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A lack of effective listening between colleagues is one of the main causes of workplace conflicts, a problem that has been on the increase during the pandemic.
Before we have even stepped into the room, we are likely to have our own agenda which disrupts our ability to truly listen and resolve issues. But what can be done about it to improve communication and resolve conflict, and why does it matter?
Poor listening and communication are at the root of many relationship breakdowns, conflicts and disputes and lead to talent loss, poor productivity, low morale, missing deadlines, failure to complete on projects, loss of sales and a breakdown in trust and relationships.
In business truly listening to employees, colleagues and stakeholders means seriously entertaining their ideas, thoughts and feelings, whilst simultaneously putting your own ideas and instinctive responses on hold.
Why The Pandemic Made Listening Harder
Being asked to work from home and attend frequent online meetings has meant that we have less access to verbal and non-verbal cues, body language, lipreading and facial emotional reading. Turn-taking is difficult in these sorts of meetings.
If listening and speaking are harder, then people have less opportunity to express themselves. In addition, we may be distracted by other things going on at home and our mood and mental health may have been suffering. A lost ability to socialize at work means that meetings are often now solely functional. Furthermore, whilst wearing them may be required, masks have increased communication and listening problems too.
Why Listening Matters
When we communicate, we are subconsciously conducting a test for trust and respect. The test is continuous, it happens from moment-to-moment and is based on what people see, hear or feel. What they want to know more than anything else is ‘Do I matter?’ and ‘Am I heard?’
We also pay most attention to the things that directly concern us or are relevant to our own situation, our own needs, interests, fears and concerns, which means we can often listen from our own point of view rather than the speakers.
The message that a person or organization intends to give is frequently not the message that the other receives. Even when we feel we are expressing ourselves with great clarity, if either or both sides don’t truly listen to what is being said or don’t share the same meaning in the message there will be failures in communication. Not feeling heard can affect work relationships which can result in deep resentment, frustration and conflict.
Tips of how to use deep listening to resolve conflict.
Understand that every conflict has two components: emotional and rational. When a person experiences high emotion in response to a situation or an exchange with another person, the rational, thinking part of the brain will not come into play until they have dealt with the emotional hijacking of the brain. It is physically impossible for someone to switch to logical thinking when their amygdala has created an emotional fight or flight response.
Acknowledge a person’s emotional state with an empathetic response. In instances where an emotional response is taking place, the first step to resolving the situation involves expressing empathy. You do this by saying something like ‘It sounds like you are feeling very frustrated’, or ‘I can see that you are upset by this’.
Be curious about what it is that is bothering them. If you are aware of and respectful of the other person’s needs, interests, fears and concerns then that is a great opening for good communication. Equally understand that the surface level of conflict is usually just that and there may be deeper issues involved; you may be missing subtle cues or underlying messages. Try not to interrupt or jump to conclusions.
Stand in the other person’s shoes. Even if only for a brief moment in time, try to see the world as the other person sees it, rather than how you see it. If you can do this then the person that you are communicating with will begin to have trust in you.
Show you are listening. Make eye contact, be present, don’t multi-task at the same time, turn your phone and the tv off, and pay attention to what the other person is saying rather thinking about your own response. Speaking to someone who gives the impression that they are not listening will only escalate the situation further.
Reflect back. Unless we take the important step of reflecting back to the speaker what we thought we heard and checking that our interpretation is correct, then we have no real way of knowing that we have understood accurately. Don’t tell them what they are feeling but summarise the important bits by using phrases like ‘I think you are saying’…’ and ‘If I heard you correctly…’
You don’t need to have all the answers. Sometimes people just want to offload or vent and they don’t want fixing.It is ok to not always know what to say. The important thing is to be present and there for them and to have created a safe space for them to tell you how they are feeling.
Tell them your reaction if relevant. Give the speaker some information about your response to their message. Don’t attack on what has been said but add some value to the conversation, describing your reaction rather than criticising the speaker.
