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January 8, 2019 by Joelle Jay

Reaching Your Goals Through Affirmative Messages

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We know language is very powerful – but what about the language we use with ourselves? You can harness the power of language to change your thinking and change your life.

With one simple change in your thinking, you can start to use the power of language to get what you want: focus on affirmative thinking.

Affirmative thinking is constantly reinforcing what you want.

Compare that to negative messaging, which is confirming what you don’t want.

Consciously or unconsciously, we too often lean toward the negative. “I should not have a second piece of cake.” “I’m trying to give up gossiping.” But that simply has us constantly emphasizing and thinking about the very thing we’re trying to get away from!

In affirmative thinking, we instead think about what we want, over and over, to create a new track: “I want to stay fit and healthy.” “I’m remembering to focus on the good in people.”

Go easy on yourself as you get started; it takes time to adjust our thinking. Just pay attention to the words going through your mind, and if you catch yourself in negative thinking, practice changing those thoughts to the affirmative.

For example, let’s say you hear yourself saying, “I’m trying to cut back on caffeine.” As soon as you recognize the negative message, turn it around and say it again in the affirmative. An alternative might be, “I’ll choose herbal tea instead.” Always look for the affirmative message. On a daily basis, if you pay an attention to the messages you’re sending to yourself, you may find a number of  negative messages, focusing on the problem, worrying about the challenges, looking at what’s not going well, scaring yourself about what you can’t do and don’t do well. The negative messages scroll through our head so unconsciously, but they are constantly reinforcing negative messages.

Train yourself to listen to your thoughts. Think of those negative thoughts, that little grumbling running around your head, as trying to sabotage the success you want for yourself. When you see them, sweep them all away and remember to replace them what you want.

Even though on the surface they sound like the same message, one of them reinforces what you are trying to do. Always choose an affirmative message. If you’re talking to your boss, say “I want a raise,” instead of, “I haven’t had a raise in three years.”

Or, if you’re talking with someone you work with, say, “I want you to write this report,” instead of, “you haven’t even written that report.”

Always ask yourself: What is the affirmative message? Yes, you may have problems, maybe a challenge you may not be sure of going to do well, but what do you want? “I want to do well.”

Now you have the makings of an affirmative message. Can you hear how quickly you can shift from negative, self-defeating, downward spiral to positive message? “I’m going to do well.” Say that over and over in your head and you have an affirmation that eventually becomes reality.

For more ways to create a win-win for yourself, and your company, see Joelle’s most recent book: The New Advantage.

Filed Under: Blog

December 4, 2018 by Joelle Jay

How To Simplify, Simply: Cut Your Number Of Decisions

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I remember one time I read a book called Simplify your Life, I almost laughed out loud – who knew “simplifying” could be so complex! Nevertheless, over time I developed my own (hopefully simpler) ways to simplify your life. I’ll share one of them today: look for repeatable patterns.

Let’s talk about what that means. Repeatable patterns are things you can do over and over again: decisions you can make, places to keep things, what you wear, what you choose, for example. The more repeatable patterns you create, the more you reduce your stress, the less you have to decide – the simpler your life becomes.

There’s actually science behind this. It turns out that self-control is a finite resource. What that means is that your brain can only make so many decisions in a day, and when you overdo it, you can start to tire out and lose the self-control that’s so important for maintaining the details of your life. So the more you use up, the less you have later.

You can preserve brain power by making fewer decisions and making those decisions easier.

Let’s start in your office. In your office if you have 25 different colors of pens, and your brain is constantly searching even just to find a pen. Let’s find a repeatable pattern – choose your favorite pen. Have one pen. Now whenever you need a new pen, whenever a pen is missing, maybe you have a stash in your desk drawer – take one out.

What about in your meetings? Maybe in every meeting there is a discussion that has to take place, multiple emails going around to decide on the agenda and presentation slides. What if you created a repeatable pattern instead? We always use the same agenda template, we always use the same slide template and the same people speak in order.

