Tag: leadership

  • What is Leadershum?

    What is LeadersHum?

    LeadersHum is a free community that enables global leaders, thinkers, and coaches to voice their opinion through blogs, videos, ebooks, etc. We now have 10,000+ leaders shaping their skills through our platform.

    With the ‘Power List of the Top 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership in 2022’, LeadersHum celebrates distinguished leaders whose contributions to leadership coaching and strategy have made it what it is today.

    Click here for more information:
    https://www.leadershum.com/blog/power-list-of-the-top-200-biggest-voices-in-leadership-in-2022?contentId=61e184a816bd686e4fd735df

  • Work-Life Balance – Why it’s so Important and How to Achieve it

    All work and no play can lead to burn out and serious health problems.

    Working too much can cause you to feel irritable and impact your mental, emotional and physical well being to say the least. Ever heard of under-promising and over-delivering? I bet a lot of people reading this do the exact opposite of this. Over-committing is one of the leading causes of stress and burn out in the workplace. This is why finding the perfect work-life balance is so important.

    When demands and expectations are too much for you – speak up. It’s hard to say no to your boss when she/he is asking for something to be done yesterday. Especially when there are 60 other people who would love to have your job. Competition might be fierce, and you might really want a raise or a promotion. The good news is:

    It is more than possible to find a work-life balance that allows you to set boundaries in the workplace while still advancing your career.

    Assertively Say No and Set Boundaries

    So how can you improve this skill? Find assertive ways to communicate your needs and set boundaries. Here are a few examples: If someone asks you at the end of the day to do something for them right away tell them you will work on it tomorrow during business hours. If your boss is piling on work and deadlines, ask them: “would you rather I complete project A or project B because it isn’t possible to do both in the given timeline”.

    If your peer asks you to take on an assignment as a favor for them but you can’t handle the additional workload: “I’d love to help you out but I’m swamped with task A, task B and task C and two of them are due tomorrow so I wouldn’t have time to work on that for you”. Or maybe you have a team assignment with members not pulling their weight: “Lets divide and conquer this project. Would you like to do task A or task B?”.

    There are a lot of great ways to kindly say no and set boundaries that help you achieve and maintain balance without jeopardizing your career or relationships with others. Learning assertiveness skills is key to work-life balance. A therapist or career coach can help you learn this essential skill.

    Unplug

    An easy way to help you find work-life balance is to just simply unplug. Checking emails or even thinking about checking them is a constant trigger for stress as it alerts us to any number of things that could have gone sideways and require our immediate attention. Always being connected to work increases our chances of worrying all night and weekend long.  Set specific times for when you will not work or engage in any other work-related activities. For example, after 6pm and on the weekends I will not check emails.

    You can also unplug mentally by not thinking about work. Distract yourself every time you start ruminating about work. Quiet and solitude allow us to be fully present and connected to ourselves and others. It allows our brain and bodies time to recuperate for the next day. It provides a time when our bodies can be free from cortisol and adrenaline that can be at high levels when we ruminate on workplace issues. Unplugging provides a break from rumination and will help you come back to work relaxed and recharged!

    Stay Organized

    Having a schedule, and/or a to-do list is a great way to stay organized and will reduce the amount of time you spend planning each day. Make sure you have an accessible overview of any due dates, meetings, or other events you may need to prepare for and set aside specific time to prepare. A very common mistake is overestimating how much can be done in one day.  It’s easy to lose motivation to continue your routine of scheduling and writing to do lists once you realize you can’t complete your to-do list. It’s much easier to create a smaller to-do this, and once you finish all the tasks, you can keep going and do more. This way, you feel like you’re overachieving, rather than underachieving.

    Make sure to schedule personal time as well and don’t let anything get in the way of it. Make “me time” your number one priority. Write set times to cook, shop, exercise, schedule, strategize, be creative, be social, read, be alone, plan what you will cook and shop for, time with friends, time for doing nothing. Try to take care of your mental health during your personal time.

    Prioritize

    So you’ve set up your calendar, made some to-do lists, and now you’re staring at this endless list of tasks that may feel impossible to complete. Take some time to decide what tasks need to be completed first, such as whatever presentation, meeting, or project that appears first in your calendar. A lot of highly productive people feel the need to do just about everything at once, but you need to set limits for yourself as well to avoid a burnout.

    Limit Your Distractions

    When you start a task, do you constantly check your phone, emails, or other unrelated content? These types of distractions will double the amount of time it takes you to complete your tasks. You’ve probably heard of study smarter not harder, try to work smarter not harder.

