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Category: Management

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Growth Health and Wellness Management Women In Business

Where to Begin Mindful Leadership? Centering

Our world is overwhelming. This is the third week of the last fifteen that a major shooting has been in the news as I write.

Our fear of being alone, or missing out on something important makes us feel we need to sift through the constant, unprecedented deluge of information coming at us, even though we know most of it is just noise. We have less recovery time between events, and we’re getting less of the sleep we need to rejuvenate. It’s unsustainable, it’s exhausting, and it leads to a mindlessness that takes a toll on our personal and professional lives.

Enter mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the practice of becoming fully present in the moment. It is often confused with meditation. While meditation is one form of mindfulness practice, it’s not the only one. In today’s 24/7/365 world where stress is rampant, mindfulness has been scientifically proven to reduce stress, decrease health challenges, and increase focus, resulting in a better quality of home and work life.

Mindfulness has seven practices. I’m going to guide you thru these steps. I intend this series will educate, connect, and hopefully inspire you to try each of the seven for just two to five minutes on the next seven posts—and all week long.

Week 1 Mini-Practice: Centering
Centering is practicing the process of reconnecting to the still, small voice inside of you. Centering in partnership with breathing and small hand motions will bring you back to you.

Today, push yourself away from your desk for just two minutes.  Yes, you can set a timer if it reduces your stress. Feel your breath enter through your nose and move through to your heart center, then exhale through your mouth. Do this three times. When was the last time you took a mindful breath?

Next time you are heading to a conversation that may be less than mindful, try centering. This practice, while simple, is not easy.  The more you try it this week, the more you are likely to let go of mindless and become more mindful.

Mindful Matters!

 

 

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

3 Bad Speaking Habits You Don’t Know You Have

If you’re like most people, even if you consider yourself to be a “pretty good” speaker, you know you could always be better. The irony is that, while that’s generally true, you probably don’t realize the actual problems you need to fix.

So let’s turn the microscope to three of the most common pitfalls to effective speaking.

  1. Fillers

We’re all familiar with the sins of the repeated “um,” “uh,” and “like,” “you know” and “I mean,” but fillers get much more sophisticated and subtle.

Words like “actually” and “really” can transform into what I call educated fillers. They seem to fit into the conversation, but repeatedly sneak into speech in places where they have no inherent value. They just chop up the sentence, making it harder for the listener to cognitively process the underlying message.

But where most of us get tripped up is the variety of fillers used. If you alternate between them as you speak, they’re less likely to be noticed… but still detract from the fluidity of the point you’re trying to make.

  1. The Vocal Cliff

The “vocal cliff” is what I call the habit of trailing off at the ends of your sentences. This happens for a variety of reasons. First, we tend to speak in a stream of consciousness, which is full of commas rather than periods. As you’re running along, you run out of air but don’t know where or how to refuel, so your voice creaks its way to a slow, grinding halt, much like if your car ran out of gas in the middle of the road.

Another cause of falling off the vocal cliff is when you’re halfway done with your point but your brain is jumping ahead, cueing up the next point you want to make so you don’t forget it, while your mouth struggles to catch up. Your lack of attention to what you’re currently saying comes through as your voice falls off the cliff. Stay present.

Or maybe you trail off because you lose confidence in what you’re saying after reading some displeased faces in the audience. This causes you to hold back, and you fall off the cliff, which projects your self-doubt.

  1. Negative Facial Expressions

As you listen to people, chances are, you don’t even know what kind of facial expressions you make, but more often than not they can convey negative thoughts. Maybe you’re just thinking about what the person is saying, but your “thinking face” has furrowed eyebrows and an ever-so-slight frown. This leads to two problems.

First, people will infer anger or disagreement, regardless of how you genuinely feel. Second, when you do speak, those down-angled facial features actually flatten your pitch and tone, making you also sound displeased. Even if that’s how you feel, do you really want to telegraph it so transparently? And if that does not accurately reflect your feelings, then you’re sending mixed messages and sabotaging your own credibility.

To avoid any of these pitfalls, awareness is the first and most important step. Don’t assume you know which habits you do or don’t have. Try video recording yourself talking on the phone. When you watch it afterwards, do you hear fillers creeping in, or does your voice fall off “the cliff”? Do you appear anxious or irritated? You’ll be amazed at what you discover, and what adjusting such small behaviors can do for your overall executive presence and leadership image.

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Do you have questions or comments about your bad habits or how to avoid them? If so, contact me at laura@vocalimpactproductions.com or click here to schedule a 20-minute focus call to discuss them with me personally!

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Growth Health and Wellness Management Women In Business

What is Mindfulness?

What is Mindfulness?

We live in world that demands our immediate attention 24/7/365.  We have created a culture that rewards busy, but also punishes it with poor health, stress, often relationship crisis and often-mental fatigue.  As the world seems to speed up year over year many professionals are opting for a different way – mindfulness

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the process of bringing your whole self, body, brain and spirit, awareness to the present moment.  It is taking moment to pause and calmly acknowledge how you are feeling and thinking in the present moment.

