Hello, I'm Elaine Kung. We continue with SHINE Your Talk! workplace communication series. We're now looking at the 4th sticky situation at work. So we learnt how to communicate and be assertive and using practical and biblical principles. My co-workers ask for my help in my overloaded schedule. Have you experienced that? I have. You're already very busy and overloaded and yet your coworker come and asks for your health. So what do you do? So we're gonna again, ask these 6 REASON questions. Why would they do that to you? Because they need your help for work and they may not have thought about how busy you are, and how can you show empathy to what they need. So you could say, co-worker, you must be very stressed with so much work. So at least you may not agree with them giving you the work, but at least you can acknowledge how they feel and express that empathy, and how can you address the need. And this is the next few steps that we can help how to be very practical in addressing their need, in understanding what work it is, understanding the priority and how to manage our time.
And then we need to set boundary instead of always just taking on more project, and don’t know how to set boundary and say no. Setting boundary means that we are wise in how to express our perspective, our thoughts in a productive, positive, and professional. So we wanna set boundary, not taking on everything and just say, yes, all the time. And then offer solutions, right? I can offer solutions based on the next few step that we’ll go through. And then how I can help or other people can help. And then nurture trust. How do I convey my message and personal brand? What is the brand that you want to convey? Because you want to build trusted relationship. So we don't want to be a naysayer. “Oh, no, I cannot help you with that” As you go through these six questions and the next few tools that will help us address your coworkers’ request to help them while your work is very overloaded.
So let's look at this four quadrants. If you listened and watched our work-life balance series, you’ll know that we talked in-depth about the management of time using this four quadrant tool. And it's also called the Eisenhower Matrix. The US President Eisenhower used this to help him make very important decisions. Look at Q1, what is important and urgent. So when you are working on your priorities and your coworker have their priorities, you can both understand what work you're doing. If it's important and urgent, then you have to do them because your boss need it, your senior leaders need it. It's important, and it's a time sensitive deliverable. Then we all acknowledge this is something that needs to be done. And hopefully, this is Q1, less than 20 to 25 % of your time. Because the more you spend time in Q1, while it's important, it's good to get them done, it's always stressful, urgent. Then you have too much pressure. And your quality of work may not come out well, and you're too stressed. We want to manage it to be lower than 20-25 % of your time.
And then look at the work that's being done in Q2, important and not urgent, important and not urgent. That is a very good place to be in. When you're doing work that's important to you, to your boss, to the team, to the senior leader, to your coworkers when it’s not urgent. That means that you are proactive in planning out what you need to do, then you are more relaxed, not stressed, and you have the time to do it well with good quality. And you even may be predictive, expecting certain problems are gonna come up, and then you can be preventive and be ahead of it.
And we would want at least 65 to 80 % of our time spent on Q2 because this is proactive, good time management, good planning. And you want your coworker to do the same. And you would decide to do those. So when you procrastinate in what's important, and when it’s not urgent, you keep delaying, delaying, then you would go from Q2 into Q1, because you procrastinate work that can be done for next month. You keep delaying, “Oh no, it's not due tomorrow”.
Then it’s becoming urgent from Q2 to Q1. We want to be proactive stick to a timeline. That's how you can help your coworker to plan this out. And then finally, in the bottom half are all the work that are not that important. Q3 is not important, seem urgent. Someone's knocking the door, someone's calling, someone is emailing. It seems urgent. And yet it's not important. So we want to delegate them. So analyze the work that your coworker and what you're working on. It's not that important but they may be urgent and see what other resource can help to delegate for them to do. You want that to be about 15 % or less. And then Q4 are not important and not urgent. Those things we want to delete. For example, a lot of wasting time surfing on the net, wasting time talking in the water cooler. Sometimes socializing, building relationships are okay, getting a coffee and build trusted relationship. But if you're overdoing it, spending unnecessary time on the water cooler, then it’s too much and in Q4.
And then some truthful examples with some meetings that you don’t need to go to, you don't have to attend all meetings because meeting takes a lot of time. This way, when you use this tool to think through your projects and help your coworker to think through their project. In that way, you're adding value, you're helping them, and then figuring out what quadrant are these worth, and how can we better manage them.
And then when you get to the answer about the different work and quality, then you can use this Wise Appeal tool to get a good conversation with your boss, with your coworker and say, “John, I understand that you want me to help you with this additional project, because you have already a lot of workloads, and you need help. And I can feel that it’s very stressful for you.” So, this is now incorporating the reason and your empathy. You're stating what you understand. They would feel so much better because you know why they need your help.
