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Early on in my career, I was focused on being efficient. I wanted to be productive. I wanted to make an impact. And I thought I had mastered the email game in corporate America. Respond quickly; copy in your boss and others so they know what youre doing; hold onto emails for documentation and forward them back when people get confused. You send too many emails, my boss said, exasperated, in one of our performance reviews. From the feedback from your peers, you email a lot. And its overwhelming the teams. Arent we supposed to be emailing each other?” I asked, confused. Youre supposed to be communicating. Not everything needs to be an email. My boss was right. Somewhere along the way, I embraced email, became obsessed with email, and treated email like it was my job to email, rather than realizing that email was simply a tool to help me do my job better. Years later, Im now sure my coworkers used to dread seeing my name in their inboxes. Over time, they likely just glossed over my name, filing it away in a folder they would never open again. So if you suspect your coworkers might be consistently eye-rolling when your email hits their inboxes, here are three ways to course correct this behavior. Skip that email; make time for a conversation Early on in my career, I was anxious about inconveniencing colleagues in person. I didnt want to take up or waste their time. I defaulted to email as my primary form of communicationbut didnt realize that by sending so many emails, I was inconveniencing them (and damaging my reputation as a manager in the workplace). I encourage all of us to pause and ask, Do I really need to send this email? Ive been guilty of wanting to empty my inbox, to just get that response or task or request into someone elses inbox as quickly as possible. If you feel similarly tempted, ask yourself if you can: Wait to update peers at our weekly team meeting? Stop by their desk in the morning for our question? Ask for advice on the project at our Friday lunch? Text or Slack them and see if they can chat for five minutes? Think about whether you can research or answer the question yourself before hitting send? By skipping that email, you are strengthening the way you communicate with your peers. When you can touch base in person, or over video or audio, also make sure you are efficient or brief. Fight the urge to add to the email chain Recently, I opened my inbox to find more than 50 responses to a reply-all chain that had spiraled out of control. I scrolled through the congrats and great news and well deserved and amazing work and on and on waiting for a breakthrough response or something I might need to know. I deleted it after the 20th message. I didnt need to read the rest of the responses. It can be easy to reply all and pile onto the email chain gone wild. So step away from the keyboard. Instead, ask: Why does everyone need to see our response? What value does our response add to the conversation? Who are we trying to prove our value to? What if we just responded directly to that person rather than filling up everyones inbox? Can we convey our message in person or another format? Remember, every email we send is adding to other peoples inboxes, and in turn, we can expect emails back. So if you want to manage the flow of email, send fewer emails. 3. Just wait to hit send Many organizations still rely on email as a primary form of communication. When you do need to send one, make sure its concise and appropriate Ive been guilty of emailing at midnight. I wanted to get through a project, working fast and furiously and firing off emails to get what I needed done. I never stopped to think about how it would make my coworkers feel to see a barrage of messages from me if they happened to be up that late at night. What I was doing wasnt urgent and worthy of midnight emails: I was just selling lots and lots of consumer products. By consistently acting like everything was urgent, when I really did need my coworkers help, it was even harder to get them to respond. Understanding how we can better work with our coworkers starts with how we communicate. Remember to skip that email when you can and have a quick conversation. Dont add reply all to the email madness. And if you must, just wait to send it. Unless its a real life emergency, that late-night note can wait.
