Anyone who’s worked on an organisational values exercise knows how painful the process can be. You start out wanting to build something inspirational that truly reflects all that is great about your organisation; instead, you end up in endless wrangles over the right kind of words and ‘what’s the point of this?’ discussions.

We’ve all seen emotions displayed at work. As humans, it’s almost impossible to hide our emotions and often they can be a good thing – showing positive emotions at work can be highly motivating and engaging.

Christmas is usually such a mix of people, different styles, generations and needs that it can be really hard for everyone to have a good time. It is possible with a bit of planning and forethought. Consider these three needs:

I’ll let you into a little secret - no one’s Christmas actually looks like their Facebook post would have you believe. Most of us are just grateful we’ve managed to serve something resembling a dinner and not poisoned anyone in the process.

There’s a reason Christmas Eve is the most common time of year for people to fall ill. Exhausted with the pressure of organising and burning the candle at both ends, most of us roll into the festive season and our bodies take the opportunity for a break - and make us ill. Avoid that this year with a bit of thought and careful planning.

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a collection of techniques that help people do more of their good ‘programmes’ and change their unhelpful ones. The techniques get your conscious and unconscious mind working together for you, making it much easier to make changes than by will power alone...

It’s tough when you feel pulled in different directions, unable to spend time doing the things you want to. Being more balanced is a very personal thing because we are all different - to some people sitting on a beach is relaxing - to some it is the very definition of boredom!...

Eleanor is an Entrepreneur, Success Coach and Master Facilitator based in Sydney, Australia. Running a busy and successful coaching and training organisation requires her to be super organised to stay on top of everything and grow the business. 
How does she do it?...

What’s the attitude in your organisation around the start and finish time of people’s working day? How do your senior team behave and how do they judge other people around when they arrive and leave work. This will determine how people behave much more than any real resourcing issues in your workplace...

Andy is the founder of mental performance business Athlete in Mind. Amazingly he built the business from scratch to hugely successful in just one year. Andy works with athletes on the mental side of their sports performance, a successful hurdler himself, he knows how tough this side of training and racing can be....

It’s tough when you feel pulled in different directions, unable to spend time doing the things you want to. Building a good work life balance is a very personal thing because we are all different - to some people sitting on a beach is relaxing - to some it is the very definition of boredom!...

Have you ever wondered why the projects that excite you don’t seem to appeal to other people? Why some people love certain elements of their job that other people hate? Why ‘motivational’ talks inspire some people and turn off others?...

It’s a sad fact that eating our lunches at our desk has become an accepted norm. Apart from being unhealthy - just think of all those germs and rotting bits of food that fall onto your desk or trapped in your keyboard...

Anyone can experience burnout. It creeps up on you slowly and the results can be devastating. Burnout is commonly linked to stress and overwork and is particularly common in professions where there is a lot of emotional caring involved like medical professions, coaching, psychotherapy, people that work in care homes, carers, leaders and managers...

We all know them, the space invaders and the time suckers. To deal with people who waste your time you need to become highly skilled creating and maintaining good healthy boundaries. Boundaries are the physical, mental and emotion ‘line’ between us and other people...

When the internet was born people were excited about it’s potential for sharing information easily, we were all going to be better informed and increase our knowledge. What was not predicted was the extent of misinformation, lies and errors there are on the web...

Tis the season to be merry - and also stressed if you are organising Christmas this year. At such a special time, you want to get it right, but many people race up to the big day and are then too exhausted or stress to enjoy it. There’s a reason why Christmas Eve is a peak day for people getting colds. Here are our top tips for making Christmas a breeze...

Everyone does some time wasting behaviour but when does it seriously get in the way of good outcomes and productivity? Time wasting behaviour is habitual and is often done because ‘it’s the way we’ve always done it’ or ‘it gets the job done’. Could it be done better and quicker though?...

It’s simple right? Follow some time management rules; make a list, work out what’s important and work your way through it. Not so simple. Even people who really focus on managing time well are being secretly sabotaged by their own brain. Why?...

We all know them, the space invaders, the time suckers, the creepy too friendly people at work. They waste your time, make you feel uncomfortable and make you say and do things you don’t want to. A lot of people have issues with setting and maintaining boundaries with others. Boundaries are the physical, mental and emotion ‘line’ between us and other people.

Time sometimes really does seem to slip away? We lose time often not because we are busy doing something important, but because our mind is stuck in it’s naughty bad habits. If you can identify your habitual time wasters and change them even just a little bit, you will free up more thinking time, more energy and the ability to get a lot more done. Here are a few top time wasters and how to address them:

Everyone can recognise that familiar tug of war inside us; go out or stay in and catch up on work, make a fresh dinner for the kids or finish catching up on e mails; work late or go to the gym? These are common everyday dilemmas we all face but have you ever stopped to consider that this constant tug of war could be impacting your health?

