Do you feel stressed and overloaded? Or that your career seems stalled? If so, then you may need to brush up your delegation skills!

If you work on your own, there’s only a limited amount that you can do, however hard you work. You can only work so many hours in a day. There are only so many tasks you can complete in these hours. There are only so many people you can help by doing these tasks. And, because the number of people you can help is limited, your success is limited.

However, if you’re good at your job, people will want much more than this from you. This can lead to a real sense of pressure and work overload: you can’t do everything that everyone wants, and this can leave you stressed, unhappy, and feeling that you’re letting people down.

On the positive side, however, you’re being given a tremendous opportunity if you can find a way around this limitation. If you can realize this opportunity, you can be genuinely successful!

One of the most common ways of overcoming this limitation is to learn how to delegate your work to other people. If you do this well, you can quickly build a strong and successful team of people, well able to meet the demands that others place. This is why delegation is such an important skill, and is one that you absolutely have to learn! Read more…

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_98.htm?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mtpage

No two people think or act in exactly the same way. For this reason, when you bring any group of people together for the first time, you have the potential for misunderstanding and conflict. However these differences can – when well managed – lead to better performance by individuals, teams and organizations.

Consider your own workplace for a moment. Are you fortunate enough to work somewhere that doesn’t just accept people’s differences but actively celebrates them? Or does it sometimes feel as if distrust and prejudice are part of the culture? The chances are your organization falls somewhere in the middle, and there may be room for improvement.

In this article, we’ll explore why it’s important to accept other people, and how you can encourage your team members to welcome diversity. We’ll help you to identify when their behaviour toward one another is unacceptable, and offer ways to support people in speaking up about it.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/tolerance-workplace.htm?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mtpage

“Oh, no!” I thought as soon as I spotted the email in my inbox. The message that prompted my sense of dread wasn’t a cancer diagnosis, a huge financial loss, or even a missed deadline. It was an email from a good friend, inviting me to attend an event that evening — a night I had planned for “me time,” including doing some cleaning for a party, running errands, and writing Christmas cards.

To be clear: I’m far from antisocial. I am usually out with people three or four nights a week. I really did like this friend, and the event sounded interesting. I am open to spontaneous invites, and I had accepted about three of them the week before. But on that particular day, my innate emotional response told me that I needed to keep my evening free to preserve an overall sense of peace, spaciousness, and order in my life.

But another part of me felt guilty about declining the invitation just to have time to myself. It felt like telling a guy you can’t go on a date because you need to wash your hair. So I went back and forth all day about it: Could I get my to-do list done before events later in the week? In my rank of priorities, friends are more important than my home, so was I being a bad friend?

In the end, I didn’t go to the event. I let my friend know I would be open to attending the event in the future but I already had some plans for that evening. The decision led to a peaceful evening and nice flow to the rest of the week.

This situation highlights a truth I’ve been exploring with my time-coaching clients over the last year. To feel most joyful and satisfied, you need to not only accomplish certain priority items but also prioritize certain experiences of time. In this case, I needed the experience of “breathing room.” I wanted to savor tasks like writing Christmas cards instead of feeling like I was working on an assembly line where efficiency was the only goal.

Sometimes, very small shifts in how you use your time can make the difference between feeling focused and productive at work, with energy left over for home, and feeling like you’re pulling yourself through the day in a fog of exhaustion only to collapse on the couch at night. For example, make it a rule to have at least 15 minutes between meetings to wrap up your notes, get a drink of water, and have a moment to breathe. Even those few minutes can help you feel good about what you accomplished and leave the office satisfied — instead of feeling overwhelmed by loose ends and. Is having 15-minute gaps technically the most efficient? No. But can it be effective at helping you finish tasks and feel like you have space to think? Absolutely. The same principle holds true for blocking out a few hours of uninterrupted time each week to move ahead on a priority project or to exercise.

Unfortunately, these sorts of experiences often get pushed out or devalued in traditional productivity advice, particularly when it comes to our work. As a time investment expert, I’m interested in ways you can push back and reclaim the joy in your time. Because as Brené Brown shares in her talk on The Price of Invulnerability, “So often we’re missing what’s truly important because we’re on the quest for what is extraordinary.”

