Professional Development Best Practice 5 – Critical Organizational Assessments

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Organizational Assessment Best Practice - Critical Organizational AssessmentOrganizations are not always what they seem or communicate. That is not to say individuals within the organization are not professional, polite, or enjoyable to work with. Rather, policies governing development, compensation, rewards, and advancement are subject to the overriding biases of the organization’s culture. Consequently, most organizations will outwardly espouse a performance-based recognition and rewards program yet many take obvious action of rewarding individuals on some other basis.

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Thought dedication. You decide what to think, and how to react.

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What is the importance of attitude?

Every person, you included, wants to achieve more, earn more, find happiness, be successful, and be fulfilled. At the root of all these elements is attitude. Positive attitude. Your positive attitude.

Every person, you included, instinctively knows that. Yet most people, you included, don’t really possess a positive attitude. Oh, you may think you do, but I promise you, you don’t.

Most people don’t read about attitude.
Most people don’t study attitude.
Most people don’t practice attitude.
Most people don’t live the essence of attitude.
Most people don’t live the principles of attitude.
Most people are not dedicated to attitude.
You included.

In fact, you may have never read a book on the subject of attitude.

I believe I was born with a positive attitude, and I believe you were born with a positive attitude. It took 24 years for me to discover mine. I wonder if you have found yours yet.

Everyone, you included, has heard the expression, “Attitude Is Everything!”

Let me break down the elements of that expression for you – maybe for the first time. Attitude controls, rules, affects, and directs your career, your family life, your personal life, and you. It affects or can impact your relationships, your business success, and your health.

Attitude has power. Personal power. And the best part is: YOU CONTROL IT. You determine the way you think about, develop, and deliver your attitude.

In my Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude I explain the simple difference between “positive” and “YES!” When something great happens to you, you don’t scream “POSITIVE!” When something great happens to you, you scream, “YES!”

It’s subtle, but powerful, language when you come to that mental and verbal understanding.

What language do you speak? No, I don’t mean Spanish, French, or English. I mean positive or negative. Attitude language.

Ever look out the window when it’s pouring rain, and think to yourself, “It’s gonna be a rotten day”? Why don’t you walk away from the window where you can’t see outside and think about the day in terms of you, not the weather.

It’s the small wording of expressions like that, that lead to a “bad day” for anyone. Even you. A rotten day starts with the way you think about it, and the way you talk about it. It’s not about the weather outside. It’s about the weather inside – inside your mind.

How’s the weather where you live?
How’s the weather where you work?
How’s the weather where you play?
How’s the weather where you think?

One of the definitions of a positive attitude is: The way you dedicate yourself to the way you think. And you are in complete control of it.

Thinking positive is a self-discipline. A daily self-discipline. You control it. You make it happen. Or not. Taking positive actions is dependent on positive thought. If you don’t THINK positive, you will not BE positive, and you will not DO positive.

There are many definitions of attitude, and there are many ways to look at attitude. Books have been written on attitude that you have not exposed yourself to. All of them are helpful, all of them are good, and all of them must be studied if you want to achieve your positive attitude.

Books like Think and Grow Rich contain the philosophies, strategies, and the connected stories of men and women who have achieved their positive attitude – and can help you achieve yours. You should own them and read a few pages every day. (That’s one of the secrets of attitude: read and study attitude for 15 minutes a day). Positive attitude is yours for the taking, all you have to do is read, study, and apply – every day.

The challenge of positive attitude is for you to decide that you’re willing to dedicate the time, and that you have the desire to make it happen for yourself.

If you want some ideas for the achievement of attitude, go to www.gitomer.com and enter the words ATTITUDE STARTERS in the GitBit box.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

The 5 Key Pieces Of Your Digital Marketing Puzzle. Are You Missing One?

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Digital marketing is a vast and complicated web of interlinking strategies. A full marketing plan should incorporate many different elements, and ensure they work together. If your off-page seo strategy doesn’t correspond with your core services or brand strategy – you may be missing conversion opportunities and wasting your spend. If it sounds tricky, that’s because it is! On the plus side, it is incredibly effective.

Digital marketing gives you unprecedented access to your customers. It’s an opportunity to connect with them in ways that traditional marketing simply didn’t allow. You’ll also find that digital marketing is much more cost-effective. These marketing tips are highly targeted, meaning that you only need reach the people who really care about your product. If you’re new to the game, here are the five most important pieces of the puzzle.

The 5 Key Pieces Of Your Digital Marketing Puzzle. Are You Missing One?
Photo courtesy of Joe The Goat Farmer

1. A website

A website should be the first thing on your list. It’s the heart of your online presence, and should act as the sun in your digital marketing solar system. All the other elements revolve around it, and feed back into it. All elements of your digital marketing strategy should lead back to just one thing on your website. That’s a product or service that you will sell. Your website will also host all the necessary information about your business.

