“Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk” on body language has been viewed 32,728,866 times, more by now, for a reason. This isn’t the same old talk about how your body language affects others. She’s talking about how your body language affects you! We all know that a tall posture, firm handshake, and smiling eye contact will make a better impression than slouching and looking down. That’s a no brainer. What you may not realize is how much it changes the way you feel about yourself. Try it right now! Stand tall, shoulders back, breathe deeply, eyes straight ahead, smile. Doesn’t that make you feel stronger, more powerful, more successful?
I’ve been remiss in not sharing a compilation of my Forbes articles with you for several months. Sorry about that! Most Popular 8 Secrets Smart People Know About Time Management 9 Reasons You & Your Employees Can’t Do 40 Hrs Of Work In 40 Hrs Three Traits Of Top-Notch Leaders 10 Reasons Your Employee Engagement Program Is Hurting Your Company Most Recent Do What You Love — And Watch Your Productivity Suffer 10 Reasons Leaders Get Dragged Into Problems Unnecessarily And What To Do About It Especially for Non-profits The Secret To Sustainability For Non-profit Organizations I hope you find these valuable!
One of my great pleasures is working with sharp, knowledgeable, dedicated, and determined leaders and Board members of impressive non-profit organizations. These organizations are almost always doing amazing things, but too often I find them feeling totally strapped and constrained by resources. The staff is overworked and underpaid. Most non-profits walk a fine line between hope and despair. Financial limitations, and the insecurity that creates, lead to way too much focus on money and the wrong metrics. When you focus on money, you devote most of your time to boosting donations, memberships, and attendance. You constantly brainstorm new schemes to attract more of each. Meanwhile, you don’t care who donates, joins, or attends, as long as those numbers are going in the right direction. The problem is it does matter where the money comes from. That money, and your considerable efforts to acquire it, control how you use your limited resources. Typical consequences of chasing money include:
The tangible outcomes of progress are easy to measure: sales, profits, market penetration, and yield, as well as number of products, parts, members, programs, etc. Many employees are pretty clear about their goals in relation to these type of results. But only those on the “production line” can really tie their own productivity to these metrics: Parts per hour, sales per week, hours per production, etc. Everyone else spends a lot of time talking, thinking, writing, and reading, often with little to show for it. As a matter of fact, the farther they are from the assembly line, the more time spent this way and the less time spent producing tangible value for which customers are willing to pay.
When talking with a long-term client last week, I mentioned that I was flying to Philadelphia for the day to meet a coaching client. She expressed surprise because she didn’t know I did executive coaching. Shame on me! How can I let my clients not know all that I offer! What about you, dear readers! Do you know that I do executive coaching? “Ann is an invaluable executive coach. She is a quick, honest, and insightful partner. I have learned as much from her about focused, action-oriented leadership in two months as in a decade of first-hand experience.” – John Bidwell, Director, Marketing & Digital Strategy, Baystate Health Do you also know that I speak to a wide range of audiences with the goal of helping them make immediate improvements?
Top-notch leaders share three essential traits. Two of these traits are well understood, common targets of conscious improvement, and the topic of numerous articles published daily. The third is another matter entirely. It is not well understood and is rarely discussed in helpful, instructive ways. That’s too bad because it offers the single greatest opportunity to improve results and productivity. 1. Respect How you treat people matters. It matters a lot. Top-notch leaders know this. And while the Internet is filled with advice about how to treat employees, it all boils down to one word: Respect. If you respect your employees, you:
“Follow your passion!” We’ve all heard that advice. And while it sounds like nirvana, beware! The tasks you love can destroy your productivity. To me, your talents and passions are revealed by the things you can’t not do. The activities that perk you up no matter how tired you are. The ones that suck you in and make you late to dinner or keep you up way past your bedtime. Your passion could be almost anything from making people happy to creating order out of chaos to writing computer code. The more closely your talents and passions are aligned with your job responsibilities, the happier you should be with your job. But just because you are following your passions, doesn’t mean you are as productive as you should be! Here is why and what you can do about it:
The employee of a client was asked to look into the possibility of a new product idea. Being his diligent, hard-working self, he did a complete analysis and returned several weeks later with recommendations. He expected a pleased boss and was shocked to find his boss had expected a response in a matter of days, not weeks. I hear of situations like this frequently. And it is sad because it would be so easy to avoid the lost time, delayed outcome, bad feelings, and lost trust in both directions. Was this employee slow? No. Is this boss a jerk? No.
You can’t solve a problem without eliminating its cause. Unfortunately, most organizations either struggle to find the real cause or they skip that step and just try “solutions” at random. Those solutions range from seemingly small changes such as: • New forms • New rules • New meetings • New forms and rules for meetings To enormous initiatives such as: • New employee engagement programs • New performance management systems • New organizational charts, titles, and office assignments You get the idea. (Contribute your favorite “futile fixes” in the comment section of this article!) What do these ”solutions” have in common?