. A mindfulness course won’t save an employee from burnout or demotivation as long as an organization does not call out on unacceptable behaviors.
Respecting the time for rest (whether the weekends or
the rest of the time after the workday is done) – which is something that the
French have already embraced with the legal right to switch off from work and
employees no longer receive emails or phone calls after the typical work hours –
is an important thing. But it’s not enough to make sure people do not stay
overtime, other things should also be considered. One of them is showing care and
interest on how one provides feedback. Sure, it’s not easy; doing the good
thing never is. But if you want to foster a supportive environment and if you
care for the mental wellbeing of your team, consider how you provide feedback
and support that manner not only if you are a manager who provides feedback to
the employees, but also if you are an executant and you give feedback to your
peers.
Only talking about this idea of
healthy organizations won’t change a thing. We must really consider the do’s
and don’ts and take act.
Apparently, we live in a world that no longer knows who Muttley is.
Sassafrassarassum Rick Rastardly!
A few weeks back, I heard a rock song on the radio that stuck with me. I liked the verses, but I was to find out it was a cover. Both versions are just as beautiful.
The first version - Tudor Gheorghe
The second version - Trooper
