Stop being tempted to go down the ‘wrong’ path and execute your game plan!

Have you ever found yourself going down the ‘wrong’ path and wondered how you got so far off track from achieving your goals?  Ever wondered why you don’t achieve the goals you set at the beginning of the year? Ever stated a new year’s resolution and then found yourself off track in February or March (so soon after the start of the year)?  Here are some of the pitfalls we need to resist if we are going to achieve our personal and professional goals and create the kind of life we really want – this year and every year going forward.

 

Personal Development & Multifarious Pitfalls to Resist
- Tempted to not invest enough time in those things that matter more than money to you.
- Tempted to quit too soon.
- Tempted to not choose your highest and best activities during the day.
- Tempted to not seek out mentors.
- Tempted to not get (or take) expert advice.
- Tempted to not optimize your own attention, deploying the power of focus on your priorities.
- Tempted to avoid reality-based thinking.
- Tempted to not insist that there are things which will no longer be acceptable to you.
- Tempted to make no decision (to avoid making a bad decision).

- Tempted to be everything to everybody.
- Tempted to treat exceptions as rules.
- Tempted to allow your team to be undermanaged.
- Tempted to avoid measuring success in all areas which will result in your overall success.
- Tempted to hold-on to people, clients, friendships, etc. longer than you should.
- Tempted to not require reviewing each team member’s written goals for the week.
- Tempted to not invest in the training & development of your people.
- Tempted to not be skilled at clearly articulating the value you bring to your client’s lives.
- Tempted to not seek accountability for yourself.
- Tempted to not measure your progress in a thorough (and candid) way at least 4 times a year.
- Tempted to not build a business to be of tremendous value.
- Tempted to not work hard enough (sometimes you should “work like you’re a rookie”).
- Tempted to not take enough time off.
- Tempted to pull punches rather than (skillfully & gracefully) telling the truth.
- Tempted to not challenge false assumptions (including our own).

Stop being tempted and do what you know you need to do so you can achieve your goals and have the kind of life you really want to live. Get focused, execute your game plan, and enjoy the rewards.

 

If you need help, let me know how I can help you on your goal achievement journey.

6 Management Strategies for Organizational Change Success

Human beings tend to resist anything they view as stressful, and let’s face it, organizational changes are about as stressful as it can get!

 

For most of us, familiarity with our surroundings, our relationships and our working environment allows us to reside safely inside our comfort zone. And comfort equals security.

 

But when our comfort zone is detonated by changes in management or organizational systems, we implode, seeking the shelter of our innate desire to resist, at all costs.

 

Changes that occur outside of our control force us to adapt to new rules, new systems and new policies which can, at the outset, make us feel uncomfortable and insecure.

 

However, a responsible and responsive management team can intercede before staff resistance spreads like the plague and threatens the smooth transition of organizational changes.

 

Effective team leaders acknowledge and understand that it is a basic human instinct to react to change with resistance, even though staff may fully comprehend the reasons why changes in the organization are vital to its existence and growth.

 

6 Management Strategies to Avert Resistance

 

1. A clear outline – Discomfort and insecurity arises when staff are not made aware of the policies, principles, guidelines and structure of intended changes. Every employee needs to know how his/her position will be affected and what his/her role requires.
2. Commitment –Implementation of organizational changes will not occur smoothly if everyone – from the CEO to the office clerk – is not committed to the project and its successful outcome.
3.  Advocacy – Each member of an organization who may be affected by the impending changes must be given the opportunity to express his/her opinion.
4. Responsibility – It is the role of the team leader to ensure that each employee who is responsible for a component of the change strategy is held accountable for his/her actions in implementing the changes required.
5. Acknowledgement – Evaluation and acknowledgement of the success of the change strategy at regular intervals ensures its smooth implementation.
6. Flexibility – Management needs to adopt a flexible approach to each stage of development of a change strategy so that unforeseen contingencies can be implemented, if and where necessary.

