Month: June 2015

3 Steps To Overcome Overwhelm By Embracing #Assertion #Leadership #Responsibility

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American Football

Overcoming Setbacks Is Part Of Life (Picture from GaborfromHungary from morguefile.com)

Any job can kick your butt.

If you get knocked down often enough you lose sight of your goals. Your results can nose dive. Your team spirit vanishes. You hate Sunday night (it reminds you of Monday morning). Welcome to survival mode.

If the situation continues for long enough it can have serious health implications too.

Next stop burn-out.

How Many Stressed Out People Are There In Great Britain?

You are far from alone if you have ever been so stressed out you needed time-off from work. According to Health and Safety Executive (HSE) data (1):

The total number of cases of work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2013/14 was 487 000 (39%) out of a total of 1 241 000 cases for all work-related illnesses.

From personal experience I know the costs behind the HSE’s numbers. Those costs are measured in disruption to personal and family life; the impact on team outputs; the downturn in customer satisfaction.

It is the difference between enjoying life in 3D and enduring it in 2D. So what are the elements that help you start to overcome overwhelm?

Effective Leadership

Skilled and confident senior staff help to balance workloads and they practice realism when goal setting for their teams. They are people who value people just as much as spreadsheets.

These leaders create the safe space in which team members produce excellent results; manage risks and speak up about issues that affect results.

That communication is a regular part of the flow within the team. No one wants an unexpected and stress-filled adult-to-adult conversation to kick off; leaving a manager angry and their team member acting like an upset child.

Personal Responsibility

Responsibility starts with self-awareness. How does the team / organisation feel to you? How is it serving customers? How are your values represented? Is the work flowing freely or piling up on your desk?

I’ve found that people know when a situation ‘feels’ wrong. They are the ones having sleepless nights and stress-filled days.

Your self-awareness check will tell you whether: colleague relationships are also suffering; customer feedback shows that they aren’t getting what they expected; it is time to speak out.

Responsibility involves speaking out when these factors are present and reducing the flow of ideas and energy within the team. You can suggest how a change will improve relationships and boost customer satisfaction. Why keep good ideas to yourself?

Remember to have empathy for senior managers. They are always being pushed to produce more outputs, more quickly with less resources in their teams.

Assertive Communication

From experience, research and work with coaching clients there is value in communicating assertively.

Communicate your feelings positively. Don’t turn any negative feelings in on yourself.

After all, teams with good communication and engagement channels produce better results. That is a key part of the virtuous circle: research shows that being heard and valued is a core component of engagement, which is an important part of producing great results.

Workshop Ideas

I am leading a workshop in 7 days drawing on many of the ideas above.  The event takes place in a week on 5 July (2) and before then I will share some further insights.

As a start, take the opportunity to read Rebecca Knight’s Harvard Business Review article (3). It is worth your time.

What Is Your Solution To Overcoming Overwhelm And Combatting Workplace Stress?

Add your voice to this conversation in the comments below. Your views will help another leader or staff member dealing with these issues.

Please share this post with others, where that will help someone improve customer satisfaction; create a more supportive team and experience greater job satisfaction.

Resources

(1)

http://bit.ly/HSE_Stress_Related_Disorders_GB_2014

(2)

http://bit.ly/An_Assertiveness_And_Success_Workshop

(3)

http://bit.ly/HBR_Rebecca_Knight_How_To_Handle_Difficult_Workplace_Conversations

 

 

Tackle Your #CoachingGoals – Top 5 Ideas For Engaging With Potential Clients

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Support Personal Development And Spread Happiness

Support Personal Development And Spread Happiness

It is always good to spend time continuing professional development. Gaining more skills means you provide a better service to others, while living out your values. What could be better than helping to solve someone’s problem so they get their smile back?

Do You Know Someone Losing Sleep Over Their Problems?

Obviously I am proud to know so many people in professions which help others. All those others need, is a willingness to take action. Anything is possible if they are ready to put an end to their sleepless nights.

Which is why it is handy to have real / virtual access to the community of helpful people. People who coach; people who are NLP practitioners; women and men who are therapists.

How Do You Start Conversations Which Help Solve Problems?

Any time I get together with these helpers the conversation returns to the basic theme. What approaches work well when building powerful and authentic problem-solving connections?

In the last 7 days I have gained a bunch of insight from others’ marketing wisdom. Some of it has been completely new. Some insights put a fresh perspective on information I already had.

Here are some headlines you might find useful if your profession helps others perform better.

