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Allen, author from “Getting things done” ( see earlier post) mentions in his book that things clutter your mind, your “RAM” so to speak. E.g. if you start thinking about things and the thoughts clutter your mind, you cannot focus on the task you are aiming to do.
Therefore, he suggests to get it out off your head. I said that a few years ago (when I was in primary school): every night when I could not sleep and all sort of thoughts kept me awake, I got a pen and paper and placed it next to my bed. I wrote on it all kind of things that went through my head. If I woke up at 4 am and had a thought, that is where it went. I decluttered my brain, my RAM.
And, it helps to do that in your daily work life. You write your ACTIONS down, not your thoughts. Your actions have to form some kind of to-do list that you then can transform into “products” or “results”. Or, have 2 lists, one for Actions and one for random thoughts - depends on the industry.
I keep you posted.
Have a lovely day, sunny here in London.
Volker
If you follow the link you find my essay on Personal Development - Island Theory.
I wrote about it in my blog before.
- 6th of March about Islands
- 22nd of March about Islands
- 27th of March, the story of the Prince and the Magician
Please leave comments and feedback, I am looking forward to a great discussion.
Volker Ballueder
I spoke to a good friend yesterday, someone I have not spoken to for quite some time.
He is also a Buddhist and when we spoke about job and career and money, salary, family, karma and so on, there was this parallel world. We are both very career orientated, do not mind working long hours, always like to earn a lot of money but also are very keen on our family.
However, nothing of it seems to be the big issue in our life. Not that we are super rich, or work 9 to 5 - no, we are both at this stage of life where we are, what I would call, content.
Our jobs are great. The money related to the job is good and does not let us think we should go somewhere else to earn more. Our family is supportive and we do not mind working long hours if we can combine it with our family. A holistic view of both of our lives is the contentment in what we do and issues we had before, e.g. better job, better money, more time, are not issues anymore.
I wonder if that has to do with Buddhism as well? I need to speak to Marcelo on balamadana about it!
I do not believe it is another week. Besides a very busy day at work, I met with a “client” for Career Coaching tonight.
The goal setting process combined with a good NLP technique and the Buddhist view in combination with gut feeling - how do you do that?
You start analytically and write down the pros and cons of the existing and the new job. Purely to find out what your clients likes, dislikes, what scares her/him. S/he gives so much away by talking about it and by using certain terms.
Then you start the goal setting process, stepping stones and the approach of “if you had already achieved what you aim to achieve in this lifetime, how would you have got there“? By internally going where you would like to be in order to look back as if you had lived through your decision already, helps you to get a different perspective on it. Try going backwards on the different timeline, going via stepping stones you set before? Ever tried?
You then have the choice of deepen the “what did you achieve” question with some “how did you achieve it” and “why did you achieve it”. Get some more NLP in there by using different aspects of the decision making process, e.g. use similar terms and digg deep on the reasoning on how someone would have achieved something.
I like to bring in some Buddhist thoughts. The path does not matter as it all has been defined before……but that is an entry in itself I believe!
Then break up with the exercise, take a deep breath and go back to your analytics pros and cons sheet in order to start analytics, a decision matrix, and evaluate the whole situation. Mix it a bit with gut feeling and you will hopefully either see a result or a strong tendency on what the client really would like to do. S/he will see it her/himself, no doubt….
Job done.
Sounds like a recipe, not as easy to follow without experience but surely something for everyone to pick up on.
Leave your comments on how you last made up your mind about a difficult decision!
Hopefully speak soon,
Yours Volker Ballueder
Hello,
After a few months my new website for cb consulting is live!
I made a few changes and added more services. Now, cb consulting not only concentrates on coaching and on trainings but also adds the management consulting for strategy and marketing to its portfolio.
Also, particularly looking back at my old job, I gained so much knowledge and experience about the Online Marketing industry that I am more than confident to suggest marketing strategies for various services to clients. Just done that recently.
It crosses the line to my main job, working in Search Marketing, a little but to be honest, anyone who has not thought about Search Marketing for their site should do that immediately. That is almost the fundamental of the Internet these days.
I think I will enclose a chapter in my essay about islands. A dear friend of mine met me on Tuesday night and it was good speaking to him. He knows all about Buddhism and suggested, after me speaking about the islands, the following:
Volker, I think you should stay on the island where you feel happy and let other people come to your island too. Develop yourself from input from others, build bridges and network. That would increase your personal development and you increase the cross-fertilization with others.
