A recent study shows Americans convey importance to those who appear busy. But busyness is a proven productivity killer, so I asked 10 business and productivity thought leaders 1) how they recognize when they're getting too busy and 2) how they unbusy themselves.

The backlog is for the “Product owner” as a microphone is for a journalist. Or how a bible is for a pastor. It is one of our main work tools. But what is the backlog? Backlog (…) was used, mainly in…

#FutureofWork - Skills Required for Future Success #sketchnote #futureofwork http://t.co/0p78rIxxOI @AbhijitBhaduri

If micro-managers are like babysitters, then the bosses we all hope to have are like great coaches. Coaches inspire and bring out the best in their team. Micro-managers slowly suck the life out of you. Everybody knows a micro-manager, but nobody claims to be one.

List of the best virtual team building activities for remote teams. Includes free, paid and "must try" ideas. Updated in 2023. Now sortable!

Every startup wants to grow, who doesn’t? But with growth, every company needs to inevitably add more managers, more heads, more leaders, basically a larger workforce. This creates a frantic need to h...

Opinion: How one little graphic about inequality, posted on a professor's Google+ page, came to be shared and adapted around the world.

The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) have identified a set of competencies they consider necessary for a practicing business analyst to be effective at their job. This article builds a capability view using these competencies as a foundation, and then considers the value streams that a business analyst uses to co-ordinate these competencies to perform their job.

If you understand why talented people leave their organizations, you can make sure it doesn’t happen to yours. Here are five ways to retain your best talent.

Trust your gut and begin looking for these other signs.

We have different views of the DISC profile types based on our own perceptions. Hence, we may also have our own misconceptions about DISC personality types.

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions. How do we simplify? How do we make better, more objective, and more informed decisions? How do we teach our children to make better decisions? How about applying a visual approach designed for business to life and school? It's called the 6 Thinking Hats Approach

Work is clearly evolving which means that we are seeing new technologies and behaviors enter our organizations. These new behaviors and technologies are largely being fueled by the consumer web and now organizations are struggling to adapt.

A Scrum Master ensures that the practices and processes he mastered through a CSM certification are applied correctly in the organization.

Although there are many models of emotional intelligence, they are often lumped together as “EQ” in the popular vernacular. An alternative term is “EI,” which comprises four domains: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Within those domains are 12 EI competencies, starting with emotional self-awareness in the self-awareness domain. Emotional self-control, adaptability, achievement orientation, and a positive outlook fall under self-management. Empathy and organizational awareness make up social awareness. Relationship management includes influence, coaching and mentoring, conflict management, teamwork, and inspirational leadership. Leaders need to develop a balance of strengths across these competencies. Assessment tools, like a 360-degree assessment that uses ratings from yourself and those who know you well, can help you determine where your EI needs improvement. To best improve your weak spots, find an expert to coach you.

In September, I was required to attend a course for determining my personality style. I’ve previously blogged on this topic before and determined that, of the four temperaments, I was melanch…

Employer Branding strategy is not easy to set up. However, successful recruiters have to know how to plan, develop and implement productive Employer Branding strategies in order to attract talent.

Think twice before you compliment your interviewer's skirt.

Explore 20 ways of how not to implement change in organizations. Change is demanding and challenging, so knowing how not to implement change in organizations will enable you to plug any change management gaping holes in your organization's change strategy. By Catherine Adenle Knowing how not to implement change in organizations will save your organization

Wondering whether it is possible for you to try diagnosing Employee Development Needs and how? Check this very informative infographic about the procedure of diagnosing Employee Development Needs and learn all about it and the ways you can successfully implement this knowledge.

Whether you are creating a new program, or upgrading and existing one, these secrets will help you create a winning employee onboarding process.

Know the ways to be indispensable at work? Have the mindset of a person that’s keen to be valued at work? Explore 20 ways to be indispensable at work

How do you achieve success? Use this infographic to survey some of the offbeat habits that can bring business fortune.

If you're trying to reach a goal or know someone that is, share any of these 101 'You can do it' memes and help make their day!

All leaders should recognize and tackle the subtle ways that implicit bias shapes everyday interactions as well as decision-making.

