Chief Strategist Coaching Circles Works with organizations looking to perform at a higher level and reach for an ever-expanding set of challenging and valuable goals.
MICHAEL STOLLER
A Falling Awake Certified Coach, Michael is also an experienced consultant and trainer working predominantly with men and couples.
STAN LANKOWITZ
A Falling Awake Certified Coach, Stan dedicates his career to helping individuals and leaders in organizations design and implement strategic plans, and achieve success.
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When I Get Better At… by Marshall Goldsmith
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In my younger days, as a newly minted Ph.D. and organizational behavior consultant, I would challenge my clients to pick one to three areas for personal improvement. As I grew more experienced, I began to realize that three was too many. The problem was not a lack of motivation or intelligence—these were brilliant, dedicated leaders. The problem was that they were just too busy. They all had profitability goals, growth goals, quality goals, customer goals, health goals and so on. Multiply each of the types of goal by three and you quickly reach a number of goals that is not only impossible to achieve, but also impossible to even remember.
What I teach my clients now is to pick the one area for personal change that will make the biggest difference, and to focus on that. If we pick the right area for change, increased effectiveness will almost always influence other aspects of our relationships with people. For example, more effective listening will lead to higher scores in all kinds of related behaviors, such as building teamwork, increasing customer satisfaction and treating people with respect.
Nathaniel Branden, Ph.D., a psychologist and author of about 20 books, has a wonderful exercise that helps answer the question, “Is this change really worth it?” Between five and eight people sit around a table, and each person selects one behavior to change. One person begins the exercise by saying, “When I get better at…” and completes the sentence by mentioning one benefit that will accompany this change in behavior. For example, one person may say, “When I get better at being open to differing opinions, I will hear more great ideas.”
After everyone has had a chance to discuss their specific behavior and the first benefit, the cycle begins again. Now each person mentions a second benefit that may result from changing the same behavior, then a third benefit, continuing until the facilitator ends the exercise (usually after six to eight rounds). Finally, participants discuss what they have learned and their reactions to the exercise.
When Branden first explained this exercise to me, I was polite, but skeptical. I couldn’t see the value of simply repeating the potential benefits of change over and over. My skepticism quickly went away when I saw the process work.
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Goal 1, Mission 0 by Marshall Goldsmith Comments (0)
Obsessing on your goal – may cause you to forget your mission.
In the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai , the main character, Colonel Nicholson, is a prisoner of war in Burma who leads his men to build a bridge for his Japanese captors. Nicholson is an officer of high integrity, dedicated to excellence, a great leader of people - and thus well trained to complete any mission that he is given.
So he skillfully inspires his men to build a near-perfect bridge. By the film's end, he finds himself in the painful position of defending the bridge from attack by fellow British officers who want to destroy it - to prevent Japanese trains from using it. There's a chilling moment of realization, right before the bridge is detonated, when Nicholson (played by Alec Guinness) utters the famous line, "What have I done?" He was so focused on his goal - building the bridge - that he forgot his larger mission - winning the war!
That is goal obsession, which is a subset of wanting to win too much. It rears its ugly head in many ways. In its broadest form, it's the force at play when we get so wrapped up in achieving our goal that, like Colonel Nicholson, we do it at the expense of a larger mission. It's one of those paradoxical traits that are usually the sources of our success, but taken too far can become blatant causes of failure. You see this when people become fixated on the wrong goals. Given their history of success, they end up achieving a result that does more damage than good to their organizations, their families, and themselves
The canyons of Wall Street are littered with victims of goal obsession. I asked one hard-driving deal maker, "Mike, why do you work all of the time?" He replied, "Why do you think? Do you think I love this place? I am working so hard because I want to make a lot of money!" free
How Will You Know Success? by Janne Weddle Comments (0) Foundation: Without written goals all we tend to have is SOME Day’s. More people accomplish their goals if they are written down—those who don’t just end up with a bunch of “Someday I am going to…..” However, there is also the art of writing effective goals.
Here are some goals I have seen over the years that people have developed: Obtain Listings, Increase my income, Develop a customer service improvement plan, Implement Teams, Create a Training Advisor Board, Develop a Marketing plan, Improve Communication, Develop Plans to reduce errors---the list could go on and on! Douglas K. Smith in his outstanding book Make Success Measurable—touches on the very thing that has been bothering me for years and that is there is a difference in the types of goals we write—he states there activity based goals and outcome based goals. In order to improve as a business owner one must focus on outcomes instead of activities when goals are set—it is the true measure of success.
“Delegating Decisions” By Robert Gunn
Three keys to delegating decisions in a way that accelerates group progress toward goals: tolerant restraint; focus on goals over tactics; positive tone. free
“Being Here” by Edward Teach
Making big changes in a business is always difficult. Can managers make it easier by mastering the art of “presence”? free
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When I Get Better At… 
Goal 1, Mission 0 
How Will You Know Success? by Janne Weddle 
