Integrity – A Core TMC Principle

The passing of US Senator John McCain has prompted a wealth of bipartisan comments about the man he was throughout his political career, and his entire life.

Although I don’t usually bring politics into The Morris Code (and I’m not even in the United States), the outpouring of admiration reminds me of one of the six fundamental principles of TMC and that is to “personify integrity”.

I didn’t know Senator McCain personally, but based on what I’ve always heard about him, I believe he truly did personify integrity.

What has that got to do with being a confident professional and high performer at work? It’s quite simple …

When you personify integrity (mean what you say and say what you mean), and know yourself so well that you know exactly what you stand for, you will of course be confident, competent and productive. They all go hand-in-hand.

Action – Think of someone you truly respect. Someone who you feel is successful. Someone who you trust and who makes you feel valuable. Does he or she personify integrity? Have high self-awareness? Confidence? 

No one can tell you what your integrity ‘should’ be. That is entirely up to you. But modelling someone who you think has integrity is a great place to start.

And remember, if you don’t know what you stand for, you’ll fall for anything!

The Power of the Nap

sleep
Yes, napping benefits your health!  Researchers have found that the brain needs rest and can refresh itself with a 20-minute power nap.

Of course, not everyone thinks they could take a nap in the middle of the day, but frequently we can. Some companies, including Google, Uber and other top performers, are including napping rooms or similar facilities in to their building designs.

Here are several proven and important benefits of a good power nap:

Helps with Stress:  Stress hormone levels are lower in those who take naps. A short power nap leaves you feeling refreshed, renewed, and focused.

Increases Alertness and Productivity: Taking a 20-minute nap approximately eight hours after you have awaken will do more for your stamina than sleeping another 20 minutes in the morning.

Improves Memory and Learning:  Napping protects brain circuits from overuse and neurons can consolidate what has been learned.

Helps Your Heart:  Taking 40 winks in the middle of the day reduces the risk of heart disease.  Countries where siestas are common have lower levels of heart disease.

Increases Cognitive Functioning:  Over forty five minutes, the benefits of napping disappear; the recommendation is a fifteen to thirty five minute “power nap”. This is the time necessary for the brain neurons to recuperate.

Helps Motivation to Exercise:  You will be able to exercise longer, faster, more efficiently when your body has its required amount of sleep.

Boosts Creativity:  Power napping allows your brain to create the associations necessary for creative insights.

Makes up for Midnight Tossing and Turning:  Sleep deprivation triggers a diabetes-like condition, harmed hormone production, and interferes with the ability to use carbohydrates.  Power napping benefits someone who is getting insufficient sleep at night.
 
Protects You from Sleepiness:  Naps are useful for shift workers, students, and anyone doing long-haul work.

Improves Overall Health:  Napping benefits heart functioning, hormonal maintenance and cell repair.  A power nap maximizes these benefits by getting you into and out of rejuvenating sleep as fast as possible.

Now, go take a nap…

Metacognition – An important skill for the workplace

Brain_12873853_Medium

What is metacognition?

John Flavell (1976) coined the term metacognition. Metacognition refers to higher-order thinking that enables understanding, analysis, and control of one’s cognitive processes, especially when engaged in learning. The more popular definitions of metacogition are:  the process of ‘knowing about knowing’; the process of ‘thinking about thinking’; the process of developing self-awareness and the ability to self-assess.

What are metacognitive skills?

Metacognitive skills include the ability to assess one’s current and previous knowledge, recognize flaws or gaps in one’s thinking, articulate one’s thought processes, plan gap-filling strategies, and determine the relevance of new information. Highly developed metacognitive skills can help compensate for deficits in general intelligence and/or prior knowledge and are important throughout life. Employers need to foster in their employees, the development of metacognitive skills.

Why is this important?

Research has shown that unproductive employees typically have poorly developed metacognitive skills. Interestingly, this may manifest itself in an employee’s overconfidence in his or her abilities. These employees may use inaccurate information to solve problems and stop working on projects before fully understanding what is needed for success. Poor metacognition is a big part of incompetence. Employees with good metacognitive skills are able to monitor and direct their own performance and learning processes. They can think through a problem or approach a project with confidence. They can select appropriate strategies and make decisions about a course of action to successfully perform the task. They often think about their own thinking processes and take time to think about and learn from their mistakes.

How can employers assist employees in developing good metacognitive skills?

Metacognitive skills can be taught (Halpern, 1996). Here are a few ideas to consider:

  • Encourage your employees to engage in ‘metacognitive conversations’ with themselves. Have them ‘talk’ with themselves about their learning, the challenges they encounter, and the ways in which they can self-correct and continue learning.
  • To help employees examine and develop their metacognitive processes, encourage them to discuss their thought processes with other employees.
  • Use ‘formative assessments’ during the working day. Formative assessments are brief, low-stakes activities that employees do in order to give themselves knowledge about their performance. For example,  encourage employees to think about the following questions: 
    • At the beginning of a project:
      • What prior knowledge will help me with this task? What should I do first?
      • How much time do I have to complete this project?
      • In what direction do I want my thinking to take me?
    • In the middle of a project:
      • How am I doing? Am I on the right track?
      • How should I proceed? Should I move in a different direction?
    • At the end of a project:
      • How well did I do? What did I learn?
      • Did I get the results I expected?  What could I have done differently?
      • Can I apply this way of thinking to other problems or situations?
      • Are there any gaps in my knowledge? Do I need to go back through the task to fill in these gaps?
  • Offer trainings that teach and support the development of metacognitive skills; an approach to learning with emphases on investigating the internal mental processes. 
  • Provide trainings that are based on microlearning, a form of learning that consists of brief, inter-connected learning activities composed of microcontent. 
  • Present trainings that can be delivered using microcontent audio files. Research has shown that computer-based interactive programs using audio files can influence a learner’s cognition by adding clarity, meaning, and motivation.  

