Five blessings from a BURNOUT

Burnout seems to turn your life upside down in one go. But it is the other way around. Burn-out means that you have finally landed with both feet on the ground … It is not a curse, but a blessing. No blockage, but an opportunity.

Burnout is not a disease or weakness, but a sign of powerful self-healing capacity.

HERE THE FIVE BLESSINGS:

Blessing 1: Burn-out extends your life
Burn-out is a reminder that you have an expiration date. Anyone who is exposed to enormous stress every day will get a stomach ulcer, heart attack, or cancer … And in the end you will die from long-term stress, directly or indirectly, simply. A burnout prevents it from happening. You simply can no longer continue as before. You can therefore greatly thank your body. It does not let you down, but prevents you prematurely dying. Burn-out is a brilliant example of self-healing capacity.

Blessing 2: Burnout brings passion
Various studies indicate that people on their deathbed mainly regret what they have not done. Of always postponing it. As if life is endless. A burnout tells you that NOW is the perfect time to not postpone anything for you. Take care of yourself. Live with attention. Follow your heart, passion and dreams. Spend more time with the people you love. Because not a single day returns. And, as the Little Orchestra once sang: started long ago …

Blessing 3: Burnout erases your old hard drive
If you get burned out, it is as if your internal hard drive has been erased. You become an empty head. Focusing on something is impossible. Even something as simple as making coffee can suddenly be a huge task. It seems like you’ve lost your mind. Don’t make the mistake of looking for it. After all, you cannot solve a problem with thought patterns that are the cause of it. Life only becomes truly worthwhile if you take this opportunity to change your mindset and thereby your actions.

Blessing 4: Burnout gives wings
Burnout is often mistakenly seen as a sign of weakness. While life is challenging you at that moment to experience your own strength. It is a transformation. You are no longer happy with the life you led. It is a too tight jacket that tears because you have grown too large. Like a cocoon bursts when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. And this person can fly into her freedom. Burnout is
your moment to spread your wings. It is not an end, but a fresh start. A chance to finally choose what you are meant for.

Blessing 5: Burn-out makes you better at work
Burn-out makes you a better and extremely reliable employee, colleague or manager. Because it learns to focus on what’s good for you. And from there you can also be better for others. You make better choices, discover where your strengths lie and what your limits are. In addition, from now on you will signal it when others enter the burn-out danger zone. And with that know-how, you can greatly help your colleagues and employer.

Action Centered Leadership

One of the great challenges when it comes to proper leadership is balancing the various interests of those who you are required to lead. Not everyone is going to have the same goals and aspirations, even within the same business or organization. Therefore, it is the job of a good leader to reconcile all of those various interests and bring them together in a way that keeps the team working in the right direction. With good leadership, it is possible to bring everyone together in a common pursuit even if they have divergent goals among themselves.

As you are surely aware, there are a number of different leadership models available to help guide managers as they try to get the most from their teams. The model we are discussing in this article, Action Centered Leadership, is notable because it can help to deal with the problem that was outlined above – that is, how to reconcile the various goals and desires of individuals while still accomplishing the specific goals set out for the team and the project as a whole.

Action Centered Leadership

Action Centered Leadership is a model that was presented by John Adair back in 1973. At its simplest form, the model can be described by the three areas that it divides leadership into – Task, Team, and Individual. Each of these three elements plays an important role in the leadership picture, and only when all three are balanced properly will the leader be achieving success. Without even diving in any further, it is pretty easy to understand how each of these three aspects is important. Harmony among the three might not always be the easiest goal to reach, but it is the job of the leader to make it happen.

To grasp a better picture of the Action Centered Leadership model, let’s take some time to look individually at each of the three elements.

It All Starts with a Task
Without a task, there is no reason to have a team made up of individuals, and no reason to lead them in the first place. Every leadership role is developed because there is a goal in mind, and someone needs to be in charge of directing the team toward that goal. Such a goal can be rather general, such as simply running a profitable business, while other goals will be very specific – like developing a new product to launch to market by the end of the year. No matter what the goal is, that task is what will guide the leadership that has to be provided to the team.

