When was the last time you learned something and did you find the opportunity yourself or rely on someone else to do it for you?

We tend to think of training a bit like teaching – something we rely on others to drive; something that is done to us.  Learning and development though is wider and has more opportunities for you to drive your own growth.  So how do you take control of your own learning in a fast-changing world, where time and attention both in work and outside are under pressure?  A good place to start is by adopting the 70:20:10 model of learning.

The 70:20:10 Model for learning suggests we gain 70% of our knowledge from job-related experiences, 20% from interactions with others, and 10% from formal educational events.

Hands-on experience (the 70%) is the most beneficial for us because it enables us to discover and refine our job-related skills, make decisions, address challenges and interact with influential people within work settings. We also learn from our mistakes and can get in the moment feedback on our performance. If you ask an experienced person how they got to where they are now, they won’t tell you about what they studied, they will give you a list of experiences.  How they got thrown in at the deep end, volunteered to take on a gnarly project, how they stumbled a few times, got up, wiped their grazed knees and learned from the experience to do better next time.  70% of what we learn, we learn by doing.

The model continues by suggesting that 20% of what we learn, we learn from others.  This can be a formal arrangement like getting a coach or a mentor, as well as learning from your own manager.  Or it might be informal like watching someone do something really good (or bad!) and learning from what you see.  Now that we work in a more flexible way from a range of settings (hooray for that) the moments to see and learn from others are all the more precious.

And that leaves the final 10% - formal learning – a small but mighty piece of the puzzle.  Study, courses, training events and workshops, whether online or in-person, still provide a great opportunity to add to our learning.  This is the bit we tend to think of first when we talk about learning, because it’s usually a planned event.  Make the most of these experiences and enhance them all the more by moving quickly from the formal learning applying it back at work – which puts you back in the 70% arena.

So, here’s a quick reminder:

• 70% of learning is experiential. It happens through learning on the job, including assignments, practice and trying things out.
• 20% of learning is social. It happens with and through other people managers and team members. It also includes mentoring, coaching and feedback.
• 10% of learning is formal. It happens through structured training events and programmes.

Create a world for yourself where you can manage your own development through doing, coaching, mentoring and generally putting your hand up for stuff, as well as the more traditional methods of training and education and see where it takes you.  Make this year the one that you devote some time to your own development.  Be prepared to invest in yourself.  And as with any DIY, it’s all in the preparation.

As the days get longer and the sky bluer (a girl can dream), let’s stop, breathe and turn our attention to motivating people.

We love to turn motivation into a verb – as managers, we talk about how we plan to motivate our teams.  However, motivation is not something that can be done to someone else.  All you can do as the team’s leader is create an environment where people is able to motivate themselves with you offering them what they need to keep skipping back every day, working willingly and effectively.  Individual motivators will be different, but you could do worse than concentrate on these three areas: autonomy, mastery and purpose.  Daniel Pink refers to them in his book “Drive” as three consistent motivators for the modern workforce.

All teams need to feel they can work without checking back with you at every stage, so develop them to a point where they have autonomy.  Especially now, where we seem to be having trust issues with people we trusted before – just because we don’t always work in the same physical space anymore.  This is your problem, not theirs and most team members flourish with a bit – or a lot – of autonomy.

Teams want to move and grow – to feel they are mastering new skills and abilities, so provide opportunities for your team to stretch and develop.  People also need to see a point to their work; to feel they are doing something valuable with their day, so ensure everything you do together has purpose and drives you towards results and success for your organisation.  Ask yourself, if it isn’t important and it won’t take you forward, why are you asking the team to do it?

Providing a motivational environment is one thing, but what do you do when a team member has lost their mojo?  Lack of motivation hits us all at one time or another, and it helps as their manager to take a coaching approach.  By asking powerful questions, you can focus on why they’ve lost motivation and think through their options to turn things around.  The most powerful question any manager has in their armour is quite simply – “How are you?”  But you have to mean it and you have to allow time for the answer.  Never ask this one with half an eye on the door and furtive glances at your mobile phone.  Asking “How are you?” is a great way to start a conversation with someone who is clearly not okay but not talking about it.  And then you can help them think through the highs and lows that may have led to a descent in motivation, plus what the options are to improve things.

