Five Tips For A Better Attitude

Practical Practice Management A Division of Top Practices

Maintaining a positive attitude is a choice, but it is much easier to have a positive attitude when your work and your life are going well.  As we all know there are bumps in the road of life every day.

I not going to say that keeping a positive attitude is easy, but it is possible.  There are a few things we can do each day to help our attitudes to stay on a more positive road.

• Be grateful. When things are getting tough start saying what you are grateful for.
• Reframe the challenges you are facing. Instead of dreading what you need to do, think about it as an opportunity to challenge yourself to feel better about the situation and how you can learn from it.
• Use positive words instead of negative one. (This can be challenging but it also can be fun)
• Avoid others that are complainers, it…

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Job Performance Reviews

Practical Practice Management A Division of Top Practices

When working with managers I have found one area that many find difficult is conducting Job Performance Reviews. Over the past couple of months, I have compiled five key areas that cause managers to find doing performance reviews difficult.

1. There are no “real” job descriptions
2. Lack of a practical training program to teach the employee their job tasks and expectations
3. Lack of daily, weekly or monthly training follow-up by manager/employer
4. No requested input or training evaluation from the employee set in place
5. No jointly designed set of performance objectives going forward, so employees know what future expectations are from them.

When you look at this list it is pretty amazing and I’m sure you are thinking, “How can you run a business if you do not train employees correctly?” One would think that this would be a top priority, but I can tell you from over 20 years of management…

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Bad Things Do Happen

Practical Practice Management A Division of Top Practices

Most thought leaders teach us to focus on the positive, such as the “Law of Attraction” to bring good things our way. But are there benefits to thinking about what bad or negative things that could happen? Ryan Holiday, Author of “The Obstacle Is The Way,” and “Stillness Is The Key” hosts a videocast “The Daily Stoic” and addresses this very thing and states it has been practiced for thousands of years.

Ryan states that the stoics would practice, Premeditatio Malorum (“the pre-meditation of evils”) which is a Stoic exercise of imagining things that could go wrong or be taken away from us. Now, I know this sounds like a downer, but the purpose of this exercise would be if you thought about what might possibly go wrong then you would be more prepared if it did. It was not a practice that they used to consume their mind with…

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Job Performance Reviews

Practical Practice Management A Division of Top Practices

When working with managers I have found one area that many find difficult is conducting Job Performance Reviews. Over the past couple of months, I have compiled five key areas that cause managers to find doing performance reviews difficult.

1. There are no “real” job descriptions
2. Lack of a practical training program to teach the employee their job tasks and expectations
3. Lack of daily, weekly or monthly training follow-up by manager/employer
4. No requested input or training evaluation from the employee set in place
5. No jointly designed set of performance objectives going forward, so employees know what future expectations are from them.

When you look at this list it is pretty amazing and I’m sure you are thinking, “How can you run a business if you do not train employees correctly?” One would think that this would be a top priority, but I can tell you from over 20 years of management…

View original post 123 more words

Thankful, Grateful, Blessed

Practical Practice Management A Division of Top Practices

We hear a lot about having a grateful mindset.  It is very true that your life can be better by adopting just one of the practices below and practicing it every day.  It doesn’t have to take a lot of time, but the return will be bountiful!

Start a gratitude journal. – List one thing that you are grateful for today and then write a paragraph about it.  Having just one thing allows you to really think deeper about the reason why you are grateful for it.

Write a traditional thank you note.-This is becoming a lost art, but not one that should be.  People are so amazed when someone has actually taken the time to sit down and write them a personal note and put it in the mail.  Not email.

Post thankful expressions in visible locations at home and at work. If you have a bulletin board…

View original post 151 more words

Job Performance Reviews

Practical Practice Management A Division of Top Practices

When working with managers I have found one area that many find difficult is conducting Job Performance Reviews. Over the past couple of months, I have compiled five key areas that cause managers to find doing performance reviews difficult.

1. There are no “real” job descriptions
2. Lack of a practical training program to teach the employee their job tasks and expectations
3. Lack of daily, weekly or monthly training follow-up by manager/employer
4. No requested input or training evaluation from the employee set in place
5. No jointly designed set of performance objectives going forward, so employees know what future expectations are from them.

When you look at this list it is pretty amazing and I’m sure you are thinking, “How can you run a business if you do not train employees correctly?” One would think that this would be a top priority, but I can tell you from over 20 years of management…

View original post 123 more words

A One Minute Mindset Shift

Practical Practice Management A Division of Top Practices

With such busy lives we live it shouldn’t surprise us when our attitudes shift slightly to the “dark side” when there is a disagreement or misunderstanding at work.  For some people it is easier to recover from these moments and others not so easy.

The problem is when we cannot recover quickly our priorities, focus and productivity go down or possibly even stop.  I had someone share with me several years ago what he called, “A One Minute Mindset Shift” and I have tried to use it as much as possible over the years and I know it has saved me from many unproductive hours and grief.

It takes a little time to be able to get into the “feel” of this exercise but it you practice it like a “One Minute Breathing Exercise” several times a day it will be easier to do when you really need it.

Step…

View original post 161 more words

Thankful, Grateful, Blessed

Practical Practice Management A Division of Top Practices

We hear a lot about having a grateful mindset.  It is very true that your life can be better by adopting just one of the practices below and practicing it every day.  It doesn’t have to take a lot of time, but the return will be bountiful!

Start a gratitude journal. – List one thing that you are grateful for today and then write a paragraph about it.  Having just one thing allows you to really think deeper about the reason why you are grateful for it.

Write a traditional thank you note.-This is becoming a lost art, but not one that should be.  People are so amazed when someone has actually taken the time to sit down and write them a personal note and put it in the mail.  Not email.

Post thankful expressions in visible locations at home and at work. If you have a bulletin board…

View original post 151 more words

Do You Listen To Understand?

Practical Practice Management A Division of Top Practices

Most conversations at work are not speaker to listener. They end up being speaker to speaker. People talk at each other, reacting immediately to what was said, not listening for understanding to what was said. Because of this the result is poor communication.

This can be very frustrating for employees when they work with someone who lacks “active listening”skills.  They never feel that they are heard and most likely they have not been.

Great managers/employers take the time to develop active listening skills, and even when they are practiced it still is hard not to fall back into the habit of thinking about your response instead of listening for understanding.  When you take the time to gain understanding of what your employees are saying you will be able to respond appropriately.

When someone takes the time to really listen to us it makes us feel respected, cared for, satisfied…

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