communication is the key to culture

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auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

obviously first off give my shout outs to my team and individuals again who are kind of moving this thing forward. So first off shout out to Brandon R. Bay in Brandon 78. Brandon came down this weekend. We did some video work. Scott what's up man good morning looking forward to a great week. So Brandon R. Bay came down from Brandon 78 from Leicescate Kentucky this weekend. We did some video work. I shot about four or five hours of video on Saturday. Brandon wanted to interview me for everything around the job search because he is a small business and he wanted to talk about hiring managers and culture and leadership and trying to build an organization.

So shout out to Brandon R. Bay with all this video work. Drew Skeleton does a lot of my video editing. Alex Pooler design. He does all of my design work. Summer Living 10 out of call to Summer Living 10 on Friday. TaylorDessen.com is going to be lit. Very excited to roll that out. So a shout out summer. Summer has been back from Seattle to Nashville. So if you need a kind of a web person UX person just general marketing person. Please let me know. Also if you're watching this, watch us now or in the future. It's what I love about live stuff. It just kind of hangs out in the ether.

But if you are watching this down the road and are a hiring manager or need help hiring, I would love to work with you. It doesn't have to be in tech. Again, I specifically focus within the software development space. But if you're not in software and need help hiring, definitely I'd love to work with you. If you need like 10 admin assistant positions, shoot me a DM. I'll help you with that. If you hate your recruiters and you're like, Taylor, I can't bring on any more recruiters right now. But I'd love to talk to you about your processes and see how we can improve our internal processes.

I'd love to do that too. So shoot me DM. So I want to go and get started today about communication communication. As a most part, people are pretty terrible communication. And I want to talk to you specifically about communication within the workplace. And so the biggest issues that I see is people getting into the workplace and not realizing that they need to over communicate. And because I have an individual right now that is currently on project and that's not communicating, right? I need more communication. Right? If you are on project, especially if you're contracting with somebody, you need to upward communicate. Right? I think upward communication is an art.

First off, I'm not going to lie, not everyone's good at it. But I think the more you upward communicate, you over communicate about what's going on, how you're feeling, how things are going, any roadblocks you're happening that's going on. I think I think you improve your standing within your organization. I think, I think for me, I think the first thing that you need to do is you need to set expectations. Right? So I see so many individual starting jobs. Or before they even started job, they have these vacations set aside or they have this family time or whatever. I know vacations are kind of back burner right now.

Cannot wait till this COVID thing's done. But they have this time already taken off and then they don't they start the job and the managers don't know. Right? So that's the first issue. Like let your managers know when you're taking off, like from the get so they can plan around that. And again, real quick, if you have any questions or you have any comments about communication, if you have any suggestions, right? I mean, I think right now within Slack teams, Zoom, texting, I mean, in my opinion, there's zero, zero excuse for you not communicating what's going on. And within the within the workday, right, because I think expectations and this kind of isn't a culture thing.

I think expectations of the communication within organization after hours is another thing I need to be addressed. Right? I think there's a lot of organizations that sometimes expects you to be on call after five and that can wear some people out. So I think you need to ask that within an organization before you get started, hey, what is your expectation after hours? Right? If I need to be on, like I need to be on, right? Like me and my boss, we had a conversation a while back in regards to what are expectations, right? There are things floating in my screen. I have no, maybe that's snow, maybe there's snow in the house.

We've talked about communication on expectation after hours, right? You know, people were getting dinged. We did an internal review, which was interesting. I need to talk on that. But people were like, hey, they're not getting back to me after hours. They have family. They have kids, right? And so I think that needs to be a question as a job seeker that you ask in the workplace. Like, hey, listen, like, what is your expectation for our communication? I think for my day to day from a nine to five, eight to five, whatever your work schedule is, like, you need to be communicating. You need to be constantly communicating.

I find myself not communicating enough as a manager, right? So I get in these meetings, I get in these calls. And I'm like, yeah, let's talk about this. And I'm blindsided people. I'm blindsided people. And I understand that I need to get better with my communication. Consticking me, Katie, and I'll work constantly letting my team know as a manager of happenings that are going on. Now, the biggest question is, is Taylor, do I need to communicate like my lunch or do I? Yeah, right now you do. Right? My team, like, if they go out and work out, they post it. If they go out and they do, they have a lunch, like they post it.

