Where you sit can make you more productive

To improve worker performance, employers invest in everything from rewards and incentives to education and training. But there is a surprisingly simple way to increase productivity, one that is low-cost and has an immediate effect: better office seating arrangements. Recent research suggests that whom you sit next to affects how you perform and can improve productivity and work quality. So if you tend to focus on quality (you produce superior work but do so slowly), try to sit next to someone who completes tasks quickly. The two of you will probably influence each other.

(Adapted from Want to Be More Productive? Sit Next to Someone Who Is, by Jason Corsello and Dylan Minor)

Help perfectionists

Perfectionists don’t like to reveal their weaknesses, which makes them especially difficult to coach. What’s a mentor to do? Focus your coaching on affirmation, validation, encouragement and support. Express value for the person, not his performance. And when perfectionists fall short or believe they’ve failed, help them cultivate a sense of curiosity and inquiry about what went wrong, and offer approaches for moving forward. Give them permission to make mistakes by disclosing your own missteps. Show them how you learned and grew professionally from them. And demonstrate that it’s OK not to know all the answers. It can be helpful to say, “I don’t know that, but let’s find out together.”

(Adapted from How to Mentor a Perfectionist, by W. Brad Johnson and David G. Smith)

Listen more than you talk

We’ve all had one of those communication meltdowns where you and your co-worker raise your voices or shut down instead of listening to each other. But you won’t be able to find common ground unless you hear the other person out. The next time you and a co-worker get into an argument, try listening more than you talk. As you listen, notice: Are you already thinking about your rebuttal? Are you responding with a ‘yes’ followed by an immediate ‘but’? Or have you already interrupted? Be open to your colleague’s perspective — and to the chance that you might be wrong. If you’re not listening because you’re worried about not having the perfect reply, you can always say: “I haven’t thought about it that way before. Can you give me a day or so to think it over?” Very few people will complain about someone listening to what they’ve said and taking time to analyse and respond to it.

(Adapted from In a Difficult Conversation, Listen More Than You Talk, by Emma Seppala and Jennifer Stevenson)

Make time for little tasks

Everyone has those small but necessary tasks — clearing out the inbox, making the introductions you promised or filing the stack of paperwork. If you can’t delegate or jettison these less important tasks, here are two ways to take care of them efficiently:

— Batch them. Do them all at once, creating momentum. You can park yourself at a cafe and vow not to go home until you get through them. Or, meet up with some colleagues to work through your lists of boring tasks together.

— Employ a ‘small drip strategy’. Identify small blocks of time in your schedule, like 15-minute windows between phone calls, and use them to do low-value tasks. You can find these scheduling holes serendipitously, or deliberately schedule in a half-hour of grunt work every day, perhaps at the end of the workday, when you have less energy for important tasks.

(Adapted from 3 Ways to Make Time for the Little Tasks You Never Make Time For, by Dorie Clark)

Improve yourself

There’s a common misconception that individual development needs to happen individually. But the most successful efforts to improve ourselves involve other people. If you want to gain a new skill or break a bad habit, seek out people (both inside and outside your organisation) who are looking to do the same, and meet regularly. You can also join online learning communities, discussion groups or courses. By exchanging empathy, success stories and cautionary insights, you can build the confidence and commitment to push through setbacks and accelerate the adoption of new behaviours. You can also help each other out of ruts. Most important, you create a sense of ownership over one another’s success that results in momentum for change.

(Adapted from Why Self-Improvement Should Be a Group Activity, by Ron Carucci)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, June 26th, 2017