Soft Solutions Consulting

10 Things Successful Leaders Do

Matt Brown — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:28:09 +0000

Top Ten Things Successful People Do Differently

Be specific! Knowing exactly what you want to achieve gives you a better idea of what success looks like. For instance, “lose weight” or “sleep more” are vague. What specifically do you want?
Seize the moment to act on your goals! We’re busy folks and it’s easy to not find the time to act on goals. Decide when and where you will take action you want to take, specifically. For instance, work out Monday, Wednesday and Friday before work for 30 minutes. Studies show this helps your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by about 300%!
Monitor your progress. Know exactly how far you have to go and adjust accordingly. Check your progress honestly and frequently–weekly, or even daily, depending on the specific goal.
Be a realistic optimist. Engage in lots of positive thinking regarding how likely you are to achieve a specific goal. Believe in your ability to achieve! Don’t underestimate how difficult it will be though. Any worthwhile goal requires effort.
Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Most of us believe we are what we are and can’t change that so we focus on goals that prove that. Our belief in fixed ability is just wrong. You can change and reach your full potential! Enjoy the ride in developing and acquiring new skills.
Have grit. Grit makes all the difference in any challenging situation. Effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.
Build your willpower muscle. Build up your self-control muscle by exercising it regularly. Start with one activity you’d rather not do and plan how you will deal with roadblocks. For instance, when you get a sugar craving, eat a piece of fruit. Over time, your muscle will grow and it will get easier.
Don’t tempt fate! Don’t overtax your willpower muscle. For instance, by dieting and quitting smoking at once. Don’t make reaching a goal harder than it is by being overly confident in your ability to resist temptation. Pace yourself! Be kind.
Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do. If you’re planning to stop a bad habit, focus on what you will do instead of the bad habit. For instance, if you’re working to control your temper, you might make a plan like “If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down.” Plan your replacements in advance.
Review and celebrate successes, even small ones. Often highly successful people focus on what’s not done, nothing is ever good enough. List all your positive steps to get a sense of progress. It will help keep you from getting discouraged.

Make Your Coaching A Success

Matt Brown — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:04:17 +0000

Vickie Elmer suggests the following to make sure your coaching experience is as successful as possible:

.Find the right match! You need someone to push and challenge you, to encourage and hold you accountable. But you also need someone you can trust and can talk to easily.
Be aware of your company’s expectations. Make sure your boss (and boss’s boss) share their expectations of outcomes with you and make sure your coach knows these so they become a primary focus of the coaching.
Make sure you get what you paid for. Come prepared with issues or questions that have a direct correlation to success in your job. Review homework assignments. Be accountable.
Let your coach see you in action. This is becoming more commonplace and is a good thing. It shows your colleagues that you’re seen as valuable and promotable and shows them that you are working on improving yourself. Be sure to be your normal self!!.

Is Coaching For You?

Matt Brown — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:00:44 +0000

Is coaching for you? Read how it can be an effective tool for growing in your professional life!

Resilience Needed!

Matt Brown — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 19:50:28 +0000

Resilience won't make your problems go away but it will help you see past them and find some enjoyment in life. Learn how to do a better job with your own resilience.

Developing Meaning At Work

Matt Brown — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:57:51 +0000

Meaning at Work

Matt Brown — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:55:10 +0000

We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know

Matt Brown — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:35:34 +0000

We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know
The conscious vs. the unconscious mind. With the unconscious mind having the capacity to process 200,000 times more than the conscious mind, it’s worh taking a look!

The vast majority of us leaders have very little understanding of why we make the choices we do, and that we’re influenced instead by peer pressure; impulsive and reactive emotions; a deep and bottomless need for admiration and status; overconfidence in the present; excessive worry about the future; the evolutionary instinct to avoid pain and move towards pleasure; and precious little capacity to delay gratification.

In other words, we have a great capacity for self-deception when we just draw on our rational mind.

Here’s how we learn: Levels of Learning

There are four distinct stages of learning:

1. Unconscious Incompetence. This is when we don’t know what we don’t know.

2. Conscious Incompetence. This is when we realize we are not as skilled or expert as we thought.

3. Conscious Competence. This is when we are steadily developing skills through experience or formal learning and still need to work hard to do something.

