Give Thanks

We have all heard how essential it is to give thanks and be grateful for things we have in our lives, but sometimes gratitude can be challenging. In a little over a week, it will be the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, so BCG is taking this opportunity to share some of the primary ways that we try to give thanks in our daily lives.

Be Present

Don’t let the moment escape you! Stopping when you feel that warmth of gratitude fills your body and acknowledging the goodness surrounding you is essential to finding what truly matters to you. Taking this opportunity to give thanks can turn your whole day around.

Send a Thank You Notes

Sending a note to say thank you can help you and your recipient a moment to reflect with gratitude. Of course, texts and emails count too, but a handwritten letter is a fun way to show others that you appreciate them.

Practice Patience

It is a work in progress, but being intentional in responding to others and exercising patience, can go a long way in gratitude practice. In addition, if we can realize that everyone is doing the best they can in their current situation, then extending some extra grace comes naturally.

Show Verbal Appreciation

When someone takes the time out of their day and helps another person, it is an act of giving. Even if the action is a part of their job, it is still a choice, and they choose to provide a service. So give thanks to those who help others, a simple “Thanks!” after the checkout line at a grocery can make all the difference.

Having thankful intentions does not have to be fancy or complicated. It does not have to take more than a couple of moments in your day. Once you form a habit, it can be something you do without trying, and that is when genuine gratitude surfaces because we develop a new perspective.

We compiled this list at BCG to start a conversation about how we all give thanks daily and begin a larger conversation about gratitude in our work lives. We hope that our customers and readers know how very much we appreciate them! Thank you for looking to BCG for your needs—we feel very grateful to work with amazing people and agencies. Keep your practice strong and your gratitude stronger; ’tis the season after all!

What is a Coach (and Why Would I Want One?)

 While many people have heard of coaching, few have a clear understanding of exactly what a coach is and does. This prevents people from getting appropriate support for life changes. As a coach the most common thing I hear from people is, “I’m not really sure what a coach does or how they could help me.” 

What is coaching?

Coaching is not the same as consulting nor the same as therapy, but it takes elements from each discipline to create its own unique method. A coach works with individuals who are focused on making changes in their lives. While a therapist may seek to diagnose and treat a client, coaches work under the assumption that their clients are whole, healthy individuals. Coaches ask thought-provoking questions that challenge clients. They create collaborative and individualized strategies, set goals, and keep the client focused on the future.

What happens when someone hires a coach?

While each coach has a unique style and approach, most expect clients to commit to working with them for a set period. This can vary from anywhere between 4-18 months – depending on the changes that the client intends to make. Some coaches meet with clients in person, but many hold coaching sessions over Zoom or the phone. During those sessions the coach will ask probing questions, serve as a sounding board, offer an outside perspective, help maintain motivation, provide strategies, set goals, and ensure accountability. 

What can a coach help with?

Coaches help individuals move forward. They guide business owners as they strategize for growth. They partner with professionals seeking to develop their career path, manage a workplace environment, launch a new business, or find work-life balance. They help students discover career aspirations and plan educational paths. Coaches offer support to individuals seeking to improve relationships, focus on their health and well-being, change their mindset, or alter habits. Essentially, coaches help people create change – even if they don’t quite know what that change is yet.

Is coaching right for me?

Not everyone is a great fit for coaching. Coaches typically like to partner with individuals who have a desire to learn and grow. Ideal clients make a commitment to changing and arrive with some level of motivation to make that change. Since it’s a collaborative process, it’s also important that the coach and the client have good chemistry and feel like the partnership is a good fit. 

At Bauman Consulting Group, we provide both individual and group coaching to help people achieve their personal and professional goals. Find out more at www.baumanconsultinggroup.com.

Fifteen Fun Healthy Workplace Competitions

Many organizations incorporate competitions into their workplace wellbeing programs. These competitions can be a way to engage employees, build teamwork, and bring a bit of fun into the workplace. In fact, research demonstrates that workplace wellbeing competitions can result in decreased absenteeism, reduced stress, and lower health care costs. These competitions can also increase job satisfaction, increase brain power and performance, improve employee sleep, increase employee retention, and foster team building. And these benefits can be found regardless of whether your employees are in the office or working from home.

Workplace challenges can be done on an individual basis, a department level, or even an overall team goal for the company. It’s always nice for there to be some sort of a prize associated with the challenge, but you can be creative and find inexpensive options. Have fun with it! For example, one company we work with bought an incredibly ugly blazer from a thrift shop. This blazer is passed from champion to champion after each wellness challenge. The employees love the honor of having the championship blazer hanging in their cubicle. Another company created a homemade trophy that is displayed in the winning department. Others provide gift cards, bonuses, gym memberships, and self-care rewards to winning participants. Just remember to find a reward that is meaningful to your organization. 