I like that idea. Why do I always have to go back into the water? Always striving to find something new. I should settle down and relax. Now got a house ,-)
The idea of sitting there and looking inside myself and enhancing performance from within, that appeals to me. I will start working on that soon.
Happy New Year again!
May all your wishes come true….what about all the New Year Resolutions?
Sitting at a nice meal last night, my wife and I discussed that actually so many million people wish for a new start, e.g. to give up smoking today. Why is that?
Because it is a new year, a new start. From my point of view these new starts do not come from calendars. They come from within. Enhancing Performance from within! It is your yourself who decides when the new year/new life starts. So just because it is “fashionable” to do so because so many people try to give up smoking 2008, and because the number in the year adds ‘one’ to it, this is not “your point zero”.
I do not want to discourage you, just the opposite. But do not be disappointed if it does not work out to change your whole life today. Take it in little steps and coach yourself or be coached and find the right time for you - and when the time is right, celebrate your new year!
Lots of luck for that!
Volker Ballueder
This Sunday Morning is miserable. Not easy to convince myself to go jogging but I need to and of course I want to ,-) So I will.
Let us talk about change. In October I got married and tomorrow I start my new job. That is a lot of change. According to “Holmes and Rahe, Scaling of life Change”, published in 1971 in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research - Marriage ranks with a scale value of 50 and change of work around 36 out of 100 (which is Death of Spouse). My old manager said the other day that he went to a conference that showed that people those days are going through 9 jobs in their first 10 years of working whilst his generation (he is about 40) is having 3 or 4 jobs in the same time. So maybe the scaling changed over the last 30 years.
But, change of jobs and getting married are not necessarily bad things, just the opposite. It is about the perception you have for change. I often talked about the “motivation towards to and away from”. E.g. if you change jobs because you were fired then your perception of change and the stress it causes is much higher. The opposite is true for a wedding. If you are looking forward to it and things are going well, the stress related to it is “positive stress” which is easier to cope with.
Then again, “positive stress” has the same physical impact on the body, e.g. increased heart rate, however it shows that if someone is very positive about a change then it is easier to cope with the “side effects”. Research suggests if you have a loved one that dies suddenly and unexpected, the effects on the sudden change are greater than if you know the person had a terminal illness and you see that person die. However, it would never change the grief and loss, it might just be easier to cope with the moment itself.
Whilst writing here I scan through the magazine “Personal Success” published by the Coaching Academy, and my eye caught an article about motivation of young people at the workplace. It seems that the “Matures (age over 62)” and “Baby Boomer (43-61)” are in charge of the “Generation X (28-42)” and Millennials (27 and under)”. The X-ers and Millennials do not necessarily see “hard work and loyalty, achieving a rank” as their primary goals for work. That just perfectly fits in with what I said earlier about changing jobs and taking longer to settle in the one that seems right. The one that gives someone freedom and room for personal development, “me time“.
The article points out that the younger generation have a lot of respect for their managers and their leadership and that they need to have the right “feel for the job” - if they do not feel that the job or manager are right, then they are not going to stay long in the job. Loyalty must be earned by good managers but once that has been done, one surely gets that commitment back from the younger generation. The change from management to coach? How can my boss guide me to where I would like to be?
All this and more details are published by Cam Marston “Motivating the “What’s in it for me?” Workforce”.
I noticed another article in my magazine, going back to NLP “acting as if” - reminds me of the Secret, acting as if you are already have something, and seek for something and really want something, putting a picture in your mind.
The article talks about people that wanted a promotion at work and started to “act if” they already got it. Changed their lifestyle, hairstyle, daily style and within weeks either got a promotion or what they wanted - down to synchronicity.
That reminds me of really wishing for something and it comes through. But also, I think that, like my NLP trainer used to say, if you for instance start thinking of something to buy in your head, you already “bought it”, even if not physically.
Where we going from there? Take little steps towards your goal. If you like to be the CEO of a company, learn how to run it and make your knowledge available to people. Show people what you can do and how you can lead them and get yourself the first position in management. From there learn about strategies and give strategic advise…and one day, you will be there. Taking small steps at a time and you will get where you want.
