The To Do List Diet

How much time do you spend on low/no payoff activities during your work day?

Despite our best intentions, we often choose what we want to do rather than what is essential to do. The To Do List Diet is about trimming your to do list down to a Size 1. That is going to require some serious dieting!

ProductCamp Austin

ProductCamp 10 is being held in Austin on Saturday, February 16th, with over 550 people attending the event. Sign up at ProductCamp Austin or visit their ProductCamp Austin Facebook page.

ProductCamp is an unconference – that means peers present topics of interest to other peers without all the marketing stuff that goes along with the standard conference. Best of all – the topics presented are voted on first thing in the morning and only the highest valued topics are selected.

The picture is of the my proposed session for ProductCamp 10: The To Do List Diet.  With luck, my topic will be chosen as one of the ProductCamp 10 sessions.

At ProductCamp 9 in August 2012, I submitted and was chosen to present No More Lame Conference Calls – The 6 Principles You Need to Lead Great Meetings! This is the topic that I’ve been presenting to PMI Chapters (Colorado, Texas, Hawaii, & Oklahoma) and IIBA Chapters (Colorado) in both 2012 and 2013 to rave reviews.

I learned three lessons during my presentation at ProductCamp 9 (August 2012).

First, fun is attractive. It’s Saturday morning and the session better offer something that engages me, my brain, and my passion.

Second, “no slide deck” works! One peer loudly exclaimed upon hearing there was no slide deck in my session: “Whoo hoo – my third session with no slide deck!”

And third, provide really valuable content and then spend the bulk of the session engaging and applying the content. It is that simple!

Unleashing my Inner Jester!

These were the lessons applied when submitting my topic yet I went one step further: I’m unleashing The Jester inside of me! In a world of sexy, cool, high buzz topics, why on Earth would I suggest a topic on to do lists? Because it is a fundamental bridge to accomplishing anything in life. And I plan on having fun doing it!

It remains to be seen if my peers will find this valuable among a mix of amazing topics being offered. Perhaps only a Jester could turn boring topics like to do lists and conference calls into a Saturday worthy session!

Join us for ProductCamp 10! Like our Facebook page and join the conversation: The To Do List Diet

Leading conference calls is the fastest way to develop your collaborative leadership skills!

Conference calls offer professionals and executives the opportunity to quickly learn what does and what does not work when you apply collaborative leadership skills during a virtual meeting.

How?

First, clear your mental paradigm by ignoring everything you thought you knew about leading conference calls. Many professionals use long ingrained bad habits over and over yet continue to expect different results. Next, start with a simple model that adapts to and supports your unique leadership style. Then practice and seek honest feedback.

Potential Block to Success:

Your success depends on two things. First, your willingness to adopt a new mindset for leading groups during virtual meetings. Second, your ability to shift your focus from “how am I doing” to “how do I make my meeting more valuable to all of my participants?”

Resource:

Our ebook, No More Lame Conference Calls – The 6 Principles You Need to Lead Great Meetings, helps you quickly see a new way to collaboratively lead groups via the telephone. Professionals and executives in over 14 countries are enjoying and utilizing our model.

Live Presentation:

On January 17, 2013, I’ll deliver an engaging and practical presentation based on our ebook to the PMI Oklahoma City Chapter (and their sister FAA PMI meeting). Do you live near Oklahoma City? If so, please join us! You can sign up on the PMI Oklahoma City website.

Description:

What assumptions block your ability to lead an effective conference call?

Could a simple leadership model based on 6 Principles make you more effective as a Project Manager?

How do you quickly train your participants to be more effective during your meetings?

PMI members see “conference calls” for what they are: the primary way professionals build trust, credibility, and collaborate with the professionals necessary to get the job done.

The most frequent challenge mentioned by PMI members is not how to improve their own leadership skills but rather how to train the participants attending their calls to be more effective during the meeting.

In this fast paced interactive session, come prepared to ask questions, work in teams on assumption sets, and learn how the 6 Principles help you establish a collaborative environment in both virtual and face-to-face meetings. And yes, it’s going to be fun.

If you’d like this presentation adapted for and delivered to your organization, please contact me.

