Personally? I like to get up, get moving, and get things accomplished fairly early in the morning. If you ever have a mid-morning meeting with me, there’s a decent chance I’ve already gone rollerblading, answered some calls and emails, recorded a video, perhaps done a little writing, and more. That’s just how I’m wired; I happen to be pretty productive in the morning. But I know that not everyone is wired the same way. A lot of business owners I’ve run into have the enviable skill of keeping productive late in the day and on into the evening.

Being a night owl like that has some advantages, but it can also make the 9-to-5 life a little bit difficult. You may not be at your best first thing in the morning, but you’re still expected to be up, showered and shaved and ready for the day just like everyone else.

The question is, what can the late-night bloomer do to stay competitive in 9-to-5 life? I’ve got just a few tips I can offer here:

Use your evening hours to prepare for the next day. Afraid you’ll show up for your crack-of-dawn conference call feeling a little scatterbrained? Spend some time getting your affairs in order the night before, when you’re really sharp. Make your next day’s to-do list, cheat sheets for your morning meetings and calls, etc.

Do your morning routine at night. Again, make use of those evening hours, when you really feel on. Lay out your clothes, pack your lunch, shower, shave—do that stuff the night before, and maybe buy yourself an extra half hour of sleep in the morning… or at the very least, make those rough mornings a little less hectic.

Spend your early hours on the more menial or mindless tasks. Do you have parts of your day that require considerably less brainpower than others? Make those the tasks you complete earliest in the morning, and save the more demanding stuff for when you’re firing on all cylinders.

Take a work-from-home-day whenever you can. Having more flexibility in your home office can make it a lot easier to cope with the 9-to-5 day. If you can work remotely, do!

None of these tips will transform you from a night person into a day person—and that’s okay. Maybe they will help you use those mornings more effectively, though.

If you want the people who work for you to do a better job, you’ve got to provide them with feedback. This is more than just rattling off a hasty opinion, giving them a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Providing feedback, whether to vendors or employees, is a real skill. And at times, it can be a real challenge—especially when your opinion is less than positive, and your mood is one of anger.

So how do you give good, meaningful, constructive feedback, even when you’re upset? I was thinking about this recently when I came across an article in Entrepreneur, which lists the four basic kinds of feedback. When used judiciously, each of these types of feedback can be advantageous, the article claims; working on your feedback skills means working on your understanding of these four basic feedback types.

I thought this advice was too good not to pass along, so here’s my summary of the four basic types of feedback.

1. Remaining silent. Sometimes the best thing to say is, well, nothing at all! If your blood is boiling and you don’t trust yourself to be diplomatic or truly constructive, it may be best to just keep quiet. Just make sure not to overuse this approach; silence works best when you can follow it up with some measured and thoughtful feedback later on.
2. Criticism. Criticism means offering comments about what the person is doing wrong—and sometimes, that’s necessary. My personal advice here is, first, to be intentional about pairing it with positive comments, too; you want to be precise in your feedback, not make the person feel like they just can’t get anything right. Also, make sure you offer criticism about actual performance; you obviously don’t want to get too personal or rude, so stick to concreate workplace examples.
3. Advice. This is when you combine the positive and the negative—something like this: “I really appreciate how you’re the last one in the office every night, and your hard work does not go unnoticed. However, if you could remember to turn the lights off when you leave, that would really be great.” This way, you’re not discouraging the person from staying late. You’re actually reinforcing it, but also curbing the leaving-the-lights-on behavior.
4. Reinforcement. Finally, reinforcement basically just means offering kudos for positive behavior that has no negative association. Never underestimate the impact that your words of acknowledgement and encouragement can have for employees!

Thinking in these categories—and matching each to the situation at hand—may be a good way to improve your feedback skills. Take some time to consider these four feedback types today!

When you’re running a business, each day brings new challenges and new opportunities. Some of these can be addressed fairly straightforwardly. Others may require some out-of-the-box thinking. That’s a problem for business owners who find that their creative juices are waning, or that they just can’t get into the right headspace for truly uninhibited problem solving.

And truthfully? We’ve all been there. There are days when I’m not exactly creatively energized, either—days where I feel stuck in a rut. The good news is that there are ways to get out of that rut and reignite that creative spark.

Let me share just a few of the methods that tend to work well for me.

