Breaking Through
Leadership and Strategy Notes by Laura Huckabee-Jennings

November 18, 2011

Fearless Teams Collaborate

Filed under: Business Strategy,Communication,Executive Coaching,Fearless Leadership,Leadership — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 5:29 pm

At Transcend, we believe that collaboration is fundamental to driving business performance and is a hallmark of the fearless organization.  We also believe that collaboration is a key indicator of a high-functioning leadership culture.  Here’s our view on what makes collaboration so important, what it means for an organization, and how you can work to increase or support collaboration in your teams.

Why is Collaboration Important?
Leadership is fundamentally about change – instigating it, managing it, making it successful. Think about it. If a leader isn’t there to change the outcome from what it would have naturally been without that leader, then why do we need a leader at all?  For that matter, this applies to any individual on any team, but particularly to leaders as they often have more influence on the team and its outcomes.

So if positive change is the result of great leadership, it helps to consider that effective change must be supported by many individuals – especially those directly involved in or responsible for that change or its outcome. The individuals working together to create change – growth, new products, new partnerships, new strategies, are most effective when they work together toward a shared vision of what they are trying to create.  This is what collaboration is based on.  The most effective change starts with collaboration on the desired outcomes and strategies to achieve them.

While old-style organizations could succeed with silos and business functions and units that worked independently of one another and often felt like separate companies, there are serious pitfalls to working in that manner in a rapidly changing environment, and today, who isn’t working in a rapidly changing environment?  Time, resources and skills are all in short supply, and collaboration is the key to leveraging the limited resources we have, so  collaboration is critical to embracing change and uncertainty and creating from it opportunity and growth.

What is Collaboration?

Collaboration is working together for a common purpose that harnesses the best of the individuals involved, multiplying their impact on business results. It’s built on trust and mutual respect and shared purpose.  (See last month’s article on Trust).

When we do not collaborate we end up with unproductive or even competing work “silos” that duplicate services or effort or even siphon off resources to “kill” a competitive silo/division/product.  Think about the Microsoft tablet developed 5 years ahead of the iPad, killed by competitive groups at Microsoft.  While competition was seen as healthy, it limited the ability to introduce new products and services that may have been a threat to existing products.  Apple seems to have embraced cannibalizing it’s own product lines (iPhone replacing iPods, for example) and a collaborative environment would better assess the relative merits of new products, even when they cannibalize old product lines.

What Do Leaders Do to Build Collaboration?

As a leader, your responsibility is to establish standards of behavior, attitude and process that enable collaboration, and hold your team accountable for them. Collaboration is a leadership issue, just as trust and values and vision are driven primarily by leadership.

So how can you build or support a more collaborative organization?  There are 3 big keys:

  1. Create a shared purpose across all groups
  2. Recognize and reward behaviors and attitudes of collaboration and contribution to the whole
  3. Use flexible processes that deliver defined results

1.  Create a shared purpose across all groups.  What really matters then, is to quickly gain alignment around a share vision or purpose.  What is the one thing that you are all aiming to do?  What is the one problem we are trying to solve?  What makes that important?  If you don’t have agreement on the problem you are trying to address, you will have great difficulty in agreeing on a solution.  Like math and physics homework, start by defining the problem.  This makes it much easier to determine who needs to be involved, how they will work together, and what the goal of collaborative work might be.  If this is new to your organization, pick one project and work from a definition of the problem and see how that changes the nature of the solution.

2. Recognize and reward behaviors and attitudes of collaboration and contribution to the whole.  A slogan on the wall or an admonishment from management is not nearly as powerful as systematic recognition and reward for the behaviors you want to encourage.  If your best sales person is hard to work with and secretive, and you reward him, you are sending a message that this kind of behavior is not only fine, but to be emulated.  Be careful how you decide to reward those who are actively working against collaborative efforts.  Look at how your reward systems identify collaborative behavior and efforts that benefit more groups and consider how to improve this.  Even simple recognition in company meetings of collaborative efforts and team results rather than individual contributions can start to shift attitudes and behaviors.

3. Use flexible processes that deliver defined results.  Collaboration is not a “soft” skill, but rather a defined set of behaviors and a process that supports those behaviors.  Look carefully at how projects are defined, who is involved and how accountability is shared across groups.  For the best results, start with a shared definition of the problem, a team that includes all stakeholders, a jointly-developed collaborative team and process and clear deliverable results.  Collaboration doesn’t just happen because you ask for it – it needs structure and process that demands it.

Collaboration is often used as a buzzword in modern organizations, but without commitment and effort, it remains just another management fad and fails to deliver its real promise of extraordinary results.  To be a truly fearless organization, boldly finding opportunities in every twist and turn of the market, technology and broader environment, collaboration is vital and requires action and commitment.  What can you do today to build collaboration and fully leverage every member of your team? How will you know you are succeeding?

October 14, 2011

Fearless Leaders Build Trust

Filed under: Business Strategy,Communication,Executive Coaching,Fearless Leadership,Leadership,Positive Psychology,Strengths — Tags: , , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 12:15 pm

Trust is one of the fundamental pillars of organizations that go from good to truly great, and a key difference between LITO (leaders in title only) and effective and fearless Leaders. So what exactly is trust, and how can you proactively build it?

Trust consists of three elements occurring at the same time: knowing the positive benefits of a relationship, evaluating any risks in the relationship, and choosing how to interpret the behavior of the other person. In companies, this manifests as knowing that the people you work with can and will help you meet your personal and professional goals more often than they will not, and knowing why they behave the way they do and not taking it personally.

At work, you will have conflict with the people you work with – partially by design. It is the conflict and tension between groups with divergent priorities that encourages creative solutions and some level of balance. However, if interpreted as a negative in our work relationships, this conflict can erode trust quickly. For example, you may feel pressured by your boss to get her pet project completed, and tend to forget that she made sure you got a decent raise in your annual review. All humans tend to fixate on the negative experiences we have, so it takes many more positive ones to build a positive relationship. For most things in our lives, the ratio we need is 3 positives to 1 negative, and 5:1 in our intimate relationships. So, how can we build trust when our brains are prewired to distrust?

As a conscious leader in an organization, you have the responsibility to build those positive interactions – both for yourself, and for others in whom you wish to inspire trust.   In building your own positive experiences, be on the lookout for what others are doing that is positive, strong and good. What unique qualities does that person bring to the organization? In which circumstances does he shine? By consciously looking for the strong aspects of our colleagues, the negatives can be more realistically weighed and do not overshadow the trust we are trying to build.   To inspire others to trust you, work on creating positive experiences with you for every member of the group. This is not equivalent to being their friend, or sugar-coating the truth, or going easy on them. It is about being honest, fair, respectful, and consistent in your words and actions.

Here are Ten Key Actions for building Trust in your organization starting today:

  1. Trust first.  Building trust with others is a reciprocal activity.  In order to build trust, you must first extend trust.  Give your team responsibility, assume your peers will do the right things, treat everyone like adults. They will tend to reciprocate.  If you can’t do this, don’t expect others to trust you either.
  2. Communicate well and often. Keep your team, your peers, your boss informed about what is going on in the business. What are your current priorities? What has changed in the business, the environment, in your results? Be clear about decisions made and the decision process.  Be upfront about what you do and do not know.  Include the right people in your communication to make sure the messages are shared in the broadest circles practical.  Celebrate team and individual wins as often as possible and communicate them broadly.  Share bad news quickly and keep communicating as plans to manage it develop.
  3. Demonstrate a win-win attitude by understanding the needs of the organization and the individuals who work in it, and advocate for getting both sets of needs met.  Look for ways to make the individuals successful, to build on their ideas, to help them shine – while meeting the business goals.
  4. Truly appreciate others.   As you are looking at the team, find something wonderful, strong, powerful about each team member, and look for that to show up.  Tell them about it, try to find new ways to leverage that strength in the team.
  5. Ask for and listen to feedback – in person.  You don’t have to agree with the feedback, but it is important that you truly understand what others are thinking and how you are perceived.  This means getting eye-to-eye with your group.  Electronic communications cannot completely take the place of meeting in the flesh.  Walk the halls, travel to meet, hold group meetings, retreats and one on ones.  The feedback and relationship-building you get in person will be 10x more powerful than emails and teleconferences.  Trust is built by looking someone in the eye, shaking their hand, and reading their body language when they speak.
  6. Set clear expectations.  Make sure every member of your team knows exactly what you expect of them, and what your process looks like.  How often will you review their work?  What level of input are you expecting to have in the final product?  Which decisions are you expecting will be made by the team, and which do you need to make?  What can the team do when they need extra support?  What is the agenda for your meetings and what preparation is expected?
  7. Walk the talk.  Trust is built in small positive increments.  Find a small win for the team, commit to it, and deliver.  Do it again and again, with ever-larger commitments.  These positive experiences with you (“she really does what she says she will”,  “We can count on him”, “He has our back”) will build trust quickly.  This is about action.  Can others see you actively making the organization stronger and acting for the good of the whole, not just your own career?  That is the foundation of trust, so get out there and make it happen.
  8. Make it right.  When you make a mistake, own it, learn from it, and let others know that you are aware, that you are learning, and that you have a plan to prevent the same mistake from happening again.
  9. Hold everyone accountable.  As you take responsibility for your results and your mistakes, ask others to do the same.  Have individuals commit to specific actions in front of their peers, and follow up with the group to verify follow-through.  Ask about what prevented something from getting accomplished with curiosity and have individuals come up with a new commitment, with a plan for overcoming that obstacle next time.
  10. Practice tough love.  Accepting people the way they are and appreciating their strengths does not mean that everyone necessarily belongs on the team.  When performance standards are not met, when accountability and trust measures are violated, neither the individual or the organization can prosper, and removing that person from the organization may be the win-win solution you are seeking.  Call them on their lapses, give them a chance to correct it with support, and then decide if they are able to meet the requirements of the job or not.  Hesitation to remove an unproductive or even disruptive team member erodes trust quickly.

