Executive

All ideas are not created equal.

• -When a boss has a bad idea, most employees are afraid to say so. They will follow along and wait for the project to fail rather than offer suggestions.
• -When a team member has a great idea, others may be hesitant. It can be due to company politics or the controversy change can cause. Instead of offering manageable insights, they stay silent.
• -Other times, when good ideas go awry, it’s because the generator of the idea is emotionally attached. They typically have a narrow POV and refuse to listen and incorporate others’ ideas that are necessary for success.

Remember, ideas are only as good as the team and their project manager.

So, Why Are Good Ideas Sidelined?

1. Company politics
2. Team is risk-averse
3. Poor facilitator and team member skills
4. Team members fear rocking the boat
5. Conflict created by difficult team members
6. Lack of focused-action steps and attention to details
7. True brainstorming is ignored
8. Team members are not aligned
9. Failure to manage the outcomes
10. Poor understanding of the purpose or goal

How to Improve Generating Good and Achievable Ideas

Good Idea, But, Bad Communication

Devin had project management success. It’s why he was hired to lead a team in designing and executing a new project for a new association. But, his new board missed a key factor when hiring him…Devin was a DIYer. He had poor facilitation skills and ignored others’ comments. When the new project failed to launch due to lack of interest and funding, the board brought on new team members. Finally, one of the members exclaimed, “I don’t get it. What is the purpose and goal of this idea?” She took it upon herself to clarify the purpose and goal, along with the team. With effective communication and everyone on the same page, the project succeeded.   

Communication is everything. When you fail to share your ideas in a way that can be readily understood, you lose support and money. Hire the right coach to guide you and the team in designing a message that clarifies your idea and resonates with your products and services.

Bad Idea, But, Everyone Went Silent

This happens often. When a boss (or anyone idea) has a bad idea, most team members are afraid to stand up and speak up. As a result, a lot of time, money, and attention is spent on something that won’t work. Sometimes these types of ideas only need tweaks, other times, they need to be scrapped.

As the boss or idea generator, use one or two independent sounding boards to bounce off ideas. Allow them to ask questions, dig deeper than the team may feel comfortable doing themselves. The key is to listen and learn. Many good ideas derail due to circular logic about why something “should work” but won’t.

Great Idea, But, Before It’s Time

I remember years ago wanting to put together an executive HR group. The person I shared my idea with nixed it. A year later I shared it with a different person. She ran with the idea. The executive HR group is still flourishing today.

Sharing ideas can be two-fold. You may share with someone fearful of stretching beyond their comfort zone or someone who fears any political repercussions. Regardless of why, they are afraid of being part of a new idea that has not been successful elsewhere.

Make sure to develop your ideas on paper to get them out of your head. Be clear about “why the idea is important” and create a story to support it. Then share with others. This is a great opportunity to learn about any challenges or other solutions. Remember, this is not the time to debate. Instead, listen and learn. Be open to expanding your POV which is required for success.

Remember, all ideas are not created equal. Some are good and some are simply bad ideas. Yet, there is a multitude of good ideas that should be pursued. But, to be successful, need a committed team, great communication, and expanded POV for what is possible.

©Jeannette Seibly, 2019

Jeannette Seibly is an award-winning champion for people and results. For the past 26 years, she has guided bosses and teams to excel in implementing great ideas. Contact Jeannette today for straight talk with dynamic results.

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Ghosting in business is not an option. You’ve ghosted someone when you miss scheduled meetings, avoid difficult conversations, or fail to follow-up and follow-through on promises. This behavior and attitude will come back to haunt you regardless of your reasons why.

A sales rep became upset when members of his network group complained he had ghosted them. He had missed several scheduled meetings and failed to follow-through with people. Instead of apologizing and resolving the upsets, he ignored the whole thing and claimed he was too busy.

As a result of his ghosting, several members did business with a competitor. When he found out, he exclaimed, “All you had to do was call and tell me you wanted to buy something.”

The question he failed to ask himself, “Why would anyone want to do business with someone who ghosts them?”

Why Do People Ghost?

