7 Simple Steps to Get More Out of Your Day

Let’s face it – time is probably our greatest resource. We never seem to have enough of it, and it seems to pass so quickly. Well we won’t get any more of it, and we can’t slow it down.

What we can do is make the most of the time we have. Here are some simple steps you can take to get the most out of your day.

1. Plan your day the night before – At the end of each day write out all the things you need to do the following day to achieve your goals. Pull together all the information you’ll need, phone numbers and relevant paperwork.
2. Prioritise the list – Number each item and do the nasty jobs first. There’s always the temptation to do the easy jobs first. However, think how the thought of doing the nasty jobs hangs over you as you do the easy stuff. Think how good you’ll feel when the nasties are out of the way, and how motivated you’ll feel.
3. Stick to your list – Tick off each item as you go, and don’t let yourself be distracted. The temptation is to handle the telephone and e-mails as they come in. The phone is hard to ignore but you could always pull out the plug and let it go to voice mail and switch off the email program. Make an agreement with yourself to check for messages every two hours or so.
4. Remember the Three D’s – Do it, Delegate it or Dump it! Handle each piece of paper only once. Either do something about it now, delegate it to someone else or chuck it in the trash. And remember – “Only do it if only you can do it.”
5. Don’t procrastinate – Procrastination really is the ‘Thief of Time.’ It’s so easy to put things off till another time or till “I’ve had time to think about it.” DO IT NOW!
6. Plan your leisure time – Take up activities that need you to be at a certain place at a certain time. Instead of just going to the gym, book a fitness class or an appointment with a personal trainer.
7. Be honest with yourself – Keep asking – “Is what I’m doing now getting me to where I want to get to?” if the answer is “no,” change what you’re doing.

This is the easiest way to get more out of your day and more out of your life.

How to Motivate Your Team in 7 Simple Steps

Do you want a highly motivated team who are engaged and happy at work, and who make a positive contribution to your business?

The question, I’m most often asked by managers, is – “How do I motivate my team?” They want some instant fix, a ‘magic bullet’ that improves team motivation overnight. But as we all know, life isn’t like that.

I understand and appreciate why this question is being asked, I was a manager for sixteen years, and I understand the challenges managers face every day with their people. The answer I give is – “You don’t motivate your team, you create the environment where they motivate themselves.”

Effective motivation is intrinsic, it has to come ‘from within’. There is no instant fix; it’s an ongoing day to day process of small actions that build a highly motivated team. It's like pushing a heavy boulder, you need some initial effort to get the process going, but once you've done that, it takes a lot less effort to keep it moving.

7 Steps to success

1. Spend some quality time with each of your team. Talk with them and find out how they’re doing on a personal level, and a business level. Give them feedback; tell them when they do something well and tell them when not so well.
2. Listen to what they have to say, and show that you’re listening. Turn away from the computer, and switch off the phone. Keep good eye contact, use open body language, and make noises that indicate that you’re listening. Emphasise with their personal problems and provide solutions to business problems, wherever possible.
3. Coach them on the job, to do even better. Remember that coaching is a two-way process with your team member; helping them to find solutions to job related or personal problems
4. Find ways to make their job more interesting. Vary the jobs they do, give them some of your tasks, and give them more responsibility. Ask them to train or mentor another member of the team.
5. Show that you appreciate them, and have some fun. Give the occasional reward for no particular reason. Some time off work, a personal thank you letter, cakes or sweets, flowers on a birthday or a bottle of wine. Suggest a team member takes their partner out for a meal and charge it to expenses.
6. Keep them informed. Let them know what’s happening in the company; how the business is doing, provide relevant information on new products or services.
7. Trust and believe in them. Show them what you need them to do, and let them get on with it. Take risks; don’t keep ‘supervising’. Set up parameters that allow them to make decisions. If they keep coming to you with questions, don’t provide an answer, ask them what they would do and support their response.

Your team members want to know that you care about them, that you’re interested in them from a personal, and business point of view. They want to believe that you trust them, and want them to succeed. If you can create that environment; then you will have a happy and motivated team!

10 Sure-Fire Tips to Make Feedback Effective

Feedback is one of the Top 3 factors that motivate people at work. The majority of employees want to know when they're doing well, and when they could be doing better. There's no doubt, that giving people feedback, is absolutely vital to ensure a motivated team who deliver results.
Whether you want to reinforce positive behaviour or change unacceptable behaviour, there are certain steps you need to follow to make it effective.

1. Do it ASAP - When you see or hear something, you do or don't like, you need to say something right away. If it's positive feedback it's not much use saying something months later.
It also makes sense to give constructive feedback as soon as you see, or hear something you don't like. If you don't do it right away, then the person will assume that you didn't notice, or that it doesn't matter, or that you don't care.

2. Do it in private - This seems like the most obvious thing to say but I still see managers giving a member of their team some positive feedback in front of other people be they colleagues or customers. Of course, it's usually more of a reprimand. Some managers believe, that if they're seen and heard giving some feedback, then it will have an effect on the other team members - you bet it will - it'll totally de-motivate them!


3. Check that it's okay to speak - If one of your team has just finished speaking to a customer on the phone, they might have some 'admin' things to do before they forget. If you interrupt, then you risk being responsible for a customer not getting something they were promised.
It's only good manners to check before speaking, and your people will respect you for it.

4. Announce your intentions - If your people are not used to receiving regular feedback, what do you think runs through their mind when you pull up a chair, or ring them on the phone - you're right - they think it's bad news, that they've done something wrong, or there's a problem.
It's important therefore to tell them up front, what you want to speak about.