    If you can improve your efficiency at work by assertively saying no and setting boundaries, staying organized, prioritizing, and giving yourself time to unplug and unwind, you’ll have much more time for a personal life! Achieving this level of work-life balance will not only have an amazing positive impact on your mental and emotional well being, but will actually make you more productive and effective in both professional and personal pursuits.

    Original Content Created By Psych Company Team

  • People Buy Stories Before They Buy Stuff

    I’ve been writing about the use of story in marketing for years. I remember when I first started telling people over a decade ago to make their clients the hero of their stories and to use their personal stories as foundational marketing elements they were dubious at best.

    Today, every marketer understands the value of story as a way to sell just about anything. But, still, few understand the right way to use story and narrative as a way to guide people on the perfect journey.

    This is due in large part to the fact that it takes some skill, a bit of hard work and perhaps, more importantly, patience. A great story has many significant elements and to have the greatest impact each element must be built in a certain order – much like the foundation of a house must be laid before the walls and roof have a place to stand.

    The good news is that I believe there’s a framework that any business can adopt and that framework is evident in just about every great story told throughout time.

    Any screenwriter making a living today uses this same framework to draw us in and take us along with them on a journey.

    After you read this post, you’ll also have the tools to build this same framework for your business and use it as the basis for just about every marketing decision you make.

    Your core story and the narrative technique described below will work to help cement your brand in the mind of your ideal client, but it is equally effective as a framework for a product launch or email autoresponder campaign.

    The framework relies on the three key elements: The ideal client persona, the core story and the journey goal map (based on the Marketing Hourglass.)

    The ideal client persona

    The term persona is borrowed from the theater. An actor may receive a script, and the persona is the description of the character played by the part. If an actor is to understand the character they must know a little about what drives them, what they believe, what they fear, and what they desire.

    Audience Audit, Inc did research on small business personas for Infusionsoft and created some great examples of how you might describe a segment of your marketing.

    They give the segment a name and then describe them with a handful of core words as well as some background on what they believe.

    “Passionate creators – Creativity, optimism, service

    This segment believes that passion is one of the most important qualities of a small business owner. They are proud of the job-creation engine that small businesses represent, and value having the ability to serve a customer well.

    Passionate Creators are interested in creating something unique, making a difference in the world, and driving economic growth. They are dramatically more optimistic than other segments, and the most likely to report that small business ownership has contributed to improvements in their overall attitude, time availability and financial security (versus if they had a corporate job).”

    You can read the entire small business market survey here

    Another resource I often point to when discussing the topic of personas is Adele Revella’s Buyer Persona Institute. http://www.buyerpersona.com/ Revella is a past guest on the Duct Tape Marketing podcast – you can listen to that episode here. https://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/customer-personas/

    How to craft the right story

    As stated above, there are elements that make a story both a good story and the right story. For most businesses this isn’t about telling some riveting tale that makes for good entertainment, it’s about demonstrating you are the right person to help the reader achieve what they want to achieve.

    Make them the hero

    First and foremost, if you intend to create a story that your prospects care about you must position them as the hero of the story. Most businesses go on and on about how great their business, product or service is, and frankly, that’s the last thing a customer cares about.

    Think about every great story you’ve read, you love the story because you connect with the story’s main character. For your story, the main character must be your ideal customer persona and not your business.

    Your customer or prospect has problems, and it’s your job to guide them on a journey to solve that problem and achieve their ultimate destiny.

    I know that may sound a bit dramatic, but doesn’t that sound a lot nobler than just selling them stuff?

    I work with small business owners, and I can tell you that no one wants the world’s greatest marketing consulting – the hero of our story wants freedom, control, growth, and creativity and it’s our job to guide them down the path to leads to just that.

    Help them understand their problem

    One of the first tasks is to help the hero understand the real problem they face as it’s often not what they think it is.

    Now, sometimes this can pose a real challenge as selling a solution to a problem people don’t even know they have is a tough path to trod.

    The real key lies in the persona. So often what people want in life can be achieved once they let go of many of the symptoms of what’s holding them back.

    Often we have to show prospects what letting go and refocusing on what matters looks like before they start to see that as the answer.

    Our story must both reveal the real enemy and prove that we know who and what it is. You build a great deal of trust through empathy.

    In our case, the real enemy is time, focus and fear. When we address these elements, we can start to reveal what a solution could look like in the context of the real problem.

    Reveal the authority to guide them

    Of course, once your story connects with their real problem you must be able to reveal you and your business as the one who can guide them to where they want to go.

    Every great hero meets a mentor or guide along the journey that gives them the knowledge, tools and confidence to take up the journey.

    Think

    • Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber
    • Gandalf and Mithril armor
    • Dumbledore and Harry Potter’s wand

    Admit it, the idea of playing the role of Obi-Wan for your prospects has to be a lot more fun that just being the head of marketing.

