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By Mary Kelly
It is normal for many people to doubt themselves. If you have feelings of self-doubt, you’re in good company. Doubting yourself creates a host of unfavorable scenarios and prevents you from reaching your full potential. It holds you back. Many opportunities may pass you by because you feel as though you don’t deserve them, you are not qualified enough, or that you’re lacking in some way. Self-doubt is especially prevalent in the presence of peers. It’s easy for others on your level academically or professionally to challenge your self-belief – just by being there! You might feel like they’re ahead of you, even though you’re on the same level. It’s important to realize that you’re just as deserving as anybody else. Stop comparing yourself to others. Keep these concepts in mind to help you feel confident when trying to persuade others:
As my friend Jess Pettitt says, “you are good enough now”. Seize your well-earned confidence and move forward to your next challenge. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success!
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By Mary Kelly
Sally is a 38-year-old manager of a retail store in a busy strip mall in Portland, Oregon. Last week, in a panic, she called her regional manager, Darla. “Danny gave me his two weeks’ notice today. Charlene quit last week. I do not have people to run the store. What do I do?” Sally’s boss weighed Sally’s options:
Sally was at her wit’s end, and she was frustrated with Darla for not understanding that the problem was bigger than just her and her store. Sally was thinking: “Darla doesn’t understand that I bend over backwards for my people. They like me and they have worked for me this long because they feel a sense of loyalty. I cannot blame Danny and Charlene for leaving right now. It just does not seem worth it to work.” “They hate wearing masks all day. They hate that part of their job is now cleaning and sanitizing the store. They hate that shoplifting is increasing and that the police cannot respond right away. They know that their taxes are going up, so their take-home pay is going to decrease. The workload of the job has increased, and the pay increased, but not as much as the hassle of coming to work. Darla does not understand that Danny and Charlene were my best workers. They were reliable. They each have over 4 decades of work experience. Customers love them. I depended on them.” “But I can’t blame them. If I were in their position, I would quit, too.” Danny and Charlene are part of The Great Resignation. Baby boomers, who are turning 65 at the rate of 10,000 per day have been crunching the numbers on their Roth IRAs, their Traditional IRAs, their 401(k)s, their SEPs, their savings, their investments, and their social security. They are doing the math on their budgets. And the Baby Boomers are resigning in droves. For Sally, it is a problem to replace her best front-line employees. For large corporations, the resignation of 21 million experienced workers in the past 8 months is a crisis. This attrition the next business crisis – the loss of the knowledge, education, work ethic, and talents of their most experienced people. As Baby Boomers walk out the door, some Generation Xers are feeling relieved. “Finally! Maybe I can get promoted now!” Other Generation Xers are considering their own resignation. “I don’t want to work for a new boss. Bill was great. I do not want Bill’s job. Whoever they bring in is going to be worse. Maybe I will follow Bill’s example and retire as well." Human Resource managers are panicking. “We are advertising everywhere, and we still cannot recruit the right people.” “We are offering great pay and benefits and we still cannot hire the right people.” “We are incentivizing our current employees with free lunches and other perks, and we still cannot keep the right people.” This, and thousands of other scenarios, is The Great Resignation. Senior executives are worried: “How are we going to fill the gaps? Where are the job-hunters? How do we get future leaders ready for increased responsibilities?” Some senior leaders were not thinking about leaving or moving to another job until they were hit with a wave of empty positions: “I don’t want to have to do Cindy and Mark’s job along with mine. Maybe it is time for me to retire, too." Employment cycles move like waves in the ocean. External forces impact us close to home. Everything Sally is experiencing is happening on a larger scale throughout corporate America. The businesses that are least prepared and most negatively impacted by this wave are those without a viable succession plan. A solid succession plan:
The consequences of The Great Resignation are just now being realized as organizations are opening back up to find that some of their best talent is staying home for good. How is The Great Resignation affecting your organization? Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Mary Kelly
Distractions are everywhere, and leaders know they need good habits that ground them in what is most important. Being productive seems to be more difficult when people are thinking about taking vacations and traveling. Incorporate these habits into your regular routines to stay focused on what is most important.
Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Mary Kelly
Position alone doesn’t make you a good leader. Today we’ll learn how clarifying your personal mission is the foundational step to helping your team align with goals and then execute them. Reflection: Creating an environment of success and communicating purpose to others requires first understanding yourself and what motivates you. When you know what YOU want to accomplish, and why, you can communicate purpose and values to those you lead, so they embrace team goals. To gain insight into what you want to achieve, ponder what your life might look like 10 or 20 years down the road. The desire for significance in life is universal – and critical to achieving your goals over the long term. Defining what brings significance to your life will help you focus on ways you can achieve your life purpose. Answer a few questions to help you determine your personal missionas the first step toward cultivating effective leadership. Action: A personal mission statement is not a list of specific goals or tasks. It’s broader than that. It’s a philosophy of life that guides your planning and goal setting. Steven Covey calls it “…your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values.” Here are two examples of mission statements, one work-related and one related to family:
Take a few minutes right now. Step away from everyday pressures and write answers to the questions below. Use these questions to help you craft your personal mission statement:
My personal mission: Once you’ve stated it clearly, ask yourself: Am I bringing my personal mission to bear in all areas of my life? Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Mary Kelly
An effective team fosters creativity and takes advantage of diverse strengths and experiences. Working as a group can produce results beyond what any individual member could do alone. However, some teams thrive while others flounder. Creating a collaborative environment takes work, and many obstacles can undermine the process. Maybe negative competition runs rife. Or perhaps your organization could benefit from investing more time in teaching team-building skills. Situations like these can take a heavy toll on job satisfaction and productivity. Learn how to spot and overcome 3 of the most common obstacles to team building. Vague Goals Teams must understand their goals before they can commit to them. While work groups may function independently in some ways, they still need senior leadership to provide adequate direction and support. Use these strategies to ensure that everyone on the team is on the same page:
Lack of Trust Cohesive teams trust each other. They create an atmosphere where members feel safe to share information and take risks. Developing healthy relationships makes it easier to tackle any task. Try these tips to build trust within the team:
Ineffective Communication Friendly and respectful communication makes employees feel like they belong. Team members feel more driven to achieve their common purpose. Keep these effective communication techniques in mind:
Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Mary Kelly
We are often stressed about unresolved tasks that hang over our heads. Most of us feel as though we have too much to do, and we feel as though we don’t have enough time to do everything. World events, our jobs, family issues, and community commitments often causes us to add to our stress bucket. What can you get off your plate, resolve, or delegate so that you have more time and resources to devote to doing the activities only you can do, or for those things that you want to do??
Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Mary Kelly
The continued push for flexible working hours and locations continues to expand and can be challenging for leaders who want to keep top talent, provide “working from home” opportunities, and stay productive. Leaders know that training and developing their people is a crucial component for keeping them engaged and proficient. Workers claim they want to be both personally and professionally developed to become more successful in the workplace. One way businesses can provide flexibility, even when they have employees back on site, is to create training that can be done from remote locations. Training can be more effective when conducted at a time and place that is most convenient for the employee. It allows workers the flexibility they want, and can be a better experience than the “everyone has to meet in the conference room at 8 AM” approach. How can organizations provide quality training that actually benefits both the employee and the organization? 1. Set expectations for the training outcomes When it comes to ensuring the success of any training, it’s important to provide your employees a comprehensive walk-through of what they should expect to learn. If leaders don’t provide direction and set expectations, workers may think this training is just another mandatory program designed to check a box for compliance or HR. They may not take it seriously. Leaders need to let their people know why they were given the training. 2. Have quality content This is the biggest challenge I see when implementing training. Many leaders delegate the job of finding good topics and programs to the HR department. The HR department is not always clear on the leaders’ goals. Sometimes the HR department finds the cheapest possible option, and the outcome is worse than if they had not done any training at all. For example, I just worked with an organization whose teams loved the prospect of having remote training on Effective Time Management, but they complained about the first series of programs they received. Why? The programs were poorly orchestrated, poorly conducted, and contained out-of-date content. Employees (rightfully) believed that this was a waste of their time, and the irony that the topic was called Effective Time Management was not lost on them. The leader called me to do damage control. Employees were now jaded on remote learning, and they were wildly unenthused about going through another iteration without some kind of guarantee that it would be better. Doing training right means getting it right the first time. 3. Assign group facilitators to hold remote learners accountable Employees who have just started training remotely may find it a paradigm shift. They may try to multi-task the training, such as allowing the videos to run on one computer while they peruse social media on another. To make remote learning successful, assign a facilitator who may be able to be online at the same time and create a more interactive experience. 