Posts Tagged ‘work life balance’

“ReCentering Engagement & Performance”

Replay Now: webcasts.astd.org/webinar/815 

Insights + power tools + real-time strategies for transforming leadership engagement and performance. The content transcends business and the world of work, and is applicable to anyone seeking improvement in any area of living.

Engagement and performance transformation are the most essential skills for seizing opportunities, overcoming challenges and realizing goals.

“Engagement” is the moment you become aware of and choose to step-up to challenges, opportunities and goals.

“Performance” is everything that happens intellectually, emotionally and physically from the moment you engage, and as you move through the experience.

“Transformation” is improvement, development, positive change, doing and being better.

 You will learn how to:
>Leverage two types of engagement and performance happening every moment.
>Communicate more clearly and effectively.
>Think better, transform negative reactions faster and make creative decisions.
>Strengthen your capacity to focus, listen, comprehend and connect.
>Seize opportunities, overcome challenges and realize goals.
>Overcome distraction, procrastination and wasted time.
>Connect and collaborate better, faster, now.

ASTD is the world’s largest training and development association.

Replay Now: webcasts.astd.org/webinar/815 

“Remember you come here having already understood the necessity of struggling with yourself – only with yourself. Therefore, thank everyone who gives you the opportunity.” Gurdjieff

The world of work has never been more intense.

You’re more productive than ever. Even so, if you aren’t multitasking every second, you’re weighted down by the belief that not enough is getting done.

More than 8 out of 10 workers say they are stressed out at work. Being human has become all about doing in your real-time, 24/7, 365 always connected life. Keeping your mind above water is increasingly difficult. Forget work-life balance, embrace work-life blend.

Noise

Think about the vast quantities of content that you consume on a daily basis via email, text messages, social networks, the internet, television, radio, meetings and conversations. You’re swimming in a contextual field of data.

We have too much information, not enough transformation.

How much of this does anything to improve your life?

I have asked this question to thousands of business and education professionals. The most consistent answer is less than 10%.

Despite extensive information, education, learning and development, you think, feel and engage in the same ways over and over.

External Disruptions

Here’s a snapshot of your external noise:

You check your email approximately 36 times per hour at work. An executive in a large organization recently told me that she receives over 300 emails a day, seven days a week.

There are meetings. And, meetings about meetings. Emails remind you about upcoming meetings. Emails summarize what happened in meetings, filling the gaps when you were spaced out and disengaged.

People engage their cell phone 300 up to times each day.

Over 90% of employees day dream during meetings.

Over 37 billion dollars is wasted for unnecessary meetings in the US annually.

Colleagues have questions and gossip. People talking to you about what they did, or what they’re going to do, or what they would do if they could.

During one of my presentations, a manager revealed how stressful it is to engage with colleagues about non-work related topics knowing that work is piling up by the second. He said, “People are talking to me about trivial personal stuff, but I can’t hear them because all I can think about is the work I need to get done.”

Interruptions are continuous in the workplace. People who are interrupted take 50% longer to complete a task and make 50% more errors. It takes you sixteen minutes to get focused after each disruption.

All this external noise leaves you with an insistent feeling of incompleteness. You rarely feel a sense of completion about anything. The moment something is finished, you rush to the next thing. Occasionally, you stop to briefly ponder about why you’re always feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.

You switch tasks about every three minutes, and spend less than 60% of your day fully engaged and productive.

Internal Disruptions

Your consciousness is flooded with thoughts, emotional states, sensations, reactions and choices. As if the present moment isn’t enough, your mind drifts to the past and future.

Brain research has proven that we have approximately 70,000 thoughts per day. You’re capable of experiencing 411 different emotional states. The five senses are delivering additional content every moment.

Here’s a snapshot of your internal noise:

Your attention is dragged into a head trip about what happened last night, replaying the experience. In the next moment you’re stuck in a negative emotional state lingering from critical comments made by your manager. Next, your stomach rumbles with hunger pangs. Where to go for lunch?

This internal noise happens in less than sixty-seconds while you’re attempting to get something completed. You’re mostly unaware of the absurdity of this situation.

External disruptions are minor compared to the internal disruptions we experience every moment.

Intensity Avoidance

You carry wrong views about life intensity. Your habitual reactions are to avoid intense situations and people.

You’re irritated, angry and judgmental about the difficult people in your life. You think, “My life would be great, if only I didn’t have to deal with __________. You fail to notice, as soon as a problem is resolved; you’re immediately obsessing about something else.

One Critical Insight

The intensity happening in your life delivers the energetic opportunity to become more. You’re running away from the things you need to realize your next levels of success.

Intense situations, persistent challenges and diverse people are the best opportunities we have to transform engagement.

Transforming engagement is the most essential now-next skill. There is unstoppable power in learning how to use intensity to think, speak, feel and choose better and faster.

3 Things

You need three things to create and sustain engagement transformation:

Insights

A steady stream of insights delivers knowledge for creatively managing and transforming your engagement. Without insights, you’re stuck in habitual ways of thinking, speaking, feeling and reacting.

