Debra Kasowski

5 Ways to Lead and Influence by Actively Listening

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Have you ever been part of a conversation where someone is finishing your sentences before you’ve even completed your thought? Have you ever had someone interrupt you just before you are about to make an important point? Have you ever had a conversation where you couldn’t get a word in edgewise?

You’re not alone.

For some reason, some people think that they need to respond to what you’re saying right away without taking a breath or they need to interrupt you because they need to share their idea immediately before they forget it. Whereas, others may dominate the conversation just because they like to hear themselves talk or that no one has ideas as great as theirs. These individuals fall short of being a great leader because they lack the emotional intelligence skill of active listening.

Now take a moment to think of the people you know who make you feel valued and appreciated when you speak with them. It is like you are “the most important person in the room”. These people have the power to influence and persuade. They are great leaders. What qualities do they possess? Do they have a superpower that no one else has? What separates them from everyone else?

There are five ways that you can lead and influence others by actively listening so you position yourself as a person who makes others feel like they are the most important person in the room.

Listen to your own inner chatter.

Stop and ask yourself these questions:

  • Am I coming from a place of judgment or am I trying to learn about another person and what they are saying?
  • What thoughts and emotions are coming up for me?
  • Am I truly being present and mindful of the conversation?
  • Am I catching myself already formulating a response to what they’re saying?

41461729_lTurn your attention to the speaker.

  • Give them your full attention by maintaining appropriate eye contact, smiling appropriately, and nodding where you have agreement.
  • Eliminate distractions by turning off your cell phone, closing the door or moving to a private area, and turn off your computer so you are not tempted to multitask.
  • Don’t interrupt the conversation. Wait at least 3 seconds before you start to speak to ensure that they have finished their thought.
  • Don’t finish the other person sentences before they finish talking.

“There is a big difference between showing interest and really taking interest.” Michael P. Nichols

 

Ask thoughtful questions or make a positive statement about something that they have said. By asking purposeful questions, you are demonstrating that you are actively listening to the conversation and interested in what the other person has to say. When you make a positive statement about something someone has said, they feel good because you took notice which makes them feel valued and appreciated.

“Effective questioning brings insight, which fuels curiosity, which cultivates wisdom.”

Chip Bell

Reflect, paraphrase, and expand. Reflect back and paraphrase what you have heard. You can gain more information and gain understanding by asking probing questions or simply stating “Tell me more.”

Allow for pauses in the conversation. Pauses are very powerful as they help eliminate filler words like “ums”, “uhs”, or “ers”. Pauses allow the speaker as well as the listener to gather their thoughts and reflect on what has been said.

Great leaders were not born. They learned what separated good from great and they worked at making people feel important. You can up level your leadership style by practicing these active listening skills. People will become magnetically drawn to your leadership presence and describe you as a great leader.

What can you start doing to become a better listener?

DEBRA KASOWSKI, BScN CEC is an award-winning best-selling author, transformational speaker, blogger, and Certified Executive Coach. She has a heart of a teacher and is certified in Appreciative Inquiry and Emotional Intelligence. Her writing has been published in a variety of print and online magazines. Debra Kasowski International helps executives, entrepreneurs, and organizations boost their productivity, performance, and profits. It all starts with people and passion. www.debrakasowski.com

5 Things You Can Do to Get Out of Your Own Way

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No matter how successful you are or how driven you are, resistance to change is sure to show up. It shows up in the form of anxiety, self-doubt, and guilt. In order to accomplish what you want, you need to step out of your comfort zone but as soon as you do this, your mind starts playing games with you. It wants to keep you safe and protect you from any risks. This mindset chatter is the biggest obstacle to your success because it allows you to get in your own way. You end up reverting to patterns you have had in the past that no longer serve you.

The fear and resistance can paralyze you and stop you from taking any action at all. The resistance you face can prevent you from asking for a raise or the overdue promotion. Resistance can prevent you from making the sacrifices required in order to get control of your health and wellness. The only one who could put this resistance on and set the brakes is you.  The person who can make the change is also you. If you want to achieve things that you never thought possible, you must start taking action steps that will help get you to where you want to be.

