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Category: Growth

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Entrepreneurship Management Personal Development

What does mindset have to do with it?

Have you ever woken up on the “wrong side of the bed” followed by a bad day? Better yet, have you ever felt good for no reason and then had everything that day go perfectly?

Did you know that you created both of those realities? It’s your mindset that creates the world you live in and as Henry Ford said, “whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”

You might be thinking, “I’ve heard of this mindset thing, but isn’t it just for yogis and hippies?” The answer is NO! It’s for everyone and for anyone who is serious about taking control of their life. So let’s talk about what mindset is, what the right mindset can help you accomplish, and ways to create a mindset of abundance and possibilities.

This is not a concept I was brought up with, so if that’s true for you as well I’ll tell you this is something that can be learned and mastered.

Simply defined by the dictionary, mindset is an attitude, disposition, mood, intention, or inclination. But in this context what I’m talking about it is the power of your thoughts to create the world around you.

Do you see the glass half full or half empty? While that’s a cliché question, it has a lot of merit when talking about mindset. We all know people (family, friends, co-workers, etc.) that see the negative in any situation and assume the worst. These are the people who think the sky is falling all around them all the time. You also know people who see the good in all situations and really know how to make lemonade out of lemons. Actually they see the lemon as nothing more than the opportunity to make a drink they like. You might call them Pollyanna, but in reality these folks are living much happier lives than their “Chicken Little” counterparts.

Your current mindset, whether a half-full or half-empty belief pattern, has been with you for a while now. Your thoughts have been with you for a very long time and the older you are the longer you have held your beliefs. Your beliefs are the thoughts you have been thinking and if you have been in a negative place for a while now these are deep-seated beliefs.

The more I “play” with mindset the more I find that I have so much more control over my life than I could have imagined. Sure, I always knew I had some control, I can make choices, and do whatever I want, but I didn’t realize that I had actual control to create exactly what I want and have the exact perfect people show up at the exact right time. That is the type of creation I’m talking about. When I choose to have a positive mindset, one of abundance, I find positive people and abundant opportunities. When I choose to feel fear, disappointment, overwhelm, guilt, jealousy, or blame, the world around me provides more situations to match those feelings.

Without going into the science of how your brain works, what I want you to know is that you can start creating new thoughts, new neuropathways, new patterns, and new beliefs. Since your current beliefs are just reflections of your thoughts, then it is completely possible to change your thoughts in order to change your beliefs.

When you go to an event with the mindset that it is going to be boring, be a waste of time, and not be of any value, of course that is what you will receive because your mind will do everything to make that reality happen. Your mind needs the external world to match the internal world you have created through your thoughts. So if you have a mindset or attitude that something will be a waste of your time before you experience the event then your mind will get to work finding all the reasons that the event was a waste of time after it is over so that your outside world matches your inside world.

On the other hand if you go into the event with the simple mindset that “I am going to meet one new and interesting person” I guarantee that you will. You are going to create your reality by the words you use in your mind first.

Now don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying you can make a million dollars materialize in your bank account just by thinking about it. I am saying that you get to create the situations, people, interaction, and opportunities that can lead to the million-dollar idea or partnership. In order for that to occur you have to be ready to see those opportunities when they present themselves because they don’t show up with obvious neon flashing signs that say look at me over here, I’m the million-dollar idea you are looking for.

The question is – what are you doing in order to create the life you want? Do you know why you get up every day and go to work? Do you have a purpose behind what you do or do you just do it because “that’s what people do”? Are you allowing life to happen to you or are you making life happen?

The most successful athletes, artists, musicians, and business people have coaches because they know that the investment will help them create the mindset they need to get the results they want. They also invest in personal development, meditate, and focus on what they want rather than focusing on what they don’t want. They don’t just hope for the results they want; they go after the results they want. They understand the power of mindset.

Here’s an example (I love this story): Back in 1992, before his career really took off, Jim Carrey wrote himself a check for $10 million and on the memo line he wrote ‘for acting services rendered.’ He dated it for Thanksgiving 1995, approximately three years from that time. He stuck that check in his wallet and it was right before Thanksgiving 1995 that he was offered a role that would pay him $10 million. Watch this 3-minute interview on that story.

Do you want to be like Jim Carey and the elite who understand the power of and utilize mindset for what they want? Or do you want to be like the average person that spends their days letting circumstances just happen to them, focused on the negativity, and letting life pass them by.

You have to decide whether you are getting the results in life that you want. If you are not, its time to think, act, and be different because the only way to get different results is to start doing things differently. So how do you do that? It’s the difference between something being simple vs. easy. This in theory is simple; you don’t need to learn a new language, go back to school, or move to a monastery. However, that does not mean it’s easy.

