Coaching is not only reserved for business executives, it is equally important for managing and supporting your team. Knowing how and when to coach your team not only helps them grow and perform well in their work, it also helps you as a business owner drive results to the goals you are aiming for. If you’d like to know more about how coaching can bring out the best in your team and skyrocket your business tune in below!
Tuesday, August 30th, 2011 Category: Business, Business Building, Communication, Consulting, Dealing With Change, For Supporting Your Team, Growth, Managing Others, Video No Comments 
Are you constantly challenged by all you have to do and not having clear priorities about what to tackle first? Trying to finish tasks on time can often fall victim to the “urgency vs. importance” dichotomy that stresses working on the important over the merely urgent. But in addition, to finish a project, every step is critical, even the “unimportant” ones. If you are building a boat, caulking the hull so it doesn’t leak may seem more important than buying the anchor. But both tasks have to be done if you are going to put to sea.
According to productivity guru David Allen, what’s really critical is to determine the next action, the next physical thing you have to do to move your project forward. “Finish Phase II” isn’t an action. “Email Bill in accounting to release the funds for Phase II” is an action.
Similar to Getting REAL with your calendar, the same goes for your to-do list. When you are looking at a list of only the next action to take on each of your projects, priorities will naturally arise or can more easily be chosen.
By always keeping track of the next task for each of your open projects, you can always be productive without wasting time figuring out what to do next, which will help keep your project on track and on time.
Author’s content used under license, © 2008 Claire Communications
Photo Credit: iStockphoto
Friday, August 26th, 2011 Category: Business, Delegation No Comments
What consumes your workday? Julie Morgenstern, author of Never Check E-Mail in the Morning, calls them the “nibblers”—interruptions, procrastination, perfectionism and meetings—because they will definitely consume your workday.
Meetings and interruptions can be managed with a variety of tactics. Limit conversations to 30 minutes with an agenda. Donald Trump has been known to have “stand up” meetings, no chairs just bullet points of conversation.
Control your email habit by turning off all your notification bells and whistles and choose a time to check it, not first thing in the day, as the title of her book suggests.
Procrastination and perfectionism are best fought, she says, with the ultimate weapon for expanding your day, planning. Lay out your calendar and to do’s a week at a time rather than trying to create the “perfect” day or trying to become a perfect time manager. It only creates frustration and failure when you can’t deliver which then leads to procrastination around planning.
Author’s content used under license, © 2008 Claire Communications
Photo Credit: iStockphoto
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 Category: Maximizing Productivity, Productivity No Comments
There is a well-known axiom in business that “failure to plan is planning to fail.” Well-known, and, all too often, honored in the breach. It is planning, in its many guises, that ultimately has the greatest impact on whether you finish a task or project on time.
But for many of the tasks thrown our way at work, planning seems to be an unthinkable luxury. Assaulted by emails, barraged by phone calls, sliced and diced by meetings and interruptions, the idea of planning a day, let alone a longer-term project, is almost laughable. And if someone else isn’t imposing unrealistic deadlines on us, we’ll commit to them ourselves, agreeing to be somewhere or accomplish something in impossible time frames.
If you’ve been dreaming about having two full days to plan your life that never seem to materialize, I offer you this series on planning in bite-sized pieces. For the next several days I’ll share with you a planning nugget that can be accomplished in 30 minutes, sometimes less. Enjoy getting things done on time!
Planning Nugget #1 Protect your calendar
Your calendar isn’t your to-do list. In our desire for control we block out segments of our days when we intend to do things, then life happens, emergencies come up, interruptions occur, new projects come to us. Make your calendar REAL. Loading up your planner with the 19 things you want to accomplish each day just creates frustration, not productivity.
Instead, separate the functions of your calendar and your to-do list, and use the calendar only for events that are time-specific and even further involve meeting with other people. For instance, blocking out 2 hours for paperwork is unlikely to happen, you’ll get a phone call and that will take precedence. Hold space for things that are actually going to happen because someone is counting on you like meetings or appointments.
Create a separate to do list to hold all the things you need to do or dream of doing. By separating your calendar and to do list you’ll get a clearer sense of how much time you truly have and be able to choose what to do with it.
