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Category: Entrepreneurship

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Management Personal Development Women In Business

The Attention Deficit Workplace – The Answer Starts with YOU!

You are a role model … to someone. The expression “tone at the top” is true. The example leaders demonstrate is often believed to be a requirement employees must follow. No matter what’s written in policy handbooks or said aloud, the traits leaders demonstrate others will implement as their own. Even though most leaders recognize this to be true, it’s easy to forget how daily behavior is observed and actions are emulated. When we use the word ‘leader’ we are referring to everyone, it doesn’t matter your title, responsibilities or what’s printed on your business card, everyone leads.

Consider this, distractions cost US businesses $588 billion dollars in productivity each year, according to the Information Overload Group. It makes me wonder, how many of these distractions are derived from your leadership “tone” and daily work behavior.

Let’s determine the answer with a pop-quiz.

1. Email:

  • Do you expect immediate responses to emails sent?
  • Do you pop into an employee’s office, send a text or call them within 30 minutes without an answer?

2. Phone Call:

  • Do you always take phone calls regardless of what you are working on or who is in your office

3. Devices:

  • Are you always seen carrying your cell phone?
  • Have you interrupted meetings or allowed yourself to be distracted in order to respond to messages or alerts?
  • Does your phone stay on and active throughout each work day?

4. Unannounced Visits:

  • Are you known for walking into an employee’s workspace unscheduled to discuss a project, question or need?

5. Open Door Policy:

  • Are you devoted to an open door policy permitting others to interrupt your activities throughout the day?

6. Schedule:

  • Do you allow for an open schedule of time that anyone can take to meet their needs?
  • Are you intentional about blocking off time throughout the day to work without interruption

7. Meetings:

  • Do you accept every meeting invite?
  • Do you require an agenda before attending or does the invitation merely imply your required attendance?

8. Priorities:

  • As other departments or peers make demands of your time or request non-priority essential tasks, do you take on their requests without scrutiny?

9. After Hours:

  • Are you known for sending or responding to after hour emails or texts?
  • Are you willing to interrupt your family time to take incoming work-related phone calls?

10. Social Media:

  • Do you pop on social media to respond to posts and comments throughout the day?
  • Do you actively share and communicate with others online frequently?

11. Vacation:

  • Have you been known to respond to messages while taking time off from work?
  • Do you regularly take time off to decompress, relax and refocus?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions (and I admit, I definitely did!), you are sending a message to your employees the same is expected of them. If you are unable to allow yourself time to focus without interruption, or if you are not proactively seeking ways to avoid disruption, others will fail to do so as well.

As the leader, you are the Attention Ambassador of your office. Lead by example. When you silence your phone, others will too. If you refrain from sending or responding to after-hours messages, others will feel permitted to do the same.

It’s up to YOU as the leader to prioritize your time and demonstrate that your team can feel empowered to do the same. As a result, employee productivity will soar, engagement will skyrocket and so will the profits that follow suit. When employees feel free to say “no” to other’s request for their time and attention, they can say “yes” to what matter most.

Choose to lead by example. Be the role model. Be a true leader. Be aware of the example you set. Change the expectations and remember – Attention Pays.

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Best Practices Body Language Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations Skills Women In Business

Do You Know Where to Look to Find Yourself?

“A sense of uncertainty arouses the senses of being lost. Avoid the lost sense of uncertainty by truly knowing yourself.” – Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

As we go through different phases of our life, we seek assurances that we’re within the confines of society’s norms. Then, we use that feedback to adjust our actions and the way we interact with others. At some point, we find the wherewithal within ourselves to venture on a path of life that states, we know what’s best for us. That process may take years and sadly, some never discover it.

Some never discover the fortitude within themselves that states they have something of value that’s needed by others. Some never discover the quality about themselves that states that they possess more insight and knowledge than others give them credit for. Some never discover that they are more of what the world needs more of. The reason they don’t or can’t embrace that reality is that they don’t know where to look to find themselves.