Power Tools

Power tools enable you to use intensity to create transformation. The x-factor for creating and sustaining positive change. Too often, learning and development lacks practical tools. It’s essential that you have a “toolbox” full of tools. Use the ones that work; forget the ones that don’t; keep acquiring more. Power tools convert insights into transformation in the moment.

Real-time Strategies

In order for insights and power tools to be effective, you must know exactly when, where and how to engage. The more you can determine this in advance, the better your chances of making positive change in the moment.

Without insights, power tools and real-time strategies, distractions, disruptions and intensity are reduced to noise.

Insights + Power Tools + Real-time Strategies = Better-Faster Engagement Transformation

“Do it. Be it. Become it. Don’t stop no matter what happens.” Michael Clark

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Join over 10,000 professionals by following me on Twitter: @ReCenterMoment

To bring the direct experience of engagement transformation to your team go to www.ReCenter.org

[slideshare id=25288670&doc=yourmostessentialnow-nextleadershipskill-130815153248-phpapp02]

This is a portrait of engagement transformation, your most essential now-next leadership skill:

• Your intellectual head trips are silent; attention is simultaneously centered and divided between tasks and self, communication is clear and precise.

• Your emotions are directly connected to purpose, passion and values, broadcasting positive frequencies to team members, and resilient in the midst of adversity and disruptions.

• Your physical body is upright, relaxed, poised and grounded, activating better and faster decision making.

Intellectual + emotional + physical performance engaged in the present moment workflow = Engagement transformation

Leadership and employee engagement were important long before the topic started trending, and will continue to be critical long after the buzzword fades.

According to a recent report released by Gallup , 70% of the American workforce is not engaged, costing US organizations between $450 – $550 million each year in lost productivity. These numbers have been verified in countless other research studies, and have remained the same for as long as research has been conducted on the subject of engagement.

The Solution

Engagement transformation is the most essential skill, the solution to seizing opportunities, overcoming challenges & realizing goals.

 Whether we realize it or not, every effort to improve anything involves engagement transformation. Engagement transformation is the skill behind and above all skill development.

Organizations and the products and services they create, exist to transform some aspect of the customer’s engagement and performance. Successful companies actively train, develop, coach, empower and recognize engagement and performance in their leaders and employees.

Transformation Defined

“Engagement” is the moment we become aware of and choose to step-up to challenges, opportunities and goals. Engaged leaders and employees sustain a continuous improvement mindset.

“Performance” is everything that happens intellectually, emotionally and physically from the moment we engage, and as we move through the experience. The best leaders and employees know exactly how to align and integrate intellectual, emotional and physical performance into moment-to-moment workflow.

“Transformation” is improvement, development, positive change, doing and being better.

Three Core Areas of Engagement

Every leader and employee can learn how to align, engage and transform three areas of performance:

• Intellectual Performance: Improving critical thinking, problem solving and verbal and written communication.

• Emotional Performance: Improving how we experience, manage communicate and transform emotional states.

• Physical Performance: Transforming negative reactions into better, faster choices and effectively managing stress.

No Accidents

An employee’s direct supervisor or manager is the most powerful influencer in determining performance quality. Transformation does not happen by accident or good intentions. With the right insights, tools and strategies, leadership, employee and customer engagement can be quickly transformed.

Real-Time Strategies

What exactly are you doing to guide, support and recognize your personal transformation?

What exactly is your manger-supervisor doing to guide, support and recognize employee engagement and performance transformation?

What exactly is your executive team and human resources department doing to guide, support and recognize employee engagement and performance transformation?

“Micro-manage yourself, lead others.” Michael Clark

Photo by John Laborde.

If you liked this post, please share it, and consider subscribing to my blog.

Join over 5,000 professionals with me on Twitter: @ReCenterMoment

To bring the direct experience of engagement transformation to your team go to www.ReCenter.org

“Michael and Justin recently shared their online learning platform experiment with us and our IQ’s literally jumped 10 points!” Kevin W. Grossman, Founder and Writer Reach-West & #TChat Co-Founder

Social Learning Events

• Google + Hangout: Tim McDonald, Talent Culture and Huffington Post Live Community Manager, conduced a Google + Hangout sneak peek video with Michael Clark. View here: http://ht.ly/jnadR

• Blog Post: Michael Clark’s blog post about social learning and engagement-performance transformation in social business is posted on the Talent Culture website. Read here: http://goo.gl/ULsIQ

• Radio Show: Michael Clark appeared on Talent Culture-#TChat Radio with Justin Mass, Sr. Manager, Learning Technology & Design at Adobe on Tuesday, March 26, 4:30pm PST. You can listen toThe Social Learning Show here: http://ht.ly/jn6or 

• Twitter Chat: Michael Clark co-moderated with Justin Mass the Twitter #TChat on Wednesday, March 27, 2013. Here’s the Twitter #TChat preview questions created by Michael Clark http://goo.gl/5Tm2G

• Twitter Chat Trends: The Twitter Talent Culture #TChat trended above two hot topics, “Game of Thrones” and “Marriage Equality”. See here: http://ow.ly/i/1M17x 

• Twitter Chat Slideshow Recap: Digging Deep into Social Learning #TChat Recap is a storify of the best tweets from the chat. Read here: http://goo.gl/d02C4