Remember that building trust is not something that happens on a team-building afternoon, or in one meeting or over lunch – although those can be good places to start.  Trust is created in daily habits you cultivate in working with others to build positive interactions and experiences.  Find ways in your daily work to build in good trust habits and set goals for practicing them regularly.

The lack of trust is the definition of fear – fear of harm the other person may do to you, your career, your reputation, your results, your relationships…  Building trust is one of the fundamental elements of the journey to leading fearlessly.

September 5, 2011

Successful Organizational Strategy – The Fierce Culture

Filed under: Business Strategy,Communication,Executive Coaching — Tags: , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 8:41 am

Have you ever wished for less bureaucracy, less process, fewer approvals?  To achieve this, you need to be clear about how people will make decisions when there are no rules in place, no authority to ask.

The guiding principle for making decisions without a clear rule is to default to organizational values.  This is not writing “Integrity” as a value on a poster on the wall and expecting that everyone will now tell the truth all the time in every circumstance.  Your values come to life (or don’t) in actions you take every day in the business.  How you hire, how you fire, which information you share, which you withhold.  Small consistent actions you take every day communicate loud and clear what you value, and what you don’t.

In organizations, the structure, the practices and the language of work begin to define the culture.  In most organizations, this is unconscious, and our culture is determined by default and often by the microcosm of the people we work with most frequently.  Each leader brings their personal values to work in the absence of a strongly articulated corporate value system, and it can feel fragmented from group to group.  Sales and operations within one company may have very different cultures, making it even harder to communicate and work productively.

To combat this, many organizations create rules, processes and structures and aim for “adherence” and develop a new policy every time a lapse or error is discovered.  You have only to look at our legal system to see where this kind of structure leads – to an ever-expanding list of rules of work that are increasingly difficult to follow, and often restrict some helpful practices in order to prevent unhelpful ones.  Frustration with delays, bureaurcracy and complicated procedures bubble over in organizations creating rules to govern behavior.  And yet, we do not want individuals to run amok and put the organization in jeopardy with their actions.  The best alternative I have seen is grounded in developing a robust organizational culture, based on clear values.

A recent example I came across is Netflix, and this link shares with you their 128-page powerpoint presentation on their culture, why it works for them, and how they bring it to life.

Values-Based Culture

Notice how Netflix takes a conscious approach to corporate culture and chooses to take a deliberate path adhering to values that set it apart and to not take the well-trodden path in areas such as compensation, process, structure or hiring.  Because they ground this culture in values, and understand that rules do not replace values, they work instead to make sure that their leaders take action that reinforces and actively communicates their values.

These are courageous choices which make Netflix stand out and be truly differentiated in how they develop, how they grow, and the kinds of people they attract.

On your path to leading fearlessly, this is the heart of a fierce culture – one which leads by example and makes choices about the kinds of behaviors that honor organizational values, and will be recognized, encouraged, rewarded, and also those behaviors that undermine organizational values and will be recognized, discouraged and moved out of the organization.  It is not a path for the faint of heart – it requires self-examination, decision-making, trust in the team, and fearless action to bring it all to life every day.

Where have you been courageous in aligning your organization to its values, and dared to differentiate?

August 24, 2011

Why focus on strengths?

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development,Executive Coaching,Positive Psychology,Strengths — Tags: , , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 1:24 pm

When you see a report card from school with 1 A+, 2 As, 2 Bs and a C, what are you drawn to comment on?  For most of us, the answer is “Why did you get a C?”

We may comment on the A+ in passing, but it is often glossed over as an area we don’t need to worry about, rather than one in which that student might really build some outstanding strengths.

What about a performance review or a survey on your presentation or reviews of a paper you wrote?  What sticks with you?  Research shows that the negative or critical information is where we tend to focus our attention and is what sticks in our minds.

This focus on “problems” or weaknesses is called negativity bias, and it’s a common human trait.  In fact, it seems to be how our brains are wired, and may be there to protect us from harm and ensure the survival of the species.  Imagine a brain wiring rule like, “100 good things in the environment and 1 bad = focus on the bad so that it doesn’t wipe you out”.  As a survival mechanism, this is pretty powerful.  In our modern lives, however, it has some consequences that are not always so helpful.

One of these consequences is that we focus disproportionately on negative information even when it is not particularly helpful to do so.  When you give or receive feedback on performance, you may notice that even if more than half of the feedback is positive, the overall impression is often negative.  Whether focusing on yourself or others, you will tend to look for “what I need to work on”.  This may lead you to focus on improving some perceived weakness or shortfall, but the overall result is often to feel worse about your performance than is truly justified, and to feel compelled to continue to “try harder” to do things that are very difficult for you.  You may take a class, find a mentor, read a book or implement a new system for getting better at your weak areas.  With lots of effort, you will get better at it, but if it doesn’t come naturally to you, you are unlikely to ever be truly great at it.

The cost of this kind of negativity bias is nothing short of our long-term results and happiness.  We are most productive, creative and satisfied in our work and lives when we have a “positive experience” ratio of 3:1.  If our natural inclination is to accentuate the “negative”, we can have a hard time reaching that ratio.

The value of the strengths movement and a focus on your talents as an individual is to change the focus of your energy and attention to what is already working well, and to find ways to leverage those talents to make them more and more relevant and powerful.  Conscious practices that shift your focus to “what’s right” and from your “to do” list to an “I did it” list help balance out your tendency to only see what remains to be done, what needs improvement and what isn’t working very well.

The purpose is not to ignore very real challenges, or to reframe them in a positive light, but rather to balance your perception by appreciating real progress, real effort, and real successes, even when incomplete.  By taking note of what does work and where your efforts are met with success, you recharge your mental batteries and are better able to take positive action in all areas – including those in which there is still significant work to be done.

In fact, the seeds of success in challenging areas are often hiding in plain sight in the areas in which you have been successful.  Your personal areas of talent can often be leveraged to bring about improved results in new areas of your life.  Take time management, for example.  If this is an area of weakness for you (it is for me!), but you do have a need to achieve something each day, leveraging that need to achieve by putting some time-management tasks in your daily routine as tasks to be achieved may be your route to success.

Everyone desires to reach goals, achieve meaningful results and feel successful.  The way in which you do this varies greatly, and you will have higher levels of success when you find the strategies that leverage your innate talents.  You can get better at many things, but you will make the most improvement in areas where you are already naturally talented.

Think of the star athlete.  If you are a great pro football player, no doubt you worked very hard at perfecting your game, your physical condition, your skills.  But you also were born with some gifts that made it possible for you to not only be reasonably proficient, but truly world-class.  In contrast, the player with below average natural ability can improve significantly with hard work, but can only aim for about average – not world-class.  The difference is the level of natural ability or innate talent.

Each of us has similar natural gifts and talents, innate tendencies of thought and behavior that give us power, make us feel great and where we can excel naturally and without great effort.  If we discover those natural talents and invest in growing them, nurturing them, and applying them to as many situations as possible, we begin to grow into our potential.  For example, if you are an introvert, you can learn to network like a pro, but you will never be energized by it. In contrast, an extrovert may never love putting together reports or analyzing data all alone.  Our introvert can focus on leveraging a few close relationships to build networks of contacts, and our extrovert can build teams to work together to create reports or analysis.  They could even swap specific tasks and still get the work done, but in a way that allowed each of them to do what played to their strengths.   When you begin to create space to focus on those things you do well and enjoy, you can begin to truly shine and stand out as a star in that area.

While it is not possible for most of us to change our daily work overnight to cater to our unique talents, it is certainly possible for each of us to begin to skew our work to include more activities that let us shine, that allow us to grow and begin to see how unique talents and a diversity of talents in a team can be leveraged to overcome individual weaknesses.

If you want to improve your results, or build a high-performing team, one of the keys is to consciously shift your focus from what isn’t working well and try to figure out what is working well and how you can build on that to improve results.   Great analysts can delve into data and discover new trends, phenomena and theories to improve results.  Great motivational speakers can bring the message to more people and get involvement from partners, customers and colleagues to improve results.  Great project managers can marshal and organize the resources to get things moving.  Regardless of the talents you bring to the picture, you can still achieve the needed results, you will just do it in your own way – and differently from someone who brings other talents to the team.

