Good professional football coaches know when it is time to change the game plan and great coaches make the right changes. How do they know which changes are the right changes? This writer thinks it is because they are very good listeners. They hear their players and their assistant coaches.

How can they hear anything in the midst of all the noise and commotion going on at a professional football game?  Listening is more than hearing words. It has to do with "hearing the whole picture". 

How do leaders hear pictures?  They simply allow the views of everyone involved to "sink in" while trusting their own internal computer to put all the pieces together. That is exactly what today's business leader must do to make the right changes in the game plan: allow the views of everyone involved to sink in. Trust your own internal computer to make sense of it all. Trust that changes in the business plan will come clear. 

Right now there is

[Read More]

 "Don't worry" is one of our most frequently spoken phrases. Not that it does any good, of course! Western culture is strongly committed to the notion that worry is a bad thing and, therefore, should be avoided. But since it is impossible to be alive and not worry, the prevailing culture simply encourages us to act and speak as though we have no worries. We put a very high premium on those who can make us laugh and on those who can remain calm and act cool in any situation. The truth is that only fools and dead people do not worry.

This author and trainer has long contended that there is such a thing as "good worry", and that learning to worry well is a far more productive and useful approach than learning to suppress , deny or ignore matters that we ought to worry about.

Executive business leaders are, in fact, paid good money to worry. We are told that two thirds of our worries are wasted because they are about the past or the future. There

[Read More]

 

News came on July 16 that inflation has jumped more than one percent in a month, the fastest single month increase in decades. Gasoline is selling at four dollars per gallon. The home mortgage market crisis continues to play out. Airlines and automakers are reporting steep losses. 400,000 jobs have been lost so far this year. Credit is tightening.

None of these developments are going to destroy the United States or its economy. As a matter of fact, there is plenty more bad news to worry about: massive floods this spring, the state of California is on fire, the corn crop will be late and less than anticipated. Also, as Mark Twain might say, a president will get elected and so will Congress come November.

Stress management assumes that there will be events and situations to which people react with anxiety. Anxiety is made up of both a cognitive component (worry) and a visceral component (blood pressure goes up, adrenalin flows, emotions run strong). The manager and

[Read More]

Across the nation any number of employers are converting to 10 hour four day work weeks as a way to cut gasoline costs for the work force. This would save 20 percent of the fuel required for travel to and from work, an imaginative and welcome idea! For the most part the work schedule will become Monday through Thursday, with Friday off.

Not everyone will go to four day work weeks in the companies that make this change because some jobs and some responsibilities simply dictate at least five days of service and availability. And, of course, not all employers will make the change. But the big news is that some employers are making the change. This writer can think of no better way to reduce workplace stress. I hope that a trend develops until it becomes the national norm to have every weekend a three day weekend!

The shorter work week with longer working hours on the workdays is not new. This approach, along with flex hours and shared shifts (two people sharing one job) are prac

[Read More]

 

American workers are working longer hours (about nine hours to nine and one half hours per day). They are taking less and less of the vacation time to which they are entitled. This trend has been increasing in recent years for any number of reasons. In some cases employees believe that by not using vacation days they are demonstrating commitment and loyalty to their company. Others are creating an emergency cushion of paid leave "in the bank" should they ever need paid leave.

Other employees do not take vacation because they are unwilling to risk having a large workload pile up while they are gone and be waiting for them when they return. Still others cannot afford to go anywhere on vacation and find it boring to stay at home and not go to work.

There are what could be described as "sub trends" that go hand in hand with not using or only partially using vacation days. One such sub trend is that of taking on the vacation a cell phone and  l

[Read More]

 

Managers will find it easier to understand employee stress by thinking about food. The cost of energy is linked to the cost of food in several ways. It requires energy to raise food: fuel for tractors, fuel for making fertilizer and fuel for transporting food. When energy costs go up food costs go up. The price of foods made with corn is rising because the market for corn in ethanol gasoline is creating increased demand. Bad weather in the United States and increased need for grain in China is also driving market prices higher for food and grains.

The people who work for you might not be overly interested to know all the reasons why their gasoline, electricity, heating oil, natural gas and food cost more with each passing day. Along with healthcare costs, mortgage rates and college tuition what they really want to know about is how to pay for what they need. They need food every day. When prices rise stress also rises, rapidly.

Gardens can be part of the answer.

[Read More]

 

A rule of thumb in stress management is to start with the most immediate stress. Relief needs to be immediate if people are to believe that their efforts are worthwhile. Remember, being under stress can do strange things to anyone's thought process. This is because the rational side of us humans is being pressured by the non rational side that screams, "Make this stop right now".

The temptation is to try the quick fix but when that fails the next temptation is to give up, run away, hide, deny or decide that somebody else needs to perform a rescue. So the quicker an immediate stress gets addressed the easier it becomes for the leader to persuade people that teamwork and planning is worthwhile.

The business manager who leads employees to cope with the high price of gasoline right now has a "natural". The financial stress of higher gasoline is widespread, highly publicized and a big stress producer, even for people who do not drive to work. H

[Read More]

Leadership in business management is not of epic proportions most of the time. Movies would have us think of business leaders doing heroic and super-human feats of courage. In fact, the very best of business leaders grow right out of the ranks of management, tending to the everyday humdrum gnitty-gritties that make up the bulk of most business days. Good leaders are almost always aware of the stresses being experienced by the people they lead and whose work they manage. What are those stresses these days? How can the business leader be helpful without compromising productivity and profit? Here are a few items to consider. There are many more.

The stress of schedule. Consider: workers have children to be picked up or taken to school and everywhere else. Workers also have spouses, parents, relatives and friends who sometimes need looking after, who sometimes throw parties and do celebrations, who often enough engage in shared projects such as building, painting or rem

[Read More]

Business managers already know that by preventing or reducing and managing stress they increase worker production as well as worker satisfaction. But did you know that in so doing you also head off the number one trigger for clinical depression?

Dr. Maletic, a researcher in the physiology of brain function recently reported on a significant study underway at Duke University. This research project has identified a number of genes in the brain that, when damaged, set the person up for depression. Of special interest to business managers is the additional finding that just because the genes in question are vulnerable that does not mean the person will become depressed. It appears that it is only with the right degree of environmental triggers that a person will become depressed. The number one environmental trigger? Stress!

What are the three top symptom of depression? They are trouble sleeping, loss of appetite and low energy. So: by reducing stress in the workplace the manager

[Read More]

 

Leadership: Art and Science

Leadership is both art and science. It is a science in that specific tasks and functions can be identified and described as constituting leadership. It is an art in that how a person goes about those tasks and functions makes all the difference.

There are at least seven functions of the business leader common to most businesses:

• Identify and communicate the mission, goals and objectives.
• Get agreement from everyone involved that the mission, goals and objectives are worthwhile.
• Determine the needed resources. Don't overreach!
• Identify and find the resources. Almost all new business failures are because the resources were lacking.
• Make a good plan.
• Use the resources wisely.
• Evaluate constantly and make necessary changes. Flex

[Read More]