Nine Companies That Got Brand Right

by Lindsay Pedersen, author of “Forging An Ironclad Brand: A Leader’s Guide“

It’s tougher than ever to grab and hold customer attention. People are overwhelmed by messages flying at them from all directions, and it’s easy for ours to get drowned out. Plus, there are more options than ever, and online retailers have made it easy to pick the lowest price (with decent reviews) and be done with it.

Don’t want to become a commodity? You’d better get brand right.

Many companies ignore brand, but that’s a huge mistake. A compelling brand strategy is the best way to earn customer loyalty.

The best brand strategies must meet nine criteria. Here they are and some real-world examples of companies that get them right:

1. BIG: Your brand promise must be big enough to matter.

This is the space you own in your customer’s head. Make it a big space, a big promise. This will create value for both your customer and your business. By mattering to your customer, you fuel a business that matters.

EXAMPLE: Salesforce enables leaders to grow their businesses faster. This is a large and resonant promise for Salesforce’s target customer. A less big alternative might have been “track customer communication carefully” or “largest storage capacity among CRM solutions.” With its big promise, Salesforce is a beloved brand with a tremendous market capitalization.

2. NARROW: It must be narrow enough to own.

While your brand positioning must be big enough to matter, it also must be narrow enough for you to dominate. Choose a positioning you uniquely can own — one where you are not just better, but you are different.

EXAMPLE: Dollar Shave Club chose a meaning narrow enough to own. They unabashedly targeted millennial males not loyal to the status quo way of buying shaving materials. With a subscription-based razor delivery model, Dollar Shave Club outflanked Gillette by not distributing through traditional retailers.

3. ASYMMETRICAL: It must use your lopsided advantage.

Promise and deliver from your place of dramatically asymmetrical strength. (It’s asymmetrical because your edge comes not from being medium-good at a lot of things, but from being excellent at one thing.) Your positioning must pinpoint precisely what only you can bring to your customer that others cannot copy.

EXAMPLE: GORE-TEX has an asymmetrical advantage in waterproof fabrics. By inventing and patenting the technology for their fabric in 1969, they claimed the gold standard in waterproof fibers. As a result, GORE-TEX waterproof fabric is used in products manufactured by Patagonia, L.L. Bean, Oakley, Marmot, and The North Face (to name just a few).

4. EMPATHETIC: It must address a deeply relevant and meaningful need.

Your positioning must genuinely have your customers’ interests at heart. Ironclad brands genuinely care about their customers and seek to serve them with authenticity.

EXAMPLE: Airbnb empathetically addresses a large and previously unserved desire. Based on a promise to “belong anywhere,” Airbnb marries two deep, human needs: the need to belong and the need to feel safe in parts of the world beyond our experience. The Airbnb promise is meaningful for guests, who get to experience a new place through the lens of a local, and hosts, who get to share their world with someone they’d otherwise never get to know.

5. OPTIMALLY DISTINCT: It must strike a balance between familiar and novel.

Your brand positioning must be recognizable enough that your customer can easily grasp it, and yet new enough that it breaks through clutter and sparks intrigue. Familiarity gets you into the customer’s mind, while novelty attracts the customer’s attention.

EXAMPLE: Chobani yogurt blends the distinctness of Greek-style yogurt with the familiarity of mainstream American yogurt. Fage had made the mistake of being very different — an unintuitive-to-pronounce name (“Fah-jay”), large cartons, plain whole milk SKUs — and never broadly tapped Americans’ yogurt-eating. Mainstream American brands like Yoplait had become ho-hum, uninteresting — overly familiar. Chobani blended familiar (traditional American fruit flavors and single-size servings) with novel (Greek yogurt’s thick texture), growing it to be one of the largest in the yogurt category.

6. FUNCTIONAL AND EMOTIONAL: It must serve the customer on both functional and emotional levels.

Your offering must be at the critical intersection of your customer’s heart and mind. If it’s only emotional, they might not believe it. If it’s only functional, they won’t bond with it or be loyal to it.

