Free Coaching Worth Over $1000 (Bloggers Eligible)

Every once in a while, I get this drive to boldly go where no coach has gone before in helping people put their best foot forward in communication.

I’m officially launching a project through which I intend to kill two birds with one stone: coach some cool people and help increase awareness about the importance of good people skills.

In short: I’m giving away free coaching worth over $1000 to the 3 bloggers that impress me the most with a people skills article on their blog. Now for the long story…

The Prize

Three smarter-than-the-average-bear bloggers will win an individual communication coaching program with me. Every program includes 5 coaching sessions of 60 min. each, and it will take place via Skype. Together, the 3 coaching programs are worth over $1000.

You will definitely be interested in such a coaching program if any of the following changes are relevant to you:

  • Improving your confidence or self-esteem;
  • Crushing limiting beliefs like a bug;
  • Learning how to better communicate in the workplace;
  • Advancing in your career;
  • Promoting you, your services or your business in a powerful way;
  • Developing your conversation skills and your social life;
  • Building healthy relationships with other people;
  • Improving your blog, social media use and online brand.

I can tell you from many previous experiences that if you commit to the program, in 5 coaching sessions (5 hours of coaching), you can create a significant shift in one key area of your life.

Why Bloggers?

In order to be eligible for winning the prize, you need to an active blogger. When I say ‘active blogger’ I mean that:

  • You own a blog and you write on it periodically (al least two times each month);
  • You have written at least 20 posts on your blog.

I’ve decided to make this prize available for bloggers only for two reasons:

Bloggers are influencers. They express themselves in writing, they build tribes and they spread the word online on various topics. This is particularly relevant for me as I also aim through this project to encourage spreading the word on communication and people skills.

Blogger are givers. They share their experiences, their know-how and themselves, they help people learn and they often put a smile on their face. I always believe that if I give something, it’s better I give it to others who give themselves rather than to those who simply need.

How to Enter the Competition

There are 3 essential steps to entering the competition for the free coaching.

Step 1: The article. Write and publish on your blog a post (article) in which you share with your readers one or more personal experiences and one or more key lessons on people skills that you’ve learned from them.

Note: The article must be written in fluent English. I will automatically disqualify any article that isn’t. Also, only one article is allowed from each blogger.

Step 2: The footer. At the end of the post, add the following line, with the two links to this blog included:

I wrote this article as part of a collaborative project for increasing awareness about the importance of people skills. This project is initiated by People Skills Decoded.

Step 3: The email. After you’ve published the post, contact me by email and let me know about it. I’ll reply to your email and confirm that you’re in the competition.

The Rating System

I will rate each article based on four criteria:

  1. The personal story/ stories is/ are inspirational and convey the messages well;
  2. The lesson/ lessons drawn from them is/ are well explained, practical and insightful;
  3. The article is written in a clear, easy to read and high-impact style;
  4. The article gives me a tingling feeling.

The point is this:

Show me that you’ve learned something valuable related to people skills on your own, eloquently share it on your blog to teach others, and I’ll help you take your people skills to the next level.

If you want to increase your chances of rating well, I advise you to read some of the articles I wrote on this blog, to get a better idea of the kind of content I find valuable.

Based on the 4 criteria above, I will pick 3 articles as the best and I’ll declare the bloggers who wrote them the winners of the free coaching programs.

Deadline: December 22, 2010.

Then, on December 25 (Christmas Day), 3 bloggers will receive a special present from me: an email announcing them as the winners of the competition. I will also post the news on People Skills Decoded on the same day, and link to the winning articles.

If you want to keep updated with this project, I encourage you to subscribe to this blog, follow me on Twitter or add me on Facebook.

Put your life experience and your writing skills to good use and you’ll start the New Year working one-on-one with me in an awesome communication coaching program.

I’m look forward to reading your article.

Image courtesy of Zephyrance

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose: Motivating Employees without Money

As a communication coach, I often work with people who lack motivation in their current job and they seek the people skills to make and effective career change. This is how I’ve learned there are a lot of de-motivated employees out there and a lot of companies which pay a huge cost for this.

Motivation and Money

We are typically taught to believe that money is the perfect motivator, to which all people react very well, every time. If you want an employee to work harder and to be more productive, give them more money for their good work.