By focusing on your innate talents, your daily accomplishments and small victories, you can increase your “positive experiences” at a conscious level and build strategies that will allow you to build real and lasting strengths.

What will you do to notice your own talents and achievements today?  How about those of your team?

 

June 30, 2011

Finding Common Ground: Positions versus Interests

Filed under: Business Strategy,Communication,Executive Coaching — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 11:13 am

Remember the last time you experienced conflict with someone?  One of the most common reasons we create conflict is our focus on positions.

What is a position?  It’s a particular answer to a question, a particular method of doing something, a solution that is definitive and ours, or even a definition or stance that we have chosen to espouse.  In politics we think of these “positions” as clear polar opposites, such as liberal or conservative.  In real life, each of us carries a set of interests (our personal financial interests, our personal religious or special-group interests, etc) which help us move toward or away from the defined polar-opposite “positions”.  When we focus on the position, there is no middle ground to be found, only a “right” and a “wrong” – as we see it.

As you can no doubt guess, this creates plenty of conflict.

So, what is the alternative?  We can instead focus on the underlying interests of each party and find ways to to honor both sets of interests.  Interests are the broader strategic goals held by participants in a dialogue or negotiation.  If “liberal” and “conservative” are positions, “a healthy growing economy where small businesses can thrive” might be one interest.  Clearly not a broad goal that is completely the province of either position, but one supported by people who might identify with either position.

In negotiation, conflict management and communication, the interests are the strategic goals that allow parties to move beyond seemingly opposing positions to find solutions, have meaningful dialogue and to discover win-win arrangements.

In fact, when we discuss only positions, we are taking a very superficial view of any issue or situation, and avoid the greater possibilities for creativity, collaboration and compromise that comes from expanding our view to encompass interests.  Perhaps that is why we hear so much in our sensationalized media about positions – because the goal is often to titillate and gather viewers by escalating and exaggerating entertaining conflict rather than the less emotionally volatile discussion and promotion of real solutions .

In real life, however, we are usually best served by finding the best possible outcome, and most often by finding the best outcome that keeps our relationships positive and productive.   Understanding the overarching goals for someone’s position gives you the chance to better understand their motivations, their passions, their beliefs and their priorities.  If a member of your team suggests spending more on marketing, and another proposes spending less, there is a conflict of positions.  Inquiring into the interests of each person (beliefs about the effectiveness of marketing methods, priorities for current budget, conflicting departmental goals, etc.), allows us to have a meaningful conversation about team goals and the role of marketing in achieving those goals.  The two team members may be focused on meeting the same revenue and profit goals, but approaching it from different beliefs and sets of data.  By sharing those beliefs and the rationale behind them, a new solution may be created that incorporates the observations of both team members, and they each learn something new about how to approach the marketing budget, and renew their commitment to mutual goals and the team.

Conflicting positions can almost always be best resolved by reaching more broadly to understand the underlying interests and reasoning for the positions taken.  In fact, if the broader interests are understood, many of the strategic goals may be met without a compromise of position, as new elements are introduced that meet additional long- or short-term goals.

Where do you find conflict over positions in your life and work, and how could better understanding interests help you resolve that conflict productively?

To get started, work on clearly understanding the positions of all parties (including your own, if you have taken a position), and then asking what about that position is important?  What problems does it solve?  What makes it the preferred solution?  How does it fit into big picture goals?  And be prepared to share answers to those questions for your own position.   You may find that big picture goals are more in synch than you first imagined, or conflict much less than the positions, and open up new possibilities that everyone can both embrace.

April 5, 2011

Laura Huckabee-Jennings Earns Professional Certified Coach Credential

Filed under: Business Strategy — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 1:22 pm

April 2011 – Leadership and executive coach Laura Huckabee-Jennings recently earned the prestigious Professional Certified Coach designation, becoming one of only about 2,000 credentialed coaches among the nearly 25,000 coaches worldwide, according to statistics from the International Coach Federation.

Huckabee-Jennings, formerly with Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola in line management positions, received her credentials from the International Coach Federation (ICF) , the world’s largest non-profit professional association of personal and business coaches, after following an accredited coach training program with the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC). ICF establishes professional standards and defines and supports ethics within the coaching profession. Coaching is a professional partnership which assists clients in achieving more fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. To earn the PCC designation, Huckabee-Jennings had to, among other requirements, complete over 750 documented hours of client coaching, more than 125 hours of coach-specific training, submit recommendations from expert coaches and pass written and oral exams.

“Laura is a talented Executive coach and leadership development consultant. I served 28 years in the United States Marine Corps and Laura was instrumental in helping me achieve my goals since retirement.  I routinely seek Laura’s assistance on all matters that help me move forward with my business and personal life. Laura’s experience, knowledge  and expertise puts her at the top of my list of those I call when I need help.”  – Bruce Bright, President and CEO, BRIGHT CONSULTING GROUP

Prior to founding Transcend Leadership Coaching in 2002, Huckabee-Jennings completed degrees in Physical Chemistry from Princeton University, a Master’s in Comparative Culture from Jochi University in Japan, and an MBA from INSEAD in France.  She has worked in leadership positions in strategy consulting, consumer packaged goods and high technology companies around the world, including in Switzerland, Poland, Israel, Japan, China and the US.

Transcend Leadership Coaching specializes in helping clients develop higher-level leadership skills, build robust high-performance teams, and develop effective executive presence.  Since starting Transcend Leadership Coaching in 2002, Huckabee-Jennings has worked with leaders and executives in businesses large and small to improve productivity, build trust, reduce stress and grow business.   In her work, she challenges her clients to overcome their internal resistance to change and take calculated risks to develop greater awareness, change outdated behaviors and create phenomenal results.

Laura can be reached via email at huckabee@transcendllc.biz

March 31, 2011

Taking reponsibility for your results

Filed under: Business Strategy — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 1:27 pm

When did you last use the phrase “if only”?  If only my situation were different…  If only this person or that person would do something different… then everything could change.  It’s completely understandable that our reaction in many situations we believe to be adverse is to look for the cause outside of ourselves. And indeed, there are many external circumstances that we do not control and may not even be able to influence.

How about the phrase “He/she/it made me…”?  She made me angry.  The kids got me upset.  The weather prevented me from running today.  I have often felt that the actions I took or the emotions I felt were primarily driven by something outside myself.  There are certainly people and circumstances who trigger specific responses in me, and that can feel like something or someone else “causing” my response.  It is human and perfectly normal to assign responsibility for our actions or emotions to others when we do not like what is happening.

However, when we get into this kind of “victim” thinking, we relinquish our ability to make significant change.  Most of us do not like to think of ourselves as victims. In fact, we would deny vehemently that we engage in victim thinking. But for most of us, there are actually many moments in the day when we choose to let others be responsible for the things in our lives that we find unpleasant unfavorable or unexpected. Some of the phrases you may find yourself or others using include, “he made me mad”, “we can’t change the economy”, “no one told me…”, “that’s just how it is”, “that’s just how we do things”.   Any time that we absolve ourselves of all responsibility for our current circumstances we are engaging in victim thinking.

The momentary relief we experience from assigning blame to some other outside party for our current circumstances has a price. The price we pay is remaining in those circumstances, because in playing the victim, we also expect some outside party to solve our problem. In truth, we each own at least some small part, if not all, of the current situation in which we find ourselves. Even when we are truly victims of uncontrollable circumstances, we can often find warning signals we ignored, good advice we didn’t take, or decisions we made that contribute to us being in our current situation.  At the very least, we are responsible for our reaction to those circumstances, including our emotional response.

Until we are able to acknowledge our own responsibility in creating our current results, our attempts to change those results will be largely ineffective. It is only once we are able to step up and own our piece of what we have created, that we can begin to also create solutions and move in the direction of our true goals.

If your business or life is not creating the results you want, what can you personally do to change that? Where have you structured your business or life in such a way that it creates your current results? Rather than blaming the economy, politics, difficult customers, or any other external party, what would change for you if you focused instead on the one thing you, and only you, can change:  yourself?

February 10, 2011

Top 10 reasons you need a coach

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 9:28 am

“Everybody needs a coach. Every famous athlete, every famous performer has somebody who is coach — somebody who can say ‘Is that what you really meant?’ and give them perspective. The one thing people are not really good at is seeing themselves as others see them. A coach really, really helps.” – Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google

As a very successful CEO, why would someone like Eric Schmidt suggest that he needs a coach and so do you?  I see executives every day who make incredible strides forward toward their goals with the help of an executive coach.  Their work is inspiring, and I am honored to be part of it.  But some of you may still wonder what a coach could do for you and why you should invest in an external coach for yourself.

