My self-motivation during challenging times

by Confident Factor on November 21, 2011

1. All motivation is self-motivation.

Nobody else can motivate you. What they can do, however, is either support or distract from your own motivational process. Notice whose style adds to your self-motivation and who gets in the way of it.
Consider coaching some of the key people in your life in how to enhance your self-motivation or in how not to derail your motivation.

2. Very few people can perform at their best all day.
Keep track of the times of day when you are mentally most alert, when you are most communicative and when you are most creative.
Wherever possible plan to spend time doing the kind of task that comes easily at that time.
This avoids wasting energy to motivate yourself to go against your natural inclinations.

3. If there is a task you must do that doesn’t appeal to you and keeps getting put off, ask yourself, ‘What will it do for me when I’ve completed this?’
Focus on the bigger picture, rather than the actual task and you may find that it’s easier to get it done.

4. If you work well to deadlines (or to put it another way, you tend to leave things to the last minute!) then make life easier by keeping your diary clear in the run-up to important deadlines. That way you can focus on the work that has to be done for the deadline and not be distracted by other projects until it’s finished.

5. Take regular breaks.
You probably know this, but do you do it? The natural rhythm of brain and body means that few people can focus on the same thing in the same way for more than about 45 minutes.
When you start to feel restless, that’s a good indicator that it’s time for a change of pace for a few minutes.
Check your email or make a phone call or get a glass of water and then you may be surprised how easy it is to return to your original task.

6. Set yourself clear goals – long term, short term, weekly, daily.
Having clear outcomes is the greatest aid to motivation. The NLP well-formed outcomes pattern is probably the most useful aspect of NLP in all situations. Practice it until you can’t not do it.

7. Stimulate your brain.
Low motivation often comes from the stress of boredom and lack of opportunity to achieve something new.
Exposure to new ideas and different perspectives can create a new level of engagement with familiar tasks by prompting you to review your purpose, revise your approach or raise your standards.

Thanks for reading and if you would like to add a comment, please do so below.
kind regards,
Tom

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Is `average performance` good enough these days?

by Confident Factor on November 21, 2011

Reflecting on the part we play in the “big society”, I was struck by the clear divisions that existed amongst the general public.

Leaving political differences aside, it reminded me of the importance that strong communication and leadership must reach all view points, otherwise the objective and goal will fail.
Like any goal, to succeed you must have a clear plan of how you want to cascade, consult, engage, encourage others and measure it’s success.

The public sector embarks on massive change and will follow the private sector’s approach, which after all is “business as usual”.

With any people cost-management, you have high and low performers that are managed through an appraisal system. The high’s will progress internally/externally, whilst even protective organisations are compelled to get rid of dead wood.

In between these two, sits the average performer who determines the success of people cost-management.
Average performers can be frustrating because they are not as good and productive as we would like them to be. However, they are not bad or poor and often show more commitment via long hours, so how do you give them a tough appraisal?

Typical business colleagues performance is 20% high and 20% poor, with the remainder as average, meaning the appraisal system is geared to manage the high’s and low’s, but often this approach misses out on the majority.

This often leads appraisers to “gloss over” and “not confront” the average performers on missed targets as it’s often “safe territory” along with the other 60%.

You could say that the appraiser should learn “tough love” or the average performer should “work smarter” or even longer hours!

Maybe a fresh review of how we engage and manage our colleagues is required?

Developing both the appraiser and colleague, you reach a stage where the “average” sets their own targets within reason.

This encourages engagement and ownership by the “average” colleague and motivates the appraiser to coach the colleague between appraisals.

From experience, this improves the overall business performance, as high’s realise they have more competition and the poor’s are more aware of the widening gap from average, which often leads to a marked improvement too.

Courage should be shown when appraising poor performers, ensuring fairness and transparency. Regular reviews must be completed by appraisers who need to actively coach not manage performance.

It is possible to improve a business performance to 35-40% high and 5-10%% low, however the average’s contribution has dramatically improved as each bench mark increases, along with greater colleague satisfaction and ownership.

To learn more about how we can support your performance coaching and training programmes, please click on link below:

http://confidentfactor.com/business-programmes/confident-performance-3/

Thank-you for reading this and please feel free to comment

kind regards,

Tom

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Feeling low on energy post redundancy?

November 21, 2011

Of the many knock’s life can throw at us, redundancy must rank highly. It’s very tough, because you’ve not only lost your “safe” job, but you no longer have the financial and emotional security and that can eat away at your confidence. Although you may be one of many to suffer redundancy within your business, [...]

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Leadership – It’s in your top 10!

July 4, 2011

Throughout 30 years in business, I often think about “value leadership” and how to develop tomorrow’s leaders through coaching & training. Not surprisingly, great teams even like my beloved Arsenal, have great leaders which take many different forms. Already a celebrated polar explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton coordinated the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition with the goal [...]

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