How many times have you started a new program you initially thought would be a breeze?

You gave your word, put down a deposit, signed an agreement, and even committed to invest more time, effort, and additional funds. You did all that only to find out—just a few days later—that this new effort requires too much of you. All too quickly, “life gets in the way”… and then your commitment goes out the window.

Whatever your new commitment was…a gym program, a study class, a diet plan, a social club, or a new career focus…it required additional time.

You believed that a new program would get you new results. And that is a fair assumption, but…

…what’s missing here is the fact that replacing old behaviors with new ones isn’t as simple as pushing a button. It takes much more work to make a commitment stick.

First, let’s understand why it’s not so easy to successfully introduce a change.

You’ve got a daily routine you have built along the years. You are so used to your routine, you could probably do it with your eyes closed. But even though going through your normal routine is easy, it doesn’t always get you the results you want.

Whenever you want to change your routine, you are no longer performing in automatic. Instead, you’re paying close attention to your actions. It’s the difference between driving a car on automatic and learning how to drive with a stick shift. In the latter, you need to pay attention to every turn, making sure you’re in the right gear. It’s not easy and it takes a lot of focus.

Similarly, when you’re introducing a change to your routine, it requires more effort to focus on the goal and to consistently choose actions that advance the goal. That can be really challenging.

So why is it hard to make that change? One psychological model that explains the difficulty has to do with your conscious and subconscious mind.

When you’re operating in “automatic”, your subconscious mind is in control. When your subconscious mind is aligned with your conscious mind, taking action seems effortless.

But when there is no alignment, trying to take action just ends up sapping your energy.

Oftentimes when you make a commitment, you first engage your conscious mind. The problem is your subconscious mind hasn’t yet bought into supporting your quest. So instead of an easy change, you’ve got years of deeply held beliefs and assumptions ready to challenge your commitment.

Normally, people don’t know how to powerfully interact with their subconscious. You neither learn it in school nor from your parents. Many people don’t even think it can be done.

But when you go about aligning your subconscious mind with your conscious goals, then keeping your commitment becomes much easier.

If you’re interested in exploring how to align your subconscious mind with your conscious goals, you’ll want to work with a professional. That way, you can more quickly and easily make the consistent progress you really want.

Give our office a call at 732-385-1522 and ask us about how the Core Energy Coaching(TM) process can help you fulfill the commitments you’ve being attempting to uphold without much success.

People tend to feel quite protective about how they do things.

It might have taken you years to develop your modus operandi. So, when someone is brave enough to indicate how you could be doing things differently, you’re unlikely to listen. More so, you may have even asked for their feedback . And yet, when they open up and share with you what they see, you tense up and start to justify your behavior to them.

I am going to make three assumptions here:

1. You rarely ask for feedback
2. You only request feedback from people you respect
3. You don’t accept unsolicited feedback

So, how do you get the most out of genuine feedback that you ask for?

First, you need to want to hear it.

Here are 6 tips to get the most out of feedback:

1) Choose to hear feedback as an opportunity

They are telling you something you don’t see, or you see but ignore the implications. Even if it sounds harsh, the intent is to help you. You know, tough love…

2) Listen

Some comments will be tolerable. Others, just plain invalid. These are the exact nuggets you want to listen to and understand. Many times, our self perception is a far cry from reality. When you care of how others perceive what you do, it is time to find out what their perception is. Great listening will help you to achieve that.

3) Ask questions

This is your opportunity to clarify others’ perception. Use the word “why” as many times as necessary.Find out what is the impact on others.

4) Leave your “ego” at the door

Now is not the time to defend the fort. Of course you have reasons why you are doing things the way you do. But, stop thinking that you know it all. This is called arrogance. And that will do absolutely zero to help you improve.

5) Brainstorm

If they pointed out some problems, discuss possible solutions. You are not required to guarantee implementing what they recommend.  But, you’ll may get a sneak peek at what it may be, if you choose to do things a certain way.  Open communication will help you see things you cannot see on your own.

6) Keep the experience positive

When you do have someone who is honest and willingly shares with you what you can’t see on your own, cherish that. You not only need to make the experience conflict-free, but also inviting to the point that they will be willing to help you again. Be interested in everything they say and show your gratitude.

What has been the most helpful feedback you’ve ever received? Post your comment in the space below.

An interview is similar to an audition. The objective in mind here is to choose the right employee—the one who has the talent to elevate your team’s performance.

Now, let’s say you’ve already looked through many resumes and picked those that resonated with you. You would have highlighted specific individuals for interview because those people would have: similar relevant experience, specific technical specialties, important competencies or strengths, or even recommendations from someone you know.

So what do you need to do to make the interview successful?

There are four actions you need to take that make an interview effective: verifying, observing, building rapport, and evaluating potential.

Verify

Don’t take a resume at face value. Ask questions to verify details that are of interest to you. If what impressed you in reading their resume was their experience, ask them to give more details about that experience.

It’s important to know:

• who they interacted with at their prior jobs
• what was their impact
• what they did really well
• what they would have done differently given another opportunity

Observe

As your candidate engages in the conversation, you want to learn the facts. For example: How do they handle familiar territory? How do they respond when they do not know the answer? What is the level of energy that they exhibit? What’s their level of self-confidence, and of their confidence in other people?

Make sure to separate what you see from how you feel about it. The time to be subjective is when you evaluate. When you observe, do the best you can to be objective as you watch their responses and engagement level.

Build Rapport

The interview is a safe environment to build a connection with a future employee. Although you may not have selected them yet, you can start building trust and comfort so you can have an open line of communication later on.

What are some great rapport-building questions to ask?

• What are your strengths?
• What are you best at?
• What is most important to you at work?

If you cannot build an initial rapport with a candidate during the interview, chances are that you are inviting a low-communication element into your organization.

Evaluate Potential

Now it’s time to put on your judgment hat. When evaluating potential, you want to examine two aspects.

Individual potential: You’re not only looking at what they have done in the past, but also what their potential is for growing and taking on more responsibilities above and beyond the position they’re being interviewed for. When evaluating leadership potential consider asking

• What do you think you can improve on?
• If I see something you can improve on, how would they like me to communicate that?

Team fit: Look at this hiring process as an opportunity to add value to your overall team performance as well as to identify the dynamic needed for its success. Ask yourself
Does your organization need the specific strengths that this candidate brings forward, or you already have plenty of that? Sometimes, we tend to look for copies of exactly what we already have, but a team can produce better results when additional strengths are acquired.
Would your permanent employees (those you intend to keep for the long haul) get along with this candidate? Or are you inviting future conflict?

As you go through your assessment and compare multiple candidates, embrace your intuition. Too many times I heard managers fire an employee and talk in retrospect about how they ignored a “weird feeling” during the initial interview.

At the very least, speak to someone about your intuition. Verbalizing what you feel helps validate what you sense, especially when it’s with respect to weighing the risks and benefits of bringing certain candidates on board…

• has the same values that they have
• can make decisions like they would
• take action when they would have

What would your life be like if your clones did your work for you?

In all likelihood, you’d be able to sleep better at night. You’d be less stressed out. Why? Because you’ve got people you can count on to run the show the way you would.

Sounds impossible? Well, what if you could hire dependable employees who would produce the same level of results you hold yourself to?

At the end of the day, what matters most is hiring someone you can trust. But you don’t guarantee that by listing “trustworthy” as a necessary skill in a job posting.