Thinking about the key reasons that have power for supporting your success and growth, the Top 10 reasons for hiring an external executive coach are:

  1. Your coach is there for you, your agenda, your goals.  Your coach cares about your success, as you define it.
  2. Your coach helps you get clarity around your goals, get inspired by them and what they mean for you, and maintain focus in your busy world.
  3. Your coach looks for your blind spots and helps you see the impact you have from a new perspective and see new alternatives to move you forward.
  4. Your coach is a source of ideas, knowledge, tools, cutting-edge thought, and a broad body of experience and perspective that helps you recognize challenges early, and discover new and creative solutions.
  5. Your coach helps you grow as a leader by developing your awareness, your thinking, your knowledge base and your vision for what is possible.
  6. Your coach will not judge you for what you say or do.  You can be perfectly honest about your fears, doubts and concerns and your weak moments without repercussion.  You can truly get out your feelings, worries and challenges and address them with your coach in a confidential manner.  Your conversations are private so that you can tackle any situation – even those you don’t feel you can share with anyone else.
  7. Your coach supports you in being accountable for taking action on your biggest priorities.  When you take on a new habit, behavior, style of communicating or other change to your ingrained habits, your coach is your partner for making new habits stick and addressing obstacles as they arise.
  8. Your coach provides disciplined self-reflection on what you are doing and where you are going.  You have structured time to take the larger view on your career, your business, your progress toward your big picture goals – and that is what will truly allow you to grow as a leader.
  9. Your coach is your objective external sounding board to help you try out new thoughts, behaviors and ideas in a safe environment and giving you feedback on what is moving you forward and what appears to be holding you back.
  10. Your coach is a witness to your success and encourages the discipline of measuring your progress and celebrating your achievements, and building confidence and accountability for your actions and decsions that move you forward in achieving your goals.

What could you achieve this year with a coach?

January 10, 2011

Rediscovering Your Passion for Business

Filed under: Business Strategy — Tags: , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 11:57 am

Did you go into business to change the world, make money, be your own boss, express your creative side, or just create a corporate culture that honored your personal values?  Did that passion get lost somewhere along the journey of establishing product lines, websites, employee manuals, call scripts, business metrics, processes and legal documents?  You are not alone.  Many business owners start out with a passion for what they are doing, and lose their way at some point and feel overwhelmed running their business.

What would it mean for you to rediscover your passion and live each day fulfilling your dream, without the overwhelm?

For most business owners, rediscovering your passion means taking a hard look at what is causing you to feel stress and overwhelm, and tackling that at the source.  This process is simple, but not easy to undertake on your own.  We create our own stress by how we think about our circumstances and how we choose to react to them.  So, the root cause of your stress is you, and there are particular circumstances or interactions that trigger you to feel stress – and these will be unique to you.  The great news is that you can change the stress you create for yourself in any circumstance just by shifting how you think about it.  The first step is to raise your awareness of the kinds of thoughts that are triggering your stress, and take them out into the light of day and decide if they are thoughts that are helping you along your path, or getting in your way.

One of the best ways to raise your awareness in this way is to work with a coach, or a group of business owners who have been through similar things and share some of your frustrations, fears and stress to uncover the hidden thoughts that are raising your stress.  With a professional coach and other business owners, you can ideas on what thoughts are holding you back and how you might change them to gain productivity, confidence and courage.  Even on your own, you can work on this by journaling your stress: try writing down the moments where you feel irritated, worried, guilty, fearful, or angry.  Notice what thoughts are racing through your mind as you experience that feeling and write them down.  Decide which thoughts are serving you well and represent the truth, and which thoughts are creating stress in you.  As you start to identify thought patterns that cause you stress and situations that trigger them, you will gain control over the level of stress you feel, and allow  yourself to refocus on the things you love about being in business.

Stay tuned for another post on Rediscovering Your Passion for Business soon, and join our preview call for upcoming Business Growth Mastermind Coaching in January!

Join us for a Preview Call on January 25th at 12:00 pm CST.


Click this link to register for the Preview Call!

January 5, 2011

Becoming the Business Person You Were Meant To Be – Part 10: Adopting Continuous Improvement

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 1:42 pm

With all the support mechanisms we’ve reviewed over the past few months in place, you are well on your way to realizing your goals and achieving your personal vision, in line with your most dear values.

So what remains to define your journey to a more fulfilling life?  Simply making the changes needed to integrate this process into your life on an ongoing basis.  As your life changes and you achieve key elements of your vision, you may find that your vision begins to expand or change in ways that cause you to incorporate new goals.  As you gain skills and overcome obstacles to your success, you may find entirely new skills suddenly become relevant and perhaps even critical to achieving your goals.

How can you incorporate this change without losing your momentum?  Just as good manufacturing processes include an element of continuous improvement, or Kaizen, you can apply this same concept to your vision and your process of achieving it.  And just like running a business or organization of any kind, you want to plan on some regular reviews and opportunities to review what is going well, and what you might want to change.

What personal practices do you currently have in place?  How could you integrate some review of your personal goals and progress into those practices?  If you journal daily, how would you include some review of your plans into that?  If you review your finances quarterly, what would adding a review of other aspects of your business or life at that time add to your ability to plan for the future?  Are there other mindfulness or planning or visioning practices that would lend themselves well to reviewing your vision, goals and recommitting to them, or making appropriate changes to keep the inspiring and motivating to you?

With a vision, goals, strategies and plans that originate in your personal skills, talents, preferences and values, you will find yourself living a life of greater satisfaction, purpose and energy. This higher level of energy will allow you to achieve so much more than you thought possible in your chosen field, while leaving you abundant energy to share with others and inspire them to find their own source of energy, inspiration and fulfillment.

Want to learn more and get help becoming your truest self?  Learn more about my Mastermind Coaching Groups starting this month and come to the preview call:  http://transcendllc.biz/blog/business-growth-mastermind-group

December 22, 2010

Becoming the Business Person You Were Meant To Be – Part 9: Powerful Partnering

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 9:40 am

At yet a higher level of engagement than simply getting feedback, is developing partnerships to support you in pursuing your vision.

Partners can be colleagues, family members, friends, or anyone who has an interest in helping you meet your goals and achieve your vision.  When considering who you might enroll as your partner, think about who might share your vision, benefit from you achieving it, or be pursuing a similar vision themselves.

The purpose of partnering is to find continuing support from someone who truly wants you to achieve your goals and is able to provide help to you when you need it.  In a coaching relationship, you can count on your coach to be supportive of whatever vision you are creating, and unbiased about what goals you choose, or how you choose to get there.  A professional certified coach is one of the best ways to achieve this level of partnership, but if coaching is not for you, you can find other types of partnership that help you grow and learn on your journey to your vision.

Some things a partner can bring to you include resources, ideas, a brainstorming partner, encouragement, accountability and feedback.  If you are both working toward similar goals, you can trade success stories, celebrate together as you reach milestones, and pull each other up when you get discouraged in any particular area.

If you can’t find an obvious partner in your immediate circle, you may want to focus on a specific goal and look for others who are acquiring a similar skill or habit.  For example, if you have an important goal that includes developing stronger public speaking skills, your local Toastmasters may be a resource both in developing that skill, but also in finding partners in your journey to reach that goal.

Depending upon your goal, you may find local networking groups, existing support groups, and alumni or educational groups where others share your goal and are actively sharing their successes, strategies and struggles, and these groups can be the source of great power in keeping you on course

Who will you choose to partner with in your journey?  Which partners might be right for each of your goals?

December 9, 2010

Becoming the Business Person You Were Meant To Be – Part 8: Feedback

Filed under: Business Strategy — Tags: , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 4:35 pm

So now you are working toward your goal, you are holding yourself accountable for implementing your plans, and probably beginning to feel more focused and like you are on the path to your vision.  What helps keep you on the path?  How will you know when to make course corrections?  What are you measuring to see what progress you are making?

Of course tangible goals like losing weight, or eating better can be measured on a scale, or by tracking your meals and looking back to see how you did.  But what about other goals you might have like losing your temper less often, or listening better?  Because these goals are measured by how others perceive you and your behavior, you may need to develop a system for getting regular feedback and understanding how much progress you are making, and what else you might need to consider.

In the work environment, you may already be getting feedback from peers, a boss, investors, and at home you may have a partner, children or other family members who observe you first hand.  Instead of relying on existing feedback mechanism, it can be very helpful to ask these observers about what they see you doing and how that has changed.  What appears to be working, and what remains to be improved?  If your goal is a great working relationship with your team, ask them how they would characterize your working relationship with them now and how that has changed since you began implementing your strategies.

Let others know what you are working on, and ask them to help you by letting you know how you are doing on that.  By being vulnerable and human, and letting others know you are aware of areas you could do better, you are likely to be seen in a more sympathetic light even when you do not make progress, or when you backslide.

Feedback is critical when you are seeking a result that involves other people and their perception of your behavior and how it impacts your relationship with them.  You may think you have dramatically improved your listening skills, but if no one else can see a difference, you may still have a long way to go, and detailed feedback from a trusted source can be the difference between making a quantum leap toward your goals and meandering along and perhaps missing the mark and ultimately slowing your progress toward your vision.

November 10, 2010

What Makes Executive Coaching Unique

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 10:03 am

Anyone who is not already familiar with the concept of executive coaching may easily confuse it with related professional advice from other sources.  Since executive coaching clients are often senior executives, they have probably experienced many kinds of advice and encouragement in their professional careers, but coaching is a unique form of personal leadership development.

