Team Massive Results Blog

Curiosity! by Ian Kinnery

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

One of the greatest attitudes to develop is one of curiosity. The ability to wonder how things work, what might happen next, why B followed A, is a wonderful strength.
Nowhere is this more powerful than in the field of human relationships. The ability to be curious about another person can lead to a whole new level of insight and closeness.
A person listening with curiosity is likely to listen much more carefully and much more respectfully to another. Someone curious as to what is going on for the other person, genuinely interested in what the other person thinks is likely to ask better and more insightful questions, often helping the speaker to explore areas that they wouldn’t have otherwise explored.
By curiosity I don’t mean a nosy, intrusive gossiping type of selfish wanting to know, but a genuine, well meaning, non judgemental curiosity that emanates from the best part of our selves based on an authentic level of care.
That well founded curiosity can and will lead to deeper levels of relationship, to questions and ultimately therefore to understandings.
If we truly care about others, then the natural corollary of that is that we will want to understand more about those others and that is the basis of well founded, well meaning curiosity. I wonder, on a scale of 0 to 10 where 0 is “could care less” and 10 is “passionately curious” where would you rate yourself on this skill scale and what would it take to move that up a point or two?

You are working too hard. Ever considered why? by Ian Kinnery

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

There is a saying, “if you don’t know where you are going how will you ever know when you get there?” It is true in life, and even more true in business.
What are you trying to create? What are you trying to build? If you don’t know, how will you ever know when you have achieved it?
One of the major challenges that is common to most of the people I work with is that they are time poor. They are not lazy, in fact they are usually working too hard, but not always on the right stuff. They are busy doing it, doing it, doing it, constantly working in the business, working harder and harder and not necessarily getting where they want to be. Often this is because they have never really worked out where they want to be.
When I ask “When you first set out in business what did you want to achieve?” the most common answer I get is something like “I wanted to replace the income I was getting before I left the corporation I had just left”. There is nothing wrong with that as a response but when you think about it from a design point of view, what they were designing was another job to replace the job they had just left. Did they really mean to design another job? Or did they really intend to create something else?
The second most common response is “I wanted to earn more money”. Again there is nothing wrong with that response other than its lack of specificity. Did they stipulate exactly how much more money, and by when? I normally hand over 50p to those people and point out that I have just helped them realise their goal. When they say “that’s not what I meant!” I simply point out that they didn’t say how much more they had wanted to earn.
Building a business which can be defined as an enterprise that can work without you, is about designing a different thing altogether than designing another job or another money making scheme. Do you have a design that you are working to which allows you to set clear priorities?
Overcoming the “time poor” blight that seems to infect so many business owners is all about prioritising what we do with our time. The fact is that we are all given the same number of hours each day and for most of us a lifetime is between 70 and 80 years, so the difference that makes a difference is, fundamentally, not how much time we have but what we do with that time. What we say yes to and what we say no to.
Unless we are very clear about what we are trying to achieve we cannot possibly have a viable criteria against which to judge what we do and what we don’t do.
You will never be as productive as the day before you go on holiday. The day before we go on holiday we are ruthless about prioritising, the stuff we do, the stuff we delegate, the stuff we bin.
Why? Because we are much clearer about our goals, our deadlines and our priorities.
What would it be like if we had such clarity every day? How much more productive and successful could we all be?

Five Qualities of Top Team by Brian Tracy

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Over the years, exhaustive research has been done on top teams. There seem to be given characteristics or qualities of peak-performance teams that you can incorporate into your own business. Here they are:
Shared Goals and Objectives
In a smoothly functioning team, everyone is clear about what the team is expected to accomplish. The goals of the team are shared and discussed by everyone. Each team member gives his or her ideas and input into how the goals and objectives can be best achieved. Each person feels like a part of a larger organization.
Shared Values and Principles
In excellent teams, there is regular discussion about the values, principles, and behaviours that guide the decisions of the team. The leader encourages values such as honesty, openness, punctuality, responsibility for completing assignments, quality work, and so on. Everyone discusses and agrees on what they are.
Shared Plans of Action
In this phase of team building, you go around the table and have each member of the team explain exactly what part of the work he or she is going to accept responsibility for completing. At the end of this discussion, each member knows what every other member is going to be doing and how his or her own work fits in with the work of the team.
Lead the Action
There must always be a clear boss or leader in any organization. Democracy is a fine concept, but it goes only so far in business. Someone must be in command and take charge. And that someone is probably you. On a good team, everyone knows who is in charge. The leader sets an example for the others. The leader becomes the role model.
Continuous Review and Evaluation
In this final phase, the team regularly evaluates its progress from two perspectives. First, is the team getting the results that are expected by its customers or other in the company? In dealing with customers, does the team set up mechanisms to continually ask customers, "how are we doing?" Bringing the Team Together
One of the most important things you do in building a peak performance organization is to hold regular staff meetings. Bring your people together weekly, at a fixed time, to talk, discuss, catch up on progress, learn how the company is doing, and generally share ideas, opinions, and insights.
Action Exercise
Conduct a values clarification exercise with your entire team. Then mutually agree to live and work by the common values.

Confidence and Competence by Ian Kinnery

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

If confidence is the difference that makes the difference, the thing that all high performers share, it would be good to have strategies to develop and enhance that confidence, wouldn't it?
Life is many things and it strikes me that one of life's frustrating quirks is that it can be both corrosive and uplifting at the same time, and not necessarily in equal measures. We all know that success breeds success and when we are on a roll, we seem invincible. Everything we touch seems to be successful. We can't help but ride the roller coaster upwards and onwards. And then…then something happens and the upward spiral seems to stall, and before we know it we are in a downward spiral. That is life. It is never a smooth road. Sooner or later we encounter the corrosive element. The part that seems to eat away at itself, destroying as quickly as it built.
As we spiral upwards our self confidence increases, and consequently as we spiral downwards our confidence dissipates and disappears. Such is life.
What is important, it would follow, is to develop strategies that we can use to nurture and preserve our levels of self confidence.
Fortunately there are many available to each and every one of us.
Confidence and competence are very closely related. I will guarantee that the things that you are most confident about are the things that you have the most competence in, whatever that may be for you. Also the things that you are most competent in are the things that you will be most confident about.
So one strategy is obvious, to develop your confidence, develop your competence. take an example of an area where your confidence is less than you would want it to be, public speaking, running meetings or selling might be examples; and work to build your competence and I will guarantee that your confidence will begin to grow.
Learn what you need to learn about that particular area, read everything you can, get a coach or a mentor, watch the best exponents you can, study them. Practice, practice, practice at every opportunity you can get. Practice out loud. Make mistakes, learn from them and practice some more. Don’t let the ease that great performers have learnt to display fool you. Every great artist was an amateur at first.
Develop mastery of your task. As your mastery develops, so will your confidence and as your confidence develops so will your mastery.
A great strategy for developing confidence is to develop competence and that requires taking action.