Start small. There is no need to go big, which can quickly make you feel overwhelmed, say “see, I knew this was too hard,” and then quit. That’s a formula for disaster. You want to see success in this so start small and build. Find one thing every day to be grateful for. It can be the sun, your family, or your job. Even if you don’t like the work you do right now be grateful that you have the job. It puts food on the table, a roof over your head, and supports your family. When you know what you don’t want, you get clearer about what you do want. That means use any dissatisfaction at work to allow you to focus more on what you do want.

Then, once you have your gratitude in focus, make sure to state it in the positive. You will say, “I am grateful to know that I want a job that allows me to be
more creative.” Don’t say, “I want a job where I don’t have to make sales calls.” Always state what you are excited about rather than what you are not happy about. This is a subtle shift but will have you thinking with a different mindset.

Positive affirmations also help with a positive mindset. For some people it is a true affirmation with an I Am statement – I Am happy, I Am healthy, I am abundant. For others it may be focusing on positive quotes or prayers.

One of my favorite affirmations is, “today is a beautiful day full of infinite possibilities.”

If you are having challenges with positive affirmations and really believing what you are saying you can start with more general thoughts. You can be grateful for the abundance of sunshine. You can find something general that makes you happy and focus on that. Sometimes the key is to start small and once you get comfortable with this you will start to see abundance everywhere.

Another idea is to keep a journal, write down your thoughts and when one is negative ask yourself for another way to look at it that is positive.

So ask yourself: What am I grateful for? Start and/or end every day with gratitude, whether spoken aloud or written in a gratitude journal. These simple and small efforts are the first step on a journey to the life you truly are meant to live.

Categories
Best Practices Management Marketing Personal Development Women In Business

Navigating the On-Camera Interview

You’ve been invited to be interviewed on camera for TV, a video podcast or other virtual event. Does the voice inside your head say:

A: “Woohoo, this is a great chance to get some major publicity, I can’t wait!”

B: “I think I’m going to throw up.”

Most people get nervous when being interviewed, and even more people get nervous at the idea of being on camera. Put the two together and you have a combo that makes the fight-or-flight reflex kick into overdrive.

Aside from checking to make sure there’s no spinach between your teeth, you need to have a strategy to get the result you want. Check out this quick video for some proactive measures you can take in advance to direct the interview where YOU want it to go.

On the one hand, there are all of the delivery details I’ve discussed in other videos in this series like body language, voice, and how to calm your nerves when on camera.

But for interviews, it’s all about having a game plan.

Creating Your Interview Game Plan

First, who is conducting the interview, and what is their agenda? Do they showcase leaders whose story will serve as an inspiration for others? Or are they more likely to try to shoot holes in your theory?

There’s a huge difference between being a guest on a weekday morning television talk show and an evening television news program. The daytime interviews tend to be friendly and just want an interesting story that their listeners will enjoy. Evening news programs are more interested in getting “the scoop.” They enjoy conflict and putting people on the spot, particularly if you espouse a principle that their following tends to disagree with economically or politically.

Knowing what their intention is in advance can help you determine your own goal.

• Do you want people to pull out their smartphones and order your product or sign a petition right then and there?
• Do you want to educate more people about a growing problem – and solutions?
• Do you need to debunk some myths?

Depending on your desired outcome, you will decide in advance what stories to tell, what evidence to share, and how explicitly or implicitly you want to invite others to act.

If the interviewer is more likely to play a little hardball and ask a few tough questions, prepare your answers in advance. At this point in your career, you know what objections and challenges people tend to raise, so be prepared with how you want to respond.

Most importantly, remember that an interview is a conversation.
• DON’T just go on a monologue of statistics.

• DO take a conversational approach

• DO engage the interviewer by using his or her name once in a while, and

• DO give short, clear answers to allow the interviewer to volley back and forth with you without having to cut you off to get a word in edgewise.

Of course, that’s only half the battle.

It’s Not (Just) What You Say…

Once you have a sense of what information you want to share, you need to practice how you say it. I strongly recommend writing down a few questions – tough ones and lob balls – and practice answering them, but video record yourself while you do it!

The recording serves several purposes. First it lets you see how you look when you’re answering it. Are you squirming or poised? Do you smile at appropriate times, laugh nervously, or never even crack a smile?

Second, it lets you see how you sound when answering the questions. When you listen to the recording, you’ll realize when you’re rambling, when you’ve left out an important detail, or when you’ve given a great, laser-focused answer. Do you say “Actually” in every sentence (what I call the educated person’s “um”), stutter your way through an answer when you aren’t sure what to say, or mumble so quietly that you have to turn the volume all the way up on your ear buds to even hear what you’re saying?

