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#Leadership : 5 Signs of Work Stress That You Should Never Ignore…Simply Recognizing That you’re Stressed & Taking Steps to Change your Work Environment or How you Respond to It can Be very Helpful

January 26, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Everyone has the occasional stressful day at the office. But for some, work-related stress is a chronic problem. Sixty-five percent of Americans named work as their top source of stress, the American Psychological Association(APA) found. Eighty percent of people surveyed by Monster said they experienced the Sunday night blues, and 76% of those characterized those blues as “really bad.”

Work-related anxiety does more than just put a damper on your weekend, however. In men, chronic stress is linked to a host of health problems.

“Men under stress are more likely than women to report having been diagnosed with high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease or heart attack,” Simon A. Rego, PsyD, director of psychology training at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told Everyday Health.

Unfortunately, men may be more likely than women to ignore or downplay stress, both at work and in their personal lives.

“Men notoriously have trouble putting their feelings into words,” Edward Hallowell, author of Crazy Busy: Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD, told WebMD. “They bottle things up so they’re more subject to the damages of stress.”

Simply assuming that stress is a normal part of your work routine could also be causing you to miss your body’s attempts to warn you that the pressure is too much. If you’re experiencing any of the following symptoms, they might be due to work-related stress.

1. Frequent headaches

Frequent headaches are one of the biggest physical signs of stress, according to The American Institute of Stress. Over-the-counter pain relievers may help to relieve the occasional work-related tension headache, according tothe Cleveland Clinic, but if your headaches are chronic, you might need to explore stress management techniques, counseling, or even anti-anxiety medication or antidepressants.

Migraine headaches that happen over the weekend could also be a sign that the pressure at work is too much, since sudden decrease in stress levels may trigger these severe headaches, reported Prevention. Maintaining a consistent eating and sleeping schedule could reduce the chances you’ll experience a weekend migraine.

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2. Jaw pain

If you’re stressed, you may be clenching your jaw or grinding your teeth at night and not even realize it. Jaw pain, earaches, and headaches are all signs of bruxism, which might be caused by day-to-day stress. Practicing stress-relieving techniques like meditation might help minimize teeth clenching and grinding, as can consciously trying to relax your face during the day. If you grind your teeth at night, your dentist may tell you to wear a mouth guard to prevent damage to your teeth.

3. Upset stomach

A stressful situation at work could be the reason behind your stomachache or other gastrointestinal troubles, like constipation. That’s because “the brain and the digestive tract share many of the same nerve connections,” Douglas A. Drossman, M.D., a gastroenterologist and psychiatrist and co-director of the University of North Carolina Center for Functional GI and Motility Disorders, told Eating Well.

Altering your diet can help minimize stress-related tummy trouble. High-fiber foods like oatmeal can help regulate digestion, while fatty fish like salmon and sardines may reduce inflammation that exacerbates your stomach problems. Sugar, caffeine, alcohol, and junk food can all make your stress worse, says the Stress Management Society.

4. Breakouts and other skin problems

If your skin suddenly looks like you’re back in high school, tough times at work could be the cause. Your body’s chemical response to stress can increase breakouts, since your body is producing more cortisol, which in turn can lead to oily skin and acne flare-ups, according to WebMD. If you suffer from dry skin, eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, or other skin problems, stress can also exacerbate those conditions.

If you’re too focused on work-related troubles, you may forget to wash your face, not get enough sleep, or eat poorly, all of which can make skin problems worse. Sticking to your regular skin care regimen can help reduce breakouts, as can getting enough sleep, exercising, and drinking plenty of water.

5. Hair loss

Hair loss is a fact of life for many men, often linked to genetics, aging, or a decrease in testosterone. But if your hair is coming out in handfuls when you comb or wash it, you might have telogen effluvium, a condition that can be triggered by stress, as well as by certain medications or infections.

Occasional stress isn’t enough to cause sudden baldness, though. “Stress because you’re late to work or you’ve got a heavy workload is not going to cause you to lose hair,” dermatologist Paradi Mirmirani, MD, told WebMD. Long-term stress that causes other physical changes, like dramatic weight loss or big shifts in diet, could trigger hair loss, however. The good news is that this kind of hair loss is often temporary and may stop once you get your stress under control.

Tips for Reducing Work Stress

While you can take steps to alleviate some of the physical symptoms of stress, those remedies aren’t likely to address the underlying cause of your anxiety. Identifying stress triggers and finding ways to manage them may be the best way to reduce the headaches, stomach pains, and other stress-related problems that you’re experiencing, as well as to avoid the long-term term health problems that constant stress may cause.

Exercising, practicing meditation, creating boundaries between your job and the rest of your life, and taking time to relax and recharge can all be ways to manage work stress, says the APA. Making changes to your workspace and getting more organized at the office may also make you happier at work, since cramped and cluttered desks can exacerbate stress, according to a report in Time magazine.

Simply recognizing that you’re stressed and taking steps to change your work environment or how you respond to it can be very helpful, say experts. “People feel less stressed when they take control of a situation,” psychologist Emma Kenny told The Guardian.

CheatSheet.com | January 25, 2016 | Megan Elliott

Follow Megan on Twitter @MeganE_CS

#Leadership : Why Failure Makes You a Better Leader…Failure is Never a Positive Feeling. Nevertheless, Constantly trying to Avoid Failure is Just as Bad Because it Means you are Unlikely to Take the Risks Necessary to Achieve Success.

January 25, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

In 2016, embrace failure. It could be the point where your company makes a change for the better. How will you learn from your failures during this coming year?
Failure is never a positive feeling. Nevertheless, constantly trying to avoid failure is just as bad because it means you are unlikely to take the risks necessary to achieve success. Failure is not something to purposely seek out, but it’s certainly not something to fear if and when it does happen.

