If you recognize the warning signs of impending burnout in yourself; remember that it will only get worse if you leave it alone. But if you take steps to get your life back into balance, you can prevent burnout from becoming a full-blown breakdown.

Some tips:

• Start the day with a relaxing ritual.
  Rather than jumping out of bed as soon as you wake up, spend a few minutes doing nothing – just lying there, or meditating, writing in your journal, doing gentle stretches, or reading something that inspires you. Whatever you chose to do that is realistic focus on it. If your children jump into bed with you and wake you up then try to focus on them. Children are grounded and in the moment. 
• Adopt healthy eating, exercising, and sleeping habits. When you eat right, engage in regular physical activity, and get plenty of rest, you have the energy and resilience to deal with life's obstacles and demands. Start with one of them and attempt to follow through 2 -3 days per week. It is better to start than not at all or to set a goal that is bound not to be reached. You will feel so much better if you start slow and have a much better chance of following through. One step at a time gets you to the top of the ladder. 

Maybe you are increasingly aware of an issue or behaviour pattern you are willing to change which is activating your curiosity. You are reading this article which shows that on some level there is a curiosity. You might be interested in the topic, or maybe have a colleague or friend who is working on personal development with a coach already recommended you check it out. Remember: It is in fact a strength to reach out, not a weakness.
 
Coaching Scenarios:

• You know ‘something has to change.
• The issue for coaching is fairly straight forward. You already know what you want but are not sure how to start, or are interested in having a neutral non-judgmental outsider for support, encouragement, accountability. Many of my clients come to me to gain clarity.

 
Some thoughts to consider: 

You are:

• Aware that talking about it with your friends, family or colleagues is not changing anything.
• Ready to stop talking about the issue with friends, family or colleagues about the same topic – equally they are tired of hearing about it.
• Understand that looking for advice from colleagues and friends is not enough.
• Curious to look inside yourself for some answers.
• Step outside of what you know, into the unknown – outside your comfort zone – outside your box, to find a new way to handle the issue.

 
The next steps: 

• Narrow down what will work best for you: language, in person meetings or online sessions, location, cost, length of sessions, how many sessions does the coach recommend.
• Research the local market on Google, ask friends & colleagues if they know anybody
• Read the testimonials / recommendations to get a feel for the coach and their strengths
• Which websites / coaches appeal to you, 'speak your language'
• Does this align with the issue you are looking to move away from?
• Get in touch with one or more, talk to them, see where the chemistry fits best.
• Make your choice
• Remember: “Actions speak louder than words”.

 
 It is important to know the difference between all the various approaches to change, see my article  Coaching vs. Trainings / Consulting / Mentoring / Traditional Therapies  for more information.
 
Suzie Doscher(PMC), a Professional Master Coach (IAPCM) Coach focusing on Personal Development. 
Check out Suzie's books full of SELF COACHING Exercises - 'Balance by Suzie Doscher' available in any Amazon store worldwide.
Please also visit: www.suziedoscher.com for more info about coaching.

by Suzie Doscher
Photo credit: Shutterstock

Hiring a candidate can feel like reaching the finish line of a journey. After weeks or months of recruiting efforts, you finally found the right fit. But it’s not – it’s actually the beginning of a crucial stage of your hiring process: onboarding.

“It is an incredibly vital stage of the hiring process because employees are acclimated to their position, the company’s philosophies, and what the organization has to offer during onboarding,” says Jamie Olson, Head of People & Culture at Continu, a learning amplification platform for teams.

“It also increases motivation, resulting in employees who are dedicated to the company’s success, and promotes the retention of new recruits by making them feel like a part of the team.”

Your onboarding process is the first impression. It can make or break the long-term chances of success of your new team member – it’s when expectations are set and important information is passed along. Olson broke down everything you need to know about how to effectively welcome a new employee to the team. Learn more in the checklist and onboarding tips below.

The ultimate onboarding checklistFirst of all, it’s important not to “wing it.” Onboarding doesn’t consist of greeting your new report and making a few introductions before leaving them on their own. You’ll need to create a streamlined process that is consistent every time you hire someone new. Here is a checklist.
​

Core values are personal to each individual . They can be described as your code of ethics, your fundamental principles, your standards, or personal rules. I like to refer to them as the bricks you build your foundation on. Knowing what you truly value in life, what makes you feel fulfilled and gives you a sense of meaning, connects you to your true self and is an important part of your personal development.
 
Core values are about YOU – not what society, the media, your education, your colleagues and friends or family deem as important, or of value, but what is important to you, what you value.
 
Stress tends to set in when you are not treating these values with the respect they deserve.
 
Not respecting your core values means you are not respecting your true self. In turn your self-esteem could suffer, which of course in turn de-creases the quality of your day-to-day life. When the feeling of being calm and peaceful is present, and the quality of day-to-day life is high, you feel good about yourself and who you are. Your self-esteem and self-worth benefit from this.