Pay attention to your self-talk.  Listen to the words that you are saying. Are they positive or negative? Do you hear yourself saying “I wish I was more confident” or “I wish I could handle difficult conversations better?” Instead of wishing, why don’t you be more confident or choose to handle difficult conversations better? Everything starts with a choice.

Drop the words “can’t” and “try” from your vocabulary. When people say “can’t”, they often mean I don’t want to and when they say “try” they often mean I don’t think I can do it. You want to start using empowering language.

Zero in on the Barriers You Tell Yourself. What are the barriers to achieving what you want? One of the most powerful things you can do is ask questions and gain different perspectives of a single situation. Take your emotions out of the equation and take a serious look at the facts. Do you have the information you need? These real or perceived barriers can be overcome when you get more information. When you get more information, you can ask better questions and get better answers.

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
― Winston S. Churchill

Don’t let the fear of failure be the one thing that holds you back. Failure is actually your greatest teacher. It allows you to ask the next questions: What worked? What didn’t work? What can I do differently? It is by asking questions that you stimulate your brain to focus on solutions. Turn your challenges into opportunities to get creative and innovative.

Improve your skills. Improving your skills is one of the most under estimated keys to success. People often think if they read one book or attend one seminar that they should be achieving success; however, if you don’t apply what you learned and put it into action the reading and attending were a waste of valuable time. By improving your skills, you build confidence and competence in your abilities. You can improve your skills through the work that you do, volunteering, or trying new things.

Set goals. By just taking time to write down your goals, you become more focused on what you want and look for opportunities to support what you want to achieve. Don’t let the size of the goal overwhelm you. Break the goal into smaller pieces whether it be quarterly, monthly, weekly, or daily tasks. You may choose to delegate some of the work required. You might be telling yourself there’s so much to get done and I just don’t know where to start. Have no fear -start by blocking off time in your calendar to work on the task at hand. When you focus your time and attention, you will intentionally do the work you need to do. You are making a commitment to yourself. The more manageable the task, the greater likelihood you will achieve it.

Take bold action and celebrate your success. One of the things that allow you to get in your own way is waiting for someone to come and save you or hand success take you on a silver platter. Don’t wait for others to give you success. Success comes from you and the work that you put in. Positive thinking alone does not accomplish what you need to do; it comes from taking some serious bold action toward what you say you want to do. Celebrate every success along the way. These mini celebrations will help create a momentum that will drive you forward and help you bust through your fears and get out of your own way.

Resistance appears just when you get close to accomplishing a major milestone. This resistance serves you to reinforce the importance of why you set out to accomplish what you want to accomplish. Why is what you’re doing so important? What is the impact it will make? And what is the risk of you not following through? How many lives including your own will be affected?

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”
― Peter F. Drucker

You are meant to do great things. Leverage the anxiety, self-doubt, and guilt to your advantage by changing your self-talk, staying focused on your priorities and getting the facts, improving your skills, setting goals, and taking bold action steps that truly make you an unstoppable force in the world.

What are you resisting right now? How are you getting your own way? And what actions are you going to do take to change it?

DEBRA KASOWSKI, BScN CEC is an award-winning best-selling author, transformational speaker, blogger, and Certified Executive Coach. She has a heart of a teacher and is certified in Appreciative Inquiry and Emotional Intelligence. She is a contributing writer for Diversity Magazine and Fabulous at 50 magazine. Debra Kasowski International helps executives, entrepreneurs, and organizations boost their productivity, performance, and profits. It all starts with people and passion. www.debrakasowski.com

How to Test Your Reality and Combat Negative Thinking

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Negative thinking can cause a person to jump to conclusions without checking out all the facts. We all have negative thoughts at one time or another; negativity is normal. When we start to “paint every situation with the same brush”, we fail to remain objective and make effective decisions.

Have you ever let your imagination run wild wondering why you haven’t heard from someone? Have you ever wondered why someone else got promoted over you? Have you ever made an assumption and realized you are totally wrong? Reality testing helps you remain objective so that you can identify and understand the emotions you are feeling and deal with what drives them.

“The things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished.” – CHARLES DICKENS, David Copperfield

Reality testing is part of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory in which the ego is able to recognize the difference between the external world (reality) and the internal world-the world of the mind. Testing reality is the ability to see a situation for what it really is and allows the ego to distinguish between fears, beliefs, hopes and actual reality.

