I’d Be More Happy & Successful if Only I Were Better at __________.

by Denise Green | Career Satisfaction, Coaching, Optimal Results, Personal Development, Time management Comments | 0

How Would You Fill In the Blank?

Last week we introduced you to our over-committed client Mary, and the Life Satisfaction Assessment. Now we want to know what you discovered.

What would you change about your life in order to be more happy and successful?

Why am I so nosy? Simple: I WANT TO HELP! I have weeks worth of incredible content but it means nothing if it’s not what you need right NOW.

So please take a moment (more like 90 seconds) to respond to a short questionnaire. Click here to go to the survey.

I’ll Trade You A Book for Your 90 Seconds

And since I know how hard it is to motivate you to take those 90 seconds, I’d like to offer a free gift. Anyone who responds to the survey will receive our acclaimed ebook: Conversations for Brilliance AND be entered in a drawing to receive a free 1 hour coaching session with me. I don’t even offer private coaching so please take me up on this special offer and enter the contest.

Share Your Story!

Want to submit two entries to the contest? Just send us a story about how the eGuide, How to Say No With Grace, Not Guilt has inspired or helped you. You can email your stories to info@brillianceinc.com or on our online Contact Us Form.

Here’s to your Brilliance!

Warmest Regards,

Denise

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Are You an Ambivert?

by Denise Green | Career Satisfaction, Coaching, Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Energy, Strengths Comments | 0

Don’t Believe Every Assessment You Take

As a leadership coach, you might think I’d like personality assessments. But I don’t. It’s not that they don’t have some value.  I just think that they’re more limited than people allow for: that humans are more complex than any automatic assessment can capture.

And I don’t care what their creators and promoters say about how precise they are, I get different results depending on the time of day, what’s going on my life, and how much coffee I’ve had.

Perhaps you’ve felt boxed in by one of these reports. According to at least two instruments, I’m an Introvert. And sometimes that feels true: I do sometimes like to think quietly until I’ve fleshed out my thoughts. Other times, though, I spew nascent ideas as fast as I can think them. At times I do gain energy by being alone. But after a while I need to get up and be with people.

About 7 years ago, I came across an assessment called the Highlands Ability Battery that promised to measure innate abilities that didn’t fluctuate after the age of 14.

That was when I heard the term Ambivert for this first time. Finally, I felt understood by an assessment. It was actually worth the painstaking three plus hours to take the tests.

We Ambiverts can be very confusing to others. We can be gregarious one moment, meditative the next.  We get a charge from being with people and working on a team…until we don’t.  For me, this really resonated. I can lead a day-long workshop with passion and deep empathy. After, you can find me in a fetal position in my car, recharging my batteries.

For you all you Introverts and Extroverts, I have a message: it’s not personal, and we’re not crazy.

So What Can an Ambivert Do?

Let people know about your style: that your behavior fluctuations are not about them, just about you needing to manage energy.   Be realistic about your needs. When you need to recharge, don’t feel guilty stepping away. You’ll be more useful and nice to be around when you return. And when you’re in the mood to talk out loud, say that these are early thoughts and that you’re tossing them out. On the other hand, if you need time to think before responding, say so.  People will be less confused, and will make fewer wrong assumptions about your intent.

Think you’re an Ambivert? How can you tell? What advice do you have for others?

Book: Don’t Waste Your Talent by Don Hutcheson

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Recipe For Brilliance

by BrillianceInc | Building Teams, Career Satisfaction, Coaching, Developing Others, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Management, Newsletter Archives, Optimal Results, Personal Development, Science of Leadership, Strengths Comments | 0

Are you in the zone? You know..that place where you feel energized. Where you like going to work, where you feel a sense of fulfillment, satisfaction, and gratitude. If you’re not living there, how far away are you? Around the block? Next County? Neighboring planet? For managers, how would your employees answer?

When we ask program participants and clients about times when they felt in the zone, nearly all can name one. Barely anyone claims to there now. And survey research supports this observation. According to a Gallup poll, more than 70 percent of people are disengaged from their job.

There are several key ingredients to peak performance. Knowing them can make it easier to diagnose what’s missing.

