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Get Ready For Next Week - Choosing Your State

Here’s a quick exercise for you.

Partner up with someone, a friend or a colleague.  You are both going to tell a real story and read each other’s mind!  The story is simply a short 60-90 second story on how you arrived here today, your journey.

When telling your story I want you to pick a playing card in your mind without telling your partner what the card is.  You both do this.

Next I want you to tell your story in the style of that playing card, Ace is high and is positive, upbeat, confident, etc., 2 is downbeat, low, uncertain.  All others playing cards are somewhere in between with the appropriate styles.  Now tell you story in the style of the playing card you chose.  All your partner needs to do is guess what playing card you have in mind.  Once you’ve done this one way, switch over and let your partner tell their story while you guess their card.

How did you do?  Did you guess their card or at least guess just one card out?  Easy isn’t it.

Easy to guess the card and read other peoples state and even easier to choose your state at will.  In fact you were so good at choosing your state your partner guessed it within 60 seconds.

As you prepare for next week take time to consider the optimum state you want to be in the key meetings, projects, conversations, emails, commute, etc. next week.  Which playing card do you want to act out for each of these?  Once you have it, do it.

Get Ready for Next Week: Be Clear

We all like to think we are good communicators, we articulate a clear vision, we are clear while delegating and setting goals.  But how clear are we?  Being clear is not simply speaking clearly or being able to write clear steps.  If the content of what you are saying or the actions cause confusion or conflicting results you need to look back at how clear you were before you start looking at others.

A sure fire sign that you are not being clear in your direction is when you hear yourself say something like “Can you research that and get back to me with the results?” when asking a team member to take action.  Be clear, what is the desired outcome you are looking for?  If you don’t know, don’t set the task.

Next week when others are looking for direction from you, be clear.

If you don’t know what the specific desired outcome is you are looking for then don’t set a vague task.

Look at your teams’ goals – how clear are they?  Could they lead to confused results or take the team in different directions?

Get Ready for Next Week: Innovate

Innovation is a magical concept that all businesses look to embrace.  Businesses often have innovation as a core competency.  Leaders talk about the need to continually innovate in order to stay ahead of the competition.  But what actually is innovation?  In its simplest form it is doing things differently, maybe not radically, but certainly in a way that produces better results.  While leaders and businesses strive for this magical innovation they often fail to notice the small innovations that take place every day.  These small innovations often don’t get noticed.  If they go unnoticed they don’t get rewarded, with no reward employees don’t see the incentive.

Think back over the last 5 days, what (small) innovations took place?

How were they noticed or rewarded?

How will you reward (small) innovations next week?

(Small) innovations take place everyday in business – notice them.

Get Ready for Next Week: Mentor

Many people aspire to be thought of as a mentor by someone.  To be a person that has experience, knowledge, patience, and an ability to communicate.  This is someone we can go to and learn from.  They are respected.

No-one is born a mentor; mentors develop through their own learning and critically through talking to their own mentors.  As a leader you must first have a mentor before you can be considered one yourself.

Do you have a mentor?  What do you want from a mentor?

Whose experience and skills can you learn from and help you develop?

Once you know who could be your mentor, how are you going to approach them next week?

Get Ready for Next Week: Trust

Trust is at the root of all successful management and leadership.  Employees need to trust their managers and leaders through times of change and difficult economic environments.  When business is doing well employees need to know that they can trust their managers and leaders to sustain the success, to implement the right strategy.  At a personal level employees need to trust their managers and leaders with this job security, development and growth.

As a manager and leader what did you do this week that built trust in you from your employees?

What did you do that eroded trust?

What one thing will you do next week that will build trust?

Never take trust for granted, always look for opportunities to continually build trust.