Coach Andrea’s Intro

I remember reading a story about a restaurant that was having “issues” with its catsup bottles.  The tops kept coming unscrewed and catsup spurted on customer after customer.  The remedy was to offer to pay the dry cleaning bill for the customer covered in red sauce.

Steve Straus would say the restaurant provided first aid, but not “second aid” (finding the core reason underlying the problem). In our businesses, we are all moving quickly and hopefully bringing our key strengths and skills to the office.  If you don’t have the time or inclination to create permanent solutions to your problems, surround yourself with those who do.

Quote of the Week

“Solutions – The first step toward a cure is to know what the disease is..”
~Latin

Second Aid

by Steve Straus

Every Boy Scout and Girl Scout knows about first aid. A 1948 printing of the Boy Scout Manual states that first aid is “the emergency care given to anyone who is badly hurt or who is taken suddenly sick. It is also the immediate care that is necessary to prevent slight injuries from becoming much more serious.” Many people are trained and prepared to administer first aid in an emergency situation.

But what of second aid? The term sounds jarring because we don’t use it, certainly not often. Second aid is what happens after the immediate crisis is over, whether in a medical, life-threatening situation or in our everyday living.

Do you have a good ability to jump in and handle sudden situations in your business, family, community, and spiritual life? Are you good at first aid? Many people are quite good at fixing things, moving from problem to problem “putting splints on the breaks” if you will.

How is your follow-up, your second aid? Do you look for the core reasons underlying the just-solved problem?

Do you create permanent solutions? Do you even enjoy permanent solutions or, instead, get your satisfaction from attacking the next problem?

There is no right or wrong here, there is only understanding how you show up and the results you’re getting. If you’re not interested in second aid, surround yourself with resources which will provide it. If you do like to create permanent solutions, then enjoy doing that.

Self-awareness is the key.

Copyright 2010 Steve Straus. All rights reserved. Steve Straus can be contacted at http://www.StrausUSA.com

Coaching Call to Action

If you aren’t good at second aid, who or what is the provider of second aid in your life?

Other articles you might be interested in:

1. Doing is Desire Demonstrated
2. How Did That Happen? vs. HOWDIDTHATHAPPEN!!?
3. Internal vs. External

Coach Andrea’s Intro

David Cottrell provides an insightful idea about team make up that you may not have realized. He says there are two types of people: high-energy performers and energy sappers. The ratio of energizers to sappers is important for the team to be successful.  And it’s not a 1:1 ratio. Who is on your team?

Quote of the Week

“Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”
~Vince Lombardi

Identifying Energizers and Sappers

by David Cottrell

In theory, every person on your team is a source of energy for your organization.  But in reality, some team members create energy while others sap or destroy energy.  If you know your team well, you already know which team members are sappers and which ones are the energizers.

High-energy performers test the limits and spur themselves and others on to even greater results.  These are the people who will push you up and add energy to your reservoir.  They spark others to perform.  It’s fun to watch them in action.  A team full of energized people is typically easy to motivate but challenging to manage because their high energy level requires constant direction and focus.

At the other end of the spectrum are the sappers.  You know who they are – they complain and whine, and think of every reason possible why plans and strategies will not work.  They are the people who pull you down and sap your energy.  They blame others for their issues and don’t accept responsibility for what they control.  Their negativity and cynicism effectively sucks out the energy right out of the room.  A team dominated by energy sappers is relatively easy to lead because there is little forward movement or activity.  But it is very challenging to motivate these team members to achieve results because they are content with mediocrity.

Your organizational energy is not the sum of your individuals.  It is dependent on the ratio of energizers to sappers.  If you have more sappers than energizers, the energy will be drained, and in fact the energizers may eventually become sappers.  As unfortunate as it is, a negative, cynical person has a far greater impact on the energy of the team than a positive person.  Adding a positive person does not counter a sapper; in fact it probably takes at least three energizers to counter the energy drained by one sapper (Cottrell, p. 33-34).