Category:
E-Commerce
You are what you eat, as the saying goes. But does the same apply to what you drink? Pinterests Summer Trend report flagged skincare drinks as a rising category, with searches up 176% on the app. Since then, the trend has spread across platforms, with TikTok creators touting skin-boosting drink recipes they claim clear complexion, racking up thousands of views. Maybe you should drink your skincare instead of using all these products to fix your skin, TikTok creator @xarabeq suggested in a video posted back in June. Her retinol skincare recipe includes carrots, lemon, orange, ginger, and turmeric to make a week’s worth of wellness shots. @xarabeq Drinking my skincare I want to make these retinol skincare wellness shots weekly so let me know any tips to make this process better cause CHIILLEEE it was a mess Wellness shot ingredients: 2 lemons 1 orange 2 ginger 1/2 bag of carrots 5 turmerics #drinkyourskincare #retinolskincare #clearskin #skintok #wellnessshots #healthydrink original sound – xarabeq A viral recipe by @nelakugc uses cucumber, celery, lemon, ginger, apple, and greens to concoct a glowy skin juice. Another user recommends a daily shot of olive oil mixed with lemon juice for skincare benefits. @nelakugc drink your skincare girlies #greenjuice #glowyskinjuice #glowyskin #skincare #healthyrecipes #girlytok #f DAISIES – Justin Bieber Worldwide Google searches for drinks for skin and drink for glowing skin have doubled in the past month, according to Vitabiotics, the U.K.s top vitamin company. While its true that diet affects the health of your skinthe bodys largest organare these skincare drinks actually effective? Carrots appear frequently in recipes because of their vitamin A content. Nutritionist Lucia Stansbie explains the difference between retinol in skincare and vitamin A from carrots. This drink is said to be rich in vitamin A, but plant-based vitamin A comes in the form of beta-carotene, the pigment that gives many orange fruits and vegetables their color, she says. While vitamin A does help the maintenance of normal skin, our bodies only convert beta-carotene into active vitamin A in small amounts. Instead of a daily shot, she suggests simply eating a carrot or adding one to your morning smoothie to maintain vitamin A levels. Turmeric is another common ingredient in skin elixirs touted on social media. Turmeric is also an important nutrient, but it’s better absorbed with a source of fat, Stansbie says. Instead of using it in a juice, I would again use it in a smoothie where I would add an avocado or nut butter to have some healthy fats to maximize its absorption. Celery juice is popular for its hydrating properties, but instead of juicing it, Stansbie suggests blending it and adding a source of vitamin C, one of the most powerful nutrients which contributes to normal collagen formation for the normal function of skin, along with spinach and berries. I would pair this with a protein-rich breakfast that provides vitamin B, such as vitamin B2 and biotin, which both contribute to the maintenance of normal skin.
Category:
E-Commerce
Colin Fisher is an organizational scientist and associate professor of organizations and innovation at University College Londons School of Management. He has written about group dynamics for both popular science and management audiences, with his work having been profiled in Forbes, The Times, NPR, and the BBC. Whats the big idea? Why do some groups just click, while others fall apart? The Collective Edge unlocks the secrets to building a powerful group or contributing to its success as a member. With the right internal dynamics and structural foundation, a group can be poised and ready to collaborate effectively and become more than the sum of its parts. Below, Colin shares five key insights from his new book, The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups. Listen to the audio versionread by Colin himselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. The lone genius is a mythtry a collective perspective. We love stories of lone geniuses. Narratives of individuals shaping the world hold a special appeal, whether they are scientists, CEOs, performers, or prime ministers. But lone geniuses are more myth than reality. The truth is that groups make the world go round. For instance, who invented the lightbulb? If you said Thomas Edison, youd be wrong. Incandescent bulbs were invented before Edison was born. Edison built on the work of many others, and he didnt work alone. His breakthrough was a team effort with a group he called the Muckers, whose names are mostly lost to history. Today, teams dominate the landscape in terms of breakthrough ideas. One study of millions of patents and research papers found that teams were over six times more likely than individuals to produce breakthrough discoveries. So why do we keep telling the wrong story? Our brains are biased. Psychologists call it fundamental attribution error: We over-explain success with personal traits and ignore the context that made it possible. We also inflate our own contributions. In one study, group members estimated their share of the teams output; the totals reached 235%. This myth makes us worse at building teams: idolizing individual brilliance, hiring stars, purging bad apples, and hoping for lightning to strike. If we view the world from a collective perspective, we can ask better questions: What group conditions made this success possibleand how can we recreate them? Next time you admire a breakthrough, look past the most obvious hero and ask: Who else was involved, and what made their collaboration work? 2. Synergy is real, but elusive. Synergy sounds like a buzzword, but its very real. Ive felt it as a jazz musician, where groups Ive been a part of spontaneously bring ideas out of one another that none