Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's webinar. Employee alignment starts with meetings that don't suck. I'm Michelle, Marketing Specialist here at igloo and today I'm joined by Kristin Hancock. I'll let her introduce herself a little bit more, but wanted to go over a couple of housekeeping items. First, the presentation is being recorded and will be made available afterwards. All participants have been placed on mute. You can ask questions throughout the entire webinar and we will be answering those at the end. If you do have a question, you can submit them in the bottom left hand corner of your screen. And so, just before we get started, wanted to do a quick introduction, Kristin leads the change for organizations that want to be a great place to work. With over 10 years of communication experience in non-profit and healthcare, she holds a unique perspective on work, life, and how human connection improves both. And with that I'd like to hand it over to Kristin. Wonderful. Thanks, Michele. Hello, everyone. I'm Kristin Hancock. I'm so excited to be with you guys today, and talking about the... I think the best webinar title ever, that employee alignment starts of meetings that don't suck. So I'm going to get started by reminding everyone that if you take something from the Webinar, take this. You are responsible for employees alignment because you are responsible for your own behavior. I am a big advocate for self awareness. I think it's the best lesson that we can all learn. And most of what I'm going to be sharing with you today really stems from this belief that it is up to us to make things better at the places that we work. So before you do that, I'm gonna do a little bit of background. I think it's important to have a little bit of background on who is sharing the knowledge with you guys. So I've narrowed down the top five things that I think you need to know about me. So the first thing is that I am from a very, very, very small town in just outside of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, called Oak Bluff. There are permanent rainbows, and wheat fields in this beautiful small town pictured there on your screen. I love Oak Bluff, of course, but my favorite city in the world is Las Vegas, Nevada. Try to get there as often as I can because it is just a city full of all kinds of ridiculous fun. Thirdly, I am going to be immigrating from Canada to the U.S. In a few weeks to live with my beautiful new family in Indianapolis. This is a picture of a last year I thought was timely given Halloween being this week. Four. I am a self professed dog lover, and I spend quite a few of my Saturday's volunteering at a dog shelter. This was one of my favorite dogs, Marjorie. She has been adopted since, which is great. And that's her giving some kisses which dog lovers will totally understand. Sure. Very last very important thing to know about me. I am that person who paid 120 Canadian dollars for the 2014 Starbucks Limited Edition Swarovski travel mug. So just just some important key points about me and my life before we get started today. This is my business logo. One year ago, I started my own business after quite a few years in non-profit healthcare and government communications. This is also my website [www.kristinhancock.com], so any of the work sheets that I talk about later are available here to download for free on the tools for change page. But don't worry too much about that because the fine folks at Igloo are also going to send out those worksheets after the webinar. So if you miss out on them or can't find them, they will get a copy of them after by email, which is wonderful. My first year self employment has been fun and exciting and challenging and all of the things that you would expect that come with it. And I jokingly saying that as long as I didn't lose tens of millions of dollars, I made more than Uber in my first year business. So that's a great thing. So let's get started. I think most of us have heard this quote before. "You don't need to have leader in your title to be one." I've heard this throughout my career. I hear it. I feel like I hear it more now than I used to. My response to this quote is the Tina Fey eye-roll because I just... It's such an obvious 'duh' to me. Of course you don't need leader in your title to be one. We're all communicators. We know this. We live this every day, so I'm a little bit tired of hearing it. And I think what happens is we developed an echo chamber of saying this all the time, but we don't really know how to make that happen. So what I'm my goal today is to provide some tools so that we can have a conversation about how this happens. So we're gonna go through intangible activities so that you can lead by example regardless of your position or seniority at your organization. In fact, if you're on this webinar and you're newer in your career and communications, you might benefit even more because you're gonna look like a rookie rock star when you get out of this. So doesn't matter where you're at, whether you are a manager with direct reports or whether you are a new employee somewhere. All of these told her things that you can take back to your workplace. Maybe even today, if you're still inclined and so enthused. I would like to hear from you maybe in the Q and A section. If anyone has a coworker who is not from planet Earth. Perhaps they are from Mars or Saturn or another galaxy. I have yet to hear of this