Photo Credit: iStockphoto
Sunday, August 21st, 2011 Category: Organizing, Productivity, Time Management No Comments
Attention entrepreneurs, executives and managers: Lead the humor parade. Fun and laughter affects attitudes. And once you affect attitudes, you can unleash a new level of productivity and commitment in your organization (or in yourself). But where do you start? Following are just a few suggestions to get your own creative humor juices flowing:
Figure out your humor profile. Listen to yourself for a few days and see what makes you laugh out loud (and be honest!). Have your coworkers or staff do the same.
Make it a point to look for humor. The more you do, the more you’ll find (and receive!). Try looking at things from an out-of-the-ordinary perspective.
Collect humor. Using your humor profile, start a funny file, collecting cartoons, jokes, comic strips and stories from newspapers, magazines and friends. Set aside a portion of your office or desk or wall as a “humor corner.”
Encourage laughter in your department. Establish a humor bulletin board, keep a prop box, play simple games on a regular basis, gather a “fun committee,” encourage humor breaks.
Laugh at yourself. One of the characteristics of effective leaders is the ability to laugh at themselves when things they try don’t work. Without that, people view them as critical.
Use humor in the course of normal business. Add humor to presentations, performance evaluations, meetings, in memos, newsletters and emails, and at parties and recognition events.
Keep the humor appropriate for the office. Never poke fun at anyone in a subordinate position in the organization and be careful not to offend others with humor that deprecates anyone’s beliefs or backgrounds. There is plenty of wonderful, clean humor out there.
Photo Credit: iStockphoto
Author’s content used under license, © 2008 Claire Communications
Friday, August 19th, 2011 Category: Business, Business Building, Joy and Happiness, Managing Others, Work-Life Balance No Comments
“How can I attract better clients?” It’s one of the top 10 questions my clients ask about building a successful business and the answer might surprise you. If this is a question you’re trying to answer watch the video here:
Knowing the greater purpose of your business and putting that upfront is something that will attract the ideal clients to you. Show what your company is most passionate about and you are bound to get clients who understand and believe in the same.
Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 Category: Business, Business Building, Consulting, Video No Comments
Andrew came to me one day looking like he was about to breakdown. “I don’t know what I am doing wrong,” he said. “I am running a successful business, my team is meeting their targets and we’re hitting the numbers we planned to hit.” It sounded like everything was going well until he said, “I always feel burnt out each day and it’s a struggle.”
It is a challenge whenever we get burnt out and it often sneaks up on us. We do what we think is best for our business. We push ourselves and our teams further and harder. We ask more of everyone to build profits or simply stay afloat. The inevitable outcome is that at some point, somehow, we can no longer physically or mentally maintain this overextended state. When we burn ourselves out, we are unable to perform as efficiently because we feel trapped in a world that makes us do the same thing over and over again without any end in sight, and no acknowledgement for what we are doing.
If you find yourself unable to get up in the morning because you dread the work you have to do, it’s most likely that you’re burnt out.
Andrew, for example, didn’t recognize this until he started to breakdown. By doing more than what he was capable of doing consistently, exhausted himself, leaving no time for other important aspects in his life, like being with family or taking care of himself. He missed important calls, deleted key emails, fumbled in a meeting and made bad financial decisions.
If you’re like Andrew, who believed that working long hours was temporary or that pushing beyond his limits to bring in more income was sustainable moving forward, there’s something I would like to reveal to you: you are producing less the longer you keep working without a break, killing the proverbial “golden goose”.
Sadly, I’ve watched smart, but overwhelmed people, breakdown. Their relationships become more difficult, their health suffers, and ironically, even their finances suffer because they lost revenue while rewarding themselves with big expenses for “working so hard.” It’s a difficult spiral. The more they pushed themselves, the less sustainable the results became. As a result they felt unproductive, inefficient and irrelevant which led them to try to work even harder. Andrew was trying to drive a car that had no gas and then getting out to push it instead.
Here are the 5 simple ways I advised Andrew to avoid burnout:
1. Take a Breather. Schedule reflection points into your calendar or project timeline. Take a step back every now and then to nap, daydream, meditate. Not only will you rest, you will be able to reassess the progress that you have made in your projects, even be more creative and innovative in your approach. You can evaluate how you to speed up development and remove factors that are slowing you down.
2. Be with your people. It is important to allot time for the friends and family in your life to remind you why you do what you do. You do work hard for them but delivering the paycheck isn’t the only thing that they need from you. More than that, they need to see and feel that you are very much present in their lives. And you need to be able to celebrate the joys and triumphs in their lives as well.