Action Centered Leadership Task

Speaking of the variety of tasks that are possible for a leader to work toward, one of the most important jobs of the leader is to actually define and identify the task at hand. Sometimes this will be quite easy, but other times it can actually be a serious challenge. Teams work together better when they are clear on the task at hand, so providing that definition in no uncertain terms is a major part of the equation.

Leadership style for action centered leadership

Among the other important parts of the task including identifying milestones along the way that need to be met, establishing who is responsible for which part of the task, and what will be defined as success in the end. Monitoring progress and making sure that the group is getting closer and closer to accomplishing the task falls on the leader, and is an important part of the Action Centered Leadership model.

Teamwork is Essential
Leading the team is what most people think of traditionally as being ‘leadership’. Any given team is made up of individuals with various skills and experiences, so it is up to the leader to extract the best possible performance from each of them. The way the team works together should be defined by the leader, such as communication standards and methods for resolving conflict. Whenever two or more people are working together on a task there is bound to be conflict along the way – the best leaders are able to moderate those conflicts and resolve them quickly.

Encouragement is another important part of the Action Centered Leadership plan, especially for long projects. The members of the team need to remain focused on the ‘prize’ at the end of the task so they can remain motivated and determined to reach a successful conclusion to the project. Making sure that the team as a whole feels invested in the success of the group is something that a good leader will be able to accomplish.

Don’t Forget About the Individuals
Forgetting about individuals within the team is probably the most common leadership mistake that is made by managers in all areas of business. It is tempting to just treat each individual as a robot who is programmed to only do what is best for the organization – but real life is just not that simple. Individual people have varying desires, fears, experiences, motivations, etc. Extracting the best from each person on the team means treating them as the individual that they are. Offering rewards or praise for a strong contribution to the team is a common tact for getting the best possible performance from members of the team. Only when the leader is able to place each person in the role that is best suited for their skills and interests will the team be able to function as successfully as possible.

Action Centered Leadership is a popular leadership model to follow in large part because of the simplicity that it offers. Just by understanding the basics of the three areas of leadership provided in this model – Task, Team, and Individual – a leader will be well on the way to a successful project. Each of these three areas is vitally important, and it will be difficult to succeed in one area without support from the other. Bringing all three together properly isn’t always going to be easy, but it is a goal that each leader in an organization should strive to achieve.

Key Points

Action center d leadership involves balancing task, team and individual focus.
Each of these three elements plays an important role in the leadership picture, and only when all three are balanced properly will the leader be achieving success.
No matter what the goal is, that task is what will guide the leadership that has to be provided to the team.
Making sure that the team as a whole feels invested in the success of the group is something that a good leader will be able to accomplish.
Only when the leader is able to place each person in the role that is best suited for their skills and interests will the team be able to function as successfully as possible.

How to develop an action plan for bigger success

What is an action plan?
What are the criteria for a good action plan?
Why should you develop an action plan?
When should you develop an action plan?
How to write an action plan

What is an action plan?

In some ways, an action plan is a “heroic” act: it helps us turn our dreams into a reality. An action plan is a way to make sure your organization’s vision is made concrete. It describes the way your group will use its strategies to meet its objectives. An action plan consists of a number of action steps or changes to be brought about in your community.

Each action step or change to be sought should include the following information:

What actions or changes will occur
Who will carry out these changes
By when they will take place, and for how long
What resources (i.e., money, staff) are needed to carry out these changes
Communication (who should know what?)

What are the criteria for a good action plan?

The action plan for your initiative should meet several criteria.

Is the action plan:

Complete? Does it list all the action steps or changes to be sought in all relevant parts of the community (e.g., schools, business, government, faith community)?
Clear? Is it apparent who will do what by when?
Current? Does the action plan reflect the current work? Does it anticipate newly emerging opportunities and barriers?

Why should you develop an action plan?

There is an inspirational adage that says, “People don’t plan to fail. Instead they fail to plan.” Because you certainly don’t want to fail, it makes sense to take all of the steps necessary to ensure success, including developing an action plan.

There are lots of good reasons to work out the details of your organization’s work in an action plan, including:

To lend credibility to your organization. An action plan shows members of the community (including grant makers) that your organization is well ordered and dedicated to getting things done.
To be sure you don’t overlook any of the details
To understand what is and isn’t possible for your organization to do
For efficiency: to save time, energy, and resources in the long run
For accountability: To increase the chances that people will do what needs to be done

When should you create an action plan?