4. Unconscious Competence. This is when we achieve mastery, and no longer have to think about what we are doing. We are competent without the effort required in the Conscious Competence stage. It is natural.

McGinty Quoted in SHRM Magazine

Matt Brown — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:00:34 +0000

Check out Steve’s article on 360 feedback!Assess Pros and Cons of 360-Degree Performance Appraisal

Clueless Leaders

Matt Brown — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:28:11 +0000

Leaders Who Don’t Think They Have a Problem–Know Any?

A long story but worth it. The nugget is at the end. The point is we all need to be open to feedback and to take it seriously. Why? because we all have blind spots!

The Story of Julie by Peter Bregman

Julie Anko*, the head of a division of a retail company I work with, was at risk of getting fired. Here’s the crazy thing: she was a top performer. She had done more for the brand in the past year than any of her predecessors had in five years.The problem was that she was a bear to work with. She worked harder than seemed humanly possible and expected the same of others, often losing her temper when they wouldn’t put in the same herculean effort she did. She was also competitive and territorial; she wanted the final say on all decisions remotely related to her brand even when her peers technically had the authority to make a decision. She wasn’t good at listening to others or empowering them or helping them feel good about themselves or the team. And, though she was working all hours, things were falling through the cracks.

But none of that was the problem for which she was at risk of being fired. The real problem was that she didn’t think she had a problem.

I was asked to work with her, and my first step was to interview everyone with whom she worked in order to understand the situation and share their perspectives with her.
When I did share the feedback, her response surprised me. “I didn’t know it was that bad,” she said, “but it doesn’t surprise me.” I asked her why.

“This is the same feedback I received at my previous company,” she said, “it’s why I left.”
We could look at Julie and laugh at her ignorance. At her unwillingness to look at her failures and, as a result, repeat them. But the laugh would be a nervous one. Because many of us — and this includes me — do the same thing.

I’m often amazed at how many times something has to happen to me before I figure it out. I believe that most of us get smarter as we get older. But somehow, despite that, we often make the same mistakes. On the flip side — but no less comforting — we often do many things right and then fail to repeat them.

There’s a simple reason for it: we rarely take the time to pause, breathe, and think about what’s working and what’s not. There’s just too much to do and no time to reflect.
I was once asked: if an organization could teach only one thing to its employees, what single thing would have the most impact? My answer was immediate and clear: teach people how to learn. How to look at their past behavior, figure out what worked, and repeat it while admitting honestly what didn’t and change it.

If a person can do that well, everything else takes care of itself. That’s how people become life-long learners. And it’s how companies become learning organizations. It requires confidence, openness, and letting go of defenses. But here’s what it doesn’t require: much time.

It only takes a few minutes. About five actually. A brief pause at the end of the day to consider what worked and what didn’t.

Here’s what I propose:

Every day, before leaving the office, save a few minutes to think about what just happened. Look at your calendar and compare what actually happened — the meetings you attended, the work you got done, the conversations you had, the people with whom you interacted, even the breaks you took — with your plan for what you wanted to have happen. Then ask yourself three sets of questions:

How did the day go? What success did I experience? What challenges did I endure?
What did I learn today? About myself? About others? What do I plan to do — differently or the same — tomorrow?
Who did I interact with? Anyone I need to update? Thank? Ask a question? Share feedback?

This last set of questions is invaluable in terms of maintaining and growing relationships. It takes just a few short minutes to shoot off an email — or three — to share your appreciation for a kindness someone extended, to ask someone a question, or to keep someone in the loop on a project.

If we don’t pause to think about it, we are apt to overlook these kinds of communications. And we often do. But in a world where we depend on others to achieve anything in life, they are essential.

After several long conversations, Julie came to appreciate the efficiency of slowing down enough to see the others around her. She saw that she was working so hard and moving so fast, that even if she was delivering quality results, she was working against herself, putting her job at risk, and making things harder for everyone.

