Summer is out, and fall is in! You know what that means, Halloween is just around the corner.

Halloween is an interesting day that brings back childlike memories for plenty of you and your family, not to mention for your employees, associates and co-workers. Will you use this coming holiday to not only bond with friends and family, but also those that you work with? Or will you choose to actively ignore it? Already planned out the work day activities? Wondering just what your choice says about you?

Research shows us that looking at your behavior patterns for handling holidays, which can include uncertainty and increased stress, can speak volumes to your personality in the workplace. If you haven’t yet dedicated the time to better understanding your workplace behavior patterns and those around you, now is the time to do so before the holidays are in full swing. Creating a thriving workplace culture isn’t just an idea for this final quarter of the year, it’s a must when it comes to building the effective and productive team you need for 2017.

What can you do right now? Choose an activity outside of work to get involved in. Doing activities outside of work is a great way to learn more about the people you spend 40 hours a week with, and what better opportunity is there than Halloween?

Here are 3 ways to celebrate this coming holiday:

1. Carve pumpkins together. This is a fun and creative activity to do outside of the work place. If you don’t know your co-workers very well this is a friendly way to get to know each other without the awkward silence. Maybe even after carving the pumpkins you could put on a contest, share it on your social media to connect with your community and the winner could get a prize!

2. If you and your co-workers have kids, trick or treating is another option for this Halloween. Take the kids through the neighborhood and grow as friends! And who is to say that trick or treating is just for kids? You can put on your costumes and go trick or treating yourselves!

3. If you all have separate plans on this Halloween, then bring the celebrations to your office. You can decorate your office space and even dress up. Have a costume contest, a candy swap, or a Halloween lunch…there are plenty of ways to be creative this Halloween!

While this is about getting to know who you work with inside and outside of the office it is also about breaking down barriers and creating a venue for meaningful communication. Find opportunities, even past this coming Halloween, to get to know your co-workers. It will make your work experience much more enjoyable and enable you to grow as a person!

Wait a minute, did you say you can’t get anything done?  Anyone who is successful in business today knows that one of the ways to stay successful in business is to get the work done. But what strategies are you utilizing in your practice to make sure it happens consistently?

It is a simple concept – someone hired you to do the work and you get that work done. Unfortunately, our daily lives are full of interruptions and having an afternoon to get work done without interruptions (let alone 30 minutes) is almost unheard of. The problem is distractions pile up and before you know it you can find yourself still at the office burning the midnight oil, just to keep pace.

In many ways, technology makes it completely impossible to avoid interruption. At any given moment, your cell phone, your office phone, your email, your text, your social media and a whole host of other things could interrupt you while you were in the middle of an important project.

Unfortunately, even minor distractions have catastrophic impacts on all of our productivity.

You need to learn to master your technology to create silence in the world around you. There specific, actionable strategies you can employ to help you succeed. You need to activate the technology you use to assist you in getting work done, rather than thwart you. When you take this proactive action, you will see an increase in your productivity and efficiency together with a reduction in mistakes.

Here are our top 5 best practice strategies for creating silence in your world so you can get things done:

1. Make a list of all your distractions.

What stops you from getting work done? While this is a loaded question, here we are talking specifically about your technology. Is it your phone ringing? Your smartphone notifications? Your news updates? Your obsessive need to check email? Spend at least a week observing your daily distractions and document them so you can know how to proactively limit then going forward.

2. Determine what you need.

Now that you know what is distracting you each day, you can make a list of the technology that creates this distraction. Once you’ve made this list we will move to training your device.

3. Train your device.

In many ways, the specific device you use will dictate how you create silence. Like it or not our strategies can be dependent on the tech you own right now. Specifically, we are looking at setting up do-not-disturb features. This may be silent mode, do-not-disturb, messenger assistant, or any one of countless others. While both the iPhone and the Android platform have preset to do-not-disturb feature built in, there are additional apps you can add to help you manage your technology. As stated in Step Two, the first step is knowing where you need to create your silence. The second step is determining what functionalities exist on each of the devices you use and, finally, setting them up to create the environment you want.

