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- ABOUT LINDA FEINHOLZ “Your High Payoff Catalyst”

Priscilla Palmer’s Personal Development List

I’m delighted to have been added to Priscilla Palmer’s Personal Development List.

And these collaborated sites:
Blogher’s Religion and Spirituality “department”
Burst Blog
Change This
Change Your Thinking
Daily PlanIt
Did I Get Things Done
GTD Wannabe
Jobman2
Joyful Jubilant Learning
Life Coaches Blog Stratagies for a Greater Life
Lifehack.org
Lifehacker.com
Phattitudes.com
TED Blog
Transformational Girlfriends
Transfoundation
Unclutterer

And these for those of you who speak Russian:
Anatoly Tikhomirov at Personal Efficacy
Armen Petrosyan at Thought Storage #428
Irina Chelnokova at Women Path
Michael Subach at LifeIdea.org
Sergey Biryukov at Personal Development in Russian
Vitaly Kolesnik at Kolesnik.ru
Vladimir Rundan at Living is Great!

Comedy Plus Recommends: Santa’s Elf’s Club, Santa Mail, Santa’s Wish Tree, Write to Santa, Everyday Should Be Christmas, Santa’s Link Love, Santa’s Community Blog, Book Project, Your Wisdom of Total Happiness, Zubli Zainordin, Hall of Fame, NoDirectOn (not:NoDirection), Marketing•Review, OgenDicht/EyesClosed, The Blog Elf, PurpleFrogCat Blog, PurpleFrogCat StumbleUpon, Polliwog’s Pond, Carnival of Good Stuff, Polliwog’s Stumbles, April Decheine 2006, I could write a book, April Decheine Wife and Mother, Santa’s Magical Golden Cat, Comedy Plus

October 27, 2007 | Filed Under Ideas, Inspiration | 2 Comments

THE HIGH PAYOFF ACKNOWLEDGMENT

By Linda Feinholz, “Your High Payoff Catalyst”

I got the most marvelous surprise today. It was totally unexpected, and stopped me dead in my metaphorical tracks.

I’d been listening to one of my coaching clients describe how scattered she’d become. She’s a small business owner, planning on doubling her sales and finding a new facility and redesigning the packaging for her signature products.

I helped her take back control of her time and attention and prioritize her marketing so she’ll put her time into the Highest Payoff prospects first. The tension dropped off her shoulders and there was a smile in her voice.

She said “I knew you’d make this easy!”

I LOVE being acknowledged and I know you do too. This one was a real gift. It meant that she was experiencing the bold claim I make in my newsletters, on my web site, in my programs, with all my clients: small simple easy steps can have a huge impact.

The gift she gave me was in telling me that what I give my heart and soul to was appreciated. And I wasn’t even expecting it.

Why do I tell you all of this? Because I’m just the same as you and everyone you come into contact with on a daily basis. That includes your family, friends, and colleagues, the folks serving you in restaurants, delivering your mail, working on a portion of the product being made for your customer and even your clients.

Just like me, and just like you, the people around you are doing their best, trying to succeed at the things they’ve taken on. We each become so focused on our own ‘doing’ that we often don’t know if our efforts are seen, are on target, are even valued.

When my coaching client acknowledged me, I was reminded by my own reaction just how strong a result the simplest gesture can create - Acknowledgments can be the very best surprise!

I’m all about making things simple and easy to use and that includes acknowledging people and teaching other how to as well. I figure that if I teach it and encourage you to use it and you teach it to others, the world will be filled with people being acknowledged and acknowledging all the time. Now that’s a world I want to live in!

So here are the simple steps to becoming a High Payoff Acknowledger.

Step 1 – SET Your Intention
Before my client said a word to me, I was in my head, sorting through the information I was going to use with her, checking what she was paying attention to and how well it was getting her to her goal. When she spontaneously shared that comment with me I instantly relaxed, lightened up, and felt sparkles. I’ve timed it – It took her less than 3 seconds to change the energy in my world. Wouldn’t you like to create that same result over and over in your world?

