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Self Management
Free downloads
Download these discussion papers and "start here" tips for your own initiatives or to motivate others.
Authored by members of the EncourageMentors Group, these articles present and discuss concepts, reviews, tips, references and useful "start here" ideas to support your own initiatives. Use them too, to interest and motivate others or to help generate discussion.
We are continually developing new materials for this service. To receive updates, register as a subscriber to our complimentary ezine, Encouraging Progress.
Doing the Wrong Things, Better
I’ve been setting up a new website to provide access to more of our services online, because so many people are too busy to get off the treadmill long enough to use them in their current form. Their every week is wall-to- wall frenetic busyness and they spend four to 12 hours trying to catch up or mop-up on the weekend .
They're too swamped to respond to emails or stop for lunch. Even telephone discussions must be booked days in advance.
They report a growing sense that things are out of control, and that the organisational response is to introduce additional tasks, complexity and doubling- up of effort, that create further stress.
What's causing this and what, if anything can be done to limit it?.
Gratitude and Complaint are Equally Transformative
(Thoughts for the end of another year, to be read any time)
At least half my work involves hearing a great deal of information about clients' workplace struggles, and I accumulate convincing evidence of wasted of energy and organisational toxicity. They say: It's impossible to do what I'm paid for. I am worn out. We're overloaded and I'm going under. The organisation is demoralized. We're tired and overworked. There's continual bickering and fights. People don't want to come to work. It's killing me! And then there are the seriously dysfunctional organisations . . .
These are vital issues that deserve and must get our attention but it's gravely limiting to obsess about, become highly stressed or defeated by them. How might we confront the challenges that go with the territory of employment in many organisations and still enjoy the workplace?
Read the full version, download free.
Fantasy: More Painful Than Reality
In my role as a leadership mentor and coach I am often surprised by how many people revisit, but as though for the first time and like a bolt from the blue, the realisation that life can be and often is painful. Their repeated awakenings from the fantasy that life is or should be otherwise, generate a good deal of difficulty.
The basic cause of this is our day-to-day unawareness of a deeply-held belief that happiness is dependent on something outside of ourselves, on distraction from or the avoidance of pain, on the repetition of things we cannot control, or on something very different from the reality of everyday human existence. To the extent that we believe and remain unaware or barely aware of this foundational attitude, we self-generate increasing pain and stress.
Ultimately, happiness is a matter of choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of our unhealthy habits of mind and the discomfort of being ruled by them.
Understanding these processes and how to make healthy choices are matters worth exploring if we're concerned with enhancing our self-management practices.
Read the full version, download free.
Does Work-Life Balance Exist?
A seemingly overabundance of life coaches, businesses and government-funded organisations exists to help us achieve an ideal balance between our "work" and "the rest of our lives". People even speak of "the perfect balance", with seminars and speakers appearing all over the country to address this theme. But is there anyone who is truly effective in living a balanced life? Are we all striving for something that no one can reach?
This may seem like a controversial question or one with an obvious answer, but it needs to be asked: Is there such a thing as work-life balance? And if so, what does it really seek to address?
Read more, download free.
What to do when you don't know what to do
I've come to understand that "knowing what to do when I don't know what to do" is often more important than possessing information or other practical competencies. It's a skill we at EncourageMentors work hard to enhance in our clients.
Rather than becoming dependent on our services or reliant on others to rescue them at times when they're stuck or amidst a crisis, we advocate their making habits of certain practices which they can self-initiate and trust to produce helpful results in difficult times. (There will be other such times.) It beats the heck out of trying to develop them from scratch when everything seems to have turned to custard.
Here are seven of those simple practices. Add them to the tool-kit you'll open when you next face a crisis or a perplexing challenge: that's the tool-kit labeled Here's what you need to do when you don't know what to do.
Once you begin to use them, you'll gain objectivity about the dilemma or crisis and be better able to avoid being consumed by it. Your thinking will become clearer and you'll have easier access to the competencies the situation calls for.
Read more, download free.
Foresight from Hindsight and Insight
Five business leaders I met during January and February thought they had "just survived" or "barely scraped through" extremely challenging times in the previous year. They were nonetheless prepared, on reflection some months later, to play down the pain and desperation of those times.
They were also inclined to abandon resolutions (Old Year, not New Year) they had made to prevent recurrences through improving their own practices. Better priority-management and planning, leadership, relationship-management, crisis and conflict management were some of the main needs they'd identified at the time.
