Leadership Style Survey This questionnaire contains statements about leadership style beliefs. Next to each statement, circle the number that represents how strongly you feel about the statement by using the following scoring system: Almost Always True — 5 Frequently True — 4 Occasionally True — 3 Seldom True — 2 Almost Never True — 1 Be honest about your choices as there are no right or wrong answers — it is only for your own self-assessment. Leadership Style Survey In the table below, enter the score of each item on the above questionnaire. This questionnaire is to help you assess what leadership style you normally operate out of. The highest of the three scores in the columns above indicate what style of leadership you normally use — Authoritarian, Participative, or Delegative. The lowest of the three scores is an indicator of the style you least use. Final Thoughts Normally, some of the best leaders operate out of the participative mode and use the other two modes as needed. Reliability and Validity Next Step
Powerful people have a distorted perception of time Maria Konnikova, writing in the New York Times, made the point recently that there’s much more to poverty than just a shortage of money. Being poor, she said, brings with it other abstract deficits, most notably a lack of time. She quoted Sendhil Mullainathan, an economist and the author the book Scarcity: “The biggest mistake we make about scarcity is we view it as a physical phenomenon. It’s not.” Saying time is scarce seems imprecise, given that each day, no one has more than 24 hours. A new study out of the University of California at Berkeley examined how the perception of time can be distorted by being in a position of power. The reason powerful people feel they have an abundance of time, the study goes on to say, is that their feelings of control over many aspects of their lives spill over onto their sense of time—which jibes with previous studies that looked at the ties between power and perception. This post originally appeared at The Atlantic. Eyebrows, why
Employee Effectiveness - The Clemmer Group Webinar: 9 Ways to Build Effective Relationships “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” These are a few lines of a poem penned by the metaphysical English poet, John Donne, around the time of Shakespeare. Community, interdependence, and oneness has been a central part of many ancient philosophies […] Read post » A Fresh Look at Employee Engagement Managers play the most important role in creating employee engagement. Read whitepaper » Creating Empowerment and Growth “Managing the monkeys” so employees move from passing problems upward to taking more problem solving ownership. Watch video » The Impact of Coaching Effectiveness The impact of coaching skill development on employee engagement and satisfaction. Watch video » The Impact of Leadership on Employee Turnover Data showing the impact that leadership effectiveness has on employee turnover. Watch video » The Impact of Leadership on Employee Engagement Watch video » Read post » Read post »
The Daily Routines Of 26 Of History's Most Creative Minds Even Beethoven and Balzac had just 24 hours in a day. How did history's most prolific minds schedule their greatness? Based on research from Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (which we covered previously here), a new interactive infographic by creative marketing agency Distilled offers us mere mortals insight into the daily routines of 26 famous artists, writers, composers, and thinkers. Organized from earliest to latest risers, the visualization reveals hours spent sleeping, eating, working, bathing, socializing, and exercising (good news for the lazy: most of these greats preferred casual strolls to pumping iron). Perhaps what stands out most is how few of these creative people had good old-fashioned day jobs. The infographic is accompanied by the subjects' thoughts on productivity. To play around with the full interactive infographic, go here. [Image: Kurt Vonnegut, Maya Angelou via Shutterstock, Haruki Murakami]
Kotter's 8-Step Change Model - Change Management Tools from Mind Tools "Change is the only constant."– Heraclitus, Greek philosopher What was true more than 2,000 years ago is just as true today. We live in a world where "business as usual" is change. New initiatives, project-based working, technology improvements, staying ahead of the competition – these things come together to drive ongoing changes to the way we work. Whether you're considering a small change to one or two processes, or a system wide change to an organization, it's common to feel uneasy and intimidated by the scale of the challenge. You know that the change needs to happen, but you don't really know how to go about delivering it. There are many theories about how to "do" change. In this article, video and infographic, we look at his eight steps for leading change, below. Click here to view a transcript of this video. Step 1: Create Urgency For change to happen, it helps if the whole company really wants it. What you can do: Note: Step 2: Form a Powerful Coalition Step 4: Communicate the Vision
How Airtasker can help you dump your dead-end job Stuart Orth and his dog Ziggy. Photo: Sahlan Hayes You know the saying: If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen? Stuart Orth certainly did as he folded his chef’s apron for the last time and walked out on a career that had become a living nightmare. Orth, 40, says he had been pushed to mental breakdown numerous times by an industry that requires chefs to work unsustainable and unsociable hours and pays them poorly for their dedication. “It’s not like Masterchef, that’s for sure,” he says, comparing real kitchen life with the reality TV show. Orth quit his job when his grandfather died, deciding he needed to devote some time to himself. After years of slogging away for 60-hour weeks under artificial lights, he is finally in the sunshine, doing what he loves, and earning significantly more than he did as a qualified chef. The platform launched two and a half years ago and work volumes increased seven-fold last year, handling around $12 million worth of jobs each year. 1. 2. 3.