3. Amp up your Social Life. Mark out your vacations, nights out, and days off. Schedule other activities aside from work. Maintain a weekly movie date with your friends. Keep Saturdays free so you have time to play with your kids. These will give your mind time to rest as you focus on other important things in your life.
4. Pamper Yourself. Getting a massage, working out, caring for yourself can divert your need to be busy into something healthy for your body and your mind. Pursue a hobby, schedule personal training sessions, create a block of time to take care of the “golden goose”. By keeping yourself healthy, you ensure that you have the mental and physical energy to deal with the difficult tasks that your work and life demand of you.
5. Support the Greater Good. When you connect the work you do to a larger purpose it helps you overcome obstacles that might otherwise stop you, it provides a source of inspiration and let’s you know that you make a difference far beyond the walls of your office. Look for volunteer opportunities, create a “green” program inside your office. It will boost your morale and elevate the time you spend at work to a higher purpose.
The key to avoiding a burnout is to keep in mind that there is more to life than work. Give your all during your workday then go out and deeply enjoy the fruits of your labors. It’s what gives you the energy to work another day.
Photo Credit: iStockphoto
Friday, August 12th, 2011 Category: Self-Care and Wellness, Stress No Comments
The number one question I get as a coach is “how can I manage my time better?” Many of my clients are small business owners and entrepreneurs who come to me because they are working up to 100 hours a week to sustain a successful business. Consequently their businesses have done well but their families have crumbled, they have been hospitalized for stress, they have no connection to anyone outside the office, and they have absolutely no time for themselves.
Work doesn’t have to be that way. There is a way to run your business without sacrificing what matters to you most – your own happiness. I know this is possible because I too used to work 80 hours a week, until I got pregnant and got really tired. Starting my family, I knew that I needed to rethink the way I was running my business. 80 weeks weren’t sustainable and they were no longer a badge of honor or toughness or a measure of success.
When helping people with time management there are two steps I take immediately:
First, we define their underlying mindset and eliminate the patterns that are holding back their progress. They reclaim their time without sacrificing results in their businesses and their lives.
One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is spending time, energy and money on things, people and processes that make no difference like keeping employees who that aren’t performing, using outdated software, handling things that others should be doing. We do this to fulfill on mental patterns that we may not be aware. Beneath our driving need to succeed is a need to be right, important, perfect, and seen as an expert and leader. Because of these behaviors we’ve told ourselves that no one can do something as well as we can, that it’s faster, easier, cheaper to do it ourselves. We tell ourselves it takes too much time to train someone, that it costs to much to add someone. We are afraid to ask for help, real help, because it would compromise our posture of looking like we know what we’re doing or that we have it all under control. This mindset is costing you precious time and very real dollars on a daily basis so we work to define those patterns and eliminate them.
Second, we hire an assistant. To be the extraordinary leader you want to be you must free your time and mental energy so that it can be devoted to higher level thinking and developing your expertise.
How much are you spending each week working on administrative tasks and things that are “below your pay grade?” Five hours? Ten hours? More? What if you had that time back to work on the top level tasks for your organization. Here are a few tasks that your assistant will be able to help you with:
1. Scheduling meetings, conference calls, social gatherings, flights, parties
2. Filtering and responding to email and phone messages
3. Writing press releases, articles, speeches, newsletters and managing your social media sites
4. Managing your database, handling customer service, creating a client care process
By hiring an assistant, you’re investing not only in your business but in the growth of others. There are amazing people out in the world, commonly known as virtual assistants, who work remotely part-time or part-time in your office. They have every type of skill set you can dream up and pay rates that can fit within your budget. With training they can handle the tasks that take most of your time or you don’t have any time for. By outsourcing the work to a VA, you can spend time and energy on the things you are expert at.
Let’s do some really quick math. There’s a tool I love called Time-Value Calculator that you can access at msnmoney.com. It helps you calculate what you make each year and how much time, money and energy you spend to make it. From this information you get your hourly rate. If your hourly rate is $200/hour and you spend more than an hour a day going through your email you’re losing $925/wk during the time you’re filtering email. For every hour you spend doing administrative tasks, someone else could complete them for $15. It might take you $200 an hour to train your assistant but it will be an ongoing $15 an hour for them to handle other tasks while you deliver your expertise at the higher rate.
My life changing moment came when I met Cairyn. My business instantly started operating around the clock when we began working together. She is located in the Philippines. I do most of my work during my Pacific Time business day. We connect at the end of my day and she’ll take whatever the homework is and do it overnight and it’ll be in my inbox the next morning all taken care of.
