Your Presence Impacts Everything

My daughter wanted me to watch American Idol with her this season – from the beginning. So, of course, I had to pick everything apart in my curiosity about people and success. I immediately noticed stadiums of 20,000 or more hopefuls in each audition city, did the math, and wondered what the process of elimination was. I did some research and learned that regardless of what you see on television, the vast majority of those who try out for the show are excellent vocalists. In fact, people who are willing to make a fool out of themselves actually have better odds of getting through round one.

But that wasn’t the part that interested me. Less than 1% of the excellent singers who show up actually get to audition in front of the “star” judges. What I wondered is this: as producers watch rows and rows of these amazing voices, what is it that strikes them enough to move a person through to the next round?

Part of it may be having a good back story, like having broken both your arms falling out of a tree, or coming from an interesting part of the country or having an interesting family. But beyond that I believe it is presence. In this case perhaps it’s “celebrity presence”. You could call it charisma, but it’s even more distinct than that. It’s the ability to capture the imagination and emotions of an audience. Those who have it aren’t just singing in great voices, they are making a connection that “strikes” at an emotional level. It wakes people up and generates energy.

You don’t have to have celebrity presence to have presence. Everyone has some tone and level of presence, but we don’t think about it much, and we often attribute it to personality, assuming it can’t be changed, and therefore not bothering to develop it.

I would like to suggest that developing your presence could be the most important professional development work you ever do.

If you give presentations as a business leader or salesperson, you probably have a sense for when you are “on”. You can see from the faces in the audience that people are mesmerized. If you don’t develop your presence as a speaker, you give away your ability to influence your audience with the clear compelling messages that will get them moving in one direction.

Even in quieter interactions, such as one on one conversations with employees or small meetings, your presence will influence your audience far more than your words. See if you recognize these examples:

1. Have you ever been in the presence of someone who champions justice? In almost any situation they can find a story about someone taking unfair advantage of others. The person is appalled on behalf of the victim(s). The “presence” is that of self-righteous anger and the energy around it can be powerful. Some people are invigorated and inspired to jump on the wave of rebellion and take some action. To others it sounds like constant complaining and they feel drained by the negative energy. These are two ends of the same spectrum. If you want to be an advocate for change, working on your presence can make the difference between gathering a crowd of people ready to fight for your cause, and wondering why everyone is avoiding you.

2. I saw a speaker recently who was dripping with charisma, effervescence, and what I would call celebrity presence. Her stories were dramatic and mesmerizing, and her physical presence was beautiful to match. She compelled about half of her audience, but many of the intellectuals in the group were turned off by a message that to them seemed trite and empty. This is a great example of someone who has polished her speaking presence, and somewhere in the process it got overdone enough to lose some of its magic. The lesson here is that working on your presence is one thing, but taking it beyond authenticity may backlash you with a reverse effect.

Your presence doesn’t have to be big or loud to be compelling. If we take a look at quieter people, they tend to fall along a spectrum as well. At one end are those we barely notice, but at the other end are those who inspire us. They may sit quietly and listen most of the time, but when they say something it’s profound. When we read stories about powerful guides and teachers, they tend have quiet and peaceful but focused energy about them, and people come from miles around just to hear what they have to say.

Many of the most powerful business leaders are quiet intellectuals with a strong presence.

No matter who you are or what you do, working on your presence can help you be more successful. If you sing, it gives you a better chance of passing an audition; if you present, it gives you a better chance of having an impact on your audience; if you lead, it gives you a better chance of being willingly followed.

The two most important keys to presence are confidence and authenticity. Those are common words: easy to say, not anywhere near as easy to live. If you find yourself thinking about how you should say something so people will hear you or react the “right” way, you are already moving away from those keys. The tangible steps towards building presence involve becoming aware of and removing everything that holds you back from being present. For some this takes years of work, but the good news is, for every new level of awareness, you become that much more compelling in your interactions.

If you want to work on your presence, work with a coach who not only understands the concept of presence, but who IS present when you have your initial exploratory phone call. You will be able to tell this from your own emotional response during the conversation. Do you feel intrigued, interested, and inspired? If so you have found your coach. If you feel bored, not understood, or uninspired, keep making calls until the connection feels right. Trust your intuition, and good luck on your journey!

Are “You” Lined up with Your Goals?

As a coach, I help you achieve your goals faster. But I’m less interested in your actual goals than how you can most easily achieve them. And, I’m less interested in how sensible your action steps are than how lined up you are mentally and emotionally with those steps. Simply put, if you aren’t lined up with your goals, you wont achieve them. So my most important mission when I talk with prospective clients about their goals is to ask the kind of questions that will reveal any hidden values conflicts, fears, or attachments connected to those goals.