happening. I assume it might be possible that there are other worldly beings here with us. I kind of doubt it. Maybe you have a boss that looks like this in real life. I also doubt that though. I don't doubt that maybe some of us have bosses that looked like this in our mind. But likely the people that you are working with in your workplace are also human beings. Unless you work with dogs, which is another level. But I would love to hear from you if you do not work with human beings. However, I'm sure they are. In addition to the leadership quote that I talked about, I also keep hearing about how we need to humanize leaders when we're developing communication for them or when we're having meetings with them. And I'm confused by this because, like I said, I suspect that most of us work with fellow human beings. People all are already human, so this kind of gives me the same eye-roll that I had before with the leadership quote. I think what we need to focus on is developing human connection, and that is only achieved when we take ownership of our teams again, regardless of position or title. This is another one of my favorite quotes. I know that as communicators, our work is only as great as the connection that it creates. So I think this should always be our goal because humans crave connection, we're built and we're wired for connection. So that should always be our goal, no matter how broad the communication or how intimate the communication if it's just one on one, for example so with that, let us be humans together, today. For the next 20-30 minutes, I'm going to share a little bit of a personal example with you. I absolutely can promise that there is nobody attending this webinar right now who has not gone through something challenging in their personal life. Maybe that something as simple as a child being home from school with a flu and you need to re-adjust your day. It could be something as devastating as the death of a family member. And of course, because we are living the human experience, we also encounter everything in-between those two extremes. So a few years ago, my first marriage fell apart and I found myself navigating a divorce, which is just as fun as it sounds. But of course I did the thing that many of us do. And I decided "No, I'm still going to go to work, because what am I going to do at home all day anyway? I need to go to work. I need to keep my mind busy. I need to stay active." So that's what I did. And a few weeks after I went back to work and hadn't taken even a day or an hour off, a director at my current organization said... pulled me aside and asked me how I was doing. And I go, "oh, I'm doing okay. You know, I just have to be glad to be at work. I'm getting things done and being productive here." And she stopped and she said to me, "Are you sure that that's what you're doing?" And I said, "of course. Of course, that is." And she very delicately and very politely told me, "No, Kristin, you're not being productive, and maybe you should take a day or two off." And in that moment I realized that my self awareness has fallen because so much of my personal life was in turmoil at that time. So from that I birthed this poster that, as far as I know, still exists in my former workplace. The poster's probably four or five feet long. It's more of a banner than a poster. "Be responsible for the energy to bring into this space." The non-professional or PG... trying to keep it PG here... But the non-professional way of saying this is this: I'm gonna use the poop emoji here appropriately, I think so. It's really about being aware of what's going on in your entire life so that you could be your best self when you go to work. One of my guilty pleasures is to tie into this is the TLC show, "Say yes to the dress." If you have not seen the show, it's about brides spending obscene amounts of money on bridal gowns. Of course, drama ensues. The most frustrating part is that friends and family members who are hoping, in quotation marks, the "bride shop" ultimately end up just absolutely roasting these poor girls as they're standing in front of them and the beautiful gowns. The piece that is missing from the show, and I believe is also missing somewhere workplaces, is this: The quote from author Bruce Kasanoff. "Honesty without compassion is cruelty." And I think that is part of the problem in our workplaces is that we need to build places where we can be honest with each other but also have compassion for what's happening in our whole lives. To eliminate this cruelty piece and also help employees feel that they belong and that they have a safe space to come to work and be their best selves. So I am hoping to create a space here and also that you can take back your workplaces, that we will calm enough, a safe place where employees don't feel lost, and also a place where we can provide very clear structure so that there's a mechanism for these conversations to happen. We often talk about employees bringing their whole selves to work, but then they get to work, and they don't know how to do that because we haven't provided the structure for that to happen. So out of this, the very first piece that we're going to chat about, is the 'Communications Coffee Party.' I've seen things for communications, like most people on the call are in the field of communications. This does not have to be the case. You could use this if you were in finance or engineering or whatever industry happened to