At the recent CUPA-HR Annual Conference and Expo in Philadelphia, members of the higher ed HR community gathered to share their challenges and find inspiration in fresh perspectives. A common theme emerged: Rapid change is becoming the new normal in higher ed.
But fast fixes aren’t always the best response to change, according to our three keynote speakers. While AI can speed up your workflows, it can’t substitute for the harder, human work of cultivating relationships, including a deeper relationship with yourself.
Why Quick Fixes Fall Short
It feels good to escape from daily stress with a quick dopamine hit — scrolling on social media, adding to an online shopping cart, streaming your comfort show — but it won’t address the underlying causes of workplace stress and burnout. Opening keynote speaker Jenn Lim, known for her work on workplace culture and employee experience, said that focusing on grit or resilience overlooks the systemic factors of workplace stress.
Real change starts with taking time to pause, breathe and think deeply about priorities.
Lim also knows this takes time you may not always have, but she warns, “we repeat what we don’t repair.” Adding more and more to an already packed schedule can’t be a solution to workplace overload. In fact, busyness can be yet another way to avoid the harder questions, since being busy often triggers our reward pathways.
Instead, Lim encourages busy HR pros to pause and reflect on the question, “Is your higher purpose aligned to how you spend your time?”
Takeaway: The old paradigm was “I take care of myself when I have the time.” The new paradigm is “I take care of me to be better at taking care of we.”
CUPA-HR Resource Spotlight
Taking care of others starts with taking care of yourself. Watch the on-demand webinar Filling Your Cup: Self-Care During Challenging Times for practical tips on prioritizing your well-being.
What We Get Wrong About Teams
Despite the importance of collaboration, Colin M. Fisher, author of “The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups,” says we still have a lot to learn about how teams work.
It turns out that many of the interventions leaders use for dysfunctional teams — like coaching or teambuilding — don’t work all that well.
Take, for example, team-building at an offsite workshop or retreat. The research suggests these are costly and unreliable. That’s because we don’t understand how teams fundamentally work: We don’t always need to trust each other before we collaborate. We come to trust people through collaborating with them.
So, what does work? It’s something that certain high-performing teams already do before they enter an ER or the cockpit of an airplane: high-fidelity training situations. In fact, sports training camps are a great model for teamwork. Ask teams to complete tasks like their real work, then make space for learning and debriefing.
Takeaway: To build stronger teams, leaders need to understand how teams really work and create opportunities for people to practice, debrief and improve together.
Why Emotions Are a Workplace Skill
Everything feels urgent. You carry others’ emotions without feeling supported yourself. You shift gears constantly without processing your emotions around change. Does this sound familiar?
HR is used to dealing with emotions. But as a society and in our workplaces, we’re not always great at prioritizing emotional regulation. In his closing keynote, Marc Brackett, the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, emphasized the important role emotions play. Emotions shape every aspect of our lives, from our attention, memory, and learning to our decision-making, relationship quality, and physical and mental health.
“We love the quick fix,” he says. But that won’t work for long-term emotional regulation.
So, what works? Brackett emphasizes research-backed strategies for emotional regulation. For example, an “emotion ally” at work can help you cultivate your emotional strength. Emotion allies are good listeners, empathetic, nonjudgmental, kind and encouraging. In other words, they’re not the fixers or problem-solvers.
Takeaway: Greater emotional regulation skills help people become less stressed and burned out, make more sound decisions, become more satisfied in their jobs and live healthier, happier lives.
CUPA-HR Resource Spotlight
What if love had a place in how we think about workplace culture? Read Love as a Framework for Improving Organizational Culture.
Read More
Beyond Happiness, by Jenn Lim
The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups, by Colin Fisher
Dealing With Feeling: Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want, by Marc Brackett