Do Free Work – For a career you’ll love!

Charlie has clearly articulated a powerful approach to creating a career you can love. It’s an approach that we have used successfully as well.

Our Story:

In mid-2009, when work slowed down dramatically, I did the same thing. We had all this free time on our hand so we decided to go out and do what we loved for free until people could pay us. We realized that the best thing for creating paying work, is when people have experienced good work of ours.

The ways that have worked for us:

• We identified our “ideal client” and our “ideal gig”.
• We began to speak about these favorite topics to groups of people that contained our ideal clients (CEO’s, human resource professionals, and other leaders).
• Even more radically, we became very flexible with our price structures if an ideal client fit the following criteria:

Their mission is one we are passionate about

We like them as people and working with them was enjoyable

We have the time to do it

• The easiest thing is to do whatever it takes to make our consulting programs work for the client. That often means going way above and beyond what we’d expected to see happen. Adding value in many unexpected ways as we go along. The wonderful thing is that this is a far more delightful way to work as well. Plus, the testimonials clients did for us went from very good to outstanding.
• We produce free videos for our ideal clients. I’m a bit of a video production geek anyway, so it was an easy next step. We started asking if we can video-record portions of our programs. We created videos they could use to communicate changes to their far-flung employees and other stakeholders.

• We even create videos and lead events far after we are officially done with a gig.

The benefits

• No surprise, their gratitude helps us network and build a reputation much faster.
• We’re doing more and more of the work we love to do.
• We’re partnering more and more with clients we like and respect and who like and respect us.
• I’ve always enjoyed my career, but now I love it more than ever.
• We keep honing our skills at what we most want to master.
• We feel engaged and alive, even when the money isn’t so strong. It keeps morale up.

My challenge for you

What can you do to create even more passion in your career?

Join us at the Breakfast With The Best and Culture Con, 1/31!

Michael and will be leading workshops on how to have a ‘best company to work at’ in the morning with the Breakfast with the Best and in the afternoon at the Culture Con.

Steps to a Culture of Passion

At Breakfast With The Best we’ll be hearing from the 10 best companies to work for in NH. Plus the gathering of 300-400 will be sharing their top practices as well! Come for great ideas and fun connections.

Sponsored by Business NH Magazine

Following that we’ll move a few blocks for the Culture Con. There we’ll go deeper into how to apply the best ideas to your own organization.

As a preview I’m guest blogging on Dyn’s blog about “8 Ideas For Enhancing Change Via Positive Change“. Dyn is hosting the Culture Con.

I hope to learn and have fun with you there!!

Bob

Gratitude improves health, happiness, love-life, popularity and more

Scientific research brings us more proof of the power of gratitude!

A great blog post by Ocean Robbins…

The Neuroscience of Why Gratitude Makes Us Healthier

 

 

 

 

 

When ideas have sex

This is a fascinating Ted talk on the unfathomable amount of collaboration that goes into every single thing we modern humans do.

Positive change (and negative) are happening all the time. Just by doing whatever jobs we do, we contribute to millions of other people’s wealth, health and knowledge.

If you are a learning geek like me, check it out!

Increasing Positivity in every day life

I just read a wonderful post by a dear colleague, Schon Beechler titled Battling the Barrage: Ten Ways to Bring Positivity into Every Day.

I added two powerfully positive things I do in the comments below her post as well.

Creating positivity despite the bad stuff

Optimists are Realists – the studies are in!

Guest Blogger: Terry Paulson   

When I wrote “The Optimism Advantage,” I was already sold on Seligman’s work on learned optimism. But in doing preparation for the book, I found other research that indicated that optimists are realists. It makes sense. If earned optimism comes from a track record of overcoming obstacles, than you’ve had the experience of facing, analyzing and overcoming problems. To do that, you have to really understand and accept the problem. They are realists because they believe that by understanding a problem, they can cope more effectively. Here are a couple of quotes that I saved that points this out.

“The myth: Optimists are amiable (probably IQ-challenged) Pollyannas who shield themselves from bad signs and aren’t prepared when trouble strikes. Lisa Aspinwall, a University of Maryland psychologist, got $50,000 for work showing just the reverse. She found that happy, optimistic people are more willing than pessimists to read bad news about their health habits and more willing to learn about their failures on tests. They also remember bad news longer than pessimists do. Far from being unrealistic Pollyannas, optimists give up sooner than pessimists when presented with unsolvable problems, Aspinwall discovered. ‘Pessimists may not want to know bad news about themselves because, unlike optimists, they don’t think there’s anything they can do about it,’ she says. Optimists may want to know where they’ve erred ‘so they can improve later—of course, they think they can improve.’ And their open approach promotes better relationships. Optimistic couples are more likely than pessimists to bring up what’s bothering them so it can be resolved. ‘They may be more confident that they can solve things,’ Aspinwall says, ‘but when something can’t be solved, they seem to recognize that earlier.’” Marilyn Elias (USA Today, 5-16-2000)“Numerous studies show that optimists, far from protecting their fragile vision of the world, confront trouble head-on, while it is pessimists who bury their heads in the sand of denial. In a 1993 study of women newly diagnosed with breast cancer, the women with an optimistic disposition were more likely to acknowledge the seriousness of the disease, experienced less distress and took more active steps to cope with it. ‘Pessimism was associated with denial and a giving up response.’ Said Charles Carver of the University of Miami, who conducted the study with Micahel Scheier of Carnegie Mellon University. ‘Optimism was associated with positively reframing the situation, with women believing, ‘This is not going to go away, so let me make the best of it I can.’’Carver said.” Terence Monmaney (LA Times, 1-5-2000, pp. A1, 15)

“A study of 78 men with AIDS provided evidence that optimists live longer. Those who indicated that they had a realistic view of their disease’s course died an average of nine months sooner than those who were optimistic about postponing the end…. The central paradox of positive thinking is clear—Clinging to the belief in a positive future against reasonable odds sometimes makes it happen.” Shelley Taylor, Positive Illusions” (January 8, 2000, 4A, Sun-Sentinel, South Florida)

Dr. Terry Paulson is a psychologist, professional speaker, columnist and author of the popular books “The Optimism Advantage,” “Leadership Truths One Story at a Time,” “Making Humor Work,” and “They Shoot Managers Don’t They?”

