Jenna Rogers(00:00)
It's the assumption that everyone works how you work. Everyone works the same hours as you. Everyone has the same work ethic. Everyone has the same motivations. You're assuming their intent.

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Jessy Grossman

We are back after those long summer days, but very short camp hours. The Two Millennial podcast is officially back. If you forgot, I am your host, Jessy. And today we are kicking this fall off with the crucial of crucial topics. Topic that impacts every aspect of our personal and professional lives, communication. Because let's be real, "the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place". And no, I did not just make it up. That is quoted as George Bernard Shaw. In reality, this common pitfall in communication, you know, the one where we assume that simply saying the words means they've been received and understood and understood as intended, it's all too familiar for all of us. The reality is that communication involves much more than just sending words into a void and then magically being understood. When I first heard the word communication, I thought that just means talking. And since I like talking, I figured that meant I was a great communicator. And well, I was very, very, very wrong. Communication is just so much more than just talking. It's this complex process with multiple components. So what exactly is communication if it's not just me talking? In reality, it's the process of exchanging information, ideas, thoughts, or feelings between individuals or groups through various methods such as speaking, writing, gestures, or other forms of expression. And this process includes several key components I wanted to call attention to.

 

1. And the first is sending the message. So this was the only stage I got right about communication. And that is where the communicator crafts and shares their message. Although I would say I was not doing much crafting. It was more of just blurring out from my brain. This form of communication can be through spoken word, but it can also be written text. It can just be your body language and even nonverbal cues.

2. The second part of the communication process is receiving the message. The recipient of the message needs to actively listen or read the message, interpreting the information based on their own experiences, biases, and understanding. listening is a part of communication. You know, seems so simple now that I understand it, but at the time I thought of it as a separate thing.

3. The third one is a bit interesting. It's feedback and effective communication requires feedback from the receiver to confirm that the message has been understood correctly. This feedback loop helps clarify any misunderstandings and ensures both parties are on the same page. There's nothing more frustrating to me is when I make a statement, I'm like, I'm gonna go pick up the children from school and I get just a nothing. Because then I don't know if they heard me and I might say it again and say it again. So for me, repeating it back is an effective way to assure that I heard it. And last is understanding. So beyond just receiving the message, the receiver needs to fully grasp the meaning behind it. So this involves not only decoding the words, but also understanding the context and emotions behind them.

Mastering the art of communication can significantly enhance the impact of leadership. And so today I've brought on the perfect guest who will do just that. Today on Two Millennial, we are joined by Jenna Rogers. Jenna is the founder and CEO of Career Civility, a Chicago-based communication consulting firm. She helps her community and her clients communicate more effectively in the workplace, while also creating conversations around toxic corporate culture and specializing in communication training. It is Jenna's mission to make the workplace better for the women who will come after her. So let's jump into the interview.

 

Jessy Grossman

We have our communications expert on the show, Jenna Rogers. Hi, great to be here. So I have to say, Jenna has like the most awesome, which is I guess awesome is the most millennial wherever, is that true?

I was a Gen Z or how would I say awesome?

 

Jenna Rogers

I see that's the thing. I am not speaking other lingo outside of millennial. So I'm okay with the millennial lingo. I'm a millennial myself.

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Jessy Grossman

Okay. Okay. So we can stick with awesome. All right. She's an awesome Instagram page, all about how you write emails. And I'm pretty sure every time I see something, I'm like, I wrote an email incorrectly yesterday.

 

Jenna Rogers

Well, no, that I'm never judging you because and it's funny because people are like,

sometimes the trolls will get into the comments and they'll be like, who cares, do less. And I'm like, listen, 60 % of the time, I'm probably doing what I'm saying not to do. But when I'm really trying to write an intentional email, or I'm trying to like build a good relationship with someone, that's when I'll tap into the like, here's how to write effective emails. And I will say some things do become second nature opening, like the opening line of the email and how I close my emails are pretty second nature these days, but otherwise, sometimes not taking my own advice when I'm in autopilot. I love to say I'm following up which apparently is like not effective. The worst. It's the worst. Why? Why is it the worst? I love saying I'm following up. I know because that's what everyone says. So everyone is just following up and like what are you following up on? Like everyone's chasing me for something. Like I've got to order school supplies for my you know

kids school, got to order uniforms, have to  shop, have to do all this stuff. So kindly, I don't care that you're just following up on that you sent before because I have so much on my to do list. But if you just get right to it, like, hey, I need you to place the order for X, Y, and Z, you're like, okay, thank you, as opposed to just following up.

 

Jessy Grossman

So how do I say thank you in like a nice way? Just thank you? I want to I wrote an email earlier today. And it was like, I want to I'm going to get it out. Just you can tell me how to do it better.

I want to extend my sincere thanks.