Practical Tips to Renewed Creativity

Do something menial, physical, and active. Take your dog for a walk. Go out to your yard and pull some weeds. Spend an hour on the treadmill. Get your blood circulating and your mind free to wander, free to find its way to new angles and new points of view.

Get a change of scenery. Pack up your laptop and your work files and head to a coffee shop, a library, or even a park bench somewhere. You’d be amazed at how a physical change in perspective can lead to a creative one.

Play a game. Creativity and play are closely connected. Spend a few minutes playing chess with someone, picking up a game of mancala, or simply cuing up a game on your phone, tablet, or video game system. This isn’t wasted time; it may very well lead your brain to a new way of problem-solving.

Relax. Take a hot shower, go get a massage, or simply chill with a good book. Do something to ease tension and allow your mind to drift.

Journal. Go sit somewhere you can people-watch—an airport, a coffee shop, the park, the mall—and bring a legal pad with you. Write down some observations about the folks you see. This is an amazing way to refocus your brain.

Beating your head against the desk isn’t going to help you think creatively—but maybe stepping out of the office, and shifting your focus to something else, will.

It’s not uncommon to have an hour, a day, a week, or even a full month when you’re not feeling motivated. There are tasks on your plate, obligations you need to fulfill, but your heart isn’t in it, and it’s hard to summon the energy to really do your best, most creative work. This is an experience that’s often shorthanded as burnout, and while it’s something most of us deal with from time to time, it’s imperative that we learn how to manage it—how to work through it.

So how is it done? How can you bounce back from burnout and do your very best, most engaged work, even during those seasons where your motivation is lacking and your energy is dimmed?

My methods may not necessarily be your methods, and it’s smart to find the burnout cure that works best for you—but I’ve got a few quick practices that I certainly recommend you try.

How to Work Through Burnout

In no particular order:

Give yourself plenty of short breaks. A lot of people like the 50/10 rule—work for 50 minutes out of every hour, then chill for 10. You may find a balance that works better, but whatever it is, upping your break time may actually make you more productive in the long run.

Drink plenty of water. Don’t just depend on caffeine to boost your energy. Hydrate yourself. Keep healthy.

Get some sun. Don’t underestimate the rejuvenating power of sunlight and fresh air. That’s not touchy-feely stuff, either—sun and fresh air actually cause chemical changes that can improve your mood and energy levels. A quick walk in nice weather can work wonders.

Unplug for a while. Create some healthy boundaries in your life—giving yourself at least a couple of hours a day where your phone, tablet, and computer are out of sight and out of mind.

Breathe. Download a meditation app to help you with some deep breathing. Again, this isn’t an old wives’ tale; there is real science behind the role oxygen plays in nourishing and rejuvenating the mind.

Talk to someone. Sometimes venting your workplace frustrations and anxieties is all it takes.

Connect with coworkers. Invite a coworker to join you for coffee or for lunch, and spend some time just chatting. Learning more about the people you work with can make you much more excited about your own role on the team.

Create. Drawing, painting, songwriting, journaling, photography—whatever your outlet is, engage in it to help express the things you can’t put into words.

So those are my tips for working through burnout—but I want to hear yours, too! Leave me a comment to let me know!

At the beginning of the year—with the holiday season behind us and New Year’s resolutions to uphold—we all tend to be pretty gung-ho, pretty enthusiastic about getting a strong start. Starting strong is one thing, though; finishing strong is something else altogether. After the summer doldrums, many teams struggle to regain their focus for the year’s end—but there are things that you can do as a leader to get them pumped up for a great final quarter.

Let me show you some examples.

Motivating Your Team for the End of the Year

Set a goal. It’s so obvious that some leaders skip over it altogether—but if you want your team to come together in the back stretch of the year, give them a sense of common purpose—a goal to achieve before New Year’s Eve.

Determine priorities. You’re probably familiar with the oft-cited distinction between things that are urgent, things that are important, and things that are neither. As you look toward the last few months of the year, have a clear sense of what needs to be accomplished now and what can wait until after the holidays.

Get the team together. Hold an end-of-summer/start-of-fall huddle where you and your team members get together to discuss strategy and to plan for the next few months. Get your whole team involved in the brainstorming process, and lead with some specific steps and objectives for everyone to work toward.

