Research has shown that some sunscreen ingredients can seep through the skin into your bloodstream. Several spray sunscreens were recalled after benzene, a known carcinogen, was detected in them, and Hawaii has banned certain ingredients because of concerns that they may harm ocean reefs. While those issues raise real concerns, the risks are more theoretical than proven. Regular sunscreen use does prevent skin cancers and saves lives. It can lower the risk of melanoma by about 50 per cent.

Sunscreens are potentially harmful

Recent research has raised concerns about chemical sunscreens. The FDA scientists published studies showing that avobenzone, homosalate, octinoxate, octisalate, octocrylene, and oxybenzone get into the bloodstream. Absorption doesn’t mean these ingredients are unsafe, but the amounts absorbed were higher than the level the FDA says would exempt them from safety testing. However, definitive answers may be years away.

Some sunscreens are safer than others

The FDA, the American Academy of Dermatology, and independent researchers say that UV filters have been used for years by millions of people, and there have not been noticeable systemic effects. Research in animals suggests that oxybenzone might interfere with hormone production, which could affect fertility, puberty, and thyroid function. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents not use oxybenzone-containing sunscreens on children.

Only certain chemical sunscreens should be avoided 

Sunscreens with the minerals titanium dioxide and zinc oxide work by creating a physical barrier on your skin and are not absorbed into the skin. However, mineral sunscreens might not be as effective as products with chemical filters because it t takes a lot of titanium or zinc to create a product with a high SPF. The minerals also may clump up in the product, so they don’t get evenly dispersed on the skin. They can also wipe off more easily.

Opting for a Mineral Sunscreen Instead

Both spray and lotion can do a good job if used correctly. Sprays have the highest rated SPF level, but can be tricky to apply because the droplets can disperse into the air and make it easy to miss areas on your skin. Instead, spray sunscreen onto the palm of your hand then rub it in. Ensure you don't inhale the spray as the ingredients may irritate or even harm your lungs.

Sprays work better than lotion

health

Health

Your Sunscreen Safety Questions, Answered

There are currently two forms of this word because the English language is continuously changing, and historically, words often had many different forms before they became standardized. For example, “altogether” was once written as “all together,” “all-together,” and “alltogether.”The two-word spelling of “all right” takes on multiple meanings depending on the tone and written form that’s used. “All right” can be used as an adjective or adverb to mean “adequate” or “satisfactory.” It can also be used as an affirmation that suggests “correctness.”

All Right!

Both forms are correct by US writing standards. The main consideration when it comes to using “all right” versus “alright” is the purpose of your writing and how it might be received by your reader. Some posit that “alright” is an appropriate spelling for informal usage, like in a text message or brief email to a coworker or in fiction writing to characterize colloquial dialogue. Conversely, the use of “all right” is better suited for formal correspondences, such as in a professional report, official business letter, or academic paper.

 “All right” vs. “Alright”: Which One To Use

Below are a few examples of how the various forms of “alright” and “all right” are used in sentences.“All right” in a sentence<ul><li>Adverb: “My choir recital went all right, but I almost forgot the lyrics.”</li><li>Adjective: “I feel all right to try out for the solo part again, though.” </li><li>Affirmative statement: “All right! I heard you the first time.” </li></ul>“Alright” in a sentence<ul><li>Adverb: “Is the temperature alright?”</li><li>Adjective: “I wonder if Katsu is alright at doggy daycare. It’s his first time. ”</li><li>Exclamatory statement: “Alright! Time to head to the restaurant?”</li></ul>

“All right” and “Alright” Examples

What's the difference between "all right" and "alright"? Learn how to tell the difference and when to use each—with examples.

writing

Reading & Writing

communication

Communication

Alright or All Right—What’s the Difference?

