Building Resilience

The ability to lead in changing times requires resilience and optimism. The American Psychological Association suggests these ways to build resilience.

1. Maintain good relationships with close family members, friends and others.
2. Avoid seeing crises or stressful events as unbearable problems.
3. Accept circumstances that cannot be changed.
4. Develop realistic goals and move towards them.
5. Take decisive actions in adverse situations.
6. Look for opportunities of self-discovery after a struggle with loss.
7. Develop self-confidence.
8. Keep a long-term perspective and consider the stressful event in a broader context.
9. Maintain a hopeful outlook, expect good things and visualize what is wished.
10. Take care of one's mind and body by exercising regularly, paying attention to one's own needs and feelings and engaging in relaxing activities that one enjoys.
11. Learn from the past and maintain flexibility and balance in life.

Courtesy Counts

Why is it so hard for some people to use the words “Please” and “Thank you” when they make requests? I become absolutely livid when someone barks an order at me. How hard is it to make a polite, courteous request? Can’t people say, “Will you please get it to me by Friday,” instead of “I want it by Friday,” or “Send it by Friday.”

Get Creative!

A good decision making requires new and useful alternatives.The working environment is dynamic, flexible, uncertain, and unpredictable. Professionals must innovate and create new approaches to achieve make decisions and solve problems.

Brainstorming

Four rules
o Rule out criticism
o Welcome freewheeling
o Seek large quantities of ideas
o Encourage combination and improvement of ideas

Nominal Group Technology

• Each individual writes down as many ideas as possible working individually.
• Each person presents one of his/her ideas, which the group leader records on a flipchart or whiteboard.
• The process continues until all ideas have been recorded. No ideas are repeated.
• Group discussion of each idea starts after all the ideas are presented.
• Each individual ranks what they think are the top five ideas, by giving a score of 5 to the one they think is best and 1 to the one they think would be least successful.
• Combine everyone's ratings for each idea.
• The idea with the highest score is the one you choose. If there is a tie, use Paired Comparison to make a decision.

Have you used any of these tools? Have you used any other creativity tools? Share your positive, successful experiences using these or other creativity tools.

With Transparency, Everybody Wins

Transparency means that what you do is visible to others. When others can see your goals for the week, you have a tool to discuss priorities. The simplest way of creating transparency is with a WEEKLY WHITEBOARD REPORT.

A weekly whiteboard report posted in your office is an effective tool to keep everyone aware of your weekly goals. Use red for critical and milestone dates. The weekly whiteboard report is especially useful if you support more than one manager.

If you do not have a whiteboard in your office, use a Word table, Excel spreadsheet or calendar page similar to Outlook. Every Monday, print out the report for the week and post it on your wall where everyone can see it.
Date Priorities


May 24
Monday .


May 25
Tuesday


May 26
Wednesday 9 – Noon: Workshop


May 27
Thursday


May 28
Friday


Contact me at haddockworkshops@aol.com for information about my workshop Prioritizing and Managing Time.