Carnival Of Management Tips

Welcome to the February 9, 2007 edition of carnival of management tips.

Anna presents Work/Life Balance at The Engaging Brand

N Rana presents Euranus Reviews - Money Making posted at Blogging the Deeds, saying, "Still everything greek to me. Oh lord, please help."

Wilson Ng presents Making Employees Productive posted at Reflections of a BizDrivenLife.

Emmanuel presents How to harness the Intelligence of Customer to solve your problems posted at Comments on: There is a science to get rich.

Jeff Burkey presents Say Goodbye to Outlook and Say Hello to Ziggs posted at HedgeFundDomain.

Billy Smith presents The “Golden Rule” of Leadership « The Organic Leadership Blog posted at The Organic Leadership Blog, saying, "Thanks Anna!"

Podcast Freq presents Podcasting Ideas and Motivation

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Management by Michaelangelo

There are many people who enter management thinking great, the end of doing all the boring, mundane jobs. Then they realise how hard management is, and they wonder why they ever aspired to being a manager. Well Michaelangelo has the answer...

When asked by a young boy why he was hitting a large piece of rock with his hammer and chisel replied, " Because there's an angel inside and I'm helping him to escape"

When you are next faced with the round of weekly coaching sessions, performance appraisals, recruitment...just remember what a creative, inspiring role you have...you are allowing the angel inside to escape....

Are the winter blues affecting your motivation?

If you are feeling low and wondering "Is this all I have to look forward to?" - Don't worry it is the winter blues grabbing hold of that mind....the lack of sunshine is a huge factor on motivation.

But it is also a chance to think about what is important to you. Often we are trying to define ourselves or measure our happiness from what we do or achieve......it is not wrong, but don't forget to think about measuring your day to day life against who you are.

Often depression hits because you are not doing something that is core to your values...you may be achieving a lot and yet it doesn't seem to make you happy. If that is the case take a few minutes to think about your values, who you are and make sure that your day to day life is fulfilling these needs. No money will ever compensate for you working or living against your desires or values.

Be a Bullfighter! Cut the jargon....

Jargon really does turn people off, it also confuses people so here are my list of jargon words that you must avoid

Strategy
Vision
Mission
KPI's
Strategic imperatives
ROI
Strategic Direction

You need to replace all these with everyday terms so most of the above can be replaced with the following 2 sentences

What are we trying to acheive, what are our goals for this week, month, quarter?

What targets shall we set ourselves?

Ten Ways to Beat the Winter Blues

As we enter the colder, darker days (or at least in the UK!) we tend to suffer a dip in our motivation. So how can we keep our motivation going?

1. Exercise is good for your motivation. Why not go for a walk for 20 minutes at lunch.
2. Take a nightclass to learn a new skill.
3. Sit down and write 3 goals for the next 3 months. Plan how you will achieve them.
4. Eat well, eat more vegatables/fruit to keep your body in tip top condition.
5. Don't waste your weekend -this is a chance to recharge your emotions. Plan something to look forward to during the week.
6. As a manager, set some events that bring people together with a fun element - quizzes, brainstorming, celebrations.
7. Write a blog to help others with the feelings of a dip in motivation.
8. Visit older members of your family and friends who feel the winter the most. The act of helping others can be uplifting.
9. Hold breakfast sessions at work to stimulate motivation discussions.... keep them light, but they ease people into work.
10. Make sure that if you work in the office you get some of the sunlight during the day. When outside - via a walk etc make sure you lift your head and allow your eyes to see the sun.

Helping each other can be great, understand that people will have down days, be patient and supportive.

8 Word Legacy

Over at our sister blog -The Engaging Brand - they run a podcast called The Engaging Brand which looks at motivating and inspiring people at work and they have a lovely question at the end of the interview...what do you want your 8 word legacy to be?

This is a great thought...try writing one it is difficult, but it helps to give you focus to your life.

What is yours....feel free to share one

Don't forget those loyal employees

A study done by Sirota Consulting showed that employee engagement declines after only 6 months of being employed. Although after 10 years service it recovers it never returns to the level it was....

Lesson for me is that we all rush to "engage" people when they join, but remember it is as important if not more important to "re-engage" your existing employees. Once you start taking them for granted you risk their loss, the loss of talent and also the loss of that invaluable experience.

So what are you doing to re-engage people on a regular basis? If you need help then visit our site

Make Targets Exciting

Words like objectives, ,metric, KPI's are all banded around but they are not passionate words. If you want to engage people in achieving targets why not bring some creativity to it?

I bet you have someone in your team, or in your business with some artistic ability. Set a visible target here are some examples

1. Race track - move the car around to the finish line which has the target on it.
2. Archery - move an arrow with the bulls eye as the target.
3. Themes - so at Christmas work up the branches on the tree.
4. Horse race - with the winning post as the target and the horse gets nearer.

The key is to bring fun and creativity to it.

How to get more feedback

Yesterday I touched on the importance of pausing. Today I want to talk about starting your questions with "So, what...?"

In questioning ask - "So, what could you do to...?"

In listening say " So, what you are saying is........?"

In summarising state "So, what we have here is......?"

The "So, what" technique gives clarity, it is non threatening and simple. Try it and tell me if it helps!

A Question You Should Ask

Whether it be your partner, spouse, direct report, colleague...try asking this question.

"What is the best praise that you ever received and what made it so good?"

From that you can understand much more about the individual. You can then adapt to the style they link - informal vs formal, verbal vs written, public vs private etc. Every one of us is different, learn how to make each individual special. It is not how you like praise, it is how THEY want praise.