Tag: #leadershipcoaching

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Three Ways to Accomplish More in Less Time

Have you ever walked into work only to sit down and realize that an entire eight hours has passed by? Not only that but have you also had the feeling of not accomplishing nearly enough? While the day has seemed to escape you, there are ways to accomplish more in less time that won’t leave you with an out-of-body experience at the end of the day.

Here are three tips for accomplishing more in your workday in less time.

1. Plan Ahead of Time

Planning your workday ahead of time and creating a comprehensive checklist to follow can help you see exactly what you accomplish each day. Even if you aren’t able to finish everything on the list, seeing checked-off boxes will help you see that you didn’t “accomplish nothing” during the day.

This idea also helps ensure you don’t forget any important tasks you need to get done each day. You can prioritize each thing by order of importance and work your way down the list. After all, accomplishing one major task is going to feel far more rewarding than a group of smaller tasks.

For example, if you’re on a deadline and you need to submit a major project proposal or article to your boss by the end of the day, that needs to be done first. Accomplishing that time-sensitive task is going to feel more rewarding than if you decided to clean your office or reply to secondary emails instead.

2. Don’t Overextend Yourself

This tip may seem counterproductive, but hear me out. Have you ever felt completely burnt out during the workday? Compare how you felt during that time to a day where you were completely determined and motivated to get work done. Which of those two days did you accomplish more?

I’m going to take a wild guess and say it was when you felt motivated. If you refrain from completely filling your work docket, you’re going to be far less likely to burn yourself out. Allow time to complete each task to avoid a rush job and space out your assignments as best you can. This way, you can accomplish everything you need to in a tighter timeframe.

3. Follow Your Internal Body-Clock

Are you a day or night person? Maybe you prefer afternoons instead? Regardless of your preferred time of day, you should plan to get the most work done during that time. Generally, these preferred times are when we’re the most alert, therefore, they’re the best time to get the most work completed.

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Mental Fitness Foundation Program

If you want to:

  • Be more empathetic of yourself and others
  • Achieve your goals with more ease
  • Have greater professional and personal achievements
  • Have more satisfying relationships
  • Experience better health and
  • Greater happiness

Enroll in the Positive Intelligence®: Mental Fitness Foundation Program to:

  1. Develop greater mastery over your own mind
  2. Quiet the negative and
  3. Activate the positive region of your brain.

The next program begins May 7.  

For more information and to register: https://redworkscoaching.com/services/executive-coaching/positive-intelligence-increasing-your-mental-fitness/6-week-mental-fitness-foundation-program/

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Engaging employees from different generations

 

If you work with a team made up of people from different generations, then you know how difficult it can be to create an engaging environment for everyone.

Here are some quick tips to help you adjust your workflow techniques if you’re managing employees of vastly different ages:

  • Email is a form of communication that most generations understand very well.
  • Set up 2-way mentoring relationships between the generations to promote learning from one another and understanding the other’s perspective
  • Always be open to feedback and constructive criticism of the work environment. Employee satisfaction is positively correlated with engagement.

At the end of the day, you just need to make sure you understand how each individual employee works best. People work better when they feel understood and like their skills are being utilized properly.

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Who are your Saboteurs?

Saboteurs are the voices in your head that generate negative emotion in the way you handle life’s everyday challenges. They represent automated patterns in your mind for how to think, feel and respond.

Saboteurs cause all of your stress, anxiety, self-doubt, frustration, restlessness, and unhappiness. They sabotage your performance, wellbeing and relationships.

Perhaps you have a strong Judge Saboteur that beats you up repeatedly over mistakes, wakes you up in the middle of the night worrying about something, or you judge others or your situations.

Known as the Master Saboteur, your Judge works with one or more Accomplice Saboteurs to hijack your mind and cause most of your setbacks.

You can’t defeat an adversary you don’t see or one that pretends to be your friend. The first step to conquering your Saboteurs is to identify them and expose their lies and limiting beliefs.

Sign up for the three-minute Saboteur Assessment to discover your saboteurs. https://redworkscoaching.com/services/executive-coaching/positive-intelligence-increasing-your-mental-fitness/

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Four Tips to Have Engaging Meetings in a Hybrid Environment

With so many businesses moving their operations online, many leaders are struggling to find a balance in hybrid environments. The remote experience has a learning curve and things become even more complicated when you combine it with in-person activity.

