C-Suite Network™

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Growth Management Skills

Building Relative Vision

Vision is relative.

As organizational leaders, we thrive on the big picture. Not one senior leader that I have spoken with has said to me that this is a 9-5 job for them and that their sense of purpose ends when they leave in the evening. As senior organizational leaders and executives, we gain a great deal of motivation though building strategy, charting new courses though unexpected, and often turbulent, waters, and seeing our organizations reach new milestones in their journeys.

However, in every organization I have worked with there is also a level of stratification where the organization’s junior leaders lose this sense of purpose, and an “us versus them” mentality develops. The idea of “here’s the latest bit from the good idea fairy up at corporate, from people who don’t even know what we’re doing down here, which makes our job harder” is prevalent and demoralizing across teams in the majority of businesses.

The facts show this as well, studies published in Harvard Business Review, showcase a significant gap between strategy and execution. This gap presents a high failure rate which is often not based on having a successful plan but in having junior leaders execute successfully on what the senior leadership has proposed.

Though my coaching and consulting in the past two years I have found that the simplest explanation for this is the vision. Junior leadership often adopts the 9-5, just a job mentality, and the organization’s grander vision is reduced to a few bullet points which are posted in the company break room and given out at annual training events. The junior leaders lose their stake, their purpose in the organization is reduced to merely knocking out tasks without a grander idea of how those tasks contribute to the whole. Likewise, senior leaders are looking for people to execute, but provide no more substantial motivation towards that purpose besides, “it’s their job, do it.”

Building a relative vision is critical in today’s agile and change-orientated business environment. Junior leaders must build up their piece of the company’s overall vision. They must learn how their teams contribute, what their effect is on the larger scheme, and how they may more effectively chart a course through uncertain futures. Senior leaders must find the ways to begin bridging this gap. Simply posting company values and outlining KPIs is not enough. They have to become more inclusive in their strategy sessions, including ideas and input from their subordinate leaders, as well as providing mentoring and coaching opportunities towards these leaders’ personal and professional growth. From all these junior leaders must become more imposed to take action and hold ownership over their pieces of an organization; and as their competencies a grown are proven, they must be given more time and space to manage their teams without excessive or obtrusive management oversight.

All this creates a dynamic leadership structure where motivation is derived from a shared sense of purpose and direction. This shared mentality helps join leaders feel their place in business from more than someone who is merely trying to manage their teams time and resources to someone who is an active participant in a company’s success.

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Growth Leadership Personal Development

Need to Know Leadership Tips for 2019

ABOUT KARIN HURT & DAVID DYE:

Karin Hurt and David Dye are internationally recognized leadership and employee engagement experts, keynote leadership speakers, trainers, and the award-winning authors of Winning Well: A Manager s Guide to Getting Results Without Losing Your Soul.  The husband and wife team are the founders of Let’s Grow Leaders an international leadership development and consulting company located outside Washington D.C. Dye is a former executive and elected official with over two decades of experience leading teams, building organizations, and working with Boards of Directors to transform their effectiveness. A former Verizon Wireless executive, Hurt was named to Inc. Magazine’s list of great leadership speakers. Hurt and Dye are on a mission to  help leaders across industries increase their influence, solve common leadership frustrations, and improve productivity through practical leadership inspiration.

For more information, visit: http://letsgrowleaders.com

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Best Practices Growth Personal Development

Blogging and Relationship Marketing

Blogging and relationship marketing go together. Blogging shows your expertise – you’re connecting with clients, but you are not selling them anything. You are a resource and provide them with good information on your web site that can help them.

The focus of a blog is not selling. It’s more educating, communicating, persuading, and story telling. You’re making an investment in a relationship with your target audience, rather than bombarding them. Your clients are inundated with marketing messages from commercials, emails, billboards, and social media.

Blogging and Relationship Marketing go Hand in Hand

Use your blog to educate, entertain, and teach them something new. By doing that you start to build that “Know, Like and Trust” factor. It’s about them.

People listen to two different radio stations, especially on the Internet and face-to-face. Many like to broadcast on the radio station WIIAM. What WIIAM stands for is “What Is Interesting About Me”. When people are searching out content on the Internet or social media, people are listening to WIIFM: “What’s In It For Me”.

As we know in radio, AM is a lower frequency and doesn’t have the quality as FM, which is better for music and sounds better. People are much more interested in “How Can You Help Me” as opposed to “Who You Are” and “What You Do”. That’s one of the biggest mistakes that people make is that they’re constantly trying to sell and promote themselves. Instead, provide great information on a blog that helps the other person.

