Accomplishment Coaching

Can I trust this?

Yet again, LinkedIn Answers creates fuel for thought.  These three questions were asked recently and brought up a powerful conversation about trust:

There are likely a million ways to answer these.  Here are two:

• “Deciding” to trust is actually an oxymoron.
• Trust is a gift you give, not one you get.

First, if you consider the roots of the word “decision”, you’ll find it’s defined as “to kill” (i.e. “de” = of, “cide” = to kill or killer).  When we “decide” to trust, we actually build a case with evidence of whether someone or something is trustworthy or not.  If we find evidence they are trustworthy, we’ll trust them.  If we find evidence otherwise, we’ll figuratively “kill them off” (not trust them).

Second, consider that we as human beings are actually already related 100% in everyway possible.  We have hearts that love, lungs that energize and dreams that pull us forward.  In other words, we’re the same thing, regardless of culture, skin color or ideology.

But it’s our minds that mess us up, especially around trust.  Our minds create, store and fuel our stories.  Stories about how Bob didn’t do what he said he would when he said he would do it.  Stories about how Sally’s upbringing makes her a mean person.  Stories about how someone did something that didn’t meet my expectation so now they’re untrustworthy.

This is all a farce.  Our stories are simply interpretations of how things went or will go.  Our stories are a completely unreliable source of truth.  Our stories are exactly what keep us from trusting one another.

So, perhaps what there is to do is simply offer our trust as a gift.  When we offer it as a gift, we:

• give our trust without a story
• give our trust without killing anything or anyone off
• build our ability to be with risk
• create powerful relationships
• empower the person we give trust to follow thru without the fear of negative consequences

Yes, trust truly is a powerful tool as is a hammer.  Both can be used to build and to destroy.  Practice giving your trust as a gift and you might be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Leadership Practices:

• Choose three people this week to whom you’ll offer your trust as a gift (i.e. with no expectation of repayment)
• Journal about your experience; the struggle, the doubt, the anxiety, the stories and the results
• Rinse and repeat.

Happy Gifting,

- Coach Preston

Preston True Leadership Development, Spirituality Client Development, Coaching, Facebook, Leadership, Personal Development, Sales and Marketing, Spirituality, Twitter

Better than push-ups

Last night I attended a workshop hosted by Corey Perlman, the author of eBoot Camp.  I thought I knew a thing or two about Facebook and a ton or two about LinkedIn (not so much with Twitter).

Within 15 minutes, I knew two things:  a) I had better put down my ego, and b) find the seatbelt that came with my seminar chair as we’re floorin’ it!

Here’s just one of the 100+  nuggets I learned last night:

Did you know that you can actually do a keyword search in not only Google, but within LinkedIn as well? 

Why would you want to do that?  By identifying the most popular keywords that apply to your product or service, you can design your LinkedIn profile, website or blog to use those words… which leads to more traffic to your site.

The best part of this… it’s free to find those words.  I’ve had SEO (search engine optimization) experts quote thousands of dollars to do the same thing.  Just one of the gold nuggets that came out of Corey’s seminar.

If you’re wondering how to make the major social networking sites work for you without them draining all of your time or learning capacity, I highly recommend reading Corey’s book and attending his eBoot Camp seminar.

Happy Tweets,

-Coach Preston

Learn more about Corey at:

http://www.coreyperlman.com/

http://www.ebootcampbook.com/

http://www.facebook.com/coreyperlman

http://twitter.com/coreyperlman

Preston True Marketing Business Development, Entrepreneur, Facebook, LinkedIn, Professional Development, Sales and Marketing, Social Networking, Twitter

Jan’s spent the last eight years building a successful financial planning firm.  He’s developed 20 of the most successful associates he could imagine.  He owns two homes, nice cars and purchased a boat two years ago to spend more time with his wife.  To most folks, Jan’s living a life of his dreams.

But not for Jan.

