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Game-Changing Tactics to Help you with Stress Management

If you Google Stress Management youwill find 611,000,000+ results, and over 94,700,000+ references to research papers on the topic. I am often asked for tips on managing stress in the workplace – where, oh where do you start…

Periods of stress occur in high pressure situations – when deadlines are looming, there is a lack of resources, staff morale is low, during company takeovers, and the list goes on and on. Individuals feel the effects of stress when they do not feel fulfilled or appreciated in their job, are not being authentic in their professional role, feel disconnected from personal priorities, or are suffering from complete exhaustion and burnout.

Try these eight tactics to help manage your stress:

  1. Awareness = Reflection Time What is working? What is not working? What can you implement to improve what is not working? Reflection helps you work out discrepancies between what is important to you and how you spend your time.
  1. Energy Management – Mental, Emotional and Physical Working longer and harder will not make your job easier. Getting less sleep, not eating well, and not exercising will not help reduce your stress levels nor improve your job performance or productivity. Here are a few strategies for managing and maximizing your energy:
  • Monitor your energy levels and be cognizant of how you are feeling – it will make a huge difference to your productivity, satisfaction on the job and interactions with others.
  • Set aside time daily to work on high priority tasks, assign designated times for email and returning calls, and try batching similar tasks for greater productivity.
  • Take brief and regular breaks away from your desk.
  • Eat well and try to have small meals or snacks every three hours, integrate cardiovascular exercise into your schedule and protect your sleep.
  • Express your gratitude for a task well done, remember to smile and don’t take yourself too seriously – it is okay to have a good laugh.
  1. Leadership Learning Never Ends Schedule time to learn. It can be as simple as reading for 15 minutes per day on a professional development topic that will assist you in your position. Knowledge and skill improvement through reading, coaching, training or a mastermind is recommended. Utilize and effectively maximize your systems and tools to manage your time, projects and client records.
  1. Manage Yourself Know what you are good at (not just what you think you are good at) and which of your strengths are the most valuable – then operate from your places of strength. Performance cannot be improved from focusing on weaknesses. Know your values and stand by them. Understand how you work with others, how you are perceived and what you could do to improve your professional relationships. Know the type of work environment that you thrive in and can make the greatest contribution.
  1. Morning, Afternoon and Weekend Planning Routines Try to not look at your phone, email or social media for the first two hours of the day. Set aside time every day to work on your top three priorities and stick to it. At the end of the day, prioritize tasks for the next. Evaluate progress at the end of each week and plan for the next.
  1. Move from Complexity to Ease Stop multitasking – it is not effective. Tackle one thing at a time and make sure that what you do has the greatest impact and return on your time investment. Keep it simple – one thing at a time.
  1. Resilience – Break Down the Complex Your professional and personal lives are complex, and unexpected challenges do occur. Resilience is built and can be developed. It helps how you assess, react and cope when the unexpected occurs. Think rationally about what needs to be done, be mindful and improvise when needed.
  1. Take Charge of Your Schedule – Take Conscious Action Now It is okay to say no, or advise when something does not work for you in your schedule. Do not allow your email, social media, or constant meeting requests to take over your day. Design your week to work for you, focus on your goals and act with intention.

I would love to hear from you on any other Game Changing Stress-Reducing Tactics  you use and that have been a game changer for you. I will be giving away three $15 Starbucks cards – so please do participate for some Java energy. I will be using Google’s Random Number Generator to pull three submissions. Please have in your response by Friday, November 23rd, 2018. I will announce the winners on Monday, November 26th, 2018.

Please click on the button below to complete the following two questions:

  1. What stress-reducing, game changing tactics do you utilize? How have they made a difference?
  2. If you could work on one area in your professional life to reduce stress, what would it be?
Complete 2 Questions
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Attitude is everything – smile for success!

Do you have the right attitude? Are you perceived as open, approachable and communicative?

