Co-working Spaces For Introverts

Click through to read the original article on Businessweek.com

Co-working. It's super trendy, but can make some people want to put on their headphones and hide under their big, collaborative shared desks.

Susan Cain, author of Quiet and presenter of the famed TED talk "The Power of Introverts," has partnered with Steelcase to create Quiet Spaces, a new line of co-working office spaces expressly designed to empower introverts to do their best work. 

As an introvert who works 9-5 in a shared, collaborative office space, I can't help but love this idea. The small, private spaces allow for a brief escape from the sometimes overwhelming environment of co-working, but the design still leaves the space feeling open. Check out the video to see more of the Quiet Spaces and to hear Susan Cain speak about the project:

Insights in Austin, TX

Here at Floricane, we're big fans of Insights® Discovery. It's one of several tools we use with clients, but it's my personal favorite. Aside from being more accurate than any other personality profile I have used, it is simple to understand, gives organizations and teams a common language, and is incredibly robust. Last week I spent four days in Austin, TX at the North American headquarters for Insights® and was able to see firsthand just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Now, for those of you who may not know; I am a pretty big nerd. I spent my plane ride to Austin perusing a 200+ page research document on the validity and reliability of Insights®.  So, I was admittedly geeking out when I got to learn about the equations that are used to create the Insights® charts and graphs. The staff got so tired of my questions that they put me in touch with their research team based in Scotland. And that was just on the first day.

As the week went on, we explored all of the possibilities of Insights®. There are dozens of workshops, hundreds of exercises, and thousands of conversations that you can engage in - all stemming from 24 simple word choices that comprise the Insights® Evaluator. Yet of all the interesting things I learned last week, none of them are top of mind for me when I think about my time in Austin. The first thing I think about are the relationships I formed. 

You see, at its core, Insights® is all about relationships. Sure, self-awareness is fun and thought provoking, but using that self-awareness to build and enhance meaningful, effective relationships is where true value is created. This point was really made clear to me as I made an intentional effort to adapt my default style to better connect with others I met. It was challenging and exhausting at times, but the resulting relationships I formed are well worth it. 

Make It Harder

We held our first Insights Discovery® Leadership Effectiveness workshop this week, and – feeling a bit brave – Theran and I asked the 28 participants for their feedback – in the moment.

We asked them to work in small groups to identify something about the day they felt was particularly effective or impactful, and something that was missing or could be improved.

In a more gentle fashion than we anticipated they gave us the feedback – with both barrels.

Debriefing with the Floricane team later in the evening, it struck us that the group was simply giving us the permission so many of our clients offer.

• Make it harder.
• Make it more authentic, real and concrete.
• Share stories.
• Make it harder, more authentic, real and concrete.

No, I’m not repeating myself.

All told, the workshop participants had a great time – they walked away with new perspectives, new skills and new relationships. The energy was strong all day, and individual light bulbs went off all day.

But it wasn’t enough. These folks invested time and money to go deeper, play harder, discover more.

It’s easy to forget sometimes that our clients don’t call us because they’re bored and looking for a little something to do on the organizational change front. They’re serious – either because they are struggling, or they see real opportunity that needs to be seized. It’s our job to work hard, and to challenge them appropriately.

Making it easy defeats the purpose, because change usually isn’t. Easy, I mean.

“Let’s Circle Back On This”: Thoughts on Corporate Jargon

Last weekend, my best friend and I went downtown to watch the Coalition Theater’s 2014 Battledecks competition. Ten Richmonders competed to improvise the best (read: funniest) Corporate-style PowerPoint presentation based on a deck of ridiculous slides they had never seen before. As you can imagine, the results were beyond hilarious. It seemed everyone in the audience found humor in the presentations, because we all recognize that over-used, stereotypical language of business jargon.

I like to think that Floricane is a little more raw and down-to-earth than your typical O.D. consultancy, but even we can fall into the habit of corporate-speak. When I first started here in 2012, I felt like I had to learn a whole new language. Around the office, in emails, and at client meetings, I was surrounded by words and phrases I had no context for: “core competencies,” “best practices,” “hijacked,” and “out of pocket.” [Confession: For a little while, I thought John had made up “out of pocket” to mean that he wasn’t going to have his phone in his pocket for the rest of the afternoon. That makes sense, right?].

After a few months, without really realizing it, I started to speak this language fluently, surprising myself by saying things like “Can I leverage your talents for a minute?” and “Let’s take this offline.” My excuse? It’s easy to adopt the insider-language when you’re one of the insiders, and it can be useful to have common company-wide vocabulary-- but there are downsides, too, like alienating the "outsiders," and causing confusion with fluffy, unclear language.

A lot of jokes are made about corporate jargon. It’s obvious from the comedy of Battledecks, Dilbert, and Office Space that these words can come across as vague, ridiculous and eye-roll-worthy, so why don’t more companies make an effort to side-step it altogether? It's simple: Changing your company's language means changing your company's culture, and culture change isn’t easy.

I’m no consultant, but I can tell you this much: Easing up on the corporate-speak and humanizing the way we communicate will bring more clarity to the workplace, and clarity is a good and empowering thing for everyone.

Playground Perspective: June 2014

The rare times Thea and her cousins are together, uninhibited and free from distractions, are filled with laughter and energy. Over Memorial Day weekend, the cousins flew kites, splashed in the Chesapeake Bay, built sand castles and landed their weight in fish from their great-grandfather's pier.

