Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Book Reviews

Horizon Point writes about dozens of leadership, career, workplace, and workforce topics, and we love to feature other researchers, writers, and practitioners who are doing similar work.

  • Are You (or Someone You Know) a Jerk at Work?

    Are You (or Someone You Know) a Jerk at Work?

    We’re fortunate to work with hundreds of different people across industries and state lines, and we learn something new with each project and grow personally from every relationship. We also hear many, many stories about bad managers and toxic coworkers. Back in 2019, Lorrie addressed the question, Are Your Top Employees Also Your Most Toxic?. 

    When I’m facilitating leadership or communication training, I often get the feedback, “I think I can try these strategies and behaviors with most of my coworkers, but what do I do with someone who is just a jerk?”. If we have the opportunity for more conversation, I can usually help get to the root of the behavior and suggest a strategy or two. Sometimes I just have to shrug my shoulders and say, “I’m sorry, that’s tough”. It really stinks when I feel like I can’t help.

    A few weeks ago, I discovered Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them by Tessa West, and I am here to sing praises! Tessa, an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University, defines seven types of work jerks and how to deal with them. She also provides three practical resources:

    • Am I a Jerk at Work? (take this quiz online!)
    • Am I an Effective Ally? (take this quiz online!)
    • What Type of Jerk Do I Have at Work?

    I took both quizzes, and not only did I get clear insight into my results, the quizzes themselves challenged me to think critically and honestly about how I would respond in real-life scenarios. 

    Here’s Tessa’s definition of an Ideal Coworker: 

    Even in tough situations, you try to take the perspective of others. When there’s conflict at work, you don’t run and hide. Instead, you have difficult conversations, even if it means finding out a thing or two about yourself that you don’t like.

    In groups, you’re willing to lead without dominating conversations and agendas. As a boss, you’re careful not to fall into micromanagement traps. When you feel overwhelmed you accept help, have your direct reports prioritize work, and figure out what projects need the most attention.

    Do you see yourself in that description? What about your direct supervisor? If you have direct reports, do you think they view you this way? 

    Let’s look at Tessa’s definition of the Effective Ally: 

    You respond to jerk at work behavior with a combination of appropriate confrontation and advice-giving. You realize that the solution to jerks at work is to form allies at work, and you’re quick to help victims find the right people to buffer and protect them. Grand, public gestures of support are not your style. If confrontation is called for, you prefer one-on-one meetings. You realize that public shaming rarely gets you to where you want to be. Instead, you use tactics aimed at reducing conflict rather than exacerbating it. You prefer open and honest communication between those who are involved as an initial strategy.

    Often you find yourself in a mediator role, helping two people with conflict work it out. Boss’s love having you around because you know how to ease interpersonal tensions without creating the appearance of taking sides. If you aren’t a leader already, there’s a good chance you will be some day.

    Same questions as before: Do you see yourself in that description? What about your direct supervisor? If you have direct reports, do you think they view you this way?

    Jerks at Work defines seven types of toxic coworkers, including four specific types of toxic bosses. For each type, Tessa provides “sneaky behaviors to watch out for”, specific strategies to try, and insight for bosses to help prevent toxic behaviors on teams in the first place. I won’t spoil the reveal for you, but suffice to say, you will see people you know in this book. It might even be you. 

    I’ll leave you with this excerpt from the book’s conclusion: 

    For most of us, sustained conflict at work causes stress and anxiety and interferes with our ability to get stuff done…[None of the] strategies I recommend in this book cost a million dollars, or hours and hours of precious time, to implement…Jerk-at-work problems can be the death of a team. And luckily for you and me, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to solve them. It’s about looking out for warning signs, understanding why someone behaves the way they do, and learning how to open the lines of communication so you can solve the problem quickly and with as little stress as possible. That way you have time for real rocket science.

    At the end of the day, we all want to do meaningful work alongside people who support us. No one wants to deal with jerks at work. But sometimes we have to. And sometimes we find that we are the jerks ourselves. Are you (or someone you know) a jerk at work?

  • Atomic Habits: A Book Review

    Atomic Habits: A Book Review

    As summer turns to fall, and the busyness of the last quarter of the year approaches, habits have been on my mind. I recently had a routine doctor’s appointment where my blood pressure was slightly high, and my weight had increased more than I’d like. Following a conversation with my doctor, I reflected on a book I’d read recently about “atomic” habits. 