When we work together, our most productive work will be addressing those conflicts and getting “you” lined up with what you want to achieve. Once you are lined up with your goals, then the action steps are easy to take, and over time, with consistent action, there’s almost no way you can fail. But when you aren’t lined up, no matter how clear you are on your actions, no matter how committed you feel when we get off the phone, by the next session, it’s predictable that you will either be frustrated with yourself for procrastinating, or you will cite many legitimate reasons why you could not take the actions required to achieve your goal. You may even be distracted and want to talk about other things, until after a few months you look back and wonder what you accomplished.

How do you know if you are “unaligned” with your goals? Here are just some of the signs:

1. It takes a whole lot of willpower and discipline for you to follow your plan.
2. You feel that you need accountability – someone to push you.
3. You really don’t enjoy doing the specific actions required to succeed.
4. You find yourself procrastinating and feel ashamed, but that doesn’t change things much.
5. Other, more important things keep getting in your way so you don’t have time to do what you need to do to succeed.
6. You keep changing your mind about your goals.
7. You set a goal and work towards it for awhile and then, without even realizing it, you seem to drift into not working on it, until one day you notice you’ve blown it off for weeks.
8. You feel like if you could only just get this one thing worked out and achieve this one goal, everything in your life would finally be ok (the right job, the right weight, the right relationship, etc.)

In contrast, how does it feel when you ARE lined up with your goals?

1. You may be tired or unmotivated, but you take the action steps anyway, and you feel good about it.
2. You might want an accountability partner, but you look forward to the time together instead of feeling pushed or forced.
3. Taking the steps required to achieve your goal feels energizing and exciting even if you feel scared, even if you fail.
4. Once you get some momentum going on your actions, they get easier, more enjoyable, and you feel more efficient.
5. You can see yourself having achieved your goal, and it feels possible, not like a “too good to be true” fantasy.
6. You know achieving this goal will be fulfilling, but you don’t expect it to make all your problems go away.
7. You might procrastinate or get distracted sometimes, but within a few days you are naturally thinking and focusing on your goal again, and wanting to take more steps.
8. As you work towards your goal, you continue to grow your confidence, even when things aren’t working out like you’d hoped.

If you look at the two lists above, you may notice that there is a distinct difference in the overall feeling and forward motion. When you aren’t lined up with your goals, your emotional state is more conflicted, your mental state is more confused, and although you may take some action, you never gain enough momentum to see results. When you are lined up with your goals you still feel all the same human emotions like fear and frustration, and you still face setbacks, both internally and externally, but through it all you naturally hold the vision, want to move forward, and find the energy you need to do what it takes. So eventually you gain momentum and get results.

If you are becoming painfully aware that you are in the “not lined up” category, don’t despair. You wouldn’t “want” whatever it is that you want if it wasn’t lined up with at least one real value or need. And that means the possibility exists for you to achieve at least most of what you want. However, if something isn’t lined up, you will have more long term success working to identify your internal conflicts and working them out than in attempting to force yourself through willpower to take action.

This doesn’t take as long as you might think. You don’t have to go into years of therapy and resolve everything in your past that affects you now. Just shining some light on your values, thinking about what makes you feel happy, fulfilled, and purposeful, and understanding what tends to get in the way for you can make enough of a difference to get you moving forward.

That’s why, at Aspyrre, December is the month of “self-discovery”. January is a big month for goal-setting, so in December we get back in touch with our core values, think about who we really are, what we most want out of life, and identify what gives us a sense of fulfillment and purpose. Then, as we plan for the year ahead we can make a conscious effort to line our goals up with our strongest values and give ourselves the best chance for success.

There is an exercise I have my clients do each year in December that helps shine the light on what is most important, and sets the stage for setting solid, values-based goals in January. The exercise is on my website, and is called “Your Year in Review”. Feel free to go through the questions yourself for this year, and when you are done, see if you have uncovered any gems that help you line yourself up with what you want to accomplish next year. I’d love to hear what you come up with!

P.S. As I write this at the end of 2009, I am working on a new website, so if for any reason the link doesn’t work – just go to my website and look in the articles section, or feel free to e-mail me and let me know so I can get the exercise to you.

What to Tweet About?