 

It only takes one irresolute employee to destabilize an entire workforce, so periods of internal change within an organization require management to stay vigilant for any signs of rumblings or disapproval.

 

Long-standing employees can feel betrayed and rejected when changes are announced by management. They often experience a sense of loss, confusion, frustration and job insecurity. The plan for job advancement they have often calculated appears to be shot to pieces.

 

So they react with denial and resistance to the imminent changes.

 

Management’s ability to recognize these patterns of behavior and work to overcome any resistance establishes how well they will accomplish organizational changes. Their willingness to invest in the support and training necessary is an integral factor in achieving a positive outcome.

 

Employees aren’t the only ones who have to adapt to changes within the organization.

 

Top level managers generally bear the brunt of discontented staff from the ground up. Senior managers who have been instrumental in bringing about the changes within the organization often underestimate the impact those changes will have on their employees.

 

Unrealistic expectations of how their staff will react (or over-react!) often causes top level managers to retreat and isolate themselves from the problem when the impact of their proposed changes filter back to them.

 

However, they tend to lay the blame at the feet of middle management if employees resist or complain about the changes.

 

Middle management tend to carry the most stress during times of organizational change. They feel “trapped”, unless they have exceptional leadership skills; besieged by resistant employees who look to them for guidance yet often denied direction and focus by top level management.

 

Those in middle management often find themselves acting as the arbiter during times of organizational upheaval.

 

However, organizational changes within a business often prove to be a suitable testing ground for leadership qualities; from the employees all the way through to top level management.

 

Those who possess the qualities that define a good leader often emerge during the stressful environment that usually accompanies change. This creates an ideal opportunity for potential leaders to display those qualities and be recognized accordingly.

Gain Clients’ Trust: It’s What You Do, Not What You Say

Six tips for conveying your competence

 

Being competent is an important factor in building trust. People seldom believe you’re competent based on what you say about your credentials, experience, investment philosophy, or background. They believe you’re competent based on your behavior. As essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “What you do shouts so loudly in my ears I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

 

1. Competent professionals ask good questions.
John Sculley, former CEO of Apple says, “The solutions are often obvious once you get the questions right.” Successful people measure your competence by the quality of your questions.

My favorite questions to ask in the client interview (with prospects and clients) begins with,

 

“What’s important about success to you?” Of course, there is a stage setting before you blurt out this question.

 

Your prospects can tell you are competent because they do all the talking about what’s important to them (their values), goals, where they are now, and where they want to be.

 

2. Competent professionals discover all the necessary information in the first interview.
Prescription before diagnosis is malpractice. Incompetent professionals give advice on what the prospect/client should buy without knowing all the details first.

 

Your prospects and clients can tell you are competent by the questions you ask and because you expect them to tell you the truth.

 

3. Competent professionals have a system for helping their clients.
Competent professionals have a system that repeats itself with every prospect and client.  Lee Trevino once remarked, “The best swing is one that repeats. I used to hit a one iron 260 yards through a doorway. Now I can hit it through a keyhole.”

 

4. Competent professionals make it simple.
The more successful or “sophisticated” your client, the more they appreciate simplicity.

 

5. Competent professionals are thorough.
Competent professionals are obsessively thorough.

 

6. Competent professionals are totally present.
A speaker coach, Max Dixon, asks, “Can you show up ready to be no place else?” This means asking a question and being completely present for the answer, not thinking about the next question or the next comment.

 

Can you show up ready to be no place else?  The competent professional does.

In summary, you have to be competent. Then your clients must be able to see, hear, and experience your competence from the very first moment they interact with you. Before they discover your true competence by working with you they must believe you are competent in order to give you their business in the first place.

How to Easily and Quickly Attract More Ideal Clients

“Tea, Earl Grey, hot,” commands Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation. And he gets a perfect cup of piping hot English brew exactly the way he likes it. Three factors are at work: 1) Picard knows what he wants, 2) he articulates it clearly, and 3) he has a system, the starship’s “replicator,” for producing his desired outcome every time.