Ideally, you should record your practice several times until you have figured out what information you want to include or leave out, and can answer the easy AND the hard questions smoothly and confidently.

When you are a good conversationalist with engaging examples and confident delivery, that’s when the wider audience will give you points for acing the interview and taking home the win.

Categories
Growth Leadership Operations Personal Development

Creating Dysfunction, Instead of Engagement, in Three Easy Steps

What if your leadership strategies were damaging performance of your team and you didn’t even know it?

Samuel Johnson once said, fraud dreads examination but truth invites it. In 2010, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority was dreading the next steps in the investigation on safety inspections. In a Wall Street Journal report, the MTA admitted that their workers often failed to do the required tests and maintenance on its subway signals. Furthermore, managers failed to properly manage the workers and failed to put processes in place to prevent them from filing the false reports.

Although the officials could not identify any accidents that may have resulted from the lack of inspection, this dysfunction is serious. Proper functioning signals will prevent delays and PREVENT ACCIDENTS. Proper functioning signals will stop a train if an operator misses a red light.

More recently, Wells Fargo fired over 5,000 employees because of a sales scandal. The bank leadership has claimed that the employees acted alone in opening 1.5 million false bank accounts and 565,000 fraudulent credit cards on behalf of its customers. The truth is the bank leadership created an environment which encouraged the fraud. (Lindzon, 2016)

What would cause a worker to commit fraud on something so important and avoiding accidents or to sell customers false accounts? Workers submitting false reports put passengers, the MTA, and themselves in danger. What would cause workers to be so dysfunctional? Three simple steps can easily do it:

1. Set stretch numerical goals beyond capabilities
2. Hold people accountable to those goals
3. Rely on inspection to catch errors

Many organizations set stretch numerical goals that are often beyond employee capabilities. This causes employees to take short-cuts. This is exactly what the MTA workers and the Wells Fargo sales people did. For the MTA, most of the problems occurred on the highest traffic areas because high traffic makes it much more difficult to do maintenance. Workers needing to dodge trains to ensure their own safety during the inspection tasks. Furthermore, the tasks of inspection and maintenance are arduous and complex.

For the Wells Fargo employees, the pressure to meet unrealistic goals was unbearable. There were constant conference calls and meetings to find out the status of the goals. Employees were told, “I don’t care how you reach the goals, just do it.”

Many organizations attempt to hold people accountable to overly challenging tasks or goals without knowing what the outcome will be. This is exactly what the MTA did. This creates dysfunction because it forces workers to either make short-cuts or to choose nefarious actions. They are often willing to do anything to relieve the pressure. They must achieve what management expects or risk being criticized for not doing their job, receive a lower performance evaluation rating, or worse. This is not the only place where this dysfunction plays out. Our high school (and college) students admit succumbing pressure to perform by cheating. Depending upon the study, 80-95% of students admit to surrendering to the cheating option.

Inspection is important but not as a way to ensure compliance. Inspection should be used to uncover important knowledge about how to improve the processes. It should not be used as a club to threaten employees with punishment. According to the article, the MTA’s inspector general looked for those individuals responsible for falsifying the reports. I wonder how much truth he/she will get with that approach.

Why not develop engagement instead? What should the MTA and Wells Fargo management teams do to improve safety, reduce costs and improve maintenance quality, and increase sales? The short answer is to engage the workers in creating the solutions and stop trying to catch them doing things wrong. Here are a few basic steps:

• Engage the workers to help improve the processes while helping them to feel safe and helping improve their productivity. Make it safe for them to tell the truth without fear of reprisal.
• Take their recommendations and fix their processes.
• Stop using inspection as a club and start using it to increase the knowledge to improve the processes again.
Are you creating dysfunction and then looking for the offenders so you can hit them with the inspection club? Stop. It’s hurting everyone. It is not leadership. It is dysfunction in three easy steps.

Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal. Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP. Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.

OptimumLeadershipTV

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Investing Management Personal Development

The Most Powerful Skill You Need to Succeed in the C-Suite

Demetri Argyropoulos Avant Global CEO and Founder

Whether you’re CEO of a multi-billion-dollar brand, or a start-up working towards Series A, there is one thing every executive has in common; you want to get to the next level and expand your customer base. Unfortunately, for most companies, it can be extremely challenging to keep up with change.

At the speed of light, corporate cultures are transforming and innovative technologies call for new leadership skills.

The upside is, regardless of how fast the world moves around you there’s one thing that will always stay the same, the most important skill you need to master to prosper in business.