I want you to think of one leader that you admire. Ready? This individual has the uncanny ability to be comfortable in any situation and always comes across as having a positive attitude. They have an aura of confidence that enables those around them to feel that all is in their control. They are authentic, honest, competent, kind and know how to put others at ease in their presence. Now, isn’t that how you want others to perceive you in your leadership role?

The leader that I admire professionally is a CEO that has an exceptional attitude and possesses the characteristics outlined above. He always greets with a smile, is a great role model and mentor to his employees, and is known for his positive, engaging attitude. He has a wonderful persona and, in all honesty, is an all-round nice guy. He is in a cut-throat, highly demanding business; however, I have never seen him be anything but composed and genuinely interested and passionate about what he is doing. He makes eye contact, ensures when he is speaking to someone that they have his undivided attention, asks questions and seems genuinely interested in others responses. He is humble and not frightened to make fun of himself to make others feel more relaxed, and always so very, very calm with an inspiring demeanor. Now, that being said, he does make the hard calls and decisions; however, it is all in how he delivers his message that emphasizes his business acumen and competence.Attitude counts! Having the right attitude means coming across positively, holding your head high, engaging in conversation and smiling. Being upbeat and thinking about what you say before you say it – words have implications, so use them wisely. Attitude, skill, competence, emotional intelligence, resilience and reliability are all key areas of success in a leadership position. You need to follow through, do what you say you will do and when you will do it. Effective leaders give 100% effort on a task at hand, and don’t procrastinate or shy away from a difficult or confrontational situation.

You need to practice these traits day in and day out for consistency and continual improvement – they just don’t happen miraculously. And remember, what you exhibit is what your team will reflect – so team performance and morale will improve with your good example.

How can you remain ‘on’ in your professional and personal life from morning till night while retaining a positive attitude? How can you ensure that you will be engaged at every event and show up professionally, with competence and a stellar attitude? What standards do you have around attitude?

It is time to do a ‘temperature check’ on your attitude today? How would you rate yourself?

Attitude can be negatively impacted by stress. Stay tuned for an upcoming post on STRESS MANAGEMENT. It could be the game changer for your attitude!

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Over Deliver = Exceed Client Expectations

Are you planning effectively to exceed your clients’ expectations? Are you maximizing your project management software and internal processes to ensure that you have sufficient time to deliver every stage of your project on time? It is important to be prudent when scheduling, so build in a contingency percentage into every task to ensure you have a runway for the unexpected. Good planning can help you raise the bar on customer satisfaction. At the same time, if you are exceeding client expectations, this trickles down as feedback to the team and in turn increases morale, as staff are proud to be associated with excellence.

You will find with good planning that, more often than not, the contingency you have created may not need to be utilized and you will be able to deliver early. Only make promises that are attainable. When you exceed expectations, you deliver with the ‘wow’ factor. Clients value great service, so exceeding their expectations in turn yields repeat business and increased ROI.

Competence is determined by your ability to perform successfully and efficiently. The objective is that you never deliver short nor late – a high-performance tactic that you want to instill in your daily practice. Always aim to deliver early, better than promised, on (or better still) under budget. In this competitive market economy, bringing in new clients is an obvious objective, but ‘wowing’ and retaining them cannot be underestimated.

Easy ways to exceed customer expectations – yes, all common sense:

  • Be prompt, engaged and present in meetings
  • Put in the time to develop your client relationships
  • Ask questions, and then, more questions, so you fully understand what is expected
  • Deliver exceptional service and quality
  • Clearly communicate what you can and cannot provide to avoid misunderstandings  around expectations
  • Put yourself in your clients’ shoes – what would you need to be ‘wowed’?
  • Acknowledge and thank your clients for the opportunity to have their business

To help you maximize client satisfaction and your personal and professional success in the year ahead, I’m offering a one-day workshop on Tuesday, December 11, 2018 in Vancouver – Organize and Kickstart Your Planning for 2019 – limited space is available.

At the workshop you will:

  1. Design a personal plan for the upcoming year to increase your focus, productivity and results.
  2. Learn high-performance tactics and hacks to enable you to work smarter, not harder or more hours.
  3. Design your year ahead to be the best year ever!
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Catch yourself the next time you say “I am so busy…” think about it, are you really?

