The Work-life Insight

It was great talking and catching up with my sister today. Helping her think through some of her life's challenges was a gift. Before that my buddy Dan called me. He needed some advice on selling his business. Before that Kiran called me. She is looking for a job.

How can I ever believe that I am guided by God's magic?

Faulty intentions that can disconnect you. I am:

1. what I have: do your possessions define me
2. what I do: do your achievements define me
3. what others think: does your reputation define me
4. separate from everyone: my body defines me as alone
5. sperate from all that is missing from my life: my life is disconnected from my desires
6. separate from god: my life's assessment depends on gods assessment from my worthiness

Andrew Temte reminded me about the famous Latsu saying. If you fill your heart with love and gratitude, there isn’t room for hatred and anger.

I once had immersed myself in the works of Dr. Wayne Dyer. I had learned that if you lived your days with intention breathing in higher energy for 1 day 70,000 lives could be impacted.

Andrew Temte with his thoughts made an impact…thank you

In an attitude of allowing, all resistance in the form of thoughts of negativity or doubt is replaced with simply knowing that you and your Source are one and the same.

Some meetings lead to major a-ha moments that meaningfully move projects forward. Other meetings? Not so much. In fact, 47 percent of employees claim meetings are the biggest waste of their workday.

These boring, redundant meetings waste valuable time and energy. But what’s worse are the discussions that devolve into arguing, bickering, blaming, complaining, and the airing of petty grievances. When meetings turn unnecessarily hostile, communication breaks down. Progress stalls. Morale suffers.

As a leader, it’s important to stay in control of the meeting dynamic so that it doesn’t turn into one, big venting session. Here are ways you can stop complainers from controlling the time and make sure your meetings are constructive.

Productive Meetings

1. Consider unifying the room
Creating a shared purpose and structure are keys to making any meeting productive, especially one that could be contentious and complaint-ridden. Before diving into the meeting content, layout the agenda. Be clear about what topics you’ll cover, and in what time frame. That way, you can steer the conversation back on track if it veers off course.

You also should introduce the discussion by offering a clear, future-focused objective such as, “We’re here to create a revised timeline for this project” or “Our goal today is to make a decision about the product launch date.” Don’t focus on why a project is behind or failed (unless the meeting is specifically designed to be a post-mortem or de-brief). Instead, reorient your team to the current context. Share a mission, vision, or purpose that they can get excited about and set your sights on an inspiring goal ahead.

2. Think about setting ground rules
Whenever you want to facilitate a fair discussion, establish the norms for participating. At a minimum, yelling and name-calling should be off-limits. If the meeting will be about a contentious topic, set the expectation that you want to have a respectful discussion. In order to do that, there are certain expectations everyone agrees to follow while another person is speaking, including:

• No interrupting or cross-talk
• Critique ideas, not people
• No distractions—phones and computers away
• Do not offer opinions without supporting evidence
• If you are confused, ask for clarification
• Don’t generalize; speak from your own experiences

These guardrails can help ensure you have a spirited, passionate discussion that doesn’t descend into venting. If the conversation gets heated, go back to your ground rules. Reinforcing an atmosphere of respect and civility will bring down the emotional temperature in the room.

3. How to defuse defensiveness
In general, people vent because they want to be heard. To snuff out complaints, you need to show you genuinely care about your team’s challenges and concerns. Devote time during the meeting to hearing them out. Validate and empathize with phrases like, “I understand why that must be challenging” or “I hear you. That must be tough.” Then dig deeper. Ask clarifying questions such as, “Can you tell me more?” or “What impact has that had on you?”

These questions will help you get to the source of people’s frustrations and elucidate what’s blocking their progress. Just be careful not to linger on problems for too long, because you risk feeding into negativity and pettiness.

4. Problem-solving is all about Partnership
After you’ve released the pressure valve and actively listened to the complaints, it’s time to shift into solutions mode. While under pressure, many leaders make a common mistake at this phase: They prematurely jump to assigning roles and responsibilities. In other words, they tell their team exactly what to do.

