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Should you use it to create your content?

ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can revolutionize the way you approach content creation. In this article, we’ll explore some of the ways ChatGPT can transform your content creation process and help you produce high-quality, engaging content faster and more efficiently.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It uses machine learning algorithms to analyze and understand natural language, allowing it to generate responses that are similar to those of a human. This technology has a wide range of applications, from chatbots to language translation and even content creation.

How can ChatGPT transform your content creation process?

Generate new content ideas.

One of the biggest challenges of content creation is coming up with new and engaging ideas. ChatGPT can help you overcome this obstacle by generating a list of potential topics based on your input. For example, you could provide ChatGPT with a general topic or keyword, and it would generate a list of potential angles or subtopics to explore.

Improve your writing skills.

ChatGPT can also help you improve your writing skills by analyzing your content and providing feedback on areas that could be improved. It can identify issues such as sentence structure, tone, and grammar, and provide suggestions for improvement. This feedback can help you refine your writing style and produce content that is more engaging and effective.

Save time.

Creating high-quality content takes time and effort, but ChatGPT can help you save time by automating certain aspects of the process. For example, you can use ChatGPT to generate outlines or rough drafts of articles or blog posts. This can help you get a head start on the writing process and save time on research and planning.

Increase efficiency.

ChatGPT can also increase your efficiency by providing answers to common questions or inquiries. For example, you could use ChatGPT to generate a list of FAQs related to your product or service. This can save you time by answering common questions and reducing the need for manual responses.

Personalize your content.

ChatGPT can also help you personalize your content for your audience. By analyzing your target audience and their preferences, ChatGPT can suggest topics or angles that are more likely to resonate with them. This can help you create content that is more engaging and effective, leading to higher engagement and conversions.

To Recap

ChatGPT is not just a powerful tool that can transform your content creation process—it’s a stunning example of artificial intelligence at its finest.

In fact, you might be surprised to learn that ChatGPT was the one who wrote this entire blog post. That’s right, using its advanced natural language processing and machine learning algorithms, ChatGPT was able to generate high-quality, engaging content from scratch, without any human input. It’s a testament to the incredible capabilities of modern AI technology, and a glimpse into a future where machines and humans work together to create amazing things.

A global retailer once hired me to help install PeopleSoft—it was their 3rd attempt. Their pain is not uncommon. Enterprise resource planning, or ERP, is a vital management tool, but its implementation can often be a nightmare.

For example, the average cost of an ERP implementation is $4.5 million or 6% of revenue. The average time to implement is 1-3 years. (!) With these painful stats in mind, it makes sense the Wall Street Journal once described SAP implementation as a “corporate root canal.”

Here are five questions you need to ask and answer before implementing an ERP.

1. Who is on the team? The most common mistake is to assign responsibility to IT and whichever department will use the system the most. Those two silos typically don’t appreciate the implications of their decisions on the groups who will input, maintain or receive outputs from the system. This can scuttle your ERP. Instead, get a cross-section of expertise on your team. Every group interacting with the system should be there.
   

   Your ERP team should be made of your best employees—their decisions will impact how this system (and your business) will run for years.

2. What one behavior drives the business case? If your team is serious about the business case, they must articulate what they need people to do in clear, tactical terms. Then focus, focus, focus; focus relentlessly on that. An IT firm spent millions on enterprise resource planning to help them make money on license renewals. The one activity they needed most from their sales team was to call clients the month before their contracts expired. Because they didn’t make that specific request, sales people didn’t do it consistently. The firm could not hit the business case; it was wholly based on “license renewals”—a lovely concept that no one acted upon.
3. How are we managing first impressions of the system? Shteingart, Neiman & Lowenstein’s 2013 research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, shows that “first experience has a disproportionately large effect on subsequent actions,” something they labeled “outcome primacy.” In other words, first impressions matter. So the first employees who touch the system—starting with requirements definition—had better be wowed. Only someone in marketing should be giving the project a name. And if user acceptance testing sucks, stop implementation. As Kahneman and Tversky found, we feel the pain of loss more acutely than the pleasure of gain. We compulsively avoid anything that smacks of failure. Manage the employee experience as rigorously as you manage the project itself.
4. Who will be our first users? In the 1960s, Everett Rogers published a book called the Diffusion of Innovations, which analyzed why certain ideas and products capture the public’s imagination. He mapped those who adopt the idea against a bell curve, showing that 3.5% of the target group are eager early adopters, and 13.5% are positively predisposed to change. You can use this to create momentum. If you want your ERP to look like a winner, find the early adopters. Enlist the 3.5% for system test, and the 13.5% for UAT. Pilot with these employees intentionally. They’ll make the system seem safe and successful to everyone else.
5. How are we ensuring the system is employee-centric? Employees don’t think about the system. They think about their jobs. Training must be about how to use the system in the context of their jobs. What will they do, day to day? Where will new tasks and handoffs take place? Where are the data and tools they relied upon—which will stay and which will be replaced?

