Jason Womack

Who's on your team, or as Seth Godin says, "What's your tribe?"

I'm recommending Seth Godin as a source for ANYone who is in charge of influencing the course of their life, their work, their community, their family, their...(you get the point).

If more people knew about what you're here to change...

Jodi and I met Kevin Carroll when he and I spoke at the same leadership conference in Las Vegas a couple of years ago. Jodi sent him a hula hoop (yeah, ya gotta get on her good side!), and I sent a thank you card (you know, I send one - or more - a day) ... he is someone who is changing the world, and he knows it!

What would happen if more people knew about the change YOU are here to make?

I'm compiling a list of people I want to invite to Ojai, CA. It's going to be in January, and we're going to spend a day and a half making a plan for change. The only requirements to get an invite:

1) You're willing to share your dreams with a group of people who absolutely will support you; and

2) You get these two paragraphs...

• The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play,  his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. 
  
  He hardly knows which is which.  He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.  To him he's always doing both.
  -  James A. Michener

On goals, visualization and performance

3 things to write about here: Goals, visualization and performance

Tomorrow, I will race in the Santa Barbara triathlon. I chose the Sprint Distance race, one that I've done a total of 4 times in the past.

While I was up in SB today, scoping out the course and getting my "mind set" for the race, I had a nice "Twitter conversation" with a colleague,Rob, in Europe. Here it is:

[Rob] @7breaths_ Good luck with tomorrows tri, any goals set for this one?

[me] @JasonWomack Do I have a goal for the triathlon tomorrow? Of course! Always (and this is not JUST about sport) perform with a SMART goal.

[Rob] @7breaths_ SMART goals do help don't they. I'm tending to do a lot of visulisation prior to training these days, find it helps - do you?

Goals

I see the three words of the title of this post a significan [aka: crucial] aspect of excellence. As soon as we "sign up" for event (a presentation at work, an athletic endeavor, going on a vacation with friends or family, etc) the goal-setting process begins. At it's very core, I'd defind a goal as: "Something I kinda hope happens."

I know, it's not a tight definition; but then again, the goal setting and goal achievement process is a loose one, isn't it? We see something, hear something, meet someone and our worldview changes.

Visualization

Visualization is - for me - foremost an external process, and THEN an internal one. (Below, you'll see my latest "vision board." As a participant in one of Keith Ferrazzi's classes, I completed this assignment to make a visual representation of the things I'm focused on...)

Allow your thinking to "get out," and then watch how your world gives you the small hints, tips and opportunities to achieve those things yo're thinking about. Right now, on the bathroom mirror at home, I wrote (with a dry erase pen) the following

40
40
40

That's a reminder to myself that I need to: Read 40 pages, Write 40 sentences, Exercise 40 minutes - every day I'm home this week.

Performance

The race starts early (7am, Pacific time zone, if you're up and want to send a "fast thought" our way...) and it will be a short one. If all goes according to plan...

...oh, wait, that's one thing about goals. You've got to be careful about who you share them with. I usually err on the side of NOT advertising ALL of my goals to everyone. In this case, the goals I have set I will share with my race mentor tonight over dinner. I'll leave it to tomorrow to let you know if I reached them! Suffice it to say, as we write about on pages 22 and 23 of our book, my 3 goals are extremely specific and "just" believable!

 

 

How can you make good things happen?

Emmett Carson, Ph.D.
CEO and President, Silicon Valley Community Foundation

 

We have the collective opportunity to impact the causes AND the people to make the good things happen!

Work that we are doing is essential to our advancement...

Collectively we're greater than the sum of our parts...

Strong leadership is required during the current recession...

Almost two years ago now, I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Carson share some ideas with us on community development and organizational power. He spoke at the Craigslist Foundation Nonprofit Boot Camp (where I volunteered as an executive coach for Directors attending the day-long event).

Dr. Carson shared his ideas for just about 25 minutes or so. I walked away believing in my own business philosophy that much more:

Show up
Do great work
Repeat

 

Where do YOU find opportunity? (Thank you Ben Zander!)

