Suzi Pomerantz’s Blog

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How to have a happy 2009

Happy New Year!  Want to ensure that it’s a happy one?  Yes! Magazine just published an article that shows ten strategies scientists prove will make you happy.  As leaders it is critical to realize that your actions have major impact on your happiness and satisfaction with life and work, and you can lead by example to create happy employees and colleagues around you, too!  It turns out happiness is an inside job…and a great antidote to the current global economic climate.  :D

My favorite quote from the article is from Harvard’s happiness professor (how’s that for job-related pressure?), Tal Ben-Shahar, who states that “Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning.  Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable.”

They even provide an adorable downloadable pdf poster that you can hang in your office listing the 10 Happiness Hints!  You KNOW I’ve got it on my wall!  

Click on the full article for detail about each of the ten:

1. Savor everyday moments
2. Avoid comparisons
3. Put money low on the list
4. Have meaningful goals
5. Take initiative at work
6. Make friends, treasure family
7. Smile even w hen you don’t feel like it
8. Say thank you like you mean it
9. Get out and exercise
10. Give it away, give it away now!

Wishing you bountiful happiness in 2009 and beyond!  Go make it happen and you’ll make your corner of the world a lot brighter for yourself and everyone around you.  

Laura Koehne wrote a great post about “How to Have Weight In Your Job Interview” in which she describes two highly qualified candidates for a business development opportunity and the only differentiating factor between them was the confidence level.  

Confidence stems from our mindsets as well as our understanding of how to create the results we want in life by focusing on our “inner game”. During the current global economy and the focus on job losses, it is particularly important to shift our inner game to one of possibility and personal power. 

Here’s what you can do to boost your confidence now:

1.  Face the face in the mirror.  That’s right.  Look deep into your own eyes and do what you can to connect with that person.  I guarantee that the guy or gal in the mirror is by far the most critical person of you that you will ever meet. If you can genuinely connect with and find value in that person, you are well on your way to letting that confidence shine outward!

2.  Learn about the 10 Mindsets that will increase your visibility in your company and get you promoted!

3.  Keep a list of your “pride points” that you can turn to when you feel low to remind yourself of how great you are.  

Leadership and business development rely on your ability to master your own best practices of confidence. What have you found works for you in rebooting and restoring your confidence?  Leave a comment and let us know!

The current economic picture is fraught with fear, but you don’t need to be! Bust the blues of the recession with a few simple mindsets that will banish the downward spiral we see all around us now. You needn’t fall prey to the swirling energies of depression (either monetary or emotional) that are running rampant in our communities and world right now.  These mindsets remind us how:

1.  This too shall pass.  As bad as things are, and as bad as they have yet to become, this is not a permanent state of being for our world.  That’s the good news!  Find something (anything) that gives you a feeling of joy or love or some small bit of happiness each day.  Simple things work best.  A grandchild’s smile, a sweet, crunchy apple, the twinkle of a star in the night sky, a flower, a raindrop, the smell of your favorite person.  Daily practice:  find and focus on one joyful thing each day. What we focus on expands.  

2.  Gratitude.  It is impossible to feel fear when we are steeped in and present to grateful feelings.  Grateful to be loved, to be alive, to breathe?  Focus on that because you will restore your inner calm with strategic and intentional thoughts about thankfulness.  Daily practice:  create a gratitude list before you get out of bed each morning.  I’m grateful for every stiff kink in my body because it means I’m alive!

3.  Generosity:  This is the biggest mindset.  Often when things are tough, the first thing we and companies around us do is tighten our belts.  This is not the time to hold onto everything!  This is the time to purge! Donate everything that doesn’t work for you anymore, give of your time to someone worse off than you, help a friend, donate food to the hungry, and give to your favorite charity.  Giving feels good because you’ve contributed to others, and if you are paying attention to all the ways you can be generous with others, you’ll find that many don’t cost you a thing and that your return on your investment is one-hundred fold. Daily practice:  Ask yourself, “What can I do for someone else today?” and then act on the answer.

4.  Money is energy, keep it moving.  If we think of money as a scarce commodity, the current global situations will cause hoarding, runs on banks, and the equivalent of a giant dam blocking the flow of life-sustaining water to our worldwide village.  If we realize that money is energy…life energy…we must do whatever we can to keep it moving.  Buy what you need, give money away, and keep money flowing so that it can flow back to you.  If you create an energy block, you will cut off your own supply in the future. Daily practice:  Spend money or give it away to those less fortunate than you!

5.  Trust (or faith, if you are religious).  An abundance mentality relies on trust that everything will work out okay, and that everything happens for a reason.  There is a power larger than us that knows what it’s doing. The universe works on dynamic laws that create and sustain prosperity for those who tap into them, and trusting the universe to provide is a key to freeing the knots in your stomach.  Worry and fear are indicators that you are not trusting.  Daily practice:  What/or whom do I need to trust in to be able to breathe easier?

