Tag: Productivity

Journey To Leadership

The Importance Of Gratitude In Leadership

by journeytoleadershipblog2 Comments on The Importance Of Gratitude In Leadership

Some leaders who have achieved high levels of success are unhappy and ungrateful.

They go through life with pessimism and a sense of emptiness.

They don’t express gratitude. They pass down their toxicity to other people, find faults on everything and everyone. Why is that?

It is safe to say that people who express gratitude in the workplace are seen as naive and weak. Are they really thou? Do they know something that we don’t?

Wondering what are the benefits of gratitude and how to improve your level of gratitude?

The Importance Of Gratitude In Leadership

What is gratitude?

The expression of gratitude is both personal and universal. It depends on your cultural background, your systems of belief, your circumstances and your self-awareness.

Gratitude is a conscious choice.

Gratitude is acknowledging the value of someone or something, celebrating success after reaching our goals, choosing to see the positive in any situation and consciously remembering who helped you.

Being grateful is a thinking process that needs constant work. It is a demonstration of your character and your internal strength.

Gratitude is a perception of life.

It is appreciating what you have in life, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Gratitude is an emotion, an attitude, a habit.

To some, gratitude is directly linked to happiness. To others, it fosters complacency and selfishness.

Benefits of gratitude?

Some days are harder than others. Gratitude doesn’t make things magically go away. However, it puts things in perspective.

In addition, being grateful has the ability to:

  • Increase your self-awareness. Gratitude will automatically influence your attitude, your character.
  • Stabilize your health, manage your emotional intelligence and improve your self-esteem. Gratitude is a combination of your emotions and your state of mind.
  • Increase your effectiveness, productivity and optimism.
  • Build great and valuable relationships. You will also be seen as friendly, positive and much more approachable.
  • Make others feel appreciated. Making people feel valued will in turn make you feel valuable.
  • Promote empathy, resolve conflicts and successfully influence people.
  • Help you recognize that a curse is in fact a blessing in disguise.
  • Help you activate the laws of attraction. more opportunities will come to you naturally.
  • Make the best of everything.
  • Value and focus on the things that you do have.
  • Help you enjoy your journey and find greater meaning in life.
  • Energize you and help you experience positive emotions. It prevents depression and suppresses pride.

Through this practice, leaders build up a reservoir of positive energy.

How to improve your gratitude?

Gratitude is recognizing people for the things that they gift you, for the hurdles, the joys, for your past, present and future. To express your gratitude, practice these tips:

  1. Identify your strengths and weaknesses.
  2. Accept yourself for who you really are.
  3. Clarify your own goals and purpose. You will then know when to celebrate your success.
  4. Keep an open mind which means that you must be open to explore and to learn.
  5. Be sincere and positive. Avoid focusing on negativity in general.
  6. Show that you care and directly give thanks.
  7. Write down all the things that you are grateful for. You can also keep a personal journal. Then, you can memorize what you are grateful for so you can visualize it during hard times.
  8. Give yourself permission to be vulnerable, to emote and to speak your mind.
  9. Volunteer and give back to people.
  10. Engage in activities that are essential and beneficial to you.
  11. Maximize the opportunities that come your way.
  12. Learn from your painful experiences.

Gratitude is not a common emotion or state in the workplace.

Furthermore, nothing can make you feel demoralized and unappreciated like an ungrateful boss.

Nevertheless, at work, there are several opportunities to demonstrate gratitude: a motivated team, a respectful salary, expected results.

To nurture a culture of gratitude within your organization, it is important to exercise your muscle frequently :

  1. Lead by example and be genuine when expressing gratitude.
  2. Get to know your team.
  3. Help someone out once in a while.
  4. Acknowledge people’s success and offer rewards for a job well done.
  5. Sincerely compliment people once in a while.
  6. Encourage your team to always do their best.
  7. Provide frequent feedback.

What are the things that you are the most grateful for?

 

Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!

Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.

Book Reviews

Fast Focus By Damon Zahariades

by journeytoleadershipblogLeave a Comment on Fast Focus By Damon Zahariades

In Fast Focus, a quick-start guide to mastering your attention, ignoring distractions, and getting more done in less time!, Damon Zahariades provides tools and strategies to manage your ability to focus.

What is focus?

Focus is the concentration required to consciously block out the noise and the distractions while performing a task.

The ability to focus can be a natural talent. But for most of us, it is a built-in habit, a skill which means it can be learnt.

Why do you need to effectively manage your attention? 

Focus can positively impact your life. A lack of focus will reduce your effectiveness and your work quality.

Lack of focus or mind-wandering is not all negative. It helps us get in time with our creative side and find solutions to difficult circumstances.

However, gaining better focus will help you finish all your tasks on time, make better decisions, solve problems, become more productivity, get a successful work/life balance, embrace failure and learn  from your mistakes.

