Diplo Learning Corner

Get your brain in motion

Category: Management (Page 4 of 24)

5 Tips to Deal with Professional Disappointment

18/11/2020 /

10% of life is what happens to you, and 90% is how you deal with it. Dealing with disappointment at work is a prime example of how overcoming the obstacle can be more important than the obstacle itself.

Maybe you got passed over for the promotion you really wanted. Perhaps the project you’ve been working on for months suddenly got cancelled for flimsy reasons.

Some people handle tough emotions better than others. Professional disappointments are disappointments nonetheless, and coping with them appropriately is important for future professional success.
This article presents 5 useful tips to deal with professional disappointment and to avoid it to have any further negative consequence:

1. Be Honest: People will know you are disappointed, so be honest about it. Don’t divulge details you’re not comfortable sharing, but respond to appropriate questions with candor and grace.

2. Be Respectful: Bad news can come suddenly, and it is easy to lash out at the person delivering the message or at the person responsible for the bad news. Resist that temptation.

3. Get Over It in a Reasonable Amount of Time:  Try to get over the disappointment quickly. Accept what you cannot change about the situation, cope with it, and move on with your life. Show you are resilient.

4.  Don’t Make Rash Decisions: Do not let your compulsions dictate your behavior. In the moment, it may seem satisfying to undermine whatever or whoever is causing your disappointment or to throw your hands up and quit, but doing so would be incredibly short-sighted.

5. Decide What to Do Next: If you’re dealing with a game-changing disappointment, you need to decide what you’re going to do in the wake of it. Again, don’t make rash decisions.

Image Source: Pixabay

4 Ways to Focus Better

04/11/2020 /

To perform better at work, learn new skills, be more productive, make decisions, study smarter, and make progress in basically anything that involves your brain, it’s advisable to work on how to focus better.

Your attention is your biggest asset, so it’s important to keep it where it’s supposed to be — on the task at hand that is getting you one step closer to achieving your goals and dreams.

However, it can become a struggle to stay concentrated on the one activity, task, or even person, in front of us.

This article, presents 4 proven techniques on how to focus better:

  1. Identify any distraction in your surroundings, then remove it
  2. Train your willpower muscle
  3. Give meditation a try
  4. Do one thing at a time

Image Source: Pixabay

5 tips for novice public speakers

30/09/2020 /

Dananjaya Hettiarachchi, the winner of the World Championship of Public Speaking 2014 organized by Toastmaster International, interviewed by Richard Feloni for The Business Insider Australia, suggests 5 tips for novice public speakers.

Tip 1
Always start with a message. A common mistake is to start with a topic, instead a speech should begin with a message, as concise as possible. This message is whatever you want your audience to be thinking about when your presentations concludes.

Tip 2
Be confident enough to yourself. You need to sell yourself before to sell your message, the way to do that is to be genuine. A speech should be conversational, not theatrical. The only way to go in front of an audience and to present in a way that isn’t simply miming is to practice again and again, pretending that you’re talking to your closest friends.

Tip 3
See yourself through your audience’s eyes. Speakers tend to become wrapped up in themselves, maybe because they’re afraid to acknowledge a room full of listeners. But if you’re going to speak, you need to realize that you’re doing it for the benefit of others, not yourself.

Tip 4
Have a forum to practice. 80% of the path to becoming a great speaker is trial and error and the only way to learn is by speaking in front of an audience that will give honest feedback.

Tip 5
Find the right coach or mentor. You should find someone willing to help you grow as a public speaker. This does not need to be someone who can teach you advanced speaking techniques; they just need to be someone who gives you permission to explore possibilities, who gives you permission to fail.

Read here the full article

Speech

Image: flickr – Brian Talbot – (CC BY – NC 2.0)

10 Tips to Survive Going Back to Work After a Holiday

26/08/2020 /

Going back to work after holidays can be very difficult. Most people get what is known as the post-holiday blues, while others suffer from anxiety at the thought of having to return to their work. It’s been scientifically proven that getting back into our routine can lead to sluggishness and demotivation.

To help you out, this article offers a list of 10 tips that can help you deal with the post-holiday blues:

1. Embrace the Blues: The first step to dealing with this rather grey mood is to embrace it. Understand that it’s okay to feel sad and accept that the first couple of days back in your daily routine will be difficult.

Image source: Pixabay

10 Tips for Enjoying the Holidays

05/08/2020 /

Holidays can cause us to feel happy, sad or ambivalent. The holidays can also cause stress.

