Category: #Management

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Who’s on your sounding board?

We all need to make critical decisions. Some of us more often than others, and especially if you are in a leadership or sports coaching role. Your decisions will impact not only your own go forward path, but those of individuals as well as the entire group you are responsible for. Making decisions which impact others requires a different level of experience, and I can assure you that you will be better served when you have people you can trust to provide you with insights and guidance you may require.

Let’s first establish a definition of a sounding board, as it might be a different from what you might be considering. The way I would define a sounding board is being able to have people that you can under almost any circumstance, be there for you (e.g., via the phone, text, video, or in-person) to discuss critical and often highly sensitive information with them. Often with little to no preparation notice, or what might be defined as an “on-call” scenario and analogous to an emergency room setting.

Finding people to be on your sounding board isn’t an overnight activity. It will also take time to both vette them, and to develop a level of trust and interaction with these people which will serve to provide you with a track record of exceptional listening, practical and actionable advice. This isn’t exactly an easy combination to assemble quickly, but when you have them in place, they will serve to guide and support you like few others will be able to do so.

Is there a list of qualifications someone should have to be on your sounding board? Yes, there are, but realistically they might be different for each person depending on what level of experience they have themselves, or where you need support based on areas, you are not strong in yet. For instance, areas where someone could need help from a sounding board person or group would be if you are not strong analytically, or you might be a new or inexperienced leader or sports coach, or perhaps challenged with verbally expressing yourselves clearly. Another area a sounding board member could be invaluable to you, is if you have not yet attained the EQ (e.g., emotional intelligence) level you need to be at, and which will be required in many circumstances.

Another method to help someone determine who should be on their sounding board, is to factor in whether you struggle with thinking through all the variable outcomes from a decision you will be making. If you do, I strongly advise you to seek out a person who is exceptionally good at this. Numerous mistakes can be avoided when you receive guidance from someone with this skillset, and they typically have attained this via a combination of experience and being strategically oriented.

There are some leaders and sports coaches who don’t think they need to have a sounding board. You will quickly be able to figure out which “school of thought” they are in by asking them questions which will reveal this. The type of questions you would ask will relate to having them share with you how they go about thinking through scenarios and what methods they leverage to make a decision.

If they are the type of leader or sports coach who doesn’t have a sounding board, there are often two immediate reasons why this is the case. The first is that they are overconfident and underqualified in their knowledge relating to the situation, or they neglect to factor in the bigger picture thinking which will be required to appreciate how others will be impacted by their solo style decision making.

If you are a newer leader or sports coach, or perhaps someone who could gain benefit from considering the pros of developing and having a sounding board, here are some suggestions to support this thinking.

  • Having an open and growth mindset will serve you well and conferring with a sounding board will support this leadership style well.
  • No one person will always have all the answers to determining the best go forward path in every situation, but a combination of minds will get you much closer to an ideal solution or multiple options to be considered.
  • Others experience is a gift they can share with you, and it doesn’t have to cost much or anything to seek out this invaluable knowledge.
  • Consider broadening who should be on your sounding board, and perhaps include people you wouldn’t imagine doing so. Why? Because a homogenous sounding board isn’t going to offer you the diversity you will benefit from more.
  • Dismiss the notion in your mind that asking for help from others is a sign of weakness. It’s not, and in fact when you ask for help or guidance, you will be signaling that you are confident in being a strong, realistic, and thoughtful leader because you are thinking beyond what is only best for you.
  • Your sounding board will likely evolve over time, and it should. However, there will be foundational people on your sounding board who should remain there to provide you with longer term perspectives from where you have evolved from.

Having a sounding board will serve you well, and it will also help to fast track your professional and personal growth in ways you will pleasantly and intellectually discover along the way.

TAGS: #Business #Leadership #Leader #Leaders #Sports #Sportscoach #Teams #Teamdynamics #Strategy #Motivation #Professionaldevelopment #Personaldevelopment #Communication

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Having and taking time to think.

In the past when I needed to carve out time to be focused, with the purpose of focusing and critically thinking about something, I would procrastinate with the best of people out there. I soon came to realize why I was challenged with doing this and was able to make adjustments in my life to address this. Doing so opened an entirely new world and way of thinking for me, and I now cherish being able to take the time to sit and think. 

I’m the first to admit that being focused isn’t one of my specialties, but I have come to realize that when I do focus and take the time to decompress, wonderous opportunities and things begin to happen. This may not seem hard to do, or special, but the reality is that the society we are living in shares my challenge of being focused. I know this to be true both scientifically, as well as via personal and professional experience. 