The 7 habits of highly effective people do the same. They talk about “starting with the end in mind”. Imagine you are already a CEO, how did you get there? And, using stepping stones that you can write down on a time line, check against your performance to see your progress.
Be who you want to be - act as if!
It is not always easy to find a new topic. I got the man flu - a rather bad cold - which tied me down all weekend. Am not feeling the greatest I have to say. But, I feel obliged to write a few lines. But what about?
Maybe about the latest book I am reading, “the peaceful warrior“, or the the book that changes lives. It feels to me as if I had heard that story before and maybe I have seen the movie years ago. A friend recently recommended me the book and what it says in the beginning I found quite interesting: “one has one or more teachers in life outside school/university“.
And yes, that is quite interesting for me to look back. Teachers or mentors. People who give you guidance. There are of course my parents, my brother if I allowed him to because he was older, my grandparents on both sides, my friends’ parents surely, my teachers in school and university, my friends to a certain extend, my “big-brother”, the porter in halls of residence, my wife, my managers, my work colleagues…..- I guess I could extend this list indefinitely. Where do one start to call someone a teacher and at what point does this person become a mentor?
I suppose for me I surely learn a lot from anyone. The person selling me my train ticket, the car salesman, the “Big Issue” seller in London, the police at the accident scene, my friends. But, for someone to become a mentor, a guardian, that is different. A guardian angel of course is something I believe in, imaginary, non touchable.
But a real life guardian (angel), mentor or coach - latter - is the one that makes the difference to my life. He gives me guidance without teaching, without being patronizing. Someone who lets me do mistakes and directs me rather than tells me what to do. That is where good leadership differentiates from bad leadership - where dictatorship differs from democracy with a leader - if that makes sense. The idea that someone is a mentor means for me that this person has a big influence on one’s life. In small steps or big leaps.
I for instance have a few mentors that show up in my life every now and then and give me “food for thought” on how to continue the journey. Because they are stepping into my life now and then they evaluate the situation thoroughly, invest time to question and find good guidance.
Whilst the mentors who are there permanently do not take the time to catch up but give you direct advice rather than letting you come up with your own thoughts and ideas - your own direction in life.
I guess it comes down to being a teacher versus a coach. A good coach in my opinion is not necessarily a good teacher, is more of a “non-teacher” - but usually s/he is a good manager and leader. Whilst a good teacher can be a better by being a good coach and teacher, combining the best of two worlds for the job of a teacher.
For tonight that is a nice ending. If you find a good coach, it takes you from A to B. Like the coach as a bus. The coach gives you guidance but you have to put the effort in to get there. The “coach route” is set out for you, with you coming up with your own idea on how to move from A to B. It empowers you, motivates you and gives you self-esteem and self-confidence.
A teacher just seems to tell you what is right or wrong and you just have to swallow it. If you believe it, if it is on your path and whether you want to go from A to B, that does not matter.
Have a safe journey.
Finally - yesterday arrived Jung’s book “MAN AND HIS SYMBOLS“. I was waiting for it for almost 10 days. Guess the postal strike did not help - I will let you know more about this book once I had a closer look.
Also waiting for the movie “THE SECRET“. Ordered it ages ago at a HK based DVD shop who is half price Amazon but it takes double the time. Never used to. Anyhow, hope it arrives shortly as my NLP community in Germany is talking quite a bit about it.
Also, I am in a “clearing out” mood this weekend. I found all those magazines “Personal Success” from the Coaching Academy. To be perfectly honest most issues just go unread to the bin as it is always the same story to me about “how great that I became a coach - I changed my life and then I changed everyone else’s life”. Is that all feasible?
The book recommendations are interesting but most of them are the guru books of “how to change your life in 10 days“. I have read plenty it almost always comes down to be what you wanna be and what lays deep inside you. Will that change the face of coaching?
I personally trained with the coaching academy which I value. Jonathan done a great job to make coaching more popular in the UK and helped a lot of people. I still think to get accredited by the academy but do not believe I increase my skills by paying for the course, mainly because most coaching techniques are based on NLP. Other courses in psycho-analysis for instance might be better spent - but I let you know more in due course.
