Almost half of UAE professionals may quit their jobs after the summer holidays

Dubai, UAE,  30^th August 2010 – New research from Regus reveals that UAE professionals may quit their jobs after the summer vacation due to lack of promotion and bosses that do not know, or do not communicate the company’s goals.

To read the full article visit www.ideasgroupblog.com

Five essential elements to conduct a one on one feedback session

Giving feedback to team members is not the most enjoyable thing that a manager likes to do, however as Kelvin Lord puts it, “You cannot improve what you cannot measure” and as a Leader or a manager your job is to look for constant and never ending improvements.

To make things easier for you, we have come up with five essential elements that will make the feedback session easier for the employee and the manager and most essentially link it to sustainable organizational performance.

Full blog on http://www.ideasgrp.com/blog

Pakistan Flood Aids

A man trying to join a naval boat with his children in Sukur

Picture: Reuters

Extract from the UN news centre

“According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 14 million people – almost one in every 10 Pakistanis – have so far been affected by the flooding, which began late last month in the wake of heavy monsoon rains.

More than 1,200 people have been killed, and at least 2 million left homeless, by the disaster which has also destroyed homes, farmland and major infrastructure in large parts of the country, most notably the north-west province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK).”

Although there have been some mixed sentiments, a lot of countries have pledged aids for the disaster, one of which is India, a country known to be in a political conflict with its Neighbor Pakistan.

It is interesting to see who are the donors countries to date. Te list  ranks the donors as per their contributions as of Aug 18,2010.

To view the full list click on the following link www.ideasgrp.com/blog

“When you lose something, you are just making space for something bigger”

I have received a call last week from one of my clients, who for internal reasons had to cancel one of the  biggest contracts we have signed this year. To tell you that I wasn’t deceived would be lying; The news could have ruined my whole day, week or even month because of the magnitude of such contract. However as I am committed to have a high EIQ (emotional intelligence quotient), I had to analyze the choices I had, so I quickly drew the below mindmap (click to enlarge).

As you can see, by just changing my paradigm from deception to choices, a multitude of options started flowing  and I was suddenly enveloped with a warm feeling of happiness. It is strange and weird but in the nicest possible way.

So I continued my analysis and tried to come up with computer and IT analogies; when we delete files in our computers we are just making space for another file, the same goes in our lives; when we lose something we are just making space for something bigger.

A lost opportunity = more focus on a bigger one
A lost job = a chance for doing what you love
A lost family member = more love for other family members, or more focus on continuing what the lost one has started
A lost friendship = opportunities for a better one

And the list goes on...

A women in Lebanon has lost her son in a water sports accident, and after grieving him for a while she felt that her life had stopped; You just can imagine how hard it is to loose a child. But one day she woke up and asked herself the following question: What is the reason that my son was taken away from me at a young age? What is the message behind it? How can I use this incident to serve others?

A week later she has started a foundation with a purpose of making parents aware of the dangers of inattention when it comes to their children. So going back to her choices, she had two choices; either grieve her child for the rest of her life, or help thousands of other households save their children. With the latter choice she now feels that her son’s decease was a rebirth for a thousand more child.

“When you lose something, you are just making space for something bigger”

So if you just think about a loss as a free space, you will not get stuck in the past and will start generating opportunities for the future. It is all about using your energy- any kind of energy; negative or positive - and turning it into choices that will get you closer to your goals.

To know more about increasing your efficiency and how to generate healthier choices, visit our website: www.ideasgrp.com

You can complain or you can....

 

The world that we live in presents enough challenges for de-motivating the most positive people on earth. On the other hand, people seek comfort when they start sharing their problems with others; and some take that comfort to the next level and will find a need for complaining. As one of my friends puts it: “As human beings, we love to be victimized. Being victimized is perhaps the best way to run away from our responsibilities.”

This implication of being victimized spreads across all aspects of life: Relationships, education, health and most importantly careers.

Looking at the career and professional aspect, it is really annoying to be around people that whine and moan every day at work; sometimes this excessive negativity will drag others into it and will have a slumping effect on performance.

So how do we stop those people from complaining and how do we lift our moods if we think that we are in an awful situation.

First of all, Start by auditing your life: List the good things that are happening in your life and the bad things that you are exposed to and ask yourself those two simple questions: 1) How can I increase the good things? 2) What can I do specifically to change each of the bad things on my list?

Second, Don’t be positive: Yes you are reading correctly. Being positive and wishing for good things to happen is like staying at home without contacting anyone and waiting for Microsoft to ask you to become one of their Vice Presidents. Instead of being merely positive, have a Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) and draw plans, while acknowledging that you will face some negative challenges. So have a PMA and identify what might go wrong so you will be able to pro-act and not re-act.

That brings us to the third point which is Be Proactive. As Dr. Stephen Covey puts it in his habit 1: “Take responsibility for your life”. If you cannot see a change make the change, if things are not going the way you plan, you have two options: sit down and watch things go terribly wrong or take control of the situation and ask yourself how can you change the situation. The how questions open a lot of doors and will get you closer to your desired situation.

