Categories
Professional Development Soft Skills

Some Essential Tips to Boost Your Productivity

Break_the_cycle

Are you overwhelmed by priorities?  Well, focusing on the essential priorities can make the difference between feeling continually stretched to actually feeling more relaxed and successful!

Prioritisation is a time management skill fundamental to the success of both effective managers and professionals. For many of us the plain truth is, that although we tell others to prioritise, we don’t always manage to do it consistently for ourselves.

Why don’t we practice what we preach?

Prioritising is essential for our health as it reduces stress.  It improves work life balance by creating better boundaries.  You may find that much of the work you felt was urgent, isn’t really essential at all.

Very often we find ourselves backed into a corner due to a very common underlying reason…….

Saying Yes to everything!

Is this true for you? Do you or others around you fall into the trap of saying “yes” because:

      • You like to please people?
      • You need to know everything and feel in control?
      • Or you have a fear of missing out? (FOMO)

Maybe you have another reason? (Please let us know!)

Saying “yes” to everything may give you a short term benefit. However, it’s likely to get in the way of the long term satisfaction you get from succeeding with your most important goals.

Instead of endlessly saying “yes” to our manager, key customers and colleagues, we need to decide what’s essential.

3 Keys to Success

Deciding on what’s essential is a tried and tested way to clarify what our priorities are.

Make_time_to_reflect

Here is a three step process to help you do this:

Take time to reflect!

The most effective managers and leaders block time to reflect in their diary every day. Without reflection we behave like hamsters in wheels, going round and round, and never stopping to think why.  Here’s a quote from the successful investor Warren Buffet about how he prioritises his own time:

“I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business.”

Learn to say “No”.

When we were cavemen and women, saying “no” was pretty risky.  It could result in social exclusion and being left to the mercy of large animals on our own. Today’s manager can develop a repertoire of ways to elegantly and unapologetically say “no” without risk to life or limb. Learn how to do this and experiment with different ways every day!

“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” Warren Buffet.

Focus on a few things only – Your essentials

Greg McKeown, author of “Essentialism”, tells us that the thing that holds capable, disciplined people from breaking through to the next level, is success. Why? It gives too many options, which then, if not managed, lead to failure. The answer is the disciplined pursuit of less. This means finding out and focussing on a few things only. Greg tells you more on how to do this in his video for Stanford Business School here.

Greg McKeown: Essentialism - The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

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Conclusion

Focusing on a few essential priorities is key to your long term success. Developing the associated skills – being able to reflect, say “no” and focus on a few things only, can help you succeed. Again, in the words of Warren Buffet:

“The most important investment you can make is in yourself.”

Categories
Management Training Professional Development Soft Skills

CREATING POWERFUL RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH NETWORKING

How to succeed at the Networking Game

Networking in-person conversations, much like the networks themselves, are not self-sustaining, they require real commitment and drive in order to connect and establish the foundations of a relationship.

Once you initiate and make eye contact you need some tricks to establish trust, build rapport and make great first impressions.

successful_networking

CREATING POWERFUL RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH NETWORKING

Adapt Your Approach

Networking can feel uncomfortable – like a fish out of water – because we are exposed to people and situations that we are not used to. It can be uncomfortable, but that discomfort serves as a reminder of our need to adapt our approach for the different types of people we are looking to attract. How are they interacting? Is their style of communication indirect or direct, expressive or more reserved. Most importantly, watching and listening helps us to understand them better and communicate with them in the way that they like.

 Active Listening

Put simply, active listening is where you speak less and allow others to speak more. By taking this approach to your networking conversations, you can develop a more profound understanding what others are saying and most importantly, develop a stronger rapport with them.

When listening actively, it is important that we not only use words but also appropriate facial expressions, eye contact and changes in posture because we need to signal that we are listening and relating to what is being said. Successful active listeners also use questioning to prompt their counterparts to look for new ideas and approaches, helping them to focus on solutions rather than problems.

Here are some examples of phrases you can use to dive deeper: “Why is this issue important to you?”, “Just to clarify, you’re saying…?”, “What makes you say that?”

 Segueing 

Finding the opportunity to move to the topics you want to talk about when networking is a challenging but vital skill. Particularly in formal, professional circles time is precious, so having planned topics or moves to break the ice is a must. Once the chit chat has run its course and others have had their chance, we need to look for opportunities to steer the conversation towards areas that are important to us.

Segueing enables us to do that even in situations where others have harnessed the discussion, for example “What’s most important here is that…” or “The key issue is…” helps us to navigate conversation towards our priorities.

Conclusion 

It is all too easy to walk up to someone at a networking event, only to have nothing in mind to say, which starts the conversation off on the wrong foot.

Adapting your communication to match the preferences of others, listening actively to what they have to say and seizing your chance to move conversation in your direction can help you perform and succeed at the networking game.