1. What are your strengths?
2. What are your weaknesses?
3. Why are you interested in working for [insert company name here]?
4. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?
5. Why do you want to leave your current company?
6. Why was there a gap in your employment between [insert date] and [insert date]?
7. What can you offer us that someone else can not?
8. What are three things your former manager would like you to improve on?
9. Are you willing to relocate?
10. Are you willing to travel?
11. Tell me about an accomplishment you are most proud of.
12. Tell me about a time you made a mistake.
13. What is your dream job?
14. How did you hear about this position?
15. What would you look to accomplish in the first 30 days/60 days/90 days on the job?
16. Discuss your resume.
17. Discuss your educational background.
18. Describe yourself.
19. Tell me how you handled a difficult situation.

20. Why should we hire you?

1. Why are you looking for a new job?

22. Would you work holidays/weekends?

23. How would you deal with an angry or irate customer?

24. What are your salary requirements?

1. Give a time when you went above and beyond the requirements for a project.

26. Who are our competitors?

1. What was your biggest failure?

28. What motivates you?

29. What’s your availability?

30. Who’s your mentor?

1. Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss.

32. How do you handle pressure?

33. What is the name of our CEO?

34. What are your career goals?

1. What gets you up in the morning?

36. What would your direct reports say about you?

1. What were your bosses’ strengths/weaknesses?

38. If I called your boss right now and asked him what is an area that you could improve on, what would he say?

39. Are you a leader or a follower?

40. What was the last book you’ve read for fun?

1. What are your co-worker pet peeves?

42. What are your hobbies?

43. What is your favorite website?

44. What makes you uncomfortable?

1. What are some of your leadership experiences?

46. How would you fire someone?

1. What do you like the most and least about working in this industry?

48. Would you work 40+ hours a week?

49. What questions haven’t I asked you?

50. What questions do you have for me?

Assigning the Wrong Person to Manage the Project

Usually early on in a project, the majority of the time and effort is focused on lining up the right resources rather than identifying the right project manager. “Indeed, too often ‘project managers get picked based on availability, not necessarily on skill set,” says Sudhir Verma, VP of the Consulting Services & Project Management Office at Force 3, a technology solutions provider. Selecting an inadequately trained or inexperienced project manager can doom even the best of teams. It’s important to not only spend time selecting the right resources for the project, but also ensuring that you select a project manager whose skill set matches the project requirements.

Failing to get team buy-in

The fastest way to torpedo a project is failing to garner enough support from the departments and people directly affected and/or involved in the project. According to Bill Rosenthal, CEO of Communispond, in a CIO article, most managers fail at:

1. Clearly explaining everyone’s respective role
2. Describing the personal payoff everyone will receive when the project is successfully completed
3. Explaining how each individual’s contributions will be evaluated
4. Generating a sense of urgency about the project, leading the team to think business as usual will be fine

The best way to combat this is by getting the project manager to kick things off by calling the team together (including all off-site staff) and delivering a presentation about the project and its significance in a way that really gets everyone fired up.

No executive buy-in

For a project to be successful, “Somebody at the higher levels of the organization needs to own the project from start to finish and be personally vested in its success,” says Casey Holloran, co-founder and CMO at Costa Rican Vacations & Panama Luxury Vacations. “When [a project] has no clear head, things tend to fall apart.”

Too many projects at once

A common mistake that you may not have even been aware of is putting too many project’s into production at the same time. Most managers believe that they can get more done when they start a lot of projects at once, but in reality this practice is hugely counterproductive. When you force people to multitask, it actually makes them slower, hurts the quality of work produced, and worst of all can cause delays that have a ripple effect throughout the entire organization.

A good way to stop these productivity losses is to “reduce work in progress (WIP) by 25-50 percent,” says Realization CEO, Sanjeev Gupta. While this may sound counter intuitive, it actually helps reduce the back and forth and makes managers more responsive in dealing with issues and questions. Gupta points out that by reducing your work in progress by 25-50 percent “can double task completion rates.”

