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Tips for Reading the Room Before a Meeting or Presentation

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In every conversation at work, there’s the explicit discussion happening — the words being spoken out loud — and the tacit one. To be successful in most organizations, it’s important to understand the underlying conversations and reactions that people in the room are having. But if you aren’t picking up on those subtle cues, how can you learn to do so? What signals should you be looking for? And what can you do to influence the unspoken dynamics?

What the Experts Say
“Knowing how to read between the lines is a critical workplace skill,” says Annie McKee, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of How to Be Happy at Work. “You need to understand other people — what they want, what they don’t want, their fears, hopes, dreams, and motivations,” she says. “This builds trust. And trust is fundamental to getting things done.” In addition, you must be aware of your effect on others, according to Karen Dillon, coauthor of How Will You Measure Your Life? “You need to be constantly assessing how other people are responding to you,” she says. “Some people find this easy and intuitive. For others, it’s a challenge.” The good news is that this skill can be learned. Here are some ways how.

Observe
The best way to read a room is to pay close attention to people — and not just what they’re saying. “If you’re relying [solely] on their words, you’re only getting half the picture,” McKee says. Upon entering a meeting, she recommends, do “a quick scan of the individuals,” noting “who’s next to whom, who’s smiling, who’s not, who’s standing, who’s sitting, and how much space is between people.” Next, try to pick up on “the almost invisible clues on how people are feeling” by looking carefully at “their facial expressions, posture, and body language.” Be on the lookout for “quick microexpressions” such as “fleeting smiles, raised eyebrows, or even tiny frowns.” Vigilant observation will give you the information you need to interpret group dynamics. Dillon recommends identifying role models to further improve your social awareness. “Think of people you admire who are great at reading the room,” she says. “Isolate the things they do and try to emulate those.”

Control how much you talk
You can’t observe if you’re spending most of your time talking. You need to listen, Dillon says. “Be conscious of how much you are saying.” Whether you’re in a room with a large group of people, a small group, or you’re speaking with a colleague one-on-one, she advises taking frequent pauses “to really think about what the other person is saying” and watching out for the nonverbal cues. Don’t just wait for your turn to talk; there is “no shame” in silence. When the conversation is more intimate, Dillon says, you must strive to “make the other person feel heard.” Be present. Be engaged. Make eye contact. “Position yourself so that you’re not inviting others to butt into your conversation. Help the other people feel confident that you are all in the moment together.” After the other person says something, paraphrase what they said to indicate that you’re paying attention. Similarly, “if the other person doesn’t seem to be hearing what you’re saying, and you start to realize that you’re talking at them, you should ask a question,” she adds. Try open-ended questions such as “What do you think about…?” or, “What are the consequences of…?” or, “Have you experienced this?” The answers to these questions help you uncover what’s really going on.

Interpret your observations
Once you’ve “tuned into the emotions and energy in the room,” you can “try to make sense of what you think you know,” McKee says. She recommends “generating multiple hypotheses about what’s going on.” Consider the people in the group more broadly and reflect on the possible reasons for their individual and collective emotional states. “What’s happening in their lives? What’s going on in their jobs? What do you know about these people?” If you don’t know much, this can be tricky, but you can still come up with hypotheses for what’s motivating people. At the same time, you shouldn’t project your feelings onto the group. “Keep your emotions in check,” McKee says, adding that this is a feat that “takes tremendous skill and self-control.” If, say, the room is reverberating tension, don’t let yourself “be hijacked by negative energy, and don’t give in to your natural inclination to be frightened and angry.” Remember, too, that the emotions you perceive are not personal. “It probably doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

Check your hypotheses
When you’ve developed a few explanations for what’s going on in the room, check your understanding. You can do this by continuing to gather further information — though you should continue to be open to what you’re seeing and sensing so that you don’t fall prey to confirmation bias. You can also ask people directly, in private, McKee says. When you’re in one-on-one conversations, you might say something like, “In the meeting I saw you furrow your brow when discussion turned to the xyz project — how do you feel about it?” Most likely, your colleagues will be pleased you noticed, she says. When you make note of people’s feelings and reactions, they “feel attended to.” Another tactic McKee suggests is talking with a trusted colleague, mentor, or coach. “Talk about what you’ve observed — not in a gossipy way, but as a learning opportunity,” she says. “You want someone else to check ideas with” so that you can say, “What do you think is going on with that colleague? Or that coalition?”

Put your perceptions into practice
If in the midst of a meeting or interaction, you notice that things are getting tense or heated, you can “take the opportunity to shift the emotional reality of the room,” McKee says. “Use humor,” she adds. “Or empathize with the group — make them feel okay.” She recommends determining who in the room has “the most social or hierarchical capital” and then focusing on getting that person on your side. “It could be a person who has the most seniority, or the person who others are sitting closest to. It could be the person who’s telling jokes and has the ability to lighten the mood.” Keep an eye out “for any positive signals” — the executive in the corner who’s smiling, for instance — and concentrate on those. Importantly, continue to pay attention to what’s not being said. “Most people are just waiting to talk,” she says. As a result, “we may catch most of the words, but we miss the music.”

Principles to Remember

Do:

  • Consider the people in the room more broadly and reflect on the possible reasons for their individual and collective emotional states.
  • Look for microexpressions such as fleeting smiles or raised eyebrows. These offer clues to group dynamics and individual emotions.
  • Isolate the behaviors that your socially aware role model exhibits and try to emulate them.

Don’t:

  • Be distracted. Maintain eye contact and be present and engaged in conversations with others.
  • Make it all about you. Ask open-ended questions to help you uncover what’s really going on.
  • Allow yourself to be hijacked by a room’s negative energy. Keep your emotions in check and do what you can to shift the emotional reality of the room.

Case Study #1: Pay attention to people’s body language and facial expressions
As the chief human resources officer at Prosek Partners, the global PR company, Karen Niovitch Davis has a good deal of experience reading rooms. “I’ve had a 20+ year career in HR,” she says. “A lot of what I do is about trying to really understand what people are saying when they are not actually saying it.”