be in. Please share. I always use this as an example, just as I mentioned before of the worksheet that's available on my website, or also Igloo send them after. So don't panic about finding it. Right now, I have always asked who wants to have a meeting when you could have a party? The party sounds a million times better in my world. So we're gonna go through this worksheet, and I'm gonna walk through exactly what's on it and why these pieces are here. At the very top you'll see what my goals from last meeting were, and when I was successful or unsuccessful and why. This is the part of the work sheet that is key for accountability. These are the pieces that you will run through every week, so when you start having these meetings every week, the goals will fill in from the previous week. Last week I said my meeting was to update this certain page on our website. I was successful because I made time to do it and blocked it in my calendar, or I was unsuccessful because I ran into a block with IT that we're working through, and here's what the new plan is. I want to know why, for the successful piece and the unsuccessful piece, because I think that helps everybody else on the team to keep that accountability and also helps work through any obstacles that might come up. This meeting happened every week without fail. Your meeting could be Monday morning. It could be Friday afternoon. It could be anywhere in between. Pick a time that seems to make sense based on the structure of your team and also based on what your workflow is. Like, this particular sheet I used in-person, I was fortunate to work in an office where people were physically there every day, we didn't have any remote workers, but it could easily be adapted to a digital work space. Or if you have remote team members, there's no reason that you couldn't send them by email ahead of time and still follow through the same template. I'm going to go through the top. You'll notice here on the side that there's a section for work and the section for personal. And this is what I'm talking about in terms of structure. This is where you give people the opportunity to share what they're comfortable with from both pieces of their lives. So it's important to have both of these pieces again so people can bring their best self to work. We're going to walk through each of the pieces across the top here on the first section on the left there, the best thing that happened last week. So I want to know what was the highlight of your week at work and also the highlight of your week in your personal life — just gets people a nice opening question. It allows people to have a nice conversation. Best thing that happened at work was I, you know, put the one big project to bed. Best thing that happened in my personal life was, it was my daughter's sixth Birthday party. That's awesome. It's just a nice way to get to know people in in a way that is safe for them to do so and easy. The next a section, What I'm most looking forward to this week is a highlight that's coming up for you this week. I used to have a section that asked about what you were dreading this week. What I found was that was it turned into a bit of a wine festival that was just people airing their grievances or complaints, and it wasn't productive. There's a place for sharing frustration, but it just turned into kind of a complaint about all I have to do this again or I have to deal with this team again. So I think what I'm most looking forward to changes that highlight to something exciting and again in your personal life give you an opportunity to share something exciting happening in your personal life. This week, it could be something of small. As my husband and I are going for dinner this week. That's awesome. Just a quick way to get to know people. The next thing is something on my mind that might distract me. In my opinion, this is the most important part. I want to know if there's something at work that's distracting you. I also want to know there's something in your personal life that might distract you as well. I don't believe that we can check ourselves at the door when we go to work or that we can check ourselves at the door when we come home. So I don't need huge detailed on this. You don't have to share anything, really, except that there might be a distraction. So I don't need people to go into extensive detail about, for example, the details of their divorce they're going through. But I think it's important for us to be able to say to our coworkers, I am going through a tough time at home right now, as some of you may know, I'm going through a divorce. It's a bit of a crazy week for me. They just want everyone to know that so that we can keep that in mind. One of the benefits of airing this distraction is that it's going to make it less of a distraction. When you give language to those feelings, it helps to diminish the impact that they might have and also help people be understanding of you at work. So the poster that I shared earlier about owning your energy and being responsible for the energy you bring in to work — That doesn't mean you can't have a bad day. And it doesn't mean you can't be distracted. It means you need to take ownership of it. So if I come into work and I look miserable and cranky and I'm not talking to anyone and I don't say anything about it, my coworkers think I'm just being rude all day. If I come into work and I'm upset and I'm disheveled and I say to