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.
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Any Limiting Beliefs Holding You Back? ​

As Henry Ford so wisely stated: "If you think you can, or cannot - either way you are right".
In other words if you think and therefore believe something to be true, then it is your truth.

• If you believe you cannot do something... you cannot and most probably will not even try, or try to find a way, to do it.
• If you believe you can figure something out ... you will find a way.
  
  

Your beliefs can be negative or positive, therefore limit or empower you.

If you are not quite 'the person you want to be', then it pays off to find out if it is a thought (belief) holding you back.

The thought could be anything from 'I do not know how', 'I do not have any support', 'I do not know where to start', 'I am uncertain about this,' etc.

This time of year is tough for anxious sleepers. So much to do, so much on the mind. And with the bane of Covid-19, environmental issues, political tension, and travel chaos swirling about, it's a wonder any of us can get any sleep.
If you're anything like me, all you want to do is shut off your brain long enough to doze off and get a restful seven to eight hours so you can tackle the next day. But how?
There are actually a few methods, some rather surprising, that help. I've used a combination of these over the years to great success, and urge you to do the same.
I'd try two or three of the following that fit you the best. Within 10 to 15 minutes, you should be fading into sleep.
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1. Engage in "box breathing." I've referenced breathing exercises before -- and they work well to calm the nervous system. My favorite is a simple three-three-three-three "box" method. Breathe in three seconds, hold three seconds, breathe out three seconds, hold three seconds, repeat three or four times. While this is designed to calm your nervous system, you'll notice your mind following suit.
   
   
2. Write down your top three anxieties before bed. Keep a pen and paper handy at your bedside. Right after crawling into bed, write down your top three worries(one sentence each) in a list on the pad. This may seem like an empty action as you're not attempting to address your worries directly, but the mere act of writing them out is cathartic -- kind of like you're leaving them on the pad to pick up the next day (or just drop entirely).

The morning shapes your day in mysterious ways.
It shouldn’t as there are 24 hours in a day — but it does. Weird. I’m not one of those 4 A.M. cold shower peeps anymore.

I prefer a realistic start to the day. It’s even more important for me because I have no job or boss to report to. So if I stuff up the morning, over time, I can stuff up my life and end up warming an office chair in a skyscraper of broken dreams, dying to escape (again).

Do these things before 8 A.M. to crush your day.

When was the last time you sat still in silence and did nothing for a while?

A few hours ago?
Yesterday?
Last week?
No idea?

While we often try to squeeze more and more into our busy schedules, what really happens is that our need for speed leads to chaos.

We end up feeling more stressed, less focused, less connected, and less productive.
When we're under pressure, we often believe we need to hurry up and do more,while the real answer often lies in slowing down and sitting still.

Each year, more and more people report that their lives have become busier and more stressful.
And one of the biggest threats to our mental health is today's glorified "hustle culture" that makes so many people believe that their worth as a human being is defined by their level of productivity.
But that's not true.

Your value as a human being isn't defined by how much you work, achieve, or produce.
You're worthy of love and a sense of accomplishment no matter what you do or "achieve."
You don't need to do more or be more.

Maybe you even need to slow down and do less.

An assumption is a thought or conclusion drawn when someone says or does something. It is a reaction.  You do not have the full picture or asked any questions yet to be able to make an informed decision.  Conclusions are often based on assumptions which could be incorrect. They are not backed up by fact yet treated as the truth. 
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Assumptions have the potential to confuse a situation, and everyone involved. For example, silence or nodding does not always mean the person agrees. They could be simply acknowledging they heard you.  They might not agree yet in that moment are not ready to comment. 
You cannot  know if what you are assuming is the truth unless you ask questions to get more information and clarification. Listen carefully and ask questions if you are not sure or need further information to form an opinion.
 
The brain is wired to keep you safe and fulfill your core needs such as nutrition, shelter, community, pleasure, reproduction, and emotional expression. This establishes an idea of where you are, who and what is around you, and where you might encounter danger. Also known as the ‘fight or flight mode’ which is essential in times of danger - it keeps you at the first level of awareness.

I've probably written a dozen articles over the years about the benefits of mindfulness, how it impacts the brain, and how simple it is to get started with meditation. And yet I confess I have personally never managed to keep up a consistent meditation practice. 

At least I know I'm not alone. Experts reassure struggling meditation newbies that just sitting still and breathing can be way harder than it first seems. And if that doesn't work to alleviate my guilt, then I also remember this post highlighting the wisdom of Wharton professor Adam Grant and author Oliver Burkeman, arguing there are many other ways to practice mindfulness aside from classic meditation. 

You don't need to meditate to practice mindfulness. After being harassed for years by mindfulness's many boosters, Grant finally took to The New York Times to argue that meditation isn't for everyone. Many people, he explains, find other ways to quiet their brains, be in the present moment, and reduce their stress. 

Burkeman concurred in the Guardian, writing "I have a personal theory that almost everyone secretly meditates, whether they realize it or not....almost everyone pursues some activity demanding absolute presence of mind: if not mountain climbing or sailing or bike racing (where a lapse of attention might mean death), then photography or singing or recreational cookery (where a lapse of attention means you'll screw things up)." 