Create seasonal teams or job responsibilities. As you consider the things that need to be done between now and the end of the year, assign special responsibilities to team members, and assemble groups to tackle projects together. Do what you can to give ownership and to foster collaboration.

End your year on a high note; use these tips to help orient your team in the right direction.

If you’re like most of the leaders that I’ve met, one of your least favorite parts of the job is diffusing workplace conflicts. That conflicts would arise is, of course, inevitable: when you get people working together in close proximity, tensions are going to develop, misunderstandings are going to happen, and feelings are going to get hurt. Dealing with these conflicts is never fun, but it is essential—and if you do it right, you can address conflicts in a way that actually make your team stronger.

Let me show you what I mean. What follows are a few things every leader should keep in mind with regard to the conflict resolution process.

Conflict is a sign that people care. Trust me: As much as you might think you want a conflict-free workplace, you don’t. Not really. A workplace with no conflict is one where the team members no longer feel any enthusiasm for one another, nor any connection to their job. Conflict implies caring, and that’s something you can build on.

Conflict can be healthy. You don’t want employees yelling at each other and calling one another names, but you should seek some healthy communication—and conflict can often be a catalyst for that. If you can get both people to speak directly and to listen closely to one another, an experience with conflict may actually lead to stronger bonds of teamwork.

Conflict can often require a level-headed moderator. If you’re going to try to manage the conflict, make sure you allow yourself time to cool off, first. Don’t let angry emotions guide your attempts at peacemaking, because you’ll find it highly counterproductive!

Conflicts usually aren’t personal. The triggering issue may seem personal, but really, most workplace conflicts are about deeper feelings. Try to determine what’s really guiding feelings of anger—team members who are not properly appreciated, whose work is not well defined, etc.

Conflict is best addressed through listening. Trying to stifle the feelings of your team members is dead wrong. Always give them room to vent, and to explain what’s really bothering them. Sometimes that can be healing in and of itself.

These principles may be useful to you as you consider the role of conflict in your workplace. I certainly hope so. In addition to the above, I highly recommend that all leaders enroll in conflict resolution training whenever they have the chance!

When you run a business or lead a team, you’ve always got a thousand things on your mind. There is always much to juggle—issues that need to be addressed, obstacles to overcome, goals to achieve, people to connect with, appointments to keep… the list goes on and on.

It’s enough to create some serious mental congestion in your head. See, all of those balls you’re keeping in the air can effectively cause a traffic jam in your mind. You may sit down to do your work but find that it’s hard to let a creative thought through; you’re too focused on all the day-to-day stuff that you’re supposed to keep track of.

Really engaging in good, creative, productive work requires you to clear that congestion and bring some clarity to your headspace—but how? I’ve got some tips for you that I think you’ll find to be pretty practical, and hopefully helpful!

Don’t check email first thing in the morning. In fact, don’t even check it within your first hour in the office. Make it the fifth, sixth, or seventh item on your to-do list. Allow yourself some time to get at least a few things done in a clear, uncluttered headspace before you allow email communications to intrude.

Disable all electronic alerts. Take some time to go through your phone and your laptop and ensure that you’re not getting little dings every time there’s a text, an email, or a Facebook message. Set aside appointed times throughout the day to check these things, but free yourself from the constant barrage of distractions.

Break larger goals into smaller ones. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by long-term ambitions—but what if you take big projects and break them down into smaller steps, perhaps just one or two reasonable goals for each day? This is a great tool for managing all that noise in your head.

Take breaks. I’m forever stressing the importance of taking regular breaks. It’s so vital to allow your mind a chance to just wander, rather than constantly focusing it on big tasks and projects. Take your dog for a walk. Go rollerblading. Do something to allow yourself a reprieve.

Use the end of each day to prepare for the start of the next one. Before you leave the office for the evening, get your to-do list ready and all applicable documents lined up for the next morning. Clean your office. Declutter! Give yourself every opportunity to hit the ground running.

Use these tips to get your head in the game—and to start really using your time at the office well.

A team that is healthy—physically as well as mentally—is going to perform better, bring more creativity to the table, take fewer sick days, and gel together as a unit much better than they would otherwise. Team leaders across the country know this, and have for years—yet many teams still lack a viable focus on workplace wellness.

Why is this?

Here’s my basic answer: Workplace wellness is not nearly as simple as it seems at first blush. You might think that you could simply tell your team members about all the benefits that physical fitness can bring, and that they would then jump at the opportunity to eat better and work out daily. This is not always or even often the case.