EXAMPLE: Etsy gets it just right by promising “something real from a real person” — an ideal intersection of functional and emotional. They bring the functional benefit of making it easy to find makers of what you need along with the emotional, soul-satisfying payoff of buying from a real artisan. It is functional enough to assuage the mind and emotional enough to capture the heart. In contrast, Microsoft Office is a brand that is overly functional — it is all about the product’s features and does nothing for your heart. And Jaguar is a brand that is too emotional — while the heart loves style and luxury, the mind can’t accept that it requires frequent repairs.

7. SHARP-EDGED: It must entail a single, sharp-edged promise.

Your brand positioning must be simple and singular. It should be ridiculously clear to customers what you do and don’t promise. Focus on that specific benefit, with all you do and say supporting that single idea.

EXAMPLE: Let’s look at a few well-known car brands. When you say Volvo, I say safe. When you say Prius, I say fuel-efficient. When you say Jeep, I say fun. None of these brands overextend into being sporty, prestigious, or fast. It’s clear both what they do and what they don’t do. But when you say Buick, it doesn’t mean much. That’s a brand without sharp edges.

8. HAS TEETH: It must be demonstrably true.

Your positioning must offer compelling, granular, concrete proof that it will deliver on its promise. It need not only be true, but demonstrably true. This helps customers believe it, trust it, and engage with it.

EXAMPLE: Plenty of insurance companies pitch a savings advantage. However, only Geico’s promise to save you money on car insurance is extremely specific, with numerical, relevant facts to back it up: “Fifteen minutes could save you 15 percent or more on car insurance.” Fifteen minutes is fast, but not so fast that it’s not believable. Fifteen percent is substantial, but does not sound like an overpromise. The matching of “15 minutes” with “15 percent” makes the promise memorably specific.

9. DELIVERS: You must deliver on your brand promise across everything you do, from big to small, from new customer to loyal customer — consistently.

You don’t just nail the letter of the promise, but the spirit of the promise.

EXAMPLE: Zappos promises world-class customer service, and they deliver on that consistently and across all dimensions. They hire people for their customer service ethic. Their processes are set up to reward creative, above-and-beyond ways to delight customers. They will get your merchandise to you in 24 hours. They provide free shipping both ways. Even their boxes are a treat to open. They deliver excellent customer service in spades.

For a brand to meet these criteria, leaders must make difficult choices and trade-offs. It can feel scary to decide so boldly and shine a spotlight on what you have selected. Yet choosing is what separates good leaders from great leaders, what separates flash-in-the-pan businesses from the ones that endure for generations.

 

Lindsay Pedersen is the author of “Forging An Ironclad Brand: A Leader’s Guide“. She is a brand strategist, board advisor, coach, speaker, and teacher known for her scientific, growth-oriented approach to brand building. She developed the Ironclad Method for value-creating brands while working with billion-dollar businesses like Starbucks, Clorox, Zulily, T-Mobile, and IMDb, as well as many burgeoning start-ups. Lindsay lives in Seattle with her husband and two children.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2KEng6l via website design phoenix

3 Tips For Finding International Business Partners

Looking to expand your reach in offshore markets? If your business has been wildly successful on the home front, expanding on the international front can bring a lot of benefits.

To name a few:

• Increased revenue
• Decreased competition
• Access to export financing
• Business expansion

If you’ve decided to take your company global or expand outside of your native country, the first step is going to executing your entry strategy with the right business partners in play. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. There is a lot of planning that goes into selecting international business partners. In this article, we’re going to give you 5 tips that will help you make sure you expand your business with the right set of business partners.

1. Do Your Research.

It’s tempting to take the word of referrals but when you’re searching for partners that will help your business grow in offshore markets, it’s better to do your research (even if you still intend to interview your referrals).

Though it may seem tedious, understanding exactly what a potential partner does in their day to day operations is important. Tools like https://sayari.com/ will help you quickly identify the legitimacy of a business and what their reputation in the community they serve is.

