The 101 people, ideas and things changing how we work today (From BBC Worklife)

👉 The 101 people, ideas and things changing how we work today

👉 GO TO BBC WORKLIFE 101

The world of work is in transition. Are you ready?

In Japan, companies are encouraging employees to go for lunchtime sleep, or hirune. It could contribute to a better working environment. (From BBC / Image credit: Piero Zagami and Michela Nicchiotti.)

The world of work is being struck by waves of change. Some are vast and visible – leaps in machine learning and artificial intelligence or the rise of ‘do anything from anywhere’ technologies. Other ideas are just beginning to emerge – like monitoring content to ensure proper gender balance, or rethinking office design to promote air quality. Behind it all are the people whose ideas and attitudes have the potential to shape the next chapter of our lives.

[In this reading article] are the 101 indispensable things that you need to know about our work-life future:

1. 100-year-lifespan

We’re more likely than ever to live past a century. Whether this becomes a blessing or a curse for society and business depends on how much we can prepare for it.

2. 5G

Self-driving cars, robotics and smart cities, to name a few, will be supercharged through the 5G wireless network. It’s the next step in mobile internet connectivity – and it’s here. Almost.

3. Adaptability quotient

In an ever-changing work environment, ‘AQ’, rather than IQ, might become an increasingly significant marker of success.

4. Algorithmic justice

More machines than ever can recognise us, but they inadvertently discriminate on race, gender and more. People like Joy Buolamwini are trying to fix these built-in biases.

5. Anti-distraction apps

For better or worse, the internet is an attention-sapping platform. Perhaps an app that blocks, well, almost everything can help you focus.

6. Autocomplete

We’re starting to trust AI systems to write our emails for us. Is this time-saving tool changing how we communicate?

7. Automated hiring – and firing

AI can screen your job application – the question is whether it should also be allowed to scan your social media, analyse your facial expressions and even fire you.

8. Biohacking

Fasting, micro-dosing, supplements, some go to great lengths to boost productivity – even if the validity of such approaches is unproven.

9. Biometric CVs

Wearable tech that monitors physical performance is booming. Whether there is a place for it in recruitment and performance analysis is debatable.

10. Breathable offices

Rethinking how buildings are designed, decorated and operated could help benefit our health and even our productivity at work.

11. Burnout

How the idea that we can work harder and be better at everything is creating an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and anxiety from not meeting these high expectations. (Continue reading)

Active Listening: Hear What People Are Really Saying (From MindTools)

❓QUIZ ⇒ How Good Are Your Listening Skills?

💡Infographic ⇒ View and Download Full-Size Infographic Here 

How well you listen has a major impact on the quality of your relationships with others. 

[…] Given all the listening that we do, you would think we'd be good at it! In fact, most of us are not, and research suggests that we only remember between 25 percent and 50 percent of what we hear, as described by Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience. That means that when you talk to your boss, colleagues, customers, or spouse for 10 minutes, they pay attention to less than half of the conversation.

Turn it around and it reveals that when you are receiving directions or being presented with information, you aren't hearing the whole message either. You hope the important parts are captured in your 25-50 percent, but what if they're not?

Clearly, listening is a skill that we can all benefit from improving. By becoming a better listener, you can improve your productivity, as well as your ability to influence, persuade and negotiate. What's more, you'll avoid conflict and misunderstandings.

💡Tip: Good communication skills require a high level of self-awareness. Understanding your own personal style of communicating will go a long way toward helping you to create good and lasting impressions with others.

Becoming an Active Listener

It takes a lot of concentration and determination to be an active listener. Old habits are hard to break, and if your listening skills are as bad as many people's are, then you'll need to do a lot of work to break these bad habits.

There are (some) key techniques you can use to become a more effective listener:

1. Pay attention

• Give the speaker your undivided attention and acknowledge the message. Recognize that non-verbal communication also "speaks" loudly.
• Look at the speaker directly.
• Put aside distracting thoughts.
• Don't mentally prepare a rebuttal❗ […]

2. Show That You're Listening

• Use your own body language and gestures to show that you are engaged. […]
• Make sure that your posture is open and interested. 
• Encourage the speaker to continue with small verbal comments like yes, and "uh huh."

3. Provide Feedback

• Our personal filters, assumptions, judgments, and beliefs can distort what we hear. As a listener, your role is to understand what is being said. This may require you to reflect on what is being said and to ask questions.
• Reflect on what has been said by paraphrasing. "What I'm hearing is... ," and "Sounds like you are saying... ," are great ways to reflect back.
• Ask questions to clarify certain points. "What do you mean when you say... ." "Is this what you mean?"
• Summarize the speaker's comments periodically.

💡Tip: If you find yourself responding emotionally to what someone said, say so. And ask for more information: "I may not be understanding you correctly, and I find myself taking what you said personally. What I thought you just said is XXX. Is that what you meant?"

4. Defer Judgment

• Interrupting is a waste of time❗ It frustrates the speaker and limits full understanding of the message.
• Allow the speaker to finish each point before asking questions.
• Don't interrupt with counter arguments.

5. Respond Appropriately

• Active listening is designed to encourage respect and understanding. You are gaining information and perspective. You add nothing by attacking the speaker or otherwise putting her down. […]
• Assert your opinions respectfully.
• Treat the other person in a way that you think she would want to be treated.

