Five to Thrive 4/8/19

UMD’s Thriving Workplace Initiative is making the University of Maryland a great place to work by providing tools and support to foster engaged, inclusive and empowered faculty and staff across campus.

Each Monday, its Five to Thrive list offers five strategies crowdsourced from research, experts and our own UMD community to help your workplace thrive.

Want to build a Thriving Workplace? Here are this week’s tips:

• Assume noble intent. Sometimes communications through email, text or memos can be misconstrued or the tone can be misinterpreted. Make every effort to assume people are coming from a good place.
• Incorporate the “rule of three” into your meetings. If it’s easy for you to talk, let three people share their thoughts before you do. If it’s not a strength, aim to share three ideas or thoughts during the meeting.
• Innovation shouldn’t happen only in a crisis. Encourage a culture of calculated risk and disruption and reap the benefits.
• Don’t get so smart that you become dumb. Complacency is the secret ingredient for failure. Keep observing, keep listening, keep learning.
• Teamwork makes the dream work. Giving your team the space to be creative and the opportunity to collaborate fuels problem-solving and elevates every member. Give each individual on your team ownership and your trust.

The Thriving Workplace Survey remains open through April 12! Take five  to 10 minutes to reflect on life at work and help the university create more engaged, inclusive workplaces. Learn more at president.umd.edu/thrive.