Professional Services Professional: Personal Athlete Training

Personal Athlete Training Outline

• Interpersonal and Influencing Skills

  Essentials of engagement

  • Burying boomerangs, being mindful not to criticize, condemn or complain
  • Getting to know people well enough to affirm what really matters to them
  • Connecting with core desires in order to find out what people truly want

  Lasting impressions

  • Becoming genuinely interested in other people rather than trying to get people interested in you
  • Smiling and using people’s names to create rapport and memorable encounters
  • Listening in order to demonstrate that you understand what matters to others

  Merit and maintaining trust

  • Seeking collaboration rather than personal victories by never saying ‘you’re wrong’
  • Sharing your journey and surrendering the credit to others
  • Beginning all interactions with a warm smile and firm handshake, and using creativity to replicate it in electronic and written media

• Planning, Preparation & Prioritisation

  Personal victories

  • Being proactive by focusing effort on those things you can do something about and enlarging your circle of influence
  • Beginning with the end in mind, making decisions based on principles defined in a personal mission statement
  • Putting first things first and saying ‘no’ to unimportant tasks

  Public victories

  • Using courage and consideration to seek mutually beneficial agreements and solutions
  • Using empathic listening to first understand before seeking to be understood
  • Recognising and valuing others’ opinions, viewpoints and perspectives

  Choosing your ninja weapons

  • Reviewing your support systems and ensuring that information is not just stored in your head
  • Getting your email inbox to zero
  • Networking to spot opportunities and threats while they’re still in the distance

• Effective Time Management

  Ninja productivity

  • Scheduling ‘thinking time’ in your proactive attention period(s)
  • Leveraging Pareto’s, Parkinson’s and Hofstadter’s laws
  • Reviewing and renegotiating your commitments and not over-committing
  • Disconnecting and ‘going dark’ for an hour a day to protect your attention

  Attention tension

  • Applying the 40-20-40 continuum to a meeting
  • Identifying and optimising your attention levels and times
  • Scheduling work based on the level of attention required, saving difficult tasks for proactive attention levels

  Positive momentum

  • Starting each day by doing the worst task on your list of things to do
  • Giving yourself permission to be imperfect and delivering substance without the frills
  • Identifying conflicts and having courageous conversations