There is a common misperception among many business owners, which is it’s effective to say, “Let me tell you all about the services that I offer”. Blogging and relationship marketing supply information to the prospect that will entice the client to find out find out more. This is one of the primary purposes of a blog.

A real relationship takes time. It takes caring and giving equal benefits to both sides. Building a relationship in relationship marketing is about thinking about “What’s In It for Them” that I can provide that’s different.

  • “How can I be a resource?”
  • “How can I be a support mechanism?”
  • “How can I give them something that everybody else in the marketplace is not doing other than trying to come in, get work and take their money?”

Blogging and relationship marketing put some of the pieces of the puzzle together.

Pat Iyer has been blogging since 2009. She’s written thousands of blog posts. Connect with her and read her writing tips blogs on www.Patiyer.com.

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Best Practices Culture Entrepreneurship Industries Leadership Skills Technology

Will A.I. Disrupt Your Profession?

Artificial intelligence (A.I.) is a technological advance for humankind that has some people excited and others terrified of what is to come. The main concern is rooted in what A.I. will do to jobs, and how we as human beings will be affected by changes in digital and mechanical techniques.

A.I. and other new forms of autonomous machine function are in the process of transforming our personal and professional lives, and this represents a Hard Trend that will happen and a subject I’ve discussed for decades now. We are just starting to see some incredible progression in the A.I. space, giving us a chance to pre-solve problems involved in real-world applications of A.I.

But while function is one thing, the newfound transformation we’ve watched come to fruition is coming from machine learning, a subset of A.I. that enables machines to become better at tasks that were previously dependent on human intelligence. With advances in a machine’s capability to think and learn like people, it’s easier than ever to pre-program physical functions so A.I. can take over menial or mundane tasks. Take, for example, a study conducted by legal tech startup LawGeex, which challenged 20 experienced lawyers to test their skills and knowledge against an A.I.-powered system the company built.

A lawyer is not often considered replaceable by technology or artificial intelligence. In this challenge, the task was to review risks contained in five nondisclosure agreements — a simple undertaking given the group of legal professionals, which included associates and in-house lawyers from Goldman Sachs, Cisco, and Alston & Bird, as well as general counsel and sole practitioners. This lineup should easily have triumphed over an A.I.-powered algorithm, right?

Wrong.

As a matter of fact, the study revealed that the A.I. system actually matched the top-performing lawyer for accuracy, as both achieved 94%. As a group, the lawyers managed an average of 85%, with the worst performer scoring a 67%.

But what about the speed of those decisions? When reviewing the nondisclosure agreements, the A.I. system far outpaced the group, taking just 26 seconds to review all five documents, compared to the lawyers’ average speed of 92 minutes. That is a tremendous spread when compared to the near-perfect accuracy the algorithm performed at in that time! The fastest review time of a single lawyer in the group was 51 minutes — over 100 times slower than the A.I. system! And the slowest time was nearly a standstill pace, as it clocked in at 156 minutes.

While reviewing documents is just one of several parts of the job of a lawyer, this data further proves the Hard Trend that I implore everyone to pay attention to in the years to come. Artificial intelligence is here to stay, and by using machine learning and deep learning techniques, new A.I. systems are learning how to think better and better every day. So the question remains: Are you anticipating how A.I. can be used to automate tasks and do things that might seem impossible today — in other words, disrupt your industry? Are you starting to learn more about A.I. so that you can become a positive disruptor rather than become the disrupted?   

For now, according to consultants, the fact remains that 23% of legal work can be easily performed using artificial intelligence; however, there are many aspects of a lawyer’s job, the obvious example being providing an emotional and compelling closing argument in court, that are currently beyond the capabilities of algorithms. While that may be the case today, what’s next? Using methods that I discuss in my latest book, The Anticipatory Organization, you can learn how to become an anticipatory thinker and be more entrepreneurial in the ways you apply A.I. technology to your profession.

Take the example of Alexa, which is utilized in an ever-growing number of applications, from ordering groceries to playing our favorite song during dinnertime. This device, enabled by A.I., has learned our routines and how to serve us better each day by listening to us ask it questions or give it tasks to accomplish.

Netflix and Spotify media streaming services are using A.I. to learn what we like to listen to or watch, and then, using this knowledge combined with their own databases, they can quickly suggest other songs or shows we may also enjoy. Over time they increasingly learn to understand the dynamics of what we like, recognizing our patterns enough to suggest new things to us we will most likely enjoy — very much like a best friend would introduce us to a new music group.