Here’s how to reclaim your desired experiences of time:

Define what success feels like for you. Get clear on your desired experience of time. For me, it’s really important to have the ability to calmly prepare for projects at work or activities at home, exercise regularly, and be completely present with people. To another person, the mountaintop may be feeling like they can pick up and leave on the weekend to go skiing or hiking. For others, the ideal could be simply having the bandwidth to stop and pay attention when someone asks him a question.

Be honest about “must do” activities. It’s amazing how often we think of something and then turn it into a burden or obligation when it was self-generated. The truth is that it’s completely up to us whether we complete the task or do the activity. If you want a different experience of time, be honest about what truly needs to happen to make life work. These “must do” activities should then find a place on your calendar to get done. The “would like to do” activities can go on a separate list that you can either move ahead on as you have time or hire someone else to do. This is especially critical for those who choose not to work full-time. Often, they think they should be able to fit everything into their schedule, which can end up making them more stressed than those who do work 40+ hours a week.

Under-schedule your calendar. The ideal amount of meeting time varies from position to position. But as a general rule, you’ll end up with your best experience of time if you have four hours or less of meetings per day, or group your meetings together on certain days so that you have one or more meeting-free days. Outside of work, your life can feel much calmer if you have at least one unscheduled weekday evening and at least half of a weekend day that’s more relaxed. During that open space, block in time to move ahead on projects and activities that are important to you. Open space doesn’t mean that you don’t intend to do anything, but it does mean that you can focus on something without feeling like you need to rush through it and quickly move on to something else in 30 minutes. To maximize the value of this time, close your e-mail tab and silence your phone (or at least the random alerts) so you can be open to the activity of the moment.

Decline activities and tasks that aren’t aligned. Once you’ve set aside this time, stick to it. Many people feel pressured to accept new tasks or projects just because they see the open space on their calendar. But remember, you’ve set aside this time for a reason: to focus on your own priorities. When someone asks you to do something that would cut into that time, you need to give yourself permission to decline if that activity isn’t aligned with your goals. You’re not lying to say you’re booked or at capacity when you have set aside the time for yourself.

Savor the beauty of the everyday. The key to happiness may have nothing to do with fitting something more in your schedule — and may have everything to do with stopping to enjoy what’s already there. I wake up two hours before I need to be at my desk so that I can savor the beauty of mornings. I make it a point to be thankful for my food or to take in the beauty of the greenery outside my window and to think, pray, and journal. Those two hours are an important source of happiness for me because I’m attuned to noticing and appreciating the good in them. Science has shown that focusing on positive cues and showing appreciation for them can lead to an increase in feelings of happiness in a matter of days. Even a few minutes of relishing something that you usually rush through can reduce depression.

In this holiday season, and especially in the New Year, give yourself permission to prioritize your desired experience of your time, not just your priority items.

https://hbr.org/2015/12/commit-to-under-scheduling-in-2016

Many scientific researchers work day in, day out to pursue goals that will take years, decades, or even generations to achieve. Their progress is often painstakingly slow, they likely receive little feedback, and they know that success isn’t guaranteed.

However, despite the odds, they find enough meaning and motivation to keep working towards their objectives. Because of their long-term focus, we’ve all benefited from life-saving advances in areas such as vaccination, CT scanning, antibiotic development – and very many others.

It’s clear that people who maintain focus on long-term goals can achieve much bigger things than those who jump from idea to idea, or those who give up after the slightest setback. So, how can you keep focus on long-term goals, especially when you have to contend with everyday distractions and other urgent tasks?

This article looks at strategies that you can use to focus on your long-term goals.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/long-term-focus.htm?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mtpage

Bad news for the self-proclaimed multitasker: research continues to debunk the myth that you can productively do more than one task at a time. The human brain simply isn’t designed to function this way. Attempting to divide your focus increases stress and decreases performance.

