Work in Progress Resources

1. More About Me

This editable PDF is designed for you to use with your team to learn more about each other and support your ways of working. You can download the file here.

2. Happiness Survey

Indeed.com have recently published a ‘Work Happiness Score’ as a feature of their advertised roles. The score is made up of 12 drivers of workplace happiness identified through their research.

I’ve used these drivers to create a survey for you to evaluate your own workplace happiness.

Take the test https://lnkd.in/eeXs4Rp

Use this to:

• get a quick view of your current happiness
• provide ongoing ‘tracker’ so you can monitor and adjust
• to inform a conversation with your manager to craft your job to work for you and them
• as a prompt for team discussion*

*If you are a manager, you can design an anonymised version of this for your team (using Typeform or SurveyMonkey) so you can see scores for each level and prioritise your actions.

3. Ask better questions

Download this 2 page PDF to help you and your team ask better questions.

4. The Mirror Test

Download this editable PDF to understand if what you want to be known for is what people experience when they work with you.

It's a great tool to get feedback on your strengths, understand your personal brand and give you a confidence boost

5. Whole Life Career Management

This resource is a tool to help you think through your personal and professional goals and create a useful action plan.

Use this to focus your efforts and set yourself up for success

Click here to download the editable PDF.

6. The Shape of Your Resilience

This resource is designed to help you reflect on how you respond to challenges and develop your resilience.

Click here to download the 2 page document.

7. Trust me, it's better for everyone

Paul Zak's research shows that high trust companies vs low trust companies result in people with:

• 74% less stress
• 106% more energy at work
• 50% higher productivity
• 13% fewer sick days
• 76% more engagement
• 29% more satisfaction with their lives
• 40% less burnout

It's not always easy, but there are some principles that can be universally applied. This isn't just the responsibility of managers, everyone can support these principles and put the ideas into action.

Principles & Ideas to Support High Trust Workplaces

8. Thinking Big and Small

New problems need new solutions. In times of challenge we need to be open to ideas and able to turn inspiration into action.

For creative thinking we need to think BIG and SMALL. Whether it's the approach of one person or a team, consciously spending time in both modes of thinking will help get to better outcomes.

In the image below, I've summarised the principles of Big and Small thinking and some of the questions to ask as you spend time in each mode.

9. Bright Sparks & Black Holes

Reflecting on the things that give and take our energy can be very helpful in crafting our roles. Download this editable PDF to reflect on these areas and use them to identify actions to support your career development.

This is helpful for individuals and also a useful tool if you're a manager or mentor who wants to support people with their thinking.

10. Learning in Limbo

It's never been more important to take ownership for our learning and development. Our capability and capacity for learning is one of the biggest things that contributes to our career resilience. Managing your own learning plan is crucial in a squiggly career.

Download this template to create a learning plan to support your development.

11. Working Through Frustration

There are many factors in our working lives that can trigger frustration. At the time of writing this article (April 2020), there are perhaps more factors than ever. Frustration is a negative emotion which, if left unmanaged, can cause stress. Below is a 4 step process to take control of your emotion before it feels like it takes control of you.

In this LinkedIn post,you can see a video of me talking this through.

12. Dealing with drama

Conflict is a normal feature of our working life, but the role we play in the conflict can create negative patterns for our career. Karpman's Drama Triangle provides a way for us to reflect on the role we play and the assumptions we make about other people's role in conflict.

Download this 2 page PDF to work through this for yourself.

13. Being better than busy

With so many distractions and demands upon our time, it’s easy to let busyness rule our days. However, work that has meaning to us and impact to others often doesn’t come from time spent being busy. Quality of work is not just about the quantity of hours worked. 

Download the editable time tracking template to:

? Reflect on how you’re spending your time

? Reflect on what you define as quality work vs. your manager/peers/stakeholders

? Inform job-crafting discussions to increase your impact

14. Coping with career uncertainty

Squiggly careers are the new normal and with them comes uncertainty and ambiguity. Reframing how we think about uncertainty and how we respond to it is crucial to our career resilience.

In this download, you'll find a framework for thinking about how you move from Plans to Predictions to Possibilities and practical actions to support your reframing and response to uncertainty.

15. Investing in your resilience

Resilience is a key skill for squiggly careers. The ups, downs, twists and turns we all face in our career can feel hard and challenging. Investing in your resilience before you need to rely on it is vital.

Download this resource to assess the 5 areas that are important for ‘resting resilience’ and review ideas to respond to any areas you may need to invest in.

16. Adaptability Aptitude

Adaptability is a core career skill that increases our resilience in times of change.

There are 4 areas that individuals, teams and organisations can reflect on to understand their current adaptability aptitude.

1. How able are you to READ signals?
2. How quickly can you RESPOND to a change of plan?
3. How easy is it for you to RESET your emotions?
4. Do you need to RESTATE success?

Below you'll find some questions to reflect on and potential actions to take to improve your adaptability aptitude to support you in your career.

17. Knowledge vs. Wisdom

In Squiggly Careers we're all dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty. Much of the information that helped us to move forward in the past might actually hold us back in the future. The DIKW framework is a useful prompt to reflect on how much time you spend doing 'the right things' rather than questioning 'the right things to be done'.

To cultivate wisdom think about:

• How you spot signals about things that are important to you
• How confident you are in using your intuition and judgement to move forward without all the facts
• Whether you create sufficient mental space for your own insights and opinions to emerge (journaling and meditation can support this)

18. Whole Brain Thinking

For individuals and teams to be able to think creatively and solve problems, we need to ensure we don't become too 'blinkered' in our thinking. Our dominant thinking styles can blind us from seeing other perspectives or insights.

Ned Hermann's 'Whole Brain Model' provides a useful framework to think about your dominant thinking style and what actions you could take to develop more cognitive diversity. It's also a useful framework to think about your teams cognitive diversity.

In the short video below, I talk through the model and how it can practically be applied.

19. Breaking Through Career Bottlenecks

This resource looks at 3 of the most common career bottlenecks and shares ideas for action to breakthrough them.

You can download the worksheet here.

20. Assessing Your Emotional Intelligence

This resource will enable you to self-reflect, get feedback and take action. You can use it individually or within your teams as a development activity. There are also a number of additional resources to explore within the download which you can access here.

21. Turning Routines into Rituals

If you feel like you are spending days on repeat, reflecting on how you can turn the mundane into more meaningful moments is likely to be a good investment of your time! Read this resource to help you reflect and take action. Download here.