These are just two examples of many A.I.-enabled services that have been integrated into our lives, yet it was not too long ago that applications like these would have been viewed as an impossibility. In a relatively short amount of time they have become second nature in our lives. If A.I. can quickly accomplish a lawyer’s task today, then it can also learn how to accomplish many tasks in industries once thought untouchable by automation and machine learning, such as medicine, finance and design.

As an entrepreneur, it is increasingly important to understand what A.I. can do to create  business value. A.I. is presently forecast to reach nearly $4 trillion by 2022. Reacting to this opportunity will only keep you behind and disrupted. It’s time to learn to become anticipatory leaders in our fields, solving problems before they happen, and elevating our thinking to actively shape a positive future for ourselves and others.

If you would like to learn more about how you can better anticipate transformation in the professional world and developments in artificial intelligence, then be sure to pick up my latest book, The Anticipatory Organization. Let me help you take your career to the next level and remain indispensable in an ever-changing technological frontier.

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

Negotiator Win: Know How to Turn Weakness to Power

“Weakness, like power, is perceptional. Knowing when to display one can expose the other.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

Have you ever employed the initial appearance of weakness as a tactic in a negotiation? It can be a great way to gather valuable information. When the other negotiator sees you in a weakened position, that’s the time when you can turn your perceived weakness into a source of power. Observe the following to do so.

The Opening – Setting the Stage:

To set yourself up to be perceived as weak, consider the following strategies.

  • At the opening of the negotiation, offer a weak handshake; this positioning is enhanced by allowing your hand to be on the bottom of the handshake (i.e. the other negotiator’s hand on top of yours). That will subliminally signal subjugation on your part.
  • Project a sense of slowness to grasp points. Don’t overplay your hand. Remember, you’re playing the role of someone that’s not sure of himself.
  • Allow yourself to be maneuvered by making concessions quickly when doing so is not detrimental to your position.
  • Refer to having to consult a higher authority when pushed too hard for a concession; that’ll convey a sense of powerlessness.
  • While engaging in the processes above, seek to uncover the other negotiator’s source(s) of power. You can use that as leverage against him later in the negotiation.

Mid Game – The Turn:

This is the point at which your demeanor transformation begins.

  • Know the strength of your resources compared to your opponent. That will be your source of power. You can use it as leverage during the negotiation to thwart his efforts.
  • During the negotiation, be prepared to refer to a higher authority that trumpets the other negotiator (e.g. him – we reached a multimillion-dollar deal with company x last year, you – we know that and they’re talking with us this year; I guess they didn’t like the results of your deal.)
  • Create a false sense of value with red herrings as chits that you can trade later for items and concessions of importance.

End Game – The Closing:

This is the time you employ tactics that display, you’re no longer a weakling.

  • Begin to use the red herrings you set up in the prior phase to enhance your negotiation position. Be stubbornly diligent when making concessions at this point. Your efforts should send a subliminal message that indicates, you’re going to be a tough negotiator from this point on.
  • Once you’ve engaged in the strategies above, be cautious. You will have transformed yourself from the weakling you initially appeared to be into a titan. The other negotiator will realize that he’s dealing with someone that’s more astute than he originally thought. That will cause him to raise his guard. He’ll also be seeking ways to adjust his negotiation strategies to match his new reality.

The timeframe and phases mentioned above still have to be accompanied with the negotiation strategies that are appropriate for the type of negotiation you’re in. Thus, the outline above should serve as a foundation to which you can add more specifics steps to fit your situation. By using this outline, you’ll be well on your way to creating a roadmap that leads to more successful negotiation outcomes … 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 “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.TheMasterNegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#Power #Weakness #value #Hide #bodylanguage #Negotiator #Business #Management #SmallBusiness #Money #Negotiating #combat #negotiatingwithabully #bully #bullies #bullying #Negotiations #PersonalDevelopment #HandlingObjections #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #psychology #NegotiationPsychology

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Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

10 Simple Ways to Improve Your People Skills

Much of your success in life hinges on your ability to understand and interact with people. Use these tips to up your people-skills game.

No matter what new technologies and systems you put in place to grow your business, how to work with people will always matter most. To develop natural charm and innate people skills requires effort along with trial and error. Here are ten simple ways to help improve your natural charm and create real connections to build more powerful people skills:

1. Talk to others about what they want to hear

People often hear only what they want or need. The things potential customers want to hear most are how you can serve their goals, interests, ideas, experiences and aspirations. Talk about that, and you’ll get and hold their attention without difficulty.