    Paint a better picture

    One of the keys to moving your prospects down the path is to inspire them by painting a picture of what it could look like if they had the real problem handled.

    A vivid picture of what a small business owner’s day could look like if they installed a marketing system – right down to how they would feel on that day is a great way to lead your prospects to make a change.

    Challenge them to succeed

    Finally, you must be able to challenge them to take action. This part of the story might be referred to by marketers as the call to action, but for it to be powerful, you must also help them understand the cost of not taking action.

    Generally, people are more motivated by what they might lose than what they might gain and when you can help them see the true cost of not acting as well as the value of succeeding when they do act, you can start to position what you do as an investment rather than a cost.

    Marketing is almost always seen as a cost – when it’s seen as an investment the dynamic of the sales conversation changes dramatically.

    How to craft the right journey

    Once you understand the hero of your story and the challenge you can help them solve you have to move to understanding the journey itself.

    As a prospect searches for solutions to questions, problems and challenges known and yet unidentified you have to use your marketing to address the questions and goals they are bound to have during each stage of the journey.

    You must get involved in their journey as early as possible, and you can only do this by addressing them where they are. If you simply jump to promoting what you sell before they’ve even concluded that you address their challenges, you’ll be forced to hard sell.

    But, if you wait until they’ve concluded on their own that your category of solution is that answer to their prayers, you’ll be forced to compete against everyone else who says they do what you do.

    When you understand the goals and questions your prospects are facing during each phase of their buying journey you can create content and campaigns aimed at these specific desires.

    For example, here’s what the journey goals for a small business looking to grow more profit by working with a tax advisor might look like.

    • Know – To learn the best, most profitable ways to run and grow their business
    • Like – To better understand what other people are doing to lower expenses
    • Trust – To understand what’s possible and legal
    • Try – To see if any of the proposed savings apply to their situation
    • Buy – To experience a process that feels very professional and give hope of substantial savings
    • Repeat – Understand other ways they can gain wealth and possibly set up business to sell
    • Refer – To feel proud telling another business owner about a very smart decision they made

    As you can plainly see the idea of cutting taxes doesn’t even appear until about midway through this journey. The consultant selling tax consulting, however, must look to become the guide first by building trust teaching ways to run and grow a business.

    Understand your customers, make your prospects the hero of your marketing story and then guide them to success. That’s how you build a business that both succeeds and matters.

    If you’re an overachiever I also suggest that you read the following:

    • Save the Cat – Blake Snyder (Storytelling from a screenwriting perspective)
    • The Hero with a Thousand Faces – Joseph Campbell (The classic academic tomb that reveals why we like Star Wars so much)
    • The Writer’s Journey – Christopher Vogler (A very practical text for understanding the role of mythology in story)
    • resonate – Nancy Duarte (A presentation framework based on the hero’s journey)
    • Storytelling with Data – Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic (Sometimes you must use numbers to tell a story! – Edward Tufte for the Internet age)

    Content Originally Created by Duct Tape Marketing

    Author:  John Jantsch

  • 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success

    Practiced effectively, marketing is simply a system. While this may be hard for some business owners to come grips with, like those who feel that “marketing is a strange form of creative voodoo thinking,” marketing is not only a system—it may be the most important system in any business.

    To understand how to approach marketing for a business, it may be helpful to understand the Duct Tape Marketing System definition of marketing. Marketing is getting someone who has a need to know, like and trust you.

    One could argue about what “like” or “trust” is in any given industry, but now more than ever, this definition gets at the heart of the game. Here are the 7 core steps that make up the simple, effective, and affordable Duct Tape Marketing System. Businesses that appreciate and implement this approach to marketing grow in a consistent and predictable
    manner.

    To read the entire ebook written by John Jantsch, click HERE

  • Content is No Longer King – It’s Air

    No matter how you plan to grow your business content has become the entry point and catalyst for effective growth in most every channel. No, content is no longer king – that’s so last decade, but more on that in a bit.

    I’ve been writing a great deal about growth of late because I’ve become fascinated with the struggle it presents.

    One of my core beliefs about growth is that it comes from doing less instead of more.

    While that may sound a bit counterintuitive it springs from the fact that marketers today have something like sixteen channels to choose from in order to create awareness and ultimately grow their businesses. (I outline all channels in this Lead Generation System post)

    Terms like social media marketing, influencer marketing, content marketing and search engine marketing entered the marketing conversation in the last decade.

    While this may seem to present a golden opportunity for some businesses, it has created frustration for others. It is simply impossible to effectively create a meaningful presence everywhere and attempting to do so creates so much fragmentation that the message is often lost completely.