Every week, she attends a management meeting at Prosek for senior vice presidents, managing directors, and partners. The company’s CEO leads the meeting, and Karen, because of her role, is often aware of what’s on the agenda.

“Since some of the things that we discuss are sensitive or controversial, I am often prepping for how my colleagues will react,” Karen says.

Recently, for instance, the CEO announced that the company would be expanding and that it had signed a lease for more space in the building. Certain employees and teams would be moving to another floor.

Karen paid close attention to her colleagues’ body language and facial expressions to gauge their reactions. She was prepared for a mixed bag. “I knew everyone in the room was thinking: What does this mean for me? What does this mean for my team? Are we all going to have to move?” she says. “That’s human nature.”

Many of her colleagues seemed “genuinely pleased” by the news, she recalls. “They were excited because the move means we are growing.”

Others, however, gave off a decidedly different vibe. Some people’s faces went blank; others visibly frowned. One — we’ll call her Jane — looked down and scribbled a note to a colleague sitting next to her.

Karen assumed that Jane wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of moving. She thought about what she already knew about Jane. “She does not like to change her routine,” Karen notes.

Shortly after the meeting ended, Karen approached Jane. She told her that it seemed that she was unhappy about the move. “I wanted to make sure she knew I noticed her,” Karen says.

Jane appreciated that Karen noticed. “She said, ‘I don’t want to move because I like where my desk is now,’” Karen says. “She told me that she didn’t want to say anything in the meeting because she didn’t want to come off as not a team player.”

Karen listened attentively to Jane’s reasoning. She empathized with her and asked her open-ended questions about her concerns. She wanted to make sure Jane felt heard. “I told her that the office would be an exact replica of our current space and that the views would be better,” she says.

But Jane was not swayed by the argument. “I told her we would work something out so she would not have to move,” Karen says.

Case Study #2: Don’t assume you know how other people feel — ask them
Heather Anderson, an executive mentor at Vistage International, the San Diego–based advisory and executive coaching organization, says that she often speaks to her clients about the importance of social intelligence. “Emotions contain data,” she says. “I tell them that the emotional data they receive in their team meetings, their one-on-ones, and their client calls are just as important to their end game as anything else.”

She speaks from experience. Recently, Heather ran a meeting for one of her peer-to-peer coaching groups at Vistage. One of the agenda items was to provide feedback to one of the newer members — we’ll call her Susan. These meetings happen regularly; their purpose “is to challenge each other to be better leaders.”

“People are candid in these meetings and it can feel harsh if you’re on the receiving end — particularly when it’s your first time,” Heather says. “It’s intimidating.”

Heather first scanned the room to gauge the temperature; it wasn’t particularly tense, but she could tell that Susan was nervous. Next, she listened carefully to what others said. The comments were “frank,” and it wasn’t particularly positive.

She paid close attention to Susan’s body language. “I could see the look of surprise and fear on Susan’s face,” she says. “She shrunk in her chair and her shoulders dropped.”

Heather empathized with Susan’s emotions and reflected on what was happening. “I thought she felt threatened,” Heather says. “I wondered, ‘Should we soften our words?’”

To be sure, she asked Susan how she felt. “I said, ‘How are you feeling? What is it like to get this feedback?’”

Susan surprised her. “She said, ‘Wow. This is intense, but this is exactly what I signed up for.’”

Heather realized that she had projected some of her own feelings onto Susan. “I expected her to feel a certain way,” she says, “but you can’t assume you know.”

Later, Heather asked Susan how she planned to use the feedback she received during the meeting. “Susan was able to recite very specific action items, and she talked enthusiastically about the things she wanted to do and changes she wanted to make,” Heather says.

Heather plans to follow up with Susan in a few weeks.

Rebecca Knight is a freelance journalist in Boston and a lecturer at Wesleyan University.  Her work has been published in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Financial Times.

HBS

When Your Passion Works Against You

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When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 after a 12-year absence, the company he co-founded was dispirited, rudderless, and near bankruptcy. In a staff meeting, Jobs shared his plan for revitalizing the struggling brand, touching on one necessary ingredient: passion. “People with passion can change the world for the better,” he said.

Jobs’ passion and his ability to communicate it saved the company.

Business leaders like Jobs who express passion in the workplace can reap big benefits, earning enough admiration and support from colleagues to execute their ideas successfully. Yet passion also has a dark side, and if employees aren’t careful about how and when they express it, it can turn off colleagues or even make them feel threatened, according to new research.

“You can’t just express passion and expect it will be jolly good. It isn’t always the way to get people on board with you. There’s a time and a place for it,” says Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Jon M. Jachimowicz. “It can even be dangerous if you’re not careful about when, how, and to whom you express passion.”

Passion can be intoxicating

When an employee expresses passion for an idea at the right time and in the right context, this intense positive energy can act like a gravitational pull that sucks in other workers to invest their time and support, ultimately contributing toward the success of the idea. “Passion, like a smile, is contagious,” Virgin Group Founder Richard Branson once observed. “It rubs off on everyone around you and attracts enthusiastic people into your orbit.”

But when does passion work, and when does it not?

Jachimowicz and his team designed a series of six studies to better understand passion in the workplace. The resulting paper, The Gravitational Pull of Expressing Passion: When and How Expressing Passion Elicits Status Conferral and Support from Others, was published in July 2019 in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

“PASSION, LIKE A SMILE, IS CONTAGIOUS.”

In the first study, which tested the effectiveness of passion in a real-life setting, the team collected data from the Canadian television show Dragons’ Den, where 177 entrepreneurs pitched their business ideas and products to a panel of five investors, called dragons, to solicit support. Would high-passion presentations entice more investors?

The research team found that entrepreneurs who came across as passionate about their projects received more offers. In fact, just a slight increase (one standard deviation) in how much passion the entrepreneur expressed created a 40 percent boost in the likelihood that funding was granted.

“When we see someone who is passionate, we often take it as a sign of competence and future success. As a result, we offer that person support,” says Jachimowicz, who co-authored the article with Christopher To of Northwestern University, Adam D. Galinsky of Columbia Business School, as well as Shira Agasi and Stéphane Côté, both of the University of Toronto.