The statistics say that 90% of new businesses fail in the first five years. However, the studies say that focusing on statistics l

ike this only makes it more likely you will become a failure. Fail in the right areas and don’t obsess over setbacks.

The reality is failure does make better leaders, and here’s why.

To become a great leader in 2016 you have to be comfortable with things going wrong. Great leaders see them as learning opportunities, rather than setbacks. As long as you learn from the mistakes you make, failure is a worthwhile endeavor.

Failure Shapes Leaders

Someone who never fails either never takes risks or constantly finds a way to weasel out of responsibility. The greatest leaders in the world are shaped by failure. Take a look at tech executives, such as the co-founders of Google. They dropped out of college. Most would see that as a failure, and yet they created one of the historic companies.

The most rewarding decisions of your life will be shaped by how you react to failure.

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Resilience to Run a Business

Resilience is how people react under pressure and how they bounce back from disappointment. The only way to gain this resilience is to dare to fail. There are no leaders who are born to be leaders. This is a disservice to the men and women who are good leaders as it simply dismisses their achievements as genetics, God, or some other force out of our control.

Failure will teach you resilience and how not to buckle when you experience difficult times.

Learn What Works

The only way to achieve the success you crave is to think outside the box. Copying what someone else has done will not make your business into the organization you want. It will only take you part of the way, as all innovators have realized.

To learn what works and what doesn’t you have to test. This is the number one rule of marketing, and it’s what crucial A/B testing is based around.

If you are unwilling to fail, you will never go through this process and you will never achieve the things you want to achieve, as a result. Accepting failure will push you to try things you have never tried before and potentially win big.

Better Employee Morale

There’s nothing worse than working for someone who believes they can do no wrong. Executives like these tend to always shift the blame to a lower manager, or to simply pretend a setback never happened. It’s not a good trait to have.

Employees who see that you as a leader can fail won’t look down upon you because of it. They will see it as a positive trait. It will encourage them to try new things because they know that if it goes wrong they aren’t going to lose their jobs over it.

Some of the best corporate ideas around have come not from leaders but from the people working under them.

Of course, this is no reason to actively seek out failure. Someone who fails repeatedly without success is simply a bad leader.

Who has Your Back?

Take a startup company as an example for this section. Everyone starts working in good faith. They all love the product and they all believe they can succeed. Then a major setback happens, such as having a poor first release.

There are two sets of people at this point. One set will continue to work with the company and figure out where they went wrong. The other set will either walk out of the company or become snarky and unmotivated.

Failure has taught you who REALLY believes in what you are doing and who is going to bail when the going gets tough. You wouldn’t have known that unless something had gone wrong.

Conclusion

To become agreat leader in 2016 you have to be comfortable with things going wrong. Great leaders see them as learning opportunities, rather than setbacks. As long as you learn from the mistakes you make, failure is a worthwhile endeavor.

It will help you make the tough decisions and better appreciate your responsibilities as a leader. Countless organizations have turned themselves around simply because a big failure made them change their way of thinking.

In 2016, embrace failure. It could be the point where your company makes a change for the better. How will you learn from your failures during this coming year?

PUBLISHED ON: JAN 25, 2016

Inc.com |

BY AJ AGRAWAL

CEO, Alumnify

#Leadership : The Surprising Ways Employee Benefits Will Change in 2016…Smart Companies are Helping their Employees Worry a Little Less about Life Transitions & the Exorbitant Cost of Education.

January 25, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

When it comes to employee benefits, it’s easy to feel like nothing changes. The calendar flips to January, and you often just retain the same benefits you did the year before. You wind up feeling grateful as long as the costs don’t rise.

But in a few important ways, the benefits you’ve come to laconically accept will be changing in 2016. Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits at the Society for Human Resource Management, says the main trends pertain to worker education and family-leave time.

Whether you similarly change your own array of offerings this year or not, it’s vital to stay up on what’s coming down the pike. Not only might it help you better attract and retain top talent, you might actually get wind of cost-savings you never knew about. With this in mind, the following is a look at the latest benefits trends poised to give you something to consider in the new year.

Education and Leave

More employers will follow the lead of PricewaterhouseCoopers, says Elliott. The giant accounting firm announced last year that it would pay up to $7,200 in student debt for employees–as much as $1,200 a year for six years. He also sees companies emulating partnerships like the one Starbucks has with Arizona State University, in which Starbucks will reimburse part- or full-time employees’ pursuit of a bachelor’s degree.

As for family leave, Elliott expects companies to go the route of private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, which recently extended paid leave for new parents, and announced it would let employees take both their babies and their caregivers on business trips–on the company’s dime. The parent-friendly moves are part of a larger trend that began to make waves in 2015. Netflix, for example, now gives new parents unlimited maternity or paternity leave during the first year after the child’s birth or adoption. Amazon, Microsoft, and Adobe also extended their leave policies, though none went as far as Netflix.

Why is all of this happening now? Two reasons. First, notes Elliott, benefits like this help in recruiting and retaining female employees. Second, it’s election season. “The candidates on both sides of the aisle are talking about this more, and you can bet it’ll be a campaign issue later on,” he says.

Of course, large companies aren’t the only ones that need benefits to win recruiting battles. Often, it’s fast-growth, entrepreneurial companies that are on the cutting edge of new benefits offerings, since they are adding talent at a breakneck pace to keep up with the burgeoning demands for their services.

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Mobile Health

Lyft VP of people Ron Storn knows all about the pressures of adding staff quickly. At the end of 2014, the car-sharing startup had about 380 employees. Today, it has more than 700. What’s more, it’s a dispersed group of 700. Whereas the company was once based only out of its San Francisco headquarters, it’s now building offices in Nashville (customer service) and Seattle (engineering), not to mention 10 to 15 other regional offices.

