Horizon Point Consulting

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BEYOND Thrilled to Welcome Taylor Simmons to our Team!

We are BEYOND thrilled to have Taylor Simmons begin work with Horizon Point as a Career Consultant. Taylor has a background in human resources and workforce development, most recently serving as the Director of Education and Workforce Development for the Decatur-Morgan County Chamber of Commerce.

Taylor’s education, experience and skills will bring tremendous value to Horizon Point as we seek to grow passion and productivity in the workplace, but most importantly, Taylor embodies the Horizon Point Values of People First, Passion, Productivity, Continuous Learning and Improvement and Give Back.

Taylor’s Passion + Productivity = Give Back mindset begins with her focus on helping students, professionals and companies maximize their talent. Taylor says, “Passion means a love of what you do. It’s fueled by the desire to do your best. It’s demonstrated by helping others achieve their career, personal and organizational goals. Passion leads to productivity and results are evident through achievement of personal goals as well as success.”

In relating passion to productivity, she says, “I believe passion does increase productivity. If you are passionate about something whether it is work, children or hobbies, you will be more productive.”

Mary Ila Ward, owner of Horizon Point says, “Taylor has demonstrated her productivity fueled by passion in previous roles, always going the extra mile to help others and see programs and people succeed. She is skilled in taking programs and projects to the next level, and puts people first with her ability to listen and follow-through on anything she commits to doing.”

Taylor’s desire to give back is grounded in the principles of servant leadership. “I believe leadership development is essential in developing people to be passionate and productive in the work they do. Servant leadership is a great way to develop those around you. Servant leaders focus on helping others, and in turn, build better organizations. This is the ultimate way to give back. Your time, efforts and energy are always focused on others,” she says.

This mindset, she says, stems from, “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” Acts 20:35

Taylor lives in Hartselle, AL with her husband Chris and two children, Lydia and Porter.

Taylors giving spirit will help take Horizon Point Consulting to the next level in our quest to drive passion in people by helping them connect and grow in careers while helping organizations build a fully engaged workforce that drives productivity. She will be focused on delivering group and individual career coaching services to our clients.

Reach out to welcome Taylor at tbs@horizonpointconsulting.com!

October 2, 2014
Get a best friend at work and other tips on work and life wellbeing

At the recommendation of the Alabama Society of Human Resource Management’s Wellness Director, I downloaded a copy of Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements by Tom Rath and Jim Harter. The book describes the five essential elements of wellbeing (in order of importance) to be:

Career

Social

Financial

Physical

Community

The authors emphasize how each element is intricately interwoven with each other.

Here are some tips for maximizing work wellbeing by seeing wellbeing from a holistic perspective:

Don’t be a workaholic. “While you might think that people with high career wellbeing spend too much time working, they actually take more time to enjoy life, have better relationships, and don’t take things for granted. They love what they do each day.”

Get a work best friend. “Our research revealed that just 30% of employees have a best friend at work. Those who do are seven times as likely to be engaged in their jobs, are better at engaging customers, produce higher quality work, have higher wellbeing and are less likely to get injured on the job.”

Salary matters, but it isn’t everything. “Generally, those who have a lot of money can do what they want when they want to do it. Money can increase short-term happiness by giving us more control over how we spend our time, whether that means a shorter commute, more time at home with family or additional social time with friends.” And “What we found was that financial security- the perception that you have more than enough money to do what you want to do- has three times the impact of your income alone over overall wellbeing. Further, the lack of worry about money has more than double the impact of income over wellbeing.”

Being engaged in your work leads to giving back to the greater community. “In one organization we studied, workers who were the most engaged in their jobs donated 2.6 times more than those who were not engaged in their careers.” We agree. Read more at Passion + Productivity = Give Back

How does your work wellbeing impact other areas of your wellbeing?

August 25, 2014
3 Tips for Getting Over Your Vacation Hangover
You’re back from vacation and hopefully you unplugged while there. And now you have a vacation hangover. You’ve got way too many things to do for work, not enough time to do them in and your wondering, just like you’ve wondered the morning after you had one too many drinks, was it worth it? Should I really have even gone on vacation?

After returning from a work and play trip, the hangover hit me (and my husband) hard. The around the world re-routing and delays of flights to get us home didn’t help nor did the thee hours of sleep we got the night we returned due to the around the world trip home. My husband walked in from his first day back at work, looked at me without a hey, hi, how are you, and simple stated, “I don’t think our vacation was worth it.” After which, he took the time to look at me, still in my pajamas, covered in spit up, no shower in 48 hours, laundry piles all over our closet and again simply said, “Looks like your day went about like mine too.” Whereas he had been at work, I was trying to catch up on work and laundry and spend time with our two kids on our first day back. Not good. We actually both needed a drink, or so we thought, to nurse our vacation hangover.

If you took some of our unplugging tips to heart by getting stuff done before you left and scheduling a day or two to play catch-up when you returned (unlike us), you may not be hung over at all.

