Productivity Archives - Page 17 of 32

How to Spot a Micromanager

August 3, 2011 by Thomas

Weâve all been guilty at one time or another of being a micromanager whether it was in the workplace or other facets of our lives.

You can usually spot a micromanager a mile away â the individual who wants to be a good leader but goes about in the wrong manner. While trying to better their workers, athletes, students, loved ones etc. they end up creating an issue that was not there in the first place.

The micromanager in many instances becomes just that because they want to make sure everything goes according to plan, their plan.

Whether it is the boss who doesnât have enough faith in their workers, the teacher who strays from the lesson or the coach who doesnât trust his team, they end up micromanaging and with it bring added stress to a situation. Another way to describe it is the micromanager wants full control and will accept nothing less.

Most micromanagers come about their title unbeknownst to them. They oftentimes donât go out of their way to fill this role, but once it consumes them they know nothing else. Like it or not, they have programmed themselves for this part and they are unlikely to change unless called on it.

Dangers of Micromanaging

For those individuals who have willingly or surprisingly become a micromanager, there are options. They can continue to let this role define them as managers, coaches, teachers, etc. or they can do something about it.

One of the first things the micromanager needs to assess is how their actions are impacting not only those under them, but themselves. For many micromanagers, their leadership skills or lack thereof eventually lead to them burn out, taking some of those under them along the way.

While some micromanagers need to assume that role for a while if those under them lack certain skills and/or experience, others run the potential of alienating the very individuals they spend time working with, teaching and coaching.

No one wants to feel like they are somehow inferior to those above them, made to think like they cannot make a decision or carry out a project. The person in many cases will eventually tune out the micromanager, leading to an awkward relationship at best among the two.

Having discussed the dangers, how do you know if you in fact are a micromanager?

Among the telltale signs of this problem are:

You decide that instead of working to educate others and provide constructive criticism , you in fact treat them as inferior, being fast to highlight their mistakes;
You find the need to order individuals around;
You have a short fuse and become frustrated, defensive and/or lash out at those who contest something you did or said;
You are upset when someone goes above your head to deal with your micromanaging issues.

Given the fact we all have been guilty at some point in our lives of micromanaging others, it is important to not immediately play the victim game. Whether it is in the office, the classroom or other walks of life, micromanaging doesnât serve either the person in charge or those under them any good.

Many of us are taught from an early age that we are either followers or leaders. For many micromanagers, they take the leadership role a little too far, eventually isolating themselves as someone who others do not want to deal with.

In the event youâve been labeled a micromanager or feel some of the above items may actually describe your leadership skills, donât think that you cannot change things. The benefits to removing the micromanager title from your resume are numerous.

Remember, an even bigger and better leader is one who can admit their deficiencies and learn from them.

Photo credit: smh.com.au

Dave Thomas is an expert writer on items like online marketing and is based in San Diego, California. He writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs at Resource Nation.

Are Women Getting a Fair Shake in the Workplace?

July 27, 2011 by Thomas

A co-worker and his wife recently brought three new lives into the world â triplets â two boys and a girl.

After all the congratulatory remarks were passed along, I stopped for a minute to wonder how the trio would be treated a couple of decades now when they go out into the working world. Trust me; their parents are likely asking can we at least enjoy them as little ones for a bit longer?

Will this young girl and millions like her find a working environment that is warm and receptive down the road or will it be cold and intimidating?

Challenges for Women at Work

While many young females are not stepping into 9 to 5 situations just yet, that day will come for millions of them and lead to an age old question, do they get treated differently than their male counterparts in the workplace?

As many successful women have worked their way up the corporate ladder, many others find themselves being left behind, whether it is salaries compared to men, opportunities for advancement or just plain respectability from their male counterparts.

As a woman in the workplace, have you found yourself the victim of?

A lesser salary than a male counterpart doing the same work;
Getting passed over for advancement opportunities;
Verbal or physical harassment.

While there are rules in place that are supposed to protect women against harassment on the job, the salary and advancement issues are two items that women have little power to fight. As even some males discover along the way, office politics can play a big role on who gets raises and the opportunities to move up the corporate ladder.

According to a recent study from CareerBuilder, 38 percent of female workers indicated they believe they are paid less than their male counterparts sporting the same skill set and experience. The study goes on to note that 39 percent of women employees think men have additional advancement opportunities within their companies, a jump of 13 percent from 2008.