Generic ERP training is a waste of time and money. Train people to do their jobs, not use a system.

Enterprise resource planning is one of the most invasive and expensive undertakings your company will ever face – even if it’s “cloud-based” and “intuitive.” If you get these five things right, you’re ahead of the game and on your way to a return on your investment.

Which model is best for your business?

As the field of organizational change management evolves, so do the organizations themselves. More than ever before, our clients are waking up to the current pace of change and the stakes they face. They know they need strong change skills to survive.

In recent years, we’ve been helping organizations build their own internal change management functions. We partner with them to build the skills, methods, and tools they need to drive change from within.

Here’s how we help clients stand up their own change management team.

We encourage our clients to clearly define their Change Management Community of Excellence (CoE) strategy. In other words, how do they plan to operate their change management business? We recommend they select one of these four models.

• Self-service – Business owners become the change management practitioners and use self-service change management tools to execute the work.
• Limited service – Business owners become the change management practitioners with minimal guidance up front. In this approach, the CoE will act as advisors up front and then the business owners will use self-service change management tools to execute the work.
• Co-service – Business owners are in an equal partnership with the CoE to drive changes. In this approach, the CoE is a key member of the project team and will lead and/or support the change effort.
• Full service – The CoE leads the change effort while the business leaders act as sponsors of the work.

Their approach for delivering change management services may evolve over time but we encourage them to think about this early, so they have a starting point.

Based on the model they choose, the organization identifies individuals who will be their new change practitioners. Then we ask our client to select a current project to use as an immersive learning example for the new team.

Next, we conduct training on the basics of change management.

These sessions prepare the new change resources to articulate the need for change management, use fundamental change principles, and employ change methods and tools.

Skill-building happens during various change management working sessions specific to the chosen project. We use the real work of the project to coach the new change practitioners as they use change approaches and tools. The sessions get the team ready to tackle future change projects as they arise. In other words, everything they learn is transferable to their future change initiatives.

Some of the sessions include understanding what methods they already have.

Where we find gaps, we help the team develop methods, tools and templates to add to their toolkit. Other sessions help them to determine who the project’s stakeholders are and how they are impacted. We use other sessions to develop the overarching message for the project. Key Behaviors sessions identify the employee behaviors they need to modify or reinforce to drive the change.

Then, using all the information we gathered from those working sessions, we work with the team to develop stakeholder-specific plans they will execute. These interventions create positive momentum to engage with the change and, hopefully, achieve the project goals. As the team executes the plans, we coach them and get them comfortable in their new roles as change management practitioners.

Finally, we help them use metrics and track the success of their efforts. Seeing new practitioners realize their impact on the organization is rewarding. It’s been a lot of fun helping organizations grow in an area I love.

They tackled AI, onboarding, streamlining, CRM, and leadership.

We got to work on some epic stuff in 2022. Here’s what a few of our clients invested in last year.

