How Running Made Me A Better Coach

~a personal story~

I am set to run my first half-marathon in 2 days. I'm a smidge intimidated at the thought of joining the crowd of 'real' runners and full marathoners, but at the same time I feel confident about completing the race.  I WILL finish. And in two months

3 Reasons Why a Sunny Outlook Brings More Success

People often make fun of "the power of positive thinking" - or consider people who subscribe synonymous with idiots walking on rainbows with rays of sunshine coming out their

3 Parts to Making Change EASY

Yes, you read that correctly: "Change" and "Easy" can absolutely go together. Most people would agree that change is hard, changing habits is difficult, changing your conditioning takes focus and discipline plus time you don't want to spend on it.  Admittedly, that is true for most people.  However, you

9 Ways to Stay Motivated

So you've set your goals or intentions.  Now what?  From experience, we all know "life gets in the way" and often weeks and months can go by without much progress toward achievements. To change results, there must be a process or system for execution. In other words, you have to

5 Simple Steps to Achieving Your Goals

Watch the video summary now.

As I prepared for the coming year, helping my clients prepare their goals and objectives, and working on my own, I realized there is a plethora of resources available to us geared toward goal setting but there was a need for more information about goal ACHIEVING.  I set out to create something - some easy worksheets and a few steps - so that anyone could take this document and be a goal achiever.  Whether you 'do'

Greater Success Through More Mistakes

Usually we equate "success" with avoiding mistakes.  However, the path to greater success is simple: more mistakes. What? Yes, it seems ironic.

Yet we all have experiences proving this to be true. Consider the times in your life you are most proud of.  I'll bet you they were achievement-oriented where you had to overcome some obstacles.  You made some mistakes, but you pushed on. You didn't let fear keep you from moving forward.  And success tasted sweet. 

What Are You Afraid Of?
There is a state of being that I call "burning fuel on the launch pad."

Selling With Confidence

Feel like you want or need more Sales Moxie or Mojo? Do you berate yourself for not asking for the sale, speaking with confidence, or generally being uncomfortable or even afraid in sales situations?  There are some easy ways to feel more comfortable and confident when selling.

After all, "sell" is a 4-letter word.
But "sell" is not a bad word! Successful sellers are helpful, influential, and skilled at finding a match with customer needs --rather than manipulative-- so you can quit worrying about changing your personality!  You probably just need to rev up your confidence.  Yes, there is definitely the idea of too much confidence in sales which can come across as aggressive, "sales-y" or pushy, and this approach is the cause of most buyer's remorse, returns, and canceled contracts.  Yet the other side of the spectrum is probably worse because although it makes friends and establishes comfort with prospects and buyers, it is simply not as effective (as the overly confident sales approach) in terms of actual sales.  Let's face it, provided you believe in your product or service, you can't truly help people if you don't offer them ownership.

Why do people buy from sharks?
Bottom line: they respect sales confidence.  Think about how your own buying experiences validate this. As buyers, we want

Cultivating a Daily Success Mindset

What one skill do all successful people, all around the world, and all throughout time, have in common?

Whether they realize it or not, they all are masters at visualizing their success.  They routinely envision successful outcomes--and most often expect nothing else. Their words likely match their thoughts, but they may have also mastered the art of not telling everyone how confident they are.  If you could tap into the minds of the top tier of successful people, you would find

Take Control Over Your To-Do List

Are you one of the millions with a To-Do list? How about one with WAY more items on the list than humanly possible to get done in a day, or even a month?  If so, are you ready for a better way?  You've suspected there is a better way...you've probably known for a long time.  I've identified some proven techniques that will help you take back control of "the lists" -- so that about a week from now you won't miss your old "system" and you'll be amazed at how much smoother things are going.

Let's talk To-Do list "How-To's." Seems a little ridiculous?  Yet - if it's going to help you feel better and get more done, it's worth reading on, right? 


Mind Dump
The first thing I recommend is to set a timer, have plenty of paper/pens (or a computer app with unlimited typing space), and

Business Planning

BUSINESS PLANNING: A Coach's Perspective on the Process

When it comes to business planning, I see a spectrum where on one side are people who love thinking about possibilities, strategizing and analyzing options, often spending hours, days, weeks dreaming about what's to come, planning -- and not implementing. On the other side are people who hate the boring, time-consuming and sometimes paper-work laden process of planning in business and so they procrastinate it indefinitely or participate half-heartedly only when mandatory.

There is a zone in the middle where business people explore possibilities, create a plan, implement the plan, achieve goals, and reap the rewards. How can you participate fully in business planning so you experience these valuable gains without wasting time? It's actually pretty simple.


GREAT EXPECTATIONS

From my perspective, the most important facets of business planning are

What You See Is What You Are

We can look at another person and discern some things about them immediately.  In addition, we can look at our own overall picture and acknowledge that it is a mirror reflection of who we are; our state of well-being, physical health, financial health, strength of relationships, and success in business.  These are outward reflections of our mindsets, philosophies, and specifically how we think of our self.

Why do the vast majority of people who win the lottery lose it all and find themselves in the same financial status as before their winnings?  Why do roughly 99% of people who go on a diet to lose weight gain that weight back?

It's as if we have a default setting, and something may occur to change the setting, but usually we seem to return back to that setting eventually.  We do. In a nutshell, it is

Getting Started: From Intention to Reality

So you want to make a change.  The "pain" of your current situation has caused you to want something different.  You may exclaim, "That's IT!  Something needs to change with this.  I am going to______."