5. Tell them how YOU feel about their behaviour - Your people work for the same organisation as you, but it's you they have to please. So make sure when you give feedback - it comes from you. That means not saying things like - "The company doesn't like their employees to speak to customers like that." Or - "It's not up to me, but you'd better improve your performance or you'll be in trouble."

6. Focus on one thing at a time - Don't confuse your team member with a whole list of behaviours. If it's positive feedback then, you don't want to list several things they've done well. You're only diluting the whole feedback and it loses its impact.
If you're giving constructive feedback, then you don't want to confuse your team member with a whole catalogue of behaviours that you're unhappy about.

7. Be specific - When you're giving one of your team some feedback and coaching them - it's so important to focus on job related behaviour and not on the personality of the individual.
If you feel a bit uncomfortable giving feedback, try to focus on the person's behaviour on the job, in terms of how they conducted a particular task. That's what you're giving feedback on, not them as a person.

8. Include the customer and the organisation - Whenever appropriate -relate what your feedback is about, to how the customer was affected. This of course could be an internal or an external customer. You could also relate it to how the organisation was affected, if relevant

9. Get input - When giving constructive feedback, it's important to get the team members input. Listen to what they have to say and discuss how, you can, together, resolve the situation.

10. Don't leave them low - This is particularly important after giving constructive feedback. As I said earlier, this isn't an attack on the person; it's about job related behaviour. A team member should come out of a feedback session with their sense of self-worth intact.

The Number 1 Secret of Success

Do you know what one of the key secrets of success is – what makes people successful in business, sport or any other aspect of their lives?

Let me come back to that in a minute.

Ever since I discovered that I wasn't invincible and that my body would fall apart over time, I've been a member of a gym.

I've attended regularly over the past fifteen years and my body deterioration is almost being kept in check.

However I've always noticed a lot of new faces at the gym, some of which seem to disappear over a short period of time.

Most gyms and health clubs have a high turnover of members or 'churn' as the marketing people like to call it.

One club I know of loses around fifty members a month and has to work hard to sign up that number just for the business to stand still.

It's not that these gyms offer a poor service, on the contrary – it's because the members – 'give up'.

New members join to lose weight or to get fit. They then torture themselves on the rowing machines and all the other instruments of agony. If, after a few weeks of sweat and pain, they don't see any visible result - they give up.

You're probably way ahead of me on this; because the key secret of success that I mentioned earlier is this – NEVER EVER GIVE UP!

This is what separates the winners from the losers in business, in sport and in life – this is what success is all about.

If you have a mountain to climb either literally or figuratively and you reach an obstacle – don't give up.

Find another way round – even go back a short distance and come at the situation from another direction.

Whatever it is you're trying to achieve, whatever success you want - never give up! Make mistakes - fall down - get up - fall down - but get up and try again.

So there you have it - If you want success remember what Winston Churchill once said - "Never - Never - Never give up!"

Treat People Like a Dog

Let me ask you a simple question; do you want to encourage positive behaviour from other people, or do you want or encourage negative behaviour? I’m mainly talking about the people you manage, but it affects everyone. I suppose the answer is fairly obvious!

I know your going to think I’m a bit mad (probably true) but bear with me on this story.

I really like dogs! I don’t have one at the moment because it isn’t practical. But if you have a dog or maybe you don’t, you’ll know that it has to be house trained. As a puppy, it comes straight from the kennels and expects to continue ‘doing its business’ wherever and whenever it feels like it.

So you have the challenging job of training the puppy to do what nature requires, but elsewhere, and preferably, outside.

I’ve had four dogs in my time and they all had to be house trained. I’ve also observed other people training their dogs. I remember one of my neighbours with his new puppy. Every time the pup did his business on the living room carpet or wherever, my friendly neighbour would grab the dog and give forth with lots of “Bad dog, dirty dog” and “Don’t do that again!” Lots of shouting and shaking the poor pup!

The dog, of course, was quickly learning the message that, doing the ‘you know what’ was a bad thing to do. It was okay at the old kennels, but here it was totally different and obviously not acceptable. So it took forever to train the poor dog that it was still okay to do its business, but it had to be done outside.

I, on the other had, being extremely clever, and also wanting to get the whole housetraining bit over as quickly as possible, took a different tack. I used to keep a close eye on the puppy, and very soon realised when he wanted ‘to go.’ I quickly scooped him up and headed out the door. As soon as the dog had done, what he had to do, in the garden, I piled on lots of praise, “Well done” “Good boy” and lots of ‘happy noises’!

The puppy quickly began to realise that whenever he felt like doing its business, he would get all excited and head for the back door. He knew that this meant lots of good stuff, fun, praise, the occasional chocolate drop and of course - physical relief.

So what’s this all got to do with motivating other people? Too many managers are spending too much time concentrating on what a team member may be doing wrong. They believe their role is to ‘fix what they perceive to be broken’. On the positive side, they may ‘fix’ the problem with, on-the-job coaching, or further training. However, many take the attitude that, the ‘bad dog’ treatment will do the trick.

As you ‘manage by walking around’, listen to what your team members are saying and observe what they’re doing. When you see or hear them doing something well, give them some positive feedback. As it says in the ‘One Minute Manager’ catch people doing something right. This is not to say that you ignore poor behaviour, but more about concentrating on what people do well. If you do this, it will encourage more of the good behaviour and much less of the poor behaviour.

Think Praise not Punishment!