No matter what phase of life you’re in, you have a sense of uniqueness that’s of value to someone. Look deeper into the values of those that need your uniqueness to find more of yourself. No matter what setbacks you may encounter, look deeper into how those setbacks occurred, in order to discover the uniqueness that lies within you. No matter what you encounter, look at those encounters for the value they possess. Look at them as a value-add to your life. Then, and only then, will you find that elusive place where you discover more about who and what you are. That will also be the tipping point when you discover more of what you want to be … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

In a negotiation, you may be besieged with doubt about the strategy you’re implementing. You may ponder the right course of action to adopt due to unforeseen occurrences in the negotiation. During such times, don’t allow despair to surround you. It will stifle your train of thought. Don’t allow hopelessness to engulf you. It will deter you from moving forward. Don’t let fear deride you, it will make you stop dead in your tracks. Instead, when you find yourself perplexed by the thought of inaction, seek attunement with the inner you. Explore the possibility of why what’s occurring is happening and the meaning of it. Be mindful to give the meaning you assign a positive perspective. That will be the doorway that leads from the disruption of darkness into the light. That will also be the doorway that allows you to find more of yourself.

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

What are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free 5-minute video on reading body language or to sign up for the “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions #Psychology #Truth #Perception #rejection #leadership

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Personal Development Women In Business

Want To Advance Your Career? Find a Mentor

Lux was a top performer. In the 20 years before I met her she was always considered a high potential employee. In her two decades in the IT department of a large financial institution she progressed slowly but steadily through the ranks. If there were a complex problem to resolve –Lux would get done.

And then she got stuck. She couldn’t understand why she was overlooked time and again to achieve a top position. The reason was simple – she never asked. Sometime being good at what you do can be what prevents you from getting ahead. Why would anyone advance Lux further when she was doing such an excellent job just where she was? And for her part, she never let anyone know that she had her eye on a very senior position. The game changer for her was the suggestion to find a Mentor. She chose the CFO of the organization who was both flattered and interested in being her guide. Within a very short time, after expressing her interest in moving up the ladder, and following her mentor’s suggested roadmap to success, she achieved her objective of being a senior V.P.

And now it’s your turn. A mentor is a wise and trusted counselor and guide. In “traditional” corporations an executive or senior person is assigned a “high potential” to assist in his or her development.  A Mentor has a body of knowledge that a Mentee would like to learn. For example, in an accounting firm, information regarding technical matters and professional development are often transferred from Mentor to Mentee.

There are many reasons why having a Mentor can accelerate your career. Here are three for you to consider:

1. Guidance regarding how to navigate corporate politics. For women, it sometimes helps to have a Mentor who is also female. Your role as a Mentee is to be open to the feedback, suggestions, and critiques that are offered to you. This will maximize the effect of the support you receive.

2. Assistance finding connections, the “whos” who can help you get where you’d like to be more quickly. The question to ask is “who do you know who….”

3. And thirdly, guidance in how to improve your skills. Within the context of a mentoring relationship the Mentor assists an individual fill a particular knowledge gap by learning how to do things more effectively.

In your search for a Mentor, it’s a good idea to choose someone working in the same functional area as you are, as well as someone who shares your values. Professional organizations in your field, whether they offer formal mentoring programs or not, can be excellent sources of Mentors. Test the waters by asking for advice first. Be open to sharing your concerns and fears. Mentors are most likely to invest themselves in those in whom they see a little of themselves.

Don’t think that you, as a Mentee, get all the benefits from the relationship. In my experience mentoring is a rich and rewarding experience and I’ve learned more about technologies from my Mentees than I would ever have learned on my own! Having a well chosen Mentor to guide you can be a game changer in accelerating your career. Do it now!

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Entrepreneurship Marketing Personal Development

Four Myths and Five Truths About Value and Pricing

Does your price communicate something about your value, or does your value inform your price? Is it either? Or, is it both? Spoiler alert: “both” is closest, but the truth is more interesting than that simple answer.

