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Category: Learning (Page 17 of 25)

The hard truth about soft skills

30/04/2015 /

54 lessons organized in 8 chapters, each of them covering an aspect where soft skills play an important role: career management, getting the job done, communication, handling critics, office politics, self-promotion, dealing with differences and leadership.

In her book “The hard truth about soft skills – workplace lessons smart people wish they’d learned sooner“, Peggy Klaus, tells us about the importance of soft skills on workplace, trying to understand why they are still so often ignored, although they are fundemental in our everyday work. The problem is semantic? What is soft cannot be considered serious? The matter is that most of us think that they are about touchy-feely people skills?

Among the 54 lessons pinted out by Klaus on the basis of her work experience:

hardtruthcover1. Knowing yourself is as important as knowing how to do your job
2. Learn when to stick and when to shift or the details will hang you
3. Know where to draw the line between self-improvement and self-destruction
4. When it comes to gossip, learn the art of deflection
5. Don’t take it personally
6. Your procrastination is trying to tell you something
7. Keep your visibility when you are not face-to-face

 

(How to) Sleep, don’t weep

23/04/2015 /

Improving your own bedtime routines can be an easy way to feel better day by day and to become a more successful and positive person. According to Jacquelyn Smith, Careers Editor for Business Insider, there are nine things successful people do before going to sleep:

  1. They read;
  2. They make a to-do list;
  3. They spend time with family;
  4. They reflect on the day;
  5. They meditate;
  6. They plan out sleep;
  7. They unplug and disconnect from work;
  8. They lie down on a positive note;
  9. They picture tomorrow’s success.

Read the full article here.

Sleep, don't weep

Image source: Flickr – Guilherme Tavares (CC BY 2.0)

Little changes for a big change

14/04/2015 /

What if someone told you to floss only one tooth everyday? Or start the new year, not with grand resolutions, but with a simple challenge? In this TEDx BJ Fogg shows us that the best way to achieve lasting change is to think very very small rather than planning monumental changes.

JB Fogg directs research and design at the Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab, where they focus on methods to change habits. His life is devoted half to university and half to industry innovation. Up to him, his expertise is creating systems to change human behavior and he call this “Behavior design”.

<iframe src=”http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Forget-big-change-start-with-a/player?layout=&read_more=1″ width=”416″ height=”296″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”>

 

15 Best Leadership Books a Leader Should Read

26/03/2015 /

According to John Coleman, ‘broad reading habits are often a defining characteristic of our greatest leaders’. Actually reading has shown to lead many benefits in leadership development: it improves communication, emotional intelligence and organizational effectiveness and reduces stress.

Unfortunately, nowadays business people seems to be reading less, maybe because they are not sufficiently convinced of the importance of reading, they don’t know what they should read or because they think they don’t have the time.

In this article on Lifehack, Joe Vennare identifies some 15 best leadership books  especially would-be leaders need to read to define leadership and how applied it, communicate and motivate teamwork, and keep going on.

The Bus Metaphor

24/03/2015 /

The right people in the right seats on the bus: this is the metaphor from the first Jim Collins best-seller ‘Good to Great’. In that book – published in 2001 – the author identifies what leaders need to do, in order to see their teams and organizations excel. And he uses the power of an image to communicate the following concept.

According to Collins, leaders who are able to transform their organizations begin not by setting a direction, but by getting the right people on the bus – and the wrong people off the bus.

Actually great leaders understand the following three simple truths:

1. If you begin with “who,” rather than “what”, you can more easily adapt to a changing world.

2. If you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away, because they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great.

3. If you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won’t have a great company.

Assembling the team is the first crucial point. Then a leader has to develop a vision (the direction of the bus), to remove obstacles to high performance (that is, maybe people are not exactly in the right seats and need to be assigned to the right role) and to help people with diverse talents and interests building trust in each other.

It is an hard work, but leaders need it to accomplish objectives with the right people.

Bus

Image source: http://bit.ly/16TU0QU

 

Fail to Succeed

21/03/2015 /

I’ve missed over 9,000 shots in my career.
I’ve lost almost 300 games.
26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed.
I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life.
And that is why I succeed – Michael Jordan

image

Image source: Flickr – Ryan Fung (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

 

Five Inspiring Habits of Effective Leaders

19/03/2015 /

Becoming an effective leader is not a one-time thing. It takes time to learn and practice leadership skills until they become a part of us.

Taking time to analyze the habits of effective leaders is an important exercise allowing us to recognize both the good and the bad characteristics, in order to shape our leadership style.

Below are just five habits we can emulate:

1. Taking calculated risks;

2. Fostering a positive work culture;

3. Encouraging innovation;

4. Leading by example;

5. Remaining graceful under pressure.

Read more on: http://bit.ly/1KIhTtB

Leader

Image source: http://bit.ly/16RQplZ

 

Top Team Building Activities

17/03/2015 /

Team building activities are essential in creating a productive team, since they serve to increase communication among team members in a positive working environment. Actually staff are most productive when they are happy within they role, and feel that they are making a valued contribution to the team’s goals.

Team building does not have to be painful, annoying or even embarrassing. There are many valuable team building exercises that can be effective in uniting groups, developing individual skills and collective strengths.

There are four main types of team building activities, which includes:

1. communication activities and icebreakers;

2. problem solving and/or decision making activities;

3. adaptability and/or planning activities;

4. building trust.

If you want to learn more on team building activities, read here: http://www.huddle.com/blog/team-building-activities/

teamwork concept on blackboard

Image source: http://bit.ly/1uEy4E9

How to Learn a New Language in Six Months

10/03/2015 /

Chris Lonsdale is a psychologist from New Zealand who runs a company in Hong Kong. After spending many years assessing all of the research available on language learning, he was able to formulate five principles and seven actions that will allow any adult to learn a new language and speak it fluently in six months.

Discover Lonsdale’s approach in his TED Talk.

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