I found her through my most favorite team building resource, oDesk. oDesk is an online community of freelance professionals from all over the world, inside the United States and every country imaginable. At oDesk.com you search the database for team members by business skills, the fluency level of English or any other language, computer skills, pay rate – you essentially start typing your job description and create the parameters for the person you’re looking for. Then you get your list of results, all the contractors qualified for your position. The thing that I love about it, is that every person who signs on to work through oDesk completes a series of skills tests. So for instance if you find somebody internationally that you really want to work with, they have completed a series of tests for their skill levels in English, Microsoft Word, Excel, even customer service. There’s a test for everything.
oDesk also manages the billing process so everything is centralized and automated through them, you’re not paying an individual person. At the end of a week your contractor will log their hours and you’ll receive a bill for the time they’ve worked for you. All of which is trackable online. And oDesk is just one website, but it’s one of my personal favorites for automating my business life. By delegating tasks to your team, whether remotely or not, you are not only gaining more time each week but you are earning your $200/hr rate back and investing in what matters most – your family, yourself and your business. So for today, I leave you with a question. “Are you ready to reclaim your time starting right now and start building a more successful business?”
Image Source: iStockphoto
Thursday, August 11th, 2011 Category: Business, Business Building, Dealing With Change, Delegation, Gratitude and Giving, Growth, Managing Others, Reinventing Yourself, Self-Care and Wellness, Stress, Work-Life Balance No Comments
One thing I’m extremely passionate about in the realm of coaching entertainment business owners to excellence are connecting your business to the higher purpose it serves and leveraging your most valuable resource – yourself. You are the engine that keeps that car running and though you’ve heard it before, you need to take care of yourself.
As I write this I’m waking up at 6am with this column pouring out of my head feeling hung over, not from an alcohol fueled premiere party but from making cupcakes for a baby shower and overdoing it on the frosting taste tests. Yes, sugar can leave you hung over too. Why did I do this? Because I wanted to impress the other mothers. To be the superior, gluten-free, “aren’t I awesome” baker of the group.
I’m not your mother, your priest or your personal trainer. I don’t mean to sound like an expert. I’m inviting you to put on your business owner suit and consider doing these 3 simple things that we neglect when we start telling ourselves how incredibly important, smart and busy we are.
1. Drink more water. You don’t drink enough. I promise you that you don’t. Even those of you that are saintly about how much you drink. You don’t drink enough. This is not medical advice and I ask you to use your noodle here but the rule of thumb that I hear all the time is 64 ounces a day or 8 glasses. Create a game or system that helps you get it done, a pitcher on your desk, an assistant at the ready with a glass. I just put reminders/alarms in my iPhone to make it happen.
2. Eat something green at least once a day and no, I don’t mean lime sherbet, or even limes in your beer. I recommend something from the powerful triumvirate of spinach, broccoli or kale. Leafy, green and loaded with iron, vitamin D and K these superheroes of the vegetable world can keep you going, heal what ails you and help your caboose fit into your red carpet finery.
3. Put down the sugar. I say this to you from my sugar-induced coma. I had a blast using my industrial cake mixer last night and I’m paying a heavy price this morning as I wait for my kids to wake up and kick my pa-toot around the living room floor. It’s hard to keep up with toddlers or the entrepreneurial needs of the company that you are so diligently growing, when you’re running the endless cycle of poor sleep, caffeine, sugar cravings, overeat, lather, rinse, repeat.
And finally, for those of you reading out there that seem to have your food and exercise regime the “perfect” place, it can always be refined to deliver more energy, greater fitness and increased peace of mind. Additionally you’ll also discover more focus and energy when you let go of the righteousness of “having it all figured out”, “doing it right” and any other judgments you may be having about the rest of us. We can feel it and it’s taking precious time mental and creative energy away from what you say is important to you. And that’s not the business you’re in. You’re showing up, thinking, working and creating because you want to make a difference in the world. Walk away from your judgmental inner monologue and hand a colleague a glass of water instead.
Image Source: iStockphoto
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 Category: Business, Business Building, Health, Productivity, Self-Care and Wellness No Comments
“Argue for your limitations and sure enough they’re yours.” – Richard Bach
One of the top complaints or limitations that clients come to me with is “good help is hard to find”. Sometimes the phrase is “people are lazy” or my personal favorite, “when I was starting out I was young and hungry and driven. People just aren’t like that anymore.”
