©  Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
www.ForWomenEntrepreneurs.com

Some days, I want to scream.  I’m sure you’ve had that experience, too. Perhaps, not for the same reason. I want to scream because I cannot believe the number of distractions people who say they are focused on building their businesses find….AND JUSTIFY! ( Oooo, that’s just put the scream up a few decibels! )

As a business consultant and executive coach, I get the urge to scream far too frequently for that one reason alone. Wonderful, well-intended people hire me to coach them to systematically clarify, construct and grow their businesses. They swear blind that they want to achieve “A”, and are frequently running after the rest of the alphabet, with carefully constructed, elaborately convoluted, reasons why!

How do you determine if you are driving yourself to distraction?

• You are not getting where you say you want to go in a meaningfully measurable way.
• You are feeling overwhelmed much of the time, too many wheels spinning and not enough hands.
• You are always attracted to new, shiny objects when what you were playing with is just becoming pliable, comfortable and useful.
• You vociferously defend your choices to stray from the mission you’ve set yourself and justify the departures loudly.

I know it is difficult to stay generally on the path. Shiny things attract. Marketing language of others beckons. Fear of “losing an opportunity,” or “leaving a stone unturned” paralyzes. Lack of confidence in your intuition and judgment wanes. Others are too ready to share their opinions of what you should do…even if you didn’t ask. There are many distractions. It is up to each one of us to calculate the cost of tempting detours in terms of time, energy, money, frustration and loss.  And, it’s up to each one of us to ‘fess up to the degree of our commitment to our missions.  Sometimes, that’s just talk, too.

One thing I know for sure…and I learned it the long, hard way: I cannot say I want one thing, do another, and hope for a satifying result. Although, I do know a few people so addicted to drama, that they wouldn’t know what to do if they didn’t have a tale of woe to tell. They love distractions, especially when they can make them someone else’s fault.  Go figure!

Thanks for letting me “scream” here!  Is it still a scream if no one is listening?

Rhoberta

Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
Consultant. Counselor. Coach. Catalyst.
Success Solutions for Life, Work & Business

www.Rhoberta.com
Escondido, CA
Follow me on Twitter:  www.Twitter.com/RhobertaShaler
Join me on Facebook:  www.profile.to/rhoberta & on LinkedIn: www.LinkedIn.com/in/rhobertashaler

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© Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
www.ForWomenEntrepreneurs.com

• Do you balk when someone is in your face?
• Do you freeze when someone is aggressive with you?
• Do you think of a comeback hours too late?
• Do you live in fear of seeing or interacting or working with that person again?

If the answer is “Yes!” then you don’t know what to do that is effective and productive when faced with conflict. GOOD NEWS! The skills to manage and accommodate conflict are learned. That’s where you got the ones you have AND you can get better, more effective ones easily.

We have not come far from the reptiles when it comes to being faced with anger, conflict or confrontation. Our reptilian brain only knows how to fight, flee or freeze.  Apparently, conflict management wasn’t an option in the days of the dinosaurs!

With systematically developed communication and conflict management skills, you can feel much more competence, comfortable and confident every day. You know you can handle it, and that feels good.

Recently I was consulting to a company who had employee problems ruining their productivity and profitability. Morale was down the drain. Trust was almost non-existent. People simply showed up and went through the motions most days. On other days, it was all out war…in the most underhanded, undermining ways as well as loudly, rudely and viciously. What an incentive to take sick days!

No company can afford this. In fact, Dan Dana’s research shows that up to 42% of an employees time is spent engaging in or trying to resolve conflict. And, I add, without skills they can’t resolve anything!

So, the client had called me when he was dangling from the last threads of his tether.

“Help! If something doesn’t happen, we’re going to go bankrupt. They are difficult to work with. Their animosity for each other spreads to their attitude with customers. They demonstrate little respect for each other, and, I know they are just holding themselves back from being insubordinate with me.  What can you do?”

I said:  “Take a deep breath!”

And, then we began to unpack the issues, history and probably steps to solution.

The simple truth is: WE TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO TREAT US!  If we once let them treat us badly, we’ve begun to set a pattern…and, often, set it in stone. This CEO had not developed a conscious culture for his company, had not communicated the ways in which employees would interact in order to stay employed, and had no mechanism for agreement. So, not only did folks have no skills, they had no direction.

Corporate culture must be defined. Yes, it takes time away from the day-to-day, but it is essential. Without defining corporate culture, anything goes.  If don’t know the agreements–and the consequences of stepping outside of them–there is stress. The problem is that without those agreements, no one knows where the boundaries are.

COMPANIES HAVE THE TEACH EMPLOYEES HOW TO TREAT EACH OTHER AT WORK!  They do that by pr0-actively addressing this in their corporate culture documents and discussing it fully–and enforcing it–with their teams.

What’s going on in your neck of the woods?

