Think like an athlete – self-motivate with goal-setting

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Self-motivate|Think like an athlete – self-motivate with goal-settingSteve Redgrave, CBE, DL is arguably the greatest British Olympian. As a rower, Redgrave won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games. When asked to explain his success, Redgrave explained: “Self-belief is probably the most crucial factor in sporting success. The bodies are roughly equal, the training is similar, the techniques can be copied. What separates the achievers is… the iron in the mind.”

This principle is incredibly pertinent for sales. Those salespeople who continuously win and close are those who have learnt to stay motivated and connected to their goals. However, maintaining effective and consistent motivation at all times is hard. Many salespeople are stuck in a comfort zone or in a pattern of behaviour they find difficult to break. Equally, some people have goals and clearly defined actions, but procrastinate when the time comes to take action.

Change is critical to developing, growing, and attaining goals. Change means moving through one’s comfort zones. While comfort zones might have their own drawbacks and people might be bored and frustrated by them, when push comes to shove and action is required to move out of them, most people choose the easy option to remain – not changing at all.

Goals should be SMART, defined as specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time driven. They should also be written down. To set goals effectively, we always advise following a set process. The exercise can be done alone, but often it is productive to do it with other people—family, friends, or anyone who plays a supportive role in your life.

  • One: Gather eight pieces of paper and label each page with one of the eight life goal areas (social, physical, financial, mental, professional, family, personal, spiritual). On each page write a brief summary of where you currently are in relation to this life goal.
  • Two: Place a circle in the middle of each page and draw lines that point outwards from the circle. Then allow yourself to feel what you would like to accomplish in the future. Write these goals on the lines.
  • Three: For each piece of paper with a different life goal area, prioritise and pick the three most important goals.
  • Four: On a new piece of paper, create a master list of the top three goals in all of the eight areas.
  • Five: Check for any conflicts. If you can, try to make sure the goals are not too heavily weighted in one or two areas. The more holistic your goals are, the more likely you are to achieve them.
  • Six: Write a detailed description of how you are going to achieve these goals. This is your action plan. It’s important to decide what you are going to do now and what you are going to do in the future. Take care not to overload yourself with too many actions in the present. However, it is good to stretch yourself by having bold and audacious goals.
  • Seven: Breaking down the goals and actions into short-term goals and actions can be a very powerful way of building the goal-setting and attainment “muscle.” Three months (12 weeks) can be a very effective time frame for establishing a life-long pattern of generating and sustaining the fire of internal motivation.
  • Eight: Share your goals with others, especially those who will be impacted by the goals: friends, family, colleagues, or people you like and respect and who like and respect you. This creates a powerful statement of intent from yourself that you are deeply committed and connected to your goals.
  • Nine: Review your goals and try to fine-tune them on a weekly basis. Obtaining valued accountability from others provides support and encouragement, as well as objective sanity checks.
  • Ten: Be courageous, tenacious, and persistent. Goal setting can be challenging since it pushes you through your comfort zones. Remember that it is important to keep going, even when the going gets tough. The ROI of goal setting will reward the effort and courage of sticking to the process.

Sales success is often more about perspiration than inspiration. The gold medal salesperson understands that a high level of motivation is required to sustain consistently high performance. This person understands that optimum motivation is maintained by having a strong emotional connection to their goals.

About the Author

Anneli Thomson is a Managing Director of Sandler Training UK as well as a world champion triathlete. For more information, please visit https://www.sandler.com/resources/sandler-books/gold-medal-selling/

Maximum Returns for Minimal Effort: 4 Great Time Management Tips

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals | Maximum Returns for Minimal Effort: 4 Great Time Management TipsWhether you work in an office building or from home, staying on task can be difficult. The distractions may vary – a barking dog versus a chatty coworker – but they’re still there.

If you’re your own boss, it can be even more difficult to manage your time because no one is there to keep you in check. What can you do to get your work done in a timely manner, so you’re not working 24 hours a day?

Online business blogs, such as bullpreneur, provide resources for new and veteran business owners alike.

Wasting Time is Wasting Money

If you’re the owner of a company with employees, their wasted time is your wasted money. Not only is the work not getting done, you’re paying them for their time regardless.

If, on the other hand, you’re the be-all of a company, you’re cheating yourself. If you’re not working, you’re not making valuable connections, keeping up on your industry, or bringing in money.

With the ease of social media at your fingertips, it can be difficult not to fall into an internet rabbit hole instead of working. What can you do to get your employees – and yourself – to stay focused during work hours?