Today, we live in a world where business, degrees and even entire relationships are conducted behind a screen. As a result, employee frustration and miscommunication is at an all-time high, with tone alone being misinterpreted almost half of the time in email, leading to endless wasted hours and heightened anxiety.
For better or worse, digital communication, whether it’s through email or direct messages on platforms like Slack, don’t let us see each other’s immediate reactions — which is why we look for ways to “politely” express irritation. The key word is “politely,” but it isn’t always interpreted that way.
So let’s take a look at the five most common phrases employees use that actually make them passive aggressive and petty:
1. “Per my last email…”
What it actually means: “You didn’t really read what I wrote. Pay attention this time!”
2. “For future reference…”
What it actually means: “Let me correct your blatant ‘mistake’ that you already knew was wrong.”
3. “Bumping this to the top of your inbox…”
What it actually means: “You’re my boss [or employee]. This is the third time I’ve asked you. I need you to get this s*** done.”
4. “Just to be sure we’re on the same page…”
What this actually means: “I’m going to cover my a** here and make sure that everyone who refers to this email in the future knows that I was right all along.”
5. “Going forward…”
What it actually means: “Do not ever do that again.”
It’s likely that you’ve used one of these phrases before without even realizing that it could be perceived as passive aggressive. Or, you may have been on the receiving end, which can also be frustrating.
(Even as a digital body language researcher, whenever I see “Thanks for your patience” in an email, I can’t decide if they’re brushing me off with an undefined future date, or if they really only need a few days longer than expected to get back to me. In most cases, though, I know they’re just saying “Sorry I’m late with this; it’s taking longer than I thought.” That’s all.)
The right way to express what you mean
So how should we frame our own “Just following up on this” without engaging in any passive aggressiveness? When is it okay to loop in our boss without seeming like a jerk? When do we use the phone to call and clarify something?
Here are four things successful communicators do:
1. Don’t respond to messages or emails when you’re angry or frustrated.
This prevents miscommunication, wasted time and regret. If you feel emotionally hijacked, save your email message as a draft and revise and send it when you’re in a better mood.
2. Assume good intent.
Instead of calling someone out for screwing up, step into their shoes and ask yourself, “What are some reasons why they might have made this mistake?”
It’s better to people exactly what they need to take action. Sometimes just adding a quick brief so that they don’t have to go back and read through previous emails and writing “Here’s what I need from you” or “Here are the open dates again” is helpful.
3. Show empathy and encouragement.
Replace imperative words like “Do this” with conditional phrases like “Could you do this?” When delivering feedback, begin your message by expressing appreciation using words like “Thank you for [X]” or “Excellent job on [X].”
If your boss, or even a client, sends you a passive aggressive email, fight that urge to send an even more petty reply. Lowering your actions down to their level will only escalate the tension and increase anxiety.
4. Avoid digital ghosting.
Need to get back to someone? Here’s a quick guide to remember:
If you can answer in 60 seconds or less: Respond immediately.
If it’s urgent: Respond immediately or let the sender know you are working on it. Make an appointment with yourself on your calendar if you need to.
If it’s a matter lacking urgency: Don’t stress; block out time to follow up after at your convenience.
If you’re the one waiting for a response: Unless it’s critical that you get a reply ASAP, remember that people may have a lot on their plates. If you follow up twice and don’t get a reply, switch to a different medium (e.g. a phone call).
Parents don’t set out to say hurtful or harmful things to their children, but it happens. You’re tired, they’re pushing your buttons, and you’re frustrated after asking them for the 600th time to clear their plates or get out the door on time. You could also be inadvertently repeating things you heard in your own childhood that your parents (and maybe even you) didn’t realize took an emotional toll.
We parents are trying our best, but sometimes — a lot of times — we fall short. That’s why it can be helpful to know some of the potentially damaging phrases parents often resort to without realizing their impact. It’s not about beating ourselves up. It’s about doing better by being a bit more conscious of our language.