Cottrell, D. (2009).  Monday morning motivation: five steps to energize your team, customers, and profits.  New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Reprinted with permission from the OSU Leadership Center, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, (614) 292-3114, http://leadershipcenter.osu.edu.

Coaching Call to Action

This week take some time to look at who you are being both at work and outside of work.  Are they different?  What if you were to align them so that you were being the same in both places?  What will you do more of, keep the same, stop doing?

Other articles you might be interested in:

1. Four Things Customers Never Forget

Coach Andrea’s Intro

It’s hot here in New England this week!  So, I thought it best to keep this week’s tip short and to the point and provide something to chew on. Michael Angier’s article fits the bill.  It’s summertime.  We are combining our personal life and business life differently than we do at other times of the year.  A perfect time to check in and ask yourself if you are trying to be one way in one part of your life and another way in another part of your life.  It’s all YOU. Can you really separate yourself?

Quote of the Week

“Dare to be yourself.”
~Andre Gide

You Are NOT Your Business

by Michael Angier

Many entrepreneurs are so close to their business it’s hard to tell where their business starts and where they begin.

Their identity is very much tied up in what they do.

Other small business owners compartmentalize really well-maybe too well. They make a big distinction between personal life and business life.

For me, there’s no real difference between personal life and work life-it’s ALL life.

That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be some distinctions around the time you spend, but trying to be one way in one part of your life and another way in another part of your life seems disingenuous to me.

And as the great Nido Quebein quips, “Be who you is. Because if you ain’t who you is, then you is who you ain’t.”

I suggest that you are not your business. Your business or your career does not define who you are. But to a large extent, your business and your career IS you.

What you say, what you do-or don’t do-reflects on your company. Who you are being, both at work and outside of work, is a representation of your business.

Who you are being touches every other aspect of your life.

Copyright Michael Angier & Success Networks International. Used with permission. Michael Angier is the founder and president of SuccessNet.org.

Coaching Call to Action

This week take some time to look at who you are being both at work and outside of work.  Are they different?  What if you were to align them so that you were being the same in both places?  What will you do more of, keep the same, stop doing?

Other articles you might be interested in:

1. The Ability to Respectfully Disagree
2. Make it a R-E-A-L Holiday Season

Coach Andrea’s Intro

I’m happy to share Simon Tyler’s description of the Urgent/Important Matrix.  The first time I saw this it opened my eyes to how much time I was spending in the Urgent quadrants, without taking the time to decide if the tasks truly were urgent or important.  I had a sense they were and rather than take the time to step back and access, I kept moving forward adding more and more to my plate.  Sound familiar?  You get an email and drop everything to respond to it, your phone rings in the middle of your precious “planning” time and you answer it – concentration lost and another task becomes urgent.  It’s a vicious cycle.  And yet, we all know some time spent in Box D (Non-urgent and Important) has a huge payoff.  As you enter the second half of 2010, will you take the time to do an audit of how you are spending your time? Will you then block off time to get familiar with Box D?  Will you focus on what moves you forward on your goals?

Quote of the Week

“The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.”
~Robert J. Shiller

Have You Got It? Urgentia – Addiction to Urgent

by Simon Tyler

• Identify all the tasks and actions in which you are involved.
• Assess the degree to which they are urgent (looming deadline or immediate requirement to be completed) and the degree to which they are important (developing you, solving bigger challenges, leading to your goals or greater success)
• Work on the Urgent and Important first (Box B)
• Work on the Non-urgent and Important box second (Box D)
• Handle the urgent, non-important in new ways (Box A)
• Avoid Box C

In some form this 2×2 question comes into most of my coaching conversations and this week I have become abundantly aware that I need to listen to myself for a while, as I am solving my own state of ‘Urgentia’ with a mixed dose of unimportant distractions. Things that aren’t important simply aren’t important. We shouldn’t spend excessive time involved in them; in fact we should cease them.

