Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is reaaaaally simple this monday: Ask at least three people how their weekend was.
Follow up and ask a few more questions, like “What did you do?”, “How was it” or whatever comes naturally. Spend a couple of minutes and take an active interest in their weekend.
This simple action shows that you care about your co-workers beyond just the work they do and helps you create lasting, positive relationships at work.
The Chief Happiness Officer’s monday tips are simple, easy, fun things you can do to make yourself and others happy at work and get the work-week off to a great start. Something everyone can do in five minutes, tops. When you try it, write a comment here to tell me how it went.
If you want to be interesting you should start by being interested in others.
The one you mentioned is a simple yet effective way to do it.
Cheers,
Daniel
Manager : How was your weekend?
Employee : Not bad. Yours?
Manager : Pretty good. So have you had a chance to look at item 1?
This irritates me beyond belief. So while I believe this is good advice, please don’t use it as a “Monday morning checklist item”. It does more harm than good if it’s preceived as insincere. I believe the follow-up questions and genuine interest are key. My experience is most managers care more about “item 1” than they do about the employee’s weekend.
Great tip, the only shame is that most people who do this have really no interest in really knowing how your weekend was and so we have been conditioned to generally give the same responses. The trick is to show genuine interest to know a little more about someone every time you interact with them. Be curious.
Innovation Zen: I’d forgotten that quote. It totally applies here.
Chris G: Thanks for that, that is an important point. If you’re faking interest by rote, it’s better not to do it.
This only works when it comes from a real, genuine interest in other people.
Tez: Exactly! And the thing is that when you ask people about something they care about, what they end up telling you is often very interesting, because they have a passion for it. Be curious, indeed!
Oops, Just a additional post here because I forgot to click on the “Notify me” checkbox.
Oh god, just what we need, someone encouraging people to ask one of the most annoying work conversation questions ever.
Some of us are really unhappy and don’t need our faces shoved in the unhappiness of our life outside of work, while we are at work. Please keep your distance.
And for god’s sake, if we humor you with an answer, please don’t follow up with requests for more information.
I wish I had an office to disappear into with an actual ongoing work load that would save me from work-as-social-event.
“Benign indifference at work” is more than just ok, it’s a beautiful thing.