2. Take a training course

Invest in learning how to communicate more effectively. This will pay off in every aspect of your business and your personal life. The highest-paid and

most powerful people on the planet are all master communicators who have learned how to take control of even the most challenging situations, understand the art of persuasion, and know how to recognize and use persuasive strategies. Good communication leads to success!

3. Show appreciation

Make it a habit to thank others for everything they do to support you. A simple “thank you” makes others feel appreciated. You benefit in return by having good feelings about making others feel good. And you also benefit by making others think better of you, making them want to do more good things for you in return. The more you genuinely show others you care, the easier it will be to make a good impression on them.

4. Give genuine, sincere compliments

When you compliment someone about a trait, skill, accomplishment, or possession, it gives them feelings of recognition and value. The more you pay close attention to customers, the more important they feel. When you pay compliments often, even on small things, it helps build rapport.

5. Act honorably and treat others with respect

Always do the right thing, even when no one’s watching. That’s how you build a positive business reputation. Reputation isn’t purchased; it’s earned. We’ve all heard this: “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” This is the Golden Rule in business that should govern your attitudes, thoughts, words, and actions.

6. Identify personal core values

Clarifying your core values highlights what you stand for. Your core values also represent your uniqueness and personal style. They guide your behavior and provide you with a personal code of conduct. When you honor your core values consistently, you experience fulfillment in every part of life. And when you don’t, you become incongruent in your business practices. For example, if one of your core values is to offer high- quality customer service, yet your employees don’t show customers the respect they deserve, that’s a problem because you’re working outside your core business values. To turn it around, you must empower your team to match every area of your core values, including valuing customers.

7. Commit to good business ethics

Practicing good business ethics should go without saying. So why are there still so many unethical

businesspeople out there? Ethics are your moral judgment about what’s right and what’s wrong. Good ethics simply make good business sense!
Success comes easily when you act with honesty and integrity at all times. Good ethics require dealing honestly in your business, backing up your products and services, and treating everyone fairly. A lack of business ethics endangers your future success and jeopardizes your reputation. If you believe that, like karma, what goes around comes around, always practice good ethics.

8. Remain true to your authentic self

Remaining true to your beliefs helps you sincerely connect to others. Pretending to be something you’re not makes doing business hard. You can’t manipulate your personality to seek approval or avoid disapproval. Authenticity isn’t defined by your title, position, or role. It’s all about being true to your heart and your destiny. This requires you to trust yourself, embrace your uniqueness, share your gifts, and learn to be present in the moment.

For example, one of the greatest compliments I get from audience members after giving a speech is, “You’re so real and authentic. I felt like you were speaking directly to me.” Hearing this always warms

my heart. It’s my goal to always be in the moment, make a personal connection (no matter how large the audience is), and share my knowledge with the audience. It’s about connecting your head and heart to make an impact.

9. Build confidence to make stronger connections

Being confident earns you the respect of others. Confidence shows in many ways, including your mannerisms, appearance, and the way you talk, walk, and listen to people. To become more confident, you must respect and accept yourself as you are right now. You are unique in your own way. Accepting yourself and your flaws without any inner conflict helps build confidence.

Take responsibility for your success by having confidence, which is independent of all external factors, especially the things beyond your control. Confident people talk assertively, strike an assured pose, and use a certain tone of voice. Confidence allows you to be tough in business, but tough doesn’t mean you can’t still be friendly and approachable. Having true confidence is about being daringly honest and truthful at all times.

10. Tackle problems with a positive mental attitude
Positive thinking allows you to try to solve problems through constructive action. A positive mental attitude lets you build strengths and overcome weaknesses. It helps you realize you’re born for greatness because within you is the power to make any dream a reality.

Categories
Best Practices Investing Personal Development Sales

Your 2019 Resolution: Control the Suck of Discounting Expense

There is almost nothing you can do for your business with a higher financial payback than getting your arms around your discounting practices. I want you to make a New Year’s resolution to put rigor and discipline around your discounting (some call it “pricing exceptions”) policy and processes.

Why is this so important for your business?  Simple math.  When you sell your product or service to a customer, your costs to fulfill your part of the deal are the same—regardless of whether you discounted or not.

Discounting changes only two lines on your P&L statement: the top line and the bottom line.

