Tag: fear

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Invest In Your Best

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When creating and giving employee evaluations, how much time do you spend on strengths versus weaknesses? If you’re like most managers, you rack your brain to find every possible weakness and development need for the employee you’re evaluating. I remember having a hard time writing reviews for my best performers since it was more difficult to find areas of weakness. Telling them where they were doing a great job was almost an afterthought and not much more than a pat on the back.

Focusing on weaknesses might help an employee become a bit more “well rounded”, however, being “well rounded” is incredibly overrated. Employees will rarely become strong in an area of weakness. The best we can hope for is that they will rise to become mediocre. However, where an employee has talent, they can become world-class. In addition, focusing on maximizing those areas where we have true talent is incredibly motivating.

This doesn’t mean we should ignore weaknesses. By all means, if weaknesses are getting in the way of doing the job, you need to find ways to manage around those weaknesses. These can include looking for ways to get them to acceptable levels of performance, changing their responsibilities or counseling them out of your organization. But don’t expect them to become “expert” tomorrow in those areas they’re weak in today.

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Manage Your State

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What is your state of mind as your reading this?
Are you tired? Energized? Frustrated? Confident? Bored…I hope not!

Our state of mind changes dozens of times throughout the day; a boring meeting, a difficult phone call, an accepted offer, a misunderstanding with a demanding client. We know that all of these things affect our state and, as a result, our performance. But, do we understand how it affects our co-workers and staff?

As a manager, you can’t afford to let your state manage you; you need to manage your state instead. Teams tend to mirror, and even magnify, the emotions of their manager…positive and negative. If you’re confident about a situation, they’ll trust things will work out. If you’re worried about business performance, they’ll fear for their jobs.

Managing your state is not always easy. After all, we’re human and a right to be angry, frustrated or worried. My rule is that I’m allowed to get emotional about a situation for 5 minutes, behind closed doors. Then I take a deep breath and change my state. Here are some of the ways I’ve learned to change my state:

  • Smile – Sounds silly but it works. The next time you’re in a negative state, take a deep breath and smile real big. You’ll notice a change in state almost immediately.
  • Be Thankful – Think about all the things you could be thankful for; family, friends, home, situations, etc. Being thankful will help you to forget the problem of the moment and take a longer term view.
  • Ask The Right Questions – “Why me?” is the wrong question. Asking negative questions makes matters worse by causing you to dwell, unproductively, on the problem. “How can we achieve this goal regardless of the issues?” is the right question. A positive question will lead to productive, creative answers.
  • Pick a Song – After a very difficult situation last week, I was incredibly frustrated. Five minutes after blasting AC/DC’s Back in Black, I was a different person. Pick songs that “pick you up” and use them as medicine for the mind.

Learn to manage your state and you’ll be surprised at the result in your own productivity as well as your teams.

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Have Response-Ability

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A business owner’s worst enemy is BLAME. It’s easy to blame other people or situations when things aren’t going well. It’s especially easy during this current economic downturn. “My business is slow because of the horrible real estate market” or “This credit crunch is killing me”. The reason blame is so dangerous is that it takes our focus off of what’s really important – the things we can actually control.

When coaching my clients my goal is to focus them on having greater Response-Ability. Response-Ability is the ability to respond to any situation with the right action.

The first step in having Response-Ability is to stop blaming other people and situations. You need to own your results. That means, first, identifying a result in your business or your life that you’re not satisfied with. You then need to ask yourself what behaviors and attitudes led to those results. Not someone else’s behaviors and attitudes but your own.

This is often the most difficult step in the process. It’s hard for us to admit that we are the cause of our own struggles, even for a coach.

I have a fourteen year old son with Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a high functioning form of Autism. He has some really good weeks and really bad weeks. After a particularly bad week, I had a conversation with my coach. She asked me what I had done to cause the bad week. Excuse me? I didn’t cause the Asperger’s! It’s not my fault! However, being a good coach, she continued to push the issue. Finally, she helped me to understand that the biggest difference between my son’s good weeks and bad weeks was me!