While an autocratic approach can be efficient in the short term, it typically leads to pushing back and resistance. When people are aggravated, it’s not a good idea to rob them of a personal agency and power. Coaching people to find their own solutions, on the other hand, is significantly more effective.

One of my clients, Abigail, used a coaching strategy while managing a multimillion-dollar technology roll-out for a healthcare company. Cross-departmental meetings were fraught with fighting. The project was at risk of falling behind, but people still whined about lacking time to get everything done amid their other priorities. Rather than having her dictate next steps to the parties involved, I coached Abigail to invite others into the planning process. At her next meeting she posed a few questions, including “What would support you in accomplishing this by the end of the week?” and “How can I best hold you accountable?”

When you coach people to find their own solutions, it makes them feel like part of the team. They’re more likely to follow through because they have a sense of responsibility and buy-in. You encourage them to access their own resourcefulness, counteracting some of the helplessness that leads people to vent in the first place.

Finally, don’t end the meeting until you have firm commitments in place. Get agreements for what each person will do and by when.

Remember that in the normal course of work, petty annoyances are par for the course. How you choose to handle frustrations makes all the difference.

Credit:
Website: https://melodywilding.com

Call us today to learn how we can help make your meeting successfully.

The business world has discovered coworking spaces and is going for them in a big way if you look at recent studies. According to figures at the website Statista, there were 14 coworking spaces in the US in 2007, but that number increased to 4,043 in 2017 and is projected to increase to 6,219 by 2022. There are many advantages in coworking spaces for businesses in all fields, but certain types of businesses benefit even more. Client advisory firms with clients in multiple cities can benefit greatly from using coworking spaces in those locations.Here are five reasons why every client advisory firm should have seats at multiple coworking spaces.

1. It’s more efficient. People work better in an office setting with their coworkers nearby. They can accomplish much more in an office environment than by working at home, where there are more distractions. Besides, it’s more motivational to get out of your pajamas and go to an office, where you’re around other people who are focused on their jobs.
2. It’s more cost-effective to use meeting spaces on demand. Why pay to rent conference rooms and meeting areas that sit idle most of the time? Real estate costs are a big chunk of a company’s expenses, but with coworking spaces, you only pay for space when you need it.
3. You’re closer to the client. Coworking spaces allow you to put your people right up close to the client. You want to have enough coverage for your most important customers, and with coworking spaces, you can set up shop right down the street from them. And sometimes, when your client also uses coworking spaces, you can be right in the same building with them.
4. It’s better for networking. Coworking spaces are hotbeds of business activity — almost every industry uses them, which means your people could be sitting right next to a contact who can help them get more business in unexpected ways. It’s called serendipity, and it happens all the time in coworking spaces!
5. You can scale up or down as needed. The operative word in business today is speed — companies who can move quickly are the winners in this fast-changing world. If you are presented with a golden opportunity that requires you to scale up, you can do it quickly and in the most cost-effective way by using coworking spaces. Let’s say you just signed a contract with a mega-client and you need to have bodies on the ground at the client’s location in two weeks. You can have everything set up and ready to go at a coworking space in a matter of days — try doing that with traditional office space! Another benefit: using multiple coworking spaces lets you list multiple addresses in your business communications, which makes your company look bigger and more comprehensive to clients and prospects.

It’s clear that coworking spaces are a trend that’s going to be at least as important as telecommuting in today’s business world, and these spaces should be part of any company’s strategic plan going forward.

I am pleased to announce that we have signed leases to add 7,000 sq feet to our current coworking and shared office footprint of 8,000 sq ft. By March 2020 we will be at 15,000 square feet. We are slated to add another 14,000 by the end of 2020.

This expansion marks WorkSocials 4th Expansion Project in 3 Years.