It's OK, they reassured me, things would never be as bad again. Yeah, right.
Disruptions, confusion and chaos in organisations (to paraphrase Margaret Wheatley in Leadership and the New Science) are necessary to awaken creativity. But unless our creative juices are also transformed into practical improvement, we run the risk of repeating ourselves. Have we had X years of experience or the same experience X times?
Most of us will face challenges this year, ranging in severity from mildly stressful to overwhelming - it goes with the territories called Being Human and Working in Organisations. Whether these become destructive occasions or explosions of inspiration, creativity and growth, depends largely on how well we prepare ourselves to respond. Staff, colleagues and others we support will face difficulties too, and we should prepare them to improve their responses.
Preparedness depends on our ability to learn from experience.
How can we do that and cope with our current workloads? Where should we begin? What's the likely ROI? Read the full article . . .
Optimism is good for your health
It has been three days since you left a voicemail message asking your friend to call you, and you haven't heard a word. You reject the notion that she doesn't like you any more, and choose to believe she must be really busy with important and exciting things. Congratulations! You chose optimism over pessimism, and will probably live longer for it.
Optimism has been shown to improve the quality of life (your own and the lives of those around you), and several studies have linked optimism with longevity. In fact, a recently concluded 10-year study showed that pessimistic men were twice as likely to experience angina and heart attack as optimistic men. And that's independent of all other health-related factors.
There are ways you can influence your own degree of optimism, and good reasons why you should. Read the full article . . .
Get Off the Treadmill.
It's easy to become mesmerized by the 10 Urgent and Important Things To Do Today that relentlessly present themselves for attention immediately we've dealt with the previous Top 10. We think we must first get them under control before we can afford the luxury of strategic thinking and well-considered planning. It's common practice, though obviously not a sensible one.
Caught in this trap, we may register This is a nightmare but I'm not a quitter! or I don't think I can do this for much longer, or I'm not sure I'm cut out for this. But we usually continue anyway, ignoring or suppressing our instincts, wisdom and real needs.
It makes as much sense as running low on fuel while accelerating past gas stations because we have to get somewhere.
The wrong path to your goals will never lead you there. However how hard you work to do things right, they're always going to be the wrong things. Given how easy it is to establish you're on the wrong path, it's surprising how often people behave as though they don't understand this simple truth. They miss or suppress the warning signals. Read the full article . . .
Risking happiness
Industrial psychologist Kate Marr has written, "It takes a lot of courage to become who you truly are and reach your full potential. It takes courage to objectively look at yourself and see the areas preventing your happiness. It takes courage to take responsibility for your own happiness, rather than depending on someone else."
What stands between happiness and you . . ? Read more, download free.
Exuberance, enthusiasm and leadership
Have you enough exuberance in your life and in your work with others? How might you get more of it? Who are the naturally exuberant? Can you help others become more exuberant?
Kay Redfield Jamison has answered those questions in a recent book. She suggests that exuberance and the capacity to fire infectious enthusiasm are fundamental qualities of leadership. Read more, download free.
Stress management and the toilet brush
Much of what ought to be common sense is plain to see if we look for patterns and meaning within everyday events. But because we often ignore what experience can teach us or decide that other choices are more convenient, common sense is not always common practice. This fundamental contradiction creates stress.
The best way to manage and reduce unhealthy stress . . . Read more, download free.
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Soulful men: a new culture of masculinity
Beyond the limitations of the conventional roles for which society prepares men, is a hero's journey of a different kind: the journey into one's soul and the discovery of one's spirit.
If we recognise this possibility, men's mid-life dramas and disillusionment can become turning-points for important new growth, and much of their pain and discomfort averted. It can take courage, because male conditioning does not normally prepare us for this journey, nor appear to value it. Support is invaluable. Help is available!
The end result is that men are able to move away from being so driven by the 'Herculean' goal-focused achievement path, towards a more balanced approach to life characterised by appreciating the simpler pleasures: like spending more quality time with our families and friends, and taking time out for rest and recreation. Jack Johnson's "Slow Down Everyone, You're Moving Too Fast", could be the theme of this new 'soulful' way.
Read more, download free.
Managing depression and despondency: Progress in Five Chapters
I used to believe I had no choice about becoming depressed; that it was a feature of my genetic make-up, my moodily melancholic Welsh and anxiously alarmist Spanish parents. There was always a "trigger" and usually someone else I could blame for pulling it.