Actually developing a workplace health initiative requires a much deeper understanding of what motivates your team, and of how fitness can actually be integrated into your day to day rhythms and routines. With that said, I want to offer five quick things for leaders to remember about workplace wellness—all of which I think will provide you with a good foundation for developing your own initiative or program.

1. Your team is going to have to be motivated. They may understand, intellectually, the benefits of workplace wellness, but that won’t always connect to their actions. It can be helpful to bring in an outside expert to give a presentation about the real-world benefits of fitness. Providing pedometers or apps that can be used to quantify fitness results is another good idea, as is using competition to get your team members more engaged in the process.
2. Wellness isn’t just about diet and exercise. A focus on physical health is fine, but not if you’re neglecting the more internalized aspects of health. Remember that one of the key obstacles to your employees’ wellbeing is stress—and one of the best things you can do to promote their wellbeing is to provide ways to deal with stress.
3. Creating a healthier workplace culture is key. It’s not just about replacing the soda machine with bottled water. Working to create an environment where morale is high and turnover is minimal ultimately improves your team members’ wellbeing significantly.
4. You can’t dictate wellness from the top down. Get your team members involved in shaping the process, and allow individual managers to fill you in on what you can and should expect from subsets of your employee base.
5. As with anything you do for your business, it’s important to review and revise your wellness plan often. Make sure you incorporate feedback from your employees, too—not just raw data.

A well workforce is a worthy investment—and with these touchstones in mind, it’s something you can work toward, build on, and ultimately achieve.

Your company’s culture is the set of attitudes and values that binds your team and pushes you forward; there is nothing more important in defining who you are as a company, and what your company ultimately stands for. That’s why, when you merge your company with another, it’s so important to think about what that culture is and how it can be preserved, even as it blends with another.

Sadly, this is one component of mergers and acquisitions that often gets overlooked. I’ve seen it a million times. Executives, accountants, and attorneys are all burning the midnight oil, trying to pull together an agreeable deal before a deadline comes—and as they do so, they forget all about the less-tangible components of culture and team dynamics.

Thinking About Culture in the Face of a Merger

When you forget about culture, though, you run a major risk of disenfranchisement—among your team members and perhaps among your customers, too. Here are a few recommendations I’d make for avoiding that.

• Make communication a priority. Know what your culture is, and what values unite your team. Convey that culture to all new employees you bring into the fold. Also keep the lines of communication open with your people, and make it clear that you want to hear about any concerns they have during the transition. As in so many aspects of business, good communication will address most of your problems before they even become problems.
• Look for common ground. Merging two companies often means combining two totally different cultures, but if you spend some time thinking about it you will likely find some commonalities, some shared values. Make those major areas of emphasis in the early days of the merger.
• Look for cultural ambassadors, both in your company and in the one you’re merging with—people who believe in the company vision and are committed to the success of the newly merged business. Engage them early, soliciting their feedback and asking them to be leaders in engaging the rest of the team.
• Recognize that there are going to be some things that are changed, perhaps even some aspects of culture that are lost; communicate these things in advance, but also emphasize that not everything is going to change.
• Develop a really robust onboarding and orientation process, working with HR to assume that everyone new you bring into the fold knows roughly what your culture is.

Bringing two companies together can result in clashes of culture—but it can also result in opportunities for mutual growth. With these tips, I hope you can make your merger into something more like the latter!

High stress. Constant turnover. Low morale. Little team cohesion. These are just some of the signs of a toxic work culture, and it’s important, before we go any further, to ask yourself: Is that the kind of workplace you have? Really think about it for a moment, because often those who work in a toxic environment don’t quite realize it; they question their own reality, or simply blame themselves for their unhappiness. But if you and your teammates struggle with engagement, with high anxiety, and with the constant interruptions of office politics and team discord, that may mean that your culture is simply poisonous.

That’s the bad news, but there’s some good news too: Leaders shape culture, and as such they can be proactive in fixing a culture that’s broken. It won’t be easy and it won’t be overnight, but there are some things you can do to remove the toxicity in your work environment.

I’m going to recommend a few detoxifying strategies here:

Consider open allocation culture. Instead of assigning work to each employee, allow them to gravitate toward teams and projects that they feel passionate about—just so long as they are working on initiatives that benefit the company.