When Storn thinks of benefits that will emerge in 2016, one of the first trends he thinks of is health care benefits that are mobile-friendly. For example, Lyft is partnering with a company called One Medical Group, a provider of technology-enabled primary care. The partnership gives Lyft employees 24/7 access via mobile app to a virtual care team, which can help them treat allergies and renew prescriptions without an office visit. One Medical also offers same-day appointments with doctors in more than 40 cities. A benefit like that is ideal for Lyft, Storn says, because there are so many employees who are either traveling or new to a particular city. “It’s great for our employees because of the convenience,” he says. “They can go to a new city and have fewer distractions, not worrying about what doctors to see.”

Mind and Body Fitness

Joris Luijke, VP of people at Grovo, is another human resources expert who knows all about recruiting and retaining in fast-growth environments. Grovo, which is based in New York City, creates employee-training videos for clients like Sotheby’s and SurveyMonkey. It has 190 employees, raised $15 million last year, and has raised more than $20 million overall. Mind you, Luijke has only been at Grovo for three months. But he was previously vice president of human resources at Squarespace, which has raised more than $80 million. Before that, he was vice president of talent at Atlassian, which had one of the strongest IPOs of 2015 ($460 million). So he knows what it’s like to compete for high-stakes talent.

Ask Luijke about benefits you’re likely to see more of in 2016, and the first thing he speaks about is a new, more specialized focus on employee fitness and emotional well being. For example, a standard fitness benefit might be something like reimbursement for a gym membership. But Luijke sees companies making a focal point of fitness–going out of their way to make sure a stressful, full-time job doesn’t come at the expense of exercise and eating right.

Grovo, for example, employs a full-time personal trainer. Employees can sign up for one-on-one advisory sessions with him, or simply take his classes at the in-office company gym. The company also has a dedicated nap room for relaxing, meditating, or actually napping. “There’s this real movement to making emotional and physical health more of an explicit part of the employee benefits,” he says. Luijke further makes the case that your company will see a lasting ROI if you make a large investment in the health of your employees.

Flexible Hours

When it comes to family leave, he also sees a trend in which employers do more than just provide paid time off. Like KKR, which pays for employees to take their babies and their caregivers on business trips, Luijke envisions a benefits scenario in which companies become more thoughtful about employee reintegration into the workplace, after an extended time away. One possible solution he foresees is simply allowing employees to work three or four days a week before returning to full-time schedules.

If, after reading all this, you find yourself wondering what steps to take to attract talent with novel twists on your benefits, both Luijke and Storn have some straightforward advice: Ask your employees. Survey them. Talk to them. Do it regularly. Lyft, for example, found out about One Medical because a handful of employees were using it on their own anyway. After learning about it from employee surveys, Storn became convinced that it was the right thing for the growing company to do.

PUBLISHED ON: JAN 25, 2016

You #Career : Four Job Search Mistakes College Students Should Stop Making Immediately…The Pressure to Nail Down a Summer Gig starts Early in the Spring Semester. The Best Opportunities often Appear during the Doldrums of Winter & Vanish Quickly.

January 25, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

If you’re a college student, For seniors, this final semester brings a blend of relief, nostalgia and, I can imagine, creeping anxiety about how to pay back those tens of thousands in student loans. As someone still young enough to remember my college days and the anxiety-filled post-graduation job hunt, but advanced enough that I’m now reviewing resumes from eager young students and about-to-be-graduates,

I’ve been taking careful note of the common mistakes I’m seeing from entry-level job seekers and would-be interns. Here are four of the top blunders to avoid:

Guessing vs. playing it safe.

When you’re taking a multiple choice final and come across a question you don’t know the answer to, conventional wisdom says you should guess. By leaving it blank, you’re guaranteed zero points, but with a shot-in-the-dark guess amongst A,B,C and D, you have a 25% chance of being correct. This logic shouldn’t apply to your job hunt. If the posting asks you to email your resume and cover letter toasmith@company.com, incorrectly guessing that the A stands for Alan and not Abby and addressing your letter to ‘Dear Mr. Smith’ (I’ve seen it done) is an easy way to look like you don’t care about details. Comb LinkedIn for all the A. Smiths who work at the company to find the right one. If that doesn’t yield results, “Dear Hiring Manager” is still preferably to being presumptuous.

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Focusing on the wrong achievements.

The types of accomplishments that got you into a good college are not necessarily the ones that will land you a good job. Putting your four years of varsity cheerleading ahead of your internships is not the path to success. Include only those extracurriculars that you can reasonably tie to the skills and experience the job posting is asking for or that are extraordinarily impressive. Admissions officers care if you’re well-rounded, employers much less so.

Assuming a B effort will yield A results.

Being the best of a subpar bunch is not a bad place to be if your biochemistry professor grades on a curve. Unfortunately, for you, most employers don’t. You’re not just competing with other applicants, you’re competing against all the other choices the hiring manager has for getting the chunk of work done that the job description represents. There are few fields with such a labor shortage that companies will willingly hire a mediocre candidate because he or she is less mediocre than the other applicants. Instead, I’ve seen company leave a job posting up for months, outsource to freelancers, reassign job duties to cover the required tasks or simply do without. If a company wants to hire an A employees, they’re unlikely to settle for a B among a sea of Cs.

Saying too much

To the surprise of no one, young people who grew up in the TMI era often lack an intellectual filter when it comes to parsing which of their personal stories are fit for public consumption. See this Frank Bruni piece from 2014 on oversharing in college admissions essays for some choice examples. Youthful TMI or braggadocio isn’t just for admissions essays, as my piece on the world’s worst cover letter (penned by a would-be Wall Street intern) shows. Heed its lessons.

