The following topics have ideas in this archive: 1-3 to Build Presence, 4-6 to Build Resilience, 7-9 to ReVIEW Performance, 10-12 to Manage Energy (time!)
Yawning is a great way to warm up your voice – a muscle that needs care and attention to give optimal output. Yawning is your head telling you it is not getting enough oxygen. To freshen yourself after a few big yawns, breathe in through your nose – hold your breath for as long as you can and let your breath go out slowly and naturally through your slightly opened mouth. Change something about your posture now. Next time the phone rings or a person walks in, you will sound and look more strongly like you.
‘Counting together’ is a group-dynamic exercise that increases your focus, opens awareness to the others’ focus and taps into ‘the more’ of synergy very tangibly. Stand together in a circle and choose a number (X) that is higher then the number of people. The purpose is to count to X together, one at a time, without any structure or agreed timing. You may find yourself slipping into a logical sequence to complete the task, but that defeats the purpose. As soon as two people simultaneously say a number, you need to start again. If you are having difficulties, try: standing on two feet, stop talking, concentrate on the silence, rather then the spoken word and slow your breathing. If you are really good, challenge yourself by counting to a higher number!
Send an e-mail to a chosen group (managers, employees, front-line staff) to send you a story that describes the strength / beauty / uniqueness / value of your organisation. It needs to be a story that involves people and their actions. Stories connect people and make others understand easier what it is they are working for. These stories are a wealth of information that can be used in describing the Vision of the Company, in motivating employees through difficult times and capture the knowledge built up in your organisation. They are also great to record on a DVD as an incentive for your people or your customers, or to be created as a booklet. How price-less are the stories of those who retire and have seen your organisation going through so many stages? Capture before it’s gone for ever.
For a free coaching assessment on your Presence, send me an e-mail to arrage a 45 minute meeting; you will receive a free assessment report
Resilience is the capability to deal with adversity; The 15 Emotional Intelligence Skills are proven to be fundamental in developing resilience.
By being more precise in describing your feelings of and your feelings from the day-to-day happenings in work, you’re more resilient to deal with them effectively. Therefore, practice Emotional Literacy as follows:
(1) Recognise feelings for what they are by giving different descriptions every time. Be careful of a trap called thoughts in disguise. Examples: I feel like…, I feel that…, I feel as if…. These are not descriptions of your feelings but of your thoughts. It’s not always anger, sadness, happiness or fear only; there are millions of variations – example list attached.
(2) Express these descriptions of your feelings out loud. This seems an obvious thing to do, but is for most of us difficult. By saying it out loud, feelings become more manageable.
(3) Describe in ‘I’ terms rather than ‘You’ terms.
At your next Team Meeting you become the person on your right and explore an agenda point from this person’s perspective. This works best with a complicated agenda point that needs a thorough examination from all angles for at least 20 minutes. Try to become the person in the way the person moves, behaves, talks and uses the voice (externally). Try to become the person in the way the person thinks, feels, analysis, reacts and uses knowledge. After the 20 minutes capture what you have gained: an insight in the person’s perspective and an opportunity to see the interpretation of others’ on your perspective. Most importantly, you have sped up the performance of the team quicker and higher then in any other way, whilst, I hasten to add, having a twinkle in the eye.
A resilient organisation is one that not only survives, but is able to thrive in an environment of change and uncertainty. Check the organisation-wide resilience in the next fire-drill:
(A) Appoint in every department / on every floor (or outsource) 3 observers. Each will assess either of the following 3 focus points that are signs of resilience:
1. Team work, cooperativeness between people.
2. Energy, being focused or directionless, sure or unsure, active or passive, positive or negative.
3. Leadership, who is taking the lead naturally and/or because of status and/or because of role in the organisation and do people follow.
(B) Run the fire-drill on a time that everybody is busy and nobody expects it.
(C) Draw your conclusions
For a free coaching assessment on your Resilience, send me an e-mail to arrage a 45 minute meeting; you will receive a free assessment report
It’s the time of year where performance reviews are prepared and done by both Manager and ‘Performer’, which will more or less determine how our future will be.
toBE ready for this, here’s a few tips to view people with additional insight:
Tip 7: VIEW of You
As the person Reviewing somebody else’s Performance
Whilst there is a fixed form (in most company’s) that guides your measurements of the person’s performance, the true Review is your experience of the Person and the Person’s impact. A great way of getting straight to the core of this is to think about the person’s energy. What/How is the energy of this person? The energy of a person has 4 qualities: high/low, fast/slow, wide/narrow, heavy/light, loose/directed. When you describe this about the person and match this with the Jobs’ responsibilities and Performance, it will give you surprising insights, as it moves you to a deeper level of review than just task-based or people-based reviewing.
