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Back to School (or, What I did on my summer vacation)

It’s a gray Monday in the Pacific Northwest, one that looks suspiciously like fall. I’m back from my summer vacation (as many are, a bit of a working vacation but hey—it was Costa Rica!) and am working to caught up and get back in gear.

Lots of long flights meant lots of time for reading. One book that made a deep impression on me was Coaching the Artist Within. This highly readable, immensely practical book sets out to teach you a dozen essential skills. Skills that not only will help you to be more creative, but will get you up off your duff and into meaningful pursuits, no matter what the arena.

The first skill is becoming your own self-coach. Because I already am a coach, the first exercise of the book was particularly interesting and surprisingly rewarding for me. The idea is that you alternate roles in a dialog fashion. First, you are you, bringing forth the issue you wish to be coached on, just as you would with an actual, live coach. Then, you switch chairs (the author suggests you do this literally), and speak to yourself as your coach.

I dove into the self-coaching exercise with a nagging issue for me: finishing my novel. While I won’t go into details here, the upshot is that I have a solid story with a large gap in it. I’ve been stuck in incompletion for an embarrassingly long time. So I sat down with myself as coach as used my journal to capture the back and forth. After four pages (longhand), I had worked out some areas of wrong thinking and created a plan for how to get back to work. (And so far, I’m please to report, the plan seems to be working.)

The exercise does a great job of suggesting the entry point into the self-coaching dialog. However, from my own perspective as trained coach, there are some pieces missing. If you’d like to work as your own coach, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

• Structure your conversation with yourself. This means putting the dialog into a specific order, beginning with a simple statement of what you want to work on and what outcome you want from the conversation. Every coaching conversation begins this way: What do you want to work on today? What would you like to walk away with? By being very specific here, at the beginning, you set your agenda.

• Hold your agenda. If you were working with someone else as your coach, she would keep you from wandering off on tangents. As your own coach, it’s your job to keep yourself on topic. Writing your dialog out will assist you in doing that, as you can read back over each statement and see where you’re starting to slip off topic.

• Be honest with your responses. Self-coaching is useless if you let yourself remain in denial about what you’re doing (or not doing) and the obstacles that are holding you back. Find out what you are pretending not to know; go for the heart of the matter.

• Ask yourself open-ended questions that begin with “what” and “how.” This, for me, was one of the most difficult coaching skills to master. But once you get in the groove with what and how questions, you can really make progress very rapidly. You'll notice I don't suggest asking “why?” I am not a fan of asking why because when someone doesn’t know why, they’ll come up with some answer and get stuck with it. Often, there is no good answer for why—so skip it. Instead, listen for a way to ask a question based on what or how. Here’s an example.

Me: “I’m not working on my novel. I’m stuck and I don’t know how to fix it.”

As self-coach: “Fix it? What about your novel is broken?”

Ultimately, the job of a coach is to use inquiry to allow the client to see themselves from a more objective viewpoint. By using the same skills that a coach would use, you can take yourself from stuck to starting and from angst to art.

For me, the breakthrough moment came when I wrote that I had to fall in love with the book all over again to work on it. As soon as I wrote that sentence, I recognized it as pure BS. The next coaching question was golden, “What do you have to do to work on it?” And the answer, of course, was blindingly simple: show up every day. Duh. But that’s what a good coach does—she gets you to take off the blinders and see what’s right in front of you, then provides accountability so you follow through.

Ready to give it a try? All you need is a few sheets of paper (longhand will slow you down so you can really see and hear your responses and think your questions out more carefully) and about 30 minutes of uninterrupted time. Here’s the first coaching question to get you started: What do you want to work on today?

Four Hour Work Week

Imagine that you could cut your work hours down to a mere four hours per week and make three times the amount you’re making now. Think of the things you could do with all that free time, the life you’d enjoy. Sound impossible? Not according to Tim Ferriss.

In his best selling, and provocatively titled, book The 4-Hour Work Week, Ferriss details how he has created tons of passive Tim-not-there income and freed up most of his time to create his amazing lifestyle of travel and adventure. He claims that anyone, no matter what their job, can duplicate what he’s done. There is a catch. Two, in fact. First, you have got to be extremely disciplined (you might even say selfish) and you’ve got to have a very healthy set of…courage.

