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More With Less
The newsletter for high achievers who wish to have more impact with less Struggle

IN THIS ISSUE
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
OnFire Coaching

• TeamsOnFire Intensive – Assess and amp up team performance
• LeadersOnFire Intensive – Wake up, step up, fire up
• WomenLeadersOnFire Intensive – At my log home in Muskoka
• PartnershipsOnFire – REVitalize your partnership

FEATURE ARTICLE: More Asking Less Assuming: 10 Things High Achievers Know About Powerful Requests

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ANNOUNCEMENTS:

TeamsOnFire Intensive – Assess and amp up team performance

High Achieving organizations assess individual performance all the time. But what about team performance?

To stay on top of their game and the competition, savvy leaders regular assess and tune-up their teams.

How often does your team take stock and reflect on its performance in a systematic and high performing way? Not only on the financial and operational results you achieve, but on how well members engage with one another on the team’s most important objectives?   

To support team’s in amping up their performance, my partners and I use a tool that assesses 7 factors of productivity and 7 factors of engagement or positivity.

Through the team coaching process, you will use your results to develop the mindset, skill set, and alignment essential for creating and sustaining a fully engaged, highly effective, high performing team.

LeadersOnFire Intensive – Wake up, step up, fire up

It has been said that progressive leadership is about the increasing ability of a leader to expand his or her influence. Expanding the influence of a leader is accomplished by growing the leader himself.

Working 27 years in business and 7 years as an executive coach and living 51 years of life I know that when all external factors are stripped away our power and fulfillment, as well as our struggles, come from within.

So how do you get within and what do you do when you get there? And how do you do that in a way that is easy, fits your busy schedule, and is tied to organizational outcomes that matter?

I’ve been a leader. I’ve studied leadership. I am passionately interested in human development, most particularly my own. I know what it’s like. And I’ve already done much of the research and analysis for you as a result. I’ve distilled what I’ve learned in real life, in reading 100’s of books, in attending a diverse array of development workshops, and in collaborating with and coaching 100’s of leaders.

I’ve done the work for you and refined the highlights into a personal mastery intensive.

Here are just a few things you will walk away with from this intensive:

• Using a simple process, feedback on your behaviours and impact
• Clarification of your purpose, vision, values, strengths, passions and needs (what you love, what you’re good at, what’s important to you)
• Discovery of your inner guidance system and how to use it to simplify your decision making for the rest of your life
• Identification and exploration of how to deal with self-defeating beliefs, fears, and habits that hold you back and stop you from following through on what’s most important
• How to respond to obstacles easier, quicker, and with less spin and angst
• Learning about the top 10 critical success habits
• Unleash the power of goal setting
• Create a practical development and action plan based on high performing business planning principles that responds to your core strengths, the root cause of your gaps, and organizational outcomes that matter
• A mastermind group of leaders who have supported you in problem solving, shared experiences, perspectives, learning, ideas, and resources
• A high achieving, no-nonsense thinking partner who provides coaching support both during and after the intensive

Talk to me about LeadersOnFire. My partner and I will offer it in whatever form works best for your leaders – at your office, virtually over the phone during hours that make sense to you, or at my log home in Muskoka.

We are planning a WomenLeadersOnFire intensive retreat at my log home in Muskoka on September 20th and 21st, 2008!

We design our programs to be precisely customized for our clients. As such, pricing depends upon duration, mode of delivery and numbers.

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Registrations are now being accepted for:

REVitalize Your Partnership Virtual Retreat
Conducted virtually over the telephone in the comfort of your own surroundings
Suitable for both personal and business relationships

When: Thursday, April 10th and 24th from 7:00 to 10:00 EST

What’s included:

• 6 hours of virtual retreat time
• Personal attention from 3 highly experienced coaches and facilitators
• Partnership Manual
• 45 minute follow-up Partnership Coaching Session, and
• 1 hour Group Follow-Up Call.

Your Investment: Early bird rate of $199.00 plus GST per couple until March 20th

Pay Pal and Downloadable Registration forms are available at:
http://www.groupcoachingessentials.com/pages/revitalize

And for:

PartnershipsOnFire Intensive Retreat
Muskoka, April 25th and 26th, 2008
Suitable for both personal and business relationships

When: April 26 and 27 2008 (9:30 - 5pm Saturday, 9:30 - 12:30 Sunday)

What’s Included:

• One and a half day retreat at my log home on the Muskoka River (Huntsville)
• Partnership Workbook
• 45 minute follow-up Partnership Coaching Session
• A one hour Group Follow-Up Call
• Lunch on Saturday
• A weekend in Muskoka (priceless)

Your Investment:
$429 per couple (plus GST). Accommodation costs are extra. Suggestions can be made regarding local hotels.

