Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Talent Management and Development

We provide full service talent management and talent development consulting services. Read our blogs in this category for stories and best practices from real clients and real research.

  • Building the Bridge Between Survive and Thrive in the Workplace

    Building the Bridge Between Survive and Thrive in the Workplace

    Oftentimes getting from one place to another requires a bridge to cross. A connection point between two things that seem unconnected or so far apart they can’t be reached by conventional means is necessary. 

    These “bridges” are often grounded in both sides of what they are trying to connect. They are meaningless and useless if they don’t have two sides for anchoring.  

    So is true of meeting survival needs and getting to “thrive” needs in the workplace. Relational needs are the bridge. Relational needs have roots and support in both survive and thrive and they provide a way between the two.  Meeting relational needs is the bridge. They also may be the linchpin. 

    In her book Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown seeks to map and define the language of feelings and emotions before being able to build meaningful connections. In her section on “Places We Go When We Search For Connection” she seeks to define belonging and connection and contrast it with disconnection and loneliness. 

    In this section, Brown drives home the point that relational needs (belonging and connection) are both about surviving and thriving. She states, “from an evolutionary perspective, connection was about survival, today, it’s what gives purpose and meaning in our lives. Research shows that ‘people who have strong connections with others are happier, healthier, and better able to cope with the stresses of everyday life.’”  

    In contrast, disconnection can “‘actually share the same neural pathways with feelings of physical pain.’ Current neuroscience research shows that the pain and feelings of disconnection are often as real as physical pain.”  (For more on this and the connection to building inclusive workplaces, tune into this Neuroleadership Podcast.)

    We need connection – pun intended – to build the bridge to meet our survival needs that are evolutionary and adaptive, as well as to help us meet our full potential and thrive-to produce meaningful, creative, and purpose-driven work.. 

    So what do we do to meet relational needs and build bridges in the workplace?:

    1. Focus on communication. Communication is an essential part of relationships.  I found it fascinating in our 2021 book of the year, Do Nothing, how author Celeste Headlee emphasizes our need to communicate with voice as a key to meeting relational needs and thriving in the workplace (and in other places) in contrast to communicating through writing. Communicating with voice she postulates, instead of texting or emailing, helps to meet the evolutionary and neurological needs tied to relatedness. Our brains haven’t evolved enough for communication primarily through text, email, and other chat features to meet the lower order survival needs formed through relatedness. We need to be heard and we need to hear others to be successful in meeting relationship needs. She, among other authors, also points to how social media “communication” has largely reduced our ability to meet our relational needs and has fostered a culture of more disconnection and loneliness and the undesirable outcomes (as listed in Atlas of the Heart as “less empathy, more defensiveness, more numbing, and less sleeping”) these states produce. 

    So, in the workplace we need to: 

    a. Puts guardrails around communication almost exclusively done through means that don’t give people literal voice. COVID has made this harder. A simple guardrail would be “cameras on” during a virtual meeting. A larger area of focus would be training leaders on what modes of communication are appropriate given what needs to be communicated and teaching people how to not “hide” behind email and text messaging when difficult conversations are needed. Read Do Nothing  for more practical insights on this. 

    b. Build workspaces that foster communication in person. This doesn’t mean the open office environment, but it does mean common spaces where people can interact formally and informally throughout the work day as people return to the office post pandemic. This could be common break areas for meals and common meetings areas conducive to formal meetings and also informal chats that pop up doing the workday. (Note: Don’t take this to mean we are advocating for a 100% return to the office all day, everyday post COVID.  Research shows that most people want a hybrid arrangement and the research also supports the critical piece autonomy and flexibility play in meeting thrive needs. More on this in next week’s post.) 

    2. Focus on building psychological safety. In  Atlas of the Heart and her other works, Brown repeatedly emphasizes how important belonging is. She says that “true belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.” The best way to foster this type of belonging that leads to meeting both survive and thrive needs is to build a psychologically safe environment.   Here is some more information from us on psychological safety and some tools for building a psychologically safe workplace from Google. 

    When we produce a psychologically safe environment we get over the bridge to the thrive side, thus increasing positive workplace outcomes and diminishing negative ones as found in the research by Amy Edmondson.