Some of Ferriss’ methods are sound, though. Even if you only implement some of his suggestions on managing work flow (like screening interruptions and email) and put some of his outsourcing tools to work, you’ll find that you save tons of time. I’ve already starting exchanging emails with one of the virtual assistant firms he recommends. His chapters on how to automate your income were, to me, worth the price of the book.

The 4-Hour Work Week won’t appeal to everyone. Ferriss often comes across as flippant, shallow, cocky, and downright arrogant. You may not find everything he says he does believable. And maybe you like your work too much to cut down to only a few hours a week. As for me, I’m working on farming out tasks I don’t enjoy so I can spend more time doing what I love--coaching great people like you to get good things done!

Be a More Successful Manager

Ten Steps to Be a Successful Manager by Lisa Haneberg is a highly practical guide for anyone who wants to excel in their role of manager. Packed with practical advice and written in a clear, engaging style, Haneberg outlines an action plan for success.

Here are some of the features that make this book valuable:
::Tools. Many chapters have a “Tool” section. These range from a list of questions you can use to discover and clarify what’s expected of you to ways to spark collaboration by your reports.
::Pointers. These handy sidebars are sprinkled throughout the book and flag information you need to know.
::Worksheets. Lisa provides lots of handy worksheets to help you tackle everything from planning your week to determining which metrics to measure. As an aside, in Worksheet 3.1, the very first question is one that every manager should ask to prevent employee disengagement!
::Tune Up. Every chapter ends with a section called “Tune up and Realign.” This summary reminds the reader to focus on what’s most important to implement each step effectively.

All in all, this is a great, well written book. Lisa has a wonderful style which speaks with authority without being preachy. She comes across as a mentor who wants to see you succeed and knows exactly how to help you go about doing that.

It was a great honor and thrill to be selected as a back-cover endorser for this book! Thanks, Lisa!

Do you want to cross the dip?

First, intention; then enlightenment; then practice; then teaching--G. Norek, MD.

When the going gets tough, and it becomes evident that you might never succeed, you’ve hit “the dip.” The Dip, also the title of Seth Godin’s newest book, is that point which defines winners from losers and separates the best from everyone else. As an event, the dip happens when the going gets tough and it becomes very difficult to tell if success is even a possibility. What Seth argues is that you should learn how to discern a dip (which means success is available and you should amp up your effort) from a dead end (which indicates that no amount of effort will create success). (If you need help recognizing your dead end, try this simple test. If you have stopped making progress and find yourself hitting up against the same obstacle over and over, that’s a hint that you’re at a dead end.)

During the interview with Seth I sat in on yesterday, he argued that to cross the dip that you shouldn’t aim to be well-rounded. Instead, you should be rigorously singular. In other words, you should find your hedgehog concept and run with it. (The hedgehog concept was made famous by Jim Collins in Good to Great.) The mistake, or at least one of them, is to have too many goals, too many North Stars, too many ambitions. If you want to be a great neurosurgeon, Seth might argue, it doesn’t matter if you can also play good tennis or keep up with world affairs. The only thing that matters is that you have a relentless focus on becoming the best at your craft and nurturing it above all else.

Very few people cross the dip. A recent article about Tiger Woods in Sports Illustrated tells why. In the words of poet Kenji Miyazawa, “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” Very few people are willing to embrace pain of any kind, much less leverage that pain to vault across the dip to access their best life, their true greatness. That is the reason why fierce animals like Tigers are rare.

Whereas Seth Godin is telling people when and how to quit, I want you to know that there are ways to cross the dip. Dip crossing is a skill. Skills are transferable knowledge; they can be learned. So here is dip-crossing skill number one: determine your single intention. The one thing you want that will allow you to be the very best, beyond all others in the world. (If you need some help, start reading 40-Days Forward.) If you know what your intention is and you know you can get there--even if you  don’t know how--I can teach you how to cross the dip. Tune in tomorrow for next dip crossing lesson.

Little Green Book of Getting Your Way

Buy Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Green Book of Getting Your Way
on amazon.com and get hundreds of dollars of
free stuff from Jeffrey and 33 other top business leaders
around the world… including us!

