Eblin Group

Mindful Mondays: What Songs Are On Your Mindfulness Playlist?

Scott — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:43:09 +0000

Music can have a powerful impact on mindfulness. Certain songs or genres can be totally distracting or annoying while others set you up to remember why you do what you do as a leader. Likewise, there are distracting and annoying things about smartphones and there are also very useful things about the devices. One of those is the capacity they give you to carry around a mindfulness playlist in your pocket. Having one can be very useful when you need some help in refocusing on a more mindful approach to leadership and life. As an example, there are three songs on my mindfulness playlist that I come back to again and again.

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Seven Tips for Taming Your Calendar

Scott — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:09:25 +0000

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post called Five Ways to Get Your Calendar Under Control. Since then, I’ve used it as the starting point for a conversation among high potential leaders in our Next Level Leadership® group coaching program. As the inflow becomes heavier and the expectations become higher, taming the calendar beast is a common challenge for leaders. Here are seven of the best ideas I’ve heard lately from leaders who are figuring out how to leverage their time to get important stuff done:

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Mindful Mondays – Breathe to Relax

Scott — Mon, 13 May 2013 11:47:02 +0000

If you’ve been following Mindful Mondays, you know that I’m a big fan of stretching and breathing. As I mentioned in this video, combining the two can be a quick and effective way to take a break that pushes the reset button on your brain. Of course, you may want to take a quick break by focusing on one or the other. If I had to pick one to start with, it would be breathing. Obviously, we all do it and, because we do, it’s always available as a resource for slowing things down enough to step back, relax and reset your perspective.

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Why Leaders Need to Be Indifferent

Scott — Thu, 09 May 2013 12:23:10 +0000

A couple of months ago, I was talking with an executive leader I’ve known for a few years. One of the things I’ve noticed about him in that time is that his confidence has grown in a very appropriate and admirable way. I mentioned this to him and, in reply, he laughed softly and said, “It’s a fine line between confidence and indifference.”

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Mindful Mondays – Choose Your Word for the Week

Scott — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:07:01 +0000

The ancient Greeks had a word called praxis which is the root of our modern day English words, practical and practice. Aristotle described the end goal of praxis as action. When he wrote about praxis, one of his points was that if you want to be a certain way, start acting that way.

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Four Tips for Talking with the CEO

Scott — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:35:00 +0000

Does the thought of a brief conversation with the top executive in your organization stir up the butterflies in your stomach? If it does, you’re not alone. It’s basically a form of corporate stage fright that lots of people experience.

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Mindful Mondays – What I Learned About Perfectionism from Yoga

Scott — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:27:23 +0000

The best coaching question I was ever asked was about 15 years ago when a woman who was coaching me while I was a corporate VP asked, "What would it take for you to stop judging yourself?" That question hit me like a ton of bricks because it cut to the quick of my perfectionism and feeling like I never measured up to my own expectations. I'd like to be able to report that I was immediately transformed by the question and it was all sunshine and roses from there. That wasn't the case, but, by raising the question, my coach succinctly framed something for me to work on for the next fifteen years.

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Three Ways to Know What You Need to Know

Scott — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:14:35 +0000

A big part of my job as a coach is delivering colleague feedback summaries to my executive coaching clients. Sometimes the feedback is hard for them to hear. I have sympathy for them. I was once a corporate executive and, in one particular case, got some blistering 360 feedback that had me licking my wounds for a month or two before I finally gathered up the gumption to act on it.

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Mindful Mondays: Presence in Boston When It Mattered Most

Scott — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:23:27 +0000

What a week it was for the city of Boston. It’s hard to believe that the citizens there went from the attack at the Boston Marathon to a citywide lockdown as police hunted for the surviving suspect to the celebratory singing of Sweet Caroline with Neil Diamond himself in an afternoon game at Fenway Park all within the span of five days. When I wrote about the resilience of Bostonians last week, I had no clue just how resilient they would prove to be.

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A Boston Marathon Memory and Hope

Scott — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:15:23 +0000

There’s little I can add to what’s already been observed about the tragedy at the Boston Marathon this week. The horror, the heroism and the heartache will stay for a long time with everyone who experienced or witnessed it. What I want to add to the conversation is my own memory of running the Marathon with my friend Tiffany when we were both graduate students in Boston back in 1987 and how that memory gives me hope today.

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