Author: Yessy Rayner

Mind Reading

Assuming we know what the other person will say next, instead of listening fully. Even if we think we understand their experience or anticipate what they might share, it’s essential to stay fully present and give them our undivided attention. Every person’s story is unique, and by listening openly, we show respect, empathy, and genuine care.

Rehearsing

Preparing our response while the other person is still speaking, which takes focus away from them. Simply allowing the other person to speak and being comfortable with the possibility of not immediately knowing how to respond shows genuine engagement. It is such a special gift to give someone our full attention, and to offer our time without distraction. Focusing entirely on the other person can be transformative, creating a deeper connection and making them feel valued, heard, and understood.

Advising

Jumping in with solutions instead of simply offering support and understanding. Jumping in with solutions instead of simply offering support and understanding can unintentionally dismiss the other person’s feelings. Even if you have a lived experience that is similar to the one you are hearing, trust that the person you are listening to primarily wants to be heard, not advised.  This is their experience – focus on them, listen without judgment, and validate their emotions. Often, people need understanding more than solutions, and just knowing someone is there for them can make all the difference.

By recognising these blocks and working to overcome them, we can improve our listening skills and engage in more meaningful conversations—not just on R U OK? Day, but every day.

As a leader, are you on autopilot, distracted throughout the day and going through the same old routine? What if you were to slow down, increasing your productivity and making stronger relationships? If this appeals to you then perhaps it’s time to engage in mindful leadership.

The concept of mindful leadership includes meeting the needs of yourself, your team and your organisation with presence, emotional flexibility, curiosity and an open mindset. This style of leadership has improved focus, quality relationships, creative thinking and innovation at its core. Slowing down may feel counterproductive, however it can allow you time to see what’s actually happening and allow your leadership intentions to thrive.

Stepping towards mindful leadership

Listen, with the intent to understand.
Often leaders are focused towards the loudest voice, not on the most important. Offering full attention is the key to effective listening and communication. This can be tricky as leaders multitask and juggle conflicting priorities. Listen deeply with the intent to understand. Practice empathy and compassion so that understanding is increased and there is a sense that we are all in this together.

Practice Self Care.
Building a healthy routine that incorporates self-care and mindfulness will allow leaders to work effectively and build skills to execute mindful leadership. Practice mindfulness more informally throughout the day. The in-between moments allow leaders to stay grounded in a busy day and maintain presence. Leaders are encouraged to take their eyes off screens, even for a minute and simply notice, yourself and what’s around you, this is the starting point for mindful awareness.

Approach problems with an open mind.
Leaders that follow a to-do list may be productive however being stuck in the list does not allow room for creativity and innovation. Being flexible and accepting of new information allows ideas to flow. Mindful leaders are open to feedback so that new information can be considered.

Understand your unconscious biases and judgements.
Leaders should start every task with a moment of presence as this will build focused engagement and clarity. Clarity helps leaders to see what is actually there, not what we hoped or expected. Suspending biases and judgements can lead to creative thinking and problem solving as new information is considered.

Mindfulness is a movement gaining momentum, and leaders need to embrace it to be successful in their roles. Mindful leadership involves cultivating focus, reducing stress and anxiety, and building the essential capacity of resilience in yourself, others and the organisation.

How can we help?

If you want to transform your leadership styles and practise mindful leadership, below are some courses that can help you engage in mindful leadership today:

• Leading Me, Leading Others
• Avoid Burnout @Work
• Mindfulness @Work
• Resilience @Work
• Leadership Essentials

Blog written by Jo Riley | ATI-Mirage’s Lead Consultant PD & Wellness

Don’t get stuck in the perception that communication is all about what you say. It rarely occurs to people that listening is the most important part of communication. In order to listen deeply to others we must have increased self-awareness that allows for a level of listening that is free from our own assumptions and judgments. It is our own assumptions and judgments that can lead to poor communication outcomes.

What is self-awareness?

By definition, self-awareness is the psychological state of knowing oneself. It is a form of self-reflection that allows us to understand our own relationship between thoughts, feelings, intentions, beliefs, values, assumptions, biases, fears and expectations and how that relates to our reactions and behaviours when responding to others. It forms an understanding of our internal filters and how they affect the way we see and hear others.

