Don’t you get nervous?
It’s a question I’m often asked after I present at a conference or conduct an in-house professional development program for a client. Whilst I’ve been presenting or training for over 20 years, I still get butterflies in my stomach before I present. I’ve grown to understand that this Is a good thing. It means I’m excited and keen to give all that I can to my audiences to help them get more productive! What I also recognise is this it is not the same for everyone, especially if you only present once every now and then. So what I do …
Are you overlooking the obvious?
Whenever I work with teams on their productivity, I notice a number of things, but there is one thing that regularly stand out as an opportunity to increase connection and collaboration that is regularly overlooked. The Expert Every team or organisation has one. The person “labelled” as the expert in Excel, expert at saying “NO”, getting stuff done, whatever it is. They are the “measurement tool” the organisation and their teams use to compare and contrast their own expertise. Am I better at this than that person, or are they better than me? If a person is considered to be …
Communicating Change
I once worked with an organisation who had spent several million dollars implementing a new video conferencing system. They came to me to discuss training for their staff and wanted to know how much it would cost. I asked the question I always ask and that was what was their budget? You see if you don’t have some framework to work within, the options are almost unlimited. You could go from giving them a link to a website to download some free resources through to a 12 month program of providing them with tools and resources to engage, knowledge share …
I can’t read your mind!
As a child, I loved super heroes and their super powers as much as anyone my age. One of the super powers I always wanted was the ability to read minds. Unfortunately, today in business, we often make the assumption that everyone knows what we know….and reality is, we should assume they often don’t! When you have skills or knowledge one of the challenges you face is the assumption that everyone knows as much (or as little) as you do. We assume others know what we know. It’s like we expect them to read our minds and know automatically what …
Every one is NOT like you!
When I was a child, my mother used to espouse the old adage… “You can’t please all of the people all of the time.” Whilst we know that not everyone will like you, it’s important to also know not everyone is like you. What’s the difference? Often when I speak to people about sharing ideas or information with their team, all I hear is frustration. For example, a finance manager who tried to upskill one of his team members by presenting her with, what was for him a life changing book, on how to use various Excel features. A few …
Interruptions
One of the challenges associated with presenting to your colleagues, clients or even at a conference is the interruption of late arrivals. For some it may be a matter of course or culture, ie everyone is always late to meetings, it could be they went to the wrong venue, lost track of time or were caught in traffic. It’s safe to assume in almost all instances it has NOTHING to do with you. When people are late to my programs, I am always welcoming and if there is any participation coming up, I use that time to check in that …
How’s Your Communication?
I recently facilitated a work/life balance presentation for a client. I believe work/life balance isn’t final. That you don’t just achieve it and stay there forever. That it ebbs and flows as life changes and work alters and we need to be able to deal with all the physical, mental and emotional strains this places on ourselves and our teams. In a world of instant access, this simply means managing time and managing expectations – our own and others. However, one of the challenges with this is that we often apply our own expectations to other people and as a …
Optimisation
Optimisation Nelson Mandela once said “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” At the start of the week, it often seems like we have so much to do, but often it just “feels” that way. One easy way to get what needs to be done out of your head is to do a simple brain dump. Take a blank piece of paper (or utilise the task feature in your email program) and simply jot down all the things you need to do. It doesn’t matter if they are business or personal, just get it all out! Once you’ve got it …
Brain Dump
With so many tasks, expectations and deadlines it is easy for things to fall through the proverbial gaps if you don’t have a strategy for collecting, sorting and categorising the importance of tasks to be done. When you don’t have a strategy, or it is very loose, the results can vary, from missing important deadlines, being unprepared for meetings or worse, feeling anxious and stress resulting in grumpiness when you get home or trouble sleeping. Whilst working with a global brand we explored the concept of a brain dump. A brain dump is simply an allocated block of time where …