I’m building a reputation inside my company as “The Pricing Guy”. Actually, I’m the “The Value-driven Pricing Guy”, a difference many of my clients appreciate. Nobody is a hero in his hometown, I suppose. However, the glass is more than half full: it’s good identify a simple-to-close gap. Readers of my blogs and my upcoming book, however, need not wait for internal company perceptions to catch up with reality. I am passionate about helping companies grow more profitably now

Let’s separate some common myths about pricing from facts.

Myths Concerning Price:

Price is just another feature to trade away.  This myth may threaten your company’s future more than any other. Fail to understand how customers actually think about price, and your people may end up donating your company’s profit dollars to your customers profit lines.

You should charge your full value premium. Ask Martin Shkreli (the “pharma bro”) if the still thinks it’s a good idea.  In the long term, customers only pay a price premium willingly; give them a perception of overcharging, and your price premium is temporary. Use caution with pricing consultants (who often charge a “shared profits” fee) with no contractual incentive for retaining customers at a higher margin.

Customers prefer complex calculations when justifying your price.  Has anyone every bought right into the assumptions built into any ROI calculator ever created by the selling company? Rather, is “the battle of the assumptions in the model” a sale unto itself? Humans use shortcuts whenever we can. Use a value/pricing justification that mirrors one of the common shortcuts, and you’re far better off — so are your customers.

Pricing is a useful incentive. Some companies build a sterling reputation for not discounting. Others teach customers to expect profit-killing end-of-quarter and end-of-year discounts. Inside one such company, I and my team developed a reputation for being the ones who produced high revenues and high profitability—with some work, we weaned our customers off of the discounting bottle, and my superiors off of the end-of-period discounting addiction. If you recognize this behavior in your own company, we need to talk: the profits you’re flushing away each quarter are probably far less than you’d pay me in a year…probably less than helping you through the first year of a full sales performance transformation.

Truths About Price:

Price is about differences. Your price level isn’t nearly as important to a customer as your price premium. Similarly, all of the bells and whistles on your product/service are clutter—surrounding your value differences.

Customers weigh the precise vs. the ambiguous, if you let them. Price and price premium are precisely measured in real-world numbers with dollar (or your own currency) signs attached – I’ve even seen prices with precision to the fourth decimal place. Conversely, your value premium exists only inside a customer’s mind, and unless you influence them into forming concrete (even monetized) thoughts around value, that value persists in a nebulous form.

Value is inherently based upon available options: Competitor, do it yourself, do nothing (status quo), do it later. Your proposal’s value must exceed the value of all of these other options.

Pricing communicates value… to customers, price is part of your messaging: Your price tells them what you think you’re worth. A lost deal feedback from my early Miller Heiman days that still stings (after we were told to skinny our proposal way down): “we didn’t think you understood the complexity of our problem, and didn’t think you could possibly do the amount of discovery we need for that price”.  My clients often recognize this ugly truth: when you lower your price, you concurrently send all kinds of bad messages about what you believe you’re worth.

Pricing discipline isn’t just for setting prices of custom and semi-custom products and services. It’s useful for setting and defending standard prices against discounting. Finally, it can become the objective framework used for discussing pricing exceptions (in contrast with “the best whiner wins the discount dollars” systems I encounter occasionally).

In Summary

Because pricing discipline is value discipline, it helps sellers discover full value by probing for all connected value; I use a tool called value network building, to analyze all of the places “where value could land” at the customer. This tool helps inform great conversations about value discovery long before pricing is discussed, and yields the right kind of “pricing courage” to conduct win-win price negotiations.

Want to know more? Ask questions below, or reach out to me privately. I am happy to add value to any issues you’re wrestling with.

To your success!

#MillerHeimanGroup,#MillerHeiman, #MHIGlobal, #customercentric, #customerfocus, #Perspectiveselling, #salesperformance, #valueselling, #valuepricing, #valueculture, #value, #sales, #discounting

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Management Personal Development Women In Business

Warning – People Will Always Be Your Competitive Advantage

It doesn’t matter whether you have just developed the best product ever created. It doesn’t matter if your software or technology improvement will promise to change the world. If you don’t have the right people and the right culture, chances are your dreams of success will fall by the wayside as do those of most companies. Stop and consider this -would you enthusiastically rehire all the people in your company?

