Category Archives: coaching

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Hard learning

Hard Learning, Have You Experienced It?

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Hard learning doesn’t necessarily mean difficult. Have you been known to learn something the hard way?

Life is full of lessons if you open your mind to see them.

Sometimes I ask seminar participants, “What is a learning moment?”

Someone almost always quickly jumps to the explanation of a mistake, a failure, and then that circumstance becomes an opportunity to learn from the mistake. Makes sense, right?

I usually ask a second question, “Can you learn something from an experience when things go right?”

Simple, yet often overlooked. In many cases, you will get more momentum when you focus a little more on the things that are working. When people recognize the correct way, they can replicate it.

In success or in failure, there are learning moments.

Hard Learning

What have you learned the hard way?

Maybe it is closely following posted speed limits, or coming to a complete stop at a stop sign? A costly and embarrassing traffic citation may be a lesson learned the hard way.

Perhaps in school or college, it was studying for the exam, not procrastinating until the last minute, and to get started early.

In the workplace, it may be learning what to say, how to say it, and when to say it. Workplace success is as much about navigating as it is about being right or wrong.

Have you learned to be more organized? Do you have your Word documents or Excel spreadsheets stored in a logical manner with meaningful names in specific folders? Can you find them when you need them?

What about a missed bill, paid late, resulting in an additional charge? Does that pinch? Have you learned?

Life is full of lessons. Some of them are learned the hard way.

Learning may not always be difficult, but sometimes it is hard.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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achieving objectives

Achieving Objectives Happens When You Commit

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Are you good at achieving objectives? Do you have goals or metrics used to measure progress?

When you say you want to take a trip to visit another country, read a book that has been sitting on your shelf, or complete the degree you started right after high school, do you start your sentence with, “Someday.”

Someday I…

want plant a vegetable garden.

want to start exercising again.

hope to get a new car.

There is a problem with someday. It doesn’t lock you in. You haven’t really committed, and as a result, there is a good chance, you’ll never achieve it.

Something else will always get in your way. Something that seems urgent, more important at the moment, or maybe your budget just doesn’t seem to allow it.

Career minded people often find themselves vaguely committing. They vaguely commit to more education, vaguely commit to a book, or vaguely commit to pursuing a posted job opportunity.

Time slips by and perhaps none of it happens.

Achieving Objectives

The truth for everyone is that three years from now, or ten years from now you are going to arrive someplace? A place in time, a milestone, a point on your journey. The question to ask yourself is, Where?

Where will you arrive, what will that look like, how will things be different.

Achieving your objectives starts with commitment. You need to set a date. You may even need to pick a place, a venue, or a destination.

Sometimes when there is a deadline, things seem to stick. The commitment is there, there isn’t any more room for procrastination, delays, or waiting.

The bigger the objective, the more checkpoints that may be required. Have you budgeted appropriately? Have you studied as you should have? Will you take that first big leap that starts the process?

Never starting is one of the first places people stop.

The clock is ticking. Without commitment you won’t get very far.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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best results

Best Results, When You’re Doing Your Best

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How are things turning out? Are you getting the best results? What questions are you asking yourself? What are your answers?

When things go right, it often feels like things can’t go wrong. So much so, that people often take for granted the opportunities that are welcoming them along for the ride. Has this ever been you?

Sometimes the opposite is true. One wrong turn seems to lead to another. The only opportunity that you start to wish for is that there will not be more bad news. Could this be you? Have you experienced this in the past?

At the moment, if the chips seem down, it is often hard to see what things will look like on the other side of the crisis. The haste to improve, correct, and redirect the flow is often overwhelming.

Have you searched for more optimism? Is there a path to shifting from doom to bloom?

What will you focus on to get better results?

Best Results

There are two possible paths to shift to better results. The best news is, you can take them both at the same time.

The first possible path is to put the obstacle into perspective. People often lose their perspective when the chips seem down. The half-inch tall obstacles get blown out of proportion and they appear hundreds of feet tall. Step back and look at how big, or how tall, in the bigger picture of life, how tall is this obstacle?

Worry won’t shrink it. Keeping it all in perspective might.

Remember that disappointments are a natural part of life. The risk that doesn’t always blossom, and opportunities that seemed like they would likely appear, but then didn’t. It’s normal.

The second possible path is to start analyzing your wins. You can do this with a win-list. It’s simple really, you stop counting the things going wrong and you shift your focus to your wins. Any win and every win, no matter how small.

Most people are pleasantly surprised when they start focusing on wins instead of drowning in the drama.

Everyone wants the best results.

Doing your best matters. What you focus on always creates your perspective.

You’re taller than your obstacles, and you’ll win.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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natural actions

Natural Actions and Behaviors, Do They Change?

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What are some of your natural actions? Short tempered, poor listening, procrastination, or so many more. What do others say, or what is your self-assessment?

Your life is full of habits that you’ve built.

Evolution of Your Actions

Do you believe that you are fairly smart? It may be that you’ve learned to believe that you are. People have given you feedback that you are, or they have quickly bought into your ideas, repetitively, across time.

