Change 1 PERCEPTION And You Can Change It All!

All too often, we go through our day, deciding what we’ll experience before an event actually takes place. We are each ‘primed’ by our experiences. We take an past experience, and label it, and then hold that label in our mind as our ‘quick’ reminder of how we perceive the person or event.

For instance, when you look at your calendar and see who you will be meeting with, you’re inclined to label them and judge them based on past experience of your interaction with them, rather than wait to see if it’s repeated this time, or not.

Today, take a frank look at a meeting you have with other people you know ‘well.’ Ask yourself:

“What am I assuming about them and their behavior?”

Right down one assumption you have about each person you’ll be seeing. For instance, “Jerry - impatient” might be one of your notes.

Now, find a different word for the description of each person. You might relabel Jerry as “passionate” or “hoping I’ll see it his way.” Find a new label for each person and hold that label in mind as you start your meeting with them. Make a point to remind yourself of your new label everytime you ‘hear’ the old label creeping into your mind.

Let me know what you come up with in the comment box below.

June 30, 2008 | Filed Under Leadership | Leave a Comment 

THE HIGH PAYOFF RELATIONSHIP KEY FOR LEADERS

© 2008 Linda Feinholz

For two days I stayed out of it. I sat watching and listening.

That’s what I was supposed to be doing, as a consultant and coach who was sitting in to observe the workings of a team of managers as they conducted their monthly senior management meeting.

And boy did I have to bite my tongue!

In every moment they were working so hard to avoid improving their working relationships with each other.

What do we understand about building relationships?

So often, often relationships seem to be out of our hands. There are people with whom we get along, and others who (at best) we tolerate. Some relationships scare us, so we avoid those people. Mostly, we invest our relationship building with those who understand us.

From my one-on-one discussions with each of these managers I had some perspective of their attitudes towards one another. And I watched those attitudes play out for sixteen hours.

The heads of Marketing, of Sales, of Production, of Finance, and everyone else sat around the table. They spent more time watching to see if they were at risk, and criticizing each other, than bringing their experience to bear in solving the challenges in front of them. Meetings that ought to take 30 minutes went on for up to four hours! Ugh!

None of them had their attention on the critical success factor of strong teams: building strong relationships with each other.

As the managing heads of their company they needed to improve their capabilities as technical managers AND claim their role as leaders. Both of those competencies depend on commitment to relationship.

When I brought this up with each of them their first concern was whether there was enough time to add “all that extra work” to their plate.

What if my clients understood that they could affect the quality of their relationships intentionally? Easily? Without risking a thing? Would better relationships across the board improve the quality of their lives at work and at home? And their business results? I’ve got my money on your answer being an emphatic “Yes!”

So here are the keys I’ll be teaching them that unlock High Payoff Relationships:

Leaders Inspire
In 15 seconds when speaking to others, leaders inspire a shared vision of what the organization can become and enlist others in putting their efforts into making that vision come to reality. One sentence spoken with a smile and energy at the beginning and conclusion of a meeting is usually all it takes. And that’s not more work!

Leaders Model
Every business has a culture demonstrated by the behavior in the organization. Leaders model the way by setting an example for others to follow. For this group, modeling includes showing up to participate in meetings. That includes speaking up actively with questions that clarify the challenges under discussion and proposing ideas for how to solve them. It won’t take a minute longer – in fact it will shorten most of their discussions by about 75%!

Leaders Enable
Nothing is more frustrating for an employee than to be told they have a target they must achieve… and then having nothing but obstacles in their way. Leaders enable others to act by providing the tools needed for them to get their jobs done and removing those obstacles. This set of leaders needs to demonstrate doing that among themselves and for everyone else.

Leaders Challenge
Contrary to popular belief the goal isn’t to prove others wrong. Leaders challenge the process and the status quo, without criticizing or discrediting others. They look for opportunities to innovate, experiment and take risks. My clients need to recognize that risk taking involves mistakes and failures – learning opportunities. Learning easy changes in language will ease their stepping forward with ideas for making it all work better.

Leaders Encourage
We each know how wonderful it feels to be acknowledged, whether in conversation or with an email of appreciation. This team needs to mimic their CEO and encourage the heart or each person, including their peers, by recognizing contributions that individuals make; celebrating their accomplishments; and making people feel like heroes. Total time? About 9 seconds!