Lack of scheduled meetings

We all know that communication is a critical cornerstone to ensure project success. Even with all the project management software in existence today, nothing can replace the good old fashioned meeting and without them a project can easily fall apart. When starting a project, it’s always a good idea to pick a day and time that works best for the team and hold a weekly meeting (whether in person or virtually) and stick with it. Having a recurring scheduled meeting will help keep everyone on the same page and thus keep the project flowing.

Not having a specific scope

Scope creep is a total project killer. If you fail at defining a project’s scope not only will your project not have a clear end goal, but also it will be increasingly difficult to fight off scope creep and stay on task. Scope creep is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to your project. The best way to combat this is by clearly defining the scope of your project before any other work is started.

You probably already know that meditation is physically and mentally calming, but it’s also emotionally soothing. That makes meditation most pleasant and revitalizing.

Before we get to the mediation, let’s examine the nature of stress first.

What is Stress?

When the mind is speeding from one thought to the next like a jet, and the physical body feels intensely alive, that’s a common type of stress. So, is it a pleasant or unpleasant mental state? To answer that question, I suggest you tune in to your bodily sensations next time you are under stress. That way, you will know for yourself.

Stress is generally triggered by heavy workloads and tight schedules. For example, you have to cover for a colleague at the office who has called in sick, which doubles your workload. Another scenario would be a deadline that moved up.

Ultimately, thinking is the cause of stress. The sheer thought of a heavy workload or a tight schedule, can give rise to a sense of panic. With this knowledge, it’s quite easy to see that destressing is fundamentally about not thinking. In other words, the most effective way to relieve stress is by taking a break from thinking.

How to Destress: Guided Meditation

Guided meditation does not involve thinking. Instead, you work with plain awareness. When you meditate, you give relaxed attention to your meditation object. That’s it!

The mind calms down the moment awareness takes the place of thinking. In this context awareness, attention, and mindfulness mean the same thing, they all point to a state of mind that is free from thought.

Guided meditation is one of the easiest meditation techniques available. What is more, it’s as fun as it is powerful. All you have to do is press play, close your eyes, and follow the voice instructions.

Meditation downloads can be found by searching for guided meditation in any search engine.

Meditation Tips

• Meditate in a quiet room where you won’t be disturbed. That makes it easier to relax and concentrate. It’s also a good idea to switch off the sound on your cell phone.
• Meditate lying down on your back. It’s natural to relax the body while lying down. Remember that a relaxed body makes for a relaxed mind and vice versa, so make yourself as comfortable as possible. If there is nowhere to lie down, sitting on a chair will do just fine.
• Meditating with your eyes closed makes it easier to stay focused. Moreover, darkness has a calming effect on the mind. So if you like, you can switch off the lights in the room.
• Always give relaxed attention to your meditation object, trying too hard only increases physical and mental tension.
• Meditate 1-2 times per day for a minimum of 5 minutes per session.
• It’s better to do multiple 5-minute meditations with short breaks, than a long session. In the beginning, the mind quickly gets tired since it’s not used to giving its continuous attention for extended periods of time.
• Meditate in the morning while you’re still in bed. That gives you a fresh start of the day. Likewise, you can improve the quality of your sleep by doing a session before going to bed at night.

A final note. The more you practice, the deeper the meditation takes you, making the destressing more effective. The soothing and calming effects also become more pronounced with experience. In short, you have everything to gain by establishing a regular meditation practice.

Good luck!

Feel free to share your experiences of destressing in the comments…

So with this cartoon, I played with the idea that higher-ups weren’t necessarily something to be concerned about, they were just literally higher up. Maybe they’re really tall? Or possibly up on some sort of raised platform? In any case, a ladder is probably a good idea, and it’s easier to draw than a trampoline.

As a side note, while I was writing this, I came up with an idea for someone in management being summoned by the “lower-downs.” I don’t think it’s going to go well for anybody.