Step 2 – DECIDE On Your Target
Take a beginner’s approach to this – start with the people it’s easy to thank. For some of us that’s people we work with everyday. For others it’s the strangers we encounter from time to time. I will say that it can get addictive – you may find yourself acknowledging everyone everywhere. You might even be using a whole “45 seconds” every day!

Step 3 – Make it SIMPLE - Find One Thing To Acknowledge
This is your opportunity to deliver one single quick message. This isn’t the time to deliver a performance evaluation or give constructive feedback. This is about gifting the person in front of you with a moment of joy at being appreciated.

Step 4 – Make It Systematic – Create A New HABIT
One of my clients has taken on the habit of ending every meeting acknowledging the person she met with. 3 seconds per meeting. A small business consulting client sends out 5 written thank you’s on high quality statationary every day. 10 minutes at the end of each day. One of my MasterMind buddies uses Friday afternoons to review his calendar and send emails to people he worked with during the past week. 16 minutes a week. And worth every moment.

Step 5 – SET Your Reminder
I’ve found the letter “A” is a great visual reminder for me. Try it on - Write it in your calendar. It will trigger you to use acknowledgments during your business day. Put it on a post-it on your cell phone and it will remind you throughout your life. Put it in your computer meeting reminder and it will spark your imagination throughout your weeks.

Let me know how you do with it, and the results you create.

October 26, 2007 | Filed Under Inspiration, Leadership, Managing | 1 Comment

Change “1 Acknowledgment” And You Can Change It All!

Most of the meetings I attend conclude with everyone shoving themselves away from the table (or phone) in relief. During that meeting at least one person offered an idea they could have kept to themselves.

Acknowledge them and they’ll show up fully again at the next meeting. And it will encourage you to show up with your ideas as well!

Whether you’re the leader of the meeting or one of the attendees, ask yourself:

“What idea or insight was shared in this meeting that

had me see the situation in a new way?”

Before you push away from that table, or hang up the phone, tell the person who made the observation how valuable it was for you.

October 25, 2007 | Filed Under Inspiration, Leadership, Managing, Teams | Leave a Comment

Change”1 Acknowledgment” And You Can Change It All!

Have you told someone “Thank You!” lately?

Many of the managers I work with tell me “Oh, everyone knows how much their work is appreciated.”

I’ll let you in on a secret: They don’t.

When was the last time you personally felt acknowledged? I bet you can tell me the time and the place, who said it, AND tell me how good and motivated it made you feel.

Now ask yourself:

“When was the last time I told each of these people how much

I appreciate their efforts and the results it creates?

Make a list of the people who help you create your results - staff, vendors, people in other areas of the business. Now write down 1 thing they each do that makes it all work.

Grab your phone, grab a pen, or grab your keyboard and spend the 27 seconds it will take you to let them know. And put it on your calendar to do it again next month.

October 21, 2007 | Filed Under Catalyst Action Tip, Leadership, Managing | Leave a Comment

SMALL BUSINESS ACCELERATION - BE THE LEADER!

By Linda Feinholz, “Your High Payoff Catalyst”

“I’m too small to be a Leader. We don’t need to spend any time on that!”

Those were the words from my small business client, Paul. He didn’t mean that he was too short. He meant that in his mind, his $4 million business was too small to need a ‘leader.’

After all, he wasn’t running a computer software company or a car manufacturer, ‘just a local services business.’

He brought me in to work with his management team on improving their overall performance. The company had been started by his father, a selling dynamo and charmer who had everyone who worked for him happy when he walked through the offices. “Dad” turned the business over to Paul when he decided to retire up the coast with Mom.

The company’s facilities services business had a good reputation and customers who were generally satisfied with the services. But those same customers’ internal business goals of cost containment meant they were always willing to entertain lower priced proposals from the competition.

