10 Micro-Steps for Creating the Well-living Workplace

Take these actions to heart … one a week for 10 weeks to create the well-living workplace.

Eliminate ‘but’ from your conversations. Listen for the word and clarify what the person is saying when they use ‘but’. Have your meetings ‘but free’. Declare your office a ‘but free’ zone! Ask everyone to step up and eliminate ‘but’ from your conversations.

Eliminate ‘that’ from all of your writing. In doing so, you strengthen your written presentation! You step up to demonstrate your authority. Stay alert to the use of the word in your conversations as well.

Follow the ‘pull back and listen’ approach. In sharing your ideas hold on to your shirt, blouse, coat sleeve and pull back when you notice you have been speaking too much. The pull back reminds you to listen to others. Also, take a breath before you speak to ensure your words connect with the conversation and represent what the intended meaning you assign the words.

Follow the ‘question and silence’ approach. In meetings when you ask a question, wait through the silence afterwards. Do not rush in to clarify unless someone asks you. Let an answer unfold. Take the offering and guide the person/people accordingly. When you ask a question and jump in before someone responds, you are rescuing your colleagues/ employees and educating them you really do not want an answer. If such is the case, do not ask a question. Merely tell them!

Choose something you do well each day and amplify it for the next 21 days. If you are great at clarifying issues in a meeting, do so with a bit more flair. However, be alert to the receptivity to your amplification. Reflect on your contribution as helping or hindering the meeting. Sometimes a strength can become a weakness (the Icarus Paradox).

Choose something you wish to stop doing because it negatively affects your involvement in the workplace. If you usually arrive at meetings at the prescribed time, decide to arrive 2 minutes earlier. When you do take a few deep breaths and focus on the agenda items. Then organize possible responses and/or scan through the attached documents to familiarize yourself with the content.

Ask someone you know to coffee, tea or juice. Ask them what is working well in the organization. Then dialogue ways to do more of what’s working. Decide if you can do something together and/or decide what you do as individuals. Select a time within two weeks of your get together to dialogue what you learned from taking action.

Ask someone from another department who you’ve met at a recent meeting. Ask the person for coffee, tea or juice and dialogue about the five key connectors between your departments. Select one of the connectors and find ways to improve the connection. Then act on the connection together and/or separately. Select a time within two weeks of your get together to dialogue what you learned from taking action.

Listen to the words of your colleagues as they share their ideas during meetings and in the lunch room. Reflect on their words as commitments – did they fulfill them? Celebrate with them! Or have they been speaking in estimations hoping to keep their promises. If yes, what can you do to help them help you in keeping their commitments.

Listen to yourself. Are you communicating from your commitments? Take the bird approach and observe your involvement in the visible workplace. Then take the earthworm approach and dig around in the invisible workplace. What have you learned about communicating from commitment as a person, bird and earthworm? Share your learning with others.

Each insight is helpful! However, taken together - they catapult you to create the well-living workplace - a place of work where everyone lives and works well together.