Too bad you can’t just step up and order perfect clients like Picard and his hot tea. But in the real world, you can use a process called “Slots and Replication” to achieve a similar goal: When you clearly articulate the attributes and character of your ideal clients, you can put in place a system for replicating them. This system—asking for and getting quality referrals—is the lifeblood of many successful businesses.

The Ideal Client Profile

Before you talk to your existing clients and strategic alliances about referrals, you need to create an Ideal Client Profile. This description should be detailed and specific.

Think about who your best clients are right now, and consider what makes them so great. Ask yourself, In what ways are they alike financially, professionally, or personally? What attitudes and aptitudes set them apart from the masses and make them such exceptional, enjoyable clients?

Slots and Replication

Your objective should be to take on only those clients who match your Ideal Client Profile. Once you have written your Ideal Client Profile, you can figure out how many people who match this criteria you’ll need to meet your business development goals. It’s a pretty simple calculation to establish the income you desire to earn and extrapolate the number of clients required to achieve it. Begin with the end in mind, as Covey says.

With this valuable information in hand, you can create a business management tool I call “Slots and Replication” to track your acquisition of great clients and keep you aware of how many more are needed for you to reach your goals. Here’s how you can make your own:

• On one piece of paper, print your Ideal Client Profile.
• On another piece of paper, number backward, starting with the total number of ideal clients you need, and print a list of your ideal clients. Don’t list all of your existing clients; include only those who already match your Ideal Client Profile (they match every item on your Ideal Client Profile).
• Continue numbering backward until you have “slots” to represent all of the ideal clients you need to reach your income goals. Use additional sheets of paper if necessary. For example, if you need 100 ideal clients, then you might have four sheets with 25 slots each. Maybe you’d already have 27 clients’ names you could include, and you’d see at a glance that you have the additional 73 slots to fill.

Now you’re ready to attract those additional 73 people. The objective is to replicate the 27 who are already ideal. You’re absolutely crystal clear about how many and the kind of clients you want. It’s time to talk to those 27 and see who else they know—who are just like them. Your existing ideal clients are your replicators. You must simply give them a precise description (your Ideal Client Profile of your business), and ask them for the names of people who meet it. Show your strategic alliances and centers of influence your Ideal Client Profile to obtain referrals from them also. Make a list of your strategic alliances/centers of influence and potential strategic alliances/centers of influence (think outside the box) who you think have clients who fit your profile or they would know people who would fit your profile.

So it is with clients. Once you define the type of person you most want to work with and let your clients and colleagues know about it, you’ll start to see this type of person everywhere. It won’t be a matter of chasing down prospects to fill those slots; instead, you’ll easily attract and notice ideal potential clients.

Figure out exactly what you want, state it clearly, and allow the “replicators” to work for you.  Reap the rewards!

Use the online exercise to help you get started by going to: http://accountabilitycoach.com/assessments/icp/

 

For help with this concept, choose from the many high-value and high-content tele-seminars for only $27 USD that can be found by going to: http://www.accountabilitycoach.com/coaching-store/audio-store/

 

Breaking the Backbone of Limiting Beliefs

According to the laws of physics and aerodynamics, a bumble bee can’t fly. So…try telling a bumble bee that!

 

Isn’t it wonderful that bumble bees don’t possess human traits?  Because if they did, in all likelihood, we would live in a world devoid of flowers and honeycombe and the simple delights of bumble bees productively going about their business in our garden.

 

Why? Because we human beings have a knack for getting caught up in limiting self beliefs, so it follows that the bulk of us would simply accept the word of the scientific community and not fly because we’ve been told we can’t!

 

And like the imaginary void that would be created without the ingenuity of bumble bees, we create huge voids in our life by accepting self limiting beliefs.

