Special Note: When this post went live, some of the links were not working.  That has now been corrected.  All links are working properly.

I am very excited to announce the release of 2 new books I’ve compiled this summer!

The first is a collection of wisdom for every professional entitled: Wisdom@Work – Insights for 21st Century Worklife Success. Get more info. or order – click here: https://www.createspace.com/3456926

The second is The 1% Edge – Strategies to Increase Your Management Effectiveness. There are 2 releases here. One is the handbook and the other is the workbook counterpart which is the expanded version with a series of coaching questions for each. The handbook is available now. To learn more or buy – click here: https://www.createspace.com/3467099

With this new announcement also comes sharing an exciting change related to this blog. This blog will now be replaced with a new blog related to the new book – The 1% Edge. It will serve as the interactive counterpart to the book for supporting information and a place/forum for purchasers of the book to share experiences and best practices as they apply the principles of the book – in essense to build a community of managers to support their professional efforts.

The blog is open to everyone: www.the1percentedge.blogspot.com.

Even if you’re not a manager with a title, it will additionally have tips to help you gain your 1% edge for career management success!

This blog will be ending in the next few months.

Again:

For practical coaching, tips, advice for career and management success visit: www.the1percentedge.blogspot.com

For commentary on currents news and trends related to leadership, career, and management – go to

www.leadership-careerandmanagement.blogspot.com

To your success!

JoAnn

Related posts:

1. Professional Success Tip – A Twist on the Word – Value I love this quote, “What we must decide is perhaps...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

As a reminder, a common definition of effective is doing the right things at the right time to get the best results. However, in this post, I’d like to expand our thinking around the concept of being effective.

I believe increasing our “effectiveness” is more important than ever in creating and maintaining value to our organizations. It’s a must have and do career strategy.

An Expanded View
Consider effectiveness to not only be getting the right things done at the right time, but additionally identifying and  addressing needs, identifying potential solutions, and getting high-impact results.  In essence, effectiveness is beyond just executing tasks.

If this expanded view of being effective is to be realized, then what’s needed in order for this new version to occur?

Consider the following:
1.    Broader knowledge of the players involved in key situations, their roles, their strengths and weaknesses.
2.    A clear understanding of the core needs of the company.
3.    Identification and laser focus on the core needs of internal and external customers and how your role (and that of your team or department) addresses and impacts those core needs.
4.    How does the specifics of your job description contribute to the above.

Compiling the information to the above will craft a bigger picture from which to work to develop and increase your effectiveness. In fact, you may need to volunteer to tweak your job description.  There are a lot of job descriptions out there that are not “value based” job descriptions (meaning they are more about being busy than get high-impact results).

From this big picture access how you go about your work week, what you do with your time and how the tangible results of the day impact this big picture.  If you’re a manager, do the same with your team.

Then ask yourself this question, “Am I getting things done or am I getting things done that also impact the bigger picture.”   Getting things done that impact the greater picture are high impact results.

The irony of productivity is we can go a full work week, get things done and yet have little to no activity that significantly address the big picture.

Coaching Tip: Plan and work with the big picture in mind. Make sure to track and language your performance with this in mind. This is a beneficial strategy in performance reviews.  You can communicate and show how you’ve demonstrated results with more value.

Career Management Bonus Tip: This is also a great strategy for how to communicate your experience in a job interview.

Related posts:

1. Effective Communication Tip – Use Targeted Feedback This blog is underwritten by Management-in-Minutes, a portable learning resource...
2. A Key to Success – Give it Your Definition If you want to know a key to success…then read...
3. Career Management – How You Manage Your Health Some blog posts are of great value by sharing a...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Quick Coaching Tip of the Day: Make a list of how you are valuable to your company.

To extend the thought, listen to this brief Seminar-in-a-bite:

http://joanncorleyspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/11/useful-career-success-strategy-are-you.html

Related posts:

1. Professional Success Tip – Start Where You Can “You too can make a difference in life – first,...
2. A Special Announcement August 29, 2010 Special Note: When this post went live,...
3. 7 Must Dos For Professional Success Ever read something that you felt compelled to share? Well...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

As companies continue to invest in the training of their employees there still seems to be some key elements missing to insure there is a meaningful return on investment. The key employee training component that impacts several other key components is this – a learning rhythm.

