Be The Change

Tag: effectiveness, time management

  • 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…

  • Banish email overwhelm – from ‘oh no’ to zero

    I was recently asked to help one of my favourite third sector clients with handling in-box overwhelm. This is such a huge issue in our sector I’ve decided to share my ‘Banish email overwhelm blueprint’ here on my website. Please share the love, and send this link to friends and colleagues also struggling under the…

  • Difficult conversations – mistake #3

    Having difficult conversations Mistake #3 Muddying your message Perhaps you’ve avoided procrastinating about holding a difficult conversation with a third sector colleague or direct report. (Congratulations!) Maybe you’ve been crystal clear about the changes you’d like to see. (Well done, it’s not always easy) But then, you blow your advantage by muddying your message with…

  • Difficult conversations – mistake #2

    Having difficult conversations Mistake #2. Not being clear about what behaviour you want to see exactly Phew! Thank goodness that’s over. You’ve had the difficult conversation you were dreading. You think the meeting went quite well and your report seemed to take on board what you’d said. You’re hopeful things will start to change for…

  • Work-life balance in a nutshell

    Work-life balance (or life-balance as it’s becoming known) is everyone’s Holy Grail. But what does it actually mean? In my years of coaching in the charity sector, where life balance can be a challenge, I have come to see it as four related areas. In a nutshell: A satisfactory balance between the hours spent on…

  • What makes a great team player?

    Love her or hate her, not many people would say that Margaret Thatcher was a great team player. These days even top leaders recognise they need to be team players to get the most out of their people. Team working really matters. Tensions and conflict from poor team playing wreck havoc on productivity and take…

  • Make it up – make it happen

    The pressure is on me at the moment. And it’s all of my own making! At a recent training day, I challenged participants from the charity I was working with to choose a task they’d been procrastinating on and make a pledge to the group about when they would get it done. I found myself…

  • What are Aung San Suu Kyi’s values?

    I was talking to a third sector coaching client yesterday about the stunning victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, in Burma’s recent byelection. We’d just finalised a list of her unique set of core values and wondered what Suu Kyi’s values might be? Patience, we could only presume. She…

  • The power of your thoughts

    A few weeks ago on holiday in Greece, I found myself suspended in mid-air at the top of a cliff – freaking out! My hands were shaking. My legs felt like water. There was no way I was going to abseil down this 70-foot cliff, my absolute intention a few moments before. Now, I was…