Tao of Leadership : Time for Reflection

Endless drama in a group clouds consciousness. Too much noise overwhelms the senses. Continual input obscures genuine insight.

Do not substitute sensationalism for learning.

Allow regular time for silent reflection. Turn inward and digest what has happened. Let the senses rest and grow still.

Teach people to let go of their superficial mental chatter and obsessions. Teach people to pay attention to the whole body’s reaction to a situation.

When group members have time to reflect, they can see more clearly what is essential in themselves and others.

The Tao of Leadership

John Heider / Lao Tsu

Difficult conversations ... Moments of truth

Whether personal, with a parent, or professional, with a collaborator, a boss, a colleague, a client .... we all need, at one time or another, to engage difficult conversations ... moments of truth ...

Moments of truth where our goals, our identity, our image, our influence, our balance are at stake ...
Moments of truth that move us, destabilize us, make us doubt ...

Over time, each relationship develops its preset codes and scripts. Contexts that are installed and that sometimes lock us up and are no longer useful to us. With time the scripts become more difficult to change.

It is time to create a moment of truth. A moment one to one to address the issues that matter ...

A moment to discover the truth of what there is between us, our history, our relationship, our evolution ... the truth of our relational system ...

How you manage the moments of truth?

Listen to the Radio Show I was invited to on Authenticity and Coaching

Finding Your Authentic Self 

Growing or Aging?

Individuals and organisations can go through different phases during their existence.

• Growth phases of development where there is openness, learning, flexibility, movement, where are put in place new knowledge, habits, processes. Growth phases focus on innovation and continuous improvement of results.

• "Aging" Phases where the focus is on stability, established, defined and repeated routines, processes and organisations. Aging Phases are efficient in stable environments, unsatisfactory in changing contexts.

Growth is about being curious, flexible, open,

having fun, doubting, listening, learning, playing.

Aging is knowledge, about knowing, having opinions, judgements, certainties, being rigid, closing oneself.

The challenge for people and for businesses is being able to be always in growth phases.
Is it possible?

People and businesses need to work their self-knowledge, their strategy, their mission, to be able to adapt and have an impact and be successful in the environment or market.

Age, Learn to know Yourself.

Create certainties about yourself, who you are, who you are not, what you want and do not want, what you need and reject. Love yourself!

Grow, Be curious and open.

Doubt everything around you, be humble, open and curious, listen, take an interest, learn. Go beyond appearances, look in all directions front, back, sideways, search, explore.

 Age and Grow

Develop your wisdom from within, being curious, humble, be an apprentice and an innovator with the surroundings and circumstances.

In what phase are you?
And your company?

Values ​​and Corporate Culture

What values ​​are shared and respected in your company?

Businesses and companies are under pressure to achieve high levels of production, quality, billing and generate larger results and profitability. One to one and company relationships become tense.
The most basic human values ​​may be set aside, forgotten.

Values ​​are key elements in human organisations.
Strong values ​​increase the feeling of belonging, motivation, enthusiasm, performance, energy.
When human values ​​are not respected it creates demotivation, politicking, harassment, mobbing. It enhances competition and enmity.

What culture is there in your company? 

Companies with strong values ​​can achieve excellence.
In companies without values reaching ​​normal performance standards may seem miraculous. People spend a lot of energy for very

ordinary tasks and results.

What values ​​need to be developed in your company?

A management team must ensure that strong values ​​are respected in the company. They must embody these values. But it is the people, the teams, the organisation that make these values be alive and applied on a daily basis.

Re-connect your people with individual and collective values that ​​strong and inspiring.

What do you think?
What's happening in your company?

Transform Objections into Benefits!!

All Sales People fear Objections. Objections tend to destabilize you when you are presenting the value of your offering. Objections can destroy everything you worked creating.

The main impact an Objection can have on a sales or negotiation relationship is the visible tension, discomfort, uneasiness it can create in you.

What is the difference between an Objection and a Question? Your perception!