He works almost 80 hours a week, never leaves the office without work, falls victim to temper tantrums, and rarely feels like he’s created or has enough.  His boat has been in dry dock for a year, he’s got a new grandson he’s not met, and he’s not spent more than a day with his wife without having to drop everything to get to the office.  To top it all off, he just received word from three major clients that they’re switching advisors later in the year.

Jan’s an expert. He’s been in the business for years.  He’s got more market and financial knowledge than all his associates combined.  He spends more time with his clients than any of his counterparts.  How could this be happening? 

Jan’s on a merry-go-round called his Overwhelm Cycle and there’s little hope for jumping off anytime in the near future.

Like Jan, many of us sabotage our businesses, our relationships, our health and ourselves.  We convince ourselves that working harder, longer, and “strategically” will bring the relief we’re seeking.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

It’s time to halt the merry-go-round.

When any of us suffer a “power-leak”, whether large or small, we really need only look at two areas of our lives: integrity and well-being.

- Integrity in this context isn’t about moral vs. immoral, or right vs. wrong, but defined as having our intentions, speaking and actions align.  How many times do we have no intention of going to the concert our friend invited us to, say “sure I’d love the tickets”, and then never go?  Or maybe we’re a day late on a credit card payment, or didn’t say “sorry” to our partner after last night’s argument, or visited the grandkids since last December, or, or, or.  Being “out of integrity” with even the smallest items, drains us of our power consistently. 

- Well being is simply our mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health.  When we get busy being busy, one of the first things we neglect are the actions that actually support us the most when we’re busy.  If we aren’t consistently playing, reading, attending church/temple/etc, having date nights, eating fresh food, drinking lots of water and exercising, we’re simply treating our bodies and minds as though they don’t make a difference for us.

If we were to simply practice doing what we said we’d do, or saying “no” when we mean “no” or scheduling our time based on commitment rather than fear, we’d not only get more done, but have far more satisfaction doing so.  If we were to eat better food, drink more water, create healthy and safe outlets for our stress, get more sleep, practice our spirituality, exercise and engage in provoking conversation, consider how much power we’d actually have.

The keys to stopping overwhelm and plugging power leaks are integrity and well-being.

Leadership Practices:

1) Make an “out of integrity” list.  It will serve you best to have this be an exhaustive list - i.e. put everything you can think of on this list, then add ten more items.  Make it a daily practice to cross off one item per day - i.e. it’s now complete and back in integrity.

2) Throw away your “to-do” list and use your calendar instead.  To-Do lists are based in victimization… “Look at all the things I have to do”.  You eliminate some, but even more get put on.  Instead, schedule appointments with yourself in your calendar to get things accomplished.  Yes, everything from generating that report to picking up the dry cleaning.  If you actually create time to handle that item, you’re far more likely to get it accomplished AND you’ll no longer be a “victim” to all there is to do.

3) Create a list of ten well-being items to track daily.  Anything from brushing your teeth to reading a book to smiling at strangers to working out.  Track each item daily as you engage it.  Review your daily and weekly tracking.  You’ll likely start out with a lower percentage as you begin to create a habit of taking action on the items, but you’ll soon grow to higher weekly averages.  When you consistently hit 100%, create a new list with new items to track.

Happy Satisfaction,

-Coach Preston

Preston True Leadership Development Client Development, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Personal Development

Tick-tock, tick-tock...

I thought I’d post a question I found on LinkedIn Answers recently as not only is it a common issue we deal with as business owners and professionals, but it’s one of the most challenging to deal with:

“We all know a disciplined lifestyle helps us be more productive, effective and successful… but with so many things on our plate, staying up late, skipping breakfast, missing family events, falling behind our targets; this all becomes inevitable more often than we would like. What are you doing to discipline yourself…what are you doing to keep yourself motivated to stay in that disciplined lifestyle?”

As a coach, not only do I see this in clients, but I experience it as well.  We are all constantly taking on more than we can likely handle and we know it’s destructive.  Yet we don’t stop.

So what is it that keeps us going, going and going?  I invite you to consider it’s the LACK of the following three characteristics.