Busyness is not good business

I went through a period in my career, where I was ‘SOOO busy’! I was SO busy attending meeting after meeting, my days were scheduled from the time I walked in the office to the end of the day. My real ‘work’ time and I mean by that productive time where I would actually get things done, started after 5:30 pm daily. I was SO busy, juggling work projects, priorities and staffing issues, days moved quickly into years on the job.

Don’t get me wrong,  I was very productive and overall attained exceptional results. But oh how much time was wasted during business hours on non-productive meetings, and so much work time overlapped into my personal time in order to retain my level of results. I felt like I moved through life putting out one fire and then going to the next, putting that out and then going to the next. Sound familiar?

I would wake at 5 am and get some emails done before waking my children to get them ready for the day. Rush to work, for many years being the first in the office so I could get some quiet time before my day was taken hostage by others agendas. My breakless days rarely included time to eat lunch. I ran on adrenaline and a lot, yes a lot, of coffee.

I would get in an hour at the end of the day after staff had left the office and then rush home to cook and have dinner with my children. I would spend time with them doing homework or activities and when I had them tucked in bed, my nightly work routine would start. This is when I worked on projects and finally got around to doing some email, which I often did until one o’clock in the morning. Not exactly a healthy existence; and oh how much time I wasted over those years, surviving this way year after year. My message for you: simply don’t do it!

On reflection, did I really have to be that busy? No. The norm of the environment that I was working in was not based on your effectiveness nor results, but the number of meetings and projects you juggled—how ridiculous! I remember trying to implement a ‘no meeting Wednesday’ or a day to work remotely to actually get some work done, and I was laughed at for such a ridiculous idea. Now how many progressive organizations function around these two options, and retain engaged employees with higher levels of productivity, increased results, and sustained longevity?

Looking back on this time of craziness, which many leaders recall similar times of “busy-ness,”I laugh at myself at the time I wasted, the time I will never regain. With maturity and increased job responsibilities comes a bird’s eye view of how you could have done things differently.

I spend time daily reminding leaders of these very facts: life is short; be a good leader; take time with your family and friends as it is precious; and treat your health, well-being and exercise time like gold. Just like when you are on a plane and you are told if you are traveling with a child to put on your air mask first, it is the same in life – the more time you actually spend looking after yourself, the better person you will be and in short, the better leader.

I challenge you to take five minutes and evaluate what is on your calendar for the next week. Then ask yourself the following:

  1. Are there any meetings that are not essential in my calendar this week?  Cancel them, or reschedule them when they will be most productive.
  1. Do you have time blocked off daily to work on your top 20% of tasks that will bring you the greatest impact?  If not, move things on your calendar to enable you to do to so. Daily, I concentrate time on my top 1-3 tasks that are essential to move important projects forward. I do not allow this time to be interrupted or bumped for another type of meeting.
  1. Do you have a process at the beginning of your day that you follow to ensure you stay on track?  If not, I encourage you to simply spend the first ten minutes of every day thinking and strategizing about what you expect to get out of your scheduled interactions so you   have a plan which will provide you greater focus. Do the same at the end of the day, evaluate what you accomplished, if there are any carryover tasks or follow up that you need to do and schedule the time to do so.
  1. Is there a day, or half a day a week that you can allocate as a ‘meeting free’ zone so you can get some concentrated time on a special project?  If you do not do this already, make it happen it will change your work week for the positive considerably.

If you would like to connect with me on this blog post to continue the conversation, please join my Facebook group at  https://www.facebook.com/JennyReillyConsulting/

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Leadership under fire…

A story of true grit in a crisis moment

“Fire, Fire, Fiiiiire”, rang through my house last Tuesday evening as I hosted 80+ guests at a welcome reception for new parents to my daughter’s high school. I was at the front door welcoming a teacher when I heard one of the parents screaming “fire, Jenny we need your help”.