Caroline Myss, a five-time New York Times bestselling author and internationally renowned speaker in the fields of human consciousness and mysticism says: “Being able to speak and live with the truth, your truth, means you have to become comfortable with having your power, be comfortable with all that is true about you, all that is beautiful about yourself, this is being okay with yourself.”

​

Consider the Core Values Process I offer as a gift to yourself.
The focus can be on your life, your overall life which would include your career, your career alone or your leadership values (this is a great exercise to do as a new leader or to update your existing leadership skills aligning them with your personality). Get in touch.

by Suzie Doscher
​Photo credit: Shutterstock
 

You did it. You made it out — hopefully with some shred of sanity and sense of personal self-worth. But even if those things feel unrecoverable, they aren’t. You can get them back.

Maybe you’ve moved on to greener pastures. If that’s the case, well done. You’ve taken an important step towards preserving (or gaining back) your emotional and physical health.

Maybe, although less likely, your boss either moved on or was fired. Most of the time, these situations don’t fix themselves, as for some reason senior leadership would rather keep a single toxic boss employed than the multiple high-quality employees who leave because of them.

In either case, there’s a residual emotional and physical toll that lasts well beyond the end of the boss-employee relationship. I know; I’ve been there.
In the span of just two years of reporting to a toxic boss, I went from being a high-performing, high-potential engineering leader to nearly leaving the company I’d spent 15 years at because of one single person. My boss. That’s how badly I needed to get away from her.

By  Jessica Hicks, Associate Multimedia Editor at Thrive Global

Managing people is tough — but managing people as they work from home during a global pandemic, well, that’s another story. Whether you’re a first-time manager or have been leading people for years, the coronavirus crisis has likely pushed you into uncharted territory. On top of overseeing day-to-day workflow, problem-solving, and paying attention to the bottom line and deliverables, there’s another big task on your plate: helping to take care of the human capital on your team when you don’t see them every day. 

“It is difficult to know what demands each individual is facing — whether it be navigating health issues, a partner that is a frontline responder, children in need of care, extended family members that are isolated,” Ashley Hardin, Ph.D., a professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis, tells Thrive. “Many employees are balancing many roles and enacting those roles simultaneously for the first time.”

By Patrick Lencioni

I’m a big believer in reminders.  Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century author, once said that “people need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed.”  I’ve learned this in the context of managing my own life, in the parenting of my children, and even in consulting to CEOs and other leaders.  Which is why I wasn’t all that surprised when a long time client recently asked us the question, “as a CEO, I’m not sure how I should be spending my time every day.”
Here was a guy who has been using the organizational health concepts from The Advantage in his company for years, but who had lost sight of how those concepts should relate to the prioritization of his daily activities.  Basically, he needed a reminder, which prompted me to write this essay. 
The simplest answer to his question is this: “A CEO should spend most of his or her time doing the things that only he or she can do.  Anything else can be delegated, and should be whenever possible.”  There are a few responsibilities that leaders of an organization, whether they are CEOs, division presidents, school principals or pastors, cannot delegate.  A large part of those responsibilities relates to what we call organizational health.  They include:

Dr. Travis Bradberry

When emotional intelligence (EQ) first appeared to the masses, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: people with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70 percent of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into the broadly held assumption that IQ was the sole source of success.
Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as being the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. The connection is so strong that 90 percent of top performers have high emotional intelligence.

“No doubt emotional intelligence is more rare than book smarts, but my experience says it is actually more important in the making of a leader. You just can’t ignore it.” – Jack Welch 

Emotional intelligence is the “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions to achieve positive results.

​Being successful in life requires you to make the right decisions for yourself and this takes knowing who you are and what you uniquely offer. When you say yes to the right projects and job for yourself, you are able to beautifully handle the work and the obstacles that inevitably arise as you make something happen in the world. 

Susan brings you a cutting edge, revolutionary body of knowledge called BG5 that applies the principles of individuality from Human Design. Using the knowledge gained from BG5 analyses catapults you into a new way of dealing with yourself and others which leads to unprecedented results. 

by Suzie Doscher 
There are wonderful books, classes, films, talks, workshops, DVDs, magazine articles, conversations, coaches, and therapists teaching the importance of being in the moment, staying in the now and going with the flow. But how do you really do this?

It seems odd that we do not just naturally live in the now. After all, almost everyone would agree that the present moment, the now, is all we have. The fact remains that most people do not live in the present moment and have to learn how to do so.
 
Reasons to master living in the moment:

• You receive instant relief from stress
• You are able to manage fears better
• You become calmer. A sense of calmness enters if you stop to take a few breaths. Focusing on your breathing returns your mind to the present moment, away from your thoughts.
• You feel stronger and some of your personal power returns. You feel stronger because you took charge of the moment. This offers the feeling of having influence and consequently strength.