Right People, Right Seats, Doing the Right Things

In Jim Collins seminal book, Good to Great he talked about having the right people on the bus. What he meant by that was that WHO you have on the bus, the essence of the team, is more important than the skills and experience they have. Put the right people on first and then develop your strategy from there.

Once you have determined who the right people are, the next task is to make sure you have the right “seats” i.e. the right roles to accomplish your goals. One person and only one needs to be accountable for a role. If you have two people in the same role chances are fingers will be pointing to that other person when something doesn’t get done. Filling the right seat means that a person has the skills and hopefully the experience, necessary to accomplish what needs to be accomplished in that role. Lastly, the people in the seats need to be doing the “right things”. Their energy should be spent working on the priorities that best support the company’s goals. Are your people wasting their time and energy on tasks that are not a priority at this time?

How to Find the Right People

Every company has a culture – it’s the way “things are done”. Culture is a very important discussion to have related to finding and retaining the right talent. The two important components are Core Values and Purpose. Many companies find a set of words to describe their values: Integrity, Responsibility and Innovation are three common ones. The test of a real value as opposed to an aspirational one is whether or not stories can be told that support the value. If you can’t tell stories about leaders or employees who exemplify a value, well then – back to the drawing board.

One way to promote values and at the same time have a tool to onboard new employees is to have what we call “Our Little Book of Emails”. Let’s say Samantha did a great job creating the ultimate customer experience. Imagine reading an email from the CEO to Samantha that congratulates her on living a value that is critical to the company – “We strive to offer the ultimate Customer Experience”. On the first day of work, a new leader reads the little book of emails and comes to this page. Isn’t this more impactful than a bullet point on a sign on the cafeteria wall?

Build Your Virtual Bench

Don’t wait until hiring becomes a matter of urgency. Create relationships with potential employees way before you need them. Ask your customers and vendors who they might know who would be a good fit to join your company. Talk to the candidates and let them know you aren’t ready yet, but sometime in the next few months a position might open up that fits their qualifications. Stay in touch and keep them informed.

Hire Slow Fire Fast

Jack Welch was the former CEO of General Electric – Jack was a very successful CEO for many reasons and perhaps one of the most important was his approach to finding, coaching and retaining the best performing business leaders in the world for GE.

When Jack was building his strategy to grow GE, he identified two key areas where he could develop a competitive edge:

  1. Develop a process that would increase the success of hiring the right executives the first time and retain them for several years after they joined GE.
  2. Create an ongoing executive education core competency within GE that would keep GE leaders among the sharpest and highest educated in the world.

Jack Welch engaged Brad Smart to come into GE and help develop a program and process to increase executive hiring and retention success from 50% (industry average) to 90% (GE standard). It is out of this best practices project (and process) that Brad Smart wrote “Topgrading,” and it has become a bestseller and standard in many successful growth companies.

What discourages A players, those employees who are high in Core Values and Productivity, is tolerance for C players – those who are low in both. It is important to regularly assess your talent and remove those who drag down the level of excellence in your company.

Take time to interview carefully and make sure that the core values of the prospective employee matches that of the company. For excellent interviewing practices and questions read Geoff Smart’s book – “Who”.

Learn from the best – and make your people a competitive advantage for your company.

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Best Practices Body Language Economics Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations News and Politics Women In Business

5 Ways to Hack Your Way to Winning Negotiations

“Hacking is a way to discover new value. View the value in what you have for multiple purposes.” –Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

When you hack something or a process, you discover new ways to use new insights to obtain new values. In a negotiation, you can hack your way to winning negotiations by using techniques, strategies, and tactics in different ways.

