Get your brain in motion

Tag: skills

9 skills hard to learn that will pay you off forever

Fruitful skills at work can sometimes be hard to learn and practice.

Here’s some tips to boost your work every day.

1.Time Management: planning is the first step and needs discipline. To do list and scheduling will help you to focus.

2. Empathy: do you feel what people feel? That’s the key to foster the team spirit in your office.

3. Better sleep helps, as many medical studies confirm.

4. Positive self talk: it doesn’t matter what others think of you, but what you think of yourself certainly does. Are you confident enough with yourself?

5. Be consistent. To mantain a top position you have to work harder.

6. Ask for help: when you ask people for advice, you validate their intelligence or expertise, which makes you more likely to win them over.

7. Shut up, if needed, but also listen

8. Mind your business: it will take time, but will surely help the atmospher at work.

9. And finally master your thoughts, directing them to what you want to do and accomplish.

Read the full article: the 9 tips

office

Image source: FlickrRaul Pacheco-Vega (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Thinking Skills

Eric Garner, in his book Thinking Skills, argues that our brain is the most powerful organ we possess. It is the tool that, if used skillfully, can help us perform better in our job, better in our team and better in our organization.

Thinking Skills are some of the most valuable skills to learn today. Indeed, we live in an Information Age, no longer an Industrial Age. That’s why brain has replaced brawn, and strength in thinking has replaced strength in muscles. No matter what kind of business you work for, nor what kind of job you do, today you are expected to apply a range of thinking skills to the work you carry out. This includes using your judgment; collecting, using, and analyzing information; working with others to solve problems; making decisions on behalf of others; contributing to ideas to innovate and change; and being creative about how your job can function better.

By developing your thinking skills to meet the needs of the modern world, you are guaranteed to succeed.

 

Brain food

Image: FlickrSean MacEntee (CC BY 2.0)

 

How to improve your presentation skills

The way how you give an information is as important as the information you are giving. This is why improving your presentation skills is crucial in order to capture your audience and pass your message.

In this article, Sarah Kessler provides a guide to teach us how to preprare and deliver a good presentation and to answer questions on it.

The first step is to prepare your presentation. While preparing you must:

  1. Research your audience (Who is it?)
  2. Structure the presentation (opening, body, closing)
  3. Practice, practice and practice but not memoryse (videotape yourself!)

The second step is to deliver your presentation. The delivery of your presentation depends on:

  1. Verbal delivery: be brief, ask questions to keep the audience engaged, work on your tone, avoid fill words, avoid speaking softly
  2. Body delivery: stand at comfortable distance, eye contact
  3. Power point

The last step are the questions that could arise after the end of your presentation. You must be prepared to them and anticipate them while preparing your presentation. It is a good idea to take questions before the end of your presentation. Anyway, remeber that you don’t have to answer to all the questions you receive from the audience.

Read here the full article

Presentation skills

Image source: Flickr – Lorenzo Gaudenzi (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In this interview by Meredith Bell, Denny Coats explains why it takes time to ingrain a leadership skill. Every action that we do comes from the brain. It is only by repetition that we can strenghten the neural pathways in our brain in order to make our behaviour pattern more natural.

How to master leadership skills

Image source: Flickr – Borghy52 (CC – BY – NC – ND – 2.0)

 

Combined skills to be a senior manager or leader

Ed Gelbstein, former director of the United Nations Computing Centre with long experience in International management, has summarized in a table what is expected from those who want to be a senior manager or leader in international activities.

Here is the summary which is the combined skills of Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Peter the Great and Houdini!

want to be a senior manager

To lead or not to lead?

There is a vast literature on successful leadership and the right skills to be a leader, but what makes a poor leader?

In an article by Bernard Marr on the World Economic Forum Blog, the author has identified the eight signs a person might not be ready for a leadership position:

  1. Lack of empathy;
  2. Fear of change;
  3. Too willing to compromise;
  4. Too bossy;
  5. Wishy – washy;
  6. Poor judge of character;
  7. Out of balance;
  8. Lack of humility.

Read the full article here.

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Image source: Flickr – Riley and Amos (CC BY 2.0)

Leadership Without Ego

What is true leadership? Can it be taught?

During TEDxESCP, Bob Davids – entrepreneur and visionary – explains the difference between leadership and management and stresses the importance of leadership without ego.
According to Mr. Davids, management implies control and if you push people you cannot predict what they will do.
Analyzing examples of famous leaders like Gandhi, he affirms that if you can lead people and get them to follow you, then you have the skills to be a leader.
But leadership is a gift and cannot be bought.
Leadership without ego is thus the most valuable commodity and the rarest in the planet.