Big Picture or Little Picture View of the World
April 12, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Do you have a big picture or a little picture view of the world? Are you stressing over the administrivia or are you focused on the big picture of your life and your career? Take a look at what types of things stress you out – are they the small details, the perfectionism, the imperfect people, the gray areas on the outskirts of the black and white? Sometimes we make our own stresses and create our own energy drains by focusing on things that have less impact than the power we are giving them.
It’s tax season and focusing on numbers is something we all need to do, but getting crazed if your account is 94 cents off isn’t such a big deal in the scheme of things. Of course waiting until the bitter end and not leaving yourself wiggle room can also make you crazed. Step back from some of the situations you find yourself in and see if you’re stressing out because you’re focusing on little picture stuff. Perhaps you need to take a look at the big picture and if the stressors that are affecting you now will really matter in the scheme of things a few weeks, months, or years from now.
The big picture sometimes can pull us through the little picture stuff when things get tough – keeping our eye on why we are doing what we are doing can keep us going. Are you focused on big picture stuff or little picture stuff most of the time? Are you drowning in details or do you have paralysis by analysis? Is it taking your eye off the main goal and draining your energy? You may want to hire out your little picture stuff and have someobody else who loves doing it do what they love and allow you to keep your energy focused on your big picture. It can sure help your sanity – especially at tax time. We can all use a little energy boost at this time of year.
Energizing and Empowering the Women’s Workplace
April 4, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Working with many entrepreneurs lately has been an enlightening experience. The raw energy, sheer joy, purposeful passion and commitment to do what it takes to follow their dreams is an enticing and energizing change from working with employees who are burned out, rusted out and just worn out from the corporate climate.
It revitalizes my spirit to know that the transition can be made from endangered exec to enthusiastic entrepreneur, but it does take a mind-shift and a different way of thinking to move from employee to renegade entrepreneur. Many of whom are women seeking heart-work now that they’ve brought home the bacon in some not-so-fulfilling career. The U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics cite the number of women-owned businesses grew by 20% betweeen 1997 – 2002. They generated $16.2 billion in revenues, while businesses owned jointly by women and men generated $18.3 billion in 1997. Women also make 80% of the buying decisions in a family.
So forget the glass ceiling and find a skylight, then open it up and create your own culture in any type of business you dream of. If you are looking for somebody to lend a hand, lend a step up or step out, then send me an email at Gail@GailHahn.com and I can help you get your life energized and empowered by sharing resources for creating a life you love and setting up your safety net for that transition into your own business.
To Your FUNomenal Success!
Corporate Kindness
March 30, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
There are a couple books out on the topic of corporate kindness and how being nice can actually be a competitive advantage. In The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, they explain how friendliness and common courtesy along with how you look affects people’s moods and attitudes towards you. Cheerfulness and being polite and respectful spreads more easily than irritability and facial expressions and body language convey more relevant information than a sales pitch.
It’s all about the notion of consequences and karma – people may forget what you say, but they never forget how you made them feel. They remember acts of kindness as well as rudeness. After all, isn’t business and all of the world about relationships and how we connect with others be it inside or outside our organization?
Another book, The Kindness Revolution: The Company-Wide Culture Shift That Inspires Phenomenal Customer Service by Ed Horrell identifies how companies with stellar street reps for service excellence practice extreme kindness, respect, fairness and genuine niceties. He notes that the opposite of kindness isn’t being mean, it’s indifference. When indifference sets in, then it gives people a bad experience and in a world of choices, the customer (internal or external) chooses to walk. In fact, you can say that about any relationship – when indifference and disrespect and unkindness sets in, most people walk.
With a little more corporate kindness and consideration, I would argue that we would have many more gruntled workers than disgruntled workers. And we could actually save lives…one statistic form the Department of Labor cites that the #2 killer of workers on the job is homicide by a disgruntled colleague or customer. What are you doing to impart kindness in your daily activities? What are you doing to add light to the world? What are you doing to save a life today?
Take the Tingle Test – Career Choices and Dynamic Decisions
March 20, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
When you’re in the midst of making career choices or other decisions about your job, your lifestyle, your surroundings or other business decision; of course you can write out the pros and cons and do a comparative analysis. I’m all for the using a visual to help sort out thoughts and see them in writing. It may make your clear choice jump out at you.
Trying what I like to call The Tingle Test is what really cuts to the chase and gets down to how you feel about a decision. Saying your decision out loud or just holding that vision clearly in your mind should give you a gut check and either make you tingle with excitement or leave you lack-luster. It’s truly getting quiet and listening to your body and how it reacts to a decision as if you already made that decision. After you visualize your decision or say it, how do you feel? Does your hair stand up, do you get tingles down your spine, does a smile appear on your face, do your eyes light up, do you stand taller? All these are signs that your gut says yes to that decision.
