Develop Positive Daily Practices and Rituals

Many leaders work at balancing their lives through what they call daily practices.  These can be tiny habits or big ones.  Usually they are sprinkled throughout the day as a way to rejuvenate yourself and reconnect, if only for a moment.

Playbook:

· Keep a checklist of replenishing activities (eg walk, stretch, nap, meditate, pray, etc.)

· When you read or hear a useful idea, write it down.

· In any encounter with a family member, search for what you can learn, enjoy and appreciate.

· Use your calendar to keep track of your daily abundances or gratitudes.

· Use Apps like “CheckLists” to help you remember positive rituals you are trying to practice.

I will be presenting a workshop on “The New Science of Goal Setting” on Tuesday, January 10.  Please look for a formal invitation forthcoming this week.  

Happy Holidays!

Coach Rob

Importance of Goal Setting in the New Year

Everywhere I go, I hear the same refrain:

• We are working as hard as we can
• We have so many things to do, it’s hard to keep our goals straight

What can you do?

1. Rest over the holidays and let your employees rest
2. Set clear goals for the new year

To help you set your goals, please attend a free Goal setting workshop on Monday, January 9.  I will be presenting a workshop on “The New Science of Goal Setting”.  The action step will be that everyone will leave the workshop with one goal in each of the following categories:

1. Work
2. Family
3. Health
4. Creativity and Generatively
5. Community

I will also be following this workshop up with quarterly meetings to help participants stick with and achieve their goals.  A formal invitation will be sent to members of the CEO Connect community via Eventbrite.

Coach Rob

Window and the Mirror

In “Good to Great,” Jim Collins uses the concept of the window and mirror. When things go well, great leaders look out the window and give credit to their team and employees for the success. However,  when things don’t go so well, leaders look first in the mirror to accept responsibility. Ultimately the leader is the one that has to be accountable. 

I have used this technique many times in coaching, because it is so illuminating and the image so easy to grasp. Clients have reported dramatic changes when they start to incorporate this into their thinking. They set their egos aside and give credit where it is due. They retrain their minds so they don’t automatically blame others for failures or glitches.

THE PLAYBOOK

· Consistently give credit for successes to your team.

· After a failure, scrutinize your own actions first.

· Just keep telling yourself it’s not all about you. 

For a great holiday gift for anyone who has ever loved and lost a pet, please consider my book Conversations With My Old Dog.  http://www.readthespirit.com/book-for-dog-lovers

Help One Individual Find A Job

Problems may be global, but solutions are local, starting with one individual.   Right now, our major global problem is unemployment.  A solution is for each individual reading this email to help one individual find a job.

PLAYBOOK:

1. Reach out to one individual to help him or her find a job.

2. Coach, mentor, inspire and offer to help for as long as it takes for them to find a job.

3. If you can offer someone any work, do so, even if it’s part-time, or a “low-pay” internship to get them started.

4. Remember what it was like for you when you were out of work—what help would you have liked?

5. Send any suggestions to me that you may have on how to address the unemployment problem and I will post them on my blog.

The New Golden Rule

The standard Golden Rule is: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s still a good one, but the Gallup Organization added a New Golden Rule: Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.  Too often we try to motivate people by a reward which motivates ourselves rather than a reward which motivates the other person. These are often not the same.

There are three rewards which  tend to motivate people: achievement (winning at competition), affiliation (being part of a team) and power (status, influence). Usually two of these motivators are strong in a person and the third isn’t. So if you use a reward system built on just one thing, you’re not likely to motivate everybody.

THE PLAYBOOK

1. Talk about the three motivators with your team. Ask them which ones are their prime motivators.

2. At home, be sensitive to what motivates each family member. One person may respond very well to affection but someone else may react much more positively when you give them a hand with a task. 

3. Ask yourself, what are your prime motivators?

Coach Rob

Keeping Perspective

When I try to help the coaching clients, one thing I must continue to remind them and myself as well is to keep perspective.

As tough as we have it, most everybody else has it tougher than we do.  This week I have noticed a few perspectives to keep in mind:

1. Be especially thoughtful and kind to your administrative assistant.  They have to do much of your tough work    without having your power.