	A global professional services firm helped employees get up to speed on Artificial Intelligence. To create the new Artificial Intelligence Academy, we built learner personas, illustrating the technical and professional skills they will need to help clients understand AI solutions. Then we partnered with a technical training firm to script, design, and develop a simulation so learners can practice their new skills in an AI project scenario.
	A national water solutions company onboarded over 500 new team members, doubling in size. HR and functional teams built a program to welcome, train, and motivate their new team members. Onboarding involved 40 trainers, 118 classes/modules, 1007 learners, and 11,396 hours of training.  We also jump-started a formal leadership development program for all people-leaders in the business.
	A global retail client boosted their organizational change management capability. They launched a new Organizational Change Management (OCM) office to handle the increase in transformation projects impacting employees. We helped the new OCM team align on a custom change management methodology. We also built tools, templates, and a digital playbook on SharePoint to help project managers and change leads execute the methodology consistently.
	An international business upped revenue by cross-selling existing digital assets. Our client wanted more of their international customer base to buy and use their digital products. Subject matter experts for 20 existing high-impact digital assets helped us create short, self-guided, virtual, interactive learning programs for the firm’s practitioners. Each program teaches the “who, what, when, where, and why” for all 20 assets. The training boosted confidence and instilled new behaviors to lead client sales conversations.
	A global retailer streamlined their contract labor supplier pool to reduce complexity and risk. We helped hiring managers make the business process and technology changes feel “familiar, controlled, and successful.” We aligned the future-state processes with what was familiar to them and presented the “what’s in it for me” for the new tool. We created roadmaps for stakeholders, providing visibility and individual control as the changes rolled out.
	A global professional services company invested in critical skills. They targeted skills to improve innovation, decision-making, and collaboration. We helped design, develop, and deliver the program, which uses bio-psycho-social practice to boost critical thinking, empathy, communication, and resilience.
	Three clients improved the customer experience with Customer Relationship Management (CRM). We helped these three companies by shining a light on the people side of their CRM implementations. Specifically, we helped employees understand how their jobs would change and how to “survive” the transition to a new CRM. We analyzed the impacts on them, engaged the workforce, prepared them for go-live, and built internal change capability for the long term.
	A U.S. DOE Office of Science national laboratory built behaviors that drive change. We helped the lab identify the key employee behaviors that would foster positive change: collaboration, role clarity, and proactive leadership. We then created ways to focus stakeholder attention on the right behaviors and provide coaching to leaders.
	A well-known brand turned their people leaders into consultants. They acknowledged that their own managers were operating as consultants to their internal and external customers, solving problems and influencing change every day. We curated the licensed content from Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting book, then designed and built custom learning for a global audience. This client now sees management through the lens of a consultant, who is “flawless” when they are being direct and authentic with their customers.

What moving to a new house can teach us about enterprise learning

Sometimes the last bit of something is great. You know how those yellow ice cream cones have a little grid in the bottom that gets filled with ice cream? That last part is magic — the perfect balance of ice cream and cone. Also great: the last part of a story, giving us the satisfying closure we need.

And then there is packing to move, where the last ten percent can feel like 110 percent. You think you’re nearly done, but the last few tasks keep dragging on. It. Just. Won’t. End. At the end of August, I moved to a new place; it was, in fact, that last ten percent that challenged me the most.

I drive a Honda Accord, which can only hold so much. It had to carry me, a large dog, snacks for me and the large dog, many plants, and a few other necessities. Then I realized it had to hold things that didn’t make it into the moving truck. I tried shipping a couple boxes; I made use of every spare nook in the car. Then I came to terms with the fact that some things just weren’t meant to go.

It occurs to me that this also happens when organizations are planning a learning experience for their teams. So often it is a big event— rare, much anticipated, and needs to fit “everything” in. Or so we think.

Do we really need to train on everything?

At Emerson we rely on 3 Cs to help us make those tricky calls. Is it: Common, Critical, or Catastrophic?

What does this mean?

• Common: Is it something that is fundamental to daily work? Is it something a lot of folks need to know or do?
• Critical: If nothing else happens, what must get covered? What is absolutely necessary?
• Catastrophic: Is the risk high? If someone doesn’t do this correctly could there be a significant negative effect on the function, business, or our customers?

It is important to recognize that everything can’t—and shouldn’t—be crammed into a learning event. When we find ourselves making use of every last bit of the time set aside for learning, it’s a sign to pause and ask, “What really needs to fit in?”  There has to be breathing room. There has to be room for dialogue, application, and actually digesting the experience.

I’m pledging to adopt Common, Critical, and Catastrophic for any future moves. Is it common—do I rely on it for my day-to-day life? (My dishes) Is it critical—a must have or something worth the cost to move? (My big couch) Is it catastrophic—fragile, perishable, or irreplaceable? (My dog!)

If the answer is yes, it is worth keeping.

You’re judging me. As you read, you’re evaluating whether what I say is true or false. You’re deciding whether I’m credible. You’re gauging my words against your experience to determine whether or not my advice will work for you.

Your people do the same to you. They judge every word you say and write, and every action you take. It’s constant and unconscious, and it’s hard-coded in their DNA to keep them safe.