What about something opposite. Do you believe you don’t have enough skill in a particular area? Maybe you’re convinced that you make poor choices or are not good at math?

Are your behaviors, attitude, or skills the result of something that comes naturally, or is there some form of development across time?

Certainly, we may point to athletic skills or even IQ as an indicator of what we might call talent. It’s true we all have some of this in certain areas.

Largely though, much of your workplace or social behavior is the result of some development across time. You may label it as good or bad, but it is often developed.

Have some of your actions changed? Should they?

Professional Development

Lots of professional people participate in training.

Training on communication skills, harmful conflict reducing techniques, leadership skills, and so much more.

Is this training effective?

Hopefully, the answer is, yes.

Yet, it is still conditioned by each individual’s receptivity to the training and by the repetitive actions that guide future behavior. In other words, did they put something new into practice and keep practicing it?

Changing Behaviors

There may be blind change. We change and follow a new path or behavior because someone said so and we’ve agreed to do it.

There is also what we may call, desired change. This represents change which is often the result of at least one of two factors.

First, we’ve experienced something unpleasant or uncomfortable, we haven’t liked the outcome, so we want to change.

Second, perhaps we have observed or experienced something we like or admire and as a result, we want to change. This is exactly why leaders should be good role models.

Natural Actions

Do you believe your behaviors are the same today as when you were ten years old? What about when you were fifteen? Or, if you are older, size things up across five or ten-year spans, have you changed some of your behaviors?

In the workplace, much of your behavior, confidence level, or interpersonal skills are developed. It may seem that you are doing what comes naturally, but actually you’re often doing things based on what you’ve learned and put into regular practice.

The commitment to become a better version of you, depends mostly on you.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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exceptional talent

Exceptional Talent Is Based on Real Skill and Art

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Skill building is life-changing. That is a fact, not an opinion. Are you developing exceptional talent or simply staying the same?

You can learn how to use a wrench, create a formula in an Excel spreadsheet, or improve your mental outlook and focus. Any or all of those may alter your future outcomes.

Change is often about learning. You can change your attitude, change your focus, and change your future.

When people excel in a career field, an athletic endeavor, or even in self-management, it is because they’ve realized that learning creates more value.

The talent you build becomes your own personal masterpiece.

Exceptional Talent

Have you ever wondered why someone speaks without a filter? On one hand they may be angry, or happy, or simply do not care. On the other hand, they may not realize how their actions, behaviors, or words influence others.

They need to build some of their essential skills. What some people call soft skills or real skills. They are essential and soft because they are hard to measure or test, and they are real because they are needed to survive in any social climate.

Exceptional talent is often observed as art.

The water color painter, the architect, or sculpture designer. All artists.

It is also true for the workplace leader, the innovation expert, and business strategist.

Don’t forget about the masterful work of the peacekeeper, the communicator, and the energizer.

All of this work, created by people, require real skills and the composure of art.

Your Masterpiece

You’re going to need to be at the top of your game to standout.

Exceptional talent is built by learning more about what makes your work matter. It matters when it is observed by others as useful, valuable, or attractive.

Every skill you build is a contribution to your masterpiece.

If you stop studying and stop learning, your work of art stops too.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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viable audience

Viable Audience and Your Next Career Move

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Wishing for a promotion? Looking at new options? Perhaps you just want to be the absolute best in your current role? Think twice about what is trendy or flashy and consider your viable audience.

Here is why.

Trendy, flashy, or doing something the way it appears to sell at the employer across town may not matter very much. Surfing LinkedIn, searching Indeed, or posting your discontent on Instagram probably won’t result in anything positive.

Choose Your Audience

Too often people try to go for the biggest viable audience. They consider that all of the organizations must be searching for someone who fits all the knowledge, skills, and abilities of the advertisement they just read.

The truth is, when you say it politely, that employer likely just borrowed the job advertisement from the closest job ad they themselves just read. It is the same, or very similar.

It appears everyone wants nearly the same thing. They offer X and provide Y. They are growing and care. So they say.

That’s what they advertise.

What is behind the veil?

Smallest Viable Audience

What do you want for your career? What makes you the best candidate?

Mainstream, fitting into the average and being just like everyone else probably will make finding the right opportunity nothing more than a gamble.

Who is your smallest viable audience? Not the largest, the most flashy or trendy, not all of the employers in the ocean of opportunity.

What employers really have the niches where you shine? Are you promoting and growing the things that make you unique, or do you find yourself trying to justify your abilities in areas where you are weak?

Sometimes you just need a job. It’s true, and understandable.

Your next career move though, it should be something more than that.

If you want it to be.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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Planning tomorrow

Planning Tomorrow, and Every Day After

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Does your day start with a plan? Will what you do today include planning tomorrow?

You can plan for tomorrow or you can make part of your daily routine planning tomorrow.

Perhaps there is a difference.

Jobs and Careers

When someone starts a new job, begins a career, or finishes their primary education, they may need some tools.

One person may need a laptop, another a tool chest with relevant hand tools, and still others will need a uniform, appropriate footwear, and some personal protective equipment.