When you grant a discount, every dollar you surrendered comes off of your bottom line, and goes to the customer’s.

For an operating business, your profits are made at the top line.  A pricing and/or discounting decision is what drives profits.  Once you see a number on the bottom line, it’s too late to do anything about it.  Discount expense sucks the life out of companies.

Resolution Part #1. Take Stock of Your Current Discounting Practices.

I am thrilled to help my readers analyze where their discount dollars go and their system for allocating those dollars. Let’s examine how you make discounting decisions together.  If you’d like to prepare, or go through the exercise on your own.  Some of the questions we’ll go through:

How many discount dollars do you spend per year?

  • Formal, through an exception process?
  • Invisible, through salesperson autonomy?
  • Does everyone in your company know that discount dollars=profit dollars? Do they act like it?

What is your price exception/discount process now?

  • What are the steps?
  • Who are the players?
  • What information/documentation is used?
  • How is the discount justified?
    • Is customer value measured/characterized? How?
  • Do you always know what the customer thinks of yours andthe competitor’s value (or just their price)?
  • How consistently do your people follow your process?
  • Have you (or can we) analyze how discount dollars are distributed? Are there concentrations by territory/salesperson, region, customer, industry, time of year?  Can we explain any apparent anomalies?
  • What do we get in exchange for price concessions?Are there any salesperson/regional/market trends in that data?

What These Questions Uncover.

The first thing we’ll discover is how well you track discount dollars. Since every one of these dollars is also a profit dollar, you need to know where every one goes. If you don’t know where your discount dollars go, your business is leaking profits.

The questions above help both of us understand how you make pricing and discounting decisions, where the discount dollars go, and if there are any suspicious trends.

Are my discount dollars being over-allocated toward:

  • The whiniest salespeople?
  • The favorite salespeople?
  • The whiniest customers?
  • A certain market?
  • At a certain time of the month/quarter/year?

That last one frustrates the heck out of me: I’ve held P&L responsibility, and have never felt that an unprofitable booking this month beats a profitable booking next month.  I’d feel that way even without the perversion of what month-end discounting teaches my customers.

I also want to explore the basis of discounting (whether/how much) decisions.  Squeaky wheel?  Best at gaming the system?  Price-based? Or…value based?

The Gold Standard of Discount Systems:  Customer Value Based.

99% of the time you hear “your price is too high”, what the person is really saying is either “your value is too low”, or “I’m inviting you to help me understand your value”.  I specialize in helping my clients have those discussions effectively. I can point you to a methodology which will steer those conversations toward value and away from price…and certainly away from unnecessary discounts.

If you have a solid methodology for understanding customer value, some great things happen to your discounting practices:

  • Discounting is purposeful. It no longer feels as random or arbitrary.
    • Your people will understand the system and feel more fairly treated
    • You might quiet the squeaky wheels; the people who scream the loudest for discounts.
  • You will be confident in your discounting decisions.
    • You’ll make better decisions about product enhancements, market entries, even market exits.
  • You will discount less and profit more.
  • You will produce more accurate forecasts. Knowing customer value is the same as knowing customer motivation. When you truly know value, you are intimately engaged with the customer’s innermost buying decision dynamics.

Resolution Part #2. Build A Value Based Pricing/Discounting System.

I can help you if you want.  Here are some options:

1. I’m feeling pretty good about the latest draft of my book on the subject.  If you’ll give me merciless feedback on it, I’ll send you a .pdf copy to review.  The book will guide you toward developing a better pricing/discounting system.

2. Let’s talk. Reach out at mark@boundyconsulting.com.  If you want to work toward a system together, prepare for our call by looking through the “take stock” questions above, and  prepare any questions for me.

Whatever you do, and however you choose to get help, please do it. The road to failure is paved with poorly justified discounting decisions.  I want you on a better path.

To your success!

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Investing Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

Are You Being Manipulated?

“Manipulation is a means to an end. If you don’t like what may lie at that end, control the means.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

Everyone’s manipulated. Are you aware when it happens to you? If you know when it’s occurring, how does it feel? Sometimes, when people knowingly allow others to manipulate them, their mind becomes susceptible to being tranquil. Without knowing it, they become more vulnerable to manipulation. Are you aware when you’re in such a state?

“She said she was waiting for me. So, I sped up and a cop stopped me for speeding. When I arrived at the meeting location, I discovered she wasn’t there. She wanted me to think she’d arrived. I realized she’d manipulated me. The cost of that manipulation could have been a speeding ticket had the officer given me one; fortunately, he let me go with a warning.” Those were the solemn words of an account manager to his business associates about how he’d been manipulated.

