Guest blog: Improving your professional performance in 2018

Business performance coach Barbara Nugent gives her tips on how to improve yourself, professionally and personally, in 2018.

The New Year is always a great time to reflect on the year gone past. We start off with great intentions and as the year progresses we often become overwhelmed with everyday life. Productivity, influencing, managing change and leadership are key challenges that emerge amongst teams in every industry, every year.

One thing is clear. Attempting to make huge changes in how we operate is very short lived. 55% of people make New Year’s resolutions but only 8% succeed. Making small changes, but doing them consistently – day after day – add up to big changes at the end of a month or a year.

Taking some of those key challenges, here are some changes you could make over the coming year to improve your professional performance in 2018.

Productivity

Being productive is not about using the latest apps or endless to-do lists. Productivity comes from doing the right things. Improve your productivity by:

• Managing yourself better: Become aware of how you spend your time. Allowing your time to be eaten up by mindless tasks can only result in being a ‘busy fool’. Make sure you are spending a large proportion of your time in your area of expertise. Delegate tasks which can be done by others. Own your time, don’t give it away easily.
• Focus your mind: There is just too much information around us. Limit the amount of data you consume, to what is relevant. Write down the amount of time you spend surfing the net or social media. Unless it’s relaxation time, cut it out! Divide your day into blocks of 40 minutes, with small 15 minutes slots in between. For each 40-minute block focus 100% on a specific task without distractions. Use each 15-minute slot to do small, quick tasks, like send a quick email or make a phone call. Do this consistently every day and your to-do list will quickly start to diminish.

Influencing

If you are leading a team of any description, it is up to you to provide an environment within which they can thrive. Getting buy in from your boss or peers for a process change or a new idea is about bringing people over to your point of view and showing them how they will benefit.

• Build great relationships: Take the time to build good relationships within your workplace. Connect outside your team and department. Listen to the challenges of your colleagues and understand how you can support them. These networks will be invaluable for teaching and supporting you in your efforts to perform better.
• Learn to listen better: We all think we are great listeners, but in fact we listen very poorly. As another is speaking, we are listening to reply, to argue, to defend and to jump in with our story. Actively listen and focus on what people say (or don’t say!) to gain incredible insight to those around you. This will in turn improve your empathy skills.

Managing change

By far one of the more difficult elements to work with, at every level and size of organisation, is managing change. Business environments change quickly, and to stay ahead of the competition, companies need to change, too. People, in general, find change difficult because it is unknown and uncomfortable.

• Communicate, communicate and communicate some more! Explaining the change, what it means, why it’s happening and how it will impact the company and employees is critical. Be honest and address any concerns. Be positive about how the change will help the company do better business.
• Institutionalise changes as quickly as possible. Changes have to become part of the day-to-day operations and processes so that they become the norm more quickly. People begin to get used to doing things in a new way, and shortly the change is no longer a hurdle. Celebrate small wins along the way to keep motivation high and a give a sense of progression.

Leading more effectively

Actively building your emotional intelligence is the catalyst that can see you raise your profile, drive organisational change projects and be promoted. As leaders, you must continuously focus on leadership development and keep working to operate at the next level.

• Get feedback: Many leaders never ask for any kind of feedback from their team, peers or colleagues. Potential is limited when you only develop to the level your boss sets for you. Growing your skills to encompass everyone you work with will give you a much wider leadership scope and an ability to influence across the organisation. Try to see your perception of yourself and how others perceive you. The gap is where the growth and greatest development lies.
• Develop your ‘soft skills’: Emotions drive people, and people drive business. Curiosity, empathy and lack of judgement are key leadership characteristics. People like to work with you because you make them feel valued. They will engage and be motivated to work to the best of their ability because they feel like they have something to contribute to the organisation. Getting the best from your team and those you work with is a real leadership skill. Building trust and collaboration drives great performance.
• Reflect: Carve out time in your week to look back and see how things are going. What’s working, what’s not? What difficult tasks or conversations have you been putting off? What have you not started? We are all racing along with our to-do lists in hand, we rarely take the time to check in and readjust our direction if we are off track. This results in a lot of time-wasting, doing things that have become irrelevant since our initial plan.

With these points in mind, decide how you want to improve your performance in 2018. Don’t try to change everything at once, but focus on one area each month. Nothing works until you do the work – so get cracking and I wish you a great, high-performance 2018!