Sometimes passion isn’t appropriate

At the same time, the team found that passion doesn’t always work. In a second study, participants watched videos of Dragons’ Den and rated how passionate entrepreneurs sounded. Investors were most inclined to open their wallets to entrepreneurs who expressed passion in authentic ways, including one who introduced a personal connection to the pitch.

However, entrepreneurs seen as expressing passion with a false note did not earn as much support from investors. For example, one entrepreneur interrupted the dragons when they were asking clarifying questions, and another made the judges feel uncomfortable by directing a passionate pitch toward just one dragon while ignoring the other four.

“Employees should ask themselves: Is this a situation where expressing passion is appropriate, and if so, how can I express passion in a way that’s valued?” Jachimowicz says.

Doesn’t work for some jobs

Passion can also backfire in certain positions more than others. A third study compared people with two different jobs who expressed passion for their work—accountants and consultants. The 64 participants said it was appropriate for consultants to express passion, but not accountants. One participant claimed, “accountants should remain stoic and emotionless.”

“It might have to do with a sense of objectivity that people expect from certain jobs,” Jachimowicz says. “We want our teachers to be passionate and instill a thirst for learning, but we want our accountants to work diligently. We want passionate lawyers, but we don’t want passionate judges.”

“IF I’M A LEADER IN A COMPANY OR TEAM, JUST EXPRESSING PASSION WON’T NECESSARILY MAKE PEOPLE AGREE WITH ME AND HELP ME SUCCEED.”

Jachimowicz, a native of Germany, learned first-hand just how much a particular job setting matters to whether passion is considered acceptable. The German word for passion, “Leidenschaft,” literally translates to “one’s ability to endure hardship,” so German workers may be more likely to express passion quietly by putting their heads down, working hard, and being persistent, he says.

But that behavior worked against Jachimowicz when he moved to the United States, where his quiet determination prompted American colleagues to question whether he had enough passion for the work. “That made me realize that the context matters, and passion is only beneficial if others can see it.”

Co-workers need to believe

There is another caveat to consider, according to the researchers. People will only support passionate colleagues if they agree with their cause.

When participants in a fourth study read about workers who were passionate about environmental issues, only participants sympathetic with those views showed admiration. The others turned their backs.

So Jachimowicz advises: “If I’m a leader in a company or team, just expressing passion won’t necessarily make people agree with me and help me succeed. Maybe I should work on getting everyone on board with the goal first.”

Passion backfires in competitive settings

Even worse, passion can be toxic in competitive situations. “Passion can be a glue that binds others together, but it can also serve as a gasoline that inflames competitive feelings,” the paper says.

In a fifth study, where participants imagined they were competing against a co-worker for a promotion, participants not only declined to support a passionate co-worker but viewed them as threatening.

“PEOPLE ARE REALLY GOOD AT SPOTTING FAKE PASSION.”

Given this friction, managers should avoid pitting passionate employees against one another, particularly if a team needs to work collaboratively. For example, rather than offering just one promotion among three passionate workers, a manager can offer to promote all employees whose work reaches a certain bar.

“The moment you set up a zero-sum setting, expressing passion becomes a poison in the workplace,” Jachimowicz says. “If two employees are competing for something, one may try to undermine the other.”

Pretending doesn’t work

Expressing fire in the belly in a job interview can work in a candidate’s favor, but the candidate should also be mindful that in certain situations, it might come across as off-putting. “If I’m the hiring manager, what if I think this person is going to come for my job in three years?”

One piece of advice Jachimowicz has for job candidates—as well as all workers, for that matter: Never fake passion if you don’t feel it.

“People are really good at spotting fake passion,” he says. “Even if I can deceive you once in an interview by saying I really want to work here, I can’t deceive you for the next six months on the job. And once people find out you’re not passionate, they feel deceived. When people express passion in the workplace, it should always be authentic and genuine.”

About the Author

Dina Gerdeman is a senior writer for Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.

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If You’re Not Outside Your Comfort Zone, You Won’t Learn Anything

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You need to speak in public, but your knees buckle even before you reach the podium. You want to expand your network, but you’d rather swallow nails than make small talk with strangers. Speaking up in meetings would further your reputation at work, but you’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. Situations like these — ones that are important professionally, but personally terrifying — are, unfortunately, ubiquitous. An easy response to these situations is avoidance. Who wants to feel anxious when you don’t have to?

But the problem, of course, is that these tasks aren’t just unpleasant; they’re also necessary. As we grow and learn in our jobs and in our careers, we’re constantly faced with situations where we need to adapt our behavior. It’s simply a reality of the world we work in today. And without the skill and courage to take the leap, we can miss out on important opportunities for advancement. How can we as professionals stop building our lives around avoiding these unpleasant, but professionally beneficial, tasks?

First, be honest with yourself. When you turned down that opportunity to speak at a big industry conference, was it really because you didn’t have the time, or were you scared to step on a stage and present? And when you didn’t confront that coworker who had been undermining you, was it really because you felt he would eventually stop, or was it because you were terrified of conflict? Take an inventory of the excuses you tend to make about avoiding situations outside your comfort zone and ask yourself if they are truly legitimate. If someone else offered you those same excuses about their behavior, would you see these as excuses or legitimate reasons to decline? The answer isn’t always clear, but you’ll never be able to overcome inaction without being honest about your motives in the first place.

Then, make the behavior your own. Very few people struggle in every single version of a formidable work situation. You might have a hard time making small talk generally, but find it easier if the topic is something you know a lot about. Or you may have a hard time networking, except when it’s in a really small setting.