Leaders Cultivate Consistency
For leaders to be credible over time, they need to act consistently, demonstrating the professionalism of their work, the manner of following through on their own performance and the management of other people’s on behalf of the organization’s vision and goals. Frankly, that starts with those other five behaviors and sustaining them over time.

There’s actually little time added, and often quite a bit saved. When leadership is incorporated into a team’s attitude and commitments it makes everyone’s ‘work’ easier, more fun and bonds teams together.

From those deeper relationships, my clients will be building their success in good times and solve challenges in tough times with everyone pulling together.

Now it’s your turn!

March 10, 2008 | Filed Under Leadership, Managing | Leave a Comment 

ARE YOU MISSING OUT ON THE TRUE POWER OF TEAMS?

© 2008 Linda Feinholz.

Here’s an interesting fact…

According to one of today’s leading authorities on Attention Deficit Disorders, Tellman Knudsen, if you have ADD, you have been programmed since birth to actually NOT be able to do something you really need to do to succeed in life…

The thing you have been programmed not to be able to do is to participate effectively with others.

As I read his work, it struck me that the same programming that helps someone with ADD increase their productivity, are the very beliefs that all people need for success in teams. And you may not hold those beliefs.

Don’t believe me?

Tell me, how often have you ever heard,

“We all have to clean up after ourselves?”

or…

“You have to carry your own weight?”

or… The all-time winner:

“If you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself”?

If you heard those sentences, or ones similar to them, repeatedly then you have been programmed.

You’ve been programmed with beliefs so that you won’t let yourself draw on the power of the ‘teams’ around you. Those teams include your peers, your vendors, your clients, your mentors, and so on.

The programming affects your productivity on two fronts. Not only is it diverting you from learning how to delegate things you really don’t need to be doing, but it is also stopping you from having the time you need to do the things you really WANT to be doing!

And a single belief can derail an entire team.

My client, Charles, is the president of an international organization. He wants his team of managers to show up as better teammates to each other, and as better leaders of their company. He needs them to step up and take on management of their business so that he can focus on strategic issues in their marketplace.

He keeps waiting for them to raise important high-risk issues for discussion. And he wants each of the managers to offer input, insights and innovative thinking on each issue. And he watches to see if anyone will fight for what they believe is the right solution to problems the company is facing.

The problem is he’s been programming his senior management team to avoid the very behaviors he wants to see. Charles happens to believe that ‘Challenging is the best way to encourage people to show their capabilities.”

Because of that belief, rather than setting up the team for success he’s been making some key mistakes:

Letting the group ‘figure out’ how to be a team for themselves.

Charles believes starting topics and letting them roll from there helps his people gel as a team. Although his managers work together well outside of his all-hands meeting, when they walk in the door for his monthly meeting they don’t know the purpose of their time together. Is it to have the team think about the topic? To identify breakdowns? To figure out lessons to be learned? To suggest improvements that can be made?

So, they comment and quibble and jockey for position and approval like siblings around the dinner table.

Every ‘miss’ is a mistake

There is no standard for evaluating the impact when a manager’s results when they don’t meet the plan. Charles’s tone of voice is so critical that people shut down. Hoping to please him by copying the behavior they see, and in the hopes he won’t do the same to them that week, everyone else picks joins in the criticism and fault-finding.

As a result, the behavior in his management meeting is often like a college hazing.

Chasing bright shiny objects

Charles gives equal value to any remark made during the discussions. When his managers discuss one topic, their conversation ranges all over the place. Any comment can be inserted into the discussion, even when it’s off-topic. Meetings often last 10 or more hours and the team seldom comes to conclusions or decisions about next steps.

As you can probably guess, Charles keeps waiting for people to take responsibility, offer suggestions and step up… while his managers are often trying to stay ‘unnoticed.’ The managers keep waiting to be lead, to have conversations organized towards a purpose and to be given priorities for the hours they’ll spend together.

We’re going to work at changing Charles’ programming and management style so his folks in turn can get UN-programmed and come prepared, hold business-matter-of-fact discussions and build a high payoff management team.

