With effort, you can learn to pay more attention to the positive information while prudently disregarding the negative.  Just as an athlete mentally trains hard on what she is doing right, not wrong, to perfect a vault or a three-point shot, you must learn to ignore the distractions that derail your progress.  A multitude of useless diversions await you each day.

Excessive e-mails are at the top of my clients’ time-wasting list of supremely distracting detritus of working in the electronic age.  The attention-getting e-mail notifications are notorious for enticing even the highest performers away from their critical job functions!  Once you open that e-mail you become ensnared in responding to the message creating a series of actions that pull you further and further off your intended task (=goal)!  This is self-sabotage!  Yes, sabotage, both personal and business.  Caroline Myss asserts, “all distractions are self-sabotage.”  Once you veer from your path, you exhibit symptoms of  The Atalanta Syndrome™.

“Atalanta  (at-uh-LAN-tuh), abandoned at birth by a father who wanted a son, Atalanta became a great heroine and one of the Argonauts. Unwilling to marry, she finally consented to wed any man who could beat her at a foot race. Such was her fleetness that she would have remained happily single, but that the Goddess of Love gave one of her suitors golden apples to scatter on the race course. These were magical, and Atalanta could not resist them. Stooping to gather them in, she lost the contest to her destined husband.
Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology, www.mythweb.com

Remember Atalanta?  She sabotaged her own chances of winning the race under the spell of Venus’ apples.  Are you Atalanta, irresistibly picking up those apples on your life path which only serves to slow you down?”
(The Atalanta Syndrome™  Who is Atalanta?  You, that’s Who!, Lewine, 2007)

Wrapping up 2011 effectively demands that leaders hone their focusing skills.  Those that allow themselves to get side-tracked (sabotage) with anything other than steps toward achieving the organization goals, will slip behind quicker than ever before.  The economic environment is harsher today.  Mistakes which were previously treated with inconsequential punishments might render an organization extinct in the coming 12-24 months!

Consider yourself a role model in your organization.  What you do, the people in your company do.  Set clearly defined goals and stay focused on achieving them.  The rest of your company will follow your lead.  Most people want to follow.  Only a small percentage of the workforce truly has the desire to formally lead other people.  (Maybe they know something you don’t !  When you get distracted, they get distracted.  Don’t you just hate it when “they” aren’t doing their jobs!  It goes both ways.  Your followers know exactly when you are not doing your job.  Don’t kid yourself by misreading their silence.  Few will confront you, their boss, directly so consider yourself the Emperor with No Clothes.  However, the informal communication system (gossip) will be on fire, clearly and accurately condemning your sabotaging, poor-performing actions.  Walls have ears.  People talk.

This challenging economy is weeding out the weak and ineffective organizations.  It’s a foot race of mythical proportion with golden apples of distraction raining down upon us all.  If you do not have a clearly written set of operational goals, your #1 priority is to establish them, NOW!  Otherwise, you are setting a de facto course of meandering and unplanned obsolescence.  No responsible captain of a ship would load her passengers onboard and set sail without a pre-established destination.  Sailing the open seas without a course is almost certain death.  In today’s market, it is not a stretch to say the same.  Goals are the primary antidote to The Atalanta Syndrome ™!

Once proper goals are set, mastering the skill of focusing is the preventive medicine to fend off organization sabotage.  The next group to fall in this erratic market will be those who have goals and succumb to the plethora of “golden apple” distractions.  These leaders fall prey to bad news, lose sight of their goals, and descend into the morass of useless activity.  Leaders who find themselves trapped in off-task minutiae end each day with a longer To Do list than they began.

In reality, everyone strays from their goals and intended tasks.  Leaders are not perfect, nor do they need to be.   As a leader you do need to practice the self-discipline of returning to task, as soon as you can, rather than be swept away with a distraction.