This morning I was talking to a well known interior designer who specializes in reimagining hotels. The type of hotels that when you go to them, they transport you to a different world, and in a very good way. I asked him how he got into this specialty area, and surprisingly he ventured into it almost by accident. When he was in his early twenties, he was given the opportunity to work with a renowned interior designer who didn’t realize he was in the presence of an absolute diamond in the making. Fortunately for the experienced designer, it didn’t take him long to realize the young designer wasn’t like anyone else they had encountered before. This was a good thing. 

The element about the new designer which made him so special, was the fact he had an uncanny amount of confidence, combined with a veil thin filter about what he was thinking and then saying. At first, he thought he wouldn’t be able to get away with canceling his mind and auditory filter, but upon testing it, he realized his authenticity and vulnerability combined with his innate and magical design skills would serve him extraordinarily well. 

One part of our conversation involved me asking him about what his method was to determine a signature scent for a hotel. Naturally this would require some thinking to accomplish, and I was on the edge of my proverbial seat waiting to hear his answer, and he did not disappoint me with what he shared. In essence, the way he goes about making this determination is that he leverages all the senses to come up with being able to articulate what the custom scent should be. He walked me through this process in much greater detail, and I feel like I had the honor of unlocking a mystery I had been wondering about how scents are created for years. 

Ironically, part of the reason I am writing about this topic is that I am taking some time off to have time to think, and to celebrate my birthday too. However, I didn’t expect to have such a fascinating conversation with someone in a profession I have always admired and been fascinated with, and secretly thought one day I would go into. So, in some respects, the conversation I had with the designer is both a surprise birthday gift, as well as an opportunity to think about why and how much joy I experienced having this conversation. If I didn’t take the time post this conversation to appreciate how invigorating the conversation was, and how much I learned about the design world in the span of less than an hour, I would be regretful of not doing this at some point. 

All of us are busy, but I expressed during our conversation how I take a non-negotiable one hour a week to write. I realized thinking about this afterwards about expressing this, that as I am writing, I am also having to simultaneously think about what I am going to express. What you might not know is that my writing style is what I will classify as stream of consciousness, but I am putting it into a format I can share with others.

When I first started sharing my writing and style with others, it was intimidating to do so. This was because I was concerned about being judged for how I was thinking about and expressing my thoughts. However, I soon realized I needed to become confident and not be concerned about what others thought, and get on with focusing on expressing myself via my writing. I also realized that writing gave me great satisfaction, and I wasn’t about to let anyone take this away from me. 

If you haven’t reached the point of being aware of how satisfying it can be to take time to simply think, I would like to encourage especially leaders and sports coaches to do this. Namely because they have to spend so much time thinking about others, that it is imperative they take time to think about themselves too. Here are some other reasons to carve out time to think. Especially critical thinking, which is much harder to do, and yes, it can be tiring to do so, but it’s worth it. 

·      Consider thinking as a form of self-care, or as a deep tissue massage for your brain. 

·      Thinking can also be relaxing, particularly if you are focused on topics which light you up and aren’t heavy or too serious. 

·      Practicing and carving out time to think may seem like a luxury, but it shouldn’t be. Just like anything you devote time to becoming better at, the rewards will be numerous when you become better at this. 

·      If you find that you don’t take enough time to think things through and make rash or not well thought through decisions, slowing down and allowing yourself even a few extra minutes to think something through can be beneficial to the outcome when you do this.

·      Sometimes you can combine your thinking with doing something productive or good for yourself. For instance, I love taking walks in nature, and I find that I can easily think and gain invaluable insights during my walks about topics I need to invest more time in relating to both my personal and professional life.

·      If you haven’t allowed yourself time to think, and this could be because you feel you don’t have time to do so, I can assure you this is simply an excuse. If you want to do this, you will find the time to do so, and it doesn’t have to be for a lengthy period. If you only have five minutes, then make the best of that time. 

I now cherish being able to slow down and intentionally take time to think. If you told me I would state or feel this way at some point in my life, I would have been quite surprised. I hope you will have the opportunity, or will allow yourself to reach this point too. 

TAGS: #Leadership #Success #Teams #Leaders #Thinking #Criticalthinking #Productivity #Management #Business #Teams #Teamdynamics #Sportscoach #Sportsteams #Motivation #Communication #Inspiration #Professionaldevelopment #Personaldevelopment

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Sometimes there isn’t a blueprint.

Being comfortable with being uncomfortable has become a state I have had to embrace over the last decade. Especially more recently as I am pursuing unchartered professional paths forward with little to no precedents to draw knowledge or inspiration from. Embarking on this journey isn’t for everyone, but I have come to realize and accept that it suits me perfectly.