Meetings are something that most people dread. We can certainly understand the sentiment, since meetings tend to go on far too long, pull you away from work, and often don’t accomplish much. But meetings can also be useful and productive things, so long as the organizer is willing to impose some constraints. Another way to improve efficiency is by limiting meetings to 22 minutes beyond which time the rate of productivity diminishes.

“Who we are and what we accomplish depends largely on a vast network of routines and behaviors that we carry out with little to no thought whatsoever,” writes Jocelyn Glei in ablog post from Behance’s blog, 99U. Habits are the brain’s own internal productivity drivers, the more we repeat a certain task, the more the brain habitualizes it. The more a task become a habit, the less brainpower needed to complete it. Glei explains, “the brain quickly transforms as many tasks and behaviors as possible into habits so that we can do them without thinking, thus freeing up more brainpower to tackle new challenges.”

How habits are formed

When we are first asked to perform something new, our brains work extremely hard. They process tons of new information as we undertake the task that is asked of us. Quickly, though, as we begin to understand how a task works, the behavior starts becoming automatic and the mental activity required to perform the task diminishes dramatically.

Think back to the last time you had to learn a new piece of software. Remember how much concentration and focus it took? Then compare that to the amount of mental effort you use when you are using something a lot more familiar – say Microsoft Office. According to writer Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, “This process – in which the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine – is known as ‘chunking,’ and it’s at the root of how habits form.”

Once we’ve developed these habits, there’s an extremely powerful three-step loop that we fall into. First there’s a trigger or a cue. Essentially, it’s something that tells your brain to switch over to automatic mode and which habit you need to perform. Then there is routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Lastly, there is reward. This helps your brain figure out if this particular habit loop is worth remembering. “As this loop then is repeated, the cues and rewards become intertwined until a power sense of anticipation and craving emerges”, writes Duhigg.

So as you can see, it’s not a wonder that we have such a tough time changing! Luckily for everyone, there are some ways we can help beat this loop.

How to change those pesky habits

Glei first points out that there’s no escaping the three step habit loop described above, primarily because “it’s hard-wired into our brains.” However once you accept this, trying to implement new habits is difficult but fairly straight forward. “The trick is to keep the cue and the rewards while changing the routine,” says Glei. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, that’s because it is – sort of. We’ve all tried to change our habits before. Typically we’re successful for a few weeks, then we slide back into our old, poor habits. The key to avoiding this behavioral reversion according to Duhigg is dwelling on the benefits of the habit you want to adopt. By focusing on the benefits, it will help keep you motivated. “Allow yourself to anticipate the reward. Eventually that craving will make it easier.”

With this knowledge, I hope that you are now better equipped to help your team adopt some new, powerful habits and keep them for good.

Lori Eschene at Tiny Buddha recounted feeling this way as she performed a song for her singing instructor.

“…he looked right at me while I sang On My Own from Les Miserables—a vastly different experience than singing in the shower, or at a karaoke bar after a couple of drinks—and he even took notes, since his hands were free.

I felt like my vocal cords were gripped in a vice. The experience of singing, while sitting alone, with someone I just met staring at me, made me feel far more vulnerable than I ever feel when I press publish here.”

But then, Lori convinced herself that her coach was on her side, and was then able to let loose and improve as a singer. Sometimes it’s easy to feel like our friends and coworkers are judging us, especially when we’re trying something new. Hard as it can be, Lori encourages her readers to train themselves to assume that most people around them are supportive, rather than judgmental or vitriolic. Believing that everyone is on our side it makes it much easier to step outside our comfort zone and learn something new.

- Shep McAllister

One of the apartment units was already tenanted and two were vacant by the time I took ownership. Repair issues included many cracks in the walls and ceilings, plumbing that needed fixing, lighting fixtures that needed replacing, broken windows and screens as well as a full repainting of the walls. I personally don’t have the expertise to do most of these renovations so I hired contractors to do what I cannot do.