Paul was suddenly wearing both the Sales Manager hat, and also the President hat. He’d been wearing that sales hat for 18 years, and he didn’t know what a President’s hat was supposed to look like.

Since Dad’s retirement, the company had undergone steady erosion from competition and constant turnover of the junior staff. And Paul was tired of feeling like the company was stalled.

Paul asked me to work with him and his managers to get them refocused and into action growing their business. I found they were stuck with all the common challenges of small businesses:

Key decision makers were feeling overwhelmed by the challenges of the business

Work groups were silo’ed as each ‘manager’ tried to carve out their turf and have a sense of control

Meetings were more about disagreements than using information to make decisions

Sales plans had bigger goals without describing the targets for the sales team

Staff felt like “It’s just a job” and were on the look out for more pay

And so on.

Paul’s initial reaction to the idea of Leadership was typical. Many small business owners, entrepreneurs, and even professionals view their sphere of influence with a ‘small’ lens. They believe their company or their department needs to hit some mythical size, often ten times it’s current sales, before having a ‘Leader’ is important.

What they don’t understand is that even a two-person partnership needs ‘leadership time’ to grow and thrive.

Each business needs a Vision that inspires everyone who shows up to work to bring their best experience, intelligence and efforts with them each day.

Each person in every company needs a sense of being acknowledged, assisted and appreciated or their attention drifts off to other areas than the purpose of their work.

Each manager needs a model for how to build a business case for the items that needed decisions across functional areas.

And each business owner, key decision maker, manager needs to use the simple leadership techniques that hold the entire work effort together, and keep it focused forward.

Leadership is the series of activities that take place when the rat race of running a business is paused for a moment and one person communicates directly with the heart of the others in their business.

Paul’s notion was that Leadership would divert his attention from managing the business’s sales. He couldn’t have been more wrong. It’s as relevant for the owner of a small business as it is for the Leader of a mega corporation.

Whether I’m consulting to an individual company, or coaching MasterMind groups of professionals who want to grow their business, the key I’m teaching each person is that small efforts have enormous payoffs.

For Paul that meant we started him with three easy High Payoff Leadership steps:

Inspiring his sales force with measurable sales targets: tripling the number of boutique hotels the company served in a 20-mile radius in the next 18 months.

Empowering each of the functional areas of the company to design and deliver services packages for that target market that kept those customers delighted and staying with the company.

Encouraging his staff by running meetings where he kept sharing how proud he was that the team was going after and winning the business that fit their targets.

In total, those activities required that Paul learn 5 new ways of talking about business, and took only 35 minutes per week of his time.

In one month his team’s time spent in meetings shortened by 30%. In four months the company had no turnover. In six months they had doubled their business in their target market.

Isn’t it time you put High Payoff Leadership on your calendar?

October 18, 2007 | Filed Under Inspiration, Leadership, Vision | Leave a Comment

Change”1 Reminder” And You Can Change It All!

When was the last time you had your Vision in mind?

It seems that the busier we get the quicker it slips away from us.

If you’re running a business day in and day out, you need a mechanism that will keep bringing your attention to the top level. A way of getting out of the details so that you remember the purpose as you review each of your challenges.

Now ask yourself:

“What do I have in front of me at all times that

keeps me focused on achieving your success?”

In print. In an image. In living color with words and pictures that remind you at a glance and help you anchor your attention back on the big picture. Get your Vision in front of you.

It will help you rapidly sort out what’s important and what’s fluff. What’s urgent and what is just a distraction from getting what really needs doing done.

October 14, 2007 | Filed Under Inspiration, Vision | Leave a Comment

HIGH PAYOFF LIVING - KEEPING YOUR VISION ALIVE!

By Linda Feinholz, “Your High Payoff Catalyst”

I startled an audience last week.

I was there to talk about Living a High Payoff Life. It’s one of my favorite topics, and every time I speak about it people’s faces light up and they become very intent. They can feel in their hearts that there are gold nuggets in there!

