Learning and Development Archives - Page 26 of 36

Painting Yourself in a Positive Light

The topic of personal presentation is one that has come up in a number of articles of late and is also a question which several people have asked me about – especially those who like me are currently looking for a new role. For me it is about much more than just wearing the right clothes and goes much deeper which is why I want to take a look at it in some more detail.

You’re probably familiar with the phrase, “painting yourself in a positive light.” If not, this particular saying has a great deal to do with the task of presenting yourself to others in an upbeat fashion. You’ll find it to be extremely important, especially in a business setting.

There’s no way around it. The way you act around people definitely influences how they feel about you. To be polite, when negative feelings are involved, some individuals choose to keep their opinions to themselves. This is acceptable, because they are well within their rights to do so. Unfortunately, others won’t hesitate to tell you what they REALLY think about you. Sometimes, it’s a vicious world out there! You need to be prepared.

In addition, there’s the possibility of the uncomfortable issue of rumors and gossip. Once one or the other gets started, it typically spreads like wildfire with no end in sight. Presenting yourself in a positive way helps to reduce the chances of these problems popping up.

The good news is this. It’s entirely possible to change a person’s first impression of you, simply by altering your personal presentation. This won’t work 100 percent of the time, of course, because nothing is guaranteed. However, you’ll no doubt see a change for the better the vast majority of the time.

Your Level of Self-Esteem

Your level of self-esteem is vital when it comes to how the public views you, in all kinds of situations. It’s important to remember that self-esteem requirements aren’t static. In other words, different scenarios demand varying levels of this much-needed attribute. Underlying personal stress (if any) and the specific audience you interact with both play a role in the outcome of the day’s presentation. No two will ever be the same.

If you feel as though you have low self-esteem, you’re certainly not alone. Millions of individuals share the same opinion of themselves. The good news is this: it IS possible to raise your self-esteem. Here are a few suggestions.

Self-worth has little to do with a person’s abilities or talent. Don’t be afraid to frequently remind yourself about all of the things you excel at. Better yet, do something that you’re good at, something that holds your attention. This allows you to relax and to feel more competent about things to come.
As surprising as it may seem, low self-esteem is often the result of thinking about yourself too much. Finding something else to focus on when you’re feeling a bit down, just might be all it takes to put you in the kind of cheery mood audiences appreciate.
Learn relaxation techniques. Relaxing magically makes your brain less emotional. Consider taking up meditation or self-hypnosis. If you want to try something a bit more strenuous, tai chi is a great option. Devoting as little as an hour a day to relaxation can really make a difference.
Don’t fall prey to the comparison trap. You’re not doing yourself any favors when that happens. There’s always going to be someone else who has more than you. Focus on you and any recent accomplishments you’ve made instead.
Promote kindness; it’s guaranteed to boost your self-esteem. It doesn’t have to be a huge gesture in order for you to feel the boost. Holding the door for someone, paying for a stranger’s cup of coffee, or taking a minute to encourage a friend are just three of many ways to make kindness matter.
Everyone occasionally makes mistakes. When it happens to you, try to handle the situation in a positive way. Do your best to find the upside of your dilemma. Many times, the repercussions of making a mistake are not as bad as you envision them to be.
Transform your home into a personal oasis. Fill it with your favorite things… music, books, candles… all of the things that relax you and shut out all of the hastiness of the day.

Just to be clear, never confuse self-esteem with confidence. Both are extremely important. But, they are two different things.

Techniques to Use as Part of Your Reflection

There are a techniques to use as a part of your reflective practice, but the best choices to start with will be the easiest, so you can get started quickly and make it a part of your daily life. As you get into the habit of reflective practice, you can then spot patterns and use the techniques to start to dig deeper if you need to.

The three main steps in reflective practice are:

Reflection
Understanding
Action

…so the techniques you use should help support these goals. In addition, your choice will be determined by whether the reflective practice is to be conducted individually or in a group, such as within your business team or a social group who want to learn how to work better together in order to improve their skills and results.

Journaling

A written journal, notes or a diary can all keep you focused on the process of reflective practice. For each event you wish to examine, answer the following questions:

What happened? (Be factual)
What you were thinking and feeling? (Explore your emotions)
What was good and bad about the experience? (Evaluate)
What sense can you make of the experience? (Analyse)
What else could you have done? (Draw conclusions)
If a similar situation arose again what would you do? (Set goals and create an action plan)

This can be done individually or as a team, depending on the event and your group’s willingness to try this method to improve their results.

Brainstorming

If you don’t have time for a lot of writing, try brainstorming and creative imagery, such as mind-mapping, sketches, pictures and diagrams that show cause, effect, and outcomes – including possible different outcomes your and/or your group might wish to work towards.

Reflective Dialogue and Discussion

This can also work well for groups. If you feel “stuck” in your life, you might also discuss what happened with your partner, a trusted colleague, or with a mentor, coach or professional – either face-to-face or by phone or email.