Business leaders know well that in a strategy meeting, the goal is to simply approve or reject a proposal put forward without questioning the plan or floating alternative options that can cause distress. It shouldn't be this way. The key to strategy development is to weigh strategic alternatives. <ul><li>The goal of the strategy is to make difficult-to reverse decisions on how to win. </li><li>Planning is how to make those choices happen. </li></ul>In strategic planning discussions, we often skip over the first step and simply move to the second. However, using certain shifts can help to improve your strategy.

The essence of strategic planning

Instead of seeing your strategy meeting as a plan-making exercise, reframe the agenda to focus on making choices. <ul><li>One way is to build a strategy decision grid that consists of the key axes of hard-to-reverse choices.</li><li>Then for each of them, describe three to five possible alternatives.</li><li>Next, focus on your discussion and analysis of the most difficult choices.</li></ul>

Frame the strategy as choices

Compare your plan to some benchmarks. The chance of a strategy leading to significant performance improvement depends on an analysis of your company's starting endowment, the trends it is riding, and the moves you are planning. The result is a realistic and concrete future to discuss. You may find your traditional strategic options won't work and may need to consider alternatives that may require making bigger or different moves than you made before.

Calibrate your strategy

Direct the discussion to focus on strategic alternatives that management thinks will be at similar risk and return levels. Then ask the team to consider which big move to make. You could also show different plan scenarios with varying levels of resources and risk. This can help you make real trade-offs instead of all-or-nothing choices.

Compare alternative plans

After the plan is developed, the detailed assumptions may be forgotten. Few review the underlying assumptions, such as uptake rates, market growth, and inflation rates. We shouldn't assume that we know the future. Instead, consider what you can do with the information you have today and build explicit trigger points into the strategy to revisit decisions as you learn.

Track assumptions over time

Private-equity firms have found that more than 30% of decisions are different when opposing possibilities are pitted against each other. Another de-biasing technique is a pre-mortem, where the team assumes a strategy has failed to achieve its intended objective after a set period. Then you brainstorm what caused the failure and how you could've avoided it.

Remove bias from decisions

strategy

Strategy

business

Business

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Simply labeling a plan ‘strategic’ doesn’t make it so

As the field of HR and people operations looks ahead to 2022 we do so with a clearer focus on the changes we face and our role in driving this continued evolution in the world of work. We’ve grown more comfortable with the ambiguity that permeates the pandemic and understand the need for agile approaches that can adapt to our new constantly evolving world of work.
The field of HR is a spectrum with some still operating in legacy environments that are largely transactional and others with more progressive and proactive practices.

The Outlook For 2022

When the pandemic swept the globe in March of 2020 the world of work went remote overnight, porting their office-based communications and collaboration systems to digital ones. It wasn’t pretty, but we figured it out. 2021 brought hope of a “return to workplace” as vaccines rolled out and visions of pre-pandemic offices seemed to be on the horizon. Then new variants emerged and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/06/omicron-return-to-office/">postponed</a> those plans sending us back into cycles of uncertainty.

Hybrid Work Version 2

As we move into 2022, the companies that successfully navigate this new work landscape will be much more intentional about re-engineering their HR operating systems and structures to be more cloud-based. We’ll get better at moving away from synchronous work and be more intentional in re-orienting to asynchronous as a default operating model. We’ll use tools like Loom to send video messages that describe in 5 minutes what usually takes a 30-minute meeting. When we have meetings they’ll be thoughtfully structured, with agendas, pre-read materials sent in advance.

Better Meetings

HR used to follow a one-size-fits-all approach. Not anymore. Over the last two years, we’ve done a lot of listening to our employees to better understand how they’re doing, what they need, and more. This awareness has refocused the field of HR toward employee experience and is allowing us to co-create programs with employees—not just for them.

Flexible HR

The past decade has seen our approach broaden beyond “diversity” to include equity, inclusion, belonging, and access. Following George Floyd’s murder, Tech giants committed $3.8 billion dollars toward racial equity initiatives. But has this had a meaningful impact on driving change?The field of HR still has a lot of work to do in uprooting the systems of inequity that permeate our companies—from pay equity to board representation.