Everyone was listening and each person was thinking about what that would look like for each of them. They were really enjoying imagining what their High Payoff Life could look like.

One entrepreneur in the audience, Jerry, kept raising her hand with questions. Each one was on a different aspect of her life. Her work, her family, her friends, her staff. Her three business interests. And every question she posed was filled with stress and anxiety and worry about getting it all handled perfectly.

Jerry was the perfect reflection of the audience as a group. They thought they were going to get a hand out with a list of steps to take that would get them to their High Payoff Life by the weekend.

Jerry was looking for the step-by-step road map to how to get it all in focus and under control and each time she asked a question it became clear that she was giving every topic the same importance and the same priority. Except one thing.

Jerry is faced with the challenge common to sole practitioners and small business owners everywhere. She had completely lost track of the Vision behind all of her time and efforts.

When I asked her what her Vision was, she became very silent, and looked as if she were only moments away from tears. That wasn’t my intention with my question, but it pointed out the root of the matter.

By holding on to all the reins in her business, Jerry spends everyday with a To Do list filled with tasks in many different categories. Her attention is on the smallest of details for each of them. What was lost in all the details was the heart and soul, the Vision that was behind all her efforts in the first place.

I asked her permission to probe a bit deeper and she agreed.

”Think back to the Vision you held when you started your business. What was it?” I asked her.

Her face calmed, her eyes looked off in the distance and the lines in her face smoothed out and her whole body lit up. “To create products that make working mothers’ lives easier!”

She said it with life and energy and a dream in her voice.

“When was the last time you had that Vision in your mind?” I posed.

She answered with her eyes focused back on me, her head tipped to the side.

“Years.”

“Do you know what your High Payoff Action needs to be when you leave here today? The one that will bring the answers to all those other questions into focus?” I asked.

The rest of the folks in the audience thought I was going to give them a detailed road map to follow and use minute by minute, day by day. We’re wired that way (grin). Instead what they got was a single assignment to take away and make their own.

“It’s the same simple action every business owner needs to take as they deal with the challenges of building and running their business. Day in and day out. A single action.”

A couple of people glanced at each other sideways but no one volunteered an answer.

“The single most important action is keeping your Vision in view.” I told them. “And I mean IN VIEW! Not on a piece of paper in a notebook. Not a sticky note at the front of your 3-ring planner. I mean up on a wall or on your desktop in plain view for you and everyone else to see.

The first step to creating and living Your High Payoff Life is having your Vision in front of you constantly. Then you’ll be able to quickly assess the things that are cropping up that are distractions rather than moving you to achieve that Vision.

I gave them the assignment I use with my MasterMind members to set their personal and business Vision. I expect a lot of walls are going to have powerful Visions on them in the next few weeks.

And a lot of To Dos are going to be re-prioritized and even dumped off the list for good!

October 12, 2007 | Filed Under Inspiration, Vision | Leave a Comment

Change 1 “To Do” And You Can Change It All!

Have you noticed how much time you spend staring at (or avoiding) your To Do list?

You can join Mark and the others in getting you time ‘spent’ on what matters. Instead of wrestling with time, take a step back and shift your perspective.

Start by changing your To Do’s and you’ll revolutionize your relationship with Time and blast by the folks who are still staring at their calendars in despair.

Ask yourself

“Which of these To Do’s actually move me toward my Vision?”

Now prioritize the top 5 remaining To Do’s and put them on you calendar today! Everything else needs to be Delegated or Dumped. Call me if get stuck deciding which of those three lists to put things on!

October 8, 2007 | Filed Under Delegation, Managing, Productivity Tools, Time Management | Leave a Comment

A HIGH PAYOFF TAKE ON TIME

By Linda Feinholz, “Your High Payoff Catalyst”

The easiest path to High Payoff results is by changing your relationship with Time.

If you’re looking for ways to get “more” done then I know you’ve probably read a hundred articles about managing time trying to find out how. I know I have. So had my client Mark.

