[00:00:00] Jenna: So when you hear everything's great and maybe you think that other people are having an easier time or they're more successful and you might just be missing something. That's where I think those are subtle signs of poor communication. That toxic communication could be communicating with you outside of your boundaries.
[00:00:17] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breadth depth, and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention. Gratitude and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.
Welcome back to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. Thank you so much for joining me again this week. I appreciate you listening in and want to say Happy New Year. Today's guest is Jenna Rogers and Jenna is what she defines as a corporator. She's built a career in the corporate world alongside founding her own company called Career Civility, which is a communications consulting firm.
She is on a mission to redefine communication and work. She specializes in the training and development of people, processes, programs, and teams. She's so passionate about the people behind the bottom line. And you can find her providing tactical communication advice, building programs, and online courses, and helping people communicate more effectively in the workplace.
We talked about what it's like to be a new mom and working. We talked about what it's like to start a side hustle while working in the corporate world and spent a lot of time talking about what makes good communication versus bad communication information overload, which is impacting a lot of folks and so many other topics that I think are relevant for entrepreneurs, people in the corporate world.
And, just anybody who struggles with effectively communicating and being able to do so consistently. I loved our conversation and I think you're going to enjoy it. Take a listen.
Jenna, thank you so much for joining me today. It is such a pleasure to meet you and to have you on the show.
[00:02:20] Jenna: Well, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to have this conversation and be meeting with you today too.
[00:02:25] Aneta: I want to learn so much more about you. I know we just shared a little bit in the bio, but what are some things you want to share with me, and with the audience about your journey?
[00:02:36] Jenna: Thank you for asking too, because it's so hard to put yourself into this little box, especially if you're trying to market yourself, or if you're trying to build a resume, or even just at the networking happy hour events that you go to, you're like what is it about me? I will do the best that I can to explain the full human side of myself, but I'm a human first and foremost.
I'm a mom of two. I also have a dog. And I'm a mom with two littles. I think that that also gives perspective because motherhood is such a vast journey, but I have a two-year-old and a four-month-old. So very new to the motherhood journey going through all of that everything that is involved within the season of motherhood.
And I'm also a provider for my family as well as a nurturer. So when I say provider I work full time. I work in corporate, but I'm also an entrepreneur and I'm at this real inflection point of my career after having two kids and deciding what that looks like to set an example, not only for them but for myself moving forward.
And is that entrepreneurship full-time? Can I provide for my family and show them what it means to bet on yourself? Or do I still need a little bit of stability from the corporate world using that to influence the work that I'm doing in my consulting firm? So I'm really at this inflection point from motherhood, from my career, and being a person in general.
[00:04:01] Aneta: I remember what that was like. I didn't start my business, but I remember working full time, having the little ones trying to figure it all out, trying to just keep my lights on and the lights on at home. So let's just talk a little bit about it. So maybe something we don't always talk about because as women, we're told you can have it all.
And I expected that I would do this, which was, I was going to have my babies and I was going to go back to work because I love to work. I had a career, and I didn't want to take a break and pause, but what I didn't expect and nobody warned me was that on my first day back in the office after I had my first child, I would just be balling nonstop.
Like it was so hard to go back. So what was it like for you after you had your kids and going back full time? Like, what was that feeling for you?
[00:04:55] Jenna: I've had two very different experiences and this has helped me just honor experiences across the board because everyone experiences it so differently. There are people where the minute that they hold their kids there is no other purpose and they are not going to work outside the home.
And it truly is being with your kids full-time. I love my kids and I also know that early childhood development is not a strong suit of mine. So going to work and working with adults at the time, like that fired me up and that was something that I still longed for. So after my first maternity leave, I was very eager to get back to work.
And then it was that daycare drop-off. And similar to your experience. I didn't understand how much it would affect me. Even just how I was choosing to feed my child, like that affected me being back at work. And I didn't understand the pole and the gravity that I had. The second time around, I had more perspective and I understood what that could be like.
And so I definitely, put myself and put my kids first. And I communicated that to the organization that I was working for and to the business. And that wasn't received very well. So I had two different experiences of going back full time and kind of figuring it out and realizing like, this kind of hurt a little bit.