Equity and Inclusion

The shift to remote and hybrid work is also impacting our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Removing geographic constraints opens the talent pool and creates more <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90525652/can-remote-work-live-up-to-its-potential-to-change-workplace-diversity">access</a> to talent and that’s having a <a href="https://digiday.com/media/why-publishers-say-opening-up-remote-hiring-has-grown-and-greatly-improved-the-applicant-pool/">positive impact</a> on hiring. As more companies embrace remote constructs, HR teams must be more mindful and intentional about maintaining <a href="https://hbr.org/2021/10/dont-let-hybrid-work-set-back-your-dei-efforts">equity</a> within these new distributed teams.

Remote Work And Diversity

We’ve spilled plenty of ink covering the Great Resignation and have felt the pain of the spiking attrition within our companies. Underneath the tumult what’s really happening is a “great migration” as industry analyst and writer Josh Bersin effectively frames it.The current job market is white-hot. Recruiter jobs postings are outpacing software engineers, as companies battle for an edge in this hyper-competitive hiring market.

Talent Mobility

Today, 45% of full-time U.S. employees are working <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/355907/remote-work-persisting-trending-permanent.aspx">partly or fully</a> remotely. While that number may drop as more companies implement return to workplace plans in 2022, it will remain a significant portion of our workforce. The percentage of employers offering remote or hybrid work significantly reduces the hiring friction. The ease of virtual interviews and hiring will continue to fuel talent migration in 2022. To offset this, companies must prioritize career growth, flexibility, learning & development, and total rewards programs that attract and retain talent.

New Ways To Hire Talent

Facebook made waves earlier this year when they changed their name to Meta, a nod to their plans to invest in expanding into the metaverse. While virtual reality isn’t new, the barriers of access (mostly hardware) continue to lower, opening up more use cases for HR and people operations.As companies who’ve migrated to remote and hybrid struggle to fill the void of watercooler moments and live meetings, the metaverse will help bridge that analog-digital divide.

The Metaverse

The metaverse is often bundled with the nascent world of <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90696192/what-is-web3">web3</a>. While we won’t see widespread implications for HR yet, we should be paying attention as this develops. Collectively, web3 includes a mix of technology, open standards, cryptocurrency, blockchain, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), Decentralized Finance (DeFi) communities, and a new creator economy.

Web 3.0

In terms of HR implications, the shared ownership and transparency of DAOs(Data Access Objects) could have broader implications including narrowing the pay gap. Crypto is already in play for some companies including Airbnb, Uber, Facebook, and others who offer employees cryptocurrencies as an option for wages or bonuses. HR needs to navigate the legal and tax complexities when offering crypto as wages, including a mix of state and federal guidelines.

The Pay Structure

The pandemic has upended many of the long-held industrial era constructs of work itself. The when, where, and how work happens has evolved beyond those limited legacy views of 9-5’s in the office. Sure, there will always be traditionalists who want to return to a pre-pandemic era of work that no longer exists. They will be at the companies struggling to attract and retain talent in 2022 and beyond.

Old Ways Getting Dismantled

The great reset requires HR to examine our practices, shed the ones that no longer serve our companies and employees, and build anew for some of the new constructs of work detailed above. It requires a shift away from prescribed playbooks of HR programs and a willingness to pilot and adopt new practices. It will be centered on employee experience and co-created with our employees. The days of HR being a back-office function are over. Our generational opportunity to redefine work itself is directly in front of us.

The Great Reset

The only certainty is uncertainty, writes HR expert Lars Schmidt. But one thing is clear: The days of HR being a back-office function are over.


corporateculture

Corporate Culture

humanresources

Human Resources

7 ways HR will look different in 2022

Purpose matters more than ever. People who don’t feel their work contributes to their company’s mission are 630% more likely to quit their jobs than their peers who do.
The way to help employees rediscover the purpose in their work is to make every task and project mission driven. Managers can tie each team member’s work back to the bigger picture of why what they do matters to the world. When assigning tasks, managers should consistently outline answers to: Why is this project important? How will it impact others? How does it fit into the company’s broader mission?