Why Achieving Goals Alone is Not Always Effective

In order to save some money, I initially tried to do as much of the renovations work myself and this included most of the painting, since I had already painted my own house before. I could also do other simple tasks like replace broken window screens since again, I already did that at my own residence. I was thinking that doing as much as I can on my own would be shortcuts to success in the overall renovations.

When the renovations crew came onsite, the plan was for them to repair the major cracks on the walls so I could do the painting. However, things did not turn out that way. They told me that my painting skills were quite poor being slow and messy. As a result, they would have to clean up after my mistakes.

Ultimately, I got ‘fired’ by my own contractors, in a nice way of course since I was the guy paying them. So I was effectively demoted by my own crew to being the clean up man since that was the only thing I could not mess up.

You’ll Achieve Faster Success in Goals with the Advantage of Group

I could take the time to learn how to do many of the renovating tasks on my own because new skills just take an effort to learn. However, such skills in repairing houses would have taken me so long, that there would have been much delays in achieving the overall goal, which was to get all of the vacant apartments rented out. Each week that a unit is vacant costs a property owner money.

So I gave in and decided upon the advice of my contractors to let them do most of the work, including painting. In many ways, getting fired by my own renovations crew was very helpful. The renovations would be completed much faster with the professionals handling these tasks. Meanwhile, this freed up my own time to focus on the things that I did well, which included marketing the vacant units to potential tenants.

In fact, the marketing campaign was so effective with my total focus, I was able to get new tenants signed up on leases before all of the renovations actually finished. This of course resulted in minimal financial loss due to vacancies.

My example here with my real estate rental property shows that some of our goals in life are not meant to be achieved alone or in isolation. Instead, success will come easier and faster if such goals were worked on with the help from other people.

Such teamwork with others also occurs in nature as many animals including wolves and killer whales hunt together in numbers. It is much safer for these animals to bring down certain prey, especially larger and dangerous ones, if teamwork is utilized.

The assistance of the right people involved with your goals can result in major success that you would not otherwise have achieved by yourself. So it is important to determine which of your goals should be attempted on your own and which ones are best with group effort.

Why is it so hard to move forward? One step forward, another back, yet another sideways? Sometimes it can seem like we are just going around in circles.

Blockages

Most blockages come from unresolved problems. So how do we become blocked and what can we do about it so that we are free to move forward? Most blockagesare in our heads. These mental blocks come from a variety of sources but they usually fall into these categories:

• The past. We were either hurt in the past or made a mistake and it still bothers us. Perhaps we have experienced serious adverse circumstances and may have a lot of forgiving to do. Whatever the reasons you still have to move forward in spite of any unfinished business. Unfortunately, the past can linger in your brain as a distraction that continually pulls on your attention and energy to give it its due, so it can be hard to move forward when this occurs. Unfinished business can also make claims on your energy that prevent you from being wholeheartedly in the present.
• The future. The future always holds uncertainty which opens the door to self-doubt. It can harness our imaginations in a negative way and make it hard for us to see useful decisions and choices. It can also open the what-if door and keep us suspended in questions that cannot be answered.
• Our view of ourselves. All of our blockages reflect in some way our view of ourselves, our abilities, competence and potential for success. If our self view was damaged, then we may have a hard time visualizing a way to move forward.

How To Handle Blockages To Move Forward

Blockages are tricky to handle. We really cannot ignore them. If we do, our inner voice will demand our attention. We also need to realize that many of our inner challenges can’t be easily solved with an affirmation or visualization. They take a concerted effort and some time to heal and repair. What’s needed is a strategy so that we can move forward. So what can we do? I think the easiest way to handle blockages is to treat them as long-term companions in our lives. And give them their due. One way is to write in a journal every day in the morning and the evening. The amount of time doesn’t have to be great. By giving attention to the part of you that needs healing you are then freer to move forward. And you will feel better about yourself and therefore do better as a result.

