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Leadership Lesson: Accepting Help Gratefully and Gracefully

July 10, 2014 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

We’ve all met her.

She’s neck-deep in work commitments, taking care of a family, trying to stay in shape, and writing a novel in her spare time.

She looks like Wonder Woman from the outside, but if you look closer, the costume is frayed. If anyone says, “hey, let me take care of that project for you,” she grits her teeth and says, “no, I’ve got it.”

Wonder Woman lego

Pew! She responds within seconds to an email.
Pew! She figures out how to fix the dryer from a YouTube video.
Pew! She cranks out a presentation deck for a new customer.

Maybe she fears exposing that she’s not invulnerable. Maybe she is terrified of anyone finding out she doesn’t know everything.

Hey, guess what? Cat’s out of the bag.

You can’t do everything yourself.
You don’t know everything.
You haven’t experienced everything.

I just returned from a fantastic event, the GeniusShared retreat in Chicago, where a group of less than 30 smart, connected people gathered to help each other work on their dreams/businesses/passion projects.

The key to success for the retreat was the willingness of every person in the room to publicly share. All were willing to accept input, ideas, and perspectives from the others in the room.

Unless you’re willing to reveal your vulnerabilities to someone else, you will never be able to progress toward your goals. It’s the first step toward being a leader as well. Effective leaders always seek out those who are smarter, stronger, more experienced than they are.

Leaders accept help from others with grace and gratitude. They offer help to others freely.

When someone looks you in the eye and says, “how can I help you,” do you have a good answer ready? Can you accept with an open heart?

When was the last time you asked someone else, “how can I help you?”

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: levork via Compfight cc

Filed Under: Leadership, Personal Development, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Business Leadership

Book Review: Executive Presence by Sylvia Ann Hewlett

July 3, 2014 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

When I first entered the workforce, my version of executive presence was a navy blue skirt suit. I struggled to be taken seriously as a writer in an office full of engineers. (That was also at a time when IBM required female employees to wear pantyhose.)

It took me years to realize that the suit alone wasn’t going to do it.

In our casual, work-from-the-couch, wear-pajamas business environment, it’s more important than ever to work on the elusive quality of executive presence.

Skills like gravitas, clear communication, a polished appearance, and authenticity are increasingly rare, but are required for building a successful business. Our own Molly Cantrell-Craig wrote earlier this year about Indiana Jones and his leadership style (you don’t need to carry a bullwhip).

Executive Presence book

In Executive Presence, author Sylvia Ann Hewlett dares to puncture the balloon of puffed up “personal branding” that is often a lazy way to fake presence. She knows what she’s talking about. She is an internationally recognized expert on workplace power and influence who began her career as an insecure, sheltered Welsh girl breaking into the elite echelons at Cambridge University.

There’s a Grand Canyon-like chasm between choosing a color scheme for your wardrobe and having the cojones to tell your boss that she has just suggested something unethical.

The book is full of true stories and practical advice from men and women who have forged a path of leadership as business owners and as management.

How to Increase Your Executive Presence (A Sampling)

  • Tackle the hard things yourself. Don’t hide in your office and expect colleagues to take care of the tough tasks.
  • Become known as the calm in the eye of the storm. When everyone else is panicking, be the person who holds it together and makes decisions.
  • Surround yourself with people who are better than you are. Have the guts to admit what you’re not good at, and hire people who are strong in your areas of weakness.
  • Overprepare for everything. Be ready to contribute and speak up.
  • Get rid of communication crutches, both verbal tics (like saying um or uh) and physical crutches like avoiding eye contact.
  • When it comes to your appearance, focus on being appropriate to the situation/audience.
  • Your work attire should be your armor, making you feel invincible, not insecure. If you don’t feel right, that’s a signal from your inner voice.
  • If you need help in developing presence, consider connecting with a mentor or sponsor, someone you admire who already has presence.

Executive Presence is a handy little book for anyone who is new to the workforce, re-entering the workforce, or who wants to build a personal brand that makes an impact. It would be an outstanding graduation gift.

Do you feel that people respond to you as a leader when you’re making new connections?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Filed Under: Business Book, Leadership, Personal Branding, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, book review, leadership, presence

How to Release Your Inner Bruce Lee

June 26, 2014 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

By Guest Columnist Martin Stellar

The young monk was sweating profusely. He was hurting and out of breath. He was spent.
In front of him stood a barrel full of kidney beans.

Beyond that was the cliff, and in the distance the rice paddies.
His master sat a little ways away to his side, meditating in the shade of a bamboo cove.

