Tips for the application and development of the social and leadership competencies

Here you will find a collection of tips on how to apply and develop the social and leadership competencies in your everyday work.

Green behaviour at work

Climate change, biodiversity loss, raw material extraction and environmental pollution affect us all. Integrating sustainability into our daily activities and adopting resource-conserving behaviour are our shared responsibility. Research suggests that engaging in green behaviour at work leads to higher levels of engagement in our jobs and increased levels of self-esteem and well-being (external page Ones & Dilchert, 2013; external page Zhang et al., 2021). According to the ETH Sustainability Office there are many simple actions we at ETH can take to make our workplace eco-friendlier. These include:

Mobility

If possible, travel to work by public transport, bike or on foot (more information here).
Fly less and use virtual alternatives instead or plan to travel by train.
Actually go to events for which you are registered in order to avoid wasting food.

Purchasing

Give preference to sustainable options when making procurement decisions.
Share office space and laboratory equipment.
Reuse things that are needed and return things that are not needed (EquipSent, hardware sale).

Everyday office life

Reduce room temperature and adapt to the recommendations of the ETH Task Force on Energy Shortages.
Reduce the brightness of monitors.
Switch off laptops and other devices when not in use and avoid standby (savings of 80% possible).
Only print documents when necessary and avoid single-sided colour printing.
Turn off the water when soaping your hands.
Choose a vegetarian or vegan menu for lunch.
Model and address sustainable behaviour, including how to deal with conflicting goals.

Enhancing your cognitive flexibility

Driving innovation in a competitive academic environment is a challenging task. It takes courage, openness, deep-rooted curiosity and, more importantly, a high degree of cognitive flexibility – in other words, the ability to adapt your thoughts and actions to changing environmental demands.

We asked scientists in the field of COLAB in the Technology and Innovation Management Group how they think people can enhance their cognitive flexibility. They answered that when making a decision, you can practice cognitive flexibility by:

Adopting a bird’s eye view: imagine that you are looking down on yourself and question the decision that you are about to make. This fosters meta-cognition – makes you think about your thinking.
Stretching your attention: before you engage in a task, ask yourself if you have taken various sources of the latest information into account (from different people and fields). This fosters information processing.
Stopping and briefly thinking twice: is the default answer the correct one? This inhibits a compulsive response.

For more information on a related project, please click here.

The four levels of listening

Building bridges is about developing a connection between yourself and others – a connection that is based on trust and understanding. One of the key skills necessary to build this trust is the skill of listening. Many experts on the topic have come up with various ways of cultivating this skill. Otto Scharmer, author, action researcher and senior lecturer at MIT, builds on this with his four levels of listening:

Downloading: Here it’s all about me. I listen and look to confirm what I already know, think and believe.
Factual listening: It’s all about the data. I listen out for the facts, especially those that disconfirm my preconceptions of reality.
Empathic listening: It’s all about them. I am able to see things through the other person’s eyes, to listen without judgment and fully understand their experience. As Theodore Roosevelt once put it, “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
Generative listening: It’s all about a higher purpose. I am listening from the perspective of the other person’s potential or that of our situation. What new possibilities are emerging from this conversation?

If you are interested in exploring the four levels of listening further, we recommend watching this external page video.

Saying thank you

As the academic year draws to a close and summer gets under way, we would like to extend our appreciation to the countless ETH members who have wholeheartedly embraced and exemplified our tips on living out the ETH social and leadership competencies. Each day, our community strives to apply them, with many people consistently going above and beyond what is expected.

Since the act of expressing gratitude plays an important role in leadership, we have compiled a selection of tips on how to convey your appreciation effectively:

Embrace authenticity – Express your gratitude sincerely and genuinely, ensuring the person understands that you wholeheartedly appreciate their work, assistance, or kindness.
Be specific – Be clear about what you are grateful for, stressing what exactly the person did to merit your praise.
Be timely – Try to give praise immediately, acknowledging the importance of instant recognition.
Follow up where appropriate – Make the person aware of the positive outcome of their actions or of how their assistance made a difference.

We would also like to acknowledge those individuals who have displayed exceptional skill in expressing gratitude to their colleagues in the past. Their efforts have been recognised and celebrated by the ALEA – Art of Leadership Award at ETH.

How to become more self-aware

The first step to nurturing your own well-being is to become more aware of yourself and your emotions. One very simple way to do this is to take the time to consciously reflect. These questions can help you get started:

Am I able to calm my mind so that I have the space to reflect and make choices that are good for me?
In my everyday life, which activities give me energy? Which ones drain my energy? Is there a good balance between the two?
How do I recognize when I am reaching my limit? What signals does my body send? Do I respond to them?
Can I – and do I – reach out for help when I need it?

If you want to more deeply explore the many facets of well-being, we recommend this quiz by the Berkeley Well-Being Institute: external page https://www.berkeleywellbeing.com/well-being-survey.html

Overcoming stress at work

A recent external page survey (only available in German) showed that 42% of employees in Switzerland feel stressed by their work. But what really is stress? Stress is a state that, if experienced at the right dose over shorter intervals, can help us to perform better. However, if people are subjected to too much stress over a longer period, a tipping point is reached that can negatively affect our health and performance. And what can we do about it? Workplace stress must be tackled at two levels:

At the institutional level: By establishing structures and initiatives that promote well-being and enhance health. This includes, for example, investing in leadership development, nurturing an inclusive culture, and introducing measures to improve work-life balance.
At the individual level: By developing awareness of and nurturing our own physical, emotional, and social health.
ETH regularly offers lunch events on the topic of health and well-being. The next one will take place on 16 May and will focus on how to recognize and overcome inner stressors. Further information.

Unconscious bias – Can it be overcome?

Unconscious bias (also known as implicit bias) refers to our tendency to make judgments based upon social stereotypes and beliefs that we unconsciously harbour about groups of people. We all have unconscious biases. Although we are unaware of them, taking a simple external page test can be a very enlightening experience. Is there anything we can do about them?

Here are just a few tips from Raphaela Hettlage at ETH Diversity:

Learn about them: You need to understand them before you can address them.
Talk about them: Everyone has unconscious biases, and talking about them can raise our collective awareness of them.
Don’t overestimate yourself: You can’t eradicate unconscious biases.
View this as an ongoing journey: Every day offers you a new opportunity to reflect upon your unconscious biases and the detrimental effects they have on you and others.

To help you understand more about unconscious biases, ETH has recently launched a new e-learning course.

How to give feedback with an attitude of respect

There are plenty of rules for giving feedback, and though they may be valuable and true, giving good feedback is much more about your attitude.

Here are three tips to help you along the way:

Maintain the connection between you and the other person by being genuine, accepting and empathetic. According to psychologist Carl Rogers (1902–1987), this creates an environment in which people can grow.
Focus on people’s growth and potential rather than on their deficits.
Always honour, respect and value the identity of the other person. What they did can be good or bad, but who they are is always good.

The benefits of coaching your colleagues

With a little theoretical knowledge and practice, anybody can coach their colleagues effectively. Reciprocal peer coaching is a great way of learning at many different levels. Some of its most notable benefits are:

You profit from a diverse set of perspectives on your own problems, gaining new insights into them and learning new approaches to their resolution.
You get the chance to practice the skills of questioning, listening and responding, which can prove valuable in many different contexts and settings.
You learn to stay on the ball as your coach checks in on your progress.
You receive honest and direct feedback from an independent third party.

To learn more about how you can benefit from collegial coaching at ETH Zurich, please visit website.

Please visit our website for more information on the ETH social and leadership competencies.