Ultimately, you can reduce the time and energy it takes to make any decision and simplify the days in your life simply by looking for repeatable patterns – and replicating those patterns instead of having to make the same decisions again and again. There are opportunities to simplify your life everywhere. Simply look for ways where you can make once decision, one time instead of several. Practice the strategy when the opportunities present themselves and simplifying your life may just become a repeatable pattern in itself.

See Joelle’s book The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership for 10 more strategies to become the leader of your own life and reach better levels of effectiveness.

Filed Under: Blog

October 23, 2018 by Joelle Jay

Organize Your Life: How To Do Less And Have More Time

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Many of us try to keep ourselves organized by creating an action plan or a to-do list. At the beginning of the day, you write down everything that you have to do, and then you spend your day ticking items off the list. But when you get to the end of the day, too often there are a lot of things left, and that can leave you feeling like the work is never done.

Sound familiar?

Perhaps the problem isn’t so much that there’s so much that needs to get done, but the fact that you’re putting everything on one long to-do list. You can actually organize your thinking and organize your time just by changing your to-do list.

Having a detailed daily action plan can help you stay focused: It’s called the catalyst. In science, a catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed in the process. For you, your catalyst is an action that dramatically increases the rate at which you achieve your vision – without it consuming you.

The CATA-list action plan is divided into 4 categories:

  • Catalysts
  • Achievements
  • Tasks and
  • Avoidances

The catalyst: To find your catalyst, ask yourself one thing you can do that will have the greatest impact on you vision. The guiding principle for your catalyst is that you know this one item would do the most to get you to your goal. For example, let’s say you are trying to lose 50 pounds. A catalyst might be to go running, or give up sugar. Choose that one thing that’s most important for you to do.

Achievements: These are the actions you classify as highly important. They might not have the transformational effect of your one catalyst, but they are the achievements that matter on a day to day basis. It’s your daily actions, priorities, projects and deadlines.

Tasks: This category is for the actions you like to take, but can’t justify as truly critical, at least not in terms of your priorities and goals. Tasks are typically big time consumers. These are the long meetings that need to be scheduled, like networking events. Maybe they are things you like to do, but maybe only after the more valuable things are done.

Avoidances: These are the actions that have actually very little return. Surfing through our emails and unuseful conversations are avoidances that actually take up the time we need for more important priorities in our lives.

By creating a catalyst, you have organized now your to-do list in an efficient way, in an organized order of value for your time and your true priorities.  

To learn more about how to master the skills of efficiency and save yourself time with strategies like The Catalyst, read Joelle’s book, The Inner Edge.

Filed Under: Blog

September 13, 2018 by Joelle Jay

3 Questions To Ask Yourself To Get The Promotion You Want

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When it comes to getting your next promotion, would you step back and wait for it to be served on a silver platter, or are you the person to take ownership yourself and ask for it?

You can be in control of getting exactly what you want, you can redefine success so that it captures all of the benefits that are important to you, including a promotion, or maybe more money, more respect, more control.

Success means different things to different people. Before you move forward towards advancement, be clear on how you want to attain your aspirations. While you are thinking about your success and promotion, don’t forget to think about what else matters to you. Don’t get tunnel vision with your advancement – keep your priorities in mind for other areas in your life as well, whether it’s family priorities, personal health and wellbeing priorities and beyond. We are always happier when we have balance in our lives.

Always remember: you have leverage and latitude to create the life you want. For example, some people want flexibility in their lives. Getting a promotion might mean getting a role with more flexibility – it doesn’t always have to be about the title itself. Maybe you want more opportunity, so getting promoted might mean more “bigger and better” opportunities. Maybe promotion for you means visibility, having a more visible role.

All of these are ways that different people define success for themselves. So, what does advancement mean to you?

Start by asking these three questions as your initial steps toward getting the promotion you truly desire – you can advance as high and as fast as you want, as you define it:

  • What does advancement mean to you, how do you define success for yourself?
  • What will determine the result?
  • What are the first few benchmark goals that will lead to that outcome?