Hack 1: Define your words. In the above statement, I gave the definition of how I was using the word ‘hack’ in this article; it means to uncover ways to negotiate better by using existing techniques and strategies in different ways. Since the word, ‘hack’ can have negative connotations (e.g. “he’s a hacker”; meaning, he’s not good), I needed to define it for you so you’d understand my intent. Thus, even if a word or procedure has an existing meaning, you can alter it to serve your purposes in a negotiation. If you’re successful, that will give you greater control of the negotiation. It’s akin to the wizard behind the curtain changing the color of the day to suit his needs.

Hack 2: Consider how you can spin an outcome to appear favorable to your position (e.g. after losing a point badly – “they didn’t win. we were positioning ourselves so we’d be in a favorable position for the next phase of the negotiation.”) When spinning an outcome know your intent. If not, you run the risk of appearing foolish or completely out of touch with reality, which in some cases can prove to be advantageous for you, too (e.g. “I don’t know if he’s crazy, or crazy like a fox.”)

Hack 3: Depending on the severity of a negotiation, think of how you can frame someone (i.e. how you wish them and/or their position to be viewed/perceived). In really tough negotiations, some negotiators will take their opponent to the school of dirty tricks. By doing that, they determine how the opponent and/or their position will be unfavorably perceived; you see this occurring more in high-level institutional negotiations, but you also see it occurring in negotiations between individuals that have winning as their sole source of motivation.

Hack 4: Confusion will usually lead to inaction. If you find you’re losing a point that’s vital to your position, try confusing the issue. You can do this by citing sources of disinformation; in a best-case scenario, you would have fomented the disinformation prior to the negotiation. If nothing else, confusion will slow the negotiation down. It can also serve as a bridge to a point that’s more favorable to your position. To be effective, plan how and when you might use confusion as a tactic in your negotiation. Hack 4 can also be incorporated into hack 3.

Hack 5: If you’re knowledgeable about reading body language, there are ways you can send nonverbal signals that enhance or detract from what’s been said. You might intentionally want to introduce doubt into a statement made by the other negotiator, even if you believe what he’s said to be true; do this by tilting your head to the side in an inquisitive manner. Then, allow him to convince you that he’s sincere. Psychologically, he’ll feel good about convincing you, which means you can use his good feeling to keep him endeared to you.

There you have it. Five hacks that you can use to enhance your negotiation efforts. Try them out and observe how your negotiation win rate soars … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 To receive Greg’s free 5-minute video on reading body language or to sign up for the “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#hack #hacking #negotiations #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #psychology

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Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Personal Development

We’re Not That Far Apart

Recently I was on a sales trip with Scott Good, my partner in one of my businesses. We had a lot of windshield time so as good friends and business partners often do, we got into a few terrific discussions. Since we are in business together, of course we talked about business. And yes, the touchy subjects of politics and religion were also covered. After several hours in the car together, Scott says to me “you know we really aren’t that far apart.” Now Scott is a really, smart guy (would I have a dumb guy as a partner?), but this was really, profound.

I continued to think about that statement over the next few days.

When we are applying for and negotiating for a new job at a new company, what does the company want? The company wants to utilize all your talents, so the company can thrive. Don’t you want the same thing? Don’t you want to apply all your skills and experience, so you AND the company thrive?  So, assuming you are the right fit, what’s keeping you from agreeing to the opportunity? A few bucks in the salary? Another day of vacation? If you and the employer truly communicate, you’ll find “you know we really aren’t that far apart” and you’ll make a deal that makes everyone happy.

When you are negotiating with a potential buyer for your product or service, don’t you generally set down some parameters of what the buyer can expect in terms of performance of the product or service? Of course, you do. Then you get to the final negotiations and both parties find ONE thing they want to take a position on and everyone forgets all the work that went into the discussion up to that point. Let’s all calm down and review each other’s position. Let’s talk honestly and openly of what we each want from the transaction. You will often be saying after that discussion, “you know we really aren’t that far apart”.

Some discussions are traditionally adversarial. Union / company relationships, political discussions, religious discussions, generational divides. How and why did we become so entrenched in our positions that we don’t listen to the other side of the issue? It does not have to be this way. Calm down, be open to learn something new, try to understand the other viewpoint. If we all just take 30 seconds to breath and think, we can most likely smooth out some of our differences, enough to say, “you know we really aren’t that far apart”.