    In summation, work by William Patrick cited in  Atlas of the Heart emphasizes our need not for individualism (which we seem to value so much, particularly in western cultures) but from our “collective ability to plan, communicate, and work together.” Our workplaces can’t thrive without these things either. 

    Interested in learning more about how to apply these principles in the workplace? Sign up for our  Illuminate workshop. 

     

  • 3 Ways to Meet Survival Needs in the Workplace

    3 Ways to Meet Survival Needs in the Workplace

    I will never forget reading Arianna Huffington’s account of her personal experience that forced her to focus on wellness and wellbeing, namely sleep.  In one of her books, Arianna talks about how she woke up on the floor after hitting her head on the way down. She had collapsed due to utter exhaustion. 

    Arianna went on to found Thrive Global and wrote another book, The Sleep Revolution. The mission at Thrive Global is to “end the burnout epidemic with sustainable, science-based solutions that unlock employee performance and enhance well-being.”  They are tackling wellbeing through employers, helping us see that these issues are not an “employee benefit” but a business “strategy”. 

    At Horizon Point, we couldn’t agree more. Much of what Thrive helps people focus on is small behavioral changes that end up creating habits at the individual level.  If the majority of employees adopt these strategies and change habits, then it ends up impacting workplace outcomes at the organizational level. Doing this successfully demands that organizations understand and adopt ways of working that support these behavioral changes. We can’t demand people change their habits when we don’t support organizational structures and cultures that allow the habits to take place.  

    We need to help people meet their “survival” needs. When we do so, that allows them to “thrive” by being able to meet higher-order needs and impact business results. 

    So what do we need to support to meet survival needs? 

    1. First, as Huffington points to, SLEEP is foundational and critical. According to the CDC,  “Insufficient sleep is associated with a number of chronic diseases and conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and depression.”  In order to consider sleep, we also must consider people’s natural circadian rhythms.   This necessitates that we look at how our bodies function naturally as Daniel Pink says in his book, When.  Taylor focused on this book in a recent blog post.   Here are a few concrete steps for workplace implementation: 

    a. Get rid of anything that requires people to go against their circadian rhythms.  Hello rotating shifts – and to a lesser extent, night shifts. Get rid of them if you can. If you have to operate on a 24/7 structure, then at least keep people on a consistent shift that does not change. There is study after study about how detrimental this practice is to people’s health.  Here’s one: Shift work impairs brain functioning.

    b. Get people to do a time audit. (Here’s a good time tracking spreadsheet download to do so.) I particularly like this one because the notes column helps people to jot down how they are feeling, not just what they are doing. I would encourage using the notes section to also note when attention seems to be waning. In other words, how long have you been focused on a task when you notice it is harder to stay focused? Research suggests that this point is usually about 50 minutes to an hour for most people. Helping people track their natural peaks and troughs of energy, attention, and productivity helps them to understand their natural rhythms. It also can help them discern what is getting in the way of a consistent time to go to sleep and to wake, which research has shown is critical to performance. You can then take this and apply some general parameters around meeting times and workday structure for your team.   For example, our team at HPC did this and we found that mid-morning was almost everyone’s peak productivity time. Because of this, we try to reserve this time for individual work on important tasks as opposed to meetings. We also seek to eliminate other distractions and time-wasters during this peak performance time block. 

    2. Next, know that you have to aid people in completing the stress cycle. Stress is a natural part of life. It is adaptive and helpful in many cases, but we need to monitor the fine line between boredom and anxiety, as we’ve noted before in a blog post. Like dealing with a chronic lack of sleep, dealing with consistent high levels of stress leads to the same type of health risks and reduces cognitive functioning, thus negatively impacting workplace outcomes. We’ve compiled 7 Ways to Help Employees Complete the Stress Cycle. Check out some of the concrete steps to actually do this in the workplace in this blog post. 

    3. Finally, paying a living wage and/or helping employees maintain financial wellbeing is critical. We’ve written about examining wage practices (how to do it) and why what you pay does matter. You can check those posts out for practical tips and advice on addressing this survival need. But I think the podcast from Adam Grant titled Why It Pays to Raise Pay  (listen about 4 minutes into the podcast to hear the MIT professor talk about this) drives the point as to why we have to focus on this survival need because when we don’t, we are actually “making people dumber”.  We reduce people’s cognitive functioning when they are constantly worried about how to make ends meet, whether it is because their paycheck does not support their ability to survive, or because they have made financial decisions that trap them into not having enough to pay their debts. So first, examine if you are paying living wages (check out MIT’s living wage calculator). If you are, great. Then second, coordinate with your banker or financial advisors to offer classes to employees about how to maintain financial wellbeing.  Most of them will do this for free for you, just make sure you’re reviewing the curriculum that will be used and selecting something that has been research-backed. 

