Imagine this scenario: One of your team members has saved the company a significant amount of money with a process she spent weeks creating.

It’s right before the winter holidays, so you decide to reward her with a turkey that she and her family can enjoy for dinner one night. You make a big deal of presenting the turkey to her. She smiles and shyly accepts the gift, quickly putting it in the office refrigerator. You feel good because you rewarded her efforts, and she seemed to be happy about the recognition.

But is she? Things aren’t always as they appear. You didn’t take the time to learn whether or not she eats meat, so you didn’t discover that she’s a vegetarian. And you didn’t consider that she commutes to the office one hour by train – so by the time she gets that frozen turkey home to give away to friends, it will be a drippy, soggy mess.

Have you ever wondered why the rewards you offer don’t seem to be received very well? We often hear from business experts about how important it is to reward your team. But it’s equally important to take the time to find out how your team would really like to be recognized. Sometimes people don’t want a bonus or pay raise. Instead, what they’d really like is a sincere “thank you” or a day off to spend with their families.

This article can help you learn the “ins and outs” of recognizing your team.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMM_54.htm?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mtpage

Have you ever been so afraid of failing at something that you decided not to try it at all? Or has a fear of failure meant that, subconsciously, you undermined your own efforts to avoid the possibility of a larger failure?

Many of us have probably experienced this at one time or another. The fear of failing can be immobilizing – it can cause us to do nothing, and therefore resist moving forward. But when we allow fear to stop our forward progress in life, we’re likely to miss some great opportunities along the way.

In this article, we’ll examine fear of failure: what it means, what causes it, and how to overcome it to enjoy true success in work, and in life.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/fear-of-failure.htm?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mtpage

You’ve just arrived at the office, and it looks like it will be another typical day. Before you even sit down, one of your team walks into your office and asks for your help on the budget she’s preparing. As soon as she leaves, someone wants to know if you have any time to help him with a marketing plan that’s due by the end of the week.

Before you know it, you’ve spent much of your day helping your team to do their jobs, while your own tasks are left untouched.

It’s important for managers to be a resource to those they lead. But it’s easy for teams to take advantage of this. Over time, they can develop “manager dependency.”

So how can you train team members to take more responsibility for their own tasks, instead of running to you for “hand-holding” through every step? In this article, we’ll examine how to decrease manager dependency, and how to get the members of your team to “stand on their own two feet.”

Micromanaging and Delegating

Team members often become dependent on their manager because of micromanagement . When managers don’t let team members take responsibility and ownership of tasks, then it’s understandable that people come to depend on that control.

It’s important to take a close look at your management style. Is it possible that you’re managing your team just a bit too closely?

If you are, then cut back slowly. Start by giving people tasks that don’t have to be perfect. (When you reduce your control and input, your team might be uncertain at first – that’s why it’s a good idea to start with low-priority or low-importance tasks or projects.)

Next, look at how you’re delegating . When delegating tasks, team members must understand exactly what they need to do, they need to know that they have the skills and knowledge to complete the task, and they need to feel responsible for delivering it with a certain level of quality by a certain deadline.

If any of this information is missing when you assign tasks, then your people may be forced to come to you for more information. You can avoid this by making sure that they have everything they need at the start of the project. To learn more about assigning responsibility, see our article on The Responsibility Assignment Matrix .

One strategy for preventing manager dependency is to assign one task to two team members. Give them the responsibility for dividing the work. If they have questions, encourage them to discuss issues with each other first. They should come to you only if they’re unable to find an answer together.

Let them know at the start of the task that you’ve given them all of the information you have. And explain that if you knew all of the answers, you wouldn’t need intelligent people in their roles! Let them know that the task will require them to do some brainstorming and strategic thinking, and that you trust their ability to do it. Also make it clear that you want them to come to you with a finished project.

If they do have problems, remember the old advice to “get people to come to you with solutions, not with problems.” Make sure that they’ve thought through at least one possible solution to the problem before they come to bother you.

Creating a Culture of Responsibility

For your team to take responsibility , you must have a workplace culture that encourages this behaviour.

Look at your organization’s culture . Does your company encourage or discourage responsibility and independent thinking?

If it’s discouraged, then you need to take steps to change this.

Make sure that “taking responsibility” is written into your performance plans. You want your team to know that this behaviour will be rewarded. When team members take independent action to get the job done, praise them for their initiative.

When it’s time for performance appraisals, assess team members on their ability to take responsibility. Let them know that you value their initiative, and that the more they take responsibility for their tasks, the better their appraisals will be. Keep notes on which team members have taken responsibility, and what they did specifically, so you can discuss this during their performance reviews.

Using Parenting Techniques with Your Team

Surprisingly, you can use some proven parenting techniques to teach your team to be more independent.