Well, reality is not that simple. As modern research in psychology, sociology and economics clearly points out, money can only motivate employees up to a certain point. Beyond that point, we need to consider motivating employees without money, using other incentives.

This doesn’t mean that you can pay an employee a crappy salary and still have them motivated. Some employers need to understand this as well: a decent salary is a hygiene factor.

However, once an employee has a good salary, you often won’t be able to motivate them further with more money. This applies especially in complex, non-linear jobs.

I think Daniel Pink, the author of the book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” puts it nicely in this video, when he says (4:55): “The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table”. After you do that as an employer, the next step is mastering motivating employees without money.

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose: The 3 Keys

There are 3 essential non-financial incentives which modern research consistently points out to work best. Daniel Pink also talks a lot about them.

  1. Autonomy. People want the freedom to work how they like, to set their own rules and conditions. They have the need to direct their own lives and their own work. This is why micro-managing employees is a bad idea.
  2. Mastery. People want to improve their skills, they want to continuously learn and get better at what they do. I’ve seen this many times as a coach: when a person feels they’re no loner growing, it’s the beginning of the end for their present job.
  3. Purpose. People want to contribute to something bigger than themselves. They want to feel their life/ work is meaningful and it serves a higher purpose, aligned with their highest values.

When employees have autonomy, mastery and purpose, extraordinary things happen, both for them and the organization. They are happy with their jobs, they are engaged and they deliver peak performance.

Going Beyond Talk

Autonomy, mastery, purpose – these are some shinny words. In practice, creating a work environment around these three non-financial motivators is not easy. It takes creativity, commitment and overcoming all sorts of obstacles.

I will often have a talk with a manager about people skills and using these motivators with their team, and I will hear an objection such as: “I would have to restructure the department to create purpose for my team. I can’t do that! That’s the HR’s job.”

No, it’s the manager’s job! I firmly believe that a good manager goes the extra mile to motivate their team, to help create autonomy, mastery, purpose. If the HR is in charge of restructuring a department, go talk to the HR and do all that you can to get their aid in motivating employees without money.

Many managers need to realize the real degree of influence they can achieve in a company, if they have the confidence, the people skills and the drive to really support their team. In my view, that’s what being a manger is all about.

Image courtesy of cszar

How to Ask For a Raise at Work

I get a lot of questions on how to ask for a raise at work. This, I believe, is a good thing. People want the people skills and tools to make the best of life in general, and getting more money for their work is one particular manifestation of this.

There is plenty to be said on using people skills to get a raise at work. I almost did a whole day training once on how to ask for a raise at work. However, at this point, four important points come to mind as the key people skills tools to apply when asking for a raise. Here they are:

1. Schedule a special discussion just for this

You don’t want to just drop a hint that you would like to make more money while chitchatting with your manager in the elevator. Subtle hints like that are easy to ignore by an employer, especially those hints that suggest taking more money out of their pocket.

Instead, what you want to do is tell your manager you want to schedule a 30 min. private meeting with them, for an “important discussion” (yeas, the discussion can take that long). Preferably, don’t go into all the details of the discussion right then. Focus on scheduling it and leave the rest for the actual moment when it takes place.

2. Back up your request with solid arguments

The way I see it, a good request for a raise starts like this:

  • You thank your manager for the time they’re giving you;
  • You tell them the discussion concerns a potential salary raise;
  • You present the arguments for a raise;
  • You state the exact raise you want.

From there, a negotiation will frequently take place.

The most important step in this first phase is the third one: presenting the arguments. You want to back up your raise request with solid facts. You want to prove that your value for this organization has increased, present real results and indicators of performance. Your value for the organization is in my view, the only real justification for a raise.

3. Ask for more than you think you deserve

Once you decide how big you want your raise to be, set a slightly higher raise that you will ask for. I know that you may have the opposite impulse, to sell yourself short, but it is important to push yourself and ask for more, not less.

I say this is important for two reasons. The first reason is that you may get more than you actually deserve simply because you’ve asked for it and done so in a way demonstrating confidence and good people skills. The second reason is that it leaves significant room for negotiation.

4. Don’t let excuses get in the way of your raise

Many employees will present objections for a raise which have nothing to do with fairness and equity, but with more emotional factors. I call this making excuses. Practice distinguishing excuses from solid objections and do not let excuses make you abandon a raise request.