Our Formula For Creating Office Spaces designed for exponential growth

Stay Customer-Centric:

To take daily steps that will create an ever-increasing level of customer happiness. Our thinking is very simple. Satisfied customers leave but raving fans create movements.

Impact:

To make a difference in the daily lives of my clients and our community. I dream to touch the hearts of my people, my clients, employees of my clients and clients of my clients. What I am passionate about is taking steps to move everyone forward. To create a level of momentum that creates an impact - "a real dent in the universe."‍

We continue to attract and retain talent from the beautiful and diverse community of Jersey City.

‍3 years in a row we have been awarded the Minority and Women-owned business certification. Last year we worked hard to earn Vendor Certification from the Federal and State governments. Not too long ago we were also granted vendor certification by the NJ Department of gaming to serve the new online gaming community. We continue to invest in technology that helps our clients. We are the Only coworking space in America that invests in focused industries to attract and retain happy clients.

In 2018, we revamped our network capabilities to offer managed internet [POE] with custom firewalls, rack space for servers and managed VLAN services. We also penned a deal with VOIP Provider allowing us to offer discounted phone service.

In 2019, we switched over to CISCO’s Miraki wifi system. This offers our Clients clean internet over wifi.

Experimentation:

To bring unthought-of amenities and services to our customers. I continue down the path of autonomy, mastery, and purpose by constantly bringing new services to my community

In 2020, we will do our annual threat assessment and pen-test to ensure safety and security. We also have an IoT strategy, this will bring virtual concierge services to our clients.

Other planned services for 2020-2021:

• Premier banking
• Business liability insurance
• Business funding
• Legal services
• Accounting, tax and business advisory through a major CPA firm
• Sales, compliance and softskills training
• Leadership deveopment
• Employee rewards and recognition
• Even higher focus on wellness, physical and mental well-being and

Curate a community that creates a greater impact:

Yes WorkSocial is a business. I am monomaniacally focused on the mission of service. I want to bring happiness back to work. The outcome of which is to make WorkSocial is a movement in happiness.

To continue down this shared agenda of creating a happy community in 2019 we launched a program to serve local solopreneurs and NJ startups. In 2019 added 20+ open plan desks for the solopreneurs. We have started to curate a community of entrepreneurs that will serve our anchored tenants.

Contribution

10% of our profits go towards a local charity where we sponsor weekly meals for about 40 families. We will also host our first thanksgiving and holiday dinner in November and December.

Our product mix:

We have 4 lines of Business

• Coworking
• Meeting and collaboration
• Business address services
• Corporate learning

Remember that time companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars on open-office layouts, only to discover that face-to-face interactions decrease by 70% in open-office plans? More fallout today: Ethan Bernstein, the Harvard researcher behind that finding, has taken to the Harvard Business Review to analyze why.

He says that workers in open spaces quickly develop psychological fourth walls, the conceptual boundaries that protect their public solitude. For example, coworkers quickly learn that wearing headphones or appearing to work intently will stop interruptions. “Especially in open spaces, fourth-wall norms spread quickly,” writes Bernstein.

The solution, however, may not come from asking individual employees what it is they actually want. “Offices overly focused on supporting individual preferences are unlikely to do an optimal job of supporting the overall team,” Bernstein writes.

Instead, he suggests that leaders need to increase the kind of collaborations that produce focused work, which are different for every office. He suggests iterating one floor of office layouts with A/B testing: worker bees who need uninterrupted focus should get that; necessary cross-team interactions should be facilitated.

Some rules of thumb:

• The closer people’s desks are to each other, the more they interact face-to-face.
• Collaborators should be on the same floor. Nearby buildings or adjacent floors don’t help much.
• Events are an important (and cheap!) part of the equation. Think workshops, social events, hackathons, etc.
• Cheap office additions, such as adding whiteboards or smaller tables that encourage intimate discussion, can have big impacts.

