Are you actively involved in social media? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Do you avoid it? I avoided it for quite some time as I’m already busy enough and I didn’t want to burden myself with even more ‘requests’. Also, I was a bit suspicious if this would be all just a big waste of my time. Nonetheless, I signed up with LinkedIn and Facebook already a couple of years ago but was never very active and somehow didn’t see the point. About five years ago, I stopped blogging and Twitter is something that I never even started as I didn’t fully comprehend the concept behind it. Update August 2010: A few days ago, I signed up for Twitter, restarted this BLOG and became much more active on LinkedIn and a bit more active on Facebook. Why the change of mind? Actually, my mind didn’t change that much. I’m still rather skeptical but I reminded myself of an important principle I dearly believe in: “You don’t know it until you do it.” So I decided to ‘do it’ and will see what happens. Perhaps I’ll come to love it, perhaps I’ll hate it or perhaps it will just become a normal thing to do like sending emails or browsing the internet. What’s your experience? Feel free to share here on this blog. Let's keep progressing! Charlie Lang Executive Progress Expert and Founder of Progress-U Ltd. Author of The Groupness Factor Follow Charlie on Twitter
Stop! to Accelerate By Charlie Lang, Executive Progress Expert Corporate Culture & Senior Leadership Expert @ Progress-U Limited  No, this is not another article that bores the busy executive with the appeal to slow down, take a vacation, and recharge the batteries. No, it’s neither an article that appeals to find more work-life-balance by reducing one’s pace. As you might know, a core part of my work is to coach senior executives. Having been in this line of work since 2002, I sometimes wonder why the majority of my clients truly cherish the time with me. Over the years, I learned to admit that I (and my charm) might only be a secondary reason. The people I’m spending time with in my coaching sessions are typically first or second level executives – Managing Directors, Sales Directors, General Managers and the like. And they all have at least one thing in common: they are super-busy! They are often the ones who are the first to arrive at the office in the morning and are frequently among the last to leave. Their schedules are insanely packed with meetings and before, in between and after they need to go through their emails, often numbering 100 – 200 per day. Have I mentioned that most of them travel a lot, too?” When every minute of the day is precious, why would they want to add another 3-4 hours per month to their schedules to see me? Interestingly, while many of my coaching assignments started out with some very specific objective to be achieved, they often turn into a continuous assignment and the specific objective seems to disappear. That seems strange, doesn’t it? Very busy executives cut significant time out of their schedule for something unspecific? And even cherish that time? Let me explain what I observed. Did I say that they waste time with me? By no means! They cherish the time with me because they figure that it makes a significant difference. And as I said, I might be only a secondary reason for that – and secondary means that I still have a role to play… What I noticed is that the executives I’m coaching realize through our sessions - which may have started for a very specific reason - that a ‘time-out’ with their coach makes a bigger difference to how they run their business than they would have thought at the outset. They realize that during these 90 – 120 minutes, something almost like magic happens. They stop, yes, really stop – and think. This is part of my job: to really make them stop by establishing certain boundaries to ensure that there will be no disturbances. Take for example, the case of one of my coachees, the only person who is allowed to interrupt our sessions is his wife. My job is not only to stop them, but to challenge their current way of thinking as well, as to trigger new insights. That’s not where it ends. New insights in most cases require a change in action. Part of the process is ‘to nail the action’, to ensure the coachees actually make specific changes in the way they think and do things that will lead to improved outcomes. The last part of the process is to keep them accountable through follow-up and follow-through in the subsequent sessions. Tom, Managing Director of the Global Sourcing office of a European retailer once shared with me the following after I asked him why he still kept seeing me once or twice a month even after 1.5 years since we started his coaching sessions: “Charlie, you know by now how crazy our business is. You are aware of the daily madness and the pressure we get from both headquarters and our customers. Taking these 90 minutes off to meet you every few weeks is a great way of recharging myself for the daily battle.” “You could go to the spa instead. I’m sure that would recharge you, too, and might be even more pleasurable.” I responded. “Perhaps, but I wouldn’t get the same level of inspiration and I’d probably make more stupid decisions which would lead to even more pressure. So it’s not just the 90 minutes that make the difference, but the impact of these 90 minutes on my daily work. That’s something I can’t get in the spa.” One of my friends at Toastmasters and NLP expert Talis Wong insists: “Practice doesn't make perfect – unless you get useful feedback. Otherwise, practice may make you perfectly wrong.” Let me twist that a bit: “Just taking time off doesn’t guarantee gaining great insights. Most of the time, to make a real difference, it takes qualified feedback, as well as effective challenging of current thinking. ” But why pay a coach for that when you could do the same with spouse, friends or colleagues. There are two main reasons why using a professional coach tends to be more effective: • Spouse, friends, and colleagues are all ‘party’ in your life, so they’ll tend to be biased to some extent. Even if they consciously try to be totally objective, it would be difficult for them to avoid being biased. • Professional coaches are trained in the art of reflection and use various tools to get their coachees think on a much deeper level thus triggering more profound insights Stop – Think – Accelerate! What do you do to move faster? Feel free to share on this blog.
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Friday, August 13, 2010
Stop! to Accelerate
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