So HuffPost Parents spoke with several experts who shared some harmful phrases you should try to erase from your vocabulary — and what to say instead.
1. “It’s not a big deal.”
Kids often cry or melt down over stuff that seems really silly. (Recall the delightful “reasons my kid is crying” meme that had a real moment a few years back.) But while kids’ crying and whining can definitely get under their parents’ skin — particularly when it’s over something you think they should be able to cope with — it’s harmful to diminish their very real feelings by basically telling them to buck up.
“These little problems — and the emotions that come with them — are actually huge to our kids,” said Amy McCready, a parenting educator, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions and the author of “If I Have to Tell You One More Time.” “When we discount their emotional responses to very real challenges, we tell them, ‘How you feel doesn’t matter,’ or ‘It’s silly to be afraid or disappointed.’”
Instead, try this:
Take a moment and try to understand things from their perspective. McCready recommended saying something like: “You seem really scared or frustrated or disappointed right now. Should we talk about it and figure out what to do?” Ultimately, you’re helping them label their emotions (an important part of developing emotional intelligence) and making it clear that you’re there for them.
2. “You never” or “You always do XYZ.”
Children have their patterns, but saying your kid “always” or “never” does something simply isn’t true. (That’s why marriage counselors advise clients to avoid the word “never” with their partners altogether.)
Using broad statements is a red flag that you’ve stopped being curious about what’s happening in this particular moment with your child, according to Robbin McManne, founder of Parenting for Connection.
“It misses opportunity for you to teach them what they should and what they can do next time,” McManne said.
Instead, try this:
Remind yourself to be curious about why your child is engaging in a particular behavior at a particular time. It really helps to connect by getting physically close to your child in that moment, McManne said, so that you’re not shouting at them from across the house, but you’re right there with them to make sure they’re not distracted by something else.
3. “You make me sad when you do that.”
Sure, it might really bum you out when your child doesn’t listen, but it is important to set (and hold) boundaries without throwing your emotions into the mix. Those feelings are yours, not theirs. Plus, you’re setting a precedent by potentially giving them a lot of negative power.
“When kids feel like they get to decide if you’re happy, sad or enraged, they may happily take the opportunity to continue to push your buttons down the road,” McCready said. “And even when they’re out of your house, this mindset can damage future relationships and set the stage for them to manipulate others to get what they want.”
Instead, try this:
Set whatever boundary you need to set, like, “It’s not OK to jump on couches,” McCready offered by way of example. Then, give some choices such as, “Would you rather play quietly in here or go outside?”
4. “You should know better.”
When you say something like “you should know better,” what you’re ultimately trying to do is guilt or shame your child into changing. But that puts kids on the defensive, which makes them even less likely to listen, McCready said. It also undermines their confidence.
“If we tell our kids they should know better — yet clearly they didn’t — we’re sending the message, ‘You’re too dumb/immature to make a good decision.’ Not exactly what we intended,” she added.
Instead, try this:
McCready suggested saying something like “Hmm, looks like we’ve got a situation here! What can we do to fix it?” The goal is to focus on solutions — not the problem — so children practice problem-solving and fixing their own mistakes, and think about ways to make better choices in the first place.
5. “Just let me do it.”
When you’re rushing out the door or waiting for your child to complete a simple task that is seemingly taking forever, your instinct might be to just take over. But try to avoid doing that if you can.
“You’re telling your child, ‘You’re not capable of this, so I need to get involved.’ This is both discouraging and really frustrating,” McCready said. “Imagine if you were super close to being able to do your own zipper and just needed a few more tries, but then Dad swoops in and stops you in your tracks.”
Instead, try this:
Slow down and give your child the time they need to complete their task. Or at the very least, be clearer about why you have to rush. Say something like, “I’ll help you just this once since we’re running so late, but let’s work on this together later!”
6. “You’re a [insert label here].”
