What are some of the stress management techniques?

A few days back, we received an enquiry from a client regarding a stress management training that they wanted to conduct for their employees. Unfortunately, on probing a bit, we realised it was what we call a ‘tick-mark training.’ In other words, a training that was to fill in a training calendar and not one that was really for employees to get rid of their stress!

It’s sad, isn’t it? But the truth is that we come across such requests quite often. But having such a situation for a stress management training really hurts. Especially in an age where stress is predominant and ever on the rise. In fact, with lives in the fast lane, there’s really no time to even get bogged down by stress and its effects!

With organisations growing and changing rapidly, stress is increasing day by day. And with everyone trying so hard to climb the corporate ladder as soon as possible, stress is a predictable outcome. However, it’s time that organisations woke up to this truth. It’s time they realised what the competition is doing to their employees and how it’s going to affect their mental and physical health in the long run. And how what started off as fatigue and burnout can turn into increased conflicts, poorer interpersonal relationships, decreasing team morale, lower productivity and eventually attrition.

Many companies complain that they can’t afford to send their employees for full-fledged stress management trainings as they would lose out on productive time. That’s where they need to think again! In fact, it’s always better to conduct capsule size stress management training workshops on a more regular basis. It helps employees stay in touch with the techniques and also gives them a chance to clear their doubts by asking the facilitator questions as and when they arise.

And if even that’s not possible, then let me help you with a few quick techniques that your employees can practise during working hours.

One of the most popular techniques for calming down is deep breathing. It helps reduce our mental chatter and connects us to the present moment. This enables us to manage our emotions and quickly get back to being calm and composed.

Another very effective technique is meditation. It is one of the best stress management techniques out there, but also one that is rather misunderstood! And that’s the reason why many people, although they have heard of its many benefits, tend to stay away from it. And that’s also an area where we can help you in one of our stress management trainings. We can show you different ways to meditate and feel relaxed and calm. In fact, mindfulness is our speciality. And apart from meditation for it, we also use a number of more fun ways that can be easily incorporated in our daily lives. And you know the best part about it? You don’t have to stop your thoughts to practice it!

There are many more corporate training techniques for managing stress effectively. These were just a few. To learn more, you can always attend a stress management training. There we can share more and practise more too.

Stress is a real issue and one that we all need to wake up to. And it’s about time that stress management trainings go beyond just being a tick on our training calendars. Let’s do it because we genuinely care about our people and are willing to take steps to look after them.

How performance coaching helps in various sectors

I was a guinea pig for testing a game which was based on performance coaching a few days back. It was an extremely interesting game and quite different from any other I had ever played before. While it was a typical board game where you have to roll a dice and move forward based on the number you roll, it also had a very unique theme. Every time you moved forward on the board, depending upon the spot you landed on, you had to pick a certain card. And these cards were all based on the skills required to be successful at performance coaching.

While I had a great time playing the game it also made me think. It made me realise how performance coaching was needed by practically every individual at some time or the other in his or her life. It was what could help tackle obstacle and barriers that hinder our progress and accelerate us to the next level. So here I am listing down how it can help professionals from different sectors and roles:

1.      Sales – Performance Coaching can do wonders to an individual’s sales performance. Sales professionals require dedicated efforts in first finding good quality leads and then trying to close on what they have to offer. Sometimes they can tend to lose track of the direction in which they are going and may go astray. They may even land up making efforts in the wrong direction by tapping the wrong customers or offering the wrong solutions. That’s when their performance goes for a toss and they may require the help of an external person who can show them the mirror and help them get back on track. Sales also being a function which needs to face the maximum amount of rejection can take a toll on some salesperson’s confidence levels. And that’s where performance coaching can also help them.

2.      Customer Service – Handling irate customers can be really difficult. The first and foremost thing that you have to watch out for is your own emotions. An irate customer can really press your buttons and we all know how we land up reacting to that! Performance coaching can help in improving the emotional intelligence of an individual. It can help get the person in touch with their own emotions and show them ways of managing them better. This helps the individual in having good control over himself which in turn makes it easy for them to handle even the toughest customer!

3.      Managers – A Manager’s job is to handle not just his own tasks but also those of his team members. And believe me, having to do all of that can be quite intimidating especially if you are new to the field! Coaching your team members becomes an important part of your responsibility and when you are inexperienced in the domain, that’s when you really realise that you need Performance Coaching yourself! By going through the process yourself and by understanding how to manage your own developmental areas, it becomes easier to guide others. Besides, the impact and influence of a strong and sorted manager is very different and one that every team member would be willing to follow.

So those were some benefits of Corporate training in some of the roles that immediately came to my mind.

Have you ever been through Performance Coaching yourself? We would love to hear how it helped you. So do write in and share your story with us…

Reasons to Train the trainer for better productivity

When we say train the trainer training, we assume that it’s meant only for trainers. However, that’s not the case. A train the trainer training is something that every manager should also go through.