Recipe at-a-Glance: One part S (Strengths) to four parts P (Passion, Purpose, Preferences, Progress).

One Part ‘S’

1. Strengths:
In every peak moment, you will find that you are doing what you do best. Strengths may be learned skills or innate abilities. Either way, they are things that you excel at. Sometimes it’s hard to notice your own strength because it comes easily to you. What comes easily to you – public speaking, playing music, interpersonal skills, listening, remembering and using data – is terrifyingly difficult for others. Where you exhibit grace, others stumble or exert more effort for the same or less outcomes.

Ways to determine strengths:

  • Take an inventory assessment: Gallup’s StrengthsFinder or Highlands Ability Battery are good options
  • Recall what tasks at work you do most effortlessly

Four Parts P [Read more...]

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An Unnecessary Disadvantage

by Denise Green | Authenticity, Career Satisfaction, Coaching, Energy, Leadership, Management, Neuroleadership, Neuroscience, Optimal Results, Personal Development, Science of Leadership, Women in Leadership Comments | 2

Advice You Won’t Find in Just Any ‘Ol Leadership Blog

There’s a lot of great advice to women about how to get ahead: how to have it all, do it all, and look great all the while.

I would like to add one more piece of advice to corporate women: wear comfortable footwear.

That’s right.

Think DSK Could Work in These?

Gorgeous Torture

For some time, this topic had been a niggling thought. Then I went over the edge into official annoyance after reading an op-ed piece by one of my favorite journalists, Maureen Dowd, when, in a piece about France’s Christine Lagard — Minister of Economic Affairs, Finances, and Industry — she found it necessary to describe her beige patent Christian Louboutin high heels (pictured right). It’s not just Dowd: it’s the norm. Once I began looking, I noticed that reports of women in leadership often include descriptions of their appearance.

Watch the news and you’ll see female politicians striving to strike just the right balance between power and femininity. They are subjected to scrutiny that their frumpier male counterparts rarely get. Can you imagine Newt getting reamed for big ankles or Obama for wearing last year’s suit? And can you imagine any of them stumping in stilettos?

My beef is actually not with the journalists. It’s with the shoes.

Here’s why this matters. [Read more...]

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Tools Are Not Enough

by Denise Green | Adapting to Change, Career Satisfaction, Coaching, Communication, Developing Others, Emotional Intelligence, Gratitude, Leadership, Management, Neuroleadership, Neuroscience, Optimal Results, Personal Development, Science of Leadership Comments | 2

Don't go it Alone

If knowledge and insight were all it took to change our habits, we could just read a great self-help book or take a course and voilà: excellence!

No Magic Wand

Sadly (for those of us who like instant gratification), it takes effort and practice to shift patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. You’ve developed your current state over years of accidental practice and attention: it’ll take some time and effort to develop new, stronger habits (aka, neural pathways). You’ll be tested a million times a day and have a million opportunities to return to your comfort zone.

Got Support to Thrive?

This is why even coaches have coaches. We all need someone who can listen without judgment and help us see things in a way that opens up better possibilities for action. Someone who can help us stay focused and support our efforts to change. Someone who can remind us why we’re putting ourselves through the discomfort and who can highlight the small positive changes that would otherwise fail to get noticed and appreciated.

“When you’re weary, find relief. When you’re strong, find delight.”

- Martha Beck, author, coach

Before You Get Support, Build Capacity

And sometimes, even that’s not enough. Knowing the tools exist, and being able to explain the tools intellectually isn’t enough. When we are in pain — depressed, sleep deprived, injured, etc. — we need triage support to build up our resources so we have the capacity to improve. Once we’ve alleviated the acute symptoms, we can pursue higher goals.

Don’t I know it.

After my daughter was born, I suffered many months of severe sleep-deprivation and anxiety before I finally sought medical advice. I was surviving, but certainly not thriving. My brain was in a negative loop. I recall thinking that I knew how to escape my negative thoughts, but I lacked the capacity to use the tools. It took two PTSD diagnoses for me to decide that I couldn’t self-coach myself out of my state. [Read more...]

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