People keep saying, “You should be on Twitter”. Yes, I know. I’m on there all right. But I don’t “tweet” much, because up until now, I haven’t really “gotten” what I should be saying. I mean, who in the world cares when I wash my hair or that I had a great talk with my daughter or whether I’m answering e-mail or talking to a client in any given work moment? And I know people definitely don’t want to read a bunch of workshop or coaching advertisements. So, what to write?

And then, today, the answer began to form around the edges of my mind. It happened when I was writing my weekly update to the Aspyrre Community members. I realized that the update created intimacy, a conversation for those who did not have time to show up for the live event that week. And for the first time, I realized I wanted to have that kind of conversation with more people. It occurred to me that the question “what do I tweet about?” is the exact same question as “what do I write about?” when I think about writing an e-mail or a blog.

Except with my blog and articles, I take time to write, and my readers take time to read.

But the world is changing, accelerating at an outrageous pace. Nobody has time to read or write anymore.

In my recent workshops on time management, participants grappled with the idea that they simply can NOT complete or even begin everything there is to do anymore. They have to choose. In my career transition workshops, job-seekers are learning how to write resumes that will not actually be read unless they make it through the first few rounds of selection. Everything has to be in bullets.

So the pieces of the puzzle begin to converge, as I realize what twitter gives me – a place to blog in bullets.

The whole world has access to the bullets, and yes, they are quite lost in a sea – like “pings” from a submarine. But there’s always someone else on line the same time I am and, the more followers I have, the more interested those “per chance” people are in what I have to say. After reading the bullets, some will honor me with more of their time, and read a paragraph or an article. And some of those people might want to delve in deeper and join the community, attend a workshop, hire me as their coach.

We live in a new world, where people can choose who, where, when, and what to engage with. Twitter is a selection tool that enables people to come together quickly around what they care about, and disengage just as quickly when they need space.

At least I think. But today, I’m going to step in and give it a try.

Your “To-Do” List – Is it a Tool or a Weapon?

How do you feel when you look at your to do list?

• Do you feel confident that everything is contained in one place, or do you wonder what’s missing?
  
• Do you feel clear about what to get started with, or do you feel overwhelmed at how long the list is?
  
• Do you feel a sense of accomplishment as you check items off throughout the day, or a sense of desperation as you watch the list grow throughout the day?

A to-do list is supposed to be an organizational tool, used to keep you productive, prioritized, and focused, and as a result it should greatly reduce your stress. But all too often I work with clients with to-do lists they want to hide from. The sense of overwhelm they experience as they see an unending list that can’t possibly be completed is enough to send them crawling back under the covers and take a sick day. If your to do list makes you feel bad and doesn’t help you work more productively, it may be a weapon you are using against yourself instead of the tool you originally created to serve you.

When facing your to-do list feels like facing an enemy, chances are it has become a trigger for negative self talk. If you listen closely to the words of your thoughts, you might notice things like, “I am so incompetent – I’ll never get all of this done”, or “what a loser”, or “this will take weeks and I’ll never get any time to relax and enjoy my life”, or “it’s useless, I can’t get on top of it – why bother doing any of it?” There are many variations in what you might be saying to yourself, but if the sight of your list triggers feelings of overwhelm, impatience, exhaustion, or other draining emotions, you can bet there is some form of negative thinking and self-talk behind it.

For many people, the energy drain is so severe that they avoid the list and procrastinate on tasks they might have otherwise enjoyed or easily completed. When that happens, your to do list has become a weapon you are inadvertently using against yourself, and it is no longer effectively serving its purpose as an organizational tool.

So, if this is happening to you, what do you do about it?

The first thing is to get back to the purpose of the to-do list. The to-do list serves you; you don’t serve it. Ask yourself why you have a list in the first place? Is it to keep you more organized, or prioritized? Is it to prevent you from forgetting things? Once you get clear on what you wanted the list for in the first place, you can make some adjustments to your list, or you can use an alternative tool that might work better. Here are a few ideas:

1. To keep you prioritized and productive: write a “top 5” list each day, of the five most important things you want to get done. There may be a longer to do list that you use to contain ALL your projects, but the top 5 is much less overwhelming, and keeps you focused on the 20% that will give you 80% of your results.
2. To move through your list faster: Most people know about the A,B,C method of prioritization. A items are the most critical items, B items are important, and C items are things you’d like to do when you can find the time. Add a Q designation for anything that takes 10 minutes or less and is relatively easy. Each day when you get 15 – 20 minutes of open time, such as before a meeting, knock one or two Q’s off your list. You might be surprised at how much shorter your list stays as a result.
3. To get rid of the overwhelm: The bottom line is that technology has changed the nature of work over the past decade such that it is now literally impossible to get everything on our lists done. The people who survive in this new age of information overload have changed their mindsets and expectations accordingly. It’s no longer “getting it all done” that is important. It’s choosing what’s most important now, given the current circumstances and opportunities in this moment, which may be entirely different from what was relevant just a moment a go. Shifting your mindset to a new way of judging your competence can be powerful. Instead of “getting it all done”, if “getting what’s most important done” is what makes you competent, your to do list may lessen its power over you, and go back to its rightful place as your servant.