Expand your sites to a broader definition of advancement. This will open up new ideas about how you can get that promotion rather than waiting around for it to happen to you. Be clear about what you want, prepare for it, expect a positive outcome and persist.

Follow Joelle’s personal leadership strategies and resources to create your vision of success.

Filed Under: Blog

August 8, 2018 by Joelle Jay

How To Avoid Burnout This Summer: Know Your 3 Zones

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In order to be your best – hitting your targets, meeting your goals, creating the vision you want for your life – you need to be able to stretch yourself just enough so that you are moving forward with enthusiasm and momentum. As always, though, balance is key: Too much stretch and you might stress yourself out, too little stretch and you might not be challenging yourself enough.

You can think about your limits in three different zones. Your comfort zone, your stretch zone and your panic zone.

Your comfort zone is where everything feels just right. When you’re in this zone, you can do well at your job and meet your targets reasonably so you can go home with plenty of time to spare, but you don’t necessarily feel challenged.

The stretch zone is the optimum measure of stretch. It’s where you do feel challenged, where you have to step up just a little bit, enough to get the enthusiasm going,  and you have energy and feel excitement about what’s to come.

The panic zone is where there too much to do, too little time to do it and you’re not able to get it all done. It’s where you start to panic because you know you’re never going to make your deadlines, and you’re not going to be able to finish what you need to do because you’re too stretched.

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, or where can you step things up to move out of the comfort zone and into the stretch?

Each of the three zones may be right for you at different times in your life. There are times that you need to stretch yourself. On the other hand, maybe you have been stretching yourself, challenging yourself and stepping up enough, and you need to back off a little bit and retreat to your comfort zone.

There even maybe times when the panic zone is actually what’s right for you. When you have a big opportunity, a short deadline and the opportunity to deliver, you might want to push yourself into the panic zone where the energy is high and you can get things done and done quickly.

Find the zone that’s right for you to accomplish more – you’re going to feel more excited about your work, and you’ll avoid burning out.

Ask yourself:

  • Which zone are you in right now?
  • Where do you want to be?
  • What would it take to get there?
  • What decisions do you need to make?
  • What conversations do you need to have?

Keeping track of what zones you’re in this summer will help you avoid burnout while challenging yourself in new ways, which will ultimately help you to succeed as a leader.

For more advice for balancing your work and refining your personal leadership skills, see Joelle’s books The New Advantage and The Inner Edge.

Filed Under: Blog

April 28, 2018 by Joelle Jay

The Executive Comeback: How to Put Back the Shine In Your Star

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A client of mine and I recently had a long talk about how scary it can be when, for some reason, you’re losing favor at work – or, as she put it, “when the shine is off your star.”

We thought of several situations where we’d seen it happen.

  • One executive was tasked with implementing a risky, high stakes project that put him in a treacherous no-win position. When things predictably became challenging, he felt like the fall guy.
  • Another leader watched as his position was eliminated during an org change. He retained his employment but ended up hidden in a distant corner of the organization, feeling like he added no value at all.
  • Two other leaders actually lost their jobs entirely, leaving them searching without a safety net for new roles and new companies – a painful and highly stressful endeavor.

If you’ve ever fallen into one of these situations, you know how you can easily feel dejected, even rejected, and downright depressed. You can lose faith, question your own value, and even give up.

Or, you can stage an Executive Comeback.

I was pleased to contribute to Joann Lublin’s Wall Street Journal column, “How to Mount an Executive Comeback,” on this topic. In her article, Lublin quotes the CEO of Avnet, William Amelio, who says: “It’s how you recover from a job loss that really builds your character.” It’s also how you recover from any career downturn that builds your character. I believe the opposite is also true: your character is going to help you create job gains and create a much more positive and exciting career upturn.

