The Genial Host

Need help or advice?  Go to the Genial Host.  Always happy to help, often to be found chatting with Harmony Seeker, the Genial Host welcomes distractions; they brighten up a boring day.

They love meetings, workshops, training days, anything that takes them away from the pile of work on the desk for a few hours.  Often to be heard saying “let’s do lunch” or “let’s meet for a coffee and discuss it” and suddenly a 5 minute discussion turns into a 30 minute chat over coffee (plus the time it takes to get there and back).

Meetings tend not to have agendas – that’s all a bit stuffy and formal.  After all, meetings are a great way for people to catch up with each other, aren’t they?

If you have a Genial Host in your gang, they can be very distracting; you might need to bring out the big guns of assertiveness!  If they come into your office, stand up, fail to offer them a coffee and be careful not to build too much rapport during the conversation and the chances are, they’ll soon tire of you and leave you to get on with your day.

Social interaction is important – teamwork can make a big difference in achieving the task, but the Genial Host takes it to extremes.  If you feel that you’re required to attend too many meetings, perhaps you’re dealing with a Genial Host.

If you think you might be the Genial Host in your gang then maybe it’s worth noticing the body language of those around you – is your attention really welcome?  And as for your own workload, how are you doing?  Struggling with a full inbox (physical or electronic)?  Tot up how much time you spend away from your desk and work on gradually reducing it.  Set time limits and draw up agendas for meetings that you call and stick to them.  Allocate certain times during the day for more social interaction and stick to them. Set specific tasks to achieve each day and, yes, you’ve guessed it, stick to them!

The Butterfly

The Butterfly has a short attention span, fluttering from one task to the next, alighting on a leaf for a moment before spotting something brighter and more colourful and flying off to investigate.

Projects are initiated with energy and enthusiasm and a sudden flurry of activity.  It’s common for the Butterfly to have several projects on the go at once; it suits their need for variety and appeals to their short attention span.

Tasks often drift without much significant progress being made and the Butterfly finds that much of their energy is used up by starting and re-starting projects – having to review what stage they’ve got to each time they pick up a project to spend some time on it.

There are a few tips we could offer the Butterfly.  

One might be to practise concentration, building up the length of time focussed on one task over a period of time.

Start with some self-study to work out the existing attention span.

Some people find it difficult to focus for just 10 minutes. Others delude themselves they can focus for 2 hours but in reality find themselves experiencing the pull of the outside world every 30 minutes, feeling jumpy and fidgety and needing to check emails or make a phone call.

Once the threshold is established, begin to build it up, little by little, until you can focus for a full hour.

In the meantime, break tasks into chunks that you can realistically achieve in the 10, 20 or 30 minutes that you can concentrate. That way you‟ll experience the joy of completion, that sense of actually getting something done.