Tag Archives: training

5 Steps to Build a Strong & Effective Habit

Building a strong habit that brings us the results we want is not that hard once we make up our minds that a change in our behavior is needed. But how do we do it? In his brand new book, The Coaching Habit, author Michael Bungay Stanier includes a chapter on how to teach yourself a new habit

I was intrigued, and Stanier’s ideas got me thinking about some of the best practices I recommend to leaders in today’s rapidly changing and challenging workplace. Here they are:

  1. Be honest with yourself – what is the “why” you are committing to this new behavior, especially when the success of this new habit will positively affect someone you care about.
  2. Identify what will be the specific “clue” or situation that will prompt your new behavior.
  3. Make your new behavior very simple and very short – no longer than 60 seconds to complete.
  4. Repeat the new behavior over and over and over until it becomes “second nature”.
  5. Acknowledge your successes everyday even when they might not have been “perfect”.

What would you add to this list? What works well for you? What can get in the way of your good intentions and how do you deal with those saboteurs? Let me know your ideas!

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The Coaching Habit

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier, Box of Crayons Press, 2016.

At the recent Association of Talent Management (ATD) conference in Denver, Colorado I was cruising through the book store (my favorite place) and heard several people talking about how good Michael Stanier’s presentation was on how to build a powerful coaching habit for anyone in a position of leadership. I grabbed one of the last copies on the shelf and I could see what they were talking about!

Stanier’s newest book is an easy read, with a wealth of ideas on how to use 7 key questions to inspire and engage the best of one’s employees, team members and even your own boss. He delves into the science of our brains and how that impacts the success or derailment of habits. And I loved the chapter on how to build any habit that actually brings you the benefits you want. It’s a great find!

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You Have a Right to a Seat at the Table

As a woman, how do you get to a position of leadership? A position of influence? A position to make a difference? It’s by having self-confidence. It’s the confidence to know that you can do it – that you are a strong and capable woman. It’s by taking that seat at the table right along with your male colleagues

As Sheryl Sandberg writes in her wonderful book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, 2013, we as women unconsciously but regularly hold ourselves back from sitting at the table.

As women, we can learn a lot from men about how to embrace our own successes. For example, research shows that when men are asked about how they achieved their various successes, they give credit to themselves – to their own innate qualities, skills and yes, their potential. It’s not in an egotistical way (no one likes that) but men don’t usually minimize or excuse their abilities but rather give themselves credit where credit is due.

Now, when a woman is asked about her success, what does she say? You will hear them (or even yourself) attribute their success to external factors like “I couldn’t have done it without other people’s help” or “I had a good mentor” or the worse for self-confidence . . . “I just got lucky”.

We constantly underestimate ourselves! Does that sound familiar? And the research verifies what we as women have suspected for a long time . . . we judge our performance worse than it actually is (men judge themselves slightly better) and when we are in front of other people, we are even more critical.

Changing this kind of self-talk is long overdue – especially as we raising our talented young daughters. We truly need the best of everyone – men and women of all ages – and, yes, ourselves as well!

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TEDTalk. “Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders,” Sheryl Sandberg, 2010.

I’ve watched this first TEDTalk by Sheryl Sandberg several times and always enjoy learning something new. Sandberg is such an inspiration because she is talking about what many of us professional women have been experiencing for years – external gender cultural barriers and internal self-imposed barriers that continually impact us – often very subtly – as we move through our professional careers.

As COO of Facebook and past Google executive, Sandberg speaks from a wealth of experience both personally and professionally on these issues. She reminds us that no one ever got to a leadership position by sitting on the sidelines – and women often do.

So how do we shift these barriers? In this TED Talk, Sandberg gives us three powerful pieces of advice to get started. First, we must always “sit at the table”. Second, we need to make our partners our “full partners” at home and at work. Third, we need to be careful to not “leave before we leave”. Want to know more? Check out Sandberg’s TedTalk – it already has 5.952,700 views!

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Creating Positive Energy as a Leader

As a leader, do you bring positive energy into the room or do you drain it as soon as you walk in? Think about it . . . you may have a good sense of what emotional impact you have on others or maybe you don’t have a clue.

Why is it even important? A core competency for any leader in any capacity is their ability to connect positively with others up and down their organization’s structure. These leaders bring an energy, optimism and a sense of hope to their work and relationships. This positive connection expands into an ability to engage and influence others in the mission and desired outcomes of the company, organization or team effort. People gravitate very naturally to this kind of leader.

But how do we as individual leaders develop this competency for ourselves? It’s so easy to slip back to the doom and gloom of everyday work life. Neuroscientists tell us this is actually how our brains are hard-wired – for basic survival – but our world has changed and we need to change our thinking as well.

Here are my favorite three ways to practice changing these old thinking habits:

First, when you wake up tomorrow morning think of 3 things that you are thankful for or grateful for in this new day. These are the lenses through which you will see everything that will happen during your day – a perspective of abundance rather than scarcity.

Second, do a small act of kindness today – and don’t mention it to anyone.

Third, when you go to bed tonight think of 3 things that went well during that day – not what you didn’t get done or what went wrong but rather What Went Well (WWW) (Seligman).

As a leader in any capacity, these simple daily practices will help you refocus on what is going well and restore a sense of positive energy that will ripple out, increasing your ability to engage and influence others.

Try it and let me know what happens!

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