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The Thoughtful Leaders™ BlogHow likable are you?
Related Posts:Leave a ReplyMove forward and plant your apple tree
The other day a client shared with me her frustration with a project at work. She was convinced that the project was going to blow up, that there was no way she could meet the deliverables and the deadlines, and that her world would, in fact, go to pieces. Related Posts:Leave a ReplyLesson learned: Focus on your customer
Related Posts:Leave a ReplyYou have what you need
There are many sayings that highlight the fact that adversity can often yield the best results. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” “Diamonds are made under pressure.” “Every cloud has a silver lining.” These all remind us that it is often the difficult times that bring out the best in us or get us where we need to go. Related Posts:Leave a ReplyStop beating up on yourself, let me do it instead!
Related Posts:Leave a ReplyHow far have you come?
As a coach I am graced with being able to watch the movement of my clients. It is truly a blessing and offers great perspective – perspective I might not have if I were only observing my own self and life. Related Posts:Leave a ReplyFour steps to reducing the harmful effects of email
Related Posts:Leave a ReplyCheck which direction you’re heading
We do it all the time. I hear it from my colleagues, clients, friends, and family members. I do it myself. We decide on a course of action – a way to handle the co-worker who is driving us crazy, to motivate the employee who simply isn’t working hard enough, to get our children to listen – and keep pushing at it, whether it seems to be taking us in the direction we want to be going or not. Most often we come to this course of action quickly – we don’t “have time” to really think through what we’re doing and where we’re going, and so we simply start moving. And keep moving…and wonder why we’re not ending up where we want to be. Related Posts:Leave a ReplyFour tips for selling your breakthrough ideas
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Sometimes we focus so hard on how to “lead” – what experience we need to have, what credentials we need to compile, what the latest management guru is recommending, what skills we need to develop. We spend so much time focusing on these issues, we often forget that connecting with others is an essential part of being successful – knowing how to influence, how to persuade, how to impress.
in the development of our business we had a big meeting with a Vice President at a major bank whom we desperately wanted as a client. We created a well-organized presentation deck, thought through all that we wanted her to know about us, and set an intention to walk away from the meeting with a proposal opportunity. As the meeting progressed, we noticed that she was not saying much and did not seem fully engaged. So in wrapping up we asked if she had any questions for us and whether there was anything that would make her hesitant to work with us. Her response made me cringe. “It was great to hear about your work,” she said. “But you spent way too much time talking about yourselves and very little time finding out about me, my work, and what I need.” It was one of those palm slap to the forehead moments.
I have a “hot button” – people beating themselves up. When my coaching clients or others in my life start beating up on themselves, when they sell themselves short or see themselves through cloudy, negative glasses, I have a hard time not overreacting. I call them on it. I point out the truth. I come up with “homework” to help them shift their views. I challenge the fallacy of their perspective. But they keep on beating themselves up.
In teaching a program on Managing Conflict recently I asked participants to name some of the sources of conflict in their organization. They offered many suggestions about the things that cause conflict to arise, and the strongest sources of conflict, the ones that seemed to generate the most nods of agreement and emphatic responses, centered around communication – lack of communication, miscommunication, conflicting messages, and misinterpreted messages.
Years ago I was leading a group through our Increasing Performance through Strategic Thinking seminar and things were going great…until the end. The participants were all fired up about their new ideas. They were excited to make things happen for themselves and their organization with the innovative problem solving they’d engaged in and the strong solutions they’d developed, except for one little problem. “How will we convince all of ‘them’ to go along with our idea?” they asked. “How can we sell this to our team, or senior management?” they posed. “How can we really, actually, make this happen?”