Experts tell us that things will get worse before they get better.  Futurists tell us that the global economy as we know it is already a thing of the past and we will find ourselves in a future of barters and community-based currency.  Real Estate Gurus tell us that there will be a second wave of impact in the housing market and all the implications that will bear.  We needn’t throw up our hands and say “so what?” to the reality of what’s going on around us.  Indeed, we must plan for it, and not hide our heads in the sand.  Yet we can have strength and power in our own resilience during these challenging times.  We can build our internal reserves and engage in practices of positive abundance mentality like the mindsets listed above, and before we know it we’ll be on the other side of this particular scene.  It helps to remember that some of the greatest fortunes were made during the Great Depression.  Here’s to your health and good fortune!

©2008 Suzi Pomerantz.  All rights reserved

This article will be published on January 8th at the Baby Boomer Knowledge Center, which is a great resource for everyone you know who is a boomer!  I highly recommend checking them out.

The Harvard Business Report has released its Research Report titled, The Realities of Executive Coaching by Carol Kauffman and Diane Coutu.

While I was honored to have been invited to participate in their survey of the top 245 coaches, I was not one of the 140 who responded (I guess I was too busy on Twitter or Facebook or something!), yet I know and respect many of my colleagues whose names are on the list and concur with most of the findings, therefore wanted to share them with you.

They define Executive Coaching as “a confidential, individually-tailored engagement designed to meet the needs both of the executive being coached and the organization paying for the service.”  The HBR January 2009 issue will have an article based on these research findings called, “What Can Coaches Do for You?” by the same authors and additional analyses by five experts.

Do you have the right mindsets to sustain and advance your career? I’m writing a new book for employed folks who want to increase visibility and promotability (is that a word?) by applying the core concepts from Seal the Deal internally in their organization.  Here’s a sneak preview, and I’d love your thoughts and comments!  Who knows?  You may even be a contributor to my new book!

10 Critical Mindsets to Seal the Deal Inside:

1.  Leadership is critical to advancing your career. If you are not leading your career and paying attention to your own advancement opportunities, why should your boss or anyone else be your champion?  Have you felt passed over for a promotion or wondered why your boss didn’t showcase your work to the CEO? Are you waiting for someone else to recommend you to the Board or highlight your achievements to the team of decision-makers who determine career ladder moves?  You must be the leader of your own career.  To that end, becoming a student of leadership, regardless of your position of authority or lack thereof in your company, is a mindset that will serve you in moving yourself up the ladder.

2.  Authenticity is about being yourself and being true to yourself throughout your career.  Integrity, honesty, knowing what matters, and aligning your actions with your commitments is all part of getting noticed.  There will be no shortage of mentors and advice-givers who tell you that to be advanced to the C-suite you need to do certain things, act a certain way, or be more like somebody else.  None of this is true. You simply need to be the best YOU you can be, and that means realistically assessing your strengths, knowing your unique value proposition (what can you contribute), and reveling in being yourself.  

3.  Self-Awareness is about owning your power, which is a key piece of the self-mastery puzzle that distinguishes a great leader from an exceptional leader.  There are always areas of ourselves that we are blind to (that we don’t know we don’t know about ourselves), or that we cannot see from our point of view.  Cultivating and increasing your self-awareness will give you the vulnerability and resilience to stand your ground when you know you are right and to step back and learn with a beginner’s mind when you uncover one of your blind spots. Coaches are extremely powerful partners in improving your self-awareness by holding up a mirror and allowing you the safe place to reflect upon potential blind spots and exercise and strengthen new muscles in vulnerability.

4.  Self-Confidence is also something that coaches are great at helping you master.  In any kind of economy, whether it’s a bear market or more bullish, self-confidence is important to your success.  Here’s a quick and easy test of your self-confidence level.  Stand in front of your bathroom mirror and look yourself in the eye.  See if you can genuinely connect with the person you see in that mirror.  Is extended eye-contact awkward?  Is speaking to that person painful? Can you look into that person’s eyes and see their soul? When you can unconditionally love, accept, and connect with that person, you are well on your way to confident!

5.  Generosity/Transparency: Generosity is not simply about giving money or gifts, because in many situations that would be considered unethical business activity (like bribes).  In this case, generosity is about a spirit of giving and a focus on helping others to succeed without a tit-for-tat mentality.  Generosity can be about listening impactfully to another, and it can be about being a Go-Giver. Transparency is about not having any hidden agenda whatsoever, and about sharing everything with those around you in service to a common goal or higher purpose.  

6.  Indispensability is one way to keep yourself employed no matter what’s going on in the company or the world.  Become critical to the future of the company.  Connect your actions and results to the key objectives of the organization, and be sure to be visible about doing so!  Are there more efficient processes and systems that could subsequently result in cost savings for the company? Lead the charge…become branded (known for) doing something important for the company that nobody else currently does.

7.  Networking is a topic I could write an entire book about.  But for the purposes of a short blog post, this is the crucial element of your career whether applied internally or externally, whether you are self-employed or employed.  The most powerful vehicle for networking both inside your company and out in the world is the Informational Interview.  It’s the fastest, most effective way to get a roadmap of how to best navigate the political landscape of your particular organization. Of course, keeping in mind the Nine Mindsets of Networking is important, too!

