Talks

Happy and productive workers are those who have healthy mental attitudes towards things around them. People with a positive mind-set will achieve much more than their counterparts who always see the glass as ‘half-empty’.

This series of talks, taken individually or together, will equip you with the correct winning outlooks to take on exciting challenges and emerge better. Each talk is one to two hour long, and perfect to motivate and inspire office workers during lunch break. 

Resilience at Work

Take a look at successful people like Mother Theresa, Steve Jobs, etc. What is one common trait that they have that differentiate them from others?
Answer – such people display the tenacity to keep doing what they want to achieve and overcoming obstacles along the way. They are resilient people.

Interestingly, research reports have confirmed that resilience is not a character trait that is determined biologically but rather, it is cultivated through thoughts, behaviours and actions that can be learnt.

We will examine the various elements that makes one resilient, and reveal how you can build up each of these elements to cope with work-related pressure, stress and even burn-out.
 

Use Coping Strategies Effectively 

At work, we will inevitably face problems like feeling stressed and pressured to perform. Not all stress is negative. But bad stress, when not properly managed, can lead to physical and mental health problems for the individual, poor working relationships and deteriorated overall working environment. 

Coping strategies can be broadly categorized into three types, problem-focused, emotion-focused and meaning-focused coping.

1. Problem-focused coping, such as evaluating pros and cons, is highly effective but only in situations when the individual has a form of control over the situation.
2. Emotion-focused coping, for example distracting yourself from the stressor, is useful in situations where individuals have no control such as, death.
3. Meaning-focused coping, actively depends on beliefs and values, does not effectively attempt to seek a solution but prefers to look on the positive side.
   

This course explains how to recognise stress-related behaviour in yourself, for example, panic attack. It goes on to expose negative coping mechanisms like alcohol, drugs, smoking and/or over-eating. The course concludes with suggestions of specific helpful techniques and tools in each category above. 

Build Constructive Thought Patterns

When we take a long hard look at how we work, plan and make decisions, we will realise that our judgements are coloured by our thinking styles. Such coloured lenses are so engrained in us that we are not even aware that the integrity of our decisions are compromised.  For instance, when a project fails, a worker automatically assume full blame in his mental mind even though it is not entirely his fault. This will, in turn, stir up negative feelings like inferiority and depression.

Removing these blinkers can help re-adjust our ‘decision-making vision’ and help us make good decisions.

In this course, we will adopt a ‘remove and replace’ principle: first, we will identify the common thinking traps like personalising; second, we will propose new thinking patterns that are constructive, and lastly, we give suggestions how to daily put them into practice. 

Reach Out and Reach Within

We are at our workplace for the larger part of the day. Sometimes the mundane work routine and pressure of work causes us to be discouraged and feel emotionally unsupported by our bosses and colleagues. This leads to reduced work performance, strained working relationships and a poor overall working environment.

This course explains how you can persevere on through:

1. Reaching OUT to others around you for help and encouragement
2. Reaching WITHIN yourself to help others
   

Participants will learn how to ‘borrow’ strengths and get help from sources around them. Importantly, they will also realise how helping and serving others can give proper perspectives to their own problems. 

Set Healthy Boundaries

Have you ever been called a ‘door mat’? Did you ever feel a nagging feeling that you are carrying other’s ‘monkey’? Have you ever felt manipulated into doing what other want you to do?

This course advocates that healthy boundaries create a healthy workplace environment. Unhealthy boundaries nurture dysfunctional ones where workers are discouraged and demotivated to work.

There are two broad categories of unhealthy boundaries:

1. Those who encroach into another person’s thoughts, feeling and choices
2. Those who become shadows without strong convictions because they allow others to infringe into their person-hood
   

The course discusses the detrimental impacts to the workplace and the individual when a worker does not set clear and defined boundaries. Participants will develop a ‘Bill of Rights’ defining and setting their own boundaries at the workplace. The important distinction between asserting his position and complying Company rules and Supervisor’s orders is discussed.

Conflict Management 

Conflict, or more specifically, interpersonal conflict, is a fact of organisational life.

There are 5 management styles people employ to deal with conflict, they are:

1. Compete or Fight: This is the classic win/lose situation, where the strength and power of one person wins the conflict. 
2. Collaboration: This is the ideal win/win outcome. It requires time to work through the difficulties, and find an agreeable solution.
3. Compromise or Negotiation: This is likely to result in a better result than win/lose, but it’s not quite win/win. Both parties give up something, in favour of an agreed mid-point solution.
4. Denial or Avoidance: This is where everyone pretends there is no problem in the hope that the conflict will blow over.
5. Smoothing Over the Problem: On the surface, harmony is maintained, but underneath, there is still conflict.
   

This course teaches some useful skills for handling conflicts with emphasis on how the model of ‘Describe the situation, Express your feelings and Specify what you want done’ can be effectively used.

Communicate Effectively

Effective communication skills are fundamental to success in the workplace.  Many jobs require strong communication skills and workers with excellent communication skills usually enjoy better interpersonal relationships with colleagues.
There are different communication styles:

1. Passive
   
2. Aggressive
   
3. Passive-aggressive
   
4. Manipulative
   
5. Assertive
   

Besides the ‘Describe the situation, Express your feelings and Specify what you want done’ model, this course will elaborate on two key techniques that can aid assertiveness: "Fogging" and the "Stuck Record" technique.