When you think negatively about a situation, you may think that the worst will happen which destroys any positive energy which drives you toward a purpose and drains the possible resources. Doubt creeps in. Negativity is compounded when there is a sense of distrust or you get involved in gossip.

Negativity or errors in one’s thinking such as over-generalization, “all or nothing” thinking, blaming others or excepting blame when there’s no one to blame to be had can all lead to anxiety which in turn impacts a person’s behavior. Your thoughts and feelings influence the actions you take. When a negative outcome comes occurs, you may feel defeated and discouraged. Your mind will start searching for negative memories to rationalize the outcome to support why something happened to you and this rationale will become a new belief.

“Reality is determined not by what scientists or anyone else says or believes but by what the evidence reveals to us” –Alan Hale

 

In order to combat this way of thinking, you need to consider everyone involved in a situation, the circumstances, environment, and all potential outcomes and effects. Re-frame the situation into a positive thought or feeling. By putting things into perspective, you become “emotionally balanced” and you are able to make effective decisions. You can get rid of negative emotions through utilizing positive self-talk, reminding yourself that first impressions are not always correct, challenging assumptions, self-reflecting on strong emotions when they arise, or by asking someone you trust for their perspective. When you purge negative emotions, you are able to adapt to situations with ease and you are able to face life situations with courage and conviction therefore, improving your coping skills.

How do you ensure your emotions do not get the best of you when making decisions?

What ways do you challenge your assumptions to verify if something is true of not?

Reality testing helps combat negativity. You can choose to stay away from being a part of the water cooler gossip or negative conversations. Re-frame your negative self-talk. Remember your emotions guide you and give you information about your reality. Treat each situation as a new situation. Ask questions. Check out all the facts before jumping to conclusions and letting the negative part of your imagination run too wild before determining the truth.

What ways do you combat negative thinking?

How has negative thinking impacted your reality?

 

DEBRA KASOWSKI, BScN CEC is an award-winning best-selling author, transformational speaker, blogger, and Certified Executive Coach. She has a heart of a teacher and is certified in Appreciative Inquiry and Emotional Intelligence. She is a contributing writer for Diversity Magazine and Fabulous at 50 Magazine. Debra Kasowski International helps executives, entrepreneurs, and organizations boost their productivity, performance, and profits. It all starts with people and passion. www.debrakasowski.com

Why You Should Banish the Word TRY from Your Vocabulary

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The words we use to communicate carry so much power. There are some words that we just need to drop from our vocabulary for they carry nothing but a negative context.

I was speaking with a business owner whose focus was in real estate who needed someone to provide interior design and decor. I referred someone who is very professional and I respect. As you can appreciate, when you provide a referral you are providing someone that you know, like, and trust and who will do a good work. Right before their meeting, the business owner called me to let me know that they were about to meet. I wished them well and I had asked that this business owner treat my referral well. The business owner’s response was, “I will try.” To which my response was, “There is no try in how you treat people. You either choose to treat someone well or you choose not to.” The business owner became flustered and stated “What do you mean? I replied that how you treat someone is a choice.

 “Do or do not do. There is no try.” Star Wars character Yoda

Yoda’s philosophy applies to all opportunities that are presented to you. You cannot just sit on the fence or put in partial effort. You’re either in or you’re out. Your results are in direct proportion to whether you’re willing to make a commitment to choose to do something versus not doing something.

By reflecting on this conversation, I have made it my mission to help you, my reader, eliminate the word “try” from your vocabulary. Try is a destructive word for two main reasons: (1) it’s a cop-out or way to get you off the hook; you really don’t have to put the effort and (2) it points to self-doubt – doubt and fear that you are able to turn out the results you have been asked to deliver or hope to deliver. There is no real firm commitment to say, “Yes, I can do this!”

There is a distinct difference between “trying” and “doing”. I had read a story in which Tony Robbins was speaking to a woman in one of his audiences about her marriage. She told him that she had tried everything to save their marriage and that her husband had done nothing. So in hearing this, Tony Robbins had asked her to try to pick up a chair. The woman obliged and picked up the chair. He stated that he told her to “try to pick up the chair”. The woman was confused; she did not understand. He went on to explain that if you tried to pick up the chair you would not actually pick it up because you are making an attempt you weren’t doing. If I said pick up the chair to you, you could physically pick up the chair but if I ask you to try you will not succeed.

