 Radical recognition is, in many ways, showing people that we truly hear them, that we listened, and that we appreciate them. We all had that direct eye contact, that smile when someone did something great. And the other team member was like, okay, they appreciate me, they value me. The team dinner, the offsite, the birthday celebration with the cake at the office. Now in a digital world, I think a lot of those cues are completely invisible. What's up, everybody, and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week, and we want to make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Well, we all have, whether we've experienced others multitasking or been culprits of it, because everything is working at a 24-7 pace and speed now. And it is hard to often be on video calls all day long. And then you have no time to actually check email. People almost think our calendars are like there to do lists now. So we have no time and space to actually be thoughtful. One practice I recommend to try to avoid multitasking for yourself is to actually set email blocks where you can check email within your own time every single day. Because otherwise, that calendar will be filled with one more Zoom meeting, maybe a morning, 9am block, a noon, not block, a 3pm block, whatever works for you. It depends on your organization. The other, a second thing is to stop having 30 and 60 minute meetings, have 20 minute and 40 minute meetings. Like we usually don't need the full time. And we're just adhering to what calendars create, give people those 10 minutes to catch up on things. And even at the beginning of a meeting, say, you know, here's what I want to achieve at the end of the meeting. Here's how I'm going to engage all of you to achieve this goal. If we all stay present, I'm going to end the meeting 10 minutes early. That will quickly avoid multitasking of others and allow everyone to get on the same page. The third thing is notifications. Like really, it's best to try to avoid the notifications popping up, but it's really hard. And so take the time to be thoughtful of it. If you have to attend to something like a text or something urgent in a meeting, let people know it may be in the chat say I have to go off video for 30 seconds, but I'm listening. And then I'll be back on if you have to look down and you're on video, look down quickly, address it and then look up and use your video body language to showcase that you're back and listening, whether it's head bobbing, smiling or sharing something in the chat. That's not just I agree, but something that adds to the conversation. And again, I think those little tweaks can help us all not feel insulted when someone's multitasking, but also help each and every one of us to be more single taskers than multitaskers. I know a dread that's on everyone's mind is how we go back into the office. And there's a lot of different perspectives on this hybrid of some work from home, some work in the office and how that ratio is going to pan out really varies by every company. But many of our clients and in our audience are worried about this around, okay, how is this going to work as we transition and some team members are in the room together. And I'm the one on zoom, I'm the one who's not able to participate for various reasons. How can we address those challenges as we move back to a more fluid in and out of the office work schedule that many of us may not have been used to before the pandemic. So, you know, this is going to be another, I think, reset for all of us. It's kind of like we've been gone for summer break in high school, and now we're all going to come back and and meet that's like the first day of school again. And we don't know, like, is it freshman year or there are entire new norms of, you know, where lockers are and who's in the cool area versus who's not. And I think it's kind of very similar to that. So, one of the things that I think is important is as we move to hybrid work to set some norms and standards around this. For example, in hybrid meetings, set some standards so you're geographically inclusive of everyone. For example, have a live meeting host and have a remote meeting host. And make sure they have equal parts of the agenda where the remote meeting host actually leads the first half of the agenda to avoid that visual bias of just who's in the room. Zoom's actually coming out with a new whiteboarding tool where people can whiteboard in the room, but also those that are remote can see everything and contribute, which is super cool. Or use a virtual white board and a live whiteboard in the room. Make sure that you have a video camera in the room where remote attendees can read body language of those in the room as well. They're not just looking at a wall because that's not fair to them as well. And last but not least, if you're presenting, start with the remote attendees to ask questions and comments first. I think just that design chronologically can avoid a lot of that visual bias that to be honest, we were terrible at, often pre-pandemic as well when people were on conference calls in an office setting. And so I think if we can remember that this is a moment not to go back to the way it was, but actually transform work, that this is a moment to be more inclusive than we ever were in the past, and to set some norms for video, for hybrid, for live meetings that will allow us to be more inclusive and creative. It will just benefit us all. And remembering that it will involve traditional and digital body language interplaying together versus one or the other. And what would you say to the person who hears this conversation and thinks, oh my God, that is a lot of stuff to be conscientious over? Don't worry. There's a book on it that will answer all your problems. But I'm joking. I'm joking. I think, you know, the best way to answer them is to say, you know, the research has shown that up to 50% of the time the tone in our emails can be misinterpreted. And on average, employees are wasting up to four hours a week on poor communication digitally. So if you haven't, all those years you've spent mastering traditional body language, the head dog, the eye roll, the lean in, this is the moment to build the skill of digital body language. It won't just benefit you, it will benefit everyone around you. The eye roll is my favorite, and AJ knows if I do that, we're in trouble. Wait, can we talk about the digital equivalent of an eye roll? I think it's like that smiley face emoji for something that's actually tense and passive aggressive. That's my version of a digital eye roll, but I welcome your opinions of what a digital eye