 

Jenna Rogers

that's nice. Okay, I would actually know I don't think it's too wordy. But the only thing I would do is take out I want to just extending my sincere thanks. Okay. Yeah, that's another thing. So like just following up, take it out. Wanted to check in or like just following up and checking in take out of your emails. Anytime you say I wanted to or just take it out.

Because I would say 90 % of the time, if you remove I wanted to, you could still say the sentence and it would be more effective.

 

Jessy Grossman

But my question is why do we care about emails anymore? Isn't email dead?

 

Jenna Rogers

I wish. I actually envision a workplace where my daughter grows up and she does not use email. I don't think that's going to be the case. I think that email is seen as this old version of communicating. It's like the facts these days, but people don't fax anymore. No one has fax machines and everyone emails. Like 73 % of business is done via email. And I think that probably has increased in our like hybrid remote first world. So email is incredibly important to be able to improve your business communication. That's one thing that I always talk about. You we learned through osmosis.

and that's average at best. We're never actually taught how to write emails. Granted, I haven't been in school in a while, but I vividly remember how to write a, know, essay outline and how to write a paragraph, but no one teaches you how to write an email. And I think that's a huge gap when entering the workforce. like emails take me probably four times as long as I would like. Like, why, why is it so just

hard to read an email. I think that's the other, you bring up a great point. We've never been taught how to write emails. So you're either writing in shorthand, which diminishes your professional credibility and it leaves room for a lot of misunderstandings and a lot of tone that could be misread. Or you're spending way too much time on emails because you're trying to figure out how do I communicate this.

correctly, you lose a lot in translation when you're on the phone versus email. So that's where we have to shift our learning from how to communicate effectively via email. I come from a sales background and so like you're practicing cold calling all the time. Like you have scripts, cranking out 200 calls a day.

But you're not doing that via email. You're not practicing how to write emails. You don't really have scripts or templates for how to write emails. And that's where my work comes in. It's like, let's just give you a script or a template. You'll likely deviate from it, but it helps you build that muscle and that repetition so that way you can write emails quicker. like love all your resources because they're like, they're so practical. Yes. I'm like, I'm like the opposite of you which is like, I'm just like way too abstract and conceptual and I'm like, first we have to have the mindset. Yours is like, really gets into it. Well, it's, and that's something I learned through school, to be honest. Like I studied communication undergrad. did a certificate in civil communication. did my thesis in civil communication in the workplace. And then I went back and got my master's in communication and it was very theoretical. So I was sitting there and I was like, but.

Where's like the meat and potatoes? Like give me something that I can actually use because while I know that this is helping inform my perspective, the theoretical did not translate into the practical. And so that's where I wanted to bridge the gap with the templates, the scripts. And what I say is like, you can read it right now and then you can take it and implement it into your email or your workday immediately. So that is very intentional.

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Jessy Grossman

I forgot to ask you about your background and how you got here. So you're just able, you know, to massage your right. Yeah. Thank you for doing that.

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Jenna Rogers

You're welcome. Yeah. So people have given me feedback that I need to like speak more about my credentials and my credibility because it is that's feedback I've gotten from clients when I've been in training sessions and when I've been doing webinars is that I need to do that more. So I'm practicing it. So thanks for noticing. So you're just not credible as you are.

Yeah, yeah. I downplay. You do that too. We both downplay. That's something we've got to work on.

 

Jessy Grossman

I mean, I'm not actually funny. So the only way I can get a laugh is by making fun of myself. That's very common, I feel. When you brought up one of those topics, it made me think of like research around when people of high power email people of low power. And usually there's not a lot of intentionality in their emails. And then if you're a lower power person,

You put a lot of thought into like, what does this email mean? Have you seen this research? Tell us more about it.

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Jenna Rogers

So I haven't seen exactly what you're referencing, but just in the line of work that I do, this is a very common conversation that I actually have with clients. And this is so interesting that you bring this up because I was just visiting a client and we were having a team discussion and it was really interesting. We were talking through a communication plan because while it seems very elementary to have a plan in place or templates and scripts when different things happen throughout the organization or throughout your day, it's also very helpful to create that shared understanding and that shared language because to your point, the person in power, the leader, of the team was like, if you ever run into any issues, like just shoot me off a text that says, can we talk?

What's your initial reaction to that? my gosh, I'm in trouble. Correct. So the rest of the team, you could feel it in the room. was like, and then the conversation evolved to the other side of the coin where then the team members were like, please don't ever send me that text. because then I'm worried about my job security. think, especially in this market in 2024, when people are just getting random calendar invites on their calendar with no context, you know, it's scary. And I've been through that situation before. So that's where it was a very enlightening conversation as to, okay, you can send that short, can we talk text to leadership? But leadership cannot send that text to their team or that email. And they cannot communicate that like that to their team. And I'll take this one step further because I do think that effective communication

