Work Smart Club
Dr. Cynthia Howard
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Top 10 Work Smart Club Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Work Smart Club episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Work Smart Club for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Work Smart Club episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
03/16/22 • 33 min
You've heard of resilience. You've probably heard of emotional intelligence. And you might have heard of emotional agility. In today's installment of Work Smart, we dive into the reasons why these are skills that you need to cultivate and the tragic consequences if you don't! Being emotionally agile allows us to regulate our emotions so that we can function at our best during uncomfortable and uncertain situations, and a key element of this is focus – something that isn't easy in these unprecedented times of disruption. We have to either learn to live in this time or move beyond it, which means defining our own normal again and taking ownership of our emotional health and development. This episode begins with a dive into the neuroscience of how our brains process emotions and triggers, before outlining the ways that these continue to live on in our bodies and psyche unless dealt with. We then excavate the causes and consequences of chronic stress and focus on the importance of self-awareness and authenticity (which isn't actually what most people think it is). You'll also hear about the tragic phenomenon of learned helplessness, getting caught in the drama triangle, and how these toxic cycles play out in the workplace! The episode winds to a close by covering the exact skills and characteristics you can cultivate to be emotionally agile, and how to do this so that it sticks. To discover all this, as well as the right questions to ask yourself to raise your emotional intelligence, tune into another insightful session of Work Smart!
Key Points From This Episode:
- Introductory comments about why we need emotional agility.
- Talking a bit about neuroscience: the three parts of the brain and how they work.
- How your emotions continue to live in your body and psyche unless dealt with.
- Commenting on how addiction to scrolling has damaged our ability to listen.
- The importance of training your brain to slow down and eliminate under and overreactions.
- Busting the myth of 'good' stress, and how stress is like being pregnant.
- How disease, illness, and immune problems are linked to stress.
- The tragic phenomenon of learned helplessness as a side effect of chronic stress.
- The characteristic of self-awareness and how it translates into situational awareness.
- How emotions are like the iceberg from the story of the Titanic.
- That authenticity isn't the same as unleashing raw emotions onto others.
- Looking at the underlying reasons for chronic anger, sadness, and blaming others.
- The drama triangle: how to recognize and respond to it.
- Touching on how to grow confidence and optimistic mindset.
- How emotional intelligence is about identifying and managing your emotions
- The skills you need for emotional agility.
- Diving into the qualities of assertiveness and balancing it with independence.
- Hear about the offerings of the Work Smart Club to help you learn and grow as a leader.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
EP 16: Staying Too Long With a Passive-Aggressive Boss
Work Smart Club
06/22/22 • 26 min
Have you got a boss that does not yell but is aggressive in other ways? Do you dread meeting your boss? Does your boss ignore you, or is excessively critical? Are you unhappy in your workplace and feel despondent? Then today’s episode is for you! We all have to deal with terrible bosses at some point during our careers but staying in that situation is unhealthy. Staying can affect your confidence and contribution to your job. Therefore, finding ways to deal with passive-aggressive leadership or workplaces is essential to your success. In today’s show, we talk about passive-aggressive bosses and how they create unhealthy workplaces. We learn about what the differences are between passive-aggression and aggression, ways in which passive-aggressive leadership manifests, the common character traits that ‘bully bosses’ share, advice for dealing with passive-aggressive leadership, why staying in an unhealthy workplace is a bad idea, what it takes to create a healthy workplace, and much more! Tune in today to hear solutions to your boss problems with Cynthia Howard!
Key Points From This Episode:
- The difference between passive aggression and actual aggression.
- Examples of how aggression and passive-aggression can manifest in the workplace.
- How leaders can be passive-aggressive in a team or workplace.
- Cynthia shares an experience she had working with a passive aggressive-leader.
- The impact that passive-aggressive leaders have on employees and team members.
- Advice for dealing with passive-aggressive people in the workplace.
- Character traits that passive-aggressive leaders have in common.