Recognize these opportunities and take advantage — don’t chalk this variability up to randomness. For many years, I’ve worked with people struggling to step outside their comfort zones at work and in everyday life, and what I’ve found is that we often have much more leeway than we believe to make these tasks feel less loathsome. We can often find a way to tweak what we have to do to make it palatable enough to perform by sculpting situations in a way that minimizes discomfort. For example, if you’re like me and get queasy talking with big groups during large, noisy settings, find a quiet corner of that setting to talk, or step outside into the hallway or just outside the building. If you hate public speaking and networking events, but feel slightly more comfortable in small groups, look for opportunities to speak with smaller groups or set up intimate coffee meetings with those you want to network with.
Finally, take the plunge. In order to step outside your comfort zone, you have to do it, even if it’s uncomfortable. Put mechanisms in place that will force you to dive in, and you might discover that what you initially feared isn’t as bad as you thought.

For example, I have a history of being uncomfortable with public speaking. In graduate school I took a public speaking class and the professor had us deliver speeches — using notes — every class. Then, after the third or fourth class, we were told to hand over our notes and to speak extemporaneously. I was terrified, as was everyone else in the course, but you know what? It actually worked. I did just fine, and so did everyone else. In fact, speaking without notes ended up being much more effective, making my speaking more natural and authentic. But without this mechanism of forcing me into action, I might never have taken the plunge.
Start with small steps. Instead of jumping right into speaking at an industry event, sign up for a public speaking class. Instead of speaking up in the boardroom, in front of your most senior colleagues, start by speaking up in smaller meetings with peers to see how it feels. And while you’re at it, see if you can recruit a close friend or colleague to offer advice and encouragement in advance of a challenging situation.

You may stumble, but that’s OK. In fact, it’s the only way you’ll learn, especially if you can appreciate that missteps are an inevitable — and in fact essential — part of the learning process. In the end, even though we might feel powerless in situations outside our comfort zone, we have more power than we think. So, give it a go. Be honest with yourself, make the behavior your own, and take the plunge. My guess is you’ll be pleased at having given yourself the opportunity to grow, learn, and expand your professional repertoire.

Andy Molinsky is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Brandeis International Business School. He’s the author of Global Dexterity and Reach, and the creator of The Reach Method — a corporate coaching program to help individuals and teams step outside their comfort zones and reach their potential.

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How To Break Up With Your Bad Habits

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Breaking habits is hard. We all know this, whether we’ve failed our latest diet (again), or felt the pull to refresh our Instagram feed instead of making progress on a work project that is past due. This is largely because we are constantly barraged by stimuli engineered to make us crave and consume, stimuli that hijack the reward-based learning system in our brains designed initially for survival.

Put simply, reward-based learning involves a trigger (for example, the feeling of hunger), followed by a behavior (eating food), and a reward (feeling sated). We want to do more of the things that feel good and less of the things that feel bad — or stressful. These three components (trigger, behavior, and reward) show up every time we smoke a cigarette or eat a cupcake. This is especially true at work. Each time we try to soothe ourselves from a taxing assignment we reinforce the reward, to the point where unhealthy distractions can become habits.

So why can’t we just control ourselves and decide to replace bad habits with good ones? The doctrine of self-control has been promulgated for decades, despite the fact that researchers at Yale and elsewhere have shown that the brain networks associated with self-control (e.g. the prefrontal cortex) are the first to go “offline” when faced with triggers such as stress. Still, in medical school, I was taught to pass self-control rhetoric on to my patients. “Need to lose weight? Quit eating junk food. Trying to quit smoking? Stop cold turkey or use a nicotine replacement.”

When I started actually practicing medicine, however, I quickly learned that it doesn’t work this way in real life.

Self-control theories have missed something critical: reward-based learning is based on rewards, not behaviors. How rewarding a behavior is drives how likely we are to repeat that behavior in the future, and this is why self-control as an approach to breaking habits often fails.

Over the past 20 years, I’ve researched ways to create a better method by bringing the scientific and clinical practices together. My time spent studying the behavioral neuroscience of how habits form, and the best way to tackle them, helped me find a surprisingly natural way to do this: mindfulness.

By using mindfulness training to make people more aware of the “reward” reinforcing their behavior, I can help them tap into what is driving their habit in the first place. Once this happens, they are more easily able to change their association with the “reward” from a positive one to a more accurate (and often negative) one.

When someone joins our quit smoking program, for example, the first thing I have them do is pay attention while they’re smoking. They often give me a quizzical look, because they’re expecting me to tell them to do something other than smoke, like eat candy as a substitute when they have a craving. But because a “reward” drives future behavior, and not the behavior itself, I have my clients pay attention to what it tastes and feels like when they smoke. The goal is to make the patient aware of the “reward value,” or the level of positive reaffirmation they are getting from the habit they want to change. The higher the value, the more likely they are to repeat the behavior.

I see the same thing happen over and over again — the reward value of the habit decreases because it isn’t as gratifying as people remember. One client of mine, for instance, thought the act of smoking made her look cool as a teenager. Even though that motivation had dissipated in her adulthood, her brain still associated positive feelings with smoking. Hence, her reward value was high. When that same client started paying attention as she smoked, she realized that cigarettes taste bad, commenting, “Smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals. Yuck.” This helped her brain update the reward value of her habit. She was able to get accurate information about how smoking feels right now, which then helped her become disenchanted with the process.

After seeing how effective this practice was with my clients, I decided to test it even further. My lab and I developed three apps that deliver this same kind of mindfulness training to anyone with a smartphone via short sequential lessons over a period of three to four weeks. The apps are designed to help people break bad habits such as smoking, overeating, and anxiety (which oddly enough, is driven by the same habit loops as the other two behaviors).

Tens of thousands of people from around the world have used these apps, and my lab has published a number of studies showing significant, clinically meaningful results: 5x the smoking quit rates of gold standard treatment, 40% reductions in craving-related eating, and a 63% reduction in anxiety. In a recent randomized controlled trial, we even found that our mindfulness app for smoking cessation taught users how to better control the part of their brain that gets over-activated by smoking cues and chocolate cravings.

While our research has been focused primarily on changing health-related habits, we believe it is highly relevant to the workplace. Our strategy can help workers up their productivity, morale, and overall performance by teaching them how to overcome the habits that may be holding them back from thriving. Here’s how to get started:

1. Map out your habit loops

Similar to the advice I give to people in my outpatient clinic, the first step to breaking a habit (no matter what it is) is to figure out your triggers. If the habit is procrastination or stress eating at work, for example, pay attention to the circumstances surrounding you when you do those things. Do you have a big project you’re trying to avoid? Do you have too much on your plate to manage?

