​Years ago, I worked at Booz Allen Hamilton, a large consulting firm in the DC area. For two years, my office was on the recruiting floor. All around me were interview rooms, networking events, and lots of hardworking recruiters. They were all go-getters. Big personalities! They walked fast, dressed to the nines, and got a lot of work done. It's the closest I will ever get to working on the floor of the stock exchange or in a newsroom. So much energy! I have kept in touch with a few of the recruiters I met during that time. It’s no surprise. Recruiters are amazing at building and maintaining relationships. It’s their job. Without a network, there are no candidates. I was thinking about how good recruiters are at networking, and thought we could all take a lesson from them. Here's what I observed...

 

1. Answer your messages. This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised. I recently set a question via LinkedIn (messenger) to a group of recruiters who were former coworkers from years past. I received responses within hours. They stay on top of all their inboxes!
2. Don’t be shy. If you’re interested in talking with someone, reach out. Recruiters don’t hesitate if it’s someone they do not know, someone who may be “too important,” or someone they have not connected with in years. Just reach out. What’s the worst that can happen? 
3. Use all the channels. Given our reliance on social media, the lines between personal and professional relationships are blurred. Many former colleagues are also Facebook or Instagram friends. You can learn a lot from those who use all the channels. The occasional personal post on Facebook can help you connect with people from years back in your career, and it can help you get to know current colleagues at a deeper level. 
4. Leverage every opportunity. A recruiter who checked my references for a job years ago made friends with the woman I provided for my reference check! No surprise, she also makes friends in line at the grocery store. Leverage every opportunity.
5. Do something everyday. Whether you’re the type to regularly schedule lunch or coffee dates, or simply spend five minutes a day reading your LinkedIn feed and commenting on posts, you’re doing something. Another recruiter I worked with would leave her lunch in a different kitchen every day. (There were two kitchens on each floor, and the building was big.) That would allow her to meet new people every day while warming up her lunch. Also provided exercise. You pick the thing. Consistency is the key.

 
 What did I miss? What would you add to the list?

Over the past few years, I have been neglecting my professional network. I also really miss my chats with some of my favorite work friends from years past. Between leaving the DC area, the demands of motherhood (goodbye, free time!), and leaving a large employer, I had not kept up with my work buddies. Many of them had new jobs and had made big life changes—and I had not so much as checked in! (Do Facebook comments count? Not so much.) I also did not have a great avenue for meeting new people and was craving an inspo injection—wanting to hear the latest and greatest from people I admire. 
 
I remembered the movie Field of Dreams. “If you build it, they will come.” 
 
And I built it. I set up a community of practice for my biggest area of focus, internal and employee communications. We meet every other month via Zoom, for an hour. At each meeting we hear from a speaker and then do some mixing and mingling. The format is simple, managing the group is simple, and I have reconnected with dozens of people I adore. It's a start at rebuilding my network, and it's been enriching.

I recycled the idea of a small community of practice, similar to one that I had been part of years back, and it’s a concept that anyone could replicate. In case you’re inspired, here’s what I learned, and a recipe to start your own group…

1. Set your scope – In the world of “comms professionals,” this group is focused on internal and employee comms. Just one slice of the pie. We also have some graphic designers and event planners in the mix.
2. Define the purpose – My initial goals for creating this group were to have a forum for benchmarking, ideas sharing, and easy networking. We revisit the goals informally at each meeting, to make sure the time is well spent. 
3. Start small – I wanted to keep the group small as we were in start-up mode. Our initial group was about two dozen people. We have about half of that number in attendance at each meeting. To create the list, I about spent 10 minutes clicking through my LinkedIn contacts, drafted a list of people who might be interested, and invited that group to join as inaugural members. Since then our inaugural members have shared the invite with friends. The group is already growing. With intention. 
4. Keep it simple – Our meeting format is quite simple. One hour, every other month. Half of the meeting is a presentation on a cool thing (we rotate speakers), and the remainder is for sharing wants and needs. (Also noteworthy: If you set up your own group, you can pick meeting times that work for you!)

 
Have you ever set up or managed a group like this? What tips do you have?

I worked in Learning & Development (aka ‘corporate training’) for nearly a decade. During that time, I did some classroom facilitation and I read A LOT OF participant evaluations. You know, the short questionnaires you complete after a training session that ask what did you like most/least, and what to change for next time. It didn’t take long to see the universal trends in that feedback. It came to mind a few weeks ago as I was reviewing feedback from an offsite, and I thought I'd share it here...