Ideally, an action plan should be developed within the first six months to one year of the start of an organization. It is developed after you have determined the vision, mission, objectives, and strategies of your group. If you develop an action plan when you are ready to start getting things done, it will give you a blueprint for running your organization or initiative.

Remember, though, that an action plan is always a work in progress. It is not something you can write, lock in your file drawers, and forget about. Keep it visible. Display it prominently. As your organization changes and grows, you will want to continually (usually monthly) revise your action plan to fit the changing needs of your group and community.

How to write an action plan

Determine what people and sectors of the community should be changed and involved in finding solutions

If you have been using the VMOSA (Vision, Mission, Objectives, Strategies, Action Plans) model, you might have already done this, when you were deciding upon your group’s objectives. Again, try to be inclusive. Most of the health and development issues that community partnerships deal with are community-wide, and thus need a community-wide solution. Possible sectors include the media, the business community, religious organizations, schools, youth organizations, social service organizations, health organizations, and others.

Some members of the community you might consider asking to join the action planning group include:

Influential people from all the parts of the community affected by your initiative (e.g., from churches and synagogues, the school system, law enforcement, etc.)
People who are directly involved in the problem (e.g., local high school students and their parents might be involved in planning a coalition trying to reduce teen substance abuse)
Members of grassroots organizations
Members of the various ethnic and cultural groups in your community
People you know who are interested in the problem or issue
Newcomers or young people in the community who are not yet involved

Let’s consider some of the people who were involved with the planning group for the fictional Reducing the Risks (R.T.R) Coalition that hopes to reduce the rate of teen pregnancy. Some of the members of this planning group included teachers at the local high school, local teenagers and their parents, members of the clergy, counselors and school nurses, staff of the county health department, and members of youth organizations, service agencies, and other organizations that focus on youth issues.

Convene a planning group in your community to design your action plan. This might be the same group of people who worked with you to decide your group’s strategies and objectives. If you are organizing a new group of people, try to make your planning committee as diverse and inclusive as possible. Your group should look like the people most affected by the problem or issue.

Once everyone is present, go over your organization’s:

Vision
Mission
Objectives
Strategies
Targets and agents of change (e.g., youth, parents and guardians, clergy)
Proposed changes for each sector of the community (e.g., schools, faith community, service organizations, health organizations, government)

Develop an action plan composed of action steps that address all proposed changes. The plan should be complete, clear, and current. Additionally, the action plan should include information and ideas you have already gathered while brainstorming about your objectives and your strategies. What are the steps you must take to carry out your objectives while still fulfilling your vision and mission? Now it’s time for all of the VMOSA components to come together. While the plan might address general goals you want to see accomplished, the action steps will help you determine the specific actions you will take to help make your vision a reality. Here are some guidelines to follow to write action steps.

Members of the community initiative will want to determine:

What action or change will occur
Who will carry it out
When it will take place, and for how long
What resources (i.e., money, staff) are needed to carry out the change
Communication (who should know what)

Things to note about this portion of the RTR action plan:

It appears complete. Although this step seems fully developed, we would need to review the entire action plan to see whether all community and system changes that should be sought are included.
It is clear. We know who will do what by when.
It seems current. We would need to know more about other current work (and new opportunities and barriers) to judge whether this portion of the action plan is up-to-date.

Review your completed action plan carefully to check for completeness. Make sure that each proposed change will help accomplish your group’s mission. Also, be sure that the action plan taken as a whole will help you complete your mission; that is, make sure you aren’t leaving anything out.

Follow through. One hard part (figuring out what to do) is finished. Now take your plan and run with it! Remember the 80-20 rule: successful efforts are 80% follow through on planned actions and 20% planning for success.

Keep everyone informed about what’s going on. Communicate to everyone involved how his or her input was incorporated. No one likes to feel like her wit and wisdom has been ignored.

Keep track of what (and how well) you’ve done. Always keep track of what the group has actually done. If the community change (a new program or policy) took significant time or resources, it’s also a good idea to evaluate what you have done, either formally or informally.

Keep several questions in mind for both yourself and others:

Are we doing what we said we’d do?
Are we doing it well?
Is what we are doing advancing the mission?