Make work purpose driven

Encourage managers to offer direction, not directions. To help hybrid teams succeed, managers should clearly outline the milestones they’d like their reports to hit — and then let them figure out how to get there.
It feels uncomfortable at first, but by giving your team the freedom to decide their process and work product, you will end up with a better end product.

Trust your people more than feels comfortable

Hybrid work means it’s easier to miss out on the small moments that make teamwork magical and spark innovation. Google News, for example, was the result of a casual conversation between two employees standing next to each other in line for lunch. In an office, these types of interactions happen naturally; in a remote setting, they fall by the wayside and over time this is highly detrimental.
Nudges can offer an opportunity to spark these moments in a hybrid environment. You could send nudges encouraging employees to “Reach out to a team member today”, for example.

Send people — and yourself — nudges

While you should offer your people autonomy, you also shouldn’t shy away from putting a stake in the ground. When it comes to company direction, policies, and values, being clear is the kindest thing you can do — even if your decision is unpopular. 
When people know what’s happening, they can make the best choices for themselves. It’s ambiguity that is more punishing.

Provide clarity. Be more decisive than feels comfortable

Use the shift to hybrid as an opportunity to identify cultural gaps, and to set new norms to create a better, stronger culture.
Encourage managers to take notice of who often dominates the conversation in meetings or receives the most recognition for a project’s success. Make the evaluation criteria for projects as clear as possible: The more explicit the rubric, the less room for bias.

Include everyone

Some of the pre-pandemic rules still apply — but not all of them.

5 New Rules for Leading a Hybrid Team

There are two dimensions to good managing: care personally and challenge directly.<ol><li>Care Personally: The first dimension is about being more than "just professional." It’s about giving a damn, sharing more than just your work self, and encouraging everyone who reports to you to do the same.</li><li>Challenge Directly: The second dimension involves telling people when their work isn’t good enough—and when it is; when they are not going to get that new role they wanted, or when you’re going to hire a new boss over them due to subpar performance.</li></ol>

The Two Dimensions Of A Manager

Radical Candor" is what happens when you put "Care Personally" and "Challenge Directly” together.The most surprising thing about Radical Candor may be that its results are often the opposite of what you fear. You fear people will become angry or vindictive; instead, they are usually grateful for the chance to talk it through.

Radical Candor

A great way to get to know somebody and to build trust is to offer Radically Candid praise and criticism<ul><li>Radically Candid praise: "I admire that about you"</li><li>Radically Candid criticism: To keep winning, criticize the wins.</li><li>Ask the team: Is there anything I could do or stop doing that would make your lives better?</li><li>Balance praise and criticism: Worry more about praise, less about criticism—but above all be sincere.</li></ul>

Radical Candor: Sweet And Sour

<ul><li>When you criticize someone without taking even two seconds to show you care, your guidance feels obnoxiously aggressive to the recipient.</li><li>If you can’t be Radically Candid, being obnoxiously aggressive is the second-best thing you can do.</li><li>At least then people know what you think and where they stand, so your team can achieve results.</li><li>This explains the advantage that assholes seem to have in the world.</li></ul>

Obnoxious Aggression

<ul><li>Manipulatively insincere guidance happens when you don’t care enough about a person to challenge directly.</li><li>People give praise and criticism that is manipulatively insincere when they are too focused on being liked or think they can gain some sort of political advantage by being fake—or when they are just too tired to care or argue anymore.</li></ul>

Manipulative Insincerity

<ul><li>Ruinous Empathy is responsible for the vast majority of management mistakes I’ve seen in my career. Most people want to avoid creating tension or discomfort at work.</li><li>Similarly, praise that’s ruinously empathetic is not effective because its primary goal is to make the person feel better rather than to point out really great work and push for more of it.</li><li>Ruinously empathetic praise: "Just trying to say something nice"</li></ul>