I’ll be talking about this mindset change in my Calming the Chaos workshop November 17th. To see a list of workshops I’m currently offering, you can always visit my website at

www.aspyrre.com.

Getting a Better Return on your Energy

Sometimes we look at time management one dimensionally, and we forget to look at our energy, which is one of the most significant factors related to productivity. Some activities you do throughout your day are completely draining. You don't look forward to doing them, you often procrastinate, you don't enjoy yourself while you are doing them, and when you are done you are relieved and ready to relax. On the other hand, some activities naturally energize you. When you do them you forget about time. You tend to be more focused and engaged. You do a better job naturally. You feel good about yourself after you are done, and you leave the task energized, confident, and excited to move on to a new challenge.

How much more productive would you be if you could build your work day around activities that energized you? If you could eliminate or at least contain the ones that drained you? And if you could create systems and routines to get more out the ones in the middle?

My bet is that regardless of how much time each activity takes, you would end up getting more results from everything you do. If you'd like to experiment, here is an activity I recently walked Aspyrre Community participants through in our business systems forum. You can do this using a four column spreadsheet:

Column 1 - Write a brainstormed list of every activity you do regularly in your business, daily work, or job search.

Column 2 - Score each activity from 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest based on your reponse to this question: "if this activity is done consistently and well, how much impact will it have on my success?"

Column 3 - Score each activity based on whether it gives you energy or drains your energy. If it is neutral (like brushing your teeth, for example), score it a 0. If it gives you energy, score it from 1 to 5 with 5 being the MOST energizing. If it drains your energy you want to give it a negative number between "-1" and "-5" with "-5" being the activities that drain you the MOST.

Column 4 - Add column 2 and 3 (remember when you add a negative number to a positive number, it's just like subtraction. So 4 plus "-5" is like 4-5 and your answer would be -1). Your results should range from "-4" at the lowest to 10 at the highest.

How to Analyze your Results:

Activities scoring between 5 and 10 - capitalize on these activities. Build as much of your work as possible around them because you get the most leverage from them.

Activities scoring between 0 and 5 - systemize these activities, by having a step by step process or a routine for them. This enables you to do them more frequently with less energy drain, and get more leverage from them than you do now.

Activities scoring between (-4 and 0) - Eliminate / delegate / or at the very least CONTAIN these activities. They will always drain you, so if you can limit them to a short period of time and give yourself a reward afterwards, or otherwise manage them, you will be drained less by them.

When I did this exercise something quite obvious hit me between the eyes, and I actually revised my business strategy as a result. I'd love to hear what comes out of it for you!

Beyond Planning and Acting – the Emotional Game of Success

Sometimes success is easy. You set a goal, make a plan, take action, adjust as you go, and ultimately get to where you want to be. Then you choose a new goal and start all over again. Even in this crazy world when the more realistic scenario involves many goals, complicated webs of people, competition for resources, and constant change, it’s possible to set your mind to just about anything, and achieve it with a clear vision, good interpersonal skills, and consistent, focused action.

But sometimes the success formula doesn’t work. You may blame yourself for not managing your time well, or not having enough willpower, or not getting your priorities straight, but at some level it feels like you are banging your head against an impenetrable wall. I believe that this is because thinking and acting are just part of the success equation.

You see the emotional component of success all the time in sports. The underdog gets a burst of positive energy and performs beyond all expectations. Or an athlete falls into a “slump” and can’t do anything right. It’s alive in business as well. Sales teams purposely generate fun to keep the emotional energy as positive as possible. Leadership teams work on creating emotional environments (corporate cultures) that support what they want to achieve. Marketing teams use branding to create an emotional connection between products and customers. While the emotional game can seem vague and hard to define, we intuitively know it plays a big part in getting solid results.

When I coach clients, I often notice that the “emotional” game they are immersed in has more impact on their ultimate success than their goals, their plan, or any techniques or strategies they can learn. Unfortunately it’s hard to see, it’s not tangible or easily measurable, and controlling it is like herding cats. So what most people do is resign themselves to focusing on the things they can see and control – the mental game and the action game, and they ride the emotional waves the best they can.

