"Resolution" of Executive Coaching

While visiting with my colleague, Alan Weiss recently he made a point. Senior executives running organizations know what to do, its just a matter of doing it. For example, he mentioned, we don't need another book on how to lose weight, we need resolution.  He defines resolution as focus, discipline and accountability. An executrive coach should do very little "telling." You know what to do. An executive coach delivers:

1. focus = creation of additional options in order to take action in a finite period of time (the length of the coaching program)
2. discipline = a schedule to create rigor
3. accountability = someone else knows your objective and delivers the amount of support that is helpful as you propel yourself forward.

Seeing is Believing and Buying

I started life with a new dentist today and the visit brought something back into focus. You have to SHOW value. She took the usual x-rays and something new - color photos, including one with a "tooth shade sample" to document the color of my teeth at this point in time!

Brilliant....

Using a large, color, flat-panel monitor, she walked me through the x-rays and photos and made suggestions along the way. It would be hard to refuse scheduling treatments for a cavity and a cracked filling I could suddenly feel as a result of the images before my eyes. I scheduled a visit to fix them both.

The main reasons?

Before I answer, harking back to the "olden days" when the dentist only had a small mirror on the end of a skinny metal handle. The dentist contorted in all manner of ways to help you see a problem, usually without much success. If the problem didn't hurt at the moment, it was too abstract and easier to delay taking action.

Many of us can really help our client prospects. The challenge is SHOWING them. Many of us do a poor job of making the abstract more concrete through asking good questions to draw-out emotions around a problem, using process visuals and/or diagnostic tools or creating products/services the prospects can experience.

The reasons I scheduled a visit to fix the problems with my teeth were she asked me questions about what I wanted in regards to my smile, she showed me photos of the problems and she explained a treatment plan for my particular situation to get my smile back to where I want it.

New Challenge or Old Hat, It Doesn't Matter One Bit

I produce a coaching group for raising the bar on business development and they are called Business Development Leadership Groups and they are delivered via WebEx TeleForums.

The participants are experienced executives that are self-motivated and the energy level in the last TeleForum was uncharacteristically low. It may have been that particular day, the content or the business development coach (me), but something wasn't right, nobody was motivated...

In a follow-up email, I shared the following with the participants:

I know how to swim. I've been swimming for 38 years. I started swimming in a class with a coach for exercise back in January. I started at the beginning in terms of learning how to swim laps properly. I committed to start at square-one and notice, observe & learn something I didn't know. I'm happy to report I've raised the bar. Here's what I've learned over several months of focusing on how I swim:

• turn my head to one side instead of raising my head straight-up to breathe (and sinking in the process). I thought I was turning my head and I wasn't.
• extend my right arm out in front of my body as far as I can reach and simultaneously rotate my body to my right side to turn my head to the left with minimal movement to take a breathe 
• Rotate my body back to the left after taking my breathe (about 45 degrees) and "climb" or "pull" myself through the water like I'm crawling on my belly to avoid gunfire and make it back across enemy lines as fast as I can. 
• When I lose my rhythm (mainly because I tire while swimming for an hour straight), I slow-down, check myself and make some changes in order to speed-up again. 

If you start reading your own headlines about how good you are, you're sabotaging yourself. You have to reach-down, find your drive and keep the right attitude. Even if you are doing the vital few things that produce the greatest results, there is always opportunity (the vital few things inside of those vital few things).

If you stop striving to become better for a day, you notice. If you stop for two days, your colleagues notice. If you stop for three days, your competition notices....

Bitcoins are Proof You Can Create Reality

A Bitcoin is a fast-rising, global currency (its value has increased 200,000% in the past year).

• It is electronic money that can change hands without the need of a financial institution.
• More than $500,000 of the coins changed hands in a recent 24 hour period
• Bitcoin operates as a peer-to-peer network, there is not "site" so it can't be stopped if someone wanted to stop it