Managing You
Mentoring is a Very Personal Gift
Mentoring is about YOU prioritising YOU. It is a gift you give to yourself, an opportunity to stop and take time for yourself and enhance your professional leadership development. It is a time to reflect and think about what you are doing and why you are doing it, with a guide on the side in your mentor. It takes you outside the day-to-day challenges and with the help of your mentor, you can look at them differently. You will sleep at night, confident in your ability to lead your organisation inspiring and motivating your people.
Read MoreAt The Airport Without My Mobile Phone
My stress was rolling uncontrollably down a steep hill. It felt like I had no control of it. I was on the airport bus on my way to catch a plane to Adelaide. I had just reached into my bag to get my mobile phone and it wasn’t there. It had to be there, so I emptied everything out on the seat…. but it wasn’t there!
I had no addresses of where I had to go. No exact address of where I was staying. No phone numbers of anyone I was to meet. No Uber app. No plane bookings or reference numbers. All were on my phone.
It took me at least 15 minutes to regain equilibrium and then I spent the next hour on the bus planning my strategy for when I reached the airport. My proactive, solution-focused, emotionally intelligent, and resilient self came to the fore.
So what did I do and what did I learn?
Read MorePut First Things First with Stephen Covey
Are you one of the many people who feel overwhelmed and overloaded at present? Are you at burnout stage? Do you feel bombarded from all sides? Is your mental health being affected by this pressure and stress? Are you also one of the people who are being ordered back into the workplace where you know the stress levels you now feel will be escalated?
Why is this happening? Is it your manager putting you under this pressure? Is it the culture of the organisation in which you work? Is it your expectations?
Could it be that you aren’t managing your time constructively? Are you spending your time putting out bushfires, being challenged by the pounding surf or mending fences, all unfulfilling work that is urgent but not important? What would happen, how would you feel if you could do work that was important, where you were able to put first things first and saw you making a real difference?
Read MoreFailure is Never An Ending
So many people are stuck, overwhelmed with regret about what they didn’t do or should have done, unable to let go of what they perceive as failure. Failure is never an ending. It is an opportunity to learn and those who proactively do the reflection also learn. They start again, and, as C S Lewis says, they change the ending.
Read MoreReset Your Body with Lifestyle Changes in 2023?
The start of a new year is always a good time to reset our body with lifestyle changes, changing our habits, especially around what we eat and drink. We can make good excuses for eating and drinking the way we have over the week between Christmas and New Year, even when we suffer as a result. But it is unsustainable between New Year and Christmas.
Given that what we eat and drink impacts our health and well-being and determines our levels of energy, it has, along with sleep, a powerful impact on our effectiveness and the success of what we do. I have said many times before that the way we manage our energy is far more important than the way we manage our time. High energy people do not have a time management issue, for example.
Read MoreProcrastination is an Emotional Issue
Procrastination is not a time management issue as many think. It is an emotional issue.The irony is that many people, if not most, want tips and strategies for managing it. They are easy to give but they may work one or two times, but then people find themselves procrastinating again. Why? Strategies, which sit well within our rational and logical self, only work when they are aligned, and work hand in hand, with our emotional self.
Many people who struggle with procrastination have all kinds of emotional obstacles blocking their success. They procrastinate for a whole range of reasons, and finding out why is the first step in overcoming procrastination.
Read MoreProcrastination is Exhausting
Procrastination ……….. we all know what that is. Some of us know it better than others because we live with it day after day. It’s our constant companion. It is so exhausting and fatiguing.
That project, report, phone call, letter, difficult conversation or action we have to take is on our mind all the time. We know we have to do it but we keep defering and delaying it. Why? We know it is not going to go away on its own. We all know that ultimately we are going to have to do it.
In the meantime, it absorbs enormous amounts of our emotional energy as we worry and angst about it.
Read MoreSelf-Leadership is Leading From Within
Some weeks ago I had this video conversation about Self-Leadership with colleague and friend, Ian Berry. He wanted to talk with me about my ebook “Lead from Within -Be An Empowered Leader For An Unpredicable Future.” This is the book people receive when they sign up to my blog. I believe that the first responsibility of leaders today is to lead and manage themselves. If they cannot do that, they have no right to expect to lead and manage others. This means, as the late Jim Rohn said, “working as hard on yourself as you do on your job”. It means making a commitment to developing and enhancing their self-leadership. We discuss the 7 self-leadership skills that significantly enhance the leadership of those who commit to working on themselves with a mentor or coach.
Read MoreAre You Running on Empty?
What a last couple of years we have gone through? And while the powers that be have given us to believe, with their silence, that it is all over, we know it is not. It is not surprising that many people are running on empty. They have given their everything to surviving over the last few years. However all the strategies that typically helped no longer did given the duration of this unprecedented event and its intransigence about leaving. So what do you do when you know you are running on empty and need to fill up. Here are some suggestions.
Read MoreYour Priorities are Important
The fastest way to lose respect is to allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option. It rings of neediness, even though we may think we are doing it to be helpful. Initially you may get accolades for being such a “good person”, so co-operative, great to have around, willing and able to do and be everything for everyone. It is unlikely, however, that this behaviour will take you from where you are to where you want to be. So what can you do about it? Become assertive.
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