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By Mary Kelly
It is the holiday season, and it seems everyone around you is decorating, shopping, traveling for fun, and relaxing. It is tempting to take your foot off the gas pedal and turn everything off. After all, it is the holidays, and we all need a break. However, what we do in December is often what sets us up for success in the first quarter of the new year, and perhaps the entire year. How do you stay motivated on work when you want to enjoy the holidays as well? Now is a great time to reassess what is really important, and to categorize what needs to happen in the right way. Once projects are properly categorized, it is easier to get them accomplished. 1. Redefine your core values. Core values encapsulate what is most important to us. Values such as “provide for my family,” “feel a sense of accomplishment,” and “contribute to my community” help us find direction when we want to take the day off to bake cookies or go fishing. Values, both our own and our organizations’, help us stay motivated towards goals that are part of the bigger picture. 2. Redirect efforts to focus on your wants. The Great Resignation is often linked to employees wanting something different from what their employers are offering, and not feeling as though they can do what they want in their current capacity. This may be true. What are your career aspirations? What do you want for your business? What do you want to accomplish in the part of the business you control? 3. Remember that the grass isn’t always greener. Employees who are leaving their jobs are saying they are underpaid, underappreciated, and overworked. Is this you? Is this the people around you? Is this the people who work for you? Or is it just the prevailing sentiment that is making you feel like you want to make a change? When your friends are leaving their jobs, it is tempting to join the crowd of the newly unemployed, and the holidays seem like a great time to enjoy the break that quitting your job might bring. But the grass is not always greener. If the problem is that you don’t like your house, your city, or career, a change might be in order. But a new job, location, or career may not be better than what you have now. 4. Reevaluate our compensation packages and compare apples to apples. I just worked with an organization where some of the employees told me privately that they believed they were underpaid. Why did they feel this way? Because they thought they were comparing their work and salaries with comparable work. They thought they were comparing apples to apples. Except they were not. I tracked down the competitor, and found out that the salaries were 6% lower at my client’s organization, but that the benefits and bonus structures actually meant that my client’s employees were making 19% more. The problem is that the employees didn’t understand that, because they were only comparing salaries, not the overall benefits, vacation, working hours, and end-of-the year bonuses. My recommendation was that the leadership and HR team do a better job conveying what they were actually spending on their employees, and to reiterate the benefits and bonus structure as they were handing out bonuses and performance evaluations at the end of the year, so that employees didn’t think about updating their resumes while opening Christmas presents. 5. Renew the sense of excitement. Take a look at what is changing heading into the new year. Sometimes we feel lethargic about work when work is monotonous. Get the team together and brainstorm about the changes you are likely to face in the new year. Yes, I know we have been barraged with changes over the past few years, but change is exciting when it is challenging and positive. Make a list of what is likely to change in the new year, and then strategize about what needs to happen to respond and lead those changes. 6. Reengage with the right people. The people around us play a big role in our success. When it comes to our professional lives, we can be influenced by our peers. If our friends are talking about how happy they are at work, we tend to feel the same way. If our friends are pessimistic, we are influenced. To stay positive and focused, seek out like-minded visionaries and entrepreneurs, both at networking events and in casual contexts. Get inspiration and motivation from those in similar situations, who are motivated and inspired to make a difference moving into the future. 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
I don’t really like the word done because it reminds me of something being baked in the oven. It is not my verb of choice, but it is a wildly powerful word. It’s simple. Let people know when you did something. Let people know when something is done. Finished. Accomplished. Closed out. Crossed off. Done. Close the loop. Close the loop with managers, coworkers, and suppliers. Yes, they trust that you will do it, because you said you would do it. They believe you. Yes, you have done it before and they know you are capable of doing it. They have confidence in you. Yes, you are an expert in your field. They respect you. Take the final step and let people know when you have accomplished what you said you would accomplish. Why? So they can take it off their plate. Managers and leaders are juggling hundreds of issues and tasks. When you close the loop and simply tell your supervisor, your coworker, or your customer that you have done what you said you would do, it brings them a sense of relief. It allows them to close the icon. It takes that task off their plate. It reduces the stress. Yet some people push back on this idea of letting people know when they get things done for these reasons, and here are our responses: “I said I would do it.” Response: So tell them you did it to continue to build trust. “It is something I do routinely every week.” Response: Good! So letting others know it is done should be easy. “They shouldn’t have to worry about the details of my job.” We agree! Make it easy for them to NOT worry about you and your job and take it off their to-do list by letting them know the task has been accomplished. Try letting 3 people know you have accomplished what they trust you to do. A simple one word response will suffice. “DONE!” It works. 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