So what do you put in a job posting to attract the right candidates? Minimally, you want to include the following:

1. Minimum required skills (many managers stop here, but if you want to hire an ideal employee, there are more criteria to fulfill)
2. Openness toward learning and growing in their position
3. Attitude that matches the organization’s values

Now, beyond this basic stuff, what you really want to do is identify the kind of energy you want to bring to your organization.

Think about it this way. Each employee brings energy to his work. There’s energy that’s more effective, and energy that’s less effective. What kind of energy could they bring that would enable you to sleep better at night?

Here are some questions for you to explore:

• Are you expecting that they bring an abundance of enthusiasm to the team?
• Do you prefer someone who is a self-starter?
• How do you want them to respond to challenges?
• Do you need someone creative or someone who works best following strict guidelines?
• Do you value innovation in this specific position?
• How important is their attention to detail?
• Do you need someone who you can bounce ideas off of?
• Are you expecting this person to speak with ease to customers, colleagues, or vendors?

When you sift through resumes, you won’t be able to assess any of the points above. You’ll only be able to identify relevant experience and skills. An interview, on the other hand, can give you a glimpse of someone at their best.

Ultimately, you want to identify whether a candidate’s energy and attitude amplifies your values in the workplace.

And when that gets done properly, the result is hiring someone who you are more likely to trust…and who gets stuff done the way you really want it.

What are the characteristics of your ideal employee?

Related posts:

1. The Illusion of Employee Productivity: Part 1
2. The Illusion of Employee Productivity: Part 2

But happy times were about to end… or at least to be questioned. As weeks went on, I noticed how some of my team members were carrying more and more of the load. They were volunteering to take on more of the tasks that were not developing at the proper pace.

It seemed they were excited about the difference we were making. A more targeted inquiry told another story.

It turned out that two members of my team were not completing their assigned tasks. No one on my team said a word. No one complained! Other team members picked up the slack, and we were still on track. However…

The atmosphere became more stressful. Because of our success, Corporate gave us bigger pieces of the overall project. But now we could not count on the two “slackers” to help with the additional work. They hardly finished their own work.

It was time to evaluate whether I had the right people on my team.

Here are questions a manager should ask in a situation like this:

• What are your options?
• Do these employees have the necessary skills?
• Do these employees have temporary issues at home that affect their performance?
• What has been your past experience with them not carrying their own weight?
• Have you spoken to them to try and bring their focus back?
• If you let them go, can you get an adequate replacement in a timely manner?
• What is going to be the effect of adding a new person to the team?
• Can you move them to another project in the company where they perform better?
• Is there hope for this employee?

What would you do in this situation?

Related posts:

1. How Leadership Team Development Saves You Money, Time, Effort, and Energy

Many managers who just graduated from a leadership training program are excited to get back to their team and start practicing their new skills.

What are the chances that they’ll be able to quickly and dramatically improve their team’s performance?

It’s common to assume that with enough training, anyone can be a great leader… and can then get the best out of any team.

But when a leader participates in additional training, does that guarantee better team performance?

I know this may ruffle some feathers, but…no. I don’t believe so.

Think about it. Is it really so surprising that there’s more to an effective team than a talented captain?

See, developing a leader’s skills is only one piece of the puzzle.

A powerful leader, who can align a team with his vision in spite of tough situations, is developed over time… and plenty of practice.

But leaders are handicapped in two ways. The first limitation is their current skill set and behavior patterns. When they get additional training, that skill set expands and so does their ability to be more effective.

The second limitation is the skill set and behavior patterns a leader’s team expects him to have. In other words, a leader’s newfound abilities may be bounded by team norms. What that means is that if you want to try new ways of doing things, but your team views you or the situation in the same way they always have, they may resist the changes you want to implement.

That’s why leadership development alone isn’t sufficient for increased team performance. It’s important for a leader to be able to influence the team to overcome resistance to change. That’s where team development comes in.  The team needs to be trained too, so that both can continually improve together.

What training would be most beneficial for your team as a complement to your own growth?

If this applies to your organization, check out our programs for teams.

Related posts:

1. How Leadership Team Development Saves You Money, Time, Effort, and Energy
2. The Magical Effect of Praise
3. Empowering Difficult People

You’ve probably met that charismatic manager who always gets the resources he needs. Or heard of that team leader who effortlessly manages to get his charged-up team to listen to his point of view. Or how about that cousin of yours who never lost an argument as a child? You know, the one that everyone thought would become a lawyer (and oh, yeah, he did).

Some people know how to be heard and get what they want.

What is it that you can do to get others to listen to you?

Do you need to know every piece of the puzzle so that you can answer any questions presented, supply plenty of facts to support what you’re saying, or speak with conviction and passion?
One of my clients recently met with the CEO of a major company and gave a great, well-planned presentation on an innovative system that could bring enormous benefits to the mentioned organization. He knew his stuff and provided facts and industry statistics. He “crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s” in his presentation. And above all else, he was super enthusiastic and excited about the opportunity. The door to the top decision maker definitely opened for him.

Yet, there was no immediate sale.

So what was missing?

Whether you’re talking to your employees, colleagues, managers, potential clients, top decision makers, friends, or even family members, they all have one thing in common. They want to feel that what you’re saying relates to them.

In order to get your way, you need to draw people into your conversation and into listening to you. It’s important to learn what it is that makes them tick, what makes the difference for them, and what they see as the “bottom-line.” In essence, you’re about to enable those who are listening to you to get their way. This means that you need to understand where they are coming from so that you can relate to them.

Focusing only on what you have to say during a conversation, limits your ability to get familiar with what’s in it for them. To do that efficiently requires engagement and two-way communication. When I say engage, I don’t mean tell them why you believe what you do and why you think it’s important. I mean that you should ask them questions, listen to the unfolding details and answers, and think about how what you want lines up with what they want. You’ll be surprised at how attentively they will listen to your point of view once you’ve listened to theirs.

Share with us what you’ll do differently the next time you want to get your point across and get your way!

Related posts:

1. Four Selfish Reasons to Listen
2. The Secret to Increasing Productivity
3. The Importance of Communication

Most of our conversations with colleagues, managers, employees, and others happen at a rapid fire pace. People ask questions and then rush to provide supporting details to back their opinions. If you can actually keep up, it seems more like following a tennis match than a dialogue. This is almost the standard operating procedure for handling any business matters. Rarely will you find people leaving gaps in conversations (or even during brainstorming meetings) as a way to engage others in participation. Silence seems to belong to nature, but not to the business environment. Most of us actually form what we want to say before others around us are even done speaking (that is considered not listening and is rude to some extent).

So why should we even talk about silence?

Ideas require silence.

Have you tried generating ideas during a loud office party or even a heated meeting? Oh? Well, doing so would be a total stroke of luck. See where I’m going with this? Whenever you need to hear something new, analyze a situation, consider another approach, or create a whole new paradigm, you need to use silence. As a leader, understand that silence gives people around you the space to think and ponder, instead of shooting from the hip (although that may produce some great ideas once in a while).

Why are most of us afraid of letting silence just be?

The other night my young daughter confided in me that she is afraid of the dark. It has quite a stifling effect on her and, of course, she is looking for someone she trusts to support her… me.