You can’t re-motivate people any more than you can motivate them in the first place, but you can be a key player in supporting them to get themselves back on track.  And once back, with autonomy, new things to master and a real sense of purpose it will be all systems go.

Complaints are a reality of working life.  Whether they come from a customer, a colleague, a supporter or any other key contact, we are never going to get it right every time.  If the thought of a less than delighted email, a stroppy phone call or a furrowed brow face to face meeting leaves you worried, it’s worth remembering that a complaint made shows a modicum of care.  People who complain to us do so because they want to see a wrong (perceived or otherwise) put right and normal service resumed.  So treat it as an invitation to improve services and relationships and be brave.

Sometimes the only thing that sets you apart from your competitors is the way you deal with people and issues when they go wrong.  There’s a balance to be struck here.  If you’ve made a bit of a mess, you need to admit the error and put it right.  If you didn’t get it wrong, something still happened to trigger the complaint so equally, you want to act to restore or rebuild relationships

Here are 5 tips to help you find the right balance when dealing with complaints:

1. Respond quickly to acknowledge the complaint, by email or phone. You are not acting at this stage, just acknowledging receipt.  It’s respectful and avoids escalation.  It’s like the restaurant server who shows you they know you want the bill even if they can’t get over to you yet, versus the one who studiously avoids your eyes and gestures.  Let people know you’ll be back to them very soon but allow yourself some thinking time.
2. Once in conversation, work hard to really listen and not second guess. Conversations (even email ones) involving conflict are stressful and the temptation is to be thinking about what you are going to say in response which means you risk missing the main points.  Try to stay calm, slow it down and really take in what is being said to you.
3. Separate content and tone. People who complain are never happy, and their tone is likely to reflect this.  Getting hung up on tone will only distract you from the content.  Ask yourself “What are they actually saying here?” and separate that from how it is being said.
4. Acknowledge what has been said in a genuine way. This is otherwise known as “rolling with the punch”.  It is what you say to form a bridge between the complaint and what happens next.  They need to see that you can put yourself in their position and see it their way even if your position is different.  Wording is everything here.  Irritants like “I hear what you say” are usually said by people who clearly haven’t heard and they only serve to inflame.  “I see what you mean” or “I can appreciate how frustrating this was” or “Thank you for getting in touch about this” may be better.
5. We need to deal with the “s word”. So terrorised are we by court action, we have lost the ability to say sorry.  So unless you have been advised against it, saying sorry when you’ve got it wrong is genuine and powerful.  And even if you’re not to blame, it’s reasonable to say sorry that upset has been caused.  It’s also important to say sorry without blame.  If the mistake is an organisational or departmental one, you are the one dealing with it, you should be the one saying sorry on behalf of others.  It follows the thinking at everyone is a marketeer and how you deal with this situation paves the way for others.  And a final word on saying sorry.  You need to do it right.  Anything that begins with the words “I’m sorry if you feel we have….” is not saying sorry!  It’s a veiled way of saying – the problem is yours.

After that it is all about moving forward. Give reasons why something happened if you’re able.  Reasons aren’t excuses – they’re explanations and they can help.  Then move to put things right.  What would they be happy with?  What would you be happy with?  What will be done and how will you stay in touch?  Consider your own experiences as a consumer.  Some of our best relationships develop out of a wrong being put right in a way that exceeded our expectations.  If a complaint is handled well, it’s an opportunity to win over a tricky colleague, turn a client in to one of your greatest advocates and enhance your reputation through others telling people how well you dealt with a difficulty.