If you’re using the Sayari software and quickly find out  their reputation is in the trash can and they’ve had a huge amount of chargebacks and defaulted accounts, you’ll save yourself the time of entertaining an application from the b

2. Work Together First.

In corporate life, the first step of many is to start gathering proposals from partners and comparing. Which leads us to a very curious question: If you haven’t worked with any of these people before, how can you really be sure that they will be an equitable business partner to have? Simply put, you can’t.

Instead of jumping into bed with a business partner before you’ve worked together, find an ongoing project internally that could benefit from the potential business partner’s expertise. Hire them and work together. You’ll quickly find out which of your prospects is qualified to be your new international business partner.

3. Trust Your Gut.

At the end of the day, you aren’t just hiring another sales representative. The qualities that you look for in employees will not be the qualities you look for in your business partners. This person will be there for the long haul and will leave their own unique footprint on the business.

Treat the process of finding an international business partner like dating. Don’t jump into anything serious too quickly and take time to nurture trust and understanding within the relationship. Be honest with yourself. Can you really see this person standing with the company in 10 years? If the answer is no, then move on to the next applicant.

Conclusion.

Entering new markets can be one of the most terrifying steps your business ever takes, but it can also be the most rewarding. In order to succeed, make sure that you find yourself working with business partners that understand your bottom line and operations. The wrong partner can transform a very lucrative opportunity into debt and regret, so choose wisely!

What advice do you have for expanding globally? What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them? Share your experience in the comments.

from Young Upstarts https://ift.tt/2NdhvyC via website design phoenix

Career-Wise, Nothing Beats Authenticity

by Ines Temple, president of LHH Peru and Chile, and author of “YOU, Incorporated: Your Career is Your Business“

As a child, my mother was a stickler about table manners. When we’d rush in and sit down for a meal, she’d say, “When you’re at home, eat like you’re with royalty, so that when you’re with royalty, you eat like you’re at home.” She told us we needed to make this practice second nature.

Of course, in those days, my mother was more concerned about teaching us manners than about focusing on our ability to be sincere or authentic. All the same, I think that her message had a profound effect on us and was very clear: to act consistently with everyone, to act naturally in every situation and to treat everybody equally.

Nothing beats the quality of being natural and authentic in human relationships. It inspires trust, facilitates communication, strengthens relationships and has a positive impact on one’s reputation. Career-wise, it paves the way to closing a deal, being hired when interviewed for a job, being considered for key leadership positions and, above all, being worthy of respect and valued by others.

In the professional world, however, some people take their roles too seriously. They try to be “in character” 100 percent of the time and act as if the role was theirs alone. Or, even worse, they act as if they were the role itself, forgetting that a role only stands for a title, position or commission that has been given to them — and is usually temporary.

Some set aside their sense of humor and their approachability when the role comes with power attached to it. They adopt the persona of the powerful and become distant or arrogant. And, inauthentic subordinates, impressed by those who have power, become excessively solicitous to win them over.

When someone hides their real personality behind a fake façade, we can tell they’re being phony and inauthentic. We aren’t certain who is the real person behind the role, and that leads to lack of trust. This attitude can seriously damage their personal brand, as others will perceive them as arrogant or fake.

By contrast, consistently being yourself wherever you are and with whomever you’re interacting, and affording everyone the same respect and warmth, is an extremely powerful — and rare — strength. It will gain other’s trust, respect and genuine affection. Authenticity is key to establishing real and positive relationships.

Being authentic requires showing yourself as you really are. It requires checking your ego at the door and not looking down on anyone. It requires courage and self-confidence, but also honesty and tact to “tell it like it is.” It requires going as far as sharing your vulnerabilities.

Authenticity is vital to effective leadership and maintaining a good reputation. It’s the hallmark of the people we admire most – those who always act with integrity and live the same values in their personal and professional lives.

As my very wise mother used to say, to be authentic and natural we have to practice every day.