Start using active listening techniques today to become a better communicator, improve your workplace productivity, and develop better relationships.

👉GO TO FULL ARTICLE: Active Listening: Hear What People Are Really Saying (From MindTools)

How To Improve Your Listening Skills (4:54 minutes)

Active Listening: How To Communicate Effectively (4:39 minutes)

💡You may also be interested in:

• How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?
• How Good Is Your Feedback?
• How Approachable Are You? (from Mind Tools)
• FREE PERSONALITY TEST: Which personality type are you?
• How Good Are Your Communication Skills? (from Mind Tools)
• 10 Common Communication Mistakes, (from Mind Tools)
• RECOMMENDED: Skills 360 – Business English Pod (More than business English)
• How to escape the ‘hyperactive hivemind’ of modern work, by William Park (From BBC Worklife)

How Good Are Your Listening Skills? (From MindTools)

👉Understanding Someone's Entire Message

For many of us, listening is the communication skill we use the most. Yet, many people listen poorly, and they rarely think to improve this important skill.

They get distracted by their own thoughts or by what's going on around them, and they formulate their responses before the person who they're talking to has finished speaking. Because of this, they miss crucial information.

Good listeners, on the other hand, enjoy better relationships, because they fully understand what other people are saying. Their team members are also more productive, because they feel that they can discuss problems easily, and talk through solutions.

So, how good do you think your listening skills are? Test them HERE, and then find out how you can improve.

❓How Good Are Your Listening Skills?

🔺NOTE: Evaluate each statement as you actually are, rather than as you think you should be. When you've finished, click "Calculate My Total" to add up your score, and use the table that follows to think about next steps.

💡 You may also be interested in the quizzes below:

• How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?
• How Good Is Your Feedback?
• How Approachable Are You? (from Mind Tools)
• The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale (from Mind Tools)
• HOW SELF-CONFIDENT ARE YOU? (from Mind Tools)
• Are You a Positive or Negative Thinker?
• The Leadership Motivation Assessment (from Mind Tools)
• FREE PERSONALITY TEST: Which personality type are you?
• How Good Are Your Communication Skills? (from Mind Tools)
• How Creative Are You?

How to escape the ‘hyperactive hivemind’ of modern work, by William Park (From BBC Worklife)

👉 By William Park

Should ‘deep focus’ become a central pillar of workplace culture?

The constant ping of messages that keep us plugged into work chatter might be doing more harm than good. We feel we must respond – it is about work, after all. But always being switched on means we never have the chance to think deeply. And that is a problem for companies that want to get the most out of their employees.

Copyright : Evgenii Naumov

The next great revolution in the office will need to correct this, according to one man who wants to reset the way we work. He believes that the value someone can bring to a company will be judged not by their skill, but by their ability to focus. But how do we find the time to shut off distractions and do our best work?

Our workplaces are set up for convenience, not to get the best out of our brains, says Cal Newport, bestselling author of books including Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, and a Georgetown University professor. In knowledge sector jobs, where products are created using human intelligence rather than machines, we must be switched on at all times and prepared to multitask. These are two things that are not compatible with deep, creative, insightful thinking.

[…] Psychologists thought that busy multitaskers possessed abnormal control over their attention. But evidence suggests that multitaskers do not have a particular gift for being able to juggle multiple projects. In fact, in many cognitive tasks, heavy multitaskers underperform. Our brains have a limited capacity for what they can work on at any given moment. And using tricks to cram as much into our working day as possible might be doing more harm than good.

Being switched on at all times and expected to pick things up immediately makes us miserable, says Newport. […]

Because it is so easy to dash off a quick reply on email, Slack or other messaging apps, we feel guilty for not doing so, and there is an expectation that we will do it. [… According to Newport:] “The average knowledge worker is responsible for more things than they were before email. This makes us frenetic […]”

Fighting for concentration

What might being wired for work at all times lead to? Inevitably, burnout. Newport describes this way of working as a “hyperactive hivemind”. Unstructured conversations on messaging apps and meetings dropped into diaries on the fly congest our day. His objective, to give people the space to do their best work without distraction, is the subject of his next book: The World Without Email.

[… T]he important thing is to encourage a culture where clear communication is the norm.

Newport is advocating for a more linear approach to workflows. People need to completely stop one task in order to fully transition their thought processes to the next one. However, this is hard when we are constantly seeing emails or being reminded about previous tasks. Some of our thoughts are still on the previous work – an effect called attention residue.

Annoyingly, the busier we are, the more we switch tasks. So, feeling busy is not conducive to deep concentration. Estimates of how long it takes us to refocus after a distraction vary. But at the top end, one study found on average it takes us 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain deep focus after an interruption.

The flipside is that it is very convenient to have everyone in an ongoing conversation, Newport says. But convenience is never the goal in business, it is value. The assembly line revolutionised car production, but it is not a convenient system – it is the system that produces the most cars quickly.

Our workplaces should learn from production lines

According to Newport, the knowledge sectors that operate in the most focus-oriented way are areas like software engineering, where the goal is to produce a product. “Agile, scrum and sprint-based executions have been used in these sectors for a while,” says Newport. “They work on only one thing for three days and during that time the product is their whole focus. Software engineers never let things unfold in an ad hoc manner. This is more amenable to the way the brain operates.” (Continue reading)

👉 GO TO FULL ARTICLE: How to escape the ‘hyperactive hivemind’ of modern work