Visionary entrepreneur Demetri Argyropoulos is well-known from New York to Silicon Valley as the king of connections.

His investment firm, Avant Global, has generated over $10 billion in revenue for clients and created strategic relationships for the world’s wealthiest, including Bill and Melinda Gates, Lady Gaga and Bill Clinton.

 

Argyropoulos was an early investor in Twitter, RedBull and DocuSign, and his Venture Capital fund, AG Venture Capital & Investments, has seeded over 50 diverse start-ups.

 

Argyropoulos credits his success to one invaluable skill…Networking.

 

C-Suite TV Correspondent Nicole Sawyer caught up with Demetri to talk about the most powerful skill you need to master to succeed in the C-Suite, and the biggest mistakes executives make when trying to build a strategic relationship.

 

Nicole Sawyer: What is the most powerful skill to have at the C-Suite Level?
Demetri Argyropoulos: The ability to bring value to your clients and your team. Typically, this value is brought forth through introducing and fostering unique relationships. All businesses and CEOs, despite how powerful they may be, depend on access to strategic relationships. These strategic relationships should monetize the company’s ecosystem, strengthen its platform and give a competitive edge over others with sustainable differentiation in the marketplace.

 

Sawyer: What personality traits do successful C-Suite Leaders have in common?
Argyropoulos: The most important trait we all have in common is the ability to know what the market wants before it actually happens. This comes from an innate understanding of one’s customers or clients. From there, you must be able to make decisions quickly, execute that vision, while staying one step ahead of the rest. All great CEOs are forecasters and firefighters.

 

Sawyer: When it comes to managing your own career, how do you prepare yourself to reach the next level?
Argyropoulos: I always have my ultimate end goal in mind. If you understand your end-game, you are able to manifest that into a reality. I always measure progress against this end goal and quantify it along the way with revenue, timelines and objectives.

 

Sawyer: How do you know who the right connections are for different types businesses?
Argyropoulos: The key here is to understand the objective at hand – what are you trying to accomplish? What is the client trying to achieve? Once you understand that objective, you need to dig deeper to understand the context. This is done through research and by understanding the current behavior at hand to figure out the next important introduction to make. And always remember, relationships only work if there’s equal or greater value on both sides.

 

Sawyer: You’ve worked with anyone from Bill Clinton to T-Boone Pickens, what is the secret to get their attention and maintain a business relationships with well-known people who are in high demand?
Argyropoulos: When you bring value to a relationship, even if it’s the busiest CEO on the planet, he or she will still make time for you. However, following-up is key, especially for those who are extremely busy. Most people don’t follow-up, which in business, can lead to distrust. You have to always do what you say you are going to do. It’s that simple.

 

Demetri Argyropoulos, Avant Global Founder with client T-Boone Pickens, Chairman and CEO of Hedge Fund BP Capital.

 

Sawyer: Where do business leaders fail when trying to create a relationship?
Argyropoulos: Oftentimes, their approach may be too aggressive and their message may not be clear enough.

 

Every successful relationship and every failed relationship is a consequence of one thing: how well, or poorly, you communicate. Clear communication is important to set from the beginning.

 

Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and ask the question, “Why do I want to work with this person?” Again the answer comes down to the value you can bring. Deliver value and these problems go away.

 

Sawyer: What are some of the biggest mistakes people make when following up?
Argyropoulos: They’re not entirely truthful. Be impeccable with your word. Just do what you say you’re actually going to do. This is so important when building trust in an influential relationship and so few actually do it.

 

Sawyer: What’s your advice for dealing with people you don’t like? Difficult people ?
Argyropoulos: Try not to. Seriously. I have a no a-hole rule. I’ve fired billionaire clients before because it just wasn’t worth it. At the end of the day, a billionaire is not better than someone starting out, and vice versa. You have to always respect others and the unique qualities and differences we all have.

 

Sawyer: If your personality is more of an introvert and networking doesn’t come natural to you? How can an individual make connections if they really don’t like talking to people?
Argyropoulos: For starters, that’s where companies like ours, Avant Global, come in handy. Sometimes we partner with, or get hired by executives who are not very social so we help to manage new relationships and introduce them to the businesses they need to get in front of. Let’s be clear, we’re not a social firm! But for those who are more introverted, we simply want them to be the best at what they excel at and we’ll do the rest. We can’t all be great at everything.

 

Sawyer: What’s one example of a major acquisition Avant Global made that transformed its valuation and what can business leaders learn from this example?
Argyropoulos: In the case of Owl Biomedical, we took its technology that had been developed and in existence for ten years and formed a new company with this technology in mind and capitalized on it. We sold it to a multi-billion dollar medical device company in Germany called Miltenyi.

