Planners’ Picks
A collection of resources from CSN planning committee members worth mentioning
We’re in the 4th quarter of the year if you can believe it! Let’s finish strong with some leadership tips focusing on communicating with your team, building your management muscle, checking in on your own mental health, and finally developing and building trust within your team.
||| Resources on Communication |||
Linkedin Learning: Critical Thinking for More Effective Communication
In order to be a successful leader, clear communication is a key aspect of your effectiveness. After a conversation with you, do people feel clear on your position, or confused? Are they confident that you’ll welcome different perspectives, or are they uncomfortable voicing disagreement with you? In this course, Becki Saltzman shows how critical thinking improves your clarity of thought and conversation confidence and explains how and when to communicate using critical thinking. Becki gives advice on how to construct good arguments and recognize bad ones, how to maintain productive communication even when you disagree, and how to recognize the difference between debating and negotiating. Whether you’re a seasoned leader or new to a leadership role, by the end of this course you’ll have new ways to communicate more effectively through critical thinking.
||| Resources on Self-Leadership Development |||
Measure Your Mind w/ Debbie Vyskocil
Debbie Vyskocil joins the People Business Podcast this week to share her expertise in neuro and biofeedback, body markers she uses to coach her clients to better performance.
By understanding how the brain and body respond to different stresses and stimuli, Debbie guides her clients through exercises that bring them back to baseline and give them more control over their mental, emotional, and physiological responses.
If you are a data nerd or if you just like to be able to track your improvement, then Debbie’s work (and this episode) is for you.
“If it is to be, it is up to me.” ― William Johnsen
The Power of Listening
Did you know our nation has a shortage of hope? In a survey by Harvard Youth Poll from Spring 2021, “51% of young Americans (18-29) said that at least several days in the previous two weeks they had felt down, depressed or hopeless”. It’s not easy to create hope. People have been brought lower than ever before by forces they had no control over. This loss of control over life and its course has left people feeling lost, and when people lose their aims, they lose the motivation to get there, or worse, the belief that success is even possible.
How can you treat hopelessness? Check out this link to find out.
https://employeefanatix.com/the-power-of-listening
5 exercises to help you build more empathy
Empathy — or understanding the thoughts and feelings of the people around us — is one of the most important and most trying parts of being social creatures. But what exactly is empathy? And crucially, can we have more?
https://ideas.ted.com/5-exercises-to-help-you-build-more-empathy/
||| Resources on Work Culture & Team Development |||
The Magic of On-the-Spot Recognition
According to Indeed.com, “When people are offered consistent, actionable feedback, they can gain better insight into their successes and opportunities for improvement. Positive feedback is especially important because it increases morale, encourages good work, and helps provide a sense of purpose.” On-the-spot recognition = instant results. When you recognize employees right away, the benefits start right away. It’s simple and pays off. Try it today!
https://www.gthankyou.com/blog/magic-of-on-the-spot-recognition
Great Managers Are Good Delegators. Here’s The Single Best Strategy For Effective Delegation
Here’s a statement that is more obvious than we tend to acknowledge: many first-time managers are not very good at managing. While some of this phenomenon is simply a result of doing something for the first time, new managers often hit a roadblock that is fundamentally different from basic inexperience. The solution to these fallacies is the 85 Percent Rule. Read Robert Glazer’s post (Robert was the author of CSN’s Summer Book Club book Elevate).
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/great-managers-good-delegators-heres-single-best-strategy-glazer/
The Power of Helping Others Realize Their Own Strengths and Value
Here’s another great discussion from Simon Sinek on building confidence in work and life, and building trust and help each other. Great insight and lessons from the author of Start With Why and other great books. Doing little things for others will have a cascading effect on them and they will instinctively do good for others. Listen in for all of his tips on how to be a better human!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-RhaNlXBNg&list=PLbVAeYVYH_aExkIu6EGq3YxYHzKgomrvK
||| Resources on Mental Health |||
How happy are you at work?
The folks at FridayOne believe that happiness is good for everyone. So, they’ve created a survey to help you reflect on how happy you are at work. It takes five minutes to do, and you’ll get some personalized insights back.
https://fridaypulse.com/the-happiness-test/
“We remain victims as long as we hold another person responsible for our own well-being.” – Edith Eger, author of The Choice: Embrace the Possible
10 Hidden Signs Your Body Is Telling You to Slow Down
When we ignore our stress, it can build up and eventually lead to burnout. It’s only natural to feel stressed from time to time. When we do, it’s important to address the feeling head-on. When we ignore our bodies’ signs that tell us to slow down, our stress can build up and eventually escalate, which can lead to burnout.
We asked our Thrive community to share with us the little hints from their bodies that tell them it’s time to slow down. Which of these signs are you experiencing?
https://thriveglobal.com/stories/signs-your-body-tells-you-to-slow-down-stress-signals
4 Ways to Practice Positive Self-Talk
Grammarly blog author Jennifer Calonia tells us confidence is typically regarded as an admirable quality, but it’s not always easy to achieve. Some people struggle with self-confidence because of limiting thoughts. These constraining beliefs—and the consequent false narrative they allow—can pervade anyone’s self-perception.
According to Psychology Today, these self-limiting thoughts are a product of our belief system, which starts developing in early childhood. Our belief system is formed from personal experiences throughout our lives and how we interpret those experiences.
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/positive-self-talk/
Action for Happiness Optimistic October Calendar
Especially when things are feeling a bit tough, it can help to set some goals. Making goals achievable and ensuring that you have a few short-term as well as longer-term, more ambitious goals helps us feel we’re making progress. It doesn’t matter if your goal for the day is something really small, the important thing is to give yourself the opportunity to feel like you’ve achieved something and to celebrate that! This month’s calendar is full of ideas to help you think about how you can put this into practice. Download the daily reminder in PDF, JPG, or your favorite digital calendar format.
https://www.actionforhappiness.org/october
||| Resources on Building Trust |||
5 Ways to Help Create Psychological Safety
Being open and honest at work is still viewed by many as “being too risky” to undertake. In these organizations, psychological safety is not a given. A great framework for managing execution utilizes a process for engaging the team openly and honestly, communicating with everyone, consistently in a common language. See this post from Monte Pedersen on ways to create psychological safety within your team.
“Great leaders win over the hearts and minds of others.” – John Kotter