10 Habits To Follow For A Better Work-Life Balance

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By Julianna Summers

 

 

Our professional and personal lives often intermingle, creating a complex web that necessitates a delicate balance. As individuals, we strive to maintain an equilibrium that fosters our well-being in both spheres, a feat that is often elusive yet persistently sought after. This balance is an integral component of our overall wellness and success. The key to achieving this balance is not a single act but an amalgamation of various habits, ten of which are highlighted in this guide. The discourse navigates through the power of prioritization, the courage to decline, the necessity to disconnect, the art of time management, and the importance of health. Additionally, it shines a light on the joy of hobbies, the wisdom in seeking help, the pursuit of lifelong learning, the practice of mindfulness, and the value of relationships. These tenets are a stepping stone to crafting a harmonious work-life environment—a balanced existence that fosters personal and professional fulfillment.

1. The Power Of Prioritization

The initial step towards a harmonious work-life balance resides in establishing priorities. Consider the facets of your life that hold utmost importance, then identify corresponding objectives. Success requires a narrow focus, an understanding that not every task warrants your energy. Focus not on everything but on significant tasks. Your direction should reflect your values and goals, depicting your desired future.

2. The Strength In Declining

The word ‘no’ carries immense power. It sets boundaries, creates space, and serves as a tool for maintaining your focus. Invitations will come your way—requests for assistance, participation in social events, or additional work tasks. Pause and consider their relevance to your goals. Permit yourself to decline those that do not align, conserving your energy for what truly matters.

3. The Necessity Of Disconnecting

We live in a world where technology blurs the boundaries of work and personal life. Disconnecting from work becomes paramount. Establish rules for work hours, and implement them rigorously. An open-door policy may sound appealing, but the cost is often a continuous mental association with work. Continue reading →

How to Build Sales Onboarding Programs for Better Retention

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BY ANDY SPRINGER

 

Hiring and keeping sales professionals has never been more difficult. In fact, 52% of sales and enablement leaders say that finding strong sales talent is one of their top challenges. And turnover is estimated to reach 25% across sales organizations in the next year. Still, it’s on organizations to do all they can to not only hire top talent but also to prevent unwanted turnover.

What if they’re looking for a solution in the wrong place?

High Turnover? Strengthen Your Onboarding Program

Despite their struggles with hiring and turnover, few sales leaders seem worried about onboarding. Only 22% consider onboarding/seller ramp-up to be “very challenging” (Top Challenges and Priorities of Sales and Enablement Leaders, RAIN Group Center for Sales Research). Yet this is part of the new-hire journey that might have the biggest impact on turnover.

A strong onboarding program is a key retention strategy. Not if it’s rushed, though. Here’s how long it takes to onboard a new rep, on average:

Ready to interact with buyers: three months

Competent to perform: nine months

Top performer: 15 months

While this might seem like a considerable investment of time and resources, the alternative is far worse. The cost of turnover typically ranges between 100% and 500% of the seller’s compensation. In one example analysis of seller turnover during the onboarding program, in which four sellers left, the turnover cost was over $600,000.

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The unexpected power of making mistakes

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by Peter Hinssen

 

 

My exclusive interview with Amy C. Edmondson, renowned Harvard Business School Professor of Leadership and Management, about psychological safety and the right kind of wrong.

In the Never Normal, where change happens fast and unpredictably, how we work together is just as crucial as what we are working on. And psychological safety, a concept which I love to refer to in my keynotes, lies at the very heart of that “how”. That’s why I was really excited to interview Amy Edmondson who uncovered that groundbreaking concept, almost 25 years ago now. We talked about the seemingly paradoxical relationship between error-making and team effectiveness, the misunderstood aspects of psychological safety, its peculiar dynamics within boardrooms, its popularity in tech companies, Steve Jobs’ ‘toxic’ leadership, remote work and her upcoming book, “Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well”.

Amy bumped into the concept of psychological safety by accident. She set out to study organizational learning, as is essential in this fast changing Never Normal world, and she was interested in team dynamics. “Organizations are too complex to learn in any formal sense, but their teams learn”, she explained.

Better teams, more mistakes
And so she embarked as a member of a team conducting a landmark study of medication errors in hospitals. She was asked to measure team effectiveness and to find out whether team effectiveness predicted error rates. Her data found that there was indeed a statistically significant link, … but in the opposite direction than she had expected. Better teams appeared to be making more mistakes, not fewer. After her initial surprise, she suspected that these teams were not actually making more errors, but rather were more open and willing to report and discuss them.

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The forced return to the office is the definition of insanity

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BY GLEB TSIPURSKY

 

 

In a world where we’ve seen five consecutive quarters of declining productivity in the U.S. according to a study by EY-Parthenon using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one would think that CEOs and company leaders would question their tactics. After all, over two-thirds of business leaders report they’re under immense pressure to squeeze more productivity out of their workers, according to a new Slack survey of 18,000 knowledge workers.

Yet despite the overwhelming evidence that flexible hybrid work is more productive than forced in-office work for the same roles, top executives are stubbornly herding employees back to the office like lost sheep, expecting productivity to miraculously improve. This, my friends, is the very definition of insanity.

The myth of the magical office

Many CEOs are clinging to the false belief that the office is the secret sauce to productivity. It’s as if they think the office is a productivity vending machine: Insert employees, receive increased output. But the data tells a different story.

Instead of being a productivity wonderland, the office is more like a productivity black hole, where collaboration, socializing, mentoring, and on-the-job training thrive, but focused work gets sucked into oblivion. In fact, research shows that the office is detrimental to productivity.

For instance, a recent study by scholars at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Harvard University, and the University of Iowa found that software engineers located in different buildings on the same campus wrote more computer programs than those who were sitting close to colleagues. However, the engineers who worked in different buildings commented less on others’ code. In other words, they were more productive but that meant that less experienced coders got weaker mentorship.

To put it simply, expecting the office to boost productivity is like expecting a fish to ride a bicycle: The office serves a different, and very important purpose. The EY-Parthenon research shows a direct correlation between the forced return to the office and plummeting productivity. The numbers don’t lie. People are working longer hours and barely putting out more products. It’s high time we stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Continue reading →

To improve your work performance, get some exercise.

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by Bonnie Hayden Cheng and Yolanda Na Li

Worldwide, 1.4 billion adults are insufficiently active, with one in three women and one in four men not engaging in adequate physical activity. In fact, there has been no improvement in physical activity levels since 2001, and physical inactivity is twice as bad in high-income countries than in low-income countries.

To combat the negative impact of physical inactivity, in 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a global action plan aimed at reducing physical inactivity by 15% by 2030. By promoting physical activity and encouraging individuals to engage in regular exercise, the WHO seeks to maximize the benefits of physical activity: preventing and managing noncommunicable diseases like cardiovascular diseases (including coronary heart disease and stroke), various types of cancer, improving overall physical and mental well-being, sharpening cognitive capacity, and ensuring healthy growth and development.

Although the benefits of physical activity on general well-being are widely acknowledged, there has been a lack of research on how it impacts outcomes at work, including job performance and health. This is all the more important as various emerging work modes have allowed for greater flexibility and convenience. Yet we’re finding ourselves sitting more and moving less, as many of us no longer have to commute to work or walk from meeting to meeting.

How physical activity affects work performance
Given that most of our waking hours are spent working, in an effort to support the WHO’s initiative to increase physical activity, our recent research points to some important work-related implications of physical activity. Continue reading →