How to – Rise Above the Rest People who are interested in getting ahead often have a great deal of terrific information, ideas and suggestions to impart. However, that is not what impresses most professionals today.

The ability to make someone feel that they are the most important person in the room is the skill that is the most rare and the most prized. Listening to others, giving them your full attention, and finding them of interest NOT because they can do something for you, but because they are interesting to you, is a rare and precious skill.

If it’s so easy to do, why is it such a rarity? People today get distracted easily and many simply don’t have the mental discipline to use this skill in a routine and automatic way.

How to develop the most prized and elusive skill:

• Listen. Don’t allow yourself to be distracted.

• Don’t interrupt. This is all about you paying attention to them, not you talking to them.

• Don’t finish their sentences. Let them talk.

• Don’t tell them that you know what they mean. Try to keep your mouth closed!

• Don’t disagree. Avoid using the words “but,” and “no.”

• Stay focused. Don’t let your attention wander. Don’t look up or around to see who else has entered the room.

• Keep up your end of the conversation. Ask good questions. Indicate that you are paying attention by asking for more detail or clarification.

• Don’t try to impress them. This interaction is not about how smart or funny you are. It is about them.

Oddly enough, the more they get to shine, the better you look! You probably have already done this: on a first date, in a job interview, or with the boss. Doing it consistently is something most people don’t do. If you can behave this way all the time and make others feel special, you will rise above the crowd.  7:54 AM •  0 Comments •

How to – Support Improvement When I do “Shadow Consulting” (working with someone on a one-on-one basis) with clients, it’s for a wide variety of reasons: the person needs to create a strategy in order to accomplish a goal, wants to change a behavior, develop a new skill, or have me hold their “feet to the fire” to insure that they stay focused on attaining a new or especially challenging objective.

There are times when their boss, employees, colleagues and coworkers can assist in the process. Improving performance may not be solely determined by the client. Improvement can also be defined by others. If change happens, there are benefits for everyone. In order to weight the scales on the side of improvement, it requires some effort on the part of others in the workplace.

What we can ask of others:

Forget the past
You can’t change history but you can let it go. It requires a shift from critic to helper.

Tell the truth
Without honest feedback, the chance of improvement is severely diminished.

Be supportive
It’s easy to be cynical and judgmental (especially if it’s your boss who is trying to improve his or her performance); but a helpful optimist is more likely to see improvement than someone who is betting against it.

What about them?
If everyone is moving toward improving something, support can be reciprocated. Now people are equals who are engaged in the same effort to improve.

I like to ask managers how they know they are doing a good job. While the boss’s opinion is important, and a job title might appear to be validation, the people who are really in the know are the person’s direct coworkers. In the workplace, changing and improving performance is about more than the person who is improving. It is also about the people who notice it and are impacted by it as well.  12:02 PM •  0 Comments •