I wish you well.
Rhoberta

Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
Consultant. Counselor. Coach. Catalyst.
www.Rhoberta.com
www.ForWomenEntrepreneurs.com
www.WorkplacePeopleSkills.com

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© Rhoberta Shaler, PhD

There is so much buzz about social networking. Everyone wants to teach you all about it and that’s wonderful. This is a very short post to tell you about someone you really need to know if you are serious about social networking. I spent the day with her and a wonderful group of people who are all serious about social networking.

Yes, it’s the buzz.  AND, it’s the buzz that is not going away!   As a follower of my blog…which I hope you are…you know I seldom introduce you to anyone. There’s a good reason for that. I only refer people that I can unabashedly endorse.  So, meet Sabrina Gibson!  She will teach you more about social networking in a free session that many others can see to get together in a paid seminar.

Sabrina’s website: http://SmartandSticky.com
Find her on Facebook: http://Facebook.com/sabrinagibson
Follow her on Twitter: http://Twitter.com/sabrinagibson

You’ll be glad you did.  And, if I didn’t say it loud enough before:  SHE’S AMAZING!

To your success!
Rhoberta

Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
Consultant. Counselor. Coach. Catalyst.
http://www.Rhoberta.com

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©  Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
www.ForWomenEntrepreneurs.com

Yesterday I was involved in an affirming seminar that reminded me of many principles on which I have long based my life.  It’s always good to be reminded, especially by a young person who is really excited about the ideas. His enthusiasm let me remember what that time of discovery was in my life.  Thanks, Mat!

We were talking about focus and how specific it needs to be. There are various perspectives, of course. Some folks focus on the minutiae and get bogged down terribly. Others have such a big vision that nothing gets done. What’s up for you in that arena?

For me, I had to play with my personal zoom lens quite a long time to get the right perspective over the years. And, I’m always making slight adjustments. I do think, however, that my business is laser-focused. It’s all in the size of the laser beam.

My business is focused on the PsychoDynamic Success System I have created and how it applies to life, love and livelihood. It is a single focus, however, I had to get the accurate focal length to see that.  Yes, I help women entrepreneurs build their businesses by aligning their vision, values, beliefs and purpose with their expertise and experience.  And, I do it by helping clients to integrate the psychological, mental, emotional and spiritual in their lives.  It works when clients are having personal, relationship or business issues, or all three. After all, who can separate these things?  So, my focus is on creating PsychoDynamic Success in life, love and livelihood.

That lead me to think about the people who encourage us to have a niche market.  That’s an excellent idea. We do again have to adjust our focal length to the appropriate height, width and depth of the niche we serve.  Once that is established, we again laser-focus.

There is something called Principle 212. It’s all about the fact that water boils at exactly 212 degrees.  At 211, the water is very, very hot. At 212, it becomes steam and releases enormous energy. As it was explained to me, the purpose of Principle 212 was to tell folks that they had to put everything in one pot and  turn up the heat. That’s the way to get something to really percolate.

I agree. But, as I thought about it and discussed it with my partner, it became clear that you can have any size pot if you have a heat source powerful enough. The bigger the pot, the larger the flame and the longer it takes to boil. Simple formula.  This helped me clarify my business today in the most important place: my mind.

To Your Successes!
Rhoberta

Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
Consultant. Counselor. Coach. Catalyst.
….leading you to create the life, love & livelihood that fulfills you
www.ForWomenEntrepreneurs.com

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©  Rhoberta Shaler

Are your systems supporting you?  Do you know what needs to be done? Do you have a business plan? Do you know what your marketing campaign looks like? Is it all on the calendar broken down into do-able chunks?

It’s so easy for me to know that I should have all that, but, I resist doing it.  Not that I don’t do it.  I do. But, oh, how I resist!  I want to get on with things, right now. All that thinking through and organizing and making file folders, yuck! I’m just champing at the bit to get on and do things.

It was a hard-learned lesson that creating systems actually saves me time, frustration, anxiety and concern. I know when things are due. I have created a schedule of the tasks required to be ready by that due date and I usually meet the deadline easily.

This is what Michael Gerber wrote about in the E-Myth when he said that we have to take the time to work ON our businesses, not just work IN them. It’s seductive to think we are really progressing towards success when we are only working IN our business. Working ON the business seems to be, for most of my clients and certainly earlier for myself, to be so tedious.  Not so.  I can tell you that I certainly feel much better taking the time to know exactly what I’m doing, why I’m doing it and when so that nothing falls off the turnip truck!

If your systems are not supporting you, you are not supporting yourself. That’s what I’ve learned.  So, take a day to organize.  Hey, it’s only one day away from the joy of “doing” that will pay-off a hundredfold.  If a day seems like a trial, how about an hour a day for two weeks?  Just do it. You’ll be glad you did.

To your success,
Rhoberta

Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
Consultant. Counselor. Coach. Catalyst.
…leading you to the life, love & livelihood that fulfills you…and makes money.
www.ForWomenEntrepreneurs.com

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