All -

Thank you all for your patience in allowing the Smart Leaders Program team the time to set up the Global Mentorship Program Pilot.  We’ve now come to the place where we’d like to engage all of you that showed interest in being a Mentor, Mentee or both.

This post is the first in our guest bloggers series.  It comes to you from one of our Program Volunteers Glenn Turner.

Top 5 reasons to utilize a Business Coach

Executive coaching is being utilized by business leaders and professionals to achieve improved results. The choice to utilize executive coaching services is often influenced by answering the following question. What is in it for me? There are numerous benefits but as the title of this blog states here are the TOP 5 in no specific order:

1. Increased revenues and productivity. People look to executive coaches to achieve improved business results. A focus of the coaching process must be given to organizational or professional goals. The ability to spend at least three to six months with a client will allow time to be spent creating and implementing goals and action steps designed to bring about an increase in revenues and productivity. Numerous articles have been written documenting the positive results achieved in this area. http://www.managementconsultingnews.com/articles/battley_coaching_roi.php
2. Goal directed focus. Coaching is not therapy. Your past is only relevant as it affects your ability to achieve future goals. The ability to set organizational and professional goals in a meaningful and productive manner. Success will look different to individuals within the same organization. A focus on overall organizational goals as well as meaningful goals for the professional development of the person being coached allows for a true win/win situation.
3. Ability to understand and utilize the core strengths each person has in an effective and efficient manner. Highly successful people realize what their core strengths are and learn to utilize them more frequently. Many people will refer to this as being authentic. Imagine being able to engage in the types of activities that you truly enjoy more often. What would this mean to your results?
4. Understanding that attitudes are something that each of us controls. Ideally, creating more positive attitudes allows us to look at possibilities instead of problems. The best news is that we can learn to develop more positive attitudes. Think of a highly successful person in business, sports, entertainment, and politics or in a spiritual setting. Virtually all of them are positive minded people.
5. Overcoming obstacles to change. Change can be a stressful and difficult process. The ability to understand change and look at it as an opportunity for improvement is crucial for business sustainability. A leader must not only understand how to manage change for him/herself but also for other members of the organization.

Glenn Turner is a member of our Human Resource Team. and additionally is the President of LDG Consulting Inc., which provides professional value oriented facilitation services through a series of processes designed to improve communications, leadership, management and executive management skills.  If you liked Glenn’s article and would like to talk to him further, he can be reached at glenn@resultswithldg.com.

Are you like me that you prepare your To Do list? For some people, to-do lists are life savers; they keep them organized and on task. For others, they’re useless pieces of paper to ignore as they grow longer and longer. Next time you sit down to write a to-do list (or decide to face up to an existing one), follow these tips:

Break it down.
To-dos are not the same as goals or projects. Only include specific tasks that move a project toward completion. If a to-do list item is too large to get done in one step, break it down further. Include specifics.

Include Details.
Help your future self out by including details that will make doing the task easier. Instead of “Get in touch with Julie,” try “Call Julie about next task force meeting at 123-4567.”

Prioritise.
Not all To Do tasks were created equal. Some may be more urgent than others. Make sure that you do not spend your time on those which are ease but less urgent. Rather concentrate on those which are urgent or important. Allocate sufficient time to complete them.

- This post was based on HBR Tip of the day.

Hi SLN Members –

I wanted to follow up Barbara’s announcement last month (March 22nd) about the Mentorship Program with further information for all of you to keep your interest.

First off Barbara has asked me to take on the role of Director of Smart Mentoring . I’m very excited to be leading the Mentor/Mentee program of work and have the opportunity to work with many of you.

To expand on Barbara’s original high level strategy, I’ve been working on a program plan with the next level of detail. The program plan consists of mapping the high level strategy to an operating working model along with organizational work streams, deliverables, timelines, and communications mechanisms.

I’ll be kicking off the Pilot Mentorship Program June 1st. To gain early interest I’m sharing details as Barbara and I are in the planning phase.