Bernstein’s story was coauthored by Ben Waber, a “people analytics” researcher whose company, Humanyze, develops sensors (in chairs, on badges, in floors, on lighting systems) that can collect data on how workers interact.
Credit:
Post Author: Arianne Cohen
Website: www.fastcompany.com

Anthony Noto, Reporter - New York Business JournalNov 1, 2019, 7:43am EDT Updated: Nov 1, 2019, 10:10am EDT

WeWork founder and former CEO Adam Neumann is being sued by his former chief of staff.

Medina Bardhi, who worked for Neumann while he was chief executive at troubled WeWork, is alleging claims of pregnancy discrimination, unequal pay and gender discrimination.

In addition to Neumann, parent company The We Co. and WeWork’s Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Berrent are also named in the complaint.

See Also
SoftBank takes over WeWork in $1.7 billion deal with co-founder
WeWork adds first woman to board of directors Law firm Wigdor LLP is handling legal matters for Bardhi.

Bardhi filed the complaint on behalf of herself and a class of “similarly situated female WeWork employees,” according to the law firm.

The class action complaint was filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Bardhi worked at WeWork for more than five years. During her tenure, she gave birth to two children while serving as Neumann’s chief of staff.

Per the complaint:

Like clockwork, each time Ms. Bardhi returned to work following her maternity leave, WeWork’s management transparently and systematically marginalized and discriminated against her by drastically and materially reducing her role and/or demoting her outright. Moreover, as alleged, each time Ms. Bardhi disclosed her pregnancy to Mr. Neumann, WeWork began to search for a permanent replacement for Ms. Bardhi (and not merely temporary coverage while she was on legally protected leave), and ultimately replaced her with less-experienced and under-qualified males.
The class action complaint also alleges that Neumann repeatedly disparaged and characterized Bardhi’s maternity leave as “retirement” and “vacation” — comments Bardhi says were often made in the presence of other WeWork executives as well as fellow pregnant employees or new mothers.

Bardhi also alleges that the male employee who replaced her as chief of staff while she was on maternity leave received a salary that was nearly three times as much as what she was earning for performing the same work. She also claimed that WeWork systematically pays women less than equally or lesser-qualified male peers.

Bardhi was terminated earlier this month, on Oct. 2, just weeks before Tokyo conglomerate SoftBank bought a majority of WeWork for $1.7 billion. Neumann, as a result of the deal, was required to leave the company altogether.

A WeWork spokeswoman did not return a request for comment.

Anthony Noto is a multimedia journalist focused on venture capital and Silicon Alley startups. Based in New York for the Business Journals, he previously was a reporter at SourceMedia and The Deal LLC. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

Industries:
HUMAN RESOURCES

What do you do if you are a Japanese conglomerate whose investment fund entrusted billions of dollars to a grandiose-bordering-on-shady entrepreneur, only to watch said entrepreneur:

A. Burn through that entire pile of cash while . . .

B. Yammering about running for “president of the world,” before . . .

C. Attempting to bill the company $6 million for the use of the word “We” in its name, and all the while . . .

D. Selling or borrowing against his own shares in the company to buy five mansions and a private jet?

If you’re SoftBank, you throw billions more at WeWork, presumably hoping that a sudden torrent of cash will extinguish this monetary bonfire. Also, you pay the entrepreneur, Adam Neumann, more than $1 billion to stop tossing matches at your money and go away.

This might be the most spectacular implosion of a business in U.S. history. Other failures were bigger, in mere dollars. But WeWork has to be the most literally incredible. Profanity seems somehow inadequate. It’s just . . . holy wow.

In the end, SoftBank reportedly will have invested $18.5 billion in this disaster, more than the gross domestic product of Jamaica. Think about that: Instead of buying a co-working company with an astronomical burn rate, Masayoshi Son, the chief executive of SoftBank, and the sovereign wealth funds that invested with him could have had all the stuff produced in Jamaica for an entire year — aluminum ore, coffee, rum. They could have rented out every hotel room, restaurant and movie theater on the island just for themselves and their friends, and they could have frolicked up and down Dunn’s River Falls like Tom Cruise and Elisabeth Shue in “Cocktail.”