Ruinous Empathy

<ul><li>A leader at Apple had a good way to think about different types of ambition that people on her team had so that she could be thoughtful about what roles to put people in.</li><li>To keep a team cohesive, you need both rock stars and superstars.</li><li>The rock stars love their work. They have found their groove. They don’t want the next job if it will take them away from their craft.</li><li>Superstars need to be challenged and given new opportunities to grow constantly.</li></ul>

What Motivates Us: Rockstars and Superstars

<ul><li>Steep growth is generally characterized by rapid change—learning new skills or deepening existing ones quickly. It’s not about becoming a manager—plenty of individual contributors remain on a steep growth trajectory their entire careers, and plenty of managers are on a gradual growth trajectory.</li><li>Gradual growth is characterized by stability. People on a gradual growth trajectory, who perform well, have generally mastered their work and are making incremental rather than sudden, dramatic improvements.</li></ul>

Kinds Of Growth

<ul><li>It’s a basic axiom that people do better work when they find that work meaningful. Bosses who take this to mean that it is their job to provide purpose tend to overstep. </li><li>Insisting that people have passion for their job can place unnecessary pressure on both boss and employee.</li><li>Only about five percent of people have a real vocation in life, and they confuse the hell out of the rest of us.</li></ul>

Passion Is Overrated

"Give the quiet ones a voice."

<ul><li>First, you have to listen to the ideas that people on your team have and create a culture in which they listen to each other.</li><li>Next, you have to create a space in which ideas can be sharpened and clarified, to make sure these ideas don’t get crushed before everyone fully understands their potential usefulness.</li><li>Next, you have to debate ideas and test them more rigorously.</li><li>Then you need to decide—quickly, but not too quickly.</li><li>Persuade and execute.</li></ul>

Drive Results Collaboratively

It’s hard enough to get yourself to listen to your team members and let them know you are listening; getting them to listen to one another is even harder.The keys are:<ul><li>Have a simple system for employees to use to generate ideas and voice complaints.</li><li>Make sure that at least some of the issues raised are quickly addressed.</li><li>Regularly offer explanations as to why the other issues aren’t being addressed.</li></ul>

A Culture of Listening

Execution is a solitary task. We use calendars mostly for collaborative tasks—to schedule meetings, etc. One of your jobs as a manager is to make sure that collaborative tasks don’t consume so much of your time or your team’s time that there’s no time to execute whatever plan has been decided on and accepted.

Blocking Time To Execute

"Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

<ul><li>We are often told that changing our position makes us a "flip-flopper" or "erratic" or "lacking principles.".</li><li>The key, of course, is communication. Someone might reasonably complain, "Just two months ago you convinced me of X and now you’re telling me maybe not-X after all?"</li><li>You obviously can’t change course like this lightly, and if you do, you need to be able to explain clearly and convincingly why things have changed.</li></ul>

Being Consistent isn’t the Best Way

"When the facts change, I change my mind."

Sometimes we’re overwhelmed by our work and personal lives, and these are the moments when it is hardest to learn from our results and to start the whole cycle over again. That’s why you are at the very center of the wheel that moves you forward as a manager. You’ve got to take care of yourself, first and foremost. That’s easier said than done, of course.

Burnout

<ul><li>Be relentlessly insistent on bringing your fullest and best self to work—and taking it back home again.</li><li>Don’t think of it as work-life balance, some kind of zero-sum game where anything you put into your work robs your life and anything you put into your life robs your work. Instead, think of it as work-life integration.</li></ul>

Work-Life Integration

<ul><li>The world is full of advice here, and what is enormously Stick To The Basicsmeaningful for one person is pure crap for another.</li><li>Do whatever works for you. The key, I’ve found, is to prioritize doing it (but not overdoing it) when times get tough.</li><li>Here’s what I need to do to stay centred: sleep eight hours, exercise for forty-five minutes, and have both breakfast and dinner with my family.</li></ul>