He could hear the shouts of “Katsu!” drift up across the rice fields. And the cracking sounds too, each time one of the older and more advanced monks broke bamboo in two with their fists or their shins.

He looked at the beans and he loathed them.

rice paddy

For the last three hours, he’d been jabbing his outstretched hands into them, as hard and as fast as he could.

A bucket full, 50 liters of dry kidney beans.

In. Out. Down. Up. Left. Right. Left. Right.

At first it’s not so bad: The beans are smooth and slide to make space.

But after ten minutes it starts to hurt.

After 30 minutes, you want to stop.
After 45 minutes, you want to cry.

After an hour, your hand feels like a building fell on it, and everything from your fingertips to your neck feels like Dr. Frankenstein just stitched it together last night.

He looked at the beans, then at the fields. He looked at his master, placidly meditating, his eyes closed.

He hurt. He wanted to cry, to topple the barrel and throw it off the cliff. In fact, he wanted to go home, or jump off the cliff, or perhaps throw his master off instead. He wanted to quit, any which way he could.

“Katsu!” it sounded across the valley. “Crack!”

He looked at the beans again, and breathed slow deep breaths. He still hurt, but not as much, not if he concentrated on his breath.

He raised his hand, paused, and jammed his fingers into the beans again. Left. Right. Left. Right.

His master opened an eye, and quietly smiled to himself.
This kiddo was going to turn out very strong indeed.

I always wondered how people manage to get so strong that they can break stone or wood with their hands. You see the videos of Shao-lin monks, and you wonder if that stuff is real.

Kick a thin tree in two with your shin? How…

Turns out, each time they ram their hand into the beans, or practice-kick against a sapling, they create micro-fractures, hairline splits, in the bone.

When that heals, just like any scar tissue, the new bone material is stronger than the actual bone.

Do that for a decade, and your bones do indeed become as hard as rock. It’s simple biology.

Now, I don’t expect you’re on the path to becoming a Kung-fu master.

But if you’re in business in any way – if you’re in life, actually – you are only ever going to get results, of any kind, if you can muster the guts just like the monk in my story did.

Saying ‘a quitter never wins’ is a nice quip, but it’s not very useful.

It’s not about quitting – you can’t quit. There’s no quitting life.

You can quit one activity, get rid of one burden, or avoid one challenge – but the moment you turn your back, life will present you with exactly the same challenge you avoided, just in a different way.

Life’s a bitch in that sense. Or, you could say life is a blessing, in that it never fails to show you what you need to learn or overcome next.

“Does this hurt, is it difficult, does it make you want to scream? Ah… That means, my friend, that you can push through, find the key, and make that difficult thing a stepping stone, something you can use to grow and get stronger.”

And then life simply asks you to choose: Slam the beans again – or walk away?

I’ve never trained for Kung-fu. My bones aren’t rock-hard. My best punch involves fruit, wine and liquor.

But I’ve had my own path, training, setbacks and hard knocks.

And over the years, I’ve learned that ‘giving up’ isn’t an issue.

It’s not about quitting or giving up: it’s to do with the battles you choose.

And sometimes, it’s good practice to step back – not to quit, but to say “I’m not fighting this battle today – I’m going to train first and get stronger first. THEN I’ll show you”.

Just like that little monk, who realised that the real battle wasn’t against the beans, but against his own mind.

You have more strength in you than you can possibly imagine.

The only reason you’re not living your strength fully, bringing it all out onto the playing field, is that it takes time and persistence to get strong.

Breathe. Relax. Life is very, VERY playful – naughty and a bit mean too, sometimes. But life is always there to help you, to show you ways to grow and get stronger.

Life and the world aren’t out to hurt you – it’s only there to teach you.

Punch the beans.
If it starts to hurt too much: put ice on it.

There’s no shame in losing a battle so you can regroup and recover your strength.

The beans will be there waiting for you tomorrow.

If you keep it up long enough, you’ll be stronger than beans, bamboo, wood, stone.

If you allow life to teach you, you’ll become stronger than life.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some of my own bean-punching to do.

Author’s Bio: Martin Stellar is an email marketing specialist with a knack for building relationships. Former monk, former copywriter, once-upon-a-tailor; these days he’s on a mission to inspire and motivate. Each day he writes articles like these and sends them to his private list – and if you’d also like to receive them, please register at http://martinstellar.com.

Photo Credit: ♥siebe © via Compfight cc

Filed Under: Leadership, Motivation, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, inspiration, Motivation

Find Something to Push Against

May 15, 2014 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

Don’t ever tell me that I can’t do something.