 

Ines Temple is president of LHH Peru and Chile, the leading career transition and talent-development organizations in both countries, and she has provided outplacement services and HR consulting to executives and other workers throughout the world. She has published over 800 articles and videos on topics such as the new world of work, personal branding and employability. Her book, “YOU, Incorporated: Your Career is Your Business“, has been a top bestseller among business books in Peru since 2012 and is now available in English.

from Young Upstarts http://bit.ly/2RA9y54 via website design phoenix

MCAlert Founder And Former Captain At PBSO Jay Hart On How To Make Meetings More Productive

How much do today’s employees dread heading into yet another meeting? A survey of workers across the U.S. by project management company Clarizen found that the following tedious activities were preferred to meetings:

• A trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles
• Watching paint dry
• Commuting 4 hours to and from work
• Enduring a root canal
• Getting a mullet haircut
• Moving to Antarctica

Granted, the last one on the list is truly over-the-top — the average temperature in Antarctica ranges from about -76 degrees Fahrenheit to a relatively balmy 14 degrees along the coast. And unless one is singing about their achy breaky heart, getting a mullet haircut is probably ill-advised. However, the point is clear: generally, employees hate meetings. And according to Former Captain Jay Hart, who spent nearly three decades with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office (PBSO), they have plenty of valid reasons for their anti-meeting sentiment.

“Some younger workers may have a hard time believing this, but there was indeed a time when meetings were productive and positive, but in many organizations that has changed over the years — and now they are often chronic time wasters and energy drainers,” commented Former Captain Jay Hart, CEO of MCAlert and founder of Gold Shield Industries.

Jay Hart believes that the solution is not to banish meetings from the work landscape — since there are many scenarios where a face-to-face, voice-to-voice, or screen-to-screen engagements are helpful, efficient, or just plain necessary. Instead, what is required is for both meeting planners and meeting participants to hit to reset button and commit to making meetings the one thing that matters more than anything else: productive.

To that valuable — and for many employees, merciful — end, here are 10 best practices that MCAlert founder and Former Captain Jay Hart advises:

1. Take a step back and confirm that a meeting is necessary in the first place.

Sometimes, meetings are scheduled as a matter of habit or routine, rather than because they are the best way to send and receive relevant information.

2. If possible, create and distribute an agenda before the scheduled meeting.

If this is not possible because of urgency, then at least provide an agenda the day of the meeting or have it available for participants when they arrive. By providing an agenda, not only is every person on the same page for the meeting but they also know what order discussion will occur in so that interruptions are avoided.

3. Invite all relevant participants to the meeting, but…

Keep in mind that meetings with fewer people tend to be more efficient and productive. If a person does not need to be at the meeting, they should not be there.

4. If possible, avoid scheduling meetings on Monday morning — which is when most organizations hold them.

According to research by the online scheduling service When is Good, generally the best time to schedule meetings is Tuesday afternoon around 3:00pm. This is because by this time, most meeting participants have dealt with at least some of the workload crush from Monday (and which can often start building up the previous Friday!). Plus, they have more time to prepare for the meeting, along with the soothing expectation that it cannot last all day.

5. Rigorously enforce a no smartphone policy and unless it is required for the meeting itself, turn laptops and tablets off (or at least, put them to sleep).

Remember, multitasking is a myth. People cannot do two things at once. If they are checking emails or surfing the web, then while they may be hearing, they are not listening — which means that they might as well not be there at all.

6. While it is important to stick to the agenda and keep momentum flowing, do not snuff out conversation or spontaneous collaboration.

Sometimes, the most productive meetings are those that leave out the PowerPoint presentation, and replace it with authentic, old fashioned conversation.

7. Enforce good meeting etiquette.

This means no snarky remarks, exaggerated sighs, or other childish behavior that not only undermines meeting productivity but kills morale and blocks some participants for contributing for fear that they will be ridiculed, criticized or harassed for simply trying to do their job. In the same light, do not let one or two people dominate the meeting. Former Captain Jay Hart notes that often, people do not believe they are doing harm by dominating a meeting. A friendly reminder before the meeting can go a long way while not being rude.

