Page Down: Page Down in Your Life – How do You Want it to Read?
March 19, 2017 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Look further down in your story than today’s page and see how you want it to turn out. What is the plot in your ideal story, who are the characters, and how does it end? Plan for the ending chapter and the twists you want to add along the way. Adding new sub-plots will keep your attention piqued. To help get you through a tough spot or difficult time in your life, page down a day, a week, a year or two from now to get perspective on how important this particular difficulty might be.
What does your ideal outcome look like and what do you have to do now to get to that point? Something that may seem unsettling or stressful at this moment may not be such a big deal after you page down a few pages to see what affect it might have on the storyline. Expand the story a bit more and make a lifeline listing the things you want to accomplish in each decade of your life.
Fast-forward to your 105th birthday and look at your life. What will they be saying at your funeral? What is the legacy you want to leave? Be aware of how you would feel about the decisions you made. Are there any regrets? It has been said that most people end up regretting the things they didn’t do more than the things they did do. What would you regret not having done in your lifetime?
If you’re going through turbulent times, remember that the hero of most stories always have to overcome obstacles in order to become victorious in the end. If you didn’t have some conflict, it wouldn’t be a very interesting story. Are you living a pager-turner life, with lots of pages dog-eared to mark the good spots, or are you living a text-book style existence with lots of dry material between the covers?
Are you as interesting on the inside as your cover might represent, or is your life more flash on the outside with some emptiness on the inside? What are you doing to make your life something others would want to read about? (As in a great novel, not the National Enquirer.) Page down from today and see if you are living a best-seller and start creating your storyline right now.
What’s Going Down at Work: Pollsters Tell the Story
March 4, 2017 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Organizational and individual energy have hit some low points. Workers are stressed out, rusted out, burned out and ready to walk out according to some pollsters with their finger on the pulse of productivity. Read below on some of their findings on what’s going down and what you can do to help energize yourself in the midst of it all.
- Boring jobs kill. The researchers at the University Of Texas School Of Public Health found that workers who spend their lives in undemanding jobs with little control over their work are 35% more likely to die during a 10-year period than workers in challenging jobs with lots of options and decision-making. Learning how to deal with the stress and cope with the job demands help you to become stronger and more resilient to stress as published in Psychosomatic Medicine.
- Attitudes roll downhill from supervisors to front-line staff to customers, and keep them coming back. Try delighting your employees. When employees are treated well, they will treat your customers well, and people like doing business with people who like doing business.
- Enhance your energy and image over the phone by answering with your vocal tone ending on a higher note than at the beginning of the greeting. When your tone goes up, it conveys enthusiasm about the call. When your tone goes down, it conveys a more abrupt and annoyed feeling. Standing or at least sitting up straight improves breathing and vocal tone.
- Make a point to take a mid-day break and get away from your desk or other workplace to take a mental health break in order to come back refreshed and more productive. Average American workers only spend 15 minutes per day for lunch and most eat on the run, at their desk, or in their car.
- Absenteeism hit a 7-year record high according to a survey of 401 companies. 25% of absences were taken by people who weren’t really sick. Citing the main reasons for playing hooky- stress, and belief that workers had earned the time off. One of the winning excuses was, “If it is all the same to you, I won’t be coming to work. The voices told me to clean all the guns today.”
- A USA Today survey showed 75% of CEO’s and 88% of middle managers listed balancing work and family as a major concern. What are you doing in your life to actively balance personal and professional stuff?
- A Gallup Poll found 4 out of 10 workers report that they are frequently angry while at work. Maybe they should call in sick and stay home to work on balancing their life? If you notice your fuse getting shorter; take a look at your balance between personal and professional lives and actively work on simplifying and putting more fun into your day.
- A poll by Maritz Research found dissatisfaction with the way employers offer recognition. The survey of 1001 adults nationwide found 34% of them do not feel they are recognized for their work performance in ways that are important to them. Only 40% felt they were adequately recognized.
