4 Smart Ways to Get a Fresh Start

4 Smart Ways to Get a Fresh Start January is a perfect time to get a fresh start. You don’t have to set resolutions in order to give yourself a fresh start. All you need is a few minutes for a brief self-assessment and an open, curious mind. 1. Find Your Why Before setting any goals for this year, consider the reasons behind them. Your why may have to do with your professional life, or it may be more personal. You may enjoy the people you’re working with and find it rewarding to create an environment where you succeed together or you may just want to focus on you and improving your quality of life. Understanding why a goal matters to you personally helps keep you focused. It helps you keep what’s truly important to you front and center. Have you read “Find Your Why” by Simon Sinek? Having trouble putting your why into words? Consider journaling or talking with a friend, coach or mentor to get better clarity. 2. Set Clear Goals Once you understand your why, you can narrow in on what specific goals best support it. What small changes would mean the most in your life in the context of your why? Remember, concrete, specific goals are easier to complete because we can break them down into bite-sized, achievable steps. Having trouble breaking down your goal into intermediary steps? Not sure how to achieve it? We can help! Our coaching solutions offer you the mentorship you need, targeted specifically to your goals. 3. Share Your Goals When you announce and share your intentions you commit more…Talk to your boss or a team member about your goals for the year. You may want to set specific times to get together and discuss your progress. Perhaps this person can be another set of eyes and ears looking out for opportunities in the direction of your goal. Try to avoid creating a one-sided relationship that’s focused only on your needs and success. Instead, look for a symbiotic relationship, where you each have something to offer one another in terms of support and experience. 4. Invest in Yourself Make developing yourself a part of your goal. This might mean earning a new certification or degree, but it doesn’t have to. One of the easiest and most impactful ways to expand your knowledge is through reading. I just downloaded a new APP called Headway that gives me the opportunity to listen to an audiobook summary a day while talking my walk. Identify key areas you’d like to improve in your work processes and relationships. Find a book, workshop or conference that will give you the opportunity to acquire those skills. Another great development action-item can include attending workshops and seminars. For example, if you struggle with being more assertive, our workshop on The Secrets of Conflict Management will help you build that skill. Get a Fresh Start with These 24 Workshops KCC offers 24 different workshops and conferences to expand your expertise [...]

By |2023-03-24T12:01:53-04:00January 19th, 2023|Happiness Tips, Leadership Tips|Comments Off on 4 Smart Ways to Get a Fresh Start
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5 Easy Tips for Giving Employee Feedback 

5 Easy Tips for Giving Employee Feedback Giving employee feedback is one of the key ways we train, reinforce, and communicate with our team members. Effective feedback motivates employees and increases their confidence in their job performance. It’s actually something team members consistently ask for on surveys about work satisfaction. Knowing how you’re doing, what you’re doing right, and what you can improve helps us feel connected to the job we do. It helps us understand how our contributions matter. And it helps build trust with our managers. Here are 5 easy tips for giving employee feedback to boost your team’s success. 1. Feedback Matters Focused feedback helps employees. Not only does it direct them to continue doing tasks in ways that are effective and beneficial, it also bolsters their confidence about the job they’re doing. A team member who has confidence about his role in the company is a happier employee. Happy employees work harder and stay with an employer longer. I know this may sound cheesy, but I still believe that “feedback is the breakfast of champions” because you can’t improve, if you don’t know what you could improve. 2. Frequency Matters It’s tempting to focus our efforts giving feedback on annual reviews, and those may be important tools. There are hundreds of workdays between those annual reviews, though. Employees will experience more consistent growth, more energy on the job, and more motivation when they receive feedback on a much more frequent basis. The new trend is more about frequent, on-the-spot, micro feedbacks. Ideally, more positive than negative if possible. Remember the chapter in The One-Minute Manager: “Catch Them Doing Something Right”! 3. Timing Matters Giving consistent employee feedback may take some time to get used to. We tend to get focused on tasks and deadlines more easily than on the people making those deadlines successful. To build a habit of offering regular feedback, identify some key moments where feedback doesn’t interrupt workflow or embarrass a team member. For example, one great opportunity for feedback is following a team meeting. If the feedback is relevant to the whole team, add it to the meeting agenda. If it’s specific to one team member or a small contingent of the group, ask those individuals to remain behind as the meeting closes. 4. Celebrate, Don’t Manipulate In his book, Nonviolent Communication, author and psychologist Marshall B. Rosenberg discusses his approach to expressing appreciation. His concern with some forms of positive feedback is that employees can lose their motivation if they feel that a manager or leader complimented them in order to manipulate them. Instead, he recommends expressing appreciation with three specific components. First, express what specific action the team member completed that made a positive difference. Next, explain how you felt in reaction to those actions. Last, this is how those actions met a need. The order is less important than ensuring the components of the appreciation are present. Remember authentic recognition creates a powerful boost to people’s morale. 5. Critical [...]