Stick To The Basics

<ul><li>What did I need to do to make sure that my whole team didn’t have a worse day just because I was having a bad one?</li><li>The best you can do is to own up to how you feel and what’s going on in the rest of your life, so others don’t feel your mood is their fault.</li><li>Broadcast this: "Hey, I’m having a shitty day. I’m trying hard not to be grouchy, but if it seems like I have a short fuse today, I do. It’s not because of you or your work, though. It’s because I had a big argument with someone.”</li><li>If you have a truly terrible emotional upset in your life, stay home for a day.</li></ul>

Recognizing Your Own Emotions

To build Radically Candid relationships, do not try to prevent, control, or manage other people’s emotions. Do acknowledge them and react compassionately when emotions run high. And do try to master your reactions to other people’s emotions.

Radically Candid Relationships

<ul><li>I start with being humble because it’s absolutely essential when delivering both praise and criticism.</li><li>Furthermore, a common concern that people raise about giving feedback is "What if I’m wrong?" My answer is that you may very well be wrong. And telling somebody what you think gives them the opportunity to tell you if you are.</li><li>A huge part of what makes giving guidance so valuable is that misperceptions on both sides of the equation get corrected.</li></ul>

Being Humble

This simple technique reminds you to describe three things when giving feedback:1) the situation you saw,2) the behaviour (i.e., what the person did, either good or bad), and3) the impact you observed. Situation, behaviour, and impact apply to praise as well as to criticism.

Situation, Behaviour, Impact. 

<ul><li>Stating your intention to be helpful can lower defenses. When you tell somebody that you aren’t trying to bust their chops—that you really want to help.</li><li>Show, don’t tell. It’s the best advice I’ve ever gotten for story-telling, but it also applies to guidance.</li><li>Finding help is better than offering it yourself.</li><li>Guidance is a gift, not a whip or a carrot.</li></ul>

Being Helpful

Giving guidance as quickly and as informally as possible is an essential part of Radical Candor.<ul><li>Say it in 2–3 minutes between meetings.</li><li>Keep slack time in your calendar, or be willing to be late. Don’t "save up" guidance for a 1:1 or a performance review.</li><li>Guidance has a short half-life. If you wait to tell somebody for a week or a quarter, the incident is so far in the past that they can’t fix the problem or build on the success.</li><li>Unspoken criticism explodes like a dirty bomb.</li></ul>

Giving Feedback

Public criticism tends to trigger a defensive reaction and make it much harder for a person to accept they’ve made a mistake and to learn from it.<ul><li>Corrections, factual observations, disagreements, and debates are different from criticism.</li><li>Criticizing a person should be done in private.</li><li>Don’t make the problem personal, but isolate it as something different from the individual.</li><li>Don’t advise the person getting criticized to not take it personally.</li></ul>

Criticizing Better

<ul><li>Their life story, right from kindergarten.</li><li>Their hopes and dreams.</li><li>Their two-year plan.</li></ul>

What To Converse About With Your Team

Here are some simple things you can do to make sure you’re hiring the right people:<ul><li>Job description: define team fit as rigorously as you define skills to minimize bias.</li><li>Blind skills assessments can also minimize bias</li><li>Use the same interview committee for multiple candidates, to allow for meaningful comparisons.</li><li>Casual interviews reveal more about team fit than formal ones.</li><li>Make interviews productive by jotting down your thoughts right away.</li><li>In-person debrief/decision: if you’re not dying to hire the person, don’t make an offer.</li></ul>

Your Hiring Mentality

Your role will be to encourage that process of listening, clarifying, debating, deciding, persuading, and executing to the point that it’s almost as if your team shares one mind when it comes to completing projects, and then learning from their results

A Result Oriented Approach

Here are a few things you can do to make sure you and each of your reports are getting the most out of these 1:1 meetings: Mindset: Your mindset will go a long way in determining how well the 1:1s go.Frequency: Time doesn’t scale, but it’s also vital to relationships.

