Rainmaker Strategies

Business Coaching

Are You Choosing To Be Stressed?

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Don’t hurry. Don’t worry. You’re only here for a short visit, so don’t forget to stop and smell the roses.

Walter Hagen

Walter Hagen was a very busy man. Known as the father of professional golf, he won 11 major tournaments in the early 20th century, placing him third on the all time list behind Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.

He was a bon vivant, who enjoyed life, living it to its fullest. I suspect, based on the quote above, he was also someone who took things in stride, was even-keeled, and didn’t get too stressed about things, despite the constant demands on his time and energy.

I admire folks like that … and, unfortunately, that’s just not who I am … or at least who I’ve become.

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Can You Build Connection Virtually?

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There’s an old Aretha Franklin song called, “Who’s Zooming Who?” 

These days, the answer is … everybody’s zooming everybody.

We aren’t working side by side much anymore. We aren’t meeting face to face.

What are the implications of this shift for the health of your company’s culture … that amorphous intangible that’s so important to how well your organization functions and how happy and fulfilled your people tend to be?

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Complexity Doesn’t Have To Stymie You

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The words complicated and complex mean different things.

We often use them interchangeably, but that only serves to obscure the subtle … but important … differences in meaning.

An old fashioned Swiss watch is complicated, but it’s not complex.  You can understand the mechanisms and describe exactly how it operates with exact precision.

In contrast, human physiology is the ultimate example of a system that’s complex. What makes it so?

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Help Them Understand You

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Last month, we looked at why you sometimes get misunderstood at work.

This month, we focus on what you can do to keep it from happening.

Personality differences …

Let’s start with the number one bit of advice I can give you to bridge the gap between you and those who think and act differently than you.

It starts with understanding how things go wrong.

People who communicate, process information, make decisions, and interact with others differently than you will often see your style and your particular behavior as perverse and motivated by something other than positive intention.

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Why Don’t They See Me As I Truly Am?

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Sometimes people just don’t get you. You’re misunderstood at work … and it’s frustrating.

After all, you just want what’s best for your organization.

But there’s a mismatch between A) your positive intentions and what you see as your constructive communications and well-meaning actions and B) how others perceive those intentions and actions.

I see it all the time.

Examples: You take the bull by the horns and get a job done and others see you as controlling, non-collaborative, bossy, and competitive.

You listen carefully to what others in a meeting are saying … then take time to carefully consider it before offering any comment or opinion. Others see you as uninterested and disengaged.

Research shows, and our own personal experience confirms, that the way people relate to you is based on who they perceive you to be as a person … an employee … a manager … a  leader.

Your intentions simply don’t matter.

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Bargaining With Your Subconscious

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If you could accomplish absolutely anything you wanted in your personal life or your business … and you knew you couldn’t fail … what would you take on?

It’d be something big, wouldn’t it?

But there are no guaranteed successes in life.

When you take on something big, you know there’s always the possibility you could fail.

Sure, you came up with a great plan, but something unexpected happened and, just like that, you’re out for the count.

That’s life. Nothing is promised. Nothing guaranteed, besides death, taxes, and telemarketers calling at dinnertime.

But here’s the crazy thing.

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The Silent Destroyer

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It makes your blood pressure rise. Makes you crave carbohydrates. Makes your blood sugar rise. Causes you to “burn up” your calming and repair nutrients, such as vitamin C, the B vitamins, zinc and magnesium.

It suppresses your immune system, playing a role in the development of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, and diabetes, while increasing your risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s.

It turns damaging free radicals loose in your system. It inhibits the collagen production your connective tissue needs to sustain and rejuvenate itself and causes your cells to age faster. It not only stops the production of new brain cells, it damages your brain at the structural level of your DNA and puts you at higher risk for mental illness.

It compromises your ability to regulate your body’s immune response over time, resulting in chronic inflammation. It cuts off production of the master hormone responsible for growth and repair, DHEA.

All this makes you old before your time and shortens your life. This stuff is trouble.

And those aren’t all the problems it causes.Read More

What’s Important To You?

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People do things for two reasons … to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

Don’t’ want to have Alzheimer’s … otherwise known as Type 3 Diabetes … when you’re 60? Then don’t eat sugar and empty carbs. Pain averted.

But wait. Eating sugary baked goods definitely maximizes pleasure in the moment.

Choices!

So, which will it be?

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When You Care More Than Your Client

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Wait a minute. It’s not supposed to work like that.

Like what? Where you care more about your client’s success than she does.

And yet, it’s something I see coaches, lawyers, CPAs, and other service providers doing on a pretty regular basis.

Sometimes you just really get invested in your client’s success.

That’s great.

Sometimes more than they get invested in their own success.

Uh, that’s not so great.

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If I’d Only Known

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When I finally get some time, I’m going to __________.

What? What will you do? Fill in the blank.

Okay, may I be blunt?

There are some things that shouldn’t be in that space … things that tell me you’re just asking for trouble. And yet, a large percentage of the population might very well say these very things.

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Livin’ and Dyin’ … Lessons From My Kitty

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Our sweet kitty cat, Tootsie, died on February 7. She was 18.

I still “see” her everywhere around the house.  She was my constant companion for as long as I’ve lived here.  I got her from the pound when she was just a baby kitten.  She was the loudest one of the litter, mewing constantly, trying to climb up the cage, insisting that I take her home.

I did.  She fit in my hand.

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