Every day of your life, you’re manipulated. To control the degree that you’re manipulated, take note …

The degree of manipulation:

The more desperate someone becomes to reach a goal, the more irrational their efforts may appear to obtain it. Note the ratcheting degree of their efforts. Heightened attempts to manipulate you may occur during such times. If someone appears to border on irrationality, intensify your sense of awareness. It’s also the time that you might be most vulnerable to being manipulated, due to a proposal appearing too good to be true. Raise your guard higher and be mindful of your thought process during such times to ward off manipulative tactics.

Understand the intent of manipulation:

There are different forms of manipulation. Thus, the word ‘manipulate’ does not necessarily have to convey a negative sentiment. There are good forms of manipulation (e.g. keeping you from harm’s way). Thus, you should assess if the attempt to manipulate you is for your betterment or detriment.

If attempts to improve your plight are made through disguised means, you should be aware of such tactics even though they’re not as potentially damaging as those that might be applied for nefarious purposes. The point is, someone is still attempting to manipulate you, which means they’re trying to control you. For better or worse, you should always maintain control of yourself. Even if you wish to relinquish control, you’re the one in control of that decision.

The greater your understanding of someone’s manipulation intent, the more understanding you’ll possess about the efforts and where such is attempting to lead you. If you don’t wish to go there, don’t allow the manipulation to continue.

Someone attempts to manipulate you every day. You can control their efforts by controlling yourself. Once you do, you’ll exert greater control over your life … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations? 

Manipulation occurs in every negotiation. You and the opposing negotiator engage in it to alter the other’s perspective. The more insight you have about his goal for the negotiation and the strategies he might employ to obtain it, the greater insight you’ll have about the manipulative tactics he’ll employ to reach it. That will give you a mental form of protection, which should allow you to be more understanding of how to control his efforts. In so doing, keep your emotions in check. That’ll lead you to even greater control of the negotiation. To control your emotions, remember, you’re attempting to do the same thing to him that he’s attempting to do to you.

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 “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#Manipulation #Success #Emotion #Business #Progress #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #liars #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions

 

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Entrepreneurship Leadership Personal Development

A Search for Consciousness in Business

That wave of pride you feel when crossing the finish line of a hard-trained-for marathon. The swooning epiphany that you’re in love while holding hands in Italy. The rush of excitement that hits when you walk into a concert to see your favorite band play for the first time.

The most beautiful “aha” moments of our personal lives are marked by consciousness—a state that taps into our very reason for being and allows us to experience the joy of living. For most of us, that feeling of being totally present and aware in our day-to-day professional lives is less common. It can be cultivated, however, and when consciousness is embraced in the place where you spend most of your waking hours, it will set your business apart from the masses.

Understanding Consciousness, and its Business Potential

According to Merriam-Webster, consciousness is “the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself.” Taken further, it can be likened to a state of awareness, which is the “knowledge or understanding that something is happening or exists.”

In my view, consciousness is the ability to take in every single sensation and feeling in the moment, while using those insights to bring about actions that drive results. Living consciously allows you to be aware of what is transpiring around and within you, creating possibilities of forward movement. However you define consciousness, it is fundamentally a personal and purpose-directed mindset.

In business, consciousness can be a game-changing approach. According to a study conducted by Imperative, “58 percent of companies with a clearly-articulated purpose achieved growth of 10 percent or more over the past three years. 85 percent of companies with clearly-articulated purpose showed some growth overall, while 42 percent of companies without it sowed negative growth.” It will probably come as no surprise to you that the discussion of consciousness in business is very uncommon.

Overcoming Misperceptions

In my 17 years working with thousands of people in the billion-dollar automotive industry, I never once heard a leader describe consciousness as a focal point. Why? For the simple reason that consciousness through purpose-driven effort is not an everyday conversation for the majority of profit-only focused companies.

While consciousness may be perceived as too touchy-feely, the reality is that automotive leaders are missing out on a huge opportunity to get more from—and give more to—millions of employees craving a new ethos in an industry riddled with historical guilt, mistrust and greed. Though these individuals joined the auto industry to create a life for their families, many are conflicted by the need to overcome a hundred-year-old mindset led by profit-driven treatment that taught customers how to block and tackle as soon as they walked in the door. I’ve learned from speaking with numerous employees who say their jobs make them sick or that their leaders do not care are hungry for a shift and desire this “mythical” purpose approach that stretches beyond profit.