The short answer is, it seems simpler and easier than “trying” to have a conversation when you’re uncomfortable talking with others.

But, winners don’t ghost.

Winners face their fears and talk it out. They overcome limiting beliefs, such as poor communication and vocabulary skills, or disliking authority figures (e.g., bosses, hiring managers, etc.).

While ghosting provides momentary feelings of relief, these feelings won’t last. Unfortunately, those fears won’t go away! And, even worse, the people you ghost won’t forget you ghosted them!

Ghosting is not the formula for a winner!

6 Tips to Become a Powerful Communicator and Winner  

1. Be Open to Learning. Remember, no one was born a powerful or experienced conversationalist. Put away the electronic distractions. Learn how to have meaningful and productive conversations. Take classes (e.g., Toastmasters, Landmark), practice mindfulness, talk it out and role-play. Hire a coach to guide you on how to talk through challenging situations. These reduce the need to ghost others.
2. Practice Leads to Mastery. Like everything in life, practice helps you improve and become a master communicator. Remember, conversations will not always be fun, positive, or easy. It’s how you handle them that matters. Be curious. Don’t shy away from participating in team debates, offering ideas and opinions, and listening to what others are saying. Good communication skills are the marks of a winner.
3. Stand Up and Show Up. Honor your commitments and meetings. Stop relying on excuses when you don’t feel like showing up. Always show up on time. Remember, the attitude of “I matter and you matter” creates winning conversations for your career and life.
4. Be Responsible. If you want to improve the job offer, sales, or contract, don’t ghost. Only voice-to-voice communication can give you the winning results you want.
5. Start with Good Questions. Winners start meetings by asking questions about the other person, their goals and challenges. When learning about others, you elicit better information and insights into how to help them. You will also discover true solutions and new ideas. Then, let them know how they can help you. This is a winning formula.
6. Build Your Confidence through Self-Promotion. Read the book, It’s Time to Brag! Business Edition and complete the 5 amazing steps to sell yourself. These exercises are natural confidence builders. When you feel confident, you will feel comfortable communicating voice-to-voice. You will stop ghosting.

Practicing these 6 tips gives you the ability to stop ghosting, improve your communication skills, and become a winner.

©Jeannette Seibly, 2018-2019

Jeannette Seibly has been an award-winning champion for people and results for the past 26 years. She has guided bosses and teams to excel in using powerful communication tools.  Contact Jeannette today for straight talk with dynamic results.

15 signs you’re a great boss, even if you don’t feel it.

An employee asked questions of her boss to resolve a critical distribution issue. He didn’t have the answers. She kept pressing him to get her the answers she needed until he left the meeting upset by her persistence. He ignored her requests to meet with him and refused to apologize for coming unprepared for the meeting. Thirty days later he fired her.

Many people fail to apologize for mistakes, misunderstandings, or the words they choose to use (e.g., profanity, mispronouncing someone’s name, using jargon incorrectly, etc.). Their words and actions can hurt relationships and negatively impact results.

Failure to apologize can create:

• -Resentment
• -Gossip
• -Avoidance  behavior
• -Snarky remarks
• -Turnover
• -Profitability
• -Loss of customers, jobs, promotions, or pay increases
• -The list is endless!

As a boss, you don’t have the luxury of not apologizing and making things right with employees, co-workers, vendors, customers, or even your boss. It’s your responsibility to set a positive example and create win-win-win outcomes.

Remember, your communication style either energizes or deflates your team. Win-win-win outcomes require learning a very important communication skill…how to genuinely apology.

6 Steps for a Genuine Apology

Always start with honesty, courage, and respect so you can stand up and extend the “olive branch.”

1. Become present to what you said or the mistake you made. This may require journaling or talking with your coach to uncover the true problem.
2. Offer “I’m sorry.” or “I apologize.” Both offers create the start of a healthy conversation. This must occur to get the problem resolved in a win-win-win manner.
3. Listen to their response. If they are angry because you waited too long or you’ve humiliated them, you may not be present to the impact you caused. Listen and learn from their response before again offering an apology.
4. Don’t defend. The situation happened. Being right or making them wrong won’t get the issue resolved or move the conversation forward. Listen and talk without defending yourself. (Catch yourself before excusing what happened with a, “Yeah, but.”)
5. Ask what you can do to resolve it. What needs to happen to move forward? Ask for their opinion and input. If you don’t, the resentment will continue.
6. Forgiveness works magic. Genuine apologies allow for you and them to let go of resentments. Then, true forgiveness is naturally possible.

