Ask-Corinne-Torres

Make up your mind! 7 effective decision making tips to get you started

Effective decision making means that you can "make things happen," instead of just "letting things happen."  Decision making can be hard as almost any decision involves conflicts or dissatisfactions.  Avoiding decisions often seems easier. Successful decision making means making a choice.  The difficult part is often to pick the right solution amongst very good alternatives.    Yet, decision making is a key component to your time management skills and how you keep control of your time and your success! You can easily improve your decision making skills by:

 

1.    Analysing the problem. Gather as much facts as possible.  What is exactly causing the problem? Why should it be solved?  What are you addressing? What resources are needed?

2.    Listing all alternatives.  Generate ideas for possible solutions. List the pros and cons of each alternative, using your standards and judgement criteria.  Which one offers you the best course of action? Why?  

3.    Drawing up an Action Plan. Once you have made the decision, put it into action and execute your plan.  Transform your decision into a specific plan of action.  Define the steps needed.   Identify the final step and work backwards.  Create specific initiatives at each step to facilitate focus and organise the resources you might need.

4.    Being objective in viewing the problem that demands decisions. Try to avoid making decisions when you are upset, tired, or under great stress. Be objective and specific. Focus on solving the problem, not on your emotions.

5.    Developing sensitivity to the individual responses of persons affected by the decision.  Personalities differ, and best to be aware of the kind and amount of impact on individual persons as a consequence of a decision.

6.    Evaluating your results.   What lessons can be learnt?  Evaluate the outcome of your decision and action steps to determine its effectiveness and create habits to reduce time in decision making in the future. This is an important step for further development of your decision making skills and judgement. Some management decisions can be made on a routine basis until your situation changes.

7.    Accepting the responsibility. After you make a decision, you need to accept the responsibility and consequences for making it. You need to be willing to live with it.

 

Corinne Torres is a Personal Growth Coach, specialising in Executive Management Counselling and Performance Coaching.  More information on our website www.resultscoaching.com.au

Mentoring Matters: your workforce is your competitive advantage

Strategy Mentoring stands little chance of making an impact if the effort is scattershot and there is no coherent roadmap for moving forward together.  Corinne Torres looks at how you can develop and run a successful mentoring program in the workplace, regardless of the size of your organisation.

 

Is there a potential for the mentoring strategy?

Start by researching its potential by collaborating with key people in your workplace.  As the aim of the program is to assist the professional development of another person(s), identify the benefits that would be consistent with your company’s philosophy and goals.  By establishing a framework around learning, you are building scaffoldings to prevent lapses in focus and motivation.  Does your organisation have the support and resources to carry your program forward? What structure would minimise interference with normal working activities?

 

Are people interested in being mentors in your workplace suitably qualified?

Mentoring is a relationship, not just a procedure or activity. Look beyond qualifications and business experience as soft skills play a greater role.  Highly valued is the ability to listen, give and receive feedback effectively whilst providing information, guidance and constructive comments, in a supportive and caring environment. A fine mixture of confidence and assertiveness is required to highlight shortfalls where necessary, and evaluate the decisions and plans adopted by the participant, without taking over the problems and trying to solve them.  Working intuitively, the mentor must be able to work in and around personality styles. 

 

How do you match participants?

Like in every relationship, chemistry is important. Only team-up participants who click when they meet.  The mentor should not be, where possible, the direct manager of the person being mentored, to avoid potential shortcomings in performance or conflict of interest in career management.  You want participants to feel at ease airing difficulties, disputes and grievances openly without fearing negative consequences or damaging relationships.   

 

What skills and knowledge are to be learned / assessed?  What are the gaps?

Because of its long-term focus on personal growth and learning, the effectiveness of your strategy depends on identifying clearly what skills and knowledge are to be learned and how results are to be measured.  What would be the benchmarks for success?  What would be a reasonable timeframe? Arranged over time in a range of contexts to be meaningful, the methods of assessments can take a variety of forms (observation of performance, skills application, written or oral assessment, work placement etc) and will depend greatly on your working environment and the scope of your program. 

 

How do you monitor the mentoring arrangements?

Bring people on the journey with you.  Encourage participants to reflect on the processes in place and the outcomes to identify opportunities for improvement.  Like any other arrangements in the workplace, a mentoring strategy is a dynamic program subject to review. 