For instance, many parents are encouraged to let their young children take the lead in some situations. The children’s choices might be wrong, but the experience allows them to learn and grow.

This is a wonderful technique to use with your team. During meetings, put someone else in charge while you sit back and observe. Or, let the group choose a leader. Putting the team in control forces them to rely less on you, and it empowers them to make their own choices.

Parents are also advised to “practice being absent” if they want their children to be more independent. If your organization allows telecommuting, spend more time away from the office – or simply keep your door closed, signaling that you don’t want to be disturbed. Putting space between you and your team will force them to make decisions on their own.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/preventing-manager-dependency.htm?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mtpage

So how does one incorporate resilience and compassion into teamwork in the face of tough challenges, work overload/deadlines, pressures to meet commissioning/trust targets and understanding the minds of the differing personalities that you work with on a daily basis?

There are no easy answers or quick solutions however what I have realised whilst working within my team is that small random acts of kindness often goes a long way.

Equally what is pertinent is that you have to make attempts at chipping away at the obstacles whilst embracing change. We pride ourselves on the fact that our team is great because we incorporate the 5 R’s with the 6C’s: Respect each other Role model – to staff/clients/community Resilient – we don’t get going when it gets tough. Responsibility- we are responsible for ourselves, clients & community Restorative – offload & reflect.

Overall what it simply comes down to is that happiness can be created whenever & wherever you are by small random acts of kindness. Sometimes we can be doing this without giving it a second thought.

http://www.fabnhsstuff.net/2016/01/10/incorporating-resilience-compassion-team-work/

Positive and negative thoughts can become self-fulfilling prophecies: What we expect can often come true.

If you start off thinking you will mess up a task, the chances are that you will: You may not try hard enough to succeed, you won’t attract support from other people, and you may not perceive any results as good enough.

Positive thinking, on the other hand, is often associated with positive actions and outcomes. You’re drawn to, and you focus on, the positive aspects of a situation. You have hope and faith in yourself and others, and you work and invest hard to prove that your optimism is warranted. You’ll enthuse others, and they may well “pitch in” to help you. This makes constructive outcomes all the more likely.

When it comes down to it, positive, optimistic people are happier and healthier, and enjoy more success than those who think negatively. The key difference between them is how they think about and interpret the events in their life.

So, how do you think about your successes and failures? Do you have a predictable thinking pattern? Find out here.

 

Problems are at the center of what many people do at work every day. Whether you’re solving a problem for a client (internal or external), supporting those who are solving problems, or discovering new problems to solve, the problems you face can be large or small, simple or complex, and easy or difficult.

A fundamental part of every manager’s role is finding ways to solve them. So, being a confident problem solver is really important to your success. Much of that confidence comes from having a good process to use when approaching a problem. With one, you can solve problems quickly and effectively. Without one, your solutions may be ineffective, or you’ll get stuck and do nothing, with sometimes painful consequences.

There are four basic steps in solving a problem:

• Defining the problem.
• Generating alternatives.
• Evaluating and selecting alternatives.
• Implementing solutions.

Steps 2 to 4 of this process are covered in depth in other areas of Mind Tools. For these, see our sections on Creativity for step 2 (generating alternatives); Decision Making for step 3 (evaluating and selecting alternatives); and Project Management for step 4 (implementing solutions).

The articles in this section of Mind Tools therefore focus on helping you make a success of the first of these steps – defining the problem. A very significant part of this involves making sense of the complex situation in which the problem occurs, so that you can pinpoint exactly what the problem is. Many of the tools in this section help you do just that. We look at these, and then review some useful, well-established problem-solving frameworks.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_00.htm?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mtpage

Are individual members of your team performing less well than you’d hoped? If so, this proverb can take on great significance. To figure out what’s causing the performance issue, you have to get to the root of the problem.

But because employee performance affects organizational performance, we tend to want to look for a quick fix. Would a training course help Ted? Or should you move him into a different role?

These types of solutions focus largely on the ability of the person performing the job. Performance, though, is a function of both ability and motivation.

Performance = Ability x Motivation

From “Developing Management Skills” (8th Edition) p.27, by David A. Whetten and Kim S. Cameron. © 2011. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Where:

Ability is the person’s aptitude, as well as the training and resources supplied by the organization.

Motivation is the product of desire and commitment.

Someone with 100 percent motivation and 75 performance ability can often achieve above-average performance. But a worker with only 25 percent ability won’t be able to achieve the type of performance you expect, regardless of his or her level of motivation.

So, before you can fix poor performance, you have to understand its cause. Does it come from lack of ability or low motivation? Read more…

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMM_80.htm?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mtpage

We’ve all heard the advice: if you want to be more productive, cut out the TV and Facebook binges, and you can miraculously have five to 10 hours of your life back each week

That is a preposterous suggestion for hard-charging professionals

We’ve already eliminated the fat from our schedules. We listen to audiobooks while washing the dishes, answer emails while standing in line at the grocery store, and return voicemails while driving home from work. There are no more efficiencies left to wring from the edges of our days.