Well, should say ineffective communication can hinder productivity and effective communication can improve productivity because if you were the leader and you were to send a can we talk text, that individual, and this is a conversation that we had, is then calling all the other coworkers and ruminating on that text, being like, what does that mean? What does that mean? What does that mean? And so how many hours of productivity are lost because a team member is ruminating over something that the leader didn't even think anything of. Versus if you had a shared language to speak with your team and you send a text, you know, okay, that's nothing like I'll get to them when we have our one-on-one next week, but I just know that I need to add that to the agenda. Very drastic or very different outcomes with a simple communication script or template that you could send. Do we understand why people in leadership positions like think that or aren't aware of the impact of their communication? Like what, what is this a symptom? I think they're just so busy. So busy. Yeah. And you know, I

Yeah, I think they're just so busy. They don't, the higher you go, the more meetings that you have on your calendar. And when you get a minute to respond to something, you have to make it as quick as possible. So I, there's not time to think about intentionality behind your texts or emails. I mean, should people be texting about work? It's a good question. I think that that's a communication norm that you have to establish within your team, but also what's the difference between text and Slack?

if you have the Slack app on your phone. I love Slack. I fully annoyed my manager because whenever anything popped into my brain, I could just like, send it over and they were the type of person that felt like they had to respond to everything in that moment. There are different norms and expectations that you should set with instant message, such as Slack in the workplace. I actually pulled,

my Instagram community, like, what are your pet peeves when it comes to Slack or instant message? And I would say the two that won out were when people just send a random, Hey, with like no context. clearly they were probably like looking to start a conversation, but people wanted them to say, Hey, comma. Yeah. Finish their thought. Or when they send rapid fire, like one after another, after another, they were like just.

put it into a paragraph, put it in the same Slack so it's not coming as like multiple rapid fire messages. Those are like the top two pet peeves. Okay. Yeah. I should bring my former manager on. She can tell you all about how not to use Slack with your leader. But that's something that it sounds trivial and elementary, but these are the conversations that you should probably have when you work on a team that uses Slack. know, here are the expectations, here are the norms.

that we abide by. So how do you have those conversations? I mean, I tend to use like communication matrix. What do you tend to use when you are having leaders kind of set some of these norms? And is it about taking, at least in my area, which is team effectiveness, right? It's about taking all the assumptions and all the things that we already do and then actually making it more explicit so that we get to decide whether or not, is that actually how we want to do it? Boom.

Follow very closely to what you do. You know, it's understanding what is actually going on. What would the ideal state be? And then it's probably somewhere in the middle. Cause I also find that a lot of times the expectation is very different than the reality of what's actually happening. So going back to that earlier sample of the, we talk texts? The leader was expecting.

the team to send those texts whenever there was an issue or they needed to be brought into the conversation, but that's not what the team was doing. So it was also understanding like, okay, that was the expectation, but the reality was very different than the expectation. So how do we bridge that gap? understanding current state, understanding ideal state, and then the way to move forward is probably somewhere in the middle.

So you think that leaders have an expectation of communication that they've never told anyone and they're frustrated by the lack of communication without presenting those guidelines? Exactly. And I think that that uncommunicated expectation is learned from some other job or some other leader that they worked with. And so that is innate to them, but it has not been distilled down to the rest of their team. So what is the barrier from leaders like

articulating expectations because this is something I see. I have a theory on this. But I want to know what your theory is, which is why leaders just like, they have all these expectations and assumptions in their brain and they forget to just let people know that these exist. Can I share my theory for your theory? Comment for comment.

I think that it's twofold. think that one, it's assumptive and two, it's lack of awareness. So when I say assumptive, again, it's the assumption that everyone works how you work. Everyone works the same hours as you. Everyone has the same work ethic. Everyone has the same motivations. You're assuming their intent. The lack of awareness is that you don't understand how other people communicate. You don't understand what motivates people.

one of the reasons that I always talk about different communication styles or different generations is to bring more awareness to other individuals realities. because a lot of times if I'm communicating as a millennial woman, I'm assuming that everyone else communicates like me. And that's just not the case. I may like type a Virgo. I have to be very self-aware as to how I communicate with people.

because I would be the one to send a can we talk text, but I have to make sure that I'm being very aware of who I'm talking to so that way I'm not freaking them out. yeah, assumptive and unaware. What's your theory? Okay, so I have a theory about why millennials don't set assumptions. So I think your theory is correct, but I think it's potentially an older generational thing. I think now millennials are more aware that there's different communications.

Yeah, I think that they are afraid to again have positional power or to to use positional power. Like they're like, I'm not, I'm not the boss. I'm the cool boss. Or yeah, a lot of them are a lot of them are also working with peers. A lot of my clients right now are like, well, I was on that team and I was promoted. And so I think they're afraid to express too much of their needs and wants. Yeah.

Do think in 10 years that'll still be the case though? You think they'll just get used to it and they're like, okay, now I'm in power, but I'll forget all the other reasons why. Is this just a natural flow? It's not really millennial, it's more of a new leader thing. Is that what you're asking? I think so, yeah, because I think that as you realize you're so out of touch with the younger generations, you don't care to be cool anymore. You're like, they're younger than me, I'll never hold a candle to what they're interested in anymore, so whatever.