At Sharpstone Skinner we work with leaders, teams and individuals on assertive and positive ways to maintain good customer and colleague relations and provide expert help on managing situations that may involve conflict.

Dealing with complaints may not be happiest part of your day but better they say it to you than about you. And if handled well, a complaint can lead to better ways of working and turn foes in to fans.

In our world of 24/7 communication, the options for ways to talk to each other are endless. It wasn’t always the case. 30 years ago, for many, email was only an option at work, at your desk and within your Organisation and that was it. 20 years ago, we were only just discovering mobile phones could do more than text, 15 years ago computers were bigger and iPads were but a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye.

Look how far we’ve come – or have we? This ability to communicate day and night through so many media, is giving rise to something of a rebellion. Some colleagues are choosing to slow down their communication and not get back to people too quickly – or risk setting up unrealistic expectations. This is understandable but can be highly frustrating to others who are waiting for a response and don’t understand why they are not getting it.

So how long is too long to get back to someone and what is a realistic expectation for a response time?

There are those of us at one end of the scale who will reply in a nanosecond and not understand why it isn’t reciprocated at similar speed. And then there are those of us who like to weigh up the urgency, take it one task at a time and not interrupt what we are doing to respond to a communication that needs to be prioritised. I’m the former by the way, which will come as no surprise to those who know me. It’s driven by a “Do it now or it’ll slip off my list” mentality. “Make better lists” I hear you cry. Noted.

In the end, speed of response depends on a number of factors including the nature of your work, the kinds of communication options you have available to you, time zones, locations and your own personal style of communication. And there are some rules of good practice we can all apply including:

• Recognising the value of the “holding email” to acknowledge receipt of a contact you can’t fully reply to yet. It manages expectations, lets the sender know you’re on it and hopefully gets them off your back
• Being clear in your team and/or Organisation – and even with your clients – what mode of comms to use when. Not everyone does a desk job and can reply to a message quickly so it may be better to call. Some people do work that makes a phone call very difficult to take but they can reply quickly to a WhatsApp message. Lay out your communication best practices and stick to them
• Managing expectations – this means letting others know what to expect by way of reply timings. Use out of office messages - they help your colleagues manage their time and dependency on your reply
• Acknowledging that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Some team members are drowning under expectations that they will stay fully tuned in to 20 WhatsApp groups, their email, texts, Teams channels and intranet. That’s just not fair. If you want a timely response – pare it down a bit
• An awareness that having fast tools at our fingertips, sometimes slows us down. Before burying yourself in tech, it’s worth asking if a quick chat or call might be faster and lead to less to-ing and fro-ing. Picking up the phone – or picking your feet is seen as a bit vintage but it’s still a valid way to communicate. And as the old saying goes – it’s good to talk.
• Know who you are dealing with. Some people are happy to give you their initial thoughts on an issue even if not thought out yet, so they’ll reply quickly. Others like to think things through and give you their fully formed response so may take longer. Both add value – it depends on the situation and the need.

Perhaps it is time to re-examine the way we communicate and respond to others at work. Agree what works well that you want to keep and what needs a bit of reinvention – to serve everyone better. And try to keep ego out of it. Holding off on responding to make a point or show how busy and important you are just makes you look petty or inefficient.

It’ll be fun to write this blog again in a few years’ time and see what has progressed in the world of work communications. Maybe we’ll be able to engage with each other through thought transmission. Until then and in the absence of mind-reading, let’s use the tools we have to best effect and in the words of Debbie Harry - not leave each other hanging on the telephone.

Happy new year! We’re not making any clever remarks about resolutions – there are enough memes doing that for us.  A personal favourite is:

“Dear New Year’s Resolution.  It was fun while it lasted.  Sincerely, January 2nd”

Instead of making resolutions, let’s look at growth. We may not know yet what the next 12 months has in store for us but we know there will be change.  There always is. In times of great change, it can be useful to look for constants, especially if they are ones that take us to a better place.