It is still extremely pertinent today, in our busy environments where I am frequently told that everything is now in the top right box (Urgent and Important). This is often not actually true. What may have happened to you or those around you, without being consciously aware of it, is that we have become addicted to Urgent. You are suffering from ‘Urgentia’.

Our many electronic devices are, by their nature, urgent. Phones, especially mobiles, texts (even more so), email, instant message alerts and so on. Add to this the natural urgency of our media (TV, radio, newspapers) and the adverts that scream for our attention and action NOW and we have an environment in which Urgency rules. These are almost all dangerous ‘Box A’ (the urgency masks the fact that they are absolutely unimportant).

Today we have more choices available to us than ever before, we are capable of taking amazing empowered self-development steps. Changing our business and personal lives dramatically is a real and reachable option. But we don’t. These steps are always important and non-urgent (precious ‘Box D‘). They don’t shout and scream, they require us to be conscious and deliberate. Time spent here ALWAYS pays back.

Box D enjoys only fleeting moments of your attention as your diary fills with the urgent stuff. And without you noticing you are caught, like I have been this week idling in Box C, convincing myself that whatever I am doing is important, when really it isn’t. It’s simply not urgent and I have been enjoying the non-urgency of it. The same relaxed option awaits me in the important Box D as soon as I focus on it and do it!

Urgentia is not big or clever, even though it feels like it when we are caught up in it. Urgentia leads to missed goals, slipped deadlines, excessive stress and anxiety and the feeling of no progress despite what seems to be immense effort.

A simple way to cure Urgentia? Start an audit this week of where you have spent your time. Ask yourself the question “Was this task truly important, to me, my goals and aspirations?” Begin again, deliberately. Handle the urgent and do the important. Book time, reserve the space, read, and take whatever action moves you forward in the direction of YOUR goals.

Simon Tyler is one of the world’s leading business coaches. His work simplifies the lives of business leaders and owners. He is an incisive consultant, inspirational writer, provocative public speaker and master facilitator. To learn more about Simon, visit http://simontyler.com.

Coaching Call to Action

Reread and do the last paragraph of Simon’s article.  What did you learn about yourself?  What will you commit to for the second half of 2010?  Who will support you in holding true to this commitment?

What’s New

1. What’s the most important change I’ve made so far this year?
2. How have I taken better care of myself?
3. What risks have I taken?  What fears or challenges have I faced?
4. How have I grown as a person?  What qualities have I developed?  (i.e. Am I more patient, focused, or financially responsible?)
5. How has my environment changed?  Have I cleaned up my home or office, challenged myself to throw things out, or added some beauty to my life?
6. What have I done to help others improve the quality of their lives?

As you finish this reflection, consider whether you are moved to create a new goal that is IMPORTANT to you.

Other articles you might be interested in:

1. Sprint – Accelerating Past Procrastination
2. What Avoidance Behavior is Holding You Back?
3. No Complaining Week Personal Action Plan

Coach Andrea’s Intro

A number of my clients have been asking recently about following up with prospects – how, how often, what do I say? You get the idea.  This week’s article by Robert Middleton provides 3 client attracting steps to master.  My take away from the article is you have to have a process, a system that you use faithfully to turn prospects into clients. It’s up to you to create the timing of that process based on what’s worked best for you in the past, and then use it! (See Coaching Call to Action to read about specific strategies for follow up.)

Quote of the Week

“A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”
~ Frank Herbert

Bridging the Follow-Up Gap

by Robert Middleton

Pop Quiz: What’s the biggest canyon in the world?

No, not the Grand Canyon. It’s the “Follow-Up Gap.”

This is the gap between the marketing activity you direct towards a prospective client and setting up an appointment with this prospect.

No gap is wider, and untold millions fall between this gap every year. The prospect is interested, you’ve done a good job at marketing and then what happens?

You either don’t follow-up or you follow-up ineptly.