There are a great number of well-being challenges that you can create for your workplace. Many require very little in the way of cost to the organization to run too. Here are fifteen different workplace challenges you can start at your organization to build the well-being of your colleagues.

 Physical Fitness Challenges

1.     Step to It – Challenge employees to get the most steps into their day. Many people now wear fitness tracking devices or can monitor their steps using their smart phone. Pedometers can be obtained inexpensively as well – and can be customized with your company logo! Set up the challenge to encourage the most steps in a given month by individual and/or department. You might consider a special reward for everyone if the entire company hits a certain number of steps. Partner this activity with encouragement for workers to walk on their breaks.

2.     Plank You Very Much – Planking is an exercise that is great for the core and can be done quickly and without any equipment at all. Employees can track the amount of time spent holding planks and compete for amount of time total over a given month as well as the longest time spent planking. This is a great one to use as a team building activity. Employees can earn bonus points for sharing photos of their planking in unique locations.

3.     Work it Out – Encourage employees to engage in any exercise activities that they enjoy and track the minutes spent doing those activities. This can be a great activity because it encourages individuals of any fitness level to participate at what they are most comfortable doing from simple stretching to running marathons. It’s also great opportunity to give out water bottles or other fitness items with the company logo on them.

Nutrition Challenges

4.     Drink Up – Encourage employees to drink the daily recommended 64 oz of water each day. They can track individual ounces or they can record the number of days that they hit the goal. Set up special water stations around the office with infused water (try water with citrus slices in it) or sparkling water to keep it interesting. It’s another great opportunity to get out those company water bottles!

5.     See Ya Later Soda – Help your employees say goodbye to their soda pop addiction by holding a challenge to give up their daily fix. Employees can record each day their abstained from drinking soda pop. Of course, this works best in offices where the soda drinking is common place. Other offices may find that their daily coffee run or morning doughnuts are where the employees wish to cut back. 

6.     Eat your Fruits and Veggies – Americans rarely get the recommended number of fruits and veggies in their diet, so challenge your employees to make it happen. Have them track the number of servings of fruits and veggies that they eat each day. Consider challenging for the greatest number possible or meeting the 5-a-day goal. Offering healthy snacks in the office like a veggie tray or a salad bar during this time can be a great way to encourage success. Employees may decide to go out to lunch at a local salad bar for some off-site bonding too!

Mindfulness Challenges

7.     Unplug and Unwind – Encourage employees to turn off their screens and spend time relaxing in other healthy ways. Employees can record the number of hours that they shut down electronics and read books, worked puzzles, gardened, etc. 

8.     Gratitude Goals – Have employees create a daily challenge to list three things that they are grateful for each day. Employees can earn points for each day that they complete the challenge. Consider a reward for a certain level of points earned for the company. Consider sending employee submitted thank you shout outs in a monthly email. 

9.     Meditation Minutes – Foster a more focused environment by encouraging employees to meditate daily. There are free apps like Insight Timer or Calm that can be used for those new to meditation (and those with experience too!). Consider a daily challenge of meditating for at least five minutes.

Giving Back Challenges

10.  Simple Acts of Kindness – Challenge employees to engage in simple act of kindness. Purchase a stranger’s coffee order. Carry an elderly person’s groceries for them. Cut your neighbor’s lawn. Small acts have a big effect on both the recipient and the giver.

11.  Community Cares – Volunteering is good for the community and for the heart. Set up a volunteer challenge for the departments at your workplace. Can each department engage in a monthly volunteer opportunity? These can include opportunities such as a departmental jog/walk in a charity 5K, visiting at a nursing home, beautifying the community, or serving at a soup kitchen. This is a great way to involve employees families as well!

Financial Challenges

12.  Feed the Piggy – Encourage employees to set aside a dollar a day to build their emergency savings account. While we know the importance of having six months of our salary set aside, most Americans aren’t even close to accomplishing that. See how creative your company can be at developing ideas for saving that extra money. Set a company-wide goal for the amount of total dollars saved.

13.  Home Chef – It’s not a surprise that it costs significantly more to eat dinner out than preparing a meal at home. And cooking at home can offer healthier options too! Challenge employees to cook at home and not dine out – offering incentives based on the number of days in a month they cook at home and avoid dining out. Send out weekly recipes to encourage and keep employees motivated. They’re waistline and their wallet with thank you!

