Tag Archives: success

Design your next performance review workshop

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Greetings from Laura

I just completed a great lesson plan on “Designing your next performance review.” for my online coaching series.  I’m really excited about the materials, techniques and alternative references that I have been including in this subscription based lessons-learned series.
But this particular episode holds a particular soft-spot in my heart.   Most of my professional friends are disappointed at one time or another about a recent performance appraisals.   This particular lesson outlines several easy steps to assure an exceptional review.

If you would like this on-line class material (at no cost and one-time limited offer), please fill in this order form.  No credit or payment information is required.

My hope is that you will find the material very valuable and decide to subscribe to this continuous on-line coaching series.

Even if you decide not to enroll in the series, please use this particular lesson to your best advantage.

Warmly,
Laura Lee Rose

How to build a healthy employee relationship

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Whether you are a small business owner or head of a corporate department, building healthy employee relationships is much like building any relationship.  Read on for some quick building blocks for a strong employer/employee foundation.
Some significant tools are:
1) Good and open communications
2) Avoiding blame or defensiveness (don’t take anything personally)
3) Don’t make assumptions (avoid judging others)
4) Incorporate aspects of coaching and mentoring (lead by outstanding example)
Key phrases to incorporate:
Someone’s performance level is dropping and they are constantly late and/or missing important meetings:
Review the previous agreement or understanding:
“John, I need help on something. Because this is a small company and we’re working hard to make it a success, I need all my staff to be working effectively and efficiently. When I first hired you, we agreed that the work-day would start promptly at 8:30am – 5:00pm (with 1 hour for lunch at 12:00). Does that match your memory?”
“yes”
Review the reason behind the rule or agreement:
“Great. The reason I need those time blocks is so that I can schedule the proper staff meetings, conference calls, project planning and schedules within those allotted blocks. With those agreements in place, I can depend upon my full staff available during those blocks. This allows the department to function seamlessly without the overhead of micromanaging and time-cards. Have I held up to my commitment to only schedule work-related activities during those hours?”
“yes”
State your observations in a non-judgmental tone:
“Great. In regards to this specific area, I have noticed that you have not be attending our staff meetings and have been arriving late and leaving earlier. This has been a recent occurrence, maybe 2 weeks. Is there something outside of the office that is affecting your ability be fully available during the regular work hours? Something that just recently happened?”
Listen with an open mind:
At this point you might discover that your employee is going through something temporary (either in or out of the office). For example: he/she may be going through a divorce and is struggling with child custody issues. It might simply be a matter figuring out the new child-drop-off patterns or resolving some additional child-care arrangements.
Come up with a plan that accomplishes both your and their needs:
In this example, it could simply be a matter of allowing the employee to work from home on the days they are responsible for their children. Or shifting the meetings that they are critical/responsible for — later in the day/morning. Or recording the staff meetings for people to review later.
Bottom line: A healthy employee relationship is not much different from any personal or business relationship. It takes compassion without compromising your individual or business goals, mission or vision. Majority of the time, there is a solution that uplifts both sides.

Make compromising your second choice

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I am a dance instructor as well as a success and business coach; and I often find things we can learn from dance.  For instance: Sometimes it is possible to make everyone happy.  You just need to be willing to take the time to look for the shared  “Win” in every opportunity.

For instance:  A beautiful couple was taking some private dance lessons from me.  At our last lesson, I asked them if they had been able to attend some dances to practice and show-off what they were learning.  The young lady confessed that they were having some disagreement about that.
She said, “He just wants to dance with me; and I want to dance with other people as well as dancing with him”.

I certainly understand both sides of that coin.  But both partners can get exactly what they want.

1) He can only dance with her.
2) She can dance with other people as well as dancing with him
3) While he is sitting out (because she is also dancing with other people), he can be on the look-out for new moves to try out on her.

This way, everyone is playing in their comfort zones.  He can relax and watch other people dance.  He can eye-spy some interesting moves that he had not tried before; while she is experiencing some new moves with the other leaders.  When they come together again, they can share what they have learned from others.

It’s like this in life as well.  When a couple comes together, it’s good to have individual interests as well as shared activities.  This way, when you have your quality time together — you have lots more stories to share. This is the same in business relationships as well as family issues.

As a business and success coach,  I realize that there are various solutions to a problem.  Few things are his way or her way; your way or their way.  If you take the time, you can often find a higher-level solution to most situations.

