Susan Scott's Blog, page 91

Fierce Tip of the Week: Listen Fiercely

To kick off the New Year, please join us in being intentional with the skill of listening.

The Ask: Think of a time when someone’s listening impacted your life. In 2014, how will you pay it forward and listen like never before for someone else?

We want to hear from you! Share your stories on on Social; we can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Comment here on the blog.

Five people will win a copy of Fierce Conversations signed by author, Susan Scott.

Use the hash tag: #listenfiercely

Fierce Resources: Becoming More Innovative in 2014

This week’s Fierce Resource was published Tuesday on the Forbes website and was written by Forbes contributor, Bill Fischer.

Becoming More Innovative in 2014 taps into the minds of innovative people from many industries who share their goals for being more innovative leaders in the new year.

“Organizations don’t innovate, people do. Organizations that are admired for being especially innovative don’t hire genetically different people than are available to the rest of us, they just make different managerial choices that allow their people to be more innovative. Leadership does this (or, doesn’t), and, as a result, innovative people deserve innovative leaders!”

To read the full article, click here.

Just One Thing

“I made no resolutions for the New Year.  The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.”  Anais Nin

I concur with Nin, haven’t made a list of New Year’s resolutions for at least ten years but I do choose one thing I want to accomplish in the new year.  Just one.  I like to end a year with a feeling of satisfaction.  In 2014 my one thing is to finish writing the third and final “fierce” book, Fierce Love.  The trouble is, that was my one thing in 2013 and I didn’t get it done.  It was impressive how many distractions I managed to create so that I wouldn’t have to sit down and write this book that I know is important.

Hence, this year-end message for you and me is about focus, the clarity and power of it and three strategies that will help us stay focused. I want us all satisfied as we progress throughout 2014 and celebratory by the end of it.

Strategy 1

Choose your one thing. Let’s say that in the new year you want to win a promotion, find love, be a better person, complete a significant project, get healthy.  Of course, if you don’t know what you want, this is a non-starter, so you’ll need to have a fierce conversation with yourself and may have to trick yourself with the question – If I did know the one thing I most want to accomplish in 2014, what would it be?  Not what you think you should want, what you really want.

Strategy 2

Make your goal the password for something you use regularly.  My daughter, Halley, taught me this.  We have a tool called Salesforce in our offices in Seattle and each time anyone wants to access it, he or she must enter a password, which changes every six months.  For the first six months of 2013, Halley’s password was something like: Find the perfect new family home.  She included a number in the password to increase the strength of it and entered that password many times a day, which kept that goal in front of her, unavoidable.  She found the perfect home and moved her family into it in October.  For the second six months, her password was something like: Sell and close the old house by December 31.  There was work to be done on the old house and it didn’t go on the market until December 18.  Our jaws dropped when it sold the next day. The sale was to close on January 7, then the day before Christmas the buyers asked if she’d mind closing on December 31.  For me, entering a password again and again throughout my day is easier than the discipline of meditation, so I think this will be powerful for me.  And for you.  When we have to write what we want over and over again, magic can happen.

Strategy 3

Say yes to “no”.  It is human nature to want to say yes whenever possible.  Will you head up this committee? Okay.  Will you help a friend or relative move?  Of course. Will you go on a business trip?  If you need me to.  Will you write another article?  Sure, when is it due?

We want to help, contribute, support.  But the poet, David Whyte suggests that when we say yes and yes and yes to almost everything that comes along, then when a powerful yes, the right yes, the best and biggest “yes” comes along, we won’t have room for it.  You get the drift.

Once you have your sight on a goal, to make sure there is plenty of room for it, you’ll have to say no to anything that would interfere.

Here are some of the things I have recently begun saying no to:

Keynote talks that would require me to fly to the east coast in the dead of winter, risking delays and cancellations, due to snow and ice.
Keynote talks that would require me to leave my tree house on Orcas Island during the summer and fall.
Spending time with people who I find boring, falsely effusive, who hail from a different ethical system, or whose story is too often “woe-is-me” or just “me!”
Invitations to dinner.

This may make me seem like a diva or a snob and I’m not, really I’m not.  It’s just that this past year being there (on a plane, in a meeting, at a dinner table, etc.) was a way of not being here (writing), which is truly where I needed to be. I said yes to so many things this past year, including many time eaters and distractions that I manufactured all by myself, that I didn’t finish writing Fierce Love and I am clear that’s what I’m meant to do!  Finish it, put it in your hands.

So to summarize:

1. Choose the one thing you want most for yourself in 2014.

2. Create a password for it.

3. Embrace “no”.  No apologies.

Let’s pull off our one things this year. Okay?  I’ve told you mine.  What’s yours?

Fierce Tip of the Week: Are Your Relationships Strong Enough?

As 2013 draws to a close and 2014 begins, there will be many resolutions and intentions put out into the universe. A new year brings new possibilities, and it’s good to define for yourself what you hope to accomplish.

Whatever your goal(s) may be, chances are you need others to help you be successful. So how strong are your relationships? How are the conversations in your life going?

Personally, in 2014 my intention is to be healthier. Between a best friend battling cancer and a young daughter I want to be fit and strong for, my choice has real repercussions if I choose to ignore it. Yet I won’t even come close if I’m not having the conversation with myself, my husband, my co-workers, and friends and family. If those relationships are strong, my likelihood of success is higher.