So how do you manage the follow-up gap? Understanding this could have a huge impact on the success of your business. Here are the three client-attracting steps you need to master:

1. Marketing generates interest and warms up prospects.  In marketing ball, you get the attention of a prospect, develop familiarity, provide information and then offer an experience of you and your business so they are at a place of genuine interest in your services.
2. You then follow-up appropriately, not to make the sale or even to pitch your services, but to talk to explore the possibility of setting up a selling conversation (also known as a Strategy Session).
3. A Strategy Session must be set up with a qualified prospect under favorable conditions. The conditions are: a) They already know you and know something about your services, b) they are able to meet with you for 60 to 90 minutes uninterrupted, and c) they are sincerely ready to explore working with you.

Once you’ve set up this session, you switch from Marketing to Selling and you finally have the opportunity of converting a prospect into a paying client.

Sounds easy, right?

But since most have such a hard time making this happen, something must be wrong. What are you missing? Well, a whole lot of things can go wrong in this process without you being aware of them. Here are a few:

1. You fail to implement the marketing process effectively. You don’t get the attention, build familiarity, provide information or offer experiences. In other words, you don’t build relationships. People like to do business with people they know, not strangers.
2. You follow up either too soon, trying to get an appointment before the relationship is established or you follow up too late, even if the prospect is qualified and interested. Or worse, you don’t follow-up at all because you’re afraid of being rejected.
3. You conduct an incompetent selling conversation. You talk too much and don’t listen enough, failing to really understand the prospect or their needs. You close too soon, too late, or not at all and wonder why nobody appreciates your wonderful services!

Look, attracting new clients to your business is not a mystery. Many people have cracked the code and enjoy as much business as they can manage. It’s not luck. It’s a skill implemented with discipline and consistency.

But if you had to work on only one thing, what would it be?

It would be mastering the Follow-up Gap.

Why? Because if you get into the habit of following up, sooner or later you’ll discover when follow-up works best and what marketing you have to do to warm up the prospect. And if you follow up a lot and get more appointments, sooner or later you’ll get the hang of the selling process.

Byron Katie says something similar: You can have anything you want in the world if you are willing to ask 1,000 people.

The More Clients Bottom Line: There are three simple keys to attracting more clients: Marketing, Follow-Up and Selling. Master all three and you’ll never worry about your future or the economy or money again. But you might want to start with follow-up. For one, it’s free, and secondly, the opportunities are infinite.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Robert Middleton and Action Plan Marketing. All rights reserved. Please visit Robert’s web site at http://www.actionplan.com.

Coaching Call to Action

Are you hitting or exceeding your sales goals for 2010? Do you have a follow-up process? Is the process automatic?  If you answered no to any of these questions, read another article Robert wrote about some specific techniques on follow up strategies. Click here to read more.

Other articles you might be interested in:

1. Ask the Cleansing Question to Clean Up Your Follow-Up File
2. What Avoidance Behavior is Holding You Back?
3. Top 7 Tips To Boost Sales In August!

Coach Andrea’s Intro

As I think about the upcoming Father’s Day celebration, I’m reminded of the ebb and flow of the intelligence of a parent as seen from the child’s perspective.  When the child is young, the parent is really smart,  and then the teen years hit.  As a parent, our opinion isn’t even worth considering.  Lo and behold, when the “child” hits 20 or so, we get smart again.  Children (and adults) find ways to ignore this wisdom.   This week’s article, Voices of Wisdom, connects me to the wisdom of my Dad (and Mom).  When I ask for their opinion and experience, they are a great source of wisdom. And the sharing that occurs at this level only enhances the relationship.

Quote of the Week

“Treasure your relationships, not your possessions.”
~ Anthony J. D’Angelo

Voices of Wisdom

There’s a proverb that says, “Wisdom shouts from the rooftops.” This is absolutely true, but it’s amazing how we continuously find ways to ignore it.  Wisdom is available to us in many forms and from many places.  One of the primary places to find it is in the people around us, whom we trust and respect.  But it is our responsibility to turn our attention to accessing that wisdom from the voices of people we trust and respect.  We are responsible for inviting their honesty, and if we do we’ll be tapping into an unlimited resource to help us on our journey toward self-discovery.  When we as leaders value honest relationships as a way of life, it has a ripple effect on how it affects others (Saccone, p. 40).

