As workplaces continue to rightsize and downsize, we all find ourselves doing more with less. How do we stay ahead of the workload while staying sane? The key is to put your creativity to work for you so you can do more with less and shine like never before.

Just what is creativity? It is the ability to make, produce, cause to exist or bring into being; the ability to make something out of nothing or to make something better than it was before. Creativity is an inborn force that we all have: If you’re alive, you’re creative.

It needs to be said, though, that not everyone has the raw talent, creative vision and self-management skills to run out and make a living being an artist. But remember that artistic talent is only one way of potentially millions that you can express your creativity at home or at work.

In today’s workplace, creative thinking, problem solving and innovation are at a premium. Here are 12 ways you can express your creativity more powerfully in any workplace:

1.) Use your values, interests, skills and aptitudes to express your unique perspectives, opinions and contributions.

2.) Take full advantage of the unique features of your personality to express your creativity in ways that are natural for you.

3.) Dress your body and your work space in ways that reflect your passion and energy.

4.) In what you say – either verbally or in writing – and how you say it, make sure you use word choice, vocabulary and communication style to showcase your uniqueness.

5.) Everybody works differently. Use your work habits, decision making and problem solving style to express who you really are.

6.) Everybody lives their lives differently. Use your personal habits, time management and outside interests to positively impact who you are at work.

7.) What are you passionate about? What kinds of things do you channel your energy into? What are you committeed to? Take all three to work with you and put them to work for you.

8.) Every creative act begins with a conception. Make sure you capture your workplace brainstorms in concrete ways.

9.) Every creative act develops through an incubation phase. Make sure you put safe boundaries around your own creative work time so it doesn’t get overwhelmed with other responsibilities.

10.) Every creative act ends with a birth. Make sure you help each project grow to its next level.

11.) Celebrate your beginnings and your endings. Mark the big moments and look for reasons to play.

12.) Know when it’s time to move on … from ideas, projects and jobs … then do it.

Still not sure you even are creative? Try reading the now-classic The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. If Julia can’t convince you you are creative, then no one can!

Cheryl Lynch Simpson is a Spiritual Director and Solutions Coach who helps women discover and create the life they’ve always wanted to live. Cheryl is the author of over 30 print/Internet articles and the founder of Coaching Solutions For Women, a coaching website that produces and showcases career, business, and life solutions that improve the life balance of today’s busy women. For a complimentary copy of her latest e-book, Ten-Minute Stress Zappers for Women Service Business Owners, visit

How much do you have running around in your head right now? There are tasks to remember to do, projects to develop, things to worry about, and the future to anticipate. With so much shuffling around, fighting to gain prominence in your thoughts, how can you prioritize your day?

Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and philosopher, claimed, “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.” That can be pretty scary, if you manage to actually find the time to reflect on the meaning.

One solution is to be sure that you always write down everything. It clears your mind, ensures that you will not overlook a task or deadline, and allows you to prioritize. However, do not create long ToDo lists. Instead write down one thing only on a sheet of paper, and file that in a Daily Action filing system according to the day or upcoming month when you might be able to get to it. It is okay if you have to move it to another day. At least it will not be forgotten, and it frees your mind to focus on the most important activities of the current day instead of keeping one part of your mind constantly trying to recollect all that you have to do after this day’s work is completed.

At the end of each day, you can take out the next day’s papers listing each of the activities you hope to work on, and you can prioritize the single sheets so that when you start your new day, you immediately know where to begin.

However, you do not always have a full sheet of paper handy. I recommend to my clients that they carry index cards with them at all times. These cards are both sturdier and less expensive than stick-on notes. Any time a thought comes into your head, jot it down on the index card. Remember, only record one item per card.

When you come into your office or home, take the cards out and drop them into your inbox or basket. At the time you process the latest stack of mail from your index, attach the card to a full sheet of paper. You do not want to waste extra time rewriting anything, and you also do not want the small card to be lost in a folder. That full sheet of paper is what gets placed in your Daily Action file.

I call these index cards my “No Brainer” cards. Nothing is ever overlooked because you have taken it out of your mind and placed it into an Action file. Your brain is freed to focus on current activities.

