Coach Andrea

Coach Andrea’s Intro

Are you the type of person who, when confronted with an opportunity, always says, “Let’s go for it!”?  Or are you the type who holds back, examining the pros and cons before making a decision?  This week’s Tip explores how the second, more cautious type can become more comfortable with taking risks.

Quote of the Week

“Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.”

Risky Business: How to Be More of a Risk Taker

By Andrea Novakowski

Are you a thrill seeker? Or do you like to play it safe? There’s some evidence to suggest that your level of risk tolerance affects your potential for success. My clients who are business leaders, those senior executives in the C-suite, are almost always risk takers. Big risks can reap big rewards – but they can also lead to big-time failure. The key is learning how to dance on that tightrope, while making sure you have some kind of safety net below you.

I don’t know if my high-achieving clients are born risk takers, or if they’ve built their risk tolerance through practice. Studies show that even at a very early age, some children are drawn to new experiences and high-intensity activities, while others prefer predictability, safety, and routine. Both of these personality traits probably have evolutionary advantages. Generally speaking, though, the most successful people are the ones who aren’t afraid to fail.

Sometimes risky behavior only looks that way from the outside. Business leaders often have a set of criteria they use to inform their decision making, so while their choices may look daring, the process mitigates the risk. Or they may just have an instinctive feel for the ins and outs of their business. Again, while their behavior may look risky to us, the executive “just knows.”

One thing’s for sure: the better informed you are about your situation, the safer it is to take a chance. The worst sort of risk-taking occurs when you don’t know enough about the circumstances to recognize the likelihood of an undesirable outcome.

Where are you on the risk spectrum? Consider whether your level of risk tolerance might be affecting your business. If you’re too risk-averse, you may not be investing in new products, hiring new people, or expanding into new markets, so your business isn’t growing. If you’re too much of a risk-taker, you may be entering new markets without research, hiring salespeople without assessing them or the market properly, or spreading your resources too thinly.

I tend to be on the risk-averse side: I feel better when my ducks are in a row. At the same time, I can see how I might benefit by taking more risks. If you’re like me, here are steps that may help you become more of a risk-taker:

Repeat steps #4 and 5.

Coaching Call To Action

What risk would you like to take?  What steps will you take to minimize your risk?

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Coach Andrea’s Intro

This week’s Tip has you stop and reflect on the first half of the year.  Using the questions, consider what you have accomplished. It’s enlightening and energizing!

Quote of the Week

“Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix.”

~ Christina Baldwin

You’ve Come A Long Way – Even If You Don’t Think So

By Andrea Novakowski

Can it be we’re halfway through the year already? My business coaching clients always like it when we pause at this point to assess how far they’ve come since January.  It’s a chance for us to acknowledge all the good work they’ve been doing.  Yes, it’s easy to focus on what you haven’t accomplished, but I prefer to focus instead on what my clients have achieved so far.

Give it a try.  Here are the questions I asked my clients this year, inspired by a similar questionnaire created by author and coach Cheryl Richardson.  After each question, I’ve included a response or insight shared by one of my clients.  Names and identifying details have been changed.

I hope these questions have gotten you thinking about what you’ve already accomplished this year – and maybe have even re-energized you during these hot summer days. Pat yourself on the back! Now, where can you take a step forward for the remainder of the year?

Coaching Call To Action

I hope you had some great insights when you answered these 6 questions.  Want to inspire someone else?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts on Facebook below.

What’s New?

Thursday, August 16, 2012 – 9 am to noon EDT
The Return of Pounce on a Project

I’m inspired by all of the steps my clients have been taking this year!  I know I have to spend some time decluttering my office.  I’m going to do some prep work by creating a vision of what I want the room to look like.  During Pounce, I will start the hands on work.  What project would you like to get on top of and accomplish this month? Come to Pounce on a Project I – - 2012.

Join Coach Andrea on Thursday, August 16th, from 9:00 a.m. to noon Eastern. We will join as a group by phone and declare what you want to accomplish: marketing calls to hit your numbers, adding a shopping cart to your website, or cleaning your office so you can find the goals you created in January.

During the morning, the group will gather by phone a few times to check progress and get any support needed to finish with a bang. At noon, the group will celebrate their accomplishments. Who says projects have to be boring and tedious? Bring your lightness and fun and join us for the energization.

To sign up or learn more, call or e-mail me by noon on Wednesday, August 15th. Feel free to share this with friends and co-workers, the more the merrier. (Cost of the program is only the cost of long distance phone calls.)

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Coach Andrea’s Intro

Now that this week’s elections are over here in Massachusetts, it’s interesting to think about what candidates did during their campaign to garner attention and votes. It was clear that they changed the voice inside their head from saying “no” to “what the heck”. In some cases this worked and in some cases it backfired. But, we all know that unless you try, (make the sales call, make the request, push yourself) you’ll never know if you could have succeeded. This week Michael Neill elaborates on this point using the Clinton campaign as an example. See the power of moving past your inner gatekeeper.