Negotiating is something we do on a daily basis - even if it’s who is stacking the dishwasher. It is a skill a lot of people find difficult and often intimidating though, particularly in the workplace where the stakes can be high. Improve your negotiating skills with these easy to implement strategies modelled from successful negotiators:

Can you get things done better and faster by actually slowing down? Speed has many benefits but also some drawbacks in that speedy decisions can be less thought through and have unintended consequences that can take you by surprise, wasting time, money and energy later. Instead, consider trying out some of these strategies:

Successful people think long term about their career and plan accordingly. This is not being stuck in a restrictive path there is no going back from, but to have a strategy for progression and a general direction to aim for. Sadly most people spend more time planning a birthday party than planning their life!

As you evaluate your career and decide where to go next ask yourself these helpful questions...

Procrastination is a stress response. People procrastinate when they feel overwhelmed or anxious about moving forward pushing their brain into ‘freeze’ mode. It can happen to us all and putting pressure on someone who is procrastinating will only make things worse.

Remember that when you are communicating to other people about your time you are basically training them in how to treat you. We all have natural habits in how we respond to requests for our time. Let’s look at ways in which you can increase your choices of response to requests for your time adapted from our new book Time Management; Banish Time Management Forever.

Your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. What is called multi-tasking is actually your brain flicking from one thing to another so that each task gets a bit of your attention and the processing power of your brain. You will divide your focus over a number of things and none of them will get your full attention. When someone thinks they are multi-tasking their brain is actually trying to track a number of different thoughts and activities in their mind at the same time. This drains your energy and reduces your thinking capacity. People multi task because it ‘feels’ productive, rather than an objective analysis of results and output.

“Busy” has become a word so packed with meaning in social circumstances, it has become has common a response as ‘fine’ to the question ‘How are you?’. Habitual it might be but are you telling people what you really want to when you use this in conversation? Busy can be a positive thing, if you are busy doing the things you want to do with your life. If your business has been quiet and now it’s ‘busy’ that’s good. Be careful though of using it as a standard response because when you describe yourself as busy, you are potentially communicating to yourself and other people one or more of the following:

When people come on our certification courses in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) they are always blown away by the power of the interventions to change behaviours, how we feel and how we behave. It’s easy to love the big powerful stuff, but the small changes we make in our thinking are often the thing that ensures long term success because they create good habits which serve you for life. Here are our top tips to try:

It’s tough when you feel pulled in different directions, unable to spend time doing the things you want to. Building a good work life balance is a very personal thing because we are all different - to some people sitting on a beach is relaxing - to some it is the very definition of boredom! Find a work life balance that works for you by following these top tips from Time Mastery; Banish Time Management Forever.

Time is a finite resource. We all have the same amount of time each day, each week and each month. How we use that time is dependent on what each of us believes is important and how we think about time.

We often see the new year as an opportunity for a fresh start or to try something new. Our new year gift to you for 2020, is to consider how you use the word ‘busy’.

How do you maintain pace and quality of work, without burning out your staff? It’s a concern expressed by many people we work with in innovative, creative, and high pressured environments.

Creativity and innovation tend to fuel rapid business growth. Whether it’s ground-breaking design, new technology or a reputation for creative excellence - it can attract an influx of new business and new people. Add entrepreneurial leadership to the mix and things can really fly.

Every leader or business owner wants to see more productivity, but there’s no set formula for achieving it. Productivity comes from a blend of an engaging culture, effective relationships, and being able to manage both time and stress. What’s more, creative people tend to need to be together to collaborate - and that’s something remote working has largely prevented these past few months.

For a sector so dependent on the productivity and engagement of its people, the tech sector has always been at the centre of a paradox - technical people aren’t known for being natural people managers. As a tech leader that puts you at disadvantage, especially when there’s a huge amount resting on getting the best from your people.

We are all trying to manage and deliver more, at work and at home. With so many demands on our time, it can be difficult to know how to ensure everything receives adequate attention. Invariably something crashes. Increasingly as we cope with the fallout from the pandemic, the risk is it’ll be us.

Many of the stressful situations we get ourselves into happen because we don’t have as good a grasp of our time boundaries as we thought - if we’d even considered them at all. As a consequence, interactions with others can end up being frustrating and unfulfilling, and what we really want to achieve doesn’t get done. Sound familiar?