4 Ways to Manage Your Time Better

The internet isn’t the only time suck. Watercooler chats, personal phone calls, television… The list is endless. If you don’t find a way to break the habit, your work to-do list will also be endless.

Here are 4 great time management tips to follow:

1. Eliminate your distractions. No cellphones in the work area is the first step to removing distractions. Of course, that’s not so easy if you’re the boss and disregard your own rule. Making your workspace clutter-free and electronic-free can boost your productivity.

2. Plan out your workday. If you start your workday without some semblance of a plan, you’ll end up wasting time figuring out what to do. Before you leave for the day, make a list of things that need to be done the next day. It will cut back on the time you spend trying to get started each day.

3. Complete the most pressing projects first. That list you wrote at the end of the day will also come in handy when it’s time to figure out what to do first. Focusing on one task at a time helps prevent you from getting overwhelmed. There’s also a sense of satisfaction in crossing an item off the list once it’s completed.

4. Track your productivity. If you or your employees need more strict guidance, a time tracking tool installed on the work devices can help accountability. Of course, there are tons of time management apps, making it difficult to sort out the best. Forbes lists eight of the most helpful time tracking apps.

Taking Frequent Breaks Can Increase Productivity

It may seem counterproductive to take breaks to get your work done. But taking a short break can help you mentally recharge and sharpen your focus once you return to your tasks.

5 Easy Ways to Make Meetings More Impactful

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Impactful Meetings|5 Easy Ways to Make Meetings More ImpactfulOn average, work meetings last anywhere from 31-60 minutes. Theoretically, that means you could either host or attend several of them each day. Unfortunately, all too often, meetings for work end up falling flat. Whether you’re talking about improving your brand strategy, covering data and figures, or trying to come up with safer IT solutions, putting together an effective and motivating meeting can be a big challenge for business owners and managers.

It’s far too easy for employees to ‘tune out’ or contribute their own ideas during a traditional meeting setting. When that happens and those meetings are productive, your company loses money. In fact, it’s estimated that pointless meetings end up costing businesses billions of dollars each year. But, there are things you can do to make your meetings more effective.

By putting more effort into creating motivating meetings, you can see results from your employees and co-workers, rather than a lack of motivation and inspiration. You don’t have to be a great public speaker or try to force any ideas upon anyone. Instead, use some of these strategies in your next meeting to engage your employees, and you’re likely to see the results you’re hoping for.

1. Make Sure the Meeting is Necessary

If you really want to get your employees on board with meetings, make sure they’re absolutely necessary. Far too often, managers and employers hold meetings for things that could be dealt with in more efficient ways. The reality is, more employees would rather get an email about something, or even have a one-on-one conversation rather than attend a long meeting if it doesn’t accomplish anything.

Additionally, meaningless meetings waste your own time. Think about all of the other things you could be accomplishing in your day without so many wasteful meetings. How can you tell if holding a meeting is necessary? Ask yourself the following questions:

Do you need input from a specific team in order to move forward?
Is a meeting the best way to reach everyone at once?
Is it a valuable use of everyone’s time?
Does it have to be done face-to-face?

If you can answer ‘yes’ to all of those questions, then it’s likely the meeting is necessary. If not, try to find ways to work around it, including emails or quick conversations with a few key people. Not only will you save time, but you can get straight to the source of whatever issue is at hand, rather than having to talk about a variety of other things for 30 minutes in order to get to the point.

2. Send a Schedule Ahead of Time

Being organized for your meeting, even before it starts, will help to keep yourself and your employees on track. By sending out an agenda to those involved in the meeting ahead of time, everyone will know what to expect. They’ll be able to prepare themselves for discussion, think about any points they want to bring up, and they’ll know that the meeting itself has a purpose and what you’re trying to accomplish.

Utilizing powerpoint services can help you to even send out slides or images you plan to share in the meeting, as well. This will help to get everyone thinking ahead, so they can bring their ideas into the meeting. As a result, more creative thinking can flow in a shorter amount of time and you may be able to get through your meetings faster and more efficiently.

3. Make Sure Everyone is Involved

Effective meetings shouldn’t just consist of one person talking or explaining everything. While you can start with a presentation and talk about what you’re trying to accomplish, meetings are meant to be collaborative. After all, if you want to be the one doing all the talking and explaining, you could just as easily send out an email.

So, make sure you get everyone involved as a participant in the meeting. This can be especially helpful for people who don’t often speak up or bring up their own ideas. They might have something great simmering under the surface. When you make it known that everyone has to participate and contribute something, they’re more likely to finally come forward with those ideas.