When I first "met" Benjamin Zander, back in October of 2000, I was sitting in the front row of a Learning conference put on by http://www.masie.com/. Sitting there, I took this photo:

Some 10 years later, almost, I have seen him two more times live, shared the stage at the same conference in Las Vegas, read the book he and his wife wrote (three times), and watched several of his videos online. In just a few minutes, you'll get a sense of who and how he is. With each interaction, I walk away knowing there is more...

 

• ...more to see
• ...more to do
• ...more to learn
• ...more to have
• ...more to give

 

If you have a few extra moments, here he is doing his magic for an audience at a TED Conference...

 

What are the job "skills" of 2011?

Here is a list I saw recently outling suggested "skills" for applying to an organization for a temporary position (through the current boom in real estate and loan origination... ).

Building Relationships
Community Outreach
Computer Skills
Developing Budgets
Documentation Skills
Fundraising Skills
Internet Research
Job Knowledge
Presentation Skills
Research Skills
Supervisory Skills
Written Communication

Wow...can you imagine walking in to an interview, knowing you'd be asked any or all of these questions!

Are you seeing the forest AND the tree?

Some time ago, we hired someone to remove a 30-foot pine tree from our front yard. Although it gave the front portion of the house shade, it had to go; it was growing sideways, leaning up on our wood fence and towering over our roof.

Later, I walked around my yard to see how it looked without the old tree. Sure it was different, but then I looked down and noticed there was a Coast Live Oak growing just one foot behind the pine stump.

Of course, over the previous months I had not noticed that little oak tree growing in our yard. As I focused on the "priority" of removing the pine, it was all I ever saw. Standing there that day, I noticed a lesson from that experience. To this day, I get out in to the front or the back yard of our .42-of-an-acre property and see as much as I can (instead of only focusing on what needs to be done, cleaned up, removed, or fixed).

It is always a completely different experience.

If you didn't notice that BIG thing right there in front of you, what would be some of the little ones that would grab your focus?

Build (and build up) TEAM YOU!

There will be a core group of team members you will return to throughout the year.

In our seminars called Mastering Workplace Performance, we spend time presenting specific ways you can reach out to mentors, colleagues and friends to get the support you can use to "uplevel your game." I am always delighted by how many people I work with who realize that with a phone call (or a conversation over a cup of coffee one morning before work), they can discover a solution to a problem they are facing or build the momentum and motivation to take on a new project.

Do you have a team you turn to?

Who are the people you check in with when you are facing a challenge or an "opportunity?"

Is it easy to ask for help?

Here are some sample prompts you could consider asking someone the next time you sit down with someone:
1) "I'm currently working on ____________. Have you ever done anything like it? What did you learn?" Z
2) "I'm thinking of ___________. What do you think I should watch out/look for?"
3) "I'm deciding if I should ___________. Would you share any experiences you have of doing something like it?

One of the most important things I have found in building up my team is the ability to listen. That is: Sit down, ask a couple of questions to get them started, and then just listen. Sometimes I'm tempted to "tell the story" and really describe all the "whys" "what fors" "how comes" and more...But, what I've learned over time is...Just Listen.

Oh, just one more thing if I can suggest it...Write down what you learn the same day you learn it. After your meeting, grab a journal, piece of paper, or open up a Word Processing program on your computer. Something special happens when you turn those thoughts and ideas into words on the page.

Do you plan on giving a speech that could change the world?

If you're a speaker - at TED, for your local Rotary, at a community event - please consider these 7 tips. It will take you less than 4 minutes to watch, but a lifetime to perfect.

 

 

Starting the day with a big view

We've been talking and writing a lot about perspective lately. The practice of seeing what's NOT there, what IS there, and what could be different takes patience.

This morning, while taking our dog for a long walk, this view slowed me down. As I look over it again in digital form, I think, "What, from this vantage point, can I see that from down there I can't?"

My guess is there is somewhere around where you are that could bring this question to mind...