Strategy School

It's Diversity, Equity - and - Inclusion. Inclusion is belonging. ~ Christine Fleming Episode 3, BURNOUT, on Agency After Hours, listen wherever you get your podcasts. https://bit.ly/40wLDcp Hilary Laney Christine Fleming Ashley Gonzalez Angel Micarelli Listen wherever you get your podcasts. #burnout #DEI #Belonging

"You cannot perform at an A+ level when you are worried about paying your rent or your mortgage." ~ Shauna Nuckles Episode 3, BURNOUT, on Agency After Hours, listen wherever you get your podcasts. https://bit.ly/3NTr8iw Hilary Laney Christine Fleming Ashley Gonzalez Angel Micarelli #burnout #agencylife #HR

#355: Tell me like I am five years old Here’s a trick. To ensure you understand as intended, ask the orator to explain the message/topic again as if you are a five-year-old. The point is simplification. This ensures listeners extract the right points or “get the gist of it.” The main idea. This effort breaks down a complex thought into (truly) elementary language. As a bonus - this practice helps both the speaker and the listener deepen their understanding. Example: How an expert might speak Consuming a nutritionally balanced diet is paramount for optimal physiological function and disease prevention. Example - Translated for a five-year-old Eating healthy is important because it helps our bodies stay strong and feel good. Check out more tips on our blog! What is your best advice for successful communication? We are listening! #communications #commstips365 #smartertogether

Comms Tip #356: Watch Your Tone “You watch your tone, young man.” Sound familiar? Tone of voice is important in topic because, whether you like it or not, it conveys meaning. Perhaps even intention. Tone sets an emotional baseline, whether you mean it to or not. I know this because my hubs and I actually listened to our marriage therapist, and things improved! The advice? It really was, “Watch your tone.” Depending on how sensitive your audience is, tone can affect how people perceive you, how they interpret your message, and the big one for me, how willing they are to listen. When someone uses a negative tone with me, all my defenses go up instantly. And all those walls? They make it really hard to hear what you are intending to communicate. So what happens next after the walls are up? I promise my response will be off-base, defensive, and derail any progress we made. If you haven't started following the Strategy School blog yet, go there now to read the rest of what Rachael had to say about Tone. #commstips #tone #emotionalintelligence

Episode 3 Dropped! Woot! The third episode of our series, Being Human in the Smart Machine Age, discusses burnout. It might not be what you think! Employee burnout is alarming, and recent studies have indicated a significant increase in workplace stress and exhaustion. + 44% of surveyed U.S. employees feel burned out* + 45% feel emotionally drained* Rigid work environments, increased workloads, shrinking budgets, and timelines are the obvious culprits - but the less obvious may be to blame! So, what is burnout? How is it impacting our well-being? How is it impacting our businesses? Is there a path to healing what ails us? Find out with our panel of experts: Shauna Nuckles, Hilary Laney, Ashley Gonzales, and Christine Fleming (our first guest to hail from HR). ABOUT THE SERIES: BEING HUMAN IN THE SMART MACHINE AGE AI, IoT, Edge, Quantum, Robotics…feeling overwhelmed? Tech is changing the landscape of industries around the globe. Marketers, designers, strategists, and copywriters?are not immune and may?be a little worse for wear. We want the bots to do our dishes (robotics—yay!) but not take our jobs (AI-boo!). The volume and velocity of disruption are unavoidable. You cannot opt out of getting smarter about what it means to be human in the smart machine age. ABOUT THE PODCAST Trying to get ahead in your career? Or just trying not to tank? Remember when your work shined by data defending your work with such impressive research??Today, information holds little value. Despite all the buzz around insights, these, too, have little value without "the" original idea. We must learn to use information and insights to generate a future state. What doesn't exist...yet. Harder still? Those big ideas have to map to brief and capture the ROI that keeps us in business.? So, how are you going to get more effective? Get more creative? More strategic? How will you survive this act of being human in the smart machine age? Grab your cocktail or mocktail and join us at Agency After Hours. *SHRM's Employee Mental Health in 2024 Research Series

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Tip #358: Be Direct Being direct seems to be getting a bad rap lately. There is a difference between being direct and being cruel. Being direct means to be honest and open, and to say what you mean without worrying about what others think. It does not mean that you do not care, about how others feel. See the difference? Read more on our blog https://bit.ly/3BUzSCh #comms365 #communication #beinghuman