Quote of the Week

“To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”
~ Elbert Hubbard

A Simple Shift To Create Possibility

by Michael Neill

I was once speaking with the personal assistant of one of my most influential clients. A large part of her job is to be the “gatekeeper” – the ultimate guardian of her boss’ time and schedule.

But when I asked her how often she actually had to “keep the gate”, she said that it was surprising to her how seldom people really tried to get past her and speak directly with her boss. At first, I thought that was odd, because I know a lot of people want things from this client.

And then I realized that wasn’t so odd at all. Because normally the gatekeeper inside us stops us way before we get to the gatekeeper outside us.

How many times do you stop yourself from asking?

How often do you talk yourself out of even looking into something or checking out a possibility because of that voice inside your head saying things like “Gee, they must get bombarded with things like this all the time”, or “that’s never going to work” or “there’s no point in even trying – they’re just going to say no”? We all have that voice – and yet some people aren’t stopped by it. What is it that allows them to move forward while the rest of us hold back?

Years ago, James Carville and Paul Begala were managing the presidential campaign of a then relatively unknown Governor from Arkansas named William Jefferson Clinton. They recognized that the only chance they had to make headway coming from the back of a very competitive field was if they changed the normal way of doing things.

In traditional political campaigns, the default response to any newly proposed initiative is “no”.

In a bizarre twist on “first, do no harm”, the only ideas that get through the screening process are the very small percentage that are either completely generic or on rare occasions, undeniably brilliant. While this does indeed result in a kind of damage limitation, it also results in ideas that don’t make that much difference to a campaign or in the world.

Since Clinton was never going to win with a traditional campaign, his team decided to do something kind of unique up until that point in politics. They decided to change the default response to “yes”. Instead of new ideas having to make it through layers of hierarchical bureaucracy before being approved, the new policy was essentially that any idea that had not been completely shot down by 9am was OK to run with.

This wasn’t an “anything goes” policy, and a number of eccentric, dodgy, and downright idiotic ideas didn’t make it through. But whereas most campaigns might try 2 or 3 different things in a month, the Clinton campaign was trying that many new things each day. And in the space of less than a year, he went from being a complete outsider that nobody believed had a chance to becoming the President of the United States of America.

While you may not want to become the next President, you can still benefit from making this simple shift in your own life. So as an experiment this week, flip your inner default switch from “no” to “yes” – from “what’s the point?” to “what the heck?”

Even if that voice inside your head turns out to be mostly right and things don’t work out and people do say “no” to your requests, you only have to be wrong two or three times to make tremendous progress on your seemingly impossible dreams. And if you don’t start moving past your inner gatekeeper, you’re probably not going to get very far in the outside world.

Have fun, learn heaps, and “just say ‘yes’!”

Copyright 2010 Michael Neill, bestselling author of You Can Have What You Want, and Supercoach: 10 Secrets to Transform Anyone’s Life. All rights reserved – Read more tips at http://www.geniuscatalyst.com

Coaching Call To Action

For the first half of the week notice: How many times do you stop yourself from asking?

For the second half of the week: Make the requests.

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Coach Andrea’s Intro

Earlier this month I took a class in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). One of the foundational beliefs of NLP is: There is no such thing as failure, only feedback. In this week’s article, Chris Widener explores this concept and the impact of the fear of failure.

Quote of the Week

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”
~Margaret Thatcher

Using Failure to Further Your Future

by Chris Widener

Failure. Even the word sounds bad, doesn’t it? That’s because since the time we were just young children we were taught that failure was bad. But is that true? Is failure bad? Let’s consider some things.

I like a baseball analogy. Do you know who set the record for a season batting average (that means how many times the batter successfully hit to get on base)? It is a gentleman by the name of Ted Williams, and his season batting average was .411 one year. That means that out of 1,000 times at bat, he would get a hit 411 times. That is considered by baseball fans as one of the greatest records ever. There are players making millions of dollars who hit .280!

But what does that stat also tell us if we flip it around? It tells us that the best season any batter ever had in the major leagues was a failure rate of .589! Even the best fail on a regular basis!

What about the richest people on Wall Street? Do they fail? Of course, they do. They pick the bad stocks sometimes, but they cut their losses and learn from their failure.

Did Michael Jordan miss shots? More than 50 percent of them!

So what about all this? What does this mean for us? The fact is, I think we can learn a lot about failure that will actually make us a great success. So here are some thoughts to help you use failure to further your future!

Failure is inevitable if you are trying for greatness. Failure is something we must accept as a part of the road we travel to success. This is a very important item, and it’s No. 1 on the list because a lot of what stops people from pursuing success is the fear that they may fail and not reach their destination. When we embrace the fact that we will fail, and that is OK, then we have nothing to fear anymore. Instead, we keep our eyes open and pick ourselves up, adjust from the failure, and move on.

Failure is never failure unless you fail to learn something from it. That’s right; we ought to stop calling these bumps in the road “failures” and start calling them “learning experiences!” When you fail, the first thing you should think is “What can I learn from this?” If you can pull just one idea out of that question, then the experience was worth it.

