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In the book Executive Stamina: How to Optimize Time, Energy and Productivity to Achieve Peak Performance, authors Marty and Joshua Seldman make the case that by “optimizing your effectiveness,” you can enjoy a “long, balanced and successful career.”

The book might also be called Get Your Act Together, Dude!

Marty, the father, is an executive coach and clinical psychologist, skills that must come in handy in many boardrooms. His son, Joshua, is an endurance athlete, champion cyclist, and trainer.  Together they offer practical insights about mind, body and career management that break little if any new ground yet usefully survey a lot of recent thinking in a wide range of areas – down to yoga in the office and stretching exercises.

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Archives for Coaching

In a job interview, you may field questions about your situational behavior and decision making. That’s based on the premise that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. Behavioral questions (often not even framed as a question) typically start out: “Tell me about a time…” or “Describe a situation…”

Example questions are: “Tell me about a time where you confronted an unexpected problem,” “Describe an experience when you failed to achieve a goal,” or “Give me a specific example of a time when you managed several projects at once.”

Equip yourself to answer the questions thoroughly. Obviously, you can prepare better for this type of interview if you know which skills the employer has predetermined to be necessary for the job you seek. Researching the company, studying the job description, and talking to people who work there will enable you to zero in on the kinds of behaviors the company wants. In the interview, your response must be specific and detailed. Candidates who tell the interviewer about particular situations that relate to each question will be far more successful than those who respond in general terms.

Ideally, briefly describe the situation, the specific action you took to have an effect on the situation, and the positive result or outcome. It’s also helpful to think of your responses as stories. Frame each example as a three-step story, usually called a S-A-R, P-A-R, or C-A-R statement: 1. situation (or problem, challenge), 2. action, 3. result/outcome. Become an engaging storyteller in your interviews, but be careful not to ramble.

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Archives for Coaching

Let’s talk about getting fired. So the boss calls you in to her office. Things haven’t been going well lately at the company. Sales are down. So is new hiring. You take a seat and your boss says, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but we need to let you go.” What do you do? What do you say? What should you not say?

Here’s the first question: Do you want to keep this job? If you do, what’s the best way to try and paint a picture for your boss that portrays your remaining at the company in a positive light, and creates a vision of you as an employee determined to pull your weight, to excel, and be beneficial to the company? In other words, how can you–on the spot–change your boss’s mind and help her see that doing so will be to her advantage?

1. Open with a positive. Make a positive opening statement, such as, “I want to thank you for all of the opportunities you’ve given me.” Don’t wing it; write your opening statement down and commit it to memory if you have any inkling that a layoff is imminent.

2. Get your boss talking. Ask a great question, such as, “If there were one area I could improve upon that would enable me to stay, what would it be?” Again, don’t wing it; write it down if you suspect this is going to happen.

3. Control your presentation. Keep a low voice, a slow voice. Don’t allow yourself to become emotional no matter what the answer. Don’t allow your voice to go up, or your speech to speed up. Don’t lean aggressively forward suddenly. Ahead of time, practice talking in the mirror with a calm, composed manner so you’ll know what it feels like.

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Archives for Coaching

Not all executives are leaders.  Not all managers are executives.  Not all career people are professional.

Top company management usually comes from the ranks of those who sell the core business product-service, not from those on the firing line who deliver it.   That’s why in media, programming and news people rarely become management.  Since advertising sales is the primary product of media, the sales people become the managers.  In education, good teachers stay in the classroom.  In the energy industry, engineers dominate. Engineers steadfastly believe that they’re in the energy exploration and production business.  The companies themselves are in the energy marketing business.    Restaurants are in the business of marketing atmosphere and service.  Yet, they put food preparers (representing 20% of the pie) in charge.  Decisions are always food driven, explaining in part the high failure rate of restaurants.  Other reasons include poor planning, substandard customer service, low capitalization and inappropriate marketing.

A major problem with companies stems from the fact that management and company leadership come from one small piece of the organizational pie.  Filling all management slots with financial people, for example, serves to limit the organizational strategy and focus.  They all hire like-minded people and frame every business decision from their micro perspective.

The ideal executive has strong leadership skills first.  He or she develops organizational vision and sets strategies.  Leaders should reflect a diversity of focus, guaranteeing that a balance is achieved. The best management team looks at the macro, rather than just the niche micro.

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Archives for Coaching

“If you see a fork in the road, take it,” and “You can observe a lot by watching” are some of the many one-line quips of baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra.  Yogi’s comments are both fun and a blinding flash of the obvious that often draw us back to simple truths.  My favorite is “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

One blinding flash of the obvious that is often missed, and that could be extremely pertinent in the age of employee engagement, is “Engagement requires thinking.”  In my experience, many employee engagement approaches are still one-way communication efforts on steroids that fail to tap into the ability of employees to think and act differently.  At a time when study after study confirms that only about 20% of employees are engaged in their current work, it’s hard not to conclude that something’s not working!  Maybe “having a best friend at work” isn’t the determining factor.  Why are so many employees simply checked out at the place where they spend 40% of their waking lives…at work?

Let’s start with a key premise that’s often missed in engagement efforts – that we want to solve problems ourselves.  From Sudoku to mystery novels to crosswords, we all love the challenge of solving a puzzle.  Obviously, we could just turn to the back of the book and get the answer or read the final page.  But what’s engaging about that?  We want the intellectual and emotional experience of finding a sense of achievement in our own thinking.  When people get a chance to solve their own puzzles, they own the result.  And owners think, act, and engage differently from non-owners.  They’re vested, they’re passionate, they won’t take no for an answer, and they’re willing to put in more effort than is required. Read More

Archives for Coaching

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the term work/life balance?  Perhaps it’s the time you leave the office? Or maybe it’s the total number of hours you have worked in a week? Or is the time your colleagues leave the office compared to you?

Have you ever asked yourself whether you have achieved good work/life-balance?  What criteria do you base your answers on?

Most people tend to connect work/life balance with time or hours spent at work.  While that can be part of it, I would like to challenge your thinking on a deeper level.  I believe it’s about the quality of how you spend your time, not just time itself.  I ask myself: “How rewarded do I feel by what I did today?”

Maintaining balance is an ideal that permeates our lives in multiple ways.  People go to chiropractors when they have a “misalignment” in their body and are looking to be “cracked” back into place.  Generally, when one area is out of alignment it can have a ripple effect upon other parts of the body.  The same thing happens in our lives.  When one area is out of balance, it usually can, and most often does, have an effect (whether we realize it or not) on other areas in our lives.

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Archives for Coaching

One-half of US employees are dissatisfied with their jobs, up from two-fifths 10 years ago. Are you one of them?

If you are seriously dissatisfied, it’s going to affect your attitude. And that may show up in your performance. It could also put you at risk of losing out to others who are more satisfied with what they do.

But are you really in the wrong job or business? Or is it just a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence? Are you dissatisfied or unfulfilled for little or no reason? How can you tell?

Here are some steps to help you figure out if you’re in the right job and some recommendations on what to do about it.

Think of yourself as a business. Would you back yourself? Would you invest in You, Inc? If the answer is no, you’re in the wrong job. To invest in a business, or in this case, in yourself, you need to be comfortable on three main fronts: that market demand for your services is buoyant, that competition is not too tough, and that you are reasonably well placed to succeed.

Consider market demand for You, Inc. You need to be sure that demand for you is not about to fall off a cliff. If you worked as a travel agent before the dot-com era, long-term demand for your services would not have looked promising, given the looming threat from e-booking and e-ticketing. Is there something happening in your industry that could affect future demand for your services?

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