Life is a Confidence Game by Ian Kinnery

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In almost any area of human performance confidence is the underlying trait of anyone performing at a high level. We recognise it in sport, when confidence levels are high people and individuals perform at a high level, when we feel confident our resilience is high, our ambition is high and our performance is high.
Conversely when our confidence starts to lower so too will our performance. The golfer who suddenly has a crisis of confidence when about to close out the competition ends up messing up the last few holes and throwing away what looked like a certain victory. We even have a name for it. I believe they call it the yips in golf, choking or drying up are well known concepts in life and in sport. Our confidence is likely to be highest when we are performing at our best, so when we are on a winning streak, that streak is most likely to continue. We say nothing succeeds like success for this very reason.
But confidence is mercurial in that it is here one moment and it has evaporated the next. Sometimes the very act of performing at a high level can be self defeating, we feel that we don’t deserve it, that it can’t last and guess what.... it doesn’t. So given that confidence is so central to performing at a higher level I wonder how many of us trust to luck that we will be able to draw on our resource of confidence when we need to be and how many of us have deliberate strategies to maintain and nurture that most transient and crucial of emotional states. T
he origins of the word confidence simply means “with faith”. We have the faith that we can and will do something at a high level. All faith needs to be nurtured, faith needs to be fed, faith needs some kind of basis otherwise it is even more fragile and faith that is blind is not so reliable. If we could develop some strategies to build confidence, to protect it from the knocks that life generates would that not be a serious advantage?
I wonder what strategies you could use to build and maintain your confidence? Strategies that are either conscious or unconscious but deliberately designed to help maintain and build genuine, well founded, confidence, faith in your abilities.
I am struggling to decide whether to remind you of Henry Ford’s famous words. “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right” or to give you one of the tennis champion Arthur Ashe’s strategies when he said "One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation."
Perhaps I can do both.
Life is a confidence game, what are you doing to grow your confidence?

Because You Can - Part 2 by Ian Kinnery

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of years ago I met Mark Pollock, whose story is truly inspiring. He went blind suddenly and irreversibly at the age of 22. A high academic achiever and international sportsman, his future looked mapped out for success when he was suddenly hit with this devastating diagnosis. His book “Making it Happen” is a summary of the lessons he learned.
I remember that he spoke about how he decided (eventually after understandably being totally despondent) to take responsibility for his life again and he described his mental process he would go through to “make it happen”, whatever “it” may be. This involved an honest and ruthless understanding of what the blockages really were and if there were no straightforward solutions to overcoming the obstacles, he made me aware of the concept of a “work around”. He was going to “make it happen” one way or another, by either overcoming any obstacle or if that wasn’t possible then he would find a work around. A hugely powerful concept.
When I was younger I used to visit my mother when she was at a centre for the physically handicapped. She was starting to suffer with arthritis and visited this place for one day a week. On one visit someone showed me around I was shocked and inspired to see people with all manner of disabilities having fun, playing pool, playing cards, doing stuff that many of us wouldn’t even attempt. They were masters of the work around.
I personally find it gives me perspective and inspiration to spend time with people who seem to make light of the most enormous difficulties and just get on with doing stuff, because they can. of course when I see what others can achieve against all odds it helps me to raise my game; I really have no excuse for not operating at the highest level I am capable of...because I can.
A very good friend of mine tells a story about spending time as an assistant in a hospice and marvels at the fact that he found the people in the hospice generally more cheerful and optimistic than the average person in the queue at the checkout in Tesco. To use an Americanism.. go figure!
Some of the greatest of attributes we humans share are resilience, creativeness and determination. There are examples everywhere, Mark Pollock, Nelson Mandela, our military heroes and people who have faced all manner of physical, mental, political and societal obstacles but have still done the very best with the opportunity that life has presented.
So I wonder where is my excuse for not being the best I can be? Because I can.
Be the best you can be always.

Because You Can! by Ian Kinnery

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It is eight years ago this week since I started my coaching business, and I have been thinking about some of the coaches who have helped me, in these last 8 years.
I remember one of the first, and best, coaches I have ever met telling a story about her childhood. As I remember it her sister was encouraging her to step up, to do more and to perform at a higher level. The teenager sulkily replied “Why should I?” and the sister replied simply, “Because you can”. In the story the elder sister was killed in an accident and so the words had a special resonance for my coach, as I am sure you can imagine.
Often clients spend quite some time and effort searching for their own personal “why”, their purpose, their mission, the reason for them to perform at a higher level. Knowing your why is important, it gives life more meaning and it is a natural part of growing and maturing as a person. It is what Abraham Maslow was talking about when he spoke of self actualisation. Friedrich Nietzsche said “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
Sometimes the answer we are looking for is so obvious that we just aren’t able to see it;- “because you can”.
I don’t believe any of us were born to be mediocre; we weren’t born to be anything other than magnificent in whatever way that is for each of us.
On my office wall there is a poster of the athlete Steve Prefontaine and these words "To give anything other than your best is to sacrifice the gift". Now I am not particularly religious but those words resonate with me. We all have a gift and not to perform at our best does seem somehow disrespectful. My work is all about helping people to perform at a higher level, to be the best that they can be and the beauty of that is that it means different things to all of us.
So for each one of us when we start thinking about why; why we should do the right thing rather than the easy thing, why we should help someone else rather than just help ourselves, why we should step up rather than step back, why we should perform at our best rather than at anything less than our best, it may be that the answer is simply “because you can”.
John Wooden defined success as “peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable”
So success is not about winning, there can only be one winner. Success is, in fact, within reach for all of us.
And when you know you can, why would you ever not?

