be there

Difficult conversations are part and parcel of any professional job, much as we may not want to admit it. It’s comforting to think that if we put our heads down and focus on our own job, we can do great work without dealing with confrontation, but this is rarely the case. From managers needing to deal with performance issues, to team members collaborating to find solutions to tough problems, to officemates navigating interpersonal conflicts, we all find ourselves having difficult conversations in the workplace at some point or another. It’s also easy to feel like the best way to get through them is to shut down, not talk, or simply avoid them–but this is far from true. When we clam up, issues don’t get resolved, and can often get worse as individuals fill any knowledge gaps with assumptions rather than hearing the facts straight from the other person.

We all know what it’s like to go around the Thanksgiving table and share what we’re thankful for, but that shouldn’t only happen one day a year–the most effective people who are the most in-tune with the emotions and needs of themselves and others are often those who express gratitude as a daily practice within their lives. This may sound a little “woo”-ey, but there’s real science to it: Even the Mayo Clinic acknowledges the link between regularly expressing gratitude and improved moods, lessened mental health symptoms, better sleep, and more. But practicing gratitude isn’t always easy. It requires awareness of your surroundings, both your physical and social external surroundings but also your internal emotional surroundings. Practicing awareness and gratitude are often intertwined, and the better you are at one, the better you can be at the other. But how can we use the FISH! Philosophy to practice both these skills and improve our lives at work and at home?

With the world more interconnected than ever before and businesses more global than ever before, it’s no surprise that the amount of workplace collaboration we take on has grown significantly over the past several decades. And with this increase in collaboration and teamwork comes a refocus on organizational efficiency. In the past, organizations would look towards empowering the individual and determining what made each individual succeed or fail in their positions. But now, more and more workplaces are starting to get deeply analytical about how smaller teams function within an organization–after all, if these workers are all collaborating on a daily basis, then focusing on the team as a unit is surely the most effective place to start increasing operational efficiencies.