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Individual Well-being

Assess don’t assume Individual Well-beingWorkplace Well-being

Assess don’t assume

In many aspects of the people professions we are called upon to assess situations, weigh them up as part of making a decision as to how to deal with them. This is skilful work that can be helped by having a good working knowledge base around people (about motivation, for example). But what is not helpful is the tendency to rely on untested assumptions. At one extreme, this can amount to relying on stereotypes, crude caricatures that present a heavily distorted picture. But we can also encounter more subtle distortions, mainly based on the assumption that other people see the world the way we do. For example, something we see as simple and straightforward may be quite scary and disconcerting…
Dr Neil Thompson
March 8, 2022
Don’t allow other people’s pressures to distort your priorities Individual Well-beingWorkplace Well-being

Don’t allow other people’s pressures to distort your priorities

It is important not to feel under pressure to dance to someone else’s tune. For example, something seen as urgent by someone else does not necessarily mean you have to change your own priorities to accommodate it. This does not mean that we should not help people who need something doing urgently, but it does mean that the fact that something is urgent for somebody else should not be allowed to distort your own priorities. Sadly I have come across many situations where Person A has something urgent (but not especially important) that they want Person B to do and, when Person B does it, the result is that something much more important from Person B’s own to do list…
Dr Neil Thompson
February 19, 2022
Get the information you need Individual Well-beingWorkplace Well-being

Get the information you need

Over the years I have come across many decisions that have proven after the event to have been unwise of misguided. There is no single reason for this, but a common theme has been people making decisions without having the information they need. Often what happens is that there is pressure to make a decision quickly and this can lead people into moving forward with their plans too soon because key elements of information were not available at the time the decision was made. So, in making any decision we have to be clear about which is wiser: deciding now without that information and risking getting it wrong, or take the time to find out – thereby making a much…
Dr Neil Thompson
February 8, 2022
Boundaries of responsibility Individual Well-beingWorkplace Well-being

Boundaries of responsibility

There are some things that each one of us is responsible for – that is, they are individual responsibilities.  I have to do what I have to do and you have to do what you have to do. Some things are shared responsibilities – that is, we have to do them together. Teamwork is a good example of this. Developing effective teamwork is the responsibility of every team member, not just the leader. Then there are also responsibilities that belong to other people – they are not mine, they are not yours, they are not ours. It is important to be aware of these boundaries as it can be quite problematic and potentially stressful if: (i) we do not fulfil…
Dr Neil Thompson
January 12, 2022
Negotiate your workload Individual Well-beingWorkplace Well-being

Negotiate your workload

My Time and Workload Management e-learning course emphasizes that too much work is too much work – that is, everyone has a limit to how much they can get done in a given timeframe. However, some people get themselves into difficulties by taking on everything that comes their way. They feel obliged to say yes to everything even if this means they may become overloaded to the point that they risk becoming stressed and possibly practising dangerously because of that. A key skill, then, is being able to successfully negotiate our workload. If we take on more than we can reasonably cope with then we are likely to achieve far less than if we had kept our workload within manageable…
Dr Neil Thompson
December 13, 2021
There’s no point rushing Individual Well-beingWorkplace Well-being

There’s no point rushing

‘More haste less speed’ is a well-known saying and it has more than a grain of truth to it. So many people tend to respond to pressure by rushing, and this is a dangerously counterproductive strategy. When we rush our error rate goes up significantly and our sense of control goes down significantly – and, of course, losing our sense of control is a major step in the direction of stress. What is also significant is that, when we start rushing, we start giving people the message that they are not important, that we have more pressing things to do than to listen to them and take in an interest in them. Working slightly faster than usual is one thing,…
Dr Neil Thompson
November 30, 2021
Allow time for recovery Individual Well-being

Allow time for recovery

Our muscles need time to recover form exertion before we exert ourselves further if we are not to strain them. The same applies to our mental and emotional ‘muscles’. If we keep stretching ourselves in our work efforts (and in our lives more broadly) without giving ourselves time to recover, we run the risk of doing ourselves harm, potentially significant harm. Exertion plus recovery plus more exertion can produce growth and development (of muscles in the direct physical sense or of learning in our more metaphorical sense). Exertion followed by more exertion without recovery time in between can produce muscle strain and/or psychological stress. Time for recovery is therefore not an optional extra of we are to take our physical…
Dr Neil Thompson
November 18, 2021
Make best use of your best time Individual Well-beingWorkplace Well-being

Make best use of your best time

Some people are morning people and some people are definitely not morning people. We all have our rhythms and routines that mean that we are at our best at certain times of day and far from our best at others. So, do you know when your best time of day is? If so, are you making sure that you are doing your most important work at that time of day in order to produce the best results? If not, why not try and work out when that is so that you can capitalize on it? Similarly, are you clear about when your least effective time is? If so, are you making sure that you are not making important decisions or…
Dr Neil Thompson
November 2, 2021
Be open to learning from mistakes Individual Well-beingWorkplace Well-being

Be open to learning from mistakes

The idea of the value of learning from our mistakes is well established, but unfortunately many people don’t manage to get the benefit of this. That is because they adopt a defensive approach to mistakes; they see them as things to cover up or deflect attention from. Nobody is perfect and so mistakes are inevitable, so there is little point in trying to give the impression that we never make mistakes. Some mistakes can be embarrassing, but most are not unless we are trying to come across as ‘mistake proof’. Some mistakes are quite serious, but the more serious they are, the greater the scope for learning. However, that’s not to say that even small mistakes cannot produce significant learning.…
Dr Neil Thompson
October 13, 2021
Why helps with how Individual Well-beingWorkplace Well-being

Why helps with how

In any project or task we undertake, it can be very easy to get engrossed and lose focus on why we are doing it. If, however, we can make sure we don’t lose sight of the why (the purpose), we will be in a stronger position to decide on the how (the method) and put it into practice. Sadly, though, it is not uncommon for people to become so busy doing something that they forget why they are doing it. They then lose sight of how best to move forward. Clarity about why we are doing something will make us more motivated to achieve our goals and give us a more helpful picture of the possible ways of achieving them.…
Dr Neil Thompson
September 28, 2021