Remember, all relationships have their upsets. As a boss, learning how to genuinely apologize is an important part of communication.

©Jeannette Seibly, 2019

Managing people is one of the biggest challenges bosses face daily.  As an executive coach, Jeannette Seibly has been championing people and results for the past 26 years. Contact Jeannette today for straight talk with dynamic results.

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Many of my readers are not PMs for large complex projects (e.g., designing an airplane, IT, or other big projects). Yet, regardless of the size of your project, project management can be difficult for many people. If you want to achieve better outcomes, embrace doing the right things to improve your project results!

Did you know projects fail at an astonishing rate of more than 50% of the time? Many team members lament they’ve been on many projects and never saw a project succeed! (Harvard Business Review)

When you think of the millions wasted, this is a huge problem.

So, what’s missing when projects fail?

Good project management. “90% of teams believe a great project manager is critical to the outcome of a project. “(Oracle)

But, first, to be a great PM, you need to improve your project management skills; otherwise, you will fail to achieve intended results.

9 Signs of a Bad Project Manager

Which of these traits sound familiar?

1. Procrastination. Missed deadlines, not available to answer questions, allow conflicts to escalate and fail to fulfill promises.
2. Micromanager. Doesn’t trust the team to do it right and nitpicks how tasks are completed instead of focusing on how well they are completed.
3. Pollyanna. Overly-optimistic and believes in the power of positivity to the point of ineffectiveness.
4. Overly Critical. Nothing is ever right or good enough….waiting for something to go wrong…it becomes a self-fulling prophecy.
5. Know-It-All. When you think no one knows the answers better than you do, you will sabotage even the best teams.
6. Egotistical. Concerned about looking bad, and focused solely on your own future promotions and bonuses with no consideration for your team.
7. Fear of Conflict. Doesn’t have the skills and avoids involvement in tough conversations out of fear of being disliked.
8. Allows the Creep Factor. Overlooks poor project design, unresolved kinks, and fails to manage difficult team members.
9. Focuses Solely on Scoreboard. Only focuses on the end-results and fails to manage the process of how to achieve intended results.

 9 Ways to Become a Results-Producing Project Manager

1. Owns the Project and Intended Results. Timelines and milestones will be missed if you do not own the project and results. Factually address any “elephants” in the way to avoid having them trample over the team’s results.
2. Improves Communication Processes. Communication is essential to good project management. Ensure everyone that needs to know has access to all updates.
3. Shares the Credit. Acknowledge individual and group contributions to build team comradery.
4. Manages Swoopers. When your boss swoops in to fix and motivate team members, it usually demotivates the team. Keep the boss apprised with a cc: on important items. Consult with the boss 1:1 if there is a major issue or setback.
5. Develops Team Decision-making Process. Side decisions, 100% consensus or democratic voting will disengage the team. Build alignment through persuasive listening, which requires training. This process may take longer, but, will save you a lot of time and money in the long-run.
6. Provides Resources. While many projects have kinks, pitfalls, and saboteurs, develop resilience and resourcefulness to work through them. Engage the team in true brainstorming to answer: Who, What, Where, Why, and When… before asking How?
7. Selects the Right Team. There should be a mix of talent and skills to design the project and executive the plan. Non-core team members should only be included on a short-term basis.
8. Honors Risk Management. To manage risks, use experts in finance, IT, legal, people, operations, sales, and marketing to get correct and usable information.
9. Holds the Team Accountable. Manage the plan, budget, timeline, process, and outcomes, not individual personalities! To ensure team accountability, be open and flexible to for positive results.

When you embrace these 9 critical elements to become a results-producing PM, your projects will achieve intended results. During the process, you will also champion new benchmarks for future teams.