The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way is the newest addition to Jeffrey’s best selling Little Book Series, and gives you the critical tools you need to speak, write, present, persuade, Influence, and sell your point of view to others. The Little Green Book is written for the professional salesperson, the entrepreneur, the small business owner, the sales leader, the sales executive, and anyone who wants to learn the art of positive persuasion that can be applied in every aspect of their business and personal lives.

Buy the book on amazon.com, send your receipt to myway@gitomer.com and you win! You will receive hundreds of dollars worth of downloadable e-books, white papers, articles, audio MP3s, video MP4s, reports, and chapters of best selling books being offered by 34 top sales, marketing, publishing, communications, public relations, and business growth leaders. It’s that simple, and that valuable.

To buy the book now, go to Amazon.com.

My name is Tara and I have a book problem.

I am powerless over my book buying. My library has become unmanageable. Yes, I confess. I am a bookoholic. There are books all over the place. Stacked by my desk, overflowing the shelves, on the tables, in the bathroom, everywhere. I fed my habit again this week.

The first book I bought was Threshold Resistance by A. Albert Taubman. I saw Taubman on CBS Sunday Morning last week and immediately knew that I had to read his memoir. Taubman is the man who created or inspired most of America’s largest malls. He began his trek into “luxury retailing” back in 1950. He started with next-to-nothing and now he’s a billionaire. He also has the distinction of having been imprisoned in 2002 for a crime that I’m convinced he didn’t commit. From what I’ve read and seen so far, Taubman looks like a portrait of a level five leader and a highly resilient man. The book is well written and gives an inside perspective of what it’s like to succeed, fail, and succeed again. Highly recommended.

I also finally got around to buying Made to Stick this week. Chip Heath and Dan Heath pick up where Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point leaves off, asking and attempting to answer that age-old marketing question: what makes a great idea memorable? The brothers write in a bantering, conversational style. One of the first points of the book is how sticky (i.e., memorable) all these urban legends are. You know which urban legends I’m talking about. These are the ones your well-meaning mom forwards to you every so often: the kidney thieves, the do-not-call list for cell phone numbers, the Glade Plug-ins fire hazard, the don’t use cruise control in the rain--oh wait, that one was true. (To check on the validity of your favorite rumor, see snopes.com.) The Heaths argue that there are six principles for great, sticky ideas: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credentialed, Emotional, Story (which spells SUCCESs).

Over the weekend, I’ll be recovering from a cold and reading Psychological Capital which explains how to increase your self-efficacy (i.e., confidence in success), optimism, perseverance and hope, and resiliency. This one came from the library but yes, I will probably buy again. Just visiting amazon.com started the cravings again. Damn that one-click button!

Where is your boundary?

Branding a business is really tough. First, you’ve got to decide what you want to be known for. Then, you’ve got to create a brand identity, something that makes your business really stand out from the rest of the herd. Blogging can be a powerful branding tool. A blog lets you create an identity through the language you use, the subjects you tackle, and the voice your write in. Not only that, but a blog allows you to reach people all over the world.

The problem is, not everybody will like you, your blog, and your brand. As I pointed out in an earlier post, that may be exactly the point. In fact, that’s almost exactly what Michael Port tells you to do in Chapter One of Book Yourself Solid. He says you need to develop a “velvet rope policy.” In other words, you need to define, very explicitly, what your boundaries are, especially in terms of the clients you want to attract and work with.

To create your boundaries, the first thing Port asks you to do is to consider what your deal-breakers are. What behaviors are beyond the pale? What irritates you, drives you crazy? These are the characteristics of the clients you do not want. These traits define your “red velvet rope that protects you and your business.”

From a branding perspective, this is where things get a bit itchy. Do you set your boundaries in public say, on your blog? Responses to this question are mixed. If you believe the authors of Made to Stick, the answer is probably yes. In their recent piece in Fast Company, Dan and Chip Heath argue that polarizing your audience is a good thing. Drive away the ones who don’t like you! But being controversial (or even different) can be pretty darn scary in light of some of the recent nastiness that some bloggers have been subjected to.