It can be common that when we hear something that contradicts our values or interests, we tend to react by becoming defensive which immediately reduces our ability to listen effectively and make choices when we respond. Self-awareness is a skill that can be developed to enhance understanding of your emotional triggers and judgements.

Why does self-awareness lead to better communication?

Self-awareness allows for listening that is free of the assumptions and judgments that compromise healthy communication. Understanding our own filters that color our communication style can allow us the space to decide how to respond to others, with the intention of communicating clearly and with purpose.

Being aware of your communication traits, behaviours and feelings can allow you to catch yourself when you move into a defensive mindset, or become upset with someone. It gives you an understanding of why you feel like you do and allows you to thoughtfully respond rather than react to the situation.

When we react it is based on emotion and defensiveness and our ability to listen is compromised. When we respond our communication can be crafted to become a powerful tool that can facilitate problem solving and emotional connection.

How do I increase my self-awareness?

Create space and time for yourself to self analyse. Use tools such as Extended DISC®* profiling to discover more about your behavioural traits. Process your thoughts through journalling. This allows you time to be reflective and to refer back to previous situations and make comparisons. Asking for feedback from varied sources can also help your self-understanding and identifying areas to further develop. Self-awareness is a skill which requires dedication and practice to improve.

Knowing how self-awareness can affect communication can improve every relationship in your life. It’s incumbent on each of us to listen – deeply listen- to what accumulates and stirs within ourselves to ensure we communicate constructively and in a way that is not influenced by our assumptions and beliefs but is considerate of what the other person is trying to say.

How can we help?

If you want to transform your communication skills, understand your communication styles and increase your self-awareness,  join our Communication Skills workshop today.

*Extended DISC® is an assessment tool designed to help individuals, teams and organisations to become more successful by providing accurate respondent information and individual suggestions for appropriate style adaptions in a range of workplace environments and circumstances. The reports provide user friendly information that changes the way individuals communicate, interact and work together.

Blog written by Jo Riley | ATI-Mirage’s Lead Consultant PD & Wellness

While delivering a Microsoft Teams course recently, I was asked about my favourite features. I thought this blog would be a great way to share some of the features of this increasingly popular software, so here goes.

My favourite Teams features are:

• PowerPoint Live
• Whiteboard Templates
• The Ranking Poll
• Viva Insights

“What are these?” I can hear some of you ask. Read on . . .

PowerPoint Live

This feature allows you to present your slides directly from Microsoft Teams; you don’t have to start PowerPoint, run a Slide Show, and then share your screen. The main advantage is that it is all contained within your Teams Meeting window, where you can see:

• your audience (with cameras on),
• the chat window,
• the slide that you are currently presenting
• your speaker’s notes for that slide
• thumbnails of subsequent slides

You don’t have to keep moving your head from one screen to another; you can look straight at your audience, seeing exactly what they are seeing and your memory joggers on your speaker’s notes. You then have the choice of which slides to show next, allowing you to be more flexible with your presentation, and skip certain slides if you are running behind.

Many a time, I have run virtual workshops straight from my laptop, without a second screen; PowerPoint Live makes it a seamless and easy task.

Apart from being great for the presenter, PowerPoint Live also enhances the experience of the attendees with features such as slide translation and subtitles translation. There is currently a good selection of languages available for a one-click translation. So, you could be presenting your slides written in English, and have someone in France seeing your slides in French, and someone in Spain, seeing them in Spanish. Other languages currently supported include Chinese, Italian, German, Indonesian, Japanese and many more, with even more under development.

Whiteboard Templates

A virtual whiteboard is a feature available in several online meeting tools, whereby the presenter can display a whiteboard and write on it. If presenting through a tablet with a stylus, the writing and viewing experience can be as good as the physical whiteboard. Presenters can also allow virtual attendees to write on the whiteboard, thus fostering collaboration and teamwork for problem-solving, brainstorming, ideation, etc.

Microsoft Teams takes this feature to the next level with a wide variety of whiteboard templates that allows for more focused and directed collaboration. Anyone who has tried to use the normal virtual whiteboard with more than 2 other people at the same time can attest to the chaos that results on the screen, and the need for better coordination and defined areas for input by each person. This is where a template is very useful; it guides participants as to exactly where and what details are required.