Plus, when everyone gets a chance to participate in a meeting, they’re more likely to feel as though it was productive and not a waste of time. People appreciate having their voices heard, and it can certainly change their perspective on whether something was worth it.

4. Give Specific Tasks

Meetings should end with an action plan in place. Workload delegation is extremely important, not only to help prevent burnout but to make sure the people with the right skills and strengths are handling the right tasks.

By the time the meeting is over, your plan of action should include a specific task for everyone who attended. Decide who is in charge of each task, how long that task will take, and what it will consist of. When people are able to leave a meeting feeling as though they have something to accomplish because of it, they’re less likely to feel as though it was a waste of time.

StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Impactful Meetings|5 Easy Ways to Make Meetings More Impactful5. Follow Up

Don’t let a meeting on one specific subject just fall away. Follow-up with the people in attendance. Have deadlines in place for the tasks they were assigned, and check-in with them regularly to make sure everything is on track. Again, this will help them to know that the things you talked about within the meeting were worthwhile, and the work they’re putting in on their assigned job is actually important.

Meetings can be useful when they are held for the right reasons and you go through them the right way. If you truly want your work meetings to be more effective, keep some of these tips in mind. When meetings are held the right way, you can motivate your employees and make them understand that meetings can be important, rather than just a waste of time and money for everyone involved.

Forget Balance: How COVID-19 Drives Home the Importance of Work-Life Blending

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Work-Life Blending|Forget Balance: How COVID-19 Drives Home the Importance of Work-Life BlendingAs COVID-19 began to move throughout the US, organizations reacted quickly to enable employees to “work from home.” For many leaders, this was a shock and they struggled to effectively adapt their organization to a blended world. The myth of work/life balance was prevalent in many companies as they failed to recognize the trends pointing to increased integration of work and life. The concept of work/life balance, or the separation between work and life, was dealt a huge blow with the outbreak of COVID-19. The novel coronavirus forced leaders of hierarchical, on-site, 9-5 businesses to acknowledge what should have been blatantly obvious: work and home life can no longer be looked at as being balanced but should be viewed as blended.

COVID-19 simply accelerated the trend that has been taking place for years. In my TEDx Talk, Blendification® of Work and Life, I highlight that social, technological, and economic impacts are forcing work and life together. The work/life balance myth has run its course. Here are some observations from the focus on work/life balance:

Work/life balance has become a cover for “look at how hard I am working.” Over the years, I have never heard anyone say, “I need more balance, I am spending way too much time with my family.” More accurately, it is the reverse. People are constantly saying they “need more balance,” which is code for “I am working too hard” or “look at how hard I am working.” They are typically bringing attention to their work ethic as if it is a badge of honor. As a result, work/life balance has turned into a personal proclamation about my strong work ethic at the expense of my personal and family life.

Work/life Balance creates an adversarial relationship between the two. When pursuing work/life balance, an adversarial or competitive relationship becomes prevalent. When this happens, people begin to keep score. It is not uncommon to hear people add up their work hours and become frustrated when they exceed what they consider “balanced.” The pursuit of balance is a futile quest. If you are pursuing your human potential, you cannot separate work and life. You will never achieve equilibrium between the two.

Work and home life do not happen in averages. Life happens in extremes, but we talk about it in averages. As someone once told me: “If I have one foot in a boiling hot bucket of water and the other in ice cold water, the average is fine, but I am not feeling fine!” That describes work and home life. There are constant demands that create the need to be in one area or the other. With fluctuating and conflicting demands, pursuing balance is unrealistic.

While work/life balance has proven to be a myth, blending work and life is more realistic and aligns with social, technological, and economic trends. There are two aspects to consider when blending work and life: the physical and the psychological. Here are some insights into each:

Physical Blending Work and Life

As the novel coronavirus swept the world, companies scrambled to create work-from-home capabilities. As mentioned, this accelerated the trends that were already taking place. Organizations quickly leveraged technology to enable a transition from working in an office to working from home. In some cases, this was done hastily because there were tangible deadlines and corresponding health consequences. As work becomes more integrated physically with homelife, here are ideas that will be helpful going forward:

  • Provide guidance to employees (directional and financial) in setting up dedicated workspace.
  • Make recommendations on boundaries to reduce “interference.”
  • Update policies and procedures with detailed expectations related to working from home.
  • With increased risk of technology and security breaches, make sure you have updated your protection and keep enhancing it since hackers see an opportunity in penetrating our data.
  • Maintain standards in work attire for those participating in online meetings.
  • Create dedicated technology-driven social events.

