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This New Year
is bringing a new publication schedule for our monthly
Newsletter, “The Helm Report,” and ezine, “Tips For
Success.”
Beginning this month, both the Newsletter and the ezine will
become bi-monthly instead of monthly publications, and they
will alternate.
That means that in January we have published this Newsletter,
and in February we will publish this year’s first “Tips For
Success,” and so on through the year. We’re making this
change so that we can give those publications more attention
each month as we prepare them, and also because we have a new
Newsletter for you – the “TopHealth”®
Newsletter.
As Actors
Are Always Saying, “What’s My Motivation?”
I have always
had a very strong interest in being healthy, no doubt because
I lost my father, and his father before him, when they were
both relatively young (56). So, with that trend as
motivation, I have worked hard at maintaining a healthy body
weight and eating sensibly most of the time so that I can
indulge occasionally. It seems to have paid
off; I feel better now than I felt sometimes in my 20s,
and I have broken the pattern in my family history!
I have always
wanted to share some of the exciting and easy tips for
maintaining a healthy lifestyle that I’ve discovered and tried
over the years, and I believe I have found a good way to do
so. Starting this
month, with our compliments, you will begin receiving the
one-page “TopHealth”â
Newsletter. This
newsletter focuses on health and wellness by providing
concise, interesting information and suggestions.
Most of us want
to stay fit and in shape, but just wanting to isn’t
enough. We need
to be reminded regularly of the many small things that we can
do that, over time, will help us stay strong and healthy. The monthly
“TopHealth”â
Newsletter can fill the bill. “But wait,” you may be
thinking, “Your newsletter has always focused on ideas for
being a more effective manager. Aren’t you going off
in a different direction?” The answer is, not
really. Read
on.
Personal
Health: The Overlooked Factor In Management
Effectiveness
The list of
things to do if you want to be a more effective manager is
long and involved. Seven habits, be a
coach, develop teams, and on and on. These all make a big,
and usually not mentioned, assumption that the base upon which
you build good management skills consists of a healthy and fit
body. Without a
strong and well-maintained physical body, actually applying
the seven habits, etc. is going to be more difficult.
Have you ever
wondered why you sometimes have a tougher time than you
thought you should applying good management skills and
practices? Well,
let’s look at some of the negative effects that poor health
habits can have:
1.
Smoking!!! The
number one health hazard by all counts. Not only is it a
smelly habit that stains your teeth and fingers, smokers have
to contend with the greater likelihood of serious health
problems and the fact that they will live, on the average, ten
years less than non-smokers. The good news is that,
while smoking is a very addictive habit with serious negative
health consequences, there are numerous cessation treatments
that work.
2. Sedentary life
style. We are
physical animals and our bodies are designed to be used. We are designed to
move around and, up to a hundred years ago, that is exactly
what most people did a lot of. We walked more because
there weren’t that many alternatives. About eighty percent
of our population worked on farms and that active lifestyle
resulted in a high level of physical fitness.
Unfortunately, in the last
hundred years we have created more and more labor-saving
devices that result in a lifestyle that, for most of us, is
not physically demanding, and the result of general inactivity
is that it can add to health problems. Remember your old high
school coach saying, “Use it or lose it!” It turns out that he
was right. Not
getting thirty minutes a day of movement means more than just
getting flabby.
It also means that our internal organs (heart, lungs, etc.)
get weaker. And
no one wants that. Exercising regularly
means you will have the stamina to readily meet the physical
demands of your job.
3. Not getting enough
sleep. Sleep
research centers report that most of us are sleep deprived to
some degree. If
you aren’t getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night,
that’s you. Being
sleep deprived makes it more difficult to concentrate, limits
your stamina, and can make you more susceptible to colds and
other ills.
4. Not eating right. One of the problems
with trying to eat right is that junk food tastes so good, is
so accessible, and so convenient. We all tend to rationalize
that the conveniences outweigh (and that pun is intended!) the
insidious contribution that junk food can make to weight
gain. The
downsides of poor eating habits are well known: increased risk for
major health problems, poor self-image, and the cost of
continually having to update your wardrobe.
The Bottom Line: Good Lifestyle Habits
Enhance Your Management Skills, And Bad Lifestyle Habits
Handicap You
The healthier
you are, the easier it is to bring your energy to bear on
being effective at whatever you do, including your job. My experience over the
years in helping individuals deal with performance issues has
reinforced this observation. I believe strongly
that maintaining one’s personal health is a way of stacking
the deck in one’s favor in terms of becoming an outstanding
performer and potential leader, and I think this factor is
often overlooked.
I hope the “TopHealth”â
Newsletter will help you be a better manager and live longer
(and in good health) in the process.
The
“TopHealth”â
Newsletter will be mailed to you by the last week of each
month. If you
haven’t received the first copy by January 31st
just call my office at (800) 886-4356 – anyone who answers the
phone can help you – or click in
this portion of the sentence to send me a quick email.
I’m
looking forward to hearing from you about what you think of
the “TopHealth”â
Newsletter,
so please give me a call or drop me an email.
Remember, People are not your most
important asset!
The RIGHT People are!
To hire the best, test!
To reveal management potential, test!
To diagnose
problem behavior, test!
Best regards,
Kurt G. Helm, Ph.D.
Phone Toll Free
800-886-4356
Email: khelm@helmtest.com
Website: http://www.helmtest.com/
PRIVACY
and SPAM POLICY: We never rent, trade, or sell our email
list to anyone for any reason whatsoever. You'll never
get an unsolicited email from a stranger as a result of
joining this list.
© 2008, Kurt G. Helm, Ph.D. All rights
reserved. You are
allowed to use material from this newsletter in whole or in
part provided that you include attribution in the following
form: “By Kurt G.
Helm, Ph.D., of Helm and Associates, Inc. Please visit our
website at http://www.helmtest.com/ for
more information about how to avoid hiring mistakes by using
pre-employment testing as part of the applicant evaluation
procedure.”
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