Consider the definition of rhythm: a regularly recurrent quantitative change. Rhythm implies ongoing, consistent, and reliable.

In reflecting on these three qualities, ask yourself does your own professional learning include those qualities?  Additionally, does any employee training or management training contain those qualities?  The answer for many companies is no!

Professional development to be truly effective, to get real results must have these components.  Here are some practical considerations:

1. At the beginning of each week, decide on your focus for the week.

2. Determine what resource(s) you will use to add to your current knowledge around the area of focus. A resource could be a book, audio, blog post, or article.

3. Set aside and commit to a certain time each day (this a secondary rhythm) that you give attention to the area.  The good news, it doesn’t have to be that much time.  Even 5 minutes is useful.

4. In that time, take in new information and think about times, ways, situations to which you can apply what you’re learning. You can also decide on key information that you repeatedly review everyday. Repetition, particularly spaced repetition is also a necessary component in adult learning and employee training.

5. Keep a learning notebook.  There is something about writing that helps to reinforce the learning experience.

So why is rhythm necessary and powerful?  Rhythm helps to engage the brain in such a way as to create a complete sensory experience engaging us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.  That repeated multiple sensory experience begins to build sensory memory which accelerates development towards the desire behavior change. This ultimately builds a habit.  A habit, as we know, is permanent behavior change and isn’t that what training is really all about?….turning knowledge into know how?… and isn’t know how tangible behavior?

Coaching Question: Can you identify tangible outcomes from the learning your experiencing?  Whether it’s from a book or seminar how are you practically integrating what you’re learning into your real time experience?

Two areas of changes to look for: change in thought and/or change in behavior – one precedes the other.

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

Expand Your Understanding of This Post – you can access additional learning bites at the links provided.

1. Thought impacts behavior – http://joanncorleyspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/11/tfb.html

2. The Power of Focus – focus-article

Related posts:

1. Is Coaching the Next New Form of Employee Training? Is Coaching the Next New Form of Employee and Management...
2. The Absence of Learning – Purposed Incompetence Do you know of anyone who is incompetent on purpose? ...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Start Where You Can

This success tip impacts your personal productivity, your success as a manager,  and the overall building of a successful career.

I have the great opportunity to meet people from all over the country. In many of my seminars ideas and solutions are presented that each person has the opportunity to take back to their organization for implementation.

At the beginning of each seminar I make the point that for some, it will take courage to try to implement something they’ve learned.

And then…there is the thought, “ Well what about this or that….”  My response?…”For the moment, just focus on what you can influence or control.”

For many of us in challenging work environments, who work in company cultures that are not ideal, it’s easy to get distracted by all that is not working or the many things that are wrong.

In any environment, to build professional success the key is to start where you can and maintain strategic focus. Direct your focus and all of your personal resources on the areas in which you do have influence and/or control.

In fact, check out Webster’s definition of control:
Control – to exercise restraining or directing influence over : regulate – to have power over : rule

I believe there is a lot of time and energy wasted giving attention to situations and circumstances that we may not be able to do anything about for the time being. So the key is  – focus…and maintain your focus on that which you can control and/or influence.

Power Tip: Make your piece of the world great!  Start with what’s happening at your desk. Then if you’re a manager, your team, your department, etc.

Key point: Perhaps what is happening in our piece of the world is good or only adequate, because our critical resources, (time, attention, motivation, energy) bleeds into things that will suck up those valuable resources all to no benefit.

Coaching Tip: Increase your awareness regarding what you give your energy to….any adjustments need to be made?

Related posts:

1. Professional Success Tip – A Twist on the Word – Value I love this quote, “What we must decide is perhaps...
2. 7 Must Dos For Professional Success Ever read something that you felt compelled to share? Well...
3. An Interesting Imbalance in Employee Training As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve had the great...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Usually I don’t use this blog to discuss sensationlized news, yet I felt compelled to comment on this particular occurrence and even more so after reading a thought-filled blog post that I found very instructive.  You can read the entire post from the other blog, Orin Woodward Leadership Team,  provided at the end of this post.  What I want to do is submit my thoughts in light of that post.