people, "My goodness, I had such a morning, My bus was late and then it was raining and I forgot my umbrella." Then people know about it. I will probably feel better because I've shared it and everyone else in my office could be understanding and say, "Oh, my gosh, that sounds terrible." Take a few minutes, you know, let us know we can help with today. That's why I want to know about distractions. The next piece of it, by the end of the week I want to... and that's the goal setting piece. So this piece is what goes on your worksheet for next week. You do not need to lift the 100 things on your agenda that you need to accomplish for the week, but it's a great opportunity to pick one or two key things. Maybe that you've been struggling to complete. But you need to get done and put them on there so that you are holding yourself accountable for the following week. The personal side of this is also helpful and sometimes can be a little bit funny. I've had people put things like, "by the end of the week, I need to buy my dad a birthday gift." The next column over, you'll notice, has 'something I love help with.' Sometimes people will say, "and I don't know what to get him. So has anyone else got thier daa something really good for their birthday this year?" So it's just a nice way to keep that personal side of things going, but also hold you accountable personally too. Sometimes it could be something like, "I need to get my oil changed on my car" or "drop off dry cleaning" or something like that. There are parts of the personal template that I will not force people to fill out if they're not comfortable doing it. That's fine. The goal piece for your work needs to be filled out, so that something that's not negotiable and I'm sure that everyone has something that they need to accomplish that week at work. Something I love help with is also my way of re-framing the part of the week that you might be dreading. So if there's a project at work that is not exciting to you or has been dragging on or you're struggling with instead of framing it as a complaint or something, I'm not looking forward. You let's frame it as here's something I'd love help with. I'm really struggling to move this thing forward. I'm really struggling to get in touch with this person out of a meeting. Is there someone on this team who can help me with that? Same goes for personal life. Never know there's something coming up that you could use help with. And again, allows people to have that conversation in their work life and in their personal life that's in this place. Going to go back to, the slide before here so you can see this whole work sheet again. You'll notice that at the very bottom... So, what are we learning about this week? And then there's a space for someone to put a link to an article or video and then also include discussion questions. One of the key pieces that makes this worksheet unique and makes this meeting structure unique is that each person on the team takes turns hosting the meeting. So if you are the manager, you are not responsible for hosting this meeting every week. It rotates among your team members. Whoever hosts the meeting is responsible for getting the worksheet together, letting people know if there's any changes to the meeting location or who's attending and making sure everyone can be there. The person who was hosting is also responsible for finding an education opportunity to provide some discussion at the end of that meeting, so this could be any type of article. It could be a YouTube video. It could be anything interesting that you've come across that you think people would benefit from. So I got a couple of examples here. Igloo has a great resource section on their website. Many companies do their own podcast that you can listen to. Ecology is a great one. Harvard Business Review has great articles. Fast company. LinkedIn has great publishing tools that you might be able to find something on. The All Things I See Blog has a lot of great content,. These are very business oriented. But you might also find something that's about, you know, learning to work through challenges in life or having better communication at work, dealing with difficult people. There's all kinds of information out there that would be a great education opportunities for your team. It doesn't have to be a long discussion when you get into it. It could be five or 10 minute conversation. It could be something that very work related as well about a social media campaign or something for example. This is the reason that we switch hosts is for accountability. It's for leadership opportunity, and it's for responsibility. There are great opportunities now for your team to step up to the plate and show what they're capable of and also gives them the responsibility of having things together for the rest of your team. So I just think it's something I learned a few years ago and it's been a great, way to share the load amongst your team and also for you to see who might be a really shining team member in that way. From a management perspective, the other thing that came up with a new, important lesson and changing the host of the meeting was a lesson I learned very early on. I was working at a nonprofit. I had hosted a volunteer committee meeting and a board member from the nonprofit was also on the committee. So when the meeting ended and people left, I asked her how she thought the meeting was and she said, "I think it was