Back to the magazine. Issue June 2007 has an article “You have a book in you - how to get it out”. Read what coach Jurgen Wolff has to say and start writing today. Also, feel free to get his book “Your writing coach”. Whilst these articles are very motivating, how many will read it, buy the book and never do anything unless - supported by a coach? Someone who gives you the stepping stones and the motivation. For a coach himself/herself it should be easy to write a book (saying that … believe me it is not).
The April issue had a great page on “What you must do to start your own business”. Lots of helpful hints. The May issue stays unread - nothing benefitial for me. Saying that I am sure it is beneficial for most of the readers, so fair enough.
I remember when I was 10 years old or a little older and we got a task to read a book in school. I read it from A-Z. Why? I must. I must not miss out….until I learned later on in life to concentrate on what I want to read. What I most benefit from. I read about 10 books at the same time. Some over years, a page a month or year - just to keep going on certain topics. Then again I read a 250 pager the other week in 3 days.
Have a great Sunday out there.
Another weekend.
I talked to a good friend throughout the week who introduced me to a coaching form. A collection of questions to fulfil certain tasks in order to achieve - happiness?
Whatever one wants to achieve one can set stepping-stones for oneself. But of course there are a lot of forms out there and not all stepping-stones are suitable for everyone.
This form had 100 maximum points and I was devastated only getting 11 out of it. Talking to my friend he says that I did better than him and most people, however, he only aims for 60 as not everything is applicable.
It reminds me of this study they did in Stanford I believe where 50% of the graduate had to write down their goals in life and the other 50% did not. The ones that clearly defined their goals did achieve them and performed better than the control group on their overall career path. Why?
Because if one defines his goal one likes to achieve it, then one is committed and will be working towards it (common sense). One makes (almost) anything happen to achieve the so wanted outcome. This can be monetary, learning a language, reading a book, giving up smoking, loosing weight etc. - defining those goals and making sure that they happen is the job of a coach.
Contact me if there is a goal you need help with to achieve it! I give you the motivation and help you finding the stepping stones!
Have a great and peaceful sunday.
By the way - today is the first day of “smoke free England” - anyone interested on how to give up smoking? Contact me and I show you how to beat the habit!
“A successful coaching engagement will have a cascading effect, crating positive change beyond the person receiving the coaching.” - Diana and Merril Anderson, from J. Whitmore, Coaching for Performance.
I have not read Whitmore’s book but came across this quote in Clutterbuck’s Coaching the team at work. Most of you reading about coaching must have come along Clutterbuck. I was overly interested in his book about team coaching to see how one can improve team performance without being a team-leader.
In his book he suggests to look up www.coachinginsider.com where one finds loads of definitions of coaching - all I found was loads of links to different coaching offers, one linking back to the UK, The Coaching Academy, where I have done a course in the past. And, they just send me more information through the door about running workshops - you cannot avoid their promotional offers and marketing.
However, Clutterbuck summarizes nicely that the most common threads for coaching are:
- developing personal or group insight
- performance against specific goals
- support and encouragement
- experimentation
- the effective use of questioning skills
Also, a coach can be seen as a vehicle for taking the individual in the direction they want to travel. That reminds me of an old “joke” about NLP. If someone ask for example a police officer where the station is, the police officer might say “left, 2nd right, on your left hand side”. An NLP person would say “imagine you are already there, how did you manage to get to the station?”. Back to perception and your map of the world. Seriously, is coaching nothing else than the use of NLP, similar of DBM offering techniques for NLP tools so does coaching? Would be interesting to discuss!
I don’t want to stir anything up or devalue coaching at all - what I like to point out is that coaching, DBM or other techniques, e.g. motivation techniques used by so many gurus, are often based on NLP. And what is NLP? Is NLP not common sense? Common sense of life experience modeled so you can use those experience in other life situations? NLP as a basis for development - or is that too generalized?
Now I drift a little away from coaching. But I met people who were obsessed by NLP. It can get me where I want. It is the ultimate thing to know and you are happy and invincible. If I do my Master Practitioner I can teach people the world. Come back to reality! There is no doubt that NLP offers you great tools, as written in NLP revisited. However, it is not an ultimate tool and it depends WHO uses it in WHICH WAY! NLP is not the remedy for everything.
Coming back to coaching. Clutterbuck publishes a great model in his book explaining differences of coaching, mentoring etc. I asked for permission to publish it so hopefully you will see it here soon.
ballueder
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