The Executive Coach

Don't you just love life's little contradictions?

To get more in life, you have to give, give, give. To get more in life, you have to have less. You must have less:
-clutter
-distractions
-demanding, zero added value clients, suppliers, employees or partners
-busy work
-employees dependant on you
-pointless meetings

Simplicity can help provide you with clarity and focus. Describing a situation via a simple metaphor can paint a much more vivid picture than a thousand words. Repeating your main message in a meeting or presentation or speaking slowly in 3-8 second sound bites will help your audience listen and retain the information and understand its importance. Presenting without countless, overly detailed PowerPoint slides, allows your powerful messages to break through the clutter of noise and people fighting for our attention. Think of the most effective leadership speeches, slogans and marketing campaigns -- they communicate a common theme and use one or two strong but uncluttered messages.

Putting It Into Action

Do not stop providing people with the details, facts and figures that they need. Provide details as support or an appendix to your main message. Tell people what you plan on telling them, tell them, then review what you just told them. Paint visual images, use video, use props to help people remember. Purge your work space at least twice per year. During important phone meetings, clear your desk and stand up to add energy to your voice. Get your main hypothesis down to a 30 second radio commercial, where every word used must add value and repetition is key. If you want to be quoted by media or stakeholders, speak in powerful 3-8 second sound bites.

With you along the path towards success,
Joseph

When you go vacation or sneak away to the cottage for the weekend, do you bring your laptop and/or blackberry?

When was the last time you truly 'unplugged' yourself from your professional or personal obligations? When was the last time you actually took an extended vacation? Many business professionals I speak to, struggle just to take one or two weeks of their earned vacation per year. It takes most busy professionals a few days to unwind and forget about the office and a few days before the break is over, they begin thinking about returning to work. If you are only taking extended weekends or one week long vacations, you are not resting.

Unplugging from the office, your stakeholders and all of your requests for time delivers the following benefits:
1. Allows you to rest your total mind and body
2. Allows you to reflect, celebrate and learn from your recent past and achievements
3. Provides you with time and solitude to think about where you are heading in the future
4. Connects you to something new to help you grow
5. Develops your ability to delegate
6. Develops your employees who can now take on stretch roles
7. Strengthen lapsed relationships
8. Meet new people
9. Develop your appreciation for different people away from work
10. Expand your knowledge about different people, cultures and places
11. Learn new ways of seeing or doing things
12. Allows you to make a major change or start a new phase of your life

Putting It Into Action

You have no excuses, think of the twelve reasons above. Book your remaining vacation this year. Research your extended break next year. Book your multi week vacation and make sure you get to visit a new area. Working vacations and staying connected to the office are not true, reflective re-energizing vacations. You owe it to yourself and your stakeholders to reinvent and recharge yourself every year.

With you along the path towards success,
Joseph

Have you heard the expression, your eyes are the mirror to your soul?

The mirror neuron resides on the right side of your brain, the creative side. The mirror neuron is amazing because it mirrors 100% of what the eyes see, subconsciously. Only your consciousness knows whether the event actually happened.

How much of what you learned from high school has remained with you? If you are like most people, you study for exams, perform an information dump and then forget most of what you learned shortly thereafter. We are no longer in high school and we are too busy and life is moving to quickly, to not retain our learning.

In order to retain our learning, the human mind must see it, interact with it and do something with it. We should be teaching to the right side of the brain and storing it in the left (logical or rational) side of the brain. Instead, we tend to teach it in the left and expect the right to go get it, understand it and retain the new knowledge. E-learning with individual follow-up or coaching is the usual solution.

Learning today requires:
1) Motivation -- for the individual (rewards, money, career enhancement, etc.)
2) Coaching – interactive and two way
3) Retention – practice is reinforcement, have them summarize into own words
4) Transference – application to own scenarios and go forward plan = ownership

Putting It Into Action:

Do not dump learning and e-learning on everyone and force them to use it. Ensure that the four requirements mentioned above will be met. Implement or champion your training in phases. Start with your most enthusiastic learners, followed by early adopters, middle adopters and lagers. Save the die hards for last. Look for higher visibility and higher impact opportunities to apply the new learning. Get testimonials along the way and have the first batch of trainees attract the next batch to attend the training sessions.

With you along the path towards success,
Joseph

What does a cognitive condition have to do with the new economy?

Attention Deficiency Disorder is on the rise in western society. We are also spending more time multi-tasking, devoting what we think is full attention to a number of tasks at once. The reality is, the older we get, the less we can focus on more tasks at the same time. The X Generation and Y Generation that are our consumers and employees think that they can do it better, this is debatable.

The internet has permanently altered all of us as people. A recent survey showed that 69% of X’s and Y’s time is spent on-line or with various forms of media. That leaves 31% of their time for work; these numbers were the exact reverse only five years ago. You Tube was barely a blip on our radar screens a year ago, now they get one of the highest daily hit rates and visitors are staying on their site for a whopping 108 minutes. How long do you think people are spending on your site?

A new practice called Attention Slicing has emerged. Consumers and employees are devoting small slices of their attention at any time to any one source and for increasing shorter periods of time. Consumers want their information and entertainment when and where they want, and they want to be able to customize it to match their personalities, share it, and make it even easier to access.

If you think we are moving too quickly, you would be wrong. We are at the ‘kindergarten’ stage of development.

Putting It Into Action:

Your leadership, your firm and your personal brand need to adjust to this new reality of attention slicing. What can you do to make your message stand out, be more visual, add impact, be more accessible? One way is to register your own personal domain name. Then upload any materials that would give people a window into who you are as a person. The more visual your material, the better. Always invite people to provide their feedback and input. Visit some of the most popular blogs that Xers and Ys read. Begin to publish your own Blog and again allow people to comment.

With you along the path towards success,
Joseph