General Well-Being Challenges

14.  Break a Bad Habit – Have employees identify a bad habit they have that they’d like to break or cut down on. Some may wish to stop smoking. Others may consider cutting back on alcohol. Others may decide that now is the time to stop procrastinating! Have the employee identify the habit that they’d like to change – and track their weekly progress. Form teams of those who are interested in changing similar bad habits to support and encourage one another.

15.  Get Some Shut Eye – Most of us fail to get the recommended 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Whether that’s due to late night hours working or too much time spent in front of a screen, it’s causing major health problems. Challenge employees to get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep each night. This can be a great one for fun prizes and incentives such as sleep masks, slippers, pillows, and throw blankets.

There are so many options for workplace wellbeing challenges. Consider trying a challenge in your workplace each month or two and rotate between the different categories of wellness challenges. Let us know how it works in your organization! 

We at Bauman Consulting Group just kicked off our May workplace wellbeing challenge. We’re teaming up with the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash to compete for the greatest number of steps taken in the month of May. This is part of a larger effort by the college to raise money for scholarships. We’ll be posting our weekly numbers online each week. It’s not too late for you to join us! You can register online at https://foundation.uc.edu/UCBAStepsChallenge. Let’s get moving!

Top Secrets of Success from a Professional Coach

When we began our company 8 years ago, our goal was simply to help other people live better lives. We had some tools available to guide us, but it has really been the relationships we’ve had with clients over the years that have given us the most valuable insight into how people live fulfilling lives – lives where they are healthy and full of energy, feel a sense of purpose and happiness, achieve success at work while maintaining a full life at home, and develop meaningful relationships with others in their life. 

Most of our clients had heard of coaching before, but they were skeptical. They weren’t really sure what a coach would do. But what they all agreed upon, was that they needed a partner in this – someone to be a sounding board and to be their accountability partner. Many were wrestling with a single issue that they decided to get help with: a desired promotion, a desire to make a career change, a lack of work-life balance, or a desire to spend more time away from the office. They were surprised to learn that we didn’t believe in one definition of success. Instead, we spent time learning about what success was going to mean for them. They were also surprised to find that what they believed to be one single issue was actually connected with other issues in their lives. In fact, it became clear that there were 4 main areas that were impossible to disentangle as they all impacted one another. We call these the Four Core Components of Success: 1) Health, 2) Personal Fulfillment, 3) Business/Career, and 4) Relationships. 

This is why our coaching is focused on a blended approach – both life and business coaching. It’s all connected! If you’re not taking care of your health, you can bet you won’t feel very fulfilled, your career is likely going to suffer, and your relationships can take a hit. Not nurturing relationships in your life? Anticipate problems in the other areas. It’s a delicate, deliberate balancing act. 

In fact, every client we work with evaluates their life through the Four Core Components of Success. It’s through this analysis that they can identify the big picture or themes that are the root of the problem. And when we address big picture themes, we create success in multiple areas – not just the one that first brought them in.

But what is it about these four areas that makes them so powerful? They each play a key role in your well-being. When they are out of balance, they can leave you feeling unhappy or overstressed. Regardless of your definition of success, these four components are integral to accomplishing it.

Health: Successful individuals dedicate time to their health. This encompasses both your physical and mental health. They exercise in a way that they enjoy. They eat nutritious foods that fuel their bodies. They practice mindfulness and stress reduction techniques like meditation. They make time to play and have fun.

Personal Fulfillment: Successful individuals focus on their inner self. They can clearly articulate their purpose in life is and what they value – and they intentionally live their lives according to those. They spend time on self-improvement and development (both personally and professionally). They nurture their soul. They read books or take classes. They spend time in nature.

Business/Career: Successful people engage in meaningful work. Depending on your stage of life, this can mean going to work every day, writing the novel you’ve been dreaming about, or volunteering for an organization that is important to you. For some this may mean climbing the corporate ladder and landing that c-suite job of their dreams. For others, it means finding a job you enjoy that can support a flexible schedule which allows you to pursue other dreams. The key is that successful people find value and meaning in their work – it’s not simply a job or a paycheck. 

Relationships: Successful people nurture the relationships in their lives – family, friends, co-workers. They regularly spend quality time with these important people in their life and they foster deep connections. They nurture friendships and have a deep sense of community. They have love in their life and companionship.  

Take a moment to reflect on your own life now. What do the Four Core Components of Success look like for you? Could you stand to make some changes? If you would like to learn about how having a coach could benefit you on your path to success, be sure to reach out to us here. We’re ready to help you put your Four Core Components of Success in balance.