 

Our beliefs about ourselves, those around us and the world at large affect who we are and how we behave. Beliefs are merely thoughts that with a little encouragement and repetition from our over-active minds transform into facts. Or so we are led to believe.

 

Once we have formed a self-limiting belief, we continue to pursue evidence to prove that our belief is real. These beliefs are backed up by our self-talk, providing further evidence to back up our negative thoughts.

 

How many times have you caught yourself saying:

 

• I knew I’d be no good at this
• This always happens to me – I’m hopeless
• I’m always the unlucky one
• I’ll never be any good at anything
• I can’t ask for referrals.
• I’m not built for following a calendar.
• I can’t seem to stop letting things distract me.

 

Limiting beliefs are self-perpetuating; the more we believe something to be so, the more our actions reflect that belief, and the more the resultant failure to achieve what we originally set out to do reinforces the initial limiting belief.

 

The first step in breaking the cycle of self-limiting beliefs is recognizing that the belief exists.

 

Most importantly, you need to visualize yourself without the self-limiting belief that has held you back in the “no-fly zone” for most of your life.

 

Daily affirmations will help hasten the process. Write down on a piece of paper an affirmation that describes the new belief you are focused on, and pin it up someplace where you’ll see it every morning. The mirror where you dress each day is perfect.

Breaking a self-limiting belief is like seeing the world for the first time without the lens cap on. A brave new world of opportunity that you never knew existed is out there, waiting just for you.

 

For help with this concept, choose from the many high-value and high-content tele-seminars for only $27 USD that can be found by going to: AccountabilityCoach.com/coaching-store/audio-store/ 

7 Ideas to Engage and Motivate Your Staff

Sarah gets to work at the same time every day. She sits down at her desk and starts doodling on her desk pad, playing computer games, surfing the internet, or texting friends. Unless she is interrupted by a phone call or correspondence that requires her urgent attention, you know she will spend the bulk of her day doodling on her note pad, playing computer games, surfing the internet, or texting friends.

 

So why is it that the only thing that appears to motivate Sarah is the clock ticking over during the last 15 minutes of her office day?

 

Sarah is not unlike hundreds of thousands of other employees in corporate America. She is, or has become, one of the “unmotivated masses”.

 

Luckily, the success of your organization isn’t dependent on the singular input of employees like Sarah, but what needs to happen to generate a positive and motivational environment for all your employees, Sarah included?

 

As a business leader, the most important lesson you can learn about motivating staff is that what motivates you may not necessarily motivate Sarah or any of the other employees you are responsible for.

 

Motivation means different things to different people. As a business manager, it is an integral part of your role to observe and learn what inspires and motivates each and every member of your staff.

 

However, having said that, recent psychoanalytical studies on what influences employees to become engaged and proactive yielded a defined methodology that proved to be universally effective.

 

How to Engage and Motivate Your Staff

 

1. Reward Immediately and Frequently

 

In the study, one of the primary influences that affected the motivation of employees was recognition and reward. It was shown that small rewards offered frequently and as soon as possible after the performance had the most impact.  So the gift of two tickets to the cinema was more rewarding than the promise of a promotion at some indeterminate time in the future.

 

Conversely, inappropriate or incorrect behavior must be noted as soon as it becomes evident.

 

While it was noted rewards are seen as more motivational when given in the presence of other team members, bringing a staff member to account for an oversight or error is best performed in private.

 

Further, as a leader it is important to check for improvement in a timely manner and compliment employees if a positive change is evident. Otherwise, staff may be left wondering why they should bother if changes are not acknowledged.

 

2. Share the Vision

 

Employees are seen to be more motivated when they believe their contribution is making an impact on the overall success of the organization.

 

So it is important to share the company’s mission statement and vision with the entire staff. By allowing them to share in any improvements and successes the company experiences, you ensure they feel like an integral part of the team.

 

3. Chart a Career Path

 

The majority of employees have a perceived career path they would like to follow.