If your body doesn’t react positively, then maybe you need to tweak your decision – figure out what isn’t exactly feeling right about it an make some adjustments in order to pass The Tingle Test with flying colors. Stress is what happens when your mouth says ‘OK’ and your gut says ‘No Way’ – that’s when you know you need to regroup and feel energized with a better decision.
Make your decisions dynamic and involve all aspects of yourself to know if you’re OK with that decision. Take The Tingle Test on your next decision and see what happens.
Now I’ve got goose bumps just thinking about my future and opportunities coming into my world…..how about you?
Corporate Kindness: A Competitive Edge
March 19, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
There are a couple books out on the topic of corporate kindness and how being nice can actually be a competitive advantage. In The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World with Kindness by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, they explain how friendliness and common courtesy along with how you look affects people’s moods and attitudes towards you. Cheerfulness and being polite and respectful spreads more easily than irritability and facial expressions and body language convey more relevant information than a sales pitch.
It’s all about the notion of consequences and karma – people may forget what you say, but they never forget how you made them feel. They remember acts of kindness as well as rudeness. After all, isn’t business and all of the world about relationships and how we connect with others be it inside or outside our organization?
Another book, The Kindness Revolution: The Company-Wide Culture Shift That Inspires Phenomenal Customer Service by Ed Horrell identifies how companies with stellar street reps for service excellence practice extreme kindness, respect, fairness and genuine niceties. He notes that the opposite of kindness isn’t being mean, it’s indifference. When indifference sets in, then it gives people a bad experience and in a world of choices, the customer (internal or external) chooses to walk. In fact, you can say that about any relationship – when indifference and disrespect and unkindness sets in, most people walk.
With a little more corporate kindness and consideration, I would argue that we would have many more gruntled workers than disgruntled workers. And we could actually save lives…one statistic form the Department of Labor cites that the #2 killer of workers on the job is homicide by a disgruntled colleague or customer. What are you doing to impart kindness in your daily activities? What are you doing to add light to the world? What are you doing to save a life today?
You can find these books at the link to Amazon in this publication.
Energizing Your Service Experience
January 7, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Happy New Year to everybody. I’m thrilled to be able to share another article on Customer Service that was published in the December Parks and Recreation Magazine; called Bringing Customers Back. The article was based on the experience that my friends Dr. Diane Blankenship and her family and I had dogsledding in Wyoming. About our adventures and mis-adventures with services that were lacking and how it could have been better to make it a more positive once in a lifestime experience. Those who are members of The National Recreation and Park Association can read it in their magazine and others can visit http://www.NRPA.org and look under publications.
Take a look at the article if you want to learn more about facilitating the 6 phases of the customer experience.
To Your FUNominal Success!
Happy Herd or Mad Cows at Work
December 15, 2006 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
Happy Holidays!
I hope this finds you well and enjoying the wind-down of the season and the many festive office parties that are sure to abound. In appreciation for your support and adding light to my world, I wanted to share this pdf version of the new issue of Stephen Covey’s Sales and Service Excellence magazine that features Fun*cilitators and our article on Contented Cows – How to Create a Happy Herd at Work through mixing fun and effectiveness. It hits the bookshelves in January and I wanted you to have a sneak peek – I thought you might like to get a jump on your competition and be the first on your block to get the inside scoop on building a better team.
If you want a copy of the magazine article in a pdf version, send me an email at Gaia@gaiahart.com to get your own copy and share it with others who may be just chewing their cud at work.
We’ve stocked up on our 52 Ways to Have Fun at Work card deck to prepare for the upcoming publication date. If you want 52 more ways to have more fun at work in addition to the article, send me an email or give me a call to order your own card deck chalked full of ideas, tips and tidbits to practice safe stress at work. 866.Fun.at.Work or Gaia@gaiahart.com.
To Your FUNominal Success!
Gail
Change Your Mind, Change Your Energy, Change Your Life
November 28, 2006 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
When you change your mind, you change your energy and when you change your energy, you change your life. As we enter the holiday season and I see all kinds of news stories about the stresses of the holidays, it reminds me that much of the energy drain and stress is something we create for ourselves. When we change our mind about something and made a decision to think or not thing about it in a certain way, our entire energy about that thing changes. We can also change the energy of the people around us. After all, we are part of other people’s environments.
Make some decisions about salvaging your energy this holiday season and set guidelines for yourself that make sense to you and your family. It’s too late to make a decision not to cook a huge Thanksgiving meal, but not too late to make a decision about how to handle holiday parties, family, gift giving or experience giving, new traditions you can start, old traditions you can change or ditch all together and how you can improve your situation, your sanity and your energy in the coming year.
Try making a written 120-day plan and then keep it handy to keep you focused on what you want to be doing with you life, then celebrate when you see all the checkmarks after 4 months. It will certainly change your mind about what you decide to do with your time. If something isn’t serving you well, make a decision to change it for the better and keep moving forward.
Cheers!
Gail