Good luck when leading your conference calls, web meetings, and face-to-face meetings in 2013! Ask for help with your meetings when you need it.

It’s OK to occasionally ask participants for their input on the topic being discussed. (Tip: Ask people by name, rather than tossing out a generalized request for feedback. People pay more attention if they think they’re going to be called upon to participate.) Keep people involved, so they resist the temptation to multitask.

Here’s suggestion 3 (of 3) for growing your conference call leadership skills.

Always ask your participants for input and rarely call on them by name

Many conference call leaders attempt to ‘control’ their conference call rather than lead them. What’s the difference? Control employs force and manipulation where as leadership draws upon engagement and collaboration.

If the conference call leader wants to eliminate multitasking, all he or she needs to do is start the call off with momentum and make the meeting more valuable than any other activity a participant can choose from.

Why?

Inviting input from the participants does not mean your meeting will be taken over by meaningless drivel. You still need to keep the meeting focused. Yet, the more you invite input, the more “ownership” the participants will take in making the meeting successful. If you make your conference call valuable to your participants, and you invite them to actively participate, they will not multitask.

I challenge every conference call leader to stop playing the “gotcha” game with your participants – using the fear of being called upon as a way to force them to mentally stay in the call. No one likes being made to look stupid in a group. Besides, participants have discovered amazing ways to counter this insane power game.

How?

Before each conference call, find out what is important to each of your participants. Then work your agenda to include something valuable to everyone. Finally, consistently deliver value to each participant in every meeting you lead.

Benefits?

For the participant: They will be heard. This is a far more rare experience than most people realize. When you listen to your participants and highlight the value of their input, your participants will happily show up on your call ready to ‘get stuff done.’

For you, the leader: Control is an illusion. Anything that improves your clarity around leading and working more productively with your team is a huge accomplishment. Leading a group is easy when everyone is engaged.

Leader Mindset:

Your intention is to fully engage your conference call participants in a way that makes it more valuable for them to focus their attention on your meeting than any other activity. Collaborative leadership skills are essential for advancement in your career.

Think of your participants as your customers. Make the time they spend on your conference call valuable. Invite, identify, and acknowledge something brilliant within their input. Demonstrate this during your meetings and multitasking will be a non-issue.

Always say your name first when speaking on a conference call!

Conference call leaders share a universal goal: to reduce confusion and miscommunication during your meeting. The simplest way to do this is have participants say their name first.

Why?

Saying your name first gives you two benefits. First, it reduces confusion about who is speaking. Second, it alerts the multi-tasking participants that the conversation is shifting to a new speaker.

How?

Develop a simple pattern to “say your name first” that is brief and to the point. Two approaches that I use are either “Byron here” or “This is Byron”. If your meeting includes participants from multiple geographic locations, consider: “Mary from New York here” or “This is New York Mary”. Use the least number of words as possible.

Benefits?

For the early participant:

Saying your name first (along with identifying the meeting) when you welcome the early participant sets a warm, inviting tone for participants coming into the call. This helps you make a great first impression.

For the arriving participants:

As other participants join, they can quickly tell who is already on the call. Not only do you model the behavior you expect from your participants, the ongoing conversation quickly focus their attention on your meeting.

For you, the leader: You start your meeting off with a warm welcome and the incoming participants can quickly tell who has already joined the meeting. Best of all, you are modeling the behavior you expect during the conference call. This makes it much easier to start your meeting with focus and energy.

Leader Mindset:

Your intention is to mentally reboot the participants coming onto your conference call so that they are energized and focused during your meeting. Imagine what you could accomplish during your meetings!

It is all too easy for participants to be mentally drawn away from your conference call. Your goal is to make sure this doesn’t happen. By removing confusion and miscommunication, your participants are much more likely to remain attentive during your meeting. Successfully keep participants fully engaged in your meetings over time and you’ll develop a reputation for being a great meeting leader.

Many of the suggestions Lee makes are very good and the article is worth reading. Over the next three posts, you’ll find a suggestion for taking your conference call leadership to the next level. Let’s start with the first suggestion.

Start your call early rather than “on time”!

The biggest mistake is to start the call late. Starting on time is expected and IS smart to do. Yet, the leader misses a huge opportunity to get the call moving by engaging with the participants prior to the stated start time.