2. Deeply, deeply appreciate your humility and bristle at any sign of arrogance.

3. You have a big voice. Give others the chance to have their voice as well.

4. Don't forget that you don't only work purely for financial gain nor does your company.  Does your company strive to make a difference in this troubled world?

5. This is not about you.

6. Tomorrow you may no longer be sitting on top of the world. Enjoy the view while you have it and be careful not to fall off.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Jeff Zaslow’s latest book, GABBY: A Story of Courage and Hope,  (the memoir of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly) will be released this  Tuesday, November 15. 

Coach Rob

What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About Time and Energy

For the past several years, I have been fascinated by neuroscience which combines brain research, biology, and psychology.  Here are a few key learnings which can be applied to helping you

manage your time and energy better:

1. The brain is capable of making a finite number of decisions each day.  There are diminishing returns on the effectiveness of decisions the later in the day they are made.  If you have to make key decisions, make them early in the day.

2. The brain needs food which it turns into glucose.  As glucose levels drop, so does our ability to think clearly and to manage our emotions.  As an example, we tend to be grumpier before meals.  So it’s important to feed the beast all day long.  Keep healthy snacks in your briefcase and eat  several small meals a day.

3. Don't make tough decisions when you're hungry. Don't skimp on calories as you try to deal with more serious problems.

4. “While glucose is the problem, sugar is not the solution. When you eat go for the slow burn: most vegetables, nuts, raw fruit, cheese, fish, meat, olive oil, and other good fats.”  Roy Baumeister

5. The brain needs rest.  We tend to forget how rejuvenating a 15 minute nap can be.  Research shows that the best way to regain energy is to first drink some caffeine and then immediately take a 15 minute nap.  It takes 15 minutes for the caffeine to kick in and then you’re rested and ready to go.

Manage Your Energy As Well As Your Time

I hear people saying, “I don’t have enough time.” As Mary Martin, a business owner in Holland, Mich., says, often what they really mean is they don’t have enough energy. As I coach, I first ask whether my clients feel engaged in their work. Then I ask about any family or health issues that may be preoccupying them. If there are some, I find out if there is any action they can take to resolve them. I also ask whether they are getting enough sleep, enough time at full rest and enough exercise.

These kinds of actions helped these leaders avoid the burnout that so often accompanies people in demanding roles. When you’re a leader, you don’t have to prove yourself with a superhuman effort or superhuman time commitment. Sustainability is more important. And to achieve that, you have to know what re-energizes you. It’s all about discipline and knowing what recharges your batteries.

· If you don’t know what re-energizes you, ask the people around you. Ask your mate what he or she notices about your behavior – when you’re up or down – and what led to it.

· Ask yourself the questions I ask clients: Are you fully engaged in your work? Are there family or health problems that are preoccupying you? Are you getting enough sleep? Enough full rest? Enough exercise? What action can you take now to begin to resolve the problem?

To find more coaching lessons, order www.readthespirit.com/balanced_leadership/

Coach Rob

Why Facebook is so popular? It's addictive. You post and and are reinforced when you get a "like" or a a comment. It's popularity is based on the psychological concept of intermittent reinforcement, same as a slot machine. Comments or "likes" please and advice on how to stop the FB addiction?

Getting Important Things Done

Recently, the most frequent pressing problem I am seeing with my coaching clients is “Too much to do, too little time.”  In today’s world it is not uncommon to be rewarded for doing well in one role by being given an additional roles, usually with no additional resources provided.

The problem makes me ponder: In these difficult times, what can a leader do to get important things done?

One tip: Instead of setting several goals at a time, set one goal and work on it until you get it done.  Research as described in the book Willpower¹, indicates that our mind does not work

effectively if we focus on more than one goal at a time.  So, here are a few coaching tips:

1. Set only a few big monthly goals (daily or even weekly is too short a time)

2. Every day work on one piece of the “big goal”.  Start early when you are fresh and every day put some concentrated effort into making progress on the goal.

3. Don’t multi-task while working on this goal. 

4. The same holds true for family and personal goals.  Select only one in each category each month.

Please feel free to share any ideas you have on “getting important things done”.  

Coach Rob

¹ Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength  by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney available at http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human-Strength/dp/1594203075/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319477127&sr=8-1