When it comes to personal and professional growth, coaching is one such constant.  Here are 3 reasons why:

1. You can do it anywhere. This one-to-one interaction works equally well face to face or from a distance and a combination of both works even better. It means internal coaches can work with colleagues from different teams, sites and parts of the globe and those seeking an external coach can make their choice without the restrictions of geography.
2. It has survived fads and trends in Learning and Development. Every profession has its flavours of the month.  L&D is no different.  If you’ve been in this game for over 30 years as we have, you will have seen a fair few.  A trend has tangible benefits and solves a particular need whereas a fad is often driven by a coolness factor and an “I want some of that too” mentality.  When coaching first came on the scene, many thought it was a fad but decades later, it endures with credibility and impact.  It is going nowhere.
3. No sheep are dipped in the coaching process. Mass group training has great value where there is a common need.  In a coaching situation, the need is rarely mass-produced and that means coach and client can work together in an individualised way, targeting priorities and taking action where it counts.  In the early days, coaching was viewed as an expensive luxury, the preserve of the senior executive, because it only applies to one person at a time.  Years on, it has proved itself money well spent as individuals directly attribute success, advancement and impact on the bottom line, to their coaching sessions.  It is selfish time to think, talk and be supported and challenged to take action.

Coaching can be defined as a relationship of rapport and trust in which the coach uses their ability to listen, to ask questions and to play back what the client has communicated to help them clarify what matters to them and to work out what to do to achieve their aspirations.

When you put it that way, there is little to lose and much to gain from a coaching relationship.  Many of you reading will know this already and have years under your belt of successful coaching experiences.  If that’s not you yet, consider making 2025 the year you get a coach, become a coach, or open the door to coaching in your Organisation.

We don’t know yet how 2025 is going to pan out.  What we do know is that, whatever this year throws our way, will be a talked about, planned for and solved at coaching sessions the world over. Long live coaching!

I’m really looking forward to a day of back-to-back meetings where my eyes never leave the screen and my derriere never leaves the seat.

Said no one ever.

And yet, we have an increasing number of days in our week that are just that.  Breakless, airless days where one meeting ends on the hour and so the next one starts.  And on it goes until we collapse in a heap, hardly daring to look at the list of actions those meetings have yielded.  It’s miserable.

Some of the by-products of conjoined meetings are:

• We have to exit before they end in a bid to get to the next one
• We’re late for at least one meeting a day, irritating others who were on time
• We don’t have time to download our thoughts and reflections from one meeting before going in to the next, so we arrive at the meeting with our head not clear from the last one
• Actions pile up with no time to start working on them
• Unless our note-taking is on point every time, we can’t fully remember what went on or what we agreed to at each meeting
• Those little human necessities like going to the loo, grabbing a coffee or just plain staring out the window, become luxuries.

We expound the virtues of flexible working and not having to be in the office all the time – but really, if we work like this, it doesn’t feel flexible at all.  We just have a different view from our window.

Enough doom and gloom – here is the good news.  The back-to-back meetings epidemic is human made.  We created and normalized it, so we too have it in us to recreate a better pattern.  Here are what some of our clients have successfully done without reducing productivity or effectiveness:

• Applied the 15-minute rule. We pioneered this back in 2020 and you can read about here. Essentially you are ensuring a 15 (or 20, even better - 30) gap between meetings.  You have to do this across teams or it doesn’t work but it makes a massive difference to be people’s energy and wellbeing, as well as meetings feeling less arduous.
• Found alternatives to screen meetings like going for a “walk and talk” using phones - a great option when you don’t need to look at papers or slides.
• Implemented meeting-free afternoons each week/month.
• Saved longer meetings for when everyone can be together in a shared space and ensured these include some social time.
• Carried out a meeting audit to assess which meetings are necessary and add value and which are a fixture in the diary no longer needed. Dropping even one regular meeting because it no longer serves a purpose can make a huge difference to time and workload.