But if you are, here are some tips to get over it:
1. Realize you have to take recovery from your hangover one day at a time. You can’t get everything done in one day, so don’t stress yourself out when you don’t. Prioritize what is going to help you get over your hangover the quickest and tackle that first. Ignore your inbox if you have to. Those 987 emails can wait. For me, tackling playing grocery store and painting with my three year old was more important than the email inbox. It was a beast though when I got to it.
2. Sleep. If you don’t catch up on it, you are never going to get anything done. Sleep some of it off to be more productive.
3. Drink water. Lots of it. Especially if you’ve been on a plane. Even if you haven’t been on a plane, water can help cure any type and any size hangover. Well maybe not a vacation hangover as much as a drinking water, but it does beg the point of making sure you take care of yourself physically because if you don’t you’ll never get your productivity back.
How have you nursed a vacation hangover and gotten through it?
July 1, 2014
2 Reasons You Should Consider Dual Career Ladders

Being in a leadership role seems to be the ideal in most companies. Leading is what people strive for, and in most cases I think this is the norm because it is the only path by which advancement can take place. Want to move up and get paid more? Well then you have to lead and manage others.

Another way to help people grow

A client we’re working with is considering dual career ladders for the organization. With this organizational structure, there are advancement opportunities into the traditional route of leadership, but there is also a path by which people can grow by demonstrating technical expertise in their field.

Why you should consider dual career ladders

Dual career ladders may be a good route for your company because:

1. Not Everyone is suited for or has the desire to get work done through others. Quite frankly, some people would rather do the work themselves and may be best suited to do so. Getting work done through others can be extremely challenging, and for some, can be draining instead of stimulation. If people are in roles that are constantly proving to be draining instead of energizing, productivity will suffer. Which leads to the 2nd reason to consider dual career paths…

2. Dual Paths can help your company be more successful. By placing people in the roles where they contribute the most, the company gains success through talent.

Dual career paths may not be feasible for all companies due to size of the organization or the nature of the work, but the structure begs the question for any organization about how to provide opportunities for people to advance and grow in their careers.

The best place to start if you are considering how to determine who is best suited for an expert role or a leadership role is to assess your talent. There are a variety of instruments that are effective for this purpose (email us if you want some recommendations), but the most important way to assess people for advancement opportunities is to ask the hard but simple question, do you want to lead? It’s much easier for people to honestly answer “no” if there is an option to grow in their career through another path. I think we hear the answer “yes” to the question do you want to lead more than we should because it’s the only option.

June 9, 2014
Want to be a millionaire? A Good Leader? Manage Your Time First
Want to be a good leader? How about a millionaire? Manage yourself and your time first.

What does it take to think like a millionaire? In reading The Millionaire Mind, I was struck by what seemed to first be a contradiction. Based on the study of almost 1000 millionaires, it was obvious these individuals as a group managed their expenses just as wisely, if not more, than their revenue generation. Most bought at discount retailers and had very small or non-existent mortgages by buying older homes that retained or appreciated in value.

Keeping costs low is a priority in the millionaire household, except with what the book described as “do it yourself” projects. Most millionaires captured in the study did not cut their own grass and if something broke in their house, they didn’t fix it, they called an expert.

At first glance, this doesn’t seem like a managing cost approach. However, upon further inspection, it is not a matter of keeping costs down, it is a matter how your time is best spent because time is money. If the cost equation involves devotion of ones time, especially for someone who has learned how to generate revenue (as most millionaires have) through their time, best to outsource those non-essential tasks to someone who can do them more effectively. Which actually saves money.

What does this have to do with leadership? Maybe leaders could learn a thing or two from the millionaire mindset. One thing I find that is a frequent area for tactical leadership coaching of what is really personal leadership (instead of actually leading others) and that is the issue of time management. It is difficult to lead and guide the work of others if, as a leader, we have difficulty managing our own work and time.

We’ve devoted several blog posts over the years to this topic that you can view here:

Personal Leadership on Purpose

A New Take on Time Management

5 Ways to Find Your Productivity Sweet Spot

Saying ‘No” to Something is Saying ‘Yes” to Something Else

Schedules Communicate Priorities

But what can you take from all of these, and what do we work with clients on helping them manage their time better? What does the millionaire mindset teach us? It’s pretty simple:
- Define Your Purpose see the mission statement and goal setting links in this post.
- Vet how you spend your time by that purpose. A helpful way to do this is by looking at Covey’s approach- is it urgent/not urgent, important/not important. The goal is to be in the green on this grid- or in Quadrant II by spending your time on tasks that are important, but not yet urgent. It’s simply being proactive. Notice that many of these items in Quadrant II deal with developing others – values clarification, relationship building, empowerment.
Image source: https://www.franklincovey.com/blog/manage-your-time-and-energy-effectively/
March 31, 2014

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