One of the most valuable things parents can do for their children is simply avoid labeling them, McManne said. Labels hurt the parent-child relationship because they get in the way of parents seeing their children as struggling and needing help. Parents start to link certain behaviors with whatever label they’ve given to their child, rather than digging in and really trying to understand what’s happening developmentally.
“Labels take us further out of compassion and curiosity,” McManne said.
Labels also have the potential to become self-fulfilling. If children hear from parents that they’re a certain way, they might come to accept that as true — even if it doesn’t feel true to them.
Even labels that seem positive like “You’re smart!” can actually be harmful, McCready said.
“When we say ‘you’re smart’ or ‘you’re athletic,’ we’re telling our child, ‘The only reason you did well on that test is because you were born brainy,’ or, ‘You wouldn’t have made that goal if it weren’t for your natural ability.’ What’s more, if our child bombs the test next time, they’ll be left confused and discouraged, questioning their own ability. If they’re so smart, why did they fail?”
Instead, try this:
Notice and applaud effort, not outcomes. And do whatever you can to avoid labeling your kiddo as anything, good or bad.
A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior, and often child neglect or abuse on the part of individual parents occur continuously and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such actions. Children sometimes grow up in such families with the understanding that such a situation is normal.
Dysfunctional families are primarily a result of two adults, one typically overtly abusive and the other codependent, and may also be affected by addictions (such as substance abuse, such drugs including alcohol), or sometimes by an untreated mental illness. Dysfunctional parents may emulate or over-correct from their own dysfunctional parents. In some cases, the dominant parent will abuse or neglect their children and the other parent will not object, misleading a child to assume blame.
Some features are common to most dysfunctional families:
Lack of empathy, understanding, and sensitivity towards certain family members, while expressing extreme empathy or appeasement towards one or more members who have real or perceived “special needs”. In other words, one family member continuously receives far more than they deserve, while another is marginalized.
Denial (refusal to acknowledge abusive behavior, possibly believing that the situation is normal or even beneficial; also known as the “elephant in the room“.)
Inadequate or missing boundaries for self (e.g. tolerating inappropriate treatment from others, failing to express what is acceptable and unacceptable treatment, tolerance of physical, emotional or sexual abuse.)
Disrespect of others’ boundaries (e.g. physical contact that other person dislikes; breaking important promises without just cause; purposefully violating a boundary another person has expressed.)
Extremes in conflict (either too much fighting or insufficient peaceful arguing between family members.)
Unequal or unfair treatment of one or more family members due to their birth order, gender, age, family role (mother, etc.), abilities, race, caste, etc. (may include frequent appeasement of one member at the expense of others, or an uneven/inconsistent enforcement of rules.)
Organizations that rely on data analysis to make decisions have a significant competitive advantage in overcoming challenges and planning for the future. And yet data access and the skills required to understand the data are, in many organizations, restricted to business intelligence teams and IT specialists.
As enterprises tap into the full potential of their data, leaders must work toward empowering employees to use data in their jobs and to increase performance—individually and as part of a team. This puts data at the heart of decision making across departments and roles and doesn’t restrict innovation to just one function. This strategic choice can foster a data culture—transcending individuals and teams while fundamentally changing an organization’s operations, mindset and identity around data.
Organizations can also instill a data culture by promoting data literacy—because in order for employees to participate in a data culture, they first need to speak the language of data. More than technical proficiency with software, data literacy encompasses the critical thinking skills required to interpret data and communicate its significance to others.
Many employees either don’t feel comfortable using data or aren’t completely prepared to use it. To best close this skills gap and encourage everyone to contribute to a data culture, organizations need executives who use and champion data, training and community programs that accommodate many learning needs and styles, benchmarks for measuring progress and support systems that encourage continuous personal development and growth.