Just like the dark, silence looms in the background, giving us a feeling of inadequacy (“I hope someone will just say something already…”) This is exactly why human beings look for someone to fill the pauses in conversations with words. They are afraid of silence. But the truth is that you don’t have to continue talking nonstop. It is okay to pause and have silence. When you pause, you create a space that could be filled by your ideas or those of others. Imagine how that could change your organization.

Where could you leave more room for silence?

As soon as we hear it, our minds start to react. We get scared.

And that’s true even if what we’re afraid of doesn’t happen anymore!

The problem is: previous failures impact our present actions.

What really matters is what we choose to do every time we hear that little voice in our heads.  You know, the voice that reinforces the feeling of impending doom…

When preparing for your next project, investment, speech, or even phone call, it’s normal to avoid doing things in a way that did not work in the past (you know what I’m talking about, we call them mistakes!).

However, how many times do you hesitate, or not act at all, just because of the thought that you MAY fail? Is it possible that taking this one specific action could lead to your next success story?

 Fear of failure could stop both you and your organization from growth. At best, all this fear leaves you with is indecisiveness. At worst, the fear of failure leaves you with an attitude that every move is a high risk decision.

That leads you to play it safe. You might copy others instead of having a unique and original offer to share with your customers! Think about how much that fear actually costs you.

On one of my scuba diving excursions a few years back, our scuba guide mentioned that most people think sharks are dangerous. People fear them because they are unpredictable. People collapse the notions of unpredictability with danger, which is naturally followed by a feeling of fear.

You know what might help you see things from a different point of view?

Understand that unpredictability and danger are two very different concepts. Knowing that not everything that is unpredictable is also dangerous may help you see opportunities from a different perspective.What opportunities are you missing out on because of unpredictability and the attached feeling of fear?

 Here’s what you want to do. The next time you’re afraid of making another mistake, ask yourself:

• What’s similar about what I’m dealing with to what I’ve experienced before?

• Are there any past lessons learned that I can use to empower myself here?

• Am I guaranteed to fail?

• What can I do to mitigate risk and increase my chances of success?

• Is this experience going to be a worthwhile learning opportunity?

 Here’s an interesting question: when have you been grateful for failure? Share your thoughts with us in the space below.

Related posts:

1. How to Overcome Deadline Sabotage

The Four Big Factors Continued

3. Grant Recognition

Although some jobs are incentive based, such as commission based sales positions, many are not. In jobs that are not, monetary incentives are not used and other methods of influencing productivity are necessary. Recognition is a major tool you can use and there seems to be a direct correlation between recognition and productivity.

At one of my workshops, I met a manager who candidly admitted that she did not see the need to praise others for what they do, since she is a self-starter and does not need it herself. Regardless of your own work style and desire (or lack thereof) for praise, granting recognition can have a positive effect on your employee performance.
Recognition can be done in a formal or informal way. Generally, the bigger the organization, the more formal the recognition needs to be. Even simple words of praise have a huge effect, and when given in public can impact the whole team. Acknowledging and celebrating employees’ successes not only uplifts the workplace atmosphere, it also motivates your people to “go the extra mile.” In other words, recognition increases productivity.

4. Address Personal Factors

As we all know, we take home what happens in the office. If you leave the office at the end of the day in a bad mood, chances are that by the time you get home you’ll still feel upset. The reverse works as well. For example, you can take one look at some of your employees and recognize how distracted they look when arriving at the workplace. People walk into the workplace each morning with preoccupied minds. You may stop yourself from asking too many questions or checking-in with these employees, for fear of invading their privacy. You may also assume that this stuff is totally out of your control. However, how many times does that “stuff” affect your employees’ productivity? What is the cost of you totally ignoring it? Will hoping that it disappears work?
Personal factors such as an alcohol dependency, family problems or financial worries can all cause employees’ work performance quality to drop. In corporate America there are Employee Assistant Programs (EAP) dedicated to addressing these issues, in which the direct manager can refer his employees to these resources when necessary. Unfortunately, small business owners do not have this resource available. And still these personal issues (as well as others) interfere with business results. So what can you do?

First, have a straight-forward conversation with your employee about your concerns. Sounds simple, right? Many people don’t know how to start such a discussion. Even more importantly, most do not realize that once the conversation begins there are two key elements that must be part of it in order to influence employee engagement. Above all else, you need to listen to what your employee is going through. Just by listening to them you show them that you care. Next, you want to clarify and possibly reiterate your expectations regarding performance while at work. Missing either one of these minimizes the effect you may have.

Now that you are familiar with these four factors, how will you shift YOUR leadership?

Over the next week, try to implement one of these elements each day. For example…on Monday set expectations, on Tuesday focus on support, on Wednesday grant recognition, and on Thursday address personal factors. And then on Friday, take time to review the difference it made. Share your findings with us!

Related posts:

1. The Illusion of Employee Productivity: Part 1
2. What You Don’t Know About Handling Signs of Employee Disengagement
3. The Secret to Increasing Productivity
4. The Magical Effect of Praise
5. Who is Your Ideal Employee?

There are four major factors that affect employee performance. As a business owner, you may think that you do not have any control over some of these. That’s where you’re wrong! How would it feel to know that you are able to influence each of the factors that impacts your business’ productivity?

The Four Big Factors

1. Set Expectations

When you give employees clearly defined goals and objectives for their assigned tasks (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) they stay more focused on what they need to do to succeed. If you fail to discuss deadlines with employees, the urgency of completing the task, or the frequency at which you expect them to update you, you project a non-committal approach of supervising. The project seems unimportant and you seem disinterested in it. This non-committal approach permits employees to focus less on the job at hand and productivity diminishes as a result. Now what? Just prepare for unforeseen consequences.

Setting expectations is necessary not only in task related circumstances. It is just as critical when dealing with workplace behavior. We refer to it as “creating a workplace culture.” When you expect your employees to behave a certain way with customers, vendors, and even one another, taking on a “they should know it by now” state of mind can lead to vagueness. Be clear and specific as to which behaviors are expected and which are not tolerated, as it may have an indirect effect on your employees’ performance.

In addition, keep in mind that employees learn through observation and dialogue with peers, leaders, managers, and others. They learn limits by watching the reactions of their supervisors and the consequences that come with pushing the limits. By setting clear expectations, you have the ability to control what behavior is commonplace in your office.

2. Provide Support

One of my clients shared with me that whenever his employees get to the work site and realize that they ran out of the necessary materials for the day’s tasks, they not only waste time retooling or resupplying, but also get upset with the situation. Not a good day.

When employees feel that the logistical stuff is taken care of, they keep their eyes on their part of the project. On the other hand, when they cannot begin a project because they are waiting for material or equipment, they start to get aggravated and even feel unappreciated. They sometimes even get the feeling that this project is unimportant or wasn’t planned out well. How could that affect their productivity?

Being supportive also includes ensuring that your employees are properly trained to do their jobs. Whether you choose to send employees out for professional development, provide in-house training, or engage in on-the-job mentoring, you must allow the employees opportunities to grow and learn. By doing this, you create the possibility for employees to feel mentally prepared to take on more complex jobs and function at their best.

Take a look at your supervising style and how it impacts your employees’ productivity. Are you staying on the sidelines and allowing your people to do the job on their own terms? Or are you taking the lead and making sure you clarify your expectations? Are you taking care of logistics or expecting employees to deal with it on the spot? Share your experience with us.

Stay tuned to discover additional factors you can address in order to increase productivity.