roll is. Well, we've certainly had some team members who oftentimes would send something that was meant to be taken seriously, but punctuate it with the smiley face, which we knew was exactly that, the digital eye roll, and it can really wear you out. We drop great content each and every week, and we want to make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. The challenge that I think many were not ready for with the pandemic was actually onboarding people in a fully virtual work environment with relationships that have been established pre-pandemic. So many of us in a lot of our clients have gone through this transition of taking on a new role and working in a new team, or maybe starting in a new company and starting completely virtual, but the entire team obviously had been working together before the pandemic, and absorbing and learning those norms is really challenging when you're onboarding. And obviously the onboarding with HR is more around benefits and the ins and outs of working together in the team, but not the digital body language communication that's so essential. So what is your advice for those who are starting in a new role with a new team or at a new company where there aren't clear guidelines or norms around digital body language? How can we quickly get up to speed with the norms in the office in a way that actually helps us and doesn't set us back? You know, most of the things we learned in our first jobs were at the water cooler. You know, John likes quick walk-ins in the office or we walk by his office at 5 p.m. and then you'll get your question answered, but never email it to him. He'll be annoyed or not respond. These are the things that really allowed us to understand how work gets really done versus any standard manual. And I think that we're dealing with a lot of challenges with that in a virtual setting. One of the things I recommend when you're onboarding new hires in a virtual setting is to remember that the traditional sort of three-day training isn't going to work or the traditional just look behind my desk and see how I do this isn't going to work. But there are actually smart ways of engaging virtually that will actually speed up knowledge sharing for a new hire. For example, record recent meetings that you've had internally and externally. Have new hires actually listened to those recordings of meetings in a way that you couldn't do in the office because there wasn't recordings of office meetings to learn the rules of the road, to learn how language is used within the company. Another thing is those junior team members who are starting out can shadow probably client and customer meetings they normally weren't allowed to attend so that they can really understand the business. They can be off video in a Zoom call and it can usually be appropriate in certain situations. Another one is create a virtual peer group for new hires to share information with each other. They often went to a training program but actually they can be a knowledge network to reduce duplicative work and share information. And a last one is instead of having sort of weekly meetings, have like 15 minute checkpoints every day. Kind of like you did in the office, you walked by someone even like a quick 10 minutes at 9 a.m. and 10 minutes at 5 p.m. Like that will transform how individuals are able to answer or ask questions and change that relationship for a new hire. So those are some best practices if you're onboarding new hires digitally. I think the other lens to it is now all these new hires that started out digitally have to go to face to face which is also a whole nother lens. And I think what will be important there is to use actually digital to stay in touch with those that aren't at headquarters or aren't in your office particularly but also to use this time as we move back to hybrid to deepen connections that you couldn't have in a digital world. You bring up such an important point there and as a leader it's been something that I've learned over the last decade is that more small moments of communication to start the day end today those check-ins and keeping them informal allow that anxiety to wane because if you have a team member who's now worried about something for days on end as the data shows their productivity slips and that anxiety doesn't go down by sleeping on it it continues to carry over. So to have that touch point to start the day make sure they're oriented right and then to end the day and if there are any questions concerns gaps to handle it in that moment instead of letting it go on for days on end or waiting for the next weekly meeting to bring it up which at that point the whole team has suffered I think is so key. Absolutely it's almost like for that new hire as well I like to say instead of being first in and last out of the office one of the things you can do is send like a quick update at the beginning of the day saying here's what I'm going to complete today and then at the end that quick email recap here's what I accomplished and here's questions I have like those little things to make sure that you even show you're on it as a new hire can be incredibly effective. I heard the term from you called radical recognition and is this being able to identify quickly these communication styles and then act accordingly? Radical recognition in my language is in many ways showing people that we truly hear them that we listened and that we appreciate them it's in today's world that we all had that you know quick direct eye contact that smile when someone did something great and the other team member was like okay they appreciate me they value me the team dinner the offsite the birthday celebration with the cake at the office now in a digital world I think a lot of those cues are completely invisible and so what I mean by radical recognition is that what was implicit in traditional body language has to be explicit in how we recognize others in digital body language sending a quick THX period thank you email is not a thank you it's an acknowledgement you got the email so take the time to give credit where it's due whether it's video shoutouts of great work done acknowledging your team at the beginning of a meeting with specificity around what they did I know a leader who calls people on their birthday during the pandemic like that's a nice touch another leader that makes sure to celebrate specific moments in town halls or each of the team members or has appreciation awards virtually whatever is offensive to you I think you should do that but radical recognition is incredibly important and it's here to stay especially as we move to hybrid