Month: March 2012

Be Present or Be Gone

Accountability Personal leadership

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Key point: to be a great communicator you have to be truly present. Do you know the 4 key principles of being present? If not what do you do to practice being present? If the answer is that you don’t, you likely have some work to do.

A lot of people have asked me about what I think makes a truly great communicator. One thing I’ve always emphasized in responding, is the importance of remembering how you make people feel. However to make people feel a positive connection with you, PRESENCE is vital.  I recently ran across an iconic article written by Christopher von Baeyer entitled “The Power of Presence.” The following is the essence captured in 4 key elements:

  1. PRESENT: The ability to be centered and aware in each moment of communication.
  2. REACHING OUT: The ability to build and sustain an authentic relationship with one’s audience.
  3. EXPRESSIVE: The ability to communicate dynamically and congruently with voice, body, mind and emotion.
  4. SELF-KNOWING: The ability to reflect upon and leverage one’s unique identity as a person and a professional.

If you have consistent feedback and a validated understanding how to really apply the big 4 above, you’re probably a darn good people connector. If not , I suggest you learn more about about how to develop yourself more in this area . It is a never ending development journey. (By the way, great companies like The Boston Consulting Group, put leaders through days of training on this capability.)

Character move:

  1. Recognize that developing an authentic personal communication system is something each of us can develop. It is a skill system and not just something we’re born with or not. We have to work at it.
  2. Determine where you are relative to each of the 4 principles and pick ONE thing to work on (e.g.working at appropriate eye contact, remembering people’s names and something about them, finding our voice, etc.)
  3.  Remember that at the end of every interaction, people will remember how you made them feel over everything else.

4. Make the ability to be a great communicator and people connector one of your core skills.

Be PRESENT in The Triangle,

– Lorne

 

 

Falling Upward

Abundance Growth mindset

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Key Point: we have to learn how to fail in order to learn how to succeed. And, we have to learn how to leave in order to understand what it is to be at home. Constructively embracing failing and departure involves establishing our own framework for personal growth. What is yours?

Most of us have heard of the concept of learning from our mistakes. But, do we really embrace and understand that concept? Richard Rohr in his challenging book entitled Falling Upward makes this difficult point: any attempt to engineer your own enlightenment is doomed to being incomplete because it is ego driven. That is, we are choosing where to focus our improvement. But when we really fail and face humiliation, we are forced to look where we haven’t or have preferred not to. When we are open to looking in our darkest more hidden areas, real profound learning emerges. This becomes real self improvement; not just reading about it.

Leaving involves stepping out of our comfort zone. Sometimes we choose to leave an affiliation. At other times the change is not our choice. But, leaving always involves the opportunity of letting go of validations, smallness, securities, and even hurts that limit us. It is the time for renewal. Some believe that leaving is when the greatest personal development occurs.

Character Move:

  1. Embrace failure and recognize it is going to happen to every one of us, and likely more than once.
  2. Use failure as a mirror. Look and learn where you normally might not see. Accept and let it make you more authentic.
  3. Embrace leaving and rejoice in the ability to renew. Yes it will be uncomfortable. But everything ends. Move on and know that you will develop if your mind set is open to renewal.
  4. Recognize that relative to failure and loss, you don’t really have a choice. Both will happen. As the saying goes “God comes disguised as your life.” It is the way we chose to react and move forward that allows us to “fall upward” as Rohr so wonderfully describes.

Falling upward in the Triangle,

Lorne