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Industries Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

Take the 5 Step Attention Challenge

You think you’re paying attention – you’re not. We live in an attention deficit society. Technology distracts us. Social Media overwhelms us.  Daily to-do lists leave us feeling exhausted. We are constantly being asked to do more with less, to the point we have lost sight of what is important as we race each day to cross off another meaningless task or chore.

I believe in order to be influential in the world, and make a true impact on it; we must give our undivided attention to people and things that matter most in our lives. Instead, we are allowing those that are most important to compete with all of our daily distractions. It’s time to commit to change.

Attention isn’t a little thing. It’s everything. What you focus on grows. What you don’t, goes. When you decide what gets your attention, that becomes your future. I challenge you to start turning your life into one of attention abundance instead of distractions in five steps. Are you up for the challenge? It won’t be easy. It will bring to light the aspects in your life that are worthy of your focus, your time and your undivided attention.

Step 1: Identify What Matters Most

Grab a piece of paper and write down three priorities that come to mind at home, at work and in your community. Perhaps it’s the name of people, or high-profile goals. Maybe it’s a charitable cause or public service. Either way, be specific in each of the three categories and limit yourself to no more than three priorities for each. This step is going to help you identify what matters most to you, the core of you. These are the priorities that get you out of bed each morning, and give you a sense of purpose. When we attempt to define too many priorities, we dilute the meaning of those that matter most.

Step 2: Be Accountable to the Calendar

With your limited priority list now identified, it’s time to get selective with your calendar of commitments. We only get 365 days each year to reach our goals and objectives. That’s a pretty tight calendar budget if it’s not managed wisely. Consider this, if you only had $365 dollars in the bank and were forced to choose between food and jewelry – you’d choose food, right? That’s easy. So why do we think of the days in a year any differently? We are all working from the same limited budget of days, yet some are too quick to spend their days on what doesn’t matter. It’s time to be accountable to our calendar.

First, go through your work calendar and identify two meetings this week that are not necessary. If you feel the objective of the meeting can be accomplished in a simple phone call or email, choose those options instead. If you have the meetings scheduled merely out of routine and habit, they aren’t needed. If you are attending meetings and feel they are not a valuable use of your time, decline them.

Second, for those meetings you choose to keep on your work calendar, email the host and request an agenda. Take a few moments to be certain your time will be respected and used wisely. If you are the host, give respects to the attendees by creating an agenda that you commit to using and sticking to. If you want others to respect your time, you must first start by respecting theirs.

Third, at home, review your personal commitments and obligations. Have you accepted a dinner invite you didn’t really desire to attend? Perhaps you have requests for lunch, parties and gatherings that you aren’t certain how you’ll fit into your already tight calendar of events. If any of these scenarios sound familiar, it’s time to employ the power of one simple word: “No.” That’s right, “no.” “No” is a complete sentence and doesn’t require explanation. Your time is your time, and only is gifted to others when their requests of it fall in line with the priorities you listed in step one. When you say “no” to some, you’re saying “yes” to whom and what matters most. Consider this – if there is a dinner invitation you’ve received that you’re not thrilled to attend, and you would rather stay home and watch a movie with your family, who is going to benefit the most from you saying “yes” to the dinner invite? You? Your family? No – the person with the invitation is the one that benefits. If they are not in your list of priorities, then you are allowing them to take time away from those truly deserving of your time.

Step 3: Be Accountable to the Clock

There are only 1,440 minutes in each day. Considering we sleep approximately 440 of those, we are left with only 1,000 minutes to accomplish what truly needs to be done each day. We are all gifted with the same amount of time in a day; how we choose to use it and prioritize it is solely up to us.

Have you ever stopped to consider the amount of time you spend each day on social media? What about watching television? How about checking email? Now, consider how much time you spend building relationships with family, friends, colleagues and clients? Who is winning your attention and what is stealing your time.