    The key to succeeding in the current environment is to master two or three channels at the most and commit to going deeply there. In my experience, most businesses already have one or two channels that produce the bulk of their business, yet they do little to amplify that effort. (I’ve written more on this idea of Channel Leverage here)

    For example, many businesses derive a significant percentage of their business through referrals and word of mouth recommendation but have no formal referral program in place.

    My contention is that business should focus on building multiple referral programs and explore ways to use advertising, strategic partnering and even content to amplify their referral channel – less is more!

    And now to the real point of this post (Sorry I had as one of my editors called it a lot throat clearing to do to get to the point.)

    No matter what growth channels you decide to pursue, content is your ticket to entry. Now, before I go much further let me say that by content I mean, long, deep, dramatic, useful, dare I say epic, educational content.

    Again, in this regard – less is more.

    The days of writing 500-word wispy blog posts three times a week are over. They certainly served a purpose four or five years ago (hello SEO) but no longer.

    Today you are better off writing one or two epic posts a month and using them as a tool to power every channel. (That’s good news, right?)

    Your approach to content as an asset still needs to be based on an editorial calendar that serves your business, but creating that plan is even easier if you start to think about ways to use your content for multiple channels.

    When we work with businesses today content development is the place we must start. There’s little hope in expanding the reach of a business without a substantial content asset to draw from. There are few channels that don’t run on content.

    Let me give you an example of how this could play out.

    Let’s say you commit to 12 epic blog posts per year – something in the 1500-2000 word range with lots of deep useful advice, some nice design elements, maybe a dash of data and even a bit of drama.

    If you’ve done your keyword research and spent a little time using a tool like BuzzSumo to drill down into specific post ideas you have the makings of an annual editorial calendar. (Here’s a post on how I use BuzzSumo)

    Now, let’s make this content pay.

    In one sense you already have. Your post will most certainly help your SEO efforts the chosen topic and set the table for shares and links. (By far my most shared content is over 1,500 words)

    Let’s say one of your posts describes the sixteen most awesome ways to do X. It’s long and it’s meaty and people devour it, but you know what would be cool – if you added a one-page checklist with all sixteen points.

    And what the heck, let’s use a tool like Thrive Leads to create a two-step opt-in box for people who want that checklist. (There’s an example of a content upgrade in this post)

    Wow, people are actually opting-in at a pretty high rate, why don’t we see what happens if we buy some targeted Facebook ads to drive some cold traffic to the post. All of a sudden content is making our advertising pay off.

    If all these new people are going to opt-in we should make sure that our email follow-up directs them to last month’s epic post so they begin to realize how glad they are that they know us.

    Now, let’s amp things up a bit.

    Our blog post on the sixteen most awesome ways to do X would actually make a nice presentation. We could simply promote it to our audience and hold a webinar, but why not reach out to some potential strategic partners and offer to do it free of charge for their audience instead.

    This is a great way to extend the reach of your content, but more than that it’s a great way to get referred by a trusted source and potentially meet some very qualified prospects.
    The key to making channels pay is a commitment to producing the most useful content possible.

    • Content makes your advertising more effective
    • Content makes your selling efforts more effective
    • Content makes your referral outreach more effective
    • Content makes your SEO efforts more effective
    • Content makes your influencer outreach more effective
    • Content makes your email marketing efforts more effective
    • Content makes your social media efforts more effective
    • Content makes your PR efforts more effective

    Much has been written about the need for great content, but I believe it’s more than king or queen, it’s more than a channel, it’s air – we need it survive. It is the catalyst and enabler for every other channel we use for growth.

    This isn’t a call to write more, better content – it’s a suggestion that you must change your view of what content has become and what it must mean to your ability to grow.

    Put epic content at the center of your marketing efforts – do less, but do better – and you’ll find that you have far greater opportunities to expand in every direction.

    Article Originally Created by Duct Tape Marketing

    Author: John Jantsch

  • Becoming a Recognized Expert

    Nowadays, it’s possible for virtually anyone to get their message out into the world. As a result, we’re often overwhelmed with an endless stream of information and noise.

    So if you’re a professional who wants to become known for your expertise, how do you stand out from the crowd?

    Ron Carucci is a fellow Harvard Business Review author and member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, a partner in the consulting company Navalent, and a member of my Recognized Expert course and community. In a recent #LinkedInLive session that I had with Ron, we discussed what it really means to be a recognized expert in business today.

    To ensure you can join me for my next LinkedIn Live interview, follow me on LinkedIn. Click this link to my profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/doriec/ – and then click “follow.”

