Work life balance: What is it and how do you get it?

Work life balance has been a buzz word for the last 5 years, every body wants it and job adverts are increasingly focusing on it? However, what does it REALLY mean and how do you get it?

Read our newest article to find out more

http://www.incitecoaching.com.au/articles/work%20life%20balance.pdf

Navigating the job market: Alternatives to using agencies and online job boards

Are you looking for a new job and getting frustrated that your efforts to seek work in the "usual" ways are not working? Are you spending hours trauling through online job boards with little or no success? Does the thought of sitting in yet another recruitment agency interview make you want to bang your head against the wall?

Read this article to find out some alternatives to navigating the market place and making it work for you!

Enjoy

http://www.incitecoaching.com.au/articles/Navigating%20the%20job%20market%20Alternatives%20to%20recruitment%20agencies%20and%20online%20job%20boards.pdf

What's in a name?

When looking for a new job, what are the key factors that you look for? Is it the company? Is it the pay? Maybe the culture?

For too many people, the position title takes a huge importance in their decision making. But what does a position title actually mean?

Check out http://www.incitecoaching.com.au/articles/Job%20Titles%20What's%20in%20a%20Name.pdf

Are you courageous or merely conforming?

Have you ever wondered what drives successful people? It's the courage to take calculated risks and learn from ALL their experiences.

“The opposite of courage in these days is not cowardice, it is conformity”
Anthony Robbins (May 2009)

How courageous are you? What can you do to increase your success in the current economic climate?

Find out here:

http://www.incitecoaching.com.au/articles/Courage%20Vs%20Conformity.pdf

Masterful Communication

Do you communicate what you actually want to? Do you get the responses that you desire when communicating with others?

Have you ever been in a situation where you've been so worried about getting the content of your communication just right, that you forget to look at the person that you are speaking to, wait for responses or even listen to what they are saying?

Quite often we get so caught up in what we are going to say to our boss, colleague or friend, that we put more focus on that than how we say it.

Scarily only 7% of our communication comes from the actual words we use....learn how to make the most of the other 93% and become a master communicator.

Read more......

Define your Direction

I can't emphasize enough the importance of goal setting. Do you know where you are headed?

It has been found that 90% of those people who have achieved great success had a vision or a goal. What is yours?

To maximise the effectiveness of your goal, ensure that is is concise and that you clearly know what the outcome will look like, sound like and how it will make you feel.

Write your goal in positive tense, so that it is as if it has already happened, and put a date on it so that you know when you will achieve it. If you always write "next month I will make enough for an overseas holiday," then guess what? It will always happen next month!

Invest time in creating compelling goals and go about making them happen. Enjoy the process.

Articulate your message

What is the difference between a computer technician who does a re-install on your system and charges $50/hr and one who does exactly the same work and charges $200/hr?

You may think experience is the key, or how quickly they can do the job. Really it is the technicians ability to articulate their value and worth to you. If you perceive that you are getting good value for money then you will be more likely to pay the $200. However if you perceive the service to be expensive (even if it is the cheaper quote) then you will not pay.

We are all in some form of sales. Whether it is selling yourself at an interview, selling an idea for a night out to friends or selling that it is time to go to bed to your children. We are salesmen/women all day without even realising it!

Learn how to articulate your message well to start getting what you really want!

Get Creative

Every week there is more and more talk about the economy turning south and increased publicity about how hard it is to make a profit. Clients are constantly telling me that they are struggling to sell their business, products or themselves.

I was on the bus coming out of the city last night, after attending an event and was amazed to see that EVERY single pub on George St was packed. It was 8pm on a Monday night, I couldn't believe it! It got me thinking, people do have money to spend and still want to enjoy themselves and maintain the lifestyle they are accustomed to (I mean why wouldn't you?). The main difference now is, people are a little more selective as to where they spend their money.

Now is the time when you need to get creative to sell your products (and that includes yourself at interview). I've used this quote time and time again...Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Get creative, if you always sold your product over the phone, maybe now you need to arrange face to face meetings to increase rapport and the likelihood of a sell. If you have always relied on referral, maybe you need to get creative with a referral bonus. Whatever it is, get creative, allow your mind to run wild. What you get you to buy your product if you had 3 other things you could spend that money on?

I would love to hear how this works for you, or if you have any comments.

Do you find yourself procrastinating over tasks?