For example, when you are scanning a list of headlines searching for potential business, you’ll find 7 or 8 out of 10 are negative.  You may need to read some of those items because that information pertains to your goal.  However, if you do not need that information to perform your task at hand, employ your self-discipline and skip those unnecessary ones.  Zero in on the information that addresses what you are looking for to help you with your goal!  It is simple but not as easy as it sounds.  Try it.  You won’t be successful all the time, but you can improve; and that improvement may be the incremental level that keeps your organization on track more often than not.  In baseball, you can bat .300, and you are a star!  Yes, baseball players can fail 7 out of 10 times and be highly successful.  Business is not that accepting.  You’ll have to be doing things right more than 50% of the time to remain intact.  To thrive you’ll have to do even better, but it won’t take 10/10.  Every tenth of one-percent improvement makes a difference in your bottom line and reduces stress.

I am no different than you.  I still have to do what you do.  I am not exempt.  Golden apples lay strewn around me, too!  When I’m catching up on the business news of the day, I have to discipline myself to turn off the twitter feed and e-mail pop-ups.

None of this means you should ignore or deny critical facts that may be necessary to deal with a thorny obstacle to your goal.  Selecting what to focus on and what to ignore requires your professional judgment.  Your judgment accumulates as a blend of your personal and business experience.  Knowing who you are, where you are going, and how you will get there is the essence of personal leadership, a pre-requisite to formal leadership.  Maintaining your attention to the goals, not the obstacles, keeps everyone on the right path and out of Atalanta’s reach!

The good news is that the challenges you face this year are a clarion call to improve yourself and your organization.  My job is to find and work with companies that are good and getting better.  This year, some of my clients will break new records in revenue and/or profits!   When I am tempted to surrender to bad news, all I have to do is turn my attention to my clients.  That’s where I can find the good news.  Focusing on them, that’s my job!

Nancy C. Lewine, PhD
© 2011  All Rights Reserved

If we assume the business has a viable market to offer its products or services, it has the potential to grow in revenue and in profit.  To grow, the leader needs to “allow” it and embrace the inherent changes.  Considering that the overwhelming percentage of businesses in our country are small, we could conclude that there are millions of owners who like it that way.  Or, they do not know how to overcome the growing pains.  Or, they are resisting the natural growth of their company.  If you are choosing to stay small.  Kudos to you.  You know what you want and are pursuing it.  It is not an easy task.  As with all choices, there are the consequences and challenges to face.

I’m going to focus on the leaders who are resisting their growth, both personally and organizationally.  If you fall into this category, you probably are unaware of what you are doing and how it contradicts your stated desire.  Essentially, you are sabotaging your own and your company’s success!  A classic entrepreneurial self-sabotaging is hiring people to help you get the work done and not delegating effectively to them.  You remain frustrated with their lack of progress or performance, only to be responsible for it yourself.  Maybe you never appropriately trained the person on the correct way to do the job (the way that makes your company competitively successful in your marketplace). Or, you might have thrown the person into the job, but then micromanaged every little thing they were doing. If so, that is a classic symptom of a Dysfunctional Leader/Controlling Style (Lewine, 1995).  On the other hand, you may have washed your hands of it, walked away, and left the person to deal with the work sans any feedback or direction from you.  This is the opposite Dysfunctional Leader style, Abandoning (Lewine, 1995).  Rounding out the three major types of dysfunctional leaders is Self-Sacrificing(Lewine, 1995). This leader sabotages his success by failing to set boundaries with himself, his people, and his clients.  He gives in to every demand, feels sorry for others, and does their work for them at the expense of himself and his own workload.  His health may suffer as a result.  Rather than confront poor performers, he does the work himself.  He fails to set and enforce limits with demanding customers. The Dysfunctional Abandoning Leader gives too much away to the customer and sacrificing his profits..

In order for any business to grow, the increasing workload must be redistributed at certain levels of volume, otherwise a log jam occurs and the orders pile up. At that growth stage, you’ll either need another person or a different/more efficient way of processing the work.  Either solution demands a change in the leadership behavior.  You must lead and manage differently in the new stage of growth.  If you do not learn, grow, and apply new skills, you retard the growth of your company.  If you think you can delegate the growth and development to everyone else, you are fooling yourself.  As long as you still work there or even show up to get the mail, your presence influences the entire organization whether you want it to or not. If your company’s growth is stalled, hold up the mirror to look for your answers.  Be honest with yourself. Are you too Self-Sacrificing, Controlling, or Abandoning? If the answer, is “YES!” Chart a new course for yourself. Learn new techniques. Change one of your worn out attitudes. Try something different. Lead yourself and your organization will follow.