Employers don’t expect you to have a wealth of experience at your age. Instead, they’re looking for growth potential and good judgment. Demonstrate both by keeping your application materials succinct (you don’t need a three-page resume and a 1000-word cover letter), professional in tone and devoid of all references to your squat weight. Put another way, if there’s significant overlap between your Tinder bio, your resume and your new therapist’s intake form, re-think your choices.

Learn more about my work and connect with me on Twitter.

Forbes.com | January 25, 2016 | J. Maureen Henderson

#Strategy : Former FBI Hostage-Negotiation Trainer Shares 6 Tricks for Getting People to Do What you Want…When you’re Trying to Persuade People, more Often than Not they Feel you’re Being Pushy. When you Focus on Influencing Them, They’re much Less Defensive & Open to Hearing What you Have to Say.

January 24, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Mark Goulston spent two years role-playing for a living. He’d pretend to be a suicidal policeman, holding a gun to his neck, threatening to take his own life. His job was to challenge his audience — a room full of FBI agents and police officers — to talk him out of it.

“In the end, I always pulled the trigger, and then, from the point of view of that role play, I would tell them what they could have asked and could have said that would have caused me to give up and surrender,” explains Goulston, a psychiatrist and former FBI hostage-negotiation trainer.

Today, Goulston is a business adviser and consultant, using the skills he honed in his negotiation-training job to coach executives and employees at big corporations, including GE, IBM, and Goldman Sachs. He’s also the author of “Talking to Crazy: How to Deal with the Irrational and Impossible People in Your Life.”

We recently spoke to Goulston to learn how to get people — clients, colleagues, employees, or a boss — to do what you want at work. Here’s what he said:

**1. Get them to talk**

After you make a request — or subtly hint at what you want someone to do — stop and let that person do all the talking.

“When they start talking, they will self-discover the urgency of your request,” he explains. They’ll decide on their own that they should oblige, without you having to beg.

If you do all the talking, they may tune you out or feel like they’re being told (rather than asked) to do something, which will make them not want to do it.

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2. As they are speaking, pay attention to the adjectives and adverbs they use

“An adjective is a way to embellish a noun, and an adverb is a way to embellish a verb — and both modifiers indicate something that the person has some ’emotional juice’ on,” Goulston explains. “After the other person stops talking — even if they ask you a question — pause for a few seconds, and instead of answering it, respond with: ‘Hmmm …’ (This communicates that you have listened and considered what they are saying.) Then, say more about the adjective or adverb they used.”

By doing this they will reveal what really matters to them and be more invested in the conversation, and therefore more interested in helping you.

For example, if someone you are speaking to uses the adjective “amazing” with regard to an opportunity and asks you a question after they finish speaking, try responding with, “I can answer your question, but before I do, tell me more about this amazing opportunity.”

“This will cause them to open up more to you and at a deeper level than if you had just directly answered their question,” Goulston says. “The more they open up to you, the more invested they’ll be in hearing what you have to say.”

3. Use ‘fill in the blanks’

“When you ask someone a question, you trigger an unconscious flashback of their having been put on the spot earlier in life by a teacher, parent, or coach, and you create a syntactical ‘you versus me’ disconnect,” Goulston says. This can lead to a reflexive “pull back” by them, he explains.

To avoid this, mix in with questions or requests a “fill in the blank,” he suggests. “For instance, it is more confrontational to ask someone, using a ‘you better know the answer to this’ tone, ‘What are you going to do about x situation?’ than it is to say, using and inviting ‘want to know’ tone, ‘What you’re planning to do about x situation is … ?'”

When you use the latter approach you have syntactically invited the other person into a sentence with you instead of asking a question, “which may cause them to think it is you versus them,” says Goulston.

4. Try to trigger positive flashbacks

Believe it or not, whenever you say, do, or ask something, you almost always trigger unconscious flashbacks for the person you’re speaking to. “The key is to try to trigger positiveflashbacks, not negative ones,” Goulston says.

If the person associates you, your question, or your request with something good, they’re more likely to comply.

For instance, when making a request of a colleague you can try something like: “The last time we worked together on a pitch, we secured three new clients. So I’m wondering if you’d be able to help me with this project?”

5. Be a ‘plusser,’ not a ‘topper’

One key to getting people to do what you want is to make them feel good and important.

“In conversations, ‘plussers’ build on or add to what the other person is saying; while ‘toppers’ either hijack the conversation abruptly to make it be about them or try to top what the other person is saying as in, ‘Ah, that sounds like a nice trip you took to Florida. We went to Fiji.'”

Plussers, he says, cause others to feel that what they’re saying matters; toppers cause others to think that you were only listening to them to get your turn to speak “and even worse, make them feel less than,” Goulston says.

For an example, a plusser would say: “Wow, that’s a great idea! Really smart and creative. We could even go one step further and try X, if you think that would work.” While a topper would say: “Your idea is good but I actually ran my idea by our CEO already and he loved it — so maybe we should go with mine.”

6. Focus on the future — not past failures

People don’t love criticism. They tend to get defensive when you bring up any situation in which they failed, Goulston says. So if you’re trying to get someone to do something differentlyin the future, don’t focus on the past.

Try something like, “Going forward, something that I would greatly appreciate would be if you could do X because it would be really helpful to the entire team.”

“Letting them know you’d appreciate it, and why, is important because it allows them to feel like they’re making a valuable contribution and a positive impact,” Goulston explains.

“When you’re trying to persuade people, more often than not they feel you’re being pushy,” he says. “When you focus on influencing them, they’re much less defensive and open to hearing what you have to say.”

Businessinsider.com | January 19, 2016 | Jacquelyn Smith

#Leadership : 9 Important Things Leaders Do to Create Amazing Teams…Loved Leaders are Often the Best Whole Brain Thinkers on the Planet. They Combine a Mysterious Mix of Logic & Emotion to Get the Job Done & Learning From them Can Up your Game Too.