Mind The Gap! by Ian Kinnery

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

We know what we know but we don't know what we don't know, and it is what we don't know that costs us, money, time and opportunities. If we want to perform at a higher level we have to think at a higher level and to think at a higher level we have to be learning, constantly, insistently, persistently and consistently.
The best leaders and the best performers are always trying to polish their skills, to develop their art, to learn and to develop. It is this trait above all others that differentiates the winners from the others. We really only start to learn when we think we know it all, and the act of learning has some hidden traps. T
hose who think they know it all are in the “I know”. Their attitude is often underpinned by a sense of ennui, a sense of superiority and the woodeness of a closed mind. Those with an open mind, however, seem to be constantly interested and optimistic about what they might learn next, that might be new and fascinating. The newness may not be entirely new, but as a diamond viewed from a slightly different angle reveals new refractions, new magic , new beauty, so a familiar concept viewed from a slightly different perspective is refreshingly different and informative. Often though, we fall into the gap. The gap between knowing and doing.
The paradigm moves from not knowing, to knowing about this, to understanding this, to doing this. Often we get stuck in the knowing. You see intellectual understanding can often be even more of an obstacle to doing than not knowing. A child that knows he should clean his teeth before bed, an adult who knows that regular exercise is advisable, a business leader who knows that he should differentiate between the urgent and important is just as likely not to act as to act. Sometimes knowing seems to insulate a person from doing just as surely as not having the knowledge in the first place.
There is a saying “to know and not to do, is not yet to know”.
Knowing and still not doing is a place of great stuckness, the gap that we all fall into if we are not very careful.
Not knowing, is a place of ignorance, a place of innocence. We either know or we do not know, simple, clean, pure. There are often good reasons why we do not know, and those reasons, given an open mind and an open heart are soon remedied. Knowing but still not doing is somehow more involuntary. It seems to involve a choice, a choice not to act, not to do. That choice may not always be conscious but it is a choice nonetheless. Like many choices, repetition can often embed and entrench that choice in our identity. We justify our poor choices by all sorts of excuses. We build our defence around spurious concepts, ignoring the basic fact that we are the sum of all of the choices that we make and we bear the responsibility for those choices.
Choosing to know and then not to do is a dangerous place, a trap. Be aware of it, avoid it at all costs and when you fall into that trap seek help to get out before familiarity makes it a comfort zone.

More Thinking At A Higher Level by Ian Kinnery

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Life is full of paradoxes, and businesses most certainly are.
A paradox is when there are two seemingly conflicting concepts which both appear to be true. Business is full of paradoxes.
How can I optimise the price I charge and still provide excellent value for money? is a paradoxical question. Someone once defined genius as the ability to hold multiple paradoxes in mind at the same time.
For business leaders to perform at the highest of levels I believe they need to be able to think clearly, to have a clear and cohesive philosophy about how things work, to have clear and appropriate mental models and this inevitably means being able to cope with the many paradoxes businesses present. Being able to ride several paradoxes is another example of thinking at a higher level, and is a key skill for the most effective leaders.
“I can either be popular or successful” might be an example of a paradox. It is defined by the either/ or choice in the middle, which suggests that it is one or the other. To think at a high level we need to reconcile these two apparent opposites. Is it possible to be both popular and successful I wonder? What would we need to do and to be in order to achieve both?
“Can we ask our price and still provide great value for money?” If any business can ride that paradox it is surely in a position to be more sustainably successful.
“Can I have a happy and cohesive, empowered team, while still having the discipline and the rigour that the business demands?”
“Can I be a effective leader at the same time as I being a compassionate person?” These are just some often many paradoxes the very best business leaders are able to ride without compromise.
As people we are able to deal with and ride paradoxes, quite naturally.
If we think about being a parent for a moment one of the paradoxes we face is how we reconcile the unconditional love that we have for our children with the knowledge that as parents we must be able to provide an environment of discipline, structure and rigour. Can we love our children and still impose the discipline and structure that they need to grow into responsible adults?
The best of parents manage to ride this paradox. You see unconditional love does not actually preclude discipline and rigour and nor does rigour preclude love. It is not either/or it is both….And. Sure it is easier to believe it is one or the other. Being able to ride a paradox is always more effort than the more simplistic view. It requires a higher level of thinking, and a higher more difficult level of execution.
The best leaders manage to ride multiple paradoxes in their businesses without compromise. The best business leaders are so because they think and execute at a higher level.

Thinking At A Higher Level by Ian Kinnery

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The quality of everything that we do as human beings depends upon the thinking that goes with it. There is always thinking, and that is not necessarily conscious thought, but there is always thought which precedes, surrounds and follows everything we humans do. Therefore it follows that the quality of that thought will significantly impact the quality of the actions.
There are several well known quotes attributed to Einstein about thought. He said that we couldn't solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them in the first place and he also defined insanity (totally illogical thought) as repeatedly doing the same thing while expecting different results.

So what do I mean by thinking at a higher level?
What I mean when I use that expression is the ability to see a situation from a different perspective than we did yesterday. Hopefully from a position that is in some way more helpful, more useful. It is not a question of being right, rather than wrong. There is no right and there is no wrong, there are only choices after all, and there may be more useful choices.
Thinking at a higher level isn't about being more intelligent, although it might be about being better informed.
In trying to think at a higher level there is a natural challenge. We are not, individually, in a good position to challenge our own thinking. Because we only know what we know, we can only challenge our thinking to the extent of what we already know, and that therefore is not much of a challenge, more a reordering or reorganisation.
We do not know what we don't know, and so what we don't know is beyond our reach as isolated individuals. To access what we don't know there has to be some outside influence to catalyse a different thought pattern and different connections.
We have to find a way to introduce a different perspective, perhaps from another party or parties. It is not necessarily that the other party knows more than you do, or has more experience than you do. The biggest factor may be that the other person simply isn't you, and therefore automatically and naturally brings a different perspective. If that perspective is useful then the end result will be to start thinking at a different level. I
f that other party has the skills, the attention and the intention to catalyse your own thinking then you can reliably and usefully start to think at a higher level, and hopefully perform at a higher level.