Congratulations, you just initiated a new goal! Even if it's not new.  What counts is that you feel motivated and intend to do something to change your current situation.  Yep, it's that simple.  You said you wanted to change, but do you really think of it as a goal?  Probably not- until you've written it down, talked about it with a few people, maybe posted it on Facebook, or acknowledged it as something you want -it doesn't feel like a "goal."  However, realize that you told yourself and anyone in earshot that you have an INTENTION.  You can choose to make it a goal (or not).  Why did you say it, if you didn't really want to make a change on some level?  So now what?

That spark of motivation, no matter how small, can be leveraged to pull you through the first couple of challenges...but to make it all the way you must ensure first that you set the right goal for YOU, for right NOW.

Do You Really Want It?
There are some key differences between goal setting and goal ACHIEVING.  The most critical difference is that Goal Achievers have set the right goal: not just any random intention becomes a goal worthy of focus and effort.  Do you really want it?  When you think about actually achieving your goal, it should scare you a little bit, and excite you a lot. If it's not the right intention-come-goal, then don't worry about it.  Think about what you DO want.

Communication: Going Beyond Verbal and Non-Verbal

Most everyone wants to improve their communication skills on some level, generally because we all understand that better communication can provide the key to better relationships, more success in business, more sales/revenue, happier customers, and engaged employees.  Most everyone understands that communication is not exactly as simple as 2 cans and some string.  Often, we experience challenges communicating with certain types of people.  Or, ahem, very specific people; a family member, coworker, former boss, former friend, ex significant other, etc...  It doesn't seem as simple as "Message Sent.  Message Received."  It's not.

Beyond the verbal simplicity of communicating with others, all the various non-verbal actions add layers of complexity to any face-to-face conversation. Yet there is more beyond this.  What about all the assumptions that both sides bring to the table, often before they have even met?

The Halo Effect
Have you ever witnessed a parent who looks right past all their child's dastardly behavior and swears up and down their child is the most angelic, perfect kid?  Often they are not just saying that; they really believe it.  This is the halo effect; when every word and deed of the child is seen as proof they are angelic.  The parent in this case, has their mind made up, and they can see only the good in their child's behavior.  You've seen this at work too with bosses and their favorites. When a person is tuned into certain behavior and expectations regarding another person, and over time enough things "prove" this to be true, at a certain point almost every single thing they do and say will strengthen the belief that they will always meet these expectations.

The Opposite of a Halo is...
The halo effect also works the other way: when you believe someone will behave badly or fail time and time again, they will seem to consistently you right.  Again, we can cite examples of parent/child and boss/employee.  You have likely worked with someone or remember a kid in school that everyone thought was weird.  Everything they said was weird, their clothes seemed weird, and no one wanted to pick them for Dodgeball or debate team.  However, I'd be willing to bet that if the popular kid in class said or did some of those exact same things, people would have reacted very differently.

What about when the tables are turned? 
Have you been the recipient of the halo effect, either good or bad?  Were you teacher's favorite?  Or always getting in trouble for stuff you didn't do?  One of my clients about a year ago came to me because she was miserable regarding her work and wanted to consider other career options. Somehow the halo effect had turned her work group against her.  NOTE: this person is very sweet, sincerly nice, courteous, intelligent, pretty quiet, kind of good looking, and quite stylish.  Unfortunately something started it, probably a very minor misunderstanding and well over some period of time, it seemed that this group could only see shortfalls in this person.  She was given a poor performance review, although none of the problems could be substantiated; unfortunately her manager had fallen prey to the halo effect too, in a bad way. She left that company and started doing something else and is much happier now, and has good relationships in her work and personal life.  Bottom line: the light cast by the halo effect is very powerful, especially when it becomes a belief held by multiple people in a group.  In this case, and in many others, the belief is not the reality...   We've all witnessed experienced something similar- in school, at work, in other groups, maybe even at church or community groups.

The Halo Effect on Relationships
To an extent it seems like human nature, and it is. We label, categorize, and stereotype.  Consider the influence that these inaccurate assumptions have on communication between people, your own communication, your relationships at work, in your life. 

Who have you -maybe- cast the halo effect on where what you see reflected is something other than reality?  On some level, just about everybody you know.  Think about it...how many people understand YOU, your thoughts, your silly private jokes, your humor, your worries, your quirks?  What if they were constantly misinterpreted because people already had their mind made up about you?  How many people knows you very, very well? 

This isn't about you feeling bad, it's about awareness and realizing what type of expectations you have of other people.  Consider your next planned conversation, maybe it's a meeting or social occasion, and the person you'll be talking with.  Have you been making some assumptions about them?  Are you expecting some behavior or thoughts of them that you can't really be sure about?  Try something different this time: right now, think about what potential they have and what could happen, what are they really capable of, if given a real chance.

Now you have some understanding of the power of the halo effect on communication, on relationships, on potentially every conversation and transaction in your daily life and work.  Really notice this week when you observe this happening, and consider the how the result might be different if the expectations were different. 

ACTION:
Think of one person each in your professional and personal arenas.  What if you start expecting the best, realistic outcome from these people? 

An Even More Powerful Effect
One final take-away:  Have you unknowingly been applying the halo effect to yourself?  Good or bad? What expectations do you have of yourself? Do you find that everything you do just proves your case?  It's not just about communication, but yes the halo effect definitively has power in your relationships, with others, and with yourself.  Acknowledge when based on assumption verus fact...true knowledge is power!