Social Media

You might have a private blog or closed group at a site like Facebook. You might also decide to have broader discussions with your Personal Learning Network (#PLN) on Twitter, at chat boards, online communities, the Intranet at work, and so on.

Now that we’ve covered a range of techniques to use as a part of your reflective practice, choose the ones that will work best for each situation you and/or your team want to reflect upon, and see what a difference they can make.

Working Out Loud – Reflective Practice In Action

Reflecting on activities, events and projects in your can help you progress from complete beginner to a more skilled person who has learned from their experiences. It is also a useful tool for project teams and indeed whole organisations to adopt in order to improve their performance. It can very much be as Andy Lancaster recently mentioned in a Tweet something akin to “working out loud” as we reflect on our learning throughout a project or piece of work.

Here are some methods that you might want to consider.

Reflect Actively

Active reflection during an activity/project creates the opportunity for improving your performance as you start to spot gaps in your knowledge or things you tend to struggle with. “What should I do now?” is a common question when we are first starting on something. “What could I have done better?” is an example of the kind of question reflective practice raises. The answers you come up with can lead to a greater level of skill and confidence. They can also aid in problem solving and decision making to take a project forward.

Take Action

Taking action about what you find will lead to personal and professional growth and development. If you find any gaps in your knowledge, more studying, a course or webinar, or finding a good coach or mentor can all take your skills to the next level. Adjusting priorities and determining new lines of action within a project can lead to success in the delivery of the project.

Set Goals

Reflective practice can also help you set goals. In terms of your professional development/career will no longer feel like it is not within your control and that things just happen to you at work. Instead, you will be feel more in charge because you know what you want and don’t want. The goals you set with the help of your reflective practice will be like a road map to the destination of your choosing. Otherwise you might end up driving around with no clear direction or with a project going off target and not being delivered.

Achieving your Goals

Once you have defined your goals, it will be time to take the practical action needed to achieve them. For each action that is a stepping stone toward your goal, you can apply reflective practice to make sure you are on the right track.

The Best Ways to Reflect

how can you get started? Here’s an easy formula. You might find it helpful to create a worksheet on your computer and print out several copies. Fill them in and analyse your answers. Again these can be adapted for an individual or a group working together

What happened?
What was my role in the event?
How do I feel about what happened?
Who owns what happened?
What was the outcome of the event?
How was the outcome different or the same from what I expected to happen?
What could I have done better in this situation?
What actions can I take to help ensure a better outcome next time a similar situation crops up?

Answering these questions requires honesty, and the willingness to learn and grow. No one is expecting you to be perfect. However, most people will want to be the best they can be in their profession, so apply reflective practice and see what a difference it can make to you.

Discovering Those Learning Moments

Ever since my friend Ady Howes asked a question on Twitter under the hashtag #LoveCPD the role of reflection as part of our learning process has been very much at the forefront of my mind. It’s for that reason that I have interrupted my planned series of posts and want to reflect on reflective practice or discovering our learning moments.

Nowadays there is a great deal of emphasis placed on being our best self. Some of the techniques for accomplishing this are thousands of years old; they just have a new name. Reflective practice is the new term for the ancient process of trying to “know yourself” in order to transform your life through positive change.

The word reflective refers to reflection, or thinking about, certain areas of your life or events in your life and how they turned out. As the event is reflected upon, you are able to explore it in greater depth in order to learn lessons from your experience. As a result of what you learn, you can develop goals to improve your skills in that particular area and follow through with action steps to achieve your goals.

If you’ve been feeling “stuck” in your career or personal life, reflective practice could just be what you’re looking for to transform your life. Let’s look at how to get started.

Starting Reflective Practice

A good starting point is to keep a diary or journal. A small notebook that can be carried with you and/or a folder on your computer with various files you create can all help.

Next, it is important to understand the process of reflection in reflective practice. Reflection is an active process of observing your own experiences in order to evaluate how you were able to handle certain events or occurrences in your life. It is not intended to make you feel bad or beat yourself up over what did or didn’t happen. For each event you wish to explore, simply evaluate the situation in a calm manner to learn from it.

Some events will not require a great deal of analysis. Others might be worth digging deeper because you might spot a pattern or problem you weren’t aware of before.

Learning from Past Actions

A lot of us can be negative and pessimistic. Our negative self-talk tells us we are a “loser” or failure. Reflective practice can help transform you into a winner by cutting the cord of negativity and setting you on a path to personal transformation.

The secret of successful reflective practice is to learn how to look at your actions and experiences without being quick to judge them. It also means taking the time to examine them – rather than just rush to the next thing on your to-do list without learning any lessons from what you’ve said, accomplished, or tried to do.