Instead, Son gave that money to Neumann to rent empty offices, buy a lot of plate glass and create what a WeWork tenant of my acquaintance called “a high-tech prison” with “concentric rectangles of fully transparent cells.”

Co-working spaces can be profitable, mind you. But normal co-working landlords don’t get valued at the extravagant revenue multiples Neumann asked for — and got — by redubbing his facilities a “physical social network.” The overevaluation was obvious to my friend, sitting in his glass cube and watching WeWork’s tenants turn over like a turbine. It was obvious to me, sitting at my desk at The Post. If you’d asked either of us what to do with that $18.5 billion, we’d have gone to Jamaica. It’s hard to understand why Son instead chose a multi-year mystery tour led by Neumann.

 The WeWork story is so utterly bizarre that people can’t even get properly outraged about it. I mean, they’re trying — Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) tweeted Wednesday night that “Neumann is a fraud & a good example of why some people support a socialist like @BernieSanders. He ought to be sued & investigated.”

And sure, you’d think there must be an indictment in the offing somewhere. Neumann’s self-dealing was so egregious that kleptocrats around the world are enviously scribbling notes.

But that’s the magnificent insanity of all this: Neumann’s predation was apparently legal. And it’s not even clear it shouldn’t be. After all, everyone who gave Neumann money was a rich, experienced investor who knowingly and voluntarily ceded managerial control to a spaced-out co-working guru. I’m not saying Neumann’s behavior was admirable, except in a roguish anti-hero kind of way. But is it the government’s job to stop venture capitalists from climbing into a start-up’s metaphorical back seat, handing over the keys and letting chief executives take them for a ride? After all, professional venture capitalists are generally going to be better able to assess the viability of a business model than judges or, for that matter, senators.

 It does seem outrageous that Neumann got so much while WeWork’s employees will get to keep their jobs only if they’re lucky. But it’s not like Neumann took that more than $1 billion payout from them. SoftBank gave him voting control over the company, which allowed him to essentially take WeWork hostage and demand a ransom. With a saner governance structure, Neumann couldn’t have done this, and SoftBank could have kept the $1 billion; either way, no court was going to make them gift it to the suffering staff.

So maybe the indictment needed here should be aimed at capitalism, which enabled such an absurd and outrageous outcome. But the premise of capitalism was never that individual capitalists always make wise choices, only that when those capitalists do something egregiously stupid, markets will eventually make them stop. That’s exactly what happened as soon as WeWork filed for an IPO.

Which might be the craziest thing of all about this story: The regulated public markets worked exactly as intended, protecting ordinary retail investors from the folly of the people who were supposed to know better. I wouldn’t exactly call that a happy ending, but we probably can’t expect a better one.

Inclusive leaders tend to share six signature traits that not only promote diversity on their teams, but also improve their capacity to innovate and deal with uncertainty, according to a study of inclusive leaders from six locations worldwide, conducted by Deloitte Australia. How many of these traits do you possess?

The IT profession in the U.S. doesn’t have a great reputation for diversity and inclusion. While Asian Indians are well represented—making up 22 percent of the workforce in computer and mathematical occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—the underrepresentation of women, African Americans, and Latinos in IT and other STEM fields has become a concern.

It’s time for CIOs to make diversity and inclusion a priority, and there may be no better place to start than with their own leadership styles.

A study of inclusive leaders from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, and the U.S., conducted by Deloitte Australia¹, shows that such leaders possess six fundamental traits that foster diversity on their teams. These traits allow executives and managers to engage much more effectively with a wide range of culturally, demographically, and attitudinally diverse stakeholders. They also help leaders access a broader spectrum of ideas and perspectives, which can improve their decision-making and their ability to innovate, handle uncertainty, and anticipate the future. What CIO doesn’t want to develop in those areas?

