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Paula Davis is the founder and CEO of the Stress & Resilience Institute. She is a globally recognized expert and adviser regarding burnout prevention at work and building resilient teams. Previously, she practiced law, and then during her postgraduate training for her psychology masters degree, she was selected to be part of the University of Pennsylvanias faculty teaching resilience skills to soldiers for the Armys Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness program. Whats the big idea? To increase well-being, motivation, engagement, resilience, or the many words that describe thriving teams, we must understand that leadership behaviors drive employee experience. Leaders can control the conditions that allow for sustainable high performance. We need to advance the conversation beyond individual remedies for burnout and address root causes of stress and disengagement. Below, Paula shares five key insights from her new book, Lead Well: 5 Mindsets to Engage, Retain, and Inspire Your Team. Listen to the audio versionread by Paula herselfin the Next Big Idea App. 1. Activate sticky recognition When people are keenly aware of their impact at work, it ignites a powerful psychological fuel. Sticky recognition is a way for leaders to show an individual or team their impact, as well as awaken something even deeper: a sense of mattering. Its a fundamental human need to know that we matter. Mattering emerges from a combination of achieving goals that are personally important and being noticed or recognized for that work. There are two tiny noticeable things (TNTs) that can activate sticky recognition. The first is saying a thank you, plus a little bit of extra added to it. That extra piece is the why. Instead of only saying thank you to someone, you can say to them, Thank you. The way you summarized those reports helped me see the key takeaways and I was able to have a much clearer conversation with the CEO because of it. That little extra piece sticks or resonates beyond the thank you. The second TNT that activates sticky recognition is calling out peoples strengths. For instance, I was leaving a restaurant with a friend when I noticed a different friend walking down the sidewalk. I hadnt seen her in a long time, so I ran up to her and gave her the biggest hug, saying, Sandra, its so great to see you. When I got in the car, the friend I had gone to dinner with said, I really like the way your face lights up when you see your friends. Being complimented on that kindness in me was very powerful. 2. Amplify A, B, C needs A stands for autonomy, B stands for belonging, and C stands for challenge. This trio forms the basis for several well-being models. There are several TNTs that can expand the A, B, C needs of your team. For autonomy, we oftentimes think solely about where people work and when people work, but I want you to think about how you can give people more decision-making authority. Can you allow them to be more creative? Can you allow them to take more control? Being able to expand autonomy is great. A TNT for autonomy is setting context for rules and goals. Give the rationale, the backstory that explains why a change is happening or why they are assigned a particular project. Or tell a little bit more about the story of a client the company is working with. This trio forms the basis for several wellbeing models. Belonging comes next. A sense of connection is important and needs to be fostered more intentionally in hybrid or remote work models. One of the TNTs that amplify connection is scheduling unstructured time with someone, just 10 or 15 minutes every couple of weeks, to ask whats on their mind. Or, a much more powerful question would be, What has your attention right now? Over time, this inquiry allows leaders to understand their team in a deeper way. People want to feel a sense of opportunity and growth from their workthey want the right challenge. If they dont see a clear path for that, they will not hesitate to leave the organization. A TNT for this is helping them seek mastery experiences. Help them understand or get to know different skills that they might want to consider developing to reach their goals. Then, suggest opportunities that allow them to pursue those skills. If someone says they want to get better at public speaking, maybe you can offer that they can lead a team meeting or present at a conference. 3. Build workload sustainability There are a lot of things within leaders control that can make workloads sustainable. It comes down to two things: establishing teaming practices and recovery practices. A TNT for teaming practices is conducting a meetings audit. Take a step back and look at how many meetings you take part in. How many meetings are people on your team involved with? Are all those meetings necessary? Is there another way that information can be communicated? Can meetings be shorter? Can you add an agenda so that there is structure and clarity? 4. Design systemic stress resilience Resilience is one of the most misunderstood words in our world of work. Basically, resilience is meant to help people develop their capacity to manage challenges, problems, failure, setbacks, and grow from those obstacles. Resilience lives at the individual level, team level, and organizational level. Resilient teams show four big capacities: Team efficacy. They have a lot of collective confidence in their ability to achieve goals and manage challenges. Clear roles and responsibilities. Clarity increases autonomy. Improvisation. If they encounter a challenge, theyre able to chat, pivot, and proceed with a new game plan. Psychological safety. This allows for cohesion, trust, and the ability to discuss failure when things dont go right. A TNT for expanding your teams resilience is to debrief together after micro-challenges. Dont wait for the big project to finish. Whenever your team encounters a minor stumble, use that as an opportunity to come together and talk. 5. Promote values, alignment, and meaning Values misalignment is one of the six drivers of burnout. Values need to be lived. People want to see their leaders walking the talk. Research shows that there are six ways that leaders can build a sense of values, alignment, and meaning at work: Communicate the works bigger impact. Recognize and nurture potential. Foster personal connections. Discuss values and purpose during hiring and onboarding. Model values-based behavior. Give employees autonomy. Youll notice that the A, B, C needs are part of this structure as wel. One TNT that you can use for yourself and encourage within teams is to revive a dormant connection. Who is someone you had a strong connection with in the past, but the relationship has been quiet for a while? Reach out to that person and revive that connection. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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When disasters happensuch as hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakesevery second counts. Emergency teams need to find people fast, send help and stay organized. In todays world, one of the fastest ways to get information is through social media. In recent years, researchers have explored how artificial intelligence can use social media to help during emergencies. These programs can scan millions of posts on sites such as X, Facebook, and Instagram. However, most existing systems look for simple patterns like keywords or images of damage. In my research as an AI scientist, Ive developed new models that go further. They can understand the meaning and context of postswhat researchers call semantics. This helps improve how accurately the system identifies people in need and classifies situational awareness information during emergencies. The results show that these tools can give rescue teams a clearer view of whats happening on the ground and where help is needed most. From posts to lifesaving insights People share billions of posts on social media every day. During disasters, they often share photos, videos, short messages and even their location. This creates a huge network of real-time information. But with so many posts, its hard for people to find whats important quickly. Thats where artificial intelligence helps. These systems, which use machine learning, can scan thousands of posts every second, find urgent messages, spot damage shown in pictures, and tell real information from rumors. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, people sent over 20 million tweets over six days. If AI tools had been used then, they could have helped find people in danger even faster. Training AIs Researchers begin by teaching AI programs to understand emergencies. In one study I conducted, I looked at thousands of social media posts from disasters. I sorted them into groups like people asking for help, damaged buildings and general comments. Then, I used these examples to train the program to sort new posts by itself. One big step forward was teaching the program to look at pictures and words together. For example, a photo of flooded streets and a message like were trapped are stronger signals than either one alone. Using both, the system became much better at showing where people needed help and how serious the damage was. Finding information is just the first step. The main goal is to help emergency teams act quickly and save lives. Im working with emergency response teams in the United States to add this technology to their systems. When a disaster hits, my program can show where help is needed by using social media posts. It can also classify this information by urgency, helping rescue teams use their resources where they are needed most. For example, during a flood, my system can quickly spot where people are asking for help and rank these areas by urgency. This helps rescue teams act faster and send aid where its needed most, even before official reports come in. Addressing the challenges Using social media to help during disasters sounds great, but its not always easy. Sometimes, people post things that arent true. Other times, the same message gets posted many times or doesnt clearly state where the problem is. This mix can make it hard for the system to know whats real. To fix this, Im working on ways to check a posts credibility. I look at who posted it, what words they used and whether other posts say the same thing. I also take privacy seriously. I only use posts that anyone can see and never show names or personal details. Instead, I look at the big picture to find patterns. The future of disaster intelligence As AI systems improve, they are likely to be even more helpful during disasters. New tools can understand messages more clearly and might even help us see where trouble is coming before it starts. As extreme weather worsens, authorities need fast ways to get good information. When used correctly, social media can show people where help is needed most. It can help save lives and get supplies to the right places faster. In the future, I believe this will become a regular part of emergency work around the world. My research is still growing, but one thing is clear: Disaster response is no longer just about people on the groundits also about AI systems in the cloud. Ademola Adesokan is a postdoctoral researcher in computer science at Missouri University of Science and Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Its no secret that warming temperatures, wildfires and flash floods are increasingly affecting lives across the United States. With the U.S. government now planning to ramp up fossil fuel use, the risks of these events are likely to become even more pronounced. That leaves a big question: Is the nation prepared to adapt to the consequences? For many years, federally funded scientists have been developing solutions to help reduce the harm climate change is causing in peoples lives and livelihoods. Yet, as with many other science