great." She said, "Can I get you some feedback?" And I was very young and keen in my career and I said, "of course. Yes, I'd love to hear about it." And she said, "Kristin, when you are hosting a meeting, I would like you to imagine a stop sign in front of you and the stop sign says 'wait', W A I T. And what that stands for is Why Am I Talking?" And it was a humbling but funny way for me to learn that my default is to run the meeting. My default is to fill silence. My default is to always have conversation going. And what that means is, I am not always good at recognizing that other people might have something to say, and they might not be a forward as I am in interrupting other people. So letting the meeting host rotate every week also allows team members who might not be as forward in their communication, have something to say and lead that meeting. So this was a great way for me to force myself to sit back and listen to what some of my team members were saying. Another great example of me learning to listen is an experience I had in my very early years as a manager I had a staff member go on maternity leave in Canada. That's a minimum of a year. So this person left on maternity leave, came back to work, and had a very frustrating morning where things weren't working for. Her phone wasn't set up. She couldn't log into her email. So when I noticed she wasn't doing anything, I asked some questions and I said, "Is everything okay?" And she said, "Yeah, I just I can't work. I can't do anything." So I, as any new manager might do, ran to IT, I got mad at them and I told them they should have had this done and they had so long to do it. So anyway, eventually things got sorted out, and a couple of months later, her and I were meeting about something unrelated. It was a project she was working on. And I asked her how things were going now that she was back at work full time. And she said, "well it's better now." And I said,"well what what happened at the beginning." And she said, she reminded me of what had happened that day. And what she told me was that when she came back and things weren't set up, it made her feel like no one cared that she was coming back. It was a very humbling moment for me as a new manager to recognize that. I then realized that my anger towards other people in that situation was really a lack of accountability on my part. It was my responsibility to make sure those things were set up, even though I wasn't maybe the one physically setting them up. It was still my responsibility, but I also knew that she wouldn't have shared that with me if I hadn't asked and we weren't having a private conversation. I realized that an important piece of that employees alignment was having a way for employees to have one on one conversations with a structure that allows them to bring things like that up so that we can all learn from those experiences. So this is the work sheet for the monthly meeting. So in addition to weekly team meetings at minimum, I would say a monthly meeting with each of your staff members is the best way to help facilitate that conversation. The reason that needs to happen monthly at minimum, without fail, is because you might not think you have something to discuss. But that doesn't mean your employees feel the same way. It's really difficult at times for employees to bring up an awkward conversation that they want to have with the manager, so this gives them a mechanism to bring things up without having to say to you, "Hey can we set up a meeting to talk about X Y Z." This is a great way to make that happen. So most importantly, both of you fill this out is not just for the employees. It's for the manager as well. The very first thing again, the most important thing, I think: Any distractions to acknowledge before you start? There are times that had minor distractions or employees that acknowledge minor distractions — like I've got a deadline coming up in an hour. So I'm a little bit scatterbrained in this meeting. You know what? That's a great opportunity to say let's reschedule so that everyone can be present in the meeting and get the most out of it. The next piece of it is what you're excited or worried about. Again, very similar to that weekly team meeting, things that are coming up, that you're excited things you're worried about. How we might be able to help with that important thing. Next is to use your words. I often, when we use this is the picture of me and my niece and nephew. We can use this with small children, and I think it's a valuable thing to remind adults about that. We need to give language to how we are feeling at work so we can have conversations about it. So the next section I'm calling a temperature check. Give some examples about how that person is feeling on that date since they last chatted. I've put things in there like I'm feeling bored or feeling overwhelmed because I want people to know that it's okay to say those things. If you say you're bored, are you bored because the work you have right now is not energizing? Are you bored because you don't have enough work? Both of those things could be full, but we need to have a conversation about that. Again, both of us fill this out so that employees know how their managers are feeling, and you're leading by example by being a bit vulnerable and saying what's happening in your life and how you're feeling that day. The last piece of it, I I call it the stop judging and started helping section. Very