Then second step is, you would say “I have an issue with this, because I am already overloaded with these Q1 and Q2 work. We've discussed these four quadrants, and then we can look at your work that you're doing and additional work that you need help on. Where do these fall under?”
Then we can discuss and say, “What is the best way to solve them? Right now, I'm already overloaded with Q1 and Q2 work. So I won't be able to help you. And could I discuss with you on how this work could fit into these quadrants and we can explore what alternatives we can look into.” Or you could say, “Could I finish my top priorities this week? And then we can discuss next week how we may address this when my calendar opens up with some time.” So that is the wise appeal. When you use these three steps, they feel that they are heard. They feel that you understand them, and that you express empathy, you are helping to come up with a solution, and that you really want to build trusted relationship. And that is answering those 6 Reasons that we went through earlier.
So this is how you could help them to figure out how to address some of those extra work more, while you set clear boundary. And then when you communicate this, remember, to practice these ABCDE communication skills. And we'll go through this more in-depth in the future session. When you communicate and use the wise appeal, and when you analyze the different priorities, you want to have good, active listening. And that's why we reminded of James 1:19 again to be quick to listen with our 2 ears, to be slow in speaking and slow inbecoming angry. So we remember God gave us 2 ears to listen, so remember to listen at least twice as much as we speak. That's also why the Chinese character listen, has this ear component and also has the eye contact and the heart and the respectful attitude. So that is a very important thing when we communicate. It's actually more about listening than talking, so active listening and your body language.
The next slide will show you that in points of body language, and then your character praises, when you use sandwich style, when you communicate to affirm, be positive, you don't just say “You're wonderful or you’re great.” And say “I appreciate how you work so hard. I understand you are very responsible.” So use character words to praise them. And that way they feel that you respect them. And then D is to discipline the tongue to open your mouth only when you have something positive, encouraging, and productive to say. Otherwise, you want to zip or discipline your tongue. And finally, E is to express affirmation that you can affirm in a positive way, ABCDE.
So the B part is the body language. So a very famous psychologist, Mehrabia, defines this rule of communication. The first impression lasts forever, even just the first 30s. That impression is gonna have a great impact. And Mehrabian’s study shows that your first impression is impacted by 50 % in your body language, your visual, how they see you, your facial expression, your eye contact, your hand movement, your body position. So this is bad body language.
So in the future, we'll look at more examples. So be careful on your body language. Visual, how they see you, 55 %. Then voice, your tone of voice is 38 %. So loud, no volume, fast, or high pitch, or low pitch. When you pause and how you project your volume. So your tone of voice, is 38 %. And then the final V is verbal. The exact spoken words that you use and we worked so hard on the SHINE Your Talk! series to help you to use the right words in the right approach. That's only 7 % impact. So that's still important to work through. So that tells you the importance of body language. So I hope this helps us to understand how to be assertive in communicating. So the fifth and final sticky situation, my input is ignored at meetings.
So when your inputs are not heard, it seems like you're transparent, you're not heard, you're not seen. What do you do? Remember, don't be low EQ and get upset, get mad, get even and complain. Now, you pray, and remember Matthew 10:16, as shrewd as snakes, as innocent as doves. So I was in a meeting back in the day, mostly men in a high tech company and mostly Caucasians in North America. So I'm the among very few women and very few Asians.
So when in a room of 20-some people, I prayed about the idea and I made a suggestion. Quickly, no one said anything. And then a couple seconds later, a male Caucasian coworker said the same suggestion, John Smith. And everyone said, “John, what a good idea!” So what do I do? Get mad, get angry. Leave the room. No, I pray, think about shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves. And I said, “John, thank you for agree with my idea. Let's work on this idea together and make it a success for our team”. So obviously, when I made my suggestion, it was spoken, it was heard, it’s just that it wasn't acknowledged. So that way, I acknowledged John repeated my suggestion, “Let's work on it together.” So that's how we can be assertive and how we can handle this 5th and final sticky situation. So I'll see you next time. Good bye!
In using speaker Elaine’s definition for Leadership, how can you use the 7 PREAPRE strategies to Lead Up? Name 1 change you will start to make.
To be Proactive in understanding your boss’ SWOT, communication and work styles, how can you PREPARE to Lead Up effectively? Name 1 change you will start to make.
If you were to Lead Up the Bully type boss, how will you practice the Do and Don’t? Name 1 change you will start to make.
