by David Castillo Dominici

Look familiar?  Ever feel like you are trying to lead a team this way?

I’ve worked with many clients at different levels of the leadership cycle, from CEO’s to new leaders.  A common theme amongst them all is the challenge of leading by influence rather than through power.  Whether it’s a CEO working with an advisory board, or a new leader working with a cross-functional team, leading through influence is a whole different animal than straight leadership of those reporting to you.  Although it takes a lot of focus and energy, it can be obtained by:

1.  Building relationships, establishing credibility-there’s nothing better than one on one meetings with individuals that you need to work with, but who don’t report directly to you.  Give them a taste of how you work, what your strengths are and your expectations, then ask them about theirs.

2.  Making sure everyone is heard and engaged-if you notice some members of the team who haven’t had an opportunity to give any input, make sure you ask them.  When suggestions and ideas are presented, make sure they are acknowledged and considered.

3.  Being respectful of everyone’s time-show up on time, start meetings on time with agendas, end meetings on time, you know the drill.

4.  Being responsive-don’t disappear.  You need to be visible and approachable with consistent communication.  Nothing kills influence faster than non-responsiveness.  It sends a message that others aren’t important to you.

5.  Underpromising and Overdelivering-need I say more?

www.lifeaction-coaching.com

It’s OK to quit.

In fact sometimes it’s better if you quit.  Quitting has gotten a really bad rap.  I can remember back in my Girl Scout days, promising “I will always finish what I begin”.  And some of you may be thinking that quitting doesn’t align with reaching your potential or being the best you can be.  Or does it?

What if quitting just means that you now have more information about something and it’s not really fulfilling the purpose that you intended when you began?  There’s a difference between quitting because you’re getting lazy or scared, and you just don’t want to do the work anymore; and quitting because it’s no longer the right thing to do.

I had a client who enrolled her family in a church program every week, thinking that this would be a great family activity and they would all get a lot out of it.  After a few weeks, it became apparent that the program wasn’t all that she thought it would be and her family didn’t enjoy it and avoided going.  When I asked her why she felt compelled to make her family attend, she said because there was a waiting list of other families that had tried to sign up and she had  paid for it, so she felt obligated to continue.  However, the overall goal of this activity was to spend quality family time together.  Now, with further information about the program, the overall goal was not being achieved.  Is there a better way to achieve the goal?  Is quitting a bad thing in this case?

Don’t we also adjust our goals at work?  Once you get more information about needs, requirements, markets and resources, you may quit one direction and head for another.  It’s called course correction.

It’s your life.  Turns out, you never really quit anything.  You learn and course correct as needed instead.

 www.lifeaction-coaching.com

What’s Luck Got To Do With It?

picture by jscreationzs

I find it interesting that many times when we look at others’ successes, we make quick judgments that they were lucky. Take Sheryl Sandberg, now being called the $1.6 billion woman in the New York Times. The woman has had enormous success, but she has also worked incredibly hard to get to where she is today. She wasn’t the daughter of someone famous, she didn’t make a sex tape that went viral, and she didn’t join a reality show to get her 15 min. of fame. No, this woman actually had to prove herself over and over and over again in the business world. Where does luck come in?

What’s even more interesting is that those questioning her accomplishments are also women. In a world where women feel that they have to work harder to get the same recognition as a man for doing the same job, you would think that we as women would do a better job of supporting each other in our success.

So here’s my part in highlighting the great things that Sheryl has done, and I applaud her and thank her for taking us to the next level.  Thanks for:

• Reminding us to take responsibility for our careers and not to blame men for holding us back.
• Inspiring us to “keep our foot on the gas pedal”.
• Being a role model for aiming high and taking your seat at the table.
• Walking the talk.
• Taking a risk by choosing Facebook over an executive position at The Washington Post, when it had no business model.
• Stepping full on into your FB COO role to drive profits of $1Billion.
• Supporting women employees in their quest to have both a family and a career.

