Leadership Style Survey This questionnaire contains statements about leadership style beliefs. Next to each statement, circle the number that represents how strongly you feel about the statement by using the following scoring system: Almost Always True — 5 Frequently True — 4 Occasionally True — 3 Seldom True — 2 Almost Never True — 1 Be honest about your choices as there are no right or wrong answers — it is only for your own self-assessment. Leadership Style Survey In the table below, enter the score of each item on the above questionnaire. This questionnaire is to help you assess what leadership style you normally operate out of. The highest of the three scores in the columns above indicate what style of leadership you normally use — Authoritarian, Participative, or Delegative. The lowest of the three scores is an indicator of the style you least use. Final Thoughts Normally, some of the best leaders operate out of the participative mode and use the other two modes as needed. Reliability and Validity Next Step
How To Get More Done By Having Less To Do Ask anyone how their life’s going these days, and either he or she will answer: “Busy!” “I think it’s an almost universal experience right now that people feel busy but not productive,” says Greg McKeown, whose new book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, argues for paring back commitments to achieve more. If you’re feeling stretched, here’s five ways how to pull yourself back together: 1. You’re looking at a new opportunity. The point is that “we need to see the difference between things that are good and things that are exceptionally good," he says. 2. As you examine your current life commitments, the best metaphor is to clean out your closet. Likewise, if you’re holding onto a commitment only because you’ve been doing it for a while, ask yourself if you’d add it to your life if it weren’t already there. 3. We think working more hours will help us get ahead. 4. Being an essentialist is “not just about saying no to stuff,” says McKeown. 5. [Image: Flickr user toffehoff]
Employee Effectiveness - The Clemmer Group Webinar: 9 Ways to Build Effective Relationships “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” These are a few lines of a poem penned by the metaphysical English poet, John Donne, around the time of Shakespeare. Community, interdependence, and oneness has been a central part of many ancient philosophies […] Read post » A Fresh Look at Employee Engagement Managers play the most important role in creating employee engagement. Read whitepaper » Creating Empowerment and Growth “Managing the monkeys” so employees move from passing problems upward to taking more problem solving ownership. Watch video » The Impact of Coaching Effectiveness The impact of coaching skill development on employee engagement and satisfaction. Watch video » The Impact of Leadership on Employee Turnover Data showing the impact that leadership effectiveness has on employee turnover. Watch video » The Impact of Leadership on Employee Engagement Watch video » Read post » Read post »
The Brain Hacks Top Founders Use To Get The Job Done Katia Verresen's new client had a big problem: He needed to find three to four extra hours in his day. This, of course, seemed like an impossible feat for an oversubscribed startup founder, but his ability to fundraise and recruit the best talent depended on it. By the time he met Verresen, executive coach to many such founders, he was drained, pessimistic, dreading every week before it started. Even though tech culture champions sleeplessness, overtime and burnout, Verresen has seen how this mindset can lead to failure. To turn it around, her first order of business is to collect as much data on her clients as she can and funnel it into a plan with one goal: Maximizing energy. Physical energy, emotional energy, and mental energy. But the proof is in the pudding. Her method has turned Verresen into one of the most sought after coaches in the business. Filling Your Buckets Maintaining and using energy wisely might seem like obvious advice, but it’s hardly ever heeded.
Kotter's 8-Step Change Model - Change Management Tools from Mind Tools "Change is the only constant."– Heraclitus, Greek philosopher What was true more than 2,000 years ago is just as true today. We live in a world where "business as usual" is change. New initiatives, project-based working, technology improvements, staying ahead of the competition – these things come together to drive ongoing changes to the way we work. Whether you're considering a small change to one or two processes, or a system wide change to an organization, it's common to feel uneasy and intimidated by the scale of the challenge. You know that the change needs to happen, but you don't really know how to go about delivering it. There are many theories about how to "do" change. In this article, video and infographic, we look at his eight steps for leading change, below. Click here to view a transcript of this video. Step 1: Create Urgency For change to happen, it helps if the whole company really wants it. What you can do: Note: Step 2: Form a Powerful Coalition Step 4: Communicate the Vision
The Theory of Cumulative Stress: How to Recover When Stress Builds Up It was my first year of graduate school and my professor was standing at the front of the room. He was telling our class about a mistake he made years before. About a decade earlier, my professor had been one of the senior executives at Sears, Roebuck & Company, the large department store chain. They were in the middle of a massive national campaign and preparing for a major brand launch. For almost two months prior to the launch day, he was flying all over the country to strike up buzz with major partners and media companies. The week before the big launch day, his body gave out on him. Your Bucket of Health and Energy Imagine that your health and energy are a bucket of water. In your day-to-day life, there are things that fill your bucket up. There are also forces that drain the water from your bucket. The forces that drain your bucket aren’t all negative, of course. These outputs are cumulative. The Theory of Cumulative Stress I usually lift heavy three days per week. Why?