The second experience was no, I'm going to make sure that I'm putting my kids first, putting me as a mother first, and asking for more time, and that wasn't rewarded. And so they're just two very different experiences with very different feelings, but both helped me grow as a mom in standing in my power and asking for what I need and what I want with the data and the information that I have at the time through my experiences.
[00:06:40] Aneta: Yeah, that is so good to point out because everyone does have a different experience and you don't know until you're in that moment how you're going to feel. And so being able to feel it and to honor it and even if it's different than what you expected, that's okay.
[00:06:55] Jenna: Yes.
[00:06:56] Aneta: So what made you want to start a business on the side while you're still working and raising two under the age of two?
[00:07:07] Jenna: Yes. It's something that I'm working on in therapy a little bit of a workaholic. I also think that something I'm working on is my identity. And what that means to me because candidly, I've been a W 2 employee since I was 15. I've been reflecting on that and I don't exactly know what it's like to not work all the time. Even when I was 15, I was in high school and I worked at Dairy Queen, that was my first job.
And I played soccer and I was in student government and you go to classes and you're a kid. So I was always spinning a lot of plates if you will. So that somehow becomes second nature to me. And I think now that I'm getting older, I'm working on slowing down so it can be a little bit more present.
However, my goal is to make the workplace a better place for those who come after us, specifically women, especially now that I have a daughter. And so that keeps me motivated to continue working on my company as an entrepreneur outside the walls of the corporate world.
[00:08:08] Aneta: Okay. Yeah. That's wonderful. So tell me a little bit more about your business, it's called Career Civility. Tell me a little bit more about the business and what it is that you do specifically.
[00:08:18] Jenna: Yeah. So Career Civility was born out of a need to communicate more effectively in the workplace. I studied communication undergrad. I studied communication and civil communication, and then I went back to get my master's in communication.
One of the reasons that I'm so passionate about communication is because as I started to integrate into the professional world and the workforce, I had sales internships in college. I worked at a law firm. And then when I graduated college, you're full into Corporate America. And I recognize that toxic behavior and poor communication are disguised as professionalism.
A lot of the time, we have to learn how to communicate both interpersonally, and then also through email communication, because now the world of business is primarily done through the means of email. We're learning how to do that through osmosis and the examples that we have are not great examples.
So I've been very bullish on providing my clients, my community, with templates and scripts and advice on how to navigate the political waters of the corporate world and how to communicate more effectively in the workplace because it's tough and we're not given a toolbox to be able to do that effectively.
[00:09:37] Aneta: I completely agree with you. I spent 25 years in the corporate world, so I have seen examples of really great communicators and also some were benign, but ineffective, and then some were toxic as you mentioned. Talk a little bit about that because I want to hear your perspective on how are some of these communications and behaviors toxic, but they're disguised as professional.
[00:09:59] Jenna: So good because they're like the straight toxic examples, right? And I'm sure we could all call upon that, but the tough ones that are hard to recognize are when people can talk the talk and they don't necessarily walk the walk when actions don't align with their words. And I think all can experience being doused with the Kool-Aid.
And you are given the Kool-Aid at every company function there, pontificating how great of leaders they are. And yet when you get into a room with them, you don't necessarily feel safe or you don't feel comfortable. Maybe admitting that you have a mistake, or you don't feel confident and where you're going within the organization, or even how to interact with different members of the team.
So when you hear everything's great and maybe you think that other people are having an easier time or they're more successful and you might just be missing something. That's where I think those are subtle signs of poor communication. That toxic communication could be communicating with you outside of your boundaries.
You know, those early morning phone calls, those late evening phone calls emails, and slacks at all hours of the day. Those are also signs of toxic communication, interrupting you, and cutting you off. Giving you the space to bring your ideas to the table and then objecting to every single idea that you bring forward.
These are all signs of that toxic communication, even though they say that we're a family and we all collaborate and we connect and we want you to be involved, that's tough.
[00:11:34] Aneta: I love that you're bringing up something that I'm seeing so much of from a wellness perspective from information overload, which is communication outside of boundaries.
And sometimes it's because those boundaries have not been set or enforced by the employee. So there's personal accountability, but then there's also what happens from a leadership perspective, whether there's an option to establish a boundary. But I read stats about communications during COVID and post-COVID when people started working from home more.