We’ve helped numerous teams implement these great ideas and we can help you and your team too.

And finally, there is one action we can all take in a bid to end the drudge of days of non-stop meetings. That is to stop judging people’s value by how “busy” they are, aka how many meetings they have in their diaries. Instead, if we start putting a value on thinking and planning time before and after meetings and just time with no meetings at all, to work, apply and take action, we’ll start to break the cycle.  And become happier humans again.

Hello and welcome to late summer.  The days are getting a tiny bit shorter and we’re all trying to squeeze the last drops out of August before September and bursting-at-the-seams diaries are once again upon us.

This month may be a busy one for you or a chance to undo the top button and breathe a bit.  Either way, it is a great time to pause and consider helpful messages to get our heads in the right place and feeling strong for the start of the autumn work term.

Holidays and work breaks are fantastic and necessary, but the effects soon wear off. So here are some sayings - a few things to say to ourselves and others, useful to keep energy high and get in shape for the season ahead.

You win or you learn

It’s great to do well, walk a smooth path and have a long run of success at work.  Everyone deserves that at least once in a while – but it’s not when the learning happens.  We learn the most through the gnarly, tricky times, when nothing seems to go our way.  So when you hit a big fat failure, take it on the chin.  Life at work has a fair bit of win and lose in it, but losers are also learners.  Review what went wrong, gain the views of others, put right what you need to, then learn and move on.  It doesn’t feel this way at the time but you’ll look back on this period as a time of personal and professional growth that propelled you to a better place.

All feedback is a gift

 It really is.  Even if it is badly wrapped and seems like the present no one wants.  If all we ever hear is praise, we never know what we need to do to progress to the next level. When someone praises you, thank them but also ask what you could have done even better.  And ask them to be specific so you can really nail what you need to do to improve.  When you’re given negative feedback, learn to value it.  There will be something in the content that is of use, even if you don’t rate the delivery or the messenger.  Challenge it if you need to, ask questions if lacks clarity or substance, then take it and use it in a way it will help you most.  And don’t forget to thank them for the feedback – and not through gritted teeth.

This too shall pass

 Resilient people are positive.  Not shiny, smiley positive but sensibly positive in the way they gain perspective and look ahead.  Develop the ability to influence what you can and want to change and make choices about anything you can’t change.  No one can ever take away from you the right to choose your own attitude to the situation.  A positive, assertive attitude will take you a long way and tends to be associated with those high-performance people everyone wants on their team.

My bad

If like us, you were born before the 1980s, “it’s my fault” is what this means.  We seem to have lost the ability to step up, take responsibility and say sorry if something was our fault and shouldn’t have happened.  Just doing that when you need to, helps develop strength and accountability in you and in your work culture.  It allows us to own up, explain why, put things right and try better next time.  It also stops us expecting to be bailed out all the time by someone with rescuer tendencies.

And there are many more sayings that convert to practical ways to grow a bit of backbone, so if that is what you feel you need for the next few months, talk to us about how you can develop a stronger self and a more resilient team.  We promise to be firm but fair.

Picture the scene. You’re strolling down a sandy beach, walking hand in hand with someone hand-holding worthy. Gentle waves are rolling in and out of the shore, the water is nibbling at your toes. The sunset is glorious and the warmth peaceful. Then you walk headlong into something sharp. It’s a Teams Chat. With a start you realise you’ve forgotten to add a crucial timeline to a project that will blow everything out of the (no longer calm) water.

And that’s it. Beach dream over, the clock says 3am, you’re wide awake and reaching for your laptop.

Sound familiar?

One of the downsides to being dedicated to your job and motivated by what you do is that it can be hard to let go and return to life with a clear head. The way we work now – from a range of locations, flexibly and with 24/7 communication is brilliant in so many ways – a game changer  – but it does have its down sides. And if we’re not careful we create a situation where we’re never not at work.