We Get The People We Deserve by Ian Kinnery

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I have just been to a meeting and the panel were talking about the importance of recruiting the right people. They all agreed that it was the people that we employed who made the fundamental difference between a good and a great company; if we looked after our team well, they would look after our customers. They said recruit for attitude and train for skill. All of which I would absolutely agree with.

There was also a discussion about the attitudes our ideal recruit would need and the importance of being able to identify those attitudinal traits so that we could test for them and notice them. Again all of that I would agree with. The thing is that this is not a perfectly scientific process. No matter how much we polish the process and learn from our experiences it is naive to think that we will ever be able to recruit the perfect candidate.

When we employ someone all we do is to buy 8 hours a day from them, and often that’s all we get. Sometimes that is more than we get. Whether the new recruit chooses to bring her creativity, enthusiasm, intelligence, commitment, her heart and soul to work is a different question. That is her choice, every minute of every day.

The art and science of helping our employees decide to bring the best of themselves to the workplace is a skill set that we call leadership. In 2013 the art and science of leadership is at the same time ever more important and it is also a scarcer commodity.

You see back in my granddad’s time he had no choice. He was a miner and if he decided to not show up or to not work hard he would be immediately dismissed which meant losing the roof over his head (the house was owned by the colliery), his heating (coal was delivered every week by the colliery) and almost certain destitution, as there were few other places of employment. In my father’s time it was a little different, but not much. The leadership skills I am talking about were not at all necessary back then.

In 2013 we face a much different scenario. People are much more mobile, in terms of careers and geographically. They have more choice. If they choose not to work, the system will support them. A tangle of laws protect us all from bosses who might hire and fire indiscriminately, and rightly so. There are many reasons why doing an excellent job may not be today’s employee’s prime objective. Yet in a world of fierce competition it is ever more important that we have a team of excellent and engaged people, hence the primacy in 2013 of the art and science of leadership.

How to engage and influence others to perform at their best more of the time is a definition of leadership. Many of these skills are the province of emotional intelligence. The good news is that modern research can link emotional intelligence to management competencies and it is possible to measure our performance, and therefore improve in these areas.

Team massive Results will be holding a free seminar on this subject on the evening of March 26th.
Clickhere for more details.

Business would be OK if it wasn't for people. by Ian Kinnery

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

One of the biggest challenges in running any business is people. It is people who work in the business, people are our customers. No matter how much we may say that we wished we could do without people the fact is that if it weren't for people we simply wouldn't have a business, or indeed a need for a business.
The challenge then is how do we learn to deal with people better?
People are complex.
Dealing with people can become complex.
People are complex systems.

What is a complex system?
Well, let’s look at a simple system first. A petrol engine is a simple system, in essence the more fuel you pump in the more power it produces.
The relationship between input and output is linear. It is predictable, it can be calculated, it can be measured and it is therefore simple. People aren't like that. Even the simplest people are a complex system.
A complex system is one where there is some form of feedback loop that informs and changes the system.
People are complex systems because they can learn and they do learn- all the time.
Every experience informs and changes each one of us. In some way you are not the same person as you were when you started reading this article or even this sentence. This means that what worked for you yesterday may not work in the same way today. For example the encouragement that worked with an individual today, may not work with the same individual tomorrow. Why? because they are essentially different people. They have learned and therefore changed. The situation will be different, maybe in a tiny way, maybe in a major way

There is a saying that you cannot step into the same river twice.

For the same reasons, you and I are not the same people that we were when we began this blog. Every encounter is therefore a first meeting, a fresh encounter. That is why interactions with people can be challenging. They are all fresh encounters, no matter how well we think we know the other person, because the other person no longer exists; they are constantly being renewed and refreshed. If we start with that premise it may help all of our relationships.

Developing the skills to quickly engage with others, to build rapport, to quickly, easily and effectively connect therefore become key skills if we want to perform better in anything that involves people. Jim Rohn said, never wish that life were easier, wish that you were better.
In large measure the skills that I am referring too are what we label Emotional Intelligence. The good news is that Emotional Intelligence is a set of competences and skills that can be learned, practiced and developed.

Team Massive results will be presenting a workshop on “Leading with Emotional Intelligence” please ClickHere for details.

It's Choice not Chance by Ian Kinnery

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

“Next to life itself, the power to choose is your greatest gift” so said Steven Covey. Unlike the rest of the animal kingdom we get to choose, all of the time; every minute of every day.

We get to choose all sorts of things. We get to choose our attitude. We get to choose our commitment, we get to choose our mood and we get to choose our definition of success and our level of success.

Often these choices are not conscious choices, and so we make them without realizing that we are making them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t choices. Most of the time we are unaware that we are making choices, and so we are rarely aware of the strategies and the criterion that we are using to make those choices.

Perhaps it is because the knowledge that we have the power to choose is so frightening that we choose to ignore that we are choosing. The knowledge that we have a choice brings with it a responsibility, to make the best choice and that takes real personal courage.

One of the things that a good coach will help with is the awareness of the choices we have and the fact that our life story is the total of all of the consequences of all of those choices.

All choices have consequences.
I wonder how well any of us truly understands the choices we are making day by day, and the possible consequences of those choices. Good coaching is sometimes about lifting those choices from the unconscious into the conscious mind gently and respectfully so the coachee can examine them for herself in order to learn and perhaps make better choices next time.

If you knew you will be successful, what would you choose? What would you choose to do? What would you choose to be, in your life and in your business?