Why?

Which person shows more respect for you and your conference call: the person who shows up early or the person who shows up late? Ignore why someone is late and focus on the people who show up early to your calls!

How?

Arrive early to your conference call prepared to begin immediately. Have a simple open-ended question (7 – 10 words) written down that directly relates to your call agenda. The moment the first person arrives on the call, welcome them and ask your question. Continue to engage this person as other people arrive.

Benefit to you?

For the early participant:

By welcoming someone to the call and asking a question related to the topic, you show immediate respect for their willingness to show up early. Not only do you head off any mindless chitchat; the participant gets value from the call before it has officially begun.

For the arriving participants:

Participants come into a flow of conversation around the topic and immediately focus their attention on the call. Literally, the conversation pulls them into the call without delay. The call feels like it has started and has energy.

For you, the leader:

You build the flow of conversation before the call begins and can start your call with momentum and focus. NEVER wait to begin your meeting regardless of whether it is your boss or the decision maker – you can always bring them up to speed the moment they arrive on the call. The best part is that you are warmed up by the conversation rather than having to start cold and get the conversation rolling.

Leader Mindset:

Shift your perspective so that your calls begin the moment the first person arrives. Change this perspective and you’ll see leading conference calls in a completely different light!

Treat the early participants to your conference call as your most loyal customers; reward them by giving whatever help and attention you can before the official start time. Develop a reputation for doing this and don’t be surprised to see more people dialing in early to your calls focused and ready to go!

Video allows small businesses to directly compete with large businesses. It gives you a chance to reach potential customers anywhere and at any time in the world. Think of your videos as an “international sales team” that works night and day telling people about your business (attribution to John Locke) The key is that you must produce a video that engages, entertains, and enriches your intended audience. Oh, that’s the hard part – YouTube has millions of examples of bad video.

My second video (Never Make This Video Mistake) was an abject failure. My intention was to drive eBook sales (a result, not an intention). Was it professional? Yes. 60 – 90 seconds in length? Yes. Was it fun, engaging, entertaining, and enriching for my intended audience? No! In this case: Failure = producing the video based on my results (eBook sales) rather than the intention to have fun, inform, entertain, and enrich my viewers. With video, two out of three equals “fail”.

I had no clue as to why my video didn’t work until I started reading Steve Stockman’s book: How To Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck (examples from his website). A business video designed around a desired result has a 99.9% chance for failure. I count myself lucky to have learned this lesson only after producing two business videos and 100+ hours of production!

Stockman explains that a clear “intent” is what guides the making of a successful video (what to shoot, why you are shooting it, what to cut, etc.) whereas “result” is what happens AFTER the video is produced. There are so many possible creative ways to explore a subject that without a specific intent, you have no clear path for making decisions along the way that your viewers will appreciate and rave about!

A business plan helps you identify your intention: whom you will serve, what problem does your product and/service address, and how you will serve them well through your business. Without this clarity, you end up falling prey to making business decisions based on desired results.

Using Stockman’s advice, my third video project starts with a clear intent: Use humor to show how a lack of understanding of golf etiquette produces the same chaos and frustration that a conference call leader faces when conference call etiquette is not established.

If, like me, you didn’t go to film school, and you are thinking about or are producing videos for your business, I highly recommend reading Stockman’s book – even if you’ve hired a professional to produce the video! He’s made the complex simple and gives business people a step-by-step approach to shooting video that will engage and entertain your potential customers.

Now comes the hard part: How will you apply this concept in your business or video?

Please add comments, stories, and video examples so others can benefit.

Byron

PS: Thank you Steve Stockman for writing your book and to my niece Lisa for giving it to me as a Christmas present!

1. Millennials generally have strong tech skills yet lack communication (phone/conference call/face2face/web) and relationship skills with people they don’t know. Their collaborative approach to sales works. What are you looking to accomplish specifically with your team?

2. Hiring a coach is vastly different than hiring a consulting or training company. Consultants are hired for expertise and for a specific deliverable. Training is designed to deliver training to a minimum standard for the entire group. Coaching is designed to support an individual to achieve peak performance. You can not achieve peak performance unless you have an excellent coach/client fit. While I’m a great coach, I’m not the right coach for every person.

