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Most of us don’t mean to work in silos - but our calendars and inboxes quietly build them for us.

In this episode, Jessica and Erin guide you through a five-minute exercise to map your work relationships, notice who’s missing, and take one small step outside your silo this month.

We get busy, go to the people we already know, and stay in our lanes. In this episode of Practicing Connection, hosts Jessica and Erin walk you through a simple, five-minute exercise to map your work network and make the invisible visible.

You’ll list the people you’ve talked with about work over the past month, then explore patterns across sectors, roles, geography, and experience. Along the way, you’ll surface quiet assumptions, notice who’s overrepresented, and identify whose voices are missing from your conversations.

Finally, Jessica and Erin invite you to choose just one gap to focus on this month—and to reach out for one conversation that takes you a step outside your silo. It’s a gentle, practical way to start building a more intentional, inclusive network that strengthens your work and your community.

LinkedIn Practice:

If you’re working to solve complex problems or serve a community, who’s not in your network matters.

What’s one gap you notice in your own network right now?

Links and resources from this episode:

• Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/
• Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org

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This month’s listener Q&A gives us three juicy areas to cover: struggling with frequent task switching, dealing with burnout and unachievable workloads (and the expectations associated with this), and how our practices integrate with personal reflections.

Erin and Jessica respond to your questions with insight, experience and resources, to give you some great, actionable steps in your daily life.

Episodes referenced in this episode:

• Everyday Practices for Organizational Resilience:
  https://oneop.org/learn/everyday-practices-for-organzational-resilience/
• Turning Conflict Into Collaboration:
  https://oneop.org/learn/turning-conflict-into-collaboration/

Links and resources from this episode:

• Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/
• Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org

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You've walked into a meeting and felt it immediately - something's off. The energy is flat, or there's a tension nobody's naming.

What do you do with that?

In this practicast, we share a simple, repeatable practice for reading the emotional temperature of any room.

Reading the Room is a short practice in social awareness — one of the core skills of emotional intelligence.

In this practicast, we walk through three steps for tuning into the emotional temperature of a group before and during meetings: the early arrival observation, the 3-person scan, and the traffic light check.

Perfect for service providers, coalition leaders, nonprofit staff, and anyone who facilitates groups.

LinkedIn Practice:

1. Pick one meeting per day to practice a deliberate 3-person scan.
2. Afterward, jot down one thing you noticed that you might have otherwise missed.

Over time, this kind of intentional observation becomes second nature.

Links and resources from this episode:

• Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/
• Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org