Nadisa Associates

By Paul Aldo

For ajcjobs

There’s a new term in business. It’s executive presence. Writers, forward thinking executives, and HR professionals are using it to describe your potential for getting into - or staying in - the executive suite. While this is good news, as it recognizes the importance of interpersonal factors in business success, it can also be confusing. That’s because there’s not much clarity or consistency in how the term, executive presence, is used. Some see it as leadership, others as presentation skills, still others as having natural people sense.

The best place to start is with how you recognize executive presence. Have you ever been in a meeting or discussion where one of the participants just seemed to stand out; where there was a level of personal engagement and clarity of thought and expression that said this person is exceptional? If you have, you were likely witnessing executive presence in action.

But why did that person stand out? What did the person say or do that made you take note? Based on personal observation and hundreds of interviews, I have identified a list of nine expressive qualities that consistently characterize executive presence. They are themes of interpersonal engagement that, when taken together, define what executive presence is all about.

With the Shriver Report out, the role of women in the workplace has been documented. In 2009 women represent more than 50% of the workforce in the U.S. There are more than two-thirds of working women who are breadwinners or co-breadwinners.  This means that there has to be some major changes in the way women are viewed in their roles in the workplace. These changes are not just for the women but for men and children and families in our society. 

When we look at developing female leaders, we have the opportunity to build on the strengths that women naturally bring to the table. Strengths like, collaboration, team building, adaptability and interpersonal skills. Take a look at how Jack Welch describes emotional intelligence for a leader.

“A leader’s intelligence has to have a strong emotional component. He has to have high levels of self-awareness, maturity, and self-control. She must be able to withstand the heat, handle setbacks, and when those lucky moments arise, enjoy success with equal parts of joy and humility. No doubt Emotional Intelligence is more rare than book smarts, but my experience says it is actually more important in the making of a leader. You just can’t ignore it.”

- Jack Welch, former Chairman and CEO, General Electric Co

It is time for organizations and women in organizations to capitalize on the talents of women and gain a competitive edge for the American workforce.

Betty LaMarr, international speaker and author is President of Nadisa Associates an executive coaching and training company.  She supports leaders and individuals to assess developmental opportunities in their organizations to accelerate change in performance and profits.  For more information please go to the website at www.nadisa.com.

So many are using the bad economy to justify their bad attitudes. You can no longer take the attitude that it is up to others to get along with you. In order to get the results you want from team members and colleagues, the more you understand how your behavior impacts others, the more you can manage the effectiveness of your relationships. We are a product of our daily experiences. Each experience creates a set of emotions, which ultimately drive our behavior.  

In his best-selling 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman reported that conventional measures of intelligence (IQ) account for 20% of a person’s success.   Being smart, possessing skills and being driven can get you only so far at work. To really succeed, it’s important to be in possession of emotional competencies, often referred to as EQ (emotional quotient).  Emotional intelligence is

•       The ability to recognize, and understand, our emotions and the emotions of others                  
•       Our skill at using this awareness to manage ourselves and to manage our relationships

READ MORE: http://www.aweber.com/b/1zCFA

Do you think you have nothing to give? Your success that came with overcoming obstacles and struggles could mean a lot to other women who are traveling a similar course. To offer help is one of the greatest things about humanity. It need not be grand or on a large scale however, do not underestimate the power of the help that you can offer someone. Help will spread and touch other lives, those lives that you are not even aware of. Sure, it can be hard to share a painful experience however, sharing can help release yourself as well as the person before you.

Your strength, your courage and your resilience is an inspiration to the entire planet. Why not share it?

Since so many participants enjoyed my session on Connecting Head and Heart at the recent Women in Technology International (WITI) Conference, I thought I would give a few tips to keep the energy flowing.

What can you do differently to begin to establish your priorities around your personal values to feel satisfied at home and at work? Try these exercises to focus your career planning and life thinking – yes, you have to do the work to get to your goal!

Exercise #1: Write down your ten favorite activities, the ones without which your life would feel deprived. Does your career choice allow you to do your favorite activities on a regular basis?

Exercise #2: Write down the top five goals you want to accomplish in your career, (think money, fame, impact, contribution and more). Your selected career must enable you to reach these goals.