My Thoughts:

One of the guiding themes of my practice and any coaching and training I do is leading, managing, living from the inside out.  Who we are on the inside dictates the kind of person we’ll be on the outside. This truth proves itself out, time and time again.

That’s why it’s so important to work on our insides more than any other area.  There are many managers and leaders who want to fix the people around them rather than consider, “what about me has allowed these circumstances to occur.”

I do carry the belief that people of great talent, those in high levels of leadership and influence need to be especially attentive to what’s going on on the inside and have someone in their life they deeply trust to help them effectively deal with their own inner activity no matter how unpleasant it might be.

To stay grounded and truthful with the good and the bad about ourselves is essential to a successful life and complete health.

It’s very common to talk to a leader of an organization and discover they feel isolated and that there is no one in their life that they can talk with about deeply intimate issues, that in some cases they are embarrassed about.

Perhaps that was true in Tiger’s case.  Perhaps he has struggled with sexual addiction (if this is true) from an early age or it surfaced after his father’s death to fill a emotional hole left with his Dad’s profound absence.  These are all assumptions of course.

What is not…we all need to continually practice internal honesty as the first source of living a meaningful, productive, successful life. How we do that will be reflected in every activity and relationship we have in every context.

This post serves as my summary of the following points from the post referenced above…truly profound and worth a read.

Key Points:

I. Leaders need to build their lives upon the solid foundation of good character and morals, not on gifts and abilities.

II. Leaders must understand that having great career success does not cause us to experience or feel internal significance and satisfaction

III. Leaders need to develop good coping skills so they can courageously confront reality instead of escaping from it.

IV. Leaders must not feed an ego-driven lifestyle.

VI. Leaders must understand that money, material possessions and a beautiful spouse cannot fill the vast empty space of an unhealthy emotional soul.

VII. Leaders need to understand the underlining motivation behind what drives them.

VIII. Leaders often equate performance with acceptance.

Eight Lessons Leaders Can Learn from Tiger Wood’s Life

Please pass on to colleagues and friends.  To our personal and professional success! JoAnn

Related posts:

1. Are You Equipped for 21st Century Leadership? There has been a study released conducted by the well...
2. A Key to Performance Success – Do This Unique Assessment As the end of the year approaches, (which is hard...
3. A Key to Success – Give it Your Definition If you want to know a key to success…then read...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I love quotes!  I have since I was young. I would collect them, make collages of them, and put them on hand made cards for my friends.  Whether it’s a success saying or a success quotation – it’s a bite-size form of coaching. It’s powerful information and inspiration in a bite.

Here’s a Management Success Tip: Include quotes in your team culture.

Why? Consider what quotes do…

1. Inspire = motivate

2. Direct

3. Instruct

4. Feed our spirit

5. Stimulate our thinking

…just to name a few and I’m sure you can think of more.

How powerful is it to have just a few words carry so much weight and do so much good! And you know the funny thing?…a new social media phenomena creates a context for that to regularly occur – Twitter.

I am going to be sharing my favorite quotes there, so if you’re not following me…do so!  I promise I will not bother you with my personal, inane activities.  What I will do is pass on quotes and information that are worth your time and support you in developing the quality life you desire to have.  Twitter Web Site

To start, here are a few of my favorites and how they impact me:

Category: Wise & Instructive

Humphrey Bogart once said: “Enjoy the moments, kid, because in the end they add up to a life.”

Coaching point: Live in the moment.  Don’t waste your time dwelling on the past or too much anticipating the future.  Make the most of now…each now adds up to a life.

Category: Inspirational

“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot…and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that’s precisely why I succeed.” Michael Jordan, American Basketball Player

Coaching point: go after it, plan on loosing a lot to be a winner.

Category: Motivational

“Go big or go home.” Donald Trump

Coaching point: give it all ya got!

These 3 hit me in so many ways….all in just a few words.  Join me on Twitter for a regular does of these Power Qutoes!

Access Twitter Here

Remember the success tip...Use quotes in your team culture and to coach yourself

To your success!  JoAnn

Related posts:

1. Management Success – Be A Coach Are you a coach? If you, as a manager or...
2. A Key to Performance Success – Do This Unique Assessment As the end of the year approaches, (which is hard...
3. Management Success Tip – Pay New Hires to Leave – Huh? Want a counterintuitive route to management success?….well you may or...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In the work that I do in coaching professionals, it’s been clear to me for quite some time that we all have great amounts of potential that have not been tapped and therefore go unknown and obviously unused.