Unfortunately, however, most workplaces are not conducive to focus. They are full of urgent and attractive interruptions that reduce our ability to devote attention in a way that produces both high-quality results and pleasurable engagement. Evidence of our attention’s fragility continues to mount. A ringing phone damages productivity, but even a small vibration can impose a substantial cognitive tax. And if that weren’t enough, additional studies show just the presence of a phone undermines our focus and weakens interpersonal connections.

Persistent interruptions become especially insidious when we are unaware of the powerful role our surroundings play in shaping our thoughts, moods, and choices. I call this being environmentally unconscious. Think of the last time you were reading a book on a flight. As the sun set and the cabin darkened, you began to strain in order to see the words on the page. The gradual change in your environment happened outside your awareness without triggering the obvious fix: turning on the overhead light.

Modern office interruptions seem similarly subliminal. For example, email alert chimes trigger feelings of anxiety and curiosity. In order to relieve the itch, many people disengage from a more important task to check their inbox or phone. While they may not enjoy this disruption, few people pause to consider that they can control it by silencing the phone — or better yet, silencing the phone and banishing it to a purse or drawer, out of view.

Simply gritting your teeth and attempting to ignore nagging interruptions doesn’t work. Here are five ways to take control of your environment so it stops controlling you.

Monitor emotions. Try this little experiment: The next 10 times you allow yourself to be interrupted, stop and ask, “What was I feeling immediately before I switched tasks?” Most of our interruptions are addictive responses — learned tactics for avoiding uncomfortable emotions.

In a small experiment, I asked college students to journal their interruptions, and I found that over 90% of task switches were a response to feelings of anxiety, boredom, or loneliness. Becoming more aware of the motives behind your response to seductive interruptions will help you develop healthier strategies for managing your feelings — and for resisting that email or phone alert.

Take the easy wins. Unconscious anxiety about incomplete tasks can also make you vulnerable to distraction. Rather than letting worry take control, help yourself focus by simply knocking off a few high-anxiety but low-complexity tasks from your list. Anything on your to-do list that’s unfinished draws on your attention. And the interesting thing is that, as David Allen points out in his book Getting Things Done, the low-complexity tasks draw disproportionately from that finite reserve of attention.

For example, “Finding a cure for cancer” attracts more of your attention than “Setting a lunch appointment with the boss.” However, this latter task tends to draw more than it deserves. So, free up mental energy by simply knocking off any task that takes less than two minutes to finish before focusing on the cure for cancer.

Structure solitude. Carve out time and space for focus. Learn what your most productive times of day are, then schedule blocks of time for concentrated work on complex tasks. And don’t just schedule the time: create a ritual around building a peaceful space. Turn off phones, alerts, and even internet access, if you can. Give yourself a temporal and spatial oasis and then enjoy the space. At first, you may experience withdrawal pains (see #1 above). But hang with it.

Build your attention muscle. Attention is a muscle, and the appeal of interruptions is evidence of atrophy or underdevelopment. But the stronger the muscle grows, the longer you can focus on a task. Carl Sandburg shares a relevant story in his book Abraham Lincoln. An observer saw Lincoln sitting on a log, lost in thought as he wrestled with an especially vexing issue. Hours later, the observer happened by him again, still in the same position. All at once, a light broke across his face and he returned to his office. Lincoln had the ability to sit with a problem long enough that it surrendered its secrets to him. Be patient as your muscle grows. Time how long you can focus. Allow yourself to increase your sessions of structured solitude gradually to match your ability.

You can also build the muscle by using some of your drive and commute time to simply sit still and allow your mind to sort and present ideas to you. Turn off all media and let your mind relax and follow its own agenda for a fixed period of time. Try five minutes if it’s difficult, then increase the time as you discover the creative and therapeutic value of silence.

Take a problem on a walk. If the office environment makes it difficult to exclude interruption, develop a walking plan. Take an interesting and important problem with you on the walk. Moving your body can supplement mental activity. And you’ll be less likely to encounter interruptions while in motion.