- Ways in which ‘bully bosses’ can hide their behavior and avoid repercussions.
- An outline of the signals that the team is being run by passive-aggressive leadership.
- The financial costs associated with passive-aggressive leadership or ‘bully’ culture.
- What it takes to create a positive workplace culture and a good leader.
- Some shocking data on stress, anxiety, and burnout occurring in the workplace.
- How there have been small changes to workplace culture.
- Using data to identify problems and create a healthier workplace.
- The foundation of creating a healthy workplace: creating trust.
- Why staying in an unhealthy workplace is not the right thing to do.
- The opportunities to grow for both the employee and the passive-aggressive boss.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
05/25/22 • 31 min
While there is a common perception that people need to work on their weaknesses and not their strengths, today we find out why the opposite is true. In this episode, we talk about how leaders who operate out of their strengths have greater impact and greater influence than those who don’t, and how focusing on your weaknesses just leaves a person feeling tired and drained. Tuning in you’ll hear the difference between a strength and something you are good at, how you can overdo a strength and wear yourself out, and the vital skill of self-awareness for any leader. You’ll discover a series of questions that you can ask yourself to identify your strengths. Knowing your strengths not only helps you to identify the right jobs and opportunities to show up as your best self, but it also enables you to help your team to do the same. According to statistics, people who operate out of their strengths on a daily basis are six times more likely to be engaged in their work. So, to find out how to identify your strengths, what you can do about your weaknesses, and how to help your teamwork through their strengths so that they are empowered and engaged, tune in today!
Key Points From This Episode:
- Why the common perception that people need to work on their weaknesses and not their strengths is incorrect.
- The difference between a strength and something you are good at.
- How you can overdo a strength and wear yourself out.
- How knowing your strengths helps you to identify the right jobs and opportunities to show up as your best self.
- A series of questions that you can ask yourself to identify your strengths.
- How leaders that do operate out of their strengths recognize that their personal energy is critical to their influence.
- The vital skill of self-awareness for any leader.
- How as you develop your awareness of your strengths, you will be more confident in helping your team to do the same.
- A strength-spotting worksheet and some other resources Cynthia recommends.
- The value of partnering up with people whose strengths and weaknesses complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
- How people will always be your greatest asset.
- How People who operate out of their strengths on a daily basis are six times more likely to be engaged in their work.
- The strength of pride and the four basic needs of people while they are at work.
- Why you should consider doing a strengths assessment.
- How leaders who operate out of their strengths are more effective.
- An example of some of the strengths you may possess or identify in others.
- Why focussing on people’s weaknesses is not the strategy you want to take.
- How you can get around the weaknesses by operating out of your strengths.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
EP 03: Getting Unstuck
Work Smart Club
03/03/22 • 30 min
Of the dismal percentage of people who make resolutions, very few actually keep them. So many of us, post-Covid, feel like we’ve lost our ambition, and that, paired with the endless distractions of the digital age, leaves us with a warped perception of ourselves and the world. We get stuck in our primitive brain stress responses and go through life on autopilot, forgetting to reflect on our through-vision. In this episode, we tackle what you can do today to put an end to the pattern of distraction and busyness without actually advancing your agenda. If you’re feeling stuck, this is the solution for you to get out of that rut once and for all! Tune in to find out how to clear the resistance, step out of your comfort zone, and change your perception. If you clear the weeds, you’ll make space to sow the seeds for your vision to flourish!
Key Points From This Episode:
- The dangers of lingering habits post-lockdown and the importance of recognizing them.
- What it boils down to when we are busy but aren’t advancing our agenda.
- What perception is and how we can actively change our perception of things.
- The scientific benefits of gratitude practices.
- How our primitive brain gets triggered in a stress reaction.
- The link between the emotional brain and the primitive brain.
- How distraction breeds susceptibility to emotional hijacking.
- How our perception gets skewed when our emotions take charge.
- How we are literally overloaded with information in the digital age!
- Why emotional intelligence is so valuable.