- Other findings indicated 26% of employees are unhappy with the way they are managed and 32% intend to change jobs. These restless employees say they’re looking for better compensation and career opportunities. Now comes word that, at least in the advertising, marketing and creative industries, only half of recently polled firms are concerned with employee retention. The Creative Group, a staffing services company in Menlo Park, Calif., reports ad agency executives and senior marketing executives with the nation’s 1,000 largest companies may be in for an unpleasant surprise. Many companies don’t focus on retention until it’s too late to staunch the flow of experienced, productive people, says Tracey Fuller, executive director of The Creative Group. Now is the time to ensure top performers feel valued and respected, and have positive interactions with their managers.
Page Up: Sometimes We Must Go Back to the Beginning
February 19, 2017 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Sometimes things get so screwed up, we need to go back to the start and re-paginate to get things back in order. It takes some effort and persistence, but it pays off in the end with everything lined up just as it should be. Perhaps we have a few dog-eared corners, but that’s what a life lived with full experiences comes with. So take a deep breath and mend fences, build bridges, forgive, or get closure on things in your past which are haunting you or holding you back so you can release the draining energy.
Go back to the beginning and set things straight so the rest of your pages will fall into place more easily. When we are held back by our past mistakes or mishaps or misdirected choices, we have a hard time moving forward. Once we realize that we need to page up to patch it up and then let go to move on down the page of life, we release the power that it once had on us and we free up our energy for more positive things.
Showing You Care for Your Colleagues
February 4, 2017 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Over the years I’ve interviewed many hundreds of clients in what they do to keep their customers, care for their clients, and show their colleagues they really matter in more ways than the obvious. I’ve compiled some of my favorites for you to glean from them on what they’re doing right to reach out and show their workplace love.
- Surprise your team and take them to lunch, to a mall with $50 each and tell them they must spend it all on themselves and whoever has money left over will give it back to you.
- If you are game – or in good financial standing – take them on a trip or a cruise such as Phillips International’s Chairman, Tom Phillips who took 1350 employees and their families on a Disney Cruise to celebrate the company’s 30th anniversary. Meeting planners who are interested in cruises as incentive programs can visit www.corporatecruises.com for deck plans and virtual tours of 360 ships and an online RFP service as well as destination info and tax-deductibility guidelines. Another site for unbiased info on cruises and destinations is www.cruisecritic.com. Bon Voyage!
- Forget the Euro – time is the currency of the new millennium and giving the gift of time is a powerful incentive. Almost 40% of Americans now work more than 50 hours per week (National Sleep Foundation) and Americans work up to 12 weeks more in total hours per year than Europeans with 26% of all US employees not taking a vacation according to a study by Boston College. Many companies are now offering perks and incentives to help employees gain back some time such as giving them the services of a lawn care company, pest control, monthly house cleaning, or having a car detailer visit the workplace. ServiceMaster offers these types of home services on a large scale across the country.
- One of my early clients, Northwestern Mutual has a dry cleaner pick up and deliver clothes to the workplace. Their dry cleaner also offered to accept Fed Ex packages for workers during the holidays and then deliver them to the workplace to avoid having holiday packages sit on doorsteps or having to drive to the Fed Ex shop to pick them up. They also offer several clubs and affinity groups in their organization such as a choral group, a band, and professional associations for staff to meet others with similar interests and promote loyalty and a sense of community. People are less likely to leave a community of friends than a company of cubicles.
- Below are ideas from various clients on what they’re doing to show they care about their teammates:
- Help keep employees healthy and informed about their health and well-being to reduce your costs for sick-leave, mental-health day absences, retention, and insurance claims. Here are some tips for planning a wellness program excerpted from Human Capital Magazine:
- Provide people with the facts, and raise awareness regarding the risks of being overweight.
- Help them identify risk factors including Body Mass Index and blood pressure.
