Unnecessary work meetings can rob you of time you (and others) can be using to actually accomplish things. Sure, communication is important — you need to keep your colleagues in the loop. However, it’s also easy to overdo it. Before you know it, every little thing turns into an occasion for a meeting or conference (possibly with a side of bagels or danish). If the meeting organizers have valuable information for you and your co-workers, that’s fine. But just as often, the meeting ends up being an exercise in aimless chit-chat (to say nothing of overeating) that only drains away valuable time for all concerned. Author Nicole Blades shares six secrets for pruning away unnecessary meetings in Sidestep Pointless Powwows, Part 2 of her January 2009 Women’s Health Magazine article Work Less, Do More. Try the following list of…

E-mail distraction at work is a big problem with employees at most companies. Even the most industrious workers occasionally (or even not so occasionally) take a moment to e-mail friends about weekend plans, or check their Facebook pages, or any number of things. In the January 2009 issue of Women’s Health Magazine, writer Nicole Blades warned in her article Work Less, Do More that while some employees see chilling on the company clock as a worker's right, all those mental breaks and email distractions are costing you.

According to Kathleen Alessandro, president of Michigan consulting firm Energized Solutions, “E-mail pings, phone calls, blogs, IMs, texts, cubicle chitchat, and undefined meetings are taking an enormous chunk out of your plan for a productive day.” Alessandro estimates that the average worker unwittingly wastes about 5.6 hours a day, considering one intrusion occurs every seven minutes and lasts an average of five minutes (including the time it takes to remember what you were doing before the interruption). That adds up to 68 work distractions daily!

Can you sum up your accomplishments Haiku style? Few of us could, but in his Business Week article “Leadership in Six Words,” author John Baldoni suggests that being able to do just that is important for career success.

Leadership in Six Words

Once upon a time Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a story using only six words. Impossible, some thought. Not for Papa, as Neal Conan explained on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. The next day Hemingway produced this: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn."

Clare Booth Luce, according to columnist Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, once told President John Kennedy that “a great man is one sentence.” Noonan writes that Lincoln's life could be summed up as “He preserved the Union and freed the slaves.” Scott Eblin adapted the concept to summing up one’s leadership legacy. “It takes time and effort to boil down the essence of what you’re trying to do to a short and memorable idea.”

Leadership IQ, a Washington, DC-based research and training company, directs one of the largest leadership studies ever conducted.  Their work has appeared in Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, CBS News, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and many more.  The results in this eye-opening article were compiled after the Leadership I.Q. team surveyed 3,611 workers from 291 business and healthcare organizations. 

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