As the person whose Performance is being Reviewed
Whilst reviewing is mainly focussed on the past, with a little time for the future (in most company’s), the true Review is how the past will resonate into the future. A great way of getting straight to core of this is to visualise your value for the organisation. What/How does your value fit with the short and long term goals? Close your eyes and visualise in exact detail 3 examples of what you value drove your actions and how this contributed to the organisations’ goals. Rather then describing the tasks you did or the people you worked with, you describe the drive behind it: the values
Tip 8: VIEW of The Team
Consider the impact, influence and risks involved to teams’ performances because of Individual Performance Reviews. Team Performance Review with a Difference:
Tip 9: VIEW of The Organisation
How do you accelerate the Perforance of your Organisation? What do people see when they move around in your organisation? How much space is there to perform? What kind of energy is there in the different departments, floors, buildings? How colourful and rich is the tapestry of your people? Of what nature is the Performance of your organisation; is it a comedy, a novel, a biography, a thriller, a mystery, a fairytale? How would your customer describe your Theatre and how many friends will they bring to see your Performance? And – once/if you, the leader, know – how well do your people know this VIEW so they can adapt and accelerate their performance to it continuously?
For a free coaching assessment on your Review abilities, send me an e-mail to arrage a 45 minute meeting; you will receive a free assessment report
In my book there is no such thing as time-management. Difficulty in getting things done on time, within a given deadline and with quality always is a matter of focus. Focus = energy and has nothing to do with our clock.
Tip 10: Your Energy Management
Your energy fluctuates according the make up of your physique, mentality and belief system and how healthy this make up is.
Physique: energy management can be improved through exercise, breathing and posture. A slight adjustment to how you sit or walk in the office, a deeper and slower breathing rhythm gives you immediately more energy, hence more focus and time.
Mentality:energy management can be improved by variations of thinking, observing and re-acting. Instead of always re-acting immediately ‘to get things done’ (impulsive energy), giving it 24 hours will save you the energy, give you more focus and time;
Belief System: energy management is particularly dependent on your belief system as it is used up by the friction between ‘has-to’ and ‘want-to’. Rather then pumping energy in the friction, take time to clarify this friction to give you more focus and time. Reframing ‘o no, that’s more work’ to ‘great, that’s an opportunity for me to shine’ certainly gives you energy instantly.
toBE’s free coaching assessment will give you a free feedback report on how you over- or under-use your energy. Click here to arrange that free 45 minute assessment meeting
Tip 11: Your Team’s Energy Management
Every team has an Energy Quadrant that reflects how effective the way they work together is. This does not reflect people’s personalities, but how the group of people behave together. It is made up of a Core Quality, a Pitfall, a Challenge and an Allergy.
Your team’s Core Quality may be Decisiveness, considerateness, carefulness, courage, orderliness, flexibility.
Your team’s Pitfall is a transformation of the core quality; not the opposite, but ‘too much of a good thing’. The positive aspect goes too far, turning strength into a weakness; helpful becomes meddling, careful becomes fussy, flexible becomes capricious; a Team that acts inflexibly may have decisiveness as a core quality.
Your team’s Challenge is the positive opposite of the pitfall. Having identified the negative, transformed behaviour, you can start looking for the challenge. In a nagging team, the positive opposite is patience (and the core quality decisiveness). The core quality and the challenge are complementary qualities.
Your team’s Allergy is ‘too much of a good thing’ of the challenge, as well as the negative opposite of the core quality. The negative opposite of the core quality decisiveness is passiveness. Too much patience may also degenerate into passiveness. The more people are confronted with their own allergy, the greater the risk they run of ending up in their own pitfall.
Managing your Team’s Energy therefore for the best results is to increase the focus on the Challenge, without wasting Energy in Allergies and Pitfalls. Measuring and developing your Team’s energy is much more effective then measuring and developing their task performance.
toBE can observe a team meeting and diagnose it’s Core Quadrant; click here to arrange a meeting
Tip 12: Your Organisation’s Energy Management
Do you walk around your office, your department, your building and sense a lack of energy, a lack of morale, a lack of courage, spirit and drive? That may be a sign of under-using people’s energy. In contrast, you may walk around and sense hyper-activity, lots of noise, movement, sound and voice, a rush of risk-taking and speed. That may well be a sign of over-using people’s energy. Although the measures and management of energy on individual and team level described above will have a strong domino affect on your organisation, there is a deeper, more strategic management of energy that will accelerate Performance. This is in how you live your values. Take 1 hour to walk around, think of the organisations’ values, and ‘sense’ how much of what you see, hear, observe matches those values.
toBE can help you assess how your organisation’s values are lived; click here to arrange a meeting
For a free coaching assessment on your Energy Management, send me an e-mail to arrage a 45 minute meeting; you will receive a free assessment report
Got a question or want to give us feedback about our tips, please contact us
Go back to Tip 13-16: Build your Non-Verbal abilities