There’s More…

Ok, so we have set aside time and attention for our healing needs, but we still have to move forward somehow. How do we do that in a way that enables us to take intelligent risks and still honor ourselves and our limitations? The trick is really in how we go about it:

• Avoid pushing yourself too hard and too fast. By accepting limitations, you actually stand a better chance of success because you are not fighting yourself.
• Be prepared for and accept obstacles as important information. Sometime obstacles occur because of details that we need to pay attention to. We may not notice when we are going too fast or when we need to take a step back because we have missed something important.

Achieving Goals That Matter

You can succeed in anything you do as long as you give the work your all. To be able to give your work your all, you must have total acceptance of yourself. This is why making sure you address your hurts and unfinished business is so important. It frees your energy for your current tasks. To really achieve goals that really matter, and to be able to consistently work at them try this approach. Start with these questions:

1. Where am I? Define or acknowledge where you are.  This step also lets you be honest with yourself about the skills, resources  and limitations you have.
2. What do I need? Notice I said need not want. Sticking to our needs keeps us closer to our true and authentic self and less likely to go off on a wild goose chase or seek less fulfilling pursuits – like excessive consumption.  Need can be anything from a need to earn enough to live on to engaging in creative work. But it needs to be a real need  born of our talents and desire to contribute to the world and not one that comes from others or societal pressures.
3. What do I need to do to get what I need? Here you close the gap between the present and the future but you do so in a grounded way, because you are staying in touch with the realities of the present, who you are and your real needs. You can move forward intelligently and confidently, taking one step at a time.

The Benefit Of Being Grounded

Being grounded has the important benefit of enabling us to be serious about what we are doing, Seriousness has important implications for the quality of our work and therefore makes our work more satisfying. Have you ever decided on a goal, and felt a certain weakness inside about it? That feeling of weakness come from something not being right, probably in one of the steps above. Using the three questions will help you feel confident, appropriate and serious about what you are doing. That internal synchronicity will show up in your excellent results.

1. Write It Down.

Every task, every commitment should be written down. This frees your mind from the energy- and attention-sucking job of trying to remember. In his seminal book on productivity, Getting Things Done, David Allen points out how uncompleted commitments take up psychic energy, each one making you just the tiniest bit more tired, more distracted, and therefore less productive. He emphasizes that the first step to managing your life and time is getting every commitment, large and small, out of your head and into a trusted system. I use OmniFocus to capture these commitments, but you can start with a simple pen and paper.

2. Get a Head Start.

The best way to hit the ground running is to start the night before. Before leaving your workspace, or before going to bed, take ten minutes to look over the next day’s commitments. What appointments can’t be missed? What do you need to have with you for those appointments? (Make sure you’ve gathered those materials and have them ready to go.) What three to five tasks must get done? Decide what you’ll do first. Look at that to-do list and decide whether any tasks on it can be delegated to someone else (see number 9 below) or, even better, crossed off the list altogether (see number 10 below).

The busier your day, the more important it is to do this quick survey the day or evening before. It means you waste no time in the morning deciding where to start, or gathering materials (and maybe discovering a crucial item isn’t available when you need it).

3. Do Your Most Dreaded Task First

Every one of us has one or more tasks on our to-do list that we dread doing. Maybe it’s that unpleasant phone call you don’t want to make. Or that blog post you’ve been putting off writing because you don’t know how to start. Or that project that just overwhelms you because it’s so massive. Whatever it is, it hangs over your head, distracting you with guilt because it keeps getting pushed to the next day and the next. It’s time to end that cycle. Do it first thing. Writer Michael Hyatt talks about slaying your dragons before breakfast—there’s nothing more motivating for the rest of your day than crossing that monster off your list first thing in the morning. Make that call. Pull out a piece of paper and brainstorm ideas for that blog post. Do something about that overwhelming task—maybe you can’t finish it in one day, but you can at least get started. Whatever it is, just do it. Then let the satisfaction of crossing it off your list carry you into the rest of your busy day.

