Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Skills Improvement

We all need a little personal development mixed in with our professional and career development. Read blogs in this category for personal skills improvement.

  • Methods to the Madness of Goal Setting

    Methods to the Madness of Goal Setting

    It’s that time of year.  New Year’s resolutions abound still on this 10th day of the New Year.  We’re sticking to them now.  Will we by month end?

    New Years’ resolutions are quite simply, goals.  They can be set at any time of the year, and there are as many methods for setting and pursuing them as there are failed attempts at reaching them.

    But goal setting is a method that works. Research shows it does if it is handled within certain contexts and parameters. For the sake of full disclosure, I’m all about goal setting as a performance management method. I wish more company’s performance management and evaluation processes were centered around setting good goals tied to company values and strategy. Then, leaders could coach people regularly towards goal attainment through wise action planning and implementation.

    But the method to the madness in goal setting that works, depends on you. The method you choose to determine and also analyze your goal(s) for appropriateness is a matter of preference, not a matter of right or wrong.

    However, three I like and recommend:

    Stephen Covey- What’s the most important thing?

    Zig Zaglar- Wheel of Life

    Michael Hyatt- Pursuing the right thing in the right way

     

    All have pros and cons and cater to different personalities, mindsets and segments of life.  But all can work if you pick the right method and then, most importantly, have a solid plan for reaching them.  The action toward the goal is much more important than the goal itself (or as Nick Saban says, it’s the process)

    I’ll be describing each of these methods above so you can have some fuel for thought on which one might work best for you this year.  Then I’ll round out January with why the action plan and implementation is actually more important than the goal.

    Take the month of January to set sound goals and put a plan in place to pursue them.  The time it takes to do this is will help you achieve success for the rest of the eleven months in 2017.

  • 2016 Book of the Year

    2016 Book of the Year

    At Horizon Point, we’ve been in the habit of providing end of the year book recommendations and reviews. You can check some previous ones out here:

    The Best Books of 2015

    10 Books Leaders Need to Be Reading

    The Best Book to Give Every Person on Your Christmas Gift List

    Book Review 2013

    We like books so much, we even provide book favorites off schedule like this Top 10 List of Leadership Books.

    But this year one book was so good that our 2016 recommendation is simply one:

    When Breath Becomes Air

    For us, a reoccurring theme seemed to emerge in 2016, and that is the importance of story.  Of an individual’s story, a company’s story and a community’s story.   As we worked to help individuals chart a career path or coach them to greater leadership success, as we sought to help companies guide talent management practices through values and innovative practices, and as we helped communities understand and grow their workforce, we realized that it all really begins with the story.

    As we wrote about in a blog post back in May of this year, “When you know the answer to ‘who’ can then better design the ‘what’ and the ‘how’.”   Stories help us do this.

    When Breath Becomes Air is a powerful story, a memoir, of a man who finds himself, at a point when he feels like his life and career is just beginning, diagnosed with a disease that is very uncommon in the young.  As he grapples with his illness, we find an unbelievably talented (more brilliant than most of us could ever dream of being) human being struggling to reconcile how to spend his finite time here on earth, given all the gifts and talents he’s been given and also cultivated through his own hard work.

    And although the book may be too philosophical, or even depressing, for some, and whether we know we have a short amount of time to live like Paul does in this story or not, we all deal with his fundamental question, “What makes life meaningful?”

    You will see in Paul the answer to this question really comes down to family and faith, and quite honestly, meaningful work.

    As 2017 approaches, we hope that you are first and foremost, healthy, and that unlike Paul in the story you aren’t faced with having to daily grapple with your mortality.  However, we do hope that you spend some time discovering what makes life meaningful for you and then pursuing it wholeheartedly. And we hope that in 2017 you explore your story and ask others about theirs.  Maybe this in and of itself is really what makes life meaningful- pursuing your story and helping others pursue theirs.

    What is your story?

