Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes with the greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one. To quote Swami Sivananda (Indian Yoga master, Physician, Monk and Founder of The Divine Life Society, 1887-1963) “Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future.”
Practicing intentional positive workplace culture takes some time and committed actions. Firstly ensure that you feel comfortable being a leader as some leaders lack full confidence in leading their team when thinking about the big responsibility they have for the performance and well-being of their staff. Key No.1 is: VISION you need a vision on where you are taking the company or team and you need to build it with your people so they feel part of that vision thus are contributing to that vision and can get excited about helping the business or team get there. Within this vision will be your mission statement and a key point to create a positive workplace culture is to have happy engaged employees. Key No.2 is: GOALS as a leader you need to set your business goals and then with your people create sub-goals for them to achieve that align directly into the goals of the business or team. Performance criteria must be set for it’s critical to have clearly defined measures so your staff know exactly how they’re going, you can celebrate successes and find specific areas of weakness to work on. Key No. 3 is: RELATIONSHIPS look after your people by listening to them, understand exactly where they are now and then where you can take them. One of the biggest aspects missing in having positive workplace culture is lack of communication. People like to be heard so give them a forum or time to speak. Also staff often feel undervalued as it’s easy to get wrapped up in all the things to do that positive praise and positive feedback can become non-existent. Especially in hard times when things aren’t going right don’t forget to give genuine praise.
One of the biggest problems with being so successful in your career often means a lot of time, focus and dedication and long working hours sometimes for years is what you've done to actually get you where you are today. With so much of your focus on work it can then lead to neglecting other areas of your life particularly your relationship and family, other life interests and hobbies, and your health and fitness. Other impacts is that you've got yourself into a situation where you can't say no to a boss or client, even to yourself and you sacrifice your loved ones needs and wants. You will go home late or miss your son's school event or just everyday things like taking them to school sometimes or picking them up for the sake of not saying no or taking time out of your big important executive job. So the impacts can be that executives find themselves over weight or have on/off intense exercise regimes, they can't get up easily in the mornings, they don't really talk to their partners about anything except routine living, what they are doing on the weekend and the kids if they have them. Often we find that many executives we work with will then try and make up for this by spoiling their loved ones through gifts and fancy holidays to cover up for what is really missing instead of spending quality time together and giving their partners and families what they really want which is generally just 'them'. Try to give your family some more of YOU this month.