Fire people who bring the company culture down—but don’t fire them cold. A big part of reserving healthy company culture is getting rid of the people you identify as toxic. Just make sure you counsel and coach them beforehand. Don’t create a work environment where employees are constantly afraid they could get axed without warning.

Invest in the development of your people. Don’t offer them a job; offer them a career, and a professional journey. This means mentoring, coaching, and using your annual review system to learn more about what your employees really want—and how you can help them achieve it.

Don’t grow too quickly. Don’t hire a person just because you need a warm body in the room. Hire because you find people whose gifts and passions align with your culture.

Encourage teamwork. Rather than creating projects meant to be worked on in siloes, create projects that are designed to be tackled by several team members working in tandem.

Again, these strategies won’t stamp out your toxic culture immediately—but they will help you to build something truly healthy and positive.

A lot of people hate to say no. We feel pressure to avoid that word as best we can; we fear that it will disappoint people, or hurt their feelings. We worry that we’ll let someone down by declining their request. But let me tell you one of the secrets of successful leaders: They all know how to say no when they need to, because they all know how invaluable it is for protecting their most valuable commodity—their time.

See, saying no is really a way to control your life, and to organize your days in the most beneficial way possible. And though it doesn’t always feel good to say no in the moment, it can actually help keep you from disappointing people in the long run, because it helps you avoid making promises you’re unable to keep.

As you seek to master the power of no, let me offer a few words of advice:

• Say no immediately. It’s always better to give a definitive answer right away than make a promise you ultimately have to break—or worse, to say you’re going to do something and then find yourself rushing through it rather than doing it well.
• Avoid indecision. No is always a better answer than maybe. Indecision can be taxing for all parties involved, so don’t beat around the bush.
• Don’t lie about your reason for saying no. Dishonesty will only make you feel guilty—and besides, you don’t really owe anyone an explanation for how you spend your time. A firm but polite no is the only answer you need to give.
• Don’t be manipulated. There’s nothing wrong with giving an assertive answer; don’t allow yourself to be swayed by people who whine, beg, complain, or try to bargain with you.

The bottom line: Understand that a good, polite, but firm no is often the best answer you can give—not just in terms of protecting your own time, but also in terms of respecting the other person. Master the art of the no today!

It used to be that people who worked together were more or less always under the same roof, sharing office space for a good chunk of their days. Today, that’s less true. Thanks to advances in online communication and collaboration, it’s easier than ever for employers to hire remote workers, allowing them to get their tasks done from the comfort of their own home or apartment.

This can be mutually beneficial. Not only is working from home a great perk, and an effective way to attract top talents, but the right kind of employee can be far more productive and focused when working from home. Meanwhile, having a remote team can reduce overhead expenses. There is one downside, though, and it’s simply this: Having remote employees makes it much more difficult to build a coherent company culture.

This is truest of all when you have one team working together in the same space, but also a handful of employees who are working from home. Bringing them into the fold, and involving them in your company culture, is necessary to preserve your vision, your values, and the unity of your employee base.

Here are a few suggestions I’d make:

• Build face-time into your company’s routine. You may not see all your people every single day, but do make sure you see all of them at regular company get-togethers, holiday parties, and retreats. Consider conducting all your employee reviews face-to-face, as well.
• Remote team-building sessions can also bring people together, without asking them to leave their homes. Consider hosting a webinar “lunch and learn” event for your team members, allowing them to come together, albeit remotely, and apply their minds to a topic of shared interest.
• Have an understanding that some employees thrive in the remote environment, but others don’t—and you can usually tell pretty quickly when an employee needs the interaction of the workplace. If you have an employee who clearly feeds off the energy of others, encourage that team member not to work remotely, if at all possible.

Your team doesn’t have to share geography to be unified, and to feel together. These brief tips should help you accomplish just that.

All too often, we put creativity and business at odds with one another—as though creative people can’t have an interest in entrepreneurial things, or as though success in business does not require a high level of outside-the-box thinking.

Here’s the truth: A lot of the best business leaders I know are deeply creative people, and they have learned to harness their creative skills and use them to push their business interests forward.

And you can do the same. Let me show you just a few ways in which creative habits compliment entrepreneurialism nicely.

