What Personal and Professional Goals Are You Setting for Next Year?

Don’t enter 2011 without a clear view of where you would like to see yourself at the end of the year. All individuals can benefit from setting clear and effective goals and objectives, whether formally within the organization or at a personal level. Determining goals is part of the general process of planning for the future. It translates general intent into tangible steps and tasks.

To reach your goals in 2011, follow our simple and effective tips:

1. Plan ahead. Chart your ultimate direction and imagine your possible future.

2. Develop your goals and remember that a written goal should be clear to anyone else reading it, whether they are familiar with the subject or not.

3. Make sure your targets are just out of reach but not out of sight.

4.. Know yourself, your competencies and capabilities.

5. Asses resources and goal implementation issues.

6. Write out your final goals.

7. Develop measures for every individual goal that you set out to achieve.

8. Draw your targets on charts or graphs that will be used to measure your performance and ask yourself, “What can I do today to get one step closer to achieving my goal(s)?”.

9. Believe in yourself. If you doubt your self-worth you will find it difficult to achieve goals, and may lack motivation.

10. Maintain self-discipline and decide that you will always finish what you start, no matter how small the task. Develop perseverance.

If you find these tips helpful and would like to learn more ways to obtain your goals, visit the ReadyToManage store and check out our goal planning and assessment tools, including:

• Goal & Objective Setting Profile

• Goal & Objective Setting: A Rapid Skill Builder Booklet
• Goal Setting Storyboard

Stay Sane During The Holidays With Our Stress Management Tips

Holidays combined with end-of-the-year deadlines can create stress for everyone. It is important to learn how to deal with this stress, in order for it not to take over your life. When stress builds to extreme levels we are unable to cope and our physical and mental capacity to enjoy life can be significantly reduced.

Top 5 ReadytoManage Tips to Combat Stress:

1. Don’t Bottle up negative feelings, doing so will only exacerbate internal tension and anxiety and create a vicious cycle that only builds more stress. Instead, simply talk to someone who will listen.

2. Too much urgent activity (ie. looming deadlines and time constraints). People often confuse urgent things with important things. Organize your life so it isn't cluttered with activity that leads to anxiety over things left undone.

3. Take care of your physical well being. This includes maintaining a healthy diet and exercise regime without smoking or drinking.

4. Consider emotional factors in your life. Make sure to get 8 hours of sleep a night and don’t forget to have fun! Make time for your favorite hobbies.

5. PLAN AHEAD! Life always runs a little smoother if you plan ahead. Remind yourself that you always have time and opportunity to prepare, plan, and organize yourself to be in control.

Don’t let stress run your life this holiday season. Click Here to review or purchase The Stress Pocketbook, voted "best of its kind" by Management Today. Reviewed as "a user-friendly guide to stress management. The simple, quick-fire descriptions of common workplace situations are useful. Well worth keeping handy."

The Stress Pocketbook is full of practical advice on ways to manage your own stress, and how to help others, with an emphasis on what to do rather than on theory.

Studies Show Simulations Energize and Reinforce Learning, While Creating Team Building

Who says you can’t have fun at work? Why not introduce a new creative way of learning? People work harder and learn better when they are enjoying themselves. Training simulation games are a superb way of providing workers with a fun experience, where they can learn more about themselves and how they interact with their colleagues and environment. Research shows that people learn easily and deeply when they are having fun. A training simulation game provides a safe environment to observe the behavior and actions of others while also participating. Games offer a natural and exciting way to learn, with the power to concentrate real life issues into a compact activity, without distractions of regular work.

Like Stories, games often mean different things to different people. Therefore, the task of the game facilitator is to ensure that all participants understand the core message of the game and apply that message to workplace problems and issues, encouraging people to form their own conclusions. The purpose of each game is to empower participants to see workplace challenges differently, while positively changing their workplace behaviors.

Check out the new training simulation games that ReadyToManage has to offer:

PowerPoint Ice breakers and Team-Builders
Click here for more information and to try a free demo

PowerPoint Quiz Shows, Volume 1, 2, and 3!
Click here for more information and to try a free demo

PowerPoint Sports Games
Click here for more information and to try a free demo

World Games
Click here for more information and to try a free demo

Simulations from Team Publications
Click here for more information and to try a free demo

Traditionalists, Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y Must Learn To Work Together Toward Success

Just as technology has changed and developed in the workplace, from typewriters to computers and email, dial-up to wifi, pagers to cell phones to bbm messages, so have the people inside the workplace. Now, more than ever, we see a cross over between generations in the workplace, which can be challenging at times. As both products of chronological age and the time in which we grew up, people from different generations and age groups have rather different attitudes, values, beliefs and motivations from one another. These differences can easily lead to misunderstanding, miscommunication and even outright conflict in the workplace. A person’s outlook on the world has significant implications on how he or she treats, works with, and values other people. Recent research and organizational experience has shown that generational mix can be a potent problem that should be dealt with through education, tolerance and increased understanding of the issues.

Consultant and Speaker, Ira Wolfe recently published an article titled, “Should Employers Care That Gen Y Can't Write?” (http://preview.tinyurl.com/22jhpvj). The article covers generational differences and expectations when it comes to cursive writing versus block letters and handwritten notes versus emails. Wolfe suggests that the clarity and appropriateness of a message is more important than the vehicle of communication.

ReadyToMange realizes the importance of understanding these generational issues and offers great tools in helping employees better understand their generational qualities and ways to work collectively with other generations toward success. Our tools include:


FREE Generational Leadership booklet
This free 12-page booklet on generational differences in the workplace includes an overview of the four generations currently in the workplace including Traditionalists, Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y, and discusses how to manage staff and build relationships across the generational groups.

Generational Style Assessment: $14.95
If you and your organization are ready to take the next step in exploring Generational issues in the workplace, try our Generational Style Assessment which helps determine an individual’s influencing style when relating to people from different age groups or generations in the workplace and helps them to adjust or “flex” their own approach. A brief synopsis of the four age groups used in this assessment is included in the final report. This also shows the four generational influencing styles likely to be most effective in relation to each age group that can be employed by an individual.

The four styles (Steering, Empowering, Building, and Supporting) arise from intersecting two dimensions; the level of clarity and focus required by an individual or group, and the level of energy or engagement that is needed. It aims to:

• Raise people’s awareness about the very different behaviors and characteristics of the four age groups that we identify (20’s, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s+).
• Alert individuals to their own relating style biases, and show them four discrete influencing behaviors.
• Help people to take age differences more seriously in seeking to get the best out of everyone and contribute to getting all groups to work together more harmoniously.

In a review of this Assessment, Wolfe noted that,
For more information on ReadyToManage, please visit our Web site at www.ReadyToManage.com

“The Generational Style Assessment is a guaranteed conversation starter for helping manage a multi-generational workforce and reducing misunderstandings. For several years, Jon Warner and Anne Sandberg created a great questionnaire using real-life scenarios that every employee can relate to. The assessment is easy to complete and the booklet that comes with it includes excellent explanations and an excellent model introducing different styles that will be effective in managing each generation. Their research and materials are so good that they served as the inspiration for a chapter in my new book - Geeks, Geezers, and Googlization.”