Comms Tip #359: Listen before you speak. From Rachael's Blog: I struggle with this one so hard! This tip is a new take on the old adage “Think before you speak". Consider instead “Listen before you speak". My household is chock full of ADHD. No one - can ever - get their entire thought out. One will be interrupted - it's just a matter of when. On our family vacation in July I laid witness to the impacts of our incessant verbal interference (bad manners) on my adult children’s partners. Something about these fresh faces joining our crew made the insanity of the way we communicate with each other painfully clear. No One Really Listens. Every one of us is rude. While I cannot teach my own children any better, I decided I could at least change my own behavior and lead by example. Obv WIP. But at least I try. Here’s what I’ve been doing: Leaving Space. And asking for Space. LEAVING SPACE = When someone is talking and they pause, or seem to have concluded their thought. I force myself to Pause. Wait before jumping in and see if they have something else to add on. It should come as no surprise that based on this one act of pausing - I have learned So.Much.More. of what people have to teach me. It’s a freaking game changer! ASKING FOR SPACE = I haven’t mastered this either, but its a fascinating time trying. Being from Boston, being a woman, and being in the afore mentioned ADHD-ridden family, I have never known anything but being interrupted. So what a novel idea to ask to be heard. I was on a leadership call with my friend and colleague @HilaryLaney recently when she was interrupted before finishing her thought and she immediately pushed back saying something like “I’m not finished speaking, please allow me to finish my thought”. It was such a boss move and something we can all take a queue from. Newsflash - you deserve the same respect you give others. Final thought - please assume that people do not mean to interrupt. IMHO 90% of the time interruption is not malice, its habit. Sometimes, ironically, they are interrupting because you’ve got them so excited - so impassioned on the topic! Just keep that in mind because intention is so critical and negative assumptions impact your tone. Until next time. Got tips?

Communication Tip #360: Embrace conflict.? Excerpt from Rachael's blog: This topic has come up more in the past 30 days than in the past 30 months. Why are we, as a society, capable of such cruelty online and so avoidant of healthy conflict in person? Like most people, I used to avoid conflict at all cost. My need to be everyone’s friend outweighed my need for personal growth. Not sure when it changed exactly, but I suspect it was right around the time I developed confidence. Let me explain. You have to trust yourself to be able (a) address the issue face to face and (2) trust yourself to have the right behavior (actions, language) when things don’t go as you had hoped and (3) be emotionally a.o.k. no matter what the outcome. That last bit is, in my opinion, the number one reason people do not tackle conflict head on. They are AFRAID. Not of what the “opposing” person will say or do, but rather their own fear of having to “feel their feelings”. You don’t have to have a specific outcome for it to be a healthy conflict-resolution, you simply have to trust yourself - hold confidence that you will be able to manage your own feelings and do yourself proud.

"NO CEO, no one person, no leadership team can solve for this...it has to be everyone rallied toward the next goal, the next best choice, the next best decision..." The women in this program are opinionated, and we're here for it. >>> Agency After Hours - Episode Two - Listen wherever you get your podcasts <<< In this our second episode, we return to the topic of Being Human in the Smart Machine Age. We focus on Emotional Intelligence. Who - or What - has it? Who - or What - doesn’t? Is it essential to your career success or the bunk science some experts believe? Can emotional intelligence be taught, or are you just born lucky? Find out in episode 2. ABOUT THE SERIES: BEING HUMAN IN THE SMART MACHINE AGE AI, IoT, Edge, Quantum, Robotics…feeling overwhelmed? Tech is changing the landscape of industries around the globe. Marketers, designers, strategists, copywriters, we are not immune, and maybe a little worse for wear. We want the bots to do our dishes (robotics - yay!), but not take our jobs (AI-boo!). The volume and velocity of disruption is unavoidable. You cannot opt out of getting smarter about what it really means to be human in the smart machine age. ABOUT THE PODCAST Trying to get ahead in your career? Or just trying not to tank? Remember when you shined by data defending your work with such impressive research? Today, information holds little value. Despite all the buzz around insights, these too hold little value without an original idea. You must learn to use information and insights to generate WHAT DOESN'T EXIST YET. And, the ideas have to map to brief. So, how are you going to get more effective? Get more creative? More strategic? How are you going to survive this act of being human in the smart machine age? Start here with us. Join Rachael Truscott, Angel Micarelli and an endless parade of the best talent we know any place you listen to podcasts. Agency After Hours: Let’s get Smarter Together. #beinghumanatwork #smartmachineage #strategyschool