Tony’s New Novel on Sale NOW!
Click here to order your copy on Amazon or here for Barnes & Noble.
Click here to order your copy on Amazon or here for Barnes & Noble.
Tony Mayo’s New Novel on Sale Now!
Crimes of Cunning
On Sale Now!
A comedy of personal and political transformation in the deteriorating American workplace.
Click here to see it on Amazon.com
Fast-paced, funny, and smart. This novel puts you into the world of a young MBA striving to succeed at a famous high-tech company. Brash and confident yet comically inept, Tony clashes with colleagues, clients, and even his biggest supporters. He fires his most loyal employee, derails the career of his only friend, and nearly destroys his young marriage before transforming from chilly corporate collaborator to empathetic executive coach. Laugh and learn as his clients turn criminal, corporations collapse, and compassion triumphs.
It should be as much the aim of those who seek for social-betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence.
–Theodore Roosevelt, 1901
A veteran executive coach draws on his years inside Arthur Andersen, Wall Street, and MCI to share a moving story that explains why your 401k shrank, your house is underwater, and your job stinks. The comedy and conflict illustrate management methods and personal practices that can improve your career and deepen your personal relationships.
Click here to read a free sample.
Click here to be notified when it is released on Kindle and as an Audible audiobook on iTunes.
019 Tony Mayo Reads the bonus chapter of The Courage to Be in Community • PODCAST
Free Subscription: RSS
How to BE in Courageous, Genuine Relationships
This podcast is Tony Mayo reading the bonus chapter to his Amazon #1 best-selling book, The Courage to be in Community.
The focus of the book was the importance of compassion and authenticity, while this new chapter is all about implementation, with specific advice on how to be compassionate and authentic in your day-to-day life. The twenty-minute podcast is a simple, practical guide to building better relationships at work and at home, with answers to these reader questions:
- What can I do to deepen relationships?
- How can I feel comfortable with people of different backgrounds, tastes, and values?
- How do I help others feel safe to share their lives with me?
- What habits might I establish to reduce loneliness and build community?
Tony recommends these resources for further study and practice.
- Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High http://tiny.cc/cc-book
- Getting the Love You Want: The Couples Weekend Workshop http://tiny.cc/imagocouples
- Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, 20th Anniversary Edition http://tiny.cc/imagobook
- The Communications Catalyst: The Fast (But Not Stupid) Track To Value For Customers, Investors, And Employees http://tiny.cc/comcat
- A recipe for better conversation, with video and a summary poster. http://tiny.cc/concontract
- A story about kindness in the office at http://tiny.cc/morekind
- How asking questions, even in response to a question, helps improve communications and relationships http://tiny.cc/morecurious
- My 12 step program to shake a dangerous dependence on avoiding confrontation http://tiny.cc/toughtalk
- How groups agree http://tiny.cc/groupagree
Just click here to listen now or subscribe on your device using Apple’s Tunes, Android, and other podcatchers to have this and all new episodes placed on your device as they become available.
Crimes of Cunning
On Sale Now!
Crimes of Cunning
A comedy of personal and political transformation in the deteriorating American workplace.
Click here to see it on Amazon.com
Fast-paced, funny, and smart. This novel puts you into the world of a young MBA striving to succeed at a famous high-tech company. Brash and confident yet comically inept, Tony clashes with colleagues, clients, and even his biggest supporters.
He fires his most loyal employee, derails the career of his only friend, and nearly destroys his young marriage before transforming from chilly corporate collaborator to empathetic executive coach. Laugh and learn as his clients turn criminal, corporations collapse, and compassion triumphs.
It should be as much the aim of those who seek for social-betterment to rid the business world of crimes of cunning as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence.
–Theodore Roosevelt, 1901
A veteran executive coach draws on his years inside Arthur Andersen, Wall Street, and MCI to share a moving story that explains why your 401k shrank, your house is underwater, and your job stinks. The comedy and conflict illustrate management methods and personal practices that can improve your career and deepen your personal relationships.
Click here to read a free sample.
Click here to be notified when it is released as an Audible audiobook on iTunes.
Click here to learn the source and meaning of the book’s title.
017 A conversation with executive coaching client Ron Dimon. Part 8 • PODCAST
Free Subscription: RSS
This latest podcast is part eight of a funny and useful conversation between top executive coach Tony Mayo and his longtime client Ron Dimon. Ron is an expert on the use of information by executives of large organizations. Listen as two experienced business people play with useful ideas in this episode including:
- Management and sales rely upon the same essential skill
- Why salesperson with the most technical knowledge of the product is almost never the most top producer
- The Sandler Sales System
- Giving back the check
- The awesome power of the skeptical salesperson
- Why coaches avoid giving advice, opinions and tips
- VSOP group coaching for executives
- Problem vs breakdown
- Internal vs. external conversations
- Probing the past vs. future focus
- Effective conversation with an employee or vendor who is late with a deliverable or deadline
Just click here and either listen through your computer or subscribe through iTunes to have this and all new episodes placed on your device as they become available.