 

From this example, business leaders can learn that if you know how to assemble the pieces of a company/deal: IP, human capital, and usually a combination of both, you then have all the key pieces … it becomes about execution and creating value to the market.

 

Sawyer: Your investment portfolio includes more than 50 diverse startups. What sectors are you watching to find value now?
Argyropoulos: We want someone who is ahead of the curve in terms of where the market is heading- who is that next big game changer? Right now we like the sectors of machine learning, data science and big data for startups. We’re also always looking for disruptive investments in high-growth companies in tech, energy, real estate and consumer products.

 

Sawyer: What qualities do successful entrepreneurs have that make them stand out from the herd?
Argyropoulos: All successful entrepreneurs are tenacious and never give up. Stay focused on your mission with your goal in mind. Successful entrepreneurs also aren’t afraid to fail because they have the ability to see things others may not. It’s okay to have bumps along the way, but that fresh perspective is what’s going to set you apart.

 

Sawyer: What advice do you have for a startup to break down barriers when approaching a well-known brand about a strategic partnership?
Argyropoulos: It’s a great time to be a startup. We’ve never seen so many large corporations working with startups. I’d advise a startup to think about how its technology could actually benefit the large brand it’s approaching. Many big companies realize that if they don’t change quickly with the times, and evolve, their number may be up. Startups should appeal to the larger brands to evolve with them.

 

Sawyer: You run a very successful VC Fund, what’s the best way for an entrepreneur to network with you if they are seeking funding?
Argyropoulos: Think to yourself “Why would Demetri and the Avant team want to meet with me? How can I bring value to their firm?” If you can clearly answer those questions, you’re already ahead of the curve.

 

Thanks for reading! We’d love to hear from you. Like us on Facebook, Follow on Twitter @NSawyerTV and comment below.

 

Categories
Growth Management Operations Personal Development

Why Customer Centricity Needs to be Woven Into the Fabric of Your Organization

It seems like everybody is using the term “customer-centric company.” But what does the phrase really mean?
Let’s start off our discussion by turning to the authority when doing online research – Google. When you Google the term customer centric (or centricity), you will find many definitions from many different sources, yet they all are remarkably similar. I like to use the term customer-focused instead of customer-centric. Most people would agree that a general definition of a customer-centric or customer-focused organization is one in which everything that is done is centered around the customer. In other words, before any decision is made, it is the customer who is foremost in each decision maker’s mind. The customer comes first in every new system being developed, every new line of merchandise being designed, every new location that is being discussed, every website change that is being considered – in one word, everything – will first merit a discussion about how it will impact the customer. In addition, all employees understand their role in creating the customer’s experience, even those employees who may never have direct contact with a customer.

Consider the following two examples.

After receiving multiple requests from its customers, a manufacturer decides to add a new splash of color to an existing line of merchandise. Why? It won’t cost much to set up for the new color and it’s a reasonable request. Thus, the customers are pleased because they now have an extra choice. The company’s decision was made easy because they knew their customers were asking for it. The company listened to their customers and then acted. The company knew that the decision to add another color to the line would make a positive customer impact. This one was easy.

But, what about a tough decision that a company knows will not be received well by the customer, such as a price increase? How do you make a decision like this while remaining customer focused?

Raising the price may not make the customer happy, but what might happen if the company doesn’t take this action? If the price doesn’t go up, something else may have to go down. Not raising the price might result in a drop in quality or service. The company may simply need to raise prices, even knowing the customer will not be happy. Or maybe the decision is about something behind the scenes that may be invisible to the customer, but may still may have a negative impact on the customer. An example might be a discussion to switch to an inferior supplier. If the correct decision is not made, it may affect the customer in an even greater way than a price increase.

Customer centricity shouldn’t be a concept that is just given lip service. It needs to be woven into the very fiber of the organization’s culture. The employees need to become the threads of the fabric, which is the culture that permeates throughout the organization. The best companies are like this. So, if you haven’t acted already, make the decision for your organization to be customer-focused. As a result, you will positively impact your customers, your employees and your bottom line.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Management Skills Women In Business

What does Your Body Language Say?


“A blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts … the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.” – Edward R. Murrow

You may know your content backwards and forwards, inside and out, and be completely confident in your subject, but is your non-verbal communication – i.e. your body language – undermining your authority in spite of your knowledge?

A little while ago, I was working with a client who didn’t realize that he was a “fidgeter.” After a first practice recording, he watched his video, and before offering any feedback, I asked him what he thought about his performance. He paused, and was quiet for a moment before very matter-of-factly declaring: “I’m going to cut off my hands.”