So if we truly want to level up our productivity, there’s only one solution — and it’s painful. We have to learn how to say no to good things.

Saying no to a hopeful and expectant person can be challenging. But it’s a lot easier when the offer is unappealing: an unpaid speech in Buffalo in February, or yet another latte in exchange for an hourlong “brain picking.” It’s extraordinarily painful to say no to wonderful opportunities that you would very much like to do…except for the fact that they’re not the priorities you intentionally set.

I recently had to write an email that made me flinch. I turned down a speaking engagement on Grand Cayman that was offered to me by a longtime friend. In the past, there’s no question I would have jumped on it. “Caribbean + money + friend” would have proven irresistible. But I said no, and I’m glad I did, because it gave me more time to pursue the meaningful, long-term goals I set for myself.

That might be an extreme example, but I suspect you are also probably faced with a steady stream of good opportunities and you just don’t have time to say yes to all of them, or maybe even most of them. Here’s how you can find the strength to say no, and the questions you can ask yourself to stay focused.

What are your top professional priorities? It’s exciting to jump on new opportunities that present themselves, but not if they’re at the expense of the plan you’ve carefully laid out. What are your top two or three goals this year? For me, it’s researching and writing a new book, launching an online course, and earning money through speaking and consulting. (The island adventure would have paid far less than my usual rate — so while it would have been fun, it would have cut into the time I’d set aside for my first two goals.)

 

What is the total commitment? It’s easy to focus on the “shiny” part of the offer, even if that’s only the ego-boosting effects of being invited to do something. But find out what’s really involved. In addition to the commitment itself, is there planning or prep work to do? What’s the travel time? Will there be follow-up calls? Thinking this through will make the ROI (or lack thereof) clearer. Make sure you’re taking all aspects of the opportunity into account before you say yes. Agreeing to present on a webinar, for instance, might sound like a one-hour commitment. But actually it often means preparing slides, editing them based on feedback, holding prep calls with stakeholders, and doing a technical run-through several days before, amounting to several additional hours of “hidden” work.

What is the opportunity cost? One of my coaching clients told me recently about the acute pain he felt when he agreed to do a pro bono talk because he had nothing on the calendar, only to receive a paid speaking invitation for the same date that he now had to decline. It’s important to remember that by saying no you’re leaving yourself open to other possibilities that might offer higher pay, provide equal or more interesting connections, or be more in line with your goals this year. Even if nothing else comes along, you’ll have protected the time you need to work on your key priorities.

What is the physical/emotional cost? Finally, money and alignment with professional goals aren’t the only reasons to say no to an otherwise good opportunity. It’s also important to safeguard your health — something it’s easy to overlook. In 2015, I gave 74 talks on four continents. After being felled by a particularly vicious flu on the way back from an international engagement, I vowed to be clearer and more selective in the choices I made. If the talk didn’t meet my strategic objectives or my price point, I would need to decline. It was the only way, I realized, that I could keep myself in good shape for the right invitations.

Intellectually, we all understand the importance of focus. We know we can’t hope to make progress on our most meaningful long-term goals if we don’t carve out specific development time. And yet saying no to good opportunities feels terrible. Most people, in fact, can’t bear to do it, so they overcommit, run themselves ragged, and feel resentful in the end. And most of us succeed earlier in our careers by saying yes to almost everything. But there is strength in learning to say no. It’s the only way to reach the level of focus and productivity that allows you to become great.

If you’ve found yourself putting off important tasks over and over again, you’re not alone. In fact, many people procrastinate to some degree – but some are so chronically affected by procrastination that it stops them fulfilling their potential and disrupts their careers.

The key to controlling this destructive habit is to recognize when you start procrastinating, understand why it happens (even to the best of us), and take active steps to manage your time and outcomes better.

What is Procrastination?

In a nutshell, you procrastinate when you put off things that you should be focusing on right now, usually in favor of doing something that is more enjoyable or that you’re more comfortable doing.

According to psychologist Professor Clarry Lay, a prominent writer on the subject, procrastination occurs when there’s “a temporal gap between intended behavior and enacted behavior.” That is, when there’s a significant time period between when people intend to do a job, and when they actually do it.

How to Overcome Procrastination

Follow these steps to deal with and control procrastination:

Step 1: Recognize That You’re Procrastinating

If you’re honest with yourself, you probably know when you’re procrastinating. But to be sure, take our Are You a Procrastinator? self test.

Here are some useful indicators that will help you know when you’re procrastinating:

Filling your day with low priority tasks from your To Do List.

