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Leadership Development, personal development, Self-Awareness, Soft Skills

The Power of Flow: A Personal Management Soft Skill

February 6, 2019

Have you ever had those moments when you are involved in an activity and time just seems to have flown by? Maybe it was sitting at the piano, painting, a challenging chess match, or reading a really good book. Maybe you were playing a sport and everything was working—every pass you made, every shot you took, or every stroke of the golf club—you just couldn’t miss. Athletes call this being in the zone. It is also called “flow”.

Psychologists, and specifically those in the Positive Psychology movement, define “flow” as “the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity” (Wikipedia). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who spent two decades studying it and who is recognized for discovering this, described it as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz” (I love the jazz metaphor). When we are a flow state, we are completely absorbed in what we are doing, and this produces a feeling of energized focus and enjoyment. Tapping into flow is a powerful way to increase our own productivity, and the productivity of our teams. We are most likely to achieve flow when we are engaged in a task to which our skills are well matched – another reason to identify the capabilities of each person on a team (see my posts on teambuilding). Flow is also achieved more easily when we have clear goals and can focus on the process rather than the end product. And as I alluded to in my post last week, one of the most important keys to achieving flow is to minimize interruptions when you are working.

In Search Inside Yourself (Harper One), Chade-MengTan stated that “Flow” is another way of looking at passion. He uses the example of Tony Hsieh of Zappos who saw passion as one of the three types of happiness. That passion (flow) is “where peak performance meets peak engagement, and time flies by”.

In the work world, when we find the flow state, time seems to pass quickly without our noticing. We are also more likely to create high quality work with fewer errors. Because we are totally focused on what we are doing, a flow state may be a key aspect of mastering a new set of skills – stretching your skill set and cultivating flow can be a great tool for professional development and that’s why it is an important part of the personal management soft skill set.

John Whitehead, MA, CEC, coaches individuals and organizations in becoming more effective by helping them improve their interpersonal communications, emotional intelligence and resiliency.

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*******Are you wondering if having a Leadership/Personal Development Coach is right for you? Contact John for a complimentary, exploratory coaching session********

Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, personal development, Soft Skills, Time Management

Soft Skill Management of Time (Dr Who take note)

John Whitehead

January 30, 2019

I concluded my last post with a promise of some practical applications for use in Time and Personal Management. I also discussed Steven Covey’s concept that personal management is actually the fourth generation of time management. Covey, in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Simon and Shuster, 1989), describes the first generation as one of notes and checklists. The second generation is characterized by calendars and appointment books; the third generation adds to the preceding two with the ideas of prioritizing, clarifying values and “comparing the relative worth of activities based on their relationship to those values” (Covey). The third generation introduced the setting of both long- and short-term goals, and daily planning to accomplish them. In Covey’s mind this made everything very clinical and distant and often didn’t allow for creativity, spontaneity or relationship building. This led to his fourth generation, which he diagrammed in the following:

Covey’s view is that quadrant two is the optimum place to “be”. I will let you spend time researching this yourselves as I’m sure most of you have a copy of this book in your libraries or if not, know someone who does. It is definitely worth rereading if it’s been some time since you read it.

Some Practical Tips:

As promised, here some practical time management tips that work for me. Only you can determine whether they will work for you, so try them out! If you have your own solutions, tips or tricks, please add them to this discussion.

The Art of Scheduling

Figure out your goals for the year, month and week.
- Prioritize them.
- Set milestones for each item (what needs to be done, and by when).
- Build in celebrations (treats for hitting targets).
- Put these events into your calendar.
Block into your calendar events that occur regularly or frequently, both professional and personal. For example:
- I have specific things I want to accomplish each week. One is writing this weekly post, so I block “creative time” into my calendar so that I have dedicated time for writing or producing other material.
- Don’t forget personal time – block in time for the gym, vacations, family time, etc. (In fact why not put these in first and then build everything else around them?)
At the beginning of each day make a list of items you want/need to accomplish.
- Just write them down as you think of them
- Prioritize them, write 1, 2, 3…. beside each.
- Cross them off the list as you complete them
  - If you don’t get to these items just move them to your next day’s list.
- Here is an idea I came across many years ago: If you complete a task that was not on your list, add it anyway and then cross it off. I’ll explain why below.

Managing Distractions

A major key to getting things done, is to manage distractions. Distractions happen—we can minimize them and manage them, but never eliminate them altogether. Creating a plan for managing distractions is an important time management skill. The first step is to determine what your major distractions are. Doing so can help you find solutions and manage them.