No matter how you feel, the following tips from this article by Johns Hopkins University, can help you enjoy the holidays as much as possible:

  1. Reflect on what is important to you during the holidays.
  2. Make a plan as early as possible about what you will do during the holidays.
  3. Communicate clearly how others can assist or support you.
  4. Realize the holiday season is a marathon, not a sprint.
  5. Maintain a healthy lifestyle.
  6. Manage your spending.
  7. Monitor alcohol and medications – individually and together.
  8. Manage your expectations for family gatherings.
  9. Think ahead about stories or observations from the past as a family that you’d like to share.
  10. Reflect on what went well this holiday season and improvements you would like to make for next year.

Image source: Pixabay

Are you Tending to your Needs?

03/06/2020 /

Have you ever heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?

It is a motivational theory in Psychology which depicts human needs as being organized in hierarchical levels within a Pyramid. At the base are our Physiological needs: food water, warmth and rest. Then follow Safety Needs, Belongingness and Love needs, Esteem needs and finally Self-actualization.

Why the Pyramid? Well Maslow wants to remind us that unless we are tending to our primary, base needs, we won’t be able to fulfil those higher ones. That also means that before we can feel loved and as if we belong in a group, we must feel safe there. And before we think about achieving our full potential, we must check that all the underlying needs are met.

You can read more about each of the levels of this hierarchy and start reflecting upon whether you are meeting those needs in your own life!

 

 

Collaborative leadership

13/05/2020 /

In this TED Talk, Lorna Davis, explains the difference between traditional “heroic leaders” and “interdependent leaders”.

There are three big differences between the two ways of leading:

  1. A hero sets a goal that can be individually delivered and neatly measured. Interdependent leaders, on the other hand, start with a goal that’s really important, but is actually impossible to achieve by one company or one person alone.
  2. The second big difference is the leader’s willingness to declare the goals before having a plan. The heroes only reveals their carefully crafted goal when the path to achieve it is clear. In fact, the role of the hero announcement is to set the stage for the big win. Interdependent leaders, on the other hand, want other people to help them, so their announcements are often an invitation for co-creation, and sometimes, they’re a call for help.
  3. Heroes see everyone as a competitor or a follower. Heroes don’t want input, because they want to control everything because they want the credit. Interdependent leaders, on the other hand, understand that they need other people.

According to Davis, we don’t need heroes. We need radical interdependence, which is just another way of saying we need each other. Even though other people can be really difficult, sometimes. There’s no recipe here, but time together has to be carefully curated and created so that people know that their time is valuable and important, and they can bring their best selves to the table.

Why does hero culture persist, and why don’t we work together more? Interdependence is a lot harder than being a hero. It requires us to be open and transparent and vulnerable, and that’s not what traditional leaders have been trained to do. However, the joy and success that comes from interdependence and vulnerability is worth the effort and the risk.

Image: Pixabay – Geralt

The 7 Rules of Life

28/03/2020 /

Have you ever asked yourself what Rules you want to live your life by? We often grow up following rules given to us by our parents, family, teachers, society… we don’t ever stop to question whether those rules are actually in alignment with who we are.

Then one day, if we’re lucky, something happens that brings us to open our eyes. We don’t feel lucky at first. Coming to terms with the fact that we haven’t been living truly and authentically is scary. It sucks. It can evoke frustration, anger, or even guilt. But these strong emotions can be channeled into finding the path that we really do want to travel.

And that often starts with setting our own life rules.

In his article, Nik highlights 7 Cardinal Rules of Life which were extracted from the movie Whisper of Heart.

  1. Make peace with your past so it won’t mess with your present
  2. Time heals everything, so give it time
  3. What others think of you is none of your business
  4. Don’t compare your life to others and don’t judge them
  5. Stop thinking so much, it’s all right not to have all the answers
  6. No one is in charge of your happiness except for you
  7. Smile, for you don’t own all the problems of the world

 

Compass in hand

Image: Pixabay (CC0 – Creative Commons)

11/03/2020 /

When needing to make a choice, we are often conditioned by our fears more than our goals. Often we know where we want to go, but we are stuck. We’re just too afraid. Of what might happen. Of what others might think of us. Of whether we’re making a responsible choice or not. If we’re going to regret our decision. 

“Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life” 

– Jerzy Gregorek

Tim Ferriss suggests we should change our approach to taking action and overcoming paralysis. In an exercise he calls “fear-setting” he asks us to envision and write down our fears in detail. 

 

Hear all about it in his TED Talk.

 

Stress measurement in less than one minute

26/02/2020 /

In this manual based on the writings of professor Richard S. Lazarus, the authors present the development of the Emotional Stress Reaction Questionnaire (ESRQ). With this tool, psychological stress can be measured in less than one minute.

The first part of the book presents the development of the ESRQ, its theoretical foundation and psychometric properties. The second part illustrates how the instrument can be used in personal coaching focusing on stress management.

Read the full book here!

Image: Pixabay – geralt (CC Creative Commons)

« Older posts Newer posts »

Archives

Archives

© 2024 Diplo Learning Corner

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