Tony’s 3 Minutes on TEDx


Watch my three-minute talk for TEDx Tysons on why so many jobs stink –and what you can do about it.



See more of Tony’s speeches here:
https://tonymayo.com/keynote-speeches-tony-mayo/


You may also enjoy this blog post:

How to say, “No”


TRANSCRIPT:

We live in America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” yet we meekly surrender our freedom at work. I know, “We call it ‘work’ because ‘play’ means something else.” But we give up so much so easily! Employers dictate whether we wear our hair: long or short, covered or uncovered, coifed, clipped, combed, or corn-rowed. Whether we are allowed to wind down after work with alcohol, nicotine, or cannabis. Or, whether we wind down at all, with texts, emails, and travel at all hours of any day. We let them record our phone calls, read our emails, count our keystrokes, search our pockets, and time our bathroom breaks. We must not discuss our pay or take a job less than …_X_ miles away, then get fired anyway over a Tweet or a bumper sticker. There are even worse examples, but…

You don’t need more evidence that too many jobs are intrusive and demeaning. You know … You know it! I can tell. You may even know that inventing and enforcing these rules wastes money and reduces profits. I’m not here to prove that this is a problem. I’m here with the solution. I have the answer! … The answer… is, “No.”… “Just …say, …’No!'”

My friend took a job on the Hubble Space Telescope, where programmers had not delivered a single finished program in three years. When he heard his first deadline, he said, “No! I need more time.” His boss shrugged. My friend delivered working code “late” -but on the exact date he promised.

He got another assignment with another impossible due date. Again, …he delivered on the date he promised. He didn’t get a third program to code. He got three programmers to manage. His team delivered quality code on the dates they promised. So, they put him in charge of all the programmers. Not because he was a coding savant. Not because he was a charismatic leader. No, just because he had demonstrated the awesome power of, “No.”

Our reluctance to say, “No,” comes from fear.
Fear that you are your job.
Fear that your income is your value.
That is not who you are. You get to say who you are.

You get to say, “No,” anytime, anywhere, to anyone. Because we live in America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”



Rules? Which rules when?


As a coach and advisor to business owners, I find that the resolutions for many of our most complex, challenging management situations become simple and obvious when we use precise language to accurately describe exactly what has happened and what we want to help happen. Getting work done is faster and easier, for example, for entrepreneurs who understand the five aspects of trust, the operative features of a powerful request, and the distinct types of group agreement.

Leadership success requires accurate evaluations of colleagues and keen cognizance of how others are evaluating us as leaders. Managers can improve these judgements by understanding the difference between four common words that are too often used interchangeably.

  • Integrity
  • Morality
  • Ethics
  • Legality

One action or omission may breach all four though not in every case.

Integrity comes from engineering. A machine or system with all of its parts and components working together as intended and expected has integrity. Integrity for the human machine is consistency of behaviors, often summarized as, “Do what you said you would do.”

Integrity isn’t right or wrong, good or bad. It just works.

Morality is that aspect of a culture which delineates “good behavior.” Morality is how we “ought” to do things around here, the requirements for being respectable. Morality emerges from some combination of intuition and mysticism, from the nature of being human, not by vote, volition, or convention.

Ethics is a set of rules specifically defining the behaviors required for membership in a group and enjoyment of the privileges membership confers. A defining characteristic of modern professions, e.g., accountants, lawyers, physicians, is a Code of Ethics. Ethics are manmade and can be changed by agreement.

Law defines behaviors that can be punished by government. A unique characteristic of government is a monopoly on the initiation of force. Laws may be arbitrary or democratic, stable or capricious, and applied with equality or discrimination.

These last three are about right and wrong. Integrity is in that field Rumi wrote a poem about. 😉


Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.


I’ll meet you there.


A Great Wagon by Rumi

Those three also require imposed punishment:

  • Violate the law and risk violence.
  • Breach ethics and risk dismemberment (exclusion from membership).
  • Fail to act morally and be shamed, excluded from society.

Integrity does not require enforcement or punishment. Lack of integrity carries its own intrinsic punishments. Behaving with integrity just works better.

For the key to these distinctions, many thanks to, Integrity: A Positive Model That Incorporates The Normative Phenomena Of Morality, Ethics, And Legality by Erhard, Jensen, & Zaffron


Coaching Business Owners to Go Deep into Their Purpose • PODCAST

Coaching Business Owners to Go Deep into Their Purpose • PODCAST


Click here to listen as Matt and Dan speak with Tony on the SPRH podcast about how you can go deep into your purpose for your small business.

Tony shares practical tips to help business owners to run a larger, more lucrative business with less stress & overwhelm.


You may also enjoy The Conversation Contract podcast episode or this blog post from Tony, One more question…


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049 Powerful Requests • PODCAST

049 Powerful Requests • PODCAST


Today’s podcast, “Powerful Requests” is the audio from a webinar presented by Tony Mayo, The Business Owner’s Executive Coach. Listen to this recording and then join us for Tuesdays with Tony at Twelve, a weekly, free webinar where you can explore powerful executive coaching tools and ask Tony about applying them in your life and career.