4. Allow for emergencies.

The people you care about in your life (and the court and the bar) still need to be able to reach you in an emergency. Within your device control features create a circle or group of individuals and contract information that can still reach you when you have the do-not-disturb settings on.

5. Fine tune and enhance your strategy.

It would be counterproductive to tell you that this is a one-time solution. Every time there is a new update to your software, you add a device to your ecosystem or you change the way you do things, this process will need to adapt and change. Schedule monthly check-ins on your calendar now to make sure your technology continues to stay managed and doing what you need it to.

Remember, at the end of the day, you hold the keys to your own success. If you need a little help starting your journey to greatness and creating your strategies for implementation, let us know – we’d love to talk about it. Contact us on our website or at yourteam@practice42.com or by phone at 850-933-5072, and we will set up a complimentary 30 minute brainstorming session.

I was meeting with one of my good friends (and really respected colleagues) today and we were talking about a mistake made by a team member. A gut-wrenching, totally preventable, how-could-you-do-this-to-me-unless-you-really-do-want-to-sink-my-practice type of mistake. We talked about it, although there was nothing to be done. My colleague had already gone above and beyond and told the client the ultimate – I will fix it myself.

Our call was about another matter, but this filtered in because it permeated the entire day for her and in truth, there was nothing to discuss because she did exactly what she should have done in this situation. She saw the live grenade, dove on it, and saved the client (and the situation) for the firm and the team and herself. Because in truth, that’s what we do for our firms. There are times (and there will be times) when they require the ultimate sacrifice.

But what it meant in reality was working late tonight, after already 14 hours in, to fix someone else’s problem.

It got me reflecting because this is the fourth call I am having JUST LIKE THIS – JUST THIS WEEK WITH A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FIRM. A call where we spend the majority of an hour talking about how an employee has let you down in some capacity again, is not living up to his or her true potential or is outright just not getting the job done. To quote a gal pal of mine here in the deep south, “Well, honey, there isn’t anything to be done because she’s committed to permanently hiding her true potential.”

And it galls me.

You deserve better. Your business deserves better. We all deserve better. So I thought I would share with you my three key attributes I think define success when it comes to what I want from a team member.

Key Attribute 1 – Be Obsessive

I want you to vomit at work. I want you to be so invested in your delivery, in your job, in your work product, in what drives you that you become obsessive. I want you to be so involved that you puke when things go sideways or when you make a simple mistake. I’ll supply the bathroom; you supply the drive. But I want you to own your work at this level and I want you to care.

Key Attribute 2 – Find Yourself

I want you to desire your professional self. I am all about your development. I don’t care if I hire you as an associate, ask you what you want to do (thinking it’s to practice law or work at practice42) and we learn together you are God’s gift to marketing or a skydiver or a motivational speaker or a domestic facilitator. Life’s too short. Figure it out and be yourself – there’s nothing better.

Key Attribute 3 – Be Authentic

Tell me what you want. But more than that – tell yourself.

If you want to be the best juggler in the traveling circus – by all means – go for it! But tell me. Tell me if it’s your goal to join circus school in 6 months, start a part-time internship in 1 year and get on the road in 24 months. At least then we can plan. You might be surprised to find I not only support you, but I’ll help you get there.

I get you’re supporting my dream right now, and I want you to find yours.

But for those of you who are here and feel that supporting my dream could become yours, or at least a shared vision, don’t hold back. And don’t go halve-sees. Like most of my clients and friends, we’ve seen the amazing things that happen when you believe in someone else and something bigger than ourselves and we want you to have that experience.

So when I say I want you to puke at work, it’s because I want you to believe in something so strongly that you want it to succeed with every fiber of your being.

So when something goes sideways you feel it. Because it hurts.

Because you want to see the success of what can be. And you know it’s there. And if my firm or my company isn’t for you, I want you to tell me what you want. I want to know I should support you on your journey. And for you to have the courage to tell me at the end of the day to find someone else.

To quote my favorite decal on the wall at the yoga studio – Will it be easy? Nope.

Worth it? Absolutely.

Remember, at the end of the day, you hold the keys to your own success.