    The book is called Atomic Habits by James Clear. Clear said it best in this quote: “The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do.”

    Atomic Habits is a practical guide with several tips that you can implement immediately to change your habits. Here are a few of my favorite takeaways from the book:

    1. Aim to get 1% better every day – Just a 1% increase every day yields a 37x improvement by the end of the year. He writes, “Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement” and “You are what you repeat”. Continuous Improvement: How it Works and How to Master It provides more insight from James Clear.

    2. Habit Stacking: Everyone has daily habits already in place: brushing your teeth, making coffee, etc. Why not tack on a positive habit to something you already do? While making coffee, drink a large glass of water to help you stay hydrated during the day. Habit stacking is a great way to start a new habit by adding it to something you already have in your daily routine. Check out How to Build New Habits by Taking Advantage of Old Ones by James Clear to for more ideas.

    3. The 4 Laws of Behavior Change are Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward. This can be used to build new habits and to break bad habits. Check out How to Start New Habits That Actually Stick by James Clear to learn how to implement behavior change with this technique.

    What habits do you need to break or start today?

  • Book Review of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

    Book Review of When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

     

    A book about perfect timing – Where have you been all my life? During my month-long sabbatical, I read several books. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink was my favorite. 

    Could the time of day that we make decisions be significant? Could the time of day affect how well we learn or work? According to Dan Pink, it actually does. Pink takes a look at how our body functions naturally. Actionable items & tips are offered throughout the book.

    To get started, you need to map your biological clock. Pink shares 3 categories based on natural daily patterns: peaks, troughs, and peaks. Once you determine your chronotype, your personal pattern of circadian rhythms, you can determine the best time to do certain tasks. 

    Pink categorizes individuals into two areas – owl (late night/evening people) and larks (my morning peeps).  Once you know when your peak performance times are, you can focus on doing your most difficult tasks then. Plan to do your creative tasks during your troughs when you have less energy. These ebb and flow based on age also. (Note: I highly recommend this for educators!)

    A new year has arrived, learn to master perfect timing by checking out this great read!

    We will explore When & other personal development books in a new training opportunity in the works for 2022. If you are interested in learning more about how to create organizations where people thrive, please visit our Illuminate website at: https://horizonpointconsulting.com/illuminate/

     

  • 2021 Book of the Year

    2021 Book of the Year

    It might seem odd that a company with a core value of “productivity” would choose a book of the year titled Do Nothing. But in a year of seeing people’s mental and physical health deteriorate due not just to issues a global pandemic continues to cause, but also because of the phenomenon of overworking and under living, we found the book captured the essence of putting productivity, and work, in perspective.   

    As the author, Celeste Headlee states, “The question is not about whether you are productive but what you are producing.” And we would go on to say that the question also expands to examine the method in which you structure your production and whether or not it leads to healthier, more joyful lives and more meaningful output. 

    Over the course of the year, we watched ourselves and our clients attempt to be on two to three virtual meetings at a time, catch up on work emails over the weekend because the work week demanded forty hours of meetings alone, and watched as story after story was brought up about people’s mental health crashing and therefore causing a complete meltdown of physical health.  Emergency surgeries were needed, trips to the ER for chest pains took place, and people cried at lunch with us because they were so exhausted and did not see a way out of their current state of life revolving around the need to meet “productivity” demands at work and at home. 

    But as our core value of productivity intertwines with the value to put people first and to foster passion with an end goal of innovating the workplace, we found that many of us don’t have the bandwidth or the energy to innovate anything as we constantly chase the next goal or metric, all while trying to multitask as we are chained to our phones and computers. 

    We’ve lost sight of the goal of work with purpose and replaced it with work towards some endless pursuit that creates exhaustion and insanity. This narrative may not be something you’ve personally experienced, but we’d venture to guess you know and love at least one person that has been impacted by this conundrum. 

    So, we all took or are taking sabbaticals in 2021 and 2022 to think deeply about what this means and to develop training and insights to shift the paradigm for ourselves and our clients on what it means to work, to be productive, and to think deeply about just how we got to this point where enough is never enough. 