January 22, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

When you see someone who knows how to grab a group and make it a team, stop and pay attention. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sports team, work team or even an elementary school spelling bee team. Look for the characteristics that make that leader stand out. Listen for the words they use to encourage their players. Feel the sense of elation just being in their presence.

Here are the key areas that make outstanding leaders and amazing teams.

1- They really care about growing those they manage. They encourage and are not afraid to speak out and put in place a corrective action. They understand that behavior patterns from our original organization, the family show up at work and they help staff transform what is outdated and no longer useful.The ‘all about me’ types are helped to become collaborators. Those filled with fear transcend this scary place and become filled with confidence. Those who are always arguing and fighting back, learn about cooperation. The ‘blame game’ crew gets taught the language of accountability.

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2-They challenge the status quo. This is the key to honest feedback. Everyone gets stuck with old ways of doing things and these behaviors are so constant they become invisible. Asking the “why” question is a start and then listening without judging is the next step. Great leaders help victims who are too timid, to move to new ways of thinking and to become explorers. This means that fear is eradicated and replaced with at least three suggestions of how to do things differently. Then at least one new option is put into place and even the weakest victim learns to be stronger.

3- They encourage passion and opportunities. The rebels on the team who cannot accept authority are given the opportunity to become community builders and pull people together for positive change. Rather than send the rebels or the bullies to HR to get reprimanded, these folks are helped to become the visionaries of the team and use their forceful personalities to keep going in a forward direction that will benefit everyone.

4- They hold people accountable: The natural tendency to play ‘see ya’ at work stems from the childhood fear of being sent to your room or having toys, phones, car keys, or other special privileges taken away. It is easier to judge, blame or attack others rather than own up to what is not working properly for oneself. Leaders help martyrs who always do someone else’s work and want extreme recognition, share the work load. No martyr buttons on this team.

5-They recognize contributions and give positive awards. There is a healthy systems of rewards and earned pats on the back. This is where appreciation is distributed so there are no favorites. Everyone is encouraged and applauded in the right time and in the right way. Super achievers are respected more for working together than playing the “me, me, me” card. And rescuers are only offered a high five when they change their ‘jumping in too fast to help’ manner, to asking the right questions and letting someone else figure out what needs to be done.

6- They let conflict take place and teach others how to stay present and resolve issues. When procrastinators keep holding up the team projects great leaders permit honest dialogue to come forward so that these folks who have some deep behavior patterning of fearful to finish, can begin to see the important role they are playing in the success or failure of the team. Telling the truth in a disciplined way helps the ‘never get it done on time folks‘ become strong enough to see new routes to completing what they start. The avoiders learn to stay rather than run and find strength in actually initiating difficult conversations. Pleasers are encouraged to tell the truth rather than stay in the no-man’s land of saying yes to everything.

7- They know when it is time to “un-hire” the wrong fit for the team. Not everyone is willing to change and when there is a team member who is tainting the rest of the mixture, the leader is compassionate, yet clear about what is not working. Thus, splitters who are the most divisive members of a team are offered an opportunity to change and yet if they continue to undermine the good will of the rest, they are helped to leave and it is done with honorable closure.

8- They know good fun from excessive drama and over the top humor. While emotional outbursts can show up in even the most cooperative work settings the overuse of drama and clowning is put to rest quickly. It gets in the way of real work and emotional scenes along with an overdose of clever comments can become boring. Drama queens and kings are helped to become good story tellers. That way the adrenaline can still be pumped up, however time is not wasted. And the comic in the group takes a lesson from Jon Stewart and makes a few sharp pithy statements and then stops so work can get done.

9- They are eager to create a fair work life balance. There are always times when there is an all hands on deck requirement. However, this is occasional and teams will show up if there is an emergency. Leaders who discuss the issues with the team and tell them straight out what is needed and why, are the winners. They face all problems with confidence and do not hide behind the denier mask (think Captain of the Titanic). They know that family is as important as work and that there is no amount of money that can replace the health and happiness that comes with a fair balance of important relationships.

Moving forward.

Look again at the list and at the behavior patterns and see which ones you need to work on to change for yourself or to help those you work with. I can promise you that teams treated with dignity and respect, and given the opportunity to grow personally and professionally, are the ones that are the most successful.

What other important aspects of leadership do you think make for extraordinary teams? I know the list could be much longer and would love to have your input.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

PUBLISHED ON: JAN 22, 2016

Inc.com |

BY SYLVIA LAFAIR

President, Creative Energy Options@sylvialafair

#Leadership : 15 Surprising Things Productive People Do Differently…Interview of over 200 Ultra-Productive People & Simply asked an Open-Question: “What is your Number One Secret to Productivity?”

January 21, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

I recently interviewed over 200 ultra-productive people including 7 billionaires, 13 Olympians, 20 straight-A students and over 200 successful entrepreneurs. I asked a simple, open-ended question, “What is your number one secret to productivity?” After analyzing all of their responses, I coded their answers into 15 unique ideas.

SECRET #1: They focus on minutes, not hours.

Average performers default to hours and half-hour blocks on their calendar. Highly successful people know there are 1,440 minutes in every day and there is nothing more valuable than time. Money can be lost and made again, but time spent can never be reclaimed. As legendary Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller told me, “To this day, I keep a schedule that is almost minute by minute.” You must master your minutes to master your life.

SECRET #2: They focus only on one thing.

Ultra productive people know their Most Important Task (MIT) and work on it for one to two hours each morning, without interruptions. Tom Ziglar, CEO ofZiglar Inc., shared, “Invest the first part of your day working on your number one priority that will help build your business.” What task will have the biggest impact on reaching your goal? What accomplishment will get you promoted at work?