The percentage of communications early morning, evenings, and weekends has increased astronomically, significantly, and it's never changed or gone back. So even it's become sort of the status quo, and so when you're working in companies that are even maybe, across multiple time zones, you could see how this becomes a real challenge and problem.
And if people don't feel comfortable, or establish the boundary, suddenly they can find themselves burned out, exhausted, disengaged. It can cause problems at home with their families, and their partners. So tell me a little bit more about that and what you've seen how do you coach people individually and how do you coach leaders around that?
[00:12:55] Jenna: Such a great question for two reasons. One, I'm experiencing that firsthand personally at home with my husband who works on a global team across time zones. But two, that was the topic of my newsletter that went out to my community today, specifically because it's a busy season. That was kind of the container that I presented the information in.
But you bring up a great point in this post-COVID world. What are those boundaries and how can we establish them? I took it back to the very basics and the wellness world could probably, nod its head and solidarity with this, what are your boundaries as an employee what boundaries do you want to set with your employer?
That's the first thing that I think people need to reflect on. And I will also give this with a caveat that it's tough for you to even have the word boundaries in the workplace in the same sentence, because they're essentially paying you to not have boundaries, right? And so you're like if they're paying me, who am I to set boundaries with my employer?
Like I'm dutifully owed to them to not have boundaries. So I also understand the nuance there. However, if you're able to take a minute to reflect on what boundaries look like to you, such as, what time you want to be available to your employer or your clients? What are priorities for you outside the workplace such as health appointments, doctor's appointments, and dentist appointments for you and your children?
What about activities? What about travel? What about time off? What about the percentage of how you want to structure your day? Once you figure out what those boundaries are, pick one to two that you think are digestible, and easily digestible to implement into your workday.
And that could mean going to your manager and saying, hey, I recognize that we work across time zones, and yet I'm in charge of drop off for my kids, or I want to prioritize my health routine in the morning. So I'm not going to be online until 8:30, expect me to be responsive from 8:32 XYZ time. If you're working across time zones and for example, my husband has a team member in Singapore, that's hard to reconcile the time zone.
So my recommendation to him, if he's listening would be to pick one or two days of the week that you'll be available outside of your typical working hours. So that way you do have that time to collaborate and communicate and you're not losing that, but you're also not available at every single hour of the day.
[00:15:17] Aneta: Yeah, those are such great tips. And I do think that this has to happen right now because we're seeing people burned out. The information overload is significant and the other thing that you mentioned that I want to also just spend a moment on is there are so many different communication channels and vehicles now, and there's no established etiquette.
Nobody has said, what is the etiquette, for email versus Slack versus text message on your phone versus calling outside of normal hours. It seems like when, as I work with companies and I do wellness programs and I get to talk to people one on one, what they're sharing is people will use all of them interchangeably and they will use all of them.
Like if somebody is so impatient, it doesn't even really have to be an emergency. It's just an emergency for them. They will text you to say, did you see my Slack? And I also emailed you. It's like the assumption is you have to respond right now. And I'm going to try to interrupt whatever it is you're doing.
Because you're not responding in every possible way that I can until I get your attention. And it's new because when we didn't have all these channels before I left my company we had some of them, but not quite as much. And so what are you seeing in terms of etiquette and is anyone doing it well, what do you think the next step is to create a little bit of etiquette or training or agreement across these channels and how people use them?
[00:16:56] Jenna: This fascinating question. This is something that I get pretty energetic about as well because two ways to think about it. One, we haven't understood the repercussions of this 24/7 access. And I've even thought about it from a career standpoint these social media influencers have no way to shut their computer and walk away for the day.
Like I will give corporate America, at least that. We have bank holidays, we're like, no one's working. And if you're a social media influencer, your career is social media. You don't have that because even your social life is social media.
So it's bled into 24/7 unknowingly. And we don't exactly know how to create these guardrails or the boundaries around them. On the other hand, we're still treating email and Slack like a version of PDA, remember where you had like the stylist and it was just like, are you home?
And it was just very dry and direct. We've never really evolved from communicating on email Slack and text messages. So my whole platform is you need to remember you need to bring humanity back into the workplace point blank. And that also means via email and Slack, you have to remember that there is a human being on the other side of that computer.