By |2023-03-24T12:02:34-04:00November 1st, 2022|Leadership Tips|Comments Off on 5 Easy Tips for Giving Employee Feedback 
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5 Proven Interview Techniques to Hire Top Talent 

6 Proven Interview Techniques to Hire Top Talent In today’s war on talent, the power of your interview techniques is a critical part of your team’s success. Not only do those techniques determine the quality of the candidates you select, but the interview experience is important to candidates as well. LinkedIn reports that for 83% of candidates, a negative interview experience changed their opinion of a company. The last thing you want is to turn away a top candidate’s interest because they did not appreciate the process. How do you craft an interview experience that’s positive for the candidate and reveals which applicant is the best fit for the job? These six tried-and-true interview techniques will help you find the team members you’re looking for. 1. Create a Positive Candidate Experience One of the most important aspects of the selection process in today’s world is making the experience a positive one. This will help you attract top talent and help you develop or maintain your organization’s “employer of choice” reputation. Every step of the process can contribute to creating this positive impression including the job posting: the first email or phone conversation, the virtual or in-person meetings and the offer or the rejection. Our approach should differentiate us from others and be centered on making each candidate feel important. We need to be professional, open, agile, effective and welcoming at every step. Make sure you put some thought into this aspect of your process. We want each person we meet to want to work with us and for them to speak positively about our organization even if it doesn’t work out! 2. Structured Interview Traditionally, one of the most popular interview techniques in big organizations was the structured interview. In a structured interview, the interviewer asks every candidate the same questions in the same order. The answers are scored so that candidates’ performance can be easily ranked. While the structured interview technique helps identify good candidates, it can come across cold and impersonal, which can turn those great candidates away. We usually do not recommend this approach but if you’re going to use this technique, do your best to connect personally with each candidate. 3. Behavioral Interview A very popular and effective interview technique is the behavioral interview. This technique is based on the following statement: Past behavior is the best predictor of future success. In this technique, interviewers ask candidates a series of situational questions to help them assess how the candidate handles tasks, deadlines, and potential challenges or problems on the job. It helps an interviewer understand the needs and personality of the candidate so that he can determine how the candidate handles conflict or change and whether he will be a good fit for the team. Behavior interviews use questions asking for examples and stories from candidates. It may be difficult for candidates to relate situations concisely, so this technique may require some extra time and patience. It does, however, provide great insights into how a candidate [...]

By |2023-03-24T12:02:43-04:00October 5th, 2022|Leadership Tips|Comments Off on 5 Proven Interview Techniques to Hire Top Talent 
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4 Keys to Boost Employee Motivation