of us could have conceived alone. Research shows that synergy is possible. Great musical ensembles, sports teams, and businesses bring together diverse knowledge, skills, and perspectives to become more than the sum of their parts. But synergy is rare. Most groups underperform because of predictable process lossescoordination breakdowns and low effort. One classic study showed that members of a two-person group contribute only about 70% of what they would working alone. It gets worse as groups growa group of six yields only about 40% of its members output. Still, when synergy happens, its the pinnacle of group and human performance. Miles Daviss album Kind of Blue is my favorite example. Each musician had a distinct voiceColtranes sheets of sound, Evanss lush harmonies, Daviss restraint. Together, they made each other better. Each musicians idiosyncratic approach accentuated the beauty of the others, making the whole more than the sum of the individuals. A group of six yields only about 40% of its members output. Anthropologist Margaret Mead was right: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, its the only thing that ever has. But it isnt easy because our group tendencies sometimes bring out the worst in us. 3. Groups can bring out the worst in us. Groups are often in the news for the wrong reasons: conformity, polarization, prejudice, conflict, and general mass stupidity. Politicians prey on the dark side of our primitive tendencies to praise us and blame them. Social media can strengthen intergroup hate while isolating us from our local communities. Our tendency to form groups underlies political conflict, war, and atrocities. Our Paleolithic brains have some dangerous tendencies. One of the most pernicious is conformity. Conformity pressures are powerful and automatic. If youre in a group watching a street performer, you clap because everyone else claps, even when youre privately unimpressed. In meetings, that same instinct silences dissenting voices. Conformity may sound bad, but it has a purpose. Conformity keeps groups together and allows them to coordinate smoothlywe sometimes need to go along to get along. But on the dark side of conformity, sometimes were pushed to conform to the will of the collective. Conformity pressures are at the root of many catastrophic decisions, cult-like thinking, and extremism. Online echo chambers and increasing political polarization are making these forces stronger than ever. But the dark side isnt inevitable if we structure our groups carefully. 4. Use group structure to stack the deck toward synergy. Great groups dont emerge purely by chance. Theyre purposely designed to maximize their chances of achieving synergy. A groups composition, goals, tasks, and norms collectively make up its structure. Structure is the most powerful way to build effective, happier groups. The best-designed groups are small teams working interdependently toward clear goals, with motivating tasks and norms that foster psychological safety and autonomy. Too often, however, leaders are careless about group structure. They form teams based on politics and availability, rather than selecting the optimal mix of knowledge and skills. They charge teams with vague goals yet micromanage the process. They offer the team boring, demotivating tasks. When problems arise, many try to directly alter the group processholding meetings to diffuse conflict or giving rousing speeches to motivate disengaged members. One study found that when faced with a struggling group, 84% tried to intervene in the process, while only 5% used the most powerful lever available: changing the groups structure. The best-designed groups are small teams working interdependently toward clear goals, with motivating tasks and norms that foster psychological safety and autonomy. Its like they say in gambling: The house always wins. In a casino, you can win with a good strategy for a little while. But, in the long run, the odds embedded in the game will win out. Its the same in teams. Structure is simply more powerful than coaching. It should be thefirst place you turn when designing a group for synergy. 5. You can shape the groups in your lifeeven without a title. In the best groups, leadership isnt just for whoever has the formal title of leader; its a team sport. Every group member can shape group dynamics. When you lack formal authority, you have three main ways to influence your group: asking questions, modeling norms, and attributing leadership to others. One of the most powerful tools is asking questions. Asking questions about the goals, norms, and processes a group is using can spark important conversations. What are we trying to accomplish here? Why do we do things the way we do them? How can we improve? Questions like these invite overlooked perspectives and help get everyone on the same page. Early in a groups life, norms emerge easily. Members look to one another for cues about whats appropriate. So, modeling norms that promote open communication and psychological safety matters enormously. If you want more candor, show it. If you want curiosity, ask thoughtful questions. As a group member, you have a choice in who you look to as a role model, turn to for advice, or endorse their suggestions. These are small ways of attributing informal leadership to other members. Over time, informal attributions of leadership can increase the status of other group members, thereby giving them more influence over group dynamics. Start small. Ask a better question, name an unspoken issue, or model the behavior you want to see. You dont need permission to improve a group. If you play your cards right, your group can become more than the sum of its parts. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Category:
E-Commerce
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