Other interesting tidbits from the survey include:

45 percent of males note they make $50,000 or more, with 24 percent of females claiming the same;
10 percent of males make $100,000 or more compared to only 3 percent of females;
30 percent of males note they are in a management role compared to 21 percent of females;
36 percent of females claim that males receive more kudos for their achievements within the organization than they do.

One interesting fact from the survey was the responses males and females gave to what bothers them most with in the workplace.

Men noted that women oftentimes gossip or are too emotional or sensitive, while women claim men can be arrogant, make inappropriate comments or donât take women at work serious.

Interestingly enough, not a lot of men claimed that women use their beauty to advance their careers along. Oftentimes, an attractive woman in the workplace must overcome misconceptions that she used her looks, flirting skills or charm to work her way up the corporate ladder.

For those men who assume that some women in their office rose up the corporate ranks with anything other than their intelligence, keep in mind that many of these same women are holding down two full-time jobs â employee and mother.

Harassment on the Job

One of the biggest challenges women face in the workplace is harassment, oftentimes in a sexual manner.

A recent AOL Jobs Survey pointed out that one in six employees has dealt with harassment on the job. Nearly 50 percent of women are more apt to report it, compared to 21 percent of men.

For those women harassed on the job, which are oftentimes females working in blue collar type jobs, the issues can include: Unwanted jokes or offensive language, inappropriate touching or other contact with a male co-worker, being asked out on dates, and being subjected to suggestive pictures or objects.

According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), in 2010, more than 11,700 charges were brought by workers against co-workers or bosses (83.6 percent from women).

While lower pay, fewer opportunities for advancement and sexual harassment issues do persist, many women have overcome these and other obstacles to work their way up the corporate ladder.

To their credit, they overcame the naysayers who for years thought that women could be nothing more than secretaries and/or administrative assistants.

And for those males who think the secretary is a worthless position, who do you think gives the outside world its first impression of your company, handles myriad of duties and oftentimes holds the business together?

Women continue to make positive strides in the workplace, a workplace whose scenery has changed for the better in the eyes of many women and men.

Photo credit: kristisiegel.com

Home Sick? 7 Productivity Tips So You Don’t Get Sick of Working at Home

May 6, 2011 by Guest Author

A Guest Post By Ripley Daniels

So, youâve been given the opportunity of working from home and the excitement of skipping your daily commute, navigating office politics and being chained to your cubicle have all but completely overtaken you. You are free to work from home and be productive without the confines of an office environment. For the first few months, all is well as you love falling out of bed in your favorite pajamas only to stumble a few feet into your home office. The freedom and autonomy is absolutely priceless. A few months later, the isolation begins to set in. You miss the office chatter and the scheduled breaks with your co-workers. Thereâs something unnatural about spending several hours a day in front of a computer screen with no one to interact with.

If you find yourself running into the issue of restlessness, isolation and depression while working from home; there is no need to worry. Like with anything new, you must learn to adapt to your new work environment. Follow these seven simple steps and you will be whizzing through your work day in no time.

Set up or maintain a regular work schedule. Nothing causes anxiety more than not having an organized daily routine which is what the traditional office environment automatically creates. In order to get into a happy, healthy work rhythm, you must create a work schedule that is realistic and doable and then stick to it. If you are used to starting work at 9AM and shutting down for the day at 5PM, this should be the work routine that you commit to while working from home.
Allow yourself an hour break for lunch and a few small breaks throughout the day. Just as it is legally mandated that employees take lunch breaks and small breaks, you must follow the same guidelines or run the risk of burning yourself out. It is nearly impossible to work eight hours or more without stepping away from your desk so donât feel pressured to slave away in front of your computer because youâre no longer officially on the clock. Set your lunch time and breaks at the same time every day so you can keep a regular schedule.
Get outside and get active. Living a sedentary lifestyle is harmful to your health, sanity and confidence. When you are required to sit in front of a computer while working from home, it can be easy to forget the importance of fresh air and exercise and sunshine. When you do take your lunch break or small periodic breaks, try and get outside for a walk or to make a leisure call to friends/family. Take advantage of your new work environment and fit in some exercise via an exercise DVD or take a mid-day work out class at the gym on your lunch break.
Set up Skype or Google Chat so you can maintain contact with your fellow co-workers while working from home. Telecommuting can be an isolating experience but with the help of social media and various programs, you can stay in touch with your co-workers as if you were right back in your cubicle or office. This is also a good way to keep your socialization skills sharp as telecommuting can easily dull your sensibilities from the lack of human interaction.
Set goals for yourself both professionally and personally. Unlike a traditional job, a telecommuter has the opportunity of enhancing both their work life and personal life at the same time. You have the ability of using your breaks to complete various projects around the house which also serves as a mental break from your daily work load.
Attend industry events and conferences so that you can stay current on the latest technology, products, services and inventions within your field. There is nothing worse than falling behind in your position because youâre working from home and no longer have access to the same information regarding classes or programs. Just because you are a telecommuter doesnât mean that you can mentally check out and not deliver outstanding work performance.
Step away from your desk at the end of each business day and donât look back. If your schedule is 9AM-5PM, you should resist working past your scheduled hours as you will soon find that your energy levels, confidence and productivity will all drastically be affected. Turn your computer off and shut down your home office during the evenings and weekends so that you can maintain some semblance of a normal work/life balance.