Mark complained endlessly that for the lack of time, running his $400M company meant he never saw his kids. He was frustrated by the constant feeling that no matter how smart he was, Time always beat him. He listened to tapes on all the best techniques for corralling time while running on the treadmill at the gym. He read more tips in magazines on flights he sat on from city to city all over North America. And his head of Human Resources handed him the latest books to read in his ‘spare’ time.

I used to read all those articles and listen to audios in search of the miracle technique. I even sat through a couple of live programs with tools and systems. I expect you’ve done the same over the years.

I bet you’ve noticed the same paradox in your life that I have in mine: There is no end to time, and despite all those resources, there is no limit to the amount of To Do’s you can pile on your list. So over and over it feels like there isn’t enough time to get it all done.

I finally figured out that the Time Management industry exists because there’s no end to the myth of gaining the upper hand – It’s a great emotional magnet, especially the way the solution keeps being defined: Learn how to “manage” time and you’ll be its master!

Listen to me, please! You can’t master time, loose time or buy time. Time just flows. In fact, the more attention you give to Time Management, the more time you spend with your attention on “Time” the more your energy is on the wrong thing, and the less you have for getting the right things done.

I’ve designed a simple system to get your attention back where it belongs. I teach it in my business coaching programs and my work with business owners and executives. It consists of three simple actions and a single “Time Management Technique”. First the actions:

1 – Step “Back” To See Your Goal
The first thing we did was reset Mark’s attention from ”The List” to his Vision. Mark started out our discussion with the idea that his goal was to get his To Do’s “done.” He had 64 items on that list the day we counted them. But, what was his High Payoff Goal? To have his company earn $400 million, with his management team working effectively with him and with each other, and make it work so smoothly within 2 years that he could sit at his kids after school activities with his cell phone turned off and not worry about it.

2 – Identify Your Distractions
Mark had that long To Do list. He held the mistaken conviction that he had to “Do” each and every one of them. He was mesmerized by the idea that only he could ensure each one of them would succeed. In a Time Management model we would have figured out how he could do each thing most efficiently – what time slots on which days would he work on them, and so on. Instead we changed the conversation to what “Done” would look like, and “Who else” could get it done, and “What would they need to get it done well.”

3 – Prioritize Your High Payoff Actions
By taking Mark through the first two steps, he was ready for this next one with ease! What top 5 To Do’s would get him to his Vision and needed his, and only his, attention in a given day? Mark’s time, intelligence and energy were better used defining what “Done” would look like, and “Delegating” to the “Doer” than doing it himself. Anything else that was important and needed to be done in the same time period he delegated to others.

And the technique I mentioned? It’s simple. I call it “45-minute hours.” Take each hour of the day and divide it so that there’s a 45-minute span that’s uninterrupted and focused on a single item. Use the other 15-minutes for calls, email, answering questions for others, and so on. Then back on focus again.

Within a month Mark had his team using the technique and actions. His High Payoff result: Gone – obsessions with time. Gained – everyone’s boosted productivity!

October 6, 2007 | Filed Under Managing, Productivity Tools, Time Management | Leave a Comment

Change 1 “To Do” And You Can Change It All!

What are you spending your time on these days? I really want to know.Take a blank piece of paper and track everything you put your attention for the next 2 hours. List everything you spend time working on, everything you’re thinking about, wishing you weren’t thinking about, pondering whether you could made a decision and stop dealing with it, and so on. Everything.

Then ask yourself

“Who ought to be paying attention to this?”

Write the name or job title of that person next to each thing you have on your list. Don’t worry about all the ‘reasons’ you’re certain no one else can handle it because they’re too busy. Start by sitting down with just one other person and discussing how you could hand off that one thing. Then go back to your list and pick the next… then the next,..

October 1, 2007 | Filed Under Catalyst Action Tip, Delegation, Inspiration | Leave a Comment

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