Even if current IT teams aren’t particularly diverse from a gender, cultural, or thought perspective, CIOs are otherwise surrounded by diversity. Consider the global nature of IT. Many CIOs today outsource technology services to Argentina, Brazil, Ireland, Poland, India, and Malaysia. Markets, customers, ideas, and talent are growing more diverse as businesses expand globally. And in many cases, CIOs and their IT organizations are developing technologies for employees and customers around the world.

Definitions of and approaches to inclusive leadership tend to vary worldwide, and the six characteristics listed below represent just one conceptual framework for developing inclusive behaviors and encouraging diversity.

Commitment. Cultivating a diverse, inclusive workforce takes time and energy, two of a leader’s most precious commodities. So what motivates some executives to champion this issue? In addition to a belief in the business case, inclusive leaders are driven by their values, including a deep-seated sense of fairness that, for some, is rooted in personal experience. Inclusive leaders believe creating a welcoming culture begins with them, and they possess a strong sense of personal responsibility for change. When executives devote time, energy, and resources to nurturing inclusive workforces—by investing in people and inspiring others to share their passion and goals—their actions signal a true commitment.

Courage. Inclusive leaders demonstrate courage in two ways. First, they aren’t afraid to challenge entrenched organizational attitudes and practices that yield homogeneity, even if their recommendations are politically or culturally unpopular. Nor are they afraid to display humility by acknowledging their personal limitations and seeking contributions from others to overcome them. Some leaders find it difficult to admit they don’t have all the answers; in that respect, courage and humility go hand in hand.

Cognizance of bias. Inclusive leaders understand that personal and organizational biases narrow their field of vision and preclude them from making objective decisions. They exert considerable effort to identify their own biases and learn ways to prevent them from influencing talent decisions. They also seek to implement policies, processes, and structures to prevent organizational biases from stifling diversity and inclusion. Without such measures, inclusive leaders understand that their natural inclination could lead them toward self-cloning, and that operating in today’s business environment requires a different approach.

Curiosity. Open-mindedness, a passion for learning, and a desire for exposure to different ideas have fast become leadership traits crucial to success, especially in challenging times.² Curiosity and openness are hallmarks of inclusive leaders, who hunger for other perspectives to minimize their blind spots and improve their decision-making. In addition to accessing a more diverse array of viewpoints, inclusive leaders’ ability to engage in respectful questioning, actively listen to others, and synthesize a range of ideas makes the people around them feel valued, respected, and represented. Inclusive leaders also refrain from making fast judgments, knowing snap decisions can stifle the flow of ideas on their teams and are frequently tinged with bias.

Cultural intelligence. Knowledge of other cultures is essential for CIOs whose work takes them, for example, to offshore development and operations centers. Beyond “book” knowledge, cultural intelligence connotes leaders’ ability to change their styles in response to different cultural norms. For example, culturally intelligent leaders who are typically extroverted and demonstrative will make an effort to show restraint when doing business with individuals whose cultures value modesty or humility. They regulate the speed and tone of their speech and modify their nonverbal behaviors—gestures, facial expressions, body language, and physical interactions—as situations dictate. In addition to understanding other cultures, these leaders also demonstrate self-awareness of their own culture, recognizing how it shapes their worldview and how cultural stereotypes can influence their expectations of others.

Collaborative. Inclusive leaders understand that, for collaboration to be successful, team members must first be willing to share their perspectives. To that end, they create an environment in which all individuals feel empowered to express their opinions freely with the group. They also realize that diversity of thinking is critical to effective collaboration; thus, they pay close attention to team composition and team processes. For example, they prevent teams from breaking into subgroups, which can weaken relationships and create conflict. They also engender a sense of “one team” by creating a group identity and shared goals, and by working to ensure team members understand and value each other’s knowledge and capabilities.

—by Bernadette Dillon, director, and Juliet Bourke, partner, Human Capital Consulting, Deloitte Australia

‍