So, over time and with great discipline, she began to change. And, slowly, people began to notice. I knew things were going to be OK when I left her a message expecting a call back in several weeks, if at all, but she called me back that evening.

“Hi Peter,” she said, “I just wanted to let you know I got your call and I appreciate you reaching out to me. I’m heading out with the team for some drinks. I’ll try you again in a few days.”

And, sure enough, she did.

This Business of Coaching

Matt Brown — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:25:04 +0000

Most everyone now days has heard of coaching outside the context of sports.

There are many flavors to this coaching thing:

Life coaching
Wellness coaching
Business coaching
Executive coaching
Career coaching…to name a few.

I’m expecting Happiness Coach to pop up any day now since Happiness is so hot now. It’s the number one course in Harvard’s history. Maybe there is a correlation to the number of people on anti-depressives?

I have a few friends that have a different twist on coaching to which I’d like to introduce you. Feel free to contact them if you want and say HR Momma sent you. There is no referral fee to me, promise. I just like them!

Wellness Coaching

Meet Susan Harding

Susan is a total wellness coach for women. As an integrative coach, Susan is educational and motivational. Susan believes in the power of the mind-body-soul connection. She helps women of all ages empower themselves to not only believe in possibilities, but step into optimally healthy lifestyles through her business, The Next Step.

What is Integrative Health coaching??

“We are motivated by our vision of who we want to be.
Motivation cannot always come from within.”

Integrative Health Coaching is a motivational and educational partnership between client and coach. It is based on the belief that each client is whole, capable and resourceful.

Through deep listening, powerful questions, self-discovery tools, self-visualizations and many other skills, an integrative health coach guides a client’s journey toward her vision of optimal health.

Susan Harding’s educational background includes both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Health and Physical Education. Most recently, she has completed coursework in Integrative Health Coaching, Mindfulness for Professionals, and Mindfulness and Weight Management through Duke Integrative Medicine in Durham, NC. Susan is a member of the International Coach Federation.

On-Line Wellness Coaching

Meet Randy Moser

Randy has launched LifeZone4 after almost a decade of research to address the corporate world need for mass education and accountability in their wellness programs (or in place of!) . Through workshops or the site, LifeZone®4 uses interactive discovery methods that encourage preventative wellness, life satisfaction and peak performance. The outcome of his discovery exploration driven experience is personal enrichment and self-actualization leading to a positive impact on life and work.

Empirical data gives evidence that work/life balance is still the #1 concern of many people. Organizations that “Close the Gap” between their need for productivity and their employees’ need for balance in their lives are more productive and innovative; leading to higher profitability. Such companies also attract and maintain the best talent.

People and organizations are searching for solutions that are realistic and realizable before traumatic consequences occur; whether it be wellness, relationships or work environment. Organizations have a right to expect productivity, performance, creativity, team-work and ultimately profitability from their workforce. In return, employees have the right to optimize their life dimensions centered around self, relationships and work.

On-Line Leadership Development Coaching

Meet Meredith Bell

Performance Support Systems has been my 360 Feedback provider (20/20 Insight) for almost 15 years and they celebrate their 20th year in business this month. Recently they added a tool to address the need for leadership development in a very cost effective way when they launched ProStar Coach.

ProStar Coach is a totally new kind of online subscription service that will transform the way you help supervisors and managers improve their leadership skills. ProStar Coach combines assessment, development, coaching and reinforcement programs into a single unified resource. It’s a self-paced, self-directed system for long-term follow-through that helps leaders ingrain skills over time. It’s like giving a manager a 24/7 personal leadership coach. Managers work on one skill or one personal strength at a time, as they apply best practices with the people they supervise every day. They access learning resources anytime, anywhere and as often as needed to make real changes in their behavior.

Through assessments, training videos, exercises and ability to get feedback on your performance, PSS has hit a home run! The feedback functionality is awesome. This unique hybrid of social networking and forum technology supplements the built-in virtual coaching with input from real people who care about the individual’s development, such as managers, coworkers, team members, training co-participants, coaches and others who share information, feedback, coaching, advice and encouragement.

Check it out HERE. I believe leadership development is a journey, not an event, and ProStar Coach will be there for your employees.