     

  • Being a Great Leader Is a Lot Like Being a Standout Salesperson

    Being a Great Leader Is a Lot Like Being a Standout Salesperson

    Through involvement in a community group, I had the opportunity (or drudgery, depends on how you look at it, I guess) to sit through six companies presenting their “solution” to a need. After they were all done, it was obvious which company was the best. And everyone, meaning about ten people, who had heard the presentations, agreed. When was the last time you had ten people agree on something easily? Yeah, that’s what I thought; hard to think of a time when you have, right?

    With this being said, the obvious winner knew what they were doing. But it wasn’t because the salesperson from the best company was the most dynamic or attractive. I think one company thought sending the most attractive and nicely dressed female was going to do it for them. They must have thought she was going to be able to distract us from realizing that their product was inferior… but I digress….

    We often think that winning the award for best leader also involves characteristics like charisma and attractiveness. However, what hit home for me in seeing the round robin of presentations was a clear comparison and contrast of what makes a good sales pitch versus what doesn’t. Turns out, many of these things that make a good salesperson can also be applied to cultivating a great leader:

    1. Know your audience. Who are your people and what makes them tick?  What are their pain points? Adapt your communication and style to address these things.  In other words, canned sales pitches usually aren’t that effective.
    2. To get to know people better, ask good questions to calibrate your audience.  Clarify expectations and needs.
    3. Shut up.  Ask good questions (#2) and then listen thoughtfully. Cater your responses to what you hear (back to #1).
    4. Think like a marketer. People pay attention more when you talk in the form of analogies and visuals that tell a story. Facts are needed, but they are boring.   Appeal to the heart first through storytelling to grab people’s attention and then back up what you are saying with facts to make sure the head gets it.
    5. Your facts should mostly be in the form of results achieved. I was blown away by how the best company framed their entire discussion around the key results factor the group was looking for (#1) and had multiple client examples to prove it.  Most of the others focused on the facts of how they would do what they do, not why to do it. The “what” doesn’t matter if you can’t capture the “why”.
    6. Be authentic. People can spot a phony from a mile away and they can see past the short skirts and the corporate jargon. Being authentic involves:
      • Developing a distinct personality and brand (see #4) that is true to who you are and the company you represent.
      • Telling the truth.The best company was honest upfront about the things about their systems and offerings that weren’t perfect, but provided details on how they are working to address those issues.
      • Believing wholeheartedly in what you do and wanting to tell people about it not to make a sale, but because you know you can meet a need and help.

    Are you a leader who thinks like a salesperson?

  • 6 People You Need to Build Social Capital With

    6 People You Need to Build Social Capital With

    “The moment you partner with somebody, you tap into something you never had access to before. You gain their knowledge, experience, influence, and potential. When you are already achieving at a highly efficient level, you don’t gain a great increase by getting significantly better yourself.  You gain it by partnering or connecting with other good people who bring something different to the table.  And that makes you better.” John Maxwell, Intentional Living

    John Maxwell points to a great truth in this quote.  We can only make ourselves exponentially better through partnerships with others.

    As we round out a focus on social capital, here are the key people I believe we need to collaborate with in order to build:

    1. People who share your values.

    John Maxwell goes on in Intentional Living to expand the quote above to say, “…If the partnerships you make are with like-valued people, there is no limit to the difference you can make.”   Are you surrounding yourself with people who share your values?

    However, being of like values doesn’t mean the people you build with have the same personality, demographics, or even opinions. Quite the contrary. Once values are shared,your social capital expands by capitalizing on differences.  Start by playing on the same field for the same purpose, and then make sure you have a winning team by involving:

    2. People who complement you. We’ve all got strengths and weaknesses in our skills, talents, and personality.   Are you building relationships with people who complement you in your challenge spots?  For example, when it comes to skills, one of my challenge spots is HR compliance and law.  I don’t like it, so I don’t take time to learn it.  You better believe I have a couple of good labor attorneys on speed dial.

    3. People who challenge you. I love this quote from Talent Anarchy, “In any group you are either going to have disagreement or dishonesty. Which one would you rather not have?” Make sure there are people around you who will challenge and disagree with you.  This is also quite often the person who won’t let you quit.