Four tips for engaging meetings in a hybrid environment:

  1. Send out a pre-meeting email where everyone can access all meeting materials.
  2. Give everyone a chance to voice questions or concerns. 
  3. As much as possible make sure everyone can see and hear each other, and encourage a friendly, professional discourse.
  4. Encourage everyone to participate and make an effort to make the remote employees feel included.

Hybrid work environments can be challenging, however, when you have the right tools in place, you can change your meetings from chaotic to connected.

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Why Most Leadership Development Training Efforts Fail

George was seen as an up-and-coming leader in the organization. People who worked for him liked and respected him. Senior leaders saw his potential and wanted him to attend the company’s leadership development workshop.

George was ecstatic. He loved the organization and wanted to move up and contribute as much as he could. He saw this opportunity as a positive step in that progression. Plus, he had some challenges in his job that he hoped he could learn how to deal with more successfully.

After he found out he was slated to attend the workshop, George didn’t hear anything more about the training until about a week before it began. With the workshop details in hand, he was excited all over again. Excited, that is, until he looked at his calendar and saw how much he had to do prior to the start of the workshop.

Because the training meant so much to him, he was determined to be focused while he was there, so he worked really hard to get all of his projects caught up before he left for the workshop.

George loved the workshop! The facilitator was great, the content was helpful, and the food was even good! He was very motivated by the new ideas and the people he met. His confidence level increased as they practiced some of the things they learned. As an outcome of the program, he built an action plan. He left the two-day workshop completely stoked about what he had learned and how he would be able to apply it.

After the Workshop

George woke up the next morning and reviewed his action plan. He was excited because he knew what he would do to become a better leader starting today.

Back at work, he fired up his computer and checked his voice mails – 23 messages.

His heart sank a little. As he listened to the messages, taking notes as needed, he opened up his emails and found an even more depressing sight – 91 emails. Giving them a quick glance, they all required him to read, work through and respond.

After getting a cup of coffee, George went to say hello to his team. This took awhile because they had questions and issues they wanted to discuss with him. By 9:15 am he was back at his desk, ready to tackle all the phone and email messages including seven new emails that had come in while he was out.

By 3:00 pm he had mostly forgotten about his action plan and only remembered it when he saw the document in his briefcase. He took it out and looked at it wistfully. He was still committed to working on those items, but they would have to wait awhile, as the next project meeting was all day tomorrow.

Reviewing the Situation

Perhaps the situation above sounds familiar to you – a willing learner, a well-designed workshop, and a person excited about their action plan.

Admittedly, this story might be a bit too rosy, not everyone who attends training will be as excited and motivated as George. In the end, though, it doesn’t really matter because a highly motivated person like George won’t get as much from this effort as he could.

Why?

Because while most leadership development programs focus on developing great training, that is a small part of the overall likelihood of success. Why? Because, training is an event, but learning including leadership development is a process.

We don’t learn important, complex life skills in a brief instant. We don’t learn to play a musical instrument in a one-day workshop.

From a training event, we can have insights, be inspired, get ideas, approaches, checklists, and knowledge.

Skills, however, develop over time and not in a one-shot, one-time training course regardless of how well it is designed or how awesome the trainer is. It’s not a one and done activity that someone can check off their to-do list. Learning new skills come with practice and application.

Leadership development is a process and as long as those efforts are training events, the return on those investments will never be high.

Make your leadership development process more successful

To make your leadership development process, whether for yourself or your organization, be more successful, the Leader Foundations Leadership Academy is a customized program specifically created to support new leaders build a solid foundation to succeed in their new roles.

This interactive, practical learning and implementation program will get leaders up to speed fast. They will identify skills they need to develop or strengthen to level up and increase their effectiveness.

For more information about the Leader Foundations Leadership Academy please visit: https://redworkscoaching.com/services/executive-coaching/leader-foundations-leadership-academy/

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Simple Tips to Engage Employees

As technology continues to evolve, people only gain more things that are distracting. When it comes to your employees, their working hours are valuable, so you need to make sure you’re keeping them engaged as often as possible.

Simple ways to engage employees:

  • Offer rewards like a free lunch for anyone who meets their monthly goals.
  • Use workflow management apps like Asana or Trello to keep everyone up to date and on task in a fun and easy-to-understand way.
  • If your team is working remotely, conduct morning meetings to ensure everyone is on the same page.