Having the tools is part of what is needed to operate within that system. It doesn’t mean the system will work or will last. It means at some level you are prepared.

Another level of preparedness is knowing how to actually use all of the tools.

Having a laptop doesn’t mean you can create elaborate formula’s using Microsoft Excel. It doesn’t mean you can update or create a website. Simply, you have one of the tools of the trade.

What is next for your life or career? Do you have a plan?

Tools, Trades, and Professional Careers

Many people move about their career carrying a tool chest.

They have some education and they have experience. Those credentials don’t always intersect. A degree in accounting may not matter much if your daily job is creative advertising.

The average job doesn’t have a very long shelf life. The average career is longer, yet still not always permanent.

If you feel uncertain about this, ask a typesetter, switchboard operator, or your local video store owner.

Why do so many people view it as they are all set, they’re completely prepared, now where is the work?

Planning Tomorrow

Planning tomorrow means that you’ll have the tools and the work. You’ll have accountability and reasonable expectations for your future.

It’s hard to know for certain.

Consider what you do know.

Tomorrow will be different from today.

Plan appropriately.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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one chance

Just One Chance To Tell Your Story

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Actually, there are many chances but there is only one first chance. If you had only one chance, what would your story be?

Your resume might be a story. Perhaps you tell a story in the job interview. Your reputation is a story and so are the things that keep your friends interested in what’s next.

Your life is full of stories.

There are the stories that you tell yourself as you start your day, the story in your mind before the meeting, and the story you consider as you check your progress on your goals.

Everyone around you has a story too. Some will listen to yours and some only want to tell their own.

The news media has a story. So does the politician, the financial analyst, and the meteorologist.

For every person what happens next depends on their story.

Perhaps the life lesson is to learn how to listen to your own story.

One Chance for Your Story

It is possible that you could tell a better story? How would that shape what will unfold for you tomorrow? What about overmorrow?

The story that you tell depends on you. If you want a better story can you create one? Do good stories lead to more good stories?

When you care about your story it may be important to consider how you’ll tell it better. What will make it more powerful with greater impact. Will it be a catalyst for others on a similar quest?

If you care about what happens next it might be wise to listen to your own story.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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navigating Difficult People

Navigating Difficult People Is Seldom Easy

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Have you ever faced the challenge of navigating difficult people? What did you do?

Workplaces are filled with challenges. They’re also filled with emotions, bias, and mistrust.

A Few Basics

There are a few general practices that can help guide people in most situations. One of the first and perhaps the most fundamental is to recognize that it is often your own behavior that you can control, not the behavior or personalities of others.

There is a difference between navigating peers and navigating your boss, or perhaps even the boss of your boss.

What about all of the picky people, the perfectionists, or the boundary busting critic?

Then there are the annoying people. The loud, the rude, and the obnoxious.

When we recognize that we have a choice for how we react to every situation it makes navigation a little easier.

Some of it is based on your own expectations.

What are the expectations of others? Are they too high, too low, or inappropriately aligned for the circumstances?

Once again, each person has some ability to gauge their actions and reactions.

Navigating Difficult People

A picky person may feel difficult, yet when we realize and develop a greater understanding of their expectations, their values, or beliefs, we can better navigate. We can change our interactions and lower our expectations on his or her behavior.

On the other hand, a truly difficult person may enjoy being difficult.

If you suggest blue, they want green. Show them green, and it should have been orange. Tomorrow or next week, it all changes.

In some cases, you have a choice about who you interact with, in other cases you must find a way to navigate when interaction is required. Even when it is uncomfortable.

Improving your own situation starts with thinking about the choices you’ll make and how you’ll choose to interact.

Having big expectations for others that they should change is probably unrealistic.

You can change, just don’t expect it from others.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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untaught lessons

Untaught Lessons Are Not a Life Event Label

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Learning from experience is what many people enjoy the most. In some circles it is identified as experiential learning. Can you learn from untaught lessons?

Untaught suggests that it wasn’t scripted. It still, perhaps, could have happened in a classroom only it was a by-product of the instruction or lecture not necessarily the actual content.

Often people believe that experiential implies hands on. Such as a mechanic uses a wrench to loosen the bolt.

Experiential learning at its root is developed from reflection. When you reflect cognitively on the content, an outcome, or even the lecture, you are experiencing it.

What we learn becomes part of who we are. Often people become a label.

She is a teacher, dentist, or a welder. He is a carpenter, a salesman, or a project manager.

The labels often become applied as a result of formal studies. The degree in accounting makes her an accountant. It’s a life event label. She studied accounting and is now an accountant.

What happens with all of the untaught lessons?

Do you learn something from the by-product or residue of intentional learning?

Untaught Lessons

At the end of formal training sessions sometimes an instructor may ask, “What did you learn?”

For the individual there is reflection. For everyone else in the class there is reflection and an opportunity for learning from thoughts shared.

In many cases we experience or reflect upon what we choose.

When we make a mistake, we can learn from it. When we have some success, we can learn from it.

In life it is often our reflection on lessons that have the greatest impact.

Untaught lessons may not provide you with a life event label. Yet, life events may teach you a lesson.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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