Five to Thrive Week 15

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.

This week’s tips are pulled from the playbook of the Thriving Workplace Initiative’s new 2019 program, Fearless Conversations:

• Instead of dishing out advice to colleagues, ask questions to help them find their own answers. The right questions—and room for silent reflection—can help uncover new perspectives and inspire change.
• Healthy relationships include both confrontation and appreciation. Treat confronting an issue with a colleague like an expedition: Dig for understanding and forge a path forward.
• Define the scope of the feedback you’re seeking. That allows the feedback giver to be more focused. Feedback too general? Ask for examples. Asking for feedback creates a culture that is open and honest and seeks improvement.
• When delegating, map out instances where individuals have authority to make decisions, where they can get creative, and where they need to run it by you. Recognize and encourage progression within the parameters.
• Replace “but” in your vocabulary with “and.” Recognizing multiple realities eliminates the idea that one is more important than the other and gets you closer to acting on the task at hand.

Looking to have more meaningful, productive and fearless conversations in 2019? Join the Thriving Workplace Initiative for Fearless Conversations, interactive learning sessions to help transform your daily conversations and build a more thriving workplace. Watch a sneak peek here. Learn more about Fearless Conversations here.