Running his fingers through his hair, folding and unfolding his arms, touching his face, hands in and out of the pockets, scratching his neck, lacing and unlacing his fingers… Not only did it distract the viewer from listening to the message, but more importantly, the “antsy-ness” (as my mother would call it) practically screamed of insecurity and discomfort, and this completely undermined his efforts to establish himself as a confident, competent leader.

What’s most important to realize is that before you even open your mouth to speak, your body has already communicated very specific messages to the audience, and those messages have one of only two possible effects: If aligned with your words, they strengthen your image and reputation; otherwise, they weaken it. That’s it.

The Importance of Alignment

This binary result is because when your words and body language are aligned or congruent, they reinforce each other, which is much more convincing to the audience. But when they are not in alignment – where perhaps your “script” seems confident but the delivery is not, or your words claim that you are caring and want to hear from people but you never smile and your voice is flat – it makes the audience question why, and this casts doubt.

When working with entrepreneurs preparing to pitch in front of investors, I always say, “Before anyone will buy your product or service, they have to buy into you.” Regardless of how well-composed the content of the pitch is, if the delivery isn’t in alignment, this will never happen.

Ultimately, alignment between verbal and non-verbal communication is the foundation of credibility. Lack of alignment destroys that foundation. Let’s look at ways to ensure that you are in alignment, in order to maximize your credibility.
Body Language – Do’s and Don’ts

Just about everyone gets nervous when speaking on camera (or in public without a camera), and in an earlier post I offered some strategies for calming your nerves ( insert hyperlink later). But that nervousness can come across as uncontrolled fidgeting and bad habits like touching your face or waving your arms around without realizing it, or on the flip side, you might come across as stiff, robotic and unfeeling.

In this video on body language, you’ll get a quick checklist with examples of non-verbal cues to watch for when speaking in public or on camera. I use the easy acronym P.E.G.S., which stands for Posture, Eye contact, Gestures and Smile.

Take a look at the examples for each category in the video to see how many of them you’re guilty of doing… then ask yourself how that might influence the success of the video’s overall objective.

In case there’s still a part of you that wants to argue that your position and experience speak for themselves, and your body language shouldn’t make a difference, I leave you with the immortal words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.”

When the way you deliver meets up with the words you say you are speaking in unison. That is when your intended message is reinforced and your credibility shines through.

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

High Performance Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is often characterized as a scientific, analytical way of thinking. It helps us form more knowledgeable opinions and make better decisions. As a business leader critical thinking is not only necessary, but when you become a high performance critical thinker it will differentiate you from others. This is impetrative today in the business world we live in with much more complicated technologies, customer demands, and drive to go to market quickly.

High performance is defined as better, faster, or more efficient than others and we all know about high performance sports cars that are in a class of their own. High performance also applies to leaders and like the car is carefully crafted to be elite, so can you.

I have no doubt that you already have strong critical thinking skills, but you can learn how to improve and develop your mind and become a much higher performing leader.

Here are three steps to high performance critical thinking:

1. Ask the right questions

If you are going to be high performance in the critical thinking department you need to make sure you have a clear understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve. This begins with how you clarify the problem and what questions you ask. You cannot make assumptions or have ambiguous information, which may seem obvious, but how many times did you think you had a clear picture only to find out later you were missing critical pieces of information? Pieces that could have easily been uncovered if better questions had been asked or different people had been questioned.

You won’t be able to reasonably analyze a situation and locate a solution if you’re not completely clear on what you’re trying to accomplish!

The best way to get a clear understanding fast is to ask questions, but not just any question, the right questions. You want to ask open-ended questions. These cannot be answered with a yes or no. You want to start all open-ended questions with who, what, how, why, where, or when. Close-ended questions that allow the respondent to say yes or no are the wrong questions if you want to be a high performing critical thinker.

For example instead of simply asking will this change have an impact to the project, ask the team what impact will this change have on the project? Who will be impacted, how long will the impact take to overcome, what is the benefit of the impact, etc.?

Don’t ask can we implement this idea; ask how can we implement this idea? Rather than asking can we do this, ask how can we do it?

You will also need to make sure you have asked everyone the questions and not assume that someone in a different department does not have valuable insight. Just because the problem is in one area of your business or on one team or in one project, it does not mean that understanding the problem lies only within that area.

Talking to the business users who will use the solution might best solve an IT problem, but you will never know if don’t ask. Maybe the impact is not that big and assumptions are being made. What if the solution that IT is working on will have an even bigger production impact to the users? Are you asking everyone that might have insight or ideas; and how confident are you that the right questions are being asked?