 

A mentoring program can be rewarding but is not for everyone.  In theory, its implementation can create positive change and foster relationships within a culture of creativity and innovation. In practice, supporting a mentoring strategy can be draining and fall short of expectations without structured planning and sound analysis.

 

Make Time for Success! 6 easy steps to quickly take control of your time

Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you have to do? Do you face a constant barrage of looming deadlines? And do you sometimes just forget to do something important, so that people have to chase you to get work done?  Eliminate the most common time wasters and you will quickly take your personal effectiveness to the next level.

1.   Focus on results:  Many people spend their days in a frenzy of activity, but achieve very little because they're not concentrating their effort on the things that matter the most. Concentrate on results, not on being busy.  Analyse how you actually spend your time.  Write it down.  You may be shocked to see the amount of time that you waste on non-core tasks!

2.   Beat procrastination: Many people procrastinate to some degree.  Why you procrastinate can depend on both you and the task, and often can be reduced to one main reason: you find the task overwhelming.  Break the project into a set of smaller, more manageable tasks. Start with some quick, small tasks if you can, perhaps start with the tasks that appeal to you the most, even if these aren't the logical first actions. You'll feel that you're achieving things, and so perhaps the whole project won't be so overwhelming after all.

3.   Draw up an Action Plan:  An Action Plan is a very simple yet very powerful tool, and is essential if you are not going to forget things.  Ask yourself: “what exactly do I need to do to achieve this?” Be specific.  Simply list the tasks that you need to carry out, and in the order that you need to complete them.  Keep the Action Plan with you as you carry out the work and update it as you go along with any additional activities or ideas that come up.  If you think you'll be trying to achieve a similar objective again, revise your Action Plan after the work is complete, by changing anything that could have gone better. 

4.   Schedule your most challenging tasks for the times of day when your energy is highest. Most people find they function at different levels of effectiveness at different times of day as their energy levels fluctuate. Your effectiveness may vary depending on the amount of sugar in your blood, the length of time since you last took a break, routine distractions etc.

5.   Stay on course:  Scheduling is a process and you need an effective system to stay on course. This can be a diary, paper-based organizer, PDA or a software package. The best solution depends entirely on your circumstances.  It will show you how much time is available to you and when.

 

6. Manage interruptions: Obviously you cannot predict when interruptions will occur. Do not book yourself out.  You will give yourself some flexibility to rearrange your schedule to deal with urgent issues, and you will prevent stress from creeping up.

 

Corinne Torres is a Personal Growth Coach, specialising in Executive Management Counselling and Performance Coaching.  More information visit our website www.resultscoaching.com.au

What is the key to building trust in business relationships?

(Nothing like a grim weather forecast to catch up on some emails and rewrite an article which I posted last year).

 

Business networking is only as strong as the people within it. As we are all resuming networking with gusto with the New Year, how do you create rapport?  Why is creating rapport such a tricky affair?  What makes you “like” or “dislike” the person you are interacting with? 

Have you ever considered how different personal and business communication would be, if people knew intuitively how to be “in sync” with each other, or “join” a person in their views or “walk in their shoes” or being “on the same wavelength” as the person with whom you are talking?

Creating rapport is one of the one of the most important characteristics of unconscious human interaction.  As developing good relationships with other business people depends on creating rapport, it is a useful skill to master.  But it is not always easy to “connect” with other people.

So, what is rapport?

Rapport is a process of responsiveness, not necessarily "liking".  What does this mean? 

Rapport begins when a person gets the sense that he is being understood that he and the other person are speaking the same language.  It does not mean that both parties have to agree.  They can in fact disagree on the outcome of a situation and still be in “rapport”.  

What is important is the process, how the exchange between the parties happens, trusting that the content of what is being communicated comes from the best intentions. 

Think for a moment about the people in your life, at work or at home, whom you consider to be influential.  This ability to influence you and others is based mostly on the trust given by those who believe they are “understanding”.  True, a business deal cannot be sealed unless there is agreement.  But you can only have agreement between parties when there is a mutual trust based on the belief that each party is being understood by each other. 

Being understood can be a difficult process, as some elements of communication are within our conscious control such as speech and gestures, and some are less obvious, completely outside of our conscious awareness, yet very powerful. 