Pitching your ideas. One of the toughest parts of being a creative person is learning how to help other people see the vision in your head—how to pitch them on your idea for an article, or a novel, or what have you. Indeed, most writers will pitch a bunch of ideas to a publisher before ever getting a green light. That’s a great mindset for entrepreneurs to develop, especially if they’re raising capital: You’ve got to be willing to pitch your idea to a bunch of folks a bunch of times, and to hold your head up if the first pitch doesn’t go anywhere.

Brainstorming. There is so much value in giving your mind space to wander—to find its own way to the next great idea. Great painters are always pursuing flights of fancy in their sketchbooks, and writers play around with scenes or characters that never end up in the final novel. Don’t be afraid to just sit and let your mind explore things, even if you’re not sure that they will really pan out. It’s all part of the process!

Create something that’s needed. Whether you’re a painter, a poet, or a songwriter, your job is to provide the world with something it can use—a perspective that only you can offer. Similar, successful companies tend to deliver products that fill a real void, and that other businesses just aren’t providing. Having a unique vision is crucial.

Open your mind. It’s amazing how many novelists draw inspiration from songs, how many songwriters draw inspiration from paintings, how many painters draw inspiration from poems, and so on. You never know when you might draw a surprising and relevant lesson from a field that’s not your own—which means, for business owners, that there is merit to having passions and hobbies beyond the business. Read fiction. Go hiking. Take up yoga. Learn guitar. Cross-disciplinary lessons will come to you, and enrich your business experience!

Creativity is not foreign to business success. In fact, it can be a key ingredient.

Why is culture so important? Ask any given leader and the answer you’re going to receive—as likely as not—is that culture helps retain employees and create strong teams. That’s certainly true, and certainly important. But remember, culture isn’t just your set of internal values; it’s your external ones, too, the values you put on display for the world. As such, a strong culture can help your business retain customers as well as employees.

Of course, that’s assuming you have a culture that empowers your team members to help the customer, and to provide a rich and appealing customer experience. Easier said than done? Not necessarily. Let me offer a few quick, simple solutions.

Creating a Culture That Empowers the Customer

Establish the right metrics for evaluating employees. At first blush, the team member who brings in the most new customers may seem like your superstar—but of course, what really matters is keeping customers. The team member who doesn’t have any returning customers is obviously not providing a good customer experience—and that’s the kind of thing that should be integral to your employee review process.

Hire for the right reasons. Most skills can be taught, but values like respectfulness, timeliness, and active listening… those can’t be, necessarily, yet they are exactly the values that will help your employee to provide a good customer experience. Make sure that you’re on the lookout for these values during the interview process; having a panel of interviewers, instead of doing all interviews solo, can help you case a wider net for these values.

Educate your team members. Team members who understand all the ins and outs of your products, your services, your processes, and your value proposition will be able to communicate clearly and candidly with your customers, while also addressing any questions they may have. Don’t send employees into the field with minimal information; invest in ongoing education and enrichment.

Your culture matters—not just to you, but to your customers. Make sure you consider them as you develop your mission and values.

The month of December is known for its parties and its social gatherings, its charitable events and its many vacation days. One thing it isn’t known for is productivity. At many companies, it’s all you can do to keep the doors open and the lights on during these final weeks of the year.

But what if, while your competitors were all partying and blowing off steam, you actually made December one of your most productive months of the year? It’s possible, and it doesn’t require that you completely reject the holiday spirit, either. You can adopt a few simple strategies and habits to keep yourself—and your team—working well throughout the holidays.

Let me show you what I mean.

Stay Productive During the Holidays

Get an early start. Try coming to the office earlier to get plenty of work done before the day gets away from you. That way, if you get swept up in an afternoon or evening holiday party, you can feel good about having gotten something accomplished earlier in the day.

Spend some time in reflection. The holidays provide a good time for looking back. Ask yourself: What worked over the past year? What’s one thing I need to continue doing? And what’s one thing that really didn’t work? What’s one thing I need to change?

Set goals. Prepare yourself to hit the ground running in 2017. Make a long list of all the things you hope to achieve in the coming year, and also the metrics you’ll use to evaluate your progress.

Get appointments on your calendar. Family vacation days, doctor appointments, trips to the dentist… December is a great time to put all of this on your calendar for the coming year, allowing you to feel totally organized come January.