The level of stress I was under in a given week affected my attitude towards him and his actions. If I was having a bad week I had very little tolerance and would “explode” easily, resulting in a very difficult week with my son. On a good week, I was much more accepting of his idiosyncrasies, resulting in a joyful and rewarding week with my son. This was an incredibly empowering realization. It was also very upsetting, realizing how many bad weeks I had caused.

Only YOU are responsible for the results in your life.  Be at cause in your life, not effect.

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Have a Good Fight!

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Does your team get along great?
Do you always seem to agree with each other?
Do you have trouble remembering your last major team conflict?

This may seem strange, but if you answered yes to these questions…you’ve got problems. A team needs conflict to evolve.

Think of it as Darwin’s theory of evolution for business. If good ideas don’t crush bad ideas, and great ideas don’t crush good ideas, a business (and its employees) will grow stagnant and die.


Why do some teams have no conflict?

  • Lack of direction – If a team has no clarity around their identity and direction, productive conflict is difficult. As the saying goes…”If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”.
  • Lack of talent – Meaningful challenges will rarely occur if you’re consistently the smartest person in the room. Successful teams need a complimentary assortment of strengths.
  • Lack of trust – Challenges will be silenced unless your culture is one of trust and openness. Team members will be resistant to speaking up if they’re afraid of hurting each other’s feelings or jeopardizing their job.  

So go ahead, have a good fight and evolve!

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Slow Down

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It’s amazing how creating a low stress, low velocity environment helps the brain to do its thing.

I took a 4 mile walk this morning and came up with two great new business ideas. You’ll find out more about those on future posts and my website. 

So many of us run at 100mph from the time we wake up until our head hits the pillow. It’s no wonder we get to the end of the day and kick ourselves for not having time for the important things (spending time with family, exercising, etc.). It’s no wonder we “wake up” 20 years later and question why our lives aren’t more fulfilling.  

We need to purposefully block out times in our schedule for low stress, low velocity activities. Time when we can think, meditate or just be grateful.

Your life is not about ticking of more things on your “to do” list.  Your life is not about working as hard as you can so you can retire at 65.  Why wait 65 years to be who you wan’t to be?

What is your life about? What’s your life’s purpose?

Check out my next post for some ways to figure that out.

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Forget The Golden Rule

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The Golden Rule says that we should “treat others as we would want to be treated”.

Does that make sense? Should I assume that everyone is just like me?

Each member of your team has different strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, goals, motivations and learning styles. By understanding and acting on these differences you will be able to bring the best out of your team.

Let’s look at an example concerning motivations…
One team member is motivated by money and/or status while the second team member is motivated by free-time and flexibility. Should both be offered the same type of work incentives? Of course not.

Let’s look at one more example. This time concerning learning styles…
Some people learn best by studying everything there is to know about task before trying it. Forcing them to begin a task before they’re ready will result in poor execution and diminished confidence. Others like to learn by doing. They like to understand the basics of the task and then be “let loose” to learn from their mistakes. Studying the details of a task for too long only bores and de-motivates them. Would you train these different types of people in the same manner? I hope not.

The sad thing is that most leaders don’t know their team’s well enough to understand these differences. If that’s the case in your situation, the first step is incredibly easy. Just ask them. Ask them what they like and dislike about the job. Ask them what motivates them and how they like to learn best. Not only will you find out an incredible amount of useful information, you’ll also show them how much you care.

To understand more about how to understand, accept and act on the differences between the members of your team, read Performance Breakthrough: The Four Secrets of Passionate Organizations.

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Passion!

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My name is Mike Goldman. I’m an executive coach and my purpose in life is to change the world by helping people discover and live their passion.

The purpose of this blog is to help me achieve that purpose by communicating breakthrough ideas and tips to make that happen.

Imagine what your life would look like if you lived your passion everyday. Imagine how it would feel to wake up in the morning and say “I can’t wait to go to work today!”. Wouldn’t it be great if work felt like a hobby.

If you’re a business owner, imagine the impact of your employees feeling that way. What would that do to your company’s performance? What would it do for morale? What would it do for your competitive advantage?

I hope you’ll join me by reading this blog and sharing your ideas. I look forward to our conversation.