4 Keys to Boost Employee Motivation In the engine of business, motivation is the accelerator. It determines the energy with which your team tackles assigned tasks and their enthusiasm about generating solutions to obstacles that may arise during a project. If you want your team to approach their work with a high level of energy and excitement, then crafting a team culture where positive motivation thrives will be critical to achieving that goal. Motivation is also a critical factor in employee retention. Team members who feel unappreciated, frustrated or like their work doesn’t matter often leave their job in favor of a new opportunity. In fact, a recent survey by McKinsey reported that the top two reasons employees leave a job are that they don’t feel valued by their manager or the company or don’t feel a sense of belonging at work. Finding ways to positively motivate your team can improve retention as well as energizing the group to complete work and succeed. Here are four key strategies to boost employee motivation. 1. Communicate Goals and Priorities Clearly If your team doesn’t understand and buy in to the goals or which tasks have priority, it’s much harder for them to do their jobs well and have confidence about their work. Explaining what you want them to do and why it’s important or how it serves the goals of the company or team helps them understand their role in the process. It also helps them understand the importance of the work they perform and makes them feel valued. Make sure your team is notified when priorities change. Finding out that they’ve continued working on a project that was delayed rather than switching to a higher priority task generates frustration. Keeping your team informed as priorities change lets them know you value their time and effort. 2. Offer Flexibility Where You Can Giving your employees freedom to make decisions about their work offers them autonomy and respect. For example, if an employee is frustrated about a procedure or struggling to complete a task, ask for their input. What could they do differently that would make this task easier to complete? If there are ways to accommodate their ideas, do so. If not, try to find a satisfactory compromise. As often as possible, let employees have input on how a task is accomplished. If you have team members who struggle to be alert first thing in the morning, try having at least some of your team meetings later in the morning or in the afternoons. Prioritizing your team’s needs and making room for their creative problem-solving shows you value your team members and have confidence in their ability to achieve their goals. It gives them ownership of their work and instills a sense of pride in their role in the team. 3. Recognize a Job Well Done This sounds easy, and it is! Also, it really works. Make an effort to call out the things your team members do well. Notice their effort [...]

By |2023-03-24T12:02:51-04:00August 23rd, 2022|Leadership Tips|Comments Off on 4 Keys to Boost Employee Motivation
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5 Tips for Energy and Stress Management

5 Tips for Energy and Stress Management No matter how positive your outlook and how zen your mindset, it’s impossible for any of us never to encounter stress or fatigue. Unfortunately, experiencing some stress and fatigue is part of life. In truth, they’re part of what make the days we have great energy or feel calm and at peace so wonderful. The best solution is having strategies for energy and stress management in our arsenal to help on difficult days. Here are 5 great tips for energy and stress management. 1. Adapt Rather than Avoid It can be tempting to avoid stressful situations or choices by putting them off as long as possible. Avoiding the most challenging task on our to-do list or postponing that meeting with a challenging person might feel good in the moment. What it does, though, is give us more time to fret over the event. Pushing a meeting or task toward the end of the day can also mean asking ourselves to tackle the task when our resources have already been depleted by other work. Instead, use your natural energy rhythm to your advantage. What time of day do you feel the most energized and sharp? Schedule your most difficult task or meeting at that time. Or, schedule it first thing in the day, so you can get it over with early and move on to easier tasks afterward. At KCC, we call this “eating the frog”…inspired by Mark Twain. 2. Schedule a Stress Session If you’re struggling to keep worries and stress from intruding into your day, try scheduling a thirty-minute block of time to allow yourself to focus on what’s bothering you. It may seem counter-intuitive, but research shows that this actually helps us table anxiety and stress at other times of the day. It means we know we’ll have a chance to process those thoughts and worries at a specified time. You might find journaling to be a helpful way to quantify the things causing you stress. Writing a list may also help you identify solutions or ways to cope with some of the stressors you encounter. 3. Sweat it Out Exercise is a great way to work through stress. It gets our bodies moving, burns some of that anxious energy, and increases blood-flow to our brains. When we exercise, we’re also focusing parts of our brains on physical activity. We’re focused on balance, coordination, and breath. This gives other parts of our brains a rest, which can break that hamster-wheel cycle we sometimes fall into. If you don’t like exercising, try finding an active hobby or class to participate in. Consider joining a dance class, community sports team, or martial arts program. The goal is to get your body moving and have fun doing it! 4. Pursue Balance Is your work-play balance off lately? When we get stressed, it’s easy to withdraw from recreational activities without realizing we’re doing so. Feeling starved for recreation? Consider taking a day or afternoon off. [...]