Can leaders help their people find their purpose, live up to their fullest potential, and achieve their dreams? How can we help our people find happiness when everyone’s definition of happiness is different? Is it a leader’s job to help their people find happiness? We know people with a strong sense of purpose at work feel valued by their leadership. We know that people who are valued and respected garner higher rates of appreciation from their leaders. We know that people who feel appreciated at work are more engaged. We know that intrinsically motivated and engaged workers are more productive. It starts at the top. Leaders can help their team members live a more fulfilled life AND increase productivity when they focus on these 5 points. #1: Happiness Happiness is not really a destination as much as it is a state of mind. There are people who wake up happy and people who wake up miserable. There are people who may have all of the material components of a happy life – the nice house, car and family, but they could be miserable. There are people who are happy every day even though they are struggling to make ends meet. Happiness is not about money or possessions. Happiness is all about a decision. We get to decide if we want to be happy or not, regardless of our situation. Some situations are more difficult than others, but every day we get to make the decision about whether or not we want to be happy. The search for genuine happiness is one that happens in our brain. Decide to be happy regardless of the circumstances, and that encourages a more fulfilled and serene life. #2: Integrity “How do I handle ethical issues?” is a frequently asked question. It is both simple and complex. “Good ethics are good business.” It is easier to remember to do the right thing if you do the right thing every time. Practice ethical decision-making with small issues before you leap into critical issues so you default to the right decisions. Make solid ethical practices part of your business practice. From business transactions to personal relationships, good ethics are easier to remember and they bring peace of mind. Leaders who lead ethical teams sleep better at night, and so do their team members. Having a strong sense of integrity means making the world a better place with your presence and your business. #3: Fulfillment What makes your people feel a sense of accomplishment? What makes you realize that you are working to fulfill your life’s purpose? Personal fulfillment is more than the daily run on the hamster wheel. Leaders need to remind their people of how important they are in the workplace, so they can see the impact they are making. Whether it’s learning to find meaning at work, exploring a career path that challenges them, or engaging with satisfying community activities, fulfillment in life is a constant (and often, elusive) goal. Leaders can help bridge the gap by helping their people develop personally and professionally, in ways that reflect who they are, their strengths, goals, and act accordingly. A recent study said that 71% of millennial workers in the US said they would leave their jobs if they were not being personally and professionally developed. #4: Connections For the past 10 years, I have been recommending that organizations create a new job – the HCO – the Human Contact Officer. This person’s job is to help people get closer to one another – to help people create lasting and trusting connections in the workplace. Human beings are social creatures, so forging good relationships is key to thriving and feeling fulfilled. Family, professional, and personal relationships are all crucial components to providing a sense of connectedness with the rest of humanity—so making good friendships and fostering existing links with family are important. Humans need to be more human, and recent events have driven some people further apart. While you may not have an HCO yet (I will keep trying!), leaders need to encourage connections both inside and external to the organizations. Most business is based on trust and relationships, and encouraging both is part of a leader’s role. #5: Importance We all want to feel important. We all want to feel as though we matter. Fostering a sense of self-worth for every person in the organization promotes respect. When people are respected, they are more likely to feel appreciated and be truly engaged in the work they do. They take ownership of their role and how it impacts the organization. The role of leadership has become more personal. Leaders have to lead their people holistically, and that means helping them find value, happiness, and fulfillment. 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
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! 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! |
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