By improving your focus, you can reserve your energy for relationships, build stronger connections, become more present, increase your memory, achieve greater self-confidence, handle and overcome adversity.

Why are people so unfocused?

Nobody is impervious to distraction. People are easily distracted because they usually:

  • lack interest, are unable to commit or stay engaged to a particular task.
  • lack emotional intelligence and are submerged by fear.
  • are disorganized and don’t structure their day.
  • lack energy. They don’t sleep, eat or exercise correctly.
  • lack control or discipline.

Creating an environment to focus

Designing the proper environment is the first way to zero in on your task and to harmonize your workflow:

  1. Light up your work environment and always take advantage of your natural light. A low lighting makes you drowsy, strains your eyes and decrease your learning abilities.
  2. Some people feel comfortable working with background noises while others enjoy silence. Experiment and find out which one works best for you.
  3. Consider your level of physical comfort. To do so, you can adjust your clothes, your stationary, your sitting position, your sitting time and your sight line.
  4. Monitor the temperature of the room. For example, a too warm room will cause you to sleep.
  5. Breathe clean air.
  6. Practice aromatherapy. Some scents have a direct impact on your mood, mind and effectiveness.
  7. Avoid social situations if you want to work. Human nature makes us drawn to people but interacting with people decrease your focus.
  8. Organize and declutter your workspace. Clutter affects your focus more than you think because it decreases your processing abilities, hurts your creativity and occupies your memory space.
  9. Monitor your time to measure your progress.
  10. Write down your ideas and tasks so they don’t monopolize your thoughts.

Fast Focus By Damon Zahariades (3)

Strategies to overcome mind-wandering

There are several tactics to increase your focus, to relax and to avoid the biggest distractions in your life.

  1. As stated above, it is essential to monitor your time, to set realistic deadlines, to reward yourself and break down your tasks in smaller steps.
  2. Don’t set too many daily goals and limit yourself to 5 tasks daily or else you will feel overwhelmed and pressured.
  3. Identify the purpose for every task.
  4. Exercise first thing in the morning.
  5. Avoid ignoring the ideas and thoughts floating around in your head. Log them down quickly before you forget them.
  6. Identify “internal or external stimuli” that break your concentration.
  7. Record every task that you must undertake by putting them down via a to do list.
  8. To sharpen your focus, to enter the zone and boost your performance, listen to music or nurture silence.
  9. Take regular breaks and naps to refresh your mind, to refresh your mind and to avoid boredom.
  10. Restore your focus by taking a short walk instead of remaining at your desk.
  11. Multitasking is valued by society. However, attacking one task at a time will help increase your performance and your work quality.
  12. Pack all similar activities into one and execute them in a row while monitoring your time.
  13. Break down your day into several tasks and allocate the time necessary for each task.
  14. Stay away from internet.
  15. Spend less time in meetings or avoid meetings all together as they can clog up your day and as they hold little value.
  16. Set boundaries and expectations about your time and your focus.
  17. Turn off your phone for long periods of time.
  18. Observe how your energy fluctuates during the day and use moments where your energy is high to achieve high productivity.
  19. Mediate and take care of your inner peace.
  20. Stop checking your mails frantically. Instead, keep track of your inbox once or twice a day.
  21. Define a daily routine and follow it. Routines facilitates your life, enables ow brain processing. You can use that same brain power to accomplish your tasks.
  22. Stay away from perfectionism.
  23. Completely edit the first draft then come back to correct your mistakes.
  24. Stop “consuming too much caffeine” because it is unhealthy and reduces your ability to concentrate.

Review

Fast Focus, a quick-start guide to mastering your attention, ignoring distractions, and getting more done in less time! is a pragmatic, complete, quick and easy to read self-help book.

In Fast Focus, a quick-start guide to mastering your attention, ignoring distractions, and getting more done in less time!, Damon Zahariades shares valuable tips on how to increase your productivity and your focus.

Damon Zahariades shares his preferences and also incorporates practical links  and tools to enable your productivity.

It is a step by step guide, written for leaders, for people from all walks of life, for those who are easily distracted by social media, for those who procrastinate, who daydream easily and those with low productivity.

I like the fact that this books highlights the fact that so many things, concepts and institutions in life are purposely set up to distract us from reality: from the local bully to the background music in the stores to technology and internet.

All these distractions are the reason why most people procrastinate and never achieve their version of success.

Favorite quote(s)

When we lack a specific purpose, we become more susceptible to distractions. We focus on whatever our brains tell us to focus on, rather than the other way around. We become passengers rather than drivers.

Ratings 2.5/5

Author

Damon Zahariades

Author

Damon Zahariades

by journeytoleadershipblog1 Comment on Damon Zahariades

MEET THE AUTHOR

Damon Zahariades is a productivity expert, owner of the blog Art Of Productivity and the author of Fast Focus, a quick-start guide to mastering your attention, ignoring distractions, and getting more done in less time!.