Related posts:

1. The Illusion of Employee Productivity: Part 2
2. What You Don’t Know About Handling Signs of Employee Disengagement
3. The Secret to Increasing Productivity
4. The Magical Effect of Praise
5. Who is Your Ideal Employee?

When it’s 90 degrees out and your employees are sweating profusely in the office, you know that they are hot and uneasy. At a time like this, you surely know what to do to create a more productive atmosphere. However, more often than not, the signals of low productivity and job dissatisfaction are much less visible.

Sometimes you may realize how badly productivity was affected only after the job or project is complete. Even more frustrating, you may notice in retrospect that there were actually warning signs that you did not pay attention to.

Here are some signals to keep an eye out for:

• Employees constantly arrive to work late or cut their days short
• Employees show sudden stress, fatigue, or carelessness
• Employees are short and snippy with one another
• Employees come to you for help with every little problem
• Employees seem disinterested in caring for potential customers

Keep in mind that this is only a partial list of signals. I’m sure that you can add other signs to it based on your own experience.

As soon as these signs appear, you naturally make interpretations to explain why your employees behave like this or that. You may think that they are lazy or just don’t care. And while your interpretations may seem valid and sensible, they do not tell the whole story. More often than not you just ignore the behavior… at least until it happens again. This vicious cycle repeats until you are certain that you have enough “evidence” as to why the employees behave this way. At this point, you are convinced that this is the truth. Think about it for a moment.

Does this help you influence employees to be more productive?

Using your own interpretations as evidence is quite misleading. Let’s explore an example.

Erica, your office administrator, speaks to customers daily to find out what kind of service he or she requires. She writes down the client’s problem, takes his or her address and number, and schedules a service visit.

However, over and over again, you notice that the technician who eventually meets with the clients for the service visit wastes time discussing the problem with the customers, simply because he doesn’t have enough information from Erica’s initial call. You may have even told Erica that she needs to do a better job.

At this point, you are frustrated and disappointed that she “simply doesn’t care.” Although this could be one possible explanation, what else could be going on?

When you consider other possibilities and recognize key signals of disengagement, as opposed to assuming that you “already know what it means,” you can address the real, underlying issues. So what ARE the real issues? The only sure way to find out is through an open dialogue with your employee. Yes, this means that you actually have to ask questions AND make sure that you listen carefully to the responses. Only when you learn the employee’s side of the story can you make sense out of the signals and start creating a resolution.

So the next time you notice a disengaged employee, start a dialogue about what’s really going on with them. Feel free to share with us the difference the conversation made.

Related posts:

1. The Illusion of Employee Productivity: Part 1
2. The Illusion of Employee Productivity: Part 2
3. The Magical Effect of Praise

Purpose of Praise

The intention of praise is to acknowledge employees for accomplishments in a way that highlights their contributions to the organization, motivates them to repeat or excel, and inspires others to take a similar approach. Using praise increases employee productivity.

Who Needs Praise Anyways?

When you, as a leader, take for granted your team’s efforts, you end up with individuals who don’t see a difference between doing the bare minimum and giving it all they’ve got. Sooner or later, they stop thinking that their skills are important to the team’s success. Moreover, they start feeling unimportant, irrelevant and insignificant. Maybe they start losing confidence? Or even begin looking for another job where their contributions will be recognized?

What is Genuine Praise?

Have you ever heard someone giving praise and felt it wasn’t real? Maybe it seemed that the person giving the praise was just making a big deal out of something insignificant, or that they were just putting on a show?

Here is the secret: in order for praise to work you need to be sincere and honest. If you are phony, others will see through it and it could negatively effect how they view you.

Here are a few points to remember:

1. Don’t confuse praise with compliments. Making a positive remark about someone’s appearance is a compliment. I’m not suggesting you should avoid giving compliments, just know the difference. You give praise on accomplishments and behavior.
2. In order for praise to have maximum impact, you need to praise in public. This way you not only impact the employee’s sense of accomplishment, but also the entire team’s morale.
3. Be specific when you give praise so that your employees know exactly which behaviors you are proud of and would like repeated.

What Difference Can it Make?

Praise not only increases productivity in the workplace, but also diffuses tension for those employees who work hard and put in extra effort to address challenges. It increases employees’ confidence, helps them grow, and encourages them to take on more than they initially thought possible. If you want to build a strong team, you’ve got to build momentum after the players take those first baby steps!

Here is a fine thought: it doesn’t cost you anything to acknowledge and praise.

So if the effects of praise are truly magical, how much more praise are you willing to sprinkle on your employees?

Give it a try and share the impact with us!

Related posts:

1. The Illusion of Employee Productivity: Part 2
2. The Illusion of Employee Productivity: Part 1
3. What You Don’t Know About Handling Signs of Employee Disengagement

Think about it. How many times is the end result not even CLOSE to what you imagined it would be when you initially gave the instructions? Is there a possibility that YOU are responsible just as much as your employees?

Setting Expectations

When asking employees to complete a task, some managers go into lengthy detail only to find out that what they said didn’t actually make any difference. The result is quite disappointing! On the opposite end of the spectrum, other managers give more generic and vague directives while believing that their employees are more than capable of figuring out how to get the job done on their own. Once the task is complete, these supervisors are often surprised to find that the outcome is much below their expectations.

One way or another, something got lost in communication.

The Result

Take the following scenario into consideration.

How many times have you said, “I need you to do __________. You can get that done, right?”

Only a few of your employees will know exactly what you meant when posing the question above. At times, your star performers will deliver just what you are looking for. Perfect! Unfortunately, more often than not, you’ll be surprised to find out that the task you gave your employees is not done. In fact, you may find that the task is not even STARTED yet! Isn’t it frustrating when you recall that at the time they responded with “sure” and seemed to understand what you wanted?

What Are They Thinking?

Let’s explore. After hearing your question, here are some of the thoughts that might run through your employees’ minds:

“Of course I can, doesn’t she know that by now?”

“I will look into it.”

“I guess I’ll see when I can fit it in. My schedule is so full already. She must be kidding.”

“I will get that done after I finish this crazy project that I’m working on. Who knows when I’m going to be finished with it.”

“I will do it before today is over. I know that tomorrow I have this other huge task to complete. This one seems easy to handle before I get to the big one and I don’t want more pressure later.”

“It sounds like this task is complicated and that I will need total focus for it. I will quickly finish the job I’m handling now, begin this more involved task, and do nothing else until I complete this.”

What Am I Missing?

Take a moment and consider the way you communicate your expectations. Ask yourself:

1. Is the importance and urgency of this task clear to the employees (obviously it must be clear to you)?
2. Is accomplishing this task a top priority compared to other projects?
3. Is it apparent whether or not my employees need to keep me updated regarding the status of the job?
4. When do I expect that the project will be finished? Did I communicate the deadline?
5. Is there anything that my employees may be left confused or unclear about?
6. Have I discussed my assumptions with them?
7. Am I leaving any doubts in their minds?

Still Having Problems?

If you’re still having serious problems with your employees, check out our solutions for problem employees.

1. First of all, when you listen to others, whether at your office or at home, you’ll learn different viewpoints on an issue and gather more information about it. This gives you an edge as a problem solver.

2. Not only that, but others will now appreciate you like never before. Finally their voice is being heard! You become a source of support and inspiration when you show them that you care about what they have to say and how they feel.

