Turn the Airplane Around – A Change to Your Path

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Change of Mindset

Driving to a meeting this morning I was listening, as I usually do, to “Automobile University”.  If you haven’t done this, it’s a practice I highly recommend.  Instead of listening to local radio and hearing the same song five times in an hour or tuning in (bleah!) talk radio or the news, try instead taking advantage of that really nice CD player you have and pop in motivational stories or information.  I will alternately listen to audio with John Maxwell, Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Les Brown, and the CD that comes in every issue of Success Magazine.  This is especially great for those who don’t have the time to read constantly (that pretty much covers all of us).  Positive, inspirational, motivational, and informative.  Great way to start off!

Flight Path Change

plane-taking-off Anyway, I was listening to Zig Ziglar tell an old familiar story, which I’ll retell from my perspective.

I boarded a plane at Orlando International Airport that was bound for Seattle, Washington with no stops.  The plane took off and after being in the air for about a half hour, it was no longer heading directly for Seattle.  The earth rotates, winds blow, all kinds of physical forces work against the plane heading straight for Seattle.  Don’t know where we are going, but it ain’t Seattle.  

So the pilot, wise man that he is, turns the plane around and heads back to Orlando, lands and starts all over again.

What?!

Of course he doesn’t!  He and the co-pilot simply make navigational adjustments to re-direct the plane back towards Seattle in mid-flight.  It would be silly and waste of time to head back and start all over again.

That’s the story of you and me.  When we attempt to get somewhere in life and accomplish something a monkey wrench gets thrown into the works.  It is inevitable that things will not go according to plan.  Too many times, the way that a person will try to solve that problem is by tossing the whole plan out the window and making a new; starting all over again.  It tends to be either/or; a change in the plan doesn’t enter our mind.

Change Your Plan

change the path to get to your destinationStop!  Think!

It’s not necessarily the whole plan, just parts of it.  Sometimes even it’s not the plan at all, just outside forces that interfere and cause a problem.  Instead of throwing out the whole plan, just make adjustments.  Don’t change where you want to go, simply change the path you will follow to get there.  Keep yourself directed, don’t lose sight of where you want to be!  The rocky path in front of us can distract us, but you need tunnel vision so you don’t accept anything other than the goal you wish to accomplish.

Action Plan

  1. Take a look at your goals and think about one that recently had a setback.  Did you toss out the plan?  Have you made a new one or abandoned the goal altogether?
  2. Re-focus.  Do you still want that goal?  What can you do differently to get there?  Is there something you can try that no one has tried before?  This is especially good when conventional methods aren’t working.
  3. Take the first step NOW!  When we take an immediate action, no matter how small, we increase the likelihood of success.

Improving Leadership through the Brain-to-Belly Nerve

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Now this is an interesting perspective I ran across.  If I am reading it right, it seems to suggest that there are physical conditions that affect our ability to show courage and other characteristics necessary to be an excellent leader.  What do you think?  New age mumbo jumbo?  Medically-validated?
Is courage teachable or learnable, or is it ingrained in you at an early age?  At what point does it become to late to develop?
What do you do when you want to bolster your courage?  What other characteristics do you think you could build or reinforce through focus techniques like what is mentioned here?
Improving Leadership through the Brain-to-Belly Nerve (via Investorideas.com News )

Improving Leadership through the Brain-to-Belly Nerve Business Execs Should Embrace Mind-Body-Business Connection, Says Veteran Consultant; Offers TipsIdeas get bigger when you share them…     September 18, 2013 (www.investorideas.com newswire…

Continue reading “Improving Leadership through the Brain-to-Belly Nerve” →

Focus to Create Hot Moments

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Magnified Focus

focus - magnifyWhen I was a child, we used to take our magnifying glass outside and in the hot Florida sun we would hold it up and see the light shining through it on the ground below.  If we then moved it about we could focus that light into a single beam that would then start to burn a blade of grass or an ant.  The focus was the difference.

Note to parents:  if you are concerned that a kid who might read this has been suddenly given a way to perpetrate mischief, I got news for you; they already know this and if they don’t will soon discover it on their own.  I did.

Refracted light illuminates.  It can brighten and reveal.  It can even offer a low-level of heat.  This is both beneficial and productive.  Try reading or performing open heart surgery in the dark.  Try finding anything small that you dropped on the ground.  You likely won’t find it until you are able to provide ambient light to reveal its location.  Refracted light reveals but doesn’t empower.

Focused light provides power and heat and intensity.  Sunlight gathered by panels gets focus and turns into electrical power.  A laser in very simple terms is focused light.  Apply enough focus to the light and it provides intense and powerful energy.  The focus is the difference.

