Ask, “How did you decide to do that?” rather than, “Why did you do that?” when a situation goes wrong. “Why” questions put people on the defensive and produce justifications rather than useful answers.
Strengthening Your Communication Skills
January 13th, 2010Working with Your Strengths
August 19th, 2009Recent discoveries in neuroscience help explain why different people solve problems so differently.
When we’re born, our brain’s synapses have the potential to fire in any direction. Through relationships, experiences and genetics, they begin to fire in certain patterns.
Like exercising a muscle to build strength, brain cells that “fire together, wire together” - they begin to strengthen certain pathways, so that the next time you think, you’re more likely to think again in that particular sequence.
And then, during puberty, your brain sheds the capacity you haven’t used.
So by the time you’re an adult, your brain is wired to think in certain ways. This is why using your talents creates excellence - you can do it faster and better than people who haven’t been thinking that way their whole lives.
Research of more than two million people by the Gallup Organization has shown that organizations that capitalize on individual strengths are more likely to be profitable and productive than others.
Can your work be more productive (and lucrative) if you leverage your strengths?
And do you know what your strengths are?
Tip of the Week - Determine Motivation
May 20th, 2009Determine what motivates each person you deal with. It’s not the same for everyone.
A good question to ask on a one-on-one basis is:
“What is important for you in your work?”
The Benefits of Patting Yourself on the Back
April 6th, 2009The pace of work often feels like an endless flood of tasks and interactions, with no time to pause to acknowledge completion of a thing, other than checking off an item on your to-do list as you move on to the next task. In fact, you probably go through most days without stopping to acknowledge achievement, whether by you or others.
These unacknowledged accomplishments in your busy day are actually opportunities to improve your mood and make better decisions.
A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that positive moods can increase our ability to understand the big picture.
“A positive mood enhances efforts to attain future well-being, encourages broader and flexible thinking, and increases openness to information,” write the study’s authors Aparna A. Labroo (University of Chicago) and Vanessa M. Patrick (University of Georgia).
The researchers investigated the scientific basis for the simple practice of surrounding oneself with positive things. The first study presented identical statements to study participants. The statements in each set were preceded by either a smiley face or a frowny face.
“The results revealed that simply associating a smiley with a statement resulted in the statement being construed at a higher, more abstract level.”
In follow-up studies, the authors induced positive and negative moods by asking participants to describe either the happiest or unhappiest days in their lives. They then filled out three different questionnaires to determine the level of abstract versus concrete thinking. All three questionnaires showed that people in a good mood thought more abstractly.
The authors explain that being in a good mood allows people to step back emotionally. “The research demonstrates that by signaling that a situation is benign, a positive mood allows people to psychologically distance themselves from the situation,” the authors write.
“Those in a positive mood not only adopt higher-order future goals and work harder toward attaining them, but also reduce their efforts when goals are proximal or concrete,” they conclude.
How does this apply to our workday? When you finish a task, take 5-10 seconds to positively acknowledge completion (”Hooray! Good Work! Another order complete) – reach around and pat yourself on the back. If you’re a manager, seek out opportunities to acknowledge good work by your team members.
And take a moment at the end of the day to highlight three good things you accomplished during the day. Acknowledging your wins is one way you manage your mood into a more positive space.
Tip of the Week - Illustrate Your Point
February 17th, 2009Use a metaphor or analogy to illustrate your point
when explaining a new or unfamiliar idea to your audience.
For example: the aerial view from a plane, at
cruising altitude, can be a metaphor for strategic thinking.
Tip of the Week - Determine Motivation
February 9th, 2009Determine what motivates each person you deal with.
It’s not the same for everyone.
A good question to ask on a one-on-one basis is
“What is important for you in your work?”
From Dilbert’s Boss……….
February 2nd, 2009
For all things Dilbert click here
Reduction to the Achievable
February 2nd, 2009There is the classic sales technique called “reduction to the ridiculous”, whereby the cost of the item being offered for sale (or the premium above a competitor’s offering) is framed in terms of the cost of a daily cup of coffee. For example:
“Yes, it does cost $500 more, but if you think about all the benefits you get, over a year it works out to less than $1.50 a day, less than your daily coffee at the coffee shop. Surely you can afford an extra $1.50 a day.” Well maybe. But don’t ask me to sacrifice my coffee!
On the other hand, if we take the concept (a big thing made up of tiny pieces) and apply it to goal setting and target achievement, then it becomes a useful tool when undertaking an ambitious objective. It allows you to improve your odds of success by defining and executing against a series of smaller steps or goals.
Take your professional development, for example. Especially in today’s competitive environment, what are you doing to learn/strengthen a business skill? Let’s say there’s a business leadership book that has been recommended to you, but you feel there’s no time in your day to read - you’re too busy.
Two skills come into play - prioritization and time management. First, is reading the book important to you? Assuming the answer is yes, then a revisiting and re-prioritizing of some daily habits is in order. Then we can reduce reading “the Big Book” into a smaller, more readily achievable goal of daily reading i.e. Reduction to the Achievable.
A typical business book can be 20 chapters and 400 pages. If you read the daily newspaper, do you think you could forgo reading one section of the daily newspaper and read ten pages of a book instead? In six weeks with a daily reading habit, one book is complete, and, with your new revised reading habit, you have created the possibility of reading another 5-6 books within a year.
Or if you are commuting, rather than listening to headline news on the radio, how about listening to the audio version of the book? Or find podcasts of topics in your field of interest and download them to your MP3 player for playback on the drive to work.
The key elements of success are (with the example of reading a book):
- define your goal (Read a book in every six weeks)
- make sure its completion has an emotional payoff (I’ll be more knowledgeable, more current, more valuable)
- break the project into smaller, well defined, achievable, measurable goals (10 pages every day)
- take a moment to congratulate yourself on completion of each of the smaller goals (Yay! I completed a chapter and I learned something new)
Look at a project that is important to you that you have been postponing because it seems too big. Use the technique of “Reduction to the Achievable” to break through your procrastination and get started.
IBM Human Capital Survey
January 26th, 2009IBM interviewed over 400 HR executives at organizations from 40 countries to find out how they were addressing key workforce challenges. Highlighted are key areas of focus that require the immediate attention of not just the HR function, but senior executives across the organization. Here are the top four:
The report highlights how addressing these key focus areas can help transform your workforce and take its performance to the next level.
Nuturing Employee Engagement in Flat Organizations
January 13th, 2009Established organizations continue to flatten the organizational pyramid through eliminating managerial layers and upping the subordinate/superior ratio from the classic 6:1 to 12:1 and higher. Newer companies stay flat from the get-go.
One consequence is that a traditional workplace acknowledgement - the promotion - is becoming rarer as opportunities for internal upward mobility are reduced.
Read the full article online click here
