Accomplishment Coaching

Goal #144 - “Ask my partner to give three hours of his/her time per week, to release me to do something I really enjoy.” ~ Thomas Leonard, www.thomasleonard.com

Can you imagine that? 

Most of us can’t.  Time is just too scarce.  Just too valuable.  Plus, we’re the only ones who can do what we do.

What a crazy trap we set for ourselves.  Much of it is based in ego; the rest based in the concept that suffering under current circumstances is still more comfortable than changing them.

So why not ask your partner, friend, spouse or colleague to give three hours of his/her time this week.  Sure it might seem a bit uncomfortable, but imagine what those three hours will be like if you’re doing something you really, really want to do.

If you’re really saavy, you might just consider spending those three hours developing even more awareness and breakthroughs around time - check out our Time Leadership Workshop on February 25^th.

Tick tock,

- Coach Preston

Preston True Career Development, Leadership Development, Marketing Business Development, Client Development, Entrepreneur, Personal Development, Professional Development, Sales and Marketing

This past weekend, I was in my local bookstore walking through the business section.  I was absolutely amazed at how many books there are on marketing strategies and techniques.  There certainly isn’t any reason a business can’t flourish considering the abundance of marketing resources available.

Yet one of the biggest mistakes a business owner can make is to invest in any marketing effort before knowing exactly where the business needs to go.

A powerful solution to that issue… attend our P3 Workshop tomorrow in Ferndale.

Jump into 2010 with both feet.

- Coach Preston

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

Tired of always having the answer?

What questions is your leadership team asking?  Perhaps more importantly, what questions is your leadership team NOT asking?

Your organization’s ability to ask the “right questions” is critical to its success.  Unfortunately, your business, like mine, is likely at the effect of the training and experience each individual has received for years through American academia and culture - the training called having the “right answer”.

We see it daily in our lives:

• Our children are rewarded at school for the highest number of right answers
• Our businesses and organizations reward employees for having the right answers and doing the job correctly
• Our clients pay us handsomely for giving them the right answers
• We spend thousands of dollars a month or year marketing ourselves as “experts” - i.e. the one who has the best answers

So, it’s not surprising to consider that all of us have been programmed to have the “right answers”.

At first glance, having the right answer offers many benefits:

• Students who have more right answers get higher grades
• Workers who can solve problems quickly get more money and promotions
• People are recognized as experts when they have more of the right answers

It would seem that having the right answers is all we need to succeed in life.

Today, I’m going to challenge that belief.  Consider our emphasis on having the right answers actually debilitates us and keeps us small and safe.

You see, when we insist on having the right answers:

• We are attached to being right which drastically narrows our ability to create vision or get altitude (perspective) on situations
• We develop a powerful context of black/white or either/or thinking that kills off tremendous possibility
• We inhibit powerful creativity and access to new perspectives
• We frequently dis-empower our team leading to dissention and confusion

As leaders, we cannot afford to have the right answers. 

Case in point - GM, Chrysler and Ford have all been playing the game of “right answers”.  For years, they’ve been telling us what the best cars are to drive.  For two of those three organizations, that philosophy has led to some incredibly tough times.

So what’s the alternative?

Please take a moment to reflect on the following question:

What’s possible for you, your business and your team if you spent just 20% more time focused on identifying the right questions?

In Germany, major business organizations (Diamler, Siemans, SAP for example), have entire departments dedicated to Grundsatzfragen, meaning “fundamental questions”.  The primary role of this department is to create and discuss fundamental questions.   When many of these companies have been acquired by a US company, the Grundsatzfagen departments have been eliminated.  (Click for attribution and more)

Questions are the life-blood of creativity, reinvention and evolution.  Questions stir vision, purpose and passion.  Questions lead to some of the richest conversations that not only spur collaborative and intimate relationships, but ultimately lead to the most effective “right answers”.

Do you know what question led to the invention of the McDonald’s fast food empire?  Ray Kroc asked, “Where can I get a good hamburger on the road?”  Ray didn’t start with having the right answer.