February 9, 2008 | Filed Under Leadership, Managing, Teams | Leave a Comment 

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 “Action” And You Can Change It All!

When you look at these three styles of entrepreneur, which one do you most resemble? And which characteristics pose the most challenge to your achieving your goals?

Take a moment and ask yourself

“What single change can I make to keep myself focused and on track?”

You’ll be surprised how simply declaring the change will keep you noticing the challenge each time it crops up. And having your attention on it is the first step to getting the stumbling block out of your path.

September 24, 2007 | Filed Under Catalyst Action Tip, Leadership, Managing | Leave a Comment 

Hop, Skip Or Jump Your Way To Entrepreneurial Success

By Linda Feinholz, “Your Success Catalyst”

I’ve mentored a quite a few already-successful entrepreneurs over the years. To folks holding jobs inside businesses, these business owners appear to be a breed apart. I say ‘appear’ because you may think all entrepreneurs fall into a single unique category and can be considered ‘successful’ for making that choice. You’d be wrong and there’s a lesson in how to create your High Payoff results by understanding what distinguishes them.

You’ve heard me say that I’m all about getting my clients what they want (usually it’s to achieve their Vision further, faster and easier). One key group of entrepreneurs says to me “Linda, there has to be a better way. Show me what action to take and I’ll do it.” We keep their focus on a repeating cycle: Intention – Plan – Action. They attend to those steps systematically, repeatedly. Those are entrepreneurs who are ‘Movers.’

But that’s not the only kind of entrepreneur in business. There’s also the person who creates their own business so that no one else will ever tell them what to do, or how to do it. While they put a flag in the ground, and declare “This is mine!” they don’t necessarily set goals, or spend any time putting a plan in place that will guide them towards those goals. So they’re constantly busy trying to get it all done and won’t hear of handing any of it off. Those are entrepreneurs who are ‘Doers.’

You might think these are the only versions of entrepreneur to model if you’re considering creating a business of your own, you might believe that the only way to create exceptional success is by following the path of a Mover. But that’s not the full story. And to understand what it takes to create High Payoff results, you need to know of the third type of entrepreneur as well.

There are also ‘Hyper-Achievers’ out there. You’ll recognize them (if they stop moving long enough for you to spot them). They have more than one business endeavor on their plate at the same time, and six more in their hopper. They have more happening in one day than many of us take on in a given week, or month, let alone year.

So, now you’re wondering if I’m walking you through all of this because I want you to walk the hyper-achiever path. But the truth is that focusing on these three labels misses the true keys to creating valuable business results. Each of these versions of business leader might be succeeding enormously or failing spectacularly in their businesses.

Every day, you’re surrounded by entrepreneurs who are attorneys, manufacturers, retailers, executives. What makes them each an entrepreneur is that they wake each day with a singular attitude. They take a look at the world around them and declare “I know what I want to create, and I’ll take steps today to make that happen!” And then, just like the rest of us, they lead either effective or ineffective days.

For each of them, the roots of their success or failure lie in the actions that follow that declaration.

Remember the Movers? They started with a Vision they want to create in the world. That underpins their decisions. They marshal all their resources to create that result, and then set a game plan that will make it happen. Some of them, however, become absorbed in each detail, worried that it will all collapse if they take their hands off of any of it.

And the Doers? Many of them slip into becoming an employee of a new boss - their own company. They’re working long hard hours and their key motivation is doing it themselves, rather than building toward a specific goal. As a result, they wake every day with even more responsibilities than they held onto before.

And the Hyper-Achievers? Some of them set up the structures and processes and delegate the doing so it actually gets done. Others tread a dangerous line between building one fabulous idea after another, and chasing bright shiny inviting opportunities no one else yet sees. You might spot them launching new initiatives one after the other and bringing few of them to completion.

Each of these entrepreneurs increased their risk and severely jeopardized their returns.

The ‘Already-Successful’ achievers I’ve worked with come from all three styles of entrepreneur. You can learn and use the fundamental High Payoff techniques that set them apart from those who fail. What distinguishes these achievers is that they keep a clear focus to their attention, get rid of their distractions over and over, daily, and keep their attention on the activities that actually are aligned with getting them to their Vision.

How are you approaching your business?

September 20, 2007 | Filed Under Leadership, Managing | Leave a Comment