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.
Clients Comment on Morale-Boosting Ideas
October 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
I often get ideas from clients on how they boost morale in their organizations. Here are some of their ideas along with some tidbits I’ve picked up on how to enhance your work experience to live and lead Hartfully:
- Have a mascot for the office who can wear the official badge, pin, or t-shirt of the department. This can be a stuffed animal or beanbag character. Other departments have been known to kidnap the mascot and hold them ransom for pizza or candy. Sometimes the mascot sits at the reception desk to oversee visitors – it adds some playful professionalism.
- One payroll professional wore a crown and a sash that say Payroll Queen when she personally distributed paycheck stubs to the team.
- One accounting firm offered free 15-minute seated massages during the month of April when their team was particularly overworked.
- A city recreation department’s executives hosted a breakfast cooked by them for their organization to kick off the summer staff meeting.
- Another recreation department used some of their own staff in a training film with the theme of COPS – catching frontline personnel staging bad customer service for the film. They also interviewed colleagues about what they thought was good service and the best part about the film was the bloopers and outtakes that they added to the end of the film. The audience went wild as they saw their co-workers goof up and be themselves in front of the cameras.
- The admin staff at a physics lab gets together for weekly lunches during the summer to create fresh salads made from the gardens of the workers with a recipe from an Italian grandmother.
- In similar fashion – another office hosts a cookie exchange over the holidays to expand on the variety of cookies each household offers without all the work of baking different cookies. They take it one step further and deliver extra plates of cookies to the local fire department, police station, and nursing home.
- Special Events Magazine reports that two-thirds of respondents to an online poll believe that in-person interaction tops technology as a communications tool. Some 66 percent of respondents said that technology-video conferencing, Webcasting and the like-is not as effective for communication in meetings as is in-person communication.
- Eliminating just fifteen wasted minutes each day adds up to ninety-one extra hours a year, more than two full workweeks. Organize and energize your space, your stuff, and your life to gain valuable time you can use for more fun in your life.
- Ask yourself what is the best use of your time right now and then act on it.
- Create systems that work with your preferences for sorting papers and stuff – try horizontal surfaces and vertical surfaces for storage bins.
- Look at your time you have allotted for a project and then add to it – things usually take longer than you plan.
- Put your personal and professional appointments on one calendar to avoid double-booking yourself.
- Finally, decide right now to think FAT: file, allocate (give to someone else), or toss.
- Findings in a recent USA Today article: HR experts say employees exposed to stresses such as layoffs are more likely to engage in violent behavior. Nearly 35% of workers say they’ve seen an increase in anxiety and stress-related physical ailments in their workplace in the last year. 27% report a rise in emotional problems such as insomnia and depression.
High Fives to Improve Your Workplace
May 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Giving you high-fives with helpful tips in groups of five to handle issues, improve motivation, and inspire your team to get-along and get going. With that, here are several topics with their top five lists:
A helpful tip for managers when confronted with a problem involving people is to ask “why” at least five times in a non-confrontational way such as “Help me understand what happened” instead of “What happened here?” Generally asking “why” five times takes you down the path of:
- blame
- excuse
- symptom
- cause
- root cause
By digging down a little deeper, you can get past the blame and excuses and focus on the root cause of the problem instead of a surface issue.
- A study by U-inspire, Inc which revealed the top five motivating methods of over 250 major companies:
- communication
- growth
- respect
- leadership
- compensation
One of the major findings in the study was the need for organizations to develop a mission statement what conveys the goals of the company and to implement multiple levels of employee recognition programs.
* In the book Clash of the Generations at Work by Ron Zemke, Claire Raines, and Bob Filipczak, they give a simple 5-point ACORN model for managing and motivating across the generations:
- Accommodate differences
- Create workplace choices
- Operate with sophisticated management style
- Respect competence and initiative
- Nourish retention
* In keeping with the theme of fives in this post, think of yourself as a 5-pointed star. To keep your star shining brightly, follow these five easy tips from Sharing Ideas Magazine:
- Take care of your inner self and outer body.
- Shepherd thoughts that enter your mind.
- Care for your emotions and relationships with loving-kindness.
- Be on-purpose in how you invest, give, and spend your money.
- Be forgiving and grateful for the unlimited spirit of love that keeps you energized to serve others.