    4. People who the world would label as being able to do nothing for you. One of my favorite thoughts about leadership is to gauge a leader by when he/she first walks into a crowded room or group of people.  What does he/she do first?  How does he/she treat or seek out the people who the world would tell him/her can do nothing for him/her?  Do they look for the most “powerful” person in the room first or do they seek the “outcast”? I’ve watched my dad do this right for years.  He usually is the first to approach the most unlikely person in the room that no one else is talking to, and the person who oftentimes appears to be the most different from him.

    For more on this, check out: Leaders Notice the Unnoticed

    5. The person who you want to be. Who do you admire most? How much time are you spending with them?  If you don’t know them personally, why haven’t you made every effort to become a part of their circle and you a part of theirs?

    6. The people who are connectors by nature. Everyone has core strengths, and I’m finding more and more, that some people’s core strength is that they are connectors of people (People who have done StrengthsFinder know these people by the key strength of “Connectedness”). They have the social capital game down. They don’t need steps to know how to build it, they just do it naturally. If you don’t know who to call for help, I bet there are one or two people that come to mind that you know you can pick up the phone and call because they know whom you need to call for help. Check in with these connectors regularly because they can connect you to people when you need it, but more importantly, they will connect you to people of like values when you are needed.  And that is social capital at is finest.

    Who do you need to be connecting with to multiple your significance?

    Like this post? You may also like this one from Talent Anarchy: Social Capital HR’s Secret Weapon Party 3

     

  • Social Capital How-To: 5 Steps to Build the #1 Competency You Should be Developing

    Social Capital How-To: 5 Steps to Build the #1 Competency You Should be Developing

    Due to technical difficulties last week, we are sharing this topic again. We have made a few changes and added some additional tips and tools. We hope you enjoy the read and find the information beneficial!

     

    One competency you need to be building, regardless of who you are and what you do, is social capital. But creating a to-do list or development plan for building this competency is not something that comes naturally. For most,it’s like something that grows organically and exponentially once you do it. And to a large extent, this is true.

    But like all good things that need to be done, doing it with intentionality leads to better results. Try this list of steps to get you started on an intentional focus for building your social capital:

    1. Realize the WHY behind your building. Social capital, by definition is about building relationships that result in us doing things for each other because of the law or norms of reciprocity. It’s human nature that if you do something to help someone, they want to in turn, help you. So…

    2. Start helping others. Look for ways and opportunities to volunteer to help others through your expertise or connections. Make a list of three people at least once a week that you can reach out to or meet with to see what you can do for them, not what they can do for you. Respond positively when people seek out your help.

    3. As you are reaching out to help people, Assess your network. – Look up, down, left right, inside your organization, industry and community and outside of it. Where are the gaps? Here’s a link to help you do this.

    4. Set goals to plug the holes in your network. Set no more than three goals to plug the holes in your network. Some ideas to do this include committing to joining at least one group outside your box and attending at least one conference or event outside of your wheelhouse this year. Also, just simply going to a place you don’t normally go at least once a week can be powerful if you stimulate conversation with others while there. Actually, just making conversation with someone where you frequently go may do the trick. Next time you walk into Starbucks for your routine cup of joe, pay attention to who is there and talk to them.For more on setting good goals and tracking them, these posts may help:

    Goal Setting – A Series

    Goal Setting – Diminishing Returns

    Goal Setting – Feedback

    5. Finally, be self-aware. Examine your environment regularly to make sure you aren’t limiting the potential exponential power of social capital. Maybe this should be a separate post, but I think it drives home this point. I have been sitting in on several community meetings about the need to improve the community I live in. In every meeting, everyone is white, middle to upper middle class, business professionals. My community isn’t just white, college educated, professionals. In fact, like most communities, there are more people who are not college educated than those who are, our community is racially and ethnically diverse and we have the gamete of income earning. In one group, there is a diversity of gender and age, but in another, I’ve been one of two women at the table. While I’m extremely humbled to be sitting at the table with these successful people- more often than not I don’t feel worthy to be doing so- I wonder if we could make a difference more if we had people around the table that don’t frequent the same circles we frequent and think like we think?

    For you, what is hardest part of building social capital?

    Like this post? You may also like to check out Talent Anarchy’s blog posts on social capital.