Elaine

The previous article appeared on Inc.com today as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

Do you have a support group of leaders you connect with often, or, as I call them, a “mastermind”? Being a member of a mastermind is a powerful strategy used by high-achieving leaders to move ahead quickly on their goals.

A mastermind is a small group of dedicated peers who share and support each other through the challenges of leadership. It provides a mutually beneficial source of inspiration, information, and collaboration for all of the members. Your mastermind members listen to your questions, offer their advice, and help you find solutions. Then, when your problem is resolved, you turn and listen to theirs. This is the essence of a mastermind.

Far more than a typical network, a mastermind is your inner circle—your A team.

Now that you know what a mastermind is, let’s talk about what makes one successful.

Confidentiality. Like your meetings with your executive coach, or your mentor or sponsor, your meetings with your mastermind are confidential. This is a safe place, where you can be a “work in progress.” All of the members of a mastermind are asked to commit to that confidentiality. Your job as a mastermind member is to trust the members of your group to keep that commitment, so that you can be open and forthcoming in the discussions and help create a valuable experience for everyone.

Preparation. A mastermind is not just a conversation. It’s more like a coaching session. To prepare for a mastermind:

• Review your vision, goals, and the concrete measurable results you’re trying to achieve.
• Refresh your action plan, and bring a version you can share with your group.
• Bring questions you want to ask your group, and a clear sense of what you want to walk away with.
• Do that, and you’ll walk away from the meeting considerably closer to achieving your goals, because you’ve moved past some of the obstacles with the help of your mastermind.

Accountability. As long as you’ve prepared for your mastermind, you will leave the meeting with clear action steps. Your mastermind can hold you accountable to those action steps as added motivation to keep up the momentum. Be sure to report back on your progress the next time you meet!

A mastermind is very different from a networking group, a professional association, or a common interest group. While these types of groups serve important purposes for leaders, that’s not the focus of a mastermind. Rather, a mastermind is a group so cohesive that the members operate as one, focusing exclusively on the needs of one member at a time, and then another, and then another. Many leaders thrive with the support of their masterminds. If you focus on building your mastermind with the elements of trust and confidentiality, preparation, and accountability, you will too.

The previous article appeared on Inc.com today as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

Time management is all about trying to squeeze in everything you need to do into those boxes on your calendar. When executive coaches talk about “time management” they’re generally referring to the way that you organize and plan how long you spend on specific activities.

“Good” time management takes that definition further – it requires an important shift in focus from activities to results. The problem with that is that you can end up with more to do than you initially anticipated. That’s why I prefer a new take on time.

The secret to managing your time effectively is knowing what you want to do, and when you will do it, and so over the last few years I have been teaching people to “maximize” their time.

Maximizing your time means clearing away obstacles to increase time and productivity. For example, let’s say you’re going on a business trip. Managing your time would mean you get out your calendar, you slot in all of the things you need to do, you crunch and cramp them into the calendar as much as you can, perhaps even double booking yourself, and sometimes even adding an additional to-do list.

There is nothing wrong with managing your time – but you need to recognize your time limits. All that time management does is get you organized, which makes you feel like you can get more done in a day than you probably can. But is that the only goal?

Maximizing your time means making the most of your time. It requires asking yourself important questions like: What’s essential? What’s my number one priority? What’s the impact of this priority? How does it compete with the other things that might otherwise be on my calendar?

To use the travelling example, instead of just making the calendar schedules and to-do lists (managing your time), you might rather identify for yourself the one thing that’s most important to you to get done on the trip. Carve out your time on your travels to do that action item, eliminate some of the other items of lesser importance on the list, the things that you could choose not to in service of a greater goal.

If you’ve ever been to Europe, you might have had the experience of sipping wine or coffee at a cafe for hours in the middle of the afternoon, or luxury eating in an hours-long dinner with family and friends well into the evening. Europeans may sometimes be as stressed as we are, but they have routines that allow them to maximize their time in a way that allows them to take control over how they want to prioritize their day.

Now the next time you’re on a business trip, instead of scheduling and managing your time, try maximizing it by prioritizing your time. You’re thinking about not how to get everything done, but how to be your best. Being your best might mean that you get in bed early, get extra sleep, wake up feeling refreshed, eat only healthy food while you’re there and focus on that one essential thing you need to do.

You’ll feel a dramatic difference when you maximize your time. Life slows down, you feel centered, you feel aligned, you may even feel like you’re living a higher quality of life that’s very different from the mad dash that many of us feel on a daily basis. Maximizing your time may seem like a luxury that you feel you can’t afford right now, so maybe you might make the big bold leap to maximizing your time with these practices only for one day a week to start. Give yourself the opportunity to experience the difference.