Yeah. Okay. So it's more of a less of a millennial thing. guess maybe you could have asked our parents when they were 30, did they want to be, you know, I don't know. think positional power is more interesting to that generation than it is to our generation. Yeah. No, I'd be very interested to see what those power dynamics look like in like five to 10 years. No, I think that you're totally right. We, we see things the way we see them and we forget that's not how everybody sees it. Yep. Which is why- sorry, ahead.

No, go ahead. I was gonna say that's why leadership. No, you go ahead. you go. That's why you have to make those like pregnant pause on Zooms. But that's why I think leadership development and the trainings that you're doing are so necessary to help bring awareness to this. And it's not just like doing it once. You also have to repeat it. You know, you have to keep doing it. You have to keep doing it because you have to practice it and you have to implement it. It's so true.

I would say I had a huge blind spot when it came to communication and I didn't realize there were so many different parts to communication. I also, because communication comes so easily for some people to realize that you have so much to work on, it's exhausting. You know, going back to the beginning of the conversation where I was like, you know, 60 % of the time I'm probably reverting back to...

you know, the easy email responses that are, hope you're doing well. I actually never say I hope you're doing well, but you know, the like, thanks at the end of the email, just because it's easier, cause it's so tiresome to be aware of your communication style. And when you're in back to back meetings all day, and when you have personnel issues, you're like, am I really going to go into this meeting and try and understand their perspective and where they're coming from? Because the reality is they just made a mistake and we have to call that out.

And so I also think there's a time and place, right? was talking to a client and they were exhausted by being so intentional on how they communicated because they want to make sure everyone around them feels good and that they get the right framing and the right context and they say it in the right way. And I was like, I was thinking about this and it's someone who is neurodivergent as well. And I was like, this sounds exhausting. And I was like, but it's so, it's so caring. It's so giving that they want to make.

people feel cared about in their communication style, but I could see how much of an impact being so intentional had on them and how exhausting it was, like having to think everything through. Yes, I would recommend the 80-20 rule, like 80 % of the time be intentional and then the other 20 % of the time, you've already built enough trust.

and psychological safety with your team that when you do have those like moments of, can we talk? Can we run through this where it's short, it's snippy, maybe it's like end of the month or end of the quarter where it's really stressful or maybe it's back to school season. Your team knows like, hey, this isn't them. Like it's a day. So that way you've already established that really solid foundation and it allows you to not be intentional and not put that much effort into it. You know, that 20, 30 % of the time.

 

Jessy Grossman

So just so everyone's aware, we're 30 minutes into this interview and I wrote all these questions for Jenna and I've not asked a single one of them. As you're talking about this, starting to put together pieces of like lot of my clients who are neurodivergent. Yeah. The communication is actually weighing on them more. was like, that's an interesting theme. I'm just thinking of like, it's popping up into my head. It's anecdotal, so I don't have any information on this. I would have to say I need to study it more.

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Jenna Rogers

But just based on, to your point, the anecdotes or the experiences that I've experienced, neurodivergent individuals, especially in the workplace, have learned a survival or defense mechanism where they have to think so much more than the lay person. They have to...

observe the situation in a 360 degrees perspective. So that way they know how to present and operate through the world, especially in a professional setting. They can't express themselves how they usually would. And so it's harder because they do have so much more to think about and to navigate through than someone else would. That said, I have not done, I have not focused any studies on neurodivergent communication in the workplace. But that is something that I will be adding to my like future state of work that I can do because if you're training on effective communication in the workplace, you also have to train on inclusivity. And that is a huge aspect of inclusivity in the workplace. So while I think that my baseline communication training does adhere

to multiple personalities, multiple communication styles. There's also a way to have expertise in different areas.

 

Jessy Grossman

Well, if you think about it, written communication is left brain. Yes. Which is what I learned that I was really surprised because I always think of creative people as better writers.

actually like and this is my whole thing like my husband's very left brain and he writes the most fantastic like practical logical emails and it's like so much easier for him than it is for me because taking an idea and then putting it into words for me is so challenging because I'm so right brain. Yep. It's I have to it's like my inner I have to integration process and so it's good for me to put things in writing because it brings my ideas into a more succinct and like synthesized way but it is

very, it takes a lot out of me to do it. It's just a lot more work. And that's just something I've noticed about myself. And then if you put into, if you put it in the context of our remote hybrid workplace, where 73 % of business is done via email, that's a lot of left brain action. And again, that's why I try to provide these like templates and scripts. So that way you can take that and just like, it's a formula,

 

