Leadership ConneXions - Issue 6
Welcome to Leadership ConneXions Issue 6. Leadership ConneXions currently reaches out to 1000 + subscribers.
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What to do when you are not achieving your goals
I was having a bad day!
I was reflecting on a workshop I had just finished facilitating. You know the sort of thing - what went well; what could have been done better? Well, to be perfectly honest, I thought that it was OK but I could have been better.
You see, I had been totally oblivious to some of the things that had happened in the group until well after they had happened. I was too slow to react and not as flexible in the process as I should have been. I was annoyed with myself. I should be better than that. How could I not see these things happening right before my eyes? They were subtle things but if I was a good facilitator I could have stopped them impacting on the process and made the workshop more effective.
My internal dialogue was working overtime!
· You are an i.d.i….t!
· You call yourself a facilitator? You are wasting your time and theirs.
· That was just like the other day when you failed to convey your message well enough to the others at that meeting. You were like a bumbling, rambling fool…….
· You will never be a good communicator – why do you even try.
I was on a downward spiral; lowering my self esteem, knocking myself at every turn. And why not - I was not meeting the standards I had set myself.
Now, I have to say that I am passionate about improving my communication. I spend hours and hours, researching, reading, attending courses, practising, volunteering to facilitate workshops, presenting training sessions. And my internal dialogue is saying “I do whatever I can to improve and here I am, just as useless as ever.”
I was in the process of reaffirming my limiting beliefs when I received an email containing an e-newsletter that I subscribe to. It turned me around.
Basically this article said that some people are constantly setting their goals too far away. They are too grand and perhaps even unrealistic. (In my case, I want to be as good a facilitator as Bob Dick and a master of language like Milton Erickson.)
People like this (like me) tend to set a goal “way out there” in the distance. We never get to celebrate the achievement of a goal – it is always too far away. (And I suspect I continually reset the standards that I aspire to. With every bit of new communication knowledge I obtain, I raise the bar another notch.)
The article said that distant or ever increasing goals are way out there are “on the horizon” and like the horizon, no matter how far we travel towards it, we are never any closer. This leads to disillusionment and frustration.
Well…..being disillusioned and frustrated at that point in time, the concept caught my attention…. so I read on.
The article suggested that when we think we are not making any headway on the horizon, it often pays to stop, turn around and see how far we’ve come. When I did this, I realised that I had indeed come a long way. My communication skills ten years ago do not compare to my skills today. Sure, I am not as good as I want to be, but all of a sudden I realised I haven’t been wasting my time. I am getting better and I will continue to do so. Last year I wouldn’t have picked up on the things happening in the workshop but more importantly I would not have even known that I was not picking up on something. It would have been a case of I didn’t know I didn’t know. At least now I know I didn’t know. (Am I starting to sound like a Federal politician?) There has been significant achievement and there is a solid basis for further improvement. I didn’t have to feel like crap at all.
The question I pose to you now is “Do you need to turn around and see how far you have come?”
This newsletter worked wonders for me at the time so I wanted to share it with Leadership ConneXion readers. Trouble is, I inadvertently deleted it and I don’t remember the source (I subscribe to several). So if you know of the newsletter, I would be pleased to hear from you.
Barry Lawson
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How do you go about influencing others?
One of the most important determinates of your effectiveness as a leader, coach and mentor is success in positively influencing others. We all have influencing skills, the crucial question is whether those skills result in a high level of commitment and are helpful and strengthen the other person. In the end, we cannot get beyond the fact that the effectiveness of the tactics we use to try to influence others is determined by how people react to those tactics.
If you want to determine the core influencing tactics that you currently employ when working with others, then try the quiz located at: http://coachingandmentoring.com/Quiz/Influence6e.htm
It is easy, useful and perhaps even a little revealing of the real you.
Want to do another quiz?
If you like to do a quiz to get a snapshot of you and your behaviour, you might like to have a go at the quizzes at http://coachingandmentoring.com/quizzes.htm. Apart from the quiz above it also offers insights into:
· What is the focus of your Performance Management Process?
· Coaching Upwards - Test Your Readiness
· How's Your Team Spirit
· Test Your Coaching Skills
· The Empowering Work Environment
· Evaluate Your Organization's Coaching Climate
· Finding a Coach
· Are You Ready To Manage In The 21st. Century?
· How In Step Are You With Generation X?
· What's Your Commitment to Yourself?
· Leadership Trustworthiness: How Far Can They Throw You?
Leadership ConneXions seeks to save you time and energy by seeking out good leadership, communication and relationship articles. One or two people in our membership do the work, share their findings with us and we pass it on to you. You get to go straight to the good stuff.
Scott Arbuthnot, who many of you will know from leadership development programs and as a great facilitator and educator, provided some information and said “And, if you have few days to read ... check out the resources at http://www.pfdf.org/leaderbooks/l2l/complete-text.html” This site offers a great range of quality articles from the who’s who of leadership. Scan the author list and you will understand what we mean.
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