The 5 Step Process Sale

Step 1- Develop Rapport.  You must establish credibility and belief in YOU, first! The products and services come second. Your prospects need to know they can depend on you and believe what you share with them.

Step 2- Fact Finding. Your goal is to determine what the PROSPECT wants/needs and WHY!  You want to make a sale, but what do they want?  Be patient.  This may take time.  It may take several phone calls and meetings.  It also depends on how effectively you ask questions to identify THEIR needs.

Step 3- Prepare your Presentation/Proposal.  Your goal is to determine which product/service best meets your prospect’s needs/wants.  This is NOT about how you can force your way through to close the deal.  Think of THEIR needs first!

Step 4- Presentation.  Present your solution to your prospect and answer their questions.

Step 5- Ask for the Decision.  Get the order signed. Make financial arrangements, if appropriate.  Thank them.

Yes, there is a lot to do in each of these steps!  Yes, you can make it more complicated because you have special circumstances; but, if you strip sales down to its bare bones, you end up with this 5 Step Process.  Think of basketball.  The pros still dribble, pass, run, shoot, and rebound.  They must do the basics or they cannot play the game.  Whether you are a starter in high school or a professional star, you still have to do the same things.  It is the same with Sales.

In an upcoming series on successful selling, I’ll delve into more detail. I’ll discuss the Traffic Light system to help you analyze when you have a Green Light allowing you to successfully move forward to the next step; a Yellow Light cautioning you to move slower; or a Red Light signaling you’ve raced ahead without achieving the goal for that Step.   For now, begin applying the 5 Step Process Sale to your activities.  Identify where you are in the Process with each prospect you have. Keep it simple.

Happy Selling!

Nancy

Dr. Hawkins cataloged 17 Levels of Human Consciousness via an extensive research process over decades! Voila!  I had more information than I dreamed possible.  I’ll let you comb through the book as I did (and have returned to often over the years) to familiarize yourself with the detail.  I won’t try to summarize the book in this brief blog as I couldn’t do it justice, but what I will do is share the significant points that struck me.

First, he defines Power as energy which is derived from noble, dignified, and positive meaning.  It gives, not takes. In contrast, Force consumes and moves against its opposition thereby draining itself and creating conflict.  Power is endlessly motivating.  I equated this to Maslow’s highest level of motivation, Self-Actualization.

Second, Hawkins stratified the levels based on the strength of Power/Energy attractor patterns.  Yes, he described Attraction like electromagnetic fields.  Each Level progresses upward logarithmically, NOT arithmetically.  So, Level 10 is not simply twice as powerful as level 5, making incremental increases result in major advances in Power! -YES, those small actions COUNT!!!  THEY MATTER!

Third, because what each of us does matters, the little steps included, not everyone on the planet needs to be at the top to produce an improved world!  We can relax and accept people for where they are and support them there.  We can stop pushing and struggling to try to get us all on the same Level!  Maybe that will be a realistic goal in the future when we’ve evolved more spiritually.  Hawkins states that the few who attain the highest Consciousness Levels absolutely “make up for” the masses at all the lower levels (see Chapter Four).

Fourth, he posits that everyone gives off an energy pattern on a specific frequency and that a permanent record is made of everything we say or do.  “There are no secrets; nothing is hidden, nor can it be.  Our spirits stand naked in time for all to see – everyone’s life, finally, is accountable to the universe” (p. 149).  Wow!  There is justice, but we may not see it in our lifetime.  That doesn’t mean we stop holding people accountable here and now, but it gave me reassurance that those notorious criminals who victimized humanity will be reconciled within the spiritual universe.

Finally, I saw the Levels  applied to business cultures!  After 30 years of working with a multitude of companies, this helped me quantify or classify their varying organizational personalities! I further superimposed Hawkins’ 17 Levels on my Transformation Continuum(TransCont17Levels) allowing me to link the consciousness of leaders to the cultures of the organizations they create!

A bonus he provides is a list of energetically positive vocabulary words for us to communicate better messages as we send our ripples out to the world.  Hawkins published this book in 1995, 10 years prior to The Secret.  Guess what the first word is on his list?  ABUNDANCE!