©Jeannette Seibly, 2019

Being a results-producer can be one of the most difficult challenges bosses face. Jeannette Seibly has been an award-winning champion for people for the past 26 years. She has guided bosses and teams to produce unprecedented results. Contact Jeannette today for straight talk with dynamic results.

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“Mistakes will continue to happen if you don’t learn from them.” Jeannette Seibly

As a coach, I’m asked great questions.

Recently, one of the best was, “Why do people continue to make the same mistakes?”

There is no one right answer to this question.

Here’s a story of someone that didn’t learn from her costly mistakes.

Shelby spent $12,000 to publish her first book. The process was not easy, despite her book coach, Bert, telling her it wouldn’t be hard. The first mistake was when Bert assigned Nolan to do the layout of Shelby’s book before the manuscript was professionally edited. Costs mounted due to lots of changes, frustrating everyone involved. Shelby’s second mistake was expecting the sales of her book to occur without any marketing. Bert had failed to outline a marketing plan with her. A year later, when she published the second book, Shelby repeated the same mistakes leaving her frustrated and broke.

Understand Why Mistakes Repeat

Ego trumps objectivity. We want easy and immediate answers, believing if we’ve been burnt once we way too smart to be burnt again!

Intuition isn’t always right. Mistakes repeat when you confuse intuition with emotional feelings about someone or something.

For example, you’re driving down I25 in Colorado from Denver to Castle Rock and are about to pass the Castle Pines exit. Suddenly, a little voice says, “Exit Here!” Your ego chimes in saying, “I’m in a hurry and can’t be late by taking the scenic route.”  Several miles later you find yourself stuck in traffic due to a major accident that closed the highway. That’s intuition. There often is no immediate logic when intuition speaks.

Rely on others’ experiences. Others’ experiences are not yours! Someone else’s career path or life choices worked for them, but, won’t necessarily work for you.

Duped by charlatans. Yes, they exist! If you believe you cannot be duped, check social media posts and feeds!  It’s very common.

8 Tips to Avoid Repeating the Same Mistakes

1. Clarify, “What’s the end result I need or desire?” This is a critical and often overlooked step. Create three non-negotiables to avoid mistakes. For example, what are three must-haves to accept this job offer (e.g., health insurance, pay, job title, job responsibilities, etc.)?
2. Self-Talk. Negative talk about yourself will diminish inner confidence and increase the likelihood of mistakes re-occurring. Learn self-promotion to gain true confidence from your past accomplishments. This creates a positive foundation to avoid repeating mistakes.
3. Awareness. In other words, we make a difference. Become emotionally and socially present when interacting with others and watch the difference you will make.
4. Trust Yourself. Seek objective information and stop relying on your biased mental chatter. Talk with no more than one or two confidants. Asking for more than three opinions will normally leave you confused and stuck.
5. Work with Your Executive Coach. Confidentially talk out complex issues or confusing situations with your coach. This support will objectively uncover your blind spot(s). Then, take immediate actions without over-analyzing them! (If you are over-analyzing, it’s just your ego in overdrive.)
6. Read Biographies. Many successful people (yes, Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, Michael Jordan – to mention a few well-known and successful people) have failed and made mistakes. You’re not alone! Learn from them.
7. Become Friends with Your Calculator. Many people profess to hate math…yet, numbers can help you make better decisions. Take a refresher financial and/or math class. To avoid mistakes, work with a financial business consultant to double check your numbers and logic.
8. Create New Habits. Ask questions and deep dive to collect objective data about products or services. Don’t forget to have a real attorney read any contracts before you sign them!

A couple of questions to get you started:

-How are your services/products different?

-How much money is expected up front? When is the balance due? (Hint: pay by credit card for faster refunds.)

-What have been your successes?

-What is your biggest mistake? Why? What did you learn?

By using the 8 tips above, you will learn to avoid repeating the same costly mistakes over and over again.

©Jeannette Seibly, 2019

Being a great boss requires working through complex issues or confusing situations to avoid costly mistakes. Jeannette Seibly has been an award-winning champion for people for the past 26 years. Contact Jeannette today for straight talk with dynamic results.

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