If you like the above tips – subscribe to my Dance Thru Life Tips newsletter at
http://eepurl.com/cSDC6

7 Tips to reduce paper BEFORE it becomes clutter

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Office Organization Tips

By Laura Lee Rose, author of TimePeace: Making peace with time

 

Did you know that the 3rd week of April is “Organize Your Files” week?

Here’s 7 quick tips to prepare for this upcoming holiday…..

 

Office organization is an important step toward both releasing clutter and creating more time in one’s hectic schedule.  In this information age, many of us receive thousands of emails a day as well as dozens of snail mail packages and papers. Before drowning in this information, experiment with these 7 simple tips for both paper and electronic posts.

 

 

7 tips for paper and electronic clutter:

 

1) Don’t bring it in the house or office in the first place.

I do a quick elimination at the mail box. If it’s junk mail, advertisements, etc I note the ones I am interested in and toss the rest. The ones I am interested in, I look at on-line.

2) Once in the office, sort into three boxes/containers: TODAY, This week, later.

Once sorted in my time-sensitive boxes, I can prioritize my time appropriately.

3) Release the need for paper.

Acknowledge that everything is currently available remotely through the internet. There’s always ways to replace or get another copy.

  • There same ads are normally on the store’s website.
  • The magazine/newspaper/newsletter often have on-line version.
  • You can easily get replacement receipts and bank statements.

 Revisit your real need for the paper trail. If it is an imaginary dependency, then toss it and discontinue the paper subscription. Continually ask yourself “What’s the worst that can happen if I threw this away? Isn’t there a way to retrieve this if and when I really needed it?”

 4) Take on an On-Demand and Abundance mentality.

Instead of cursing the abundance of email and post mail, appreciate and use that knowledge. Realize that even better information will continually come to you.  Therefore, you never need to save something “just in case you need it in the future”.  There will always be an abundance of information exactly when you need it.  If you haven’t read or used it within a month, it is now obsolete.  Toss it. Release the old to make room for the better.

 5) Create email Message-Rules

Setting up Message-Rules allows you to presort your email, even before you see it. Investigate your mailer for the feature “Create Message Rules”.  Create different email folders and message rules for different subscriptions, subject lines, sender or from names, and topic headers.

6) Time-sensitize your in-box with “TODAY”, “This week”, “Later” action intentions.

Flag the items you need to “take action today” using your email message flag feature. Items that you can deal with later move to your email LATER folder. The only thing in your inbox should be things you need to deal with today or this week. Everything else is placed in its proper folder.  If stays in your LATER box over a month, delete it.

7) Block time to review your email.

Don’t interrupt your day every time an email, a phone call, or an instant message comes in. Allow your mail-rules, voice mail, and do-not-disturb features to do their job. Create automatic responders to initially respond to incoming email (i.e. announcing that you have received their email, that you need some time to review, and that you will have a quality response within 2 business days.  If it is an emergency, ask them to call you.)

Scheduling a block of time to handle the accumulated requested (instead of being interrupt driven) is a more effective use of time.

 

I am Laura Lee Rose, author of TimePeace: Making peace with time. I am a business and life coach with over 20 years of corporate experience, specifically in the software industry. I now use my time and project management skills in my own Rose Coaching business, to help people transform the life they have into the life they really want.

If you are interested in more organizational and time saving tips, check out my book: TimePeace: Making peace with time (at amazon.com) or subscribe to my newsletters and articles at http://eepurl.com/cZ9_-/

 

How to Stay Focused While Working from Home

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Laura Lee Rose is the Corporate Exiting Strategest for blooming entrepreneurs.
Laura helps others to easily transition into their next chapter whether it’s the next ladder of success within their corporate environment or into the entrepreneurial playground.

To sign-up for these tools, subscribe at  http://eepurl.com/gGZtP

 

Questions to Ask Yourself After You Get Fired

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As a business and life coach who specializes in time management and work life balance strategies, I recommend clients to consistently look forward (not backwards).

Therefore, the question “why I got fired” is not as beneficial as “what do I want to do now“.

Although there are many symptoms — there are usually only a few underlying reasons that anyone gets fired (I am making a distinction between being “fired” and “getting laid off”):

1) The ‘real’ job did not match what the effort the employee wanted to submit.
2) The employee and employer’s expectations were not understood or did not match.
3) The job didn’t lead the employee’s career in a direction that the employee wanted to go.
Given the above, better questions to ask yourself after you get fired are:

Creating a “No Excuse” Zone ~ Part 3

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Below is Part 3 of a 3-Part article designed to help IT and database professionals stay on top of their game in an ever-changing trade. Part 1 and 2 describe examples of how we inadvertently make excuses for our lack of progress in certain areas of our careers.