Have you ever found yourself writing to do list after to do list of all the things you should be doing that day, in work? Or put off your sales calls for the next day as you "really must" get this report out by next week and if you don't do it today you never will? Or put off a difficult conversation with somebody, and gone to get a coffee instead?

You are procrastinating. Procrastination is defined as the 'deferment of actions to a later time'. Twenty percent of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators (Hara Estroff Marano, 2008). It is also one of the biggest time wasters there are. Procrastinators are actually putting obstacles in their way. Life has enough obstacles for you to navigate around, without adding your own.

So why do we do it and is it all bad?

Dr Ferarri believes that people procrastinate for different reasons.

(i) Thrill seekers - they leave things until the last minute for the euphoric rush

(ii) Avoiders - those people who avoid a task because of fear of failure or even fear of success. Either way these people care what other people think. They would rather been seen as not putting the energy into a task than filing at it.

(iii) Decisional procrastinators -the procrastinate about making a decision, if they don't make a decision, they wont have to take responsibility for it's outcome.

Procrastination isn't all bad. If you are procrastinating and doing nothing (i.e. sitting staring at a blank screen) or a doing something less important (such as checking emails for the 10th time that hour), then yes, it is a problem and can hold you back from success. With an increasingly competitive employment market, my advice would be to acknowledge your procrastination and do something about it. However if you are procrastinating and doing something more important (think of the "absent-minded professor" who forgets to eat and shave because he is so keen to get to work on his research) then that is not so much of a problem.

How do you get over procrastination?

Procrastination is a learned behaviour, so if it can be learned, it can be unlearned.

(i) Firstly decide whether it is a negative form of procrastination. Ask yourself 'is this the best thing I can be working on?' If not, change your focus

(ii) Work out how and why you procrastinate. Is it every time you need to make a sales call, or is it when you are stressed? Once you have identified when you procrastinate, then you can overcome it.

(iii) Create a productive environment. Turn off your emails, or move somewhere where you don't have internet access. WARNING: chronic procrastinators, may take this too far and tidy your desk for the whole day......that is not creating a productive environment.

(iv) Challenge your believes. Do you have the belief that you work better under pressure? There are plenty of ways to work under pressure without leaving your work until the night before it is due to be completed.

(v) Ask for help. Hold yourself accountable and make it so that you cannot fail, talk to friends, family or colleagues and ask for their help. If you don't want to talk to them, get a coach. They will hold you accountable.

Control your procrastination today and watch your success increase!

Survive Redundancy

With redundancies on the rise due to the global financial crisis, we have already seen mass redundancies across many Australian industries. The Reserve Bank of Australia is predicting that as a result of the economic slowdown, 100,000 people will lose their jobs in the next 12 months – pushing the unemployment rate to five per cent. As of November 2008, unemployment sits at 4.4%. Now is a crucial time to start practising techniques that will increase your chances of keeping your job.

Firstly, as with any goal it is important to know your outcome so that you can work towards it. Make sure that both you and your bosses expectations of your work align.

Be productive! How many hours a week do you waste going for a coffee? Talking to colleagues? Busying yourself with admin? A study conducted in 2005 by Microsoft found that Australian employees are unproductive for 2 out of 5 days a week. Other studies have found that workers are unproductive for 90 days a year due to lack of planning or poor management.
Continue with this behaviour and you are in the firing line for redundancy! Be productive and work for 8 hours a day. Leave 5 minutes earlier and get your coffee on the way to work. Write a to do list for the following day before you leave the night before to stop time wasting in the morning.

Give up the email addiction. When the email alarm goes off, do you quickly jump onto your email screen? You are not alone, the eRoi Email Addiction Survey found that 66% of people read email seven days a week and expect to receive a response the same day. If you are addicted to email you are severely wasting your time. Every time you are distracted, it takes approximately 20 minutes to get back to where you were prior to the distraction. In 2005, a psychiatrist at King’s College in London administered IQ tests to three groups: the first did nothing but perform the IQ test, the second was distracted by e-mail and ringing phones, and the third were stoned on marijuana. Not surprisingly, the first group did better than the other two by an average of 10 points. The e-mailers, on the other hands, did worse than those on marijuana by an average of 6 points!

I challenge you to try these three simple steps over the coming 2 weeks and see how much more praise you get from your manager. If you have any comments, questions or would like more techniques, I'd love to hear from you.