The following article appeared on Inc.com today as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

Gut check: Are you feeling challenged at work?

Are you challenged enough?

Are you too challenged?

To be your best–hitting your targets, meeting your goals, advancing your career–it’s important to get the answer to those questions right. And there isa “right” answer. You need the optimum amount of challenge to stretch yourself (without overdoing it). Too little challenge, and you’re underperforming. Too much, and you’re at risk of burning out.

Finding that optimum amount of challenge is critical for high achieving leaders in fast-paced companies, but it’s not always easy.

• Sometimes leaders and high achievers race so fast after the next level goal that they forget to enjoy the space they are in right now.
• Sometimes the pace is so fast they feel they can’t slow down.
• And sometimes there’s a mismatch between individuals and their managers about how much stretch is enough. Recently I had an interesting conversation with a manager who was highly motivated about advancing one of his employees. He wanted her to get out of her comfort zone, to stretch and challenge herself, to be bold and take risks. He wanted to see her career to take off by gaining experience with diverse challenges. But when I talked to the employee herself, she seemed exhausted. She said, “Sometimes I wish I could just relax and settle into my job.”

To assess your own amount of challenge, consider three options:

The “Comfort Zone”

The “Stretch Zone”

The “Panic Zone.”

The Comfort Zone. Your comfort zone is the place where you feel most comfortable. Here things are easy. You know what you are doing, and you have done it before. You feel a sense of peace, security and confidence. There is no question that in your comfort zone you feel good most of the time. However, the comfort zone is not the ideal place to live long term.

The risks of complacency live in the Comfort Zone. Here you can neglect to challenge yourself, which causes stagnation and can eventually stop growth and progress. If you’ve been in the Comfort Zone too long, you may start to feel a little anxious–a sign it’s time for you to get out and do something more.

When you have been in your comfort zone long enough to build up your confidence and feel like you know what you are doing, that is the time to step it up and move up into your stretch zone. Remember, leaders must constantly work to challenge themselves, acquire new skills, meet new people and say “yes” to new experiences in order to grow.

Remember the example of the employee above whose boss was excited to challenge her? In her exhaustion, she was craving a little time in the comfort zone. She felt she needed time to reflect, readjust, and become comfortable and confident before taking on the next challenge. The Comfort Zone isn’t a bad place to be. Just be sure you don’t stay there too long.

Stretch Zone. Your Stretch Zone is your sweet spot. This is the place to stay as much as you possibly can. In the stretch zone, you set goals that are just out of reach: realistic and reasonable, but challenging. You say “yes” to new opportunities.It is that place where your mental productivity and performance reach their peak. You look for ways to expand your knowledge, your skills and your expertise. You try to improve yourself in significant ways that have an impact on you, your goals and the people around you. In your stretch zone, you are constantly raising your hand, getting in there, trying new things and constantly moving onward and upward to something better and better. The great thing about the stretch zone is that it is energizing, and uplifting, gratifying, fulfilling and accomplishing – all the ingredients that define excellent performance.

For the manager that wanted to stretch his employee, the Stretch Zone would be the best place for both of them to be.

It is possible, however, to take it too far, and that is when you move into the Panic Zone.

Panic Zone. The Panic Zone is where stretching becomes stretched, where risk-taking becomes too risky, where being bold becomes too much. In your Panic Zone you are so far out of your comfort zone that you no longer feel there is a floor beneath you.

The dangers of the panic zone are multiple. You can get distracted. You can move too fast. You can make mistakes. Ultimately you can burn out.

It is in the panic zone I meet too many talented people who are squandering their precious resources–their talents, their contributions, themselves. They are stretched so thin that they are no longer effective.

You can see how this might be the next step (or the last straw) for our overly challenged employee. Stretched too far for too long with no end in sight, she was becoming anxious and less effective than she could be.

As a visual reminder of the three zones, think of a rubber band. A rubber band lying on the table, not doing its job, is very useless, full of potential, but unrealized potential, just waiting to be used. A rubber band that is stretched to an optimum level has a job to do, to hold things together. A rubber band that is stretched too far will start to fray, and will eventually snap. When you’re in the panic zone for too long, you can feel yourself ready to snap too.

When it comes to the three zones above, ask yourself:

• Which zone are you in?
• Where do you want to be?
• What would it take to get there?
• What decisions do you need to take, and what conversations do you need to have?
• Can you define the perfect stretch zone for you?
• Where do you want things to ease up, to keep you out of the panic zone?
• Where can you step things up to move into the stretch?