Psychologically Blending Work and Life

While most of the focus has been on the physical aspects of blending work and life, the true benefits of a blended life are psychological. The millennial generation has opened our eyes to the need to pursue our human potential by positively impacting the world. Given that we spend over 50% of our waking time at work or in work-related activities, we cannot possibly realize our human potential without incorporating work. As a result, the workplace becomes one of the primary areas where people pursue their potential and maximize their impact on society.

What happens at work, happens at home, and this inherent connection is key to creating a better workplace, better homelife, better customers, and better communities. When workplace organizations recognize the importance of growing and developing their employees—not just their job-related skills, but their personal and leadership skills—they will see happier and more fulfilled employees taking pride in their entire life. Here are some points related to developing the psychological aspects of blending work and life:

  • Develop, define, and disseminate your desired culture to make it so compelling and strong that it is alive when employees are working from home.
  • Align your culture with a motivating cause.
  • Create a strategic platform that sets clear strategic focus, outcomes, and actions that are connected to the organization’s culture and cause.
  • Cascade the strategic platform throughout the company through internal peer accountability groups (we call them Roots Groups in The Blendification® System).
  • Institute ongoing training and development around activating your employees’ human potential, leading to greater lifelong fulfillment.
  • Build an ongoing communication and operating system that blends your culture, strategy, and execution, linking employees’ daily work to meaningful outcomes.

The illusion of work/life balance has been revealed with the response to the COVID-19 outbreak. It is time to embrace the trends that have been taking place for years and leverage work to enhance employees’ lives, customers’ lives, and the benefits to their communities. Since COVID-19 accelerated working from home, business leaders now have the opportunity to increase their company’s impact by blending work life and homelife.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Dan BruderDan Bruder is the CEO of Fusion Dynamics Group, an international strategy and leadership consulting firm based in Colorado. He has an accomplished background in executive leadership and is a faculty member of Colorado State University’s Executive MBA program and the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Graduate Leeds School of Business. Drawing on his 30-plus years of leadership experience, he created The Blendification® System: Activating Potential by Connecting Culture, Strategy and Execution. The Blendification® System book is available on Amazon as well as through a series of workshops and keynotes. Learn more about The Blendification® System, at www.BlendificationSystem.com

How To Thrive In A Co-Working Space As A Business

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Co-working Space|How To Thrive In A Co-Working Space As A BusinessCo-working spaces have certainly become more popular over the years for their affordability and opportunities that it provides for businesses of all sizes. Whether it’s a temporary space in between offices or a permanent one, this is an environment that can work for you. Here are some tips to thrive in a co-working space as a business.

Use All The Features Available

Co-working spaces have a lot of benefits that come with the package you pay for. Depending on the type of co-working space, it will also depend on the number of amazing benefits that can come with your membership and the level of packages that are available. Some of the best ones might include a personal gym for members only, coffee and tea-making facilities, and even a bar. When you’re paying for this space, you might as well to take full advantage of all the features available because it’s a package that is worth utilizing, especially if it can help your business in a variety of ways. Working in a coworking environment certainly has it’s perks and in some cases, can be better than non-serviced buildings.

Network With Those Around You

Networking is a great way of meeting new people, and you can certainly get this when it comes to co-working spaces. There will be lots of people from all different backgrounds, and with these spaces, you usually get a lot of different businesses, start-ups, and individuals. You want to take full advantage of meeting these people and creating connections. You never know how they might be able to help you on your journey as a business. The influence that some might have could be life-changing, so start shaking hands and making small-talk!

Alternate Locations

There is usually a lot of different spaces within a co-working space, and it can certainly be beneficial to alternate between different locations. This can help your productivity, and it’s not something you would always get with a non-serviced building. You’ve got the freedom to go wherever and enjoy different setups whether it’s a sofa with a coffee table or a traditional desk area. It can also be great to do when you’re feeling particularly unmotivated to get anything done that day. Switch it up every couple of days or even every day if you prefer.

Keep The Productivity High For Team Members

Keeping your productivity levels high is important, especially for any team members that you might have who work with you in this co-working space. As much as it can be great for meeting new people, it can also pose as a distraction. Make sure you have a schedule that you can stick to and not deter from too much when it comes to your working day. Taking regular breaks is important, but it’s good to keep to a schedule in order to keep yourself motivated and productive.

A co-working space is definitely something worth considering if you think it’s the right fit for you. Use these tips to help you thrive!