- Empower employees to change and provide them with the knowledge and tools to improve their situation – books, trainers, coaches, nurses, health club memberships, time off each week to work out, seminars, seated massages, healthy choices in the cafeteria, and smoking cessation or Weight Watchers classes.
- Implement a total wellness program into your menu of options for employees – more than an exercise program, it includes a combination of activities that focus on health promotion and disease prevention and healthy, active lifestyles.
- The Society for Human Resource Management’s annual survey of several hundred employee benefit managers found that 31% subsidize or reimburse gym membership fees, 22% provide on-site fitness centers, 24% offer weight-loss programs, and 11% offer nutrition counseling.
- One high-tech company in Washington DC gave employees a stipend for monthly house cleaning and yard work to allow them extra time to work out – no excuses for not having enough time.
- A survey by Career Builder.com found that the majority of workers are dissatisfied with their career progress with 63% reporting that finding a better job would improve their quality of life.
What are you doing for your team to energize them and help increase their quality of life at work? How are you showing your team that you care about them in more ways than giving them a paycheck?
*: Star in Your Own Life
January 19, 2017 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
This isn’t a dress rehearsal; it is opening night every single day. Practice putting your best foot forward; little eyes are upon you. Work on yourself to be the star of the show and shine in your own spotlight. A former Parks and Recreation slogan states “Life, be in it!” A good motto for living a luscious life.
What does your ideal life look like? What does success look like to you? How would you set the stage, and what specific details and characteristics would be present if you lived as the star in your own show? Take a couple hours to be alone with your thoughts and write down in graphic detail what your ideal life would look like. Take a look at your ideal day and then take inventory of what you already have from that list, then identify the gaps.
Write down specific steps to take to attract whatever you don’t already have in your life and take note of all the things from your ideal day list that you already have in your life. Celebrate the things from your ideal day listing that you already have in your life. It means you are on the right track. This one activity of being the star, producer, and director or your ideal show is one of the single most powerful visualization techniques and life changing exercises I have encountered.
Once you have your list, you are on your way to creating the Treasure Map of pictures depicting your ideal day and your ideal life that was mentioned previously. So get ready to dance the La Vita Polka – the dance of life and get ready to shine as the star of your own show. What are you doing to prepare for opening night?
Improving Meetings, Morale, and More
January 4, 2017 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Seems we can’t get away without having meetings. Communication is a key element to empowered workplaces and effective employee morale. But it seems that so many get it wrong when it comes to hosting meetings. What is up with that? To help pump up the effectiveness of meetings; I share the following tips.
If your meetings are becoming stale, try www.effectivemeetings.com with lots of tidbits for running terrific meetings.
Improve your all-employee meetings
- Draw on the experience of top performers and celebrate the successes of others – have them share their stories.
- Work actively with professional speakers to familiarize them with your organization.
- Encourage informal interaction with round tables and allow for socializing activities.
- If you are presenting awards: staff should participate in the selection of rewards.
- Employers should reward measurable activities or a point system.
- Offer reward that have some brag value – offering cash may be fleeting.
- Recognize employees who talk up the company and spread good words.
Improve morale with the five R’s
- Rewards: check competitor’s salaries, perks, and benefits packages and exceed it or get more creative to retain top talent.
- Room to grow: offer a chance to grow professionally and personally and advance skills through a mentoring program, promotions, and training.
- Recognition: Practice regular formal and informal praise and appreciation. Generation X and the incoming Millennials are used to getting feedback every 60 seconds with computer games and expect to know where they stand and get noticed for it. We tend to get antsy just waiting for our computers to download and that’s only 22 seconds. An annual appraisal won’t cut it.
- Respect: Make a determined effort to listen with an open mind and show genuine respect to avoid the “Because I’m the boss” attitude.
- Reasonable Workloads: Productivity will decline if workers are expected to produce 110% all the time. People need time to renew and refresh to avoid burnout and especially since September 11th, we need to understand that there will be a general defocus in work and productivity. Offer flexible work schedules, job sharing, telecommuting, and compressed workweeks.
