The PMA Blog

I keep this quote on my office wall.

"When learning about life and people, make no more assumptions than are absolutely necessary.  Ask and observe."  William of Ockham, 1324

 Over the years it reminded me time and time again, that no matter how prepared I can be to teach a specific topic, the most important component of that training is unknown until the class begins:  the audience.  

It's too easy to forget this when trainers and facilitators have been teaching a topic for a long time or leaders have become expert in their presentation material.  Once we forget this simple rule, the lecture begins.  Or, we roll out the same tired questions, expecting the same answers and we are fully prepared to respond to them, even before the question is complete.  It is the stuff of deteriorating results in the classroom, and it can be deadly for our most seasoned trainers (myself included). 

So, here are three tactics for keeping it fresh and different every time, based on who's in the room.

I've seen a multitude of blogs and articles citing this statistic “the average duration of a New Year’s resolution is 19 days.”  The gist of most of these articles is that we should take the stat as a sign that resolutions are a waste of our time.  I disagree.  I think if you make a list of the most successful people you know and compared them to everyone else, you would find one critical difference.  Follow-through.

We all have great ideas.  We all have things that get us excited and make us feel a passion that we don't feel about other topics.  But most of us stop short for a handful of key reasons:

• We lack confidence.
• We fear failure. 
• We get overwhelmed. 
• We lack focus.
• We are shooting for balance.
• We feel incompetent.

So what's the answer?

In last year's Forbes article, "How To Get Even More From Your Technology:  Turn It Off", Kevin Ready makes the case that in order to overcome the evils of our technology, we should walk away or turn it off.  

He's not wrong about the evils, and occasionally walking away or turning it off creates a much needed techno-break. However, I believe there's a far more valuable answer:  Get control of your technology!

Don't let it overwhelm and distract you.  With a few rules for wrestling it under control and modifying your behavior, your tools can be useful and productive, not your enemy.

At Priority Management Associates, we teach people to take the following approach:

Assess it - Learn it - Control it - Work it

I recently heard syndicated radio host, Mel Robbins, report that one-third of Americans feel "stuck" on a regular basis.  In my experience, feeling stuck is usually connected to these thought patterns:

I recently found myself having one coaching session after another with front line managers and team leaders on the virtues of being more vulnerable with their team and colleagues.  It seems that this is one of the leadership qualities we miss in our supervisory onboarding efforts.  They get stuck trying to be more authoritative and show everyone why they are now the manager.  Some feel compelled to know everything and cover up mistakes with justifications.  In their efforts, many end up alienating the very people who once believed they would make a good manager. 

Listening to customers and delivering truly “mind-blowing” service can be a very effective way to engage your team .  The following anecdote has been relayed countless times as a story of great customer service, but the untold story is the one of how a phenomenal team mobilized to make it happen.

Over the 20 years that we've worked with both dysfunctional and highly functional teams, my colleagues and I have seen a key behavior surface as a difference-maker consistently.  Accountability.

Unfortunately,  it has become another buzzword, overused and with so many different interpretations that it has lost much of its meaning. According to Patrick Lencioni, author of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, “When it comes to teamwork, accountability means the willingness of members to remind one another when they’re not living up to performance standards and results.”