PDCA PDCA (plan–do–check–act or plan–do–check–adjust) is an iterative four-step management method used in business for the control and continuous improvement of processes and products. It is also known as the Deming circle/cycle/wheel, Shewhart cycle, control circle/cycle, or plan–do–study–act (PDSA). Another version of this PDCA cycle is OPDCA. The added "O" stands for observation or as some versions say "Grasp the current condition." This emphasis on observation and current condition has currency with Lean manufacturing/Toyota Production System literature.[1] Meaning[edit] Continuous quality improvement with PDCA Establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the expected output (the target or goals). Implement the plan, execute the process, make the product. Study the actual results (measured and collected in "DO" above) and compare against the expected results (targets or goals from the "PLAN") to ascertain any differences. About[edit] See also[edit]
The Four Elements of Physical Energy and How To Master Them I have a FitBit (glorified pedometer if I ever saw one), and since getting it, my exercise goal each day is to hit 5,000 steps. On work days, I generally hit 2,000-3,000 each day consistently, meaning I only need to take a walk around the block twice when I get home to meet my goal. Recently, due to winter, I mostly was just pacing back and forth in my apartment while watching Netflix. I find that having a goal for step count rather than exercise is easier, because some days I just don't *feel* like exercising (like Saturdays, when I am running around doing errands), and typically on those days, I get a bunch of steps in anyways. I combine this method with Jerry Scienfeld's method of "Don't Break the Chain," which REALLY helps come Sunday when I'm not doing anything or going anywhere, and therefore really do need to concentrate to get my 5k steps in.
Coaching Tools 101: The Urgent Important Matrix - What is it and How To Use it! Well, Former US President Eisenhower used this so-called “Eisenhower Principle” to organize his tasks. He is quoted as saying, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” It was Dr Stephen Covey (of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” fame) who took these concepts mainstream, calling it The Urgent Important Matrix in his famous book . Quadrant 1 – Crises or “Important AND Urgent” Tasks What: Tasks that fall into this quadrant include deadlines, urgent meetings, pressing problems, crises and fire-fighting. How we feel: When we spend a lot of time in this quadrant we become stressed and burned out. Action: Minimise the time spent in this quadrant by prioritizing, planning and delegating ie. spending more time in Quadrant 2. Coaching Tip: If your client is in a line management or service based role, they will spend more time in this quadrant than a project manager. Quadrant 2 – Goals and Planning or “Important and Non-Urgent” Tasks
The Productivity Paradox: How Sony Pictures Gets More Out of People by Demanding Less The Idea in Brief Human beings don’t work like computers; they can’t operate at high speeds continuously, running multiple programs at once. People perform at their peak when they alternate between periods of intense focus and intermittent renewal. Employees can increase their effectiveness by practicing simple rituals that refuel their energy, such as taking a daily walk to get an emotional breather or turning off e-mail at prescribed times so they can concentrate. If companies allow and encourage employees to create and stick to such rituals, they will be rewarded with a more engaged, productive, and focused workforce. Artwork: Antony Gormley, Capacitor, 2001. The way most of us work isn’t working. Nearly a decade ago, the Energy Project, the company I head, began to address work performance and the problem of employee disengagement. To date, the reaction to the program has been overwhelmingly positive.
Team building training and development. Before exhibiting the signs of effective teamwork which were listed in 'What is Effective Teamwork?' your team will probably need to pass through several stages of development, during which other signs or characteristics will be exhibited. We us a simple model based on four essential stages of development. It has been found to be very useful in helping teams and team leaders to understand team development. This model will help you and your team members not only to understand, but to then agree where they are in the development process. We have a really useful diagnostic instrument to enable your team members diagnose and agree where they are in the team development stage matrix. No team ever exhibits solely the characteristics of one particular stage; rather it is a question of which characteristics are the most prominent. This is the most common stage of development to be found in organizations. Stage 1: Development activities for the undeveloped team
How To Selectively Sync Folders With Google Drive Google Drive is perhaps one of the strongest Dropbox competitors in the market right now. Being a Google product the app and its web version are just a bigger team for Dropbox to contend with. Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides are built to save documents to it. Given everything Google Drive has going for it, it might surprise you that up until a few days ago it lacked a very essential feature that Dropbox has had for ages; selective folder syncing. The feature basically lets you pick and choose which folders to sync to your desktop. Select Folders To Sync On First Install When you download and install Google Drive for the very first time, you’re asked to sign in to your Google account and then taken through a very brief tour. Unselect the folders you do not want to sync and click ‘Start Sync’. Update Which Folders Are Synced If you already have Google Drive installed and it’s syncing all your folders to your desktop you can remove the one you no longer want to be synced.