CMQ Personal Coach

It's a Whole New Year

Playing With The Toys We Already Have

The malls have stopped playing that annoying holiday muzak. My neighbours of the “Who Can Have the Biggest Collection of Lights and Inflatable Snowmen on their Lawn” competition are deflating and dismantling their munitions. Trees are down. It’s over. It’s time to turn our focus to the coming year and what we want to create. I had one of those ‘AHA’ moments as I was setting my intentions for the year. I couldn’t think of any material things to want. I looked around my workspace and saw books that I was so excited about when I bought or received them that I haven’t yet had the opportunity to read. There aren’t any spots in my house that scream out for an additional piece of furniture. My vehicle isn’t new, but it serves its purpose. We still have games and ‘toys’ from last year that we haven’t exhausted the learning potential of. I can find something in my closet that’d get me through just about any situation and I’m housing more handbags than any one person should admit to having. Do I have it all? No. Am I rich or loaded with possessions? No. But, at this moment I have enough. Any more is excess. Which brings me to the theme of my year: “Play with the Toys You’ve Already Got”.

We all have things that we want so desperately, and then once we get them put them aside to pursue our next ‘want’. How many guitars lean silently in the corners of rooms; how many books remain unread on the shelf? What about gym memberships and exercise equipment? I’ve known sales directors who spend big chunks of company money on the latest audio training system for their team while most team members still haven’t utilized the last one they purchased. What if we slowed down, turned around, and focused on getting the absolute most use out of the things we already have. My guess is we’d have a richer, deeper experience. We’d reduce the crazy amount of waste that surrounds us. We’d teach our children about the value of things. We’d have a deeper relationship with the things we do. We’d be more engaged, skilled and knowledgeable about what we chose to give our time and energy to. We’d be creating less debt, less landfill, and less time in the shopping mall parking lot.

So that’s my intention. I’ll be reading and re-reading my favorites until I really absorb the lessons. I’ll be painting with all the art supplies I’ve accumulated over the years. I’ll be organizing my ‘stuff’ to make it more accessible and useable than it’s been in the past. As for the new stuff? Gate’s closed until a real need emerges. Let’s see how far I get.

Now that I’ve told you mine, what’s your intention for the year? I’d love to hear it. Write me here at carol@cmqcoaching.com

Ask the Coach

Dear Coach,
How’s this for a conundrum: I work for a great, dynamic company that is in a position to really grow this year. While I love it, the biggest challenge we face is communication. Each department has its own agenda, and the information that’s needed is not always getting passed along. On the flip side, I already feel I spend half my day in meetings that may or may not really pertain to me. Why is the amount of time spent ‘communicating’ too high, and the actual flow of information too low?
Signed, Make My Meetings Matter

Dear Make,
You’re not alone! There are people sitting in meetings in offices all over North America right this moment wishing hard that they were somewhere else. It’s not the number of meetings that is a challenge, but the effectiveness. Here are some tools to increase the effectiveness of your next meeting.

Set an intention, in writing, as to what you’re looking to achieve. Share it with all participants. Don’t confuse this with and agenda. An agenda can be a list of topics, or ‘problems’, to be discussed. An intention is solution focused. If you actively state “We intend to design an action plan for new marketing initiatives and clearly assign a point person and target date for each new initiative” you are more likely to stay action-oriented, and avoid reiterating old news or sharing laundry lists of things you’re working on.

Schedule a clear finish time and stick to it. Treat it like you have to leave for the airport at the appointed time or you’ll miss a flight. At first you may struggle a little to complete on schedule, but when your team learns that an 11:45 finish really means an 11:45 finish, they’ll start to target their conversation to the task at hand. When you know what’s expected, and you know you expect to complete it in 45 minutes, guess what happens. You complete it in 45 minutes.

Create a ‘parking lot’ for things that come up and need to be dealt with, but don’t fit into the format or time frame. Key issues will come up during a meeting that, while important, have the ability to pull things off track, or may not pertain to all of the people present. By creating a ‘parking lot’ to hold those ideas you can acknowledge their importance and commit to dealing with them promptly, and still allow you to focus on the present issue. Schedule follow up at the end of the meeting to address them in the most appropriate way. A word to the wise, though: this technique will only work as long as you keep your commitments to follow-up on ‘parked’ issues. If your team sees that this is being used to push concerns aside, it loses its effectiveness.

Stick to these three strategies, and you’ll find your meetings become more effective, compact, solution focused and dynamic.