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Archives for August 2020

How to make the most of your day

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How you spend your days is how you spend your life. Time is the ultimate currency. We spend it on what we deem important or interesting, but sometimes it feels like we don’t gain anything in the end. Either we wasted time mindlessly watching or scrolling, got bogged down by mandatory tasks, or struggled to achieve our best.

It’s easy to get frustrated or stressed when this happens, but the only way to solve the problem is to rethink how and where we direct our time and attention. Here’s how you can start to maximise your day and get more of a return from your time.

Making time

We each get 24 hours. You can’t make more time in a day, but maybe we can structure each day so we feel accomplished without a mad rush? In their book Make Time, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky explain how you can slow down your day by carving out time for things you care about. Instead of doing more, you focus on things that will bring you a sense of satisfaction.

There are four steps to making time.

1. Highlight

Each morning choose a highlight, something that you want to focus on that day. Even if you have a day full of urgent tasks and long meetings, you should take 60-90 minutes for your highlight.

Adults spend an average of more than four hours watching TV or on social media each day, so most of us actually do have room for 60-90 minutes. Allowing your highlight to be the focal point of your day doesn’t take long, and it will give you something positive to look back on. Each day you will have done something important to you.

2. Laser

Avoid things that draw your attention away from your highlight. Distractions prevent you from entering a state of laser focus, so you get less of a pay-off for the time you are trying to spend on your highlight. Think about what chews up your attention when you are trying to work. Is it your smartphone, other people, background noise or discomfort? Once you’ve identified your distractions, use strategies like keeping your smartphone out of sight, putting in some headphones with white noise or choosing an environment to best suit your purpose.

3. Energise

Stick to daily habits that improve your physiological health. This includes eating nutritious foods, staying hydrated, being active and sleeping well. We can be quick to neglect our bodies as soon as stress piles on. Healthy habits become less of a priority, which is to the detriment of our ability to make the most of each day. When you maintain daily habits that keep your body functioning well, your mind is freed up to attend to other things. Not only can you be more productive but enjoy the rewarding feeling of having looked after yourself!

4. Reflect

Look back on each day and learn from it. Each day provides you with data—your energy levels, emotions, appetite, productivity, interactions etc.—and you can treat the next day like an experiment based on this information.

  • What factors could have been influencing you today?
  • How do you think they helped or hindered you?
  • What does this tell you about how you should approach tomorrow?

Taking this analytical stance is a very helpful technique to avoid feeling like your day was a total waste if things didn’t go as planned. There is always something to be learned!

Attention

Another vital part of getting the most out of your day is learning how to direct and restore your attention.

Attention restoration theory, developed by professors of environmental psychology, Rachel and Stephan Kaplan, gives us two modes of attention:  Directed attention and effortless attention, also called fascination.

The Kaplans point out that our directed attention mode becomes fatigued over time. This is why a long drive can be exhausting. Even though our bodies aren’t working hard, certain day-to-day tasks require a sustained effort to focus attention on one thing and shut out other distractions.

So, how can we first maintain directed attention well enough to complete work (even the boring stuff), then rest properly when the time comes? Resolve emotional turmoil through productive reflection

Author of Focus and Emotional Intelligence Daniel Goleman explains that emotional turmoil is one of the biggest challenges for people trying to direct their attention. It could be an upcoming event you are stressed about, a troubling relationship or any other personal problem. According to Goleman, productive reflection is the best way to get over this hurdle and regain control of your attention.

Productive reflection means stopping, reflecting and resolving those thoughts that keep creeping in and distracting you rather than letting them continue to stew. These thoughts draw our attention because we know they need to be dealt with through action or simply processing their emotional impact. Give it a go if you find yourself struggling to be attentive; is there something that might be causing you emotional turmoil? What is the best way to move past this?

Use your rest time wisely to really rejuvenate

Do you go straight to screens when you have time to rest, watching TV and movies, scrolling social media?

Even though it doesn’t require any effort to pay attention to a TV show, spending rest time on screens will actually do nothing to reduce mental fatigue. You may be resting your body, but your mind is fully occupied for hours on end.  This is called hard fascination.