programs, the White House is proposing to eliminate funding for climate adaptation science in the next federal budget, and reports suggest that the firing of federal climate adaptation scientists may be imminent. As researchers and directors of regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers, funded by the U.S. Geological Survey since 2011, we have seen firsthand the work these programs do to protect the nations natural resources and their successes in helping states and tribes build resilience to climate risks. Here are a few examples of the ways federally funded climate adaptation science conducted by university and federal researchers helps the nation weather the effects of climate change. Protecting communities against wildfire risk Wildfires have increasingly threatened communities and ecosystems across the U.S., exacerbated by worsening heat waves and drought. In the Southwest, researchers with the Climate Adaptation Science Centers are developing forecasting models to identify locations at greatest risk of wildfire at different times of year. Knowing where and when fire risks are highest allows communities to take steps to protect themselves, whether by carrying out controlled burns to remove dry vegetation, creating fire breaks to protect homes, managing invasive species that can leave forests more prone to devastating fires, or other measures. The solutions are created with forest and wildland managers to ensure projects are viable, effective and tailored to each area. The research is then integrated into best practices for managing wildfires. The researchers also help city planners find the most effective methods to reduce fire risks in wildlands near homes. In Hawaii and the other Pacific islands, adaptation researchers have similarly worked to identify how drought, invasive species and land-use changes contribute to fire risk there. They use these results to create maps of high-risk fire zones to help communities take steps to reduce dry and dead undergrowth that could fuel fires and also plan for recovery after fires. Protecting shorelines and fisheries In the Northeast, salt marshes line large parts of the coast, providing natural buffers against storms by damping powerful ocean waves that would otherwise erode the shoreline. Their shallow, grassy waters also serve as important breeding grounds for valuable fish. However, these marshes are at risk of drowning as sea level rises faster than the sediment can build up. As greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and from other human activities accumulate in the atmosphere, they trap extra heat near Earths surface and in the oceans, raising temperatures. The rising temperatures melt glaciers and also cause thermal expansion of the oceans. Together, those processes are raising global sea level by about 1.3 inches per decade. Adaptation researchers with the Climate Adaptation Science Centers have been developing local flood projections for the regions unique oceanographic and geophysical conditions to help protect them. Those projections are essential to help natural resource managers and municipalities plan effectively for the future. Researchers are also collaborating with local and regional organizations on salt marsh restoration, including assessing how sediment builds up each marsh and creating procedures for restoring and monitoring the marshes. Saving salmon in Alaska and the Northwest In the Northwest and Alaska, salmon are struggling as temperatures rise in the streams they return to for spawning each year. Warm water can make them sluggish, putting them at greater risk from predators. When temperatures get too high, they cant survive. Even in large rivers such as the Columbia, salmon are becoming heat stressed more often. Adaptation researchers in both regions have been evaluating the effectiveness of fish rescuestemporarily moving salmon into captivity as seasonal streams overheat or dry up due to drought. In Alaska, adaptation scientists have built broad partnerships with tribes, nonprofit organizations and government agencies to improve temperature measurements of remote streams, creating an early warning system for fisheries so managers can take steps to help salmon survive. Managing invasive species Rising temperatures can also expand the range of invasive species, which cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars each year in crop and forest losses and threaten native plants and animals. Researchers in the Northeast and Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Centers have been working to identify and prioritize the risks from invasive species that are expanding their ranges. That helps state managers eradicate these emerging threats before they become a problem. These regional invasive species networks have become the go-to source of climate-related scientific information or thousands of invasive species managers. The Northeast is a hot spot for invasive species, particularly for plants that can outcompete native wetland and grassland species and host pathogens that can harm native species. Without proactive assessments, invasive species management becomes more difficult. Once the damage has begun, managing invasive species becomes more expensive and less effective. Losing the nations ability to adapt wisely A key part of these projects is the strong working relationships built between scientists and the natural resource managers in state, community, tribal and government agencies who can put this knowledge into practice. With climate extremes likely to increase in the coming years, losing adaptation science will leave the United States even more vulnerable to future climate hazards. Bethany Bradley is a professor of biogeography and spatial ecology at UMass Amherst. Jia Hu is an associate professor of natural resources at the University of Arizona. Meade Krosby is a senior scientist for the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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