Through examination, we learn more about ourselves, and in that process of learning, we open ourselves up to a range of new possibilities. Through learning from experience, we can become even more successful in our personal and professional lives.

Learning Moments

We’ve all done it. Repeated the same mistake at least twice. Had a “disaster” in terms of our work life or personal life, such as the loss of a job or the (bad) breakup of a relationship. When this happens, have you:

Stuck your head in the sand and just ignored what was happening?
Blamed others for what happened?
Or did you sit down to reflect on what happened to see what lessons you could learn from it?

Chances are that like many others, you’ve done 1 and 2 most of the time up until this point in your life. With reflective practice, it is time to begin doing #3 regularly.

You can start small and then work your way up to the bigger issues as and when you need to. You can start your journal with something that happened today in your work or personal life, and reflect on how it went.

For example, did you have to give a PowerPoint presentation at a meeting today? How did it go? Were you prepared? Were there any technical or other issues that cropped up? If so, how did you handle them?

Maybe you talked to a family member on the phone and things got a little out of hand. What happened? Were there any things you could have done or said differently?

We hate it when things don’t go well at work or we argue with the people we care about. Often, though, these are some of the best “learning moments” that can highlight areas of our life we need to work on in order to be our best self. Once you have evaluated the event, think about what lessons you’ve learned and how you can do better next time.

In relation to the presentation, it might be:

Get to the room earlier to set up better
Conduct a practice run using the equipment to avoid technical glitches
Make the lettering on the slides bigger so everyone at the back could also see clearly

In relation to the phone call with the family member:

Don’t mention topic X
Avoid the blame game
Change the subject if they start going on at you about Y or Z
Remind them you are an adult and while you appreciate their input and caring, you’ve already discussed the issue at least once and don’t need to again.

These are just a few examples. You should be able to come up with many of your own, relevant to your personal circumstances, once you start on the path of reflective practice.

In subsequent posts I will delve a little deeper into this.

Can You Be Too Perfect?

Having looked at fear of failure and success I want to now look at how being a perfectionist can stop you from achieving what you want.

Let’s start by understanding what perfectionism is not. Perfectionism is not the admirable quality of holding yourself to high standards. Rather, perfectionism is the fusion of high standards with your self-worth. A less-than-perfect performance damages a perfectionist’s self-worth in their opinion. The possibility that their performance will not be flawless is debilitating to them, and they can become paralyzed by the idea of doing something.

A perfectionist believes that they can never be good enough. They consider any mistake they make to be an indication of their value as a person and therefore no mistake is permissible. They seek to avoid shame and judgment by being perfect.

Successful professionals are typically not perfectionists, although they may be people who hold themselves and others to high standards. The hesitation and over-analysis that is common to perfectionists does not help them to advance in a profession.

What Perfectionism Looks Like

Perfectionists are often chronic procrastinators. They spend so much time preparing for a task that they never get to the task. The anxiety surrounding their fear of making a mistake is disempowering, so they often feel unable to proceed with their work.

Perfectionists may be aware that their perfectionism is a disadvantage to them, but they consider it the price they have to pay to be successful. Perfectionists hold others to high standards, too, and can be very critical of them. But even though they are quick to criticize, they have a hard time accepting criticism, which can stop them from moving on with their work.

Perfectionism is a big de-motivator. Perfectionists can be reluctant to try new things because they are afraid that they won’t be able to live up to their own standards when they do it. And, if they do try something new, they will often abandon it quickly. The mistakes that anyone is bound to make when learning a skill are so painful to perfectionists that they will quit before they gain mastery. As a consequence, they never enjoy practicing the skill, be it speaking a language, playing an instrument, or participating in a sport.

Because perfectionists are so risk-averse, they rarely are able to innovate or be creative. They have all-or-nothing thinking, and won’t do anything if they can’t devote themselves to it totally. They are often hiding the fact that they are imposters.

How to Overcome Perfectionism

Many of the ways of overcoming perfectionism have to do with recognizing that it is a hindrance, not a help, in achieving your goals. If your goal is to do an excellent job in a presentation for work, being obsessed with every little detail stands in your way rather than helping you.

If you are overwrought over things that are out of your control, you aren’t completing things that are in your control. If you are focused on past errors, you aren’t working on tasks that can actually move you toward your goals. So step back, look at the big picture, and put perfectionism in its place.

Another approach to overcoming perfectionism is to heal the parts of you that causes it. Perfectionists are weak on self-acceptance and self-compassion. To overcome perfectionism, learn to love yourself in all your imperfect glory. Honor the work that you do, even if it is less than perfect.

Honour your commitment to high standards, but don’t let your failure to meet them make you feel unworthy. Treat mistakes as lessons you can learn from. Let go of the personal hurt you feel over them. Be analytical about them, freeing yourself from the impact they have over your feelings of self-worth. Enjoy your successes and victories. Celebrate them. Let your successes, not your errors, define you to yourself.