8. Like basketball and football coaches, meeting leaders need to keep an eye on the clock to assess whether agenda items are being addressed in an efficient way, and that participants are not drifting outside of the scope.

And speaking of time: make sure that meetings start on time, and in an appropriate way (usually after the meeting in a one-to-one conversation), hold latecomers without a valid excuse accountable for their tardiness.

9. At the end of the meeting, invite participants to provide feedback.

Or, as they say at weddings, they should be prepared to forever hold their peace (at least until the next meeting!).

10. After the meeting, provide participants with a summary of key points and agreed-upon action items.

Small businesses can typically send this information out through email or upload it to a shared folder (e.g. Google Drive). Larger organizations probably need a more sophisticated tool like a project management system to distribute and store this information.

The Bottom Line.

Meetings are not the enemy, and never have been. Instead, unproductive meetings are the real threat. Former Captain Jay Hart explains that it may sound like a pipe dream for some folks who are struggling to find any reason to like meetings, but meeting planners and participants alike who keep the above 10 best practices in mind will go a long, long way to ensuring that their meetings are rewarding instead of regrettable.

from Young Upstarts http://bit.ly/2KAXr7q via website design phoenix

UX Design Software To Create Appealing Prototypes

A good prototype is the realization of all your hard work; the representation of how your development project will function in a real-world setting. Prototypes help you identify any issues with usability, and give you something tangible to present to your clients or shareholders. Creating a great prototype starts with using the right software. Without it, your prototype will lack a certain completeness that could mean the difference between client satisfaction and frustration.

Here are some great examples of UX software to help create appealing prototypes.

Proto.io.

If you’re looking to create high-fidelity prototypes, look no further than Proto. Proto is a beautiful, easy to use prototyping tool that will help you create your best prototypes that look and feel like the real thing. The process only takes a few minutes, and your prototype will be ready to show off!

This software is 100% web-based, so there are no bulky files to download and install on your computer. There are even pre-made templates you can utilize to increase productivity and speed up the design process! Best of all, Proto offers a free 15-day trial, so you can get a feel for how the software functions before you buy it.

With over 500,000 users, Proto serves some big names like Disney and ESPN. Intuitive, aesthetically stunning, and powerful, Proto is one of the best prototyping tools out there for nailing down the UX aspects of your design. Why not give it a try for free?

Axure RP.

When it comes to creating awesome prototypes, Axure knows their stuff. One of the most trusted wireframe/mockup and prototype design software available on the web, Axure can help successfully guide your project from conception to completion and beyond.

Once you’ve gotten a feel for the software, you’ll find that the interfaces are simple, easy to use, and make a lot of sense in how they’re set up. You’ll be able to create seamless wireframes, stunning mockups, and realistic prototypes all within the same software; which, we might add, is cloud-based.

Sharing and collaboration are made simple with the cloud-based software, and you’ll receive email notifications anytime there are changes made to the design. Keep your team, your managers, and your clients all up to date with this web-based software for creating powerful prototypes.

Turning static design into great prototypes is Axure’s specialty, which is why it’s one of the most widely used and trusted prototyping sites out there. The pro version starts at around $29 per user per month, so it’s also an affordable design tool for your team.

Fluid. 

Fluid UI is focused on one very important aspect of prototyping: speed. Rapid prototyping ensures that you’re maximizing your time and getting a feel for how your software, site, or mobile app will function before launching the final version.

With over 2,000 built-in components, plenty of graphics and icons, and an easy to use interface, you’ll be creating attractive, functional prototypes quickly and easily. What’s better than a working prototype? An interactive one, of course!

With Fluid, you can create interactive prototypes that function just like the real thing. Never worry whether a website or app is going to function exactly how you want it to; with Fluid, you’ll create an interactive prototype that’s as close to the final product as you can get.