Everybody has their own way of finding balance between work and the rest of life, so if you’re managing it well, read no further. If, however, you struggle sometimes as most of us do, here are some tips to help you detach from work when your day is done.

• Decide in the morning, an end point to your day and the work you need to do. Few jobs are so neat that you can finish every task daily, so agree with yourself where you want to have got to by the end of that day and leave it there. Tie things up to the point that you won’t fret about what is left to do.
• If you’re out and about, use your journey home to make the mental transition. This is one of the advantages of a commute. It gives you a chance to detach from one part of your life and rejoin another. So, if you have a commute, make the most of it and don’t just work or you haven’t detached at all. Read (not a job-related book!), watch or listen to something, play a game, stare out the window, look at fellow commuters and wonder about their lives – and allow your mind to end that part of the day. And if you do work locally or from home, go for a walk in the park, meet friends for a drink – do something that draws a line under the working day and propels you into the rest of your life. “Faking your commute” has been much talked about since we work more flexibly and with good reason. We all need that transition period and it needn’t be train/bus/car – it could simply be doing something in your office space that isn’t work related to help you make the switch.
• Consider switching off your work notifications. This won’t be right for everyone and if you’re on call you may need to stay in touch. If you’re not, however, and you know that emails coming in will make you agitated or distracted when you don’t want to be, consider closing down those communications until the next day.
• Be a follower of that time honoured stress management technique entitled “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. If work is your sole focus it’s hard to switch off when you want to. It’s easier if you have other places to be when the time comes. So, develop interests, value your social life, volunteer, do sport – or whatever interests you outside work. If nothing else, they will give you something to think about when you need a break from work thoughts.
• Review your before-bed activities. Some people can eat late, scroll their News apps, drink copious amounts of caffeine and check emails and they still sleep like babies. Many of us can’t. Look for a night time wind down routine that works for you. Children have them, adults need them too. It doesn’t have to be bath/book/bed – just something that will give you the best chance at encouraging the beach dream and not the project planning nightmare.

 

When was the last time you shook things up a bit in your working life?  Took on a new project, learned a new skill, put yourself out there and did something weren’t particularly confident about?  If the answer is “all the time”, give yourself a big gold star.  If it is “in the last year” – well done you.  If you can’t remember – then go stand in the corner.

One of the greatest enemies of the new is quite simply – the old and wise.  The more experienced we become and the more in demand we are, the less time we have for keeping ourselves fresh.  We all need to be seeking out new knowledge and experience because it makes us even better at what we do.  But you have to consciously make time to do it.

These last few years have certainly shaken us all up.  We’ve had to adapt in ways we couldn’t have imagined.  You may feel fresher than ever - at the top of your game because you’ve had to make so many changes to the way you work.  Or you may just feel exhausted.  You have to make time for learning and time is the one thing many of us is short of.  If that is unlikely to change for you any time soon, here are three quick-fire ways to actively bring learning in to your working week and avoid the rot setting in:

1. Look left and right instead of up and down. Get out of your silo. This means seeking out experience in and exposure to other areas of your Organisation. It will give you a much better appreciation of the challenges colleagues face and how you might respond to them.  Get as much exposure as you can to different disciplines.  It’s fascinating, enriching and pragmatic.  Pragmatic because there’s a big link between learning and earning.  You’re making yourself more marketable.
2. Commit to one key learning investment a year. That’s not too much to ask of yourself or your employer. Promise yourself you will learn one significant skill every year.  It could be through formal study, a course or workshop, something online or simply reading deeply around the subject, but it should result in you being able to do something you couldn’t do before and something you can use in your work.  Learning is liberating so don’t deprive yourself.
3. Put your hand up more. Volunteer to take on new responsibilities, participate in different projects, take on a problem child task that no one else wants. It may be something you struggle with at times or feel scared about too, but you’ll come out the other side of it fresher and better.  To do this you may need to let go of another activity that could be done by someone else or perhaps doesn’t need doing it all.