work related, top three things you're working on that month. Something I need help with, something I'd like to help with. So again, trying to avoid the whine festival, but also giving examples of people who... or a project that you might need help with. I love hearing... I love hearing as a manager, things that my employees would like to help with because there might be something I'm working on, for example, a new strategy, And they say "I heard about this new strategy. That's something I'm really interested in from a professional development standpoint. Let me know if I could help with it." That's awesome. As a manager, I love hearing that, and as an employee, I love having the opportunity to share things that I would love to be a part of. So that gives a great opportunity for conversation there. Last piece here is a picture of me in one of my former coworkers. On my very the last hour of my last day at my last job, we spent this hour talking about all the great things about each other. It was a Love Festival. He did a great job of this, and you did a great job with this, and at the end, he said, "You know, we really should've shared this with each other while I was here, instead of waiting until the last hour." So my final note is to remember that part of your conversations are to celebrate great things that you've done. I think as communicators we often focusing on what's next and the next innovation, the next improvement. And this is also a great opportunity for you to celebrate accomplishments along the way as well. So I will say thank you to all of you for joining. I'm gonna pass it back to Michele to wrap things up and see if we have any questions. Sounds good. Thank you so much, Kristin. I just wanted to do a quick plug for Igloo here at the end. At Igloo, we look to simplify your journey towards digital transformation. Our mission is to create digital workplace solutions, which inspire employees to be more connected and more engaged in the workplace. You can think of us as the next-generation Intranet, but at the end of the day, we're Digital Workplace Solutions company. We connect people to each other, information, and the technologies they depend on. We help our customers building sustained digital destinations that are beautiful, easy to manage, and solution oriented. And our portfolio of digital solutions integrates with the systems your business already relies on and centralizes information into a single source of truth. Our digital workplace platform helps organizations form a digital representation of their physical space and culture — bringing people, communications, collaboration, knowledge, and technology into one central place online. But it's not merely about a centralized digital destination. It's what you do with that to increase time to value for customers, Igloo experts take the most common challenges that our customers face — whether that's one of the challenges Kristin talked about today such as employee disengagement, employee alignment, or a different challenge — and we build them into fast to deploy and easy to configure solutions. And with that, I'd actually like to open up the floor to questions. As a reminder, if you have any questions, please submit them in the bottom left hand corner of your screen and you will start working through those. I see someone did have a... just to reinforce that the templates are gonna be sent out by Igloo after and they are also available on my website If you want to download them. So, they are free and able be used any time. And I would love to hear from people if you've implemented them and how they worked, if they've changed things, if you've altered the templates to make something work better for you. That would be awesome to hear. And you can see Kritin's website on this screen [www.kristinhancock.com]. And I'm, of course, like we all are on all social media platforms. So feel free to connect with me there, too. Okay, question: "Do any sort of personality traits to better understand how to relate to your teams." A bit of a big question. Someone asking about personality assessments. So maybe Myers Briggs or any ground with those kinds of things. I think anything you could do to better understand your team is always helpful whether that's some kind of Myers Briggs — Although I'm not sure how I feel about that — It's like the science behind it is a little bit broad, but I think conversation in general is the best way to get that started. And I think as a team, if you can decide that something's going to help you work through things, than that's... I would never say no to any about information. I would caution people to not label team members strictly by personality type. I think sometimes that can be a little bit problematic, because then we end up putting people in containers as opposed to just viewing them as a whole human being on a scale of different personality traits. It doesn't look like there's any more questions right now. If you do end up having a question later, feel free to reach out to Kristin or Igloo. If you go to igloosoftware.com/demo That is how I would encourage you to book a demo and see how we can help you with some of your business challenges. A reminder. We will be sending out a copy of the recording to everybody registered today. As well as a copy of those worksheets. And yeah, I think that we'll wrap it up here. Wishing you all a wonderful day. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.