Exercise #3: List everything you would like to do in your lifetime. These lists can run several hundred items. Does your chosen career choice allow for the accomplishment of your dreams or are you just dreaming?

You are the steward over your time, talent and resources. Now is the time to begin to balance between your inner life and your outer desires. Synergy or balance comes when living, loving, learning, and leaving a legacy grows together.

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Have you ever tried to get something done that you thought was simple but it took three times longer because you had to deal with difficult people? Maybe you work with people who just don’t do things the way you do and don’t have the sense of urgency that you have, not to mention their lack of pride in their work!  Well, what can you do to get around these roadblocks that just slow you down or stop you?

When it comes to working with people who we describe as difficult, it so often means that they are different in ways such as, values, time, style  and activities. In fact, in order to know how to best deal with people who are different from us, it’s important to understand that the ‘golden rule’ treat people the way I want to be treated, should really be the ‘platinum rule,’ treat people the way they want to be treated.

In working with clients to identify how best to communicate with others in the manner they want, I have helped them work with people others experienced as difficult. They were able to get those same people to support them and develop a  winning relationship.

This truth is becoming more and more apparent that we recognize that the burden falls on us to create harmony in our own lives by getting along with others. The reality is that we have no choice but to work together; we live in a world where we either work or provide products and services to people of different cultures or we purchase products and services from them.

It’s imperative that we foster a spirit of curiosity so we’ll be motivated to understand the cultural basis of our behavior as well as other people’s behavior. In turn, having greater understanding will lead us to successfully interact with those whose backgrounds may be different—often subtly, sometimes radically—from our own.

So, how can you begin to develop this knowledge to create greater acceptance and harmony in your professional and social relationships?

§  Reserve your judgment of the little things people do and instead seek to understand the person themselves.

§  Recognize the values beneath cultural behavior. Then use your understanding of cultural differences as a springboard for cooperation rather than allowing those differences to become a source of conflict.

§  Be aware of your “filters,” that is, the way your culture affects your point of view and your behavior. Avoid unthinkingly applying your frame of reference to others, believing the way you do it is ‘the way’ to do it.

§  Seek to understand your personal style. Then use that understanding to identify and resolve areas of conflict with others.

We can all lower our stress in the workplace by not expecting everyone to be the same. We can appreciate that differences can bring about new perspectives and innovation instead of creating reasons for tension. Understanding more about your Emotional Intelligence will help you begin to positively influence others to create the winning situation that you want.

Betty LaMarr is the CEO of Nadisa Associates, a career and professional coaching company. To find out how prepared you are to deal with difficult people, take our complimentary assessment, Influence & Politics and get immediate feedback. Paste the link: http://www.assessmentgenerator.com/H/cRblamarr1233941048.html.

For more information please go to: www.gettingvisibility.com for your eCourse, Getting Visibility with a detailed personal analysis or email: betty@nadisa.com.

This is a list from MJ Ryan’s new book AdaptAbility. I highly recommend it!  You can go to her site and read more about her at: www.mj-ryan.com.

1. Focus on the solution, not the problem. Because society rewards analytic thinking, we believe that identifying the cause of our troubles is the answer: Why is this happening? That’s a starting point, but don’t spend too much time there. What are you going to do about where you are?

2. Because feeling in control is so crucial to resilience, and unasked-for-change can leave us feeling very out of control, try asking yourself this question during the day: What am I free to choose right now?

3. What if you don’t believe you have the confidence or talent to find a solution? Pretend you do. Turns out that “fake it till you make it” has validity in brain science—the thoughts you hold and actions you take really do create new pathways in your brain. “As we act, so we become,” as Sharon Begley puts it in Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain.

4. Find things to laugh about. People who thrive during change work their funny bones. Says psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Thrivers’ happiness is not dependent on external factors or life circumstances alone. It derives from their chosen state of consciousness and ability to cheer themselves up when things are looking down.” Laughter has been shown to relieve stress, lower blood pressure, and improve breathing as well as mood. Best of all is when we can laugh at ourselves for not being perfect or when we hit some road block in the direction we wanted to go. It helps us stay lighthearted and resourceful.

