April 06, 2012

As a true Urbanite, I sometimes need reminding that my brain, body and soul need to leave the city and hang out in nature.  It’s also really good for my waistline!  Here’s a wonderful article that describes all the benefits of playing outside and maintaining sustainability. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/nature-deficit-disorder/

June 01, 2011

What an amazing group of people! I was lucky enough to be invited to facilitate a workshop on “Navigating Organizational Change and Transition” at the Social Venture Network’s Spring Conference 2011 at Skamania Lodge outside of Portland, Oregon. SVN members are passionate, smart and welcoming business people who are interested in making the world a better place…seriously! They are driven by socially responsible values and sustainable business practices, and work hard to keep the triple-bottom line front and centre in their everyday pursuits.  It was an honour to be among them and have a chance to meet many leaders in the CSR world.  Thanks to Deb Nelson, ED of SVN for the invitation!

March 20, 2011

I meet too many leaders who, in the safety of a coaching session, admit to a tremendous lack of caring concern for themselves. It’s not enough to show compassion for others. In fact, it’s empty if you can’t find it for yourself. Kristin Neff is the author of a forthcoming book on the subject and says that people are hard on themselves due to our culture. She says “We have a long history of self-sacrifice and [the belief] that we should put all of our attention on meeting others’ needs. And people really think that self-criticism is an effective motivator, and they believe that if they were kind and supportive to themselves it would mean they wouldn’t work hard, they wouldn’t strive to improve.” Read more here.

March 13, 2011

You have too much to do and not enough brain-space to get it done effectively without losing your mind! Add on to this that, typically, we lose 2 hours a day with interruptions and distractions.  Here’s  a nice round-up of tips from a variety of bloggers on how busy people can manage their time more effectively:

March 06, 2011

My favorite RBKanter lesson from this post is how “resilience is the new skill”. I believe that all successful leaders need to increase their RQs (Resilience Quotient) so that they can drive change without losing their centre (and their mind!).

April 17, 2009

What burns fast, fizzles out even faster. Adrenaline-only, micro-managing, profit-obsessed leadership is an addictive management style that is easy to fall into and can seem hard to escape. It’s unsustainable by virtue of neglecting your most valuable resource: your employees. With nobody breathing and everybody running (and flailing!), soon your best staff will be running straight for the door. Seven people practices will replace this whirlwind with a sustainable workplace. They succeed by supporting employee wellbeing while equally inspiring a high-performance, results-focused culture.

No. 1 — Surround yourself with the most awesome talent you can find.
Create a talent management plan for recruiting the highest quality employees. Great people working together will make your workplace hum. Mutual respect, bursts of creativity and congruence of vision and values will become the order of the day, increasing effectiveness and productivity.

No. 2 — Define everyone’s goals.
Get everyone thinking in terms of goals—as an organization, as teams, as individuals. Everyone needs to know what they are ultimately trying to achieve, why they are doing it and where they are trying to get to tomorrow and each day after. When everyone is working toward a common purpose they feel part of something that really matters. They become personally and professionally invested in making something happen.

No. 3 — Get people in the right roles.
Everyone brings different assets—different styles, skills, knowledge and talents that can contribute to your organization’s success. Each employee needs to find themselves in a role that wholly and directly contributes to the organization’s goals and that allows them to perform at their fullest potential. When people see meaning and fit in the roles they play, they feel like an invaluable part of something bigger than themselves.

No. 4 — Decide to empower.
Increase engagement and participation in decision-making. Your employees aren’t children. They are professionals who are trained and smart (that is if you have completed Step 1 and surrounded yourself with the most awesome team). Your staff need to be heard, and if you don’t engage them—genuinely—they will leave. Develop a decision-making model that people believe in, one that allows all staff members to influence you and create positive results.

No. 5 — Have those courageous conversations.
Deal with conflict openly and honestly, even when it gets scary and uncomfortable. Build the skills to help people work through differences of opinion rather than fester in them. Doing so will set free the edgy ideas and collaborative people power that get buried in fear and anger. Making conflict manageable and temporary allows people to feel confident settling in for the long haul.

No. 6 — Keep them happy.
Your job is to clear the path for success and to nudge people along it. Remove any barriers getting in the way of people achieving their goals. Maintain an ongoing dialogue with all employees—from small talk to performance feedback, scheduled meetings to spontaneous walk-bys. There is no such thing as too much communication. For each employee, you are their supporter, their vote of confidence and their cheering section. The most important relationship in any workplace is between employees and their direct supervisor. That relationship is your priority.

No. 7 — Be a change expert.
Change is unavoidable. Stuff happens that shakes people’s foundation—in the world, at home and in the workplace. People are getting hit all the time with uncertainty and complexity, and it affects performance and satisfaction on the job. Create a change management culture that builds people’s resilience, helping them see the purpose, the picture, the plan and their part in each change. Make your organization a resource for feeling proactive and in control when everything seems in flux. If people are resilient to change, everyone wins.

Stay tuned for future posts. I’ll be going into more detail on each of these people practices.