Using Natural Effectiveness™ to Sustain Strategic Momentum

Using Natural Effectiveness™ to Sustain Strategic Momentum
Natural Effectiveness™ revolves around your personal
traits and characteristics. If we can measure how you work
most efficiently and effectively (and we can), and then
focus leadership around those characteristics and
strengths, amazing things can happen. This is the core of
our Natural Effectiveness™ philosophy. It is about
defining the way you work most powerfully and positioning
you to leverage your natural strengths to meet your goals.
You don't have to figure out how to be someone else. All
you have to do is be your most efficient and effective
self, and it will give you tremendous power to lead,
achieve and develop.

At Change Agents we measure natural effectiveness based on
four basic traits: The take-charge trait The people trait
The pace trait The structure trait.

Based on your highest trait, you will likely approach
building and sustaining strategic momentum in certain
predictable ways.

If your highest trait as a leader is the take charge trait,
you might approach your team as the General. This is not to
be confused with a dictator. But your tendency will likely
be to direct, deploy and conquer. Remember, you can fight
some of the battles on your own, but you will need all of
your troops to win your vision. You are looking for and
trying to inspire allegiance to the vision and the
strategy, not necessarily to you, yourself, personally. You
must remember that people provide the energy for your
campaign. If you ask them to salute, it may make them tense
and less energetic and committed to the cause.

If your highest trait as a leader is the people trait, you
will automatically build a team. You will connect with
people individually, in small groups, and corporately to
share your passion and inspire them to want to seek the
vision you outline or the future you envision. You will
draw word pictures that explain what it will be like when
you achieve the vision. Two things that are critical to
your success are that you listen and that you take
appropriate actions when necessary. Some visionary leaders
have failed because they were considered all talk and no
action. The key is not to let your enthusiasm overcome your
good sense.

If your highest trait as a leader is the pace trait, you
will likely lead through encouragement. You will spend more
time encouraging action than you do in pushing for results.
Your strength is your ability to stay the course. Another
plus for you is the patience you have when things don't go
as you planned. Giving people permission to be human and
make mistakes allows for creativity and innovation. Meeting
deadlines can be a pitfall for you. It is critical that
your team trust you. You build that trust by doing what you
say you will do when you say you will do it.

If your highest leadership trait is the structure trait,
you will likely use systems and processes as the highways
to your strategic goal. Effective systems and processes are
critical supports in any strategic effort. Remember: people
need to know why they are being asked to follow a certain
system or process. The best way to engage them is to allow
them to create or redefine the systems and processes they
need to achieve the results you need.

As you build your strategy-focused Naturally
Effective™ organization, you will want to engage the
strengths and talents of every person on your team. The
bottom line in using your natural effectiveness™ to
maintain strategic momentum is this: work from your
strengths, employ and leverage the strengths of others, and
that will help you sustain your strategic momentum.

----------------------------------------------------
About Gayla Hodges
Gayla Hodges is the President Change Agents, Inc., a
company that specializes in energizing workforces to
achieve strategic goals. She coaches executives and
managers on leading corporate change, facilitating the
development and implementation of organizational
effectiveness strategies. For more information, visit
http://www.changeagentsinc.com or call 623-362-3876.

Coaching Skills Training: The 3 principles of coaching

Coaching Skills Training: The 3 principles of coaching
We know that coaches have a healthy attitude towards other
people and this is demonstrated by the three main things
they do in their coaching sessions.

Firstly they concentrate wholly on the people they coach in
order to raise their levels of awareness. Secondly they use
encouragement and support to make sure that the people they
coach take responsibility for moving their own issues
forward. Thirdly they are open and honest and genuinely
want to see others succeed and in this way they quickly
build strong relationships of trust. Let's now look at each
of these in turn.

Raising awareness

By looking in our bathroom mirror we can raise our
awareness of how we look and use this information to
improve our performance in 'looking good'. Just being aware
of what's going on when we experience certain things is
often all it takes to make improvements - it's a natural
process.

Perhaps you've experienced the sensation of daydreaming
whilst driving to the extent that you can't recall if
you've passed your turning or not. When this happens it's
because we're performing on 'auto- pilot', in other words,
we are not consciously aware of what we are doing. This
situation can be remedied simply by raising awareness
again. The next time you're driving concentrate on how
often this daydreaming happens. Paradoxically, because of
your awareness and concentration it won't happen at all.

Generating responsibility

Coaches also want people to take responsibility for
tackling their own problems and developing their own
abilities. Insecure managers often get a sense of
satisfaction from always rescuing other the people. It
makes them feel good because they've helped someone out and
they believe that the other person will feel good because
they've passed their situation to somebody else. But
these same managers have massive pending trays groaning
under the weight of other people's problems. If we solve a
problem for somebody once, the chances are they'll come
knocking on our door each time they have another one. When
we take responsibility for someone else's situation we have
failed to develop that person and have simply reinforced
their sense of dependence. Over the long term this can lead
to feelings of frustration and resentment.

Building trust

Finally, effective coaches see the virtuous circle of
establishing trust. They realism that by raising awareness
and generating responsibility they are providing people
with a platform to perform at higher levels. As this
happens they will develop a great sense of trust in the
coaching process and in turn answer their coach's questions
with deeper levels of honesty and candidness.

In this way our coaching will help them to become more
aware and responsible and so it goes on.