These unconscious elements, such as the values you hold, the beliefs you have, your purpose in life, or your own “emotionally-laden” experiences, act like filters, which go on “inside” each of us all the time.  It is common to be confused and find ourselves having to “go inside” to understand what is being said.  This is this ability to “tune in” which allows you to share and receive a great deal of information rapidly without needing to fill in all the missing pieces.  This self-exploration is a valuable process because it assists you in gaining more choices in both behavior and perception, hence expanding the limits on how you feel and how you are understood.

So, how do you create rapport?

Creating rapport and having the ability to elicit the belief that you understand is not a lottery.  There are a number of techniques in Neuro Linguistic Programming, you can explore to establish consistency in building rapport.  Beneficial and relatively easy to integrate are learning how to match someone’s body language (ie posture, gesture and so forth); maintaining eye contact, and matching breathing rhythm. 

The theory is that effective communication is an integrated process. Communication is 7% words, 38% tonality and 55% physiology. The words you use are important, of course, but the way you use your posture, your gestures, your facial expression when you speak, matter greatly.  You may feel that the person you are talking to, may not "like you” or may not “like” the words in your sentences or the tone of your voice whilst in reality, this person may be "responding" to your physiology, to the frowning of your eyebrows, or the lack of expression in your face.  

As always, the best way to test the theory, it is to put it into practice!  Experiment by changing the tonality of your voice or your physiology and note the difference in the results you get or the experiences you have.  Change the tonality of your voice by being more conscious of its volume (loudness), its speed (tempo) as well as its tone (pitch).

The thing to remember is when you talk to someone, the desired outcome to effective communication is to be able to establish rapport with the person you are talking to. It's not always easy to “connect” with other people, but creating rapport is a useful skill to master -- for your personal life as well as for your professional one.  It starts with recognizing that each person is different, and by responding to these differences with greater awareness.

Strategies 4 success when resolutions don't stick

By the time you read this, you will have made and, quite possibly, already broken a New Year's resolution. It's a fact of life. 

We vow to get in shape, lose weight, quit smoking or reduce our dependence on plastic.  We undertake to earn more, spend less and pay down our debt. Mending relationships at home and at work, are also very high on everybody’s agenda too.  But invariably, we get sidetracked.

Why don’t these resolutions stick? 

That’s because they are based on wishful thinking, rather than commitment.  There is a gap between our intentions and our actions.  Often, not enough time was spent pondering exactly what you hope to achieve in the year ahead, how you plan to do it and where the resolutions fit into your overall picture.

Kick start your detox

There is always an emotional base and unconscious drives to everything we do or don’t do.  It often helps to have a friend who's made the same resolution; so you support each other.  But your reasons for doing it might differ greatly.  To maintain your focus and motivation, here are a few questions to help you discover and harness your unique motivators.

1)   What kind of New Year’s Resolutions do you typically set?  Are your resolutions money, health, self-improvement, or relationship-orientated?

2)   Why do you set these particular resolutions?  

3)   Why are these resolutions important to you? 

4)   What do you hope to gain by achieving these resolutions?  

5)   If you are procrastinating, what is the downside of achieving your resolution? What is the upside of continuing to procrastinate?

6)   Do you believe you will be happier next year on December 31, 2010 if you are successful in achieving your resolutions?

7)   What will you do to be successful?

Strategies to succeed

To maximise your chances of keeping those promises, it is essential to construct a plan of action to focus on.  Here are some insights to develop practical strategies.

• Write down your goals and make sure they are about you. The desire has to come from within for you to succeed.   When the goals are down on paper in black and white you'll have something to refer to later.  It will be easier to adjust as you progress.
• Be realistic and be specific. Rather than; 'I want to lose weight', make it' 'I want to lose 15 kilos, at an average of 3.5 kilos per month, so I get down to my ideal weight of 70 kilos in 16 weeks.   Think long term and take easy small measurable steps.  If your goal is too big or unrealistic, you might be defeated before you get started.
• Work out the nuts and bolts of actually implementing your goals.  You may have to acquire the skills to achieve.  Consider self development courses or working in collaboration with someone else with the expertise you don’t have. 
• Good habits take time but set deadlines and a time framework to reach your goals. Don't try to do too much at once or you're more likely to fail on all counts.
• Part of the change process is setback.  Take a look at past actions.  You may not like what you see but you can learn from mistakes and setbacks. View them as lessons for growth and make adjustments as you go along.  Avoid perfectionist thinking and be overly critical of yourself and present situation.
• Keep a diary of your progress.  Keeping a record (weekly or daily depending on the resolution) of what you've done well and what you could improve on, makes it more likely you'll stick to your resolution.  Put a reward system in place when you reach a milestone or when you keep your focus after experiencing a setback.

