Entries from April 2008 ↓

Personal productivity and GTD on the rise. Effectiveness, efficiency, and GTD is today’s most wanted skill.

by desi.italy

Here are few unarguable facts

• David Allen: Getting Things Done - GTD godfather gives his talk to Googlers.
• Authors@Google: Marci Alboher & Tim Ferriss (self explanatory)
• Stephen Covey Speaks at Microsoft - softies are lucky to hear Stephen live in Redmond campus.
• Dr. Stephen Covey’s thought-provoking speech at Microsoft - another coverage of Stephen Covey’s talk at Microsoft.

Software giants seek the ways to perform better - more effectively, more productively, more efficiently. How? They adopt proven patterns & practices - GTD by David Allen, New Rich by Tim Ferris, and the wisdom of Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Personal Development Practice Is Your Competitive Advantage

What does it all mean to you and me? It means that you and I are on absolutely right path. You and I offer the most demanded quality - constant improvement of personal effectiveness and efficiency. If you are executive level guy - you can lead the company to long and short term wins and hopefully get acquired by either Microsoft or Google ;), or even beat them both! If you are midlevel manager - you can make your team perform with peak results without burning out and hopefully get promoted to executive level. If you are individual contributor - you can hit your goals, expect for promotion to midlevel management position while keeping healthy work-life balance.

Here is how Michio Kaku sees the future capitalists (from his keynote during last TechReady6 convention in Microsoft, Seattle):

Want to be the next capitalist? Consider adopting/adapting this awesome material - Better Than Free (it only proves Michio Kaku is right).

How do you add extra value to your product, how do you add extra value to what you can offer? You practice personal development principles and techniques. You practice, practice, practice this until it becomes daily habit so that your thoughtful part of brain is available for creative work - The Secret Behind GTD [Getting Things Done] Revealed.

What Is Next

I expect massive investment in building and running effectiveness workshops inside the large companies. In fact, our own team already ran few session on that one - that was awful, which is good - there is a room for improvement and growth. Most important is that it is a good sign. My wife who works for large company too came back home the other day and  told me her team is invited to time management workshops and other personal effectiveness training.

I expect significant growth of services offerings from personal coaches and GTD trainers - I already can spot few ads in local papers (and I live in a very small town). If you are in coaching biz - it is show time for you, teaching sells!

I bet Tony Robbins now smiles a huge smile asking himself 2 questions:

• Who is going to hire me first - Microsoft or Google? (already did that for IBM according to Charlie Rose)
• How much should I charge them?

How do you manage your emotional energy? How do you use your emotions to motivate yourself and others?

You develop your core emotional intelligence skills.

by s-t-r-a-n-g-e

In his book Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: Inspiring Others to Achieve Results Daniel A. Feldman describes the following core skills and techniques to develop it.

Core skills

• Knowing yourself
• Recognize your emotions
• Differentiation between emotions
• Knowing the reason behind the emotions
• Maintaining control
• Resisting or delaying an impulse
• Controlling aggression, hostility, and irresponsible behavior
• Managing emotions in a flexible and adaptable way
• Reading others
• Being aware of the emotions of others
• Appreciation emotions of others
• Understanding how and why people feel and act as they do
• Perceiving accurately
• Accurately assessing a situation
• Having clear vision
• Keeping a broad perspective and being objective
• Communication with flexibility
• Having a full range of emotional expression
• Being authentic
• Addressing your needs as well as the need of others

Developing the core skills

• “Park”
• Pause
• Reflect on “what” and “why”
• Choose action.
• Core connecting
• 3 deep breaths
• Become aware of the next thought in my mind
• Say “I am having the thought about ….”
• 3 deep breaths
• Syncing-In
• Have a beginner’s mind
• Focus on immediate experience
• Re-engage in what I am doing, what’s in hand
• Focused listening
• Expand my reception
• Step into other’s shoes
• Dig deeper into the message
• Re-framing
• Identify current frame [my current situation]
• Look into the future [what I want it to be]
• Explore new frames [What are opportunities? Positive sides, Other’s view on it]
• Process communication
• Body language
• What’s happening? Not what’s being discussed.
• Make a clear, non-attacking process comment