​Here’s how I think about mental strength:
Mental strength is the ability to control your mind instead of being controlled by it.
For example:

• Instead of getting sucked into spirals of self-criticism and shame, mental strength is what allows you to redirect your attention and thinking somewhere else less destructive — like that conversation you’re having with your son or the report you’re supposed to be drafting.
• Rather than impulsively responding to your spouse’s sarcastic comment with a witty jab of your own, you are able to resist the impulse and either say nothing or mention assertively that you don’t appreciate the sarcasm.

Now, obviously there are aspects of your mind that you can’t control… Whether a specific memory pops into mind, for example. Or whether you feel afraid of almost getting run over by a car.
So becoming mentally strong doesn’t mean you are able to exert complete control over everything that goes on between your ears.
Mental strength means understanding which parts of your mind you can control and being able to do it well when it matters.

For example:

There is nothing new under the sun. It’s an old saying, but it’s true.

The ancient world has always been a source of wisdom and wonder. Centuries of knowledge has changed millions of lives before us and continue to inspire, guide and show us better paths for a more fulfilling life.
Once every quarter, it pays to take a moment for introspection and reflect on your life. What could you change to improve your life?

What habits and behaviours can you keep to do more of what’s already working? How can you improve your relationships with those around you?
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The process of becoming wise, healthy, and wealthy is through accumulating knowledge over time. Better wisdom can help us make the best life-changing decisions and lead a better life.

Aristotle knew all about how to make the most of your life.
He said that happiness is found in satisfying our basic needs like food and shelter first, but then we need to focus on people, activities, and things that fully engage us.

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.”

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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
 

Taking care of ourselves helps us do better work, but it shouldn’t feel like work. 

Well-being is having a moment. What was once considered a soft-news lifestyle topic has, thanks to our collective experience of the pandemic, moved to the center of the conversation about work and life. And as a Chief Well-Being Officer, I’m certainly glad to see this shift (even if I obviously would have preferred a different catalyst). 
Still, when I’m asked questions about well-being, as I often am, I’ve noticed a troubling trend. Very often, well-being becomes just another stress-inducing item on our to-do list. So as we continue to prioritize our well-being, we also need to shift our mindset away from viewing well-being as work. Because well-being isn’t a benchmark we need to hit. It’s not another guilt-inducing metric to measure ourselves by. The whole point of bringing more well-being into our lives is to lower our stress, not add to it. 
With that in mind, here are six ways to prevent well-being from becoming just another item on our to-do lists.

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.

Mental resilience is the cornerstone of a successful life - but can you build it in yourself, your family and your team?
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Crying every morning may sound like a terrible way to start the day, but for life coach Suzie Doscher, Class of 1974 (1970-74), tears are a vital safety valve – and a healthy response to a global pandemic. “When a friend asked me how I was coping with lockdown, I told her I regularly had a good cry,” she says. “I sometimes started the day feeling uneasy or unsure, but I know it’s important to deal with my emotions so I release them by having a cry. That is how I got myself to a place where both my feet were firmly on the ground, and then I knew that I could handle whatever came my way.”

Now, more than ever, our mental health matters. We live, work and study at breakneck speed, bombarded by choice. And with technology – and the recent lockdowns – creating an ‘always on’ environment, boundaries between life and work are increasingly blurred. Clearly, the ability to build our own mental resilience, in mentally healthy work and living spaces, is crucial.

None of this is news to Brigitte Eigenmann, Head of Human Resources at ZIS. “Our mental and physical health are connected,” she says. “That’s why we need to take mental health seriously.”

By Melissa Waggener Zorkin, Global CEO and founder of WE
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Have the last six months left you feeling hopeful and clear about what tomorrow will bring?
I didn’t think so. 

We’re living through extraordinarily difficult and uncertain times, and there are no easy solutions to the issues we face. But as business leaders—and as human beings—it’s our job to figure out a path forward and to do so in a way that creates positive change in the world.
The coronavirus pandemic triggered an economic disaster that continues to unfold. In a recent survey by WE and Quartz Insights, a whopping 80% of business leaders called economic downturns the biggest threat to purpose leadership. Although it may be tempting to prioritize quick economic fixes over values, every indicator shows that brands whose purpose persists through these hard times will thrive where others won’t. 

A piece of simple old wisdom that’s desperately needed in the modern world

“You’re not going to believe it! You’re not going to believe it!” shouted the young man as he ran across the courtyard. “I just heard something about one of your friends!”
“Whoa, slow down,” replied Socrates lifting his eyes from the scroll he was reading to face the young man. “Before you tell me the news, I’d like to give you a little test.”
“A test?” the young man fired back frustrated his eagerness had been met with resistance. “What kind of test? I don’t like tests!”

“Don’t worry,” Socrates smiled. “It’s not very hard. In fact, it’s quite simple. It’s called the ‘Triple-Filter Test’. And as its name implies, it consists of three questions that will hopefully help you better filter information.”
“The first filter is Truth,” Socrates continued. “Are you absolutely positive that what you’re going to tell me is true?”