Perhaps the most familiar advisor for many executives is the mentor.  A mentor is an invaluable resource at any stage of your career and provides advice, counsel and resources to show an executive how to achieve success in the way that the mentor did it.  The mentor shares the strategies that worked for them at a similar stage in their career to help the executive achieve similar results.  The mentor is usually 2-3 levels further on in their career than the executive and has a “been there done that” approach to helping the executive think through the options in front of them.  They can provide a model for how progress can be made – and the executive gets a roadmap for following in the mentor’s footsteps.

A coach, on the other hand, is not necessarily someone who has taken the exact career path the coaching client is pursuing, but helps the executive develop their own path to whatever destination they are seeking.  While a coach may provide resources, models and ways of reframing a situation, the coach does not provide “the solution” for how to handle a situation, but helps the executive consider many alternatives for moving forward.  The coach is not there to tell the executive how to do their job better, but rather to provide an outside perspective to help the executive consider more broadly the impact of their actions and a wide range of possible alternatives to arrive at more powerful solutions that fit the executive and the situation.

Think about great athletes and their coaches.  The coach is often a fan of the game, a student of the game, but usually not a superstar player themselves.  Like a great sports coach, an executive coach is not necessarily a better player than you at your game, but the coach can provide feedback and insight to help you fulfill your potential and reveal your inner greatness.

When you are navigating the waters of a culture, club or structure where there is a more senior person whose footsteps you want to to travel, a mentor can be a great fit and a huge help in making the right connections, playing the politics and getting seen in the right places.  However, for the executive who is creating a new game or forging a new path due to changing markets, customers, organization or technologies, a coach can guide the executive to get very clear on the goal, develop strategies that leverage their unique strengths and talents, plan and implement every day, and clear away barriers as they arise.

The coaching relationship is a unique one that can open the eyes of an executive to new possibilities and catapult them to greatness of their own making.

October 29, 2010

Becoming the Business Person You Were Meant To Be – Part 7: Creating Accountability

Filed under: Business Strategy — Tags: , , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 5:58 pm

In coaching relationships, one element of the relationship to which many clients ascribe great power is the accountability provide by the relationship.  The client makes a plan to take certain actions over the next week, and the coach will ask about those actions in the next session.  While there is no right or wrong for doing or not doing any action item, many clients feel that they have made a formal commitment to taking those actions, and will work much harder to complete them, just knowing that they will be reporting on them to their coach.

Even outside of coaching relationships, you can build an accountability partnership with people who share your goal.  If your team at work decided that you will all eliminate complaining, you can hold one another accountable and help each other notice when you spiral into a negative cycle.  Just knowing that one other person is going to be asking you about your progress can help you stay on track with your intended actions.

In an organization, there is no skill more important than “walking the talk”, or living by the principles that you publicly espouse.  If you have ever seen a management team say they “value diversity” and never change the gender/race/nationality of their own team, you know what I’m talking about.  Another great example in corporate America is companies who say “people are our greatest asset” and then allow poor people management skills to persist and even promote the individuals with the poorest people skills – because they bring in revenue results.  At what cost?

The cost for a management team not “walking the talk” is in losing credibility and trust.  This is often when the corporate mission begins to be seen as a “slogan of the week” to be hung on the wall and ignored, just like the last one was.

The cost to you as an individual in not “walking the talk” and honoring your commitments to yourself is that you begin to lose trust and faith in your own ability to follow through.  The impact of this is greatest on your confidence, your self-image and your faith that you can overcome obstacles.  An accountability relationship of some kind can help you stay on track, and also help you catch yourself quickly when you begin to fall short of your action plan, and make adjustments to the plan, or to your habits and thoughts to ultimately bring you success.

October 12, 2010

Stepping into Your Greatness

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 10:04 am

Within each of us we carry the seed of our own greatness.  We nurture this as children, but soon learn to hide it from the light of day and fit into what we think society expects of us.  We build our internal beliefs and habitual thoughts about what we “should” do and “must” be, and in doing so, we protect ourselves from the thoughts and words of others, but also lock away our most precious gift to the world – ourselves.

As we mature, we even forget who we really are and begin to believe that the shell of beliefs and habits we have built is really “us”.   We make excuses for ourselves and others, thinking “well, that’s just the way I am”, instead of committing to live in our own true image.

An analogy I found that rings true to me relates to the weather (posted on Michael Neill’s Genius Catalyst blog):

  • If you are a victim of the weather, then sunshine is far preferable to rain.
  • If you are the weather, which weather you are most comfortable with will be a function of the weather you are most familiar with being.
  • If you are the sky, it really doesn’t matter what the weather is.  It will change according to the day and the season, and you will carry on, regardless.

When we are acting like someone we “should” be, we are pretending to be the victim of the weather, when we are actually the sky.  The first step is to understand that you are playing the victim, or at best the weather in your own life, with your mood and reactions driven by what is happening.  Step outside of that “should” perspective and know that you are the sky, and that the passing weather is an interesting experience to be observed and learned from, but no more defines you than a raincloud defines the sky.

From this bigger, more powerful perspective, what greatness inside yourself are you willing to reach out and commit to being?  When you make a commitment, great things begin to happen.  Step up and start creating your own success.

For one man, his commitment is to be TBOLITNFL (his story here).  Post your own commitment and step into your greatness.

Becoming the Business Person You Were Meant To Be – Part 6: Great Planning for Success

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 9:36 am

Behind every good strategy and every goal achieved, there was an action plan that brought it to life.

The strategy is not the end of the process, but the beginning of your journey toward your vision.  You have defined the vision, made it concrete with some goals that define what it will take for the vision to come to life, developed some strategies that you think will help you achieve your goals, and now you are ready for the plans.

Plans are the day to day activities that are how you will implement the strategy.  In some cases, it may be as simple as attending a meeting, or joining a group and putting it on your calendar.  In others, it may involve multiple steps in meeting with others to get feedback, breaking your strategy down into specific steps and tasks, and then making time to take those actions every day, week and month until you have built new habits, new ways of being and a new feeling about your life.

So if your goal is to bring in 10 new clients, for example, your strategy might be to increase your number of prospects in your target market.  Your plans might include joining a new group with lots of your target clients in it, attending more events where your target clients will be present, or speaking at those events.  It might include making sure you actually attend the meetings of the new group by blocking that time in your calendar, having a plan for talking to at least 5 new people at each meeting, or spending 30 minutes a week identifying events where your target will be present, or calling organizers to find speaking engagements.  When you break your strategy down into specific actions, plans for overcoming habits, time pressure and your own thoughts, you are creating a plan to implement.

Plans are at the most basic level, so if you find you planned to do something important in the morning and you just can’t get up, adjust your plan to do it at a time that feels more natural to you.  Plans are the level at which you “play” on a daily basis until you find a formula that works.  It is the most flexible, but that does not mean you don’t need to have a written plan and a commitment to work your plan.  Unless it’s written down and scheduled or made concrete for you in some other way, a plan becomes just another “nice idea” that you didn’t do anything about.  So, while your plans can be flexible and changed when they are not serving you well and moving you toward your goal, you have to take positive actions on your plan regularly.

What will your plan be for this month?  For this week?  For today?  How will you make sure you follow your plan?  When will you review your ability to follow the plan and make adjustments?

September 15, 2010

Becoming the Business Person You Were Meant to Be – Part 5: Developing Strategies

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 11:57 am

With SMART goals in hand, you are ready to build strategies around them.  This is just like developing business strategies in that you can look at your various strengths and build strategies that play to them.  If you know one of your key strengths from Strengths Finder is “Relator”, you work best through people.  So, you might find that you want to work on a goal through finding a group that share the goal and working with them. Or you are an extrovert, you might exercise more regularly if you were in a group doing the same (a class, a group training together for a race, etc.).

There are always multiple strategies for achieving any goal, and these can be as personal as the goals themselves.  If you want to reduce the amount of soda you drink, you might think about when you drink it now, what triggers you to drink it, and what alternatives you might create for yourself.  Not having it at home could help someone who primarily drink soda at home, but if you drink it mostly at work from the vending machine while on a break with colleagues, your strategy would probably be very different.

If you are trying to replace an old habit, whether it be interrupting others in conversation or asking multiple questions at once before you get answers, you will want to find new behaviors to replace them with.  You might work on shutting off the internal dialogue that has you preparing what you want to say by listening to the other person and building a mental image of what they are saying and taking a breath in the silence before you say anything.  You might have a mantra before you speak of “one question”… and practice not speaking until you had the question you really wanted to ask.

A strategy is simply a decision about how to use resources to solve a problem.  It is a choice about what you will do and what you will not do in order to achieve a goal.  When you have given a strategy a good chance to succeed and find it ineffective, it’s time to come up with a new strategy.  Remember, experimenting is how we learn.  Failures are opportunities to examine what happened with a critical eye and design a new solution that may work better.

What strategies will you come up with to reach your goals?  How can you learn about strategies that have worked for others and might be useful to you?  How will you leverage your innate strengths and values to make your strategies right for you?

August 12, 2010

Becoming the Business Person You Were Meant to Be – Part 4: Setting Great Goals

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 11:30 am

Now that you have a vision of where you are going, it is important to set goals that move you in the direction of your vision. I like to make sure they are SMART goals. You may have heard this acronym before, but it stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Bound.