Mindfulness is not simply meditation.  It’s a way of being and a choice on your leading and living.

Mindfulness was named one of the 2018 business trends. There are seven practices to become a mindful CEO running a more peaceful, presence filled, and profitable company. I’ll share with you the strategies and research behind the companies applying mindfulness in the next 7 weeks.

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

You Always Have Control

“Change is ever occurring. Thus, you can embrace change and control it, or you will be controlled by change. The choice is yours but if you don’t make a choice, change will make the choice for you.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

www.TheMasterNegotiator.com

No matter what occurs in your life, you always have control. That’s true because you have the power and ability to change anything that doesn’t suit you. That change may be limited and limiting, but there’s a degree that you can influence change, you just have to seek what it is and what it means to change.

So, when you don’t like the outcome of a situation, seek to change it or the way you view it (i.e. change your mind per the meaning it has). Once you realize that you don’t have to be held captive by the outcome that change thrust upon you, you’ll feel better about how you can control the change that has occurred. That will allow you to see the perception of negative change from a more positive perspective … and everything will be right with the world.

 

 

 

 

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Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Personal Development

A Lot of Talk About Leadership, But…

I recently saw of list of what an organization considers the top 50 leadership gurus in the country. There were several familiar names on the list. Scott Love was not on the list. In this day and age, I see and hear a lot of talk about leadership, but I don’t see that much real leadership taking place.

Scott is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. When he was a twenty-two year old Ensign in the early 1990’s, he was in command of a U.S. Navy minesweeper. Yes, a minesweepers job is just what the name says. Scott Love has gone on to a successful career.

Leaders don’t become leaders because they write about the topic. They live it. They model it. They have followers. They are TRUSTED. They make positive things happen.

Yes, we do have leaders in our families, communities and in our workplaces. But don’t get confused with all the rhetoric – a real leader has a history and a life that clearly shows WHY we should follow them.

I think you will enjoy my conversation with Scott Love.

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Entrepreneurship Management Marketing Personal Development

Strategy and Strategic Thinking

When starting or expanding a business, having a strategy is important. A strategy is simply an action plan. It may be as simple as how will I get my first paying customer or how will I / we penetrate a new market with an existing or new product or service.

To develop a strategy – you need to continually get better at strategic thinking. This simply means how does your community, region, state and the country perceive your product or service. What’s in the news – real or fake – what are people believing and talking about? Understand what is going on around you. Then decide if you want to join in the flow or you want to “go against the grain”. Strategic thinking is what you will build your strategy or action plan around.

Learn for many sources. Ian Bremmer is a great source to learn about global issues, Tom Friedmann has his finger on the pulse of world and the United States politically and culturally, Mark Sanborn helps you become a better leader, NPR delivers great news updates and Ari Weinzweig is the best in the world at helping you develop a vision for your future. And, of course choose your own industry information sources. All this will help you to join in the flow with your startup or business expansion, or to decide to stand out from the competition by going against the tide.

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Management Personal Development

7 Ways Entrepreneurship Can Be Incorporated into Your Company Culture

Company culture is the foundation of relevancy for your business. A positive company culture fosters creativity, outside-the-box thinking, and imagination. Changing your company culture is not easy, but the benefits speak for themselves.

While building Barefoot Wine into a bestselling brand, we relied on seven steps to build a positive company culture:

  1. Remove Roadblocks: Structure can be limiting. If an employee’s great idea has to pass through more than one pair of hands, they can become discouraged and may even lose recognition for their work. At Barefoot, employees were able to present their ideas directly to management, avoiding unnecessary compliance processes.
  2. Acknowledge: When creative, thorough, and efficient work is recognized publicly, all of your employees are more likely to respect others as team players. On every employee’s work anniversary with Barefoot, we sent out a memo that outlined their accomplishments during their last year. Recognizing employees’ efforts sends a message that good work does not go unnoticed.
  3. Have Fun: Vendors, employees, and consumers alike all want to do business with fun people. Going along with the Barefoot brand, Michael was “Head Stomper” and CEO; Bonnie’s title was “Original Foot” since her foot was on the label. Doug McCorkle was our Controller and “The Cork”—because who else but our Controller would put a stop to it? A fun environment allows creativity to flourish.
  4. Make Mistakes Write: Don’t just make your mistakes right—make them write! Mistakes happen. Establish a culture that embraces this, as long as all of the blunders are identified. Allow any mistake to be an opportunity to put processes in place that will prevent it from happening again. Identify which documents need to be updated for the future, whether that’s a checklist, a new procedure, or a new policy. Establish a culture of permission—a culture that says, “Be creative and make mistakes as long as you hold yourself accountable.”
  5. Have a Two-Division Company: What set Barefoot apart was having two divisions, compared to a vertical structure with the CEO at the top and numerous departments on the bottom. We had Sales and Sales Support. That’s it! Product development, marketing, accounting, and the CEO were all part of the Sales Support division. If your company is all about the consumer experience, sales should be on top with everyone else supporting sales. Think of where your company would be without sales—it wouldn’t be!
  6. Pay for Performance: Paying your employees right will not only keep them there—it will keep them motivated. We established our pay structure with teamwork in mind. Since our employees’ bonuses and employer’s contribution to their 401k were partially reliant on performance, they were determined to excel, and to encourage their teammates to do the same.
  7. The Money Map: Set the precedent for your employees right when they start. We distributed an infographic that showed exactly how the money traveled from the consumer’s pockets into their In that moment, the sales process became transparent to the employee, and the stage was set for a positive sales culture.