To Your Success

Ian Kinnery

There is no right, there is no wrong. by Ian Kinnery

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

There is no right, there is no wrong. There are only choices. Life and business are a series of thousands of small and large choices taken every minute of every day.

Coaching is a process of facilitated self reflection which will allow the coachee to make decisions which are more useful to her. As John Whitmore has said coaching is about awareness, accountability and responsibility.

Awareness of what the options are, what forces those decisions may be driven by (they are certainly not all conscious decisions), and what the options may be. This awareness alone gives each of us a wider choice in the decisions we make and good coaching will help align those decisions to the person we really are, not the imposter that often shows up and pretends to be us to the outside world.

Accountability and responsibility refer to the fact that we are not simply victims of circumstances. We have choice and the knowledge that our lives represent the sum total of the consequences of all of those choices, for which we are accountable and able to choose our responses.

A good coach will gently and respectfully yet firmly hold the coachee accountable for her choices in a way that few other relationships are able to, which is one of the things that makes having a coach so transformational in so many lives in so many ways.

A good coach is a compassionate yet unreasonable friend. They are always on your side. They always have your back. They will not let you fall, but because they will not accept anything less than your best you will find them unreasonable, particularly in the way that a good coach will demand that the very best of you shows up each time and every time. That is why we all need a good coach.

Ian Kinnery

The Secret of Your Subconscious by Brian Tracy

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

One Thought at a Time
The incredible thing about your subconscious mind is that it cannot tell the difference between something that you vividly imagine—such as a goal, a hope or a dream—and a real experience. For example, if you go to an automobile dealership and take your dream car for a drive, and, as you drive along, you imagine you already own that car, and you create the feeling of enjoyment that would accompany your being the proud possessor of that beautiful machine, your subconscious mind simply accepts that the car belongs to you. It doesn´t argue; it doesn´t complain; it doesn´t try to change your instructions. It simply tries to make your instructions a reality.

Visualize What You Really Want
Think of your subconscious mind as a photo lab and your conscious mind as a camera, or a photographer. Your conscious mind takes pictures of what you want and passes the film to the photo lab, your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind then develops the pictures and passes them back up to your reality. The photo lab doesn´t argue with you over the content of the film that you sent to it. It simply develops the photographs exactly as you saw them through the lens of your mind´s eye.

Design Your Dream Home
Does visualization work? Well, here´s an exercise that has worked for me and might work for you. Everyone I know wants to have his “dream home.’ The first problem with obtaining a dream home is that most people have never even sat down to think about what it would look like.
Many years ago, when my wife, Barbara, and I were going through financial difficulties, we began putting together a composite of our dream home. We subscribed to magazines full of beautiful pictures and descriptions of lovely homes for sale. We cut out pictures and descriptions that were consistent with what we were looking for. We discussed our dream home at great length. We went to open houses in the best neighborhoods in the city. We looked at beautiful, expensive homes and at the details and furnishings in them. We read Architectural Digest and House Beautiful. We eventually came up with a mutually agreed on composite of what our dream home would look like.

Take Action on Your Dreams
Within a year after beginning this exercise, we moved from a rented home to a beautiful home that we had purchased. It wasn´t quite what we had in mind, but we both recognized at the time that it was merely a stepping-stone to what we really wanted. A year later, after looking at 150 houses in different cities, we walked into a home that was for sale, took one look around and, without speaking, both knew that we had found it. This was the home that we had been looking for.

Be Prepared to Pay the Price
It cost twice as much as we ever had imagined paying for a house, and it required a good deal of renovation to make it conform to the mental pictures we had developed. Nonetheless, we bought it, renovated it, repainted it, furnished it and landscaped the grounds exactly as we had imagined. And it all began to come together after we had carefully crafted a clear mental picture of what it would look like when it was done.

Be Clear About What You Want
What is your mental picture of your dream house or dream car, or dream vacation or relationship? When you are clear, your subconscious will bring it into your life.

Action Exercises
Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:
First, begin today to design your dream house. Be crystal clear about every detail and keep feeding the picture into your subconscious mind every day until it becomes a reality.
Second, refuse to imagine or visualize a problem or situation that you don´t want to come true. Your subconscious mind develops whatever pictures you supply it - so be careful.
Third, cut out pictures of things you want in your life and look at these pictures carefully, taking in every detail. You´ll be amazed at what starts to happen.

Ian Kinnery

Make Goal Setting Work For You

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I know that a lot of you will have set goals of some sort for the start of the new calendar year. Some of you may well have used my own “Great Goal Setting” process to do this. Whatever methodology you have used it is clear that setting goals is actually the easy bit. The difficult bit is sticking to the processes which will deliver those goals.

Here are four tips to help you get into the habit of doing what needs to be done. You will find that once you make a start and build some momentum, things get easier. You start to form new habits, helpful habits, and useful habits which relentlessly move you little by little towards the achievements of your goals.

1. Share your goal. Sharing your goal will help you to be even more accountable. If you share with a trusted friend they can add to your own resolve when they helpfully ask you if you have done what you committed to do.
2. Make it a game, make it fun. We do things that we enjoy, see if you can have a competition with someone even if that someone is yourself. Two friends committed to go to the gym twice a week. The consequence of not going, of not keeping their commitment to themselves and to each other was a fine. It may be a £5 donation to the other person, or to a local charity or having to take a 30 second cold shower. Whatever it was, it was fun and served to strengthen their resolve.
3. Measure your progress every day. You cannot manage what you can’t measure. The act of measuring will cause you to focus even more on the processes towards your goals. It will turbocharge the effort.
4. Make the results visual. Things that are visual are very effective (think road signs, TV adverts, billboards) so find a way to make your progress visual with a chart, a graph, whatever works for you. Put it somewhere you will see it every day.

It takes repetition to form new habits. In the age of the internet I have found a really useful and free resource at www.habitforge.com which will help you get the momentum we all need through repetition and reminders of any new habits we are trying to form.

