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"Progress!"
(Progress-U Leadership & Coaching) - Issue No4 / May-June 03
0. Opinion
1. Leadership
Stop Burning!
2. Career Development
Regular Feature:
Recruitment Tips: Like a car without rear gear
3. Coaching
Viewpoint: Positive
Expectations or Positive Phantasies?
4. News
Seminars, New Articles, ...
5. Management Tip
General Management:
Are you sick of your staff being sick?
0. Opinion
Dear Reader in "Progress!",
When my friends in Europe ask me when
I believe the SARS crisis in Hong Kong would be over, I tend to answer,
"When the media loses interest in it."
It is very interesting to observe how
different people deal in different ways with the impact of this crisis
on their lives. However, common to almost all of them is that they
believe that it is coincidence or destiny that they have to suffer
from the consequences of this crisis.
What if we would instead believe that
something like this happens to us for good reasons? To make us aware
that our life is not heading in the right direction? To wake us up
and push us to change our way of life? Wouldn't it make us think where
we are going wrong? And wouldn't we then be more likely to take the
necessary steps to a better life?
To say it is destiny or coincidence
is easy, but leads us nowhere. To accept "response-ability"
instead will help us to "Progress!"
Yours sincerely,
Charlie Lang
Executive Coach and Founder of Progress-U Ltd.
1. Leadership
Stop Burning!
Hong Kong as a city is very fast paced,
and so is most of the business done here. People react differently
to this fact: many feel stressed by the overwhelming number of tasks
they have to complete in their job, and thus experience distress or
negative stress. Others are excited by the speed and by the thousand
things they want to do, and hence experience the so-called "eustress"
or positive stress.
Eustress leads to increased motivation,
good - sometimes almost "high" - feelings, and better concentration.
Whereas distress makes it difficult for us to focus and concentrate,
leaves us feeling miserable and incompetent and, when enduring, may
even lead to psychosomatic burnout symptoms (stomach upset, headache,
etc.).
Since each person reacts differently
to the same stressors, it is easy to conclude that experiencing distress
or eustress is largely dependent on our attitude and habits in dealing
with the stressors.
Now, how can we learn to create more
eustress and abandon the harmful distress? As with every personal
change we want to achieve, it all starts with awareness. Start analyzing
what creates distress and what creates eustress in your current life.
Start becoming aware of what feelings both kinds of stress create
in you and, which symptoms each one creates. During that awareness
exercise which you will need to perform for a couple of weeks, pay
attention to the conditions around you that may make you more vulnerable
to distress.
After that you need to take action:
try to simplify your life; manage things better; delegate more; focus
on activities that you really enjoy and are good at; eliminate tolerations;
reframe situations with a more positive approach; become aware of
what you can change directly, indirectly and what you can't change
at all (e.g. the weather) and adjust your reactions accordingly. Find
rewards in the things that created distress so far and which you can't
eliminate, i.e. learn to live with them with a more positive attitude.
Don't forget to occasionally take some time off and RELAX (whatever
it takes to relax you is OK).
Conclusion: Stop
burning-out by either eliminating the distress or by turning it
into eustress. It is a very worthwhile exercise and will drastically
increase the quality of your life!
Also, learn about the 90/10
principle. It will help you to change the way you react to situations.
Click on http://www.progressu.com.hk/90-10principle.htm
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2. Career Development
Regular
Feature: Career
Tips: Like a car without rear gear
Yes, once upon a time such cars really
existed. These were so light that it was even possible to lift them
sideways into a narrow parking gap, with the help of some friends.
But driving back? No chance! You only could move forward or stand
still.
That's just about how career works.
Wherever you go, you either stay there or progress. Returning is not
part of the concept since you are on a one-way-road.
So far so good, if there weren't time
and again people who try to drive backwards. There is for instance
the Managing Director who is proud of his current position and who
now tries - for whatever reasons - to get a job as a division manager
in another company of similar size. The Managing Director in that
company who reads the application can not be blamed for fearing that
this applicant may not pay the adequate respect to him and therefore
rejects the application. Then there is the division manager with 8
direct and 62 indirect reports who now applies for the department
manager post in a considerably smaller company with 10 direct reports
only. Even though the salary might be same or slightly better, the
decision maker who receives the job application will most likely reject
it as there is a high probability that the former division manager
might soon be dissatisfied with the reduction of responsibility and
influence.
The same applies for salaries as there
is a high risk of frustration and de-motivation.
Hence, when you drive a car without
rear gear, you better be careful not to drive further than your destination.
However, there is little hope left
for those who see no other choice but to move back. With such a car
you can't drive backwards but you can get out and manually push it
back. If ever you did that, then you know how tough it can be, especially
when it is dark or when it is raining or even worse, on a bumpy road.