&: Think About all That the World Has to Offer, and, and, and…
December 19, 2016 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
There is so much out there to do and learn and see and experience. How can anybody be bored for one second? It can be overwhelming at times, but it is all ours for the taking if we choose to become participants instead of spectators. Live as a lifelong learner and you will never be bored. Keep opening your mind to new experiences and accept the stimulation of change and challenges to keep your energy flowing, your neurons firing, and your brain expanding. If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it – so start exploring and discovering.
Check out books, surf the Internet, take adult education classes, attend seminars and conferences, participate in recreation programs, and travel to local or exotic destinations to expand your horizons. Keep growing your dendrites in your brain to keep yourself vital by continuously flexing that muscle in your head by doing crossword puzzles, reading, painting, and other activities that keep you moving and thinking and trying new things. Boredom is a state of mind and drains our energy quickly. Decide to be a discoverer and get curious about the world to defend against energy drainage.
Freedom from Fatigue
December 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
We’re a nation of over-doers, over-schedulers, and over-achievers which makes us fatigued both emotionally and physically. I offer some ideas from past clients on how they fight fatigue in the workplace along with my personal experience and research in fighting personal fatigue. Read on to help energize yourself and your workplace.
- SAS of Carey North Carolina, a privately held software company with a turnover rate a fraction of that of its competitors. They offer free amenities on their park-like campus including a health club, medical care, M & M’s every Wednesday, a chance to have lunch with their kids at the subsidized childcare center, and subsidized country club memberships to the company-owned golf course. They have also arranged for local businesses to bring their services on campus such as dry cleaning and car detailing to save worker’s energy, effort, and downtime from work running errands. They know that if workers are being taken care of and are happy, then they won’t feel fatigue, and will take care of the customers and that will make the owner as well as the customers happy. It’s all about removing the everyday irritants and obstacles to living a balanced life so workers can focus on their work without extra stresses of running errands and juggling life priorities.
- I asked one of my clients, trucking industry executives, what they did to energize their workplace and here are some of their answers:
- Have a spring bonnet contest with each department entering one bonnet to be modeled by one of their team members. Judges for this Alabama company selected the one with a live chicken on it as the winner. The gentleman in the audience declared that his bonnet would have won if he had known the use of livestock was allowed.
- One Fedex exec goes out on the floor and sings happy birthday to each person on their special day and he also sends candy bars with notes attached for those doing a great job.
- Another Fedex manager has found that asking his customers to supersize their order (similar to the fast food industry) is helpful as a recovery strategy. When following up with a customer whose package went astray, the liaison asks for another chance to do an even better job and it has resulted in tens of thousands of extra income – just by asking them to supersize their order.
- A Hilton Generational Time Survey of 1220 adults asked Americans how they felt about their lives:
- Need more fun – 68%
- Need a long vacation – 67%
- Often feel stressed – 66%
- Feel time is crunched – 60%
- Want less work, more play – 51%
- Feel pressured to succeed – 49%
- Feel overwhelmed – 48%
- When we look at these statistics, it seems even more important to evaluate how our workplaces are helping our employees balance their personal and professional lives and to make it easier for them to do the job we pay them to do.
- Seven Kinds of Tired:
- tossing and turning tired – not enough sleep
- everybody-but-you tired – overdoing it, too busy
- ditching-your-diet tired – skipping meals, overeating, unhealthy choices
- allergy tired – worn out seasonally, watery eyes
- hard-times tired – troubled home, lost your job
- under-the-weather tired – listless and groggy
- exercise-overdose tired – always on the go, overactive and stressed to fit your fitness in
That are you doing to fight fatigue at work? What are you doing to energize your personal life and your physical self? Take steps now to enjoy freedom from fatigue – you’ll be happier in the long haul.