Some common distractions are:

Colleagues stopping by to chat
Checking email or voicemail
Noise in the environment
Clutter in your workspace
Boredom after spending too long on one task
New ideas popping into your head that just “need” to be dealt with now

You can solve these by:

Establishing “open door” hours
Closing your door or otherwise indicating “Please Do Not Disturb”
Using noise canceling headphones
Setting a regular time to check voicemail and email
Letting calls go to voicemail
De-cluttering your workspace
Building in breaks

Finally, have you ever had one of those days when you feel like you accomplished nothing at all? Let’s go back to my list-making suggestions above. If you cross off the actions you completed plus add to the list other activities you completed that weren’t on the original list, then at the end of the day you can look back at it and, sure enough you will have a documented record of your accomplishments for the day. I guess I can check off “write my next blog post” now.

John Whitehead, MA, CEC, coaches individuals and organizations in becoming more effective by helping them improve their interpersonal communications, emotional intelligence and resiliency.

*******Are you wondering if having a Leadership/Personal Development Coach is right for you? Contact John for a complimentary, exploratory coaching session********

Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, personal development, Soft Skills, team building

Time (Personal) Management as a Soft Skill

John Whitehead

January 23, 2019

“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.” ~ Winston Churchill

I believe the very first workshop I attended in my working life was one on time management. That workshop — in the late 70s in Winnipeg — was the start of a lifelong journey of learning. I attended that workshop because of my then-boss’s strong suggestion that I might want to improve my time management skills. From his point of view (and in hindsight, I can agree with him), my time management was basically non-existent. I learned much from that first workshop over 35 years ago, but I admit that it’s an on-going process and that time management can still be a struggle.

The simple fact is that there are a finite number of hours in a day, days in a week and weeks in a year. Why is it that some people seem to accomplish so much, while others just seem to spin their wheels? It’s not solely about productivity; it is also about quality of life. Spending too much time on “work” tasks throws your work/life balance out of whack. We can’t create more hours in a day, but we can use those we have in a way that creates success not only our careers, but in life in general.

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” – Zig Ziglar

Further to that, it’s more than “time management”; it’s really more like “personal management”. Steven Covey spoke to this in his ground breaking book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Simon and Shuster), when he talked about personal management being the fourth generation of time management and “that ‘time management’ is really a misnomer – the challenge is not how to manage time, but to manage ourselves.” Covey goes on to state that “Rather than focusing on things and time, fourth generation expectations focus on preserving and enhancing relationships and on accomplishing results…” In other words, Covey’s model is to focus on what is important, not what is urgent.

Covey also outlines a number of activities for personal management:

Write a personal mission statement based on personal, family and professional values.
Define all your roles, both professional and personal.
Select the two or three most important goals every week. Tie short-term goals to longer-term goals.
Focus on activities that will achieve the greatest results.
Portability – you should be able to carry and access your priority list or calendar wherever you are.

For many of us, managing our time has become second nature; for others it is a continuous struggle. As a soft skill, personal management is crucial as it can have a significant impact on team dynamics (see previous post on teambuilding) and communications. It is tied to our level of self-awareness and our personal growth in emotional intelligence.

“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” ~ Yogi Berra

Next week, some practical applications for use in Time and Personal Management

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John Whitehead, MA, CEC, coaches individuals and organizations in becoming more effective by helping them improve their interpersonal communications, emotional intelligence and resiliency.

*******Are you wondering if having a Leadership/Personal Development Coach is right for you? Contact John for a complimentary, exploratory coaching session********

Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, personal development, Problem-Solving, Self-Awareness, Soft Skills

The Soft Skill of Problem-Solving

John Whitehead

January 16, 2019

Was Problem-Solving on your list of soft skills? I can’t say that it was originally on mine. Why is that? I think that we tend to think of soft skills as “positive”. Soft skills are there to present an upbeat environment that everything is okay. It is an improvement mechanism. A reference to problem-solving suggests that there are indeed problems— and that’s a downer. No one wants to go there! That’s just my thought, what is yours?

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” ~Albert Einstein

The reality is that no matter your role or the industry you work in, you will encounter problems. How you handle them will go a long way in determining your level of success. It will also determine how you manage the relationships and shared goals you have with your team and/or organization.