You can always adjust your workplace processes depending on your business as you try different approaches and see what works and what doesn’t.

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How to increase productivity by increasing employee engagement

A recent report by Gallup shows that global employee engagement has seen an impressive rise in the past decade. The companies that fell into this category report higher earnings-per-share, up to quadruple that of their competitors who have less engaged personnel. However, the same report notes the effects of the pandemic on employee engagement and the risk of employees becoming disengaged. Now more than ever, company leaders are considering employee wellness and job satisfaction as a top priority. Creating the right working environment could be the thing that takes your business to the next level, it’s essential to remain competitive in today’s marketplace.

There are various implementations you might consider for increasing employee engagement. Depending on your industry, you can get more specific, but at the very core you’ll want to consider these three concepts:

  • Recognition
  • Work-life balance
  • Employee Wellness

It’s important to consider more than one channel for engagement because your employees are all unique individuals. Part of engagement is acknowledging the skills and characteristics each employee brings to the table. The more you understand someone, the better chance you have at connecting with them. Now you can consider these concepts in a little more detail and think about how you might apply them to your own business Each one contributes to overall productivity in its own way.

Recognition

When a person feels valued, they generally want to keep creating that feeling. Even a few simple words of appreciation can go a long way and help someone power through the rest of their day. Not only does recognition have a positive effect on the employee, but it reflects well on the manager or owner.  One of the simplest ways to implement a system for recognition is with some form of reward. Of course, the reward itself might change depending on the nature of your business.

Work-life balance

Even though your business might mean everything to you, your employees still have a whole host of responsibilities outside of work. If you try to maintain a professional yet flexible workplace, your employees will generally be much happier coming into work. Try to be understanding that everyone deals with daily stress, and it benefits you most when your employees can focus solely on their work. If they can worry a little bit less about scheduling conflicts, they’ll have more energy to complete work tasks.

Employee wellness

Productivity is all about maximizing time and efficiency. When you’re focused on your wellness, you can carry that positive experience into other areas of your life. Companies with wellness programs report high levels of employee satisfaction. It might be a small investment but it shows good faith in your employee and contributes to their ability to perform well in their work. Wellness programs also attract qualified candidates that prioritize their health, which generally indicates a higher ability to perform and potentially an even greater work ethic.  

The bottom line

Employee engagement is directly related to the success (or failure) of your business. When it comes to creating an engaging work environment that fosters productivity, you need to focus on bringing value to your employee, as well as making them feel valued.

The Great Engagement: Engage and Mobilize Employees Program

To develop more strategies our Great Engagement: Engage and Mobilize Employees Training Program focuses on simple but powerful behaviours that will have maximum impact on a leader’s ability to engage his or her employees.

Your organization may be eligible for funding through the Canada-Saskatchewan Job Grant program or the Re-Skill Saskatchewan Training Program.

For more information and to register:  https://redworkscoaching.com/services/executive-coaching/engage-and-mobilize-employees/

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NEW Webinar: The Great Engagement – Three Powerful Practices

“Engaging the hearts, minds, and hands of talent is the most sustainable source of competitive advantage.” Greg Harris, President and CEO of Quantum Workplace.

We’re excited to launch our new free one-hour webinar called, The Great Engagement: Three Powerful Practices.

Check it out: https://youtu.be/z3xmDmK86hE

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FREE 30-60-90 Day Employee Engagement Plan Blueprint

Use your free 30-60-90 Day Employee Engagement Plan Blueprint to design your own Great Engagement for 2022.

The Great Engagement is a call to action to expand your approach to more effectively engage your employees. Employee engagement impacts your bottom line!

How engaged are your employees now?

Research indicates that 60% of employees are not engaged, and 15% are actively disengaged at work.

The costs of this situation are staggering. Disengagement costs the North American business economy over $350 billion per year in lost productivity.

What might employee disengagement be costing your organization?

How do you currently engage your employees?

How will you engage with your employees in 2022?

If you’re not currently focused on engagement then how will you engage your employees in 2022?

If you’re not sure how to start, get your free 30-60-90 Day Blueprint to actively design your own great employee engagement program. We have included a few simple ideas and a planning framework to set you up for success in 2022!

Link to your free 30-60-90 Day Blueprint