Specifically, they are hungry for consciousness, and they are not alone. Industries across the world are experiencing what I call the need to Shift Awake.

The D(Evolution) of a Conscious-Less Corporate Culture

Nowhere is the need to shift toward consciousness more apparent than in an organization where the top priority is shareholder profitability. In many organizations, the ultimate goal is shareholder profitability which drives quarterly and annual targets, which drives department objectives and employee projects and responsibilities. In an effort to increase profitability, typically these targets are solely focused on cost-cutting measures or revenue-generating efforts. I’m sure many of you are nodding your head. These efforts, when running as planned and market demands are met – companies hit their targets, resulting in more money in the pockets of the shareholders and voila, the company is still in business. Yes, there are a variety of other scenarios that play out, but for the basis of my next example, let’s keep what I’m about to say pedestrian.

During these moments, when organizations are profitability-focused have you ever wondered what is happening to the employees at a deeper level of the business? What they typically hear is – more, more, more. Sell more. Cut more. Create more. Also, let’s add in – sleep less, care less, and work with less. At the sake of hitting their targets, there is less focus on keeping the employee engaged and more effort expended toward filling the pockets of those at the top.

This is one example of a conscious-less organization which is the basis for most of our free-enterprise corporations and the reason capitalism gets such a bad rap. The consequences of a conscious-less led company do not happen immediately, but quite the reverse. You will often see high profits, high productivity and market domination out of the gate. Their success overshadows any need to reevaluate the way business is done.

Due the pressure, it is only a matter of time that a fissure in the foundation will start. Silently and slowly it begins to erode the growth they’ve had for years. A company may see their turnover creep up, maybe it’s just in one department at a time, so the effects are not widely visible. Once employees become disengaged, their customers begin to feel it. A dip in customer loyalty happens and the company thinks it’s a one-off. Inevitably there is a downward spiral that occurs, and the company comes to a point where they need to evaluate.

In other words, sometimes attained targets and full pockets for the leaders at the top come at the expense of employee engagement, customer satisfaction and, ultimately, success.

This is where the shift happens…or it doesn’t. Either the company will continue to overwork their people, drive customers away and reduce product quality to make profit miraculously appear—or they will wake up and recognize that something has to change. Even if they do wake up, many companies don’t know where to start because the idea of leading in a different way is so foreign. As a result, not all companies in our capitalist society survive the need to Shift Awake.

The Case for Conscious Capitalism

Believe it or not, there are already companies thriving in a conscious state of mind with a purposeful business model that factors in all stakeholders in addition to profit. They have an ethos strategy that creates a feeling of belonging and empathy, considers all people involved and empowers them to grow and develop. It’s a strategy that will come full circle as they give back to the company and the world around it.

This is known as “conscious capitalism,” a term coined by Raj Sisodia and John Mackey that begins to explain what these companies are doing differently to drive results and keep their people happy. According to the two authors, “in business as in other aspects of life, being conscious means taking responsibility for all the consequences of our actions, not just the ones that reflect well on us. The wonderful thing about thinking in a conscious way about business is that it enables businesses to make decisions in such a way that they have positive impacts in multiple dimensions for all stakeholders. This is far more fulfilling than simply striving to create financial wealth for shareholders.”

It’s an approach that yields much more than just a good feeling. Many companies that operate under conscious capitalism—including Amazon, Patagonia and the Container Store—have experienced growth beyond their expectations. In fact, it’s been found that using a holistic viewpoint to guide direction and desired outcomes has enabled conscious companies to score big. A study called “Firms of Endearment”took a deep dive into understanding the qualitative and quantitative metrics that made up these renowned brands, and researchers found that conscious companies outperformed the S&P 500 by 14 to 1 and even outperformed the companies from Jim Collins classic’ “Good to Great” by 6 to 1.5.

Evidence in support of conscious capitalism continues to grow. In 2012, Motley Fool Founder David Gardner went out on a limb and selected a grouping of twelve conscious, purpose-driven businesses’ stocks. He then asked a group of 200 executives at a conference to watch and see if they outperformed their traditional, bottom-line driven competitors. He said, “Let’s watch these 12 stocks over the course of the next five to 10 years and see if these companies do a good job—not just of living up to what we expect from conscious companies, but of how they score for shareholders.”