Really listen to the power of the word “try” and how it sabotages your efforts-it all starts in your mind. It’s time to shift to making a commitment. 100% all in where failure is not an option.

The words or phrases you should be using instead include:

I will…

I can…

Let’s get to it…

Can you hear the difference in the power of those phrases? How much stronger is your belief in yourself? How much more will you be able to accomplish or achieve?

Be aware of the words that you use. Make a commitment to yourself and to others when you say you will do things. Give it your best! Remember when you offer a referral you were hoping that they will treat your referral with the same respect and appreciation as the relationship they have formed with you.

What are some words you have eliminated from your vocabulary?

Please share this article with others who need to eliminate the word TRY!

DEBRA KASOWSKI, BScN CEC is an award-winning best-selling author, transformational speaker, blogger, and Certified Executive Coach. She has a heart of a teacher and is certified in Appreciative Inquiry and Emotional Intelligence. She is a contributing writer for Diversity Magazine and Fabulous at 50 magazine. Debra Kasowski International helps executives, entrepreneurs, and organizations boost their productivity, performance, and profits. It all starts with people and passion. www.debrakasowski.com 

How to Pivot and Position Yourself in Changing Economic Times

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The economy is constantly changing whether it is due to the current political party or available resources. It does not matter if you have right sized, downsized, or any sized, you need to adapt to the fluctuation of the marketplace. If you are a business owner, you know that you can’t sit around and wait for the timing to be just right.

You’ve probably learned that there are times you have needed to dig deep and tap into creativity and lead the way in innovation. You may have heard the entrepreneurial saying, “build the plane as you fly”. Entrepreneurs are constantly pivoting or course correcting to reveal the blueprint or formula that allows for a model that scalable and rinse and repeatable. If everyone waited for the right time, nothing would happen.

During tough economic times, you need to be adaptable to what is going on in your environment. Not just tough times – anytime. Pivoting allows you to refine your initial vision and re-position yourself with the economic changes .You may take a look at the skill set of your team or brainstorm new programs and services to support your clients. At the end of the day, your clients or customers are looking to receive solutions to their pain points and provide the greatest value. Ensure you are using your team’s assets. Even if you readjust your product line, products or services, you still need to market and let people know about what you have to offer them. Now is not the time to stop marketing. You can’t be on the mind of your customer if no one knows that you are the solution that they’ve been searching for.

“The easy way to get into a person’s mind is to be first.” Al Ries and Jack Trout

You don’t have to wait for the market to turn to prosper. Market your message to the masses. Create your own economy. Distinguish yourself from your competitor by being the best in your industry. This doesn’t mean comparing yourself to your competitor. It means being your best-be so good that people rave about you. What makes you unique? What do you do or offer that makes you stand out from the crowd? What emotions do you trigger that causes people to want to choose you… How do you make them feel?

You want to create that hunger or desire that people need to have your product or service and that you are the only one with a solution to their pain point or problem. Why do people need you? What do you offer that others do not?

TICE Strategies to Put Yourself Out of Your Comfort Zone and Into the Marketplace

  • Tell –Tell people what you need. Tell people what you need them to do. Tell people what you offer.
  • Inquiry – Discover the needs and wants of your clients. Aim to fulfill those with your products, programs, and services.
  • Collaborate – Connect with other business owners that offer complementary services for a joint venture or collaboration. Ensure they are like minded and have the same vision and values you do.
  • Escape the Office Computer – Get out from behind your computer and connect with people. Learn what is important to people and how you can help them without being salesy. Listen to what they want and need.

By doing these four things, you can redefine or reinvent your business strategy and marketing plan to suit the needs of the ever-changing environment. Set yourself up for success so you can pivot, position, and profit.

DEBRA KASOWSKI, BScN CEC is an award-winning best-selling author, transformational speaker, blogger, and Certified Executive Coach. She has a heart of a teacher and is certified in Appreciative Inquiry and Emotional Intelligence. She is a contributing writer for Diversity Magazine and Fabulous at 50 magazine. Debra Kasowski International helps executives, entrepreneurs, and organizations boost their productivity, performance, and profits. It all starts with people and passion. www.debrakasowski.com