“No, I’m not sure it’s true,” the young man responded sheepishly. “I just heard about it and I thought you should….”
“Moving on,” Socrates jumped in. “Since you’re not sure whether or not what you want to tell me about my friend is true or not it’s time for the second filter which is goodness —Is the news you have about my friend something good?”

I wonder how many words have actually been written about communication. Suffice it to say, there have been a great many. I suppose it is because we haven’t cracked it yet; this ability to convey messages so that what we say is heard in the way we mean it, and conversely, what we hear is received in the way it was meant. Indeed, the road to clarity always seems to be under construction.
Even if we try to simplify our communication processes, barriers come up that can sabotage the message and render it ineffective by the time it gets to those who must act on it. There are a lot of reasons for this. Here are four that come to mind:

Cultural barriers
There are many factors that make up what we refer to as “culture” but to me, cultural difference is about attitudes and beliefs that come from our personal environment and experience. As such, two people could get the same message but interpret it in two entirely different ways simply because their frames of reference and language differ.

Small things tell you a lot about a person

Last week, a client asked me, “How can I delegate more effectively?” It made sense that she wanted to dig deeper into this. Delegation is a superpower for leaders — it’s one of the most powerful ways to scale yourself and your impact. I strongly believe: great leaders delegate better than average leaders.

Part of this is causality, though. If you don’t delegate, you’re probably going to burn yourself out as an average leader and never finish the journey to becoming a great leader.

In some ways, delegation was always one of my strengths. But it was also something I leaned into too much once in a while. I was quick to pass on responsibilities and give others opportunities, but it was sometimes a scattershot approach. And it didn’t always come with the clear guidelines and support that makes delegation effective.

So, where is the balance? How can we unlock this deep well of efficiency and effectiveness? Like most leadership topics, it begins with the leader.

1. Address Your Own Control Issues

The barn has burnt down, now I can see the moon.

The above quotation from Masahide delivers a compelling message. He looked at what some would consider misfortune and created in his mind a thing of beauty. He could have said to himself, as many of us would today, "How terrible. I can't believe how unlucky I am." Instead Masahide was able to embrace the good. "Wow! I never realized how much beauty I can see with no barn to obstruct my vision. How lucky I am!" It stands to reason that...

If we embrace the good that can come from whatever life hands us, we have come a long way in learning how to embrace uncertainty.
 
There is no question that life sometimes seems really rotten on an objective level. But the objective level is unimportant; it is the subjective level that determines how we interpret what happens in our lives. Do we interpret something as good or do we interpret something as bad? I have noticed that when people look at all their experiences in life as a way of learning and discovering more about the world and themselves, then all their experiences - good or bad - are good! It follows that if we can learn to see that ALL experiences in our lives can be really valuable, our worry about the future is greatly diminished. We have come one step closer to being able to embrace all the uncertainty in our lives.

These are a sample of options you have when in need of some stress relief:
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• Take a break and leave the room. Find a quiet space, even the loo will do.  
• Compose yourself by taking at least 3 breaths. As you exhale, imagine a little bit of the tension leaving your body. (I find visualizing a dark cloud dissipating helpful.)
• Gather your thoughts.  
• Keep your focus on exactly what has been going on that is causing you the stress. Is it the task itself? How about more basic such as hunger or the space around you?
• Does it will involve another person or people… What is missing?  
• Once you know specifically what has thrown you out of balance, think about what can you do now to influence the situation.
• Consider all the steps required to find a solution. Make a list, if only a mental list.  
• What can you do today, right now?  Arrange your list in terms of priority. What has to be done first, then what?  
• Consider the practicalities of your action plan. Is it realistic? Have you the time?  
• Do you need advice or support? If so, whose?  
• Fine-tune the steps you consider necessary to resolve the situation. Keep things realistic to avoid feeling pressure.
• Having thought things through you may find the problem has changed in perspective. Adjust the plan accordingly.

It is most import to ensure that any action you propose to take is in keeping with your personality and can be executed in a style that suits you.
 
 
by Suzie Doscher, Executive and Life Coach, Self-Help Author
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Empower yourself by not only connecting, but also aligning your life (and that includes life at work) with your core values.
In my experience finding out or rediscovering what my personal values are was one of the most important steps in my personal growth. If I think back at the person, I was before I reconnected with them… ‘a loose cannon’ comes to mind. 

I had lots of things in place, lots of boxes ticked but at the same time my life was not making me happy. I was not satisfied let alone had anything even remotely close to inner peace. 
Once I discovered what is truly important to, what nurtures me, what allows me to feel like myself and grow into my skin then my life started changing. 
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The reason being that I felt I had a foundation to live life from. I noticed my values are the bricks to my foundation, they are what grounds me. It was so exciting to find out that these values are part of me, inside of me and always there. Living in alignment with them does not actually cost me anything. There is a ‘cost’, this comes in the form of time. I take time to nurture them, to feel strong and fully in my personal power. I feel my inner light is shining.