Here are the three things that come up regularly in participant evaluations: 

1. Unclear instructions for activities – If at some point in the training, you’re pairing off or breaking into small groups for discussions (without a facilitator), you know to provide the instructions and repeat them three times. Inevitably someone will say, “Now what are we supposed to be doing?” 

What can you do? Before you send everyone off to the small groups, ask someone from each group if they have questions about what they are supposed to be doing, provide a handout/instructions that is available in the breakouts. If you’re in Zoom, don’t rely on the main presentation materials—send a handout in advance, and make sure everyone has it handy.
 
2. Not enough time in the breakouts – There’s almost always feedback about the time in breakout or small group discussions being TOO SHORT. We humans like to talk, and the discussion time is NEVER enough. “We didn’t all get a chance to talk” or “We rushed through the last person.” Most of the time you leave them wanting more (or complaining that they were rushed).  

What can you do? After you debrief the small-group discussions, ask everyone individually to reflect on one insight or one idea that came out of the discussions. Ask them to jot it down. It’s a simple step that helps them see value in the discussion they had, and think less about what was lacking or how they’d have preferred to have more time.
 
3. Too much content – If you skip over a section of content, if you provide a lot of back-up materials, or if you mention, “Let’s move through this part quickly,” it gives the perception that you’re managing your time poorly or you are cheating the group of some good content. Participants feel they are not getting the full experience. 

What can you do? Create one main presentation with the content that’s essential, and that you’ll definitely make time for. Have additional slides at-the-ready in case you want to supplement the discussion with additional materials. Pull them out if there actually is time, and/or send the additional slides in a follow-up communication after the course. Avoid the chunky back-up section or appendix.
 
 
A lot of these “universals” are relevant to meeting planning and offsites as well.

L&D friends: What would you add to the list?

Some days, I really can relate to the woman in the popular 1980s Wendy’s commercial who lifts up the top half of the bun,  leans in closely, adjusts her glasses, and wonders, 

​As a communications consultant, I write things people don’t want to or can’t. Some of the time, that means that I will connect with a client, jot down notes about what’s on their mind, ask some questions for clarity, and put a draft on paper. 
 
A lot of the time, however, I am creating content. Figuring out what needs to be said, and putting the words on paper. A client will say, “We need to get a message out.” The message is the bun, and it’s my job to make the patty. 

While this is an intuitive process, these three questions guide me:

1. What’s the point? – What needs to be communicated? Is there a new thing to share?
2. What’s the context? – How much background does the audience need? 
3. What’s the ask? – What action is required and is the deadline clear? 

If you tend to agonize over writing or simply don't know how to get started, remember these questions. You'll have your 'beef' in no time.

As a trained linguist, I listen for misunderstandings. They provide great insights into conversational dynamics, and of course, it’s a fun mental puzzle. I thought I’d share a couple of my most fun misunderstandings. (Full disclosure: both stories happened on vacation in Italy, years ago. Yes, like many I am daydreaming about the possibility of travel. These popped in my mind recently while reminiscing…Maybe someday soon?) 
 
What would you like to order?

It was a scorching hot August day on the Amalfi coast, and we were a group of sticky hot tourists looking to take a lunch break. We sat down at a beautiful restaurant, one of those you see in the pictures with massive lemons hanging in a trellis up above. Once everyone had studied the menu and decided what they wanted, the server came. My Italian was better than the others’ and so I ordered for everyone, based on what I’d remembered everyone wanted, in the order that I remembered it. The food started to arrive at the table, in a seemingly random order. We were puzzled. Why was a second course coming out with a starter? Where’s my pasta? Why were the dishes coming out in rounds, rather than in order, or all at once? 
 
The server must be incompetent. That was the only possible explanation. Italians were serious about course order. This guy must be a goof ball, or maybe he was just having a bad day? Then suddenly came the aha. The pattern to the “random” order? The dishes were coming to the table in the exact order I had requested them. The laugh was on me! 

Want to go out and play?
​
A few years back, I took my niece and nephew, who were 6 and 8, respectively, to Italy to visit family. The kids spoke no Italian, but they made instant friends with some locals. One afternoon the neighborhood kids came by, wanting to play. My niece and nephew went out happily, and about five minutes later, stormed back in, angry and frustrated. 
 
“They are cheats!” they declared. 
 
“I don’t want to play with them anymore.” 
 
