Why did you write this email, message or report? Everything you include in your piece of writing should support your core purpose. 

Don't waste words on meandering ideas and extraneous information. And when reviewing what you've written, put yourself in the reader's shoes. Will they understand what you're trying to achieve?

If you can't appeal to your reader, no composition skill or subject matter expertise means a thing. To do this, understand your reader's goals and how your purpose fits in.

When you review your writing before sending, ask yourself whether your writing helps the reader understand what's in it for them.

• People will enjoy working with you.
• Humor is a potent stress buster.
• It is humanizing.
• It puts others at ease.
• Ha + ha = aha!  Humor is a key ingredient in creative thinking.
• It helps build trust.
• It boosts morale.
• People who use humor tend to be more approachable.
• Humor can allow your company to stand out.
• It can increase productivity.

Also known as Freytag’s Pyramid:

• Exposition: Introduce important background information
• Rising action: Tell a series of events to build up to the climax
• Climax: Turn the story around (usually the most exciting part of the story)
• Falling action: Continue the action from the climax
• Dénouement: Ending the story with a resolution.

• Before: Describe the world with Problem A.
• After: Imagine what it’d be like having Problem A solved.
• Bridge: Here’s how to get there.

Set the stage of a problem that your target audience is likely to experience ( a problem that your company solves). Describe a world where that problem didn’t exist. Explain how to get there or present the solution (i.e. your product or service).

The first day in a company is all about making good impressions. And an excellent elevator pitch is one way of endearing yourself to your new workmates. An elevator pitch is a 15–30-second speech that tells your colleague who you are, the roles you have held previously, and what you will be doing in the new job.

Your pitch should never be lengthy. Since you are a stranger in the new workplace, an elevator pitch assists in breaking the ice and striking up conversations as you do your work.

Being a good listener can help you catch on things about the company and your job quickly. 

It is also a good idea to seek clarification by asking various questions. Prepare both general and practical questions concerning the dynamics of your new role. 

• They have an easy time feeling good and recovering from adversity
• they have close, supportive social connections
• they believe that their presence in the world matters.

1. Purpose. Our purpose is a reflection of our core values, and we feel more purposeful at work when our everyday behaviors and decisions are aligned with those values.
2. Engagement. Prioritise some fun. Take ownership of decisions that affects you. Adopt a flow at work.
3. Resilience. The ability to handle, adapt to, and productively learn from setbacks, failures, and disappointments.
4. Kindness. Being kind at work involves treating others with dignity and respect, extending empathy and compassion, practicing gratitude, and constructively managing conflicts.

Intentionally design for the same interactions that would otherwise happen if people were in the office.

• Culture is what naturally happens when a group of people gets together for any period.
• A great culture happens with intentional design and influence. It's the reason you should make your company's mission, vision, values, operating principles, standards, and agreements visible. 
• Culture is experienced through emotions, including how your employees feel about the company, you, other leaders, and peers. That feeling is developed through human interaction at the water cooler, kitchen, or hallway conversations.

Your people need to feel your presence as a leader as they will have fewer opportunities to see you face to face when they work remotely.

• Regularly show up in a variety of forms that can include weekly video meetings, periodic company-wide emails, or presence in public channels.
• Err on the side of more communication rather than less.

Humor and status have always been tightly linked: good leaders seem to often use humor in order to motivate their team members' actions. As individuals, we tend to prefer, researchers claim, jokes that make us laugh while feeling slightly uncomfortable.

Furthermore, we perceive the joke teller as a self-confident person, who could easily become a leader due to his or her courage to make such a joke. The key point here is that the joke should be appropriate and match the context.

Making inside jokes usually shows how bounded a team or a group is: their jokes can understood the best by themselves.

However, the moment an outsider integrates the group, it is better to avoid the inside jokes, as this will most probably make him or her feel out of place.

Challenge: Expose Biases too hidden to be seen.

Innovation: An identity survey with easily visible results.

Lesson: More than one social identity is examined at the same time and allows becoming aware of issues related to diversity and privilege.

• Do not overestimate your own competency. Life experience alone is not enough to become a diversity expert.
• Broaden students’ perspective on privilege. A broad spectrum of topics that can reveal differences.

• Demonstrate authenticity — and grace. Making cultural faux pas is an opportunity for teaching and showing grace.

• Focus on solutions.  Awareness encourages motivation toward solutions.

Build and maintain a unique connection with the employee, using your listening skills and attention to detail. Avoid the one-size-fits-all approach.

Make other people who are good at a particular task mentor the newcomers for on-boarding, reducing your load and helping the new joiners. This also builds trust among the mentors, making it a win-win situation.