"Pushing back" in a career
means to make special and eventually humiliating efforts. When applying
for the mentioned division manager post, rather than elaborating on
your previous MD position, you explain that you lead a team of similar
size with similar challenges that you successfully dealt with. And
then you add that for formal reasons this division was run as a separate
company, hence the title of Managing Director which is of little importance
as the work was closely linked to the regulations and demands of the
management of the group's headquarters. This attitude will reassure
the Managing Director that you would be able to integrate yourself
in the new organization, in spite of your previous MD title.
However, the better solution is to
brake on time so that you wouldn't need to push back. This requires
good self-knowledge and a clear plan of where you actually want to
go. Same when you plan to drive with such a car to a customer for
the first time; you better make sure you know your exact destination
so that there is no need to push back.
Conclusion:
Making a career is like driving a car without rear gear, you can
only move forward or stop. Going back is a tough task, like pushing
back a car without rear gear - not very amusing.
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3. Coaching
View
Point: Positive
Expectations or Positive Fantasies?
"Optimists are
more successful" is a common statement. Recent research however
brought evidence that it depends whether the optimism is based on
a positive expectation or on positive fantasies.
Two psychologists at
the University of Hamburg, Ms. Gabriele Oettingen and Ms. Doris Mayer,
found it important to distinguish between two kinds of positive thinking:
Expectations and Fantasies.
Someone with positive
expectations actually believes in a high probability that a desire
will materialize. This belief is usually based on positive experiences
in the past and on the certainty that any efforts undertaken will
lead to the desired results. With this positive expectation in mind,
the person is more likely to make special effort towards the desired
reality.
Positive fantasies
instead constitute of mental visions of a positive future independent
from what are most probably negative experiences of the past. They
are soothing daydreams in which people paint a rosy future for themselves.
"People with positive fantasies tend to already enjoy the desired
success in the present and are less prepared to deal with the possible
obstacles and problems which might emerge on the way to their desired
future reality," says Gabriele Oettingen.
Several experiments
by the two scientists showed that persons with positive expectations
are better motivated and are more likely to reach their targets, while
the opposite is true for those with positive fantasies. This is true
not only for career aspects but also for health issues. For example,
they proved that people with positive expectations recovered considerably
faster from important surgeries than those with positive fantasies.
Conclusion:
"It is not necessarily true that people without positive fantasies
are easier to satisfy. With a more rational view on things, one
is more likely to succeed in reaching set targets," reiterates
Gabriele Oettingen.
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4. News
June 14, 2003: Personal
Inspiration Day
Charlie Lang of Progress-U Ltd. will be one of the
five coaches participating in the Personal Inspiration Day organized
by the Hong Kong Coaching Community on June 14, 2003. For details
please click on http://www.progressu.com.hk/pcday06.2003.htm
The Hong Kong Coaching
Community (HKCC) helps people affected by SARS
Progress-U Ltd. joins the HKCC Initiative of volunteering
coaches to help people in Hong Kong who are affected personally and/or
professionally by the outbreak of SARS. For details please click on
http://www.progressu.com.hk/SARS-initiative.htm
Progress-U starts a
collaboration with Profiles in Hong Kong
Starting from June 2003, Profiles Hong Kong, a company
specialized in professional assessments and Progress-U will start
a collaboration that aims to have Profiles helping Progress-U clients
with potential assessment needs. On the other side, Progress-U will
help interested Profiles clients by providing professional coaching
services on the results of the assessments. For more info on Profiles
Hong Kong please click on
http://www.profileshongkong.com
For upcoming seminars
& events please click here:
http://www.progressu.com/Seminars.htm
For recent Articles
on Coaching please click here:
http://www.progressu.com/Articles%20on%20Coaching.htm
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5. Management Tip
General
Management: "Are you sick of your staff
being sick?"
Absenteeism hits businesses where
it hurts most - the bottom line. Yet smart managers have found creative
ways to make sure their employees turn up for work.
MANAGING FOR BETTER
ATTENDANCE
Companies need to develop strategies to promote attendance, says
Alfred Charles, industrial relations specialist and managing consultant
at Pro Act Management & Consultancy in Kuala Lumpur. He suggests
some ways on how they should go about it:
* Introduce attendance incentive schemes, such as monetary rewards,
for zero absenteeism.
* Do surveys to find out the main causes of absenteeism.
* Track absenteeism to ensure that it does not exceed 2 per cent
of the available working days in a month.
* Conduct return-to-work interviews.
* Use company doctors to reduce medical absences.
* Use disciplinary procedures to address excessive absenteeism.
* Set up an attendance management policy.
* Introduce wellness programs to encourage healthy lifestyles.
Include absenteeism
in the annual appraisal system for year-end bonuses and annual increments
so that employees with poor attendance records lose bonuses and
increments. “This may sound harsh,” says Charles, “but
it serves as a good deterrent.”
Read the whole article written
by Susan Muldowney of BOSS magazine by clicking on http://www.progressu.com/BOSSstaffabsenteeism.htm
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