When we are fully present, we experience LIFE. We can see more clearly what has to happen. We can see the truth about the moment. We can see the truth about our impact. We can fully feel our feelings: joy, anger, sadness or excitement. It is in this place that we can better identify, as leaders in our own lives, what needs to happen next.
As a business coach, I ask my clients, “Have you ever had any of these experiences?”
~ You drive home from work and then don’t remember how you got there.
It’s no secret that many people who attend seminars, workshops and conferences have great difficulty in implementing the ideas.
They get all hyped up and excited on the actual day, write a book full of notes and proclaim to everyone in earshot that “this is it! I have found the magic pill that will transform my work and my life.”
I know how overwhelming it can be when participating at these events. By the end of the day my brain goes into overdrive. The question I always ask myself is “what am I going to do next?”
I have met organizations that, not believing in their own strategy, do not implement it. Similarly I have met organizations who, from careful planning, know what they need to do and do not follow through because of lack of confidence, vested interests or because “we do not do things like that”.
Unfortunately, some organizations treat strategic planning as an annual chore that is completed by extrapolating past performance figures forward and then massaging the numbers until something likely to be approved is produced. This is often compounded by perceiving this annual task to be part of a negotiation process where the skill is to offer the minimum acceptable performance.
Sometimes you don’t have the ability conduct team building from scratch. In a business startup you have a couple of choices. Your first choice is an obvious path of least resistance. In this scenario you simply place a classified ad in the biggest regional newspaper in your area and you find the most willing individual that have skills that are close to meeting your desired need. There is nothing wrong with this approach, but you don’t always get a team oriented staff this way.
Good salespeople spend 20% of their time talking to customers, and the other 80% of their time listening to their customers. Great salespeople do this as well, but with a slight distinction - they ask better questions. Asking powerful questions of your customers can open up doors to new opportunities, as well as give you better insight into how you can help your customers succeed. Here are a couple of examples to get you thinking:
1. What would you like to accomplish in our meeting today?