Raising awareness, generating responsibility and building
trust are the key principles of effective coaching.

----------------------------------------------------
Matt Somers is a coaching practitioner of many years'
experience. He works with a host of clients in North East
England where his firm is based and throughout the UK and
Europe. Matt understands that people are working with their
true potential locked away. He shows how coaching provides
a simple yet elegant key to this lock. His popular
mini-guide "Coaching for an Easier Life" is available FREE
at http://www.mattsomers.com

Two Major Challenges of Being a Financial Analyst: Time Management and Work Life Balance

Two Major Challenges of Being a Financial Analyst: Time Management and Work Life Balance
"What's the longest time you have worked without a
vacation?" This is the topic that caught my attention while
I was reading a CFA forum earlier today.

Many of the responses were quite appalling: 14 months ago
but has since worked every single public holiday, 2 years 7
months, 4 years and one analyst even said going on 6 years!

Time management and work life balance are two major
challenges. Granted these answers may represent only the
more extreme cases, it is indicative that being a financial
analyst is one of the more stressful occupations. Financial
analysts who don't learn these two lessons will sooner or
later get burned out.

Often times, financial analysts feel bad about taking their
vacations because there is always time-sensitive work to be
done. The work pile keeps growing when you are away from
the office. So you need to make a less painful choice of
the two: taking your vacation now and put in a week of
all-nighters to play catch up or skip the vacation to avoid
falling behind.

Other times, you may feel that if you'll just sacrifice
your personal life temporarily for now, you will establish
your career sooner. Once your position with the company is
secure, you'll take your vacations.

Companies provide vacation days for a reason. You need your
rest to re-energize and de-stress to prevent burnout as
much as any machinery needs downtime for maintenance and
prevent over-heating.

Think of your life as a wheel made up of these eight spokes:

1. Health
2. Wealth
3. Family and friends
4. Relationships
5. Career/job
6. Playtime, hobbies and fun
7. Personal development
8. Contribution

Rate yours from 0-10, with 0 being non-existent and the
center of the wheel while 10 being the best possible and
the rim of the wheel. Now connect them.

What does your wheel look like?

If your wheel is any shape but round, your life cannot move
forward with ease. You likely will have trouble staying
focused at work when you have family or relationship
problems. You are likely to grow resentful of the heavy
workload without fun for an extended time and will
gradually lose your passion in the career that once
motivated and excited you.

For total success in the long-term, the whole of you need
to move forward together, not just a part of you. Only when
your wheel is round and at a maximum of 10 for all aspects
of your life will it take you where you want to go much
faster, much further and with much more ease than any
crooked wheel.

----------------------------------------------------
Corinne Lor is a success coach for professionals in the
banking and finance industry.
http://www.financialanalystblog.com

Why Write A Business Plan?

Why Write A Business Plan?
Getting a business off the ground is not an easy thing to
do. It requires a lot of hard work, a good plan, and a
little luck. Most people can handle the hard work part and
you'll either be lucky or not, it's the planning part that
most people have trouble with. Many people looking to go
into business for themselves have no idea what a business
plan is or even looks like let alone how to write one.
Luckily the internet provides a lot of resources to give
you a hand. But some circumstances may cause you to forgo
a business plan right away. In that case you may not have
one yet or it's been collecting dust for the last year or
more. Well it's time to remedy the situation.

Your business plan is a plan for the future. It's about
both where your company currently is and where you want it
to go. It will be used to convince others such as banks and
potential investors about the strengths of your company and
its ability to grow and thrive. Your business plan reflects
how much you know about your business and the industry
you're in as well as your competition and their products or
services offered. And as the old military saying goes no
plan survives contact with the enemy. Well neither will
your business plan. It will need to be regularly updated if
your going to keep it relevant.

That's one of the things that most people don't realize. As
time goes on the situation your company is in changes. Your
goals change, opportunities come and go, and the realities
of your market change. Maybe you land a big customer that
helps change your finances or an advertising campaign is
more successful than you thought it would be or it could
have been less successful. It's not to say that things will
change dramatically over days and weeks but they can over
months and years. Your business plan needs to reflect that
and stay up to date with the current situation and your
future plans.

Your business plan is a tool to be used to help you guide
your business. It is something that you can refer to
frequently to make sure you stay on track. It can be used
to communicate your vision of what you want your business
to be when you are dealing with others. Especially when you
are in the process of searching for money.

As a manager as well as the owner of the business it helps
you evaluate the progress you've made based on the goals
you'd set when you first wrote the plan. The plan is
constantly a work in progress that will grow as you gain
knowledge and experience in both running your business and
experiencing the industry you are in.

And finally it of course helps you plan out what you would
like to see happen with the business. Hopefully it will
help you identify potential problems to your growth. You
should be able to identify other possible markets and
customers you'd like to eventually pursue. And it should
help you put forth your financial goals and projections. If
nothing else it forces you to periodically take a hard
realistic look at your business so you are prepared for the
future. Having a well prepared business plan is never a
wrong move.

----------------------------------------------------
Cash Miller is an experienced entrepreneur and speaker who
has spent over a decade as a small business owner. His
years of experience in small business cover such topics as
planning, management, marketing, human resources,
ecommerce, and taxation. If you are looking for more
information on this subject and others related to starting
and running a small business you can visit his website at
http://www.SmallBusinessDelivered.com