From:  Saccone, S. (2009).  Relational intelligence: how leaders can expand their influence through a new way of being smart.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Reprinted with permission from the OSU Leadership Center, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, (614) 292-3114, http://leadershipcenter.osu.edu.

Coaching Call to Action

How will you access the wisdom that sourrounds you?  Will you talk to you mentor, your partner, your employees?  What conversations will you have this week that allow the wisdom to flow?  What will you do to be ready to receive it?

What’s New

Sunday, June 20, 2010
Happy Father’s Day, Dads!

Thursday, June 24th – 9 am to 12:15 PM ET
Pounce on a Project V

Come to the last Pounce on a Project V – 2010 before the summer break.

Join Coach Andrea on Thursday, June 24th from 9:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Eastern.

We will join as a group by phone and declare what you want to accomplish: tying up loose ends before you head off on vacation, updating your marketing plan, or writing new pages for your website. During the morning, the group will gather by phone a few times to check progress and get any support needed to finish with a bang. At noon, the group will celebrate their accomplishments.

Who says projects have to be boring and tedious? Bring your lightness and fun and join us for the energization.

To sign up or learn more, call or e-mail Andrea by noon on Wednesday, June 23rd. Feel free to share this with friends and co- workers, the more the merrier. (Cost of the program is only the cost of long distance phone calls.)

Other articles you might be interested in:

1. Roots and Wings
2. The Power of Praising People
3. Better Workplace Conversations

Coach Andrea’s Intro

As a business owner, do you value the knowledge held by your employees? Of course!  Do you promote learning from others, the creation of new knowledge, and the transfer of knowledge between workers? Maybe not.  Loren Ekroth reminds us that conversation is the life-blood of the knowledge economy of today.  Conversation skills are key.  Read on to learn more about the impact of better workplace conversations.

Quote of the Week

“Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns.”
~ John Maurice Clarke

Better Workplace Conversations

The ability to create relationships of trust and sharing, so valued in family life, has taken on new importance in the workplace.  As our economy is based more on knowledge, the single most important asset in many organizations is the knowledge worker who has the ability to learn from others, create new knowledge, and transfer that knowledge to co-workers.

In organizations where informal conversation is seen as time-wasting, the rule has been to “Stop talking and get back to work.”   This rule may have been appropriate to the assembly lines of the industrial age, but it is not helpful in the workplace of the information age. The life-blood of the knowledge economy is conversation. Through all kinds of talk in the cafeteria and hallway, in bull-sessions around the water-cooler, phone visits, shop-talk over coffee, knowledge workers are often sharing critical business information.   Perhaps they’ll sketch a new idea on a napkin or ask a challenging question that will change another’s thinking so that a fresh insight comes to mind.

Data and information can be transmitted electronically, but it is nearly impossible to transfer knowledge by technological means alone.  That is because true “working knowledge” contains values, personal experience, expert insight, and emotion.

For one person to actually absorb knowledge coming from another person usually requires direct contact between people — what the military calls “face time.”  Second best can be “voice time” — contact by telephone.  To understand, we often need to get the “feel” of the knowledge as conveyed through all the senses.  Because knowledge is “alive” and has a personal flavor, it needs involvement of the heart and gut as well as the head.  It doesn’t thrive in hard-copy or electronic captivity.

Some time ago I had several serious computer problems.   I dutifully read through the detailed manuals and found some information that seemed relevant.   Then I spent a lot of time trying things — few of which I fully understood — worrying that I might create even worse problems.

Giving up, I came to my senses and hired a knowledgeable computer science student to help me for a few hours, and that made all the difference.  His “felt knowledge” conveyed a quiet confidence, and his simple, well-paced explanations made sense.  I experimented; he gently coached and corrected.  After a short time, I “got it” and was able to manage on my own with much more confidence than any manual could provide.