Even if there is no specific date that something needs to be worked on, but it is something you want to recall sometime in the future, you can create a “Someday” file. That folder might include a new restaurant you want to try, a book to order in the future, ideas for a new marketing brochure….The key is that it is an item you do not want to forget, even if you cannot anticipate when you might have a chance to pursue the action.

Once you get the hang of carrying these index cards with you and writing everything down, you will find the stress of remembering things is gone. Try it. It’s a “no brainer.”

Denise Landers is the author of

Yesterday I spent some time with a bloke who is educated, creative, articulate, confrontational, blunt, controversial, honest and friggin’ funny.

According the world-famous Harper Success-O-Meter, he’s very successful (ticks lots of boxes), is well known and respected, is down to earth, and while he can identify a problem, he’s all about solutions.

Love that in a person.

He’s Australia’s highest profile medic, has his own TV show on Channel Nine, has written a bunch of books, is an internationally renowned educator and speaker, has travelled to, and researched in, 103 countries, and his name is Dr. John Tickell.

While I have interviewed the great man on my radio show, we’d never shared a cuppa and it was fantastic to get him down to the Harperdome, and to spend some quality time with someone whom I respect as a teacher and motivator.
He’s also someone who absolutely walks the talk and doesn’t pull any punches.

I’m sure we could run a joint workshop called:
‘How to offend people and get them in shape at the same time.’

I always say to people “I can tell you what you want to hear, or I can tell you the truth.”

The Doc is a bit the same; I don’t think he’s too worried about getting the odd nose out of joint, as long as he doesn’t have to compromise what he knows to be the truth.

We spoke about a whole bunch of interesting stuff, learned a bit about each other, exchanged some books (I defininitely got the better deal) and then we parted company.

Last night I read his latest book, ‘The Calorie Comparison Guide’ and it is a fantastic resource. In the first few pages he lovingly and gently destroys most of the popular diets, explains his rationale clearly and effectively, and then proceeds to unpack his simple, yet enlightening message on nutrition.
In a world full of technical, fluffy, mumbo-jumbo crap, he beautifully articulates what most can’t.

Good work Doc.

I’m always intrigued by successful, clever, creatives.. and after chatting with him and reading his book, I tried to figure out what makes him the best in his field.

I could have come up with:

1. He’s highly intelligent and knowledgable (he is, but so are plenty of others).

2. He’s well managed and promoted (maybe, but that’s not it).

3. He’s a great goal setter and visionary (maybe, but nuh).

4. He’s funny and entertaining (close).

Here’s what I did come up with:

1. He is where he is largely, because he’s an incredible communicator.

2. It’s not about his knowledge, his qualifications or some razzle-dazzle publicity machine; he simply takes the time and effort to connect with people.
Very effectively.

3. He reads people (individuals and crowds) beautifully.

4. He has a gift for making people laugh, smile and enjoy themselves, while simultaneously punching them in the head with some tough love.

5. He addresses complex (and simple) scientific principles in a language that anyone can understand.

6. He listens, asks relevant questions, maintains eye contact, remembers and uses people’s names.

7. He is genuinely interested in people.

8. He’s not a ‘people-pleaser’, not a politician and understands when to speak and when to listen.

Whether you’re a high profile doctor, a brick-layer, a student or a manufacturer of widgets, if your goal is to create a ‘better’ reality, then work consciously at becoming a better communicator.

Here are my Top-Ten Communication Tips:

1. Genuinely listen to, and thoughtfully consider, what the other person is saying – as opposed to waiting for a gap in the conversation to impose your opinion.

2. Talk at people’s level of understanding – don’t try and intimidate or impress.

3. Watch. Communication is 93% non-verbal. Watching someone will often tell you more about them than listening will.

4. Ask open-ended questions; questions which can’t be answered by ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

5. Empathise. Do your best to put yourself in their shoes and see things through their eyes.

6. Make the conversation about them, not you. Leave your ego at the door.

7. Find something to (genuinely) compliment them about.

8. Read ‘How to win friends and influence people’, Dale Carnegie, 1936; a pioneer and a master communicator.

9. Remember and use names. I introduced the Doc to six people and as he left, he said goodbye to all of them and used their names. The net result? They all love him.

10. Don’t over-talk. Great communicators don’t necessarily talk the most. Sometimes the less we say (verbally), the greater the impact.