SECRET #3: They don’t use to-do lists.

Throw away your to-do list; instead schedule everything on your calendar. It turns out only 41% of items on to-do lists are ever actually done. And all those undone items lead to stress and insomnia because of the Zeigarnik effect. Highly productive people put everything on their calendar and then work and live from that calendar. “Use a calendar and schedule your entire day into 15-minute blocks. It sounds like a pain, but this will set you up in the 95th percentile…”, advises the co-founder of The Art of Charm, Jordan Harbinger.

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SECRET #4: They beat procrastination with time travel.

Your future self can’t be trusted. That’s because we are “time inconsistent”. We buy veggies today because we think we’ll eat healthy salads all week; then we throw out green rotting mush in the future. I bought P90x because I think I’m going to start exercising vigorously and yet the box sits unopened one year later. What can you do now to make sure your future self does the right thing? Anticipate how you will self-sabotage in the future, and come up with a solution to defeat your future self.

SECRET #5: They make it home for dinner.

I first learned this from Intel’s Andy Grove, “There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done.” Highly successful people know what they value in life. Yes, work, but also what else they value. There is no right answer, but for many, values include: family time, exercise, giving back. They consciously allocate their 1440 minutes a day to each area they value (i.e., they put it on their calendar) and then they stick to the schedule.

SECRET #6: They use a notebook.

Richard Branson has said on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t have been able to build Virgin without a simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever he goes. In one interview, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis said, “Always carry a notebook. Write everything down…That is a million dollar lesson they don’t teach you in business school!” Ultra-productive people free their mind by writing everything down.

SECRET #7: They process email only a few times a day.

Ultra-productive people don’t “check” email throughout the day. They don’t respond to each vibration or ding to see who has intruded their inbox. Instead, like everything else, they schedule time to process their email quickly and efficiently. For some that’s only once a day, for me, it’s morning, noon and night.

SECRET #8: They avoid meetings at all costs.

When I asked Mark Cuban to give me his best productivity advice, he quickly responded, “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.” Meetings are notorious time killers. They start late, have the wrong people in them, meander in their topics and run long. You should get out of meetings whenever you can, hold fewer of them yourself, and if you do run a meeting, keep it short.

SECRET #9: They say “no” to almost everything.

Billionaire Warren Buffet once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” And James Altucher colorfully gave me this tip, “If something is not a “hell, YEAH! Then it’s a “no!”

Remember, you only have 1440 minutes in every day. Don’t give them away easily.

SECRET #10: They follow the 80/20 rule.

Known as the Pareto Principle, in most cases 80% of outcomes come from only 20% of activities. Ultra-productive people know which activities drive the greatest results, and focus on those and ignore the rest.

SECRET #11: They delegate almost everything.

Ultra-productive people don’t ask, “How can I do this task?” Instead they ask, “How can this task get done?” They take the “I” out of it as much as possible. Ultra-productive people don’t have control issues and they are not micro-managers. In many cases good enough is, well, good enough.

SECRET #12: They theme days of the week.

Highly successful people often theme days of the week to focus on major areas. For decades I’ve used “Mondays for Meetings” and make sure I’m doing one-on-one check-ins with each direct report. My Friday afternoons are themed around financials and general administrative items that I want to clean up before the new week starts. I’ve previously written about Jack Dorsey’s work themes, which enable him to run two companies at once. Batch your work to maximize your efficiency and effectiveness.

SECRET #13: They touch things only once.

How many times have you opened a piece of regular mail—a bill perhaps—and then put it down only to deal with it again later? How often do you read an email, and then close it and leave it in your inbox to deal with later? Highly successful people try to “touch it once.” If it takes less than five or ten minutes—whatever it is—they’ll deal with it right then and there. It reduces stress since it won’t be in the back of their mind, and is more efficient since they won’t have to re-read or evaluate the item again in the future.

SECRET #14: They practice a consistent morning routine.

My single greatest surprise while interviewing over 200 highly successful people was how many of them wanted to share their morning ritual with me. Hal Elrod, author of The Miracle Morning, told me, “While most people focus on ‘doing’ more to achieve more, The Miracle Morning is about focusing on ‘becoming’ more so that you can start doing less, to achieve more.” While I heard about a wide variety of habits, most people I interviewed nurtured their body in the morning with water, a healthy breakfast and light exercise. They nurtured their mind with meditation or prayer, inspirational reading, and journaling.

SECRET #15: Energy is everything.

You can’t make more minutes in the day, but you can increase your energy which will increase your attention, focus, decision making, and overall productivity. Highly successful people don’t skip meals, sleep or breaks in the pursuit of more, more, more. Instead, they view food as fuel, sleep as recovery, and pulse and pause with “work sprints”.

Tying It All Together

You might not be an entrepreneur, Olympian, or millionaire—or even want to be—but their secrets just might help you to get more done in less time, and help you to stop feeling so overworked and overwhelmed.

–

Kevin Kruse is the author of the bestselling book 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management and the free online “How Millionaires Schedule Their Day: A 1-Page Planning Tool.”

Forbes.com | January 20, 2016 | Kevin Kruse

#Leadership : How to Transform Habitual Negativity at Work…Here are some Simple Strategies to Transform Negativity at Work, Which can Slow Down Productivity & Sabotage Results.

January 21, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

I wish I had a penny for every leader or manager I worked with who accepted some form of negativity at work, simply because it had become familiar. Like a persistent background noise, often negativity is tolerated until the impact becomes too hard to ignore. This might be when someone complains, or results are massively affected, or a customer notices and gives you feedback.

Negativity at work does impact results. This study by Michigan State University found productivity was directly affected, as “negative-minded workers are more likely to become mentally fatigued and defensive and experience a drop-off in production”.