I went out to talk with the Italian kids to find out what had happened. They were just as puzzled. “What were you playing?” I asked? And as it turns out, the Italians were not playing freeze tag, as my niece and nephew had thought. And the Italian kids weren’t cheating at freeze tag. Instead, they were playing a similar game, but with different rules. My niece and nephew had assumed the worst—without the benefit of language, they had no idea what had gone wrong.

“When I had children, we didn’t have all this stuff. It’s become all too complicated.” My early days as a mother are a blurr, and yet I remember this moment vividly. My mom, who’d raised four children and at that point had already been a grandmother for decades, revealed to me that she had no idea about motherhood today. How do you correctly install a carseat? How do you manage screentime? How do you use a bottle warmer? The job had evolved. We’d made it more complicated. Some of the innovations were for child safety or health, and some for convenience. Others for marketing. Babies are big business, after all.

​Work for us hasn’t changed all that much. We’ve been working from home for years. We’d pushed through the initial honeymoon period or shock—both reactions are possible when initially transitioning to telework—and we’d settled into a good, solid work-from-home routine years ago. In the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many others made an abrupt shift to working from home, without much planning or preparation. Compounded with the stresses of the pandemic, it’s been rough.

But it’s been rough for us veteran telecommuters, too. We explored why. We came up with a hypothesis. Maybe with the rush to connect and simulate the in-person interactions, we have made it all too complicated. 
 
Working from home was not nearly as exhausting before—you guessed it—Zoom. To be fair, it’s Zoom, Teams, whatever. Meeting on the phone (audio only) is way easier than videoconferencing. Here’s what I heard:
 
I've been telecommuting for 18 years. I used to walk all the time while on my calls. I cannot do that when required to take notes and also be on camera. 
 
I am fidgety, and I need to move around when I am working. I used to be able to do that.
 
On video calls, I feel like I am chained to my desk. When on conference calls, I can fold laundry or walk around and Swiff the floors. In a way it helps me concentrate. 

We have all done some personal reflection on this topic, and it’s been analyzed extensively. We’ve read about Zoom fatigue, the particular challenges of uncertainty, etc. Movement is indeed one of the issues. But there are others, including needing to manage your face. Yes, Zoom (and our politeness expectations) forces you to fake a smile. Vignesh Ramachandran's article from Stanford explains it well. There’s lots of brain science to explain our exhaustion. 

So what do we do with this knowledge? And why do I feel the need to pile onto the heap of articles and blogs, when the topic has been discussed already? Well, it’s time to head back into the office. It’s time to start new habits. Let’s remember what my mom said and not make this too complicated. 

I’ve had an earworm the past few weeks: “When you’re smilin', the whole world smiles with you.” The song is in Louis Armstrong’s voice. I was thinking about what I miss most about “normal,” i.e., pre-pandemic, life. 
 
All things considered, one of the top things I miss is exchanging smiles with others. 
 
While research may show that a smile hidden behind a mask can still be ‘heard,’ in my experience, it’s muffled. 
 
This past year of wearing a mask in public has made me realize that I rely heavily on smiling to communicate with people I don’t know. Passing you on a sidewalk? I smile. Waiting at the corner to cross a street? I smile. Expertly zig-zagging in a grocery store? I smile. 
 
It’s as important to communication as words. And it’s been silenced. To compensate, I find myself talking (i.e., a quick "hi") when I don’t want to. Smiles are the shortest, most to-the-pointest exchanges ever. So efficient. So warm. I miss them.
 
And P.S. research tells us the song is true. 

Coronavirus and COVID-19 are not the same thing.

Are you using the terms interchangeably?

(Yikes. I was!)

Coronavirus (also novel Coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2) is the virus; COVID-19 is the disease.

(Like HIV is the virus; AIDS is the disease.)

My email inbox is full of invitations to "Buy now and save."

​Since when does spending lead to saving?

A lot of marketing is based on the premise that "spending less" = saving. But I think of saving as the absence of spending. Since when can I feel good about spending now so I can save?

Server: Do you have any questions about the menu today?

Sonia: I see the scallops come with a "blt," and the "blt" is in quotes. Is this BLT (Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato), or something inspired by the original, such as, Brats, Lochs, and Tofu?"

This is an actual question I posed our server Saturday. He was not sure why I was puzzled. I was not sure why there were quotation marks around "blt." 

Yes, I had to edit the menu before I could order. It happens a lot. It's often a question of punctuation or spelling. 

(It was an actual BLT, in case you were concerned.)

(And don't you want to edit the photo above so it reads "today's?")