8.  Marketing is not something you tend to think about with respect to your job unless you are in a marketing role in your company.  Marketing internally is about increasing your visibility, whether through volunteering efforts, through internal informational interviews, or by strategically targeting the most influential players and building coalition with them.

9.  Sales inside?  No, I don’t mean the cliche of selling yourself.  That’s not useful. Nobody is buying YOU.  They are buying the promise of what results you can produce.  In that sense you are selling a relationship.  You are selling trust and confidence in your ability to have positive business impact. This requires a clear and compelling offer, a baseline ability to impact the business results that matter most, and metrics to prove it!

10. Integration is about pulling it all together.  It’s not sufficient to operate from only one or a few of the above listed mindsets.  All must be working together in concert to seal your success. The surefire way to be a rockstar in your own career is to be uniquely you, own your voice, and master integrating the mindsets discussed here as applied to your particular job and circumstances. This is about using your own personality and strengths to skyrocket to the highest level of influence and impact you dare to dream possible!

©2008 Suzi Pomerantz. All rights reserved.

The secret to success is….wait for it…..giving!  If you haven’t already read The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann, run to the nearest amazon link and grab your copy now!  I just finished it, and now have their Five Laws of Stratospheric Success hanging on my office wall.  Actually, I had these posted on my office wall before I even bought the book, but now that I’ve read it, it feels more legit.  :D

The book is a parable, so it’s a quick and fun read, about a flustered young account exec who is not going to make his numbers and loses a very big deal he calls The Big Kahuna.  The journey of his introductions to some very magical characters, each of whom teaches him one of the 5 laws below, is transformational.

Those of you who have read my book will recognize the concept of Giver’s Gain from my Nine Mindsets of Networking, and of course I’ve written a fair amount of blog posts on the value of authenticity as a leader and business person!  See why I love this book?

The Law of Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. 

The Law of Compensation: Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them. 

The Law of Influence: Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first. 

The Law of Authenticity: The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself. 

The Law of Receptivity: The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.

Let’s take the WORK out of networking, and replace it with connecting, shall we?  Then instead of having to network, we’ll all be having fun netconnecting!  It’s more like play that way. Or, if we think of knitting together a tapestry of the finest yarns we can find, creating the fabric of relationships could be called netknitting.  

In my book, Seal the Deal, I talked about the Nine Mindsets of Networking, and my colleague and friend Steve Dorfman has done a great job of putting those mindsets into actions in his recent blog post:  It’s All About Who You Know.

As Steve tells us, the word “networking, for many people, carries a stigma, conjuring up images of a room full of “Me Monsters,” all with dollar signs in their eyes, engaging in cheesy conversations.”

Here are Steve’s 5 Tips for Making Valuable Connections, and I recommend reading his blog for the details!

1.    Showing Up is 80% of success

2.    Pitch That Elevator Pitch

3.    There are no competitors, only partners

4.    Join Non-Networking Groups

5.    We Should Really Do Lunch

By far, though, my favorite tip in his post is this one:

Ask for a story and listen well. Say, “Will you share a story with me, about a client you’ve recently helped?” The other person will always oblige.

• You’ll understand what they do and maybe even why they do it;
• You’ll develop a much better sense of what type of person they are;
• You’ll get them onto new conversational ground, and away from the same old script;
• You’ll learn how to position your story, making it relevant to them.

I was watching Bambi with my kids again, and chuckled to myself when Friend Owl explained to Bambi, Thumper and Flower that Spring and falling in love makes all the animals “twitterpated”. Those of us who are addicted to Twitter are familiar with that giddy, dizzy, walking on air feeling of being twitterpated!

Personally, I’m grateful to techie folks who post lists of great Twitter tools because otherwise, I’d never know what to do! To increase your own twitterpation, visit this blog post from digital labz for 19 of these tools!  Quite handy! 

I guess the point of transparent leaders is to create and sustain a transparent culture.  Well, that’s easier said than done, especially in light of the experts on the subject.  Warren Bennis, Daniel Goleman and Patricia Ward Biederman wrote a book called Transparency: Creating a Culture of Candor and also co-authored an article in a recent issue of Leader to Leader about Creating a Transparent Culture.  

In that article, they define transparency as “the free flow of information within an organization and between the organization and its many stakeholders, including the public. For any institution, the flow of information is akin to the activity of a central nervous system: the organization’s effectiveness depends on it. An organization’s capacity to compete, solve problems, innovate, meet challenges, and achieve goals—its intelligence, if you will—varies to the degree that the flow of information remains healthy. That is particularly true when the information in question consists of crucial but hard-to-take facts, the information that leaders may bristle at hearing—and that subordinates too often, and understandably, play down, disguise, or ignore. For information to flow freely within an institution, followers must feel free to speak openly, and leaders must welcome such openness.”

However, I love that they model transparency by telling