Purchase what you need. If there is any equipment or any supplies your team needs for the coming year, the Christmas season can be a good time to shop around for discounts and bargains.

Make a personal wellness plan. Even as you’re surrounded by Christmas cookies and other seasonal goodies, you can still spend some time thinking about ways to keep fit and energetic in the coming year.

With these tips, you can ensure that your holiday season is fun—but also productive.

To be successful, you have to do more than just transform your business; you have to transform your personal brand. That’s something I tell the executives who engage me for my Focused Fun coaching services. If you really want to crush it, in both your personal and professional life, then you’ve got to turn yourself into one of the real rock stars of your field.

The application of this is endless. For example, I have worked with a lot of attorneys whose goal has been getting more TV time, turning themselves into in-demand legal experts. The results? Better cases, better clients, greater favor from judges, more money, more prestige… the list goes on and on.

You may not be a lawyer, and you may not want to be on TV, per se, but you can still work on improving your personal brand. Let me show you a few ways to do so.

Get published. Ideally, you’ll publish a book—but as you work up to that point, blogs, LinkedIn posts, and even YouTube videos and podcasts can be effective ways of getting your name out there. The point is to show thought leadership. Put your expertise on display, and start showing people that, within your field, you’re the person who really knows your stuff.

Create stories about yourself. Social media provides you with the platform you need to turn your life into a narrative fit for public consumption. Make sure you make it about more than just you: Brand yourself in the context of your team, your hobbies, the causes you champion, whatever it is you’re passionate about. Turn your social media feeds into destinations for people who are eager to learn the next part of your story.

Deliver a report. Make yourself useful to other people in your industry; publish a statistical report or a case study with your name on it. Brand yourself as someone who not only knows what they are doing, but has standard-setting data to back it up.

Become a speaker. You need to attend the big conferences and networking events that the other people in your industry attend—but you also need to sign up to speak there. Nothing helps you build your brand like investing yourself in mass education. Start reaching out to conference planners sooner rather than later.

Get fit. This is important: When you’re healthy, you have more energy and are in a better mood. That shines through, and it magnetizes people. Make a personal fitness plan today, and stick with it through the new year.

What’s keeping you from becoming the rock star in your industry? All you need is a plan and some follow-through; start with these tips, and reach out to me about Focused Fun if you’d like an extra boost!

Never underestimate the difficulty that meeting planners face. Their job is to arrange seminars and conferences that are engaging, but also informative; entertaining, but also full of real-world value. What’s more, they need to find speakers who can command attention and provide utility across the board—not just to one person, but to a wide and diverse audience.

That’s easier said than done, and it’s no wonder that meeting planners put a lot of time and work into scouting out speakers. If you’re in that position, let me offer a few recommendations—important qualities to look for in a conference speaker. If you can find someone who checks all these boxes, you’ve got a pretty good shot at having a truly memorable event!

What Great Conference Speakers Have in Common

They expect to be paid. You probably know the old expression, you get what you pay for. Well, if you’re not going to pay anything for your speaker, you can assume it will be someone amateurish and self-serving. Only accept professionals—that is, people who will ask for a paycheck!

They’re social. Your conference speaker should be a thought leader, and in today’s world that means having a robust social media presence—not a gazillion followers per se (as that’s something that’s easy to fake), but a lot of good, timely, relevant content.

They’re tech-savvy. You’re not going to have a good conference event without a strong AV component. You’re just not. Make sure the speaker you choose has a full presentation and asks you questions about your Wi-Fi setup, etc.

They want to know all about the audience. Good presentations are tailored to meet the specific needs of the audience—so if your potential speaker doesn’t ask who he or she will be addressing, that’s a warning sign.

They can prove to you that they’re engaging presenters. References, public speaking certifications, and video from past presentations can all go a long way toward proving their mettle.

They have killer content. The message is always the most important thing, and if your speaker’s suggested topics and talks sound rote or stale, that’s reason enough for you to keep looking elsewhere.

Those are the stipulations I’d make—and of course I’m happy to talk with any event planner about my own qualifications for the job!

As a business leader, why do you care whether or not your team members feel stressed? Well, because employees who aren’t stressed are healthy, focused, and energetic; and, because happy employees create happy clients, which in turn helps your business thrive.

Of course, work is always going to have an element of stress to it, but there are steps you can take to make your team environment one in which stress is dealt with in a healthy and effective way.

