On Communication and Fighting Muscle Atrophy

Too many people think they’re great communicators and listeners while not being good at either. Many communication issues I’ve helped people work through in their personal and professional lives stem from people not understanding how legitimately hard communication is. The truth is that communication and active listening skills are memory muscles that need to get meaningful reps to maintain their effectiveness.

Knowing your primary communication and conflict management styles and being conscious of how fluid communication and conflict management styles can be depending on the circumstances are oft-neglected nuances that lead to miscommunication and escalated conflicts.

Understanding the necessity of being an active and engaged listener, in listening and reiterating key points shared with you before responding, is the difference between people feeling heard and validated when they share themselves with you or feeling neglected and unheard.

Some of y’all will read all that and think, “Why do I have to do all the heavy lifting? Why isn’t the other person working on their communication skills?” You’re going to have to let that go. You can’t control the willingness of other people to put in the work to be better communicators and listeners. But you can damn sure work on yourself and model how necessary these skills are to others personally and professionally. Maybe they’ll catch on and rethink the ways they communicate. Perhaps they won’t. What matters is that you’re getting your reps in. And I guarantee you will see some gains, even if those gains are centered on your fulfillment, learning, and growth.

Don’t let these memory muscles atrophy.

On Recruiting, Interviewing, and Dangerous Roads

To hiring managers and hiring committees: your beliefs around such topics as whether a candidate should receive the interview questions in advance or have a heads up on the structure of their interviews with you is in direct correlation with your current employees' job satisfaction, the working environment you've created, and your turnover.

When you begin your relationship with someone with a lack of empathy, unnecessary power plays, and "gotcha" tactics to "keep people on their toes," you set the stage for the experience that person is about to have with your company. These aren't one-off tactics or passing beliefs but the fabric of who you are as a leader, supervisor, and curator of workplace culture.

The recruiting and interview process is a two-way street, but if your side of the road is full of potholes and spike strips, people will stay the course and drive right by you.

And those who already took a pit stop with you will be prepping themselves to return to the road for a new place to lay their head.

On HR and Being The Right Hand of The King

Image description: a comic strip. In the strip, a person dressed in medieval king regalia walks away from a limbless black knight. The king is wielding a sword in their right hand. The letters "EE" are on his back, which is shorthand for employees. The limbless black knight's torso is upright, looking onward at the departing king. The letters "HR" are on the black knight's back, which is shorthand for human resources. Their arms and legs are strewn about. They are shouting at the king, "Come back...'tis just a flesh wound...oh, all right, we'll call it a draw!"

It is 2023. If you're an HR "professional," and after everything that has happened to melanated communities, queer communities, reproductive health, and public health over the past four years, you're still operating in your HR role like you're the right hand of the King?

You're in the wrong profession.

I hear Medieval Times is hiring.

Real talk? Your HR approach and philosophy were never what employees needed, even when conversations about the ethics and execution of HR were merely whispers between coworkers who were angry about how you treated them but knew that they didn't want to catch your ire and lose their jobs. And at this point? Your brand of HR is no longer wanted or tolerated by employees, as we all understand our rights and what your style of HR represents. The standard for what HR can and should be is higher now, and accountability for HR "professionals" is growing. That HR style you're still wielding like a broadsword? That's only wanted by senior leaders who view themselves on some King Richard sh-- who believe they need a human weapon to "control the peasants."

And some of y'all are mighty comfortable with being the sheriff of Nottingham.

Not a good look.

[Image description: a comic strip. In the strip, a person dressed in medieval king regalia walks away from a limbless black knight. The king is wielding a sword in their right hand. The letters "EE" are on his back, which is shorthand for employees. The limbless black knight's torso is upright, looking onward at the departing king. The letters "HR" are on the black knight's back, which is shorthand for human resources. Their arms and legs are strewn about. They are shouting at the king, "Come back...'tis just a flesh wound...oh, all right, we'll call it a draw!"]

On White Shock, White Awe, and the Dismantling of DEI Work in Organizations

White “professionals”: If you’re shocked by the news that many companies have recently been dropping “DEI” departments and initiatives to “save money,” then I feel for you and the ridiculous state of blissful ignorance you’ve been likely embracing most of your adult life but especially since the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor led to protests across the United States.

Come on. You aren’t shocked, are you? C’MON. Stop that. Of course, these initiatives are on the chopping block. Most of these departments and initiatives were running on fumes anyway. Your company leadership ensured that by placing the burden on a handful of melanated folx led by clueless “good” white “DEI experts” and making melanated folx the scapegoats when your company didn’t have life-changing, culture-shifting results in six months to a year. And real talk?

Most of y’all have been going through the motions for damn-near three years.

Your workplaces were doing the same thing.

White capitalism-driven systems like workplaces are designed for optimum performative allyship to keep all the “good” white folx feeling good about themselves. And real talk?

Y’all stopped feeling good about being an “ally” by the autumn of 2020.

When it stopped being the “cool thing to do?” Most of y’all went back to your regularly scheduled programming.

We [the melanated masses plus everyone you work with who isn’t white, straight, cishet, and able-bodied] could see it in your body language and how you talked about the topics of equity, inclusion, anti-racism, anti-Blackness, antisemitism, and anti-Asian hate by Black Friday.

We watched as the places we worked, enthusiastic about ensuring we all knew work was a “safe place,” followed suit.

Y’all were out of energy and zeal for Black lives - any non-white lives - by January 2021.

Stop being shocked and start being honest with yourselves.

I wonder how many of y’all are standing up and speaking up as your companies cut diversity, equity, and inclusion out of your workplace like an appendix: something they had no use for and disposed of when their bodies rejected it.

Where y’all at, “allies”?

On "Quiet Hiring," Burnout, and Cutesy Names for Harmful Things

From CNBC:

"A new year is here, and with it, a new workplace phenomenon that bosses and employees should prepare for: quiet hiring.

Quiet hiring is when an organization acquires new skills without actually hiring new full-time employees, says Emily Rose McRae, who has led Gartner's future of work research team since its 2019 inception, focusing on HR practices.

Sometimes, it means hiring short-term contractors. Other times, it means encouraging current employees to temporarily move into new roles within the organization, McRae says.

...Hiring usually falls into one of three categories: backfilling old roles, creating new ones to help the company grow or addressing an acute, immediate need.

Quiet hiring is all about that third category, even if it doesn't technically involve any new hiring at all. The idea is to prioritize the most crucial business functions at a given time, which could mean temporarily mixing up the roles of current employees."

SIGH.

Listen to me closely: THIS IS NOT A HIRING TREND TO LOOK OUT FOR.

Could white supremacist workplace culture leadership do me a favor and stop giving things new names? Y'all did this last year with "quiet quitting" *cough* doing your job and only your job, then going home on time *cough*. And now you want HR to happily push employees to do jobs outside their job description - outside of the job you hired them to do - and give it a "cute" name? That's not a new thing. Quit acting like this is a new workforce tactic. "Quiet hiring" is something companies have been doing for years. Companies have been making employees take on the roles of multiple people "just for a little while" for decades. You know, "just until we end the hiring freeze" or "until we get through this recession." Who are y'all trying to fool? Y'all realize we all know the reasoning behind the line "other duties as assigned" being added to job descriptions, right? Your workers aren't stupid. Give your employees credit for knowing when they're being used with nothing more than a paycheck with no pay increase in return. Stop using HR to weaponize policies that lead to overworking people and push them to either be burnt out or quit.

There's nothing quiet about burning people out and overworking them with an overwhelming workload with no end in sight "for the good of the company."

That's a loud and clear message y'all have been sending for eons.