People Rich eTips June 2013

Welcome to our June edition of short tips and tricks that aim to provide quick insights into human communications, neuroscience, wellbeing, projects and business in support of your personal and career education.

This year, the Project Management Institute’s international defacto standard for project management known as PMBOK finally recognised the importance of the “people” aspects of projects. It added a new function or knowledge area of project management, signalling that “stakeholder” management was a critical factor for successful projects.

As projects are all about people, the importance of considering the engagement of key stakeholders helps to manage the risks of those who can influence the project negatively.  The difference between a stakeholder and a key stakeholder is in their power of influence.

The Communications Management Plan is a key tool for clarifying the communication requirements and protocols for the engagement. This means recognising:

• Who are key stakeholders;
• What information they need;
• In what format they need it;
• When they need it; and
• Who is responsible for the communication.

The magic is in the process of working with the key stakeholders in determining their needs where their buy-in is captured upfront, and we then only have to deliver on our communication agreements. This reduces the overall need for maintaining the relationship, as we have set a plan that meets their individual requirements.

DEVELOP YOUR OWN PROJECT SKILLS

Learn more about projects, join Master Project Coach Todd Hutchison in Perth on the 1 July 2013 for the 3-day ‘Applied Project Management’ to learn and master the techniques of project stakeholder engagement. This is your opportunity to become Nationally qualified.

Did you know that according to www.seek.com.au, there is over 12,500 jobs for a "Project Manager" in Australia right now!  Click here for more information on getting those critical skills.

Have you ever considered the power in having a mentor? They guide you, challenge you, inspire you and help you play a much bigger game. Everyone needs a mentor or a coach to help guide them and establish some accountability to progress your own life's plan.  It is too easy to get caught up in the busyness of life and forget about your own career and personal goals. 

In fact, many people are teaching us, supporting us, and helping us grow in everyday life. For clarification, a coach is a person who understands the process of coaching you to success, whereas a mentor is more a person who has done or is doing what you aspire to do.

Take the example of a sports coach, where they were a previous champion themselves, they are a mentor-type coach who can talk with a voice of personal experience.  Other coaches may never have been successful players themselves, but are exceptional coaches of other people that help them achieve their own success. This is the more traditional coach.

Mentors can be people we meet up with face-to-face, but they may also be found in books, DVDs, and CD products.  They are those people that share their wisdom, knowledge and experience. Often you find mentors in your own organisation when you start your career.

Do you need to be motivated again on your own life path?  Well a mentor or coach is a great solution to speed up your success. Who do you know who are the masters in your profession that you may be able to learn from?   What areas of expertise are you developing where you could do with extra insights? 

Take the legendary Justin Herald (formerly the Attitude brand founder) who turned $50 into a $20M+ annual turnover business.  Do you think someone with that type of business experience can add to your business?  Absolutely... His story is best told by him, and his insights can be read in books, watched on video and heard in audio products. Best of all - he has made an incredible offer to you below.

UNBEATABLE OFFER - ARE YOU CRAZY?

Learn about the incredible story of Justin Herald and more...  Justin Herald  has unbelievably offered his whole Entrepreneur's Key (a USB of over $4,000 of his products) at a special price of only AUS$400 to readers of our eNewsletter as a limited time offer for the month of June.

He also offered those who buy the product in the next 5 days a FREE personal chat about your business or personal brand.  That is unbelievable value to get all his products and get to speak to him directly - the opportunity to engage with a true business mentor to shift your business into a new gear.  

Just think about this for a moment...   You could not be able to engage this guy for $400, little alone get all his $4,000+ products on a USB.  This is why we are flexing our own rules on promoting a product in our eNewsletter as we believe this is too good not to mention it.

Simply email Justin directly to take advantage of it, and let us know how you go. People Rich guarantee that you will get enormous value - we did!

Education comes in so many forms, from university study, seminars, short-courses and through to books, DVDs, CDs and on-the-job training and insights from life experiences. So what makes an expert?

You are not born an expert, you must develop yourself. Even your natural behavioural style helps us identify your growth potential, however offers little real competency in comparison to when you develop the skill.

As you personally and professionally develop yourself and gain experience in your strengths you become in the state of flow.  Flow is where you can do things faster, easier and with far less energy than others can.  In fact, it was Malcolm Gladwell the author of Outliers that proposed that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert or master.  Consider the following extracts from his book:

• “In fact, by the age of twenty, the elite performers (violinists) had each totalled ten thousand hours of practice.”
• “The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin.
• “To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about ten years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fisher got to that elite level in less than that amount of time: it took him nine years.) And what’s ten years? Well, it’s roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.”

Reflect on what you have done extremely well in your own life and you will see the relevance of this 10,000 hour rule as a lead-in to exceptional ability.  It also makes you realise that if we change professions we begin a new cycle of learning, but we bring across the skills from our previous roles and build upon them.  Changing industries is easier than changing jobs and professions.

Remember that perfecting of a skill is not about just practice, it is about perfect practice – the refinement of doing something better and better.  The true master is always a life-long learner and a student of life.

As an analogy, the mind is the software and the brain is the hardware.  How neuroscientists see it is that the mind is the collection of the things the brain does, like reasoning, remembering, thinking, planning and imagining.

The conscious mind, and these thinking-based activities are largely attributed to the frontal lobes of the brain. 

What we do know is that the left and right prefrontal cortexes actually specialise in different behaviours.  The right side relates to avoidance behaviour, whereas the left side relates to approach behaviour. So how we approach and avoid both people and dangers is based on the function of these brain areas.

When the frontal lobes are damaged through injury or disease, the individual’s behaviour becomes less controllable. For example, they will not be able to stop themselves from doing things they know are rude or inappropriate.

There are many factors to productive business relationships. They include alignment to our natural behavioural style, our communication style and the level of trust and respect we have for one another.  What is most important in a team is to have a higher purpose and shared values for long-term sustainability.

When picking a business partner, these two factors are critical once compatibility of skills is found to be complimentary. It shows that people are employed due to talent, but removed due to misalignment of values.   Unfortunately values are not so easy to identify upfront.  

The test is in our actions.  What we say we value, and what we do will demonstrate if we are really living those values. It is in what we do that shows the priority of our values. This is why a probation period for a new team member is important.

Having a higher purpose that the partners are committed to helps ensure longevity and will guide decisions and even differences in opinions and perspectives when it counts.  This is the ‘why factor’ for the business.

The power of the why cannot be underestimated.   You will not run into a burning house for no good reason, yet if your child was trapped inside, you would do it without a second thought. The only thing that changed was the why.

So if you are struggling with your own personal commitments or business, look at the why factor and you may be able to up the ante with a greater why.

Take time in selecting business and life partners.