Leadership Practices:

1. Play a game.  For one week, record the number of times you give people the answer.  Scoring key = 0-3 times - great work empowering questions; 4-6 times - you’ve got some room to practice asking more questions; 7-10 times - congratulations - you’re not only the “answer-man/woman but you’ve effectively eliminated all creativity and have trained your team to be entirely dependent on you! 
2. Practice asking questions that evoke a future vision rather than solve a problem.  For example, “What’s the possibility or opportunity we see inside our overtime situation?” rather than “How do we reduce overtime?”
3. Create a semi-monthly meeting (twice a month) in which you and your leadership DO NOT answer a single question or issue.  Make the sole purpose of this meeting to identify the “right questions” your leadership team needs to be asking.
4. Invite a facilitator in to run a Leadership Cafe for you - it’s a powerful, structured experience that allows you to identify the right questions your oganization needs to be asking.

Giving up always having the answer may not happen overnight, but focusing on the right questions will get you further, create more success and, ultimately, have you develop a more fulfilling business and team.

Happy Curiosity,

-Coach Preston

Preston True Career Development, Leadership Development, Marketing Career Development, Client Development, Coaching, Leadership, Professional Development, Spirituality

The power of more

Partnerships are a funny thing.  We seem to love creating them, but it often seems we have real struggles sticking with them.  So what gives?

Rarely intentional, we enter personal and professional relationships without truly considering what’s important for each one of us.  The Gallup Management Journal ran an article last year that identified the three “most important statements in determining how well your abilities mesh with those of your collaborator”:

1. We compliment each other’s strengths
2. We need each other to get the job done
3. He or she does some things much better than I do, and I do some things much better than he or she does

Although this can apply to personal partnerships as well, I wanted to give an example of how this so critically applies to professional partnerships.  Let’s use our old friend, Stan, as an example.

What Stan knows about himself is the following:

He’s created a successful business over the past 12 years primarily because he’s great at fostering relationships, freely expressing compassion, mentoring and developing his staff, being highly self-aware, and upholding integrity. 

But he also realizes that he’s often too narrowly and short-term focused, jumps too quickly to fix symptoms rather than identifying the root problem, and lacks critical decisiveness in taking action.  This often puts him in a position of complying with the views of others and current circumstances.

When I asked Stan who he felt would be a good fit as a potential partner, he suggested he’d look for someone who has a high level of relationship building skills, sees a similar future for the business, and is willing to weather the bumps of partnership.

If we take a look at this more critically, Stan was really looking for someone who was very similar to himself.  Of course he would… he’s built a successful company on the culture he’s created.

But that’s exactly what Stan doesn’t need.

Rather I suggested he look for someone with the following characteristics:

• Willingness to speak powerfully and pointedly, even if he/she occasionally steps on some toes
• Has little interest in the symptoms of business challenges but can see the root-causes
• Maintains daily focus on the five, ten and fifteen year future of the business
• Has a focus and drive for business results and keeps individuals and teams accountable for results
• Regularly displays courageous behavior in making decisions and taking action

At first Stan was completely resistant… “That person will get crushed in my company.”  Eventually, he began to see exactly why that type of partner would be best.  Through interviews with his staff in which he asked what they thought his leadership gaps were, they almost perfectly outlined the above description.

A year later, Stan and his partner Mary have grown the business significantly, hired more effective staff and shifted the company culture from being 100% “nice and friendly” to “nice and friendly AND results-oriented”.

Stan found a business partner who compliments his strengths, keeps him accountable to results, and is able to do what he can’t.  He does the same for Mary.

Powerful partnership is often most effective with clear difference rather than similarity.

Leadership Practices:

1. Schedule interviews with your staff over the next two weeks and ask the following questions:
   1. What do you see are my gaps in leadership?
   2. If you were going to partner me with another leader, what qualities would that leader possess?
   3. What two actions would you assign me to practice more effective leadership?
2. Write out the three top characteristics you bring to the table as a business leader
3. Notice how many times your actions say “I can do this all on my own” - what are the results?
4. Publicly share your gaps with at least two people, and especially with your current business partner

The myth of “individualism” died long ago, but there’s a large contingent of business owners who still buy into it.  If you’re ready for a new level of success, I invite you to consider a partnership or, if already in one, revisit it.