By |2023-03-24T12:02:58-04:00July 13th, 2022|Leadership Tips|Comments Off on 5 Tips for Energy and Stress Management
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5 Components of Successful Delegation

5 Successful Components of Delegation Delegation is one of the most critical skills you can learn as a leader. Not only does it effectively train your team and give them ownership of the work you’re doing together, but it’s like adding extra hours to your day. Delegation allows you to get multiple tasks on your to-do list completed at the same time. Considering handing over tasks to other team members can seem intimidating at first. The real process of delegating goes beyond simply asking a team member to add an item to their to-do list, though. Successful delegation involves five critical steps to ensure that the work you surrender gets done correctly, on time, and without a lot of hands-on time from you. Here are the 5 key components for successful delegation. 1. Give the job to someone who can get it done. The first step in delegating is, of course, actually asking someone else to take on the job for you. The right person must have time in their schedule. They don’t need to know how to complete the task already. What you’re looking for instead is someone who has access to the resources needed for the job. They may need training or coaching first, so factor that time into your plan. If the training takes a short time and the task is recurring, making the time to bring the employee up to speed makes a great investment. Try not to stress too much about this step in the process. Think of delegating like giving someone on your team a gift. You’re offering them a chance to increase their skills and improve their value to the team. 2. Communicate Precise Conditions of Satisfaction. One of the reasons people hesitate to delegate their work is worries about the task being completed incorrectly or remaining unfinished. The best way to combat this issue is with clear communication of expectations. Be sure to outline the deadline, budget, context, deliverables and any special circumstances. Ask your teammate to summarize to you what they heard you ask for. This helps ensure that you communicated your needs effectively and that they feel confident. Also make sure you clarify how you both want to handle any questions they may have about the task. Do you want them to bring those questions to you? In person? Email? Is there a different person on the team who has expertise who would also be a good resource if you’re unavailable to answer questions? Putting all of these expectations in writing is a good idea, too. That way you can both refer back to the document or email and see specifically what was discussed. Depending on memory alone can get dicey, especially when we’re juggling lots of other tasks or projects. 3. Work out a plan. If the project or task that you’re delegating is simple, then this step may be very easy. If it’s a multi-step process, you may need to spend a little more time breaking down the [...]

By |2022-05-09T16:38:45-04:00May 9th, 2022|Leadership Tips|Comments Off on 5 Components of Successful Delegation
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5 Tips for Successful Coaching

5 Tips for Successful Coaching Coaching is one of the most effective methods for leaders to use for performance improvement and for employee engagement. Not only does it help the individual develop and grow, but it shows that we are willing to invest in them and that we believe in their potential. Effective coaching leads to employees who are more proficient, work more independently, produce higher quality work and are more motivated. Successful coaching also increases the performance and ability of the team as a whole. Here are 5 great tips on coaching for success. 1. Give Team Members a Chance to Self-Assess First. Before offering your own insights, always give team members a chance to self-assess. Encouraging self-assessment assists in several ways. First, it encourages improvement even when you are not coaching. It also allows you to determine why the employee may not be performing as desired. For example, it may reveal that they don’t know they’re doing something incorrectly. Self-assessments also help team members build self-esteem. It reinforces the idea that you, as their manager or leader are listening to them, value their views, and consider them an important part of your team. It also increases the chance that problem behaviors will change. If an employee is not identifying areas that you identified (or has identified them incorrectly), use increasingly specific questions to allow the employee to self-assess, if possible.  This allows you to determine if the employee doesn’t know what’s expected, doesn’t have the skill, or simply chooses not to demonstrate the skill. Before moving on to other parts of your coaching session, be sure to reinforce the correct self-assessment. Defer or redirect inappropriate or incorrect self-assessment. 2. Next, Use Assessment Tools. There are different types of assessment tools that you can use to get even more information on the person. Their talent zones, development opportunities, blind spots and hidden potential. You can use psychometric questionnaires, potential assessments or 360° feedback tools. When you use an assessment tool on top of the self-assessment and your own observations, it adds objectivity and more in-detail information to help identify the focus and next steps. At KCC assessments are one of our specialties, we call these “x-rays”. 3. Limit the Focus. In coaching sessions, it’s best to focus on approximately two strengths that can be leveraged and about two areas for development.  Limiting the discussion is critically important for several reasons. First, focusing on just two areas for development helps ensure that the team member reaches proficiency. Adopting new procedures or breaking incorrect patterns is a challenging process. Adding too many changes to a team member’s to-do list all at once is likely to cause more frustration and confusion than success. It’s better to start with the two most important areas for improvement and focus on them to build that success and confidence. Once those areas have improved, there’s a positive track record showing improvement which will energize your team member and encourage them to continue increasing their proficiency. Once [...]