Make sure the goals are clearly stated. One way to help your employees feel focused, rather than overwhelmed, is to get everyone on the same page about what your team is trying to accomplish. Don’t let there be any uncertainty or aimlessness with regard to what people need to accomplish. At the start of the year, sit down with everyone to outline three to five major strategic goals for the year, and periodically huddle together to discuss progress toward these goals.

Clearly define responsibilities. Team environments where everyone wears a lot of hats, and where people’s roles don’t have much definition to them, can sometimes lead to anxiety: People either don’t know exactly what they need to be doing, or they worry that others aren’t doing their part. Make sure that all of your team members understand their role and how it fits into those big, strategic goals.

Offer flexibility. Your team members have a lot of stuff to juggle—not just at work, but at home. That can be overwhelming, but a willingness to work with your team members and to allow them some flexibility to go pick up their kids from school, for instance, can help alleviate some of that burden.

Discourage multitasking. It’s only natural to feel stressed when you’re trying to do several things at the same time. To discourage multitasking, you may have to lead by example a bit, but you can also establish policies that discourage people from dividing their attention. For example, ask your team members to refrain from bringing their phones into meetings; let them simply focus on what’s being said.

A final thought: To create a low-stress work environment, you’re going to have to have healthy stress management principles in your own life.

I meet a lot of leaders who take the idea of New Year’s resolutions seriously—yet they sometimes struggle to know exactly which resolution they should be making. Let me offer you a practical suggestion: As we head into the new year, resolve to make better use of your company meeting. Be efficient. Be action-oriented. Be brief. Make sure that you’re not wasting your own time—or that of your team members—and that when your people show up for a meeting, they know something actionable and important is on the docket.

Make Your Meetings Better

Easier said than done? Not necessarily. Here are just a few ways to carry out this particular resolution.

Don’t invite people to your meeting until you know the agenda. This way, you can have a better sense of who needs to be invited, and how long you need to allot for the meeting to run its course.

Make sure your team is prepared. Don’t keep that meeting agenda to yourself; send a copy to everyone involved in the meeting so they can show up well-prepared, and knowing what to expect.

Commit to your agenda. Only discuss topics that are planned, and only spend the allocated time on each item; if you plan to discuss Item X for 10 minutes, do so—and if you need more time, push it forward for the next meeting and keep moving down your agenda.

Try to get everyone involved. Create an environment in which all opinions are welcomed; remember that you can listen and respect everyone’s point of view without having to take every single suggestion.

Be present. Active listening is crucial in any meeting. Look at people when they talk, and take notes as needed. Consider a policy in which no laptops or mobile phones are allowed in the meeting, to prevent distraction.

Your meetings can always be improved—so make that your first resolution for the coming year.

What’s the secret to a good New Year’s resolution? I think the trick is picking something that stretches you a little, but not too much. You don’t want to aim too low, because then what’s the point? You also don’t want to bite off more than you can chew, or else you’ll have forgotten all about your resolution by February.

Seek the middle ground, and seize this opportunity for reflection, adjustment, and course correction! Let me recommend a few resolutions leaders can pursue, any one of which could significantly boost your effectiveness in 2017!

New Year’s Suggestions for Leaders of All Stripes

Get healthy. Yes, this is a catch-all, but it’s important that you do something to improve your own physical fitness—because it’ll only make you more productive in the long run. Become a more energized and cheerful leader by adopting a daily fitness routine, or making needed changes to your diet and sleep schedule.

Get a handle on your finances. You may have an entire team of accountants to handle your financials—but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have some baseline understanding of your company’s financial status yourself. Take some time at the beginning of the year to look at your debts, revenue forecasts, and more. Stay in the know about your basic finances this year!

Develop your personal brand. Spend some time becoming an industry thought leader and authority figure this year. Use social media and blogging to show off your industry expertise.

Resolve to take time off. Why not spend less time in the office this year? Recharge your batteries somewhere, and make that time in the office really count. Plan some vacation times today, and also set parameters for your personal life; ensure you’re spending some evenings and weekends with your family, not your work.

Learn something new. Enroll in a class this year—online or otherwise—or simply read some challenging books. Allow your skills and your knowledge to increase. You never know where they might take you!

Resolve to make improvements in the year to come—and think practically, as well as idealistically.