And that means that you can't just send them three different messages from three different platforms because human beings have human needs where maybe they are going to the bathroom or they are getting water, or they're out to lunch, or they're at a doctor's appointment, or they're just on another meeting.
And they cannot be a computer where they're responding to everyone at any given time of day. So remembering that there's a human being on the other line or on the other side of that computer, and then communicating with that same humanity, hope you're doing well is a very mannequin computer response instead of saying like.
Hey, I recognize this is a really busy time of year and then getting to the email. Little nuances and changes and subtleties in your communication when you're remembering that I'm dealing with a human being and not AI and not a computer and not a mannequin right now will transform how you approach those slacks, emails, text messages, and phone calls.
[00:19:11] Aneta: I love that you brought up AI because I was going to go there and I was listening to a podcast that was talking about AI and of course, we're the ones that are directing the conversation. We're the ones that are setting the tone. We're also training AI, which is like a child and infant, how to respond to us.
And so I always find myself, even when I'm using like chatGPT for something I'll say, hey, here's what I wrote, this is what I'm going for, what would you recommend? But I always say please and thank you just because that's how I talk to people. And it responds to me that way.
I started talking about spirituality because I do yoga, meditation, and all these things. It told me once to have a blessed day, which I thought was interesting. So it's picking up on everything. And it's conforming to what we are saying or doing. But today I was like, hey, good morning and I said, how are you doing today?
And it said, well, I'm a computer. I don't have feelings. Like it was a reminder. Like it couldn't answer that question and I giggled because I know that obviously, but it's so ingrained in the way I just speak if I'm talking to someone on the other end.
So I thought about how we sometimes treat people like they're not people. Like you said, we've dehumanized the experience, and what you give out you are going to get back that energy that you're putting out. Like it will be held back as a mirror to you.
And so how do you train companies? Like who do you work with and who typically identifies that there's a challenge? Is it an employee or is it a leader? Like how does that usually work with you and the training that you provide?
[00:20:53] Jenna: Great question. And what's interesting is that not a lot of people operate and communicate like you do with AI.
If you're doing that to AI, I can only imagine you are doing it to your clients as well. And not everyone operates like that because people do treat it like it's a very transactional interaction. So to answer your question, I'll answer the second piece first in terms of who am I working with and how am I training companies.
I've found a pivot in my business and I'm no longer training the managers anymore. I'm training the end users. It's easier for them to implement little changes into the emails that they're sending daily than it is for a manager to pull their team together get time off the floor and have formal training.
So I've pivoted my content delivery and how I'm working with clients on more of a one-to-one and micro byte and out or micro byte delivery. What's interesting is when I am training individuals, it is focused on those bite-size pieces of information. So I stood up this like email tip Tuesday and it's just little quick email tips.
It's like, instead of saying, hey, how was your weekend or how was your Thanksgiving or how was your Christmas? How was your New Year's holiday? It's recognizing you are probably buried in a pile of emails coming off a holiday weekend. I hope you enjoyed it. Have you had a chance to review this? Yeah, A lot of people ask, why can't I just get to the point?
Why can't I just ask the question? That's too nice. I'm not here for niceties. And I respond with one, do what works best for your communication style. If that's not how you'd communicate in person with your friends or family, then stay true to yourself. Two, you know your industry and your clients best. So make sure that you're also flexing whatever communication advice that I'm delivering to your industry and your clients, but third.
Always remember that there's a human behind the computer screen. And sometimes we can't just get to the point because you wouldn't walk into a meet, you actually wouldn't walk into a meeting and say, so what's the update? You would walk into a meeting and you would start small talk and that's how you build relationships and that's how you recognize humanity, right?
Or that's how you pay honor to the human experience in the workplace through small talk. And I know that small talk is tough and that's also how you make friends. You don't make friends by saying, give me the update. You don't make friends by saying. What's your status? You don't make friends by saying, you know, what's your ETA?
[00:23:24] Aneta: And most people, all of that. And also most people are living right now, operating with a dysregulated nervous system. They're in the sympathetic fight-or-flight freeze all the time. And so when they read something like that, it pings their nervous system again. And so they are not able to respond from a place of critical thinking or a place of emotional regularity, they're responding from a very emotional state.
