Get your brain in motion

Tag: tips

Non-financial motivators

In the article  “8 Ways Leaders Can Motivate Employees Beyond Money”, the author affirms that non-financial motivators may be more effective in the long term than financial incentives.

Based on a McKinsey survey, the author then provides the following 8 principles, which can be very useful when money is in short supply or when a financial incentive is not available:

  1. Energize your team
  2. There’s more to life than work
  3. Put your people first
  4. Act with integrity
  5. Be a great communicator
  6. Be a great listener
  7. Be a problem solver
  8. Lead through experience and competence, not through title or position

motivation

Image source: Flickrairpix  (CC BY 2.0)

8 Tips for effective scheduling

In our daily routine we are unceasingly exposed to facts and events that can easily draw our attention away from tasks which are essential for being efficient and fully productive at work.

Effective scheduling can help us prioritizing and preventing unfruitful struggles to cope with the demands placed upon us.

Geoffrey Whiteway on Coaching Positive Performance lists eight tips that – if daily implemented – can help us scheduling:

  1. Plan the night before: making plan the night before, will ensure you less anxiety and better night sleep.
  2. Select 1 key task: identify the most important task for each day and get that task completed.
  3. Key task first: Life is unpredictable and if somethings happens that plays havoc with your plans, getting the most important task done first will increase the probability for your day to still be effective.
  4. Context based lists: If you have more than 20 tasks to be completed, make a list and put specific tasks under headings based on the situation you find yourself in, or the resources available to you at the time.
  5. No agenda, no meeting. Avoid meetings which do not have a clear agenda, as they tend to be just “talking shops”.
  6. Establish rituals. Routines allow you to get important, repeated tasks completed with maximum efficiency and minimum thought.
  7. Only time specific tasks go in your calendar. Tasks without a deadline risk being continuously put off.
  8. Projects vs. tasks A task is something which needs to get done but has not been done yet. A project is something which needs to be done, but has not been done yet and will take more one task to get done. There is real benefit in thinking this way and breaking each project down into tasks.

schedule

Image source: Flickr – photosteve101

5 tips for novice public speakers

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 (if need be) that you’re talking to a room full of your closest friends.

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

Tip 4: Have a forum to practice. Eighty per cent 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)

 

6 Things The Most Productive People Do Every Day

Ever feel like you’re just not getting enough done?

Below are six tips Tim Ferriss, author of the international bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek, offered:

1) Manage Your Mood
If you start the day calm it’s easy to get the right things done and focus.
Studies demonstrate happiness increases productivity and makes you more successful.

2) Don’t Check Email In The Morning
Research shows emails:
– Stresses you out.
– Can turn you into a jerk.
– Can be more addictive than alcohol and tobacco.
– And checking email frequently is the equivalent of dropping your IQ 10 points.

3) Before You Try To Do It Faster, Ask Whether It Should Be Done At All
Everyone asks, “Why is it so impossible to get everything done?” But the answer is stunningly easy: You’re doing too many things.

4) Focus Is Nothing More Than Eliminating Distractions
What’s the best way to sum up the research? How about this: Distractions make you stupid.

5) Have A Personal System

6) Define Your Goals The Night Before
Define your one or two most important to-dos before dinner, the day before.

Once you are more productive, you’ll have a lot more hours to fill.
So why not use them to make others and yourself happier?

For the article: Barking Up The Wrong Tree

4579520419_3668704c59_o

Image Source: Flickr – To-do List, john.schultz

5 Leadership Tips by Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln gets a lot of credit for being a great leader.
Here’s what he did, why it works and how it can make you a better leader.

1.   Get out of the office and circulate among the troops:
Lincoln knew people were his best source of information. And accessibility built trust.
Guess what? Modern business theory backs him up. These days the management gurus call it “Managing by Wandering Around.”

2.      Persuade rather than coerce:
Does the modern research agree? Yes.
The #1 thing Harvard Business School teaches it’s MBA students about negotiation is “They need to like you”.

3.      Lead by being led:
Looking at the research,  the type of leadership that works in the toughest situations is Lincoln’s method: being democratic and listening.

4.      Encourage innovation:
Reward people for trying new things and don’t punish them for failure.

5.      Influence people by storytelling:
Facts and statistics are great but when people hear presentations what do they remember? The stories.

There’s a lot to learn from Lincoln!

For more: Lessons From Lincoln: 5 Leadership Tips History And Science Agree On

Abraham_Lincoln_Signature.svg

Image source: Wikipedia

 

Starting a New Job

When you get a new job, elation and excitement come first and you’re enthusiastic about all the new possibilities before you.
After that, however, the panic begins. You start to get nervous about your new responsibilities, the corporate culture and the people with whom you’ll be working.
While starting a new job can be a stressful experience, this important transition doesn’t have to be full of tension and anxiety.
In this article, Mind Tools covers strategies for making this transition easier, and it offers some tips for building solid relationships with your new colleagues:

1. Give yourself 90 days to become fully effective in a new role;
2. Focus on a few quick wins;
3. Build the new skills you need;
4. Navigate the new culture;
5. Learn who’s who.

Starting a new role can cause a lot of stress. And you’ll make it harder on yourself if you try to do too much too soon. Spend plenty of time getting to know your new culture. Your boss doesn’t expect you to create full value for the company during your first few months, so take it slowly. And try to focus on a few small victories that will help you establish credibility.

Read more on: Starting a new job: getting used to your new role

new-career

Image source: Loren’s World

Posted by Camilla Sicuro.

 

Tips for Effective E-Learning

Never heard of it?  You’ll love it.

As pointed out by Atrixware in its site, the fatal flaw of many E-Learning PowerPoints is found not with the audience, but with the presentation itself. They are boring!  And boredom is NOT an effective teaching technique!
Instead of looking at what makes PowerPoint bad, it is good to consider can be done  to make it good.

1.   Gain Attention
2.   Inform Learner of Objective
3.   Stimulate Recall of Prior Knowledge
4.   Present the Material
5.   Provide Guidance for Learning
6.   Elicit Performance
7.   Provide Feedback
8.   Assess Performance
9. Enhance Retention and Transfer

Read more: 9 Handy Tips for Effective E-Learning Slideshows

500px-Athene_cunicularia_-near_Goiania,_Goias,_Brazil-8_edit

Image source: Wikimedia Commons