Once you know your triggers, try to identify the behaviors you engage in when you are acting out. Do you check social media instead of doing work? Do you snack on sweets during challenging assignments? You must be able to name the actions you turn to for comfort or peace of mind before you can evaluate their reward values.

2. See what you actually get out of those actions

The next step is to clearly link up action and outcome. Remember my patient who struggled to quit smoking? Just like I asked her to pay attention to the act of smoking, I am asking you to pay attention to how you feel when you partake in your habit.

If you stress eat, how does it feel to eat junk food when you aren’t hungry? How does what you eat impact the state of your mind, and body, fifteen minutes after the fact? If you procrastinate, what do you get from surfing the internet for pictures of cute puppies? How rewarding is it in the moment, especially when you realize that it isn’t helping you get your work done?

Remember your answers to these questions, or write them down to help solidify them in your mind.

This new awareness you have developed will help your brain accurately update the reward value of the habit you want to break. You will begin to see that “X” behavior leads to “Y” consequences, and often, those consequences are holding you back from reaching your full potential.

3. Replace the reward with curiosity

The final step to creating sustainable, positive habit change is to find a new reward that is more rewarding than the existing behavior. The brain is always looking for that bigger, better offer.

Imagine you are trying to break a bad habit like stress eating at work, and willpower hasn’t quite worked out for you. What if, instead of indulging in your candy craving to counteract a negative emotion, you substituted it with curiosity about why you are having that craving in the first place, and what it feels like in your body and your mind?

The reward value of curiosity (opening yourself up) is tangibly different than stress eating (closing yourself down) in this instance. Ultimately, curiosity feels better in the moment and is much more enjoyable than the rumination that often occurs after giving into a bad habit.

To tap into their curiosity, I teach my patients a simple mantra: Hmmmm. As in, be curious about your feelings. What does this craving feel like when it first arrives, before I have decided to indulge it?

People often learn, pretty quickly, that cravings are made up of physical sensations and thoughts, and that these come and go. Being curious helps them acknowledge those sensations without acting on them. In other words, they can ride the wave of a craving out by naming and sitting with the thoughts and feelings that arise in their bodies and minds from moment to moment — until those moments pass.

If you’re curious to see how well this might work for you, now is a good time to give it a try.

The next time you find yourself indulging in a bad habit, take a moment to pause and consider using mindfulness to help you overcome it. Your behaviors may not change immediately — but stick with it. If you can hack your mind using our methods, you will eventually be able to break free of unwanted habits and comfortably watch your cravings pass by.

Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, is an associate professor at Brown University’s Schools of Public Health & Medicine, Founder of MindSciences and the author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love — Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits. To learn more about his research and the apps mentioned in this article, visit www.drjud.com

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Stop Making Gratitude All About Yourself

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You read a lot these days about research showing that practicing gratitude — making a deliberate point of being grateful for the good things in your life — has all sorts of benefits for happiness and well-being. These articles usually end with a call to start a gratitude journal to reap the full benefits of being thankful.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But we should keep in mind gratitude’s other, arguably even more important purpose: strengthening our relationships with those we rely on.

Historically, most of the research has focused on gratitude’s social function, not its impact on our brains. This body of research has found that, to put it bluntly, expressing gratitude to someone who helps you keeps them interested and invested in having a relationship with you over the long haul. It makes their time, effort, and inconvenience seem worth it.

In the same vein, there is nothing quite like ingratitude to sour an otherwise happy relationship. It’s not difficult for most of us to recall a time when we were shocked at how unappreciative and thoughtless someone was in response to our generosity. (If you are a parent, chances are you only have to think back to this morning’s breakfast.) Without some sort of acknowledgement, people very quickly stop wanting to help you. In fact, in a set of studies by Adam Grant and Francesca Gino, when someone wasn’t thanked for their help, their future rates of helping people were immediately cut in half.

Gratitude is a glue that binds you and your benefactor together, allowing you to hit the same well over and over again, knowing that support won’t run dry.

At least, gratitude can be that glue if you do it right. Recent research suggests that people often make a critical mistake when expressing gratitude: They focus on how they feel — how happy they are, how they have benefited from the help — rather than focusing on the benefactor.

Researchers Sara Algoe, Laura Kurtz, and Nicole Hilaire at the University of North Carolina distinguished between two types of gratitude expressions: other-praising, which acknowledges and validates the actions of the giver, and self-benefit, which describes how the receiver is better off for having been helped. In one of their studies, couples were observed expressing gratitude to each other for something their partner had recently done for them. Their expressions were then coded for the extent to which they were other-praising or focused on self-benefit. Examples of their expressions include:

Other-praising

It shows how responsible you are…

You go out of your way…

I feel like you’re really good at…

Self-benefit

It let me relax…

It gave me bragging rights at work…

It makes me happy…

Finally, benefactors rated how happy they felt, how loving they felt toward their partner, and how responsive they felt the gratitude-giver had been. The researchers found that other-praising gratitude was strongly related to perceptions of responsiveness, positive emotion, and loving — but self-benefit gratitude was not.

This is worth taking a moment to think about because most people get gratitude utterly wrong. More often than not, human beings are a bit egocentric by nature. We have a tendency to talk about ourselves even when we should be thinking and talking about others. So naturally when we get high-quality help and support, we want to talk how it made us feel. Though to be fair, we assume that’s what the helper wants to hear — they were helping to make us happy, so they must want to hear about how happy we are.

But this assumption isn’t quite right. Yes, your helper wants you to be happy, but the motivation to be helpful often is tied directly to our own sense of self-worth. We help because we want to be good people, to live up to our goals and values, and, admittedly, to be admired.

Remember this the next time you receive support from a colleague or friend. Helpers want to see themselves positively and to feel understood and cared for — which is difficult for them to do when you won’t stop talking about yourself.