    Here are five pieces of advice from Ron about how you can start your journey as a recognized expert:

    Expand your audience. A few years ago, at the start of his journey, Ron realized he needed to grow his network – because as it stood, he was mostly in dialogue with people who already knew him, and he needed to get known by new audiences. He therefore doubled down on content creation, and actively began writing for Forbes and the Harvard Business Review.

    Create content to attract your ideal clients. One can’t simply create content and expect to go viral or suddenly gain a massive following. Ron says, “It’s not enough to write or put ideas out there, even if they’re brilliant. They have to be the brilliant ideas you want to represent you. That’s how you invite the kind of people into your life whom you want in your life.”

    Swim against the stream. Right now, consider what everyone in the news is writing about. Sometimes, it pays to do the opposite, such as Ron’s successful recent piece in the Harvard Business Review talking about ambition (at a time when almost everyone else was focused on writing about the pandemic).

    Get proactive with your social media engagement. We all appreciate the fanfare of a well-liked post, picture, or article, but every single reaction to your content is a potential opportunity, as Ron suggests. “Every one of those reactions, tweets, LinkedIn follows, the comments on the article, is a new relationship,” he says. “Just responding something like, ‘Hey, thanks for your engagement’ or ‘Hey, interesting question- what do you think?’ grows both your recognition and potential business down the road. I would leverage every one of those interactions far more aggressively. In terms of just being diligent and engaging, try to start a conversation with them.“

    Play the long game. Everyone envisions a “break-out” moment on their journey to success. The truth is, you don’t reach your goal by taking just one really good step. As Ron says, “We all think that maybe this article, maybe this video, maybe this TED talk, maybe this podcast will be the one – that breakout moment. There’s no such thing. Each of those moments becomes a diligent step on the journey to advance the cause. Be diligent in your content idea sharing, in your strategies, how you create content, whom you talk to, and what you talk about. That’s all really important. But prepare yourself for the psychological and emotional journey of resilience. This is a long game. The recognition part of the recognized expert is a long game. Don’t keep looking to your left and right and getting into the ‘Well, how come them and not me?’ It’s not about meritocracy. Don’t be looking for the merits of your ideas to stand above somebody else’s or not. That’s not what this is about. It’s about people getting to know you better.”

    By following the steps Ron suggests above, you can advance much further on the journey to becoming a Recognized Expert.

    To watch the video replay of my interview with Ron, click this link here.

    And if you’d like to see how far along you are in the recognized expert journey, sign up to receive a free PDF download of my Recognized Expert Self-Evaluation Toolkit.

    Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter! Make sure to comment below, share your questions and ideas, and click “share” so your colleagues can join in on the discussion, as well.

    Author: Dorie Clark

  • Your Leadership Legacy Is Now

    How will you be remembered for leading through these times? What will people say about the way you showed up? What will be your legacy?

    Today and tomorrow – into the foreseeable future – will be painful and destabilizing as we manage through this pandemic. Our days will also bring new ideas and plans, and the chance to relate differently to others and to the world. Everything has changed and is changing every day.

    Will they say you were centered, calm and present in an environment of fear and uncertainty? Will they recall how you focused everyone on what was most important? Will they think back and remember how you communicated every day about what you knew, didn’t know and couldn’t know about the Covid crisis and its impact?

    Will others look back at how you took charge of details to solve urgent problems and then included others in the plan for getting through the worst days? Will they say how inspired they were by your vision for what your organization could be post-pandemic, a vision that was realistic and bold and challenged them to bring their best?

    Will they recall feeling connected to you and cared about? Will they talk about how you checked in often to ask about their families’ safety and how they were handling the stress of working from home? Will they hold in their minds the thought, “he was going through this with us?” Will they talk about how you were present and grieved with a team member who lost her mother?

    Will they say you showed your humanity, your fear for your own family’s safety and your own concerns about the future of the organization and business. Will they remember you saying, “I don’t know?”

    The future is not some far-off time when others will settle back in their chairs to review how you showed up as a leader when the world changed. Your leadership today will be talked about tomorrow and for days to come, and it will carry more significance, or not.

    So, don’t wait for history to remember you. Your leadership legacy is now.

    Author: Ken Giglio

    Ken Giglio is a highly experienced Executive Coach, Consultant, and Coach Supervisor focused on Mindful Leadership, the courage to confront and shift the self-limiting mindsets and behaviors that undermine personal, team, and organizational effectiveness. As Principal, he leads a global team of highly experienced executive coaches and supervisors who link leadership to an organization’s strategic business objectives. www.mindful-leaders.com

  • 5 Steps to Stay Focused When Teaching Online

    Try Balancing High Intensity Activity with Periods of Recovery


    It’s only noon; you’re halfway through teaching your third virtual class of the day, and you just can’t take it anymore. Even with the air conditioning on full blast and slurping down your third cup of coffee, you can’t stare at the screen any longer. You feel increasingly distracted, increasingly frustrated, and you’re not even sure why. Worse yet, you know your students are feeling the same way. In your gut, you know there has to be a better way to keep focused and energized.