To share, acquire and even create working knowledge, we need the abilities to establish rapport and create trust, to suspend premature judgment, ask good questions, listen for connections among ideas, and honor diverse perspectives. And, certainly, we need to know when to talk and when to remain silent and receptive.   The new knowledge economy requires such conversational skills so that we can learn from each other.

Leaders in some of America’s most successful companies such as Intel have removed the barriers that used to discourage “learning conversations” and now actively reward employees for sharing knowledge.   They are encouraging “communities of practice,” informal groups where novices can learn from more experienced people.  They make it easy to have access to anyone who has the useful knowledge you need by arranging open spaces and eliminating closed doors.  Other companies are experimenting with new approaches like “Appreciative Inquiry,” an informal process for drawing out knowledge of what has worked best in the past.

Because the greatest portion of the knowledge assets in any organization is not in manuals and data bases but within the minds of its people, and because most knowledge transfer takes place informally, the “soft skills” for effective relating to other human beings will continue to be needed.  With the right skills and attitudes, a CEO can learn from a worker on the assembly line, a General Halftrack can pay attention to a lowly Lt. Fuzz, and left-brained engineers and right-brained customer service folks will be able to learn from one another.

Might a better rule for organizations in this new knowledge economy be:  “Stop working and talk it over”?

Loren Ekroth (c) 2010, all rights reserved. Loren Ekroth, Ph.D. is a specialist in human communication and a national expert on conversation for business and social life. Complimentary newsletter, “Better Conversations,” at www.conversationmatters.com. Contact Loren@conversationmatters.com.

Coaching Call to Action

Where are you, as a business owner, encouraging communication and conversation between your employees?  What else could you do to take communication and knowledge transfer to the next level?  What’s possible for your company if people are truly sharing, talking and communicating with gusto?

What’s New

Thursday, June 24th – 9 am to 12:15 PM ET
Pounce on a Project V

Come to the last Pounce on a Project V – 2010 before the summer break.

Join Coach Andrea on Thursday, June 24th from 9:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Eastern.

We will join as a group by phone and declare what you want to accomplish: tying up loose ends before you head off on vacation, updating your marketing plan, or writing new pages for your website. During the morning, the group will gather by phone a few times to check progress and get any support needed to finish with a bang. At noon, the group will celebrate their accomplishments.

Who says projects have to be boring and tedious? Bring your lightness and fun and join us for the energization.

To sign up or learn more, call or e-mail Andrea by noon on Wednesday, June 23rd. Feel free to share this with friends and co- workers, the more the merrier. (Cost of the program is only the cost of long distance phone calls.)

Other articles you might be interested in:

1. Small Effort Gives You Big Payoff
2. Top 7 Keys to Managing Millennials in the Workplace
3. The Need for More Grace in the Workplace

Coach Andrea’s Intro

Like Michael Neill, as a coach, I am expected to ask “great” questions that facilitate “aha” moments when you are able to “see something about yourself, your work, or your life in a whole new way”.  Early in my coaching career, I had a list of these great questions in a notebook in front of me for my coaching calls.  I busily scanned them during the call so that I would be ready with the one that would make the difference and create a shift for my client.  I was more present to my list, worrying about which one was right, than listening to my client.  After 13 years of coaching I find that listening, being present and trusting myself are the keys to providing the question my client most needs to shift their thinking.

Michael Neill’s article provides some ideas on how to prepare for “insights” on your own.

Quote of the Week

“During [these] periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight.”
~ Fritjof Capra

Chasing Butterflies

A couple of years ago, my family and I visited the Boston Science museum and spent some time in their wonderful butterfly garden.  While there is much to see and do inside, the highlight of the visit is the chance to have a butterfly land on your hand, head, or shoulder.