You may also set up an automatic “feed” to non-Apple devices by using this link: click here for other devices.
Fear is Running Your Career and Your Company
Your efforts to lead, manage, and sell often fail because of people’s fears. The fear may be disguised as resistance, indecision, lack of creativity, poor communication or reluctance to take responsibility. You can work on the symptoms forever, but the big rewards come from dealing with the fundamental fears we all share.
We promise according to our hopes and
perform according to our fears.— La Rochefoucauld
I painted a lot of houses when I was a teenager. Each season, when school let out, I had to force myself up the ladder again. I didn’t look down, I maintained a white knuckle grip, I kept as much of my body in contact with the ladder as possible. The occasional trips across a plank between ladders were performed sitting down with one hand on the wall. Every sway and breeze was a stomach churning calamity. Some say acrophobia isn’t a fear of heights but a fear of falling and hitting, but that wasn’t true for me. I didn’t think about falling. My body just hated being up there. Over the course of a few days I got more accustomed to being on the ladder and by the end of the summer I even made a few trips across the plank standing up. The fear never went away. I just managed it better. The next season it would be back, full force.
Why would anyone do that to themselves? Why did I tolerate so much discomfort? Why would I place myself in situations which brought up so much fear? The reason, ironically, was (more…)
Everyone’s favorite radio station is WII-FM
Everyone’s favorite radio station is WII-FM
What’s
In
It –
For
Me
Broadcast on their frequency and they’ll tune in.
Conscience
Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.
—James Freeman Clarke, 1810-1888
Historian of Abolitionism, Transcendentalist
Another Reason to Avoid Jargon
Another good reason to avoid jargon, shibboleths, and technical terms with colleagues and prospects. It makes you sound untrustworthy, even criminal. Listeners naturally wonder, “What are you hiding behind those obscure references, technical terms, and acronyms?” For good reason.
The word jargon originally meant unintelligible noises resembling speech, like the twittering of birds. But early on, jargon became the name of the peculiar speech used by criminal groups.
–Professor Heller-Roazen
Learn to Talk in Beggars’ Cant
The New York Times
See also, Misunderstood Jargon, on this blog.
A Sales Transformation from Loser to Leader
I am going to share with you a useful story about a huge breakthrough in sales effectiveness. My friend told me this story at a critical time in my career. First, some background on how I heard it and why its lessons are so powerful.
I returned to executive coaching full time in 1995 and put my coaching materials on the World Wide Web using CompuServe’s pioneering OurWorld service. My email newsletter was soon being read around the world. I soon received an email from an important coach in South Africa, Pat Grove, who became a valued friend and mentor.
Pat told me that he was in San Francisco in the early 1970s helping to invent coaching at the same time as Werner Erhard (EST), John Hanley (Lifespring), Fernando Flores (Action Technologies), and others. Pat developed and delivered his own training programs in South Africa and Israel for forty years, until his death in January of 2012. I never participated in his group training but I did get tremendous value from our emails and Skype conversations. I am sad that he is gone.
Pat mentioned once that being an effective coach is only possible if one is effective in sales. Simply put, if no one accepts your coaching you are not a coach. Pat, like me, was not a “natural salesman.” We also began our careers with traditional business training. He started as a bank accountant and my first paying job was with a “Big 8” accounting firm. Frustrated and bored, we each decided to try sales and we each failed. The story of my first breakthrough in sales effectiveness is told elsewhere on this blog. Here is Pat’s story, that he shared with me by email in 1996. Pat wrote quickly and informally so I present an edited version here. [My comments are in square brackets.]
No Big Deal
by Pat Grove
I gave up wanting to prove anything and just got the job done.
I chose to be a service agent…
The most important thing I learned was not to sell benefits but to enroll people into taking action on their dreams.
Selling Encyclopedias was at first for me a way to prove to myself, and others, that I was OK. Firstly, my background and experiences and lying about myself to others and to myself was catching up with me. [Pat used the word “lying” in a particular way here. He refers to the pretensions so common in our culture of pretending to “have it all together,” hoping people will think we are more competent and comfortable than we truly feel. This is all an “act” to prevent people from seeing us as we see ourselves.] So I found a system that had the potential to make a lot of money compared to (more…)
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