Over 50 templates are currently available, and they are categorised into: Brainstorming, Problem-Solving, Strategy, Project Planning, Design & Research, Workshops and so on. Here you will discover old favourites such as SWOT, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Pros & Cons, SMART etc.

Some of the templates that I use for collaboration, problem-solving, debrief or team-building include Cause & Effect Diagrams, Stop-Start-Continue, Two Truths & a Lie, Empathy Maps and the Sailboat. And I have created my own Six-Hats template.

Ranking Poll

Polling is another feature available in several online meeting tools. This one allows the presenter to quickly ask questions to the audience and easily capture, collate and present the results of these questions.

Most of the tools offer only a multiple-choice poll type. Microsoft Teams offers other types such as Word Cloud, Rating and Ranking. The latter was only released in Aug 2022 and is my favourite as it allows participants to rank a list of items in order of their preference. This is much more useful in certain settings where a single or multiple-choice is too restrictive. Examples where I have used Ranking Polls include: a list of Values statements, a list of Reward options, favourite dishes or drinks, a list of Emotional Triggers, and a list of Procrastination Behaviours.

Viva Insights

This little add-on is a great tool to help anyone create balance in their life. It provides a wide variety of tools such as creating focus times, mindfulness activities, scheduling downtimes, reminders for sending Praise Badges (another little gem in  Teams), etc. Plus, it can send you daily emails summarising tasks coming up, emails to follow up, etc. You can think of Viva Insight as your own Personal Assistant, helping you stay on top of your work, whilst looking after your well-being.

It can also help you with your meeting habits, by providing insightful stats about your past meeting behaviours such as how many meetings you organised, how many you were invited to, how long they lasted, how many were virtual, etc. As most of you probably experience, meetings can be such a drain on your energy and your time, and any data to help improve your habits and behaviour in this area is very insightful.

And the Inspiration Library of Viva Insights is chock-full of Harvard Business Review and other articles on Well-being, Culture, Resilience and Impact. I highly recommend the following: Rediscover Joy at Work, 5 Practices to make your Virtual Workplace Inclusive, How to say No after saying Yes, and 4 Ways to spark Creativity when feeling Stressed.

Do try some of these Microsoft Teams features and drop us a note about how much you enjoyed them and the difference they are making in your work life.

Interested in knowing more about Microsoft Teams?

If you want to learn more about this popular collaboration tool, join our Microsoft Teams workshops – click here for more details.

Blog written by Dr Rambo Ramdianee | ATI-Mirage’s Senior Consultant – IT & PD

Managing your energy is just as important as managing your time. Managing time leads to greater productivity and managing energy will give you more happiness, focus and attention. While time management is an ongoing task for most people it’s easy to get swept up in the chaos of the year and lose sight of your energy levels.

“You charge your phone every day, why don’t you do that to yourself?”

The upcoming holiday break gives you a great opportunity to reassess your personal energy levels and create an energy plan for 2023.

Personal energy can be identified by four dimensions:

• Physical energy – the way we take care of our physical bodies
• Spiritual energy – related to our purpose and mental wellbeing
• Emotional energy – how we feel
• Mental energy – our drive to grow and develop

Let’s take a look at some ideas for recharging.

Sleep

Take the time to get more sleep and create a plan to maintain a consistent sleep pattern in the new year. The benefits of an established sleep routine can improve your attention span, improve your memory, and lower your stress levels. Science has shown that sleep restores your mind and helps you to restore your energy.

Listen to Music

Listening to music benefits us individually and collectively. Music helps to stimulate your brain which has been linked to better learning capabilities. When grooving to your favourite tunes your brain increases its production of the neurochemicals dopamine and oxytocin, which make us happy, motivated and alert.

Move

While sleep is important so too is movement. Exercising at any level boosts the oxygen circulation inside your body which supports your internal energy production. Think about the types of movement or exercise that you find fun, fulfilling whether that’s individually or socially.

Declutter and organise your surroundings

Start with a small section of your life and set aside time to declutter and organize it. This will energise you in the short term and help to maintain a sense of calm and control in the long term. You will have better focus in this area and benefit from higher energy. Make a plan to work on different areas over your break and into 2023.

Unplug and do something else

That’s right, take a break from tech. Turn away from the screens, pick up a pen and start journaling, do some mindful colouring in, get out to your garden, enjoy your kitchen to bake bread, relax in a warm bath, play an instrument or tinker in your shed with something mechanical. Whatever the option for you, make it mindful enough to recharge your energy and find a way to build it into your regular routine.