And so you could see how putting something like that out is only going to give something back that is probably less than ideal. And even if the person responds professionally, the energy, the blow to the relationship, like there are so many consequences that you don't always see, and I guess, and I would ask people.
Why, if it only takes you five seconds to put something nice out there, is it because you also are dysregulated and so you can't operate from that place to even think to do something more civil or pleasant just to start the communication? It's fascinating to see what's happening right now.
[00:24:39] Jenna: It's what you put out is what you get back and it might not be necessarily in that specific interaction. But it could be down the line. One of my favorite things to coach on is de-escalating, de-escalating rude emails, de-escalating passive-aggressive emails, and what it truly means and looks like to be able to do that.
The hardest part is putting yourself in their shoes, because if someone is firing off a rude or angry email to you, it's not you, they're likely getting pressure from somewhere else, especially in the context of business, they're getting pressure from their higher-ups, they're getting pressure from the board.
Maybe they just got off a nasty call and they're paying it forward to you. So for you to be able to de-escalate that situation by coming in and saying, hey, I understand that this is frustrating. And here's what I'm working to resolve. You're not getting caught up in this toxic cycle of then giving the same energy back or even trying to apologize and unnecessarily taking the blame for something that might not be your fault.
You're just de-escalating by saying like, hey, I know that this is hard. I know that this is frustrating. I know this is not the outcome that you wanted. And for me to move this forward productively, here's how I'm working on it. Or here's what I'm doing to solve this. It's a really tough skill set to practice because you do have to regulate yourself.
You have to swallow your defense mechanism right off the bat. So I also say like, hey, get up and take a lap, right? Like come back to that email. That email does not need to be responded to right away. They will also probably be less angry if you respond in a couple of hours as opposed to in the heat of the moment.
[00:26:27] Aneta: Yeah. So tell me who your ideal clients are.
[00:26:33] Jenna: Women. So I have an umbrella of just women in business in general, and I have three subsets. Number one is busy working moms. Hi, I am she, talking about dysregulated nervous systems. So women in the workplace, busy working moms, female entrepreneurs, and then also entry-level women in the workplace.
When I first sought to define my ICP and my ideal client, I had female executives on there and I sunsetted that profile because I realized that executives, just based on your title, have access to a lot more support than not. And these entry level. Women in business, you know, Gen Z, these millennials who are in the corporate world, they're having to learn through so many fumbles and mistakes and obstacles and observing the other toxic structures that have been in place in business.
So I now really want to provide. Resources for them to learn a better way of doing business, as opposed to stumbling and learning through mistakes and toxic, aggressive, and abusive ways of business.
[00:27:50] Aneta: I think that's fantastic. And you're making a big impact. Think about the ripple effect where these women are coming in entry-level maybe they stay in their job longer because they're able to have skills and tools that will allow them to be more effective. Maybe they feel a sense of empowerment and they don't have to necessarily fumble through it, but they feel more confident. And how about if they're able to then impact actually?
Everyone else around them, because if you start with the executives they've figured out what they need to do to be successful at that point. Like you said, but it's younger folks. I would have loved and benefited from something like that. I worked in banking. So a very male-dominated space. And so let's talk a little bit about the female and male energy.
And I don't mean gender, I mean, different energy. And in my experience and what I'm seeing right now and talking to all my clients and everything else we are over-indexing on some of this toxic masculine energy and many organizations right now. And that also is a symptom of what people are experiencing.
It's a symptom of the financial stress that is happening. It's a symptom of many things that are changing and sometimes a resistance to trying to hold on to the old. And so how do you feel like strong communication and good communication can help to tip things back a little bit more into having a balance between female and male energy, where you do have more productivity and you have more engagement and you have people that want to be there and be more effective, cause I do think those are the benefits of what you do.
[00:29:36] Jenna: It all comes back to knowing yourself. And that's, in my opinion, a very feminine thing to experience is sitting with yourself.
And understanding what is your communication style. What are your values? What is your mission statement? What legacy do you want to leave behind? Operating from a masculine is very oriented. And I operate in the masculine. That's yes. That is something that I am working too.
And yet I should say operating within the workplace, within your feminism. Within your feminine energy is a very vulnerable state to be in and yet it could pay off dividends. Potentially not even from a P and L standpoint or from the bottom line from a financial standpoint, but from the impact and the ripple effect that you make within that organization.