Many corporate challenges are systemic and uncovering that is going to lead to even better solutions. When a project breaks down it may be a symptom of a much larger issue than just the specific project. What if the policies in place throughout the organization are no longer adequate?

Lastly on the topic of asking questions: Make sure those you ask are open to answer freely without any repercussion and that they know that it is safe to tell the truth. Without this it really doesn’t matter how good the questions are that you ask.

2. Identify possible solutions

If you want better solutions, high performance solutions, you need a different way to come up with them once you have clarified the problem.

Start with a core group of people who are familiar with the problem. These are most likely the people who helped you identify the problem in the first place. This means that they could be people from different departments and different areas of your organization if you followed the guidance in step 1 above.

One of the biggest mistake leaders make is assuming that the executive team is best suited at coming up with the best solutions. Or even worse thinking that they must be the one to come up with the answer and work in a vacuum. You do not have to have the answer and knowing this is a key factor in being a high performance leader. The answer is in the room, but it may not always come from you. High performance leaders understand this.

Make sure it is crystal clear that there are no bad ideas, nothing is off topic, and no one will be reprimanded for anything said. And then mean it! If you cannot say this and mean it there is a much deeper issue you must face and that is an issue of ego. Great leaders check their ego at the door and that is something to start practicing if it’s a new idea for you.

Remove emotional attachment to the outcome. This means remove the emotional attachment to wanting to be the one who comes up with the solution and remove attachment to what you think the outcome should be. Go into this stage of the process with an open, clear, and present mind.

You’ve got the right people in the room now it’s time to restate the problem clearly so everyone knows what they are working towards. Allow everyone to ask their own clarifying questions and then start brainstorming. It may be beneficial to bring in a facilitator who is not close to the challenge to help with the brainstorming and discussion process.

Take some time with a pen and paper to define all possibilities. Brainstorm without thought as to how the solution can be implemented. Be creative, be open, and just write; don’t delete or omit anything yet. Bring other people into the brainstorm if there is a team of people who will help implement the solution or benefit from it.

To improve and develop your high performance critical thinking skills, you must be open to new ideas, so try and incorporate as many solutions and ideas as you can into your list. It does not matter initially how they could be implemented or how realistic they are. Everything that is said must be included in the list.

3. Analyze the Solutions

You have your problem clearly defined and now a list of solutions, so it’s time to start analyzing and gathering more detailed information in order to support or refute each one. This is where you will start to weed out the solutions on the list that just don’t seem the most viable and get down to the top 3 – 5 that have strong merit.

Gather as much information as possible to support all the solutions you’re considering, as well as information you need to refute them. Include the benefits and challenges of each suggested solution.

Ask each team member to work on different solutions to gather this information and bring it back. Considering your solutions from all angles will keep you from making a haphazard decision, and don’t assume you know anything without the information that can support it.

Once you have the information that supports your 3-5 top solutions start talking as a group. Ask lots of questions, open-ended questions, and start asking how. This is where the rubber will need to meet the road. The solution will need to be realistic in both tec
hnology and cost, specific enough to implement, and you must have or be able and willing to get the resources needed.

Final Thoughts

By following these steps to high performance critical thinking your organization can become faster, better, and more efficient at not only solving problems but identifying them earlier, saving time, money, and energy.

Thinking critically in this way can help you with many aspects in your life. Keep practicing these skills on a regular basis and soon you’ll enjoy the benefits of high performance critical thinking.

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Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development

Dissolving Problems: What Strategy Works Best?

Have you ever solved a problem only to see it return? We have all experienced this frustration. How can we reduce this frustration and make our best effort to prevent a problem from returning? What is the best strategy?

In March 2017 the United States Congress failed to pass a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare (Affordable Care Act). The media reported numerous reasons for this failure and most of them involve blaming a person or group of persons. Looking for the “culprit” is a popular strategy for attempting to dissolve a problem and it never really works. Focusing on who caused a problem is very popular but also very unsophisticated. It’s popular because it is easy and it helps us avoid personal responsibility. It is unsophisticated because it is a focus on symptoms and not root causes. How can we avoid blame and focus on the root causes? The answer, focus instead on the first 15%.

I painted a bathroom this past weekend. Taking extra time to carefully tape the trim allowed me to do a high-quality job faster and with less waste in the cleanup stage. I spent time on the first 15% of the job, namely the taping, and it helped me save time and to do better job overall. I focused on the first 15%.