Remember be the best you can be always.
“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable” Coach John Wooden

Ian Kinnery

The Great Leadership Challenge by Jim Rohn

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

If you want to be a leader who attracts quality people, the key is to become a person of quality yourself. Leadership is the ability to attract someone to the gifts, skills, and opportunities you offer as an owner, as a manager, as a parent. What’s important in leadership is refining your skills. All great leaders keep working on themselves until they become effective. Here are some specifics: L
learn to be strong but not impolite. It is an extra step you must take to become a powerful, capable leader with a wide range of reach. Some people mistake rudeness for strength. It’s not even a good substitute. Next, learn to be kind but not weak. We must not mistake weakness for kindness. Kindness isn’t weak. Kindness is a certain type of strength. We must be kind enough to tell someone the truth. We must be kind enough and considerate enough to lay it on the line. We must be kind enough to tell it like it is and not deal in delusion.
Next, learn to be bold but not a bully. It takes boldness to win the day. To build your influence, you’ve got to walk in front of your group. You’ve got to be willing to take the first arrow, tackle the first problem, discover the first sign of trouble. Like the farmer, if you want any rewards at harvest time, you have got to be bold and face the weeds and the rain and the bugs straight on. You’ve got to seize the moment.
Here’s the next step. You’ve got to learn to be humble but not timid. You can’t get to the high life by being timid. Some people mistake timidity for humility. But humility is a virtue; timidity is a disease. It’s an affliction. It can be cured, but it is a problem.
In addition to reading and listening, you also need a chance to do some talking and sharing. I have some people in my life who help me with important life questions, who assist me in refining my own philosophy, weighing my values and pondering questions about success and lifestyle.
Humility is almost a God-like word. A sense of awe. A sense of wonder. An awareness of the human soul and spirit. An understanding that there is something unique about the human drama versus the rest of life. Humility is a grasp of the distance between us and the stars, yet having the feeling that we’re part of the stars. Here’s a good tip: Learn to be proud but not arrogant. It takes pride to build your ambitions. It takes pride in your community. It takes pride in a cause, in accomplishment. But the key to becoming a good leader is to be proud without being arrogant.
Do you know the worst kind of arrogance? Arrogance from ignorance. It’s intolerable. If someone is smart and arrogant, we can tolerate that. But if someone is ignorant and arrogant, that’s just too much to take. The next step is learning to develop humour without folly. In leadership, we learn that it’s okay to be witty but not silly; fun but not foolish.
Next, deal in realities. Deal in truth. Save yourself the agony of delusion. Just accept life as it is. Life is unique. The whole drama of life is unique. It’s fascinating.
Life is unique. Leadership is unique. The skills that work well for one leader may not work at all for another. However, the fundamental skills of leadership can be adopted to work well for just about everyone: at work, in the community, and at home.

Created by Jim Rohn
Supplied by Ian Kinnery

To Your Success Ian

The Law of Superb Execution by Brian Tracy

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Leaders are committed to excellent performance of the business task at hand, and to continuous improvement. A leader is the person who chooses the area of excellence for his or her team. A leader knows that excellence is a journey, not a destination. Leaders are committed to being the best in everything they do. They constantly strive to be better in their key result areas. They compare themselves with people, organizations, and products or services that are better than they are, and they are continually improving.

Standards of Excellence
Leaders set standards of excellence for everyone who reports to them. They are ruthless about weeding out incompetence and poor performance. Leaders demand quality work and insist that people do their jobs well. The leader sets the standard of excellence. No one, or no part of the organization, can be any better than the standard that the leader represents and enforces. For this reason, leaders are committed to personal excellence in everything they do.

Leaders are Learners
Leaders are learners, continually striving to be better in their work and personal lives. They read, take additional courses and seminars, and listen to audio programs in their cars. They attend conventions and association meetings,
go to the important sessions, and take good notes. They are committed to learning and growing in every area where they feel they can make an even more valuable contribution to their work.

Inspiring People
People are most inspired when they feel they are working for an organization in which excellence is expected. The very best way to motivate and inspire others is for you to announce your commitment to being the best in your field or
industry. Then, continually benchmark your performance and the performance of your organization against the very "best in class" in your business.

Core Competencies
Leaders identify their core competencies, the vital tasks they do that are responsible for them being in business. They continually look for ways to upgrade these core competencies to assure that they maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Leaders think about the future and identify the core competencies that will be required for success in the years ahead. They then develop plans to acquire those core competencies well before they will be needed to compete effectively in the marketplace of tomorrow.

Action Exercise
Identify your personal core competencies. What are the essential skills of your job, the abilities that make you valuable, if not indispensable? What core competencies do you need to acquire if you want to be the best in your field in the years ahead? Make a plan today to develop the key skills and core competencies you will need tomorrow.

Created by Brian Tracy
Supplied by Ian Kinnery

To Your Success Ian

The Law of Ambition by Brian Tracy

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Leaders have an intense desire to lead; they have a clear vision of a better future, which they are determined to realize. Vision is the one common quality that separates leaders from non-leaders. Leaders have a clear picture of the kind of future they want to create, and they have the ability to communicate this vision to others in an exciting and inspiring way.

Key Responsibility of Leadership People may work steadily for a paycheck, but they perform at high levels only when they are inspired by a vision of some kind. The development and articulation of this vision is a key responsibility of leadership.

Leaders Visualize Leaders have the ability to visualize, to see the big picture and then to inspire others to work together to make it a reality. The true leader sees leadership as a tool he or she can use to bring about a result that is bigger and more important than any single individual.

Become a Leader You become a leader when you set a goal, make a plan, and then throw your whole heart into making it a reality. You become a leader when you develop an inspiring vision for yourself and others. You become a leader when you know exactly where you want to go, why you want to get there, and what you have to do to achieve your vision.

Leaders Explain Leaders can explain clearly to other people what it is they are trying to accomplish, why they are trying to accomplish it, and how they are going to bring it about. They are eager to get results and they are impatient with delays. They are excited about what they are doing, and as a result, they get other people excited as well. Leaders have goals, plans, and strategies that they are working to implement every day. They are in a hurry. They have a lot to do and they feel that they have too little time.

