7 Needs Work Should Fulfill

great place to work

Make Work Great

Leaders recognize that organizations are great because of the people working in them. Knowing that people make or break a company is one reason leaders are constantly trying to improve company culture.

Moe Carrick’s new book, Bravespace Workplace: Making Your Company Fit for Human Life, recognizes the importance of people so much that the dedication at the very front of it is “dedicated to workers everywhere. You are the heart of it all, and it’s what you do every day that makes your company great.” How very true that is, and how incredible for Moe to recognize it even before page one.

“If only my manager thought that way,” you may be thinking or even, “Would it be too obvious for me to buy a copy for my manager?”

Moe addresses some important issues as she advocates for people, for culture development, and for thriving organizations in the midst of rapid change. I reached out to her to talk about her work.

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“Creating the kind of workplace that is actually fit for human life goes way beyond mere happiness.” –Moe Carrick

Make it a Bravespace

What does a bravespace workspace look like?

Most simply, I define a bravespace workplace as one where people can show up as they are, both perfect and flawed, and do great things together. Bravespace workplaces activate, enliven, and tenderly support the complex humans that we are so that we can bring all of ourselves to work every day. This means that an organization designs itself, trains its people leaders, and runs day-to-day processes so that the people who work there (any company’s greatest asset!) can bring their highest and best skills to work every day. People sometimes over-simplify what I am saying as “a workplace where people are happy” but let’s face it, an ice cream cone can make me happy!  Creating the kind of workplace that is actually fit for human life goes way beyond mere happiness.

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“Brave doesn’t always involve grand gestures.” -Shauna Niequist

Andrew Carnegie

Breathe to Succeed

breathe to succeed

Take a Deep Breath 

Technology has revolutionized the way we work today, but working at the pace of tech is not sustainable.

Have you ever harnessed the power of a deep breath to change your day?

Research continues to validate the power of the breath. Learning how to breathe can increase your productivity and reduce your stress. Perhaps its simplicity is the reason many do not practice it daily.

In her new book, Breathe to Succeed, Sandy Abrams talks about how to utilize the power of breath & mindset tools in a simple, fast & effective way that helps us enhance clarity, creativity, productivity & success on many levels. I reached out to her to talk about her experiences and research.

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“Fear is excitement without breath.” -Robert Heller

The Benefits of Deep Breathing

There are so many scientific benefits to deep breathing, and you share them throughout the book. Would you just share a few of them?

Deep breaths immediately take us inward and bring us into the present moment, which is a coveted destination these days since most of our time is spent living in the past or future as well as externally: reacting to pop up notifications, emails, text, social media.

Deep breaths connect us to the part of our brain that regulates emotion; so with even just a few deep breaths we connect our mind and body and are able to work from optimal thoughts and energy rather than autopilot.

Deep breaths offer both immediate and long-term benefits like meditation but can be done in the moment, without having to master the art of stillness or reserve chunks of time.

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“When you begin your day with mental clarity from slow, deep breathing, you take control of your priorities and put yourself first.” Sandy Abrams

What do you say to those who are skeptical (as you once were) of the power of breathing?

New Rules to Increase Employee Engagement

engagement

Creating Engagement

With so much focus on engagement, you would think that the statistics would dramatically improve. Instead, most of the surveys show employees are not fully engaged. Why is this, and what can be done about it?

In a her book, Employee Confidence: The New Rules of Engagement, Karen J. Hewitt, argues that employee confidence and engagement are intertwined. The difference maker in engagement is confidence. I had a chance to catch up with her and talk about her new book and work.

 

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“Disengagement isn’t the real problem – confidence is.” -Karen J. Hewitt

 

How to Thrive

What makes an organization thrive?

There is only one thing that makes an organization thrive, and that’s its people. It’s as simple as that. The moment your people stop feeling valued, or supported to achieve their potential, or communicated with, their engagement levels fall.  And when this happens, you’re not just looking at engagement problems, but problems with all the other things engagement drives, like quality, productivity and client satisfaction for example.

Even worse, the best employees leave, which inflates costs and blows a big hole in both productivity and the engagement levels of those who remain.

Clever business leaders put 80% of their efforts into their people, because they know that people are the key to everything else they are looking for. It sounds obvious I know, but most leaders do the opposite. They get so hung up on the numbers that they place a disproportionate amount of attention on them, to the detriment of their people.

As soon as they stop taking time to understand what their people need, disengagement is the natural outcome, and with disengagement, the all-important numbers either go downhill or don’t deliver what they could because employees aren’t operating to their potential.

 

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“Coaching is transformational leadership in action.” -Karen J. Hewitt

 

Create an Engaged Culture

How to Achieve Conscious Success

conscious

Achieve Conscious Success

 

If you want to achieve success, you should ponder these three questions:

  1. What is my best purpose to achieve conscious success?
  2. How can I demonstrate high awareness for conscious success?
  3. How can I positively differentiate myself from others?

Those three questions are literally on the front flap of a new book, The 9 Dimensions of Conscious Success. They pulled me into a narrative by David Nielson. In the book, David shares the dilemma of how to achieve conscious success and outlines a process that helps you move to a life that fulfils your purpose. David is a management consultant who has spent over three decades in consulting and leadership development. I followed up with him to talk about his work.

 

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“You cannot differentiate yourself based on a false image of yourself.” -David E. Nielson

 

What is conscious success?

Conscious Success is knowing how you want to show up in life and business, and following a prescribed behavior set which deliberately produces the success you have defined for yourself. The elements and behaviors are specifically the 9 Dimensions.

 

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“How you show up in life is a conscious choice – an import choice, it turns out.” -David E. Nielson

 

What are some ways to move from unconscious to conscious, and from incompetence to competence?

It starts with increasing your own self-awareness. We emphasize in the 9DCS model that the foundation is defining your purpose, increasing your self-awareness, and increasing your social awareness. As part of the 9DCS model and book, we created an assessment to assist individuals in increasing their self-awareness. We believe this is the starting point for developing your own plan to move toward your own conscious success.

 

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“Gratitude drives your purpose.” – David E. Nielson

 

Know Your Purpose