Do we call it luck when a man has such accomplishments?  Was Zuckerberg lucky?

This is exactly the kind of role model we need for the next generation of great women leaders!

http://www.lifeaction-coaching.com

by akeeris

One of the best management rules to adopt for your direct reports is:  You get 5 minutes to whine, but you may not whine unless you also come with solutions.  This keeps the whining to a minimum and the solution thinking maximized.

Seth Godin’s take on whining was outlined in his blog  Two Problems with Whining:  It doesn’t work and it’s a reverse placebo.  The more you whine, the more you see of what you are whining about.  Who wants that?

The truth is, that whining allows us to keep complaining without focusing on what we have control over.  So the next time you catch yourself whining, do the following:

• Ask yourself what you have control over in the situation
• Ask yourself what role you play in the situation
• Determine if there is behavior you can change in yourself that will affect the situation
• Find a way to get creative in your thinking and poke the box to come up with a solution

I once had a boss who called meetings in the late afternoon at one of the local bars.  We chose to focus on solution space over a glass of wine for two reasons.  It got us out of the office and into a different place, which is useful for creative thinking, and we enjoyed the right kind of wine.

by FreeDigitalPhotos.net

www.lifeaction-coaching.com

by Michal Marcol

When did signing your John Hancock get to be so important?  Most people have no idea how valuable their signature can be in the online world we live in today.  How many times have you gotten an e-mail asking for a response, you decide to just pick up the phone to make it quicker and ‘Bam!’, you are stopped dead in your tracks because they didn’t put their phone number in their e-mail signature?  Now you have to go find it.  This is costing you time and work, and you hate it.

That’s just one example.  There are dozens of proactive measures if you are trying to connect with people in other ways like blogs, newsletters and social media.  Check out this article by Magdalena Georgieva with great tips on how to make your signature part of your marketing.  Remember, no matter where you are in the career world, we are all marketing something, especially ourselves.

There are more than 15 elements to marketing yourself and developing your Personal Brand. And no kidding, the more you integrate them, the faster you will be noticed and remembered!  Awareness gets you 80% of the way there, but then it’s up to you on all of the implementation.  Isn’t that where we all fall down?  Make this year different!  At least get your signature lined up to market yourself.

www.lifeaction-coaching.com

by jscreationzs

If you believe there is a get rich quick scheme or a magic process that gives immediate results, then don’t bother reading any further because if I had such an answer for you, I would be incredibly rich and way too busy to write this post.

When I first started my business, I joined every network that I thought would fit with my business plan. I quickly found out which ones worked for me and which ones didn’t. The key was to focus my time as quickly as possible on what was working and release the ones that weren’t. Then, I went all in.

When I say I went all in, that’s exactly what I mean. That meant that I did the following:

•  attended every meeting possible
• never sat next to someone that I knew
• joined a committee and attended every committee meeting
• volunteered to take action items
• promoted the organization in social media
• invited other business owners to attend and join
• gave testimonials for the organization
• attended their national conference
• offered free coaching sessions to members
• provided a free 2 hour workshop
• attended a 4 day social outing
• purchased advertising on their website
• set up one-on-one meetings with people I met to connect further
• looked for opportunities to refer business or meaningful connections
• built relationships based on things other than business

I could go on, but you get the idea. There’s a difference between a Ponzi scheme built on getting a huge network underneath you and the long-term investment strategy where you make meaningful relationships with the people within your sphere of influence. You know it works in the financial realm, and it works in the business world as well. So don’t expect to get increased business by attending one or two networking lunches. It doesn’t work that way. You may make a few good contacts, but for long-term success you need to go all in and as Chuck Hawkins says Hustle Harder!

www.lifeaction-coaching.com

by Grant Cochrane

It’s Saturday night and I’m kicking back after a day downtown at the  Superbowl festivities in Indianapolis.  The city looks great, the transportation and customer service was impeccable and the zipline was amazing to watch (didn’t want to wait in line for my turn and would prefer a zipline over a rainforest in the Caribbean rather than a concrete jungle in the Midwest). Back tomorrow for the NFL Experience!