- The fascinating etymology of ‘perception’ and how it becomes our reality.
- The number one characteristic of successful people: self-awareness.
- Why it’s important to have a vision for the year.
- What mindful attention is and why it’s important to be present.
- Why it’s important to ask questions and clarify assumptions.
- Active steps to get out of a rut!
- What the ‘daily review’ and ‘year in review’ activities involve.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
The Work Smart Principle: Leader’s Guide to an Inspired Work Life
11/23/22 • 27 min
In the uncertainty and ambiguity of the information war that we find ourselves in, only one thing in the workplace remains constant: rapid change. “Normal“ is now a distant memory as every day we are faced with new obstacles and challenges that test our every resolve. The key, then, is resilience, and more specifically, building systems of resilience that will allow us to successfully navigate every unforeseeable twist and turn. Resilience is often overlooked, misunderstood, and as a skill, underused. So today, we will be breaking down 5 key steps that will allow you to measure and monitor resilience in your workflow. We discuss the importance of planning and prioritizing, the ripple effect and how it pertains to workflow, the undeniable value of optimism, and why we need to change the very way that we think and problem-solve. If you have emotional agility, a clear understanding of KPIs and other metrics, and accept that rapid change is the new normal, then you’ll be one step closer to building a system of resilience that will allow you to triumph over the unknown.
Key Points From This Episode:
- The uncertainty and ambiguity of the information war that we find ourselves in.
- Why “normal” is no longer possible.
- Resilience as an understated and underused skill.
- Why resilience is often overlooked and misunderstood.
- Creating adequate systems of resilience.
- The importance of setting aside time to plan and prioritize.
- How Dr. Howard defines resilience.
- Planning for disruptions and taking time to think things through.
- The ripple effect and how it pertains to workflow.
- Collaboration as a skill that should be learned.
- How curiosity can help you achieve your objectives.
- Why optimistic thinking is a precursor to resilience.
- Learning to think differently.
- The importance of listening to new ideas and implementing the ones that work.
- How to think in terms of systems.
- Having a standardized approach to problem-solving.
- Why leaders in the workplace need to be flexible and have emotional agility.
- Analyzing and understanding KPIs and other metrics.
- Recognizing that (rapid) change is the new normal.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
EP 02: Creating Your Personal Vision Statement
Work Smart Club
03/03/22 • 39 min
If you want this year to be better than the last, and you want to get unstuck but don’t know where to start, then lean in and listen up! In this episode, we walk you through the three-step process to creating your personal vision statement so you can consistently meet your goals and achieve the success you desire. We break down how to identify your strengths (not your weaknesses!), choose your guiding values, and pick a focus area. You’ll also discover why it’s important to have goals for everything that you do and how building in daily strategies will solidify your vision statement. You’ll learn how to create a vision board, find out why they’re so effective, and discover the immense power of visualization. The time is now to reclaim your life and your fire, and take action to reach your dreams and live a life of inspiration and fulfillment. Tune in for the formula that will get you back on track and change your life for the better!
Key Points From This Episode:
- The dire consequences of distractions.
- Why it’s critical to write down your goals!
- Today’s focus: getting unstuck and creating your vision statement.
- Why you need a vision statement.
- Cynthia shares vision statement samples.
- The three steps of writing a mission statement: identify your strengths, choose your guiding values, pick a focus area.
- Why you need to lead with your strengths, not your weaknesses.
- How to identify your strengths.
- How people fall into learned behaviors.
- Why it’s important to have goals for everything that you do.
- How failing to identify your values can lead to conflict.
- What falls under the category of ‘values’.
- Three questions to ask yourself to clarify your values.
- Why resolutions typically don’t work.
- What a vision statement is, exactly.
- The recommended time frame for your vision statement, milestones, goals, and strategies.
- The importance of concreting your vision statement with daily strategies.
- What a vision board is, how to make one, and why they’re so effective.
- How to combine your daily review with your vision journal.