 

Not only is it vital as a manager to be aware of the staff member’s vision for the future, it is also important to clearly define how management views their career path. The qualities and expectations required by the employee to achieve their career goals must also be clearly defined.

 

4. Lead by Example

 

A good leader must illustrate to his or her employees the correct procedures and processes required. If you want your staff to arrive at work on time, then you will need to follow suit.

 

Lead constructively by being a great role model so staff knows what is expected of them.

 

5. Communicate Openly and Honestly

 

Staff who are kept “in the loop” are more likely to remain motivated than those who have no idea what is going on.

 

A great leader always maintains open channels of communication so his or her staff feels comfortable about discussing any relevant issues.

 

Inappropriate behavioral practices as well as the need for conflict resolution can be kept to a minimum if managers maintain an open door policy.

 

6. Invest in Staff Training

 

Staff feel valued when you spend the money and time investing in their knowledge and skills.

 

Regular staff training sessions, seminars and group training experiences not only improves your employees’ skills, they also enhance your employees’ motivational levels by improving their self esteem.

 

7. Create a Stimulating Environment

 

It’s okay to have a little fun once in a while.

 

You will find that 30 minutes once a week engaged in some sort of competitive game, competition or quiz will repay itself 10-fold in productivity by increasing employees’ self worth and therefore their motivation.

 

Schedule games for the end of the day so your staff can leave the office with a renewed sense of well-being.

 

Another alternative could be “casual dress Fridays” or the opportunity to leave work 15 minutes early thrown in from time to time.

 

Add any of these ideas into your business to help increase the motivation of your staff so you can experience even better results from them. They will appreciate you thinking enough of them and their abilities to implement these in your organization.

4 Tips For Overcoming Procrastination

It’s time for you to go on the defensive and tackle this self-defeating habit.

 

Tip1: Start on the most basic level by treating your body and mind to a system of reward and punishment.  When you complete a goal as stated reward yourself generously.  When you procrastinate, you get nothing.  Not only does this train your mind to work harder, it also provides motivation for when you work—to get to the finish line and claim your reward!

 

Tip 2: Another tip that might prove helpful is to try and break down large projects.  Some people’s natural inclination is to avoid large projects; they seem very daunting at first glance.  However, once you break large projects into smaller pieces, it is easier to get started and manage.  Take one day’s worth of activity and break it apart into smaller goals.

 

Tip 3: It will also help to prioritize your assignments.  Make a list of all your things-to-do and put them in order of importance. The activities that have the highest probability of helping you achieve your goals would be ranked as the most important.  Now as you finish each task you can cross off items as you complete them.  This will help you organize your workload.

 

Tip 4: Don’t underestimate the advantages that enlisting a friend or acquaintance might bring.  When you get someone else involved, you are essentially tag teaming your way to success.  Two heads are always better than one, especially when you are accountable to that other person.  Fighting such a battle on your own can be difficult, but when you bring in someone else to help fend off the threat of procrastination, your odds are improved.

 

Remember that procrastination never pays off for anyone, whereas when you take certain action—even if it’s unsuccessful—you can always learn from the outcome.  Procrastinators are simply everyday people with big dreams who need a little push in the right direction.  Work with someone that you can rely on to help you overcome procrastination and achieve all your goals and ultimately enjoy what is important to you.

 

For help with this concept, choose from the many high-value and high-content tele-seminars for only $27 USD that can be found by going to: AccountabilityCoach.com/coaching-store/audio-store/ 

 

The War of Art Book Excerpt

One of my clients gave me a book, The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield. I found a great passage on page 22 of this book that I thought you would enjoy and get value from reading.

 

“The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit.  We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.  Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables of Resistance.”

 

Procrastination has become and is a ‘habit’ for many of us. It is a habit that typically doesn’t serve us well. It is a habit that can and probably should be changed to something that positively helps us fulfill what is truly important to us in life. Think about you and if you procrastinate and if you want to change this habit for something better.