Making changes to company culture starts at the top and radiates through the rest of the company. So, take a look at your management’s attitude toward everything from pay, to making mistakes, to having fun, and you will soon see where the changes are necessary.

For more, read on: http://csnetworkadvis.staging.wpengine.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

 

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Growth Management Operations Personal Development

Your Brand is Only as Strong as Your Weakest Link

Your Brand is Only as Strong as Your Weakest Link

Recently I was flying to a speaking engagement. While waiting for my flight to board I bought a yogurt parfait. After paying for it, I looked for a spoon. There were forks and knives, but no spoons. The little compartment next to the forks and knives was empty. I asked the cashier if they had any spoons. She pointed to where they weren’t. I told her they were out, and in an effort to get rid of me, she suggested that I could go to the restaurant next store and ask them for a spoon.

I walked by the first restaurant a few minutes later and there were plenty of spoons. Obviously, there were spoons somewhere. The employee just didn’t want to get them, when a customer needed them.

I didn’t want to make a scene over this, but I thought I’d mention something to the manager. He wasn’t there when I bought my yogurt. He apologized, but then said something interesting. He mentioned that the restaurant was managed by a group at the airport, so I really shouldn’t expect the same service or quality I am accustomed to at this company’s regular restaurants.

This was a major brand with locations throughout the US. The airport restaurant had the same signage, the same logo and looked just like any of the restaurants you would visit outside of the airport. I’m sure that any executive of this brand would cringe at the response the manager gave me… “I really shouldn’t expect the same service or quality I’m accustomed to…” Really?!

And, that is where our lesson begins. You see, it doesn’t matter if it is an airport restaurant, a small kiosk or a full-service restaurant. There must be a similar experience across all locations, regardless of size or where it is. The logo is the logo, and the brand is the brand!

Let’s switch industries and talk about an icon in the world of customer service. When Nordstrom decided to move into the online world, many of their customers were concerned that they would erode their reputation for amazing service. Management thought long and hard about how to create an online experience that matched the expectation of a Nordstrom customer, and they delivered. Regardless of location – instore or online – Nordstrom will always focus on making sure the customer has the best experience.

Now we move to an employee within a company. If there are 100 employees, and 99 of them are amazing, but one is not, what happens when a customer encounters the one who is not? You know the answer. That one bad employee just created the reputation for your brand – at least with that customer.

The old saying is that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Well, the brand is only as strong as its weakest location – or weakest employee.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

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Entrepreneurship Management Personal Development Women In Business

Good Times or Bad – You’re Still the CEO

Good Times or Bad…You are Still the CEO

Imagine coming home after a long day at the office as a mid-level manager in a small busy company. You are one of 175 employees, and it is hump day – the week is half over. Work is stressful and you are looking forward to decompressing. You stand in the entry of your home totally stunned by the notice in your hand. Your bank has sent a notice that the paycheck you deposited in the bank on Friday has bounced. What would you think or do?  In a company with a consistent degree of transparency this might be annoying but not a surprise. Your CEO may have warned you that times were rocky. You might be asked to reduce your salary but because of your belief in the company’s cause and your contribution to a cure, you stay the course. You believe.

In another home just down the street a different scenario is at play. Another bounced check another manager but the reaction is different. This manager had no idea what was happening behind closed doors. His imagination started running rampant and he is getting angrier by the minute. He goes to the phone and calls one person after another to vent and check if their checks bounced too. He goes to his computer and resignedly finds his last resume. He has had it!

Which type of CEO are you?  Not all CEOs are created equal. Some are hired guns others are the genius who came up with some bright idea in the first place. Some CEOs, the ones we usually hear about, are public CEOs whose high incomes are reported in good times and bad times.

There are many challenges that keep a CEO up at night.  As a CEO or C- Suite member you always have a choice of whether to be proactive or reactive.  What’s your plan?

 

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Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management News and Politics Personal Development Taxes

What I’m Thinking

I’m concerned with Inequality. Chuck Collins, great grandson of Chicago meat packer Oscar Mayer has been a great teacher for me. Too many of us only read and listen to Twitter feeds, or the talking heads on radio and TV and never really understand the economics, let alone the human dignity involved in racial, gender, and income inequality. Chuck’s book is “Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good”. Great read. Bill Gates, Sr. is part of the story.

As an executive coach, business consultant and business journalist I work hard to help my clients and Business Builders Show subscribers to go deeper on the issues they face today and will face tomorrow. I recommend they go beneath the headlines to understand what’s really happening in our system of governing. For instance – do you really understand the Estate Tax?

Click here to listen to my latest interviews with Chuck Collins. You can follow him at www.inequality.org.

Love to hear your feedback.