 
Steps to practice being in the moment:​

BY XIMENA VENGOECHEA 5 MINUTE READ

It happens to high- and low-performing teams alike: The ties that bind everyone together just aren’t as strong as they could be. Maybe you’ve inherited a team that’s always been sluggish and uninspired, or one that’s usually steady, but the trust is eroding under pressure. Or perhaps you’re just trying to take your team to the next level. Whatever the case, every team needs to reflect once in a while on what could be improved. It’s human nature to be conflict-averse, but it’s every manager’s job to bring points of conflict out into the open and move forward together.
Unfortunately, most meetings aren’t the best venues for doing that. Typical team meetings focus on planning what’s ahead–an upcoming project, the next quarter’s top goals and metrics, expectations moving forward. But there’s a simple alternative, focused on reviewing the immediate past, that can change how your team works for the better.

by Bill Gentry, Director, Leadership Insights & Analytics and Senior Research Scientist

A professional getting promoted into his or her first formal leadership position in an organization is one of the biggest and most difficult transitions for any leader.
Far too often, the leader and the organization take for granted just how difficult that transition is.
The numbers prove it: No wonder 50% of managers in organizations are ineffective.

Their ineffectiveness may be the result of not realizing what they are getting themselves into when it comes to leading others, not being supported in their new leadership role, and not being given the opportunity for training and development early enough in their careers as leaders.
Think of the time and money that has to be spent on replacing these ineffective leaders—not to mention dealing with the low morale and disengagement of employees working under these ineffective leaders. 

A personal care company that is part of my acceleration portfolio could never have envisioned sharing prime retail space with the giants in its product category. Thanks to e-commerce, it does so today and quite promisingly so.
Traditional size-based and time-based competitive advantages are fast evaporating. In fact, in many cases, tech-enabled business models are turning size-based advantage into a handicap.
Uber doesn’t own a single car and AirBnB doesn’t own any hotel room. In just six years, asset-less messaging app Whatsapp has one billion users, a figure most large telecom companies took decades to reach. Even in the financial sector, peer-to-peer lending platforms are hot on the heels of established banks.
Established companies could face an existential crisis as conventional advantages evaporate, entry barriers lower and rate of disruption grows. However, they must take heart from the one durable advantage they have over start-ups: top talent. ...Click 'Read More'

by Gordon Tredgold 

According to a 2014 Gallup poll, companies, 82 percent of the time, appoint the wrong person to a management or leadership position. That's a staggering number. 
And yet it's not inconsistent with either my own experience or other statistics that we see -- such as one, this time from a 2015 Gallup poll, showing that as many as 70 percent of workers are either disengaged or actively disengaged. 

More evidence? It comes from what seems to be the No. 1 reason why people leave companies: 50 percent of the time, they cite their relationship with their direct manager. 
We can only conclude that those managers shouldn't have been there in the first place, and that poor management appointments are to blame. We might also suspect that those appointments not only damaged the mood and morale of these organizations but affected their bottom line. For example, the weak employee-engagement figures cost American businesses around $450 billion every year. 

The challenge is that these situations are not going to be completely resolved until they address the real root cause: hiring and promoting the wrong people in the first place. Here are seven characteristics that companies should look for in future managers. If those people don't have them, then don't promote them. ..

Nigel Casey BSc (Hons) Digital Technology, Design & Innovation: Learning & Development at DigitalProfessionalsAcademy.com

Whether you work in the realm of digital development or not, your teams are without a shadow of a doubt, already digital. Whether you work in an organisation or as a freelance professional, you work in and with digital teams. The digital age is upon us and you are in it and a part of it whether you realise it or not.

1. Silos in Digital Teams

Encouraging, enabling or tolerating silo mentality is not good managerial practice by any stretch of the imagination. It describes a situation in which co-workers tend to operate independently to such an extent that information does not flow fluidly across teams or departments. I believe that most of the time employees do not choose to work in Silos, nor do they do it with the intention of gaining the upper hand, deliberately withholding information or sabotaging co-workers’ progress. They simply have their own, often fine-tuned systems for getting stuff done, having found a way to operate that works for them individually, without considering, or even being expected to consider the implications and how their modus operandi affects overall productivity.
Clearly, the end result can be described as the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, or even attempting to do. Lots of hands, all waggling around independently from one another, all doing their best. ...Click 'Read More' below

by Baba Shiv

​Invention has another mother: failure. It may seem counterintuitive, but repeated failures can, and often do, lead to success. Every time we try something new and fail, it provides valuable information about what went wrong and, as important, what went right. From that, we can make small changes and try again, continually learning and innovating. “If you’re trying to solve a problem there are potentially hundreds of possible pathways to take, but only a few are going to lead to the appropriate solution. And the only way to discover that is to try and fail and try again,” says Baba Shiv, a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business whose research focuses on innovation in the workplace.