Category: Effectiveness
-
How to be inclusive – despite the bias
A guest blog by Lucy Gower, Founder and Director at Lucidity. There’s a lot of talk about diversity right now. Diversity just means different. Every single one of us is a unique human being with different experiences, values and beliefs. Any difference is diversity It might refer to gender, ethnicity, background, skills, age or experience.…
-
Let’s Talk About Happy
I coached two very different third sector leaders this week. One is stressed out, overworking and overwhelmed. She’s up at the crack of dawn to get into the office, missing her yoga and fun nights out because she’s exhausted and falling out a lot with colleagues. Needless to say, she’s not happy at work at…
-
How not to let your day run away with you
Ever find yourself at the start of the week wondering, in the immortal words of David Bowie, “where the **** did Monday go?” We all have days when things never seem to get done. I know I do, and it comes up all the time in my coaching with non-profit clients. So, here’s five tried and…
-
Squeeze me, squeeze me!
I’ve just come off a coaching call with one of my non-profit clients. She’s dynamic, dedicated and efficient but was thrown by her latest annual appraisal. She’d missed a few targets and was overwhelmed by the thought of working even harder. “I already put in way more hours that I should,” she told me, clearly struggling…
-
Four short words to cross the Pacific
Have you come across the blog www.coxlesscrew.com? It’s the personal reflections of four British women who rowed into Cairns harbour, in Australia on 24 January after crossing the Pacific – all 8,446 miles of it – in a boat called Doris. Rowing two hours on, two hours off around the clock, these four really quite ordinary…
-
How not to spend the first ten minutes of your day
OK, confession time. I started my working day today with a long session on Facebook. There, said it. I know I’m not alone. One of my one-to-one coaching clients recently fessed up that she often kicked off a day at work with half an hour looking at cute cat videos. There’s something about connecting with the world first thing in the…
-
Email etiquette – ten top tips
I was chatting with an old colleague last week and she was despairing of her charity’s massive email problem. What she was saying was not new. It seems there is a major epidemic of ’email overwhelm’ breaking out in the third sector. The symptoms? Too many emails flying back and forth, too much time taken…
-
Micro-management? What a turn off
I’m about to work with a fast expanding third sector organisation where one or two managers are a little too keen to micro-manage their reports. The Chief Exec has identified it’s going on and is keen to help his people find alternatives so that everyone can flourish and grow. I can absolutely see why.…
-
Have you got the email habit?
So, who’s in charge of your email in-box? You are. Who gets to decide when you look in there? You do. It’s as simple as that. Interrupting what you’re doing to check emails breaks your thought flow and throws your planning out of kilter. You also allow yourself to get caught up in the idea…
-
Get organised with your emails
Do you keep all your emails in one never-ending list in your in-box? That’s a bit like having an overflowing pile of project papers, magazines, business cards, and letters from months back in the physical in-box on your desk. It’s cluttering up your desk and most importantly – cluttering up your mind. Many of my…