Clarity Perhaps the most important part of ambition is clarity on the part of the leader. The leader has a clear vision, clear values, a clear vision, and clear, written goals, plans, and strategies for his or her department or organization. Most of all, leaders want to lead, to be in charge, to be responsible, to make things happen. They are willing to endure the risks and the sacrifices that are required to make a real difference in their worlds.

Action Exercise Determine a clear vision for yourself and your organization. Where would you ideally like to be in three to five years? Define it clearly. Write it down. Share it with others. The more clear and specific you are about your future vision for yourself and your company, the more you will accomplish and the better and more effective leader you will become.

Created by Brian Tracy
Supplied by Ian Kinnery

To Your Success Ian

Programming Yourself for Success by Brian Tracy

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Your mission statement is always written in the present tense, as though you have already become the person that you have described. It is always positive rather than negative. And it is always personal.

Program Yourself Correctly Your subconscious mind can only accept your mission statement as a set of commands when you phrase it in the present, positive and personal tenses. "I am an exceptional salesperson," is a perfect example. After every sales call, you should quickly reread your mission statement and ask yourself if your recent behaviour was more like the person you want to be, or less? As a top sales performer, you are always comparing your sales activities against a high standard and adjusting your activities upward. You're continually striving to be better. Every day in every way, you are deliberately working to become more like the ideal person you have envisioned.

Determine Your Mission Statement Your goal is that, a year from today, when one of your customers has lunch with one of your prospects, and your prospect asks your customer to describe you in detail as a salesperson, your customer will recite your business mission statement voluntarily. The way you have treated your customer will have been so exemplary that your customer will describe you in the most glowing of terms.

Compare Yourself Against Yourself Once you have developed a mission statement like this, you can read it, review it, edit it, and upgrade it regularly. You can add additional qualities to it and more clearly define the qualities you've already listed. It becomes your personal credo, your philosophy of life, your statement of beliefs and a guide to your behaviour in all your interactions with others. Each day, you can evaluate your behaviours and compare them against the standard that you have set in this statement.

Shape Your Own Personality Over time, a remarkable thing will happen. As you read and review your personal mission statement, you will find yourself, almost unconsciously, shaping your words and conforming your behaviours so that you are more and more like the ideal person you have defined. People will notice the change in you almost immediately. Over time, you will find that you are actually creating within yourself the kind of character and personality that you most admire in others. You will have become the moulder and the shaper of your own personal destiny. After you have applied the ABC Method to your list, you will now be completely organized and ready to get more important things done faster.

Action Exercises
First, imagine that one of your customers was going to meet with one of your prospects. What would you want him to say about you? How could you behave with your customer to assure that he says these things?
Second, talk to yourself positively all the time. Feed your mind with positive messages that describe your goals and the person you want to be.

Created by Brian Tracy
Supplied by Ian Kinnery

To Your Success Ian

A Time for Planning

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:02:00 +0000

Last week I wrote about the power of reflection and I hope you found that exercise beneficial. One of the consequences of honest reflection is that many of us realise that we haven’t progressed nearly so far in the last period as we owe ourselves to have done.

Well as the year, or month, or week, or day draws to a close that provides a great opportunity to set your goals for the coming period. There are many methods of goals setting. I don’t care which one you choose but I do care if you don’t choose any.

“If you aren’t going somewhere you are, by definition, going nowhere”, so it is time to set yourself some goals, some things you want to have achieved, to have learnt, to have done, by the end of the next period.

Click this link Great Goal Setting to download an article I wrote some time ago which will help you with this really vital task. Good luck on being the best you can be.

A Time for Reflection

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:56:00 +0000

As the year draws to a close it provides a great opportunity for reflection. You know that the symbol of Team Massive Results is a spiral and I chose the spiral because it strikes me that there is a cyclical nature about life.

Every day starts with a new dawn, every week starts with a Monday, and every year ends in December and begins on January the first. The message of the spiral is when we come right back to the beginning again are we coming back at the same level? Some of us will have grown our selves and our businesses significantly since this time last year, some of us will have stood still, and yet more of us will have slipped backwards.

So you will be circling. It is almost impossible to stand still. The question is, are you spiralling up or are you spiralling down? In fact things are changing and developing so quickly that if we haven’t moved measurably forward I will contend that in these days of extreme competition we will have effectively moved backwards.

I think it was James Rohn who said that “reflection turns experience into insight”. As you sit down this year end, take some time to reflect on where you are and what speed and direction you are moving in.

To help you focus I have listed 12 great questions that you may want to address as you take some time for a little quiet personal reflection. I recommend that you “Think in ink” so take a piece of paper and a pen to note your answers and direct your reflection to answering these 12 questions. Thinking back to 12 months ago….

What do you know now that you didn’t know then about……

1. Yourself?

2. Your Business?

3. Business Generally?

4. Your Competitors?

5. Your Customers or clients as a group?

6. Your top clients individually?

7. Leadership?

8. Sales and Marketing?

9. One of the top leaders in your field?

10. Success topics like self motivation or time management?

11. Marketing topics like direct response advertising, the internet or social media?

12. Methods.. a means, process or technique of doing something useful to you, whether manufacturing your widget faster or making sales presentations more effectively?

The honest answers that you give to these questions will be a greater predictor of your business and personal success in 2011 and beyond than just about anything else.

W Edwards Deming said, “Learning is not compulsory, but neither is survival.”. In these days of rapid change and competition we owe it to ourselves and our families to make sure that our trajectory is always an upward spiral. Watch out for the next blog which will help you plan for a brilliant New Year.