Getting The Most Out Of 1:1 Meetings

<ul><li>"Why?"</li><li>"How can I help?"</li><li>"What can I do or stop doing that would make this easier?"</li><li>"What wakes you up at night?"</li><li>"What are you working on that you don’t want to work on?"</li><li>"Do you not want to work on it because you aren’t interested or because you think it’s not important?"</li><li>"What can you do to stop working on it?"</li><li>"What are you not working on that you do want to work on?"</li><li>"Why are you not working on it?"</li><li>"What can you do to start working on it?"</li></ul>

Follow-up questions During 1:1 Meetings

<ul><li>Cancellations by your team.</li><li>Updates only, with no constructive talk.</li><li>If you hear only good news, it’s a sign people don’t feel comfortable coming to you with their problems, or they think you won’t or can’t help.</li><li>If they never criticize you, you’re not good enough at getting guidance from your team.</li><li>If they consistently come with no topics to discuss, it might mean that they are overwhelmed, that they don’t understand the purpose of the meeting, or that they don’t consider it useful.</li></ul>

How to know if your 1:1 Meetings are a Disaster

Radical Candor is the sweet spot between managers who are obnoxiously aggressive on the one side and ruinously empathetic on the other. It is about providing guidance, which involves a mix of praise as well as criticism, delivered to produce better results and help employees develop their skills and boundaries of success. Great bosses have a strong relationship with their employees, and Kim Scott Malone has identified three simple principles for building better relationships with your employees: make it personal, get stuff done, and understand why it matters. Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Drawing on years of first-hand experience, and distilled clearly to give actionable lessons to the reader, Radical Candor shows how to be successful while retaining your integrity and humanity. Radical Candor is the perfect handbook for those who are looking to find meaning in their job and create an environment where people both love their work, their colleagues and are motivated to strive to ever greater success.

books

Books

According to psychologists, talking to strangers can be taxing on the brain, and even small talk can seem stressful, tiring and cognitively demanding.
On the flip side, talking to strangers is a kind of workout that boosts our mental performance.

Talking To Strangers

Talking to strangers is worth it, as it offers a certain profound joy, a real communion. If more people start talking to strangers, our broken society can be healed.<ul><li>The hardest thing about talking to strangers is the initiation of the conversation.</li><li>One has to approach with confidence yet provide an assurance that they are safe and don’t have any ulterior motive or agenda.</li><li>Older people initiate conversations more than younger ones.</li></ul>

Triggering Conversations In A Suspicious World

Most of us are laughably bad at striking up good conversations with strangers, and can hope to improve ourselves if we learn what all is lacking to break the ice.The conversation is mostly initiated by small talk, the opener that gets everything started. Most people hate small talk, but one cannot talk to strangers without initiating the conversation with something familiar and reassuring.

From Really Bad To Okayish

Many people hate it when the small talk is of the weather, but fail to understand that it is actually a kind of code that helps people overcome their inhibitions and be ready to actually talk to the other person.
Once the person who has been approached feels comfortable, real talk can happen.
Everyone is interested in a really deep, engaging conversation, but they will not show it, and it is up to us to discover the same.

Talking About The Weather: One Of The Most Common Conversation Starters

We use scripted conversations to be on the safe side, as we fear that saying any unscripted word can trigger something unwanted in the other person.While scripted conversations are efficient, they deny us the actuality of the other person, the stranger who may be just a friend we haven’t met yet.By talking off-script or replying in a unique, unheard of manner, we make it comfortable for the stranger to mirror us and say something similar.

Going Unscripted

Asking something specific and humorous to a stranger is a risk, but if the timing is right, one can give a great first impression about being complex, empathetic, humourous and human.Once the stranger recognizes you as a human, a bond is created and real conversation can start.

Being Human

<ul>
<li>When at a party, don’t ask ‘What do you do?’, instead, ask ‘What do you really want to do but cannot?’ or ‘Has your day lived up to your expectations?’</li>
<li>When a store clerk asks you ‘can I help you?’, reply with ‘can I help you?’</li>
</ul>
The point is to be different and vulnerable so that you sound intriguing and yet do not come across as a psychopath!

