Relationship Before Opportunity

How do you build deeper relationships and grow the bottom line? All it takes is a little reprogramming.

A New Perspective

How much impact could we have — in life, relationship, and business — if we simply treated people from their perspective rather than the lens of what we need from them that day?

Pain Points & Partners

The key is that when you walk in the shoes of others, you feel the holes that have been worn open from life and you experience the particular pains that come from walking in their unique shoes. Understanding those pain points enables you to empathize and understand where they are coming from. Once you fully adopt that perspective, it becomes second nature to empathize and even requires less and less effort to pick up those glasses and see the world through another’s eyes. The truly difficult part, however, is the transition process — the self-conditioning required to reprogram your thinking and reverse priorities from yours to theirs.

Reprogramming Your Mindset

You have to give up the narrowing of focus that centers on your needs, agendas, pressures, and quotas at the cost of making relationship with others nothing more than a transaction on the way to your own wants and desires. We published an article about this very topic recently and freely admit that the self, unfortunately, doesn’t like to give up its position easily.

So, for those wishing to experience greater quality of life, deeper relationships, and a bigger bottom line, put relationship before opportunity and spend time getting to know others and how you can serve their agenda before your own.

#GiANTworldwide #buildingrelationships #Connections #opportunities #newmindset

3 Words to Transform How You Communicate with Your Team

This tool teaches leaders to preface their conversations with the appropriate “P”…

PROVISIONAL means that you’re just thinking out loud. The ideas shared may or may not happen and there is nothing being asked of the recipient.

PLAN means that the stated ideas/goals are the direction that the team/individual should be moving forward toward, but that specifics may change along the way.

PROMISE means that the idea is where everyone needs to focus their attention (and may require dropping things in order to focus on what is being shared).

Those three simple words — Provisional/Plan/Promise — are powerful and can help your team know how to receive what you are sharing with them, while still giving you liberty to be thinking (and sharing) about the future. The next time you need to cast vision, simply starting with the correct “P” can set you on the right path and help your team get excited with you!

#GiANTworldwide #Ginconsultinggroup #Leadership #Communication #ProvisionalPlanPromise

What is the bedrock of your organization’s success?

Below are 8 helpful rungs of insight to climb that will ensure your organization’s bedrock has the integrity to hold your lofty aspirations for success.

Step 1: Explain It

Clearly outline your organizational culture.

Step 2: Set It

Cultural attributes define expectations around attitude, collaboration, autonomy, and generally how behavior is regulated.

Step 3: Teach It

Modeling is the best way to educate team members about culture and expectations.

Step 4: Communicate It

Directly share with your teams what culture looks like, why it is important, and how it connects to your strategic direction.

Step 5: Loop it

Integrate culture through everything you do.

Step 6: Measure it

Evaluation of culture is essential in promoting accountability across each level of your organization.

Step 7: Celebrate it

Every organization has highly-regarded leaders who are the ambassadors of healthy culture.

Step 8: Live it!

Healthy culture attracts talent more than salary or benefits.

Do you question the strength of your company’s culture, or are you wondering how to clarify it?

#GiANTworldwide #Ginconsultinggroup #success #leadership

Telling Your Time Where to Go (Instead of Wondering Where it Went)

“A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went.” Dave Ramsey

ADMIT YOU DO HAVE CONTROL

Admitting is half the journey. When I ask people where they spend most of their free time, however, a common answer I get is, “Free time, what’s that?!” Free time isn’t empty time. Free time isn’t the moment you tell yourself, “Wow, I’ve got three extra hours today that I have no idea what I’m going to do with!”

IDENTIFY TIME BARRIERS

Let’s consider what free time looks like. Use the following questions to think about how you use it…

* Where do you spend most of your free time?

* The last time you had a choice about what you did with your time, what did you use that time for?

CONSIDER YOUR IDEAL WEEK

Another helpful exercise is to think through your week and block out what you would love your ideal week to look like.

PROTECT THE FLOW OF YOUR DAY

Even when we have an idea of how we would like our days to look, our reality doesn’t always match.

#GiANTworldwide #ginconsultinggroup #LinkedInlocalKC #connections #leadership

Good Communicators Know When Writing is Wrong

Do you think you’re a good communicator? Do you ever consider the nature of your message relative to your medium of communication?

The next time you are about to press send on a challenging message over text or email, please consider these three questions?