For example, many employees will bring this excuse: “If we give you a raise, your colleagues who will have lower salaries will want one as well”. The fact is, this is not your concern. If you deserve a raise, you should get one no matter how your colleagues will react.

Ultimately, I see getting salary raises as a natural part of work and a result of increasing the value you provide. It’s best not only to know how to ask for a raise, but also to realize you are entitled to it.

I have seen many times as a communication coach how with good people skills and a big dose of confidence, you can create incredible salary increases for yourself.

Image courtesy of thinkpanama

How Badly Do You Really Want It?

Take a moment to ask a person about their dreams and they’ll tell you about a fulfilling career, a great relationship, or their own island in the Pacific Ocean.

Take a couple more moments, as I often do in coaching, to ask them what they’re planning to do in order to make their dreams come true, and you’ll often hear the most unrealistic fairytales.

In my experience, most people are simply not willing to do the things which will realistically make them achieve their big dreams, things which happen to also be pretty hard. Thus, they automatically reject the most effective alternatives, they’re stuck with bad alternatives and they eventually abandon their dreams.

Real Stories

Here are three real examples, of people I’ve interacted with in the past few months:

  1. A person who wants to become a top professional in a Fortune 500 company, but is not willing to leave the small town they live in. Why? Because all their friends and relatives are there.
  2. A person who hates their job and wants to go into a new professional field, but is not willing to take the initial salary cut. Why? Because they would have to sell their fast car and take the subway for a while.
  3. A person who wants to have a successful business, but is not willing to work for 2 or 3 years at developing this business besides their regular job, until it becomes sustainable. Why? Too much work.

In all these examples, the path exists. The only problem is that the person is not willing to take the path. They don’t want to make the necessary compromises.

Quitting In the Face Of a Challenge

Now I’m not saying that all compromises are good. Sometimes, the effort to get to a certain place in your life is just not worth it by comparison with the benefits. However, this is not the case I’m talking about.

The real issue in my view is that many people aren’t willing to make even strategic compromises, which in the end would be worth it: the short-term compromise for the much bigger long-term benefits.

In my area of people skills, I see countless examples of people who aren’t willing to accept a challenge and put in the work to improve key people skills, even though they know how much it would enrich their lives. They stop at the level of: “Yeah, I know: I should probably work on this.” And they pay the price.

Reality Check

Let’s turn the discussion towards you. I invite you to look at your life, your career and your relationships, and ask yourself four magic questions:

  1. What are my biggest, boldest dreams in these areas?
  2. What are realistically, the things I need to do in order to achieve these dreams?
  3. Which of these things have I really accepted and decided to do?
  4. Which of these things am I really doing?

If you’re like 98% of people, you’ll find out that your deeds aren’t exactly aligned with your dreams. There is a gap between them which if you don’t face, can become as big as the Grand Canyon.

You may try to find shortcuts and creative solutions to achieve your goals with little effort or struggle. If your goals are high, chances are that you will not find them or they won’t work.

The roads to great places tend to have quite the bumps at some points. The best thing you can do is to accept the bumps in the road and go through them.

In a way, you could say that making those hard, initial compromises to get what will truly enrich your life is the easy way. I say this because if you look at things in perspective, you end up living a much more meaningful and joyful life.

However, the meaningful joyful life does imply an initial level of work, perseverance and sacrifice which only few people are willing to go through. But if you want something big and you want it badly enough, it makes sense to go beyond what most people are willing to do.

If you decide that you simply don’t want if badly enough, no problem. Just make sure that when you’re an old person and you tell stories to your grandchildren about your life, you don’t say that you could have been a great person but you didn’t have the opportunity. It was right there in your face!

Image courtesy of jurvetson

Is the Road You’re On Really Necessary?

“What do you want?” – I ask my coaching client.

“I want to advance in my field; to reach the top.” – he replies.

“Do you like what you do, in this field?”

“No, but that’s beside the point”.

I listen, I ask more questions, I try to understand him. Turns out he wants to advance in his field because he believes once he gets to a certain place in it he will obtain the recognition of those around him. And getting that recognition will give him a sense of validation, of self worth.