New Year's resolutions can be both troublesome and rewarding. Many people make them, but few make a real commitment to them.   Your effectiveness lies in spending time developing goals which truly reflect who you are and in your reasons for choosing and committing to a structured path.

Focus of this blog

How do you take business and corporate effectiveness to the next level?

The answer is simple yet often overlooked. Business and corporate effectiveness rely on personal effectiveness.  By optimising your own personal performance and your employee performance, you are building a long term solution for the challenges you and your corporation will face. Behind every successful home based business or larger company, there are behaviours that drive that success. 

In the next 6 months, I will be sharing my views and clues on performance, in the areas of:

• change management,
  
• leadership training, and
  
• communications and negotiation skills.

This blog is my opportunity to reflect, to crystallise my thinking and to share my knowledge in a format that is the most useful to you.  Stay tuned!

Has procrastination ever hurt you?

Procrastination is so ingrained in our lives, it has become a lifestyle.  We no longer pay our bills on time, we are always running late.  It cuts across so many areas of our lives; we don’t notice it anymore – until damage has been done.

Has procrastination ever hurt you?

There are many ways to avoid getting what you want in life, but the most sure-fire just might be procrastination.  How many times have you avoided your intended activities by doing just about anything - even 8 times at once?  Is the task too insignificant to be done at any point in time? Or have you convinced yourself that you work best under pressure?  Or perhaps you hold such exceptional standards that you refrain from doing?  Does any of that describe you? 

We are all guilty of avoidance from time to time.  But when days go by, weeks go by and you are no closer to achieving the goals you set yourself to accomplish, it is a sure sign that procrastination has set in. 

There are different nametags out there for procrastinators: the perfectionists, the daydreamers, the avoiders, the crammers and many more.  There are only two types of procrastinators in my book: people who fail to start and people who fail to finish.  In which category do you fit in?

Contrary to popular belief, procrastination is NOT a problem of time management or of planning or of motivation.  Procrastinators are in fact very good planners and exercise great care and discipline in applying stalling strategies or delaying tactics, when required.  Excessive deliberation, inability to make a decision, inertia, paralysis by analysis, procrastination has different characteristics and is all these things and more.  Procrastinators sabotage themselves, by putting obstacles in their own path. They actually choose paths that hurt their performance.  Imagine how much procrastinators would achieve if they were releasing the brakes? 

So, how do you overcome procrastination?  Is there a lasting solution? 

Applying positive thinking and willpower helps but you will go back to your old ways in no time.  Trying to ‘talk yourself into’ doing something that you don’t want to do, is one of the least effective ways of achieving your goal.  Just try it!

Procrastination comes about because our mental programming is hardwired in a dis-empowering way.  In effect, you become ‘paralysed’ by deep-seated limiting beliefs and habits which are subconsciously influencing your willingness to undertake or complete a specific task.  And we all have experienced it at some stage in our lives. 

At a conscious level, we all know what we want to do, or at least know what we ought to be doing. But there is somewhere deep inside us, like a little voice or a force with a mind of its own, that keeps us doing the same thing the same way. Regardless of our intentions, it often feels like we are going in two different directions at the same time. You know what you want or ought to be doing but you keep doing something else.  Does this sound familiar?

Procrastinators are made, not born.  That’s the good news.  In a nutshell, procrastination is a habit, which finds its origin in an unresolved emotion or experience.  Usually a fear but it can be unresolved anger or grief.  Procrastination can be played out as resentment or rebelliousness, and can progress easily from childhood to adulthood.

 

Procrastination hurts and the cost to oneself and others can be high emotionally as well as financially.  Procrastinating can weigh down heavily on your confidence and you may struggle with stress related symptoms such as insomnia, anxiety, irritability, gastrointestinal problems etc.  Procrastination can destroy relationships, at work and at home.  As you shift your responsibilities onto others, people around you can become resentful and lose confidence in you.

If procrastination is part of your life, then you are automatically settling yourself for less than what you could have or be.   Our coaching programs look into removing the barriers that keep you from doing the things you need to do in order to get the results you are looking for.  The techniques we use (NLP, Time Line Therapy and Hypnosis) are excellent for getting to the bottom of self limiting beliefs and then resolving them so that you are no longer controlled by your past habits.  Remember, your habits create your results!