Nikole's family place in Deltaville has always been an important summer destination for our family, especially when were have an opportunity to share it with her brother's family, along with her father, and her grandfather and his wife, who live there year-round. We realized this last visit that we were at a magical moment -- looking up from lunch one afternoon, we adults realized that all three children were out playing on the beach and none of us were freaking out.

At home in the city, we find it challenging sometimes to allow our children the freedom to explore, to carve out their paths, to create their own adventures. "The Overprotected Kid," a recent story in The Atlantic talked about a childhood stripped of independence and risk. It sounded terrible! And it made me think about Thea, and my parenting, and the opportunities to give her more freedom as she slowly slides into her own childhood.

The story didn't just talk about a childhood without risk, though. It highlighted an amazing alternative in the United Kingdom called "adventure playgrounds". The Land is one such playground in Wales:
 

The Land is a playground that takes up nearly an acre at the far end of a quiet housing development in North Wales. It's only two years old but has no marks of newness and could just as well have been here for decades. The ground is muddy in spots and, at one end, slopes down steeply to a creek where a big, faded plastic boat that most people would have thrown away is wedged into the bank. The center of the playground is dominated by a high pile of tires that is growing ever smaller as a redheaded girl and her friend roll them down the hill and into the creek. "Why are you rolling tires into the water?" my son asks. "Because we are," the girl replies.
 

In Deltaville, the kids have a thousand feet of beach, a long private road of sand and oyster shells, and a long pier that stretches toward the Chesapeake Bay. This summer, they will roast marshmallows, catch and clean fish, learn to pick crabs, collect shells and colored sea glass and explore -- together outside, and alone in the pages of books curled on a bed, or swinging in the hammock.

They will run into the house for lunch, or a popsicle or to share a new treasure, before slipping just as quickly back into the sun, and the water. And the adults will smile at their joy, and their new sense of liberation, and we will all feel a little older, maybe sadder, but quietly thankful that we can give these young sparks a place to adventure.

For us adults, there will be sunsets on the pier, and sunrises on the beach, and over-warm and sandy children curled asleep in our beds late at night. We will watch them live into themselves more fully in this place with no constraints, and borrow their energy, innocence and laughter along the way. This is how we move through life.

The First Five Weeks

This is me, manning the Floricane table at The Greater Richmond Chamber's Schmooza Palooza event.

My first day at Floricane I was nervous. I was anxious. I was scared. I had not started a new job in over four years. It was like the first day of school. You remember the feeling -- Will they like me? Am I wearing the right clothes? Will anyone speak to me at all? 

I walked in the door past the security guards, escorted by Floricane’s marketing coordinator Caroline Moyer, and made my way back to the collaborative business spaces of 1E, located in the Richmond Times-Dispatch building.

When I arrived I felt more than welcome with signs and (even better) doughnuts dedicated to my arrival. I was shown to my desk and I had a seat, taking it all in.

Floricane hired me as their new administrative coordinator in early April. In this role, I am responsible for daily office life and consultant support. I clean, I copy and I type. Although those may be my general job tasks there is also an intuitive aspect to my job. I am here to anticipate needs, offer support and to deliver whatever may be necessary to the day or task.

First up was orientation. I met everyone on the Floricane Team and business partners that share the 1E space. I had a walking tour of the Times-Dispatch. I was more than eager. Since I was young I always loved reading, which eventually turned into a passion for writing. I worked on school newspapers from junior high into college. I was very close to becoming a journalism major but instead I took the creative writing route.

After the tour I was given a tutorial of all that was expected from me and an agenda for the next couple of weeks. We started the following day with what would be our weekly team meeting. The first few days I would sit in as an observer. I wanted to familiarize myself with the way of conversation, the clients and the work that Floricane offered its clients.

I would soon learn that Floricane was not only a team of coaches and consultants but that they are also actively engaged in the local community. Community is something that is very important to me. I have always said or thought that if I had unlimited wealth I would volunteer my time all the time and, slightly unrelated, start a magazine.

The first event I would attend on Floricane’s behalf would be the HYPE 804UM put on by the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce. The HYPE (Helping Young Professionals Engage) event was held at the Science Museum and consisted or speakers engaging in topics about arts culture and community. I had the opportunity to meet other like-minded young professionals who were also concerned with how to make an impact on their local community and economy. 

The next event I attended was Schmooza Palooza, an annual event organized by the Greater Richmond Chamber. This was an outside event where companies set up tables under tents in Innsbrook and interested parties could peruse and talk with representatives from those companies. Caroline and I were there to market Floricane and inform others of what we do in the field and office. I had a lot of fun walking around, enjoying the catered food and drinks -- and even took a ride on a carnival-style swing ride.

The Schmooza event cemented my feelings about Floricane. I was now a proud member of a close network of people that wanted to see Richmond improve one organization at a time. I was part of a team that wanted to take what Richmond had offered them and to turn that around and offer something back to the community in the means of leadership consultation, coaching and strategic facilitation. 

Since then I have focused on getting to know the team more personally as well as having the opportunity to find out more about myself. Through our Insights Discovery workshop I have learned more about my personal preferences and behaviors, both positive and negative. My continuing goal is to keep my eyes and ears open, and to learn all that Floricane has to teach me. I’ll take that experience and combine it with all that I have already acquired and make a small difference, impact in my city, Richmond, Virginia.

Be a Rainbow

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”

— Maya Angelou

Today we're remembering Maya Angelou, the inspirational American poet, author and civil rights activist. Let's try to take her advice and be a rainbow for others, today and every day.