You might not get rewarded for it, but the karma and granted karma don't pay your bills, and the legacy that you leave doesn't pay your bills. So I understand that there is a balance there and there is a duality, but understanding your value prop, your mission statement, who you are, how you want to communicate, how you want to show up in the workplace.
That is where you can feel confident showing up within that feminine energy and balancing the need to provide for your family or to bring home that stable paycheck.
[00:30:58] Aneta: And I would say organizations, there was a level of relationship that used to exist, I think that even when I started in the corporate world, we would get together and always go out. Like once a week, there'd be a group of us.
We would go out and it built camaraderie. We worked in different divisions of the organization. It built a sense of trust and teamwork. Those are all feminine energy qualities, like finding that It's important for me to cultivate these relationships, to deepen them, to spend time with someone that I don't know as well.
So I do think that there is a bottom-line impact. We just don't necessarily put it on a report, a P& L statement to be able to say, what is the impact of doing this? What is the impact of good communication of trust going the extra mile, calling someone and saying, hey, something you seem a little off in the meeting let's talk about it, all of those things? So beyond the written communications, you also help with maybe some of these other interpersonal communication skills.
[00:31:56] Jenna: Absolutely. You reminded me of a time when I was working on a team and I am a salesperson by trade. So I come from going to market.
I come from the sales world and being on a team in the sales world is interesting because you as an individual contributor have your own goals and your quota that you're running after to bring home your commission and your paycheck. And then you're also on a team together with a couple of other individuals, and that team makes up a team quota that you then deliver to the business.
And in this specific instance, we weren't hitting our goals as a team. Some individuals were hitting their goals, some were not, but the overall team was not hitting their goal. And I remember sitting in this meeting and our manager at the time kind of called this meeting together to figure out what the heck was going on.
And I was sitting in this meeting and I should also preface that 1 of the reasons I'm so passionate about communication is because growing up, I grew up in a very, divided household, if you will. It didn't feel like that at the time, but I grew up in a bi-political biracial household. So I was able to sit in this weird let me try and figure it out.
Let's come to a consensus here. Just even at the dinner table. And so that's always been something that when I'm in a room with other people who have different experiences, different perspectives, different goals, I'm almost the conduit to try and figure out, okay, but how can we keep this spinning and how can we make sure it works together?
That's also the eldest daughter in me, making sure that everyone is okay. So anyways, yeah, and It's a good and sometimes a toxic trait. So sitting in this conference room I posed this question to the team and I was like, are we all working together to hit a goal? Are we all working to hit a goal together?
Or are we here to hit our own goals, but supporting each other as we do it? And the team was split 50/50. And it was really interesting to uncover that problem because we realized that we weren't running toward the same goal. We needed to decide, are we in this team together to support each other and to make sure that we were supporting each other in the pursuit of our own goals.
Or are we in this team to be essentially martyrs to the greater good of the team? And so that was a turning point where then we needed to recalibrate and get on the same page with what we were looking to accomplish as individuals. And the first piece of that was understanding interpersonal communication, how people were engaging not only with the team but with their work as they came to work every day.
[00:34:29] Aneta: That's so good. So I want to go back to the topic of AI just for a moment too. So what do you think the positive benefits from a communication perspective can be using AI correctly while training it to do its best job versus, what are the consequences if we overuse it, don't do it well, put in commands that already are starting less than par and then passing that off as communications at work and let's just start in the corporate world, thinking about that. Because I think about these things all the time.
[00:35:09] Jenna: Yeah. I'm not as threatened by AI as I think I probably should be, to be honest. I think that there's a level of automation that will not replace humanity, so you can use AI to write all your emails and to ask all of your interview questions and to be as spot on paper as you need to be, and yet your spark and your soul and your humanity is what makes the difference.
You can show up to a client conversation or an interview with all the right questions and all the right answers. And there's a level of authenticity that AI cannot replicate. So there is a disconnect there that will always come to fruition.
If it's not directly in that moment, it will be down the line. As it will, what's the saying, you will have to pay the piper down the line. So I think it's great because it can spark those ideas and that information. And you don't have to sit there spinning your wheels because there is nothing worse than when you're staring at a blank page and you're like, I don't even know where to start.