Jenna Rogers

boom, boom, boom, throw it in. So that way you're still adhering to your communication style, your ideas, but it's in a container that hopefully is easy for you to grab and go. I love that. Yeah. Jenna has great resources. like, give me, give me the scripts, give me the template. Okay. So we've made it this far without even knowing what communication is. And specifically, I'm curious to know what civil communication is. Like we haven't even defined communication. Yeah. We're going to, actually going to do this episode backwards. Just forever. We're going to start with the practical tips and then we're going to move into the abstract, you know, What this actually is. I'll frame it within the context of like communication in the workplace and it, you know, communication in the workplace, specifically civil communication in the workplace is being able to create a shared understanding with the individuals that you're working with in a productive way. Okay. Shared understanding.

with individuals in a productive way. Like why do we call that civil communication? Like what is different about civil communication than just communication? Yeah. So this is where if you go online or go to any forum, there's going to be discourse around the word civility, especially in the political environment. And what is very interesting about my studies, my background,

And how I came to do the work at Career Civility is that it did start out in a political- Career Civility is the company that she owns. going backwards on this interview. we're to start talking about Career Civility last. So I founded Career Civility actually through civil dialogue. And it was under the notion of civility in public.

spaces. So for example, civil dialogue is a very specific format to have structured conversations and dialogue with people who share different viewpoints as you. So it is a specific format where it has five chairs, five participants. establish a provocative statement. So you could say something provocative such as, do we get political on this podcast? Yeah. Okay. Like Kamala Harris doesn't deserve to be president because she's a woman.

So you state a very provocative statement. You then have, you open it up to the audience to participate in this dialogue and you have a strongly agree, neutral, strong or disagree and strongly disagree chair. You have a facilitator and then you also have the audience. You allow people to get up and sit in their chairs and then the facilitator will then facilitate the conversation between the different viewpoints. There is audience participation that is allowed.

And then the facilitator will wrap it up with closing statements. Every person can give a closing statement and then everyone gets the opportunity to stand up and potentially change chairs based on the dialogue that was just had. So the entire idea of civil communication and civil dialogue is to be able to navigate through murky topics, charged topics, conversations with structure, facilitation, open viewpoints.

And then an opportunity for us to potentially explore other perspectives. So, and then also personally why I was so drawn to civil communication was because of my upbringing and I grew up in such a like divided household. Like I always say this on a lot of podcasts or talks that I do. My dad was black, my mom was white, my dad a Democrat, my mom a Republican. And so I think I just.

through osmosis was able to understand different viewpoints and see how people were able to communicate so effectively. And then when I got into the workforce, I realized that people can't have these type of conversations when dollar signs are associated with them. And so that's why I wanted to bring the idea of civil communication, being able to have these heated, you know, these heated conversations with these charged topics in a professional environment. I love that. And then somehow the market really told me that email is the way to do that. So I've been listening to the market, listening to the audience, and that's where the email component has come into play. What was the dialogue like at your table? Did you learn productive dialogue or non-productive dialogue? So I think it's all relative. Because in 2024, the conversations that we were having in the 90s are very different, right? I said in 20 during the 2020 presidential election, like I posted on my Instagram, my career stability Instagram, like I will be friends with you no matter who you vote for. And I lost so many followers. And maybe that was the case in 19, you know, in the 90s, or the early 2000s. But I didn't feel that in my household because we had grown up in a You know, we experienced a divided household. So that was wild to me. yeah. So again, this is me being not aware of how other people think and operate in society because I was like, I thought that like, I didn't think politics were actually a driving force of building relationships with people. And I will say, I'll kind of walk back my statement about that wasn't experienced back then because my grandparents, so if, you know, I mom, Republican, dad, a Democrat. I remember my great grandmother being like, I will take you out of the well if you are not a Republican. And my grandparents on my dad's side were always taking me to political rallies and stuff. So I do think that there was, I don't think it was as polarized. Again, it's relative. So I was not this age back then having these conversations. So maybe it was. But then seeing my parents who are like the boomer Gen X,

They were the antidote to that. I think I was just very fortunate to grow up in that. And now I've seen it go the other way, right? Now our generation is feeling very polarized. So there was the middle ground and I think that civil communication could be the antidote to that polarization. love that. So if we were gonna at work, put everyone into some chairs, you know, what would be the, what would be like the question? So I did like, I.

I did this for the first time in like 20, maybe 2019, 2018. and we were in a room. I was not the manager. was just on the team and we were not doing well. The manager pulled us into a room being like, let's get it together. What's going on? Like we cannot continue to operate like this. And sitting in that room, I just noticed that we were not on the same page and.

I asked to your point about this provocative statement, I asked the team, how do you define a team in the workplace? Is it that we're all working towards one goal or is it that we're all working towards our own individual goals with the support of one another? And the room was split 50-50. And my manager was like, whoa, like I was not under the pretense that we were not working towards the same goal together.