“What if you don’t really need to go through all this process to feel worthy?” – I ask him. “What If you just need to work on your self-esteem and sense of intrinsic worth, which is a more direct and effective road?” He looks at me puzzled.

I find that most people are going on roads which are not really necessary to get what they want. They struggle working jobs they don’t really like, dealing with people they can’t stand, having a vague thought that this is the only way. But they really haven’t thought things through. It is more of an automatic reaction to the world they live in. And if they do think things through, they often discover that their struggle is pretty much unnecessary.

This happens because most of us chase things like money, fame, status, without asking ourselves two very important questions:

  1. Why do I want these things, what is the final destination?
  2. Is there a better way to reach this final destination?

When you ask yourself these questions and take some time to explore your motivations, as well as your options, you often become amazed at how much simpler, less stressful things can be, and how much you may have deluded yourself.

I think that it’s a fundamental trait of the society we live in, the fact that it teaches us to delude ourselves. Schools, families, commercials and public figures try to get us chasing all sort of stuff, thinking that it will make us happy and there is no other option. Look just two feet beyond their common messages, and you will often see something else.

In particular, I think there are a couple of messages we consistently get, either explicitly or implicitly, which are actually myths and tend to put us on roads we don’t really need to take in order to reach our destinations Messages like:

  • You always need to work hard to get what you want;
  • Work is by its nature un-enjoyable and you just have to tolerate it;
  • More money will make you more happy;
  • The respect and validation of other people is the most important thing to strive for;
  • Your health and your needs come second to the needs of others.
  • You can’t really be happy. Grown people live lives of struggle and compromise.

Do any of these messages sound silly to you? That’s because they are. I can’t name one person I know, who guiding herself by these ideas managed to have a rich and fulfilling life, in a sustainable way. Not even one.

I believe that the best thing you can do is to stop every once in a while, look at the road you’re tacking, fully realize where it’s heading and what alternatives you have. Doing this and acting on your realizations, you will set yourself on a path which is significantly different that the path most people are on, and also much, much more rewarding. It is the path of the wise man.

Image courtesy of Stuck in Customs

The Elusive Reason Why Success Is Elusive

You may hear people talk about various reasons why success in various areas is so elusive: lack of a clear goal, lack of the right attitude, lack of consistent action – all solid reasons in my view. Yet, at one point in time, whenever I would hear them, I would get a feeling of that’s-not-all-there-is.

I didn’t know what was missing at first, but I eventually found out: the hardest to grasp reason why success is elusive. The reason few people are aware of, so they can’t really address it and get the success they want. Here it is:

Success is in the subtle differences.

That’s it! If you look at two people, one with tremendous success in a certain area and one who is a huge failure in the same area, they are usually not that different in terms of thinking, feeling and behavior.

Sure, they may be some visible personality and behavior differences between them, but most of them are really subtle. Nevertheless, it is these small differences that determine the big difference in their levels of success.

Success Subtlety Explained

Let’s take an example in my familiar area of people skills: a person who seems cool, confident, charismatic and one who doesn’t.

You may easily discover some evident differences between them, like one is dressed in a very stylish way and the other like they’ve received their clothes for charity. And fixing these differences will get them closer in terms of the vibe they send.

However, a huge part of the difference in coolness between them will still be there. Because coolness, confidence and charisma are mostly projected by subtle things such as: a bit more eye contact than most people, a swift smile at just the right moment, choosing one way of phrasing an idea instead of another.

I find that most people are not able to pick up these subtle factors and understand them at a conscious level. This is why a lot of the advice on how to improve your people skills, how to get rich or how to advance in your job seems very general, superficial or simply ineffective. It’s based on a superficial understanding of those key differences between people who have success in these areas and people who don’t.

The Takeaway

The point of this article is not to discourage you. It is to get you to walk that extra mile if you want success, and understand the subtle factors that create it.

In my case, I have studied the area of people skills for more than a decade now, thinking about it obsessively, observing people, researching social dynamics or analyzing the same video material for dozens of times; and I know how much this compound effort helped me.