Beating the Tax System by Being Your Own Boss: Savvy Business Owner’s Secrets to Keep More of What You Make: 30 Tips in 33 Minutes
April 2, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
30 Tax Tips in 33 Minutes – you can’t beat that.
Looking for a better way to hold on to more of your money at tax time? If you’ve ever wondered how you can keep more of what you make or had to pay Uncle Sam at tax time, then this teleclass is for you. If you’re an experienced or emerging entrepreneur, or just pondering the jump into starting your own business, then this session is for you. If you’re not sure why you would take on having your own business, or how it would help you at tax time, this course is for you.
Frank Winn and Gail Hahn are both successful, savvy business owners for many, many years and have learned from some of the best tax professionals on how to keep more money in their pockets at tax time by knowing the rules and using them to their advantage. Nope, they’re not tax professionals themselves, just experiences entrepreneurs who have hired the experts and have learned the ropes over the years.
They will reveal 30 tax tips in 33 minutes so you can reap the benefits of knowing some of the ways you can take legal deductions for your legitimate business expenses. We don’t cross the line; we just snuggle up to it. Loopholes were made to jump through and we will reveal to you 30 strategies you can save more on your tax bill. Of course there are about 60,000 pages of tax code – we’re just divulging some of the biggies where you can benefit if you have a business of your own. We’re in it to win it with our own business and we want you to join the entrepreneurial revolution and beat the tax system.
So if you’re just thinking about starting your own business or have one and want to turbo-charge your tax savings, join us for this fast-paced teleclass on Thursday, 8 April at the numbers and times listed below. The call will be 33 minutes of tax tips and if you want to stay with us for another 10 minutes, we will share an easy way to start your own business and claim your piece of the pie as a business owner. Simple, safe, no worries, no pressure – just letting you know we’ve found what CNBC and the E! TV networks have called America’s Best Product. Come see what it’s all about and learn a little something to make your life better too.
The number for this call is 218-339-7777, pin 7668800. Please dial in a few minutes early so we can start on time. The call starts promptly at 6pm Pacific/7pm Mountain/8pm Central and 9pm Eastern on Thursday evening 8 April 2010 in the comfort of your own space.
This call will be recorded. The recording number to access the call after it is completed on 8 April is: 218-339-2487, pin 7668800#, they will ask for the recording number: 0408#
If you want to save 10% on more Tax Reduction Secrets and How to Save Money on Taxes Big Time resources, books, tapes and programs by a former IRS Trainer, CPA and Attorney, use the coupon code: gailhahn when you purchase something from The Tax Reduction Institute. Their products make your life less taxing.
Getting Real with REALationship Marketing, a Teleclass
February 18, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
REALationship Marketing is focusing on the REAL relationship in the equation rather than on the marketing part. Putting people first and things second with the philosophy that appreciation wins over self promotion every single time. When you truly take care of people then they will take care of the bottom line, whether it be your internal customers (colleagues) or your external customers (clients). We will cover the insider secrets to winning the game of relationship marketing in this quick, hard-hitting, content-filled teleclas.
We will cover practical, proven, simple, successful strategies you can implement immediately to grow your network and your net worth by practicing REALationship marketing. If you are tired of the usual marketing techniques, suffering from a slump in repeat business or new business, or just ready for something new and exciting to get your creative juices flowing, then this session is for you. By attending this teleclass, you will learn the insider’s secrets to what some have called a crusade and others deemed the humanitarian way of marketing. Come learn what has been the missing piece in your marketing plan… until now. You will be given the secret weapon to win the game of relationship marketing and blow your competition off the playing field.
If you use these strategies every day for 90 days, I know you will see positive results.
Learning Points & Benefits:
1. How to have your customers love you even more than they do and keep them coming back
2. Scary business statistics on why your current marketing or the spray and pray method is a waste of time and money
3. How to create the top 3 critical things you need to make a sale and cultivate repeat sales
4. How to easily get your customers to refer you
5. How to have a competitive advantage over 97% of your competitors using direct mail that your target market will read
6. How to monetize your marketing and get results – the power of connection
7. How to expand your business growth exponentially while saving time, energy, effort and money and cloning yourself (sort of)
8. How to make a living through giving using the vehicle for the Law of Attraction
9. How to never be in the doghouse again for forgetting a birthday or anniversary
10. Get some free bonus gifts just for attending that can be priceless for you
This teleclass hosted in Pacific time, 5:30pm on Tuesday, 23 February at 218-339-7777, pin 766-8800# by International Professional Speaker, Author and SOC Executive Gail Hahn, MA, CSP, CLL. Gail has been a successful entrepreneur with several businesses for over 13 years and is featured in 12 International Who’s Who business professionals directories for her contribution to the business world. She is one of less than 500 Professional Speakers in the world earning the Certified Speaking Professional designation and one of less than 100 Executives with the Send Out Cards Corporation. She is also the CEO, Chief Energizing Officer of www.Funcilitators.com and facilitates retreats, VIP programs and teleclasses to energize entrepreneurs, execs, employees and organizations. See her blog at www.GailHahn.com.
