Building a Positive Team...!!

If you have, chances are that most days you were happy coming in to work. You had fun collaborating with your colleagues, and, together, you were able to come up with some great ideas. Because of your focus and enthusiasm, you probably did some of your best work with this group.
Teams that are highly motivated and positive are not only fun to be part of, but they also accomplish far more than teams that are struggling with morale.
This is why it's so important that, as a leader, you strive to build a positive team. In this article, we'll show you how!

The Benefits of a Positive Team

Research shows that positivity can make a real difference to people's success and well-being.
In one study, researchers found that happy individuals are then more successful in many areas of their lives, especially in their careers, compared with individuals who struggle with happiness and positive thinking.
Other studies show how much of an impact positivity has on people's ability to think creatively, progress their careers, cope with challenges, and work with other people. Positivity is an essential ingredient for success!
Positivity also brings longer-term benefits. Barbara Fredrickson, professor and social psychologist, created the Broaden and Build Theory to explain how positive emotions can broaden our behaviors over time. According to Fredrickson, the more positive emotions we experience, the likelier we are to exhibit other positive behaviors, such as curiosity, awareness, discovery, and creativity – all essential for successful innovation. In short, the happier we are, the more creative we are, and this is true for individuals as well as for groups.

Becoming a Positive Leader

Teams often become more positive because they have a positive leader. This is why focusing on your own happiness, well-being, and emotional intelligence is the first step in creating a great team.
Martin Seligman, a leading positive psychologist, developed the PERMA Model to highlight the five essential elements that you need in order to be happy. PERMA is an acronym that stands for:

1. Positive emotion.
2. Engagement.
3. Positive Relationships.
4. Meaning.
5. Accomplishment/achievement.

Start by thinking about how you can increase each of these elements in your life. Spend some time reading our article on PERMA and then take action – the more of these things you can bring to your life, the happier you'll be!
Next, stop and think about the work that you do. Do you know what your strengths are? And how often do you get to use these strengths?
Our work is most satisfying when we can use our unique abilities in a way that makes a real difference to someone else, or to our organization. First, conduct a Personal SWOT Analysis to discover your strengths. Then, use the MPS Process (MPS stands for Meaning, Pleasure, and Strengths) to see how you can use your strengths to bring more meaning and pleasure to your career.
Last, work on your emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is a vital leadership skill, because it gives you an awareness of your own emotions, as well as for the feelings and the needs of others.
Emotionally intelligent leaders understand what their emotions are telling them, and, because of their inner strength and awareness, they don't take out their own negative emotions on their people. This is definitely a skill that you should cultivate if you want to lead a positive team!

Removing Obstacles to Positivity

Before you can encourage positivity in your team, you need to remove any obstacles to it. By doing this, you can ensure that your team won't start getting motivated and then run into a series of roadblocks; this start-and-stop progress is dispiriting, and it can quickly undermine your team's sense of motivation.
Herzberg's Motivator and Hygiene Factor Theory gives you a great starting point for working on motivation. Psychologist Fredrick Herzberg discovered that employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not opposites. For your team members to be satisfied in their jobs, you must first remove the causes of dissatisfaction, and then add factors that contribute to satisfaction. Both of these steps need to take place for your team members to feel truly happy in their work!
For example, are there policies in your organization that could be causing dissatisfaction for your team members? Is each person's salary competitive? Would your team members be happier if you provided cross-training opportunities, or flextime? These are just a few of the elements that could contribute to your team members' satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
The office itself is something that has the potential to destroy motivation and positivity. So, take steps to create a healthy workplace for your team. Look at the work environment; it should be comfortable, well-lit, clean, and safe. Other elements, such as life balance, employee recognition, and involvement, also play a big part in your team members' happiness (or lack thereof).
Praise your team members for the good work that they do, and ensure that everyone has a healthy balance of work and time off.

Managing Positively

Once you've removed obstacles that could slow your team's progress, it's time to start managing your team in a positive way. There are many ways to do this.

• Teams that fully understand the purpose of what they do are usually more engaged than teams without this focus. This is why it's important to create mission and vision statements for your people. These statements are inspiring messages that express the deeper purpose of the work that you are doing.
• Create a team charter to define each person's role, the group's projected outcome, and your own expectations. Team charters are useful for a happy team, because they provide focus and direction. After all, when your team members know what they're doing (and why), they can all move forward together, instead of pulling in different directions.
  