Part 3 offers several steps toward creating “No Excuse Zones” in our home, office and thinking. For more examples that fit your specific work environment, please feel free to contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info.

We all have “excuses‟ as part of our normal, default speaking and thinking patterns. It’s normal. It’s human. We often entertain ourselves with stories of how we got to where we “don‟t want to be”. We do not readily acknowledge these stories as “excuses” or blaming something or someone external to ourselves for our predicament; we’re simply “explaining” ourselves.  But the longer we stay in the “explaining” stage of the current situation; the longer we are stalled and not making forward progress.

As you can see in part 1 and part 2 of this article, there are endless ways to take control over your own calendar and time.  Using external people and event as excuses for your lack of progress is very natural but not very beneficial.  We won’t be able to totally avoid our very natural and human reactions to things.  But we can continually improve upon are recognition of what is more beneficial in moving us forward faster.

Beginning steps toward NO EXCUST ZONE thinking:

Step 1) Create several NO EXCUSE ZONES in your home, office and social environments.
These places will be designated as “NO EXCUSE ZONES”. These are places where you are deliberately on the lookout for excuses in your speech and in others. It will be in these places where “excuses” will no longer be acceptable.
You can place a “NO EXCUSE ZONE” sign to warn co-workers, friends and family that you have kicked-up your game. It will be at these places that you practice your new-found energy, focus, and purpose.
When you detect “defensive” speech from yourself and others, diplomatically challenge the thought as an assumption, a false premise or even an irrelevant truth. Just because something is factual doesn‟t make it beneficial or useful. There are lots of truths that are simply immaterial to forward progress or solutions.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

 

 

How to Repel a Current Client From Ever Returning

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Laura Lee Rose is the Corporate Exiting Strategest for blooming entrepreneurs.
Laura helps others to easily transition into their next chapter whether it’s the next ladder of success within their corporate environment or into the entrepreneurial playground.

To sign-up for these tools, subscribe at  http://eepurl.com/gGZtP

 

How to Repel Your Existing Customers from Ever Coming Back

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Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – Corporate Exit Strategist for the Blooming Entrepreneur – and I am a business and life coach that specializes in time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. As a business coach, I received this recent question:

“How do you repel your existing customers from ever coming back?”

At first glance, this may seem like a strange question, but it is actually a great topic. In any business, it is unrealistic to feel that you can make everyone happy with your products and services. Most successful businesses do not plan to be “all things to all people”.   As such, there may be certain customers that you don’t really want as regular clients.  This is actually very good business planning.

Having said the above, how does one go about professionally “repelling” an existing customer without the risk of a “Better Business Bureau Complaint”?

One very positive way to “repel customers from ever coming back”, is to focus on your overall goal to an exceptional client experience. This seems strange, but please bears with me.

If your goal is for 100% client satisfaction (or an exceptional client experience), and you are unable to satisfy this particular client with your current services or products, point them toward someone else’s service or products that will satisfy them.

Creating a “No Excuse Zone” around YOU Professional Development Series

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Below is Part 2 of a 3-Part article designed to help IT and database professionals stay on top of their game in an ever-changing trade. Part 1 highlighted some IT scenarios. In this part 2, we will take a closer look.

Part 3 offers several steps toward creating „No Excuse Zones” in our home, office and thinking. For more examples that fit your specific work environment, please feel free to contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info.

We all have “excuses‟ as part of our normal, default speaking and thinking patterns. It’s normal. It’s human. We often entertain ourselves with stories of how we got to where we “don‟t want to be.”  We do not readily acknowledge these stories as „excuses‟ or blaming something or someone external to ourselves for our predicament; we‟re simply ‘explaining’ ourselves. But the longer we stay in the ‘explaining’ stage of the current situation; the longer we are stalled and not making forward progress.

 

Let’s look closer:

My task was to contact 3 hospitals to collect meaningful metrics on these five database features. Only one hospital has responded on only one database features. I am late with this project and don’t know how to proceed.

Our developer had not been keeping his team and stakeholders involved in his progress. He had been struggling with the 3 hospitals without conveying the obstacles he was encountering. He allowed the deadline to pass without a word of status. He was nervous and ashamed about his lack of progress on this task. Continue reading →