Master Your Life - and Have Fun Doing It by Robin Sharma

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

2011 is finding it's way to completion. Many of us are thinking about the holidays - and joy-filled moments with those we love most. This is also a superb time to carve out some solo time and begin reflecting on what you did well in 2011. And what you need to improve so that the new year is guaranteed to become your absolute best year yet. Please remember: success doesn't just show up via luck. No, success is the inevitable result of doing a number of specific things, in a consistent way. So as you reflect+deliberate on+journal your 2011 wins and record your "Opportunities for Improvement" (along with your 2012 Mission+Values and Goals),
I invite you to remember the following 6 Insights to Master Your Life:

1. IT IS ALL ABOUT YOU! What I mean by this is that the #1 reason you may not be where you want to be in your career and personal life is who you currently are vs the external conditions you might be blaming. It's stunning how our limiting beliefs and core fears sabotage us and keep us small. And here's the thing: because most of them are subconscious, we can't even see the mess they are creating for us.
The key here is to clean up the self-deception in your life. And take a good hard look at why you are where you are. Is the truth that you're scared of failure or rejection or the unknown or success? The more aware you become of how you're the one standing in your own way, the more you'll move into choice. And have the power to make the new choices that drive new results.

2. YOUR NET WORTH NEVER EXCEEDS YOUR SELF WORTH. We get from life not all we want but who we are. To have more, we must become more. The more you can learn, grow and provoke the highest display of your potential on a daily basis, the more all you want will begin to show up. (How do you start this growth? Journaling, affirmations, reading the books of world-class people, associating with superstars, attending seminars+webinars, listening to inspirational audiobooks etc).

3. FOCUS IS MORE VALUABLE THAN INTELLIGENCE. You're smart enough to master your life - and play in the big leagues of success. Here's another thing that may be holding you back: you're really busy being busy. But what's the point of being uber-productive doing useless things?
So much of the leadership presentations I delivered across the planet in 2011 for clients like Starbucks and The Coca-Cola Company and KPMG involved showing people how to make the leap from being busy to achieving results. Two quick ways: turn off your technology for a few hours each day and do Real Work. And second, make your Stop Doing List more important than your To Do List.

4. DISRUPT OR BE DISRUPTED. OK, so here's the reality: the next 20 years will be nothing like the last 20 years. You and your team and your organization can "wait for the up cycle to return". But I think you'll be waiting a long time. I don't think we're in a down cycle. I think the way the global economy+society currently is, is the new reality. And if you agree with me, there's only one choice for any one of us: innovate - or become obsolete.
So, to win in 2012, out-think who you were this year and out-learn what you learned and outwork the way you worked. Read constantly. Iterate daily. And ferociously improve every part of the way you think, work and live.

5. SHATTER YOUR STANDARDS. It's stunning how many people - built to play at wow with their lives - accept mediocrity in their health, finances, work, relationships and mindset (the problem with letting a little mediocrity into your orbit is more starts to creep in until eventually it becomes your new normal).
Right now, I challenge you with my usual respect and affection, to raise your standards. Don't tolerate any form of average. Don't accept Dis-excellence. Don't stand for mediocre. If you're going to settle, then please settle for the absolute best.

6. HAVE SOME FUN. Life's a short ride when you really think about it. Yes, do your dreams while you change the world. But do it with a smile. And a festive heart. Make time for life's simple pleasures (the other day my daughter and I shared Chinese food in the food court of a shopping mall; the laughter and joy we experienced - priceless). Savor life's gifts. Embrace all that's good in your life.
And from me to you, and from my family to yours, have a beautiful holiday season and year end. Thanks for all the tremendous support you've given me this year. Let's keep the conversation going on my Facebook page. And - together - make a difference in the world!

Kindest Regards
Robin P.S.
If this article resonates with you, you'll love my "Master Your Life Holiday Bundle" that I've put together to get you ready to fly in 2012: http://www.robinsharma.com/store/master-your-life

What Results Can I Expect To Get From A Business Coach?

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

My favourite definition of a coach is “your compassionate yet unreasonable friend”. You can expect to have someone in your corner, someone who has your back, someone who is on your side. Someone who always has your best interests at heart. Someone who knows what you are going through. In my case you can expect someone who has probably been there before, made the mistakes and done the learning for you, so you don’t have to.

You can also expect me to be unreasonable. Like all the best teachers I won’t allow you to slack, skive or give less than your best. I will do whatever is necessary to help you to perform at your brilliant best more often and more consistently.

If you are prepared to commit to this I can guarantee you success, whatever that may mean for you. Success may be more financial output, less stress or more time to enjoy it, or any one of dozens of other criteria you might choose to apply.

My favourite definition of success comes from John Wooden who said, “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable”

That is what you can expect of working with a great Business Coach. You can expect to become the best of which you are capable, both in your business and in your life. All you need to do is commit to the process, back yourself and go for it.

I look forward to working with you.

The Recession Bites... So Bite Back

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Frighteningly one of the most obvious set of figures we were shown relates to the decline of lending to UK households and businesses since a peak in 2008, proving that the sources of credit available to businesses today are very difficult to come by, if they exist at all. So what can we do about it?

Well for many start up and young companies, credit was never a readily available option, so we need to look at them to learn the skills and thoughts that can help us to prosper despite the climate in the world at large. We need to manage our cash and our profit even more diligently than ever before. We need to know those numbers, to understand the difference between cash and profit, to understand the ebb and flow of both. We need to understand how to optimise the balances between price, profit, cashflow, margin and volume. We need to find ever better ways of optimising the margin, retaining our clients and selling to them time and again.

The chances are that whatever we were doing before the recession hit will not work now. Too many things have changed. A little like the driver of a family saloon that suddenly finds himself behind the wheel of a supercar. Things look familiar but everything is so much more critical, so much more responsive; So potentially fatal.

This is not a time for amateurs or enthusiasts. This is a time for cool heads and skilful execution. It is a time when the word maximisation gives way to optimisation, when careering headlong has to give way to balanced progress, when the decisions we make will come under the full scrutiny of the most testing of times. But as the old English proverb states “a smooth sea never made a skilled mariner”

There will be many who can seize the many opportunities that are presented, to build their businesses, to hone their skills, to emerge from this cauldron, with strong, fit, lean businesses that are ideally suited to today’s conditions.

The question is will yours be one of them. I will be leading a free seminar on Wednesday 16th November where I will be discussing the top 5 things we must do to build resilience to recession. Please visit the events page on the website for details and call to reserve a place on 0845 430 9224