Posts tagged productivity
[ QUIZ ] Coaching as an Effective Management Tool

If your management role exhausts you due to people who don’t think proactively or won’t take risks, who come to you repeatedly with the same questions or who stall out at the same roadblocks over and over again, then you might want to add coaching to your manager’s toolbox.

Semi-annual performance reviews are too few and far between for our fast-paced world. Listen in to learn how coaching will help you increase accountability, skillfulness, and proactive problem-solving within your team.

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What Workarounds Have You Created?

Have you created a workaround to accommodate a performance problem with an employee or team member? If you have, you’re costing your organization time and money, and you’ve probably planted the seeds for office drama and morale issues.

Workarounds create more problems than they solve, so why do we invent and implement them?

Listen in or read on to learn why we create these workarounds, how they affect everyone involved, and how your organization’s or team’s leadership holds the keys to a productive solution.

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Finding the Third Door

The Third Door is a magical place on the decision-making spectrum that is between Option A and Option B. It is in between the right choice and the wrong choice, between Yes and No, between any two obvious answers.

The Third Door is just a few steps off the beaten path, an entryway to expansive possibility – but it is elusive and not always easily seen by our thinking mind. Listen in pr read on for an example of the Third Door in the workplace, how I found my Third Door, and how you might find yours.

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Is Your First Fact Flawed or False?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve taken off in a direction based on a first fact that is flawed. Sometimes I find out quickly, but sometimes the roadblocks, barriers, and failures aren’t eager to reveal themselves, and so it takes a lot longer. Sometimes, I’ve invested a lot of time and energy before realizing that I was headed in the wrong direction from the start.

Listen in for stories with what this looks like, plus three simple tips that will point your efforts in the right direction.

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Emotional Literacy: What’s the Cost?

The more I engage and do consulting work with organizations, the more I see that the core thing causing us to get into conflicts, waste time, create drama and chaos, and have a strong negative impact on productivity is that people are less and less skillful in the emotional literacy realm.

Listen in or read on for a definition of emotional literacy plus a story that showcases low emotional literacy skills and how they can affect an organization’s bottom line.

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How to Foster Hope When Things Aren’t Trending Toward Positive

A key learning from Navigating Challenging Dialogue® is issues like staff burnout, drama, conflict, high turnover, and low morale are symptoms signaling a deeper issue.

What’s underneath hopelessness is the basic human desire to feel our efforts are trending toward a positive outcome. Yet the important work of wrangling with long-term societal problems can feel overwhelmingly negative.

Read on (or listen in) for two radically different approaches to helping individuals and the collective in your organization find a path to hope…

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But, There IS Enough Time

When you ask your staff why they missed a deadline or dropped a project, you may hear, “I didn’t get it done because I’m overwhelmed. There isn’t enough time in the day for all that’s on my plate.”

And now they’re off the hook, and you’re on it, even if that wasn’t their intention. Because how can you effectively respond to that? It’s not like you can manufacture more time for them.

Well, listen in for a question you can ask that will point the way to getting more done with however much time they have.

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Plug the Leaks ... and Fast!

We put so much effort and attention into counting dollars, tracking expenses, investing in the newest technology, and charting our strategic pathway to the future – and those are all valuable activities. But it is the rare leader who connects a dollar value to every minute spent in putting off direct feedback and clearing up petty conflicts, confused communication, and ongoing office drama.

Listen in or read on for more on where time (and therefore money) gets wasted and what you can do about it.

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Hey, Got a Minute?

It is hard to focus when you are constantly getting pinged, binged, or tapped on the shoulder with someone who just needs a quick second. And not only is it hard to focus, but the research shows that you have a higher chance of making mistakes and experiencing more stress and exhaustion.

Do you find yourself getting frustrated by colleagues who should know the answer to a question (or at least be able to find it) but instead they holler across the room to you? Or perhaps you are the person who prefers to ask someone versus look something up yourself?

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