No wait.

Please go right ahead and tell me that.

You’ve done me a favor, actually, because I use it as fuel. Like an Olympic swimmer doing an elegant flip-turn against the side of the pool to propel myself forward faster. Like a NASA rocket pushing against the earth to break free of gravity.

There are a lot of people out there who will take delight in puncturing your newly laid plans. It’s your job to analyze whether the negative reaction is something you can use, or simply something you just need to stay away from.

“Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.” James Baldwin

History is full of stories about people who wouldn’t have made discoveries, wouldn’t have founded great companies, and wouldn’t have achieved success without the initial force of perceived impossibility.

How about these two young women who invented an invisible bike helmet because their professor said it couldn’t be done?

The Invisible Bicycle Helmet | Fredrik Gertten from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo.

Negativity Can Be Your Launching Pad

First, evaluate the source. Does the person know what they’re talking about? If they are pouring cold water on your idea, do they have expertise that means you need to listen to them? Are they simply being a Devil’s Advocate?

Second, examine the substance of the criticism. Is it something you already considered? Do you need to incorporate it into your plan? If the criticism is legitimate, use it to make your strategy even stronger.

If neither of these criteria are met, flick the negativity off your shoulder like dandruff.

Put this song in your earbuds: Fitz and the Tantrums “The Walker”

Get to work.

Visualize the goal ahead and leave the negativity in your rear view mirror. Propel yourself forward on the strength of your strategy, which has now been tested. You should thank your critic(s), because they have done you a valuable service. They have forced you to gut check.

Now you can fly.

Have you had an experience where you turned a “you can’t do that” into a “just watch me?”

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Filed Under: Leadership, Motivation, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, inspiration, Motivation

Sharpen Your Marketing Skills with MOOCs

May 1, 2014 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

What’s a MOOC?

It’s a trendy name for online college courses–Massive Open Online Courses.

It’s college without the beer pong.

In many professions, it’s common to have a requirement to do continuing education. Accountants, educators, attorneys, and many others are obligated to keep learning in order to maintain their professional status. Entrepreneurs should be doing it voluntarily.

Why You Should Always Be Learning

Even if you have 100 business and marketing blogs in your RSS reader, you should still go deeper. With the latest online courseware technology, you can communicate with fellow students, receive the information in video and/or audio format, work on collaborative projects, and often get course materials as well. This is a much richer experience than the hit-or-miss method of reading blog posts or e-books.

Stephen Covey’s 7th Habit of Highly Successful People is “sharpen the saw.” Anyone who wants to run a successful business with longevity should pay attention to this important habit.

Sharpening the Saw means preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have–you. It means having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual.

A key component of many MOOCs is the sharing of real-world experiences and projects by the participants. You may get inspiration, support, and new ideas by joining. If you’re feeling stuck in a rut, this could be something to give you a good kick in the pants.

First, Decide What You’re Studying

There are courses available on a huge array of subjects. You can either follow a course series from a specific institution, or set up your own path of study.

Are you interested in honing your branding skills? Need help with market research? Want to build on your knowledge of competitive analysis? Do some research and gather a group of courses that you can “stack” consecutively for maximum reinforcement of the key concepts.

A Sampling of MOOC Resources

  • edx.org (https://www.edx.org/) – Free online courses for an array of schools, sortable by category/subject area. This is a collaborative effort by several institutions. Includes a lot of Ivy League content.
  • MITOpenCourseWare (ocw.mit.edu) – Free online courses from MIT; includes a marketing subject area.
  • Entrepreneurship Corner (ecorner.stanford.edu) – Stanford’s excellent series of videos and podcasts for entrepreneurs. There is a mobile app available as well.
  • MOOC List (http://www.mooc-list.com/) – An aggregator site that is searchable by subject; huge list of MOOCs from all over the web.

Drawbacks of the MOOC

  • You may not earn credits; if you’re looking to end up with a certification or course credits, check up-front. Some offer college credits and some do not.
  • Might be outdated material (check the date on the course before starting it…some were recorded a long time ago, and best practices do change).
  • You get what you pay for. If it’s free, remember that you won’t have full attention from the professor, and there may not be technical support available if you have problems accessing the course.
  • Might not be structured enough for some types of learners. Most MOOCs are free-flowing and study-at-your-own pace. This won’t work if you don’t have some discipline to keep going.

So, are you ready to give it a try? Please share any good online courses you’ve experienced already!

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Filed Under: Leadership, Personal Development, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, education, MOOC, personal-development

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