If you have chosen to read this you’re a business owner who wants to be making more money and spending less of your time doing it. You’d like your business to run powerfully and consistently, and be able to have a life at the same time. To achieve those goals you need to have people working with you and for you that perform at their best, people who play ON your team rather than people who need to be reminded to show up for the game.
There are 3 keys to hiring employees you don’t have to manage.
1. Know What Business You Are in
You probably weren’t expecting this one first but it is the most important key to hiring employees that you don’t have to manage. Your business was created for a reason. What does it deliver to the rest of us out here in the world? It’s more than the product or service. For example Zappos is in the happiness business, Volvo is in the safety business. What business are you in? Take a moment to consider this.
Why is knowing this important? People want to be a part of something, deep down they want to know that their time and energy is contributing to something that matters, that makes a difference for them and for others. Inspired employees produce far more than people who are paycheck players.
When you have clarity about the contribution your business is making in the world you can help everyone in the company connect to that bigger picture. Suddenly the quality of the phone call they make, the email they write, and the deal they negotiate has significance.
It is your responsibility as a leader to see this and be able to communicate it to your team. They need to see the vision of what the business is meant to do so they can get on board.
2. Creating The Ideal Employee on Paper First
With the clarity you now have about the business you’re in its time to write a description for your ideal team member. The 20 minutes spent creating this description will save you hours, perhaps weeks in your search process and far more time once your ideal team member is hired.
The number one mistake in most non-executive job descriptions is leading with the tasks and duties. Most CEO job descriptions seek a human being who has delivered results, outcomes, ideas and leadership. Business owners and executives invest in long and short-term objectives, leadership, and creation of systems, policies, products, ideas, mission and goals. Most lower level job descriptions are about the process or skills, not addressing that a human being is on the other end but more a functionary, a cog to be inserted into a machine to perform tasks.
Imagine choosing your CEO job if the description read: Must be willing to work 100 hour weeks, eat all meals with difficult people, diffuse endless crisis, and endure 5 conference calls per day. People take on the leadership role because they have the pleasure, power and inspiration of leading. They are invested and contributing to something greater than the day-to-day tasks alone.
Create your description around a business in need of inspired human beings who perform functions that deliver “happiness” to everyone.
3. Train Them Once and Never Manage Them Again
“I don’t have time to train someone,” is what nearly every business owner says to me. Another mistake business owners make in the training department is insisting that they are so busy they don’t have time to invest in their new employee. You’ve just spent days, weeks, even months sharing what an outstanding company you have, how amazing it is to work for you and negotiating and wooing them to join you. Then they cross the threshold into your business and have to make their own way. Small companies become large companies by investing in their most unique and powerful resource, the human beings who work for the company.
Another mistake managers make is having the outgoing person train the incoming person. There are rare exceptions but often the people on their way out are leaving for a reason and tend to pass along their mindset to the next person.
If the new team member is reporting to you, schedule at least 30 minutes of your time daily for the first week to brief your new employee and show them the ropes. What relationship could be created between you and your new hire if you personally made the introductions of the new employee to the other people in your business or office? Review the job description, give them the tour, and share with them a few accomplishments or contributions that other team members have made that you’re particularly proud of. Take the time, or have their direct supervisor take the time, to integrate them fully into your culture.
The best training is being in action, even uninformed, sloppy but supervised action. Managers often want to train people to be miniature versions of themselves rather than allowing the unique and talented people they have hired deliver on a specific outcome. Drive and guide your new team member towards outcomes that you want them to achieve and leave space for them to create a path to get there.
The perspective you begin your working relationship with is the one you will operate under moving forward. Take the time to clarify the business that you’re in, invest at the beginning to define your ideal employee and set up your relationship so that your new asset is invested in the results you want for your business and you will reap the rewards ongoingly.
Image Source: iStockphoto
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 Category: Business, Business Building, Communication, Delegation, Leadership, Managing Others No Comments
To thank you, you will be receiving the following gifts:
BONUS #1: You'll receive a copy of my new eBook "Get Time Wise: Reclaim 10 hours of your life this week without sacrificing results in your business" (VALUE $47)
BONUS #2: 90-Minute audio version of the book to take on your iPod, in your car, on the treadmill. (VALUE $25)
BONUS #3: Quickstart guide with 100 time saving tips and strategies straight from my work with clients and other experts in the time management field.