What made the visit fascinating was noticing the different strategies people employed in an attempt to get the butterflies to land on them.  Some people would chase the butterflies around the garden, perhaps in hopes of catching one and placing it on their shoulder long enough for a picture to be snapped and a memory to be created.  Others seemed to be determined to get through the garden as pure observers, without ever having to touch or be touched by what it was they were observing.

The most successful group by far were those who did their best to become a part of the environment – that is, to stand relatively still in and amongst the flowers and enjoy the beauty all around them while waiting for a butterfly to grace them with a landing.

The nature of the transformative coaching work that I do is based on facilitating insights – those wonderful “aha” moments when you are able to see something about yourself, your work, or your life in a whole new way.  People often call these “light bulb moments”, because we see things in a new light that allows us to handle them with greater ease and grace than we could even moments before.

These are the insights which let us see straight through our problems until suddenly, we know what to do and our next action becomes crystal clear. Metaphorically, they’re the moments where the “snake” becomes a piece of rope and the “Wicked Witch of the West” goes back to just being an annoying neighbor named Almira Gulch.

In the years I’ve been doing this work, I’ve noticed that insights are a lot like butterflies -  while there are things you can do to make them more or less likely, it’s ultimately not up to us when they land.

• If you try to chase them through meditations, exercises, brainstorming, and other forms of “figuring it all out”, the activity in your head seems as likely to scare them away as draw them near.
• If you try to ignore your own wisdom and only learn through books, teachers, and other forms of other people’s insight, you are very likely to succeed – at confusing yourself in a myriad of conflicting ideas about what it “really” takes to be happy and successful.
• If you are willing to simply enjoy spending time “in the garden” – the quiet, reflective state of mind that occurs naturally for most of us while standing in the shower, watching the sunset, or lying in bed on a weekend morning, insights will often show up and land with a grace that takes us straight into a quiet knowing and a deeper feeling.

Sometimes it’s hard not to chase after a butterfly, especially when the answers you’re seeking seem to always be just out of reach.  But as Franz Kafka said, no doubt in a moment of quiet contemplation:

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do mot even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

Copyright 2010 Michael Neill, author of ‘You Can Have What You Want’. All rights reserved – read more tips at http://www.geniuscatalyst.com.

Coaching Call to Action

This week take note of what activities (or non-activities) bring forth insights for you.

Other articles you might be interested in:

1. The Fastest Way to a Quiet Mind
2. Weeds in Your Garden?
3. Make it a R-E-A-L Holiday Season

Coach Andrea’s Intro

I laughed out loud when I read Art Sobczak’s list of avoidance behaviors!  A few of my favorites are – the dog just has to be brushed, it’s of upmost importance to organize the freezer and lastly, I need to call my friend Jeanne and catch up. Now that we can label these behaviors (thanks Art!), are you ready to take step #1, make a commitment to improve?  Keep reading to learn steps 2 to 7.

Quote of the Week

“I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things.”
~ William J. Lock

What Avoidance Behavior is Holding You Back?

Picture the sales rep who spends two prime hours every day online, and reading trade journals, the Wall Street Journal, and more, “so he can be well-versed, just in case someone asks questions.”

And the rep who feels obligated to assume ownership of all minuscule customer service situations–ones easily delegated–because she wants to be certain they’re handled correctly. And her call productivity suffers as a result.

Or, the salesperson who is always fixated on one “big deal” devoting tons of time–at the expense of placing other calls–working on the proposal.

Know anyone like these people?

ARE you one of these people?

If so, you are flat out avoiding something.

And probably denying it.

There are all kinds of avoidance behaviors. Whenever I get particularly ambitious around the house…tightening things, replacing filters, (by the way, I’m the most un-Home Depot guy in the history of males) it is a sure sign I should be parked in front of a computer, preparing for a training program or writing articles.

What non-sales activities do you engage in that steal from your productive selling time?

Or, what call behaviors do you practice that are not as effective as what you should do?