    As the previously mentioned podcast says, we really need to think about these survival issues because when we don’t, we literally make people “dumber.”  Not meeting survival needs reduces cognitive functioning. In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the ERG Theory, we know survival needs as “existence needs”. We can’t talk about helping people thrive until we create workplace conditions that are conducive to people existing or surviving. 

    Interested in learning more about how to help people survive and then thrive in the workplace? Check out and sign up for our Illuminate Workshop. 

  • Learning from K-12 Educators

    Learning from K-12 Educators

    “Naturally, everyone must find a way to earn a living wage, but the paycheck should not be the only motivation. Employees who are confident in their abilities and somewhat comfortable in their workplace can be highly productive. Please note that my sentence said ‘somewhat comfortable.’ We must become a bit uncomfortable to grow professionally.” 

    This is a quote from a K-12 Career Counselor in our latest Continuing Education Class for Facilitating Alabama Career Development: Assessments & Resumes. For the last couple of years, our team has been working with K-12 career developers throughout the state of Alabama, and one big takeaway has been the need for assessment and resume skills that meet students where they are but also challenge them to stretch. As this educator says, “We must become a bit uncomfortable to grow professionally”. How can we support students AND make them a bit uncomfortable…in a good way? 

    In our continuing education class, we test some assessments ourselves, and we review others using sample reports. We explore free and paid tools, formal and informal. Which would you guess our K-12 educators prefer to use? Turns out – all of them! 

    “I feel that in the interest of time – I only focus on interest and do not include values. The more I read and learn – I think I’m going to pick a few assessments for the students to take and send the results to me for meetings…working to complete a portfolio”

    Our educators work with vastly different children with their own wildly different learning abilities and preferences. What works for one may not work for another. What makes one uncomfortable (in a good way) may not be challenging enough for another. Couldn’t the same be said for us grown-ups? Just as educators provide a variety of learning tools for students, HR and Training professionals should and do provide a range of professional learning opportunities that explore hard and soft skills and allow for light to heavy self-evaluation and awareness. 

    “The company that provided our training gave us several personality assessments, skills assessments, and work-based values assessments in an effort to help us learn how to ask questions and determine what was important to our students and how to use that information to help them develop their own plans for success, not only in college but in other areas of their life.  To be honest, at first, I was somewhat skeptical of this, but after seeing this method work in how to approach students and co-workers, I am a believer. I have seen it work MANY MANY MANY times with wonderful results.” 

    So here’s what we can learn from our K-12 educators: 

    1. Be willing to be uncomfortable 
    2. Try formal and informal assessments 
    3. Engage in a variety of learning experiences 

    What steps are you taking to grow personally and professionally, just like our children and teenagers are doing? 

  • 7 Ways to Complete the Stress Cycle

    7 Ways to Complete the Stress Cycle

    We’ve been looking at all things workplace wellness throughout the fall, seeking to provide insight to ourselves and our clients about how to create workplaces where people can thrive.  A lot of the impetus is put on individuals to manage their wellness and stress.  This has its place but is also up to organizational leaders to help create systems and structures that give people the ability to survive and thrive at work.  This will impact how they also thrive in all aspects of life given that people do not live and operate in silos. 

    A thought-provoking book that is geared towards the individual management of stress is a book called Burnout: The Secret of Unlocking the Stress Cycle.  Although it focuses on how individuals can “complete the cycle” the book provides insights to organizational leaders on the difference between stress and stressors and how to complete the stress cycle in ways that can be incorporated into workplaces. 

    First, what the book describes as stressors: 

    Stressors are what activate the stress response in your body. They can be anything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste, or imagine could do you harm. There are external stressors: work, money, family, time, cultural norms and expectations, experiences of discrimination, and so on. And there are less tangible, internal stressors: self-criticism, body image, identity, memories, and The Future.  In different ways and to different degrees, all of these things may be interpreted by your body as potential threats. 