When I think about strategically planning my own career path forward, I finally came to accept the notion that there are not many others I can look to for guidance. Sure, I can obtain advice on a variety of topics to help support me day to day, but the reality is that my path is completely open to both exploration, and interpretation of which options forward will serve me best. Becoming comfortable with this has taken me time to both embrace and experience the freedom of creating my own blueprint forward because of this.

The fact that my professional blueprint is flexible, is what offers me the most motivation, and I had not considered this would be an outcome I would enjoy. This has to do with the fact that several decades of my career were on a particular trajectory, and deviations off it would have potentially jeopardized where I was heading. During that time, I wasn’t personally or professionally satisfied with what I was doing, but I was good at what I was doing, so this served the purpose of responsibly being a parent and helping to take care of my family financially.

After following the professional path I had been on for decades, I eventually reached a point where I couldn’t imagine continuing forward any further. The tipping point to reach this place had to do with a combination of factors. One of them was a serious back pain which required surgery to address, and the other factor had to do with my soul feeling like it was drifting away the longer I remained in a career I didn’t enjoy. I did enjoy the people I worked with, but not the type of work or the cultures of hyper growth and daily extreme competition to perform. Stating this was a grind would be a complete understatement. What was worse was that I felt that I was losing the essence of who I was as a thriving and happy person by remaining in my former profession, and the day came when I had to do something about this.

When I finally reached the day I could no longer remain on the path I had been on, I thought about the aspects of what I did enjoy doing. My list included some amazing ones for me to pursue, but this is where not having a blueprint came into play. I also had to factor in could I in fact make a living doing exactly what I wanted to pursue? This wasn’t clear at the time, as I was in an unchartered territory with limited information to support knowing this. The reality was also that I would be entering into the entrepreneurship realm, and there was plenty of information to support learning how to become one, but certainly no guarantees of success. Contributing to this was the fact that I still had family responsibilities that I would have to figure out how I was going to be able to continue supporting when my income was going to be unknown. The good news is that I was able to sort this out, but I had not considered how I was going to have to spend a large majority of my time with a sales hat on. Fortunately, my marketing career had exposed me to many successful salespeople, so I was indirectly learning from them for decades, and was now able to put what I had learned into practice. Was this easy to do? Absolutely not, and I have talked many aspiring entrepreneurs out of pursuing this path for this reason alone.

If you are contemplating making a career move into an unchartered industry or area, here are some suggestions to help you think moving forward a reality, or to realize it’s just a pipedream.

  • Having a heightened awareness of your talents is going to be imperative. Make sure you know yourself well enough to know what you will be able to do well or must partner with someone on.
  • Not everyone is comfortable with being adaptable, so consider what your tolerance level is for this.
  • The unknown can be both simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. Are you willing to experience this on a regular basis?
  • How open minded are you to trying and failing? Perhaps repeatedly for a period of time until you sort out what does and doesn’t work?
  • Set a time length for how long you can comfortably remain on course without a blueprint, and factor in what financial or other types of support you will need during this time.
  • Are you willing to risk not ending up where you think you expect to be in “x” time?
  • Are you willing to try your patience and test your persistence levels that will be potentially uncomfortable as you are growing and moving forward without a blueprint?

Had I known that not having a blueprint would provide me with the leadership and professional opportunities I have experienced over the last seven years, I probably wouldn’t have thought they were possible. To some extent, the single contributing factor which has served me well has been my core belief in myself to attain whatever I set out to pursue. So far, so good, and I can’t wait to experience and see what the road ahead looks like.

TAGS: #Leadership #Leader #Motivation #Strategy #Personaldevelopment #Entrepreneur #Entreprenurship #Business #Confidence #Teams #Teamdynamics #Coach #Sportscoach

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The death of a phone call.

Several weeks ago, when I was teaching a six-week freshman college course at a well-known Boston business school, I asked the students if they would be leveraging the use of calling someone on the phone as part of their set-up for their upcoming assignment. I knew I was asking a rhetorical question, but I wanted to have actual evidence to support my theory of what their response would be. For additional context, there are 36 students in this class, and not one of them raised their hand when I asked them if they were going to call someone to set-up their assignment to meet with someone.

The next question I asked them was “would they be texting or emailing the people they were going to be meeting with?” Most indicated they were going to leverage email. After I had the results of how the students were going to proceed, I asked them to consider the odds of their success in terms of reaching the recipients. This is a critical factor because the assignment was time sensitive, and the chances of the email containing this fact in the subject line may not have been considered for inclusion.