    In-person classes and meetings are challenging enough; after all, there’s a reason why Patrick Lencioni’s book Death by Meeting was such a hit. Then came COVID-19 and everything moved online, presenting a familiar yet even greater challenge for educators: how can I ensure my classes are efficient and engaging in a virtual setting?

    The good news is that, right now, as we think ahead to upcoming semesters, we have the opportunity to change how we approach and design virtual classrooms. With a few simple shifts, we can make virtual classrooms more efficient, productive, engaging, and collaborative, all while ensuring our sanity and focus as educators. It may surprise you that we can turn to the nearby (likely closed) gym for tips on how to optimize online teaching—and make it more enjoyable.

    High-Intensity Interval Training: Not Just for the Gym

    Maximizing results in a minimal amount of time is a mantra echoed in the fitness world with a concept known as high-intensity interval training, or HIIT. According to Medical News Today, HIIT is exercise that involves short bursts of challenging activity followed by rest or lower-intensity exercise. Studies have found that even a short HIIT workout, done a few times a week, maximizes health outcomes including reduced body fat, improved cardiovascular and metabolic health, and improved mental health.

    Imagine yourself in a workout class. The sweat is pouring from your face and arms as you push yourself to do just one more sit-up. You hear the voice in your head telling you that you just can’t do anymore.

    Tell yourself you can do this! There is no magic pill, yells the instructor. You surprise yourself by completing two more sit-ups. Your heart rate slows as you sip water, wipe down your station, walk to the treadmill, and give the instructor a beleaguered thumbs-up.

    While many gyms are quickly adopting this trending technique, the idea of maximizing results by balancing intervals of performance and rest is grounded in the basic theory of human well-being. In The Power of Full Engagement, authors Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz talk about energy as a resource, a currency for performance. Loehr and Schwartz make the case that it is maximizing energy, not time, that will give you the edge you need to perform and renew.

    If balancing rest and movement supports healthier bodies, it can also help our mental focus and attention. Short intervals of a complex work or learning task followed by periodic breaks ensure that when we re-engage, we are cognitively ready to give our best effort to our work.

    5 Steps to Make Virtual Classes More Productive

    So how can educators apply the benefits of HIIT to their virtual classes? It’s a five-step process.

    Step 1: Get into the Right Mental Zone

    Virtual classes are different from in-person ones, but that doesn’t mean they have to be worse. Embracing a positive mindset is the first and most important step in changing how you approach virtual classes.

    For your students, you need to be a supportive coach. A positive outlook has a long-term impact on achieving learning goals. Reward students with a virtual high-five. Invite classmates to offer each other appreciative feedback.

    And for yourself, adjust your mindset about how much you can do in a class session. To be realistic, cut your expected outcomes and productivity goals by half. If you have four desired outcomes to achieve in an in-person class, plan to accomplish one or two virtually. In other words, retain the outcomes and activities that are most critical, so that you have the leanest, most essential program.

    Step 2: Hold Concise, Purposeful Class Sessions

    In a HIIT program, you might target arm strength on Monday and cardio and core on Tuesday. This ensures that you can work out consistently, building habits for success and not burning out any single muscle group. Apply this to your virtual teaching approach. Avoid squeezing a whole week’s worth of activity into one day. Remember that each activity takes longer online, while the attention span of your students shortens.

    You would never spend a whole workout watching your coach demonstrate the exercises. Participation—not presentations or lectures—is the most important part of a class session. Presentations are a one-way delivery, the equivalent of watching a YouTube video or the evening news. Reserve class time for participatory work that requires collaborative discussion.

    For long lectures, consider sending out a pre-recorded video or podcast. This enables students to engage with the content when they are ready to listen attentively. Then, when you do get together online, you can use your time discussing or working through the material.

    You might also consider creating a reverse classroom, where each small group learns a different part of the lesson and teaches it back to the entire class. In other words, think of your large class as several small group modules, and give students as much time as possible to get their hands (metaphorically) on the content.

    Step 3: Regulate Activity in Short-Burst Intervals

    Approach the design of your class session the same way you would design a HIIT program, in short-burst intervals like the ones shown in the figure below. Avoid presentations that run longer than 10 or 15 minutes before you have students engage in some way. Even a light activity, such as asking questions via the online platform’s chat function or taking a quick poll, is enough to hold focus.

    Favor small-group work and experiential learning whenever possible. If you have an hour of class time, think of ways to break it up into intervals of presentation, participation, reflection, and individual silent work and study, with the educator on hand to answer any questions that arise.