And what’s behind it—the comparison—is a leadership superpower, if you know how to use it.

People constantly, actively, and unconsciously compare.

They compare your price to what you charged before, and to what they can get elsewhere. They compare their raise to what they read on Glassdoor. They compare your presentation to what they heard on the grapevine.

These comparative judgements affect behavior. People buy, join, quit, collaborate, adopt, undermine, and make deals based on those comparisons.

As you lead, ask yourself: What are they comparing this to? If you know the answer to that, you can create trust and influence behavior.

Here’s why.

Comparisons help us gauge safety.

Scary or sweet?

What’s your reaction to the picture above?

If you have been bitten by a dog, this picture is upsetting. If you love dogs, you might find the picture endearing, knowing that “mouthing” is a sign of attachment. You have compared this picture to your experience and responded based on that.

At Emerson Human Capital, we see it in business as well.

Research shows that the most successful source of new hires is referral. Why? Because the employer compares the candidate to the trusted employee. The candidate compares the company to their friend’s stories. Both the company and the candidate feel safer moving forward.

This is also true for sales. Sales people often look for referrals or “warm leads”—an introduction by a friend. They know that the buyer will assume their experience with the friend will be similar. That makes the sales conversation safe and increases the chances of succeeding.

If you want your team to feel safe, learn what they might be comparing against from their experience, and make sure it’s safe.

Comparisons determine value.

Let’s say you want to buy an airline ticket for your next vacation. You might find a United flight for $1,240. Then you check American. They have flights, but they require layovers. You go back to Google Flights and suddenly see the rates across all the airlines have gone up to $3,950. Now, the original price feels like a bargain. The $1,240 price didn’t change—what changed is the price you’re comparing against.

Reed Hasting, Co-CEO, employed this comparison strategy when he described Netflix’ performance on the July 19, 2022 earnings call.

“Looking at the quarter…we’re executing really well on the content side…we’re talking about losing 1 million instead of losing 2 million.”

Most people want to associate their initiative with something that’s good, to make it feel safe. However, negative comparisons are powerful when you need people to act.

For example, my parents had a beautiful RV they wanted to sell. The dealer so loved it, he kept it at the lot entrance to impress people as they arrived. The camper sat there for over a year. Finally, we asked him if he had another vehicle that was less appealing. He did. So we asked him to park our RV next to it, and price ours slightly lower. The camper sold within three days.

A value comparison is about changing the conversation.

It’s about taking a person from one reference point to another. Academics call this reframing. If you want your people to see value in what you’re doing, compare against something that shows value.

Comparisons help us learn new information.

When we learn something new, we compare it to what we already know. That helps us retain and recall information. When we don’t have a good comparison, we have to create a new category in our mind, which makes information much harder to learn.

Let’s say you plan to visit our office in a month. I tell you the office door code is 3120, but you cannot write it down. You may or may not remember that number. But, if I tell you it’s the Chicago area code with a zero, it’s more likely you will remember it. You have a way to hook the new data to something you already know.

If you want people to remember something important, compare it to or contrast it with something familiar.

Comparisons create expertise.

A novice understands a category. An expert understands differences between similar items within that category. For example, if I ask you to tell me what a fish is, you’ll probably say that it’s something that lives in water, uses gills to breathe, and fins to move. But an expert can identify a muskie from a salmon based on precise characteristics, like the shape of the tail, the color of the skin, the size of the eyes. An expert developed that expertise by learning the differences between fish.

If you want your team to be experts, help them understand precise differences.

Comparisons evoke emotion.

A vivid comparison will make dull data come to life. Let’s say you’re showing a financial report that shows a new business unit with great potential but poor performance. You can show graphs on a PowerPoint slide with arrows pointing up. But you capture imagination if you describe the new business unit as Rich Strike, the 80-to-1 come-from-behind winner of the Kentucky Derby.

The CEO of a food products company recently announced a reorganization. His goal was to normalize the reorganization. This company had multiple flavors of their products, which required them to change the configuration of their manufacturing lines every day. To employees, that was a normal, predictable operation. So, he compared the reorganization to reconfiguring a product line. It made what could feel frightening seem normal.

People don’t change in response to data.

They change—they act differently—in response to how they feel about what you say. Your comparisons are a powerful tool because they impact the emotions that drive behavior.