Video that speaks to positive life-transformation

Last year I blogged about this amazing nonprofit in “Deep full-life transformation“.

This video is a compilation of client interviews we made over about 6 months. Very inspiring!

Positive Change Agents – principles for enjoyable success

We’ve used these principles to guide our positive change projects for years.  

These principles are keys to motivating busy people.

1. Take the time to make goals clear and simple.
2. The easier it is to contribute the more people do it.
3. Make starting steps doable and clear.
4. Make sure people feel confident enough in their role.
5. Frame goals, directions and other communication positively.
6. Steady guidance at a strategic level keeps people on track and confident in success.
7. Make questions specific, positive and generative.
8. Keep focused on your top priority goal. Ensure that you’ve applied all the resources you need to to this goal.

Join the Positive Change Revolution!

Many wonderful approaches create positive change. Here are a few, described by key practitioners.

David Cooperrider

Appreciative Inquiry

As described by the Appreciative Inquiry Commons: Appreciative Inquiry is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential. It centrally involves the mobilization of inquiry through the crafting of the “unconditional positive question” often-involving hundreds or sometimes thousands of people. In AI the arduous task of intervention gives way to the speed of imagination and innovation; instead of negation, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis, there is discovery, dream, and design.

AI seeks, fundamentally, to build a constructive union between a whole people and the massive entirety of what people talk about as past and present capacities: achievements, assets, unexplored potentials, innovations, strengths, elevated thoughts, opportunities, benchmarks, high point moments, lived values, traditions, strategic competencies, stories, expressions of wisdom, insights into the deeper corporate spirit or soul– and visions of valued and possible futures. Taking all of these together as a gestalt, AI deliberately, in everything it does, seeks to work from accounts of this “positive change core”—and it assumes that every living system has many untapped and rich and inspiring accounts of the positive. Link the energy of this core directly to any change agenda and changes never thought possible are suddenly and democratically mobilized.

Mark McKergow

Paul Z Jackson

Solution focus

As described by Dr. Mark McKergow and Paul Z. Jackson: Solutions Focus (SF) is an approach to change that is causing companies worldwide to sit up and take notice. Its primary focus is on uncovering and building on what is already working well – even in areas that are failing. Whether you’re a manager, a team leader, a coach or a consultant, you can use SF to generate immediate results. The SF approach is sometimes compared to Appreciative Inquiry. Both methods focus on what’s working; many people prefer SF for its incisive simplicity and applicability in all kinds of situations, big and small.

The solution-focused philosophy is an approach to change, centered on keeping things as simple as possible, doing what works and nothing else. We discovered it in the world of therapy, when in the late 1980s Steve de Shazer extended the earlier work of Milton Erickson and the Mental Research Institute to produce a tested yet minimal approach to change (for example de Shazer, 1988, and George, Iveson & Ratner, 1999). These same sources had earlier sparked NLP, to which solution focus might be seen as a younger, leaner second cousin.

Solution focus has since spread in the UK to the fields of education, social work, and child protection and is now making inroads to the organizational world.

 

Marcus Buckingham

Strength-based Leadership

As described by Tom Rath and Ashok Gopal: Nearly a decade ago, Gallup unveiled the results of a landmark 30-year research project that ignited a global conversation on the topic of strengths. More than 3 million people have since taken Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment, which forms the core of several books on this topic, including the #1 international bestseller StrengthsFinder 2.0.

In recent years, while continuing to learn more about strengths, Gallup scientists have also been examining decades of data on the topic of leadership. They studied more than one million work teams, conducted more than 20,000 in-depth interviews with leaders, and even interviewed more than 10,000 followers around the world to ask exactly why they followed the most important leader in their life.

In Strengths Based Leadership, #1 New York Times bestselling author Tom Rath and renowned leadership consultant Barry Conchie reveal the results of this research. Based on their discoveries, the book identifies three keys to being a more effective leader: knowing your strengths and investing in others’ strengths, getting people with the right strengths on your team, and understanding and meeting the four basic needs of those who look to you for leadership.

 

Join us in the positive change revolt!

Are you a positive change agent? – Survey

I’m not talking about secret agents … positive change agents are actually in the middle of the action, right in the public eye. They take risks all right, but the kind that help people and organizations grow.

See how many of these statements describe you to find out if you’re a positive change agent, a positive change agent in the making, or needing a weeklong retreat with a gaggle of positive change gurus. Then click the number that fits below the list.

1. I look for a way to adapt when the change isn’t going my way.
2. I know the journey is just as important as the destination.
3. It is intuitively obvious that when people enjoy a change process it’s far more effective, fast and easy.
4. I prefer to build on strengths and find the best in people, and not the old “break ‘em down and build ‘em the way you want them” method.
5. It is obvious that the quality of a relationship is as important as the quality of an idea/product.
6. I know why Appreciative Inquiry, Positive Psychology, Strength-based development, Positive Deviance, or Solution focus work so well.
7. I’ve seen that win-win solutions make the most sustainable change.
8. I’ve found that buy-in comes from authentic questions, real listening, and a chance to make a difference.
9. I like solutions and talking about what to do far more than creating a list of problems and playing the blame game.
10. I prefer a few core principles rather than a thick rulebook.

I’d love to hear more about how you create positive change.