Special Note: When this post went live, some of the links were not working.  That has now been corrected.  All links are working properly.

I am very excited to announce the release of 2 new books I’ve compiled this summer!

The first is a collection of wisdom for every professional entitled: Wisdom@Work – Insights for 21st Century Worklife Success. Get more info. or order – click here: https://www.createspace.com/3456926

The second is The 1% Edge – Strategies to Increase Your Management Effectiveness. There are 2 releases here. One is the handbook and the other is the workbook counterpart which is the expanded version with a series of coaching questions for each. The handbook is available now. To learn more or buy – click here: https://www.createspace.com/3467099

With this new announcement also comes sharing an exciting change related to this blog. This blog will now be replaced with a new blog related to the new book – The 1% Edge. It will serve as the interactive counterpart to the book for supporting information and a place/forum for purchasers of the book to share experiences and best practices as they apply the principles of the book – in essense to build a community of managers to support their professional efforts.

The blog is open to everyone: www.the1percentedge.blogspot.com.

Even if you’re not a manager with a title, it will additionally have tips to help you gain your 1% edge for career management success!

This blog will be ending in the next few months.

Again:

For practical coaching, tips, advice for career and management success visit: www.the1percentedge.blogspot.com

For commentary on currents news and trends related to leadership, career, and management – go to

www.leadership-careerandmanagement.blogspot.com

To your success!

JoAnn

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Quick Coaching Tip of the Day: Make a list of how you are valuable to your company.

To extend the thought, listen to this brief Seminar-in-a-bite:

http://joanncorleyspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/11/useful-career-success-strategy-are-you.html

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As companies continue to invest in the training of their employees there still seems to be some key elements missing to insure there is a meaningful return on investment. The key employee training component that impacts several other key components is this – a learning rhythm.

Consider the definition of rhythm: a regularly recurrent quantitative change. Rhythm implies ongoing, consistent, and reliable.

In reflecting on these three qualities, ask yourself does your own professional learning include those qualities?  Additionally, does any employee training or management training contain those qualities?  The answer for many companies is no!

Professional development to be truly effective, to get real results must have these components.  Here are some practical considerations:

1. At the beginning of each week, decide on your focus for the week.

2. Determine what resource(s) you will use to add to your current knowledge around the area of focus. A resource could be a book, audio, blog post, or article.

3. Set aside and commit to a certain time each day (this a secondary rhythm) that you give attention to the area.  The good news, it doesn’t have to be that much time.  Even 5 minutes is useful.

4. In that time, take in new information and think about times, ways, situations to which you can apply what you’re learning. You can also decide on key information that you repeatedly review everyday. Repetition, particularly spaced repetition is also a necessary component in adult learning and employee training.

5. Keep a learning notebook.  There is something about writing that helps to reinforce the learning experience.

So why is rhythm necessary and powerful?  Rhythm helps to engage the brain in such a way as to create a complete sensory experience engaging us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.  That repeated multiple sensory experience begins to build sensory memory which accelerates development towards the desire behavior change. This ultimately builds a habit.  A habit, as we know, is permanent behavior change and isn’t that what training is really all about?….turning knowledge into know how?… and isn’t know how tangible behavior?

Coaching Question: Can you identify tangible outcomes from the learning your experiencing?  Whether it’s from a book or seminar how are you practically integrating what you’re learning into your real time experience?

Two areas of changes to look for: change in thought and/or change in behavior – one precedes the other.

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

Expand Your Understanding of This Post – you can access additional learning bites at the links provided.

1. Thought impacts behavior – http://joanncorleyspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/11/tfb.html

2. The Power of Focus – focus-article

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Start Where You Can

This success tip impacts your personal productivity, your success as a manager,  and the overall building of a successful career.

I have the great opportunity to meet people from all over the country. In many of my seminars ideas and solutions are presented that each person has the opportunity to take back to their organization for implementation.

At the beginning of each seminar I make the point that for some, it will take courage to try to implement something they’ve learned.

And then…there is the thought, “ Well what about this or that….”  My response?…”For the moment, just focus on what you can influence or control.”

For many of us in challenging work environments, who work in company cultures that are not ideal, it’s easy to get distracted by all that is not working or the many things that are wrong.

In any environment, to build professional success the key is to start where you can and maintain strategic focus. Direct your focus and all of your personal resources on the areas in which you do have influence and/or control.

In fact, check out Webster’s definition of control:
Control – to exercise restraining or directing influence over : regulate – to have power over : rule

I believe there is a lot of time and energy wasted giving attention to situations and circumstances that we may not be able to do anything about for the time being. So the key is  – focus…and maintain your focus on that which you can control and/or influence.

Power Tip: Make your piece of the world great!  Start with what’s happening at your desk. Then if you’re a manager, your team, your department, etc.

Key point: Perhaps what is happening in our piece of the world is good or only adequate, because our critical resources, (time, attention, motivation, energy) bleeds into things that will suck up those valuable resources all to no benefit.

Coaching Tip: Increase your awareness regarding what you give your energy to….any adjustments need to be made?