Attention restoration theory tells us that there are two types of fascination: hard fascination and soft fascination. Neither states require much effort to sustain, however, hard fascination takes up all of your mental bandwidth.

On the other hand, soft fascination leaves room for reflection and contemplation. This is necessary for your mind to unwind and restore after a period of directed attention. Thoughts are able to arise and settle during rest times instead of work times.

Natural environments are recognised as a wonderful source of soft fascination as they effortlessly hold our attention while leaving room for other mental processes. Natural environments are a perfect setting for rest time because they are accessible, extensive and separate from workspaces.

Next time you feel mentally fatigued, rest by walking through a garden or park, going to a river or beach, or even just looking out the window for a few minutes! This is going to allow your attentional abilities to restore which is going to make the most of your rest time and improve your productivity later.

In Summary

Sometimes it feels like we just need an extra hour or two in the day to feel satisfied with what we can get done, but that’s never going to happen. Instead, we just need to be conscious of how the use of our time influences how we feel about each day.

Your steps to maximising your day are:

  1. Set your highlight
  2. Eliminate distractions from your highlight
  3. Take care of your body
  4. Learn from each day
  5. Allow yourself to deal with emotional turmoil
  6. Rest effectively

These are all choices you can make throughout your day that will add up. Challenge yourself to make more of a return on your time and feel more satisfied at the end of each day!

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Creating Inclusive Leaders

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In an ever-changing, diverse world, organisations require leaders to look beyond traditional ideas and frameworks to shape leadership expectations. Leaders, without consideration and reflection, can often gravitate toward people that reflect their own personality, values and opinions. With diversity becoming a developing trend, organisations are now looking for teams with people from varied backgrounds, personal experiences, personalities, and ideas. With diverse teams comes the need for diverse and inclusive leaders.

But what does it mean to be inclusive? And how do you foster inclusivity in an organisation? Inclusion requires people to feel respected by and connected to the organisation and their colleagues, feel able to contribute to wider discussions, and feel able to progress within the organisation. Diversity refers to the mixture of different people and identities coming together in an organisation. 

A report published in 2016 by Deloitte outlines “The six signature traits of inclusive leadership: Thriving in a diverse new world”. From 2011, they recorded and interviewed over a thousand global leaders, consulted experts and researchers in the field of inclusive leadership, and interviewed over 1500 employees about inclusion in the workplace around the world.

So what are the key traits you need to be an inclusive leader? 

They are:

  1. Commitment
  2. Courage
  3. Cognisance of bias
  4. Curiosity
  5. Cultural Intelligence
  6. Collaboration

Let’s explore those further.

1. Commitment – Are you dedicated to diversity?

Being a more inclusive leader requires you to be committed to diversity. This is not only in the interest of the organisation you work for, but because it aligns with your personal values. Fostering diversity doesn’t happen overnight; it requires a lot of time, energy, and hard work.

The combination of your own personal experiences with diversity and inclusion in the workplace and the rational argument from a business perspective shows your commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion in your workplace.

So how can you show your commitment to diversity as a leader?

  • Put yourself in situations where you are working with people with different backgrounds to you.
  • Take the time to read and listen to diverse information sources
.
  • Highlight that fostering diversity and inclusion in the workplace is a top business and personal priority and encourage everyone to join the learning journey
.
  • Talk about what inclusivity and diversity look like within your organisation and invite different opinions.
  • Ensure your workplace practices and processes are improving diversity and inclusivity in your workplace.

2. Courage – Are you ready to speak up?

Being an inclusive leader requires you to challenge your organisation, its practices, others, and yourself. It takes bravery to challenge entrenched organisational practices and frameworks, but doing so will mean your organisation has the chance to become more diverse. Being able to challenge others and recognise your own limitations also takes courage. This humility will help you listen to different perspectives and overcome your own limitations.

Have you got the courage to be an inclusive leader?

How can you be a more courageous leader?

  • Reflect often on the biases and weaknesses that arise in your own behaviour and be willing to call them out.
  • Seek the advice and help of others to rise above your limitations, and acknowledge when you have made an error.
  • Encourage your team to respectfully identify when biases may be occurring in the team. Emphasize this is a learning journey for all. Make it safe for everyone to make mistakes and learn.
  • Question and dispute normative organisational values, processes and frameworks that encourage non-inclusive practices.

