Career Satisfaction | Brilliance Inc

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...]

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.

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...]

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...]

Practice Gets Personal

by Denise Green | Career Satisfaction, Communication, Developing Others, Employee Engagement, Innovation, Relationship & Trust, Science of Leadership, Uncategorized Comments | 0

We have been working for some time on a webinar to help geographically dispersed teams—whether separated by a wall or an ocean—achieve high levels of trust, engagement, and results when frequent face-to-face interactions aren’t possible.

Little did I know that the content would become so personal to the Brilliance Inc. team. Since our founding 2008, we’ve had the luxury of proximity. We could brainstorm around the same pad of paper or flip chart, share challenges and successes across the table, strategize and debrief meetings in the car pool lane.

And that luxury is about to become history as life takes us in different geographic directions.

So here are some reminders that I offer to myself, my team, and any of you who are charged with achieving great things with others at a distance.

Working remotely can feel like you are isolated on an island. Not entirely a bad thing at times, but posing real challenges. In order to truly feel like a cohesive team and exceed your goals, you need to build sturdy, reliable bridges. In our program, Communicating Across Networks, we focus on three of the most important links.

Bridge #1: Connection

Relationships and trust are critical to any high-performing team. And if you’ve ever been new to a team, or worked on a team with low trust, you know how much extra effort it takes to get stuff done. When teams have trust, benefit of the doubt, a sense of humor, and true connections, mistakes and misunderstandings are merely speed bumps. Without trust, mistakes become mountains, where people play a version of corporate musical chairs to avoid sitting in the blame seat. Strong relationships can be forged and maintained regardless of geographic location. But it takes intention, skill, and constant awareness and effort to do it over phone and email.

Bridge #2: Clarity

Misunderstanding is common. And when communicating across networks, misunderstanding seems to be the NORM. Communications via email and text, even in the same language, can require translation. I can relate to George Bernard Shaw’s quote that “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”.

In the age of texting and shorthand communication, it can be tempting to assume we understand and move on. Clarifying your statements, assumptions, expectations, requests and intentions becomes even more important when you can’t infer from someone’s body language or tone.

Bridge #3: Commitment

Ever wrongly assumed that silence meant agreement? Tasks fail to get done when we presume commitment that isn’t real or when we don’t clearly grasp someone’s full workload. Clarifying who’s doing what by when and with what support, will help strengthen the other two bridges (connection and clarity). It takes courage to admit that one is not committed to a task.

Best Bridge-Building Behaviors

Key behaviors help create effective, engaged, dispersed teams. Perhaps the most essential are these:

- Assume positive intent in others
- Be curious and seek to understand
- Display authentic, appropriate humanness (e.g. admitting fear or fault)
- Adjust to the audience (tone, content, speed, medium, approach)
- Offer clear, requests, statements, declines, opinions, praise, and feedback.
- Recognize and appreciate differences

Here’s to the team (mine and yours)!

Leaving the Land of Denial: eBook Launch

by BrillianceInc | Adapting to Change, Authenticity, Building Teams, Career Satisfaction, Communication, Conversations for Brilliance eBook, Developing Others, Emotional Intelligence, Employee Engagement, Favorite, Innovation, Newsletter Archives, Our Favorites, Relationship & Trust, Science of Leadership, Strengths, Virtual Teams Comments | 0

Think you could become fluent in Spanish in a one-day workshop?

Us neither.

How about proficient on piano in one day?

Nope.

Scientific research tell us, (what you already knew intuitively), that it takes at least 21 days of practice to instill a new habit. And, mastery is another thing altogether. If Malcolm Gladwell has it right in his latest book Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to be superlative in any field.

Yet, when it comes to developing the behaviors that characterize great leadership, many clients expect mastery in a day. We firmly believe that a leadership training workshop is just the beginning.

Practice makes…
If you are in a fabulous training program (like one of ours for example!) you can gain awareness about yourself and others, practice new skills, and plan to implement the behaviors. While helpful, it’s probably not enough to keep the momentum going while everything in your life and workplace encourages business (and behavior) as usual. If you need any evidence that this is true, just glance at that shelf in your office where good training binders go to die, collecting dust.

Real, lasting improvement begins with epiphanies and takes hold with practice. That is why we became coaches. We saw too many great people fail to turn their insights into action after the (Incredible! Amazing!) workshop ended and reality happened.

Our goal:
Change the way corporations support leadership development so that the efforts create real, sustainable, brilliant results.

We have left the land of denial where we pretended that deep change could happen in a few hours, as long as the content was well designed, the leaders well-intentioned, and the facilitator was incredible. We want you to join us!

You need support while you create new habits, gain proficiency and eventually, fluency. That is why we created the ebook Conversations for Brilliance: Tools to Help You Inspire Extraordinary Results from Yourself and Others.

Conversations for Brilliance:
With this ebook, you can become your own personal coach and refine (or overhaul) your practice to improve the quality of your conversations, your relationships, and your results. Learning how to consistently have more powerful conversations takes practice.

Leaders don’t have the luxury of practicing their trade off the field. Every day, in every conversation, and with every decision, you are developing yourself as a manager, colleague, influencer, collaborator, parent, trusted partner, etc. You’re practicing anyway…why not get the benefit of some pragmatic, experienced help so you develop the outcomes you need?

What’s in the book:
We’ve included ideas, information, assignments, assessments, and other tools that, when applied with regularity and gusto, will shape your results in all aspects of your life.

Our mission is to help you have more powerful conversations-all conversations, whether with yourself or with others, big or small, long or short, easy or uncomfortable-so that you evoke brilliance in yourself and others.

Are you ready to have more powerful conversations and improve your results? If yes, click here to order your copy.

Testimonials
Here’s what people are saying about the book:

“Conversations for Brilliance is a powerful tool for managers at all levels who want to challenge and inspire their employees, as well as themselves, toward achieving ever improving performance. ”
- JAY S. BENET, VICE CHAIRMAN AND CFO, The Travelers Companies, Inc.

“It’s been said that the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of the questions we ask ourselves and others who are central to our success and happiness and, of course, the quality of our answers to those questions. Those who thoughtfully answer the provocative questions posed in Brilliance will have insights galore, plus a wealth of recommendations from which to choose as they step onto a more effective and compelling path. What a great resource!”
- SUSAN SCOTT, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF Fierce Conversations, Achieving Success at Work & in Life – One Conversation at a Time and Fierce Leadership, A Bold Alternative to the Worst “Best” Practices of Business Today

“In Conversations for Brilliance, Denise and Heather succeed in communicating profound and complex leadership concepts in an accessible manner. I recommend this book for good, introspective managers looking for advice on how to grow people-advice that goes beyond the simple management or coaching how-to’s they can find elsewhere.”
- MARIA V. WAYNE, Ph.D. AND SENIOR DIRECTOR, GLOBAL LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT, Seagate Technology

“Reaching for our potential is in our DNA; we’re each born with an innate desire to discover all the brilliance that lies within us. In Conversations for Brilliance, Denise and Heather provide a guide, a wealth of tools, and practical advice to enrich the journey of discovery. This book is a resource you will find yourself going back to again and again as you navigate the most important relationships in your life.”
- KIRSTEN WOLBERG, CIO salesforce.com

Click here to learn more and order the ebook!