Heidi Grant, PhD, is a social psychologist who researches, writes, and speaks about the science of motivation. She is Global Director of Research & Development at the NeuroLeadership Institute and serves as Associate Director of Columbia’s Motivation Science Center. She received her doctorate in social psychology from Columbia University. Her most recent book is Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You. She’s also the author of Nine Things Successful People Do Differently and No One Understands You and What to Do About It.

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The Top 5 Staffing Trends and Challenges in 2020

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With more employers competing for a smaller talent pool, it has become increasingly competitive for businesses who want to hire great talent. In April 2019, the American unemployment rate was 3.6%, the lowest rate since 1969. According to the 2018 Recruiter Nation Survey by Jobvite, 74% of recruiters believe hiring will be more competitive in 2020. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest staffing challenges employers face, with five staffing trends that are helping to combat them.

The Top 5 Staffing Challenges of 2020

The American economy has reached the tipping point with more open jobs than there are workers to fill them. In September 2018, American job openings (and quit rate) reached a 17-year high, Bloomberg reports. To avoid candidate churn and improve hiring and retention, businesses must be aware of these top five staffing challenges in 2020.

1. Talent shortages

According to the 2019 Global Recruitment Insights and Data (GRID) site by Bullhorn, the top challenge cited by recruiters is talent shortages, which 73% say is an issue. With much of the best talent already employed, recruiters must look beyond candidates who are actively applying for jobs and use cold outreach to find talented candidates who are already working.

Professional networking site LinkedIn reports 87% of people are open to new job opportunities. It’s up to recruiters to proactively find the right fit for potential employees.

2. High competition

Less candidates equals more competition. Businesses need to make their offering more attractive than their competitors.

That’s not just in terms of financial compensation. A 2019 CNBC/Survey Monkey Workplace Happiness Index study found non-monetary job benefits are key to boost job happiness. The survey results showed 14% of people prioritized more training or learning opportunities, and 9% said more paid time off was most important to improving job satisfaction. Opportunity, contribution, autonomy, and meaning were also cited as important workplace qualities.

3. Slow hiring processes

Slow hiring processes can make your best candidates check out and move on. According to a 2017 study by Glassdoor, the average hiring process length in the United States is around 24 days. Some industries and positions may warrant shorter or longer hiring process. For example, a role in government takes about 54 days to complete the hiring process, while bars and restaurants hire in around 10 days.

If your company’s average hiring process time is longer than the industry average, you could be turning candidates off. As hiring processes drag on, a company faces the following risks:

  • The candidate may not feel valued and becomes disinterested.
  • The candidate is approached by a competitor and wants to work for them instead.
  • The candidate is interviewing with multiple companies and takes an earlier offer.

One way to keep candidates interested is to be transparent about timelines to give them realistic expectations. Hirers need to let candidates know what they can expect from the process so they don’t lose interest and move on.

4. Increased transparency

Since many of the most talented candidates can afford to be selective, that means candidates are vetting companies just as much as businesses are evaluating candidates. There are company review sites out there, like Glassdoor, and even job search sites like Indeed feature company reviews on their listings.

This is a challenge for companies looking for candidates. Businesses must work to make involuntary turnover as smooth of a process as possible. Retention must be a priority. Engaging employees must be an integral part of business strategy to improve a company’s reputation and attract the best talent.

5. Unrealistic employer expectations

Employers that want top talent need to have realistic expectations about how to achieve that. Here are some things that can hurt hiring efforts:

  • Low-ball salary offers
  • Refusal to cover moving costs for an out-of-state candidate you want to hire
  • No benefits like medical and dental coverage
  • No 401k plan
  • No workplace flexibility, like remote work options, even periodically
  • No employee development opportunities or continuing education reimbursement

These are some of the benefits employees want from a job today, Harvard Business Review reports. An employer that refuses to offer a respectable wage and does not help candidates achieve work-life balance won’t be attractive.

The Top 5 Staffing Trends of 2020

To face these challenges, employers are evolving their workplaces to meet the needs of candidates. Here are five staffing trends those who work in Human Resources are adapting to a smaller pool of talented candidates searching for jobs.

1. Prioritizing candidate engagement

Technology has made it easier to keep in touch with candidates and keep them engaged. Email and social media channels like LinkedIn enable always-on communication.

Texting has also become a more mainstream form of communication, with Jobvite reporting 43% of millennials accept it, 46% of Generation X are open to it, and 36% of Baby Boomers will text with recruiters. During the hiring process, ask your candidates if it’s OK to text. If they say yes, you have another way to keep them engaged.

2. Recruiting through non-traditional channels

Jobvite also reported that recruiting through social media is the norm, with 77% of hirers using LinkedIn and 63% of hirers using Facebook.

Recruiters are also moving to channels like Instagram to reach more talent and stand out, with about 25% recruiting on Instagram. Expect more innovation in finding talent, including connecting with candidates through communities like those on Slack, Reddit, and LinkedIn Groups.

3. Building brand culture

It’s not just about the job anymore. It’s about who the company is and how the company relates to the candidate.

A 2018 report by Talent Economy found millennials, who will make up 75% of the workforce by 2025, prioritize working for socially responsible companies – and 64% won’t take a job if the employer doesn’t align with their values.

If a company culture is negative or undefined, that can hurt recruitment efforts. Businesses must think about the characteristics that make up their ideal employees and build a culture that supports that. Businesses need to demonstrate that culture on their website and marketing materials and exemplify what drives the culture in their product or service. Candidates are taking note.

4. Going digital

Another benefit of technology for hiring is that it helps streamline hiring processes. Candidates can find all the information they want about a job online, apply through a web portal and see real-time updates on their candidacy status.

Digital technology is also improving efficiency for recruiters. Just like marketers, recruiters can use tools to track recruitment campaigns, align hiring strategies across multiple digital channels, and use A/B testing to see what components of job postings are most effective. HR professionals and recruiters must use digital analytics to improve their efforts and stay ahead of the competition.

5. All-encompassing talent management

Hiring for a single type of position can’t be the norm today. According to Forbes, 29% of all American workers have an alternative work arrangement as their primary job, and 57 million people work in the “gig economy,” which means they’re working at least one freelance/contract job even if they’re also employed full-time.