If you want to stage your own comeback, start by asking yourself some key questions:

  • Why do you need a “comeback?”
  • What happened, or what changed, that has you feeling “on the outs?”
  • What’s your perspective on the situation? What other views are out there?
  • What is the true story – the empowered version of how you’re leading your way out of what could be perceived as a negative situation and back to a place of leadership and positive impact?
  • What actions can you take to move forward – onward and upward?
  • How can you keep your spirits up and your motivation high during this transition?
  • What is your ultimate outcome, and how would you describe it to others?

Answering questions like these can be the basis for a program of personal development: your Executive Comeback.

By looking honestly at your situation, and learning to tell your story, while at the same time building an action plan based on positive results, you are creating your Executive Comeback.

If you feel like “the shine is off your star,” or you want to move to a more powerful place in your organization as a leader, let’s set up a time to talk. You can reach me directly here.

Filed Under: Blog

April 20, 2018 by Joelle Jay

Why We Need To Talk Work/Life Balance

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Recently when I was giving a keynote talk to a Silicon Valley tech company, I asked the question, “How many of you want a better work/life balance?” Every hand in the room shot up.

I then asked, “How many of you believe you have work/life balance?” Every hand in the room dropped down.

Test it. What if I ask you?

Do you want better work/life balance?

Do you believe you have it?

If you are one of the lucky ones who are living their lives with a sense of serenity and ease, be sure to pass on your secrets! And if you’re not, know that you can get there. Either way, often the first step on the path to achieving that elusive work/life balance is to talk about it.

Talk to Your Friends and Co-Workers

            When I encourage you to pass on your work/life balance secrets, I actually do mean it – and if you’re seeking those secrets, ask around for ideas.

It may sound too simple, but I can tell you from experience that it works. The breakthroughs you so desperately want may be only a conversation away. All you have to do is take the initiative.

In that Silicon Valley room, seeing how the participants felt about work/life balance, I gave them some time to talk about it. In small groups they simply shared their best ideas – the ways they, individually, had saved themselves time and found better balance. In the span of just a few minutes, ideas were shared, collected, and adapted around the room. You could practically see the light bulbs going off as participants racked up ideas to save themselves hours and hours of time.

One participant learned how to better set expectations. Her co-worker at the table told her how she starts every meeting by telling everyone exactly how much time she had, and she sticks to it – saving herself at least an hour of meeting overflow time per day in the process. What would you do with an extra hour a day? Could setting expectations in some area of your life help you, too?

Another participant discovered she could save two hours a day by shifting her work hours to avoid traffic. Bay Area commutes are notoriously long, and for a driver whose commute could last 90 minutes each way, a simple change in those work hours could save her, her company and her family (day care!) time and money. Would your company prefer to have you wasting time in traffic, or contributing meaningfully to work on a slightly different schedule? Would your family be happier to have you home more? Would you? If your company is open to flexible work hours, this is something worth bringing up to management.

Perhaps neither of these suggestions fit for you. If you’ve read this far and aren’t getting any new ideas about setting expectations or shifting your work hours, you’ve proven my point: you need to get out there and find your own new ideas. Find the ideas that do help you break through. Want work/life balance? Talk about it. Ask for ideas. Go get your light bulb moment.

Talk to your Partner

Maybe what you need at this stage isn’t to get more ideas, or maybe you already have ideas but just need to put them to work.

One of the key people to involve in this discussion is your partner – your significant other or even your business partner. These are people whose lives are intimately entwined with your own. Are there agreements you need to make? Changes? Requests? Many people go through their days stressed and strapped for time, assuming there’s no way to change the situation, but it could be that if you have the courage to talk to your partner, the two of you can come up with new solutions.

Talk to Your Boss

Just as we make assumptions about what is or isn’t possible with our partners, we can also make assumptions about what is and isn’t possible at work.

Again, when I think about all the leaders I have coached to save them time and help them balance their lives for a more fulfilling and impactful approach, the ideas start rolling.