So this week as you get ready to put your goals out into the world ask yourself: Have I had the conversation? Are my relationships strong enough to support them? If not, what am I going to do about it?

Fierce Resources: The Ideas that Shaped Management in 2013

This week’s Fierce Resource was first published on Tuesday, on the Harvard Business Review blog, and was written by Katherine Bell.

The Ideas that Shaped Management in 2013 avoids giving an end of year list that focuses on the best or most important ideas of this past year. Instead, this piece explores 7 ideas that impacted how we look at leadership, management, and our bigger world.

“It’s always tempting at this time of year to try to make a definitive list of the best ideas from the past 12 months. But then we end up debating what counts as best — important? useful? original? all three?… So this year, instead, we thought about the pieces that most surprised us or provoked us to think differently about an intractable problem or perennial question in management, we reviewed the whole year of data to remind ourselves what our readers found most compelling, and we looked for patterns in the subjects our authors raised most frequently and independently of our editorial urging. The result, I think, is a set of ideas that together are important, useful, and original, and that feel like quite an accurate account of the management concerns many of us shared in 2013.”

To read the full article, click here.

Happy Holidays, From the Fierce Family to Yours

If you work at Fierce, you’ve been asked, probably numerous times: Do you all practice what you teach?

The answer? Yes, and sometimes it’s very difficult.

Our commitment to one another is to identify when we’re not being as Fierce as we could be and to act on it. This commitment helps remind us that our relationships with each other and our clients are fluid. The goal should not be perfection. Instead we strive to be present with one another each day, show up as we are, and be ready to have the conversation.

In that spirit, we want to say happy holidays and enjoy the conversation with those you spend your days with!

Fierce Tip of the Week: Be Present

The holidays are frantic. There is so much to do, so much to see, and it is all leading up to the finale of the end of another year. At work and at home, there are deadlines, end of year budget decisions, quotas to make, presents to buy – to say that the list is long would be an understatement. All the while, everywhere you go there’s the reminder that this is the happiest time of the year, so make sure you are being thankful, joyful, and nice. No pressure!

The truth is, the end of the year is actually about something remarkable, and the frantic lead up is all in the hopes of  closing loose ends, so you can be present. Nothing can be done about the previous 11 plus months. All we can do is be where we are at in this exact moment.

This week, be present and be wherever you are fully.You can’t change the past. The future hasn’t yet started.

So take advantage of the the now.

Fierce Resources: How to Set Up an Internal Training Evaluation Department

This week’s Fierce Resource was published this week on the Chief Learning Officer website and was written by Dave Basarab and Michael Yarter.

How to Set Up an Internal Training Evaluation Department provides six detailed suggestions that show how L&D leaders can create an internal evaluation function that can begin to measure the success of a training and the benefit these results will have on the company.

“In today’s value-driven L&D function, learning leaders need to measure and evaluate quality and impact. One approach is to establish a learning evaluation function. For a variety of reasons, including competing priorities and lack of expertise, very few companies have implemented an internal training evaluation function. However, there are key benefits and value to doing so. Here are six imperatives critical to start, sustain and grow this department, including pitfalls to avoid.”

To read the complete article, click here.

Fierce in the Schools: Conversations that Heal

This past Saturday, December 14th, 2013, marked the one year anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, in Newton, Connecticut.

As the airwaves and newspapers filled with stories about those who were lost and their surviving loved ones, I had this strong urge to pull back. I wanted to retreat from having conversations about or, reading, or listening to anything that dealt with this tragic and senseless incident.

And yet, to do so gives away so much of the power I have over the situation. By making the conversation about Sandy Hook smaller, we make all the possibilities for healing smaller. And when I leaned in, what I learned is that many of the families of the victims are doing it– they’re having the conversation, every day, one conversation at a time, and they’re healing.

In our Fierce in the Schools (FITS) division, the commitment is to work with educators and their students to build the social and emotional skills needed to traverse this complex world we live in. Instead of choosing to just not talk about it, the schools we work with choose to empower themselves – to tap into both their heads and their hearts – and have the conversation, every day, one conversation at a time for as long as it takes.

Our commitment as a company is to keep the conversation going; to help school systems see the impact when their students engage with not only their emotions but the emotions of others. We want to listen, to be authentic, and to have the courage to speak up when your gut tells you to. This commitment is in the hope that this next generation, the generation of the young victims who were lost, will have the adeptness, awareness, and courage to tackle the tough challenges this world sometimes give us.

Fierce Tip of the Week: Feedback Fuels a Transparent Culture

This month I’ve talked about transparency and trust. It definitely got a reaction, and the dialogue got me thinking: What fuels a culture of transparency?

For me, one very tangible aspect of a transparent culture  is one that provides constant and robust feedback, at all levels whether it’s top down or up the ladder.

These are cultures that shy away from anonymous feedback, and instead, give the space to share positive and constructive feedback. Feedback conversations can be tough when the relationship is not there. The reason is because the relationship is built through prior conversations that are open and honest and  show that you care enough to put the energy into one another.

This week ask yourself: How often do we provide feedback? Does that impact our transparency?