Leading Growth with an Assessment

Agency leaders are often tasked with working to develop staff throughout the organization. Often times leaders tend to focus on two types of staff – the shining stars that we see headed for success within the organization or the struggling supernova who need to drastically improve or move on to another company. As a result of the time and attention placed on this task, leaders are often quite skilled at identifying the strengths and areas for improvement in our own staff. However, when we have achieved leadership status within an organization a fatal flaw often presents itself. Leaders tend to believe that they don’t need to improve any more. They view themselves as having arrived or achieved what they set out to do. What’s the point of more personal and professional development when you’re at the top? 

The truth is that we can all continue to improve and develop. The better our leaders become, the better the staff can become, and the better the agency can be. When we partner with clients, we often hear leaders say, “I’ve worked on so much over the years, I’m not sure what to work on now.” Our response is always simple – “You need to take an assessment.” It’s impossible to make a good plan without data to drive it. Taking an assessment will give you the data you need to draft an improvement plan.

Leaders have often taken a great number of assessments over the years and are apprehensive to return to that route. They feel as though they’ve already gained all the information they can from that process, but assessments remain a valuable tool. Assessments are great at giving us information about a person at a particular point in time. Yes, you may have taken an assessment as part of an employee development protocol several years ago – but you’ve likely changed a lot over the years. You’ve probably completed a great deal of development work. Perhaps you’re not even in the same position anymore. You may have a completely different work environment. All of these (and there are many more!) are reasons why you should go back to step one and complete an assessment.

There are many different assessments on the market that you can consider to inform your developmental path. Each serve different purposes and provide different types of information – and some are definitely better than others. There are four assessments that we recommend to our clients who are looking to start this process: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Everything DiSC, the Emotional Quotient Inventory 2.0 (EQ-i 2.0), and the CliftonStrengths. These assessments provide a diverse array of information – which is why we suggest that our clients take any and all of these assessments. The more data you have the better – so invest in as many of these as you can in order to develop your growth plan. If you have taken one of these in the past, but it’s been more than 2 years since you’ve completed it, it’s worth investing in another assessment. If nothing else, it can confirm your earlier results and provide you with more confidence in the outcomes.

 ·      Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) – The MBTI is perhaps the world’s most well-known personality assessment. The tool can be completed online or in-person and provides a typing which places you into one of 16 different personality types. The results of the tool provide insights into the way that you interact with others, increased self-awareness of each personality type’s strengths and challenges, and ideas for adapting your behavior in response to other personalities in the room that can assist you with achieving greater success. 

·      Everything DiSC – The Everything DiSC is another personality assessment designed to help individuals better understand themselves and better learn to adapt their behaviors with others. This online questionnaire classifies individuals into four quadrants: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. The information is then utilized to explore strengths and areas of growth. 

·      Emotional Quotient Inventory 2.0 (EQ-i 2.0) – The EQ-i 2.0 is the world’s leading assessment tool for evaluating emotional and social intelligence. The assessment contains 133 items which converge to provide insight into 15 competencies and 5 composite areas. The EQ-i 2.0 provides you with a picture of how you operate emotionally – something that research now demonstrates is a greater predictor of success than traditional intelligence.  

·      CliftonStrengths – CliftonStrengths (formally the Clifton StrengthsFinder) is an online talent assessment. This assessment evaluates your natural patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving and categorizes them into 34 CliftonStrengths themes. The results are utilized to identify what you naturally do best, how to develop and leverage your greatest talents into strengths, and how to maximize your potential. 

Don’t stop at just completing the assessments. Once you are armed with this data, it’s time to put this information to work for you. You can incorporate these findings in a detailed personal or professional development plan for yourself. Partnering with a coach through this process can assist you in your growth development journey. A coach can assist you in interpreting your results, shed light on blind spots that you may not be conscious to you, guide you in setting goals related to your development, and act as an accountability partner as you take the action steps towards your goal. 

Personal Branding

Personal branding has become a topic that many individuals in business have come to dread. It’s one additional topic to put someone on the spot and require them to have a flawless answer. It’s the 21stCentury’s “elevator pitch”. But personal branding is nothing to be feared, and spending some time developing and finessing your personal brand can pay dividends in the long run.

For those new to the concept of personal branding, it can be helpful to begin by thinking about corporate brands. What do you think of when you hear Starbucks? What about Nationwide? Target? You might think of colors, of jingles, or of experiences you have had there. Maybe you have an emotional reaction. Whatever it is that comes to mind – your view of the company – is the brand of the company. It’s what you think and feel when that company comes to mind. Company’s work hard to build their brands and to maintain their brand – they want you to feel a certain way and think certain things when their name comes to mind.

