Mar
30
Corporate Kindness
Filed Under Workplace | Leave a Comment
There are a couple books out on the topic of corporate kindness and how being nice can actually be a competitive advantage. In The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, they explain how friendliness and common courtesy along with how you look affects people’s moods and attitudes towards you. Cheerfulness and being polite and respectful spreads more easily than irritability and facial expressions and body language convey more relevant information than a sales pitch.
It’s all about the notion of consequences and karma – people may forget what you say, but they never forget how you made them feel. They remember acts of kindness as well as rudeness. After all, isn’t business and all of the world about relationships and how we connect with others be it inside or outside our organization?
Another book, The Kindness Revolution: The Company-Wide Culture Shift That Inspires Phenomenal Customer Service by Ed Horrell identifies how companies with stellar street reps for service excellence practice extreme kindness, respect, fairness and genuine niceties. He notes that the opposite of kindness isn’t being mean, it’s indifference. When indifference sets in, then it gives people a bad experience and in a world of choices, the customer (internal or external) chooses to walk. In fact, you can say that about any relationship – when indifference and disrespect and unkindness sets in, most people walk.
With a little more corporate kindness and consideration, I would argue that we would have many more gruntled workers than disgruntled workers. And we could actually save lives…one statistic form the Department of Labor cites that the #2 killer of workers on the job is homicide by a disgruntled colleague or customer. What are you doing to impart kindness in your daily activities? What are you doing to add light to the world? What are you doing to save a life today?
Mar
23
There are some really amazing free virtual office tools available to us! It’s worth checking out. When you sign up for a free user account with Google you get the following: Gmail: Users agree the unique way message threads are displayed, the thorough email search function, and the option to archive rather than delete messages have them hooked. The gigantic storage space is a bonus, and any email address to which you send is automatically entered into your address book for easy retrieval. Gmail is also easy to use from mobile devises.
Calendar: It’s simple to create entries, allow an assistant to add appointments for you, view multiple calendars as one (work/personal/spouse), and set alerts. You also have one-click options to add an event to your calendar if it’s mentioned in an email message, and to create a map to the location.
Google Docs: Save, edit, and share documents and spreadsheets in this portion of your account. They have great collaboration tools, and you can access the documents from anywhere. Bloggers can publish directly from Google Docs to their blogs.
Google Talk: Allows for instant messaging and voice calls between users.
Picasa: Another way to store, edit and share photos online.
Adwords: drive traffic to your site and gain more exposure with this service where you can purchase words that show up in Google searches. Click on the button to the right under Energizing Links to sign up for your Adwords.
Groups: Join or create your own online interest group.
Adsense - monetize your marketing and earn money from your website while you sleep with Asense - click on the button to the right under Energizing Links to sign up for Adsense and start earning income every time somebody reads an ad from your site.
YouTube - Of course when you just can’t handle one more minute of adminstrivia - check out their entertaining videos for a few minutes until you need to check back in again and get back to work.
Have a great weekend and take a look at systematizing your administrivia to make your life easier!
Mar
21
Embrace Imbalance
Filed Under Well-Being | Leave a Comment
I know I’m supposed to be living a balanced life, as I walk my talk showing others how to lead more simplified, balanced lives and prioritize the things that matter. I find myself inundated lately with a symphony of things that seem to command my attention all at once. It’s at this time that I believe we need to embrace imbalance and go with the flow while letting go of some things for the time being.
Perhaps we can’t balance on a daily schedule, maybe it needs to happen over a span of a week or a month. When you know you need to gut through things or a plethora of projects for a month or two, then you brace yourself for a little imbalance during that time, as long as you can reward yourself with new balance at the end of the sprint. Having balance is all good and well, but sometimes it just isn’t possible and we need to get clear and what to do and what to drop.
What do you need to do and what do you need to drop today or this week in order to come back to center, regroup, re-charge and re-energize yourself. Get fiercely focused, get ready for a sprint and then find some fierce fun at the end of it all and reward yourself for your accomplishments. My reward for these past 2 months is a cruise and a trip to Cabo to mix some fun and effectiveness. What’s your reward?
Mar
20
When you’re in the midst of making career choices or other decisions about your job, your lifestyle, your surroundings or other business decision; of course you can write out the pros and cons and do a comparative analysis. I’m all for the using a visual to help sort out thoughts and see them in writing. It may make your clear choice jump out at you.
Trying what I like to call The Tingle Test is what really cuts to the chase and gets down to how you feel about a decision. Saying your decision out loud or just holding that vision clearly in your mind should give you a gut check and either make you tingle with excitement or leave you lack-luster. It’s truly getting quiet and listening to your body and how it reacts to a decision as if you already made that decision. After you visualize your decision or say it, how do you feel? Does your hair stand up, do you get tingles down your spine, does a smile appear on your face, do your eyes light up, do you stand taller? All these are signs that your gut says yes to that decision.
If your body doesn’t react positively, then maybe you need to tweak your decision - figure out what isn’t exactly feeling right about it an make some adjustments in order to pass The Tingle Test with flying colors. Stress is what happens when your mouth says ‘OK’ and your gut says ‘No Way’ - that’s when you know you need to regroup and feel energized with a better decision.