Join us while we pull back the curtain and reveal how to win the game of REALationship Marketing using genuine thoughts, actions, feeling and words over sales pitches to attract the right people into your life and your business. We’re getting real with relationship marketing and showing you exactly how you can turbo-charge your marketing while focusing more on the relationship than marketing. Looking forward to ‘seeing’ you on the call and giving away extra super special bonuses to those who choose to attend and take their business and their life to the next level.
If you have questions about this event – email me at Gail@GailHahn.com. Test drive a unique system for connecting with your customers at www.BizBuilderCards.com and send some cards on me to see how it works. I’ll bet you hear from the customers to whom you’ve sent a heart-ful card. I double-dog dare you. 🙂
Check out this video on how receiving a heartful card affects others. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQqtVobx1oI&list=PLtUVv9eXCdIKmF4MMCOVMBuzeZ1nrrUQF
SOCTV Guest this Thursday – REALationship Marketing
January 19, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
Join us Thursday, 4 February on SOCTV as I will be interviewed on becoming an Executive, REALationship marketing, steps to success and the power of appreciation. If you missed it, look under the archives on your SOC site. Don’t have a SOC site yet? Contact me at Gail@BizBuilderCards.com to get your own site.
REALationship marketing started out as a typo. Yep, I found I had mis-typed the word relationship at least 3 times. Of course one of the times happened to be on a postcard printing of several hundred postcards. I realized it was a subliminal sign and that’s when I coined the term and made it official. (AND, I didn’t have to trash all those postcards – the old lemon and lemon aide trick.)
REALationship marketing is when you focus on the real relationships in the equation of relationship marketing. Most business-owners are focused on the marketing. When you focus on others and what you can give to them to improve their life, or help them build STEEM, (Save Time, Energy, Effort and Money) instead of what you can get them to do, or what you can get from them; the entire energy is shifted.
Shift your energy in your business and in your marketing to a “give to” versus a “get from” attitude and things will start to shift for you. We all need to become generous givers as well as excellent receivers. You can’t have one without the other, so one is not better than the other – just opposite sides of the same coin. Practice being an excellent receiver and a gracious giver and the next time you are doing a marketing piece, review it for REALationship purposes. Does it attract what you want to attract, are you adding value, are you offering something to make other’s lives better? Remember that everybody is tuned in to the station WIIFM – ‘what’s in it for me’.
Join us as myself and other Executives and Senior Executives are interviewed about our steps to success on SOCTV. To find out more about how to tune in to SOCTV, send me an email Gail@GailHahn.com
To Your FUNomenal Success!
The Rest of the Story: Banner the Guide Dog, Larry & Southwest Airlines
July 25, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
With the help of my speaking buddies, Beth Terry, Steve Tyra, Terry Brock and of course the star attractions, Larry Colbert and Banner the wonder dog. Here’s the rest of the story in their own words about what happened that Friday the 13th with Larry, Banner and the Southwest Employees who showed their true colors in a life or death situation.
Check out the happy ending to this heart-warming story about compassion, teamwork, humanitarian and heroic efforts and doing the right thing on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=YZ17L8j6bsY
Truly inspirational efforts on everybody’s part to come through in a difficult situation.
Even the canine community pulled together. Here’s the card my Madison sent to Banner as well as a photo of Banner enjoying medical leave lounging by the pool in his colorful bandages. If you want to send a card to Banner, click here:
Knowing Why You Come to Work Each Day
July 19, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Thinking about Larry and Banner’s story makes me think about why some people come to work each day. What do you get out of the relationship with your job? Why do you show up each day and what do you want to accomplish? Do you have a master plan for showing up for life, or are you just clocking in and clocking out? I’m sure you know of colleagues who have retired years ago, but they just keep showing up for work each day to collect a paycheck.
What can you do to get inspired about your work? Make a list of what you do and don’t like about the different qualities and characteristics of your profession or your job. What can you change about it to make it more inspiring? What can you do to inspire others. As Zig Ziglar, the famous grandfather of motivation speaking so eloquently states: If you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want.
What are you doing to help other people get what they want and get where they want to go? Are you embracing empathy and kindness into your day? What would you do in emergency situations and how far would you go to do the right thing? Fortunately for Banner and Larry, Troy knew why he showed up for work that day and he knew what he had to do to do the right thing.