Sun, 24 April 2016
Joe Burton comes from a corporate background, working in high stress situations with long hours and constant travel. His career was on an uphill track but his personal life and health started to decline. He even developed insomnia and asthma around the age of 40. Up until then, he would have laughed if someone suggested mindfulness as a way to alleviate his stress. Joe realized that mindfulness training helped him be more present and aware. He developed a deeper relationship with his emotions and central nervous system. It changed the way he is with his family and as a leader. Now Joe is the founder and CEO of Whil, a mindfulness training company that offers three digital programs that work on any computer or mobile device. Mindfulness and Yoga for Adults which is all about stress reduction and improving performance. Grow is for helping teenagers deal with being a teen in today's world. Search Inside Yourself is focused on leadership, emotional intelligence, teamwork, and collaboration skills. Whil is primarily focused on serving corporations, healthcare systems, and universities but can be used by anyone that is looking for a way to help calm their life down. It now has 350,000 users and for every product sold, Whil gives one away. The average person spends almost half of their time with their mind wandering, usually worrying. We are living in an age that has our brains trained for activity. Mindfulness trains our brain to go to a place of calm and focus so we can be more present in our lives. Just 5-10 minutes of practice a day on bringing our attention back to a focal point can help us be able to maintain sustained attention for longer periods of time. It is like going to the gym for your brain..not easy but very rewarding! "Having the awareness to understand when to act and when not, and being able to act out of choice instead of compulsion is a big part of mindfulness." - Joe Burton Mindfulness training is becoming more common on the workplace because there are now thousands of studies in the field of neuroscience that correlate it with improved health and performance. It is linked to improved cardiovascular health, immune systems, healing time, memory, and focus. Studies even show a link to reducing chronic pain and PTSD. Of course this is important to employees but it also benefits companies that want to reduce absenteeism and health care costs. In this on demand world, it is important to be equipped with ways to relieve stress and mindfulness training is the perfect tool. What you will learn in this episode:
Link From The Episode: (Music by Ronald Jenkees)
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Sun, 17 April 2016
The workplace of the past is gone... We are now talking about homing from work, not working from home. Tim Oldman uses his background in interior design and architecture, along with his fascination in merging diagnostic tools like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to get a better understanding of employee spaces. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Leesman, famous for the Leesman Index, which is an independent auditor of the relationship between employees and the space that is provided for them. Tim compares Leesman to the radiographers of the corporate workplace and that couldn't be more appropriate! Leesman releases a variety of reports on ideas like cost of occupancy and employee retention. They adhere to the concept of open source knowledge so anyone can view the reports on their website.The Leesman Index looks at the impact of work spaces on employees and identifies the most effective spaces. Tim is clear that it isn't about how pretty, or how large, or how expensive a space is designed. The key is knowledge transfer. A successful organization must capitalize on knowledge existing within so they should create an environment that better facilitates knowledge transfer. The most recent Leesman Index was released in November 2015 and shredded many myths about the physical work space. It found that there is no difference on how work spaces impact gender and that age does have an impact but it is not generational. The report also shows that natural lighting is preferred over artificial, informal areas are more effective, and other important factors. However, one-dimensionally planned spaces never work. The highest performing workplaces take all factors into account. They have flexibility and variety which increases employee production and pride. What you will learn in this episode: What is the Leesman Index Who is the company that has the highest LMI Differences in high performance and low performance work spaces Shredding work space myths Work-life balance How the leading organizations are already way ahead Links From The Episode (Music by Ronald Jenkees) |
Sun, 10 April 2016
We are currently in the midst of an industrial revolution with an exponential pace of change and it is disrupting industry in every country. This revolution is different from the past three in terms of velocity, scope, and impact. It is a digital revolution, characterized by a fusion of technology that is impacting every aspect of how we work and how we live, creating threats and opportunities. Skills that we learned in formal education are now becoming irrelevant. Employees should be prepared to completely reskill themselves. I recently spoke with Sandeep Dadlani, the Executive Vice President and Head of Americas for Infosys, on what is going to be required from employees of the future to succeed and thrive. Infosys is a massive, quick growing global consulting firm. Sandeep has been with them for over 15 years in a variety of roles. They have studied the 4th industrial revolution and the impact it is going to have thoroughly. Infosys believes the answer to the challenges we face in this revolution is education. With technology evolving so quickly, corporate training programs are behind the times and desperately need to be updated. We should focus on education in areas like computers, data, artificial intelligence, and designed thinking to enable consistent training for the workforce. Learning should be a creative, clever environment that allows employees to prove that they are innovators. Managers just need to listen to the future... youth already has a good idea about what they want to be trained on. What You Will Learn In This Episode:
Links From The Episode: (Music by Ronald Jenkees) |
Sun, 3 April 2016
Lately, I've been surrounded by the theme of management and leadership, and the role of each in the future of work. Today, we are chatting with Sydney Finkelstein to discuss what makes some leaders truly exceptional. Sydney is the Steven Roth Professor of Management and faculty director of the Tuck Executive Program at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He is also the author of the phenomenal new book Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent. The idea for Sydney's book and the Superboss title arose from a pattern that he noticed in the food industry where sous-chefs at a particular restaurant were moving on to new restaurants and becoming executive chefs. Sydney began to research if the pattern was present in other industries and found that in many fields, one person has immense influence in the development of talent in that field. The book took 10 years to write... the more time Sydney spent on it, the more fascinated he became! So what exactly is a Superboss? While a leader is someone that creates other leaders, a Superboss is even more than that. A Superboss is a leader that helps other people accomplish more than they ever thought possible. He or she really makes it their business to turbocharge their employees' careers. While most bosses are narrowly focused on performance, command, and control, a Superboss has an invested interest in employees succeeding. Sydney shares some examples of Superbosses ranging from Ralph Lauren of fashion to Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle. He has found that there are 3 types of Superboss: Iconoclasts that tend to be creative and need to learn, Glorious Bastards who are tough and may even lead with ridicule, and Nurturers that truly care about the success of their protégés. We discuss how to spot a Superboss and how to interview a prospective employer to learn if they are a Superboss. "Anyone in an organization can become a Superboss." - Sydney Finkelstein We all have the potential to be a Superboss. The traits are completely learnable and teachable but one must be willing to make the commitment. Instead of solely thinking about development of talent and retention, consider the outflow. The best talent most likely sees themselves moving on to bigger and better things so enable that idea. Continue to interact with your team members after they leave your nest. Always be on the look out for talent, inspire your team, instill confidence in others, delegate tasks but don't be afraid to get your hands dirty, as well! What you will learn in this episode:
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(Music by Ronald Jenkees) |