    It’s worth noting that as another book, What Happened to You? points out that we may be cognizant of these stressors happening to us, but more often than not, we aren’t.  As this book describes, our lower order brain- the brain stem then the diencephalon then the limbic system- takes in input from the inside world of our body and the outside world through our senses and processes stressors and reacts to stressors often before our high order brain, the cortex, ever receives it and is able to THINK about it.  That’s why you sweat when you’re nervous when you don’t even realize it, or you flee or “attack” someone when they smell in a way that is associated with a bad memory. 

    Likewise, we often don’t even realize what we are doing or why we are doing it in reaction to a stressor. We often do not connect the dots to the linkages between our stressors and our stress. 

    As Burnout describes, stress is: 

    …the neurological and physiological SHIFT that happens in your body when you encounter one of these threats.  It’s an evolutionary adaptive response that helps us cope with things like, say, being chased by a lion or charged by a hippo…. It initiates a response to help you survive…. Your entire body and mind change in response to the perceived threat.

    As the book goes on to state, what we’ve been conditioned to do when we experience the lion is run! The book quotes Robert Sapolsky as saying “ …the core of the stress-response is built around the fact that your muscles are going to work like crazy.” 

    But we aren’t doing very much running these days in modern workplaces. We aren’t involving our muscles to help alleviate and eliminate the stress we feel.  We are, however, experiencing a lot of modern-day “lions.”

    So what do we do? 

    1. So first and foremost, one thing workplaces need to incorporate into practice to help their employees complete the stress response is to initiate movement into the workday.  Especially when a situation is anticipated to be stressful or a stressor has occurred. 

    For example, one day I knew I was going to have to have a conversation that was going to induce a stress response with someone I worked with.  Instead of sitting down across the desk from her, I said, “Let’s take a walk.”  We walked and talked instead of sitting and staring.  I know it helped to reduce my stress about the situation and I think it did hers too. 

    We need to be encouraging people to move and allowing time for movement during the workday. The book suggests that most people need twenty to sixty minutes a day to walk, run, swim, dance, or anything that involves physical activity. 

    2. In addition, in the modern-day workplace we live in, we may think that dealing with the stressor deals with the stress.  We need to realize dealing with the stressor doesn’t necessarily allow us to complete the stress cycle.  Take for example a “jerk” you’re dealing with at work.  Maybe he or she is not a lion, but they’ve been elevating your stress level at work, so much so that your natural response is either to literally fight the lion, I mean jerk, or to flee from him/her.  But, you can’t come across the table at the person literally like your body might be telling you to do, so you play nice. (As the book states, social appropriateness- or being taught to be “nice” at all costs- really impedes the natural stress cycle- it makes us get stuck). Or maybe you even act and go talk to your supervisor and/or theirs about it, or you go home and vent to your spouse about it.  But, dealing with the stressor, aka the jerk/lion, doesn’t mean you’ve completed your body’s natural response to the person and situation(s) he or she creates. 

    So we need to help people, again, move to help complete the stress cycle. But we can also create workplaces where other things happen regularly- all that involve engagement with our bodies and minds-  to help deal with the stress, not just the stressor.  These are: 

    3. Breathing.  “Deep, slow breaths help regulate the stress response.”  Encouraging people to breathe is a very simple thing that can help change the tone of a conversation, meeting, or a person’s outlook on a situation.  Asking people to inhale deeply for a count of three to five and exhale at the same or longer cadence is simple, and sometimes seems silly, but it may be the small thing needed to get people to a point where they can access their higher-order brain to be able to think clearly and respond appropriately. 

    4. Positive social interaction.  Things to include in positive social interaction are opportunities for laughter, affection (hugging and kissing- encourage this at home, not at the office-!), and also can include interaction with animals, like petting a dog or a cat. 

    5. Allow time for creative expression. Incorporating sports, arts, music, theater, and storytelling in all forms can help with this. Some of the work your organization does may naturally incorporate creative outlets.  We incorporate coloring sheets, fidgets, and role play at times into training to help initiate this.  Asking people to start a meeting by sharing something- in other words, something that is going to allow for storytelling can be a good way to start things off on the right foot.  Like, “Tell us about a time when you…” where the question and response is tied to the meeting’s purpose. 