If your goal is to have a healthy body, for example, you might set a goal of losing 20 pounds by October 31st, 2010, or you might set a goal of reducing your soda consumption to no more than 8 oz per day by September 1st, or any other goal that helps you reach your definition of “a healthy body”. The exact goals you set will be very specific to you, and there is no “right” or “wrong” goal, just like there isn’t a “right” vision.

In a business context, your goal might be to improve effectiveness of your meetings, and the SMART goal could be something like: Have a clear agenda for each meeting 24 hours ahead of time and end each meeting on time and with a clear set of action items assigned to specific individuals with deadlines. Or: Have only one key issue per meeting, and keep meetings to under 1 hour. Or: Have meetings only when there is a need for discussion and decision-making or quick touch-base meetings, not just to “share” information better presented in writing. All of these are possible goals. The point is to make it specific to your image of what the goal looks like.

To start with, you need to get specific about what things would have to be present for you to feel you have attained your vision. If your vision is to have a healthy body, what does that mean to you? Is it about weight, body fat percentage, how fast you walk a mile, ability to touch your toes, how much you can bench press, how often you exercise, the kinds of foods you nourish yourself with, the measure of cholesterol or other blood chemicals? If your vision is to have effective meetings, what does that mean? Is it about wasting less time, enjoying meetings more, having fewer meetings, building accountability, increasing focus, or just about making clearer decisions in meetings? All of these are possible, and many many more. Sometimes it helps to close your eyes and place yourself in your vision and imagine how you will feel there, and what will have changed for you to feel this way.

Now that you have visualized it, what specific goals did you attain to feel that way? And how can you begin moving in that direction? If you have a specific business-related goal, what are some first steps you could take to work toward your vision?

While setting goals, it is important to remember to set Realistic goals (remember the “R” in SMART?). Too often, we set goals that are very ambitious, but perhaps too ambitious and when we are unable to achieve them as quickly as we planned, we feel that we have failed.

In order to avoid this feeling of failure, but still stretch yourself to push a little further than is “easy”, it is best to set yourself a series of smaller goals for the coming week or month. To stick with our health example, a set of first steps might be to have a physical, stop drinking sugary drinks, and start walking 30 minutes every day. While this might be possible, it might be challenging, so you might set a “minimum acceptable” goal of getting the physical, and walking at least twice a week for 30 minutes, and eliminating sugary drinks during the week. Finally, you might set a target somewhere between this minimum and your ideal, and aim for that. At least if you achieve the minimum, you will feel that you have made meaningful progress, and you may be able to do even more than that in the process.

For our business meeting example, you might start with small steps such as making a list of all the types of meetings you currently have, and identifying the purpose each is serving, and outlining which ones could be eliminated, which ones need to be improved, and what might need to be added. Your “minimum acceptable” goal might be to just have the list of current meetings and their purpose. And the target could be somewhere in between where you have the list of meetings and their purpose, and you identify which ones most need improvement. Again, you will at least be able to make the list, and feel you are “on the path” to making improvements, but also feel like there is some challenge in reaching for the middle and ideal targets.

If your goals are long-term, such a 1-2 year or more away, be sure to set up some interim goals. In most cases, it is hard to set a goal of getting a big promotion, getting married, changing your corporate culture or other multi-step challenges and achieve it in a couple of months, so break your goal up into shorter-term milestones that you can aim for and feel the satisfaction of making progress before you achieve ultimate success.

Now that you have established your goals, write them down. Track them. Review them at least weekly and see how you are progressing. If you find that you are slipping, think about what specifically happens in the moment you slip up, and how you might change your thoughts and emotions to break through the next potential slip and move forward.

More next time on developing strategies around each goal.

July 6, 2010

Becoming the Person You Were Meant To Be – part 3: Establish Your Personal Vision

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 8:30 pm

The next step in this journey to greater success and fulfillment is establishing your personal vision.  A personal vision is grounded in the present and includes every significant aspect of your life, who you are, and what you desire in your life.

A great place to begin this is to start with a deep understanding of your own natural talents, abilities and preferences.  There are several tools to do this, but one I really like is called Strengths Finder 2.0, and it will give you a clear idea of your top 5 strengths and the kinds of activities you will undertake with mastery.  Building a vision that plays to your strengths will drive greater enjoyment and fulfillment.  Anytime that you are working against your strengths, you will find it feels like really hard work.   Your innate talents do not change with training, experience or education, but are intrinsic characteristics of who you are.  Knowing what your talents are is vital to creating a robust and meaningful personal vision.

The other elements your personal vision needs to incorporate are:

  • Your Skills and Experience: what expertise, knowledge and wisdom have you gained in your life?  What specific skills have you acquired?  Which ones do you want to continue to use?
  • Your Interests and Passions:  What gives you energy and ignites your passions?  What needs in the world are you compelled to meet?  What activities or causes create “flow” or a state where you lose track of time?
  • Your Communication and Interpersonal Style: how do you prefer to interact with people?  Are you introverted or extroverted?  Do you prefer to deal with data or feelings?  Are you future-oriented in your interactions or more grounded in the here and now?  MBTI, DISC, MAPP and other assessments can help you define this if you don’t already know.
  • Your Values:  What are the values that drive you?  Can you name your top five?  Some you might consider:  hard work, spirituality/closeness to God, honesty, fairness, adventure, fun, accomplishment, service to others, family, wealth, mastery, unity, questioning, organization, acceptance, faith, exploration, healing, appreciation, respect… etc.  Taking the time to identify your most important values is worth the effort in making sure your vision honors those values.  (See #2!)
  • Your Goals: What you want to accomplish in life, how you see the purpose of your journey and where it is headed.
  • Your personal history: what messages have you incorporated from your childhood and early development?  What did your family, teachers and other mentors tell you about your role in life and what you might accomplish?  How do you wish to keep these messages or free yourself from them?
  • Your stage in life:  Where you are in your life will determine what you will include in your vision.  Be clear about how this stage of your life is unfolding and what decisions are facing you and how your vision can address this.

Start by just writing what feels right at the moment, and then revisit it and edit frequently until you have a vision statement that inspires you to take action to realize that vision, and begin living like it has already happened.

You will want to post your vision statement in a place where you will see it daily, and make time to read through it at least once a week.  If it starts to feel stale, or your vision of the future begins to shift, just rewrite it.  It’s yours, and it needs to serve to inspire you, so change it until it does that for you.  You may even want to include images that help you feel the joy in your vision, inspiring quotes, or record it with music that uplifts and inspires you.

April 7, 2010

Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be – Part 1: The Purposeful Life

Filed under: Business Strategy — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 1:27 pm

Have you ever had the feeling that you were just “looking and acting the part” in your work life?  Or that somehow you were doing activities that played to your weaknesses and left you feeling drained?  Or maybe even that “if everyone would just do what I need them to….” it would all be easier and better?

First of all, if you have, you are not alone.  Some of the symptoms of this type of disconnect between “the real you” and the “you at work” are:

  • Overwhelm and Rush.  You always have too much to do, and never enough time to do it, and keeping all those balls in the air is wearing you out.  If you could just add a few more hours to the day it would all work out…
  • Urgency overload.  Everything is important and has to be done now, and even small issues feel like major crises.
  • “Silver bullet” mentality, or “next week/month/year I will be in control…”.  This can easily become a pattern in your life where there is always going to be time to enjoy your life after the next (big contract/promotion/raise/startup/joint venture/client).  It will all be better as soon as….
  • Externally-driven Goals and Priorities.  This looks like striving for goals and focusing on priorities that will garner external recognition, like a title, an income level, an award – because of what other people will think of you when you get there.

The worst part is that these symptoms tend to feed one another, and you can find yourself in a spiral of stress very quickly.  I call this the “Driven Life”.

But, there is an alternative I call the “Purposeful Life”, and its symptoms include:

  • Long-Term focus on Fundamentals.  This means looking out into the future and working on things that form the foundation for achieving your long-term vision.
  • Internally-driven Goals and Priorities.  This means setting and prioritizing goals that are based on your personal vision, not based on externally or “system”-driven criteria for success or achievement.  What is really important to you, regardless of what society or your mother think.
  • Vision-based Choice and Decisions.  In the purposeful life, you make decisions from a place of balanced vision and can measure any decision against whether or not it is taking you toward or away from your vision.
  • Priority-driven scheduling to build balance.  Finally, with a strong personal vision, you drive your schedule, your schedule does not drive you.  You put the things that really matter in your plan, and you begin to eliminate the things that do not increase your energy and your ability to achieve the vision.

I have outlined 10 steps to building a career and life around who you were meant to be, not necessarily who you think you are expected to be.  The first one is:

  1. Stop the Rollercoaster and Focus on You

In order to change the way you feel and behave and become the best business person you can be, you have to begin by set aside time to examine yourself and your situation and take the steps required to make permanent change.  This isn’t a 15-minute exercise, either, but rather a long-term commitment to valuing yourself and your unique contributions, desires and goals.

If you think you don’t have time for this, or you don’t have time for this “right now”, look back at the list of “Driven Life” characteristics and realize that you can be stuck in this pattern for life unless you find a way to make a change now, because now is all there is.