I was called in to work with a business which was missing shipping deadlines, customer complaints were escalating and arguments at work leading to discipline interviews were becoming the norm. Things had become untenable and the CEO was at a loss as to how to stop this downward spiral into negativity. The business was expanding internationally and they had come to a point where they knew they were heading towards a big fail because of the internal problems.

What I found out from the CEO was negativity had almost always been the cultural norm, but it had not been a big problem until recently. Like a rolling snowball, the negativity had grown and accelerated until it could no longer be ignored.

Examples of negativity at work

The worst extremes of negativity at work like bullying and harassment usually come to light fairly quickly. Research shows other poor behaviors, outlined below, cause almost as much distress to fellow workers as bullying, but they are often not viewed as seriously:

Claiming credit for someone else’s work;
Setting out to make a member of staff appear incompetent and/or make their lives miserable through persistent criticism;
Deliberately withholding information/providing incorrect information; and
Isolating/deliberately ignoring/excluding someone from activities.

The behaviors I encountered in the example I mentioned above were far more subtle, frequently seen in the workplace and most tolerated. These showed up as:

Blaming each other and overreacting when things went wrong
Defensiveness, with a refusal to learn from mistakes
Gossiping
Jumping to negative conclusions and being negative about each other
Black and white thinking
Focusing on problems, without striving for solutions
Juggling for status
Cultivating a bleak and depressing outlook for the business
Blaming management
Agreeing to actions in a meeting, only to come out and complain

When you see these actions in the workplace, many managers feel their hands are tied as often the work still appears to be getting done, negativity is seen as human nature or managers don’t have the tools to help make positive changes.

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How to link negativity to poor performance

When negative behaviors are more serious, it’s relatively easy to link with misconduct and dignity at work type policies. When the negative behaviors are subtle, it’s more difficult.

Some leaders and managers don’t think they are able to link such negative behaviors with poor performance. Performance criteria are often based on results, competencies or skills and so it’s difficult to quantify the impact of subtle negativity on performance in any meaningful way.

The way to link these subtle negative behaviors to performance is to assess the impact they have in terms of:

Productivity – How much time is wasted complaining, blocking a solution-orientated approach or resulting disputes
Cost – How much does it cost to bicker, moan and de-motivate people with a stream of negativity?
Motivation – What is the impact of negativity on employee motivation and effort?

How to transform negativity

Raising awareness and set standards is a must as well as an ability to transform negativity to more positive thinking and behaviors. Here are 6 ways to you can make the switch.

1. By identifying the negative behaviors, you don’t want to see, you can describe positive behaviors you do want and incorporate these behaviors in your value statement or behavioral competencies.

2. Set positive standards for the whole team, resisting the urge to identify individuals at this stage.

3. Leaders model the behaviors you want to see; it starts at the top.

4. Teach people how to get what they want in a constructive way, for example, show them effective ways of voicing views which engage rather than disengage.

5. Empower people to have their say by asking them to offer solutions.

6. Develop a “no blame” culture, using errors and mistakes as opportunities to learn.

Pivoting subtle negativity isn’t always easy, but there are ways you can channel the energy to be a positive force if you have an intention for positive change.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

PUBLISHED ON: JAN 21, 2016

Inc.com |

BY CHRISTINA LATTIMER

Founder, People Development Network@pdiscoveryuk

#Leadership : Top 15 Apps To Make Your Life Easier Everyday…..2015 was a Year of Huge Advances in the World of Apps. They’ve Gone from a “Fun” addition to a Smartphone to Being a Useful, Necessary & even Revolutionary Way of doing Business, Among other Things.

January 20, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

According to Apple, at the start of 2015, there were 1.4 million apps available for download and the 100 billion download mark was surpassed. In addition, by May of 2015, there were 40,000 new apps that were submitted to be released. With the abundant uprise in development and use, it has become almost impossible to spend time figuring out which apps are worth it and which are just not up to par.

I’ve broken it down and found some of the top business apps that will not only help you to be more organized, but could even change the way your business operates, saving you time and money.

Expensify: This app provides an easy to use interface that allows you to scan and categorize your receipts automatically. This app is clean and very intuitive.

Trello: If organization is your problem, Trello is your solution. This app allows you to keep up with ongoing projects without having to hop around to multiple places. You can even interact with others who are working on that project. According to Trello, “Trello is the free, flexible, and visual way to organize anything with anyone.”

GoToMeeting: This app was updated this year and it has made online meetings extremely efficient. It’s fast, reliable, and extremely simple to use, making it an ideal platform to hold meetings and conferences. If you’re always on the go or work with people in other cities, this is especially for you.

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Apple Pay: 2015 was the year it happened. We can now pay for goods and services with our iPhones. The security features are top-notch and since Apple partnered with Visa, Mastercard and American Express, it is widely accepted in a growing number of places.

Wordswag: Need a nifty little graphic to post online? Enter Wordswag. Take any photo, slap a cool font on it, and you’ve got a professional looking image to post on all of your social media sites. This app allows you to instantly create word art and images with text using their cool font and style options.

Office Mobile: The Microsoft Office suite is one of the most widely used bundles of software in the world. Now you can access it all on your phone, too! Microsoft released the mobile version of their Office Suite, allowing you to create and edit documents no matter where you are in the world.

IFTTT: This app hasn’t received the credit it deserves. It allows you to create your own personalized app by creating “recipes” that will alert you whenever you want. For example, if you want to be emailed every time the Lakers win a game, you could create that recipe. The options are endless and while it takes a little playing around with, it’s well worth it to have a completely customized alerting system.

Asana: This team management app allows you to easily communicate with your employees, no e-mails required. You can assign tasks, keep track of everyday, update projects, and have discussions with your team with the touch of a button.