As I was surfing for articles to use in my social media, I ran across this one from Dave Logan about Tribal Leadership and Scrum (yes I believe that is the sports analogy).  This is what stood out to me:

“…we should eat our own dog food. We need a venue, identification of community values, selection of a noble cause, commitment to Scrum (not “Scrum But”) and Tribal Leadership (not Tribal Leadership “But”).”

Of course you know I love this because of his referral to the Big BUT.  Also because I love his analogy to dog food.

How many times do we put boundaries in place, put systems in place for success, and we’re the first to turn our nose up at our own dogfood?  We have no problem making it, but we don’t really want to eat it.  Either we need to make some better tasting dogfood, or we need to accept it with an ice cream scoop and gladly welcome it as our feast.

By the way, I think the people who are running all the activities at the Super Bowl in downtown Indy are doing a great job of eating their dog food!

www.lifeaction-coaching.com

photo by winnond

Do you think that what you listen to can make you smarter? Do you think it’s the content, or do you think it’s the actual exercise of your brain?

This was the topic of a recent article in Popular Science magazine entitled “Will listening to Mozart really make me smarter?” This was a long-held theory in 1993 which showed that students listening to Mozart increased their IQ score, and it was appropriately called The Mozart Effect. Now, upon further research, it has been found that the effect is actually related to the stimulation of the brain that was activated by the music. So now, theoretically, one can listen to Justin Bieber and still have the same effect. Interesting.

So here’s an interesting question. Would you  prefer a surgeon who has just listened to 30 min. of Mozart before cutting you open, or 30 min. of Justin Bieber?

How much do you think our surroundings, including what we see and hear, really influences each of us personally?

www.lifeaction-coaching.com

This recent article in Fast Company  says a lot about the state of our business world today. The crux of the matter is that today’s business world is one of constant change, flux, and chaos. In fact, the people who are most comfortable with these things are probably the ones that will see the greatest success in our future. Now, that can be pretty frightening to someone like me, who put in a 20 year career in corporate America, but also reassuring in that I’ve become one of those diving into the uncertainty of business ownership.

It was particularly telling to me, just how fast business has changed. For example:

“Look at the global cell-phone business. Just five years ago, three companies controlled 64% of the smartphone market: Nokia, Research in Motion, and Motorola. Today, two different companies are at the top of the industry: Samsung and Apple.”

 According to Danah Boyd, Senior Researcher at Microsoft:

“People ask me, ‘Are you afraid you’re going to get fired?’ That’s the whole point: not to be afraid.”

 I hear this more and more frequently from my clients. They have gotten to the point where they are confident enough in their abilities and value, that they aren’t afraid to move on to another opportunity.

 It looks like the future is going to be one heck of a roller coaster. The great thing about a roller coaster is that it’s fun the whole way through.

www.lifeaction-coaching.com

]]> http://www.lifeaction-coaching.com/2012/01/18/the-flux-generation/feed/ 0 http://www.lifeaction-coaching.com/2012/01/17/girls-on-the-run/ http://www.lifeaction-coaching.com/2012/01/17/girls-on-the-run/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:34:49 +0000 Lynn http://www.lifeaction-coaching.com/?p=1548  

I recently learned of a fantastic organization here in Hamilton County, headed up by Susan Foellinger as their counsel director. Being a runner myself,  I just couldn’t help but be excited about the possibilities that this organization enables.

Girls on the Run® is a non-profit prevention program that encourages preteen girls to develop self-respect and healthy lifestyles through running.

But they are more than a running program!  Their curricula addresses all aspects of girls’ development–physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual well-being.  This life-changing, character development program is for girls in 3rd through 8th grade.  They use the power of … Read more