4. Schedule frequent supervisory check-ins after the event Social isolation is one of the crucial challenges in the virtual world, even if it is only a day or two per week. Employees, including your training staff, may also suffer from this unique challenge. Frequent check-ins give your remote employees a sense of community. It gives them the feeling of being heard and acknowledged. If those workers are left ignored, it could potentially impact their training and learning enthusiasm, which decreases productivity. 5. Keep tabs on the learner engagement and performance When you are providing training to your team, you won’t have the same level of visibility on your remote team as you would if you were in a physical office environment. Ignoring the learners for an extended period leads to poor team engagement and performance. Remember, engagement and performance go hand in hand. To ensure your remote team accomplishes both, help participants understand the objective of the training so that they can comply with their roles. 6. Help people focus The world is full of distractions, your remote learners may get distracted by everything they need to accomplish, both for work and at home. The same task might require more time as your team may struggle in a remote environment. Developing focus and priorities helps people plan their work, track their projects, eliminate what is unnecessary, and meet project deadlines. Great training can help. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Mary Kelly
1. Think about resource allocation as though they are the owners of the company. In economics there is a theory called the principal agent problem. It happens when employees, the agents of the organization, think more about their own best self interest than they do about the principal, or the organization. In small ways, it means that employees don’t worry about walking out the door with company pens, because they don’t consider that stealing. On larger levels, it can manifest by padding an expense report, skimping on hours worked, and habitually using company time for personal use. On a grand scheme, it means defrauding the organization. Great employees think as though they are the principal, or the owner of the company. They would not steal from themselves. They would work 100% while at work. They would consider, “If I owned this company, what would I want to happen next? What do I need my people to do, plan, and act upon?” 2. Be empathic while still holding employees accountable. Show compassion to employees while holding them accountable. Leaders who do not hold employees accountable are doing them a disservice. Employees believe they are fulfilling their role, because no one has advised them otherwise. Then they are surprised, hurt and angry when they are fired. 3. Turn uncertainty into action by breaking up large tasks into manageable chunks for their direct reports. Give people chunks of projects so they experience more wins at work. 4. Streamline internal processes. Every organization has processes that are cumbersome, outdated, and irritating to those who have to work within those confines. Examine everything for efficiency. Simplify processes to better reflect reality. 5. Adapt rapidly to the changing needs of customer demographics. Leaders have to understand and know their customer base as well as their emerging buyers. Real market data is critical. Leaders need to base decisions on reliable data. 6. Simplify the buying process for customers and clients. Make it easy for buyers to make the buying decision. 7. Focus on developing future products and services that enhance the lives of customers and clients. We exist to deliver better products, provide innovative solutions, and create solutions to problems before our customers realize that they have those issues. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Mary Kelly
Communication is key when it comes to anything that involves other people. We humans are a social species, and communication is involved in nearly everything you do. And yet, so many of us get it wrong, even to those closest to us. Some people are born with a natural ability to communicate well. Their communication methods seem to be easy for them and people gravitate towards them. Others may struggle with getting people to listen. Regardless of what category you fall into, it’s likely that you can benefit from improving your communication skills. Why Better Communication Helps Us Did you know that most businesses consider your communication skills to be the most important characteristic about you? This means that you could have top-notch knowledge and job skills, but still fail to get the job of your dreams if you’re lacking good communication skills. Communication is also critical to your personal relationships. Have you ever had a disagreement with someone in your family? Of course you have! Most arguments are the result of poor communication. Couples and family members that are good communicators lead happier personal as well as professional lives. Proper communication prevents misunderstandings, and saves time so you don’t have to repeat yourself. Fewer mistakes are made with good communication. It is estimated that poor communication costs business 37 billion dollars a year globally. How Can Leaders Improve Their Communication With Others? Communication is a two-way street, not a monologue. This means we might have excellent skills, but if the recipient doesn’t understand, then we have not communicated effectively. Remember, the onus of making sure the message is received is always on the person who is delivering the message. As a leader, we can facilitate the process by being effective listeners as well. Great leaders make it easy for people to communicate with them, and they are able to absorb and synthesize information quickly. It takes practice. This is why it’s important not only to develop our speaking skills, but our listening skills, too. We generally cannot affect the skill level of others, so we need to strengthen our own communication skills. As an excellent communicator, more people will understand us, everything around us will run more efficiently, and we get what we want accomplished. To improve communication skills, try these 5 techniques:
Bonus: Let it go. Don’t hang on to arguments, either at home or at work, because you want to be mad. That is childish and unprofessional. We will not win every discussion. There will be disappointments. Life is full of disappointments. Once the issue is over, let it go. Becoming a better communicator doesn’t happen overnight. But if we keep practicing and tweaking our skills, we will be surprised at what we can accomplish. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Mary Kelly
Feeling overwhelmed by lunchtime? You’re not alone. Leaders are responsible for more moving parts than ever before. Let’s take a look at seven of the common – but complicated – reasons why leadership isn’t an easy role.
Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! |
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