TripIt: Traveling as you know it has changed for good. Who wants to sift through emails to figure out what flight they’re on, the hotel they’re staying at, and where to get their rental car? This app organizes everything into one place so that you can easily access everything you need. It also allows you to share your itineraries with friends and family, alerts you when other flights that might serve you better come up, and my favorite: helps you snag the best seat on the plane!

RescueTime: This is one of my favorite apps on this list. We are all guilty of spending too much time on social media, and it can be hard to resist. RescueTime holds you accountable by breaking down how you spend your time. It lets you set goals, shows you how much time you’re spending on social media, and even allows you to block certain sites if you’ve been on them for too long.

Square: This is one of the easiest payment systems you can get that requires almost no equipment, can be done from your phone, and is set up completely online. When you sign up for Square, you’ll be sent a small card reader that plugs right into your smartphone. You can send receipts via email and text messages, allow customers to leave tips, and the charge fees are extremely reasonable. This is also a great tool for your employees to use if they’re on the go and making point of sale transactions while out of the office.

Forbes.com | January 20, 2016 | Jennifer Cohen CONTRIBUTOR, I help executives & entrepreneurs boost productivity through wellness.

#Leadership : Why Attitude Is More Important Than IQ. Which Side of the Chart you Fall on?…By Keeping Track of How you Respond to the Little Things, You can Work every Day to Keep Yourself on the Right Side of the Chart.

January 19, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

When it Comes to Success, it’s Easy to Think that People Blessed with Brains are Inevitably Going to Leave the Rest of Us in the Dust. But New Research from Stanford University will Change your Mind (& your Attitude).

Psychologist Carol Dweck has spent her entire career studying attitude and performance, and her latest study shows that your attitude is a better predictor of your success than your IQ.Dweck found that people’s core attitudes fall into one of two categories: a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.

With a fixed mindset, you believe you are who you are and you cannot change. This creates problems when you’re challenged because anything that appears to be more than you can handle is bound to make you feel hopeless and overwhelmed.

People with a growth mindset believe that they can improve with effort. They outperform those with a fixed mindset, even when they have a lower IQ, because they embrace challenges, treating them as opportunities to learn something new.

Common sense would suggest that having ability, like being smart, inspires confidence. It does, but only while the going is easy. The deciding factor in life is how you handle setbacks and challenges. People with a growth mindset welcome setbacks with open arms.

According to Dweck, success in life is all about how you deal with failure. She describes the approach to failure of people with the growth mindset this way,

“Failure is information—we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work, and I’m a problem solver, so I’ll try something else.’”

Regardless of which side of the chart you fall on, you can make changes and develop a growth mindset. What follows are some strategies that will fine-tune your mindset and help you make certain it’s as growth oriented as possible.

Don’t stay helpless. We all hit moments when we feel helpless. The test is how we react to that feeling. We can either learn from it and move forward or let it drag us down. There are countless successful people who would have never made it if they had succumbed to feelings of helplessness: Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas,” Oprah Winfrey was fired from her job as a TV anchor in Baltimore for being “too emotionally invested in her stories,” Henry Ford had two failed car companies prior to succeeding with Ford, and Steven Spielberg was rejected by USC’s Cinematic Arts School multiple times. Imagine what would have happened if any of these people had a fixed mindset. They would have succumbed to the rejection and given up hope. People with a growth mindset don’t feel helpless because they know that in order to be successful, you need to be willing to fail hard and then bounce right back.

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Be passionate. Empowered people pursue their passions relentlessly. There’s always going to be someone who’s more naturally talented than you are, but what you lack in talent, you can make up for in passion. Empowered people’s passion is what drives their unrelenting pursuit of excellence. Warren Buffet recommends finding your truest passions using, what he calls, the 5/25 technique: Write down the 25 things that you care about the most. Then, cross out the bottom 20. The remaining 5 are your true passions. Everything else is merely a distraction.

Take action. It’s not that people with a growth mindset are able to overcome their fears because they are braver than the rest of us; it’s just that they know fear and anxiety are paralyzing emotions and that the best way to overcome this paralysis is to take action. People with a growth mindset are empowered, and empowered people know that there’s no such thing as a truly perfect moment to move forward. So why wait for one? Taking action turns all your worry and concern about failure into positive, focused energy.

Then go the extra mile (or two). Empowered people give it their all, even on their worst days. They’re always pushing themselves to go the extra mile. One of Bruce Lee’s pupils ran three miles every day with him. One day, they were about to hit the three-mile mark when Bruce said, “Let’s do two more.” His pupil was tired and said, “I’ll die if I run two more.” Bruce’s response? “Then do it.” His pupil became so angry that he finished the full five miles. Exhausted and furious, he confronted Bruce about his comment, and Bruce explained it this way: “Quit and you might as well be dead. If you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there; you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.”

If you aren’t getting a little bit better each day, then you’re most likely getting a little worse—and what kind of life is that?

Expect results. People with a growth mindset know that they’re going to fail from time to time, but they never let that keep them from expecting results. Expecting results keeps you motivated and feeds the cycle of empowerment. After all, if you don’t think you’re going to succeed, then why bother?

Be flexible. Everyone encounters unanticipated adversity. People with anempowered, growth-oriented mindset embrace adversity as a means for improvement, as opposed to something that holds them back. When an unexpected situation challenges an empowered person, they flex until they get results.

Don’t complain when things don’t go your way. Complaining is an obvious sign of a fixed mindset. A growth mindset looks for opportunity in everything, so there’s no room for complaints.

Bringing It All Together

By keeping track of how you respond to the little things, you can work every day to keep yourself on the right side of the chart above.

Do you have a growth mindset? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Forbes.com | January 19, 2016 | Travis Bradberry