In researching this topic I turned to my fairly substantive bookshelf of management and leadership books, looking for words of wisdom. I was actually quite surprised to find that there was not all that much, and what was there was not much help. I then turned to one of my favorite sources of leadership inspiration, Canadian astronaut and author Chris Hadfield. His book, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth (Random House Canada, 2013), is full of leadership gems and sure enough, lots of problem solving object lessons. For Hadfield, one of his learnings was to “anticipate problems in order to prevent them… how to neutralize fear, how to stay focused and how to succeed”. My favourite quote though is this: “…we learn[ed] to ask ourselves. ‘Okay, what’s the next thing that will kill me?’”. Most of will not have to ask this a question as radical as this, but it illustrates that problem solving is as much proactive as it is reactive.

In Productive Workplaces Revisited by Marvin R. Weisbord (Jossey Bass, 2004), there is a neat illustration that provides a simple model for problem solving:

First you need to define the problem: Take a holistic view, look at the big picture, and take time to examine it from as many perspectives as possible.

Collect as much data about the problem as you can. This will slow down the process, which among other things, can help prevent volatile emotions from taking over and potential conflicts from happening. Another consequence of slowing down the process is to make sure that the problem is clearly defined so that you end up actually solving the problem and not just creating a temporary stopgap measure.

Once you’ve defined a problem, you can start to generate solutions. Don’t stop at one — look for a second solution, a third, maybe even a forth. Each time you search for an additional solution you delve deeper into the problem, which can create opportunities to uncover additional issues and/or highlight unintended consequences. You may come to the conclusion that the first solution was the correct one, but having examined additional ones gives you an added level of surety.

As you select the best option, check your own emotional stance to make sure you are not favouring one solution over another simply because it is yours. Here is where the soft skill of communications and teamwork come into play.

Finally, be certain, once you have implemented the solution, to evaluate the results. Did the solution generate the desired outcome? Did it cause any unintended consequences? The answers to these questions will help determine your course of action in any future similar circumstance.

John Whitehead, MA, CEC, coaches individuals and organizations in becoming more effective by helping them improve their interpersonal communications, emotional intelligence and resiliency.

*******Are you wondering if having a Leadership/Personal Development Coach is right for you? Contact John for a complimentary, exploratory coaching session********

Executive Coaching, Leadership, Leadership Development, personal development, SOCIAL STYLE, Soft Skills

Using Soft Skills as a Member of a Team

John Whitehead

January 9, 2019

My last post on Team building was from the perspective of the builder, or leader of a team. However, you don’t have to be the leader to be an integral part of the team-building process. Being a member of a team provides its own opportunities for building and sustaining a team culture. Whether you are a new team member or veteran, the opportunities are there for you to learn, grow and actively participate in team growth. The basics for any team member are to know your role, understand what is expected of you, and what the limits of your role are. If you feel unclear about your role ask the team’s leader for clarification.

Critical to your understanding is to recognize the kind of team you are in. Is it a classic “command and control” organization that is highly hierarchical — strong, top-down leadership with clear, subordinate roles (think military), or does the organization take a more collaborative approach, in which discussion and free expression is allowed and even encouraged? This discernment will guide you in understanding your place on the team; how you should act and perform within it.

As a member of a team it is also important to get a sense of the other roles on the team. In some more progressive organizations, team members are given the opportunity to experience other roles through job sharing and time spent with other team members. This is a great way to expand the knowledge and effectiveness of all team members. Recognizing and understanding each other’s’ roles and responsibilities helps the cohesiveness and effectiveness of the team as a whole. It also provides valuable back up should someone be away for an extended period of time. If your team environment does not actively allow for role sharing, then take the initiative and talk to other team members. Find out what they do and how they do it, and what they expect of you in your role.

Whether you are a member of a team or its leader,, the topics covered in these blogs over the past eight weeks are very relevant, and as I alluded to in my last blog, really boils down to the importance of Social Intelligence (also known as Emotional Intelligence). TRACOM defines Social Intelligence as: “the ability to understand and manage our Behavioral Style, Mindset and Emotional Intelligence to optimize interpersonal relationships. It deals with unconscious biases that we may not yet understand, but that can be learned and controlled. At its heart, Social Intelligence is the science of productive relationships. And modern neuroscience shows that it can be harnessed and improved. Organizations that foster Social Intelligence experience higher performance because their teams become more productive, collaborative and resilient.”

A shameless plug here. If you want to know more about Tracom’s programs, I am certified in SOCIAL STYLEs – connect with me.

This is the eighth in a series of posts exploring Soft Skills and why they are so important to your success in any endeavour.

John Whitehead, MA, CEC, coaches individuals and organizations in becoming more effective by helping them improve their interpersonal communications, emotional intelligence and resiliency.

*******Are you wondering if having a Leadership/Personal Development Coach is right for you? Contact John for a complimentary, exploratory coaching session********