Doing Conversation Starters Differently

<ol><li>Proximity: Suddenly meeting a stranger and asking something will almost certainly fail. One has to be in the proximity of the stranger for a while to be accepted.</li><li>Don’t Make It An Interview: Being too interested in the other person can backfire. You need not lean forward, ask questions quickly or interrogate them.</li><li>Statements: Use statements instead of questions to sound non-threatening.</li><li>Surprise: Be genuinely interested in learning something new and try to gain a fresh perspective.</li></ol>

Helpful Techniques To Talk Better With Strangers

The main reason we don’t talk to strangers is simply because we don’t talk to strangers. People are simply not supposed to violate the norm of leaving other people alone at back alleys, parks and subways.The trick is to acknowledge this handicap and pre-frame the negative thoughts of the other person by reassuring them that you know you are breaking the norm.

Why We Don’t Talk To Strangers

<ul><li>Asking more questions, especially follow-up questions, is more than just for gathering information. </li><li>They help create deep, emotional bonds and make the other person feel better as they are being listened to, understood, validated and cared for.</li><li>Most people don’t ask enough questions about the other person as they are egocentric and are ready to fill in their two cents to the ongoing talk.</li></ul>Most people sound despicable because they just keep on talking about themselves.

The Stranger On The Subway: Asking Questions

<ul><li>While talking to strangers, we need to signal our engagement by summarizing or paraphrasing what the other person has said, to show that we were listening attentively.</li><li>We need to amplify our visible engagement with eye contact and nodding, as the other person does not know us at all, and is relying on the cues we send out.</li></ul>

The Art Of Listening

Another way to signal your attentive listening is to simply echo what the other person is saying.Example:The Stranger says: At that moment, I felt frustrated.You: You were frustrated.

The Art Of Listening: The Echo

Listening can be for:<ul><li> Information</li><li>What we know about</li><li>What we want to experience.</li></ul>We need to work more into the deep levels of listening for motivations, values and feelings.

Listening For A Higher Purpose

Conversation starters to connect with anyone you meet.

Entrepreneurs must become experts at connecting with anyone-and with a few simple strategies, you can. Here's what happened when I tried them myself.

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

teamwork

Teamwork

How to Become a Master at Talking to Strangers

Conversation Starters to Help You Talk to Strangers

Leaders, employees, customers, shareholders, and citizens are looking to achieve new levels of success that is wider, deeper, and more sustaining.
This creates an uncommon opportunity for companies that don't operate by default - they don't continue in the tried-and-tested or dabble around the edges. With clarity and intention, companies can design their future.

A unique generational opportunity

A first step is leaders' intent toward something greater than personal success. The intent may result from an intrinsic motivation to leave a positive legacy, or they may be compelled by investors, employees, or outside pressure such as governments.
But intent is not enough. Issuing a new purpose, sympathy, and compassion are only helpful if a company proactively designs the future they want to work toward. Given that futures will be bleak if design continues to ignore the environment, more companies should consider a planet-centred design.

What it takes to design the future

Companies prefer to plan for the next quarter or year. This leads to minor improvements of 3% or 5%.
The liberating thing about future design is that companies can try on multiple futures. Each future design should be a fully rounded picture of what the company is doing, how it's operating, how it works with communities and the planet, and how shareholders benefit.

Design for the next quarter century

<ul>
<li>Instead of considering immediate needs, identify higher-order needs as they will always be relevant and lead to more comprehensive solutions.</li>
<li>Devise a description of the world the team wants to create, rather than creating a financially oriented five-year plan.</li>
<li>Align action with intention. Run a collaborative design sprint with key stakeholders. Instead of using the sprint to create new products or features, use it to arrive at new futures.</li>
<li>Build a shared mission.</li>
</ul>

Future design requires a new kind of process

To move beyond purpose, companies must proactively design the future they want to work toward.


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