Do you have other tricks you use to keep your business well and working?
_____________
Ripley Daniels is an editor at Without The Stress, a passport, travel visa and immigration advisory firm located in Los Angeles.

Thanks, Ripley, for your insight into the problems that are unique to working at home!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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7 Outstanding Web Tools to Organize 2011 and Get the Right Information to You

December 31, 2010 by Guest Author

A Guest Post by Lior Levin

The Internet has put more information at our fingertips than ever before, and, at the same time, given us more to remember. As great as the digital age has been, itâs also been a nightmare for organization, giving us more mental clutter than we ever thought possible.

Fortunately, developers are finding new ways to use the Web to help people stay organized. In every area from finance to news, new Web-based tools are cropping up to help you stay organized and avoid information overload.

Though they target different challenges, their goals are are all the same: Filter out the information that one doesnât need and ensure that the info you do need is available and easily accessible.

That is something all these tools do very well.

Contacts: Gist

Being on the Web means that we have an ever-increasing contact list and those contacts have an also-increasing number of means of contact. Between email, Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds and more, it can be hard to keep track of who we know, where they are and what they are up to.

Gist, however, makes it easy, by syncing up with your various accounts, it unifies your contact list into one easily-digested list that is sorted by importance and includes all means of contact.

Finances: Mint

As great as online banking is, most of us have multiple accounts and our finances spread across more and more companies. Fortunately, Mint makes it easy to view all of these accounts in one place, by accessing your various banking, loans and credit accounts and then displaying the information in one place, making it easier than ever to get a clear picture of your finances.

Best of all, since Gist automatically categorizes your purchases, you can easily see where your money is going and where you can save money.

Files: Dropbox

If you use more than one computer, the frustration of having to more files from one machine to another are well-known. Though flash drives and email can help, they are clunky and slow solutions. Fortunately, Dropbox can help.

Dropbox automatically synchronizes files between computers, without you having to do anything. It just runs in the background and when a file is changed on one computer, the other machines on the account get the update almost instantly. Also great for collaboration and backup.

Social Networks: Tweetdeck (Chrome App)

If you are like most people, you have at least a few different social networking profiles spread across several different sites. Keeping track of them all can be a huge pain. Fortunately, Tweetdeckâs new Chrome Application, which is a Web-based HTML5 app, lets you follow your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare accounts and more all from one multi-column pane.

Best of all, with merged columns you can get all of your private communications (IE: Twitter DMs and Facebook messages) in one stream, regardless of where they came from.

Documents: Google Docs

Though Google Docs is best known as a tool for editing and creating files on the Web, through features like easy sharing, folders and document upload, it is also a way to organize and access your critical files anywhere you need them.

While it isnât ideal for all document types, most simple documents can be easily used with Google Docs, making it a natural way to keep your files handy, no matter where you are.

Incoming Links: Zite

Between our Twitter streams, RSS feeds and other sites we follow, many of us have far more links in our inbox than we could ever read. Zite, which is currently in closed beta, calls itself âYour Personal Web Filterâ and it goes through all of that to find the stories most important and most interesting for you.

Most interesting of all, Zite learns from your behavior and is always honing its approach to what you find interesting, making it a tool that gets better the more you use it.