Your Laser Focus and the HOT MOMENT

When your energies get refracted, poured out all over the place, you may get illumination but you won’t get power.  It is not until you focus your energies on a particular point that you are able to unlock the intensity and power; that you are able to generate a HOT MOMENT.  The focus is the difference.

When we can create a HOT MOMENT, we build intensity and energy and power.  It drives us forward and isn’t easily stopped or even slowed down by anything that gets in the way.  We need momentum to keep us on track and on focus.  Once we lose focus, we lose momentum and the HOT MOMENT is gone.

To create a HOT MOMENT, identify your target.  Without a target, there is no focus.  A target must be very specific.   Identify what success is for that target.  Is it a deadline reached, value-added to a person or group, a product sold, a goal reached?  Once you have the target, funnel all your energy on it.  It doesn’t have to be for long periods of time; a laser accomplishes a lot even in just short bursts.  The focus is the difference.  Act immediately, don’t wait to “feel like it” or for the “right moment”.  The right moment comes when you create it; you will feel like it after you start doing it.  Act now and put all your energy into it and ride the HOT MOMENT for as long as you can.  Reward yourself for accomplishment.

Action Plan

  1. What one thing requires your focus this week?
  2. What does success mean for that thing?  How will you reward yourself for achieving it?
  3. Personally brainstorm for 10 minutes on ways you can dedicate more energy on that thing.
  4. What is the HOT MOMENT you can create through this?

Connecting – Networking’s Common Flaw

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Networking – Not Connecting

It is inevitable, whether you like to be in groups or not, that for a small business to succeed you or someone representing you are  involved with some networking groups.  These groups are typically formed with the primary purpose of introducing people and collecting contacts and therefore, in theory, generating leads.  There are lots of these groups around pretty much anywhere you are; literally hundreds of them.  BNI groups abound, groups like WOAMTEC that cater to a specific gender or genre, community service clubs like Rotary and Kiwanis have networking aspects to them, chambers of commerce sponsor groups, trade associations create them, and sometimes just someone with a mind for a target audience will create them.

I have belonged to several over time and visited many others.  They all have the their advantages and disadvantages and most are at least a little productive eventually.  The biggest issue I have with most of them is that the participants really don’t know what they are doing and it becomes more of a mingling than a networking.  The fatal flaw is that you aren’t connecting, you are simply meeting and greeting.  Some of the common mistakes I see are:

  • business card poker is NOT connectingPeople who show up and pass out their business cards like they are dealing poker.  Sometimes they include some type of greeting but usually it is just their brief pitch.  The assumption that I am going to do business with you or refer you to anyone else just because I have your business card is a fatal flaw.  That’s supporting your printer, not connecting.

Keep the card in your pocket, I don’t want it.

  • Shooting for quantity of contacts over quality.  I have seen people come in, make a point of talking to every single person in the room briefly, collect cards, and rush out confident that they have done their job.  Like the example of passing out the cards above, you have done nothing to further your cause other than collect some additional names you will probably add to your list to spam until they get sick of it.  Again, not connecting.
  • The assumption that you are going to do business with anyone in the room.  Yes, on a VERY RARE occasion that may happen, but it’s not the purpose of your being there.  Think about it:  did you go to the meeting to buy from anyone there?  What makes you think they did?  The purpose of networking is not to do business.  We’ll talk about that purpose (connecting) further down in the post.
  • Relying on your “elevator speech” as the entire moment of contact with anyone in the room.  I am not a big fan of elevator speeches for this very reason.  In case you don’t know what an elevator speech is, it works off the theory that if you were in an elevator with someone you really wanted to contact you basically have 30 seconds to impress so you need to present a clear, concise summary of who you are and what you do.  It works off the assumption that if someone in the elevator or at a networking group asks you what you do they really want to know.  Chances are they don’t; they really want to tell you what they do.

Connecting – Not Networking

I have spent time going around to networking groups and pointing out these fatal flaws and proposing that they do something different.  If you tire of this merry-go-round that gets nowhere, why not try connecting instead of networking.  Connecting is all about building REAL relationships with people, not just acquaintances or business card collections. You make friends, not contacts.  And that’s what networking is really all about.  You don’t have to go anywhere new, you can still attend the same events, but your intentions, purpose, and approach are different.  The only thing that will change is you.