By |2022-03-28T13:45:50-04:00March 28th, 2022|Leadership Tips|Comments Off on 5 Tips for Successful Coaching
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5 Great Time and Priority Management Tips

5 Great Time and Priority Management Tips Effective time and priority management can make a huge difference in our effectiveness and ability to achieve critical goals. Taking on too many tasks or not having clearly outlined goals can make it difficult to actually be productive. Identifying your goals and limiting your daily to do list can help you get things done in a more focused, effective way. Deciding which tasks can be delegated or postponed helps ensure that you’re spending the bulk of your time on the things you need to do today. Time management is all about how to work smarter rather than harder. It’s how to be busy for the right reasons so that you can rest and relax at the end of the day. Priority management means deciding which tasks are the most urgent & important and require your specific abilities versus which things can wait or be delegated to another team member. Having a good understanding of both techniques will help you reach your goals and achieve the work-play balance we’re all looking for. Here are 5 great tips to boost your time and priority management skills today. 1. Identify Your Goals If you don’t know where you’re headed, you’ll probably never get there, right? No matter what industry you’re in, your company and your team should have quantifiable goals written down and communicated to all team members. When you understand how your role fits into the company’s goals, you’ll know how to be most effective at your position within the organization. 2. Set Reasonable Limits on Your Daily Tasks by Picking Your Frogs! How many tasks can you reasonably accomplish in a day? A lot of this depends on the kind of job you have and your ability to manage interruptions. If you don’t already, write a to-do list for yourself each morning with a few (no more than 5) tasks on it that you want to get done in a day. At KCC, we call these your “frogs”. Do a little bit of analysis. On average, how many tasks do you finish in a single day? Are there certain days you consistently get more or fewer tasks done? Maybe Mondays are meeting-heavy, so you usually only get to 1 or 2 other things, but you notice that Wednesdays tend to be your most productive days when you get 4 or 5 things done. Adjust your limits according to your own data. If you rarely, if ever, check more than 4 items off your to-do list in a day, set a new limit for yourself of only committing to 4 tasks per day. This will help reduce your stress level and help you set realistic goals and deadlines for yourself and your team. 3. Tackle Most Urgent and Important Tasks First As you look at your goals and assigned tasks for the month, week, and day, sort them by which tasks are the most to least urgent and most to least important. There are lots [...]

By |2022-02-15T18:25:41-04:00February 15th, 2022|Leadership Tips|Comments Off on 5 Great Time and Priority Management Tips
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Get a Fresh Start with These Tips for Managing a Hybrid Team

