Monthly Archives: August 2019

employee performance

Practicing Mindfulness is Imperative for Personal Development and Employee Performance

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Mindfulness is a term that has become very popular in the self-development and personal growth fields. Mindfulness is another term for being aware or conscious of oneself. It enables someone to respond better to people and situations.


It is imperative for people to practice mindfulness in order to make changes in behavior for improving performance and to implement new skills especially interpersonal skills such as active listening. New skills at first requires a change in attitude and habits.


Since we don’t think about our habits and just behave accordingly, mindfulness allows us to be aware of how we are reacting and make a choice to change our response or behavior.


The best way to practice mindfulness is through exercises in focus such as meditation. Meditation brings the focus to one’s inner self, rather than thoughts and what is happening on the outside.

I was speaking with someone who works in a large educational institution where they had just gone through mindfulness workshops for all employees. This is a good initiative as it shows that management values this practice and are willing to invest in helping employees learn and practice it.


Becoming more conscious and self-aware does take repetition and experts recommend a daily practice session in order to develop the ability to let go of thoughts and focus on the self.


The key is for the leaders of an organization to participate in these types of training workshops and to practice mindfulness and lead by example.


coaching for employees for free

Have Coaching for Employees for Free

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Coaching for employees and management can be highly effective to improve employee performance and keep the organization agile.


However, hiring external coaches or having a full-time internal coach can be a sizeable investment that not all organizations can afford.


The solution is to have managers and employees learn the skills of coaching. Skills such as active listening and asking questions are easy to learn but not so easy to apply. That’s because habits are hard to break, and coaching must be something that people want to do and get rewarded for. Rewards for practicing coaching can be recognition and positive feedback.


The key is for the organization’s leadership to be committed to embrace coaching and to be an example. This is often the biggest challenge to having coaching become common practice.


Some managers have a stronger tendency to coach employees than others. Those that have a high interest in activities related to people service tend to find coaching enjoyable and understand that it is a key responsibility.


In fact, the younger generations of employees today prefer having managers who can provide coaching and practice a participative leadership style.


Leaders of organizations who want managers to can coach employees need to assess the interest in people of those they hire and promote for a management role. Just because someone is an expert in their field and shows they can take charge does not mean they can or will coach people.


An assessment to like the PXT Select that measures occupational interests including an interest in people would be a valuable tool to use. Creating a culture where coaching is highly valued and practiced regularly by managers would propel performance to great heights and be a workplace that attracts top talent.


qualities of first leaders

The Qualities That Make A Leader A Leader

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Leaders demonstrate certain qualities and attributes that cause others to want to follow them. In my recent travel vacation to the province of Newfoundland in Canada, I was exposed to a lot of history and visited some historic sites. One of those sites was where the Vikings or Norseman first came to North America in the 10th century. Learning about these first settlers got me thinking about how societies got organized and how the first leaders took their positions.


Lief Erikson was the explorer who first came to L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland with his crew to find resources for shipbuilding back in Iceland. His father was Erik the Red  and both he and his father were banished from Iceland for being accused of killing people. They ended up in what they later named Greenland.

Lief Erikson was the explorer who first came to L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland with his crew to find resources for shipbuilding back in Iceland. His father was Erik the Red  and both he and his father were banished from Iceland for being accused of killing people. They ended up in what they later named Greenland.


It seems evident that these first leaders or those before them took power because they were at times violent and had people fear them.  Certain types of people are prone to violence because they are physical instinctive types, while others who may have similar physical strength are much less prone to being aggressive.


Fritz Glaus in his book CrazyZoo, Know-Thyself Made Easy explains the different types of people and he uses animals as a starting point to help readers choose their type from one of the six classic types. The Lion is the physical/instinctive type, the St-Bernard the emotional type and the Fox the intellectual type.


It’s easy to think of how those born with the qualities of the Lion type could easily have become the first leaders or rulers. Perhaps as man evolved the Fox would take over as they could outwit the Lion types and even have them become their generals to fight the battles while they sat in their palaces and strategized.


In todays’ workplace we no longer need a Lion leader to shout orders and instill fear in people. We need balanced leaders who can develop all the positive qualities of their dominant type and utilize the qualities of the other types. Qualities such as emotional intelligence and compassion.    


Understanding one’s self through a system of types is crucial in personal and leadership development. Although at times leaders need to be aggressive and take charge, it is more rare than common, even for a police chief.     


The problem that still seems to interfere with good leadership is greed and this is another weakness that man must conquer in order to provide the leadership to solve the most pressing issues of our time.