Task List: Producteev

Busy people have a lot of deadlines but keeping track of those deadlines can be a real pain. Though calendars can help, especially with meetings and appointments, there are many tasks that just arenât right for calendars like laundry or sending out birthday cards.

Producteev helps organize those tasks and, through integration with email, IM and an iPhone app, makes it easy to ad tasks and receive updates on them. is also great for managers who need to assign tasks and deadlines to a team as it has a built-in function for group management as well.

In the end, the Web has both done more to make our lives more cluttered and more to simplify it than any innovation before. We have more information being thrown at us than we ever thought possible and more ways to sort, organize and parse it than we did just a few years ago.

When itâs all said and done, the Web is just a tool and weâll get out of it exactly what we put into it. If we let it drive us to insanity, it can do so. But if we make it a tool to organize and streamline our lives, it can do that just as easily.

—–
This outstanding review was written by Lior Levin who is a consultant to iAdvize, a live chat support software company. You can find Lior on Twitter as Liors

Thank you, Lior. You’re welcome back here anytime.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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30-Minute Strike Force Strategy to Increase Your Productivity

June 28, 2010 by Liz

Move that Stuff

A colleague in publishing once told me, “I can tell your productivity level by the amount of stuff around your desk.”

I checked my team at the time, the situation was the same for them. As the action of a project went faster, the piles around their desks got higher and wider. I also noticed that those collections of stuff did more than steal space …

Piled-up stuff steals time, decreases productivity, and causes stress.

As our piles move outward and get higher, we spend time:

visually scanning.
moving farther to get what we need.
remembering what each pile if for.

It’s a great rule to decide on every item as it enters our command center, choosing to

Do it.
Delegate it.
Dump it.

I find that I sometimes need more information before I can move on any of those three. Which means that some things end up in the option called

It Depends …

and that’s when the piles start neatly forming. It was the same for my team. A reset strategy was called for.

A 30-Minute Strike Force Strategy to Increase Productivity

When the piles start to slow down progress try this 30-minute strategy to get back to a Command Center that works for you and your productivity.

Choose your ground. Great commanders don’t try to conquer the world in one day. Pick one field that deserves your attention — your desk, your inbox, your favorites, your LinkedIn page, your blog.
Have a clear strategy before you start. Know your priorities and purpose going in. Define your allies and enemies. If you’ve not used something for 3 months why is it next to your keyboard? If you don’t want design work why do you talk so much about it on your LinkedIn page.
Be on a lethal mission. Set a 30 minute time in which to sort what you’ll keep and what you’ll delete or throw away. (If you make a defer / delegate pile, put it farther and make it smaller than the trash bin. If you live a week without touching anything in that pile, dump it. You’ll survive fine.)
Organize what’s left and define the space. Set the things you use most often closest to you. Decide how much time you can commit to maintain this.
Claim your rewards and Celebrate. Take a few minutes to survey your work with your favorite reward.
Leverage this process for the future. Try it in a new space.

The sense of accomplishment that comes from taking control is possibly the best motivator I know. I just was lethal with my workspace and that’s what led this blog post

And I’m still claiming my reward – workspace that’s working for me again.

Thinking about what I’ll tackle next …

What about you? Where would a 30-minute Strike Force Strategy increase your productivity?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Do You Sleep in the Freeze or Invest in the Spring?

January 22, 2010 by Liz

about seasons of life and work.

When the sailors went home last fall, some cleaned up their boats and go involved in other things. Some might have figured they were done and sold their boats off. I suppose some “hibernate” — put their in storage because the season for sailing is over. They sleep in the freeze.

The sailors who love sailing know just saw it as part of the yearly progress of the sailing “routine.” Winter is a luxury of time to fix what was wearing, mend what was tearing, and replace the broken things. They assess, check, invest, and work toward the days that bring back the summer breeze. They invest in the spring.

It’s a fact that that eventually the ice melts, the harbor always comes back in spring.

But you has to work on your boat, study the climate, and live your goals to set sail even better than before the water froze..

Most work that we love seems to have some cycle with a winter and a spring. A downtime offers an opportunity to get us running sleeker, faster, and in a more stable fashion again.

Most who do well when spring returns have been working all winter on a plan. We use the time have to build our skills, restring our offers and invest in our networks so that when up time and sunshine return we are sailing again. It’s even more than productivity and good business, it’s being invested in ourselves, our lives, each other and our dreams.

What are you doing to invest in the spring?

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