Learn something new

Challenging your brain by learning something new strengthens your neural connections, keeps your mind active, sparks enthusiasm and increases your self-satisfaction.

Everyone will have different ways of recharging and maintaining their energy levels. The key is to uncover what works for you and then set goals around making the changes required. Seek support from people around you if required and start of 2023 with the energy for success.

Learn something new with ATI-Mirage, our 2023 training calendar is out now. Click here to view our e-calendar.

Blog written by Jo Riley | ATI-Mirage’s Lead Consultant PD & Wellness

In wrapping up the National Mental Health Month in October and with World Kindness Day coming up soon (13 November), we would like to share the importance of kindness at work.

Workplace kindness is when you offer a positive attitude and goodwill towards those you work with, which can include customers, team members, co-workers, or managers. Employees that share and receive kindness in the workplace usually experience greater job satisfaction and increased engagement.

Kindness is contagious and the benefits include:

• Kindness makes us happier by raising the levels of dopamine and serotonin in our brain (‘helper’s high’)
• It helps our hearts as emotional warmth produces oxytocin which is cardio protective hormone
• The increased oxytocin from kindness also modulates fear and anxiety, improving moods and increasing empathy
• It has a positive effect on the vagus nerve which has been shown to reduce inflammation
• Kindness helps us feel connected and improves our relationships
• The positive effects of kindness are experienced in the brain of everyone who has witnessed the act

Kindness is a mindset rather than just a set of actions, but actions are how kindness is best practised!

Let’s look at five ways kindness can easily be incorporated into your week:

Express your Appreciation

Tell someone what you appreciate about them or thank them for their work of actions.

Heartfelt appreciation helps boost the receiver’s spirit, passion, and purpose. It helps them build self-confidence and self-esteem. The simple act of thanking someone shows recognition, which can help others feel valued for their efforts.

Listen

Listen with the intention to understand, not the intention to respond. Listen without judging and without interruption or distraction. Listening is a commitment to value the thoughts, emotions, and experience of another person over your own thoughts. Listening validates the speaker and reminds them that they matter.

Collaborate with co-workers

Collaboration means you’re cooperating with others and working toward a shared goal or achievement. With collaboration, you’re better able to celebrate other people and the work they contribute to the team. Collaboration promotes teamwork and a feeling of engagement and wellbeing.

Respect

A popular concept that isn’t always easy to follow through is to treat everyone you encounter as important. Learn their names, ask after their family or understand their interests. Say hello to them when you see them.

By treating everyone with the same respect, you’ll help them feel good about themselves and it can impact on the way they treat you too.

Smile

That’s right. The simplest act of kindness is to genuinely smile at someone. Being greeted by a smiling face will often improve the mood of a person. It can show your openness to getting to know others and work alongside them each day.

These are all easy to incorporate into your week, and for most, into your day. By acting with kindness, you’ll notice the beneficial side effects of happiness, improved empathy, improved moods, and an improvement of anxiety levels.

Kindness, compassion, and a genuine interest in others are elements of enlightened leadership. The act of giving kindness often is simple, free, positive, and healthy for everyone involved.

Need further help?
ATI-Mirage can help you create and harness a positive team culture at work, with a unique workshop that is fun, insightful and ready to action.  To learn more https://www.ati-mirage.com.au/creating-a-great-workplace-culture/

Blog presented by Jo Riley | ATI-Mirage’s Lead Consultant PD & Wellness

Workplaces have been transformed in the last few years and while we are seeking to ‘return to normal’, the way we work in the new normal is very different from the times gone by. The latest research by McCrindle confirms hybrid working is here to stay with 62% of todays workers saying it is the ideal way of working.

Top 5 tips for leading in a hybrid workplace

1. Invest in team building activities
Team connections and communications are key to a thriving workplace and can be harder to foster when people are working in different locations consistently. Providing team building opportunities both in person and online will help to develop connections and keep team members engaged.

2. Be clear about expectations for you and your organisation
Surveys have shown that ‘Hybrid Working’ can mean different things to different workers in particular different generations of workers. Most people view it as working some of the time in the office and some of the time at home or offsite (59%) vs the ability to choose to work remotely or in person (41%) vs flexible working hours throughout the day (33%). This highlights the need for your organisation to be clear about the hybrid expectations for the individuals and the organisation as a whole.