- The power of visualization.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
EP 11: Do you Measure your Success as a Leader? Here's how.
Work Smart Club
04/27/22 • 28 min
How do you measure your success as a leader? Very often leaders measure their success by looking at financial data but there’s a lot of information that those financial metrics simply do not convey. They are not going to immediately reflect a leader who has gone off course, who is operating with bad habits, ineffective relationships, or unhealthy communication. If you’re looking for practical strategies that you can use to evaluate your effectiveness as a leader, you’ve come to the right place! Today we discuss how being consistent is one of the best outward signs of your effectiveness and how to develop this through the tools in the Lean Six Sigma. You’ll learn about how to identify and track data, the power of measuring effectiveness by way of your interactions, and the importance of a control phase to measure and sustain your solution once you have achieved it. Tuning in you’ll find out how to affect and sustain positive change as a leader and continue to measure your effectiveness. You’ll also find out where you can get a daily progress checklist and other resources to help you do this. For all this and more, tune in today!
Key Points From This Episode:
- Today’s topic: strategies that you can use to evaluate your effectiveness as a leader.
- Why being consistent is one of the best outward signs of your effectiveness.
- How to develop consistency through the tools in the Lean Six Sigma.
- Why you want to be able to track data.
- The daily progress checklist and how this can help you determine how you are facilitating your team.
- An example of a manager that had failed to empower their team and how Cynthia helped them.
- The power of measuring effectiveness by way of your interactions.
- The importance of a control phase to measure and sustain whatever solution you have put in place.
- The role of personal controls and policy control measures.
- How to implement mindset and behavioral changes.
- The importance of the right expectations as a leader.
- What you need to do to ensure that the changes you make will stay in place.
- The story of a team that Cynthia helped with a succession plan using these principles.
- Where you can find resources to help you get clarity on challenges you may have.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
10/12/22 • 27 min
Welcome back to the Work Smart Club, we’re thrilled to have you with us! Today, we will be discussing how to be a resilient leader in order to coach your team effectively. We talk about how being in survival mode has forced us to approach work differently and how some leaders are ignoring what leadership is actually about. People need to be inspired, not managed, and cultivating resilience can motivate people to achieve their best. Leaders need to establish an overriding goal, and this could be a way of activating the forward-focused mindset that is resilience. You’ll hear all about the Work Smart Club Network’s Resilience Course and why you, as a leader, need to manage your energy, awareness, mindset, relationships, and flow. If you work on it every single day, you will build in yourself a resilience that will allow you to stay focused, even in times of heightened confusion. We can’t wait for you to tune in and learn with us today!
Key Points From This Episode:
- Introducing today’s topic: resilient leadership.
- What it means to be in survival mode.
- Why there is a need for us to work differently.
- How leadership theories hold people back from thinking about what leadership actually is.
- Why building relationships is an intrinsic characteristic of good leadership.
- What leaders are supposed to be doing versus what they actually do.
- The difference between managing people and managing processes/problems.
- How resilience can be cultivated and used to inspire people.
- Resilience as a forward-focused mindset.
- Why a leader needs to establish a higher purpose and singular goal, and how this activates resilience.
- The Work Smart Club Network’s Resilience Course and the five-level resilience pyramid.
- Managing your energy, awareness, mindset, relationships, and flow.
- Resilience as a strategy that needs to be worked on constantly.
- Slowing down our internal dialogue in order to be more effective.