When you have an objection the first reaction is to counter-attack, convince of the contrary or justify yourself. Doing so you are not attending your client, you are staying in your agenda, in your head.

Clearly inefficient!

The challenge is to acknowledge and thank your clients for the objection. The fact they actually express it enables your relationship not to be harmed by any unspoken doubts or concerns.

Make a priority of your relationship with your client, not of responding to the objection.

An Objection is an opportunity to know and understand them better.

It is also a proof of your clients’ interest or implication.

Don’t misuse it.

Build the relationship.

Through curiosity, questioning, connection, rapport, discussion, true and open argumentation.

Transform Objections into Benefits!

To learn more about our Sales and Negotiation training and coaching offerings, email to me your request to info@autenticoach.com

Mistrust, cancer of organizations.

In organizations the pressure is high and it affects every executive, manager or employee, at all levels. It targets people that produce results ... and could potentially generate even more.

Collaborators need to demonstrate daily they are valid and capable of contributing to the company.

Suspicion is never far away.

Such environments, at human level, are stressful and ineffective. Imprisoning managers and employees into short-term indicator controlled operations does not stimulate innovation nor creativity and discourages any culture of motivation or collaboration.

Switch from mistrust to unconditional trust.

Trust your team. 

After all they have these jobs because you are confident they have the ability to perform there.

Manage them from this perspective. See them at their full potential rather than focus on their shortcomings.

Choose unconditional trust!

What do you think? Is it possible? Realistic?

Emotional intelligence: the missing link in the enterprise.

The question that is taboo in the workplace: How are you feeling?

Since Descartes and centuries of industrial development we stayed hooked to a certain idea of ​​intelligence ... it has to be rational, logical, technical, scientific, economic ... well ... mental.

Our body is a way to physically bring our highly developed brains from one meeting to the next.

Our emotions must be kept in the cloakroom. They do not belong in business, world of rationality and objectivity.

Or so we think ... because the truth is quite different.

Our truth as individuals, as teams, as businesses is far from being just rational. It is also emotional and physical.

What motivates men is not data or facts, it's passions, ambitions, emotions.

We communicate more with our being than with our words.

Let's become more aware of our individual and collective emotions, of our intuitions.

Let's listen, perceive, understand beyond words or phrases.

We will be all the more effective.

Put emotions at the center of your activities. And really ask the question to your team: 

How are you feeling? ...in this position, this role, this company, this project ?

... and above all, listen to the answer.

What do you think?

The 3 Key Skills for Successful Sales

I was leading a sales workshop some weeks ago and I asked the participants what skills a high performing sales person needed to have to interact with their clients. They listed three main ones:

Focus on your Customer

• Know products and service offerings by heart
• Have the ability to present them with confidence and clarity
• Be able to quickly close a deal.

I was surprised to notice that none of these statement actually mentioned the client. As if a best practice sales process did not depend of them, but only of the sales professional's abilities. Where is the customer in all this?

Sales teams tend to focus on their products, their objectives, their abilities, their agenda.

For me the key to success goes in the opposite direction. Sales people do need to know their products and services, but beyond that, their key skills and abilities should allow them to :

• Connect with clients
• Break the ice, build trust
• Earn the right to ask questions
• Know and Understand them
• Do not listen to respond but to understand
• Listen, do not try to convince.
• Partner with them
• Build rapport and Develop the relationship
• Co-create and Position your offering

Sales teams need to focus on their clients and start adding value NOW.

This is not about pushing, this is about dancing with your clients. To achieve this you need to know them, be present and curious of them. You need to create proximity, intimacy.

Then you can start to design and co-create an offering that hopefully will respond to their expectations and needs. In win-win way.

What do you think?

Purpose and Attitude

What happens in your life?

How are you feeling?

What is your purpose?

The most important is not so much what happens to you ...

The most important is what you do with what happens to you.

You decide how to perceive, interpret and analyze things.

You decide your attitude.

What have you decided in the past?

What do you decide now?

What is your purpose?

What is your attitude?