When you lead or manage a team, one of your biggest responsibilities is to develop your team and its members. And that, mind you, has a three-fold advantage. One is that it helps the team members go beyond their challenges and grow by utilising their full potential. Another, is that it helps create a good connect between the manager and each team member. And the third is what the team members feel towards their manager; a feeling of being cared for, trust and respect. This in turn makes them reciprocate by giving their very best to their work, thereby increasing their productivity.  

What must be remembered is that not every manager is good at facilitating learning for his or her team. And a train the trainer training gives them a chance to learn that. It gives managers insights into how they can analyse and decipher the training needs of their team members. It also gives them great insights into what kind of activities they can use to help team members with specific issues. And of course, it helps them deliver the sessions effectively also.

And how does it help if a manager knows all of these things? Well it first helps him understand how to identify the corporate training needs of his team. And since he knows them the best, he will be the best person to know the exact cause of the issue at hand. This will also help him in his problem solving skills, the tools being used for both being similar. Also having your manager deliver short bite sized sessions every now and then can be extremely useful for an employee. It can be done on the job itself and done by a person the employee is comfortable with, his manager. This improves the buy-in and retention of the employees and also helps the manager in becoming adept at this skill, helping him improve at presentations skills and public speaking.

Thus attending a train the trainer training can be extremely useful for the manager, his team and the organisation on the whole. So if you are a manager and really want to take your team to the next level, we recommend attending a train the trainer program. It will help you be a manager that people look upto and also sharpen some of your other skills. And that’s definitely a reason to consider opting for a train the trainer training. Don’t you think?

Top 3 qualities of an excellent supervisor

We attended a meeting with a client last week. He was complaining that his supervisors were not up to the mark. It was a very typical complaint that we seem to be hearing more and more. The client representative was getting frustrated with the casual attitude of his supervisors and wanted them to attend a supervisory skills training to fix the same.

Now these were millennial supervisors that we were talking about. As time goes by, more and more millennials are entering into the workspace. They are getting promoted and taking up supervisory and managerial roles. However, their perspective towards life and ways of working are a little different. And this can get difficult for their co-workers to understand and manage.

I am therefore going to tell you the top three qualities that a supervisor needs to have. These are qualities that all supervisors need to have although am writing keeping the millennials more in mind!

So here goes…

1.       Ownership and Accountability – This is of prime importance for supervisors and one of the points that we ensure that we start every supervisory skills training session with. Every supervisor needs to ensure that he takes up his tasks wholly, which means being completely responsible for them. They really can’t afford to be lax as that puts a bad impression on their juniors who start displaying the same behaviour!

A supervisor needs to own the task that he has on hand and ensure that it gets completed in the best possible way. He also needs to own the mistakes and failures that happen during the completion of the same rather than blaming those below him for it.

2.       Good Communication – Being able to say what we need to, is necessary. If we lack the communication skills to do that; it will lead to a lot of confusion, conflict and rework. This is turn affects quality and the time taken to complete a task. And we are all well aware of how that affects customer satisfaction and the profitability of our organisation.

Therefore, communication skills form a very important part of every supervisory skills training and a skill that every supervisory really needs to work on. After all, a supervisor is no longer an individual contributor. He has moved up the chain and now has to get work done from others. He therefore needs to ensure that his communication is in place to get the same done smoothly.

3.       Emotional Intelligence – This is an area that many of us would prefer keeping our hands out of! However, its also one that needs to be looked into to get many of the other areas in place. Many supervisory skills trainings do not focus on this aspect. However, if you ask me, its one that they really can’t afford to leave out!

Supervisors are subject to many difficult situations on a daily basis. Having to handle their workers, bosses, clients and in some cases difficult working environmental conditions apart from personal problems. These can affect the emotional well being of the person and cause him to react to situations rather than respond to them. This affects not only those around him, but also his own inner landscape. It becomes difficult for him to handle his emotions and handling others becomes almost impossible! That’s why being able to manage one’s emotions is very important. It helps in keeping a calm demeanour and makes it easier to handle any situation that comes along during the day.

Do write in and tell us what other qualities you think a supervisor should have. We would love to hear it. And you never know, we might just include it in our next supervisory skills training!

Know how your organisational culture affects productivity

Every organisation has its own culture. And this culture is very well reflected in the way its people work and interact with each other within the organisation as well as outside the organisation. Some Organisational culture workshops aim at understanding the pulse of the current culture of the organisation and looking at what can be done to enhance the same. Others, on the other hand, may be simply a sharing of the culture the top management wants its people to follow.

An organisation’s culture is mainly driven by its top management. It’s basically a top-down approach. The way the top management of the organisation operates and treats its people, gets pretty much replicated by the rest of the organisation. Hence, the top management forms a major stakeholder in every organisational culture workshop.

The culture of an organisation is very important. It is what gives rise to a particular environment in the organisation, which in turn directly affects their productivity.