Right? If they're off hour for an hour or two, they post it. And when I say post it, they post it within Slack, they post it in Microsoft Teams, whatever your preferred group communication is. And I just think that's incredibly important. Brandon, thanks for joining on Instagram live. Again, I got Instagram going. If you want to check in the Instagram T-DESSON is my username. But I mean, so that's my biggest point I want to get across is you need to upwork communicate. Right? If you're struggling balancing maybe some family stuff, right? There's some family stuff happening right now and you're struggling with work and family, just talk to somebody about it.

Right? I have had to let go so many people in my time. When I say so many people again, I placed 50 people year up and at this for nine years, so over 450 people I placed in new jobs. Right? 50 people last year. For people now, which is awesome, four or five people, actually six people now this year, right? Hiring's been good. But the biggest problem that I see time and time again is people not communicating. So you need to fix that people need to fix that people need to be aware. And so I'm curious if there's any questions, comments. Why do you feel like you do not communicate in a workplace?

Right? Are you scared of rejection? You're scared of people judging you? Right? And I think that happens, right? I know there's some people that that post their out to do this throughout that kind of get to that rep like that needs to stop. Our communication it needs to be consistent across the board and you need to have a workplace to where you can say, hey, I'm going to go work out and people are comfortable posting that. So again, if you have any comments at me, DM, you know, at me, let me know because I love to hear from you Scott. So Scott says start by assuming positive intent.

How are your message be received? And that's how that's your audience that your audience will be receptive. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think positive intent with people messaging workplace. I think another thing with messaging communication and Scott, thank you for posting this. That's why I like Q&A. That's why I like comments because it kind of makes my brain go early in the morning. So I think the biggest thing is too is people need to get off of DM in each other all the time. Right? I know there are people on my team that come across really brash over DM's, but you do a video call with them and they're demeanored.

It changes immediately. Right? So assuming positive intent, I think that's a really big thing within the workplace. That's actually one of the biggest core values is assume positive intent. But for me, I think when it comes to communicating within your team and when there are frustrations and there are things going on is you need to either pick up the phone and call and or video call that person. Right? Hey, listen, like we can all video call now. Right? There is no excuse for just slacking somebody or teams in somebody. Right? You do a quick video call, hash it out, that builds culture because I think another thing with managers within culture is video calling is having that conversation face to face as much as you humanly can do during the day.

Right? This morning, look, I messaged my boss and say, Hey, do I need to have video on for this call? And he goes really tailor. Right? And we as leaders always need to have our videos on. We need to be there for our team, whether we like it or not. And I don't want to be on video this morning. Right? And so I think that's incredibly important to make sure that you are on video that you are present. And that is going to help from a communication perspective. I think also if you are an employee of a company, I think if the more communication on video that you can do to build like if you start, if you start a new job in the middle of a pandemic, you need to be doing video calls with your team as much as humanly possible to build rapport, to build relationships, to establish culture.

That is what you need to do. Brian, good morning. What's up, buddy? Thanks for tuning in, man. So all that being said, that's all got today. Again, super short. This morning, that's kind of the goal for this, right? Small tidbits where you can learn something. If you need me, shoot an email, tell it at baker.com. And I'll be back tomorrow. So again, over communicate, do the video thing, pick up the phone and call, get off of Slack and DM. If you are on contract for a recruiting company like myself over communicate, let me know what's going on. Let your recruiter know what's going on. When you start at a new company, over communicated about time off expectations, all of that.

You need to over communicate. Right? So if you get anything out of this or anything else, over communicate with what's going on, let people know where you're at during the day. So they need to reach you at 911. They know where you're at. So again, thank you all for tuning in to guys council 2.0 this morning. They all have a great Monday. So those are the National 100 Great Snowy Monday. Maybe you're sled on some grass that had some snow on it. And I'll see you all tomorrow. Peace.