She was like, I thought we were all working towards the same goal together. Very eyeopening that some people do not think like that. so that was the first time I ever did it, like in the workplace and I wasn't even like a facilitator, but if I were to come in now through the trainings and the consulting that I do, it would take me some time to like understand.

the dynamics again to understand like the expectation and then what's actually happening. And then I would create a provocative statement to be able to ask the team. It wouldn't be anything that would expose people or create outliers, but it would be under the pretense of like, we're not clicking right now. There's something missing. So let's figure out what that is.

 

Jessy Grossman

You could probably ask that provocative statement to most teams. So I am a team effectiveness consultant. This is one of the issues we have it with is because the word team, like everything's a team. It me up the wall. It bothers me because it's like, we're a team. And I'm like, no, we're not a team. Like I don't, there's no, I don't have any interdependence with any of these people. Yeah. Fascinating. problem is because leaders look down, they look down and they're like, I need all of you to achieve my goals. Correct. Therefore you are all a team. And I'm like, that's not how it worked because I have, it needs to be my most proximate goal. Yeah. My most proximate goal, my closest goal. So sure, you need to sell, you see how all the puzzle pieces fit together. But guess what? I don't, I don't see any of people on my team. Yep.

 

Jenna Rogers

Which is why you have to do the shared mission statement. You have to uncover their why and you have to do their shared goals. And I'll take it even one step further. And you also have to recognize that when working with third parties or clients or when you're working with someone who's not in your organization, because I will say, if you're working on a team in an organization, you at least have one shared goal. You're all working for the same company, right? But when you're working with a vendor or you're working for a client, you then have to understand what motivates them and their goal to be able to work effectively with them. Because without that, you're barking orders at them, just following up. They're like, I don't care. I have so much else to accomplish right now. I don't care that you're just following up with me to get the tax form or to get the payment or to get the analytics that you need to run your report. Like I don't care about your report. What I care about is XYZ. So you need to be able to communicate with them. Same thing, leader to team. That team also needs to be able to communicate with the client underneath that or with that shared goal.

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Jessy Grossman

A pillar of my team conceptual model that I use with is open communication. Which comes first? The chicken and the egg, does psychological safety come before open communication or does open communication come first? I think psychological safety because I've worked, and the only reason I say this is because I've worked for people who would say that they value open communication and then the minute that they're challenged, it is shut down so quick and then you don't have, like that dissolves or completely eradicates psychological safety. Am I using the wrong word when it comes to open communication? Cause I'm thinking like you can't, you can have open communication without psychological safety, but you cannot have psychological safety without open communication. Because in order to, psychological safety is like an end state, right? It's like, it's built through.

being vulnerable by asking questions, how you respond to being challenged, right?

 

Jenna Rogers

No, I don't think you're using the wrong word, but I would challenge you and say like, some people think of open communication very differently. And I think if you put it into a professional context, I don't think you can ever have open communication in a professional context. interesting. So you're saying it's like a false? Yeah. Cause you're all, if you have dollars and this is where it gets tricky. If you have dollars aligned to it, like if you're getting a paycheck at the end of the day, you're always going to be playing that corporate game. And if you're not, and if you do have open communication, you are penalized for it. What, are you penalized? I'm so curious. Gosh, yeah. So this, obviously are someone that people would want to work for because you encourage open communication. You understand psychological safety. There are a lot of leaders and managers out there that do not. And if you have open communication with them, a lot of times that is seen as unprofessional. It can be seen as challenging. Like you are challenging my authority.

it can be seen as immature. can be seen as unproductive. You know, if someone's telling you about their weekend and their life worries and everything that to them is open communication, but to that manager, that's unproductive talk. How is this related to what we're getting done today? versus you as a manager could see that as like, they're trust me enough to tell me this. And now I can be aware that they have some really serious stuff going on at home. So maybe their work isn't going to be as productive, but some people might not understand that. And if that individual is being open, is having open communication with that manager that could potentially use against them. You know, like, well, they're not being as productive at work. So that's a tally against them.

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Jessy Grossman

reminds me a lot of me being the person that creates a lot of psychological safety. You constantly are putting your net neck out there to do that because you are challenging status quo. You're saying things that are vulnerable. That's me in a nutshell. You're leading by example. I laugh that I'm just the person that runs into oncoming traffic just constantly. I'm like, you need someone to run into oncoming traffic, that is me. I will do it for you. I will get run over by the car, lay the lines of psychological safety for everyone. Being the person that I think acts on it, you don't always get shed on in a great light. yeah. Like, it might help be helpful to the dynamic, but it's not helpful to you and your reputation. And it's really hard. You're bringing up lots of feelings, lots of thoughts here. What do I do with my teams and my leaders when I'm trying to promote psychological safety and trying to promote communication, but at the same time, also knowing that that could be used against them.