The goal of helping employees develop metacognitive skills is to help them become comfortable with these skills so that these skills can be employed automatically. If asked what they are doing, employees with good metacognitive skills can accurately describe their metacognitive processes.

Focusing attention, deriving meaning, and making adjustments if something goes wrong becomes second nature.

The Great Manager / Leader

leadership2

The eastern philosophy of leadership states:

“The wicked leader is he/she who the people despise.
The good leader is he/she who the people revere.
The great leader is he/she who
the people say ‘We did it ourselves.’” – Lao Tsu

What makes a great manager/leader?

There are many characteristics of great managers/leaders.  Among the top eight is that great managers/leaders:

  1. Help develop people;
  2. Create positive environments and care about the well-being of their team;
  3. Treat people with respect, honesty and trust;
  4. Are able to communicate;
  5. Are self-aware and can acknowledge weaknesses;
  6. Pick their battles wisely and set the tone for healthy debate;
  7. Are responsible, flexible, courageous, tenacious, and patient; and
  8. Display a combination of humility and presence.

In the above list of eight, please note the importance placed on ‘people skills’ – the ability to achieve great results by dealing with people in a friendly and effective way.

However, “people skills” is what most mangers/leaders admit they lack!

It is reported that the lack of ‘people skills’ is the number one reason that managers/leaders do not meet performance expectations.  According to the Institute for Executive Development (2010), under-performance is about the lack of interpersonal and leadership skills, such as the ability to build relationships, collaborate, and influence.  Furthermore, in a study reported in the Harvard Business Review (April 16, 2013), it reveals that most managers lack empathy and the ability to build people-to-people relationships.

Where can managers/leaders get ‘people skills’ training?

Great managers/leaders know that sharpening current skills and learning new ‘people skills’ will pay off.  There are several ‘people skills’ training and development options to consider:

1.    Formal Workplace Training – in this type of training, the presentation structure is similar to a ‘class’, where an ‘expert’ teaches you ‘people skills’. Research shows that this type of training is ineffective in that the content is soon forgotten (look up “Forgetting Curve” or “Ebbinghaus”).

2.    Informal Workplace Training – should you be motivated to learn ‘people skills’ you could do this on your own. Through a process of trial and error, your ‘people skills’ training can take place haphazardly during the day. However, this type of learning tends to be unpredictable and may prove to be frustrating.  Without a structure, you may revert to your old ways of doing business.

3.    Nonformal Workplace Training – this type of training is mid-way between formal and informal. It is intentional training and offers structured objectives, and support. In nonformal workplace training, planned activities are presented by a professional trainer. These activities are just enough information, presented just in time, and are just big enough for easy consumption (frequently referred to as microlearning).  The advantage of nonformal workplace training is that learning can occur at the initiative of the individual and as a by-product of more organized activities.

How can managers/leaders find a nonformal workplace trainer?

Nonformal workplace trainers are out there; however, it may take a little work to find the best match for you.  Here are some points to consider when looking for a nonformal workplace training company.

You will want a company that:

  • Is designed on the principles of microlearning; a type of training that deals with small learning chunks accompanied by short-term learning activities.
  • Focuses on material that reflects the way you live, work and learn.
  • Makes it possible for you to train anywhere at any time.
  • Offers support and encourages self-discovery.
  • Allows you to focus on information not already possessed.
  • Is self-paced, flexible and casual; and
  • Offers a concurrent program, one for you and one for your team; a program that fills the ‘people skills’ gap until you get your proficiency up to speed.

Improving the ‘people skills’ of managers/leaders tends to improve all the skills of the people they manage and lead!

Cleared Off My Desk Today

This post is taken from my “Simple Sound Solutions” corporate training program:

Do you want a clearer desk in the next 30 minutes? Here is exactly how to do it.

Action – First, clear a space where you can create 4 piles. Next, turn off your phone or ask people to leave you alone for the next 30 minutes.

Then, start at one end of your desk working towards the other. Everything you touch has to go into one of these 4 piles:

Do          Defer          Delegate          Ditch

The ‘do’ pile is for those things you must take action on in the next 7-10 days. Do not take the action now, just pile it up.

‘Defer’ is for those things that can wait for more than 10 days. Using a sticky note, date the item for when you need to look at it again.

‘Delegate’ is the pile for those things that someone else can do. You may not think there is much you can pass to others, but there are generally a few things that end up in this stack.

And of course ‘Ditch’ is for all those papers that go to recycling, shredding or the garbage.

Be ruthless. If you only allow these 4 piles, you WILL get everything organized into them.

Then, at the end of 30 minutes, get rid of the Ditch stack, date order the Defer pile, pass on the Delegate batch and sit down to start working in your Do stack.

Get organized like this and I guarantee your day and your week will feel and be more productive and focused without all the stress a messy desk brings.

Privacy Settings
We use cookies to enhance your experience while using our website. If you are using our Services via a browser you can restrict, block or remove cookies through your web browser settings. We also use content and scripts from third parties that may use tracking technologies. You can selectively provide your consent below to allow such third party embeds. For complete information about the cookies we use, data we collect and how we process them, please check our Privacy Policy
Youtube
Consent to display content from Youtube
Vimeo
Consent to display content from Vimeo
Google Maps
Consent to display content from Google
Save