There was Tom, who brought his baby to work at times when his wife was traveling.

There was Renee, who cut back on travel by mastering the virtual meeting.

There was Kurt, who gave up endless hours of stress, worry and busyness by focusing his role and reconfiguring his team.

As another reminder, the point isn’t that these strategies are the ones that would work for you – although they might – but that all of these strategies came out of new agreements these leaders developed with their boss.

Having a discussion around what you want your job and home life combination to look like is a great step in the right direction. In doing this, you will be able to design the best strategy for your time and find the balance you never thought possible.

Let’s Start Talking!

If you’re ready to create a better balance, try these 7 shortcuts for maximizing your time. You’ll be amazed at what’s possible when you do.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: balance, best practices, joelle k. jay, personal leadership, work-life balance

April 2, 2018 by Joelle Jay

My Top 3 Strategies for Gaining Recognition in the Workplace

As Dale Carnegie said, “People work for money but the extra mile for recognition, praise and rewards.” For many leaders, recognition in the workplace is a reward in itself. They want their good performance celebrated, and recognition by management and peers of their contribution to the organization is a source of validation and fulfillment.

You might want that kind of recognition for yourself. Many of us do. But we don’t always get it.

In fact, many of us feel just the opposite. Unappreciated. Undervalued. Overlooked.

 

You can actually influence this yourself, however. Instead of waiting for others to recognize you or hoping they do, you can build recognition with some effort of your own. Try these strategies:

 

Signposting

To reiterate the importance of performance, the quickest way to get noticed is to get something accomplished that no one else has been able to do. But there’s an additional piece to performance that ensures you actually get your good work recognized – you have to point it out.

One strategy you can use to do this is called “signposting.” You tell people exactly what you did so they can recognize it. It might sound something like this: “As you know, I’ve been working on increasing revenue. I’m pleased to announce in the last quarter I raised our revenue by eight percent.” Or: “You’ll see our team has succeeded in bring in several new clients. I’m proud of their efforts. I’ve made it a priority to focus their attention and make sure they had the resources to get there, and they did.”

Signposting doesn’t mean you brag about yourself and take all the credit. In a team effort, you may very well acknowledge that the team gets the credit and that they made the difference. But you can also make it clear as to who enabled that to happen.

 

Capture the Brilliance and the Buzz

Secondly, when taking credit or looking to get noticed, it’s important to make sure you got the message right. You have to take responsibility for expressing what you want, and you need to be qualified when you do so.

Some people do this badly. They may take credit they don’t deserve, or make their results look better than they are. You have to have the substance to back up your claims. Does that mean a little bit of buzz doesn’t matter? Not necessarily. If people don’t know you very well, they may respond to your enthusiasm and the impression you make. The excitement you create around your ideas can draw attention to your ideas. On the other hand, if you have a brilliant mind and game-changing ideas but convey the message awkwardly, people may get distracted and overlook the substance.

In other words, neither is enough. The goal is to have substance, presented well—the brilliance and the buzz. Some people have exceptional performance that goes unnoticed. Some people get all the attention but don’t deliver. You need both.

 

Know Where the Bar Is

Finally, in order to gain recognition from others, you need to know what they’re looking for and what will count as success. For example, it’s not just what matters to you that gets you noticed. It’s what matters to the person you want to do the noticing.

If you want to impress your bosses, are they impressed by numbers, or do they focus more on stories that wow and inspire?

If you want recognition from your team members, do they value autonomy more, or direction?

Being able to discern what others value gives us the opportunity to align to their needs, which they are likely to appreciate and recognize.

So we ask ourselves, how do we find out what matters to these people? Begin with being perceptive—notice what people respond to and what they seem to value. Then, put yourself in their shoes. Understand what their concerns and goals are, along with what drives them. Finally, you can ask the person directly what’s most important to them. You can view this as a high sign of respect.

 

By taking these steps, you’ll make an impression on the people you want to notice you – developing your relationship with them while understanding more about how you can stand out in their minds.