You can address these questions informally (ask yourself, chat with friends and other people), as well as formally, through surveys and other evaluation methods.

Celebrate a job well done! Celebrate your accomplishments; you and those you work with deserve it. Celebration helps keep everyone excited and interested in the work they are doing.

After you’ve written your action plan: Getting members to do what they said they would

Every community organization has undoubtedly had this happen: you plan and you assign tasks to get everything you’ve planned to do accomplished. Everyone agrees (maybe they even offer) to do certain tasks, and you all leave with a great feeling of accomplishment. The problem? At the next meeting, nothing has been done. Besides tearing out your hair, what can you do?

Fortunately, there are several things you can try. It’s particularly tricky in the case of volunteers, because you don’t want to lean too hard on someone who is donating their time and energy to begin with. Still, you can make it easier for members to get things done (and harder to avoid work) without acting like the mean neighbor down the street. Some of these gentle reminders include:

Regular phone calls from staff members or dedicated volunteers asking others how they are doing with their tasks. This should be a supportive call, not a “are you doing what you’re supposed to” call. The person calling can offer emotional support “how are you doing?” as well as see if the group member needs any other assistance. A friendly call such as this can be seen as helpful, give the member the sense that he is a very important part of the group, and serve as a great reminder to do what he said he would do.
Distributing the action plan in writing to all members, with names attached to specific tasks. (Additionally, this can be a great time to ask for feedback before the plan becomes “official.”)
Making sure timelines (with due dates) are complete, clear and current.
At regular group meetings, such as committee meetings or board meetings, ask members to report on accomplishing the tasks they have set out to do. Consider making this a regular part of the meeting.
Celebrate the accomplishment of tasks. It’s important that getting something done actually means something, and is recognized by the group as a whole.

Follow up on the action plan regularly. You are asking members to be accountable, and to get things done on a regular basis. If they have agreed, you should help them fulfill their commitment as best you can.

FANTASTIC EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Employee engagement is a property of the relationship between an organization and its employees. An “engaged employee” is defined as one who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and so takes positive action to further the organization’s reputation and interests.Friends, I know many of you run businesses and like happy and engaged employees.Let us talk about EMPLOYEES ENGAGEMENT in this article.Let us roll down…

Employee Engagement

Employee engagement can be defined as an employee putting forth extra open effort, as well as the likelihood of the employee being loyal and remaining with the organization for long time. Engaged employees, perform better, put in extra efforts to help get the job done, show a strong level of commitment to the organization, and are more motivated and optimistic about their work goals. Employers with engaged employees tend to experience low employee turnover and more impressive business outcomes. Employee engagement is essential. In order for organizations to meet and surpass organizational objectives, employees must be engaged.

Engaged employees reflects in following way,

Higher self-motivation.
New ideas generation
Higher productivity.
Higher levels of customer satisfaction.
Reliability.
Organizational loyalty; less employee turnover.
Lower absenteeism.

Focus on employee engagement:

Organizations are focusing on the significance of employee engagement and how to make employees more engaged. Employees feel engaged when they know personal meaning and motivation in their work, receive positive interpersonal support, and operate in an efficient work environment. Organization is trying to refocused attention on maximizing employee output and making the most of organizational resources. When organizations focus attention on their people, they are making an investment in their most important resource. You can cut all the costs you want, but if you neglect your people, cutting costs won’t make much of a difference. Engagement is all about getting employees to “give it their all.” Some of the most successful organizations are known for their unique work environments in which employees are motivated to do their very best.

High-involvement, empowerment, job motivation, organizational commitment, and trust are focus on the perceptions and attitudes of employees about the work environment. In some ways, there are variations on the same fundamental issue. What predicts employees “giving their all?” Obviously, all organizations want their employees to be engaged in their work. Several standardized tools exist for assessing employee engagement and providing feedback for making changes. These tools tend to have several common goals and characteristics:

Create a Simple and Focused Index of Workplace Engagement

Many organizations are using very short, simple, and easy to use measures that focus on the fundamentals of a great workplace. Instead of conducting broad culture/climate surveys with 100 or more questions, organizations are opting for a focused approach that measures fundamental qualities of the workplace that likely will be important 10 years from now (e.g., feedback, trust, cooperation).