5. Celebrate success along the way, no matter how small: a new connection, a possible lead, a small savings. Give yourself credit for moving forward in a difficult situation. At the end of the day, look at what you’ve done and celebrate whatever accomplishment you can. Celebration creates positive energy and forward momentum.

6. When considering options, before you say something won’t work, consider how it might work. Try it on for a while.

7. Focus on a positive future. Ricki Lake put it this way: “When I went through challenges in my life…I told myself, `Focus on where you’ll be a year from now.’ It helps to know that, in time, the hard parts will be water under the bridge.” I’d modify that to, focus on where you want to be a year from now (otherwise you can scare yourself with all kinds of terrible futures). Then ask what actions you need to take today to make that positive future happen.

8. Breathe slowly and deeply. Shallow breathing is a sign that you are in fight or flight mode, where you are not in touch with all of your resources to handle this change. A few conscious slow and deep breaths, especially if you also relax your muscles as much as possible, tells the part of your brain responsible for fight or flight that you’re not in danger and so it calms down. Then you’re able to think more clearly, widely, and deeply. To test if you’re breathing deeply, put one hand on your chest, the other on your belly. Take a breath in and out. Are both hands moving? If only the top one is, see if you can get the bottom one going as well.

9. Direct your complaints upward. Sometimes all we can do when faced with a challenging change is to cry out to the heavens, “Help me!” That’s what AA is all about—turning your problem over to a Higher Power, however you understand that to be, so that you aren’t so alone in the difficulty. Writes Carol Orsborn in her book The Art of Resilience, “You don’t have to believe that this works for it to be effective.” Give it a try.

10.  Get out and help someone else. As Studs Terkel put it in one of his last interviews, “Once you become active helping others, you feel alive. You don’t feel, ‘it’s my fault.’ You become a different person. And others are changed too.” When we focus on someone else’s problems, we put our own in perspective. Plus we take a break from worrying about ourselves, which is always a good thing. A friend who was in a California fire zone last summer emailed me during the time it wasn’t clear whether she lost her house, saying, “If we focus on helping others, panic diminishes.” Absolutely!

11.  Find someone in the same situation to help and pay attention to what you suggest they do. One of your best resources is the advice you give others. Be sure to follow your own suggestions.

12. With apologies to those of us who shun it, thirty minutes of aerobic activity daily is still the best way, experts say, to counteract the stress of change.

13.  Encourage yourself along the way as you would a child running a race—“You can do it! You’re doing well!” This positive self talk has been found to increase what psychologists call agency—the belief you can get where you want to go.

14.  If you find yourself worrying all the time, set aside a fifteen-minute worry time, say 5 p.m. every day. Then when your mind starts worrying at other times, tell yourself it’s not worry time and distract yourself—read a good book, do a puzzle, something that occupies your mind.

15.  If you find yourself having to do things you’d rather not, make sure that you also do things you love on a regular basis: my friend Annette traces her family tree ’cause she loves genealogy, Andy plays the piano, I read novels. Passionate interests give zest to life during change. They don’t have to be expensive.

16.  Be sure to thank those who help along the way. Gratefulness is good for your mind, body, and spirit, and it increases the possibility that you will continue to receive assistance.

17.  What really matters here? That’s a question that will help you keep the change in proportion. A woman who lost her house was told by her minister that what she needed was a home, not a house. It helped her move to a rental with greater peace and perspective.

18.  Hang out with happy people. A large new twenty-year study by Harvard medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis shows that happiness is contagious, spreading from one person to nearby family members, neighbors, and friends. One happy person can increase the happiness of others he or she comes into contact with by 8 to 36 percent, and the effect can last up to a year. Ride on the uplift of others. It will give you the energy to keep on.

19. Quakers are taught to look for “way open” to know if they should pursue something and “way closed” to give up. That means they look for the open door to indicate which way to go and if they encounter too many obstacles, they conclude it wasn’t meant to be. That’s a good strategy for all of us coping with change. Yes, you should be focused on what you want, but if all pathways to a goal are blocked, perhaps that’s a message to give up and pursue something else entirely. As Anthony D’Angelo says, “Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance.”