“The secret for reduction in time of development is to put more effort into the early stages, and to study the interactions between stages.” (Deming, 1994)

The Butterfly Effect

A mild-mannered meteorologist professor at MIT was simulating weather patterns by entering data into a computer program. He decided to enter data dropping the last three decimals (ten thousand, hundred thousand, and millions) from the data seeing it as unimportant for his research. After the calculation, he was astonished to see how dropping those very small effects made an enormous impact on the outcome of the simulation. This effect came to be known as the “butterfly effect.” (Dizikes, 2011)

The metaphor of the butterfly is astonishing. The claim is a butterfly flapping its wings in New York will change the direction of a typhoon in the Pacific. Very small changes in the very beginning of a process will make an enormous change in the outcome. Focus on the first 15% to improve the outcome.

Typical managers use a different strategy. They ask questions about people such as “Who did this?” or “Who did that?” They also ask questions about fixing the issue, “How shall we fix it?” “When shall we fix it?” and/or “Who shall fix it?” They are assuming if they fix the problem they make progress. It’s not true. All they do is go back to where they started. The typical manager uses the typical performance appraisal to attempt to solve problems. This action rarely gets to the root cause because it does not focus on the first 15%. It focuses instead on the employee behavior which is most often not the root cause but instead the symptom. I could focus on being very careful not to get any paint on the trim in my bathroom and if I did, my wife could tell me to be more careful. But, because I had focused on covering the trim first my ability to be careful was less critical.

We must remove the root cause and we can only do that by looking in the right place. We must look at the beginning of the process. We must focus on the “0th” stage. To truly make progress we must improve the first 15% of the process.

Peter Drucker explained, “Progress is obtained only by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. When you solve problems, all you do it guarantee a return to normalcy.”

It is likely Congress chose the incorrect strategy in the first 15% of their planning and that poor choice damaged their ability to achieve their goal. What can we learn from these ideas? At the beginning of every project spend extra time to align the team members on the vision, the mission, and the action plan. Don’t be too quick to roll out the plan until this first 15% is clear.

When improving a process, identify all the steps that need to be completed to achieve the intended outcome and then spend most of your time on the first 15% of the process steps. This strategy will allow you to achieve an excellent outcome.

Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal. Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP. Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.

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Growth Health and Wellness Human Resources

3 Steps to Fearless Communication learned from the United Airlines Story

While the details of the removal of a passenger from a United Airlines flight are still being uncovered, there are many things to learn from this unacceptable outcome.

In all likelihood there were people who could have stopped this from escalating to what it became. There were people who had the skills to move through the conflict with calm and produce an ending that would have been quite different. There were people with courage and high ethical standards, right there, watching and feeling paralyzed by fear.

The situation got this bad because too many people thought they were powerless to suggest a change of course or break some rules.

As members of organizations, families and communities what do we need to learn from this episode?

We can’t stop bad things from happening. We CAN remind the people in our lives how simple it is to communicate without fear.

We CAN increase the number of times we feel confident and powerful and connected to others. When we feel connected to others we have less fear.

These are three ways I know to stave off fear.

Kindness is KING

Treat people well. Smile and say hello. Thank people for a job well done from the people who pack your groceries to the lobby attendant who hands you a pass to enter a building. Your positive energy actually increases when you are kind to people. It sets the stage for you to feel good and for the people around you to feel good too. Communicate kindness and you will feel more connected to people and situations.

Listen to LEARN

I can’t say this enough. People want to be heard. In even the smallest conversations, if you practice listening to people to learn something – other than listening for your moment to speak – you will feel lighter when you communicate and you will learn something that will take you out of your head. You’ll routinely learn more about people and how much you have in common.

GET COMFORTABLE Being Uncomfortable

We are suffering from a lack of confidence in conflict because people avoid conflict at all costs. Conflict is not fun but if we are regularly kind and know how to listen to people (because we do it so often) then conflict doesn’t seem so overwhelming.

If something is wrong we need to be able to say it is so. Take time to go over what this means with the people in your life. If you’re a manager and/or a parent, talk about speaking up and ask if there was something you could have done better. Encourage feedback that may be uncomfortable. When you do this, you too get to practice getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

I tell my teenage sons before they head out to a party or a large gathering of their peers, “Right before something bad happens there is no neon sign saying, ‘SOMETHING BAD IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN.’”

I remind them they’ve got to rely on their ability to see right from wrong. They must be able to stand up for themselves and/or remove themselves from a situation that’s escalating. Yes, I tell them I trust them even when there is a string of terror running through my body with memories of times when they got into trouble.

Fearless communication comes from within. It’s developed over time. It needs to start somewhere and be nurtured.

We are suffering from a lack of confidence in conflict. We can turn this around.

Imagine how much better this would have turned out if one or more people at United could say what they needed to say without fear.