Here’s how organizations can improve their data literacy:
1. LEAD
Employees take direction from leaders who signal their commitment to data literacy, from sharing data insights at meetings to participating in training alongside staff. “It becomes very inspiring when you can show your organization the data and insights that you found and what you did with that information,” said Jennifer Day, vice president of customer strategy and programs at Tableau.
“It takes that leadership at the top to make a commitment to data-driven decision making in order to really instill that across the entire organization.” To develop critical thinking around data, executives might ask questions about how data supported decisions, or they may demonstrate how they used data in their strategic actions. And publicizing success stories and use cases through internal communications draws focus to how different departments use data.
2.Train
Self-Service Learning
This approach is “for the people who just need to solve a problem—get in and get out,” said Ravi Mistry, one of about three dozen Tableau Zen Masters, professionals selected by Tableau who are masters of the Tableau end-to-end analytics platform and now teach others how to use it.
Reference guides for digital processes and tutorials for specific tasks enable people to bridge minor gaps in knowledge, minimizing frustration and the need to interrupt someone else’s work to ask for help. In addition, forums moderated by data specialists can become indispensable roundups of solutions. Keeping it all on a single learning platform, or perhaps your company’s intranet, makes it easy for employees to look up what they need.
3.Measure
Success Indicators
Performance metrics are critical indicators of how well a data literacy initiative is working. Identify which metrics need to improve as data use increases and assess progress at regular intervals to know where to tweak your training program. Having the right learning targets will improve data literacy in areas that boost business performance.
And quantifying the business value generated by data literacy programs can encourage buy-in from executives. Ultimately, collecting metrics, use cases and testimonials can help the organization show a strong correlation between higher data literacy and better business outcomes.
4.Support
Knowledge Curators
Enlisting data specialists like analysts to showcase the benefits of using data helps make data more accessible to novices. Mistry, the Tableau Zen Master, referred to analysts who function in this capacity as “knowledge curators” guiding their peers on how to successfully use data in their roles. “The objective is to make sure everyone has a base level of analysis that they can do,” he said.
This is a shift from traditional business intelligence models in which analysts and IT professionals collect and analyze data for the entire company. Internal data experts can also offer office hours to help employees complete specific projects, troubleshoot problems and brainstorm different ways to look at data.
What’s most effective depends on the company and its workforce: The right data literacy program will implement training, software tools and digital processes that motivate employees to continuously learn and refine their skills, while encouraging data-driven thinking as a core practice.
For more information on how you can improve data literacy throughout your organization, read these resources from Tableau:
As data collection and data sharing become routine and data analysis and big data become common ideas in the news, business, government and society, it becomes more and more important for students, citizens, and readers to have some data literacy. The concept is associated with data science, which is concerned with data analysis, usually through automated means, and the interpretation and application of the results.
Data literacy is distinguished from statistical literacy since it involves understanding what data mean, including the ability to read graphs and charts as well as draw conclusions from data. Statistical literacy, on the other hand, refers to the “ability to read and interpret summary statistics in everyday media” such as graphs, tables, statements, surveys, and studies.
As guides for finding and using information, librarians lead workshops on data literacy for students and researchers, and also work on developing their own data literacy skills. A set of core competencies and contents that can be used as an adaptable common framework of reference in library instructional programs across institutions and disciplines has been proposed.
Resources created by librarians include MIT‘s Data Management and Publishing tutorial, the EDINA Research Data Management Training (MANTRA), the University of Edinburgh’s Data Library and the University of Minnesota libraries’ Data Management Course for Structural Engineers.
Animated whiteboard videos have been shown to increase visitor and clickthrough rates over traditional marketing materials – cartoonmedia.com. Doodle animation videos retain subject attention by 15% MORE than a live-narrative film – Dr. Richard Wiseman, highly regarded science and psychology professor.
Animated doodle videos are unbeatable for grabbing attention and inspiring action BECAUSE they’re multi-sensory so people listen, read and watch at the same time. Now you can enjoy next-level video engagement for ANY project WITHOUT experience, multiple tools, or ever being on camera.