You don’t get to vote on whether our interruption-driven world is influencing you. Instead, you’ve got two choices: take control of these distractions or let them control you. If you allow the latter to happen, interruptions will undermine your performance, increase your stress, and weaken your capacity to pay attention.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. If and when you take control of the things that control you, you can reap the benefits of our always-online world without so many of the costs.

https://hbr.org/2015/12/5-ways-to-minimize-office-distractions

In our contemporary offices and always-busy lives, alone time can be difficult to come by. But successful creative thinkers share a need for solitude. They make a practice of turning away from the distractions of daily life to give their minds space to reflect, make new connections, and find meaning.

Great thinkers and leaders throughout history — from Virginia Woolf to Marcel Proust to Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak — have lauded the importance of having a metaphorical room of one’s own. But today’s culture overemphasizes the importance of constant social interaction, due in part to social media. We tend to view time spent alone as time wasted or as an indication of an antisocial or melancholy personality. Instead, we should see it as a sign of emotional maturity and healthy psychological development. Of course, positive social interactions and collaboration are a critical part of a healthy workplace. But while some people may be inspired by experience and interacting with others, it is often in solitary reflection that ideas are crystallized and insights formed. As author and biochemist Isaac Asimov wrote in his famous essay on the nature of creativity, “Creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display.”

Now science has reinforced what countless artists and innovators have known: solitary reflection feeds the creative mind. In recent years, neuroscientists have discovered that we tend to get our best ideas when our attention is not fully engaged in our immediate environment or the task at hand. When we’re not focusing on anything in particular — instead letting the mind wander or dip into our deep storehouse of memories, ideas, and emotions — the brain’s default mode network is activated. Many of our most original insights arise from the activity of this network, or as we like to call it, the “imagination network.”

Its three main components — personal meaning making, mental simulation, and perspective taking — often work together when we’re reflecting. Using many regions across the brain, the imagination network enables us to remember the past, think about the future, see other perspectives and scenarios, comprehend stories, understand ourselves, and create meaning from our experiences.

As mentioned above, activating this network requires deep internal reflection — the state that many artists and philosophers refer to when describing how they arrive at their most original ideas. This type of reflection is facilitated by solitude, which is why we often get creative insights when we’re relaxing or doing mundane, habitual tasks like showering or washing the dishes.

Unfortunately, most people rarely give themselves time for purposeful contemplation. While the modern workplace is often not conducive to this type of alone time, there are things managers and their teams can do to reclaim solitude and improve their ability to think creatively — without diminishing collaboration.

One solution is to give employees the flexibility to work remotely, particularly when they’re focused on creative assignments that require them to generate new and original ideas. Another is to designate an office or conference room for quiet work. But most of all, managers should let employees know that they’ll respect their individual work styles, and that slipping away from their desks to think in solitude is OK. In fact, managers should actively encourage this, as well as urge employees to take all of their vacation days. Having time for periodic rest and reflection will give your team the space to replenish their creative energy.

https://hbr.org/2015/12/executives-protect-your-alone-time

For all the hard work to improve coordination and collaboration in health care, most hospitals are still organized into silos based on clinical specialties — and communication among them is uneven at best. Teams may function fairly well within silos, but coordination across them is often poor, which has potentially serious consequences for patients. One coordination breakdown that I studied involved a routine CT scan that should have taken only a few hours from order to execution but, because of failed coordination across silos, took four days. Everyone in the chain did a good job within the confines of their local teams, but they didn’t consider how they fit into the bigger picture.

The solution to these problems is to shift focus from the structure to the activities of teamwork — what I call “teaming.” Teaming involves fluid, collaborative, interdependent work across shifting projects and with a shifting mix of partners, often across organizational boundaries. Think of it as teamwork on the fly.

Few industries present more teaming opportunities — or have a greater need for it — than health care. Why?