In fact, this exercise of becoming the business person you were meant to be can be started in a few hours, but to create meaningful change, I suggest you give yourself a year to allow your logical and emotional minds to collaborate on your vision of yourself, and to fully integrate new thinking and new habits in a sustainable way.  Plan on at least a couple of hours a week over a few months to start.  Build this time into your schedule – what work could be more important?

Next time step 2:  Establish a meaningful personal vision

March 9, 2010

Have a Personal Vision

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development,Life Choices — Tags: , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 6:07 pm

When you feel least motivated at work or in any role in your life, what is keeping you from being motivated?  Perhaps it is a poor work environment, insufficient rewards, a difficult boss or coworkers.  Or is it?

The surprising answer to motivational deficits are not individual relationships and physical environment or a lack of financial reward, but rather on your ability to control your destiny and the alignment of what you are doing to your personal values and vision.  Certainly all the variables in your surroundings help, and may make your work less onerous, but true motivation comes from internal factors:

  • Control of your own work: how, when and by what method you achieve the goal
  • Ability to do the job well: having the skills, knowledge and support to do a great job
  • Alignment of the goal with your own personal values and goals

The first two are driven by management culture, and are key elements of engagement, but the third is only possible if you have a sense of your own personal vision.  In fact, having a personal vision, a passion for something larger than your own personal gain, is such a strong motivator, that it can overcome the first two factors and drive you to unprecedented success and achievement.

Think about Gandhi who began a career as a mediocre lawyer, and discovered his purpose to overcome the abject poverty of his people, and their feelings of inferiority, and rose to greatness and influence on the power of that vision.

How can you develop your own personal vision?

First, start with identifying your core values, then work on envisioning a future in which those values are all honored to their highest in your life and work.  This becomes your personal vision.  Now look at the work and life you have and start planning how this can change into the life and work you need to manifest your personal vision.

Your vision enables your most powerful self to emerge.

February 25, 2010

Building Engagement

Filed under: Business Strategy — Tags: , , , , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 1:45 pm

Engagement is one of the most difficult concepts for most managers to grasp.  “What is engagement, what control do I have over it, and what would I do to increase it?”  And sometimes, “Why is this my job?”

Engaged employees work harder, are more productive, and actively build enthusiasm among fellow employees and customers.  If you are not the primary customer interface, think about the attitudes of the people in your company who are.  An actively engaged employee is going to go the extra mile to satisfy your customers and feel happy about doing it.

If your employees are not actively engaged (and the average percentage who are is 30%), they are either “not engaged” or worse, “actively disengaged”.  You may think of the actively disengaged as the whiners, complainers and others who spread disgruntlement throughout the organization.  You already know what impact the actively disengaged have on their coworkers – have you thought about how they treat your customers?  They don’t necessarily break procedure, but they are less cheerful, less helpful, and generally less willing to do the right thing for the customer.

So, if you weren’t before, you should now understand why engagement is part of any manager’s job.  It’s linked to critical measures like customer satisfaction, employee turnover, productivity and profit.

Secondly, you might ask, “How can I improve engagement?”  You probably have employees you think will never be engaged, but the average company has 25% of employees “actively disengaged”, while world-class companies only have 8% in this category.  Clearly there are some who cannot be budged out of this category, but most of them can be engaged.  Take responsibility for the level of engagement in your organization.  You can make a difference and you are contributing to the level of engagement you currently have.

But how do you build engagement?

Engagement starts with taking a personal interest in each employee.  Understand what they get out of work, help link their personal values and goals to those of the company or workgroup.  After this, begin to think of employees as assets that need development.  If you had expensive capital equipment on the factory floor, don’t you think you would pay for maintenance and upgrades as needed?  Well, employees are often the largest expense in any company, and yet they don’t get the training, mentoring and career development opportunities that would improve their productivity.

Find out what their strengths are, and find ways of using those on the job.  Find out their interests and look for ways to provide opportunities to grow and learn in areas they are interested in.  Celebrate successes, learn from failures and treat them like the valuable human capital they are.

You won’t be sorry you did.

November 24, 2009

Personalities in the Workplace: 5 Key Tips

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development — Tags: , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 10:58 am

What do you do when you find someone in your workplace difficult?  Ignore them, undermine them, placate them?  How can you get disparate personality types to work together productively?

Most of us have found certain people difficult to work with from time to time, and just being the boss doesn’t make managing these people any easier, so what can you to keep work productive and less frustrating all around?

  1. First seek to understand.  What do you know about this person?  What motivates them?  Where are their strengths?  In what areas are they an asset to the team or business?  In areas you find them difficult, what about your own preferences may be conflicting with theirs?
    How could you adjust your way of communicating and working with this individual to make them feel more comfortable and motivated?
  2. Develop common goals and teamwork.  It’s harder to have conflict when you are united with others around a common goal.  But big goals that are a year away or depend on so many other factors are not very motivating or unifying.  Under the “big” goals, a team needs frequent, small measurable goals that they can share.  Do you have a goal for how many calls to make?  Response time?  Meetings completing their agenda on time?  Anything that is frequent, measurable and requires the team to get it done will work.  Make sure there are some rewards and recognition associated, even as small as a “Well Done” sign where everyone can see, or lunch for the team at the end of the month.  It doesn’t have to cost a lot to be effective.
  3. Clarify expectations.  I know, you are always very clear.  But, really, are you?  Is the message you are transmitting being received the way you intended?  Are you being specific enough about what is needed and how it is to be delivered?  Spend time not only communicating your expectations, but also hearing them played back to you so you can make sure the message was heard clearly.  “Be more courteous” could mean more pleases and thank yous to one person, but mean always showing up 5 minutes early for meetings to another.  Which did you want to have happen?  Be specific and concrete.
  4. Give and receive feedback on the spot.  When you see a behavior that isn’t in line with your expectations, or have a communication or meeting that goes badly, don’t let 2-3 weeks or even 2-3 days go by before you sit down and talk about it with the people involved.  Take 5 minutes right then and there.  Cool down if you need to, but make sure you provide feedback or gather feedback while the incident is still fresh in everyone’s mind.  You may discover that you are someone else’s “difficult person” and that a few small changes will improve the environment for everyone.
  5. Don’t hesitate to let a bad actor go.  If you’ve tried to understand motivational and personality differences, built common goals, clarified expectations and given and received on the spot feedback and someone is still behaving badly or wrecking your team dynamics, sometimes you need to just amicably part ways.  There’s nothing harder on a team than watching someone else “get away with murder” with seemingly no consequences.In one client’s company I remember an employee saying “You can’t get fired from here”.  Well, if that doesn’t just encourage bad behavior, I don’t know what does.  Stop the bad actor or eliminate them, and morale will improve.

Workplace harmony begins at the top, and it isn’t about agreeing or hugging each other.  It’s about finding ways to leverage differences rather than letting them become barriers to growth.  Healthy disagreement and dialogue usually lead to better outcomes, but they need to remain goal-focused, respectful and based on data whenever possible.

Giving Thanks

Filed under: Business Strategy,Life Choices — Tags: — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 10:56 am

This holiday season, I have so much to be thankful for.  My family is healthy, we are financially intact, my business is growing, my clients are interesting, learning and taking away great lessons and growth from our work together.  My children are doing well in school and other pursuits, and I’m taking on some new creative work that satisfies my soul.

Most of all, I feel a positive wind of change in the air.  I don’t know what 2010 will hold, but I am excited about it and meeting it with eyes wide open and charged up to take on whatever comes my way.  I am thankful for the energy to do this, and the support of my husband to keep pursuing my dreams.

What are you giving thanks for this holiday season?  What has blessed your life this year?

November 4, 2009

Taking the Calculated Risk

Filed under: Business Strategy — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 9:10 am

Entrepreneurs are by their nature a pretty risk-tolerant group. They have to be – setting off on their own to do something no one else has done, or at least that no one else has done in quite the same way, in the same place, that they are doing.

However, taking risks doesn’t have to be the same as being reckless. For most businesses, there is a logical set of steps in researching the market, the customer, the competition, in order to assess the level of risk, and manage it.

I often work with entrepreneurs, and one of the most common things I find is that serial entrepreneurs can be victims of their own success. What does that mean? Well, many entrepreneurs did well by doing one or two things right, and then getting extraordinarily lucky. They hit a market at the right time, with the right product or service, and in spite of doing little or no “traditional” business management, and bucking the models, they were successful. What do you learn from this? Well, many of them believe in the power of their own success, and that the models are useless and that they can succeed at anything based on the sheer power of their personality and acumen.

Surely you can see the flaw in this logic, but also why it is so seductive. It is not unusual for these successful people to go on to start one or more additional businesses – and fail. They take the lesson of success and continue to disdain traditional management, planning, strategy and organization. Occasionally they will again get lucky, but far more often I see them fail and wonder why the magic didn’t work again.

Those who overcome this learn that hard work and smart management of a company is a surer path to success than the force of personality or luck. They begin to do more research, and look at more data. They begin to track their failures and identify root causes. They begin to learn more about motivating people, creating great organizations, channel marketing, sales strategies, partnering, product development, and many other management topics. In other words, they evolve into great leaders and business people.

