by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Executive Coaches, For Fun, Leadership Development, Team Manager Skills
Years ago, when I was new to being coached, I experienced a fundamental attribute of transformational coaching. I was completing a fantastic call with my coach, Mary Arzt. I had done a lot of venting and whining. I had seen some new possibilities. I, ultimately, had gotten clear and excited about the steps I would take into my future. A fantastic coaching call. I thanked my coach for the generosity of her listening and the power of her insight.
At which point, everything had been said and there was nothing left to say. The coach let the silence continue and we sort of basked in that rare space of nothing to do and no place to go: just perfect. At some point, my ego started to second-guess the just completed conversation. My ego realized that I had revealed (more…)
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, Leadership Development, Meetings
Solid, basic advice on better business meetings from a business psychologist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business is here in a column Reid Hastie wrote for the New York Times. Key pointers:
- Set Explicit Objectives
- Consider Opportunity Costs
- Grade the Convener
I would add:
- Use a Professional Facilitator (If the stakes are high enough).
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development
A study found remarkably high rates of dyslexia among entrepreneurs, as compared with corporate managers and the general population. What I found particularly interesting was the list of traits dyslexics develop that have them become entrepreneurs more often, have multiple companies, and an above average number of employees.
The dyslexic entrepreneurs reported as good or excellent at: (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development, Recommended Books
My friend Andy Sherman has collected a life’s wisdom accumulated from years of advising businesses into his 18th book, Road Rules: Be the Truck. Not the Squirrel. Learn the 12 Essential Rules for Navigating the Road of Life He has allowed me to make the first chapter available for free here. Read, enjoy, and prosper.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development, Quotes and Aphorisms
Optimism is a strategy for making a better future.
Because unless you believe that the future can be better you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.
If you assume there is no hope, you guarantee there will be no hope.
If you assume there is an instinct for for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world.
The choice is yours.
–Noam Chomsky
American linguist and political activist
by Tony Mayo | For Executive Coaches, Leadership Development
I went through extreme depressions, glooms. There was one occasion on which I decided actually to commit suicide.
I’d got into this state — I was working as a lab assistant at the school, and what would happen was that I’d make tremendous efforts to push myself up to a level of optimism. I’d do it in the evenings by reading poetry, thinking, writing in my journals, then I’d go back to the school the next day and blaaahhh, right down to the bottom again. This was the feeling of The Mind Parasites — there’s something that waits until you’ve got lots of energy and just sucks you dry like a vampire. This sudden feeling that God was (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development, Quotes and Aphorisms
An organization is a community of discourse.
Leadership is about influencing the nature of the discourse.
—Robert Kegan
Harvard University
See also, on this blog, step-by-step conversation instructions with video here:
The Conversation Contract.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development
Years ago, an experienced coach and mentor began our meeting by asking about my first child. Just 18 months old, he was eagerly crawling and using a few words.
“It’s a fascinating time,” I replied. “You can almost hear the wheels turning in his head as he experiments to find out what combination of noises and movements is going to get him what he wants.”
I heard myself and paused to absorb the insight.
“Wow!,” I continued. “That is still how I spend most of my day.”
But not every day. How often do you actually examine how well your “noises and movements” are serving you? Don’t we all expend a lot of energy just repeating tired and familiar strategies rather than observing our results and experimenting with new communications?
It is rare to be as eager and innovative as a baby yet how can we fail to be impressed with the child’s rapid progress? Experimenting, responding, growing, moving forward, relentlessly alive–children know how to learn.
How do you stay green and growing? One reliable technique for enhancing our learning, of course, is to work with a supportive and insightful executive coach and surround yourself with people who share your commitment to conscious development.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Leadership Development, Quotes and Aphorisms
Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something.
The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into (more…)
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, For Executive Coaches, Leadership Development
The Economist newspaper has an excellent summary of Warren Bennis’s work on leadership, adapted from their book: Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus. Bennis makes a strong case for leadership as something to be nurtured and learned.
Four things an effective leader must embody, communicate, and encourage are:
Mr. Bennis and I share, along with many other management consultants and executive coaches, a debt to the pioneering work of Werner Erhard‘s EST and Landmark Education.
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