Reading e-mails several times without starting work on them or deciding what you’re going to do with them.

Sitting down to start a high-priority task, and almost immediately going off to make a cup of coffee.

Leaving an item on your To Do list for a long time, even though you know it’s important.

Regularly saying “Yes” to unimportant tasks that others ask you to do, and filling your time with these instead of getting on with the important tasks already on your list.

Waiting for the “right mood” or the “right time” to tackle the important task at hand.

Step 2: Work Out WHY You’re Procrastinating

This can depend on both you and the task. But it’s important to understand which of the two is relevant in a given situation, so that you can select the best approach for overcoming your reluctance to get going.

One reason is that people find a particular job unpleasant, and try to avoid it because of that. Most jobs have unpleasant or boring aspects to them, and often the best way of dealing with these is to get them over and done with quickly, so that you can focus on the more enjoyable aspects of the job.

Another cause is that people are disorganized. Organized people manage to fend off the temptation, because they will have things like prioritized to-do lists and schedules which emphasize how important the piece work is, and identify precisely when it’s due. They’ll also have planned how long a task will take to do, and will have worked back from that point to identify when they need to get started in order to avoid it being late. Organized people are also better placed to avoid procrastination, because they know how to break the work down into manageable “next steps”.

Even if you’re organized, you can feel overwhelmed by the task. You may doubt that you have the skills or resources you think you need, so you seek comfort in doing tasks you know you’re capable of completing. Unfortunately, the big task isn’t going to go away – truly important tasks rarely do. You may also fear success as much as failure. For example, you may think that success will lead to you being swamped with more requests to do this type of task, or that you’ll be pushed to take on things that you feel are beyond you.

Step 3: Adopt Anti-Procrastination Strategies

Procrastination is a habit – a deeply ingrained pattern of behavior. That means that you won’t just break it overnight. Habits only stop being habits when you have persistently stopped practising them, so use as many approaches as possible to maximize your chances of beating them. Some tips will work better for some people than for others, and for some tasks than others. And, sometimes, you may simply need to try a fresh approach to beat the “procrastination peril”!

These general tips will help motivate you to get moving:

Make up your own rewards. For example, promise yourself a piece of tasty flapjack at lunchtime if you’ve completed a certain task. And make sure you notice how good it feels to finish things!

Ask someone else to check up on you. Peer pressure works! This is the principle behind slimming and other self-help groups, and it is widely recognized as a highly effective approach.

Identify the unpleasant consequences of NOT doing the task.

Work out the cost of your time to your employer. As your employers are paying you to do the things that they think are important, you’re not delivering value for money if you’re not doing those things. Shame yourself into getting going!

Aim to “eat an elephant beetle” first thing, every day!

If you’re procrastinating because you’re disorganized, here’s how to get organized!

Keep a To-Do list so that you can’t “conveniently” forget about unpleasant or overwhelming tasks.

Use Eisenhower’s Urgent/Important Principle to help prioritize your To-Do List so that you cannot try to kid yourself that it would be acceptable to put off doing something on the grounds that it is unimportant, or that you have many urgent things which ought to be done first when, in reality, you’re procrastinating.

Become a master of scheduling and project planning, so that you know when to start those all-important projects.

Set yourself time-bound goals : that way, you’ll have no time for procrastination!

Focus on one task at a time.

If you’re putting off starting a project because you find it overwhelming, you need to take a different approach. Here are some tips:

Break the project into a set of smaller, more manageable tasks. You may find it helpful to create an action plan .

Start with some quick, small tasks if you can, even if these aren’t the logical first actions. You’ll feel that you’re achieving things, and so perhaps the whole project won’t be so overwhelming after all.

If you’re doing it because you find the task unpleasant:

Many procrastinators overestimate the unpleasantness of a task. So give it a try! You may find that it’s not as bad as you thought!

Hold the unpleasant consequences of not doing the work at the front of your mind.

Reward yourself for doing the task.

Finally, if your problem is that you can’t decide what action to take, and are putting off making a decision because you’re nervous about making the wrong choice, see our decision-making section. This teaches a range of powerful and effective decision-making techniques.

Remember: the longer you can spend without procrastinating, the greater your chances of breaking this destructive habit for good!

The past decade has seen rapid development and adoption of technologies that change the way we live. But which technologies will have a similarly transformative impact on health and care?

The King’s Fund has looked at some examples of innovative technology-enabled care that are already being deployed in the NHS and internationally to transform care. Now, we examine the technologies most likely to change health and care over the next few years.

Some of the technologies we discuss are on the horizon – others are already in our pockets, our local surgeries and hospitals. But none are systematically deployed in our health and care system. Each could represent an opportunity to achieve better outcomes or more efficient care.

Read more.

http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/articles/eight-technologies-will-change-health-and-care