Pay Pal and Downloadable Registration forms are available at:
http://www.groupcoachingessentials.com/pages/relationshipsonfire

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For more information on any of these programs, please contact:
Jennifer Britton: (416) 491-9680, jennifer@potentialsrealized.com
Sharon Miller: (416) 484-8018, sharonamiller@rogers.com

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Call me for further information or to schedule a complimentary sample session. Take advantage of the opportunity to leverage all my learning and use simple tools that work.

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Feel free to forward More With Less (in its entirety please) to anyone you think might be interested. This is how I grow. Please include full authorship and subscription information. Thanks!
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FEATURE ARTICLE: More Asking Less Assuming: 10 Things High Achievers Know About Making Powerful Requests

“You’ve got to ask. Asking is, in my opinion, the world’s most powerful and neglected secret to success and happiness.”
Percy Ross, Self-Made Millionaire and Philanthropist

Asking for what we want is a powerful driver of success. Too often we hold ourselves back from making important requests on our own behalf.

Alternatively, too much time and energy is wasted in wondering about or making up what others are thinking, intending, or doing. Decisions get made on assumptions rather than by asking questions to check out the facts.

What’s the fundamental problem with not asking for what we want or making assumptions about the facts?

The first obvious consequence is we don’t get what we truly want because we don’t ask for it. We even assume that others should in fact know what we want and give it to us.

The second outcome is we may assume facts that may not exist then build our point of view (positive or negative) around those assumptions. The truth is we may be way off the mark.

In either instance we’re not coming from a foundation of the truth – the truth about what is going on for us or the truth about what’s going on for others or for the circumstances.

Here are 10 things High Achievers know about making powerful requests:

• High Achievers ask for what they want all the time. Laura Whitworth, co-founder of The Coaches Training Institute, said she always asked for 100% of what she wanted 100% of the time and negotiated from there. Using this approach, you generally end up with more than you first perceived was likely.

• Your objective is to eliminate all assumptions and story making that 100% is not possible. Assume instead that it is. Make a request and see what happens. Framing it as a request rather than a necessity or a demand allows you to hold it more lightly. A request presupposes that the other person has the right to say yes or no or suggest meeting somewhere in-between.

• Just like you should not be attached to any limited thinking that pre-supposes what you desire is impossible, you cannot be attached to absolutely receiving 100% of what you want. The key is to keep moving the dial up. You and others will get used to you stepping up your requests and come to expect that they will have to step up in their delivery as well.

• People are afraid to ask for what they want. They are afraid of looking needy, foolish, or stupid. They are afraid of hearing the word No. We say no to ourselves before anyone else has a chance to. We reject ourselves in advance. Notice any patterns in how you stop yourself from asking. Recognize it and then move forward by simply committing to ask.

• Ask as if you expect to get a Yes. When you ask from a place of positive expectation people feel your resolve and belief in the rightness of your request. If you come from a place of uncertainty or apology, people can feel that too and become less compelled to give you what you want or negotiate.

• Remember to ask someone who can give you what you want. Go to the decision maker.

• Be clear and specific. Vague requests lead to vague results.

• Ask repeatedly. One of the most important principles of success is persistence. Expect to hear No. The key is not to give up. For a year my 21 year old daughter has wanted to work at a certain restaurant in Guelph. On a regular basis she has contacted them to reaffirm her request, while at the same time working at the Y to help cover her university living expenses. Well, yesterday she was given a resounding Yes. They said, “Meg, surely you knew we were going to hire you.” Her persistence, determination and ability to create connection communicated a lot to them about what kind of employee they would be getting. High achievers have not only the capacity to ask for what they want but the tenacity to keep asking for it.

• If you find yourself complaining, ask yourself what is the request behind the complaint. My manager is so unsupportive then becomes a request for complete information by March 15th, or a career discussion by the end of the 2nd quarter.

• The principle of making requests applies not only to what you want but also to the making of assumptions. Ask for clarification. Then you have the option to respond to what is vs. what may be. Are you assuming as a leader or as an employee you are providing exactly what is expected? Are you assuming everyone is clear about what needs to be done by when and by whom? It is so much simpler to ask.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

• Make a list of the things you want that you don’t ask for. Consider various aspects of your life, such as career, relationships, fun and recreation, and personal growth. Also, consider such things as changes in behaviour, appreciation, or someone to stop something.
• Beside each, write down why you don’t ask, the cost of not asking, and the benefit of stepping up and making your request.
• What assumptions are you making that need to be ‘checked out’?
• Now, what are you going to do about it? What specifically are you going to ask for, of whom, and by when? What support do you need?

If not you then who? If not now then when? Take charge of creating More With Less and remember, CoachingWorks!

Sincerely,

Sharon Miller, B.Comm., CPCC, PCC
CoachingWorks
sharonamiller@rogers.com
(416) 484-8018
http://www.sharonamiller.com

“When in doubt, check it out.”

For additional insight on how to get from where you are to where you want to be read “The Success Principles” by Jack Canfield. Some of the observations above were gratefully borrowed from Chapter 17.

Sign me up: Call for more information and to see if you qualify for a free sample session and an opportunity to use simple tools that work.

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