Manage Your Time

Do it in style - according to your own unique Working Style features. A Working Style is the way in which people concentrate, work on something new and/or difficult, make decisions, take information in and solve problems.

The time of day in which you concentrate best is part of your Working Style too. Is getting up with the birds every morning a challenge for you? Do you find it difficult to stay awake in the evening? Blame your Working Style, not just your workload. And how about the afternoon? Does it happen that you push unwanted tasks into the time after lunch and then find that you are stuck and don’t get the disliked job done? So you put it off to the next afternoon and even further if you can.

This is a classical mismatch between a time-of-day non-preference and the attempt to do something difficult or boring just then. Your natural Working Style will make it extremely difficult, often prevent it! You can try to fool your body clock by making it follow a certain work pattern, like early morning business meetings or working on an urgent report till after midnight, but unless that is your natural Working Style, you’ll be doing so at a cost to your overall productivity, even your health.

Whether you approach your work sequentially or prefer multitasking is also part of your Working Style makeup. The latest research shows that multitasking - the very quality so sought after by most employers - can often lead to stress and burnout if your natural inclination is to work on one project at a time. Nevertheless, today’s technology enables - or even demands - us to stretch our attention over several simultaneous activities.

What is your best time management style? Find out.

Time like water....

Your Maths Learning Style

What are learning styles and why is it important for parents to know about them?

 ·         If you ask a child who needs movement to sit still and memorise a times-table, you’re unlikely to get good results. You would do far better if you allowed them to walk around or play hopscotch on a makeshift map of times-tables.

·         Tactile children, would love to use Koosh balls and learn better by using self-correcting learning tools (flip chutes, electro boards) and other hands-on activities. 

·         Auditory children benefit from making tapes of their lessons (either recording their teachers in class, or reading the material themselves out loud).  E.g., chanting the times-tables.

·         Kinesthetic children may make schoolwork more interesting by miming the lesson or staging a production.

Learning Styles help answer the following questions:

·         Does your child like working alone or with a friend?

·         Does your child like doing homework at the desk or on the sofa?

·         Can they concentrate on board games, puzzles and maths problems in the morning better than in the evening?

Discover your child's learning style - today. 

  

Un-schooling and Learning Styles

Back in the 1970s John Holt, an American educator and proponent of home schooling, said: “It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life.”

The un-schooling approach provides a stimulating environment, creativity materials, books, learning tools and, most importantly, adults ready to interact and answer questions. Children learn in an unstructured way, by following their natural curiosity. 

Critics say this can lead to education gaps caused by glossing over some knowledge areas, plus it’s trickier to assess the child’s progress. The goal of un-schooling, however, is not testable achievement - instead, it’s fostering a love of learning by pursuing topics meaningful and appealing to the child.   

Is your child's Learning Style Suitable to un-schooling? Here a a few indicators:

• Does your child have a non-preference for structured learning?
• Do they like parental authority?
• Are they a self-starter?

Do their Learning Style Analysis today to find out.

From The Top Managers in The World

“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, and how you’re led.” – Steve Jobs

 “The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” - Theodore Roosevelt

“Focus on a few key objectives … I only have three things to do. I have to choose the right people, allocate the right number of dollars, and transmit ideas from one division to another with the speed of light. So I’m really in the business of being the gatekeeper and the transmitter of ideas.” - Jack Welch

 "To live, learn and work in style you must know yourself and others." -

2008 XL Extraordinary Lives Award Nominee Barbara Prashnig 

Discover yourself. Take the Working Style Analysis Questionnaire today. 

Introverts unite - separately, in your own homes

If you feel drained by too much contact with other people and need to recharge your energy levels by being alone after a day at the office or a night out, you are probably an introvert. Today's workplace, however, is geared towards extroverts: team work, open-plan offices and frequent meetings.

If this sounds a bit like you, you might like to have a look at this website about managing your inner introvert. Also, our Working Style Analysis report will have ideas on how best to arrange your work place and work pace to suit your needs.