On the other hand, if you really dislike arrogant, lazy, stupid people who lack initiative, can’t problem solve, and have the personality of a wet dishrag, wouldn’t it save a lot of time, money, and mutual frustration to just tell them so? The flip side is to focus on what you do want, which is probably safer but maybe not as effective. Either way, you’ve got to be mentally prepared to be disliked, maybe even attacked. One thing I know for sure is when you’re successful, somebody will hate you for that reason alone. Sucks, but true.

The bottom line is I honestly don’t want to work with certain kinds of people. I may end up stepping on some toes to make sure that I don’t have to deal with people whom I’m not meant to serve and who would be better off working with someone else. Port says that you have a moral obligation, a duty, to serve people who need you. To do otherwise is to play yourself small and to deny “your” people the opportunity to reap the benefits that only you can provide to them. To me, running off the wrong clients to open up room for the right ones seems a small price to pay.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Poor old Punxsutawney Phil, the national groundhog spokesperson for the United States, looked rather shell shocked this morning when he made his annual appearance to pronounce his forecast for the next six weeks of winter. Here in the Pacific Northwest, it's been sunny for several days in a row. Any marmots (the western cousins of groundhogs) living here will certainly be seeing their shadows and predicting more winter weather.

Up on Mt. Hood a couple of days ago, the pleasant conditions allowed hikers to ascend up to Hogsback Ridge where one of the climbers was badly injured after being it by falling ice. You may remember that Mt. Hood was the site of an intense search for three missing climbers in December (only one of whom was found, deceased).

At the moment, I'm reading a fantastic book, Deep Survival, which details, among others, the story of an earlier (much worse) accident at Hogsback Ridge. If you've ever looked at stories like those of the Mt. Hood climbers or James Kim and wondered "what were they thinking," this is the book for you. Laurence Gonzales writes beautifully and spins tale after tale of survival in the face of grim odds. The stories are simultaneously sobering and inspiring. As someone who hikes in backcountry relatively often, I found myself wondering how I'd react under the circumstances Gonzales describes.

Ride along with Steve Callahan, adrift at sea for 65 days, or wander the wilderness with Ken Killip who was lost in Rocky Mountain National Park for five days. Gonzales explains both the psychology and the neuroscience behind the behavior of people in extreme circumstances with lucid prose, compassion, and humor. The book is packed with great quotes that apply not just to survival, but to daily living in less extreme circumstances; here are three:

Plan the flight and fly the plan. But don't fall in love with the plan. Be open to a changing world and let go of the plan when necessary so that you can make a new plan. Then, as the world and the plan both go through their book of changes, you will always be ready to do the next right thing.

Whether a deity is actually listening or not, there is value in formally announcing your needs, desires, worries, sins, and goals in a focused prayerful attitude. Only when you are aware can you take action.

Chance is nothing more than opportunity, and it's all around at every turn; the trick lies in recognizing it.

If you're interested in how adversity can shape people into better human beings and in becoming more resilient yourself, then read this book. I'll never look at a simple walk in the woods (or the big city) in the same way again.

Speaking of dealing with adversity, this month's free teleclass is Bounce Back: Improving your Resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from difficulty When an obstacle shows up, resilient people find a way around, over, or through it. Personal coach, Tara Robinson, will talk about how you can learn the skills of resilient people to become more successful in today’s shifting markets and beyond. The class will be  taught via phone bridgeline on February 22, 2007 at 7 pm Eastern (4 pm Pacific). Space is limited; reserve your spot now. To read some feedback on Tara's previous presentations, click here.

An Interview with Novelist Susan Straight

Susan Straight is a busy woman. A single mom with three daughters, she juggles the kids’ basketball practice, teaching, book events, and writing. The first time we talked, her shaggy black retriever, Fantasia, was trying to get her attention. During our second conversation, she was loading the dishwasher. “I don’t get writer’s block,” she said. “I have time block.”