We are all individuals - our experiences and personality affect who we are and how we see the world. We all learn in different ways and grasp concepts at different rates. Some of us need to fully understand how a piece of technology works before implementing / using it, while others can just run with a basic understanding. Knowing this, why do we sometimes assume each of us work and learn in the same way as ourselves? Here are a few techniques on getting the best out of your team by understanding each of your roles, creating a safe environment, and transforming your workforce so that you can all grow and learn from each experience. I don’t see colour, but people tell me I’m YELLOW. In any environment it is essential to know how you are perceived. It is also important to understand the motivations of each of your team members in a workplace. I have found, colour personality profiling, determining a person’s personality type based on the work of Carl Jung, really useful to identify the types of people in my teams. Jung uses colour energies to identify the four basic personality types. He explains that each person will exhibit tendencies of each colour to differing degrees at different points, which is why the four personality types can be split further into eight different behavioural types. What we can take away from this and apply to our teams, is knowing how to spot the dominant colour within ourselves and each other to best manage interactions and build on relationships. Colour personality profiling can help each team member to understand theirs and others role and the contribution they play in helping the team succeed. In my opinion, the best way to find out someone’s colour profile is in group environment. You will be able to spot the more introverted, reserved individuals whose primary focus may be problem solving and wanting to be correct. Versus the extroverts within your team who are motivated by the company of others and can easily influence those that they interact with. Knowing this, it is no wonder then that strongly orientated extraverts and introverts see things in different ways, which can cause conflict and misunderstanding. Two people may look at the same situation and yet see different things. One team member may be able to thrive better by bouncing ideas off the group, while the cool blues among us may do better when you give them a quiet minute to properly think through their ideas before presenting them to others. Now, I’m not saying go ahead and learn each percentage of colours of each team member, but what I am suggesting is to try and pull out their dominant colour so that you can get a better gauge of who they are and their motivations, so that you can be adaptive in your approach when communicating with them. Colour profiling will help you work to your team strengths and motivate your team in such a way they feel more driven. Experiment with ideas… #YOLO Don’t let the fear of being wrong rule the day. For new ideas to be adopted, we need to make room for experimentation and a trial and error approach. Experimenting with new ideas can lead to new ways of solving problems. Nobody wants to work in a toxic environment where they fear taking risks because of the consequences that may follow. As leaders we need to make sure that the environment which we create for our workforce is one where our team is comfortable being uncomfortable. Let them take a risk, let them change the game; there are no repercussions for getting things wrong just as long as you have learnt from it. Healthy discomfort comes from pushing the envelope on new approaches, while managing and monitoring risks and learning in the process. Enabling experimentation brings out creativity. Once a problem or a new idea have been encountered, give your team the confidence and incentive to solve it until problem solving just becomes another part of your agile culture. One way of finding time to experiment on new ideas and solving problems is by having your core team working towards your everyday goal, while a few others are experimenting with the new idea /problem. Not all experiments will lead to a breakthrough, and this is still a good thing as you will be able to make a valid decision based on the outcome. Successful innovation is all about making decisions based on data-driven insights gained from experimentation and trials. Hi, my name is Shana and I have failed. When it come to the end of a project / delivery one of the things I have learned is to always have a wash-up session where you cover all the lessons learned. This is an ideal way to go over the highlights and lowlights which has occurred. It also gives you time to reflect as a team, so you can appreciate what your team do well, and what areas you may need to work on. One of the most valuable activities I have come across in a wash-up is a Failure SwapShop. This is where each team member comes to the wash-up with one failure. This could be something small as not asking for help when they needed it, to missing a deadline due to bugs in their code. The idea is you go around the room taking it in turn to explain your failure, then (but most importantly) the lesson(s) learned from it. So something like this… Introduction Hi, my name is Shana, and I have failed. Group Acknowledgement – Cheers and claps Explain the failure I failed because I did not put enough effort into testing my bug fixes before merging it in with the master branch. Explain the lesson learned I have learned that I should spend more time in testing my branch before requesting a merge, as it only slows down the process. I have also learned that fixing one issue may have a knock on effect on to the rest of the application, so don’t just test the fix, try to test everything associated with it. Group Acknowledgement – Cheers and claps The main idea here is that everyone shares and reflects on their failure in a safe way and each lesson learnt is celebrated with a round of applause – because we are all learning from our mistakes. I find this to be an effective technique to acknowledge and grow from failures as a team. We can learn from others experiences. As they say; a smart person learns from their mistakes and a wise person learns from the mistakes of others. At the end of the day, true failure is when you have failed and don’t learn your lesson. So create a culture where sharing information, even about negative things, is desirable. Where failing will have a positive effect on the growth and culture of your team.