The rise of the gig economy means the best candidates for your business may not even want to work for your full-time. Or, they may be working a variety of gigs and not have a traditional full-time job at the moment.

Expect more businesses to be open to hiring remote workers, contractors, and temps in addition to full-time positions. Also, recruiters will increasingly expand their services to hire for a multitude of types of roles, too.

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When It’s OK to Trust Your Gut on a Big Decision

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Some executives pride themselves on having a strong intuition, honed through years of experience, that guides their decisions. Others are ambivalent about relying on their intuition to make important choices, concerned that their gut reaction is inherently biased or emotional. This latter group is no doubt responding to the oft-given advice that we should use formal data and analysis to “check” our intuitions. So who’s right? Should leaders make decisions based on their gut feel, or shouldn’t they?

My recent research suggests that gut feel can in fact be useful, especially in highly uncertain circumstances where further data gathering and analysis won’t sway you one way or another. In several studies I’ve conducted over the past eight years looking at high-stakes decisions, such as surgeons making life-or-death emergency room decisions, or early-stage investors deciding how to allocate millions of dollars in startup capital, I found that the role of gut feel is often to inspire a leader to make a call, particularly when the decision is risky. In the face of information overload, mounting risks and uncertainty, and intense pressures to make the right decisions, there is often debilitating evidence that delays our decision making. We put the choice off, rather than deciding. Trusting your gut allows leaders the freedom to move forward.

For example, over four different studies (which I wrote about in two papers here and here), I observed hundreds of angel investors and venture capitalists as they considered capital allocation decisions, tracking the extent to which they considered economic, financial, “hard” data, and the extent to which they relied on signals and subtle cues that were based on intuitive, “non-codified” information. Based on the objective and quantifiable information such as financial statements and market data, almost all of these entrepreneurial ventures would be considered risky investments that should be avoided. Yet, investors often entered into them, relying on their “gut feel” to do so.

I tracked 90 of the companies they were considering investing in over time and was able to see several years later whether the investors’ gut feel was predictive of which companies were most successful. What I learned from this study and others that I’ve conducted is that those who made more successful decisions based on their gut feel do the following:

  • Recognize that their gut feel is not a separate piece of information but it draws on both objective and subjective information that is already available.
  • Understand that gut feel is not quick, impulsive, and emotional — it’s actually something much more cultivated and nuanced and based on experience.
  • Commit to continually cultivating their gut feel, by paying attention to exemplars, prototypes, patterns, and models in their field and linking what they learn to future decisions.

Before deciding on whether to trust your gut feel, it’s important to do two things.

First, recognize the type of problem at hand. What kind of decision are you being faced with? What is the level of “unknowability”? Reserve your intuition for those decisions that go beyond routine, where calculations of probabilities and risks are not only unrealistic, they are infeasible. Take for example, the decision to divest a business. You will likely look at models and figures and predictions but there will be huge uncertainties and lots of factors will be unknowable. Or consider the decision to launch a new product. You’ll likely do research on the addressable market and competitor products but your analysis will not guarantee that people will buy the product. This is the kind of decision where after looking at the analysis, a leader might rely on gut feel to make the call, knowing that there will never be enough information to make a fully data-based decision.

If data and analysis are available and applicable, then rely on those. If you can calculate probability of the outcome with reasonable confidence, don’t use gut feel.

Second, clearly identify and be aware of the context in which you are making the decision. If you’re operating in an environment where successful mental models and schemas have already been developed and proven and can be replicated in a new context, focus on method and execution. If, on the other hand, you’re seeking to make an unusual, distinctive, “diamond in the rough” type of decision to separate you from others who are making a similar decision (think about trying to predict the next startup unicorn), gut feel can be helpful.

Once you’ve decided to rely on your intuition to make a high-risk, high-impact decision, don’t try to explain it or justify to others how you arrived at it. If you apply logic and data to gut feel, the more likely you are to put off a decision or make a worse one.

Remember there are some things you can’t quantify and sometimes you’re using your intuition to do something other than what the data told you to do. And when that’s the case, your gut feel can help you make a bold decision.

 

Laura Huang is an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.

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Singapore overtakes the US as the worlds most competitive economy

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TOKYO — The World Economic Forum rates Singapore as the world’s most economically competitive country, while Asia’s big economies, including India and Indonesia, fell in the annual ranking.

The “Global Competitiveness Report 2019,” published on Wednesday, had the Southeast Asian city-state overtaking the U.S. to reach the top spot among 141 countries and regions. Singapore headed the list in infrastructure, including road quality and the efficiency of its ports and airports.

Geopolitical and trade tensions are fueling uncertainty, and could precipitate a slowdown. However, some of this year’s better performers appear to be benefiting from the trade feud between China and the U.S., including Singapore and Vietnam, the report finds.

Singapore’s financial system and macroeconomic stability also raised its rating, while the report pointed out that “in order to become a global innovation hub, Singapore will need to promote entrepreneurship and further improve its skills base,” it says.

Vietnam showed the greatest improvement among countries and regions, ranking 67th and rising 10 places, helped by the trade war that has pushed manufacturers out of China.

Indonesia fell to 50th place, down five spots from the previous year. The report calls on ASEAN’s biggest economy to improve people’s access to technology, which has become more widely available in recent years. The country stood in fourth place in ASEAN — trailing Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand — thanks to its market size and macroeconomic stability. Improvements are also visible in Indonesia’s financial system.

India fell to 68th, down 10 places from last year, as a result of insufficient trade openness and protection of workers’ rights. India and Japan saw their ratings dragged lower by having few women in the workforce.

In addition to problems tapping into the potential of female workers, the report pointed to Japan’s diversity challenge in the workplace. The world’s third-largest economy slipped one place to sixth globally, but the report praised the country as “one of the world’s top innovators.”

Hong Kong was the third most competitive economy worldwide, rising four places from last year, driven by improvements in its health sector and financial system. But the future of the Chinese territory is murky, given the ongoing pro-democracy protests there.

great teams

What Pillars are Needed to Build Amazing Teams.

