027 Curing Overwhelm • PODCAST

027 Curing Overwhelm • PODCAST

 


 

Click here for Tony Mayo's podcastLearn the one common mistake to avoid if you are tired of feeling overwhelmed by listening to this quick audio message from Tony Mayo, The Business Owner’s Executive Coach.

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Thanks to MusicOpen for providing public domain recordings of Beethoven.

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.

 


 

TRANSCRIPT:
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021 Growing Beyond Control into Confidence • DeskVideo • PODCAST

021 Growing Beyond Control into Confidence • DeskVideo • PODCAST


 

Click here for Tony Mayo's podcastThis short podcast describes an important step in the growth of business owners and other leaders, moving beyond the urge to control and micro-manage every action toward acting with confidence in your team and your own ability to respond to every eventuality.

 


Transcript: (more…)

University of Chicago Alumni Career Webinar

University of Chicago Alumni Career Webinar

Mind Your Career Webinar:
Would I Benefit from Coaching?

From the University of Chicago website:
Kick-start your New Year with executive coach and dual alumnus, Tony Mayo, AB’77 MBA’78.

  • Differences between coaching, consulting, mentoring, managing, therapy, training, and just plain friendship.
  • Basic logistics of what it costs, how much time it takes, how to know if it is working, and how long the results last.
  • Finding, selecting, and getting started with an executive coach.
  • What topics and concerns are best addressed with coaching.
  • Typical components of a coaching conversation.

Click here for links to the companion articles mentioned in the presentation.

Also available as an audio-only podcast.
Click here.

 


 

The following transcript is included mostly for the search engines. If you want to read along with the video, just turn on the YouTube subtitles.

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Tony Mayo’s New Novel on Sale Now!


Crimes of Cunning: On Sale September 22, 2015

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

Or, here for Barnes & Noble

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.

 


 

Crimes of Cunning


 

On Sale Now!Crimes of Cunning now on Kindle

Crimes of Cunning

A comedy of personal and political transformation in the deteriorating American workplace.

Click here to see it on Amazon.com

Or, here for Barnes & Noble

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.


 

How to Apologize. And, Why.

 



 

A measure of a child’s maturity is progress from selfish self-justification toward compassionate empathy; from “I didn’t do it,” through “It’s not my fault!” and the teenager’s favorite, “I’m sorry you think it is my fault,” up to “I’m sorry you are hurt. What can I do to help?” Even experienced business people often revert to the most childish responses when stressed, threatened, or distracted (meaning, much of the time!). Each rung up this ladder makes our relationships stronger and our results better. Let’s explore each step and learn some even higher ones.

First, consider for a moment the results you want most. Review the outcomes you dearly wish to create, the aspects of life that deeply matter to you. Whether it is wealth, health, love, respect, ease, impact, or whatever else you yearn for, whichever measures of success you prefer, chances are that most if not all of your heart’s desires require the actions of other people.

 

You cannot achieve your most important results by yourself.

 

 

The quality of your interactions largely determines the quality of your life. This is particularly true in business, a game of producing specific, measurable results with and through the actions of other people.

The good news is, although our goals require help from others, most of us also try to contribute to the success of other people. We want to matter, to mentor, to nurture, to contribute, to belong, to be safe and appreciated. Much of human energy and attention is directed toward helping and getting help. To cooperate is human. It may be fundamental to all life on earth; it certainly is for mammals.

The bad news is, the more (more…)

Shakespeare knew something about ambition, stress, & insomnia





HAMLET
Let me question more in particular: what have you,
my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune,
that she sends you to prison hither?


GUILDENSTERN
Prison, my lord!


HAMLET
Denmark’s a prison.


ROSENCRANTZ
Then is the world one.


HAMLET
A goodly one; in which there are many confines,
wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ the worst.


ROSENCRANTZ
We think not so, my lord.


HAMLET
Why, then, ’tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
it is a prison.


ROSENCRANTZ
Why then, your ambition makes it one; ’tis too
narrow for your mind.


HAMLET
O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
have bad dreams.


GUILDENSTERN
Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very
substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.


HAMLET
A dream itself is but a shadow.


ROSENCRANTZ
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a
quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.


The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Act 2, Scene 1
by William Shakespeare




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…)