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Management Update from your Library: a collection of interesting articles focusing on leadership and management.
How to Stop Procrastinating: Overcoming the Habit of Delaying Important Tasks
It’s Friday afternoon and the clock is ticking. You’re working furiously to complete a task before the five o’clock deadline, while silently cursing yourself for not starting it sooner.
How did this happen? What went wrong? Why did you lose your focus?
Well, there were the hours that you spent re-reading emails and checking social media, the excessive “preparation,” the coffee breaks, and the time spent on other tasks that you could have safely left for next week.
Sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone!
Procrastination is a trap that many of us fall into. In fact, according to researcher and speaker Piers Steel , 95 percent of us procrastinate to some degree. While it may be comforting to know that you’re not alone, it can be sobering to realize just how much it can hold you back.
In this article and video, we look at why it happens, and we explore strategies for managing and prioritizing your workload more effectively.
Motivation: Energizing Your People to Achieve Good Things
Your people may have all the expertise in the world but, if they’re not motivated, it’s unlikely that they’ll achieve their true potential.
On the other hand, work seems easy when people are motivated.
Motivated people have a positive outlook, they’re excited about what they’re doing, and they know that they’re investing their time in something that’s truly worthwhile. In short, motivated people enjoy their jobs and perform well.
All effective leaders want their organizations to be filled with people in this state of mind. That’s why it’s vital that you, as a leader and manager, keep your team feeling motivated and inspired. But of course, this can be easier said than done!
In this article, we’ll go over the key theories, strategies and tools that you can use to help your people stay enthusiastic about their work.
Motivating Yourself: Practical Tools and Strategies
Are you able to get excited about every task you need to do? Or do you sometimes need a bit more help to make a start, never mind getting the task done? Maybe you’re continuing to ignore those overflowing filing cabinets, instead of taking some time out to reorganize them.
Or, you’re avoiding that difficult conversation with a person who is always late, choosing instead to tolerate the tardiness. Perhaps you keep rearranging your priorities, so that the tasks you hate always end up at the bottom of the list.
The longer you delay doing something, the more stress and pressure you’re likely to feel. After a while, you may even start to lose confidence in your ability to complete the task at all.
Many of us sometimes need help getting motivated. And it can be very frustrating when we know we have to do something, but we just can’t get around to making a start. Read on for some tips on self-motivation.
Emotional Intelligence in Leadership: Learning How to Be More Aware
When you think of a “perfect leader,” what comes to mind?
You might picture someone who never lets his temper get out of control, no matter what problems he’s facing. Or you might think of someone who has the complete trust of her staff, listens to her team, is easy to talk to, and always makes careful, informed decisions.
These are qualities of someone with a high degree of emotional intelligence.
In this article, we’ll look at why emotional intelligence is so important for leaders – and how you, as a leader, can improve yours.
Becoming a More Patient Leader
Leading effectively — especially during a crisis — takes patience. If you can’t retain your composure in the face of frustration or adversity, you won’t be able to keep others calm.
If you want to build your patience, you need to recognize when it might be tested the most. If you know a challenge is coming, you can be more mindful about increasing your efforts to stay calm. A good way to manage the pressure you feel from the clock ticking is to reframe how you perceive time. Here are some helpful strategies…
Take Ownership of Your Future Self
Most people, when asked if they are the same person they were 10 years ago, will say no — but we have a much harder time seeing potential for change in the future. Gilbert and others refer to this as the “end of history illusion.” Despite awareness that our past self is clearly different than our present self, we tend to think that who we are right now is the “real” and “finished” version of ourselves, and our future self will be basically the same as who we are today. Gilbert puts it simply: “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.”
Your personality, skills, likes, and dislikes change over time — whether you’re intentional about that change or not. A recently published study that spanned more than 60 years found that the personalities of nearly all participants were completely different than they had been 60 years prior.
Change is inevitable, but it’s not out of your control. Below, we provide three strategies to help you become your desired future self.
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