No one wants to stand still.  Sometimes we think we do.  We tell ourselves we’ll tread water for a bit, enjoy the comfort of knowing what we’re doing and after the rather bumpy start to the decade we’re now nearly half way through, who can blame us?  That feeling won’t last long.  Humans live to learn, we want to grow and get better and sometimes that means not being the cleverest, it means being a beginner again.  As the saying goes: “If you are the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”

Hello!

We first wrote this blog in 2020, but it still resonates, even more so in 2024. We all seem to be struggling with increasing workloads, doing more with less and little in the way of troughs to balance out the peaks.

Self-care doesn’t have to be limited to evenings and weekends; in fact it shouldn’t be.  Self-care at work matters even more.  So here it is again – our 5 tips for how to look after your well-being during the working day.

Self-care has got to be up there with the most frequently used words in our world right now. Yet when we mention it, talk turns to bubble baths and box sets.  This makes the assumption that self-care is something you need purely to recover from work rather than something that is part of work.

On a workshop this week the group were discussing said subject and most of the ideas centred around ways in which you take care of yourself by taking breaks from work.

Is that all self-care means? We don’t think so.  Strategies which aid effective working and a healthy brain and body can be just as important while you work.  And you don’t have to take a break to do it.

Here are 5 things to consider doing to bring self-care in to your 9 – 5 that are part of work not an escape from it.

1. Make thinking and planning part of the working day. Stop relegating it to before/after work time as if it weren’t real graft.  It very much is part of your professional skill set and the actions you take will be the better for it.  If necessary, block out planning time in your diary.  If more of us did this, it would elevate the status of this underrated but crucial use of our time.
2. Engage in joint problem solving. Grappling with problems alone can be a real energy sapper not to mention a time stealer.  Sometimes just talking it through with another person gives rise to a whole range of options you never considered.  Joint problem solving can be an extremely effective use of time as well as a chance to connect with others and get more heads working on the issue.  A problem shared is not just a problem halved.  Often, it’s a problem solved too.
3. Prioritise caring for your essential resources. Make a list of the things you just couldn’t do your job without at the moment.  The list might include – stable Wi-Fi, your laptop, a decent desk and chair set up, your phone, access to online communications software, fresh air, a quality set of headphones and an up-to-date system for filing vital information.  This may appear an unremarkable list but without those items working as they should, frustration builds and time is lost.  So, make a plan to look after your essential resources, update them if necessary and keep them in top order.  Take care of them and they take care of you.
4. Create alternative options to virtual meetings. We’ve written a whole other blog on this subject which you can access here, so we won’t labour the point.  Suffice to say devising effective alternative ways of communicating at work, which mean you don’t need to be on-screen all day is as much about self-care as it is about communicating.
5. Develop your professional networks outside your own organisation. Internal contacts and colleagues are vital but don’t always bring a fresh perspective.  External contacts who perform a similar role to you but in a different sector or a different role in a similar sector can be a fantastic source of ideas, information, support and challenge.  So - spend time cultivating these relationships.  A conversation with an external contact can be as refreshing as a walk in the park and you don’t have to take a break from work to do it.

We promised 5 things but here’s a bonus 6^th self-care at work tip.  Work-based learning.  Take time to engage in it.  Identify a skill you could do with honing; some expertise you’d like to develop or experience you would benefit from gaining and set about getting that learning need met.  It may be as simple as talking to a colleague who has it, or finding an interesting webinar to attend or a book to read.  Learning that happens at work is quicker to apply and easier to integrate into your current practices.  Learning makes us feel good and is a great way for you to add to your value as a team member and practitioner.

Self-care can still be something we engage in outside of working hours but it doesn’t have to be limited to then.  Self-care at work in the ways we suggest makes the day more interesting and challenges us in a good way. So, when the day ends (quicker than expected with these newly applied strategies) you can curl up in the bath with the box set because it’s an enjoyable to do rather than as a response to burn-out.