As she described her daily life to me, it’s clear that sorting through the competing demands for her attention are her norm. Back when her oldest daughter (now 17) was small, Susan was full of desire to write but very short on time. Her daughter just wouldn’t take naps. About the only time during the day that the baby slept was when she was riding in the stroller. Susan would push the stroller until the baby nodded off and then she’d write longhand on legal pads. It didn’t matter where she was. “I’d try to find a church so I’d have a bench to sit on, but if there wasn’t anywhere to sit, I’d write anyway. Sometimes,” she said, “I’d sit on the curb.”

With six novels (and another on the way), critical acclaim, awards and finalist honors for a National Book Award, you’d think things would be different now. Not so. Susan estimates that 70% of A Million Nightingales (Pantheon Books, 2006) was written in her van. Forty-five minutes waiting for a daughter’s basketball practice to end? She wrote three pages. Even with carpal tunnel syndrome, everything is written by hand. She’s gotten three voice recorders as gifts over the years but just can’t use them. There is something about the physical processing of the words. Nothing else will do.

Wherever and whenever an idea and a moment coincide, Susan grabs a scrap of paper and writes. The ubiquitous subscription cards from magazines, church bulletins, napkins, or just about anything that will accept ink can become part of the manuscript. Even now, she has three paragraphs from her church’s bulletin dated January 26, 2003. Those paragraphs, transcribed into the computer, are now part of A Million Nightingales. She calls her method “highly inefficient.”

From my own perspective of struggling to find time to finish my own novel, I see her method as just the opposite of inefficient. Susan doesn’t wait for the perfect moment to write. Instead, she makes any moment useful. “About all I do,” she said, is “write and parent.” It sounds like she’s having success in both arenas. That daughter that was so reluctant to take naps is a intelligent, vital young woman. Susan’s younger daughter recently complained that the Christmas vacation was too long because school is so much fun for her.

Even though Susan is a master at grabbing the odd moment and producing something from it, she insists that she have a whole day once a week for writing. She uses that time to process what she’s done over the last six. But the night before that, “I start thinking about it.” She takes her notebook to bed with her, reads, and thinks. The next day she examines what she’s got. A snippet of dialog captured on a napkin might tip her off that more backstory is needed to set up the conversation. She listens to music and looks at photos, reads, and just thinks. Once upon a time, Susan knew that she was going to have Fridays to process but now, it’s catch as catch can.

One of Susan’s strengths is her self-described “desperation” to write. For Susan, not writing is just unacceptable. She’s got too much to say. Besides that “it’s such a high.” I know what she means. There is something magical that happens when fiction writing is going well. Characters and scenes and events show up on the page and surprise the writer. While working on her new novel, she got just such revelation. “Two of my characters are gay,” she explained. “I didn’t know it until one put his hand on the other man’s wrist. I said, ‘Oh my goodness!’”

Another strength that Susan possesses is her ability to be fully engaged with her story no matter what she’s doing. Driving, walking, doing the laundry, Susan is thinking, thinking, thinking about her characters and what’s happening to them. One thing her students want to do is “dive right in and write.” But you can’t do that, she says. “You have to think about your story, let it live in your head all the time.” That engagement is what makes the story and its characters real. All that walking around and thinking about it is what creates the passion that shows up on the page later.

Susan doesn’t just depend on her imagination. It’s imagination and fact and experience all combined. A Million Nightingales was her first historical novel. She read over 150 books in preparation for the manuscript. She called on memories of stories that people had told her. Susan traveled to Louisiana and soaked up the atmosphere of Opelousas and Plaquemines Parish. “Louisiana,” she says, “is not like anywhere else in the world.”

All preparation aside, it’s Susan’s drive, discipline, and determination that get her words on the page. She writes on themes of mother’s love and abandoned children, racism and social justice and creates a living, breathing history. That history goes on, perhaps, to create empathy in the reader, to grant someone the rare and precious experience of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes and being changed by it. Heady and weighty stuff, that. Yet, Susan is humble and self-effacing and sweet. She seems to hold herself and her work very gently.

By the time our first conversation had ended, Fantasia had settled down and stopped asking for Susan to let her out to play. But before we said goodbye, someone else was looking for her attention. The neighbor working outside needed to talk to her about the fence he was building. “If you need to ask another question, let me know,” she said as she got ready to hang up. She was on her way back into the busyness of her life, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she scribbled a few sentences before heading out the door.