Top 5 Ideas For Engaging With Potential Clients

  • Allow your outreach plan to signpost your next step. That’s the step which makes more potential clients aware of the benefits they gain by knowing more about your work
  • The simple step after just knowing about you? Keep providing service. Go deeper so people really like and trust the benefits you offer
  • Use the client’s language so they savour the sound / sight / taste / feel / smell of their exciting future
  • When you offer to help solve their problem pause. That creates a space for the other person to decide how to respond
  • Practice self-care. Be mindful about making the best impression you can while building the relationship and offering service. Accept that the other person could still say ‘No’. Don’t take it to heart if they do (you might be able to signpost them to someone else, which is still a good service)

Caring But Not Too Much

The last point is the tricky one.

Obviously you care about explaining the benefits of your service to the other person. You want them to connect the dots, so it is obvious that you can solve their problem.

Don’t do what I did after attending one corporate meeting. I thought it would be plain sailing once I sat down with the decision makers (and submitted a follow up proposal).

When I did not receive a response I emailed the decision makers. I waited.

No response.

Finally I called their virtual assistant.

She took a message and promised to pass it on. The silence which followed triggered a light bulb above my head.

The organisation was not into my proposal. They used a passive silence to get that message cross.

Lesson learned, I moved on.

Giving Credit For These Insights

  • Hat tip to Clive Maxheath of the Men’s Action Project (full disclosure I Co-organises a MeetUp group for coaches with Clive) you can follow @Coachpreneurs on Twitter too. Details of Clive’s MAP work are available via the following link http://www.meetup.com/TheMAP/
  • I also enjoyed learning more about marketing from a great a range of speakers led by Carole Bozkurt and Ann Marie Mayling at the Blueprint Practice – you can visit them here http://blueprintpractice.com/

What is your favourite strategy for engaging clients?

Go ahead and use the comment section to share your favourite strategy. How do you build your presence in an authentic way? How assertive do you need to be when you engage with clients (I’m leading a workshop on assertion on 5 July so the issue is very topical)?

I’m looking forward to reading your replies. The community reading your comments will be grateful for your wisdom too.

Finally, remember to share this post if you have found it useful, so others can benefit from reading it.

 

How Does #Assertion Help Improve Your Day?

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Ready To Take Assertive Action? (Picture credit jzlomek at morguefile.com)

Ready To Take Assertive Action? (Picture credit jzlomek at morguefile.com)

The quietly confident smile on Nick’s face said it all.

Nick was a middle-management colleague of mine. He led a team at work and he was a good sportsman too. He knew a lot about getting the best out of others.

When I saw Nick smiling I guessed the ‘quick word’ he had held with our senior manager had gone well.

Why was that quick word necessary?

That morning our senior manager (Sue) had chosen to brutally criticise Nick during a staff meeting. Nick’s team had been around the table.

Nick’s face had registered shock. The rest of us were embarrassed. It was one of those I’m-glad-that-wasn’t-aimed-at-me moments.

After the meeting broke up Nick sat quietly, writing a few words in his diary and looking  in the direction of our boss’s door.

Once he had fixed his goal in mind he’d walked up to the door, knocked and gone in.

What Did Nick Do To Be Assertive?

When I had the chance I asked Nick the obvious question. Making the decision to act was one thing, what had he said to Sue about the meeting? His answer?

I let her know how I felt after what she said this morning ….I told her I never spoke to my team like that and I don’t accept it either …there’s better ways to work together…she said she saw my point of view.

Nick influenced a positive change in Sue’s behaviour towards him, judging by his upbeat mood.

Assertion Means Talking About Your Feelings When You Negotiate

Nick’s real-life example shows the value of bringing emotion into assertive situations.

Use the range of evidence at your fingertips, including your feelings. Involve the other party in a conversation.

Your theme is how to make your relationship more productive. Give them an incentive to change their behaviour so it benefits others.

If they join in with that conversation and then change their approach that’s a great outcome. You have both benefitted from your honesty.

If the other person refuses to engage with the conversation you have learned something.

That knowledge means you can choose your future options wisely. Those options might include downplaying or even ending the relationship.

Want To Continue This Conversation?

Thank you for reading this post. Feel free to Comment below and share the post with others who can get something from it.

I am sharing more information that will make your day easier in my June newsletter. If you would like to get on to the mailing list for further information first head over to

www.experienceenterprisesltd.co.uk

Then fill in your email address in the field on the right hand side of the page and finally press the red Send button.

I’m looking forward to sharing more ideas with you in the weeks to come.