Make your decisions dynamic and involve all aspects of yourself to know if you’re OK with that decision. Take The Tingle Test on your next decision and see what happens.
Now I’ve got goose bumps just thinking about my future and opportunities coming into my world…..how about you?
Mar
19
Corporate Kindness: A Competitive Edge
Filed Under Workplace | Leave a Comment
There are a couple books out on the topic of corporate kindness and how being nice can actually be a competitive advantage. In The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World with Kindness by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, they explain how friendliness and common courtesy along with how you look affects people’s moods and attitudes towards you. Cheerfulness and being polite and respectful spreads more easily than irritability and facial expressions and body language convey more relevant information than a sales pitch.
It’s all about the notion of consequences and karma – people may forget what you say, but they never forget how you made them feel. They remember acts of kindness as well as rudeness. After all, isn’t business and all of the world about relationships and how we connect with others be it inside or outside our organization?
Another book, The Kindness Revolution: The Company-Wide Culture Shift That Inspires Phenomenal Customer Service by Ed Horrell identifies how companies with stellar street reps for service excellence practice extreme kindness, respect, fairness and genuine niceties. He notes that the opposite of kindness isn’t being mean, it’s indifference. When indifference sets in, then it gives people a bad experience and in a world of choices, the customer (internal or external) chooses to walk. In fact, you can say that about any relationship – when indifference and disrespect and unkindness sets in, most people walk.
With a little more corporate kindness and consideration, I would argue that we would have many more gruntled workers than disgruntled workers. And we could actually save lives…one statistic form the Department of Labor cites that the #2 killer of workers on the job is homicide by a disgruntled colleague or customer. What are you doing to impart kindness in your daily activities? What are you doing to add light to the world? What are you doing to save a life today?
You can find these books at the link to Amazon in this publication.
Mar
16
The Energized Executive
Filed Under Workplace | Leave a Comment
For several years now I’ve been hearing similar feedback from my audiences: how can they energize their health, wealth, well-being and their workplace. For many they have been in the same field for most of their career and are seeking something extra…something I like to call heart work. Sure, they are competent and maybe recognized in their field and many are fairly compensated, although everyone seems to feel they are overworked and underpaid. I like to think if it as under-played when they are burned out, rusted out and worn out from their dull routine of the commute and the same old, same old at work. I have found that many people have retired several years ago, yet they keep clocking in and coming to work - retired in place.
Enter the Energized Executive Retreat, the Energize Your Life Retreat or the FUNomenal Life Retreat. These programs are in the design works right now to answer the cry for help from my audiences. I’m seeking more input from readers to help crystalize the vision and the content for these retreats. We will be looking into ways to create your ideal life, how to envision your lifestyle and build systems to support your dream life. We will have personal assessments for discovering the motivations behind your behavior and how and why you do the things you do and how that attracts the things you have in your life. We will take a look at your current and future ways of having, doing and being and we will have some fun. After all, I was an Outdoor Recreation Director for a decade. We will most certainly be treated to outdoor frolic as well as treated to professional spa treatments and luscious, healthy meals. These will be holistic retreats to address your personal energy at every level.
Drop me a line with your suggestions, ideas, insights and vision of what your ideal retreat to refresh, renew and relax. What would you need to be a more Energized Executive - to come back to your position revitalized and ready to go? I’m also working on home study courses for those of you who can’t make it to the retreat center. What kinds of things would you like to see in your home study course and how would you like it delivered? Totally digital, MP3, audio CD with workbook - you tell me and I will surely consider it.
Until I see you at a retreat - make a list of all the things you like to do to have fun or that makes you smile. Then make a date with yourself to do at least 1 thing per week on your list and work up to more things - make time for fun and you will make your life more energized.
Cheers!
Gail
Mar
16
Geeze, where has the time gone? I didn’t abandon you - just been up to my eyeballs in deadlines, projects and building a new house. In the midst of it all, I guess there was a slow news day or something, but Stephen Covey’s people notified me that I would be the cover girl for one of their other magazines in the Executive Excellence Publishing family of publications: Health & Fitness Excellence. Visit http://www.EEP.com. For a copy of the article on Planning Playtime to Organize and Energize Your Life, send me an email to Gail@Funcilitators.com.
Other news is that this blog will be moving in the near future to another site. I plan on revamping my current website and making the front page a blog so you only need to visit one place. Stay tuned for more changes to the new and improved Energize Enterprises, LLC.
Here’s a question for you: if you could plan a girlfriend getaway as part of your playtime planning, or just a personal escape to refresh, renew and recharge your batteries; what would be some of the things you would like in your escape haven? What types of activities would you like to do? What types of food? What types of environments? Would you want any guided facilitation or just to “be” in an inspirational place? Let me know your thoughts of what you would like for a FUNomenal Woman Weekend or an Energize Your Life Retreat and I will send you a free report on energy gains and drains.
Thanks for your insight!