* Am I being lazy?
* Am I avoiding confrontation and preserving my own comfort zone?
* Do I just not care about that person enough to have a conversation? (Please go deeper if you answer yes to this question.

Consider the Power of the Medium every time you have a challenging word for those you lead. And remember, this isn’t just when you’re at work; it applies to your personal relationships, too.

#GiANTworldwide #GinConsultingGroup #LinkedinLocalKC #Leadership #Communication #Goodcommunicatiors

3 Questions to Help Maximize Your Influence

Most people are in it for themselves.

We don’t like to think that, mind you. We typically consider ourselves, as a whole, to be rather altruistic. While most of us would count our relationships as congenial at worst and certainly non-self-serving at best, the truth is that at the end of the relationship for most of us stands a transaction. There is something we want to get out of it.

Think about it this way…

How carefully do you choose your words or your timing in a conversation in order to obtain the end result you want?

Be honest with yourself. We might not go into the conversation thinking about manipulating things to our benefit, but many times we do just that.

At GiANT, we like to help people discover these barriers to influence by asking three self-reflecting questions:

1. What are you afraid of losing?

2. What are you trying to hide?

3. What are you trying to prove? To whom?

#GiAntWorldWide #GinConsultingGroup #LinkedInLocalKC #Leadership #Questions #maximizingInfluence #challenges

Here are 3 steps for a Stellar Leadership

Leadership is doing the right thing.

Act justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly.

Act Justly:Justice is treating people in a way that is considered morally right: reasonable or proper.

Love Mercy: Compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm. Mercy is a broad term that refers to benevolence, forgiveness, and kindness.

Walk Humbly: In Good To Great, Jim Collins discusses the “Level 5” Leader as the highest level of leadership one can achieve and notes the “level 5” leader possesses humility and fierce resolve.

#giantworldwide #ginconsultinggroup #linkedinlocalkc #leadership #connecting

Words that Heal and Words that Steal.

"Words are free. It's how you use them, that may cost you"

Words can steal Hope, Confidence and even Life at times OR Words can heal by giving hope, confidence and renewed life. As Leaders we have to mind our choice of words because this affects other people in different ways.

Words, Intent, and Impact

Intent + words = the power to steal and kill, or nurture and empower.

Choosing Words Wisely

Our responsibility is to give words that heal, help, and serve. In order to be leaders worth following we must understand how our words sound or land on the person we are conversing with.

Receiving Words Well

Equally important is the way you receive words.

If someone is for you and brings challenge to you, consider their words as possibly helping you by bringing wisdom or discernment rather than simple criticism.

So let’s bring the right words to our teams, our families, and even ourselves, knowing that words linger in the memory of those we encounter along our path in life.

#giantworldwide #ginconsultinggroup #linkedinlocalKC #leadership #powerofwords

Rest: The Secret Weapon for Success

“He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities.” – Benjamin Franklin

Work/life effectiveness is a prevailing table topic across the corporate leaders we serve, with rest as the centerpiece of challenge. To a person, these leaders call out the linkage between rest and success.

1. Rest as an Antidote - Intentional rest is the general antiseptic to unhealthy stress.

2. Deeper Connection - A day set aside for rest allows for opportunities to strengthen and deepen your key relationships.

3. Balcony View - Taking one day of your week to dedicated rest might force us to actually have a personality outside of the work world and broaden relationships outside of your familiar employees.

4. Accelerated Productivity - More work is not better work. Smarter work is better work.

5. Reserve - Starting the discipline of intentional rest today will give access to needed reserves for staying physically propped up during the expected and unforeseen realities ahead.

#giantworldwide #ginconsultinggroup #linkedinlocalkc #leadership #rest

Decision Communication

Decisions aren't always easy to make but as leaders we have to for the better.

Take a look at a few of the practical ideas below to help you get started on the road to confronting your difficult decision:

1. Write out your decision/words first and show a trusted friend. Drafting something in an email that you have to show to an objective person forces you to lose the drama and focus on the facts.

2. Be “for” the other person as much as possible. Let them see that you sincerely want the highest possible good for their life.

3. Communicate in the same way that you would want them to communicate with you.

Be succinct, direct, compassionate, and clear.

4. Reiterate your points and ask them to respond back so you know that they have heard you and understand you.

Similarly, all people involved in a difficult situation are better off with timely, clear, and honest, yet compassionate decisions and communicate.

#gianntworldwide #ginconsultinggroup #linkedinlocalKC #decisionmaking