Competitors benchmarking

Most organizations want to know how they compare to other organizations. Using a standard measure of engagement allows organizations to see how they compare to other companies along a simple set of fundamental work qualities.

Direct action(s)

Engagement measures tend to be very actionable. This means that the organization can alter practices or policies to affect employees’ responses to every item in the measure.

Show relationship to company performance

Without a link to company performance or other critical outcomes, measures of engagement have little value. The whole idea behind engagement is that it leads to enhanced performance. The link to performance outcomes is a necessary underlying assumption of all engagement measures.

Engagement PREDICTS Organizational Success

Many studies have shown that investments in people (i.e., HR-related practices) have a reliable impact on the performance of organizations. People practices have significant relationships to improvements in productivity, satisfaction, and financial performance. When engagement scores are high employees are more satisfied, less likely to leave the organization and more productive.

Each organization is different and there are many factors that affect bottom-line outcomes; however, engagement scores can serve as meaningful predictors of long-term success. Some organizations use engagement scores as lead measures in their HR scorecards. When an organization can show the relationship between engagement scores and bottom-line outcomes, everyone pays attention to the engagement index. Establishing this critical link between people and performance helps HR professionals prove that people-related interventions are a worthwhile investment.

Elements of Engagement

Personal impact, focused work, and interpersonal harmony comprise engagement. Each of these three components has sub-components that further define the meaning of engagement.

Personal Impact

Employees feel more engaged when they are able to make a unique contribution, experience empowerment, and have opportunities for personal growth. The ability to impact the work environment and making meaningful choices in the workplace are critical components of employee empowerment. The perception of meaningful work is one of the most influential factors determining employees’ willingness to stay with the organization.

Focused Work

Employees feel more engaged when they have clear direction, performance accountability, and an efficient work environment. Aside from the personal drive and motivation to make a contribution, employees need to understand where to focus their efforts. Without a clear strategy and direction from senior leadership, employees will waste their time on the activities that do not make a difference for the organization’s success. Additionally, even when direction is in place, employees must receive feedback to ensure that they are on track and being held accountable for their progress. In particular, employees need to feel that low performance is not acceptable and that there are consequences for poor performance. Finally, employees want to work in an environment that is efficient in terms of its time, resources, and budget. Employees lose faith in the organization when they see excessive waste. For example, employees become frustrated when they are asked to operate without the necessary resources or waste time in unnecessary meetings.

Interpersonal Harmony

Employees feel more engaged when they work in a safe and cooperative environment. By safety, we mean that employee trust one another and quickly resolve conflicts when they arise. Employees want to be able to rely on each other and focus their attention on the tasks that really matter. Conflict wastes time and energy and needs to be dealt with quickly. Some researches also find that trust and interpersonal harmony is a fundamental underlying principle in the best organizations. Employees also need to cooperate to get the job done. Partnerships across departments and within the work group ensure that employees stay informed and get the support they need to do their jobs.

Making BIG USE of Engagement

Measurement of employee engagement can have many applications in the organization. Earlier, it is mentioned that engagement could serve as a general index of HR effectiveness in an HR scorecard. Also, engagement measures serve as an easy way to benchmark the work climate against other organizations.

Needs Analysis

The fundamental issues measured in engagement provide a quick index of what leaders and HR need to do to make things better. In addition, items in engagement surveys tend to be very actionable. This means that leaders or others in the organization can take action that will affect the score on a single item.

Evaluation

Many learning and performance interventions are designed to impact some aspect of engagement. When an engagement measure is used as a pre-implementation baseline, the impact of the intervention can be gauged by measuring post-implementation changes in engagement.

Climate Survey

Some organizations like to use engagement measures as simple indexes of the workplace culture. While more extensive surveys are valuable, sometimes it’s easier to focus attention on a few simple and proven factors.

Department or Leader Feedback

Depending on the demographic information collected when the engagement measure is implemented, one can create breakout reports by department or leader. This means departments and leaders can gain a better understanding of how engagement in their groups differs from the rest of the organization. This information can be used to create development plans or plans for larger-scale interventions.

RECOMMEND THIS SITE IF YOU LOVE IT. IGNITE & EXPLODE