When I was 18 years old, someone wrote of me, "Tends to despondency in the face of adversity". It was an ugly observation I thought, and it rankled. But it was accurate and a challenge I was determined to meet. It took some years to understand how to, and much hard work and courage beyond that. Read more, download free.
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Becoming better people (resolutions and guilt)
Flag away your New Year resolutions. Avoid the practice, especially if there's the slightest possibility you're someone driven by the need for perfection.
Guilt about not being better people (and for that matter, guilt about anything else) is anger turned inwards and like anger directed elsewhere, fails to make anyone better people. Its only certain outcome is our feeling bad about ourselves. People who feel bad about themselves are generally not constructive or pleasant to be around.
We have a better approach to New Year resolutions . . .
Read more, download free.
Losing and Finding Hope
Most of us say, "I want to make a difference" but are eventually confronted every day with the chasm between what we profess to value and how we actually behave. What, if anything, can be done to live with this fundamental conflict? Can we really make any useful difference at all? How can we remain positive in the light of our own powerless and inadequacy to live in accord with values that transcend our own self-centredness?
Read more, download free.
The Lesson of the Year!
We were generating too few new customers. Our approach was stale. I'd become weary and stuck. But within weeks and without any overt marketing effort, prospective clients I hadn't heard of and to whom we'd never promoted ourselves were lining up for our services.
People I'd never met wanted to join our organisation, make networking suggestions, offer support and encouragement, collaborate on books and projects, and learn from our experience.
How did this happen and what made it possible . . ? Read more, download free.
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Create More of the Experiences You Want
We are destined to repeat those experiences of which we miss the meaning. For many individuals, groups, teams and organisations, that's most of them.
- Déjà vu all over again
- A process to help you learn from last year and plan for this one
- Often, it comes down to the quality of our interactions
- The most valuable encouragement you may ever have
- Tip of the week: how to choose appropriate response skills.
Read more, download free.
Detach and de-stress
At various times we have all faced unwelcome events in our lives. We've always "got through" them and sometimes found humour in reflecting that we had believed we would not. At the time, we felt trapped, frightened, put-upon, resentful, victimised even. Yet we survived; equilibrium was eventually restored, as it usually is.
Why do we forget this? Why do we so often choose a negative view of events and become stressed-out?
The short answer is, at some level we decide to experience what we get, largely unaware of the mental and emotional processes this involves and of our capacity for altering them. Changing these processes requires first, that we understand them.
When we do understand them we are empowered to view challenges more positively. When we become skilled at recognising and changing our thoughts as they occur, we are enabled to behave differently.
Read more, download free.
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As within, so without
Many well-intentioned managers who aspire to guide and develop others haven't learned how to manage and develop themselves. They try to build organisations and teams or provide service qualities that differ from their own attributes. It doesn't work.
Two years ago Laurie took the helm of a new, mid-sized organisation dedicated to radical innovation in its field. At start-up, the high-profile enterprise attracted some of the most talented people in the business. Managers and staff were totally dedicated and delighted to be "walking" what was usually only talked about. A successful audit 12 months on, validated the risks they'd taken and the distance travelled. Clients were ecstatic about the close connections they saw between philosophy and delivery. The industry was abuzz. But 10 months ago, cracks began appearing in the culture.
Read more, download free.
When everything I do is urgent and important, what can I change?
- Beyond heroic management
- Take time to make time
- Fear or growth: your choice
- Where to begin change
- Tips of the week - more efficient decision-making and better quality decisions
- Be heard and understood the first time
Stretch yourself thin, stress yourself out, work longer hours (than is sensible), take on more responsibility (than is sensible), and make your job harder (than is sensible). The attitudinal basis of this overwork-as-an-end-in-itself game can be understood and changed, for a more healthy approach to managing ourselves and others.
Read more, download free.
The Thief of Fulfillment
By Chris Green, Conquering Fear
One of the biggest problems we can encounter when we consider making changes to our life is fear. Even though the changes we want to make will bring more happiness by considerably enhancing our lives, fear will still raise its head to try and stop us in our tracks.
This is no joke. It happens to millions of people and this fear ruins their dreams for a better life.
I don't know about you but the last feeling I want before I breathe my last is that I didn't take advantage of opportunities because I gave in to my fears. Read more. Download free.
Study of Hear and Be Heard is particularly suited to those who recognise that much of their negative stress is derived from "people-management issues" or "people-problems".
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