2011 “Pilot” Mentoring Program Activities:

• Strategic planning & Program Setup (April/May)
• Recruit Volunteers (April-December; Ongoing)
• Kick off “Pilot” Program (June 1st)
• Create reference materials, guidelines and coaching strategies (June 15 – August 15)
• Design website & DB (data & metrics) (June 15 – August 30)
• Identify and adopt charity campaigns (June 15 – August 30)
• Mentor/Mentee matches assigned (August 20)
• Run the “Pilot” (September 1 – December 31)
• Pilot Lessons Learned (September 1 – December 31)
• Kick off “Live” Chargeable Mentorship Program (January 2012)

In the next few weeks I’ll be working further on the operating and organizational model. As of today we’ll need subject area experts to lead the following functional areas.

Marketing – External marketing materials, coaching guidelines, tools, social media, newsletters, webinar recruitment and more

Operations – Website and DB management, lessons learned, knowledge base, metrics and continuous improvement and more

Human Resources – Coaching strategies, people goals, mentor & mentee matches, developmental tools and more

Strategic Philanthropy – Media campaigns, global outreach program, host workshops with community interest groups and more

Charitable Programs – Selection, setup and measurement inclusive of success criteria in partnership with Strategic Philanthropy team. Recruit sponsors for SLN and more

If you interested or would like to know more details behind the functional areas please send me a message via LinkedIn or yvonne@smartleadersnetwork.com and please include your email address so I can follow up with you.

Mentors and mentees will meet through the SLN Coaching and Mentoring Program. Places will be limited. Both mentors and mentee will be able to utilize SLN web page resources. It will guide them through the process but also allow freedom to explore areas of interest. At this stage I can see that this will cover following areas:

* Business
* Leadership (including Leadership for Women)
* Executive coaching
* Strategies for success
* Tools and Techniques

If you would like to help to set this up I would be very grateful. We can make a big impact and utilize unlimited knowledge and potential of the SLN group. We can change members lives by helping them succeed. Ideally I’d like us to start it in the second half of 2011.

Post here to express your interest to be Mentor, Mentee or Volunteer helping with this program

“Expect your every need to be met.
Expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level.”
- Eileen Caddy

Hopefully you’re not one of those, “I’ll believe it when I see it” people. The fact is that you must see what you want for your life clearly in your mind’s eye before you will ever manifest it.

At this point in the evolution of human kind, we all realize that we bring both what we want and what we don’t want to us by the way we think about them. Whatever you seek and no matter how much you want it, if you don’t genuinely expect to have it, you won’t.

Expectation is the key to all you want from life.

This post is direct reprint from Success Coaches Institute. I really liked it and wanted to share it with you. Please check their website for more inspirational information.

Short Simple Success Strategy to build your business and professional network on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is FREE and powerful business tool that we all can use to connect with your future customers, business partners as well as with your current business and professional contacts. Now that I have got your attention…

This week we are going to start the last month of the year. Yes yes, yes. December is upon us. Before we get extremely busy with celebrations I would like to encourage you to take a little challenge of planning your next year. It is a time for a small reflection.

Making plans and setting goals is one of most important and often underestimated strategies for success.
Don’t choose too many as it may be too difficult. You need just a small number to allow you to focus on key targets. Please take a moment and think what is REALLY important to you, what are you going to fully commit to. This should help you to decide what in fact is important and what appears to be.

You may want to follow this process:

1. First brainstorm and write a number of goals that you can think of in a period of 5 minutes. You may use post it notes for it or just write a list on paper or if you prefer in a file.
2. You need to prioritise them as “critical (C)”, “important (I)” and “nice to have (N)”.
3. Review all of your goals and without evaluation mark each of them as “C” or “I” or “N”.
4. Drop those that have “N” next to them. “Nice to have” goals should not be on your priority list for next year. By spending time on them you may dilute your energy that should be dedicated to higher importance goals.
5. Look first at those that have “C” next to them. They are your critical goals, review them. Are they really critical? What makes them critical? What do you need to achieve them (information, access to resources etc)? What is the consequence of not achieving them?

Read the rest of this entry »