Self Help And Education Blog

As a leader, you may have different goals and you want to achieve them your way. You may be in charge of a team and want to make the best decisions. You may also be a leader who wants to motivate members to be more productive. Or you could be someone who wants to display your leadership skills to people who are not showing obedience. These different scenarios define your leadership style.

Being a leader means having to motivate people to be more productive, and in some cases, change direction. One would think that an inspiring leader such as the likes of Martin Luther King or JFK, would be able to carry out such tasks efficiently. But then again, not everyone is born with such charisma. Keep in mind that great leaders aren't born, they are made. A leader who wants to influence and empower others should inspire them with a great enthusiasm. You may not have been gifted with this kind of personality but you can still move people through your honest conviction.

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Social Networking is extremely popular right now. It brings worlds together with a few mouse clicks and a keyboard…or even your phone! We can build friendships with people thousands of miles away. Social Networking is also something that can also be beneficial for businesses.

Tips to Use Social Networking for Business

Twitter.com. Twitter is one of the most popular forms of social networking. It is like having an IM with the world. You can use Twitter to promote your business, self or service. The key though is to be active and unselfish. You cannot make it all about you. Relationships must be built. People on Twitter are like the rest of the Internet world…they despise spammers! Do not DM links or self promos. Save that for your live tweets. I would suggest 1 self promo tweet for every 7-10 non business tweets.

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If you want to talk about a limiting perspective on life that can take you out of the game faster than anything, it is what I call the “perfectionist frame.” The feeling or belief that whatever you are doing or working on has to be nothing less than perfect or it is unacceptable.

There are many possible places this comes from, whether it’s having parents who put that kind of pressure and expectation on you as a child, the experience of actually having done some thing(s) to perfection in the past and developing a compulsive attachment to that experience, wanting to show everything and everyone that you can do it or ultimately you really are better then them at the end of the day, the fear of “screwing up” or letting people down, fear or criticism, and on and on and on.

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Because of our unique life’s experiences everyone has certain prejudices and biases, both good and bad, that we content with. The question is not whether a great leader-coach has prejudices and biases, but how they manage their biases. These biases can pose an enormous obstacle for a leader-coach when they are asked to coach someone who for whatever reason fits into a category that the particular coach has a potential negative bias against. As the workforce has become more diverse, and as companies become more international in nature, leaders may be more challenged in handling diversity related issues effectively. More and more leaders will be needed to coach those who have backgrounds and experiences drastically different from their own. When coaching those of different cultural backgrounds coaches may be totally unaware of the emotional reactions that may occur subconsciously because of the cultural differences and the “different visions of life” that result from those different cultural experiences (Goldsmith & Lyons 2006, p. 133). The potential downside of not being able to recognize and deal with resulting biases can have huge negative consequences to organizations.

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There’s an elephant in my room. He’s big and he’s taking up a lot of extra space. I feed him peanuts and straw. And, of course, water…he needs water…

My room was pretty small before the elephant showed up: now I can hardly move. He doesn’t do much either. Just eats and drinks. Sometimes I jump on his back and go for a ride but it’s not much fun cause the room is so small…we just go around in circles and then we’re back where we started…

I can’t really take him outside cause the neighbours would think I was crazy to have an elephant in my room. Some of the neighbours have seen him but not all of them. They don’t say much actually.

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On Saturday, September 1, 2007, a major event occurred for the first time in college football history that sent ripples throughout college football. The event that took place was a football game between NCAA Division 1 powerhouse Michigan and Division 1AA Champion Appalachian State.

According to the experts, this game had the making of a classic “David vs. Goliath” Story in which David had NO CHANCE of winning and the game was viewed as a joke that wasn’t supposed to be taken seriously. Michigan was considered a contender for the 2007 National Championship and ranked #5 in the nation. Appalachian State was last year’s D-1AA Champion, not ranked in the same polls
as Michigan and considered completely out of their league when compared next to Michigan.

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Problem Or Difficulty?
By Charles Bentley, Ph. D.

The two words, problem and difficulty, are often used interchangeably. But, when you explore their true meaning, you’ll see that they refer to two quite different concepts. So let’s take a minute or so to explore the fundamental difference between the subjective, personalised and internal nature of a problem - that is, a conflict in a person’s perception of elements in the real world - and the actuality - the existential, undeniable fact - of the thousand and one random difficulties that always will happen in the course of a lifetime.

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We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. -Anais Nin.

Awareness is key. That is slowly becoming my signature statement, and it counts in both professional and private life.

I truly believe that constant and conscious awareness of what is going on inside and outside of us is the key to living a fulfilling life and running successful businesses.

Finding “the answer” is NOT the key. Let me explain.

In my practice I notice that most people are looking for “the answer”. The answer to their perceived business mishaps, the answer to their perceived illnesses, the answer to their seemingly sad circumstances, the answer to why things happen the way they happen. But also: the answer to how to be successful, the answer to what makes us happy, the answer to how we can be of service to others best.

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The unitive approach to coaching is not based on any pre-conceived theory or set of beliefs. It has evolved organically over a period of years as a result of my own long experience in the field of personal and professional development.

Unitive coaching uses an entirely non-directive one-to-one tutorial format to establish a creative co-operation between client and coach. It works by encouraging the development of each client’s innate self-awareness and uniquely personal mode of expression. Instead of asking leading questions aimed at some pre-conceived ’solution’ or imagined goal, the unitive approach acts as a mirror, reflecting the potential power and innate authenticity of each individual back to its source. In this way, clients are enabled to provide solutions to their own problems. By realising new and lasting insights into their own internal process, they make the necessary changes they will need to transform their lives.

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I started blogging back in 2004, when I was in my first year of doing commercial radio. I had no idea what I was doing. I was looking for software that had a calendar and a way to publish my radio shows on the Internet.

I didn’t know anything about the different blogging software either, that was available on the market at the time.

When I did a search on Google only a few blogging software vendors came up, so I picked Radio UserLand, yes you guessed it right, because it had the name “radio” in it (interesting selection criteria by a coach and prior consultant).

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