    6. Allow crying.  Crying is one critical way for the body to release stress, yet we label people who cry, especially at work. At the very least, keep a stigma around crying that is neutral and do not punish people at work when crying happens. 

    7. Help people pay attention to their body’s response to things.  This is necessary to know when stress is taking place and also to know when the stress cycle has been completed due to one or more of the interventions above.  It’s like knowing you’re full after you’ve eaten. Some people are more in tune with it than others and we need to equip people with the mindfulness to pay attention when we are “hungry” or “full” when it comes to stress as well.  Some questions or actions you may help people engage with this is to encourage people to check their heart rate, monitor their body for tension, sweating and other responses that show us we have not completed the stress cycle and need to “eat” to initiate an action to help our bodies do so.  

    How do you deal with stress at work and how does your organization incorporate systems and actions to help people complete the stress cycle? 

    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/

  • 3 Reasons to Give and Take Extended Leave

    3 Reasons to Give and Take Extended Leave

    Today I’ve been back at work for one week. Back at work after four weeks of extended personal leave. I could write a full-length novel about the why, how, who, and what of my semi-sabbatical experience. The short version is: every employer should give extended paid leave, and every employee should take it. I’ll give you three reasons.

    1. We are People First. 

    People First is the single most important Horizon Point mantra. We live it and breathe it every day. That’s how we got here – this place in time where each of our team members is taking 4+ weeks of extended leave for rest and renewal. Our Founder, Mary Ila, took one long look at us during a quarterly planning meeting and saw a team of women who had forgotten that we, ourselves, are People First. The buck stopped there. 

    Our boss got vulnerable with us about her physical, mental, and emotional health (all deteriorating), and we got vulnerable right back. All of us called to the foreground our very real symptoms of Too Much Syndrome. Too much COVID-19 uncertainty, too much schedule changing, too much brain fog, too much or not enough of everything else. In that quarterly planning meeting, we came back to ourselves, saw our very real burnout staring us in the face, and landed squarely on the realization that we are just people. 

    Workplaces are made of People who have basic needs and who will predictably burn out without periods of rest. 

    2. Extended leave clears the fog. 

    On my second day back at work, I attended a Mental Wellness workshop with a local entrepreneurial center that specializes in woman-owned small business creation and growth. This particular workshop focused on the brain science associated with stress and anxiety. Join me on the journey for a moment. How many of these physiological symptoms have you experienced in the last week? 

    • Taut muscles
    • Fatigue
    • Hasty decisions
    • Foggy thinking
    • Negativity 
    • Worrying
    • Irritability
    • Indifference
    • Apprehension
    • Depression
    • Insomnia
    • Restlessness

    As I sat in that room, I thought back to that quarterly planning meeting. I thought back to snapshots of my personal and professional life and saw every. single. one. of these symptoms. That good ole 20/20 hindsight sure did hit differently this time. 

    When I look at this list today, only 2 or 3 resonate. My four weeks of paid leave literally gave me new life. The sun came out, and the fog lifted. I’m a better version of myself, which benefits me personally of course, but also benefits my work team. Giving employees an extended moment to clear the fog breathes life into the organization. 

    3. It’s time for a paradigm shift. 

    Some of you are ready to give and/or take extended leave. You’re willing and able and ready. Here are 6 Steps for Planning and Implementing Effective Extended Leave. 

    Some of you are not. I know that paid extended leave is a luxury. I’ve heard time and time again how lucky I am, how lucky my team is, to work for a company and a leader with such a philosophy. 

    The thing is, we shouldn’t be so lucky. Our company shouldn’t be so different, so unique. This model of People First and the option of paid extended leave should be commonplace. As workplace and community leaders, we can and should shift the paradigm. It has to start somewhere, so why shouldn’t it start with me and you? 

    A month ago, when asked, “How are you?”, I would’ve (not so jokingly) said, “I’m surviving, but not thriving! Haha.” Ask me today, and I’ll tell you how much I’m thriving. How much my mind has healed. How much better I’m sleeping. How much of my personality came back. How much healthier I feel, physically, mentally, and emotionally. 

    Extended leave was a blessing for which I’m immeasurably grateful, and now I’m on fire about spreading the wealth to others. It takes a village. Will you join me? 

     

    If you are an employer, and you want to explore options for incorporating extended wellness leave into your workplace, let’s work together to shift the paradigm.