3. When talking with a coaching organization, you want to find out if they are coaching around a specific training they developed/deliver. If they “coach” around their training program, then you will find their coaching is usually centered around “accountability” coaching. Millennials often equate accountability coaching with parenting. Coaching focused on accountability, while useful, is not aimed at peak performance – it is aimed a forcing commitments to be kept (not a bad thing!). Realize that if you hire a coaching organization that is offering a program, the program is primary in that individuals are required to “adapt” to the work with the program.

4. If a coaching organization does not offer a program other than focusing completely on the individual to work with their strengths, behaviors, and values to achieve individual peak performance – you probably have found one of the best coaching organizations available. Here, the individual is primary and the coach’s role is to adapt to the individual. If you want peak performance, look for complete focus on the individual where the coach adapts to the needs of the individual.

5. You will have one major issue to consider when hiring a coach for your team: the fiduciary relationship and how you will handle coach/individual confidentiality. If the company pays for the individual to be coached, the coach has a fiduciary responsibility to the company. The level of confidentiality that exists between individual, coach, and company must be determined as well. Generally, clients do best when they can be completely candid with their coach and not worry about anyone hearing what they discuss. Yet, if you are hiring and paying a coach to work with your team, you’ll need to decide what level of confidentiality you will allow between the three parties.

Hope this has been useful in helping you determine what you need to support your Millennials to boost their sales. You are welcome to contact me with more questions any time. My contact information is on my profile and best way to reach me is by phone.
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If you are considering working with a coach and have questions about the process, please leave a comment here or call me. Hiring the right coach is essential and as stated above, one size does not fit all. Thanks in advance for sharing this post.

The total amount of time we spent on conference calls in 2010 is stunning. Here’s a quick view of the numbers, the problem, and a simple solution for any person, business, or organization to stop wasting valuable time and resources. It is time to stamp out lame conference calls!

Get your copy today!

Lead Great Meetings Averts Intergalactic War over Lame Conference Calls! Get your copy today!

In our book, No More Lame Conference Calls – The 6 Principles You Need to Lead Great Meetings, we outline a simple way to deal with this issue. The technique is to use the word “Pause.”

Regardless of the setting, “Pause” is a powerful word that can help you keep difficult situations under control, especially when someone on your meeting becomes angry.

For example, assume that one of the people on your conference is whining about your company’s lack of support and your boss is sitting in on the call. The way you handle this situation can determine whether you step up to the next level in your company or become stuck in a nowhere job.

Here’s how to use “pause.”

“John, could I ask you to pause for a moment please? If I understand you correctly, you are unhappy with the level of the company’s support of the sales team. Is that correct?”

Assuming that John says, “Yes,” then ask, “John, could you recommend a single step that we can take to fix this situation?”

This is known as a “pattern interrupt” and is an effective way to break a tense situation.

“Pause” is a polite way to stop the rant. More importantly, by asking John to come up with a solution, the onus is now on him to offer a solution rather than just complaining.

“Pause” is also particularly effective with windbags. Here’s what to say:

“John, would you please pause for a moment and sum up your point in a single sentence?”

Or if Mary has wondered off on a tangent, you could bring her back to the point by saying,

“Mary will you pause for a moment. We were discussing what our Twitter marketing strategy should be. Do you have anything to add to that specific topic?”

CAVEAT: When using “pause,” keep your voice and your tone neutral. Any anger or frustration that you may have about the person or the situation must not show in your voice when you say, “pause.” Failure to follow this guideline can create hostility and derail what you hope to achieve.

Whether you’re leading a meeting in a face-to-face environment or on a conference call, using “Pause” is one of the best ways to improve the effectiveness of your meetings.

Posted by Bernice Ross, LeadGreatMeetings.com

Do you need more tips on being an effective leader? If so, check out our Let Me At It! Leadership Training Program designed specifically for people who lead conference calls. This program helps you integrate the Six Principles of leading powerful meetings from No More Lame Conference Calls with  a 3-5 minute audio tip, five days a week, for eight weeks. Don’t settle for lame when you can be playing at the top of your game!