This tool guides you through your individual working style needs, helping you in the following areas:

• Better communication between you and your colleagues
• Sharper problem solving and creativity
• More productive meetings
• Better time management
• Less stress under pressure
• Happier healthier work areas
• Stronger team spirit
• Increased flexibility and tolerance
• Easier learning curves

WSA costs less than psychometric testing, but it goes deeper. WSA reveals all your bio-physical makeup and conditioned style elements across the six key areas in the Working Style Pyramid Model: Information Processing, Sensory Modalities, Physical Needs, Environmental Preferences, Social Aspects, Professional Attitudes.

 

Richard Branson's Best Advice

If you ask Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin group (yes, records and airlines), for the best piece of advice he's ever received, he'll tell you: "No regrets." That famous line was from his very own mother, who nurtured his entrepreneurial spirit through failed ventures such as growing Christmas trees when he was a child. She led by example, too, and implemented many business ideas of her own.

Does your child have what it takes to be the next Richard Branson? Check their Learning Style to find out. If they have a preference for variety, high perseverance, a mixture of analytic and holistic thinking, and if they are a self-starter, you may well have a little businessman or businesswoman on your hands. Let them reach for the sky.

Leadership: It's a Marathon Not a Sprint

Leadership is a quality that people need to learn. Whether you are aspiring to a business or management career, or want to be a leader in other aspects of your life, you will want to read this interview with Gordon Tredgold, the author of a new book called Leadership It’s a Marathon Not a Sprint.

Q: How does one move from being a manager to being a leader?

A: To me leadership is all about creating and having influence, so you can actually do this whilst you're in a management position, and then you can use this influence to inspire your teams and motive them to achieve their goals wrath than through command and control structures. There is also the view that management is about getting your teams to do things right, whereas leadership is about getting your teams to do the right things.

Again, as managers we can take the double view of checking first that we are dong the right thing, and then checking that we are doing it right. With this approach we will definitely help to improve the results.

In many companies people who are good managers are often promoted to leadership positions even though these are ostensibly different roles, so being a good manager is definitely one way of becoming a leader.

I would say that an even better way would be to start leading whilst in your management position, these roles are not mutually exclusive and many of the best leaders i have worked with combined both skill at the management level before becoming leaders.

This also gives us the added bond of being able to practise our leadership skills prior to being in a formal leadership position.


Q: What other topics does your book cover?

A: My book covers many different aspects about leadership such as goal setting and inspiring people, the interrelationships between aspiration, inspiration and motivation, team building, reward and recognition and about achieving sustainable results.

You can read the book from start to finish, or you can pick a chapter at random to get a better understanding of a particular leadership topic.


Q: What made you decide to write this book?

A: I've had a lot of positive feedback over the years on my leadership style, people seem to have liked the way i have led them and the successes that we have achieved, so i thought it might be a good idea to talk about my approach and to put it down in words to share it. I don't necessarily think my approach is unique, but it has been effective and its not one that i often see written from a practitioner perspective so i thought this might be an interesting angle.

Also, my approach is very simple and straight forward, as is my writing style, so i thought that might be a refreshing change from of the more technical or theoretical books on leadership.  Dealing more with the how, than the what or why. I do believe the what and why are important, but i haven't seen many how to guides.

Also I wanted to write a book to help aspiring leaders, given them approaches and then examples of how those approaches could be implemented, to make leadership more accessible. 


Q: Tell us a little about yourself.

I'm from the north of England, which I think is what helps  makes me a pragmatic, no nonsense, straight talking leader, as these are definitely traits of people from that area. I also have a great sense of humour, which i often use to try and  reduce the stress in tense situation. I like to have fun, especially at work, i think if we can make it a more fun environment people then this will help us increase our chances of success and levels of success.

I'm a very determined character, I used to play a lot of rugby, and being fairly short and playing right in the trenches, I was always a fully committed, lead from the front type player, and this is definitely reflected in my leadership style.

(Visit Gordon Tredgold’s blog - http://www.leadership-principles.com/en/
Leadership It’s a Marathon Not a Spirnt - http://amzn.to/1fW2lmX)