Leaders create meaning by interpreting events, memorializing history, and describing a compelling future. Events are about meaning, and nothing helps people create meaning like a strategic comparison. To be effective, you need to know what people are conjuring up in their minds, and if necessary, change that reference point. You need the right comparison.

The recent wave of layoffs is dizzying. One company after another; thousands at time.

What if YOU are one of the thousands? When the dust settles, is there a way to make the most of your transition?

We think so. At Emerson Human Capital, we use brain science to help employees and organizations change. We’ve learned that moments matter. That means people process experiences differently based on whether they are at the beginning, middle, or end of an event. You can use these moments to your advantage.

Ends

If you’re leaving a job, you should know that endings leave a lasting feeling that retroactively colors the entire experience. So be intentional about how you end things.

Ends are a great opportunity to establish meaning.

If you’ve been laid off, you might feel the meaning has been decided for you: you’re unemployed and your efforts weren’t valued. But we urge you to take that power back.

Decide how you want to define this ending for you and your co-workers. What impact do you want to leave? What feelings do you want to have when you look back on this time?

Do the things that will make that happen. Maybe you want to create a transition package for your team, so they’re in good shape after you go. Maybe you decide to write goodbye emails or have lunch with colleagues. Maybe you take a printer out into a field and destroy it with a baseball bat. Note that we are NOT advocating violence against office equipment; the point is that it’s up to you.

Beginnings

First impressions are the bomb. They are like a bomb going off in your brain—it’s receiving a ton of new information and evaluating all of it as fast as it can. Is this situation good or bad? Safe or dangerous? Do I like it or not? First impressions set the tone for a person’s entire relationship with another person, event, or entity.

That goes for you (the new person joining an organization) and your new colleagues and leaders. The start of a new job is a chance to grab people’s brains and turn them into a fans or foes.

First, give yourself a great start.

Begin a new job well-rested and well-dressed. Maybe even treat yourself on your first day—it might sound silly, but these things actually change what happens in our brains. Second, assume good will. Many organizations are just not great at onboarding. If your new work home is one of them, recognize that onboarding is a finite process and doesn’t represent your day-to-day life on the new job. But if your organization is giving you a warm and thoughtful welcome, congrats! Your good first impression of your new company will carry you forward.

Next, give your new co-workers and leaders a great start. They’re unconsciously forming first impressions of you. Everything they notice will have an out-sized effect on their idea of you, at least until they get to know you. Don’t freak out, just be intentional about it. Speak, act, and present your best self.

So, if you’re caught in the craziness of a layoff—after you smash the printer—stop, think, and make it better.

P.S. If you are an expert in behavior change and you were recently laid off, are interested in a new career or know someone who is, take a look at Emerson Human Capital’s careers webpage. We’re hiring!

Don’t let the Meeting Monster steal your productivity.

By Jannai Warth, Learning & Development Consultant

It’s 8 a.m. You’re locked and loaded with a fresh cup of coffee—fueled up and ready to go. You open your laptop and see a wall of emails. You imagine a full day spent in Outlook.

But wait, you haven’t even checked your calendar. Dread rises as you move your cursor to that little icon that will define the rest of your day. Click…

There it is: the Meeting Monster. A menacing hulk of back-to-back meetings just ate your productivity.

Now, maybe you’re one of those optimistic creatures that tackles another day of meetings with gusto. If so, please sprinkle some of your magic dust on the rest of us, for whom a booked calendar means a full day of conversation, followed by a late night getting the actual work done. That, my friends, is how eight hours becomes 16. It’s the new math.

But all is not lost…

Here are some tips for vanquishing the Meeting Monster:

1. Prioritize. Decide what’s mission-critical and filter out the rest. To borrow a page from president Eisenhower’s time management methodology, The Eisenhower Matrix, relegate the stuff in Quadrants 3 and 4 (Urgent/Not Important; Not Urgent/Not Important). Identify it, then dismiss it.
2. Say no. Sometimes, you have to. But don’t abuse the power of “no.” Use it when it’s essential to hit your targets and commitments. And, if you’re a people manager, empower the team to wisely wield that gavel. Coach them on priorities and support them when they say “no.”
3. Block time for “actual” work. No matter your craft, vocation, or role, at some point you have to stop talking and start working. How? Use the Meeting Monster’s own tactics: block time on your calendar for work. It will show others you’re not available and give you the structure and space to deliver.
4. Find other ways to engage. In the post-Covid business world, working from home is common. Sometimes meetings are our way to keep remote teams connected. But meetings aren’t the only way. Consider other channels. For example, start a “Crazy Encounters” Teams chat board, asking coworkers to share non-work-related stories. It will lighten the mood and you’ll get to know colleagues in a broader way. Besides, team meetings are mainly status updates anyway, right? Speaking of which…
5. Dump the status meeting. A round table report-out might not be the best use of everyone’s time. Instead, try a weekly status report that’s, ahem, emailed…or, better yet, posted on a digital chat board. You could even use a project management platform like Monday.com. As members interact with status updates and mark completion in real time, your passive meeting becomes an engaging way to share progress.
6. Make the meeting collaborative. If you’re going to get everyone together for a meeting, make it count. Consider polling your team on topics they want to discuss and create sessions based on interest. For example, you might have team members with pressing questions on “best practices for conducting a needs assessment,” or “top 5 approaches for overcoming an objection.” Use your time on a forum that addresses issues and delivers the answers people need.

Meetings are necessary, but not always the most effective tool for communication or collaboration. Attend when they are mission-critical, then give your calendar some white space.

In addition to work time, you’ll get unstructured time, which is critical to creativity and performance. If you constantly draw water from the well without replenishing, it’s going to run dry. Downtime fosters inspiration. Need that next big thing? A 30-minute walk in the park might deliver a gusher of ideation!

What can personality and strength assessments do for your organization?

Have you ever taken one of those tests that promises to reveal something about you? Why are they so irresistible? Maybe it’s because they’re the flipside of the academic and professional tests we’ve been subjected to all our lives. Instead of pointing out your mistakes, they reveal your virtues.

Don Clifton, an American psychologist, once asked himself, “Instead of asking what’s wrong with you, what would happen if we studied what was right with you?” And a powerful assessment was born.

Many organizations use assessments to help their employees understand the strengths they bring to their team and the company as a whole. Here are a few:

• The Birkman Method
• Disc Assessment
• The Enneagram
• Hexaco Personality Inventory
• The Holtzman Inkblot Technique
• Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
• Process Communication Model
• The Revised Neo Personality Inventory (Neo Pi-R)
• The Winslow Personality Profile.

Working with corporate clients, I have used and taken several of these assessments, including the one sparked by Don Clifton’s epiphany: CliftonStrengths. Clifton founded Selection Research, Inc. which later acquired Gallup, where he became the chairman.

He observed, “Whenever you give people choices, you’ll hear some people say, ‘I want to do that’ and others might say, ‘Oh, I could never do that.’” The idea behind his strengths model is that we are all different and that’s a good thing.

CliftonStrengths is made up of 34 themes placed in four domains. What they’re really measuring is your talents. These talents make up your natural self. The talents become strengths when you invest some time in them.

You may say, “I know what my strengths are.” Good. But it’s also good to have some science behind that.

Gallup has studied human nature and behavior for more than 80 years. They’ve learned the key to personal development is to fully understand how to apply your greatest strengths in your everyday life. Gallup researchers have discovered that:

• People who focus on using their strengths are three times as likely to report having an excellent quality of life.
• People who focus on using their strengths are six times as likely to be more engaged in their jobs. [Rath, T. (2007). StrengthsFinder 2.0. New York: Gallup Press.]

People operating in their wheelhouse are happier, more engaged, and more productive. When they know their strengths and talents, and they’re allowed to use them, people:

• Look forward to going to work.
• Have more positive than negative interactions with coworkers, family, and friends.
• Have better interactions with customers.
• Share more positive feedback on their company. (e.g., They tell their friends they work for a great company.)
• Achieve more every day.
• And have more positive, creative, and innovative moments.

Beyond the world of work, there are compelling reasons for us to understand, appreciate, and intentionally use our strengths. Gallup’s research shows that a strengths-based approach improves a person’s confidence, direction, hope, and kindness toward others.

It’s important to recognize that CliftonStrengths, like some of the other assessments, is a development tool. Understanding your strengths is only the beginning. Use your findings to determine how to use your strengths to grow – in your job, career or even in your relationships.

Understanding strengths makes for better teams.