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Great image of what pillars are required to build AMAZING teams. With candor comes accountability, with accountability comes the steepest pillar of proactive communication and the cycle continues….

Too many companies reverses this and find its effectiveness never really cements itself.

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Experience Doesn’t Predict a New Hires Success

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Chad H. Van Iddekinge of Florida State University and his colleagues reviewed 81 studies to investigate the link between an employee’s prior work experience and his or her performance in a new organization. They found no significant correlation between the two. Even when people had completed tasks, held roles, or worked in functions or industries relevant to their current ones, it did not translate into better performance. The conclusion: Experience doesn’t predict a new hire’s success.

Professor Van Iddekinge, defend your research.

Van Iddekinge: We were surprised. It seems so intuitive that applicants who have general work experience or have already done the job that they’re applying for would be at an advantage. But when we looked at all these studies—and we sifted through thousands to find the 81 with pertinent data—we discovered a very weak relationship between prehire experience and performance, both in training and on the job. We also found zero correlation between work experience with earlier employers and retention, or the likelihood that a person would stick with his or her new organization.

HBR: But isn’t experience the first thing companies look for when screening candidates?

Absolutely. We sampled 115 Monster.com job ads and found that 82% either required or stated a strong preference for experience. Most organizations think that it’s important, even for entry-level jobs. Unfortunately, the evidence doesn’t support the idea that applicants with more experience will be better or longer-tenured employees than those with less.

How did the studies measure performance?

It varied, but typically in two ways: either supervisor evaluations—such as annual reviews—or more-objective, quantifiable metrics, such as sales or, in one paper on sewing-machine operators, parts produced.

What types of jobs and industries are we talking about here?

The ones most represented were protective services (police, firefighters) and then sales and customer service jobs. Study participants mainly worked in frontline positions, though some were managers. None were at the senior executive level. But we captured 15 of the 23 job families listed by the U.S. Labor Department’s Occupational Information Network, so we felt it was a pretty good representation of the U.S. economy.

Why on earth wouldn’t people with experience—especially directly relevant experience—outperform those without it?

My coauthors—John Arnold of Florida State University, Rachel Frieder of the University of North Florida, and Philip Roth of Clemson University—and I have speculated about that. One possibility is that many measures of experience are pretty basic: the number of jobs you’ve held, tenure at your previous employers, years of total work, whether or not you’ve previously worked in a similar role. Those metrics tell us whether a candidate possesses experience but not about the quality or significance of that experience, which would probably have more bearing on performance. One of the basic premises in our area of research is that past behavior predicts future behavior. But prehire experience isn’t a measure of behavior. The person might have failed or stagnated in previous jobs. So we should take experience into account but maybe do a better job of delving into prehire performance. We also want to know whether candidates have learned from their prior experiences. People aren’t always good at that; they might forget things that have gone wrong or explain them away. And, last, we need to consider that experience in one organization might not help—and might even hurt—performance in another if they don’t operate the same way or have similar cultures.

Don’t interviews and reference checks help employers figure all that out?

Yes, especially when you ask behavioral questions like “How have you previously handled difficult clients? Tell me about a specific situation, what you did, and what the outcome was.” But not all employers evaluate candidates that way. And it’s possible that applicants who could answer well have already been screened out due to their lack of traditional work experience.

What factors beyond experience should we consider?

Well, another reason employers look for hires with experience is that they think previous jobs have helped those people build up knowledge and skills. They might even think that candidates who have done certain types of work have particularly desirable personality traits. But we’d recommend focusing on the knowledge, skills, and traits directly rather than using experience or even education as a proxy.

Are there any scenarios in which experience matters?

We did identify a couple of situations in which it does seem to have more of a benefit. First, we found a smaller set of studies within our data set that looked at prehire experience and performance on the job after three months, two years, and five years. Although the relationship was weak at the two- and five-year marks, it was stronger at three months, so experience appears to have helped some people as they were getting started. Maybe it’s because they were accustomed to employment and organizational life and could hit the ground running. Or perhaps managers gave the employees who came in with experience better ratings at first. But over time employees’ prehire experience became less and less important to performing their current job.

Second, again in a smaller number of studies, we saw measures of experience more at the task level. So, for example, instead of asking pilots or truck drivers how many years they’d worked in those jobs, employers would ask how many hours they’d logged flying or driving. Those metrics were better predictors of future performance.

Is it realistic to think that HR departments and hiring managers will stop screening for experience?

You can understand why so many organizations do it: Experience is easy to assess. Have you worked in sales for three years? Have you managed people before? It’s either a yes or a no. Past performance and existing knowledge and skills are more difficult to figure out, especially if all you have is an application or a résumé. But today, when everyone is complaining about the skills shortage and the war for talent, companies can’t afford to knock out candidates who would do really well but don’t have the experience that someone has chosen to put in the job description. You want to expand the pool of people you’re considering.

Are there any other simple screens we could use instead?

Probably, but they would vary by organization and job. The key thing is evidence of correlation with job performance. Let’s say there’s a role you need to fill in the sales department and you see over time that people who majored in marketing tend to stay longer and get better customer reviews than those who studied other subjects. That could be a viable screen. For another job it could be having some certification; the data might show that employees who have it outperform their peers, so you look for it when hiring. Companies could consider using other screening tools, too, like job-relevant tests. The problem is that most organizations don’t take those steps. They use data to make decisions about products, marketing, and finance, but they don’t use it to make decisions about people—at least not effectively.

Does experience within an organization matter?

We didn’t look at posthire experience, but other research suggests that there is a link between how long someone has been in the job or working at a company and how well they perform. It’s not a superstrong relationship, but it’s something companies might consider when deciding on promotions and transfers. Is experience more important for managers? That’s something we’re looking at now. If, say, a sales rep wants to be a sales manager, how much does his or her experience in that lower-level job predict success in the more senior one?

I’ve been a senior editor at HBR for nine years and a professional journalist for two decades. Do you think I’ll do a good job on this piece?

I have no idea.

A version of this article appeared in the September–October 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review.