2. Content

Your website should also host some useful and compelling content. It can be as simple as a blog that comments on your industry. If you’re feeling more creative, you can use video content, infographics, and podcasts too. Content is one of your most important tools in digital marketing. It helps position yourself as an expert in your field, and allows you to connect with others. Most importantly, good content will be shared all over the web. It will reach new leads, and entice them onto your website.

3. Social media

We like to think of social media as the smaller planets that revolve around your website. Each one acts as a beacon to attract new leads and customers. By sharing your content on your social media sites, you’ll reach new people. You can interact with your existing customers, and keep drawing them back to your site. It’s all about using these satellites to send visitors back to your main hub. The most effective social media sites include Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

4. SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the arguably the most confusing piece of the puzzle. To get the best results, it’s often worth partnering with a digital marketing company. SEO is a series of tweaks and adaptations that make your site rank higher on Google searches. After all, the higher up on the Google results page your website gets, the more people you reach. More specifically, you can use keywords to make sure you appear in front of the right people. That’s the essence of good marketing!

5. Email marketing

According to the top marketers, emails are still the best way to reach out to customers. They’re personal, direct, and private. Most importantly, you’re sending information to people who are already interested in your product or services. Statistics show it’s the most effective form of repeat marketing.

That’s all for today, folks! Are you missing any key parts of the digital marketing puzzle?

Speaker or Listener: Who’s Responsible For Misunderstandings?

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There’s been an age-old argument in the communication field: who’s at fault if a misunderstanding occurs – the Speaker communicating badly, or the Listener misunderstanding?

Let’s look at some facts:

  1. Speaking is an act of translating what’s going on internally into communication that enables others to understand an intent – choosing the most appropriate words for that particular listener in that particular situation. But the act of choosing is unconscious and may not render a full or accurate representation of what is meant.
  2. Listeners translate what they hear through a series of unconscious filters (biases, assumptions, triggers, habits, imperfect memory) formed over their lives by their:
    • world view,
    • beliefs,
    • similar situations,
    • historic exchanges with the same speaker,
    • biases on entering the conversation (like sellers listening exclusively for need).

    What a listener hears is fraught with so much unconscious filtering that their ability to hear accurately what’s meant is untrustworthy, except, possibly, when speaking with someone known over time.

  3. According to David Bellos in his excellent book Is That a Fish In Your Ear?, no sentence contains all of the information we need to translate it. As listeners, are we translating accurately? What parts of what we hear are biased?

    4. Unfortunately, too often we expect listeners to understand us when we believe we have spoken clearly. Listeners might accurately hear the words spoken (depending on many unconscious factors and filters), but it’s another story when listeners attempt to understand what’s meant because our brains don’t tell us what it has unconsciously left out or interpreted subjectively. So while a speaker might say ABC, we might think ABL was said, and adamantly, stubbornly believe we’re correct when we’re not.

    Since communication involves a bewildering set of conscious and unconscious choices on both sides, accuracy becomes dependent upon each communication partner mitigating bias and disengaging from assumptions; the odds of communication partners accurately understanding the full extent of intended meaning in conversation is unlikely. It’s quite a complicated mess of factors and can cause lost business, failed projects, and mangled relationships.

    My new book What? Did you really say what I think I heard?  focuses on listening: how we mishear, misunderstand, and otherwise misinterpret, and where and how the gap between what’s said and what’s heard occurs. I even came up with ways to avoid misunderstanding altogether.

    While researching and writing the book (which took me 3 years)  I realized that the responsibility for effective communication is heavily weighted in the court of the listener. If listeners don’t have skills to catch or prevent their biases or unhook from their unconscious, subjective filters, or at least realize when they might have misinterpreted what’s been said, the speaker’s words and intent are  moot: they may be misconstrued regardless of their accuracy or how ‘clear’ a speaker thinks she is.

    The listener is the wild card given the number of biases he brings to the table. So as a rule, after a speaker speaks, she must then become an alert listener herself to make sure the response received is within the bounds of acceptability. Or check in with her communication partner to agree on mutual understanding. Given there are so many subjective, unconscious filters on both sides, it’s amazing we communicate at all.

    About the Author

    Sharon Drew Morgen is a visionary, original thinker, and thought leader in change management and decision facilitation. She works as a coach, trainer, speaker, and consultant, and has authored 9 books including the NYTimes Business BestsellerSelling with Integrity. Morgen developed the Buying Facilitation® method (www.sharondrewmorgen.com) in 1985 to facilitate change decisions, notably to help buyers buy and help leaders and coaches affect permanent change. Her newest book What? www.didihearyou.com explains how to close the gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She can be reached at [email protected]

Professional Development Best Practice 4 – Avoid Commoditization

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StrategyDriven Professionals are exceptional assets to any organization. These individuals are highly motivated and dedicated to achieving their goals. As such, they pursue a path of continuous growth and improvement; obtaining experiences, knowledge, and skills that, while others may have, few will possess in equal abundance or combination. Thus, these professionals are also commodities.

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