Fluid does offer a demo, which is something that not all prototyping software does. This will allow you to feel out the software before choosing one of their paid offers, which start at $8.25/month for solo users and around $41/month for team packages. The team package is limited to only 5 users, but you can host unlimited projects and have access to all of the best features Fluid has to offer.

Draftium.

Draftium is a little different from its competitors in that it’s free. This tool is only for prototyping websites, but the fact that it’s free to use makes it an attractive option, despite all of the extra features its paid counterparts have to offer. Don’t let the lack of a price tag fool you, though, Drafitum is a powerful and easy to use prototyping tool.

With over 300 prototype templates, Drafitum can get your prototype up and running in just minutes. The prototyping process is based on blocks, so you won’t have to add or create them yourself, as they’re already there and ready to go. The idea is to simplify the design and prototyping process, and we think Draftium does a great job at doing just that.

Once your prototype is complete, you can publish it on the web and share the link with your team and the client for review. Your edits will be shown online, and your client will be able to get a solid idea of what the final project is going to look and feel like.

Overall, Daraftium is a great tool, even with its “free” price tag. Free doesn’t always mean high-quality, but in the case of this prototyping tool, we’ll go ahead and say that it’s definitely worth a try.

Conclusion.

Remember that not all prototyping tools are created equal. Some have minimal features and some have so many extra features it’s difficult to tell what the software actually does. Make sure when you’re choosing one of these tools that the features it does have match you and your team’s specific needs. Always try a demo or trial version before you make a purchase, and check for good reviews on the software before using it.

from Young Upstarts http://bit.ly/31RRgkQ via website design phoenix

Tips For Passing The Health Occupations Aptitude Exam Successfully

For several decades, aptitude tests served as a measure of someone’s qualification in the health sector. It comprises of open or closed-ended questions like those in a survey questionnaire. The open-ended questions require that you give your answers based on your own opinion and does not fix the response to any predetermined choices.

On the other hand, the closed questions will not allow you to give your views but rather select any of the options provided. The reason for fixed answer questions is that the researcher wants to test specific phenomena against respondent whereas open answer questions intended to test the respondent against events.

Now, how do we pass these aptitude tests? We’ve listed some top tips to help you get the most out of your practice.

Practicing lots of questions.

Practice makes perfect. For anyone who has attended a math class or say has done an exam will understand what this means. Practicing with as many items as you can find will expose you to different techniques of handling questions. Sometimes you may find similar problems in the actual aptitude test, and thus, you will spend the least time possible giving your answer and hence save more time for other questions. One good example is the Health Occupations Aptitude Exam (PSB HOAE Test) – Free Practice.

Stick to a Study Schedule.

Before you undertake any aptitude test, it is crucial that you improve your schedule so that you complete the check-in time. There might be flexibility when studying by your own, which can easily tempt you to take a couple of extra days off. Procrastinating too much can lead to issues further down the line. Sticking to a study schedule that you carefully put together to fit your study well around your current commitments is one of the best ways to ensure that this does not happen. Along with having an old-school paper timetable, you can also make it easier for yourself to stay on schedule with a study reminders or timetabling app for your tablet, smartphone or laptop; splitting your time according to the number of questions; skipping the time-consuming questions first, using the elimination method, and so forth. By skipping difficult questions early, then you avoid spending the time that could consume time for other questions.

Improve on your areas of weakness.

Areas of weaknesses could be one of the reasons you find giving some answers complicated as we saw earlier. So what do we need to overcome this? The best solution would be to focus on these areas before we can undertake the actual test. This success could happen through finding questions related to those areas you find to be stressing and seeking help from someone you know can help you. Many forums on the internet prove to be handy too. Try any method you deem fit.

Do the test with seriousness.

No one likes to be associated with failures. Why then don’t you take the test like any other determiner exam because this test is a determiner too? Passing this aptitude test then means that your grade improves because the marks you get to add up to the overall score. Avoid destructions as much as you can because this will eat on your time. Some of these distractions include using smartphones, peer pressure, or even noisy environments. Find a suitable environment and do your test.