The choice is yours; take the driver’s seat and lead your life to your own victory or complain while watching other people climb the peaks of success.

To learn more about how to increase your Leadership Quotient and other workshops by ideas group visit our website on www.ideasgrp.com

9 tips to avoid conflict and miscommunication when writing

According to a survey done by ideas group on 60 companies in the Middle East, 85% of the workforce conflict stems out of miscommunication.

The study was conducted across companies in different industries: Government, FMCG, Aviation, Industrial, Banking and Finance Telecom and IT, in 11 countries in the following cities: Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Jeddah, Dammam, Riyadh, Kuwait City, Doha, Muscat, Damascus, Amman, Manama, Cairo, Casablanca and Beirut.

When working in virtual teams or working across the region, miscommunication is magnified by the lack of proper writing skills, whether in    emails, Memos, Instant messaging or even blogs and other social media.

So to simplify things for you we came up with this checklist of 9 items to look at before sending emails:

·      Simplify your message: In Business it is not about literature or chic fancy words, the more simple your message is, the less misunderstanding it generates. So keep your sentences short and straight to the point.

·      Use bullet points: People like to see a summary of your ideas, so if you put your main ideas into bullets, it will help the reader scan quickly through it and this will speed up the communication process.

·      Use punctuation in the right place: Each punctuation has a meaning a question mark (?) is to ask a question, an exclamation mark as the Meriam-Webster Dictionary puts it “ is used to indicate forceful utterance or strong feeling”. So ending a sentence with a exclamation mark is like a warning sign…two exclamation marks are two warning signs.

·      Never write full sentences in CAPS: Capital letters or “caps” are a sign of shouting or yelling, so unless you want to yell at your reader do not write in caps.

·      Use calm colors: Using red fonts when writing emails also indicates anger, so whenever its possible try to use blue or green instead for highlighting.

·      Make sure your email has a subject: Sending an email without a subject can be frustrated for people who use the search function of their inboxes, it helps the reader understand the email content.

·      Avoid the URGENT and (!)High importance/priority  signs: Some people are just used to the habit of sending all their emails with High Importance or High Priority; So when they have an issue with a real high importance, how will they let their readers know that this one is really important? I once received one of those with an email that said Happy Holidays. This will only stress the reader.

·      And finally, Read the email before sending it: We discover a lot of mistakes just by reading it again. If its an email going to important person, try to get a colleague to read it as well; some sentences might make sense to you but not to the reader.


To know more about conflict management, communication trainings or any other workshops visit our website on www.ideasgrp.com 

Do you want to be the next Carlos Slim, Oprah Winfrey or Steve Jobs?

Some people just seem to be naturally successful. They reach one peak after another. And the more they achieve the more success seems natural and easy. Those people are not aliens, and if you study them closely, their environment wasn’t all success.

If you want to follow the track of great people like Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Pope Jean Paul II, Oprah Winfrey, and Steve Jobs you have to understand what they have done in their lives, and how they have challenged people around them. Those legends have pushed the boundaries of what is common; they have created new industries and found solutions to very complex issues.

After compiling their bios and studying their paths we have discovered that most of them share the following attributes:

1. They have a vision

Not one single high achiever has reached success without a clear vision, a set of goals and ways to achieve them. When Warren Buffet was asked about his path he said “I always knew I was going to be here”

2. They leverage their circle of influence

You might think that high achievers do not need anyone, however none of them got to success without leveraging their contacts. Its not only about what you know, but also about who you know. Steve Jobs of Apple, used Bill Gates of Microsoft several times before launching his products…who would have thought?

3. They are flexible

High achievers adapt to the environment around them exactly like chameleons, and this is how they identify opportunities. While others are complaining about the financial crisis or high oil prices, successful people tend to create opportunities to benefit from the situation.

4. They play at work

None of the top achievers wasn’t extremely excited about what they did, they have all showed passion and excitement in what they do. So if you don’t Love What You Do, its time for a change.

5. They are compassionate

People who hurt others no matter where they reach do not make it far in life, , or at least they don’t grow comfortably. Donald Trump keeps bouncing up and down, went bankrupt, and has thousands lawsuits against him. Do you want to be there?

6. They help others

It has been observed this year that the top 3 of the fortune billionaires list donate large amounts of their worth to others, and more than half of the world’s richest people are big Charity Donors. Those people believe that “What goes around, comes around”. The interesting part is that most of the successful people do not wait till they get rich to start giving, Carlos Slim was always a person to go to when in need, and a free advice giver at all times.

So are you ready to step in the bandwagon of success? All you need to do is to adapt the above 6 attributes to your life.

For more information on how to enhance your life, career and relationship or to attend The Psychology of Success Workshop, visit our website on www.ideasgrp.com