These are all questions you can ask yourself to get to the perfect level of energy where you are focused, clear and gaining momentum with excitement and energy for the long term.

The previous article appeared on Inc.com today as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

If you feel that you and your business are in a rut, if you feel that you’ve run through all possibility, or if you feel stuck at the same place in your career, it’s all about finding a new path, and more importantly the answer of how to get there.

That answer–the “message”–may come from a flash of insight or a gradual knowing, or it might be prompted by an external event. The answer may even reveal itself in your circumstances. Your job is not to make it appear, your job is to recognize it when it does. Just as you tune your radio through the static until you arrive at a clear signal, you are tuning your mind to the messages you’re receiving until you arrive at the answers you seek.

Here are three different ways of tuning into the message to help you find success:

Drawing out the meaning. One way of tuning into the message is to look for “signs” and draw out the meaning. “Drawing out the meaning” is a technique sometimes used by coaches to help people access their intuition. It means using the environment around you as if it were filled with secret messages to tell you what to do.

For example: You’re on Section Nine of the research report you’re writing. You listen to Track Nine of a CD to clear your head. Track Nine turns out to be very short. Does Section Nine also need to be short?

Ask yourself: Notice everything around you. Observe the details, the sounds, even the smells. What’s happening? What do you notice? Then wonder, if this tiny slice of life had something to tell you, what would it be?

Seek serendipity and synchronicity. Another way to tune into the message is to seek Serendipity and Synchronicity, those twin tendencies for life to deliver enchanting coincidences just when we need them. Serendipity is unexpected good fortune, or discovery by accident. Synchronicity is a timely, meaningful coincidence.
Put them together and you have those mysterious moments in which you accidentally discover exactly the right thing at just the right time.

For example, if you find yourself needing an extra hour and a meeting gets canceled.

To take advantage of these moments when the lights all seem to turn green, you need to pay attention. Whenever you’re tempted to say “it’s a sign!” follow it with the words, “Maybe that means I should…” and see what answer comes next. Then go do it.

Learn to trust your instincts. Yet another way you can tune into the message is to learn to trust your instincts. Earlier we talked about the importance of making room for your intuition; you also need to be able to recognize the messages, listen, and act in keeping with whatever’s true for you.

What does your intuition feel like? Some say it feels like a zing, a snap, or a click. You might feel it in your stomach, your chest, or your heart. For one person it’s a calm, perfectly still knowing. For another it’s a heavily weighted thunk. Another describes a sudden peace; another a taptap of the mind. When possibilities fall right into your lap, you may feel like some invisible force has granted your silent request. It’s often accompanied by a feeling of speechlessness, almost disbelief. When you feel that, the search for solutions is over.

You may be thinking, come on. These are just little mind games. Tricks. Playing with words. And you’re right. That’s just what they are. But they are tricks and games that help you open your mind to new possibilities, new ways of seeing and understanding. These are all ways of accessing information that seems to be around us all the time, but that somehow we manage to miss. To expand your awareness of what’s possible, sometimes you just have to notice.

The previous article appeared on Inc.com today as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!

In my last Inc column, I offered seven credentials that every executive coach should have to help you find the right coach for you. Once you have chosen the right coach, you have another step to take, which is thinking about what will make you the best “coachee.” How do you make the most out of a coaching experience?

There are many positive outcomes that can come from coaching, like setting concrete goals and having a step-by-step path to achieving them in a realistic timeline, finding deeper fulfillment in what you do, and being more productive without sacrificing your personal life.

But achieving those outcomes depend on your ability to maximize the experience. Here are three priorities for coaching that drive an optimal coaching experiences:

• Clarity: As you work with your coach, make it a priority to drive toward clarity. Get as clear as possible on your goals, outcomes and objectives. Doing this step will produce long term benefits beyond the coaching engagement.
• Focus: Once you’re clear on your goals and outcomes, use coaching to make them a focus. It’s easy to drift into deep and meaningful conversation with your coach, but let your coach guide you and get you back on track to the results you want to achieve. A great coach will help you prioritize what’s essential.
• Ownership: Being successful when it comes to the coaching process is about you owning the process. Commit to the idea that it’s an investment in time. Read what your coach recommends. Reflect on the conversations. Take action to move yourself forward.

Whether you’re engaging in a coaching session for one month, one year or even multiple years, you can get the most out of your experience by being clear about your goals, focusing on the essentials steps on achieving them, and putting in the effort to extend your education beyond what’s required. An ideal executive coach can help you do all of those things and contribute to your overall success and fulfillment.

The previous article appeared on Inc.com today as a part of my column, “Behind The Desk.” Look out for new columns every week!