3. Set up your people for success both physically and mentally
Be clear on outcomes and timeframes when leading a hybrid work team. Check in regularly to provide support however ensure that this is not to micromanage. Provide clear job roles with realistic expectations and frequently recognise success.

4. Pick the tools that work best for communication and collaboration
Know the technology available to you and your team and how to use it for success. Have a mix of informal and formal channels of communication. The informal channels seek to replace the ‘water cooler’ conversations that may be lost when working in hybrid arrangements.

5. Invest in Professional Development
A focus on training, development and coaching will lead to greater employee retention and satisfaction at work.  The survey by McCridle outlines that employees are 2.9 times more likely to be highly engaged when organisations adequately fund their employees professional development.

Great leadership is the key to navigating the new hybrid transformation.  A planned approach to your professional development and IT training will assist you and your teams to thrive in a hybrid workplace, it is never a case of train once and forget. For more assistance call +61 (08) 9218 9059 or email hello@ati-mirage.com.au  We have been training Perth and WA organisations for over 30 years and we are here to help you.

Blog written by Jo Riley | ATI-Mirage’s Lead Consultant PD & Wellness.

I was recently asked by a course participant what program could be used to help them automate the creation of their monthly report.

Their current process was to copy data from a web based source, paste it into Excel.  Then use a variety of functions, such as LEFT(), MID(), RIGHT(), TEXTJOIN() and VLOOKUP() to manipulate various columns.  The resulting information was then fed into a Pivot Table, then into a Pivot Chart and then used in another report. And then the next month they had to do this all again.

They were surprised when I said that this could all be done within Excel using Power Query, without having to use another program, and that with Power Query it’s ’do once – use multiple times’.

Power Query is in my opinion one of the most unknown and under-utilised features in Microsoft Excel. Power Query can save hours of time with reports, dashboards, pivot tables and charts being updated with data refresh.

Power Query also works with Power BI, Power Apps, Dynamics 365 and more. Check out our free webinar on the 24^th August at 11am-12pm. Save your spot and register today.

What is Power Query?

Power Query is known as an ETL tool. A tool that Extracts data from multiple sources allows you to Transform that data and then choose where to Load it to – a worksheet, the Excel data model or directly into a PivotTable.

These transformation steps can then be saved and used for future imports. They can even be edited if the source data or output requirements change.

Power Query features include:

• Changing text case
• Changing data type
• Rounding
• Splitting or combining columns
• Creating calculated columns and more…

Power Query can even extract the Month name from a date column, delete columns, remove rows, or replace one piece of text with another. The Merge Query feature can be used to eliminate the need for VLOOKUPs in your workbooks. It will even allow for ‘fuzzy’ matching.

In fact, over 350 data transformation options are available with Power Query. Here’s a look at the main features:

How did we use Power Query?

The process that we used to set up their monthly reporting was:

1. Use Data | Get & Transform within Excel to connect to the web address for the source data
2. Use the transformation tools within Power Query to perform the splitting and combining of data, as well as merging with the table they used to do the VLOOKUP() against.
3. Then the data was loaded into an Excel table
4. From this a Pivot Table and Pivot Chart was created
5. Then the final report/dashboard was updated.

So each month, all they had to do was choose Data | Refresh All from the ribbon in Excel and the new data was processed and incorporated in the Pivot Chart.  The charts and summary then automatically updated into the final report/dashboard.

What if the data is not web based?

Power Query can be used for a wide variety of data sources – databases, text files, csv, Azure and the Dataverse being some of them. You can even connect to a local folder, where a new data dump can be added on a regular basis and incorporated directly into a dashboard.

Interested in knowing more about Power Query?

If you want to gain an insight into the Power tool, we have a free webinar on the 24^th August at 11am till 12 noon. Save your spot and click here to register today.

Check out our  Microsoft Excel – Analysing Data using Power Query course at ATI-Mirage and the whole suite of Automation training starting with Excel and Power BI to maximise your technology investment.  Call +61 08 9218 9059 to book more training today with ATI-Mirage.

Blog written by Julie Dall, ATI-Mirage’s Senior Consultant IT.