Culture is based on the vision, mission and values that the organisation lives by. These truly drive the organisation and run like blood through its veins. They tell people how the organisation wants them to behave and in what direction they need to head to be successful. It therefore fosters the communication within the organisation and also the way people are treated. And we all know how engagement and productivity changes when we feel valued in our organisations!

Hence, an organisation’s culture is not something that can be taken lightly. And if it’s not something you have been giving too much importance to, it’s time to think again. First find out what the current organisational culture is. You can do it through a survey that all your employees fill or through an organisational culture workshop which has activities that help you sense the same. Then bring your top management team together and ask them to brainstorm and come to a conclusion as to what they would want it to be.  Now you can run organisation wide organisational culture workshops which actually tell employees how the culture needs to be. To make it easy for them this can be shown in the form of observable behaviours that they can display. And can be done very effectively through various games and activities which simulate the work environment and tell people how they need to behave in various situations.  Thus organisational culture workshops can set the context very well and aid the top management in building a culture where their people are prospering and taking the organisation to a new level.

Organisational culture workshops are not as common as other workshops like Communication Skills, Managerial Skills, Personality Development, etc. However, they are crucial. They require the leaders of the organisation to have very high awareness levels and an acceptance that the current culture may not be the best and may need a change. After all, only when the leaders are open to change, can change be driven through the rest of the organisation. And it’s the leaders who need to walk that change. And organisational culture workshops can aid largely in that.

TEAM BUILDING TRAINING FOR EXCELLENT BUSINESS GROWTH

There’s no doubt that trainings help in developing people which eventually helps in business growth. But what do you think of team building trainings? Do they help in business growth?

I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m asking you this question. When I already said that trainings contribute to business growth, team building trainings should do the same, right? Then why do you think I’m still asking you if team building trainings serve that purpose too?

That’s because, many a time team building training is considered as an outing or a form of recreation for employees taken offsite. In fact, we get a lot of such enquiries where organisations want to conduct team building trainings as a part of their team outings for fun. They actually insist on keeping the debriefs minimal. And hence sometimes team building trainings are not taken very seriously and may be considered as simply a way to have fun.

I, on the other hand, personally feel that team building trainings are the most important one’s for business growth. This is the time when the whole team is together and away from work. They can therefore focus on bonding with each other and build those bonds that will help them back at work.

Yes, fun definitely is a big motive of team building trainings. Fun is what keeps the atmosphere light and creates a space where people enjoy mingling and getting to know each other better. And when they know each other better and bond better, a very different level of trust is created. This results in working together more efficiently, and eventually more productivity and business growth.

How? Because when you trust your team members, you are more open to each other in your ways and thought processes. This reduces conflict big time and you actually enjoy working together. And that’s when you become more productive and an overall happier team.

Team building training provides a platform where teams and team members can get aware of how they operate in and as a team. They can then work on becoming a better team to achieve better results.

So I’m sure you now know why I feel team building trainings should be given highest priority! They do after all serve multiple purposes like effective communication skills, learning, awareness, development, growth, business results, efficient teams, well bonded and motivated teams, better workplace environment and most importantly, fun! Team building training is truly a buffet!

BENEFITS OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN WORKPLACE

Communication skills training is a common training program that anyone can go through irrespective of their level, age, experience, department, etc. This is one skill that needs continual enhancement, though sometimes some people do get offended when asked to attend a communication skills training! They feel, being in the position that they are, they are by default exceptional at their communication skills. There are good at it, no doubt. But remember there’s no limit to learning. And certainly, no harm in enhancing a skill further.

It’s very important to have good communication and good team bonding in a workplace.  It makes things easier and a lot smoother. In fact, an organisation that encourages open communication has less unnecessary conflicts. People are ready to listen to each other’s opinions and a lot of sharing happens. They also give each other constructive feedback and are open to receiving it too. This helps in improving them, others and the organisation on the whole.

Talking about open communication, organisations where people can openly share ideas and thoughts have very high levels of creativity too. This in turn improves employee engagement and retention levels. When people have the liberty to share their ideas, they feel heard. This gives them a creative boost which helps them come up with more such ideas. And that’s when you have an organisation full of people who are running high on creativity, productivity and will stick around for a long time!

Another benefit of good communication skills is teams performing better. When communication is good, team members come together to create strong cohesive units. This is not just helpful within the team, but also greatly improves cross functional collaboration. Being able to communicate effectively opens more channels to ask for help and provide help more often.

Effective communication skills also help in being able to speak assertively to our seniors, colleagues and subordinates. This is challenging for some people. But can be helped by communication skills training.

In short, communication skills enable you for better asking, speaking, listening and understanding. And believe you and me, its these basics that matter a great deal while trying to get any job done! And how do you enhance these? By attending a good communication skills training. It will help you work on these aspects. And if you are already good at them, it will help you in brushing them up further.

So if you are ever given a chance to attend a communication skills training, go for it. Irrespective of what your communication level is, go for it. It will only make you better. And people rarely get a chance to better themselves.