When you look at your business or group, are you using the best tools available to maximize your chances of success? Have you discarded management tools and theories because they aren’t perfect and others have succeeded without them? Do you have a coach or consultant helping you find the best out there and applying it to your business problems? Are you tapping into the creativity of your team to build on best practices and create new innovations in running a business, or are you repeating mistakes made by many others before you?

I invite you to look at how you are working and running your business and how you could build a sturdier foundation for the growth you can achieve.

November 2, 2009

Environmental Design

Filed under: Business Strategy,Career Development,Life Choices — Tags: , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 9:11 am

In the coaching world, we talk about environmental design as a way of enhancing and facilitating change and development. What that really means is that change is easier when the environment you live and work in supports the change.

Have you ever been to a training where you learned about a new exciting tool and came back ready to kick off a new way of working, interacting or planning, only to find that enthusiasm dampened by day 2, and the training forgotten within a few weeks? This is a result of poor environmental design.

You have a new tool or skill, but you come back to the same office, same desk, same tasks, same co-workers – all of which supported the old set of habits and skills. Without support and an environment that actively and passively encourages the use of new skills, the old patterns re-emerge quickly.

So what can you do to really look at your environment and how it impacts your ability to implement change? Here are 5 ways to look around and see what is supported in your environment:   

  1. Physical Environment. Look around and see what is in your immediate work environment. Is it neat and organized or cluttered and messy? Where do new items land? Where do “important” projects and tasks land? Do you face colleagues or a wall or window? What can you hear in your environment? When you look at your physical environment, does it encourage you to take the actions you need? Is it more conducive to collaborative work or solitary research/writing and thinking? Does it help you focus? Does it keep you abreast of what everyone in the team is doing? What is important to you and your progress, and does the physical environment support that? How could you make it more supportive of your goals?
  2. Social Environment. What do you get from the people in your work, home and social environment? Do they encourage you to reach your goals? Do they have compatible goals? Are they prone to sabotaging your efforts, or are they excited to see you change? If they aren’t supportive, who could you recruit to spend more time with who would be more encouraging?
  3. Temporal Environment. How do you structure your time during the day and over the course of a week, and how does that impact your ability to make changes and achieve your goals? Are you able to use your most productive hours on the most difficult tasks? Are you actively managing your energy levels and scheduling tasks when the right energy is there to support them?
  4. Intellectual Environment. What kinds of intellectual stimulation do you get from your environment? Do you have challenging people with new ideas in your environment? What kinds of reading material, news, radio and other media do you keep in your environment and how does that impact your goals? What changes might improve your motivation and ability to stay on track with new behaviors and skills?
  5. Measurement Environment. What is tracked and measured in your environment? How is progress noted and how often? Are the things being measured encourage you to make change? If not, what kinds of measures might make more sense? How often are they measured?

In order to effectively make a change or build new behaviors, you can make it infinitely easier by designing the right environment. Think about someone trying to start a new diet. One of the first changes is to take “forbidden” food out of the kitchen, maybe join a support group or begin the diet with a friend or spouse, to get new recipes supporting the new diet and setting up a measurement and tracking system to see daily progress and understand any setbacks.

All changes are similar in many ways. They are hard, and can only be tackled when the motivation is there, but that is rarely enough. In order to create success, you need to carefully examine your environment and create stimuli and support for changes, new behaviors and new skills.

October 27, 2009

Advertising Development and AdMaps

Filed under: Business Strategy — Tags: , — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 2:46 pm

Many of my clients use advertising to build awareness of the products or services, and they often wonder if they could be doing a better job of developing effective advertising messages.

One tool I used way back in “big marketing” days at P&G and Coca-Cola was the AdMap. What this does is clarify the purpose of advertising and helps to define a measure against which a potential ad could be measured.

For many clients, the problem at hand is just making sure than potential customers know they exist, but beyond that, the problem is often more about how to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Say for example you are a plumber and you are trying to get the word out about your plumbing business. One obstacle is simply name recognition, but you may also discover that in your area most consumers believe that plumbers are unreliable, slow and eager to make more money at the consumer’s expense. In this case, you may also want to develop a message that convinces consumers that you are different and will actually show up when you say you will and accurately diagnose the problem.

The AdMap helps illustrate the core belief in the mind of your customer that you are trying to change. You have to know something about your customer to do this exercise, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s the basic layout:

AdMap

When you see this, you can build the kind of advertising message that might change the beliefs, and thus the behavior, of your potential customers. The message has to be credible and truthful, and tap into a positive image of what it would be like to use your product or service.

One of the most powerful examples I know of appears in the latest Apple ad as part of the “Mac and PC” campaign (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpOvzGiheOM). I’ve designed an AdMap based on the ad, and some of the thinking that might be behind it:

Ad Map

Now, the ad is also humorous and well-designed, but it clearly plays on consumer beliefs about Microsoft and sows a seed of doubt about how likely Microsoft is to have really “fixed” their operating system this time.

The next time you develop an ad, try using this tool to analyze the message you are creating and the beliefs you are trying to change. You can practice on your favorite TV ads and see what a powerful way of looking at advertising this can be. 

July 4, 2009

Building a High Performing Management Team

Filed under: Business Strategy,Life Choices — Laura Huckabee-Jennings @ 3:33 pm

In my line of work, I get up close and personal with the people running businesses, starting businesses and growing businesses. I have tremendous respect for the entrepreneurial spirit that motivates people to take the personal and financial risks associated with starting a business, and I love my clients. They inspire me, they teach me, they challenge me and they allow me to feel useful.

When my clients struggle, one of the most common areas of struggle is managing within their own organizations. Particularly difficult for founders, but certainly common in lots of other places in organizations, is a struggle over responsibility, accountability and the ability to commit the company (or part of it) to a course of action. When you start something, it is natural to want to guarantee success. For many people, this means managing the details, cutting off “interference” or “distraction” from others, or sometimes just shouting loud enough to “motivate” others.

Organizations with walls and lack of trust build up when the people running them resort to any of these behaviors, and walls mean lack of efficiency, insufficient communication, and resentment. If you think you are “protecting” your organization from distraction or interference, or driving performance by building fear, make sure you are not ignoring good business ideas from the rest of the company, allowing lack of direct and honest communication to foster distrust and suspicion, or pursuing goals that are not commonly shared.

Here are six signs you have trust issues:

1. The major issues for the business are not subject to open discussion. You may hear phrases like, “we’ve been over this, and we’re not talking about it again,” or “that decision’s been made. end of discussion,” or “that’s my problem, leave me alone with it.” Are there questions that can’t be asked? Sacred cows in your organization that are beyond examination? Is there an group in the organization that is held less accountable for their deliverables than others?

2. Problem-solving is done by the fewest number of people possible. Do groups “hide” issues, and try to manage them without letting anyone know there is an issue? Is a critical function (like production, or IT) frequently left out of problem-solving that will affect them?

3. Any layer of management “reaches through” another on a regular basis to get status reports. Does “the boss” skip through layers of management to talk to the “field” and measure their performance directly on a regular basis? Does regular reporting ignore the management structure in place?

4. Planning is done in isolated groups, and not for the entire organization. Do you have a “plan” for each group in the organizaton (i.e. an R&D plan, a marketing plan, a sales plan, a production plan, a finance plan), and lack an overall plan that defines common goals? Do you establish strategic goals before creating the organizational ones, or the reverse?

5. There are no processes for getting new ideas aired, or the processes are ignored. Do new ideas, processes, products, services seem to materialize from thin air, and it isn’t clear who approved them or how they got the green light to be implemented? Do you have management processes for reviewing new ideas, but no one has ever seen them in action? Do you ignore the processes you have because they are too cumbersome or don’t lead to good discussion and decisions?

6. Any group blames another group for the organization’s problems. Do you find members of one team constantly pointing out the faults of other teams rather than addressing their own shortcomings? Is there a scapegoat team in your organization? a team beyond reproach?

All of these are signs that your organization is behaving dysfunctionally, often due to personal conflicts in your management team. The key to improving performance is building trust and breaking down those “silos” of responsibility to get everyone behind a common vision of where you are going and how you are going to get there.

Building trust and building a common vision and plan are not easy, short processes. A management team has to invest time, money and energy in hashing out issues with the current business, developing a vision for the future, and agreeing on what it is going to take to get there. Points of view have to be articulated, understood, and incorporated into the plan. Compromises must be made, and everyone must be committed to the final result, have an action plan, accountability and regular mutual review.

Without this, organizations can flail without significant progress as individuals and organizations work at cross-purposes and the benefits of teamwork are not realized.

How can you start? I recommend that you begin with the team at the top, with team-building exercises, and strategic planning based on industry trends, SWOT analysis, definition of a source of competitive advantage and a 3-5 year plan based on realistic expectations of the organization. Agree on where you are going, how you are going to get there, and who is going to do what, and get back together to review progress on the plan. Adjust it if necessary. Discuss how it’s going. Don’t be afraid to share information, good or bad. Repeat the whole process annually at least. Once it’s working, consider rolling it out to the next level of management down… rinse and repeat!

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