If you can, construct a team with complementary strengths. But, regardless of team composition, knowing each member’s strengths can help. For example, if your project needs brainstorming and innovation, pull in teammates who score high on “ideation.” If your project requires a lot of data review and interpretation, bring in those who are more “analytical.” Clifton suggested that individuals don’t have to be well-rounded, but teams do. So put your energy into creating a well-rounded TEAM.

Also, consider including the entire organization in a strengths assessment. This is not just a tool for the executive team. Arguably, ALL employees need to know who they are; teammates and leaders need to know how each employee can best contribute.

One of the most powerful outcomes of a strengths assessment is engagement.

Knowing and working to strengths makes people feel more valued and connected to the group. Engagement is a proxy to productivity. It’s a proxy for less absenteeism. It’s a proxy for satisfaction. As a result, you, your team, and your company are more aligned and powerful.

Have you used CliftonStrengths or any of the other assessments? What have you learned as a result? Have they helped you or your organization? If so, how? Email us at change@emersonhc.com to share your story.

Great onboarding, like a great party, gets one critical element right.

Remember the last boring, uncomfortable party you attended? Maybe you were invited to a party at which you didn’t really know anyone. You may have left thinking “No one seemed interested in learning about me. I spent the whole evening listening to people I don’t know talk to each other about themselves. And the host didn’t bother to introduce me to anyone.”

In many ways, onboarding is like being invited to a party where you don’t know anyone. Why does this matter? Because first impressions have an outsized impact on a person’s feelings and judgments. Humans are hard-wired to make quick judgments for evolutionary survival reasons and have a very difficult time moving off of those initial assessments, despite plenty of future evidence to the contrary. So if you blow the onboarding, it’s an uphill climb from there.

Arguably the most important outcome of a great onboarding experience is a sense of belonging.

The innate motivation to belong is deeply ingrained in our human biology. As noted by The Mayo Clinic, the sense of belonging is fundamental to the way humankind organizes itself.

At work, the impact of a sense of belonging for employees is significant. According to the Harvard Business Review, high belonging was linked to a whopping 56% increase in job performance, a 50% drop in turnover risk, and a 75% reduction in sick days.

So, now that we know how important onboarding and belonging are to business, let’s get back to the party.

If you don’t know anyone at the party, you’re left to navigate on your own, and no one seems particularly interested in you, you might wonder whether you should have showed up at all. Conversely, if someone introduces you to people, you share something about yourself, discover commonalities with those people, you might feel accepted.

Acceptance is essential to belonging. The difference between feeling connected to others and feeling a sense of belonging with others is acceptance. To feel accepted, you have to share your authentic self. Sharing means opening up, and that kind of vulnerability can be a bit tricky to foster in a work environment.

But there’s a solution: build it into the process. Most onboarding is focused on the organization’s “authentic self.” There’s a one-way flow of information to the new employee about company’s identity, including history, values, and norms. But what if we made onboarding a two-way street? Including the individual’s identity creates an exchange of information — an opportunity for acceptance and a growing sense of belonging.

Here are 3 ways to make your onboarding better by promoting a sense of belonging:

1. Proactively introduce the new employee to fellow employees across the organization. The sooner you can eliminate the “stranger” awkwardness – because they don’t know people’s names and roles — the sooner they will feel that sense of belonging. Find creative ways to help new employees to remember names and faces. Of course, there’s an app for that! Check out Pingboard’s Who’s Who game.
2. Self-expression. Design the onboarding to encourage the new employee to express their authentic selves. Ask them questions, inviting them to share. For example, are you presenting company history, core values, and vision? Ask them about their history, core values, and vision for their future. Invite the new employee to share their strengths and how they see themselves succeeding in their new role. And check in with them regularly to ask how they are feeling. Joining a new company can be an emotional rollercoaster; having someone acknowledge this and want to know how you are doing sends a very strong signal of acceptance.
3. Find a way to explore the new employee’s personal background, hobbies, and passions. Then connect them to fellow employees who share similar interests. Create a “buddy” system that pairs a new employee with a veteran that has a few things in common. And make sure your buddy system has real impact: build frequent interactions between the buddies into the process over the first 90 days.

Effective onboarding, like the best parties, creates a sense of belonging. Happy hosting!

For more thoughts on onboarding, check out 4 Secret Thoughts of New Hires – Emerson Human Capital (emersonhc.com)