First, many patient-care tasks require the real-time integration of diverse skills and expertise, and the 24/7 operations of hospitals and other clinical delivery systems require sophisticated coordination across shifts. Hospitalized patients may interact with as many as 60 caregivers during an average hospital stay. A job as simple as ordering and conducting a CT scan can require people in a half-dozen different clinical roles to each do a unique task, all of which must come together to produce the desired image. This can unfold in one of two ways. The first, typical of most delivery systems, is that each expert carries out his or her task at a time and in a manner that optimizes his or her department’s efficiency. This can increase throughput time from the desired couple of hours to a full day, and sometimes even longer. In the second approach, experts coordinate their actions to optimize the whole procedure and to minimize patient discomfort. Unfortunately, this approach is rare, because of how clinicians have been socialized historically and how the work is spontaneously framed, a point I revisit below. Second, busy emergency departments depend on fast-paced communication among a constantly shifting mix of physicians, nurses, and other caregivers. Communication is essential for triaging, treating, and discharging patients who arrive in an unpredictable stream and with diverse needs. Status differences, such as those that exist between physicians and nurses and between attending physicians and residents, contribute to misunderstanding, hesitation to speak up, errors, and long throughput times for patients.

And finally, a growing number of patients with chronic diseases and multiple comorbidities interact frequently with many different specialists and parts of the health care system (clinics, hospitals, home health aides, and more). More often than not, patients themselves are left on their own to navigate the system and integrate volumes of instruction and advice. This gives rise to risks such as toxic drug interactions, readmissions, and other care failures — harmful and expensive side effects of inadequate teaming.

In short, teaming is critical in health care. But it doesn’t happen spontaneously. It takes leadership. What can leaders do to facilitate effective teaming? Three simple (but not easy) things:

Frame the work

The first leadership task is to frame the work for others. A frame is a set of taken-for-granted assumptions that powerfully shape how we see a situation. In health care, for example, a common (and antiquated) frame is that individual expertise, provided by separate experts, is key to solving patient problems and adds up to optimal care. Our frames are shaped by our past experiences and cultural beliefs. Framing is not bad or good; it’s simply inevitable, and leaders can (and often must) override the spontaneous frames we bring to the workplace.

The reframe that’s needed in healthcare is to call explicit and unrelenting attention to the interdependence of the work. This reframe is needed because the culture of medicine is steeped in an expertise mindset, a mindset that deeply values individual training, knowledge, and action. Although vital, individual expertise is no longer sufficient to produce optimal patient care. Because organizational culture (particularly in medicine) is slow to change, many clinicians’ mindsets haven’t kept up with the need to think differently about how their expertise fits into a larger picture. The clinician’s emphasis on what he or she can do for the patient in a given clinical situation thus often obscures an appreciation for how that expertise fits into the larger context.

As Chief Operating Officer at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis, Julie Morath provided a great example of framing the work to help clinicians become aware of how their individual work interacted with others’ in ways that could prevent harm. To do this, she introduced the systems theory of healthcare delivery to the hospital, organizing discussion groups and building a team of key influencers to broadcast the message that “health care is a very complex system, and complex systems are, by their very nature, risk-prone.” (For more, see the case study here.) As clinicians in the hospital started to see their work in this new light, they became willing to proactively ask what others needed, what they were thinking, and what questions they had. This change led to them asking how different activities fit together and collaborating with people across clinical groups to catch and correct errors and ensure the continuity of care.

Make it safe

The second leadership task is to recognize and combat the subtle ways in which a lack of psychological safety can inhibit teaming when caregivers are reluctant to ask questions or challenge others (particularly those of higher status), for instance by questioning a medication order. Consider the challenge of coordinating your work with others’ under constantly shifting conditions with different participants of different ranks. The interpersonal hurdles are obvious. Only in environments that are psychologically safe can people team unselfconsciously and without self-censorship.

Leaders play a critical role in creating such environments in health care by emphasizing the risky and uncertain nature of the enterprise and by asking thoughtful, probing questions. This serves two important functions. Asking questions models the curiosity that can be literally lifesaving in health care environments, and it also provides a direct invitation for others to speak up. In one study, Yale professor Ingrid Nembhard and I found that ICU medical directors who asked frequent questions built more psychologically safe workplaces, which in turn fostered more learning and quality improvement in their teams.