3. Slowly but surely, people will feel at ease communicating with you. By listening to others, you create an open environment for communication. And when that happens, you become an organic leader, not because of your rank or title, but because of the supportive role you play for them.

4. Lastly, by really listening to what others are saying, you can choose who to surround yourself with. Now that you know more about others’ beliefs and values, you can make a conscious choice regarding who is in your living environment and can impact you. Isn’t that cool?

The Difficulty in Applying Listening

So now that you know what you can gain from more effective listening, applying that new knowledge sounds pretty simple. As I’m sure you’ve heard before, use your ears twice as much as you use your mouth. Basic stuff, right? If it’s that easy though, then why haven’t you been doing it all along? Why don’t you listen?

Here’s what most people would say:

“I don’t have time to listen.” What this really means is I don’t think that whatever information this person is sharing with me has enough value to merit neither my interest nor my time.

“I won’t be able to get my point across if I’m only listening.” What this really means is I value my own point of view more than others’ viewpoints.

“When you give people an ear, they’ll just complain. What a waste of time.” What this really means is that you expect people to always complain (even if in reality they don’t).

All of these are common reasons why most people don’t take advantage of what could be gained by effectively listening when engaging in a conversation.

The Promise

Now, despite the difficulty and challenges that come along with devoting time to listening to others, take a moment to think about a few things:

What would your workplace look like if people really listened to one another?

Would the benefits of that be worth applying a new way of listening to your entire life?

Would you just hear more complaints and gossip?

Or would you learn something valuable about how your business works (or doesn’t work)?

Related posts:

1. The Secret to Getting Your Way
2. The Value of Listening
3. How to Evaluate Your Own Communication Style
4. How to Improve Your Communication
5. Are You Afraid of Silence?

The Role of Listening for Humanity

If we lived in this world in complete solitude, all we’d have to count on would be our senses, our thoughts, and our emotions. We would not need any input from others. Along with that, we wouldn’t have anyone else with whom to share our thoughts!

Reality is different. It is natural human behavior to share thoughts and experiences with those around us. This interaction is what allows our species to continuously develop on so many levels. So how do YOU interact and develop?

Your Approach to Listening

Each day, you are surrounded by people. You may think that some of these people are really smart. You may even think this to such an extent that you hang on their every word or are even willing to pay for their thoughts or advice. Others though, you don’t quite view in the same way. For some reason, the things that these people have to say just don’t seem as valuable to you. But who are these people? They may live close to you and share many experiences with you. They could be your family members, maybe your friends, possibly colleagues, your employees, or even managers at your work place.

Something funny happens when we engage in conversation with these people. Once the conversation begins with them, we think that we already know what they are going to say. More than that, we think we know what they mean, often before they even begin speaking… Gee! It’s almost as if we think we are born with the incredible talent of mind reading… (which tends not to be the case!).

As a leader, you want to deal with the actual reality, not with your interpretation of reality. Therefore, you need to use the skill of listening quite frequently and in an effective way.

Assess Your Own Listening

Next time you have a discussion with one of the people mentioned before, whether a friend, employee, or colleague, ask yourself the following:

How much can I actually remember of what this person just said?

Can I explain the main point of what was just said to others?

Do I understand (although that doesn’t always mean agree with) where the person was coming from when he or she shared the opinion?

What if the person who you were now listening to was an employee with a new idea that could increase your company profit or make a major difference for your organization? Would this change how you listen?

Share with us what you gained when you tried a different approach to listening. And stay tuned to learn some of the great reasons to listen that actually benefit YOU!

Related posts:

1. Four Selfish Reasons to Listen
2. How to Evaluate Your Own Communication Style
3. Why Communication is Like Oxygen to Your Business
4. How to Improve Your Communication

The opportunity in improving communication

Let me ask you a straight question: Can you see how much more you can achieve when you improve your communication? If not, you may be totally satisfied with the alignment of your team’s results to your expectations. Great. However, if instead you see an endless opportunity of growth, I guess you are ready to take the next step and work on improving those “skills.”

What does it mean to really improve your communication?

It’s important to understand that improving your communication requires not only replacing words or infusing sentences, but also challenging your thoughts so what you say comes across genuinely. For example, if you are acknowledging others, but you really don’t think that what they’ve done warrants strong words of praise, then don’t use any. Anyone listening will know you are being less than genuine.

In order to find out who the real you is, I’d like to invite you to a look into one-on-one coaching, where you can personally take steps to reshape how your leadership comes across to people around you, in a way that is unique to you and addresses specifically what’s standing in the way of you being clear in your communication and true to your nature.

Reaching mastery

Communication mastery is not about speaking in front of a lot of people and informing them of the business goals. It is about your ability to listen to others, identify what matters to them, and articulate face to face, through media, or other tools (even via email) in an impactful way that will align your team with the business objectives.

No one is born a master. However, we all have that potential within us. It is up to you to decide if the rewards of effective communication are worthwhile, so that you can choose to make the effort and invest in yourself and those who work with you.

What is it that you can gain the most from when you improve your communication and become a master?

Related posts:

1. How to Evaluate Your Own Communication Style
2. The Importance of Communication
3. Why Communication is Like Oxygen to Your Business
4. Four Selfish Reasons to Listen

Communication styles

No two people communicate the same way. Some are straightforward, some emotional, others witty, and a few even sarcastic. No doubt, one may be more effective than another given who you are and who your audience is.

Frankly, you may want to be like someone else and use their “techniques.” How many times have you thought about incorporating some jokes because you’ve seen how effective that can be? Odds are pretty good this wouldn’t be the right role for you, or you would already have them rolling in the aisles.

If you are not genuine in your communication style, people see through it, and as a result your credibility goes down. I would imagine that it is the last thing you’d want. I am not suggesting that you’re stuck with the communication style you have. But before you start creating the new you, consider first what hasn’t been working up to this point.

What doesn’t work

Are you aware of “methods” that have not delivered the results you intended? If the answer isn’t clear, start right now and spend the next two days listening to yourself and noting what isn’t quite working. Or be bold and ask someone to give you honest feedback about your communication style. Note: You will get what you ask for, so no pushing back now.

What will work for you

First, take a moment to consider what your strengths are when you are engaged in a discussion. Is it your passion or your humor? Your logic? Is it your gift for storytelling or your ability to listen? Perhaps you’re really good at putting people at ease. Then take yourself out for a “test drive,” trying that strength out in the next difficult conversation you have or presentation you make. Take it all in and then take a look down the road. Do you see, way out there near the horizon, how a more effective communication style can make all the difference in your business? All you need now is a new starting point, which leads us to the next blog. Share with us your thoughts and stay tuned…

Related posts:

1. How to Improve Your Communication
2. Why Communication is Like Oxygen to Your Business
3. The Importance of Communication
4. Four Selfish Reasons to Listen

The need for effective communication

Some leaders may still be relying on the technical background and knowledge that thrust them into “the big office,” believing that answering a business process or software question here and there is still all they need to succeed. But those skills are extremely limiting and won’t drive a team. You’ll never be able to do even an adequate job without honing your interpersonal skills – and becoming a “people person.”

The workplace is a complex network of skills and resources. Some individuals specialize, others generalize. In order to bring all that talent together and produce results in your organization, you can no longer avoid addressing your “soft skills.” And why are they important?

How communication affects your business

Effective communication is directly related to the bottom line. Communication is like the oxygen your organization breathes, affecting areas such as customer satisfaction, service delivery, product quality, employee satisfaction, and retention of key talent.