Personal branding is no different. Jeff Bezos gave a great definition of personal branding that really put it into perspective. He said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.” The reality is that we all have a brand. Everyone that you interact with has an opinion about you. You may as well take the opportunity to control that brand so that it works for (rather than against) you. 

There are many misconceptions about controlling your brand. It’s not about being narcissistic. It is not all about being on social media. And it’s not something that’s just for millennials or Gen Z. Personal branding can be the key to your career success.

Take a moment to think about your coworkers or a boss you’ve had in your career. What adjectives you would use to describe them? Smart? Lazy? Ambitious? Competent? Imagine you were in the position of selecting a new boss for your office out of your co-workers. Who would you pick and why? Typically, we select people because of their brand (how we feel about them) rather than their paper credentials. When you identified the co-worker that you would select as the new boss, you likely weren’t thinking, “Well, Bill has the highest education level among us, so he’s the perfect fit.” You likely thought something more along the lines of, “Ruby is really fair. She’s a hard worker and gets along with everyone here in the office. We can count on her to be reliable and not play favorites. She’s the best option.” And this is why your personal brand is so important. These are the views that shape your promotions, your opportunities, and your experience in your career. How you are viewed matters.

Now that you’ve agreed that personal branding is important, let’s talk about how to develop your own personal brand. Our five-step process to creating your personal brand will set you on the path to the career that you want. 

1. Define:The first step to crafting your personal brand is to define what it is you want your brand to be. What do you want others to say about you when you are not in the room? Be specific. Start with a list. You likely have manythings that you would like people to say, but it’s unlikely that all of that will come to mind. Narrow the list down to the key items. What are the 4-5 things you’d like to be the priorities? I.0f you are struggling to meet your core list, you can always try assessment tools like the MBTI or the EQ-i 2 to get the ball rolling on seeing what traits you possess. 

2. Gap Analysis:You know what you’d like people to say, but are you really demonstrating these traits? You’d like to be viewed as hard working, but are you really a hard worker all the time? Maybe you’d like to be seen as a great public speaker, but how often do you actually find yourself engaging in public speaking opportunities? Evaluate the key items you’ve listed and determine how you currently measure up. Then think about whether or not people would actually say these items about you. You may find it helpful to ask a friend or trusted colleague to list five things they think of when they think of you. See how closely their list matches with yours.

3.  Vision:Now you have a good sense of where you currently are and where you’d like your brand to go in the future. It’s time to craft a vision. How will you create this personal brand? If you want to be seen as outgoing, what opportunities do you have to demonstrate that to others? You’d like to be seen as an expert, how do you put yourself in that position? People will only describe you in ways that they see you acting. So if you want to be viewed as hard working, people need to seeyou working hard! If you’d like to be viewed as a leader, you’d better be leading where people can see it! This isn’t about being a bragger or boasting about yourself. It’s about ensuring that the traits you want identified can actually be seen. If you are only funny when relaxing with your close friends, no one else but your close friends will know that you are funny! If you don’t speak up in meetings, no one but you knows that you have great ideas! Develop your plan so that you know how you will show others the great traits you have to demonstrate.

4.  Create:It is time to put your plan in action. View your work and personal life through the lens of your brand. Is your plan making a difference? Are people beginning to describe you in the ways that you could like them to? Maybe you need to adjust your plan. Or maybe the plan you created is working perfectly. The key is to make sure you are monitoring the results and adjusting as needed. This is where you may find that your social media presence, your daily work tasks, and your interactions with others begin to pay dividends. Figure out what works in your situation, and go with it!

5.  Evolve:Our brands change over time. This depends on the stage of life that you are in as well as the stage of career you are in. The brand you needed to develop as a 22-year old trying to get your first job out of college is different from the brand you need as a 55-year old hoping to become the boss of the company. You need to be seen in different lights for different jobs, different roles, and at different stages in your career. Trying to define yourself as an expert when you are a rookie in the field is not likely to work well for you. But that may be more attainable for you after you’ve worked in the field for a decade or two. You’ll want to check in with your brand every 3-5 years and decide if it’s time for your brand to evolve to a new stage or if you’re still on track with your current brand. Don’t be afraid to take the next step. That’s how you move up!

A career coach often helps clients to figure out what they’d like their brand to be to best serve their career goals. Together a coach can work with you to formulate a plan to put that brand in place, and ensure that the strategies you develop work for you. Partner with a career coach at Bauman Consulting Group and begin your personal branding journey today!

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Ashley Bauman, M.S., M.B.A., B.C.C. is the president of Bauman Consulting Group in Loveland, Ohio. She provides training, consulting, and coaching to criminal justice and social service professionals.