But the emotional game is not as hard to manage as it looks – it just follows different rules and requires a different kind of awareness. Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Notice when someone is pushing your buttons. We tend to assume that the other person “pushed” and that causes our reaction. But if you take a deeper look, you may notice a pattern of your own reactions that spans different people and situations. Understanding this pattern is the first step to learning what you need to succeed.

2. Notice what drains you and what energizes you. There is a pattern here too, and once you see it, you can begin to manage your environment, your activities, and your interactions in ways that preserve your emotional energy.

3. Notice the story you tell yourself about a situation when you are immersed in a negative emotion about something. If you look deeper than the actual situation, you will notice that you have a pattern of “explaining things” to yourself that may be habitual. Just realizing that you made up the explanation and there may be other more positive explanations is incredibly empowering.

4. Notice when you are feeling your best- confident, in your element, joyful, on top of the world. What exists that does not typically exist when you are stressed or down?

Some people think that the purpose of emotional awareness is to force a positive attitude all the time, or to always have positive energy. This line of thinking not only misses the point; it doesn’t work. A positive attitude and positive emotional energy are often helpful in the short term, but especially when they are forced, they can be even more draining than feeling authentically negative.

The purpose of increasing your awareness around your emotional game is to help you manage it so you can play your full game more effectively. In your physical game, you do better when you take good care of your body, and take time off to heal when you are injured or ill. In your mental game, you do better when you are periodically engaged in something that interests or challenges you, and when you regularly get a good night’s sleep. In your emotional game, as you spend more time doing what brings you joy and confidence, your level of personal power gets stronger and stronger. And when you find yourself stressed or angry or frustrated, you know what you need to get back on track.

Imagine what it would be like to feel energetic, confident, and content most of the time. Would you be more productive? Would you be on top of your mental game? If you have a goal and a plan, and you are not moving forward consistently, there is a good chance that the barrier you are facing is hiding in your emotional game. Discover it, and you have the key to breaking through to your next level.

Ask for What you Want – and Set Yourself Up for Success

Recently I received an e-mail from Courtney Phillips, asking if she could submit an article to this blog. I don’t know Courtney, but what I do know is that she took the initiative to ask me, and then she answered the questions I had, and she followed up with me exactly as I requested her to. To me, these are most critical components to success: (1) asking, and (2) politely and consistently following up. So here’s to Courtney – I wish her the best of luck in her endeavors, and here’s what she has to say about success:

Setting Yourself Up for Success

When it comes to dealing with clients, there are many things that can go right and just as many that can go wrong. Setting yourself up for success can be far easier than you think if you make preparations and work hard at getting the right things in place from the beginning. Take your business and rapport with your clients to the next level with a few simple modifications to the way you do business as usual.

Visualize the Outcome

Knowing where you are headed is one thing; seeing it happen is a completely different way of thinking. Take time to visualize the outcomes of events throughout your day including meetings, presentations, and even the daily commute. When you actually sit back and work your way through the day mentally, you are being proactive at the core level. Don’t confuse this with dreaming or wishful thinking. Work on using your mental faculties to anticipate your day regularly and you will soon see the benefit of doing so.

Get Time on Your Side

Nobody knows you better than you do. That said, if you are better on your feet in meeting during mid-morning, schedule your most important appointments at those times. If you know that post-lunch meetings aren’t going to work well for you, then change things up. You want to bring your “A game,” so set your self up for success by playing on your strengths. Use time to your advantage and see how your interactions with clients and colleagues transform.

Create a Relaxing Environment

In business, we often spend as much or more time at the office as we do at our own homes. However, rarely do we find offices that give off that “home away from home” feel. Consider that the more comfortable you are in your own office, the more likely you are to be productive and happy. Use subtle scents, colors, artwork, and even soft music to enhance the feel of your office. Keep things clean, organized, and clutter-free and you will soon notice the difference that these changes will make in your work day.

Treat Clients as Guests

Strategically speaking, it is always best to hold meetings on your own turf. Having a relaxing environment to meet in will speak volumes to your clients about the type of person you are. Treat each client as you would a guest in your home and be sincere and deliberate with your actions. Conduct business as usual and rest assured that your improvements will reap benefits soon enough.

This post was contributed by Courtney Phillips, who writes about how to obtain bachelors degree online. She welcomes your feedback at CourtneyPhillips80 at gmail.com . Courtney taught for a couple of years before becoming interested in freelancing, as writing has always been of interest to her. Courtney writes for a couple of websites concentrating on education and health and writes from past experiences, knowledge, and research.