Your ability to guide, direct, inspire, correct, and improve the work of your employees depends on how effective you are communicating ideas, thoughts, and objectives.

One common fallacy of business owners is: “This is common sense. They should know it.” Believe that and you’re doomed. Your employees can’t read your mind. They have their own set of assumptions and interpretations, which surprisingly is…not yours. So, if you want to be the one steering your organization, you need to communicate. And do it damn well.

The role of communication when a business goes through changes

Now, let’s assume that you’ve decided it’s time to make changes in your business. All you need is to just go out and start talking it up, right? Not so fast. First, you need to have a communication strategy that crosses multiple channels.

It’s more than just deciding what content to share with your team. Delivering your message clearly and consistently through various mediums sets the tone for the rest of your organization and impacts how effective this change will be.

On this post we covered only a few points about the importance of communication skills. Stay tuned. We have just opened the floor…

What is your experience with communication in your organization?
What would you like it to be?

Related posts:

1. The Importance of Communication
2. How to Evaluate Your Own Communication Style
3. How to Improve Your Communication

Why? Because it’s very easy to accept or discard information at face value without examining its credibility or usefulness. Take, for example, the articles you read in a magazine like TIME or a newspaper like The Washington Post – when was the last time you examined the author’s perspective in a piece? Or what about a billboard that says “97% agree that Widget Company is the best” – 97% of what group? How many people are included in that 97%? You see, humans are notoriously ineffective at assessing data quality.

With training, you can improve the ability to think critically. It’s enormously valuable to be able to distinguish trustworthy from untrustworthy, logically sound from logically flawed, and perception from reality. In the meantime, here’s an overview some common pitfalls to be aware of when it comes to trusting your data. Remember: your organization’s performance depends on your ability to make sound leadership decisions.

People

When taking the pulse of your organization, notice who you gravitate to most naturally. Who are you more likely to trust? Who are you less likely to trust? Do you have favorites? How might your perceptions of people’s nature influence how you interpret the data they give you?

Here’s an example. Say you’ve got a team of 30 people – you’ve got a few high performers, a lot of average workers, and a few low performers. Now, say want to get a picture of employee engagement. Who do you speak to? Who’s going to give you the most valuable feedback? You might not like the low performers, the content of their criticism, or even its delivery, but when you discount their feedback entirely you may have missed a valuable learning opportunity.

Statistics

It’s frightening how many ways there are to misuse statistics. It’s even scarier how so many of us accept statistics as the final word in decision-making, as if they always give you a clear picture of what’s going on. While that’s true some of the time, it doesn’t let you off the hook all the time. Be careful!

The Bottom Line…

At some point, the process of data gathering and decision-making becomes a matter of trust. And this is an open question…

How do you know what sources to trust and when to trust them?

1: Take Action

One big pitfall to reading a blog is to absorb what you learn without ever applying the principles to your everyday life. That would be a loss for you because reading alone doesn’t produce results.

Results happen when you lead, manage, or interact with your team differently. Results happen when you take ownership of your role in your organization. Results happen when you take effective actions and stop taking ineffective actions.

So we invite you to not just read. Instead, do something that matters with your people (and do it today)!

2: Answer Questions

The questions we ask at the bottom of our posts are designed to get you to think and apply what you learned. Take exactly two minutes to really explore your personal answer, and then leave a comment!

Comments on this website are located underneath each blog post. To leave a comment, fill out the text boxes and then click the “Submit Comment” button.

3: Ask Questions

Our community (read: you) is important to us and we appreciate the opportunity to be supportive. Use the comment space to ask us questions and start conversations. Did you like what you read? Agree? Disagree? Did what you read spark an idea about how things could be done differently at your organization? Did it raise any other questions?

Leaving comments is a great way to record your own thoughts in a way that you and everyone else can return to later on. What you write stays around for other folks to see. Think of it as collaborative knowledge management. Engage others in the community, and your participation will pay off for yourself and the people around you.

4: Use Bookmarks

If you read a post that you think may come in handy for you in the future, bookmark it! I use a social bookmarking service called delicious.com which makes my bookmarks available to me from every computer (so I don’t have to worry about bookmarking an interesting article on my work computer and then not having easy access to it when I’m using my home computer). Delicious also makes it really easy to share your bookmarks if that’s something you want to do.

5: Search For Relevant Posts

If you’re experiencing difficulty at work, search through our previous blog posts for insight on that issue. Maybe we’ve written on that subject in a way that would make a difference for you. And if we haven’t written on that topic, well then, in all likelihood, what you’re going through is something others are dealing with also. Turn your concern into a useful contribution for everyone. Contact us to request that we cover that topic.

The search bar on this website is located on the right side of the red navigation bar at the top of the page.

6: Share

Start conversations that matter. Share a post where you have a social media presence (say, Facebook or Twitter). Forward a post to someone at work or someone you care about. Then (this is the important part), use sharing as an opportunity to begin a dialogue that can improve your work environment. Great topics to discuss? Employee engagement, teamwork, communication skills, and productivity in the workplace.

We make it easy for you to share with others (our kindergarten teachers taught us well). The sharing tools on this website are located at the bottom of every post, above the space for comments.

7: Give Us Feedback

Let us know how we can do better. Is there something missing that you want to see? Are we covering topics that are not relevant to your situation, or not as relevant as you would like? Are we talking too much theory and not enough application? Do you enjoy reading our blog or is it a pain to get through? Course corrections are a valuable part of any engagement with others. This blog is no different! The more feedback we get, the easier it is for us to provide something useful now.

8: Get to Know Us

If you like what we’re about and think our work would make an impact in your workplace or with your team, consider bringing us in to work with you. Check out the topics on our speaking, training, and coaching programs page to see what we specialize in. You can also contact us if you see us adding a lot of value with something specific you’re looking for that we haven’t mentioned.

Which tip are you going to put into practice today?

Option #1: Hope

Hope is a natural first instinct. It’s easy to believe that if you cross your fingers and work hard enough, you’ll be able to pull off another success in the nick of time. It’ll be a close call, but you’ve succeeded in circumstances like these before. Maybe you can do it again this time…

Hope is one seriously enchanting state of mind. But let’s make it really clear: hope is not a strategy. Hope is an escape from admitting mistakes. Hope is an evasion from delivering important uncomfortable information to those who need it.

When you hope, it’s easy to not take any action. Why? Because it’s way more tempting to hope a situation will get better than to take responsibility and do what’s needed. So hope can be a huge barrier to changing your behavior.

If you’ve got a project that is in serious danger of missing its deadline, you can hope it will succeed anyway. What happens is that you use the hope as your own personal reality distortion field. Instead of communicating disagreeable news ahead of time to whomever you’re accountable to, you end up praying the deadline will be met.

Option #2: Adjust

Say you promised your client you would have a more effective solution to their problem within two weeks. A week and a half passes, and although you’ve made progress, your project is far from over…at least the way you see it now. How do you get the project done on time and still deliver a great solution?

Take stock of your original commitment. Identify the core parts of your project that will fulfill the requirements and still produce a superior result. Part of that process includes distinguishing your ideal version from a “good enough” version. Remember that the market rewards “good enough”, if “good enough” is better than what people have now.

Scaling back the scope of your work forces you to deal with perfectionism. It can be personally challenging to have reality get in the way of “what this project should look like.”