There is a philosophy in goal setting that goes like this  – create goals that feel like a stretch and some refer to them as “stretch goals.”

There is also a similar approach to goal setting with a bit of a more flowery description and that’s BHAGS!…big, hairy, audacious goals!  I love that. (Of course not too sure about the hairy part…:-), but you get the point.

I’d like to direct you to the post I read, it’s worth a read: Goal Setting and Performance Post.  As you do so, please keep in mind the concept of BHAGs.  This would be a good year end exercise and incorporate these questions when you do:

1. Did I make goals this year?

2. How did it go?….What did I learn about myself and what do I need to tweak?

3. Were they BHAGs?

4. How about next year?

If you’re a manager, please integrate this with your team as well.

Additionally, if you feel you need some coaching around this issue, feel free to contact me for a session or two.  Remember, I offer Laser Coaching in time increments of 15, 20, 25, and 30 minutes.  The cost? $1.00 a minute.

Contact: joann@joanncorley.com

No related posts.

Related to performance success, this is essential and I want to recommend a method that is a twist on the more traditional ways of approaching this.

To follow is a link to an assessment tool called – Annual Portfolio Evaluation.  What is unique about this assessment approach is the human part of the equation commonly known as our strengths and weaknesses is now reframed as an ASSEST OR LIABILITY, which is the language used on a company balance sheet and other company resources.

I think that this is the key advantage to using this approach.  You and those you use this with can feel a greater sense of responsibility to what you can contribute, in essence the value you and members of your team bring to an organization.  Framing it this way vs. “strength and weakness,” adds a whole new dimension to working in the context of human resource. In fact many use the word human capital vs. human resource.

This also can be used in developing a Personal Development Plan or integrating the information into any development program currently being used in any organization.

Conversely, there is something called a “liability.”  A liability is explained in Websters a follows:
3 : one that acts as a disadvantage : drawback.

This is a useful way of helping somone see that what would otherwise be considered a weakness is actually a cost.  The message is stronger – that behavior or lack of skill is costing you and the company.  There is a cost. As somone who runs my own firm, I am keenly aware of what weaknesses I have and how they tangibly translate into costing me money. Each employee needs to constructively feel that on some level.

This message and experience is much stronger than, “you’ve got a weakness.”

I recommend you download the free assessment sheet above and give it a whirl.  Got any questions? Don’t hesitate to contact me at joann@joanncorley.com

To your success! JoAnn

Related posts:

1. Management Success – Be A Coach Are you a coach? If you, as a manager or...
2. Management Success Tip – Pay New Hires to Leave – Huh? Want a counterintuitive route to management success?….well you may or...
3. A Success Quote equals Bite-size Coaching Ever considered it that way? This is cool management insight!...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

It’s been consistently reported that many employees don’t feel valued and appreciated.  Please know that does impact their ability to really give their best. Only the unique few will do their best inspite of the absence of appropriate thank yous.  And I believe, at some point, that won’t go on forever.

One manager I met in one of my pubic seminars shared that she had written 100+ hand written notes to her whole department!  Wow….what does that say about her besides the fact that she has a strong writing hand?  I’m sure you could come up with a constructive list.

The irony?  Companies spend thousands and some millions on employee incentive, reward and recognition programs.  Yet a simple “thank you” cost absolutely nothing!

Coaching Questions: Does every member of your team feel appreicated?  When is the last time you gave a heart-felt thank you to members of your staff?

One cool idea: One company due to extended work hours, sent thank you gifts to the families of those working all those long hours.

Source: 1001 Ways to Reward Employees You can get a discounted version at Amazon by clicking the title link.
TSUWAEE7ADR5

Related posts:

1. Consider Thanksgiving a Year Round Event – The Power of “Thank You” Alright…so you may have noticed that Thanksgiving is way over...
2. Employee Rewards, Awards and Incentives – Customize it! It’s that time when as managers and leaders, we’ve got...
3. Management Success Tip – Pay New Hires to Leave – Huh? Want a counterintuitive route to management success?….well you may or...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.