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Jenna Rogers

think that's what's so exciting about the work I'm doing is that it can continue to evolve and that if I'm able to get this information into the right hands, such as these self-aware leaders, but then also these Gen Z and millennials who are entering into the corporate workforce for the first time, or they are, you know, climbing the ladder and they don't have these norms that are established and they're afraid that they're going to step on these landmines wherever they go. that's where this work is going to be important. So that way they have these templates and scripts to rely on. So that way they have this direction to be able to build psychological safety. And again, a lot of this, that is a theoretical and a lot of times you just have to do it and understand like, did I just put my foot in my mouth? Okay, let me learn from that. Did this audience not receive it well? And I can do this with this audience, but not this audience. That's what's fun and challenging about communication is there's no silver bullet. It really depends on the day you're having, the people that you're talking to, the mindset that you're in, the resources that you have. It's one thing to go to those offsides and those leadership building activities, but it's another thing to like take it through the rest of your work day and the rest of your week and actually implement it.

 

Jessy Grossman

How has your communication strategies been influenced by yourself as a mother? my gosh. I've been humbled. You're like this works with leaders, but not with my two year.

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Jenna Rogers

Honestly, leaders and toddlers, one in the same. my gosh. Repetition, give them choice. Explain what you're doing. That is, if there is one thing you take away from this episode, two things. Don't say, hope you're doing well. Don't say following up, wanted to check in, in your emails. But then the other thing, if you want to get something done, communicate why you're doing it.

The goal of this email is to the reason I'm reaching out, the goal of us working together, the reason that I'm asking for this. Same thing with the toddler, you know, hey, we have to put in order to go to soccer, we have to put your socks on, then we have to put your shoes on and by the way, you know, like you have to over explain everything. And I didn't realize that toddlers and people I work with in a professional capacity need the same guidance and communication. Well, I like, I love listening to Dr. Becky.

And then I use her communication strategies and I like adapt. Obviously like adults aren't children. I want to make that very clear. mean, yeah, well, we all have children inside of us. Some people get very like, it's condescending thing when I'm like, I speak to my leaders, like I speak to my children. Like, get it. Yeah, but that's something in them that they have to work through because like if they're getting offended by that, like give me a break.

I think I'm more mindful with that's where, again, it goes back to the intentionality in the workplace. I am so intentional with how I talk to my kids. It's nauseating, but like if you can focus on what you can control, same thing in the workplace. Like if you focus on, and this kind of answers your question, like how do you manage up or communicate up? If you can control how you're communicating and focus on how you, like being intentional with how you communicate, you can't control how they're going to react to that.

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You can't control how other people are going to communicate. But as long as like you're focusing on what you can control and being intentional with how you can control same thing, whether you're talking to a toddler or talking to, you know, your boss, you can't control how they're going to react. do believe that like there's no better teacher of how important communication is than your kids. I know. List three words that would describe the state of mind of the leaders you're currently working with. I work with a very different profiles of leaders. So I would say state of mind, fast paced, receptive. And yeah, I would say those two. don't have three. Fast Face and Reset. I love it. Yeah. Yeah.

 

What's your favorite millennial quality about yourself?

so basic. feel like millennials are so basic and I'm so basic and I ride it. I don't care. Yeah, I'm basic. I'll drink iced coffee. will like, listen, I'll be repeating the latest trends on TikTok. Like, I like all the mainstream TV shows, movies. I'm so run of the mill basic millennial and I am 100 % okay with it. love that. It's yeah, just made my day.

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That like fully made my day. Like usually I ask that question people are like, I believe I can do anything. no, I'm just like, no, I'm basic. So basic. So basic. If you could change people's mind on one thing, what would it be? If I could change people's minds on one thing, it would be that you can be friends with someone that votes differently than you. yikes. The trolls are going to come at me in those comments.

We want all uncomfortable answers on this podcast. It's not your friends that are the problem. It's the political institutions that are the problem. So it is true. We have to remember like these are systems at play. Yeah. I'm not going to villanize. Is that the word I'm looking for? Villanize my friends voting for a very complicated political system. there's, yeah, I will not lose friends over it. Sorry. I won't. But you, you don't have to, but if I could change your mind, maybe that's what I would do. Buckle up. Buckle up. I'm ready for it. I, I, I have another question, but you answered it. I don't know what it is. Leave it on that. What's the question? Well, you already answered this question like four times. It's just what's one actual piece of advice. where you're like, you know, don't need to check in. Like I use in the subject, checking in. Like what should my subject be? Subject line I don't mind checking in. It's the first line of the email just wanted to check in. But as long as you put what you're checking in, so like checking in RE invoice and then in that email, don't repeat yourself and say, I'm just checking in on, say, do you have an update for me on ABC?

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Jessy Grosssman

So do you think it's the niceties we have to get rid of? Like we just got to get to the point. Like people just want you to get to the point, but not so direct.