If you want to understand the subtle factors that create success, here are the action steps I believe will help you the most:

  1. Go beyond general advice and seek more specific and in depth information. General advice is a good start, but it usually does not do a lot by itself to help you grow.
  2. Learn from the specialists, not from the amateurs. Learn from people who dedicate themselves to one area and they grasp that area very well.
  3. Focus your learning. Don’t try to learn everything at once. Choose one personal development area which is important for you and stay on it until you see real improvements, then move on.

Remember: The subtle differences in thinking, feeling and behavior have ripple effects. They create big differences in your external reality. They differentiate people with excellent skills and results from your average Joe.

You may easily discover some evident differences between them, like one is dressed in a very stylish way and the other like they’ve received their clothes for charity. And fixing these differences will get them closer in terms of the vibe they send.

Night Owl Lifestyle

Are you a ‘night owl’? Do you find it hard to go to sleep early at night and when you get up early in the morning it’s like you’ve been hit by a train? Join the team! Night owls are a minority of the population, but a significant one.

It is commonly believed that the sleeping hours night owls have are the result of bad habits. They’ve gotten used to going to bed late and as a result they also get up late or if they get up early they’re tired. While this is sometimes the case and consciously changing sleeping habits can turn night owls into early birds, it is often not the case.

Some serious research now points out that a lot of the night owls’ sleeping patterns are hardwired. Night owls seem to have certain genetic differences which make their circadian rhythm different than the one most people have (it lasts 27 hours instead of 24). And this rhythm creates their distinct sleeping patterns.

From an evolutionary perspective, night owls are an important adaptation in the human race. Think of these people as the night guardians in the times we lived in tribes, who protected the rest of the tribe members from wild animals while they were asleep.

Consciously changing sleeping habits will often not do very much for a natural night owl. As a natural night owl, I can relate to this a lot. I remember how some years back, I had a 1 year period when I would go to bed early and wake up early almost every day. After 1 entire year of this, I was only marginally used to it and I was still drowsy every morning when I woke up.

The thing is, fighting our genetic hardwiring is best to be done if we have no better alternative. But in the case of our sleeping genes, I believe we do. Society usually tells us that ‘early to bed, early to rise’ is the way to go, without giving us convincing evidence.

So if you’re naturally a night owl, I say this: instead of fighting it, learn to use if in your favor. Create a night owl lifestyle for yourself which helps you makes the best of your genetics. Here are some actions you might wanna consider:

1. Party, party, party! What’s the one awake-activity people do more at night time than at day time? OK, now what’s the other one? It’s partying! If you’re a night owl and you like to have fun (who doesn’t?), use this to go out more, socialize more and party more.

I for example go out at least one or two nights every week salsa dancing. It’s addictively fun and it’s one of the best ways I spend my night time. You have your own tastes in partying. Maybe you like talking, not dancing, pubs instead of clubs. Whatever your formula, make some good use of it.

2. Manage your working hours. If you’re a hardcore night owl, a 9 to 5 job will simply not do it for you. You need to adapt you working hours to your sleeping patterns, at least to a certain degree, since the other way around can often be very hard. The point is to work as much as you need, but to be able to choose when you do it.

I think that for night owls it’s best to have jobs with a flexible program, which also involve activities you can do at any time of the day you find convenient. Like writing, creating or researching on the Internet. Night owls will often do much better as entrepreneurs or if they have a very open-minded employer.

3. Deal with prejudice. Night owls are commonly misunderstood; even by themselves. They will often be seen as lazy, lacking commitment or ambition. Sometimes they will even be seen as having less skills or being less intelligent, which I find amusing considering there is also some research which shows that night owls are on average, smarter than other people.

Anyway, if you wanna have a night owl lifestyle, it’s best that you take this social prejudice into account, and deal with it. Sometimes the best way is to just ignore the sarcastic comments about you coming to work later than everyone else; sometimes the best way is to address them head on. It’s your responsibility to find the best way in each situation.

As you learn to make the best out of your circadian rhythm instead of fighting it, you create for yourself a lifestyle which is allows you to have fun and be productive at the same time, without conforming to superficial social standards. This being said, I’m off to party….

Men, Women and Personal Development

I recently had my first open training where all the participants were women. This made me realize that in general, my clients who are not sent and paid for by the companies they work for are at least 2/3 women.

My experience here doesn’t seem to be an exception. Other coaches and trainers tell me they have similar experiences. As a general rule, it seems that women invest visibly more in their personal development than men do: training, coaching, books and practice.