Sometimes failure is a blessing in disguise. Just ask 3M. They were looking for an incredible adhesive and actually got a sticky paste that held, but not permanently. What a failure! No, instead, they spread some on the back of little sheets of yellow paper and called them “Post-It Notes.” Have some? I’m sure you do. 3M thanks you for rewarding their “failure.”

People won’t think poorly of you if you fail. This is perhaps the biggest myth, and it’s the one that causes us to never attempt our dreams. We don’t try because of what Aunt Martha may say about us at the family reunion. The truth is, however, people will actually respect you for trying. The only thing I have found that people think poorly about you is if you handle yourself badly when you fail. Sore losers get the bad press, not people who attempt great things!

Failure isn’t the end but the beginning. One of our greatest fears is that our whole world will collapse if we fail — or at least the project will. The truth is that that rarely happens! Most of the time we can pick back up again, make some adjustments and be on our way! This is a new beginning. Now, there is no need to go down the road you have already taken, so there is one less option you have to try on your new journey.

Sometimes we miss out on success because we quit in the middle of a problem, and it becomes a failure instead of an obstacle we could have persevered through. When people encounter trouble, they have a tendency to quit and then they see themselves as having failed. My question is this: What if they would have kept on going — if they had persevered? Perhaps they would have struggled a bit and then broken free again. The failure happened only because they quit! So don’t give up. Keep pushing, and perhaps you will see yourself through to victory!

The greatest thing to overcome is the fear of failure. Most of the battle is right between our ears. It has been said that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” and that is true because in most of our “failures,” the end result is usually much less than we feared it would be. Yet in giving into fear and not trying, we suffer the ultimate consequence: no success! So begin to tell yourself the good stuff! Change the direction of your thinking and begin to see the possibilities of success, not failure.

Remember, properly looked at, failure can help you further your future!

Chris Widener is the Co-Founder of Made for Success, www.MadeForSuccess.net, a wealth of ongoing motivation and leadership skills training.

Coaching Call to Action

Sit down and think of recent situation that you labeled a “failure”.  Now take some time to consider the situation from the standpoint of learning.  What can you learn from what happened?

Tomorrow, sit down and think about what you are not attempting due to a fear of failure.  What could you do to change your perspective and view this as an opportunity for success?

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Quote of the Week

“If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.”
Neil Simon

Risk

by Steve Straus

New research on the topic of risk has surfaced some intriguing insights, namely that we have risk and control intertwined.

If you feel in control of a situation, you will take on a greater amount of risk than if you feel you are not in control.

For instance, consider a skydiver. He or she clearly assumes a level of risk by jumping out of an airplane. That risk to life-and-limb is much greater than they have as a passenger in a modern commercial airliner in regular service, but they may be terrified to fly!

The difference? In the skydiving activity they are (or at least believe they are) in full control of their destiny. As a passenger in the airliner they have given up all control to a stranger in the cockpit.

Another example — an entrepreneur may have a higher risk of financial security than a corporate employee, but having greater personal control of their destiny may trump the “safety” of the corporate job.

When you notice potential risk also notice possible control. Having a greater sense of control may let you take on much greater risk.

Copyright 2009 Steve Straus. All rights reserved. Steve Straus can be contacted at http://www.StrausUSA.com.

Coaching Call to Action

What will you do to feel in control of your destiny? Does it feel risky?

Community Involvement

October 29, 2009
Pounce on a Project VII – 2009

Last month we worked on website reviews, book sorting and office clean up. What project would you like to get on top of and accomplish this month? Come to Pounce on a Project VII – 2009. Join Coach Andrea on Thursday, October 29th, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Eastern. We will join as a group by phone and declare what you want to accomplish: preparing your marketing plan for Q4, writing your newsletter for the month, written performance reviews, or making cold calls.

During the morning, the group will gather by phone a few times to check progress and get any support needed to finish with a bang. At noon, the group will celebrate their accomplishments. Who says projects have to be boring and tedious? Bring your lightness and fun and join us for the energization.

To sign up or learn more, call or e-mail Andrea by noon on Wednesday, October 28th. Feel free to share this with friends and co- workers, the more the merrier. (Cost of the program is only the cost of long distance phone calls.)

November 4, 2009
Being Resourceful at Holliston High School

If you are like most people, you already have more than enough resources (people, places, things) in your life that can be used for support or help when needed. But, are you using them effectively to increase your productivity and profitability?

Your ability to systematically identify these assets and use them is an important key to your success. Coach Andrea’s interactive session will provide the tools to show you how to capitalize on your resources to achieve the results taht are most important to you. Through exercises, pairings, group sharing and handouts, you’ll learn how to identify your resources, use them to the fullest and handle resource roadblocks.

Coach Andrea’s interactive session will provide tools to show you how to capitalize on your resources to achieve the results that are most important to you. This seminar is scheduled for Tuesday, November 4th from 7 – 9 PM at Holliston High School in Holliston, MA. To learn more.

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