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Usually I don’t use this blog to discuss sensationlized news, yet I felt compelled to comment on this particular occurrence and even more so after reading a thought-filled blog post that I found very instructive.  You can read the entire post from the other blog, Orin Woodward Leadership Team,  provided at the end of this post.  What I want to do is submit my thoughts in light of that post.

My Thoughts:

One of the guiding themes of my practice and any coaching and training I do is leading, managing, living from the inside out.  Who we are on the inside dictates the kind of person we’ll be on the outside. This truth proves itself out, time and time again.

That’s why it’s so important to work on our insides more than any other area.  There are many managers and leaders who want to fix the people around them rather than consider, “what about me has allowed these circumstances to occur.”

I do carry the belief that people of great talent, those in high levels of leadership and influence need to be especially attentive to what’s going on on the inside and have someone in their life they deeply trust to help them effectively deal with their own inner activity no matter how unpleasant it might be.

To stay grounded and truthful with the good and the bad about ourselves is essential to a successful life and complete health.

It’s very common to talk to a leader of an organization and discover they feel isolated and that there is no one in their life that they can talk with about deeply intimate issues, that in some cases they are embarrassed about.

Perhaps that was true in Tiger’s case.  Perhaps he has struggled with sexual addiction (if this is true) from an early age or it surfaced after his father’s death to fill a emotional hole left with his Dad’s profound absence.  These are all assumptions of course.

What is not…we all need to continually practice internal honesty as the first source of living a meaningful, productive, successful life. How we do that will be reflected in every activity and relationship we have in every context.

This post serves as my summary of the following points from the post referenced above…truly profound and worth a read.

Key Points:

I. Leaders need to build their lives upon the solid foundation of good character and morals, not on gifts and abilities.

II. Leaders must understand that having great career success does not cause us to experience or feel internal significance and satisfaction

III. Leaders need to develop good coping skills so they can courageously confront reality instead of escaping from it.

IV. Leaders must not feed an ego-driven lifestyle.

VI. Leaders must understand that money, material possessions and a beautiful spouse cannot fill the vast empty space of an unhealthy emotional soul.

VII. Leaders need to understand the underlining motivation behind what drives them.

VIII. Leaders often equate performance with acceptance.

Eight Lessons Leaders Can Learn from Tiger Wood’s Life

Please pass on to colleagues and friends.  To our personal and professional success! JoAnn

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In the work that I do in coaching professionals, it’s been clear to me for quite some time that we all have great amounts of potential that have not been tapped and therefore go unknown and obviously unused.

There is a philosophy in goal setting that goes like this  – create goals that feel like a stretch and some refer to them as “stretch goals.”

There is also a similar approach to goal setting with a bit of a more flowery description and that’s BHAGS!…big, hairy, audacious goals!  I love that. (Of course not too sure about the hairy part…:-), but you get the point.

I’d like to direct you to the post I read, it’s worth a read: Goal Setting and Performance Post.  As you do so, please keep in mind the concept of BHAGs.  This would be a good year end exercise and incorporate these questions when you do:

1. Did I make goals this year?

2. How did it go?….What did I learn about myself and what do I need to tweak?

3. Were they BHAGs?

4. How about next year?

If you’re a manager, please integrate this with your team as well.

Additionally, if you feel you need some coaching around this issue, feel free to contact me for a session or two.  Remember, I offer Laser Coaching in time increments of 15, 20, 25, and 30 minutes.  The cost? $1.00 a minute.

Contact: joann@joanncorley.com

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Here they are:

1. Leading people: directing and motivating people.
2. Strategic planning: translating vision into realistic business strategies, including long-term objectives.
3. Managing change: using effective strategies to facilitate organizational change.
4. Inspiring commitment: recognizing and rewarding employees’ achievements.
5. Resourcefulness: working effectively with top management.
6. Doing whatever it takes: persevering under adverse conditions.
7. Being a quick learner: quickly learning new technical or business knowledge

I would say no matter what level of leadership and management you hold, the ability to do these things well will make a difference in your leadership success.

This is pretty cut and dry and I wanted to post the list for your self assessment and reference.  YET, the other critical and essential question that must be asked in conjunction to this question is this: “Do your leaders have the qualities (different than skills) to effectively lead your organization now and into the future?”

Revealed in the study referenced above are answers to this question, though the question was not posed in my way.  What was recorded were other qualities leaders felt that they had that were valuable, but  considered not as important though necessary.

• building and mending relationships,
• compassion and sensitivity,
• cultural adaptability,
• respecting individual differences,
• composure,
• and self-awareness.

WHAT!…not as important…ghez!  This study again reveals the great disconnect between qualities, functional skill and effective leadership.  In fact the very qualities listed about are EXACTLY what is needed to execute the original list with some measure of success.

We’ve got to begin to see that business IS behavior and the qualities that drive it.  To expand on this, please download my expanded article The Behavior of Business. For those who do get it, you will set yourself apart and help lead your company to greater profitability no matter what role you have!

This source of this blog post can be found here.

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The Answer is YES! – Call It C.I.T. and… it’s a refreshing alternative to management training seminars.

In fact, more and more companies are putting corporate coaches on retainer.