3. Cognisance of Bias – Are you aware of your blind spots?

Being an inclusive leader requires you to be aware of your organisation’s biases and of your own personal biases. These biases can range from unconscious bias, favouritism, confirmation bias, group-think, and attribution error. In order to improve the diversity within your organisation, you must develop your self-awareness and be prepared to act.

So how do you overcome personal and organisational biases?

  • Identify when you are most prone to your personal biases and organisational biases.
  • Take note of when organisational biases take over your better judgement during stressful situations or processes, e.g. recruitment processes.
  • Ask for feedback or more opinions when making or reflecting on key decisions.
  • Adapt processes to ensure that personal biases do not influence decisions about others.
  • Ensure transparency in decision-making processes, such as recruitment practices, and provide clear explanations to those affected by these decisions.

4. Curiosity – Do you have a thirst for knowledge?

To be an inclusive leader, you must constantly desire to learn and keep improving! To improve the organisation’s diversity, you must be open to different perspectives and to areas of knowledge that you are not personally familiar with. Asking questions and attentively listening to colleagues can help you understand multiple perspectives on issues that your organisation must deal with. This also means you have to be prepared for perspectives that can be vague and indefinite.

So how can you be more curious?

  • Do not be quick to judge those who hold different perspectives to you. Listen to what they have to say, and dig into understanding their perspectives.
  • Express your desire and openness to learning about new perspectives and ideas.
  • Ask for multiple perspectives from diverse people about choices or decisions to be made.
  • Anticipate change and actively encourage different ways of thinking. This can lead to opportunities to connect with diverse others.

5. Cultural Intelligence – how do you communicate with people from other cultures?

What exactly is cultural intelligence? This particular quality of an inclusive leader requires you to recognise how your personal experiences affect your perspective of the world. You must learn to look past stereotypes and be confident in your cross-cultural communications.

Cultural intelligence (CQ) is divided into four categories; motivational CQ, cognitive CQ, metacognitive CQ, and behavioural CQ.

  • Motivational CQ concerns how interested and enthusiastic a leader is in learning and developing cross-cultural communications.
  • Cognitive CQ concerns how much a leader knows about traditional norms, values, and stereotypes surrounding another culture.
  • Metacognitive CQ concerns how consciously aware of culture a leader is during communications with people from another culture.
  • Behavioural CQ concerns how appropriately a leader uses verbal and non-verbal cues when communicating with another culture.

So how can you become more culturally-intelligent?

  • Take the time to learn about other cultures, and create opportunities to do so.
  • Be prepared when leading a culturally-diverse team. This will include learning about individual members and their backgrounds, and changing how you approach certain situations or decisions.
  • Be open in your body language and succinct in your word use when communicating with
    people from different cultures and backgrounds.
  • Recognise your personal flaws and biases towards cultural stereotypes and differences.
  • Actively reflect and question your predisposed ideas about different cultures.

6. Collaborative – how well do you work with others?

Contemporary organisations require you to harness your team’s total intelligence to get to work, rather than individually strive to complete projects. In a team, you are more likely to meet and work with people who have completely different backgrounds, and maybe even opposing ideas to your own. The challenge here is to listen, be solutions-focused, and encourage independent, self-directed thought and debate.

How can you be a more collaborative leader?

  • Create an environment where team members will take responsibility and hold themselves accountable for mistakes they have made.
  • Ensure no one is left out of conversations or group discussions and activities. You should cultivate a safe and respectful environment so that your team members feel safe to speak up and discuss ideas.
  • Ask for feedback and questions about project progress from other team members.

In summary

Being inclusive is a non-negotiable. This gives us all a great opportunity to be learners and take our leadership skills to the next level.

Check out this link for the full Deloitte report. For further information about being a more
inclusive leader, check out this link to the SPACE2 Model developed by Include-Empower.
Where do you think you need to improve as a leader? Can you see yourself developing and
implementing the ideas we have discussed? I would love your feedback!

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