So it is great to be that spark, give you ideas, and help build that toolbox in that library for you. And yet you still need to rely on your work ethic your ideas and your intelligence to take that and make it something great.
[00:36:33] Aneta: Yeah, I agree with you. I love using it for a lot of different things, research, and some things are really helpful but I also would never feel comfortable posting or sharing or creating exactly what's presented because you can read things that we're not created by a human, I think, I mean, unless they've mastered it so well and you don't know the person's voice, but I still agree with you.
You need to still infuse it with your authenticity, with your personality, with your voice and what that is, and to be able to make it better take it and make it even elevate it to the next level. So, yeah, I was just curious about your perspective when it comes to that, but maybe AI actually can make people's communications more pleasant than they are on their own.
[00:37:21] Jenna: It's something I'm working on for the relaunch of my course. My email writing course is using those prompts to help you write better emails. And to save you time and to help you de-escalate those emails, because that's the thing if you know. That you need to de-escalate. That's the human piece. Then you get to AI and you ask AI to help you deescalate it because you're able to then remove your own emotions from it.
And a lot of times that's hard to do because you're so emotionally attached to the situation. So that's something that I am working on building are prompts to use AI in your favor and to use chat GPT to help you not spend time on those emails that make your heart drop into your stomach or that make you roll your eyes.
That's not what's going to make us successful. That's not what's going to help us contribute to our legacy. However, responding to those and showing up at that moment will set that example. And so that's where I want to focus on helping people.
[00:38:18] Aneta: I like that. So tell me if people want to work with you, cause I think we've talked about so many things and everyone can improve their communication, myself included.
So you mentioned you have that online course, the email course, but tell me a little bit more about that and all the other ways that people can work with you.
[00:38:33] Jenna: Yeah, so I'd say the easiest way is to follow career civility at career civility on Instagram. It is such a great community where individuals are commiserating about corporate life. And also I'm there as a resource to help them communicate more effectively in the workplace. So every Monday I do a series, if you will, where it's like, what emails or situations can I help you within the workplace?
And people are submitting what struggles are going through, and I'm always trying to provide tips and scripts to help them take that back to the workplace. So career civility, Instagram, my website, my newsletter, all of those coincide together. I do have downloadable templates and scripts in my shop. You can access this on my website, Career Civility. com. So that way you have easy access to those on your desktop. You can download those and keep them handy.
And then my signature online course, email to Success. I'm relaunching that in January. So that way you can have a toolbox at your fingertips to help you write better emails, such as like formatting the body of your emails, because everyone teaches you how to write essays in school, but never how to format your email.
So it is not only open read, but it is also actioned upon subject lines, how to get a response to unresponsive emails, whether that's from your boss, your coworkers clients, because you have to communicate in different situations with different people. So all of this is a culmination of just, hey, let's go back to the basics and help each other be better at work. And I do believe that it starts with communication.
[00:40:10] Aneta: I love it. That's wonderful. We will include all the links in the show notes. I've just really enjoyed our conversation today. I've learned so much and what you do is so important, but I ask everyone a final question, which is what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
[00:40:26] Jenna: Live the width of my life means to. Expand who I am in every angle and embrace the AND. I'm a mom and I'm a professional. I'm a wife and I'm a friend, I'm a friend and I put myself first. I like being inside and I like being outside really, embracing the and of each crevice of the width of my life and recognizing that there are seasons for each piece of my identity as well.
[00:40:59] Aneta: That's so beautiful. I love it. I haven't heard that one, so we'll make sure that everyone gets to hear that. Thank you so much, Jenna. I just loved our conversation today and I wish you continued success in all that you do.
[00:41:14] Jenna: Thank you for this opportunity. I appreciate it. And this conversation was wonderful, the AI, the workplace, helping women regulate their nervous system.
I'm taking that away because you could probably tell. That I'm a very, you know, individual. So coming back into my body is something that helps me stand firm in my ground and make sure that I'm operating off the values that I've set for myself, as opposed to operating out of fear.
[00:41:42] Aneta: Yeah. We are all in a very highly charged environment. So important for everyone to do that all the time.
[00:41:49] Jenna: I'm glad it's a collective thing and not just me.
[00:41:54] Aneta: Absolutely. Thank you, Jenna.
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