People have debated the concept of “life balance” for decades, and it means something different to everyone. This article, looks at life balance, and how you can find one that works for you.
If someone asked you for the best way to drive from point A to point B, you wouldn’t advise him just to get in his car and start driving. He’d probably end up lost!
The same is true when you’re coaching team members. You need to work with them to find the best route from problem to solution, dividing what they need to do along the way into easy, manageable steps. The PRACTICE model of coaching helps you do this.
On a chilly Paris morning some years ago, I was talking to a group of young managers about building high-performance teams. As our conversation progressed, I asked them why they hadn’t already executed some of the ideas we had been talking about. I was completely taken aback by the response: Most blamed their bosses for their inertia. They felt that they had the worst kind of supervisors, and there was no way to get past them. That night, I thought long and hard about the discussion, and had to agree that bad bosses can deflate the best intentions, disable the most enthusiastic people, and freeze the hottest ideas. But I wondered how widespread the problem was. To find out, I reached out to my network using social media. The response was overwhelming, suggesting that the problem was widespread and worthy of analysis.
Whether you have an effective way of managing your tasks or if you’ve never been able to get the right tool for the job, making smarter use of your smart phone can make your life a lot easier. Phone-based task management is effective because it helps with three challenges: capturing tasks before you’ve forgotten about them, being reminded to do the task at the right time, and differentiating between little to-dos and important projects.
This report is the result of a nine-month analysis which examined a range of NHS organisations, including foundation trusts, trusts, community healthcare trusts, ambulance trusts and clinical commissioning groups to understand the patterns of social media use by different levels in the organisations.
This study tested the later stages of a well-established HRM model, testing whether or not there was evidence of causal links between staff experience and intermediate (staff) and final (patient and organisational) outcomes, and whether or not these differed in parts of the NHS. It used large-scale longitudinal secondary data sets in order to answer these questions in a thorough way. Overall, the research confirmed many expected links between staff experiences and outcomes, providing support for that part of the overall HRM model in the NHS. However, conclusions about the direction of causality were less clear (except for absenteeism). This is probably due in part to the relatively blunt nature of the data used.
Case Study: Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust is using value-based interviewing to ensure they recruit staff who fit the organisation and its values, an approach that’s seeing some positive early results.
When it comes to compassionate care, ‘often the simplest gestures make a difference, such as holding a patient’s hand before an operation’ says Jane Jones, Assistant Director at the Health Foundation. However, the smallest things can also mar an experience of care, as she knows from personal experience. She explores why treating people with compassion sits at the very heart of good care.
There’s an age-old question out there: Is it better to be a “nice” leader to get your staff to like you? Or to be tough as nails to inspire respect and hard work? Despite the recent enthusiasm for wellness initiatives like mindfulness and meditation at the office, and despite the movement toward more horizontal organizational charts, most people still assume the latter is best.
Who are the unhappiest among your workers? And what’s driving them crazy? They may not be who you think they are. They aren’t who we would have thought.