I want you to consider your day in 15 minute increments. Discipline yourself to limiting time on non-essential tasks for 15 minutes only. Dedicate at least 15 minutes of time to those that haven’t been getting it.

First, upon waking in the morning, take 15 minutes to check social media and read the news – then log off. Do not give into temptation to check it again until your next scheduled 15 minute window – either later that night or the next morning. Utilize apps that block alerts and notifications on your phone to avoid distractions they cause.

Second, review your daily calendar and challenge yourself and your team to cut back meetings to 15 minutes only. Require agendas and don’t permit devices that cause distractions. When you limit meetings to 15 minutes, you’ll reach agreements more quickly and be less likely to get lost on non-related topics.

Third, schedule 3 – 15 minutes increments time for checking email throughout your workday. When your 15 minutes is up, turn off your email and turn your attention to accomplishing projects, tasks and priorities. Move away from allowing email to run your day and dictate how your time is to be spent. Emails are just another person’s request for your time to do what they need to accomplish their tasks.

Fourth, dedicate 15 minutes each night to having one-on-one conversations with each person in your household. Give them a minimum of 15 minutes of your time without technology, tv or distractions. You’d be surprised how your relationships grow when you invest your undivided attention into them.

Fifth, allow yourself 15 minutes each day for decompression and quiet time. Give your body and your mind an opportunity to quiet and rest. Go for a walk. Take a hot bath. Get a stretch. Meditate. Either way, permit your mind to quiet down so it has an opportunity to recharge for the following day.

Step 4: Put Technology in its Place

By silencing distractions, such as smartphones, people begin to excel at their jobs, relationships and tasks. A cell phone is a crutch. It fools us into believing everything is an emergency, even when the situation is far from it. When people let go of the need to connect, they get better at sleeping, they come to work refreshed, they learn to trust their instincts, and they begin to rely on their skills and knowledge. In short, they become better leaders, better middle managers, and better employees. They also become better spouses, better parents and their quality of life grows.

First, use your Do Not Disturb function on your phone. Schedule it to turn on from 8pm to 8am each morning. This will ensure time each night is spent focused and dedicated on your personal well-being. In this time period, you can exercise, spend time in uninterrupted conversation with friends and family, sleeping and resting up for a more productive day following.

Second, do not permit technology in meetings. If you are hosting a meeting, make it known on the invite and in the agenda that your meeting is a no-phone zone. If you’re going to be cutting down meetings to 15-minute increments, every minute requires each participant’s undivided attention.

Third, make your dinner table a no-phone zone. If you are out to dinner with friends, make a deal that the first person to look at their phone has to buy dinner. If you are at dinner with your family, put all devices away and keep them off the table. Use that time to make genuine connections with those you are dining with.

Fourth, use smartphone apps to silence your phone throughout the day when you are otherwise committed to scheduled activities such as checking email, focusing on projects or accomplishing tasks. You will maximize your productivity when you keep your focus exclusively on one task as a time instead of allowing yourself to be distracted every few minutes.

Step 5: Gift Your Time

Our society depends on each of us to give the gift of our time to charitable causes and be purposeful in how we contribute to our community. Choose how you will contribute to causes that matter to you and your community. Be intentional in scheduling time to volunteer, donate and help others. Reflect back on Step 1 and what you listed as your priorities. Decide how you will contribute to aiding those causes and make the commitment to follow through.

Remember, Attention isn’t a little thing. It’s everything. What you focus on grows. What you don’t, goes. Decide what gets your attention, and allow that to become your future. Are you up to the challenge?

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Personal Development Women In Business

The Enemy of Your Employee Attention

There is a battle brewing in your office over your employees’ attention. The enemy – distraction.

Our workplaces are a littered land mind of distractions. It’s a wonder anyone can survive. Between open concept offices to technological interruptions, employees fight for their ability to pay attention, avoid distractions and say ‘no’ to demands for their attention. They feel overwhelmed, overstressed and overtired, spending countless energy being busy (we know that busy isn’t necessarily productive).