20.  Focus on the positive qualities you have to face this change. I recently got my town newsletter and in it, an administrator named Audrey Lee wrote, “The year ahead may be lean in fiscal resources, but I know we are rich in energy, talent, commitment and momentum.” I instantly knew the town was in good hands. The more we pay attention to the resources we have to cope, the better we will do, particularly when we ask ourselves how we can use our energy, talent, commitment, and momentum to succeed.

Copyright © 2009 by M.J. Ryan
Excerpted from Adaptability: How to Survive Change You Didn’t Ask For
Published by Broadway Books

Betty writes about “The Head-Heart Connection,” Discovering a Path to Business and Life Success Without Compromise. She discusses how one can use both their head and heart in business without losing themselves.  She talks about being clear about your operating values because they drive your decisions. You will also read about overcoming challenges to live the life of your choice. 

Book Purchase

Inner Book $17.95Heart Book $17.95

Listen to the thoughts and ideas that Betty LaMarr shares with women about how to stop being invisible.  This is part #1 of this audio series. To get the full interview send an email to betty@nadisa.com and request the long version.

After the inauguration, the speech, poem, songs and dances, it is clear that we will all have to participate at some level in the process of ‘doing more with less.’ What this past year has demonstrated is that people need hope, and faith gives people hope. It’s been said that a person can live forty days without food, four days without water, four minutes without air, but only four seconds without hope.

I know many of us have marveled at how brilliantly President Obama has chosen his team. Just as President Obama needs expert advisors, so do emerging women leaders. This is my motivation for writing this article.  I want to provide a light for women in technology to be able to travel the path to success and not have it be the harder path.

If you are a woman working in technology today, you are likely one of many women who take their BlackBerry to the shower in the morning or take their iPhone to bed at night. You want to hear the beep if someone in another part of the world needs you right away. You are likely part of a team working on projects that require a high level of energy and involvement 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  With iPhones and Blackberries it feels like you never stop working.  Do you find yourself checking email and text messages even when you are suppose to be giving yourself the day off? 

If you entered the workforce within the last decade or so you have not experienced a recession. The last official recession happened in the fourth quarter of 1990 and the first quarter of 1991. There have been other bumpy economic times that skirted close to recession since then, but in general, if you’re a Gen Y, your entire life thus far has been lived under pretty rosy economic conditions.

During such a time as this we are called upon to do more with fewer resources. Yes, you may be fortunate to have a job but it still puts lots of stress and strain on you to get the job done. I can remember being a part of a couple of downturns in business and my tendency was to work harder and longer and to try to show that I was carrying more than my weight.  The only thing that is sure to happen with this approach is that you will wear yourself out quickly and then the job is not likely to get done at all. It really doesn’t work well for you or the company.  If I had known then, what I know now, I would have done things differently to increase productivity and my job satisfaction:

A Few things to consider while weathering the recession:

1.    Become a person of influence and leverage relationships.
2.    Be Flexible and adaptable in this time of change.
3.    Anticipate change, develop an alternative plan.
4.    Spend some time thinking about what you’ll do when the economy picks up again, because it certainly will.
5.    Have your growth/development plans ready.

As economists and businesspeople nervously speculate on when the economy will turn around, some managers and executives are already preparing to reap the benefits of recovery. They anticipate change instead of simply reacting to it, and they prosper as a result — so do their careers. Those who plan for the unexpected find opportunity where others see a threat. Nowhere are such attitudes more valued than among the high-tech industries.

Managing successfully through a recession is sometimes viewed almost as an art form. One of the criteria senior leaders like to use in selecting line managers for these times is whether they’ve weathered tough economic times in the past.  Why? I suspect because there’s an element of intuition of judgment involved — being perceptive about what’s the trend and what’s only a temporary blip, knowing when to take action and when to sit tight. If you want to learn more about influence, work-life balance and getting visibility so that you get the recognition and the money you deserve, get your Free Report, “Creating Your Personal Master Plan” go to www.personalmasterplantoday.com.

The key to overcoming any challenge is to empower yourself through the event. In fact, life’s challenges and adversities can be one of the most inspiring, creative and resourceful periods of our lives, if you take the steps to focus on the positive and not the negative.

Betty LaMarr is Executive Coach/CEO for Nadisa Associates, a professional coaching company that specializes in supporting emerging women leaders in technology to achieve success through personal choices and leadership. For more information please visit us at: www.personalmasterplantoday.com.