Leadership Practices:

1) Commitment - Ask yourself “What am I really committed to?” If you’re consistently late or behind on projects, are you more committed to being late (therefore being “right” about how busy you are) or are you more committed to reaching your goal? Sometimes an unpleasant question, but one that will get you back on track.

2) Compassion - I see busy people get even busier because they beat the pulp out of themselves for not completing the previous task (and so on). They punish and make themselves wrong thereby adding stress to the situation which is a consistent obstacle in itself. Here’s a practice I give my “busy” clients = practice declaring the day complete every evening whether you’ve finished everything or not. Carrying incompletion into the next day is a sure-fire way to drown.

3) Courage - Be willing to say “no”. We are bombarded by requests and demands every day. Most of us grow up with a disempowering interpretation of the word “no”… of course we would, Mom and Dad told us “no” all the time growing up. So as adults one of the best ways for us to avoid that word is to say “yes”.  Uh-oh, now we’re in trouble as we’ve committed to far more than we can handle.  Practice saying “no”.  Start with some small things/events then move to bigger ones.  You’ll be surprised… the world will continue spinning. “-)

Taking a leadership role with our time doesn’t require a PhD or engineering background.  Several basic and familiar structures will do the trick every time.

Happy C’s,
-Coach Preston

Preston True Leadership Development, Marketing Business Development, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Personal Development, Professional Development

Zzzzzzzz...

Danny worked as an architect for a large design firm for almost 18 years before he got the itch to go into business for himself.  The time was right to make the leap… his kids were either out or just finishing college, his wife had a terrific career as a pediatrician, and he had a bunch of money in the bank.

So he made the leap.

Six months into starting his design firm, things couldn’t have gone better.  New clients were seeking him out, they were fun and easy to work with and Danny pinched himself every day to make sure this wasn’t a dream.  Plus, he knew he was the best architect in the area.  If nothing else, his skills would keep this dream going.

Then business began to pinch him.

The next six months were anything but a dream.  New clients were one in a million, the phone refused to ring, and his savings were leaking at an alarming rate.  It seemed his brilliant architectural skills weren’t going to make this ship soar.

So what happened?  The thing that most all of us as entrepreneurs allow to happen - we get comfortable and stop taking action.

Think about it: a) we open the doors to our new businesses with unmatched excitement and brilliant knowledge of our trade, b) we generate six months to a year’s worth of business from our existing network of family, friends and colleagues, and c) determine that business will keep going this way.  Then comfort sets in…

I’m not sure if it was cold water or a bus that hit me around month 13, but I awoke abruptly from my stupor of comfort and in-action.

It happens to the best of us.  We love our work, we believe we’re the best and we’re convinced others will flock to us because they’re as passionate about hiring us as we are about them hiring us.  We get comfortable and stop taking consistent and persistent action.  We get lulled into believing we don’t need to practice having sales conversations; that we don’t need to always be prospecting; that we don’t need to always be making requests. 

And the worst part is that, even when times get tough, we are more comfortable with how things are currently going (bad or worse) than we are in taking new and effective action.

So now what?  It’s simple - get into action.

Leadership Practices:

• List the top three ways you’ve successfully acquired new clients and temporarily eliminate all other ways for one month. Practice not being distracted by the next “sure thing” marketing tactic.
• Distinguish the most common place you stop in taking action - i.e. meeting new people, asking for the business, positioning yourself as an expert, etc.
• This week, practice moving through just one of those places where you stop - i.e. if meeting new people stops you, declare you’ll meet two new people this week, not the 15 that you feel you “should” meet. Bump up the number by two next week.
• Enroll a colleague or partner in supporting you and make daily promises for action - accountability is one of the simplest and most powerful tools to incite action.
• Practice having compassion for your fear and your upset - share it, express it, let it out. There isn’t one entrepreneur who hasn’t laid awake at 2am worried about business.

Action isn’t uncomfortable.  It’s the results of in-action that make us squirm.

Happy Action,

-Coach Preston

Preston True Leadership Development, Marketing Business Development, Client Development, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Sales and Marketing