Software developers experience this issue every time they release a new version of their project. How do they decide what goes in this current version and what gets saved for next time? At some point, somebody draws a line. Where do you draw yours?

Option #3: Communicate

Have you ever been highly doubtful your project would be delivered on time, even when your colleagues and managers expected it to be? It’s very normal, and what you do at this point can make or break your effectiveness.

One of the most useful tools you’ve got is your ability to communicate. And the most effective way to bridge the disconnect is to get the facts straight with the appropriate co-workers. So when your project is running behind, it’s time to let the boss know.

Confession? Hardly. When you talk facts, there’s no blame. There’s no shame. There’s what got done, what didn’t get done, what still needs to get done, and what can be improved for the future. There’s who did their work and who didn’t do their work. There’s your role and the effect you had on others.

Many people are afraid to talk about perceived failures. They are concerned that making mistakes looks bad. It’s easier for them to avoid communicating about difficult topics, so they don’t. Is it a big surprise that it gets a lot more uncomfortable for them when the deadlines arrives without the promised deliverables?

If you don’t address unmet expectations, you can hurt your reputation. You can be seen as unreliable or incompetent. Contrast that with being vulnerable and admitting you made a mistake: either you overestimated what you could deliver or you underdelivered on a reasonable request.

Effective communication is the key to consistent high performance over time.

Option #4: Combine Strategies

The best teams work in sync through a combination of adjustment and communication. That creates a positive feedback loop where team leaders address expectations and make course corrections as necessary, all the way up to project completion.

What would help you be more effective when you’re about to miss a deadline?

This post is the third in a three-part series on deadlines. The other two articles are “Why Deadlines Are Useful“ and “How to Overcome Deadline Sabotage“.

Related posts:

1. How to Overcome Deadline Sabotage
2. Why Deadlines Are Useful

So what are the two most common obstacles that come up when dealing with deadlines?

Deadline Avoidance

The opportunity arises to take on a project or task, but you never commit to getting your work done by the deadline in the first place. You haven’t made it clear what specifically will get done or when it will get done by.

What is deadline avoidance?

Deadline avoidance is one version of a fear of commitment (which ties in with a fear of failure). We don’t want to say we’ll get something done and then not produce the expected results. So instead, it’s easy to just avoid committing in the first place. The thinking here is that if we never commit, we’ll never fail.

Truth is, deadline avoidance won’t give us the success we want either (to say the least). In some sense, it’s like we’ve set ourselves up for failure before anything has begun. Life in the shadow of ignored commitments is draining — is that a big surprise?

How do you overcome deadline avoidance?

The catch with a fear of commitment or failure is that it’s virtually always rooted in one or more negative past experiences. Overcoming a fear of commitment means getting 100% closure on those past experiences, where there is no more emotional charge about what happened.

Making peace with old unfulfilled commitments or perceived failures frees you up to make new commitments and take on new projects. And of course, with new commitments come new successes to enjoy and new failures to grow from.

Deadline Dismissal

You commit to a task, but then dismiss its importance. It’s like saying to yourself you’re going to read the TPS report by 5pm tomorrow, only to have that time come and go on your calendar. It’s not forgetfulness — it’s a very deliberate moment at 3pm when you remember this task still needs to get done, and then you tell yourself, “Eh, whatever. This doesn’t matter. I’ll do it later, when I feel like it.”

Where does deadline dismissal come from?

Dismissing deadlines is a way to mentally check out. You basically give yourself permission to ignore the deadline you committed to. It might not seem harmful, but distancing tends to quickly build into a habit.

If you keep letting yourself off the hook, many of your deadlines (and in fact, probably all of your self-enforced deadlines) will completely lose their effectiveness. Then your results will totally depend on your mood. Can you get how unproductive it can be to wait until you finally “feel like it” (or the pressure’s gotten high enough to complete the task anyway)?

How do you overcome deadline dismissal?

Overcoming deadline dismissal is simple but not easy. It involves doing whatever you need to do to hold yourself accountable to what you say you will do. An accountability structure can take lots of different forms. The form itself doesn’t matter so much. What matters you drawing a line in the sand and placing value on your word. That includes the promises you make to yourself as well as the promises you make to others. Sound hard? Great! Welcome to humanity.

What deadline patterns do you find yourself trapped in that keep your effectiveness down?

This post is the second in a three-part series on deadlines. The other two articles are “Why Deadlines Are Useful“ and “Deadline Damage Control (Or, Why Hope Had to Die)“.

Related posts:

1. Why Deadlines Are Useful
2. Deadline Damage Control (Or, Why Hope Had to Die)
3. How to Overcome Your Fear of Failure

Let’s first sort out what a deadline is before we give ourselves permission to cringe.

Deadline (n): the time by which something must be finished or submitted [thank you dictionary.com]

So in order for a deadline to be effective, there must be 1) a specific task or project to complete and 2) a definite time to complete it by. If there’s no specific task and no specific time, there’s no deadline.

Deadlines are the foundation of every project. You can’t build a house without coordinating the deadlines of all parties involved. Setting those expectations and making them known enables the parties to allocate their resources efficiently. Of course, this principle applies to any project where people work together and need to be counted on to produce tangible results. Deadlines are just the vehicle to make the coordination work.

The risk in setting deadlines is to dismiss them as being unimportant, or to avoid setting them in the first place.

In our next post, we’ll discuss where these risks come from and how you can overcome them.

In the meantime, let us know: what deadlines are you resisting?

This post is the first in a three-part series on deadlines. The other two articles are “How to Overcome Deadline Sabotage” and “Deadline Damage Control (Or, Why Hope Had to Die)“.

Related posts:

1. How to Overcome Deadline Sabotage
2. The Illusion of Employee Productivity: Part 1
3. Deadline Damage Control (Or, Why Hope Had to Die)
4. What You Don’t Know About Communicating Expectations

I took some time to think about that.

Sue was talking about Ron, a co-worker of hers. At some point, Sue decided that Ron doesn’t want to help himself. But how true is that? Where did Sue get her evidence?

Sue did what most of us do. She interpreted Ron’s actions to mean that he doesn’t care. Then, she assumed that his past attitude would carry on into the future.

What Sue didn’t do was have a heart-to-heart with Ron. She didn’t listen to him to determine how real her assumptions and interpretations are. Instead, she just wrote him off – a common (and ineffective!) practice.

We all deal with stuff, all the time. At the same time, we don’t often think about what others are going through (there’s a great video on this). Who knows what Ron has dealt with already? Who, besides Ron, knows what he is dealing with now?

It’s very easy for us to jump to conclusions about the way people are. It’s called judging. We do it naturally. It’s not wrong, it’s just ineffective. A leader who judges others is less likely to inspire them… and they are less likely to reach their peak potential.

Leaders do their best work when they help others to stretch themselves, risk failure, and learn from their actions. That happens when you remove assumptions and interpretations about the behavior of others. It happens when you talk about the stuff that needs to be discussed, without looking to blame or hurt anyone.

Sometimes that can be difficult. But a whole new world of opportunities opens up when you can start a conversation by asking, “I’m noticing you’re dealing with a lot of stuff. What’s really going on?” instead of assuming someone isn’t interested in improving their situation.

In what relationships are you are jumping to conclusions?

In our family business seminar last week, we heard from several participants about their challenges with employees.