For example, some reps insist on just asking a few questions during a first call, “touching base” on a second call, then phoning a few more times before finally getting into the meat of selling. They rationalize that they’re building a relationship. Bull. They’re constructing a fat follow-up file.

Sure they’re busy, but it’s like running on a treadmill. Lots of sweat, but no forward progress. Oh, but they’re building “relationships.” Not so much.

Here’s one way to deal with avoidance behavior.

1. Make a commitment to improve. If you don’t have that “want to,” read no further.
2. Pinpoint what you know you should do, but don’t, or don’t do it often enough.
3. Identify the activity or behavior that you rationalize as important, but deep down you know it’s a mask. This is where you need to be brutally honest with yourself.
4. Determine what activity or behavior you will replace it with. For example, calling higher in an organization, asking for the bigger sale earlier, sending out fewer proposals to only the more highly qualified prospects, or spending less time internally chasing down answers to questions and delegating more instead.
5. Set specific, quantifiable, time-sensitive goals. Write them out. Any time is a great time to start.
6. Take action. Track your progress.
7. Reward yourself! What gets rewarded gets repeated.

It’s not rocket surgery (just heard that term the other day…pretty funny, I thought). Most worthwhile things aren’t. They just require effort.

Art Sobczak, Business By Phone Inc., provides how-to ideas and tips for rejectionless prospecting, selling, and servicing by phone. Get the free ebook, “29 Sales Tips You Can Use Right Now” at http://www.BusinessByPhone.com.

Coaching Call to Action

So why wait? Don’t avoid it any longer. Take some action, any action right now that you’ve been avoiding. You’ll be glad you did.

Other articles you might be interested in:

1. Bridging the Follow-Up Gap
2. Ask the Cleansing Question to Clean Up Your Follow-Up File
3. Have You Got It? Urgentia – Addiction to Urgent

Coach Andrea’s Intro

Are you the type of business person who takes a long time to start a project and once started the momentum builds?
Or are you the type of business person who is fine getting the project started, however never know when to stop the project? This week’s article is beneficial for both groups. Either way, you need to know when to end the project and it may be before the project is ‘finished”. Barry J. Moltz recommends including the definition of success and failure in your project plan. I’d always included the results I wanted, but not the point of failure.  What a great idea! Adding this point of measurement during the planning process brings additional clarity to the scope of the project. Don’t you just love getting new insights and ideas?.

Quote of the Week

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
~ Sir Winston Churchill

Raising the White Flag: No Shame in Surrender

If we define failure ahead of time, we know when to stop pursuing certain paths; we know when to get out, and why to leave.  Again too many times, we think if we stay a big longer or work a bit harder, we can turn it around.  But as Will Rogers said, ‘If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.’

It is almost always harder to quit than to keep going.  So many of us stay past the time when a business or personal relationship is profitable, productive, or healthy.  Part of the reason we stay may be that, by not having defined failure, we create the latitude to keep telling ourselves that we haven’t failed yet.  This is why defining success and failure up front helps us develop the kind of crazy confidence we need to rebound.  Unlike what many of us believe, having the courage to quit can sometimes actually build more confidence than staying the course (Moltz, 2008, p.175).

From:  Moltz, B.J. (2008).  Bounce! Failure, resiliency, and confidence to achieve your next great success.  Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Reprinted with permission from the OSU Leadership Center, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, (614) 292-3114, http://leadershipcenter.osu.edu.

Coaching Call to Action

Pull out 3 of your active project plans right now.  Look to see if you have a definition of success and failure noted on the plan.  If you don’t, add them.  If you do, congratulations!  Who else will you teach this concept to this week?

What’s New

Last weekend my daughter, Anna, graduated from college in three years!  Bill and I are so proud of her and look forward to watching this next year of her life unfold.  The plan is that she will take a year off between graduation from Colorado State University and starting vet school.  That’s the plan.  And she’s built into her plan the possibility of not being accepted into a vet program on the first go around.  How do our children get so smart?

Other articles you might be interested in:

1. Holding Ourselves Accountable