My third question for the students to consider was whether they thought they could have a higher rate of success with making a phone call versus emailing the person they were attempting to connect with. What I pointed out about leveraging the phone versus email was not a factor the students had considered. It was the fact that most of the people they were reaching out to were one or more decades older than them, and that the phone might be both a preferred method of communication for them, and provided them with a higher percentage of successfully reaching the person. Let’s call this 50% versus an unknown, and likely lower response rate if email was leveraged.

During my discussion about this topic, I also suggested to the students that there was no guarantee the person they were reaching out to would see or respond to their email. If they did, it also may not have been responded to in a timely manner. Especially if they didn’t know the person that well.  The other factor the students had not considered was the fact that calling someone increased the odds of reaching them in their favor. This is namely because people receive fewer phone calls now than they did a decade or more ago. I also pointed out that if they had to leave a voicemail, they could also provide a more human connection to supporting why they were calling the person. This in turn would also increase the chances of the person calling them back.

After sharing why, a phone call might offer better results in reaching people, the next challenge from the students; not surprisingly, occurred. The challenge they brought up was that they didn’t know what they would say during a phone call, and this was followed by their collective response that they were going to need to have a script about what to say. Upon considering this expected challenge, it brought me back to thinking about the hundreds of scripts I had written for sales teams in the past. Comparing the ages of the sales teams to the freshman college students in some cases provided only a 4–10-year age difference. The salespeople in this 20–30-decade bracket were typically in business development roles, but both these salespeople and the freshman students shared something in common.

What they had in common relates to a well-known concept referred to as “call reluctance”. If you have not had experience with sales teams, this phenomenon of not feeling comfortable calling someone without a script is a typical challenge. Call reluctance also occurs when someone isn’t practiced in the art of conversation, and potentially has a lower confidence level in themselves, or this ability. The same can be applied to why the freshman didn’t want to use the phone as a tool to help them complete their assignment, in addition to a general lack of interest in using it as a preferred communication tool.

Of course, there are other obvious reasons people in the Gen Z and Millennial generations are not as inclined to use the phone to talk to people, but arguably their lack of practice and comfort in this area has contributed to what I’m referring to as “the death of a phone call”. It has also contributed to other less than desirable outcomes including having these generations feel more isolated and lacking the skills to communicate well with others, and with ease. Numerous studies have been completed to also confirm that the impact social media has had on these generations has also contributed to the demise in either face to face, or verbal conversations being a strong skillset.

So, given the fact that fewer Gen Z and Millennials are practiced at using the phone as a tool to communicate, what if there were some intriguing ways to get them to reconsider this as a method which could serve them, or their employers well? Included below are some suggestions for leaders, sports coaches and the people in the generations referenced who might want to add what would be an old-fashioned, yet always in vogue skillset to their life…communication.

  • Let’s first consider and re-orient how people who don’t use the phone can think about a clear advantage of doing so and what it will offer them. The advantage is that doing so will increase their communication skills, and many people will benefit from this.
  • Anything new that we do will always be more difficult to accomplish at first. So, factor in that it will take practice to become better at conversing on the phone. The good news is that phone conversations don’t have to be lengthy.
  • Compared to Zoom calls, phone calls can be much less energy draining or tiring. One of the main reasons is because you need to pay more attention both visually and verbally when you are on Zoom, and this will more quickly deplete your energy level than a phone call will.
  • Any visual biases that are going to negatively impact you are not going to be factored into a phone call, and for most people, they are also less distracted and more focused when they are exclusively focused on talking.
  • Instead of texting, and leaving room for misinterpretation with your communications, try having a quick phone call, and be prepared to fifty percent of the time or more need to leave a compelling voice mail. A voice message has greater influence power than a text and offers a much more personal interaction which could be more compelling to listen and respond to.
  • Experiment with which outreach communication methods offer you better results. There will be instances that some methods are going to be clear winners.

Although the freshman students in my class may have reluctantly leveraged the phone as a communication tool, my intent was to get them to not be fully dismissive of a tool that in the right circumstances, could in fact serve them better.

TAGS: #Communication #Leadership #Leader #Leaders #Sportscoach #GenZ #Millennials #Powerfulcummunication #Businesstips #Teams #Teamdynamics #Sales #Salesleadership #Strategy #Management

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How to create a winning mentality.

A constant topic which comes up in my conversations has to do with team performance. This is independent of whether we are conversing about a sports team, or a business team. More specifically, the question I am often asked is how do we create a team which works much more productively together, and how to we get the collective team to understand how to have a “winning” mentality?