I left the teacher mid-sentence running into the kitchen and stopped in my tracks as I saw rising flames from my gas stove top and billowing black smoke. (As the teacher referenced later, it was like being in a Monty Python movie.)

Keep your composure in a time of stress

I quickly ran to grab the fire extinguisher and thankfully, a parent assisted me in extinguishing the fire.  The smoke and soot in the kitchen was overpowering. I was advising people to go outside when the fire alarms in the house started wailing (better late than never).

So much for a relaxing networking opportunity for guests. Parents immediately jumped into action, cleaning off the foam on the stove top, removing charred container remains, wiping and scrubbing off soot from appliances, walls, and the ceiling.

Demonstrate Grit In a Time of Challenge

I was personally mortified that the social event I had envisaged, moved from being a reception to a full-on cleaning party by amazing parents. These individuals demonstrated team-work, showed real grit (while getting very gritty), and best of all, a sense of composure and humor. I am so grateful to the team of women and men, some I had known for less than a year and others less than an hour. I was ushered out of the kitchen and encouraged to keep socializing with new parents and assure them all was okay.

So you may be thinking… how did this kitchen fire actually happen?

With so many people attending the potluck and bringing food, the overflow of food was stacked on the range. People continually circulated in and out of the kitchen to the dining room to replenish the table. At the time of the fire, there must have been 20+ people chatting in the kitchen. Although not entirely certain how the fire started, perhaps it was as simple as someone leaning against one of the stove knobs and unknowingly igniting it. Some of the plastic based containers immediately caught on fire. Luckily all was contained before there was any significant damage.

Most importantly no one was injured. My gratitude goes out to everyone that acted fast in putting out the fire.

Collaboration and seamless teamwork

Parents stepped up in the kitchen, becoming the best-dressed cleaning crew you have ever seen. My recall of the kitchen was not of the blackened ceiling, sooty walls or appliances but of the parents working seamlessly together in a true picture of coordinated teamwork.

Networking 101

I do not think that anyone that attended the reception expected this kind of excitement to occur. It was like putting on a planned energizer and team activity all rolled into one. It definitely changed the feel and course of the conversations, they became more fluid, relaxed and there was definitely more and louder laughter after everything settled down.

I have attended and hosted many professional events and receptions in the past. Networking is something that is not enjoyed by the majority, however once the ice is broken the conversations and relationships that can be formed can be quite amazing.

Nothing is as healthy as a good belly-laugh after a time of stress

I laughed so hard with so many of the parents afterward. The potluck will go down in the history of the school as being one of the most entertaining. It won’t be forgotten by anyone that attended for many years to come.

You may wonder why I am writing about this event, and how exactly it relates to my area of expertise in leadership and performance? This event clearly demonstrated effective leadership and teamwork practices including:

  • Calm leadership in a time of crisis
  • Clear and articulate communication
  • Exceptional, collaborative teamwork
  • Ease of delegation
  • Engagement and commitment
  • Bonding during, and after a time of crisis, and
  • True grit (yes, you can only imagine how much elbow grease was needed to get the majority of soot off the ceiling and appliances).

I spoke to every single person in attendance and we shared somewhat nervous laughter around how something that could have ended quite terribly worked out so well.  The comments the parents shared and thanks I received as they left at the end of the event were priceless.

You have to envisage the individuals as they were leaving in their lovely clothes and shoes sprinkled with soot on their outfits or hair and laughing with me as we were so relieved that all turned out well. I sure do know how to host a shindig!

As an experienced leader, in a time of challenge, I do automatically go emergency mode to turn events around. When you have your next work fire to put out, do the same  – embrace it and treat it as an opportunity to practice your leadership skills and shine. Or, when you go to your next networking event, jump in, don’t be a passive bystander. You never know who you will meet or how you may work together in the future.

If you have a story to share on leadership, performance or teamwork I encourage you to connect with me on my Facebook page www.facebook.com/JennyReillyConsulting/.

If you are interested in developing your leadership skills, presence and improve your productivity, please let me know and I will keep you informed of The Leaders’ Inner Circle membership that I am launching in July.

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