Gardner hit it right on the money. Earlier this year, he reevaluated those same stocks and found, “If you take the stocks I picked and average them, the average stock is up 400 percent. The S&P 500, by direct comparison over the same period, is up 97 percent.”

What is it about conscious capitalism that led to their success? It’s the factoring in of all stakeholders involved—including shareholder interests as well as the interests of customers, employees, suppliers, the community and the environment. In his book, Start with Why, Simon Sinek says it very well. “Happy employees ensure happy customers. And happy customers ensure happy shareholders—in that order.”

Making the Shift

It’s clear that many companies still have this wrong—including many in the automotive industry.When discussing 2017 automotive trends, Price Waterhouse Coopers mentioned, “Over the last five years, the annual rates of return that the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average achieved for investors (including dividends) were 14.8 percent and 10.1 percent, respectively. In that period, average auto maker TSR was only 5.5 percent.”

If you were to take a guess on a scale of 1 (being the lowest) and 10 (being the highest), where would you rank the consciousness of the auto industry? I’ll go out on my own limb and say it is close to the bottom of the barrel—and the numbers demonstrate the industry’s contrast with the conscious companies evaluated above.

It is worth considering what the auto industry could look and feel like if it were to embrace conscious capitalism. From my insider perspective, I envision an industry elevated as a whole by countless beautiful “aha” moment occurring at headquarters, in offices, dealerships and showroom floors—all while producing enviable profits. I see an industry with the potential to give meaning to the millions of lives it touches.

Jacqueline Jasionowski is the founder of Shift Awake Group. Her “soul” goal is to share with the world how connecting with your purpose through a higher level of consciousness will both drive results and enable you to innovate along the way.

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Growth Leadership Personal Development

Attitude Is a Multiplier

If you say the word “attitude” to people in the training community, most of us will think about presenters who burst into a room and try to knock trainees over with high bursts of energy. That’s not a bad image. Energy is absolutely part of attitude. Yet attitude is a lot more too.  It is a force that multiplies the results of training, improves performance, and leads to greater success.

Attitude has been the motive force behind many kinds of people. Rosa Parks was a quiet woman, but she had the attitude to take on bigotry and hasten the end of segregation. Winston Churchill was not a showman who sought the spotlight, but he rose to the challenge of World War II and his “never, never, never give up” attitude led his country to victory. Stephen Hawking, with his physical limitations, is not equipped to bowl people over with high energy, but his great attitude has enabled him to lead a very full life and expand the horizons of physics and science.

And you and I can use attitude to multiply our effectiveness too, no matter our field of endeavor.

What Is Attitude?

Here’s an analogy that helps explain what attitude is.

Attitude is like STP, the popular oil additive. People who love STP say that when they add it to the oil in their cars, their engines run more smoothly, produce more horsepower, and deliver better gas mileage. Attitude is like that. You pour it into whatever you do, and performance improves.

Attitude is like an electric light bulb too. As soon as Edison began to sell electric light bulbs, people were able to read and learn into the evening hours, work longer days, and achieve logarithmically bigger things in their lives. Attitude also lights up the world and empowers people to achieve more than they ever thought possible.

How Can You Put the Power of Attitude to Work?

I am still working this out – it is a very big issue. But here are some observations from my own life in business that I know to be right:

A great attitude starts with great listening, because attitude flows from other people to you – and not the other way around. When you become immersed in other people’s ideas, needs, concerns and inspirations, your attitude soars, and people sense that.

Being open to new ideas is the cornerstone of a great attitude. I have noticed confusion in this area, because some people seem to think that attitude means having emphatic opinions and trying to convince other people that they are right. A great attitude, in contrast, means trying to discover where other people are right and honoring them for that.

People who inspire you can help you build a powerfully positive attitude. If you apply life lessons from people who had great attitudes, you will take on some aspects of their greatness. When you study exceptional people, they will always be at your side in a sense. They might be your parents or other family members, business leaders you admire, historical figures, your minister or imam or rabbi – or anyone else whose life inspires you.

A great attitude is something that gets things done in the real world, not just in theory. If you go into a room and charm people and then nothing changes after you are done talking, you are not really tapping the power of attitude. Attitude does not stop as soon as the words are said. If you want to tap its power, follow through and follow up and bring change to other people’s lives and to the world.

I Would Welcome Your Input

Attitude is a topic that runs through my new book, Ingaging Leadership. As I noted above, it is a topic that I continue to explore. I invite your comments and feedback so we can engage and ingage in this process together.