Get a Fresh Start with These Tips for Managing a Hybrid Team The new year is the perfect time to create a fresh start and update your skills in managing a hybrid team. You may have practices that used to fit your team that simply don’t work well today. We live in a new world in which employees may be at home, in the office, or some combination of both. From time to time, we all need to reevaluate our performance and change what we’re doing to meet new challenges and opportunities. Turning the calendar to a new year is a perfect time to freshen up our management approach with some new strategies for today’s agile teams. Here are 4 tips for sharpening your effectiveness as a leader and help in managing a hybrid team. 1. Communication is Key Whether your team works on site or remotely, one of the best ways to maintain a cohesive, productive team is to clearly communicate how you want things to operate. Be sure your preferences are clear as far as what types of issues or communications should be handled via an email versus scheduling a meeting. Make sure your team understands which projects have top priority, and any changes to the scope or deadline to your team’s work. Some hybrid team leaders have opted to have daily standups or check-in meetings at the start of each day. While that approach may not be right for every team, pay attention to the needs of your crew. While extroverted personalities are energized by spending time together (even virtually), introverted workers may find too many meetings to be disruptive and inhibit workflow. One approach for managing a hybrid team that fosters clear communication is to set an agenda for each meeting and send it out beforehand. If your team members review the agenda and determine they do not need to attend, they can skip some meetings and continue working. 2. Combat Natural Bias One issue faced by hybrid teams and their leadership is a natural bias toward members who work on campus. It’s sort of like the expression, “Out of sight, out of mind.”. We naturally think that team members who are in the office (whom we can visually see working) are more productive than team members who are working remotely, when this is probably not true. Managing a hybrid team effectively means you’ll need to work to correct that natural imbalance by connecting with your remote team members. Set regular one-on-one calls or video chats to briefly check in with them. Making sure they have what they need can go a long way toward making team members feel supported and valued. It also keeps their contributions to your overall team present in your mind as you lead. 3. Create Connections Leaders do so much more than herd a project toward completion by a specific deadline. They’re responsible for finding ways to pull a team of people together so that the resulting sum is greater than [...]

By |2022-01-18T13:09:29-04:00January 18th, 2022|Leadership Tips|Comments Off on Get a Fresh Start with These Tips for Managing a Hybrid Team
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4 Ways to Manage Perfectionism for Success

4 Ways to Manage Perfectionism for Success Perfectionism has recently been a big topic for discussion in the workplace. While perfectionists are highly motivated, dedicated workers, a study on perfectionism published in the Harvard Business Review states, “perfectionism is strongly and consistently related to numerous ‘detrimental’ work and non-work outcomes, including higher levels of burnout, stress, workaholism, anxiety, and depression.” Not only that, but another recent study of nearly 42,000 people published in the Harvard Business Review indicates that perfectionism is on the rise in the US, Canada and the UK. Now more than ever, we need great strategies to manage perfectionism in the workplace. How do we create a work environment that supports the assets perfectionists bring to our teams while helping to shield them from the potential harmful effects that can come from perfectionism? Here are 4 ways you can create a supportive environment where perfectionists can thrive, and your team can enjoy the benefits of having those highly motivated team members among you. 1. Model a Healthy Response to Mistakes How do you handle mistakes or a missed deadline? If you respond with grace and compassion, you’re modeling healthy behavior for your team. We are only human, right? Creating a workspace where it’s safe and normal to make mistakes can help perfectionists combat the need to achieve perfection every time on every task. At KCC, we love to remind ourselves that we don’t save lives so, if something doesn’t go the way we planned it, we find a solution and move on! 2. Set Reasonable, Healthy Goals Make sure your team’s goals are based on working at a sustainable pace. Having an all-hands, late-night, big push to complete a job once in a while is okay, but no one can keep up that pace indefinitely. In fact, it’s a recipe for burnout, especially for a perfectionist. Energy and expectation management are key! It’s important to emphasize resilience…Like Muhammed Ali once said, “There’s nothing wrong with getting knocked down, as long as you get right back up.” 3. Perform Regular Check-ins As deadlines approach, check in with your team, especially your perfectionists. Are they feeling a lot of pressure? Do they need help to prioritize or to break down a large goal into smaller, more achievable tasks? Jump in and offer support and ideas to make all team members more efficient. 4. Give Regular Positive Feedback It’s easy for a perfectionist’s inner critic to become the dominant voice giving feedback on their work. Offering regular, specific, positive feedback helps keep reasonable expectations and performance front and center. Remember, perfectionists are highly engaged people. Keeping that energy positive not only helps your team member stay in a healthier state, but brings even more motivation and energy to your whole team. Build Your Best Team Looking for more great strategies to build an effective team? Check out our workshop on Building Effective Teams and get information on best practices and tips for fully utilizing your team’s skills, styles and talents. Ingrid [...]

By |2021-10-19T11:54:34-04:00October 19th, 2021|Leadership Tips|Comments Off on 4 Ways to Manage Perfectionism for Success
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