The idea is that you want to spend more time being interested than interesting.  At the heart of it, people want to know that you find them fascinating.  They don’t want to know that you have a new, revolutionary product or service; they want to know that you can help them, that you care about them, and that they can trust you.  Take this approach and in just a short time I believe it will amaze you at how things change for the better.  Better authentic relationships with people, leading to better referrals and increase in closings.  Just changing this mindset makes a world of difference.  As Dale Carnegie said,

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

Here are some tips to get started:

  • Be one of the first to arrive and the last to leave to maximize your contact time.  Budget your time so that you aren’t rushed.  Being hurried shows up in your attitude, your speech, and your body language.  No one thinks you care for them when you are in a hurry and you aren’t really connecting if you are in a hurry.
  • Set your goal before you walk in the door to focus on 2-3 quality contacts.  If you meet more, and your certainly will, then great.  But focus on actually initiating a relationship with 2-3 people where you are really connecting with them.
  • Ditch the elevator speech.  Marketing Guru Seth Godin says no one buys anything in a elevator.  Give short, concise answers to inquiries about you and quickly turn it around to ask questions about them.  You want them to talk the majority of the time you spend with them.  People who let other people talk about themselves are regarded by them as the best conversationalist in the world.
  • When you do talk, share more personal information than business information.  Real connecting with people happens on common ground and that is always personal.  You may find you went to the same school, at both natives to the area, have kids, etc.

Commonality makes connections.

  • Here’s the biggie: instead of looking for what you are going to get from each relationship, look for what you can give.  What can you do for them, especially if unrelated to your business.  Can you connect them with someone who can solve a problem you don’t address?  Perhaps they need a good medical specialist or are looking for a new church or a good place that serves authentic viking food.  How can you add value to them.  Ironically, when you do that you will eventually receive value in return.  It is really true, what goes around comes around.

Action Plan

  1. Think about your next meeting.  Pick two or three people you will focus on building a relationship with this week.
  2. In your conversation with them, find one thing you can do for them THIS WEEK and then DO IT.

The Lie of Experience as the Best Teacher

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Experience Happens

You have probably heard it said hundreds if not thousands of times during your life.

Experience is the best teacher.

Every day, from the moment you rise until you put your head on the pillow, you are going through a series of experiences.  Some experiences are what we would call good; nice things happen, we feel happy about it.  Others….not so much.

See the Ah-Ha! Moment of the Week on this topic.

Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a
collection of mistakes is what is called experience.
-Denis Waitley

Here’s the thing:  if every day we ALL have experiences then why is it that most of us don’t get any smarter?

More Than Experience

someecards.com - They say experience is the best teacher. That's why I'm so smart. I've screwed everything up at least twice.If experience were truly the best teacher, then would it not logically follow that each of us would be getting smarter every day and would never repeat the same mistakes because our experience would have taught us better?  Is that what happens in your life?  Is that what happens around you?  You know what I am talking about, the people who keep making the same mistake they made yesterday and the day before, getting the same results, and not getting that it ain’t gonna work that way.  Why?  If experience is the best teacher, then they should have already learned not to do that again.

I have to admit to being hardheaded this way sometimes.  I’ll do the same dumb thing over and over again, somehow expecting different results.  I might rationalize it, excuse it, or simply learn the wrong lesson from previous experience.  I’m not an idiot, I am a fairly bright guy.  Why isn’t experience teaching me anything?

Experience Plus

The truth is that experience alone is no kind of teacher at all.  It is REFLECTIVE EXPERIENCE that really makes the difference.  It is how we analyze what we experience that allows us to draw the appropriate conclusions and lessons from what happens to us and engage in positive behaviors to prevent it from happening again.  That reflection needs to be timely; it needs to happen within a short period of time after the experience.  It should not be rushed.  The best approach is usually to spend a little time at the end of the day thinking about what good things happened, what not so good things happened, and examining them.   Ask questions about each experience:

  1. What was good (or not so good) about it?
  2. Who was involved?
  3. What was the outcome?
  4. Was that the outcome I anticipated?
  5. What would have been a better or ideal outcome?
  6. Why did it happen that way?
  7. What can I do differently to change the outcome?
  8. How can I use this to add value to someone else?

Experience as an Even BETTER Teacher

The last question leads to the last point.  As the Denis Waitley quote said above, mistakes are painful.  So even if we are learning from our mistakes, we still have to go through the pain.  Just a show of hands out there, who likes to go through pain?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

So how can we avoid the pain?  Simply by learning from others experience.  In fact, I believe that other people’s experience can be absolutely the best teacher for us.  Examining the experiences of others allows us to be more evaluative about it because our minds are not clouded by emotion or pain.  We can assess the decisions, the process, and the outcomes and attempt to come up with practical applications to help prevent it from occurring in OUR lives.

One of the best ways to allow people to share stories with you.  Stories allow experiences to be personalized; we connect with them better and connect with the people involved.  Reading the biographies (and autobiographies) of people we admire also is an excellent way to do this.  If they have any level of transparency, they will readily share their mistakes in their stories and we can derive great lessons from people we know to be accomplished persons.

Action Plan:

  1. How are you going to implement regular reflection on your experiences?
  2. Pick at least two people that you want to learn from this month.  Get books about them, publications, web sites about them, or just sit down over coffee (or drinks) and talk to them.  Make notes on what you learn

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