When the discussion turned to why it’s hard to let long-time employee “Miranda” go, a few common reasons to hesitate came up:

• You got to know her and maybe even her family. You created relationships beyond the work environment. So, you feel responsible for her and her future, sometimes more than she does. You become attached.
• You may have already known Miranda before you even hired her. Boy, letting her go now can get very sticky. How will this relationship survive if you “kick her out”?
• You are not sure what will happen if she leaves. There’s a normal fear of the unknown here.
• You’ll have to replace Miranda by finding someone new (say, James) and then training him. But who has time for that? Maybe you can just save this hiring-training process and compromise with what you have?
• You are nervous about what other people would think about you. To complicate things, if Miranda is a family member, you may be concerned with backlash from other relatives. They may think that you are a heartless and uncaring meaniehead. You may even wonder if your other employees will feel threatened. What’s the impact on office morale?

All these concerns are legitimate – and they may also get in the way of your team’s performance.

The purpose of your business is to create value for your customers. The makeup of your team directly affects your budget. So when you inefficiently allocate your human resources, here’s what can happen:

• You overpay for the results of that specific position.
• Your other employees shift their attention to picking up slack instead of focusing on their roles.
• Your staff begins to hold a grudge against Miranda and any other under-performing colleagues.
• Your organization experiences office politics and other counterproductive noise.
• The dead wood in your organization demoralizes your high performing employees.
• Your employees begin to resent you for not taking a stand.

See, your team wants your leadership. Their livelihood depends on it. So does yours! When you tolerate an ineffective workforce, you cut into your own revenue, and ultimately, the money you’re taking home. Your business loses money – and so do you.

So how do you know when to fire Miranda?

1. You communicated to Miranda all of the specific expectations of her job, and heard back from her that she understood what she is responsible for. Do not skip this step.
2. You ensured that Miranda has the skills necessary to get the job done in a satisfactory manner and you are not willing to provide any more training.
3. Miranda’s performance is still unsatisfactory, her contribution to the bottom line of your business is worth less than the salary you pay her, and there is no better place to move her within your organization.

It’s really that simple. So how do you make firing Miranda easier to do? Here are four tips to keep in mind when you sit down to have this talk.

• Be aware that by letting Miranda go, you create an opportunity for her to find more fulfilling, achievable work somewhere else.
• Detach yourself. This business decision is not about who you are or who she is as a person.
• Keep the discussion very straightforward. Focus on facts like expectations, performance, and results.
• Do not strike deals. Do not give Miranda another chance. Do not give in to pleas. By this point, the time for Miranda to recommit and follow through on unmet expectations has passed.

What would it be like if you applied these principles to your own company? Comment below and let us know your thoughts.

Stop right there. Isn’t it time to see whether these opinions are really true? Some of these claims make a big impact on the way you live. Other opinions you have affect your ability to relate well to others. If you believed your whole life that “work is hard and boring”, how might that impact the time you spend at work?

Your opinions become self-fulfilling prophecies. If work is hard and boring, then that’s all you see when you go to work. If you believe people are dumb, that’s shows up in the way you treat others… and if you think a belief like that doesn’t affect your relationships, it may make a lot of sense to ask the people closest to you what it’s like to be around you.

Humans create self-fulfilling prophecies in a lot of areas in life: personal finance, romantic relationships, friendships, career, spirituality and religion, and so on. When you stay attached to those prophecies – those opinions – like they are real, it becomes very hard to see that your experience of life can be any other way.

But it can, if you start wondering how accurate your opinions really are. Sure, you have a point. Sometimes, life feels hard. And yes, sometimes we judge people to be stupid. But it gets worse: if we start to believe that life is hard, we look to evidence to support our belief. Our mistake as humans is to take that one or two or many experiences and then decide that’s how it always (or usually!) is…even if those experiences happen pretty infrequently. That’s how an opinion becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s how three bad days in a row at work become a job you can’t stand. That’s how your spouse overlooking the same detail for the fourth time means they are stupid. That’s how you get the results you are currently getting.

Here’s a great exercise we do that opens a lot of doors. Take an area of your life where you are experiencing a great deal of difficulty or stress. What would it be like if things were easier? Some folks say, “It would be great, but it can’t happen!” Oh yea? Says who?

That’s exactly the point about self-fulfilling prophecy! If you believed you could bring ease to that area, you would start asking yourself a whole bunch of different questions… questions like “How could I make this easier?” or “Who can I talk to that would help me get the results I really want here?” But telling yourself that something is impossible stops all lines of inquiry.

I asked above, “What would it be like if things were easier?” The next question to ask is, “What would it be like if things were stress-free?” Ease is a state of mind you bring to what you are doing. You know what ease feels like because you’ve been there before! So what’s getting in the way of producing that state of ease in the area you are concerned with?

The hallmark of effortless performance is getting maximum results with minimum effort. It is not about doing less. It is not about lowering your standards. Effortless performance is all about doing what you are doing with ease and without stress. It is about being someone who has power and control over the area in question, or as we described in the prior post: the mastery state of mind.

Does knowing more reduce your stress level? To some degree. A basic level of knowledge enables you to be competent at what you do, making the work easier and helping you to get rid of some anxiety.

But let’s say you already know what you are doing. You’re still experiencing worry and fear. Obviously, you need something else to eliminate stress – something that goes beyond just learning a new tip or trick.

Let’s understand where the anxiety comes from. The first place to look is outside of you: your team, your clients, your vendors, and so on. But if you stop there and place all the issues on them, whoever they are, you prevent yourself from addressing what you add to the situation.

Everyone experiences stressful and challenging circumstances. Yet, different people react in different ways. What’s stopping you from rolling with the punches?

Effortless performance comes from the inside. The gap you experience between ease and anxiety is in your attitude. The good news? That’s something under your control. Your vendors might not be.

Really though, isn’t that what you want in every aspect of your business? When I speak with numerous business owners, I see a repeating theme: we want to see the big picture, be able to dig into the guts of it all (without being bogged down by the mundane work), and do this all without stress. Having all that would dramatically increase business productivity.

The first place you go to, like many of us, is to learn new skills. You read a book, ask a friend, or listen to an expert. The result is that you now know more stuff. With that new knowledge, you can now get more things done with ease…or at least, you hope so.

Many high performers have an huge appetite for knowledge. They are constantly learning. Some believe that knowing new stuff is the key to increasing productivity. According to them, the ultimate answer to “how to increase productivity” is found in learning the newest tricks or tips.

How many times have you heard the phrase ”knowledge is power”? We tend to act according to the idea that by learning more, we will become masters at what we do. But is that so?

Let’s take a look at what mastery means. A simple definition tells us that “master” means being an expert. Moreover, a master has the power of command and control.

When you look at masters of any art, sport, or industry, you’ll notice one thing about the way they perform. It seems effortless. The effortless performance here does not come from what they do, but how they carry themselves while in action.

When you look at your behavior, do you notice a gap between what you know and what it’s like to get things done? You may know more stuff now, and you may even be implementing your newest tricks… but are you really less stressed when you work? The work may now be easier, but are you experiencing ease while you work?

Here’s the real question to think about: how can you get effortless performance if knowledge alone is not enough? Take a few moments to think about that and then comment below.

Related posts:

1. The Illusion of Employee Productivity: Part 2
2. The Illusion of Employee Productivity: Part 1
3. The Secret to Getting Your Way