- How resilience allows us to stay focused amidst confusion.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Work Smart Club Episode 26: Let’s Talk Flow – What It is and How to Get More of It
EP 17: Managing Conflict in a Politically Charged Era
Work Smart Club
06/29/22 • 25 min
Conflict is something most people like to avoid, except we can’t. It's part of everyday life, and in truth, without conflict, new ideas would not come forth and there wouldn't be any progress. Considering the politically-charged nature of the world we are currently living in, it’s absolutely critical that people learn how to deal with conflict. In this episode, we talk about how to develop conflict skills in the workplace. Tuning in you’ll hear about how conflict allows you the opportunity to break through assumptions and bias, why it is not personal or evidence of a failure, and how it can be leveraged to increase the value of your team’s interactions. You’ll find out why you should monitor and measure the types of conflicts that you have, why conflict training should be part of the onboarding process, and how the Lean Six Sigma approach to problem-solving can provide an added benefit. In order to have new ideas, deep understanding, and fresh insights, it's critical to learn how to have healthy debates and manage conflict. So, for some profound insight into how to manage conflict and create an energized and engaged workplace, tune in today!
Key Points From This Episode:
- How conflict is necessary for new ideas to come forth and the importance of learning how to leverage it.
- The politically-charged nature of the time we are living in and why it’s never been more important to learn conflict skills.
- The definition of conflict: the inability to agree to disagree.
- The benefits of conflict: an opportunity to break through assumptions and bias.
- Super tip: monitor and measure the types of conflicts that you have.
- An example of a leader who didn’t deal with conflict and the impact this had on his workplace.
- How to leverage conflict to increase the value of your team’s interactions.
- The importance of recognizing that conflict is not personal or evidence of failure.
- The value of conflict training as part of the onboarding process.
- The idea of generosity in terms of information-sharing.
- Bullying as a consequence of ignoring conflict and how to establish a standard of respect.
- Why problem-solving training goes hand-in-hand with conflict training.
- A quick review of the foundational approach of Lean Six Sigma for problem-solving.
- Why compromising is counterproductive to conflict resolution.
- How to establish an energized engaged workplace by having the right training.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
EP 31: How To Build Grit and Tenacity in Your Team
Work Smart Club
10/26/22 • 31 min
How can you lead a company if your employees are constantly positioned with one foot in and one foot out? How can grit help you to fortify yourself as a leader? On this episode of Work Smart Club, Dr. Cynthia Howard shares strategies aimed at building grit and tenacity in your teams. We talk about the dilution of vision and how leading without vision can impact the outcomes you are working towards. Listeners will hear about the relationship between grit and flow and how grit can enhance your ability to focus. Dr. Howard also discusses why we should be working towards building a continuously learning culture rather than a constantly upgrading culture where we throw out what doesn’t work and trade in for the newer model. Let’s focus on building cultures and employees with grit and tenacity so that leaders and teams can find success! Don’t miss out, tune in now!
Key Points From This Episode:
- How Grit and Flow are similar but different.
- How building grit and tenacity in your team will help you [as a leader].
- A short story on the impact of having grit as a characteristic.
- How grit is the muscle that makes courage work.
- Research on grit; characteristics and skills associated with having grit.
- Grit and hiring: consider rethinking grit when hiring employees.
- The relationship between flow and grit.
- How grit can help with focus and ultimately satisfaction.
- Why, as leaders, we need to stop letting outside influence dilute our vision.
- Understanding what vision is.
- Why failure doesn’t mean you should stop.
- A note to leaders!
- The intention behind having grit.
- How to unify around one purpose.
- Four questions to understand your employees' experience at work.
- Why you need to let your team figure out how to solve their own problems.
- The importance of holding regular debriefs with your teams.
- What review processes should and should not look like during your debriefing sessions.
- How support can help build grit.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
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FAQ
How many episodes does Work Smart Club have?
Work Smart Club currently has 38 episodes available.
What topics does Work Smart Club cover?
The podcast is about Purpose, Management, Leadership, Resilience, Emotional Intelligence, Podcasts, Executive Coaching, Business, Coaching, Careers and Focus.
What is the most popular episode on Work Smart Club?
The episode title 'EP 31: How To Build Grit and Tenacity in Your Team' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Work Smart Club?
The average episode length on Work Smart Club is 27 minutes.
How often are episodes of Work Smart Club released?
Episodes of Work Smart Club are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of Work Smart Club?
The first episode of Work Smart Club was released on Feb 25, 2022.
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