 

Jenna Rogers

Like a lot of people are like, just get to the point. And I do think that there is a time and place for that. So I, how I structure it is like get to the point and then build a relationship. Okay. interesting. Here's what I want. And then like lower down. So do you have an update on the outstanding invoice? I know that we're coming off a three day weekend. I'm sure you're swamped via emails.

you know, hope this didn't add another stressor to your plate. I just came up with that. Maybe don't say hope you get to the point and then build the relationship because that's also what they're going to leave with. if you need something from them, always include a call to the act call to action in the bottom of the email. If all of this sounds very confusing to you, have resources for you. I have an online course that you can take. have templates. You can follow me on Instagram for free. and this will start to make sense. Yeah. Okay. So

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Jessy Grossman

Jenna's got a lot of cool stuff going on this fall. What's coming out?

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Jenna Rogers

I'm doing free webinars in September, October. Those are the two planned. We'll see how November, December go. My goal is to not overwhelm you with more work on your plate, more meetings on your calendar, more to-do is on your to-do list. So I will always meet you where you're at, but I will be doing free webinars in September, October. I'm relaunching my signature course, Email Tip Academy, to help you communicate more effectively via email be in September. It will be officially relaunching on Tuesday, September 24th. And then from there, you can buy it on my website to help you be a more effective communicator. If you really just want to learn more about me, come to the webinars, follow me on Instagram, check out my website. wish I had another three hours with you. Well, thank you for coming on. And I can't wait to have you on again. Yeah, we're sure going to do it again. Let's do it. All right. Bye, Jenna.

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Jessy Grossman

I want to thank you listeners so much for jumping back into the podcast with me this week. And before we wrap up, I wanted to take a few minutes to provide some additional context on two important concepts we discussed today, but we couldn't find the language for. So of course I went back and dug up what those concepts actually were. The first one we talked about was this idea of this leadership amplification effect. So this concept is rooted in research on leadership, communication, and influence.was particularly explored by Adam Galinsky. And in his insightful Ted Talk, Galinsky actually discusses how even small actions and words from leaders can have a significant impact on their teams. As leaders, our communication is often amplified simply because of positional power, meaning that even minor comments can be interpreted in a much larger context by those who report to us. I know I've experienced this. Actually, when I was a trader, received a probably forward email from Brian Gelber, who was a past guest on this podcast. And I spent hours trying to decipher the meaning. And this experience just shows that even simple communication can carry a lot of weight. And I can assure you, he probably forgot that he sent that email. There's no way he has any recollection of probably half the emails he sends. So this amplification effect.

can be both inspiring, but also pretty exhausting when we're so deliberate and thoughtful and how we need to express ourselves all the time. So to manage this, I have a recommendation. The first, I recommend creating potentially some cheap communication codes with your teams. So work with your team to create simple phrases for everyday requests to minimize unnecessary complexity. if...

you want to get on a call with someone to talk something through, come up with a cheat code for that. The second thing we can do is to develop templates for more of our formal interactions where relationship building is key as Jenna shared in the podcast. And this approach can really help reduce that daily burden of the constant low stakes yet very influential communication, which makes it easier to align your values and intentions with your impact. Because I think some people think, well, this doesn't seem very authentic, right? If I'm creating templates, but there's nothing more authentic than wanting to make sure that your communication matches your values and your intention. The second concept I want to revisit is social projection. This is a cognitive bias that involves projecting our own thoughts, feelings, and attitudes onto others because we assume they share those beliefs, those same perspectives as we do. In this concept has been studied extensively in psychology and it plays a crucial role in how we interpret and interact with others in the workplace. For leaders, specifically social projection can be particularly challenging because when we fall into the trap, we might inaccurately assume that our team members share our goals, share our motivations, and share our concerns. And this can lead to miscommunication, misalignment, missed opportunities for understanding different

perspectives, but there is an anecdote to these challenges and that is the idea of perspective taking. Well, also empathy, but particularly we're going to talk about perspective taking. And perspective taking is the ability to step outside of our own viewpoint and consider how others might see and experience the world. So this is very cognitive, like brain focused activity, less of the emotional, which would be more empathy, which is the cognitive and the emotion.

But anyways, if you're wondering, okay, how do I get started perspective taking? I've actually created a couple of questions to help you engage in it. Number one, how might this situation look from a different point of view? You could even move yourself to the different part of the room in this situation. So you're not even just cognitively thinking how might the situation look from a different view. You're actually moving yourself and seeing that things look different based on where you're sitting. The second question you might ask yourself is how do I know that?

How do I know that? What assumptions might I be making about the other person's thoughts or feelings? And then the third question you might ask is how might my actions or words be interpreted differently by someone? By incorporating perspective taking into your leadership practice, you can mitigate the effects of cognitive biases like the leadership amplification effect and even social projection leading to more inclusive and effective leadership style and 

not having to deal with all those frustrating miscommunication points.

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So did we answer any of the questions that I No, but that's why we'll just have to do a part two to talk about like intergenerational communication, communication in a hybrid remote world. No, but part three too with Jessie puts her foot in her mouth. How many times? We'll workshop. We'll workshop. How do I not do that? And that's why I actually like being external because I think when you're external, you actually can't put your foot in your mouth as much as when you're internal.