    Do Nothing provides a history and research lesson about how, over the past 200 years since the industrial revolution, we’ve gotten here and gives us six “life-back strategies” on “how to break away from overworking, overdoing, and under living.”  

    And although we as a team may not agree with everything Headlee postulates in her narrative which may be more based on how she defines work (something for pay) versus how we do (something for pursuing purpose), we agree with its method of the scientific practitioner approach by taking sound research and applying the learnings of that research in our own lives and workplaces to experiment and learn.  Then, we can follow the information and data our learning provides to make better decisions. 

    And as Headlee suggests, in our metric obsessed world, sometimes the information provided doesn’t come in the form of numbers but in the way we feel.  We need to be paying more attention to how we feel and what that means for us to be productive in a way that leads to creativity and innovation. This book provides us with the opportunity to think about how to do that.   

    In fact, one method of feeling should be tied to our ability to have time to think, not just do.  Our ability to think, apply, and learn is what separates us as human beings.  It’s what makes us human and it’s what produces great work.  It’s what produces innovation. 

    Given the thinking and learning we’ve done over the course of 2021 and into 2022 on the topic of workplace wellness and wellbeing and in an effort to innovate the workplace through people practices, we are excited to be offering workshops- one on a cruise ship, yes on a cruise ship!- to help you come to understand the research, design experiments at your workplace, and help follow the data and the feelings to help not only yourself but also to help your workplace build a culture where people thrive.  To not just create change at the individual level, but to create it through organizational systems and structures.  These workshops will also provide an opportunity for relationship building and fun.

    The premise of our book of the year and our workshops is not to literally “do nothing” but to realize we’ve gone so far to the opposite extreme that we need to find a way to focus on doing nothing so that we can center ourselves so that we can find balance and pleasure not only in leisure but also in work, and to realize that sometimes they are both so integrated that you cannot have one without the other. 

    We are so appreciative of the opportunity to pursue purpose with you this year.  Thank you for your business and your friendship.  Blessings to you and your organization as we all strive to build workplaces where people thrive and enjoy doing work worth producing and have the health and mindset and permission to enjoy leisure.  Both are noble goals, and both require one another to happen.

    If you are interested in learning more about how to create organizations where people thrive, please visit our Illuminate website at: https://horizonpointconsulting.com/illuminate/

  • Book Review: Happy Brain

    Book Review: Happy Brain

    My sabbatical was great for many reasons, personal and professional. One of the big ones: I could read books! I love to read, and my schedule had gotten so full that there was no time for it. So, the first book I read on sabbatical? Happy Brain by Dean Burnett. 10/10 would recommend. 

    Leading into my extended leave from work, I experienced my first personal mental health crisis. For several months, I felt wrong. Not like myself. My moods and emotions became erratic and unpredictable. It’s very strange, that feeling that you’ve lost yourself. So I did something about it. 

    I was open with family and friends about feeling “not like myself”, and I talked with my primary care physician about options. And let me say this – if you ever find yourself feeling wrong or not like yourself, tell someone. A friend, a sibling, a doctor, a counselor. Tell someone right away, and get to work on finding your way back. For me, it was books and talking. As I said, I love to read. Reading books about the brain, psychology, self-care, faith (and so on and so forth) was my way of doing the work. Learning about the science of stress, anxiety, and depression. I’m a fact-based girl. I seek knowledge and understanding. Reading and learning about what was happening in my brain and body was therapeutic. 

    I recommend Happy Brain specifically because it is charming, fast-paced, witty, and at times, a bit silly. It’s real and relatable and fun. Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist (among other things) in the UK, and he tackled the subject of Happiness – what it is, where it comes from, and how we get some for ourselves. 

    At Horizon Point, we help design workplaces that are inclusive, encouraging, and innovative. We believe in meeting employees’ basic needs AND growth needs, not just one or the other. Healthy brains and bodies make better employees, better family members, better community leaders. Folks like Dean Burnett and Adam Grant are helping the masses learn about the importance of mental and emotional health in workplaces and communities, and we share their insights to help our local business and community partners to move the needle forward. 

    I won’t tell you whether he solved the happiness riddle, I’ll just tell you to read Happy Brain. Learn some brain science, have some laughs, and explore your unique self. Let’s do the work together.