Tony presents his model for, perhaps, the most important type of business conversation, the request. Much of what you accomplish, much of what people reward you for, much of the structure of our days can be understood as a complex network of requests and promises.

By thoroughly understanding and applying the three components of a Powerful Request, you can get more done while burnishing your reputation as a reliable colleague, supplier, or employee.

Video, handouts, and other resources from this and other webinars are available for free at:
https://TonyMayo.com/Tuesdays/

(more…)

049 Powerful Requests • PODCAST

048 Say Anything • PODCAST


Today’s podcast, “Say Anything to Anyone in a Way that Works for Everyone” is the audio from a webinar presented by Tony Mayo, The Business Owner’s Executive Coach. Listen to this recording and then join us for Tuesdays with Tony at Twelve, a weekly, free webinar where you can explore powerful executive coaching tools and ask Tony about applying them in your life and career.

Tony shares two tools to help with your most difficult and confronting conversations.

12 Steps for Difficult Conversations
http://tiny.cc/12steps

The Conversation Contract
http://tiny.cc/ConContract

Video, handouts, and other resources from this and other webinars are available for free at:

https://TonyMayo.com/Tuesdays/

(more…)

049 Powerful Requests • PODCAST

047 Breakdown vs Problem • PODCAST


Today’s podcast, “Breakdown vs. Problem” is the audio from a webinar presented by Tony Mayo, The Business Owner’s Executive Coach. Listen to this recording and then join us for Tuesdays with Tony at Twelve, a weekly, free webinar where you can explore powerful executive coaching tools and ask Tony about applying them in your life and career.

Tony continues last week’s discussion by reviewing the meaning of breakthrough, the environments that foster breakthroughs, and the foundational importance of our interpretation of events.

We focus on a powerful tool for managing our responses to unwelcome or unexpected events. Declaring a “breakdown” instead of calling it a “problem,” opens powerful possibilities for insight and action.

Today’s distinctions include:
• Conversation vs. complaining
• Victim or Agent
• Blame or Learn
• Resistance vs. Acceptance

Video, handouts, and other resources from this and other webinars are available for free at:
https://TonyMayo.com/Tuesdays/

(more…)

049 Powerful Requests • PODCAST

046 Breakdown to Breakthrough • PODCAST


Today’s podcast, “Breakdown to Breakthrough” is the audio from a webinar presented by Tony Mayo, The Business Owner’s Executive Coach. Listen to this recording and then join us for Tuesdays with Tony at Twelve, a weekly, free webinar where you can explore powerful executive coaching tools and ask Tony about applying them in your life and career.

Tony continues last week’s discussion by reviewing the meaning of breakthrough, how to manage yourself and your environment to increase your chances of experiencing breakthroughs, and the foundational importance of taking control of our interpretation of events.

Today’s distinctions include:
• Why are some coaching concepts called “distinctions”?
• The holographic, non-linear nature of coaching distinctions
• The benefits of not resisting, even welcoming breakdowns
• Both breakdown and breakthrough are creations in language
• The background of obviousness
• Speech Acts: Declaration is an action that changes the world

Video, handouts, and other resources from this and other webinars are available for free at:
https://TonyMayo.com/Tuesdays/

(more…)

049 Powerful Requests • PODCAST

045 Creating Your Clearing for Breakthrough • PODCAST


Today’s podcast, “Creating Your Clearing for Breakthrough” is the audio from a webinar presented by Tony Mayo, The Business Owner’s Executive Coach. Listen to this recording and then join us for Tuesdays with Tony at Twelve, a weekly, free webinar where you can explore powerful executive coaching tools and ask Tony about applying them in your life and career.

Tony continues last week’s discussion by reviewing the meaning of breakthrough, how to manage yourself and your environment to increase your chances of experiencing breakthroughs.

Today’s distinctions include:
• Interpretation: the thick, distorting filter between us and reality

• The Foundational Practice for Breakthrough
1. I am interpreting events.
2. I can be responsible for my interpretation.

• Historical Discourse
• Always-Already Filter

Video, handouts, and other resources from this and other webinars are available for free at:
https://TonyMayo.com/Tuesdays/

(more…)

049 Powerful Requests • PODCAST

044 Criteria for Breakthrough • PODCAST


Today’s podcast, “Criteria for Breakthrough” is the audio from a webinar presented by Tony Mayo, The Business Owner’s Executive Coach. Listen to this recording and then join us for Tuesdays with Tony at Twelve, a weekly, free webinar where you can explore powerful executive coaching tools and ask Tony about applying them in your life and career.

Tony explains the meaning of a breakthrough, and discusses how to manage yourself and your environment to increase your chances of experiencing life-enhancing breakthroughs.

Video, handouts, and other resources from this and other webinars are available for free at:
https://TonyMayo.com/Tuesdays/

(more…)