Find more strategies for gaining recognition and creating win-wins for your organization and yourself in Joelle’s book with Howard Morgan, The New Advantage.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: business leaders, business leadership, personal leadership, women in business, women in leadership

February 23, 2018 by Joelle Jay

How To Define Your Metrics For Success In 3 Questions

What is the single biggest driver for career advancement? In my view, it’s your performance. Or, at least performance is the one over which you have the most control. If you excel at your job and get stellar results, you’ll know you’re positioning yourself to be noticed.

 

There are three questions you can ask yourself to assess the impact of performance on your career:

First, is performance emphasized where you work?

Second, which performance measures will you use?

And finally, how will you claim your results?

If you can get crystal clear in all three areas, you will be doing everything possible to make your good work count.

 

Begin by assessing your company, and what it values when promoting. Does your company place a high emphasis in performance, or does it take in to account other aspects which are more important to them? If your company does place a high emphasis on performance, then you have to decide which performance measures will best highlight your hard work. There are tons of performance measures to choose from, some of which your company might track themselves, and others that you will have to do on your own. Either way, tracking your performance so that they numbers can talk for themselves is very important.

Finally, you have to be willing to claim your results and let people know that you played a vital role in achieving them.

In short, the strategy is this: focus on performance, get the results, and make an effort to point out those results so you can get the credit (and opportunities) you have earned.

 

Performance is one of the key advantages for leaders who want to advance their careers. To learn all nine advantages, check out The New Advantage: How Women in Leadership Can Create Win-Wins for Their Companies and Themselves and take your free self-assessment!

This article was originally published on Inc.com.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: business leaders, business leadership, inc, inc magazine, leadership development, leadership strategy, personal leadership, success

February 8, 2018 by AnnaPatrick

3 Most Productive Ways To Use Feedback

Have you gotten feedback lately? How did you respond?

People fall into a number of pitfalls when it comes to feedback: They take it too personally. They get too defensive. They rationalize it and reject it.

None of this is helpful, to you or your career.

Your willingness to listen, learn, and improve will do more for your perception as a committed leader than anything else. A few simple steps on your part, in addition to getting the feedback, will make the process pay off.

 

A great first step is to come into feedback with an open mind. A common response is to defensiveness. When you shut down, you don’t take in the feedback at all. Now you are not only ignoring what you might need to change or improve but you are also closing off all possibilities of getting the insights you need to learn to do things differently.

Next, treat feedback as exactly what it is: Information. Before you discount any kind of feedback, at least make the effort to understand it and either validate or invalidate it. Feedback is just information; it is not the gospel truth. Feedback is someone opinion of you, wrapped in their personal experiences, bias, and observations. Some of it will be valuable and some will not.

Follow through. You have a choice on how you want to approach feedback—you can ignore it, or you can accept it. Once you have the feedback, you have to actually do something with it – including reflecting on the results, creating a plan of actions based on the information, and following through with the people who gave you the feedback. When asking for feedback, try the following suggestions to make sure you have a positive experience: thanking your participants, sharing what you have learned, describing what you will do now, asking for further suggestions, and following up periodically.

 

Taking these steps will communicate to everyone around you that you are a person who listens and who wants to be your best. The number one predictor of perceived effectiveness is your commitments to your own self-improvement. It is only part of the process to be committed. You need to show you are committed. Otherwise, no one will know. If they don’t know you have received the feedback, what would make them think it was worth giving in the first place?

One last thing. Now that you’re staying open to feedback, ask yourself whether you’re getting enough feedback, and the right kind to advance your career. Feedback, well-done, is one of the secrets of High Performing Leaders. To discover how you can get yourself high-quality feedback to improve your results, be sure to check out The 360 Investment – a self-study course that uses techniques of today’s best executive coaches to get you the feedback you need.

 

This article was originally posted as an Inc Column on Inc.com.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: executive coaching, feedback, inc, inc magazine, joelle k. jay

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