This morning I was having a conversation with a former NFL player. We were talking about how no one ever shows up on game day and says, “I don’t feel like winning today.” Ironically, he did give me an example of an Olympic athlete who essentially said this, but is this athlete the exception? After considering whether this happens more in sports or in business, we both agreed that the essence of acting this way happens more in business than most leaders will care to admit. Unfortunately, this is demonstrated in the less than desirable performance outcome of a team. Sure, poor performance on sports team’s occurs too, but the collective team mentality is unified in their focus and individually performing at the top of their ability. If they aren’t doing so, everyone will notice, and there isn’t anywhere to hide.

In business, it’s much easier to mask your performance, at least temporarily. The reality is that eventually someone, namely your peers and your leader will at some point catch on to you not bringing your “A” game to the team. It is inordinately frustrating for your peers when you are not “pulling your weight” on a team, and for others who will have to cover or make up the difference for your underwhelming performance contributions. Is someone who is underperforming doing so intentionally? Yes, it’s possible they are, and sometimes this has to do with their state of mind. In other words, whether they have a winning mindset or mentality, or the opposite.

If someone on a team doesn’t have a winning mentality in business, is it collectively understood that a leader will need to address this. It should be both the leader and the person in question, but the reality is that the leader is generally the one who is responsible and who will need to help the person who is struggling with their work performance.  

Although it may appear to be easy to identify who on the team; whether it is a business or sports team doesn’t have a winning mentality, this isn’t always easy to do.  This has to do with the masking I referenced above, and some people are pros at this. They are also simultaneously great at redirecting the attention away from them, with the intent of buying more time to not have to produce top results they are expected to do so.

The good news is that strong team performance can be contagious, but if the team is underperforming and this is manifested in losing or not being competitive, everyone on the team will both feel and see poor results. No one wants to be in this situation, but this happens all the time. Especially in sports, and less desirably when a team is on a losing streak.

When a sports team is on a winning streak, is their mentality different from a losing or underperforming team? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to correctly answer this one, and of course the answer is yes. Although answering this correctly is easy, the hard part is to understand how to create a winning mentality. Both in business and sports. Given the reality this is difficult to accomplish, I will share some of the suggestions I have for both sports coaches and leaders who find themselves in the predicament of not having a winning team mentality.

  • Sometimes a leader or sports coach is unaware of a person on the team who is solely contributing to negatively impacting the team’s positive and winning mentality. If you are not aware of who this person is, it shouldn’t require to you to have too many conversations with others on the team to identify this person.
  • Once you identify who is causing a negative mentality on the team, talk to them individually about how they think they are contributing to the health and wellness of a team from a winning or productivity perspective. Although they may be good at masking how they really feel or are acting, and not revealing why they are negatively impacting the team, you should within 3-6 trouble shooting oriented questions be able to find out why they are doing so.
  • We know that not all leaders are created equally, and this can also apply to their ability to inspire the team they lead to have a positive and winning mentality. If a leader or sports coach doesn’t have a winning mentality themselves, I am going to suggest a controversial approach. The approach will require the leader or sports coach to delegate having another person on their team who is more skilled at and able to positively influence the team to have a winning mentality. From repeated experience, I can tell you this works.
  • The concept of believing in one another is fictionally represented on a show Ted Lasso, but the reality is this concept can be worked on through a series of integrating exercises to apply this. The next step is to then start to have the exercises become embedded in the mindsets of those on the team. In other words, everyone on the team must believe everyone else on the sports team thinks they can win or perform at a top level in order to exceed the performance of their business competitors.
  • Outworking in terms of performance, or out strategizing your competitors are two methods that will help to contribute to having a winning mentality. When they are combined, this is when I have seen team’s both begin to go on winning streaks and begin taking business away from their competitors.
  • Preparing your team to be equally mentally and physically strong can apply to both a sports team, as well as a business. Consider what you are doing on a weekly basis as a leader or sports coach to enable your team to be strong in both areas. Are you sincerely and realistically making the right investments in them to help them to have a winning mentality?

Everyone enjoys being on a well performing team, and the people who lead and who are on these team’s are doing things quite differently than you are. I know this for a fact, as I have done research which provided tangible evidence which differentiated why some teams were winning championships, and others struggled to string a few wins together. I’m sure we can all agree being on a winning mentality team is the more desirable team to be on, so what are you waiting for or going to do if this doesn’t describe the current team you are leading or on?

TAGS: #Leadership #Business #Leader #Leaders #How_to_win #A_winning_mentality #Mindset #Teamdynamics #Sports #Sportscoach #Businessleader #Motivation #Communication #Winningmindset #Havingawinningmindset #Winning #Strategy #Success