Build facilitating structures

Finally, leaders must create structures that make teaming easier, including systematic communication tools like SBAR (situation, background, assessment, and recommendation) that structure clinical interactions in ways that improve hand-offs and lower the risk of crucial omissions related to a patient’s care. Implementing structures can also mean redesigning facilities to force cross-disciplinary collaboration in the care of complex patients, as in the example of MD Anderson’s Cancer Center. Between these small and large teaming structures, leaders can impose mid-level structures that facilitate teaming in rapidly changing environments. In a recent study, Stanford Professor Melissa Valentine and I showed that implementing structures we called “team scaffolds” — temporary assignments of individuals to groupings of interdisciplinary clinicians — lead to greater collaboration and efficiency in a large emergency department in an urban hospital. What was most surprising about our results was how very little structure can go a long way in improving teaming processes and outcomes.

Getting started

The challenge is that superb teaming only happens when people overcome deeply ingrained mindsets and habits — some of which are longstanding cultural features of the medical profession. The good news, however, is that it is easy to get started. Framing, or more accurately reframing, the work can be done tomorrow, at no cost, in any healthcare system. When leaders are willing to embrace reality, acknowledge the challenges ahead, and invite others to step up and help solve complex interdependent problems, change is already under way.

https://hbr.org/2015/12/the-kinds-of-teams-health-care-needs

Imagine the colleague with whom you have a very challenging relationship, the person who makes the most innocuous conversation tense and uncomfortable. Regardless of the topic, this person opposes you and approaches things as an adversary rather than an ally.

Once you can visualize that person vividly and even viscerally, imagine the following scenario: You’re sitting at your desk working away when a message from that person pops up on your screen. You open the message and it reads: “I got the draft presentation you sent. I caught a couple of mistakes, and I have some ideas for how to make it better. I’ll drop by your office at 3 PM to discuss.”

How does that email make you feel: angry, defensive, or anxious? Are you suddenly looking for an excuse to be out of the office at 3 PM? All of those are very common reactions. Many people would think, “What a jerk, looking for mistakes in my presentation!” or “Yeah, I BET she has a few ideas — she thinks she’s so smart!”

Now, wipe that person out of your mind. Instead, conjure up the colleague with whom you get along really well, the person who always has your back. This is the person you go to when you want to calibrate on an important issue. Once you have that person in mind, imagine this scenario: You’re sitting at your desk working away when a message from the person pops up on your screen. You open the message and it reads: “I got the draft presentation you sent. I caught a couple of mistakes, and I have some ideas for how to make it better. I’ll drop by your office at 3 PM to discuss.”

Now how do you feel: Relieved? Grateful? If you’re like the thousands of people I have posed this question to, you’re probably interested in and looking forward to the conversation. You may even fill up the candy dish on your desk in anticipation. That’s how profoundly your assumptions and prejudices affect your perceptions. What’s worse is that if you consider how differently the meeting at 3 PM will go, the exact same message from two different people leads to radically different outcomes.

In the meeting with the supposed adversary, you assume the worst, and perhaps without even realizing it, your mindset, your response, and especially your body language become negative and resistant. Seeing your behavior, your colleague gets defensive and hostile in return, which begets (and justifies) more deeply adversarial behavior from you, and so on. The result is that you both shut down, trust erodes, and the organization loses a chance to get a better outcome.

In stark contrast, in the meeting with your perceived ally, you assume the best, and your words and actions demonstrate openness and even enthusiasm for the ideas. You share and learn, the quality of the work improves, and the trust between you grows.

The best antidote to this destructive dynamic is mindfulness. Being aware of the assumptions you’re making gives you an opportunity to reverse the ill effects of your prejudices.

For the next few days, pay attention to how you react to things your colleagues say and do. Tune in to your body, because it will give you the clues: When does your heart race? What makes you clench your fists? When do you raise your voice? When do you aggressively lean into the table, and when do you shut down and back away?