    Vary the activities you use to deliver content. Avoid too much frontal teaching or “talking heads.” Mix it up with engaging videos and breakout groups. Experiment with using an online shared workspace, such as a Google document or a MURAL board.

    You could splice up a long lecture into 15- to 20-minute chunks. Deliver a small chunk of content, then put the students into virtual breakout groups to discuss what they learned.

    Don’t forget to build in time to towel off and grab a sip of water. Ninety minutes is as long as a group can go without a break. A five- to 10-minute break every hour is recommended.

    Step 4: Set the Group Up for Success

    No one wants to do a workout they dread. Design your sessions to be ones people want to attend. Just as it takes time to transition from one workout circuit to the next, build in extra time for people to connect before diving into the next activity. Especially right now, people crave social connection. Build in five or 10 minutes for socializing in breakout sessions, if you can.

    And just like there is no one-size-fits-all workout, each person has different needs, attention spans, and energy for participation in an online class. Small-group breakouts give extroverts the space to talk through their ideas. Time for individual reflection gives introverts the space to think through what they would like to say.

    Step 5: Safety First—Warm Up, Cool Down, and Transition

    To work out without injury, we must warm up, know our equipment, cool down, and stretch. To lead a virtual class without “injury,” we must also take a few steps to ensure the well being of the class. This could mean incorporating agreements or ground rules up front to provide a safe space for collaboration. A few important agreements for virtual classes include the following:

    • Be present and eliminate distractions
    • Mute yourself when you’re not speaking
    • Use chat and virtual hand-raising when you want to speak

    The term “ice breaker” is often accompanied by eye rolls. Think of an ice breaker as a warm up, something that you do to help a group get ready for the hard work. You don’t run without walking first. You don’t lift weights without stretching first. A virtual ice breaker not only gets the group connected and ready to work, but also gives everyone a chance to play with the technology before beginning a session. Build in energizers (see sidebar) before each large content piece, as a way of warming up and maintaining a steady burn.

    Cooling down is just as important as warming up. In working with students online, this means three things:

    1. Summarize the learning objectives. Today, we learned about what led to the Great Depression.
    2. Clarify any remaining questions. Are there any parts of today’s lesson that were unclear?
    3. Announce the next topic and any upcoming assignments or examinations. Next time, we’ll look at what led to World War II, and your essay on life during the Great Depression is due Tuesday at 3 p.m. EST.

    Teaching and Learning at Our Best

    With the world in a constant state of uncertainty, it is hard to find things we can control. How we spend and share time in class is something that can be shaped. Applying the HIIT formula to virtual classes is one way of finding our balance, focusing, and performing at our best with the tools and resources we have.

    Original Content Courtesy of Harvard Business Publishing Education

    Written by: Rae Ringel, Brian Tarallo, and Lauren Green

  • Protecting Your Spirit During This Time

    Humans are naturally meaning-seeking, purpose-driven creatures — and these traits can help us stay resilient during challenging times.

    This marks the end of our three-part series on optimizing our mind, body and spirit during COVID. Today, we’ve delving into building resilience in the spirit. When we talk about spirit in this context, it’s totally secular and non-religious. What we’re talking about is at the heart of what resilience really is: fortitude, courage, and power. How can we spark these things within us in the midst of the pandemic? The answer lies in the wise Eastern saying: No mud, no lotus. Meaning, the challenge to cultivate these inner attributes is brought on by the challenge itself. 

    Humans are by definition meaning-seeking, purpose-driven creatures. 

    We thrive when we are leading purposeful, meaningful lives. And resiliency feeds off this energy. So to build a resilient spirit, we need to a find ways to create meaning and purpose during this pandemic. There have been so many examples of resiliency in spirit all around the world: on the balconies in Italy, the press briefings of New York’s Governor Cuomo, and in the relief efforts to get PPE to healthcare workers worldwide. The human spirit is the most resilient force on the planet!

    So today, I want to focus on three specific ways you can start building a resilient spirit by creating a sense of meaning and purpose in your own lives during this time:

    1. Step into a growth mindset, not a scarcity mindset.

    The stress caused by a pandemic creates a scarcity mindset. It’s our self-preservation mechanism in overdrive. Pandemics on the whole breed the scarcity mindset because it’s a survival tactic we as humans have evolutionarily developed. We are biologically primed to scan our environment for danger and act accordingly. It is inherently protective because it keeps us safe. But at the individual level, we have great power in outsmarting our biology to turn off our scarcity mindset and turn on our growth mindset. 