• Next, look at the objectives that you've set for your team. Make sure that your team members' goals align with those of the organization by using Management by Objectives. Without this framework in place, your team members might feel unmotivated, simply because they're not sure what they should be doing, or because they don't understand how their role benefits the organization.
• Keep in mind that you play an enormous part in how your people feel day-to-day, as well as in their long-term success. Look at how you're communicating with them, and how you're helping them develop on an individual level.
• Keep your team informed about what's happening in the organization, as well as within the team; the more open and transparent you are, the easier it will be to build trust and create good relationships. Schedule regular meetings to discuss important updates or changes. This also gives your team members a chance to voice any concerns or issues that they're having with their work.
• Research shows that autonomy plays a significant role in how satisfied people are in their jobs, so do what you can to give more power to everyone on your team. This might mean delegating important tasks, or simply stepping back and letting people choose how they're going to complete a project. An added benefit of encouraging autonomy is that people's work often improves when they have the power to choose when and how they complete it.
• Your team members can't be positive and focused if they don't have the resources they need to do their jobs. So, are you supporting your people as effectively as you could be? The only way to know for sure is to ask them.
  
  Find out what their biggest frustrations are at work, and discuss how you could eliminate them. Are the processes and procedures that they use working well? Do they have any trouble finding key information? By practicing Management by Walking Around on a regular basis, you can connect and communicate well with your team, and, by doing this, you can understand what's really going on.

 

Reinforcing Positivity

Positivity is a habit, and the only way that you'll cultivate long-term positivity with your team is to reinforce it daily. This takes focus and self-discipline, but the benefits can be huge!

• First, make an effort to build confidence in your team. Giving autonomy helps you get started with this, but you can also build confidence by celebrating the successes that your team members achieve. Another way to help your team is to encourage training and development opportunities, so that your people can build additional skills and knowledge.
• As you've likely experienced in the past, one person's bad attitude can affect the entire group. If you have a team member who consistently thinks negatively, then you need to take action before he or she drags the group down.
  
  The Betari Box is a useful tool for explaining how someone's attitude and behavior can affect the people around them. Meet with your negative team member one-on-one, and use this tool to explain how his or her attitude is affecting the group. Approach the situation with sensitivity and respect; this person might be experiencing problems at home, or may have deeper issues that might be contributing to his or her negative attitude. Next, try to understand the problem. Is this person unhappy in his or her role? And what could you do to help him or her turn things around?
• Also, coach your people to use affirmations to be more positive. Affirmations are positive statements that help you overcome negative thinking. They're great for helping your team members overcome self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors.

Source By,
Mindtools.com

7 Simple Steps to Extreme Personal Productivity

If you want to complete a major project, tackle a task you’ve been putting off, or just knock out a lot of work in a relatively short period of time, there’s an easier way.

And it’s free.

Say you need to complete a task you estimate will take, oh, 10 to 12 hours. Here’s how to pull it off in one day:

Tell everyone your plan. This step is an absolute must since interruptions are productivity killers. So is the, “How much longer do you have to work?” guilt trip family members sometimes can’t help but lay on you. At a minimum tell coworkers and family, but consider letting important clients know as well. Send a quick email a day or two before explaining you will be tied up on Thursday and will respond to calls, emails, etc. first thing Friday morning. Some customers will contact you before Thursday; others will mentally note you can’t be reached. Either way it’s all good. And you get an additional benefit from telling others your plan: People important to you know what you intend to accomplish — and will know if you don’t succeed. Peer pressure can be a great motivator. Use it.

Decide how long you will work. Don’t plan based on, “I’ll work as long as I can,” or “I’ll work as long as I feel productive.” Set a concrete target. Commit to working 12 hours or whatever period of time you choose. Then the longer the time frame, the quicker the early hours seem to go by. When I worked in a factory we typically worked 8-hour shifts; time before lunch dragged and the last couple hours always seemed like death. During busy periods when we worked 12-hour shifts the mornings seemed to fly by. Something about knowing you’ll be working for a long time allows you to stop checking the clock; it’s like you naturally find your Zen (work)place. When you know you’re in for a long haul your mind automatically adapts. Trust me — it works.

Start really early — or extremely late. Have you ever taken a long car trip and left really early in the morning? Like at 3 or 4 a.m.? Those first few hours on the road fly by because you’ve stepped outside your norm. The same trick works with accomplishing a major goal. Start at 4 a.m. or indulge your inner night owl and start at 6 p.m. to work through the night. An extreme productivity day is not a normal day; set the stage by breaking free of your normal routine.