Each time you feel yourself reacting, stop and think about what’s going on with you. What are you assuming or inferring that is leading to the negative reaction? Notice that the most intense reactions are triggered when you assume things about the other person’s character or motives or make inferences about what the person thinks of your character or capability. Did you assume that your teammate is a jerk, or stupid, or out to get you? Did you interpret his comments as suggesting that you’re not smart enough, not likeable, or not going to make it? Just becoming aware of your negative assumptions will be a valuable (if somewhat uncomfortable) step.

Once you’re aware of your default conclusion, try a more productive hypothesis. The simplest approach is to replace an assumption about the person’s character with an attribution about the situation. Instead of “He’s a jerk for pointing out the mistakes,” you might instead think, “Maybe the importance of this presentation caused him to have especially high standards.” This will make you more generous and empathetic and generate a better conversation.

The same holds for inferences you make about yourself. Instead of concluding that your teammate thinks you’re stupid (a blanket statement about your worth), make it about your behavior in the situation: “Maybe she thinks I didn’t present enough evidence for why this is the best approach.”

Framing concerns as situational doesn’t preclude negative feelings about your colleague’s behavior, but the situational interpretation will feel much less adversarial and judgmental and will lead to a more productive interaction. If you master that approach, push yourself to the next step and search for a positive motive behind words and actions that you resent.

For example, the most common reaction to the email above is to assume that the person was out to get you. You could choose instead to assume that your colleague was looking out for you by making sure you didn’t present a document with errors in it. You could choose to believe that the 3 PM meeting shows the person is interested and invested in your work and wants to collaborate. These aren’t preposterous, Pollyanna assumptions—you made them naturally when the offer of help came from someone you trusted. By becoming more mindful of your thoughts and then substituting positive assumptions for negative ones, you’ll improve the dynamic on your team without even opening your mouth.

Still, to reap the full benefit of this mindful approach, you have one more step: Show outwardly the curiosity you’re modeling internally. Ask a question to demonstrate your openness to your colleague’s perspective: “You think I should take the presentation in a different direction. What is your vision for where to take the story?” Or “You disagree with me about a couple of the data points in the document. What are you basing your numbers on?”

See how the conversation is immediately transformed? Now it’s two people trying to solve a problem together instead of two people in a tug-of-war over who is more right. As soon as you change this framing for the conversation, you engage a different part of the brain, leading to a much more constructive discussion. (For interesting evidence on how reappraisal draws upon the prefrontal cortex, away from the adversarial process of the amygdala, see‪ this research on self-control from Hassin et al., 2010.)

Only when you become mindful of your biases can you choose a more constructive path. Positive assumptions make you open to progress; negative assumptions mire you in the past. It’s time to get over your prejudices and start being mindful of how to get value from everyone on your team.

https://hbr.org/2015/12/a-mental-trick-to-help-with-challenging-conversations

A ward at Burton’s Queen’s Hospital has been given a new identity as the culmination of 12 months of improvements to the provision of care for frail, elderly people.

Ward 4 has been re-named the ‘Acute Older Person’s Ward’ and an afternoon of celebrations was held to mark the occasion and other recent enhancements to the care of older patients. This move followed the launch in October – by the Trust that runs Queen’s Hospital – of the Elderly People Assistance and Care (EPAC) model – believed to be the first of its kind in the UK.

The EPAC model was developed to empower all clinical staff to deliver an enhanced level of care to older patients, which addresses both their holistic and medical needs on an individual basis.

http://www.fabnhsstuff.net/2015/12/15/burton-hospitals-dedicates-ward-older-patients/

The culture of the National Health Service (NHS) should be sustained by the core values in the NHS Constitution including respect and dignity, compassion and inclusion. Given the diversity of the NHS workforce, these values have particular resonance.

Recent research demonstrates that very little progress has been made in the past 20 years to address discrimination against black and minority ethnic (BME) staff in the NHS. There is evidence too of discrimination experienced by many other groups including women, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) staff, people with disabilities and religious groups.

The King’s Fund was commissioned by NHS England to assess the scale of this problem.

http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/files/kf/field/field_publication_file/Making-the-difference-summary-Kings-Fund-Dec-2015.pdf