Craig Harper is a motivational speaker, qualified exercise scientist, author, radio presenter, television personality and owner of one of the largest personal training centres in the world.

He can be heard weekly on SEN 1116 and GOLD FM radio stations and appears on Monday’s on Network Ten’s 9AM.

craigharper.com/ Motivational Speaker- Craig Harper

A group of senior executives are finishing up a three-day program at a top leadership training center. They’ve already filled out evaluations of the courses they took and the instructors. Now they’re grading the facilities and meals. Soon they’ll be heading back home to see what work has piled up while they were gone.

This scene is played out countless times every day, all across the country. It also tells you a lot about the mistakes companies make with leadership training.

Companies spend millions every year to send top managers to multi-day, off-site leadership programs. At the same they spend only about 7 percent of the training budget on first line supervisors.

But it’s those first line supervisors that make most of the difference. Jeff Immelt, current CEO at General Electric, says that when he was a boy, he always knew the name of his father’s supervisor, but rarely knew the name of the CEO. That’s normal.

First line supervisors determine whether workers are engaged or not. They’re the leaders who assure that teams have both high morale and high productivity. Why not spend some training money on them to help them do a better job?

The other thing wrong with spending leadership training money on senior managers is that they’re not likely to change much. A manager who’s been plying the leadership trade for a couple of decades isn’t likely to make a big, effective behavioral change because of a couple of classes.

To make matters worse, most leadership training uses ineffective methods. Companies spend millions every year on classroom-based training that isn’t much different from what you’d see if you could go back in time to almost any Medieval university.

In both cases there’s one person in front of the room talking to a bunch of other people. Oh sure, today there would be PowerPoint slides and the seats might be more comfortable, but Martin Luther would have no trouble recognizing what’s going on.

In this medieval training model, the instructor lays out some basic principles and then works down to specific applications. That might be great for the teacher, but it’s not the way that most human beings learn best.

Think about any baby you’ve been around. There’s not a general principle in sight. The baby sees things, touches things, runs into things and tastes things and then turns all those experiences into general principles.

That’s how most adults learn, too. The most effective sequence is from specific point or experience to general principle.

What we need is more leadership training that uses methods that are more effective than lecture, or even lecture with PowerPoint and handouts. We need to use more methods that offer opportunities to learn from specific, relevant situations. And we need to use more methods that allow for reflection.

But, just because training is different from our Medieval model doesn’t automatically make it effective. There are a lot of programs out there based on the principle that we have to do something special to make learning fun. Other programs grow from the need for trainers and consultants to sell something “new.”

That’s why you have leadership training that isn’t training at all, at least not in leadership. Executives can try outdoor adventure training which can be lots of fun or they can learn leadership by cooking, which probably helps the executive be more helpful at parties. But how do either of these make you a better leader? None of these trendy methods seem to do much about helping you learn leadership, but they’re a fun way to spend the training budget.

Here’s another really important thing. A lot of great classroom training never finds its way back to the workplace. It never seems to make any difference in what the leader-trainee does.

That’s because companies spend their time and money on the training and forget about the learning. That’s up to the individual, but companies usually don’t even bother to set learning expectations or check to see whether a trainee is using what he or she was taught. They should.

Marshall Goldsmith reviewed how well 86,000 leadership training participants actually learned from the experience. He found that the people who went home, talked about the learning and worked, deliberately to implement new behaviors learned best. But those who just went back home and did no follow-up showed no improvement at all.

The sad fact is that we know how to do good leadership training; we’re just not doing it. Here are some things your company should consider.

Spend time and money training your first line supervisors and new managers. Help them put together a self-development plan that will help them learn on the job. You’ll get the most bang for your buck that way.

Make sure the leadership training you choose addresses specific skills and uses effective instructional techniques. Set specific learning objectives for everyone you send to training.

Make sure that people who go through training get help and encouragement when they get back on the job. Follow-up to see that they’re working to implement what they learned.

Wally Bock is the author of Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership ( performancetalk.com/ performancetalk.com/) and the Three Star Leadership blog ( blog.threestarleadership.com/ blog.threestarleadership.com/). He coaches individual managers, and is a popular speaker at meetings and conferences. Contact him at mailto:lta@threestarleadership.com lta@threestarleadership.com