Now, I can’t help and wonder: why is this? Do women need more personal development than men? Do men have better people skills, career skills, attitudes which justify them not seeking as much self-growth?

As you probably guessed it, the answer is definitely ‘not’. Men need as much personal development as women do. They just don’t invest in it as much. Talking with people about their views on skills and success, I believe there are a couple causes:

  • Men are less willing to see their flaws and their potential for improvement;
  • Men are less willing to accept that someone else could be competent enough to help them grow;
  • Men are less willing to actually act for their personal development;
  • Men are more confident in their ability to learn on their own.

By the way: I was guilty of all of these at one point or another. The last one might be good or bad, depending on the context and the person. But the first three are definitely trouble. Simply said, they make men in general sabotage their personal development and improve their soft skills at a lower rate than women.

On top of this add the fact that trough our nature, we men are probably one step behind women in our fitness for this modern world we life in. Women are naturally more empathic, intuitive, good at reading body language, and have a wide range of better people skills; men are naturally more aggressive and good at lifting heavy stuff. Great!

Project this phenomena 25 years into the future, and if things evolve in the same way, we’re gonna be living in a world where the average woman is running circles around the average man. She is smarter, more confident, more effective, more successful and has far better people skills than her male counterpart.

The average man will be spinning his head and not understanding what the hell is going on with his life and his career, while a woman will be overtly or subtly running the show. Now that I think about it, a lot of this I already see happening around me. Maybe I just need to meet better men and worse women. Hmm…

Anyway, the good news is that in this hypothetical future, the few men who will be able to match women will be a very interesting and appreciated thing to have around. So, as long as you’re one of them, the future’s very bright.

3 Major Myths about Being a Coach

I brand myself as a communication coach. It’s my way of saying I use my understanding of people skills and my skills as a coach to help people improve their communication and from there, get all sorts of cool results.

There are many coaches out there. And there are a hell of a lot more people who want, or at least dream about being coaches. My perception is that people often jump into this field with the same understanding about being a coach that a 10-year old has about being a brain surgeon. I know I certainly had my naivety about this field when I started coaching others careers and people skills.

This is not all caused by lack of available information about coaching. One major cause is the existence in all this information of many widespread myths about being a coach. My goal here is to address 3 of the major ones.

Myth 1: It’s all about love for people.

Love for people is definitely a big part of being a coach. But it’s not all about that. Coaching is also a business and you need to run in like one. This means you care about people, you help them, maybe you even help unconditionally or give more than you get, but at the end of the day, you make sure it’s financially profitable for you as the coach.

I’ve met coaches who believed that if they give all, love all and ask for nothing, they will be successful coaches. They are now working in recruitment, PR, anything but coaching. Because they didn’t make it sustainable for them to be coaches.

Myth 2: It’s all about asking questions.

Asking questions is an excellent way to facilitate solutions and an important tool for coaching. However, that’s not all there is to it.

There are basically 2 types of coaching: directive and non-directive. Non-directive coaching is based a lot on asking questions, but it doesn’t stop there. It also involves effective listening, paraphrasing, inspiring and stimulating your client. Directive coaching involves presenting principle and techniques, point out things the client does not see and giving him specific feedback or advice.

Some coaches have a non-directive approach, some have a directive approach and some have a mixed approach. I’m in this last category: I use whatever works for a particular client, to generate a particular outcome. If you want top results as a coach, you will need to have a quite large toolbox, with plenty of coaching tools you use masterfully.

Myth 3: Becoming a coach is easy.

If we’re talking about taking on the label of coach, sure: that’s easy. But if we’re talking about having the skills to coach people professionally, that’s a very different territory.

Some people and some companies want you to believe that being a coach is the next big thing. All you need is to care about others (which almost anybody thinks he does), get some formal training, coaching and certification (which they usually offer), then you’re off to making money, helping people and saving the world, all of this with a flexible schedule and from the comfort of your own home.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Becoming a good coach involves using the right tools, a lot of practice and the ability to consistently improve from one coaching session to another.

Even more importantly, being a really good coach is about understanding your unique combination of strengths and developing a unique coaching style which leverages those strengths, while at the same time providing top results. And did I mention, having fun with it?