You know corporate coaching has been around for a long time, mostly confined to the context of executive coaching, but now it comes in the form of time management coaching, communication coaching, performance coaching, leadership coaching, success coaching, and the ever popular personal life coaching. It can be whatever you need it to be and that’s the point!

In a climate that calls for smarter use of training dollars than ever before, companies are beginning to look not only to a more blended learning strategy that includes e-learning, webinars and tele-conferences, but also one-on-one delivery and help.

Coaching is a customized version of training, particularly when you couple it with targeted learning, which is the model I use. In fact I call it C.I.T. – customized individual training. It is a way to gain the highest level of return on investment for every training dollar spent.

Here’s a couple of questions and answers to expanded our understanding of coaching and its value.

What is Coaching?
What is a coaching relationship (short-term or long)?
A partnership
A committed alliance

What is a Coach?
An objective, key relationship who listens to what you are saying, helps you to set priorities and acts as a sort of “compass” to steer you on whatever course you choose; a facilitator of change.
Can be described as:
Sounding board
Advocate
Partner
Believer
Supporter
Informer
Resource

What Does Coaching Offer?
…a structured time and safe place to address specific situations

…working with goals by setting, planning and evaluating the process of meeting them and problem solving to name a few.

… A synergy that fuels your will, mind and heart to accomplish/ attain what you desire.

In the case of career coaching, it is working through a planning model to map out a desired career track. It’s a time to get honest and objective feedback from someone who does not have an “agenda” for you, but is committed to supporting your agenda.

Coaching additionally provides:
structure to the development process
insight
measured outcomes
accountability
encouragement, affirmation, support
clarity
focus
unleashing passion
discovering & breaking down mental barriers
unlocking potential
uncovering deep desires
sorting through thoughts feelings and emotions
goal creation
life plan design

Key Advantages
o    Specific and Directed Attention -you bring up the issues most critical to you at that moment.
o    Time Usage-this most valuable commodity is used exactly how you wish.
o    Scheduling Flexibility (the times are arranged at your convenience.  If a change needs to occur, it can be done without affecting a group or any sessions being missed.)
o    Sustained Momentum – through consistent contact and action you are able to keep your goals in front of you because there are so many other legitimate needs clamoring for your attention as well.
o    Results – through coaching goal setting and planned action is discussed thereby achieving measurable progress towards your desired results.
o    Current Information – I bring the skills of research and resourcefulness to this collaboration to compliment your efforts.
o    Confidence- planning & action breeds confidence and clarity.

Coaching Tip: Evaluate your learning strategy.  Ask yourself, “Am I learning efficiently and effectively?” “How is that impacting my return on investment for the training dollars I’m using?”

If this post has prompted you to want to learn more, don’t hesitate to contact me for a quick chat.  You can so so at: joann@joanncorley.com

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Every once in a while I’ll be posting lessons and coaching tips from my portable learning resource -  Management-in-Minutes, which has a generous library of lessons, articles, tools and tips that are short and high-impact…meant to help a busy professional build their knowledge base and competencies, while on the go.

Here’s a great one I wanted to share…Are You a Parent or a Manager? (and an important question to answer)

I bet there’s been a day or two when you have thought that or felt that way. When I conduct a management training workshop, sometimes I’ll ask, “How many feel like you left the kids back at the office.”…..many people raise their hand.

Here are two issues related to parenting that would be useful to be aware of, if you are a manager… click here to view and/or listen to the full article

Enjoy!  JoAnn

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One key area of note is that of management…how we see it, how we define it, and our relationship to it.

I would like to propose a new way of looking at management. Here’s what I suggest…let’s look at the concept of management as one in which everyone is engaged…everyone is one and doing it! What do I mean? Upon closer inspection, the word manage or management goes way beyond a title and using it that way limits the use of the potential of every employee.

In fact when you look at the primary definition of the word manage, here is what you’ll find: to handle or direct with a degree of skill. In looking at this definition, you’ll determine that in order to be a successful professional in any content you need to effectively “manage” whatever is required.

Management is not necessarily a title – it is a behavior…a behavior that is done with a needed level of skill…by everyone!

Now with that said, in order to ensure professional success, the question then is what key areas should be considered to be managed…where do the essentials skills need to lie? Here is my core list:
Your ability to manage…
1. Yourself
2. Information
3. Stuff & Work Space
4. Time
5. Priorities
6. People/Relationships (which includes your boss)
7. Your role in a process
8. Your knowledge and use of technology
9. Your career/work-life

In future posts, I’ll expand on each of these and in my Management-in-Minutes Library there are plenty of tips and lessons that will help you build effectiveness in each of these areas. A sample of one is included in the link at the end of this post.

Coaching Tip: Review this list… assess on a scale of 1-5 (5 being the highest) where you are in your skill set. Where there are gaps, create a PDP (Personal Development Plan) which creates a plan for you to gain knowledge and increase your skills in these key areas.

Here’s a lesson from the Management-in-Minutes Library that addresses area #1 – Managing Yourself.  The lesson is entitled: Your Power Point (and that doesn’t mean the slides.)

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