If you (and your partner) are interested in discovering exactly what you do and don’t bring to the table, please contact me to take my Leadership Circle profile.  I’ve found no better profile to support effective partnership development.

Happy Cahoots,

- Coach Preston

Preston True Career Development, Leadership Development, Marketing BNI, Business Development, Client Development, Coaching, Entrepreneur, Faith and Business, Leadership, LinkedIn, Professional Development, Sales and Marketing, Social Networking, Spirituality

Are you producing or consuming?

If you own a business and have employees, you’ll want to read this.

If you volunteer your time with charitable organizations, schools or other public organizations, you’ll want to read this.

If you’re a “solo-preneur” working to produce results, you’ll want to read this too.

If you engage the media in some way, shape or form, it’s likely you’re in the midst of a training process.  If you respond to direct mail or advertising by clipping your coupons and certificates, it’s likely you’re in the midst of a training process.  If you watch the news and form certain perceptions of the people you see reported about, it’s likely you’re in the midst of a training process.

A training process that, although completely legitimate and okay, is likely doing damage to your ability to produce money, time, power, love, compassion, results, and life.

You may be rolling your eyes and saying to yourself, “Preston has finally gone off the deep end now.”  No problem.  If you are, this would be a good place to stop reading.

Here’s where I’m going with this idea:

In the age of us being bombarded by information, we are involuntarily put in the position of being consumers of this information.  It shows up without us asking for it, at any time, on any day of the month, and in almost any environment.  Through the consistency of this bombardment, we cannot help but be in a training process to consume more.

Can this really be true?  Just ask the neighbors or friends you have who are in the advertising industry.  They’ve built fortunes from you and me being in this training process.

So, I’m not here to bash the advertising and marketing industries.  I’m in business for myself and I work everyday to meet professionals who will consume my services.  It’s how all of us will eat today in some manner.

However, I invite you to get some altitude on the concept and look at it from 50,000 feet rather than 500.

How can being trained as a consumer disrupt or hinder what you’re up to?

Consider that by being trained consistently and reliably as a consumer, we begin to lose our ability to produce.  We learn through this training process that everything is available for us; that it can be delivered right to our door; that if one place doesn’t have what we’re looking for another will.

This training process begins to dissolve our ability and motivation to create.  It has us become lazy, unmotivated, and (here’s the nasty part) slip into the role of irresponsibility or victim-hood.

Yes, victim-hood.

As a business professional and leader, how often do you work with, manage or lead others?  How many people have you found unmotivated, uninspired and, at times, incapable of producing even modest results?

Personally, how often do you notice those characteristics in yourself?

What stands in the way of you and your team producing results isn’t the economy, your prospects, your industry, the weather, the government, your employees or your mother-in-law.  It’s that you, your team, me and most of our culture has been trained to consume rather than produce.  It’s a “what’s in it for me” culture.  This is a great concept to leverage as a marketer, and in my opinion, it’s not a great concept to deal with when working with others to produce results.

Leadership Practices:

So, what can you do, or who can you be, to “un-train” yourself and your team?  Here are a few ideas:

• When you experience an employee doing just enough work to get by, ask “What would be available for you if you took that one, extra step”?
• When you notice your sales team complaining they don’t have enough resources to perform better, ask them “What resource are you able to create to support your efforts”?
• When you see that you consistently get stopped by negative judgments or interpretations of the economy or industry, ask yourself “What am I capable of producing in this moment”?
• When you notice you or your team depending more on hopes, wishes and prayers to make things happen, ask “What are we willing to declare and fulfill upon this week”?

Success isn’t about getting home runs all the time.  That may be what you’ve been trained to understand when you consume the information that’s put out by media and marketing sources.

Success is about getting up to the plate, declaring a result, taking the action aligned with producing that result, and being with whatever result occurs.  Then do it all over again.

Or you can choose to sit in the stands and watch the game and hope the hot dog vendor comes soon to satisfy your hunger.

Happy Producing,

-  Coach Preston

Preston True Career Development, Leadership Development, Marketing BNI, Business Development, Client Development, Coaching, Entrepreneur, Facebook, Leadership, LinkedIn, Professional Development, Sales and Marketing, Twitter