To wrap up, we find out that most of the reasons to pass the test depend significantly on your effort and it is time thus, that you focus on your principles and do the exam with seriousness so that you can improve your score.

from Young Upstarts http://bit.ly/2Yk6Ova via website design phoenix

Why A Mindful Workplace Is Good For Business

by Ora Nadrich, author of “Live True: A Mindfulness Guide to Authenticity“

For many people, the workplace can be very stressful and not a pleasant place to spend their days. Time spent there is considered a necessity in order to earn money.

Today, however, workplaces are striving to become not places to dread going to, but instead, places to enjoy. One reason is that many are introducing and practicing Mindfulness, and it’s changing how people are working together and the environments they’re working in.

If at work you can communicate with your fellow workers or boss in a mindful and thoughtful way, it will encourage you to be more focused and productive, which is exactly what Mindfulness does. It teaches you how to be present in a moment with total awareness and bring to it the very best of yourself. When you make the effort to do that, you decrease stress, increase productivity and efficiency, and form a better connection with your co-workers.

Making simple Mindfulness tools available in your business can help employees become more present and observant of their environment and the people they work with. Teaching Mindfulness will raise the overall level of consciousness in the workplace.

Here are some Mindfulness tools to use in the workplace so that it becomes a place of positivity and productivity:

1. Start each day in the workplace by practicing Mindfulness.

This means you can begin with a simple breathing exercise, which will help with grounding and focus. A very simple Mindfulness breathing exercise is:

On the inhalation, (silently) count 1234-1.

On the exhalation, count 1234-2.

On the inhalation, count 1234-3.

On the exhalation, count 1234-4.

Encourage your workers to do this any time during the day when they might feel stressed or overwhelmed.

2. Practice “noting.”

Along with Mindfulness, noting is a very helpful practice to help employees become aware of what they’re feeling or experiencing during their workday. Noting means noticing or paying particular attention to something. With it, when a fellow employee or boss does something you might find annoying or irritating, instead of reacting to the annoyance you note what you are feeling and stay present with it. Having an awareness of how you feel, and noting it to yourself silently, you can either breathe through it or tell yourself something like: “I’m irritated or annoyed right now, but I don’t have to react to this;” or “I can tell my fellow worker or boss how I feel at another time when I’m not as affected by my emotions.”

Noting is not only useful and beneficial for self-regulation and non-reactivity, but it can also be used for things such as noticing how it feels when you’re drinking a cup of coffee or tea while you’re working. By feeling the warmth of a drink, or being aware of how it smells or tastes, it can help ground you and make you feel less stressed.

3. Take a pause in your workday.

Many workplaces are non-stop busy, and some have meetings back-to-back, causing employees to feel like they can’t take a moment to breathe or take a break. Find your pause in the busyness. That means taking a conscious breath and connecting to your inner core or place of inner calm, which can be your belly or heart. You will get better at this the more you practice it and can willingly grab a pause whenever you need one because you’ll know how important and helpful it can be throughout your day.

4. Bring Mindfulness into the conversation.

Don’t be hesitant or afraid to speak about Mindfulness with your fellow workers. Everyone can use a friendly reminder to practice it in the workplace, and if you or one of your co-workers starts experiencing or showing signs of stress or lack of focus, share a Mindfulness tip. Gently suggest taking a pause or utilizing the counting breath exercise. Not only will you appreciate the reminder if you find yourself stressed or slipping out of the moment, but a co-worker might thank you and may even offer to buy you lunch for your help.

Mindfulness is the perfect tool to help businesses run smoothly and effectively. By raising consciousness in the workplace, it becomes a more effective environment where greater success can be achieved on many levels.

 

Ora Nadrich is founder and president of the Institute for Transformational Thinking and author of “Live True: A Mindfulness Guide to Authenticity“. A certified life coach and mindfulness teacher, she specializes in transformational thinking, self-discovery, and mentoring new coaches as they develop their careers.

from Young Upstarts http://bit.ly/31Rn6hk via website design phoenix