The stress distractions create in the workplace has long term consequences to the individual’s productivity and health as well as the company’s bottom line.

So how do wage war on workplace distraction?

Consider the following aspects and determine where distractions can be destroyed – once and for all.

1. Office Structure: If you’ve hopped on the bandwagon of open-office workspaces. It’s time to consider a change. If that’s not feasible, allow employees to improvise by occasionally working from home or remote locations that will permit them quiet time to focus. Still not an option? Consider permitting noise-canceling headphones for staff in high traffic areas.

2. Do Not Disturb: Utilize apps and technology to defeat technology disruptions. See my previous post for ideas to use on your own devices.

3. Prioritize: Leaders and employees should frequently review department and business priorities. Each time someone requests of your time to accomplish their needs, simply use those priorities as a filter to determine whether the extra work is necessary or can wait for another time.

4. Closed-Door Policy: Even if you don’t actually have a door, schedule time on your calendar each day to accomplish tasks and projects. Turn off your email and phone. Hang a sign on your door telling others to “Come back later – brilliance is brewing.”

5. Clear the Clutter: Use the last 15 minutes of each workweek to tidy up, clear the clutter and prepare for a successful week. A clear space makes a clear mind and prevents distractions throughout the week.

6. Promote Breaks: Encourage employees to take periodic breaks from their work. Discourage them from eating at their desks as well. Promote taking time off for vacation, rest and recovery.

7. Maximize Your Best Time of Day: Everyone has a time of day they focus and concentrate best. Consider loading your toughest, most creative-thinking tasks during that time frame. Mine is early day, so I don’t schedule meetings during that time. When is yours?

8. 80/20 Rule: Stop trying to be perfect. Our attention is challenged, stress is increased and anxiety skyrockets when we are aiming for perfection. Let it go!

Need more ideas to maximize your focus and defeat workplace distractions? Check out my other blogs at neenjames.com/blog or contact us here. We can help you make the most of each workday by paying attention to what matters most.

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Best Practices Body Language Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

Is Rejection Leading You?

“Don’t fear rejection. Use it as a springboard to greater growth.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

If no one follows you, will you still lead?

Sometimes, leaders will not be accepted. That can occur even if the leader is good and have positive contributions to make to the rejecter. What do you do, or what have you done, when you’ve been such situations? That’s really the time when you have the greatest opportunity for self-growth. That’s really the time when you stand to learn the most about yourself.

Consider this, if you never experienced rejection how would you recognize it? How would you know how to deal with it?

Dealing with rejection allows you to test your thought process. It allows you to test your resolve. It allows you to give rejection a name and a face. That name and face can serve as a positive or negative motivator; your perspective determines how your perception of rejection is perceived.

Understanding that you give life to ‘rejection’ by the way you define it means, you can give it any meaning that you desire. Give it a positive meaning (e.g. “That’s not rejection. It’s an opportunity to make me better!”)

It’s very important to identify how you react to the perception of rejection because in order to be a leader you have to be able to lead yourself. The only way you can lead yourself is to know what leads you (temps you), why it leads you (it’s allure), and what you should do about it if anything at all. Thus, the feeling of rejection will allow you to lead yourself to despair or exhilaration.

Identifying the reasoning behind your perceptions, where rejection is concerned, will give you a new look into how you motivate yourself, how you keep moving forward, how you stay alive. Once you experience that deeper sense of awareness, you’ll be able to use the perception of rejection as a tool for greater expectation … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

Negotiations are 100% focused on the perception of rejection. That’s proven when you misperceive a gesture or offer that you think is against you. Even in that moment, the way you process information may cause you to experience the feeling of rejection.

The next time you sense rejection, slow down. Become reflective and consider what’s happening. Consider to what degree your perception is leading you to a place that won’t serve you. Consider how you can mentally turn your perception of rejection to a thought that serves you better. That will be the beginning of the shift that leads you to be more in touch with yourself. After your perception shift, you’ll be able to alter your perspective and the perception of the other negotiator.

 

What are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free 5-minute video on reading body language or to sign up for the “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

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