4. Turn Off Distractions.

One of the major productivity killers is the distraction of constant interruptions. Emails, phone calls, people appearing at your door… The technology that can (and should) make our lives easier and better also can make it virtually impossible to maintain the kind of focused attention that’s necessary to work efficiently and effectively. But here’s the thing: you can control that technology. When you’ve got an important task that requires attention and focus, create the space to give it your best. Whether it’s a meeting with a client or colleague, or an important letter that needs to get written, or a piece of art you want to create, schedule a block of time to focus on that commitment, and then turn off all distractions. Shut down your phone (or at least turn off the ringer). Silence your email alerts. Disconnect the internet (or at least Facebook and Twitter). Close your office door. Just for that hour (or thirty minutes, or half day), turn off all outside communications and give yourself the necessary luxury of undisturbed time to really focus on the matter at hand.

5. Take Breaks.

There’s a limit to how long anybody can devote deep focus to a task. No matter how busy you are, after a certain amount of time the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and fatigue—physical and/or mental—starts to impair your effectiveness, so schedule breaks periodically even during the busiest days. Take ten minutes to stand up, stretch, get a drink of water, walk around the block. You’ll return to your work refreshed, both mentally and physically, and ready to be even more productive.

6. Batch Process.

If the demands of your day include routine tasks, try to group similar tasks and schedule certain times during the day to knock them out. Answering emails? Returning phone calls? Entering expenses into a spreadsheet? Instead of interrupting your other tasks to do these things piecemeal, batch them. Set two or three or five times a day to check and respond to emails. Return phone calls at 11:45 am and 4:45 pm (or, if you want to avoid getting sucked into long phone conversations, return them at 12:15 pm while folks are at lunch and 5:15 pm after they’ve left for the day, and just leave a message!). By batching similar tasks, you save the time lost to ramping up multiple times a day and reap the benefits of momentum.

7. Eat Breakfast

Do I need to explain this? There are countless studies confirming the importance of breakfast for maintaining our health. Healthy people are more productive. No matter how busy you are, eat a decent breakfast. It’ll fuel you for a terrific start to your day.

8. Get Some Exercise

Not to be too repetitive, but healthy people are more productive. Exercise makes you healthier, so be sure to get some exercise every day. You don’t need to spend hours at the gym to get the benefit of this; take a walk around the block, or do some isometrics at your desk. Just do something to get your heart pumping and your blood racing. It will enhance your general well being as well as your ability to think more clearly.

9. Delegate

I’ll confess: I stink at this. I hate to ask for help, and often it seems more trouble to explain a task to someone else than to just do it myself. But not everything that needs to be done in your life must be done by you. Evaluate that to-do list carefully. What tasks could someone else do, thereby freeing you up to focus on the things only you can do? Look around you: who is available to do some of those tasks? A secretary? A colleague? A family member? A paid helper? An important key to productivity is doing only those things that only you can do, and giving somebody else the opportunity to contribute by doing those other tasks.

10. Say No

How many commitments have you made that don’t really need to be kept at all? Have you taken on tasks that don’t actually matter to you or anybody else? Is your calendar cluttered with meetings that don’t accomplish anything for organizations that you no longer care about? Has your day been hijacked by somebody else’s priorities? If your calendar is jammed, if your to-do list is miles long, take ten minutes or so to look at each item with a careful eye. Can any of those appointments or tasks simply be crossed off to create some reasonable margin in your life?

When someone calls or appears at your door with a request for your participation in some activity, take a breath and consider whether it fits into your own priorities (which priorities, of course, might legitimately include keeping your boss or spouse happy). If the answer is no, then just say no. Practice it ahead of time: “Thank you for inviting me, but no.” “Thank you for asking, but no.” “Thank you for thinking of me, but no.”

As a wise person has said, “no” is a complete sentence. No explanation necessary. Just no.