PDCA PDCA (plan–do–check–act or plan–do–check–adjust) is an iterative four-step management method used in business for the control and continuous improvement of processes and products. It is also known as the Deming circle/cycle/wheel, Shewhart cycle, control circle/cycle, or plan–do–study–act (PDSA). Another version of this PDCA cycle is OPDCA. The added "O" stands for observation or as some versions say "Grasp the current condition." This emphasis on observation and current condition has currency with Lean manufacturing/Toyota Production System literature.[1] Meaning[edit] Continuous quality improvement with PDCA Establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the expected output (the target or goals). Implement the plan, execute the process, make the product. Study the actual results (measured and collected in "DO" above) and compare against the expected results (targets or goals from the "PLAN") to ascertain any differences. About[edit] See also[edit]
Get Your Passion Project Moving Without Quitting Your Day Job You’ve finally figured out what you want to do with your life — start a company, launch a website, design an app, or found a nonprofit. The only problem is that you can’t afford to quit your job (and lose your benefits) in order to pursue it fulltime. So, where should you start? What’s the best way to get your passion project moving? What the Experts Say Knowing where your professional passions lie puts “you in a good position,” says Dorie Clark, the author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future. Create a strategy “Begin by sketching out exactly what it is you want to achieve,” says Gulati. Save money “Having financial security gives you the opportunity to build your business on your terms,” says Gulati. Take control of your schedule Perhaps the biggest challenge is finding time in your busy schedule to work on your project. Ask for flexibility It’s not out of the question that your boss may even give you leeway to work on your venture, according to Clark. Do: Don’t:
Coaching Tools 101: The Urgent Important Matrix - What is it and How To Use it! Well, Former US President Eisenhower used this so-called “Eisenhower Principle” to organize his tasks. He is quoted as saying, “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” It was Dr Stephen Covey (of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” fame) who took these concepts mainstream, calling it The Urgent Important Matrix in his famous book . Quadrant 1 – Crises or “Important AND Urgent” Tasks What: Tasks that fall into this quadrant include deadlines, urgent meetings, pressing problems, crises and fire-fighting. How we feel: When we spend a lot of time in this quadrant we become stressed and burned out. Action: Minimise the time spent in this quadrant by prioritizing, planning and delegating ie. spending more time in Quadrant 2. Coaching Tip: If your client is in a line management or service based role, they will spend more time in this quadrant than a project manager. Quadrant 2 – Goals and Planning or “Important and Non-Urgent” Tasks
Why I became a computer scientist instead of a doctor When I dropped out of medical school in 2007, it happened in two stages: the first, administrative and fairly straightforward; the second, emotional and more complex. When I made the decision to drop out, I was a 20-year-old medical student at Tehran University, finishing up my second year. (In Iran, you start medical school directly after high school and study for seven-and-a-half years.) However, when I started at MIT, I was utterly disappointed with the pre-med culture and requirements—as well as the way biology was taught—even at this top technical school. If you are not familiar with pre-med culture, here is my take on it: As a pre-med student in the US, you generally have to take two years worth of courses and requirements as prescribed by the medical schools. In my opinion, this approach selects for the wrong type of doctor—a shallow and competitive one. In my opinion, medicine isn’t about competing with others or personal success. This wasn’t the biology I knew and loved.
Team building training and development. Before exhibiting the signs of effective teamwork which were listed in 'What is Effective Teamwork?' your team will probably need to pass through several stages of development, during which other signs or characteristics will be exhibited. We us a simple model based on four essential stages of development. It has been found to be very useful in helping teams and team leaders to understand team development. This model will help you and your team members not only to understand, but to then agree where they are in the development process. We have a really useful diagnostic instrument to enable your team members diagnose and agree where they are in the team development stage matrix. No team ever exhibits solely the characteristics of one particular stage; rather it is a question of which characteristics are the most prominent. This is the most common stage of development to be found in organizations. Stage 1: Development activities for the undeveloped team
How to Get Ahead in Risk Management Risk Management isn’t Just an Obligation, or Something other Execs Want to See...When Done Right, It really works. Risk management is easy enough to say, but pretty tricky to get right in practice. Some organizations are asked to do it by concerned board members looking for reassurance in an increasingly scary online world. Other organizations are forced to do it – notably Federal agencies responsible to build Continuous Monitoring programs according to the Risk Management Framework laid out by NIST. Others do it because they see it as the right thing to do – in a world where the security budget is never more than a few percent of what it would take to build out everything we could do, there’s an ever-present need to spend the few chips we get as wisely as we can, and Risk Management is as good a name as any for “I can’t do it all, so what is most important?”. There is a trap, though, if we just treat Risk Management as a nice label for “doing more with less”. Why does it work so well?