Gratefully,

Nancy

I’ve found my eclectic passions emerging in the dialogues that ensue 140 characters at a time. Twitter teaches you to be brief and clear in your message. That would be good practice for my clients who wrestle with their habit of talking too much!

The biggest challenge is, success! Yes, success. Success at making good contributions to other people’s feeds and lives. Success at finding and attracting those who have similar interests and needs. Success at drawing followers and trying to keep up with all of the comments that pop up when you’ve been away from T-land!
All-in-all, I’m enjoying Twitter – using it and learning how to master this new technology. I’ll keep you posted, but less than a month into it, I am pleased with the results.

If you’ve made it through this recession,  you’ve done many things right.  Congratulations!  Remember to treat those employees, customers, and vendors who stood by you through the tough times.  Demonstrate your gratitude by letting them know how much it meant to you to have them beside you.  Make sure you restore salaries and benefits to all employees as soon as you possibly can.  You want them to stay with you when they are recruited to leave as the job market improves.

Now is the time to make improvements in your company, before the tidal wave of new business floods in!  The time is right and the window is open!

Six months ago I politely, yet firmly, demanded that one of my BOA small business credit cards remain open.  They “closed” it without notifying me!  This was done after a recent purchase I had charged on that card.  Thank God for that dumb little purchase.  It saved my very generous credit line!  The reason they “let” me keep it was because I just used it.  Nevermind the excellent credit history (very high credit score) I had with them.  I had never been late, never paid an over-the-limit fee, always paid well above the minimum balance etc.  Gee, thanks BOA, I thought to myself.  I was grateful in the larger scheme of things because I know clients of mine who suffered terribly at the hands of those credit card hatchet people.

Time has passed.  Yesterday, while activating my new BOA replacement card, the customer service rep tried to keep me on the phone interminably to get me to draw from my credit line!!!  Yea, sure NOW you want me!  They went crazy earlier this year and projected their fearful behavior on me(falsely).  I am the one who kept my cool and managed my financial portfolio and cash flow responsibly.  What if they were doing that all along for themselves?  They wouldn’t be in this mess.

I’m not inclined to rescue them.  I’ll continue on my path utilizing their services as I see fit.  Just because they need me to borrow now doesn’t mean I should.  This is what got them into the problem in the first place.  Offering funds to those who aren’t ready, aren’t qualified,  and shouldn’t be borrowing.  Sure I’d like new office furniture, or heck, why not an addition to the house?  I could build a brand new office. . . but I don’t need it,  not now.  I’ll do so when the time is right.  I choose a saner perspective than theirs.  I feel I should be rewarded for that.

As a consultant to other small business owners, and one myself, we hear their call.  We’ll respond when we are good and ready.  We’re still negotiating this treacherous rapid river ride you created with your insanity, Mr. Financial Community.  We have more at stake than you do because we care more.  We care about our customers, employees, their families, our families, and our suppliers.  We don’t have layers of people between us and our key stakeholders.  We see them everyday, not just at the stockholders meetings.  They are not strangers, but real people.  So when we flag orders, reduce payroll,  and cut expenses we are acutely aware of the people we are affecting.  Big business isn’t as directly connected.  The wild swings are much more painful for us.  We tend to avoid them and steer a steadier course.

For those leaders who fell under the “sky is falling” message last year, they likely cut too much.  Much more than necessary and now they are suffering from understaffing.  Who cares about higher productivity if you are the boss and you are doing 3 more jobs now?  One’s quality of life matters.  Yet, the rampant fear still runs, causing the stereotypical risk-oriented entrepreneur to remain overly cautious about spending.  You got what you wanted, Mr. Financial Community, ultra-conservative spending.  It is time to start hiring, but ever so slowly.  You not only tamed the lion, you also forced it into submission.  While there are green shoots sprouting, the fear-mongers prevail whipping even the most optimistic leaders down as they try to rise above the fray.

Credit card companies, understand that you bit the hand that fed you. We elephants have long memories.  While you trumpet the clarion call to resume feverish entrepreneurial growth, you must take your own foot off the brake!  You get back to your business and we will get back to ours.