Withhold the fun, at least for a while. Some people like to listen to music while they work, others keep an eye on news. If you like to “treat” yourself when you’re working, don’t, at least in the early hours. When your motivation starts to flag that’s when a little music can provide a needed boost. Each treat is like a personal productivity bullet; shoot too early and nothing is left when you really need ammunition. Whatever typically carries you through your workday, hold off on it for awhile. Delayed gratification is always better gratification.

Recharge early. When you exercise, If you wait until you’re thirsty to drink it’s too late. The same is true when you work. Plan to eat or snack a little earlier than normal. If you sit while you work, stand before your butt gets numb. If you stand, sit before your legs start to ache. Any time you allow yourself to feel discomfort your motivation and resolve weakens. And speaking of food, plan meals wisely. Don’t take an hour lunch break: Prepare food you can eat quickly without lots of preparation or mess. The key is to refuel and keep rolling.

Take productive breaks, not rest breaks. Momentum is everything. Don’t take a walk, or watch a little TV, or goof around on the Internet. You will need breaks, but breaks should reinforce your sense of activity and accomplishment. Pick a few productive tasks you like to perform — and gain a sense of accomplishment when you complete — and use those for your breaks. Spending even a few minutes in the land of inactivity weakens your resolve.

Don’t quit until you’re done — even if finishing takes longer than expected.
Stopping short is habit-forming. If you stop this time what will keep you from stopping next time? Success can be a habit, so make sure your first extreme personal productivity day is the start of a great new habit.

A great side benefit of an extreme personal productivity day: We unconsciously set internal limits on our output. A voice inside says, “I’ve done enough,” or, “That’s all I can do today,” or, I’m whipped — no way I can do more,” and we stop. But our internal limiters lie to us: With the right motivation, under the right circumstances, we can do more.

An extreme personal productivity day automatically ratchets your limits higher. After a few extreme productivity days you’ll perform better every “normal” day too — because you will have unconsciously raised your own bar.

By,
B-NET

How to Train Yourself to Be Cool Under Pressure..

Last weekend after giving the okay for special forces soldiers to raid a compound where the world’s most wanted man was believed to be hiding, President Obama straightened his bow tie and went off to roast Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Funny and unruffled, the President gave no indication he was feeling the strain of his momentous decision. He was, in short, a pretty cool customer.

It was an impressive display of calm under pressure and inspires the question — how does he do it? Is the ability to handle stress an innate characteristic like height or eye color, or is it something us mere mortals can learn to do too? According to Justin Menkes, the author of new book Better Under Pressure, the answer is very much the latter. “Attributes have a range of genetic influence and the ability to deal with pressure is on the far side of the continuum in terms of preparation versus genetics. Your ability to deal with stress is overwhelmingly about preparation,” he told Entry-Level Rebel in an interview.

Obama-level coolness is within all of our reach, says Menkes, who reminds young people not to be overawed by cool performances from those in senior positions: “It is indisputable that they can do those highly pressured, extraordinary things that they see the masters do. The masters have been preparing for 40-45 years. Excellent, expert preparation got them there. They weren’t born a star.”

So how do you go about building up nerves of steel? Very much like you would go about building up abs of steel, says Menkes, who recommends a progressive increase in strain for those who want to toughen up. But be warned, like with physical exercise, strengthening your nerve isn’t necessarily comfortable:

There’s no simple A, B, C. You can’t just read books — it’s not like that. It’s not ‘OK, I put a little post-it on my desk for a daily mantra “Remember you’re terrific!”‘ That’s useless. You have to build inside your brain, your consciousness and your stomach a knowing that you can handle it.

You have to put yourself in situations that elevate your sense of stretch, whether it’s a presentation, public speaking or a task that causes you fear like taking lead in a Monday morning meeting. Take initiative on something, but not something that is over your head because what is essential is that your experiences along the way are positive.

If you put yourself in situations that are just so extreme, then the probabilities are you aren’t ready and it can go badly. Then your memory attaches negative experiences to pressure and that doesn’t help. We want you to associate elevated pressure with a confidence that you can handle it, and you do that by elevating the situations of stress where there’s a risk of failure but you’re well enough prepared for it that odds are it’s going to go well. You put yourself in several of those and then you have that internal memory of ‘I can handle pressure.’ And then you keep elevating it.

It may sound like a less than pleasant process, but Menkes insists that becoming a cool customer is key for business leaders of the future. “The biggest distinction in the 21st century is an ongoing elevation of pressure and complexity,” he warns. “That’s not going to go away, so you have to find a way to find it invigorating. The people that will thrive it are those who understand it, accept it and take advantage of it.” Better get practicing then.

By,
Jessica Stillman