    At the core of the growth mindset is the belief that challenges can make us stronger, wiser and more able than we were before. The mere fact that you are reading this is proof that you are stepping into your growth mindset, because you believe you have the power to change and grow. 

    We can take concrete steps to cultivate a growth mindset by first managing our stress response using many of the tools we learned in prior weeks.  When we build resilience in our mind and body through the ways we’ve talked about before, we can step out of the fear zone and into the growth zone even in the midst of a pandemic (see below).  

    2. Watch the movie of your life

    Another way to build our spirit during this crisis is to become the observer.  Mindfulness experts talk a lot about this concept, but let me break it down into very Hollywood terms: Start watching the movie of your life. We’re not talking about an action-packed blockbuster here, we’re talking about our quiet inner ability to watch ourselves and really pay attention to how we’re living in the day to day during this pandemic. 

    Think of your life right now as a movie and you as the hero or heroine of this tale. Are you the lead character you want to be? Are you stepping into your power and intentionally working on your potential for calmness, peace of mind and inner strength? Are you making intentional choices to read and watch uplifting things, to spend time (virtually, of course) with people who make you laugh and bring you joy? Are you working on creating a calm, safe haven within yourself amidst the chaos of the outside world?

    We’ve talked a lot in the past two modules of how when we do better, we feel better. And with this doing, resilience has a chance to grow. It’s time to channel your Hollywood starlet and cultivate that Oscar-worthy, resilient performance. 

    3. Live a lifetime in a day

    As an integrative medicine doctor, living a lifetime in a day is a mantra I repeat often to patients. It’s a way to incorporate all the elements that make up an arc of a long, purposeful and meaningful life — work, family, solitude, vacation, and retirement — and building each of those into one single day. 

    For example, engaging in work could mean any project that brings you a feeling of productivity or achievement. Spending time in family life (whether you have a family or not) could mean connecting virtually with your tribe to feel a sense of belonging. Taking a vacation could mean doing something that brings you joy and levity and gets you into a state of flow.  And retirement could mean taking a pause in the day to reflect and take stock of your blessings. 

    By living a lifetime in a day, we learn to take the long view and zoom out.  And when we zoom out, we can paradoxically learn to zoom in on what matters most: people, love, connection, health and ultimately happiness, the most universally resilient life force of all.

    The spirit of resilience in a poem

    Here’s one of my most favorite poems about the spirit of resilience. Charles Bukowski wrote this in 1993, long before the COVID pandemic. If there’s one piece of literary genius that summarizes the resiliency of the human spirit, I think this might be it:

    Author: Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, Mind-Body Medicine Doctor at Harvard Medical School

  • Do Great Leaders Work Hard or Work Smart?

    The answer is – Yes.

    As leaders we invest a tremendous amount in our work, and there are two ways that we can approach it. We can work harder than everyone else, and we can work just as smart as we work hard. Both are equally important. 

    Those who are in a position to assess other leaders will usually take note of a leader who is putting in 30% or 40% more hours than their colleagues, while showing the same results.  These leaders are typically the subject of conversations that call into question exactly what they are doing with all those hours.  

    Working hard without working smart does you no favors.  So, do both.      

    Let’s examine what it looks like to work smart.  When you work smart you are continually looking for efficiencies and the kind of simplicities that help you get things done effectively and efficiently.  It means you are building a vast and varied network of resources and people that you can call on to help you accomplish the three or four dozen things you need to achieve each day.  And to reciprocate as you find as many ways as you can to help these good people accomplish what they need to in return. 

    Smart means understanding the nuances that help leaders in your organization and your industry be successful.  The leadership competencies that we call organizational savvy and leadership agility go a long way toward describing this leadership quality.  I lean on these two competencies most often, as I coach leaders to be their most productive.  Within our organizations, we spend our time determining which levers to pull, who we can lean on, which approach works best in the culture, and those that don’t.  

    How We Achieve is as Important as What We Achieve  

    When we’re presented with challenges to resolve, we have two things that we need to focus on.  We are expected to deliver on what it is we need to deliver.  And, just as important, we are responsible for cultivating relationships with those we partner with along the way.  The reason the relationships are so meaningful is that the people we get to work with are the ones that help us get things done. Pretty simple.  The other reason they’re important is that we are going to be working with those same people tomorrow, and next week and next year.  It helps if we enjoy working with each other.   

    So the relationships we establish and enhance are as much of a commodity as the deliverables we achieve.  As we go about delivering on our goals, it’s vital to demonstrate our organizational savvy and focus on both what we deliver and how we deliver.  We need to be constantly aware of how we build relationships, sharpen our leadership intelligence, and cultivate our leadership brand.

    John Wooden
    “It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.”

    Author: Scott F. Burns

    Visit his website:  leadership-scottfburns.com