Catch Up With Delphinium

Productivity, Menopause and Birthday Shoutouts

Hello.

Welcome back to my Tuesday Top Picks!

It’s been an exciting week as we’ve finished writing our free download! The guide will help you with what to say when your mind goes blank during those difficult conversations. It’s now been sent off to the team at IT Moon for them to do their tech wizardry bit. All being well, we’ll be able to launch it next week!

We also had a birthday here at Delphinium – our Director of Happiness (my lovely cat Toulouse) turned 17 in human years, which apparently is 84 in cat years! And I gave him a little birthday shoutout on LinkedIn; it would’ve been rude not to.

Last week, we brought one of our blended learning programmes to an end for fourteen managers with their group coaching sessions. Everyone had worked extremely hard completing their actions before the sessions and had already achieved some fantastic results. It was a brilliant couple of days and an absolute joy to work with them!

As we approach December, we often start to slow down, but it’s looking like we’ll have a busy run-up to Christmas with new coaching clients and businesses planning for 2023. More of that to come later; for now, here are this week’s top picks…

Menopause has been a big topic this year, and rightly so. But it has also left many employers unsure of how to move forward to really make a difference.
Last week, Amanda Pritchard (NHS England Chief Executive) released the first national guidance on menopause.

The guidance encourages businesses to introduce practical measures such as menopause policies, staff training, flexible working, and “normalising asking for help”.

In a recent article, People Management asked whether employers should adopt the NHS guidance. Whether companies adopt it or not, it is worthwhile taking a look and seeing what you can take from it – there’s no point reinventing the wheel, after all. You can read the guidance here if you want to take a look.

Ping!

How often have you had the spark of a great new idea or been in mid-flow when your inbox pings? You think, ‘I’ll just have a quick look’, but before you know it, you’ve lost an hour! Not only that, you’ve forgotten your idea or can’t seem to get back into your previous flow.

Schedule blocks of time to batch-process emails and switch your notifications in between to stop you from getting sidetracked and hampering your productivity.

In episode 90 of the Super Managers podcast, Paul Parisi, Head of Silicon Valley Bank in Canada, discusses how motivating your team is a different ballgame to encouraging each individual. He also provides a valuable reminder about considering each individual’s goals when working with them.

You can listen to the full episode here.

During a recent training session, an attendee said they wanted to be more empathetic. He was very aware of his task-orientated personality style but also very self-critical for not having empathy.

However, as we explored the matter further, it became clear that he did empathise with his team members. The issue was he would move from one task to another without spending enough time listening and showing empathy. Therefore, we developed a suitable plan to ensure he was making the time to listen to and support his team more.

It’s great when people are aware of improvements they can make and want to create positive change. However, failing to take a balanced view and being overly critical of ourselves or only focusing on areas of improvement can result in self-demotivation – the opposite of what we want.

So, remember that it’s also important to be kind to ourselves and celebrate our successes.

If you missed out on previous editions of our Tuesday’s Top Picks, you can find a list of our back catalogue here.