Dr. Kevin Freiberg and Dr. Jackie Freiberg are two of our favorite speakers – because (1) they’re good, cool people, and (2) they are great assets to individuals and organizations who want to go “BOOM!” and break the mold of business-as-usual. We’re happy to share this special message from them for everyone who wants to build their personal brand as a go-to, get-it-done, well-connected, indispensable employee. Please share and help people hang on to their jobs in these challenging times!

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We’re at a twenty-five year high, but sadly it is not a good high! Conservative data suggests there are 5.7 million people unemployed in the United States, and the number is expected to grow over the next few months. With statistics like that looming on the horizon, we suspect that everyone is looking for ways to hold on tight to their jobs.

However, if through uncontrollable circumstances you do find yourself in the growing pool of the unemployed, there’s no better time to build your personal brand and increase your marketability.

Here are a few ideas…

We challenge you to start by taking Nike’s slogan to heart…. “Just do it!”

Get good at telling your story. Let people know what you are working on and the value you have added to the department, the team, the business, or even the value you have added to clients.

Take personal inventory. Create a summary of your projects and accomplishments over the last few months. If you don’t have much to summarize and celebrate, it’s time to make s_ _t happen!

Collaborate. Create a list of your ongoing projects and invite others to collaborate and offer feedback and insight. Cross-functional collaboration will make you more visible, will grow your network, and will give you more cross-functional experience.

Make your presence known. Be a player; be willing to arrive early or stay late, or put in some extra time over the weekend. Take a project home and work on it remotely. If you are trying to avoid the axe by being invisible and working in the shadows, be careful, it may backfire! Invisible might lead to dispensable.

Volunteer. Help a department or a project that is limping along. In the short run, yes, it may stretch you and even stress you. But in the long run, it will benefit you by growing your reputation as a go-to, get-it-done, well-connected person.

Get Focused. Rally your team and ask this question, “What can we ALL do to become more focused and more purposeful in realizing our strategy or marketing our business?” Then hold each other accountable and do it! Measure your progress and share your successes with your boss. Perhaps even share your success in your online newsletter or in-house publication. Your story may give other teams valuable ideas.

Be more efficient. Host a working lunch and brainstorm creative cost savings ideas… remember each idea holds a value; every penny counts and they will add up! Ask everyone on your team to come up with at least one way to:

• Stretch company resources
• Cut costs
• Improve efficiencies
• Grow your market
• Expand your customer base
• Help others who are struggling

Again, hold each other accountable, measure your progress, and tell your story.

Think LESS and temporary! Suggest cost savings ideas to your boss. Can you and others “temporarily” cut back your hours to get through a tough time? Can you hire a temp for the summer (think student)? Can you bring on an intern? Can you work remotely? Can the office cut back by 1 or 2 hours a day? Suggest “summer hours”; people might enjoy the freedom! Maybe offer half-day Fridays just for the summer?  You might discover that people actually get more focused and get more done in less time!

Reach out. Expand your network and get connected. Have lunch with colleagues from different parts of the business. Set goals, try and meet or reconnect with one new person a week. Shake it up when you reconnect; make it a healthy WALKING lunch. Summer is the best time to get out and get fit.

Remember, it’s not just about you! Check in with your boss more frequently (make it purposeful and efficient). Ask how you can help meet certain goals or fuel special projects. Check in on your boss’s major stressors and find ways to be helpful, perhaps even ease the stress.

Don’t be shy. Talk to company executives and ask them relevant questions about the business. Be engaging and knowledgeable. Demonstrate through your conversation that you are informed (make sure you are) and involved (let them know what you are working on and how it relates to the success of the business). Show that you are doing your part to get through these crazy times.

Audit your performance. Be objective. No one is paying you today for what you did yesterday, last week, or last month. Track your contributions and your impact as a player in the business. Are you an MVP? Are you consistently inconsistent? Are you benched? Are you on the DL? Self evaluate, then set goals and start training to become a better player.

Monitor your style. Don’t be a whiner. Whining adds no value. Don’t SUCK… the life, energy, and motivation out of everyone you work with; it is toxic. Instead, make life at work more fun. Choose to be a problem solver, not a moaner. Choose to see the good in others, not the flaws. Choose to listen more than you talk. Choose to give more than you take. Choose to be more optimistic and hopeful; it’s contagious!

Retool. Don’t wait for the company to train, recertify, or retool you. Take responsibility for your own professional development and let your boss know what you’re doing to stretch, grow, and gain skills.

Stay alert. Become a junction box for knowledge. Set Google alerts for your company and industry to help you stay informed and current. If you discover helpful information, get in the habit of forwarding it to colleagues and your boss as, “good info to know.”

Things to avoid!

• Don’t think and act like you’re entitled to keep your job because of tenure and loyalty. An entitlement mentality will get you nothing but a pink slip these days. Tenure and loyalty used to be valued. Contribution and ROI are what matter these days.
• Don’t ask for a raise; instead find a way to justify your salary! What contributions have you made lately? What cost savings have you championed? What business have you developed? What is the ROI in you?
• Don’t ask for a promotion. Now is the time to do more than is expected without any extra compensation and a bigger, better office suite.
• Don’t ask for paid time off.
• Don’t ask for more benefits, in fact, now is the time to celebrate whatever benefits you still have.
• Don’t gossip and don’t participate in rumors. Stop them.
• Don’t do social networking and personal net surfing. That means avoid Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, texting, personal blogs, etc! Let’s face it; we are at a place and time where these things are becoming major (wait… did we say MAJOR!!) distractions to our efficiency and productivity at work. Any time a boss or supervisor approaches and you are clicking out of a program or you have your cell phone in your hand, it is NOT a good sign!
• Don’t be fooled. Yeah, there is some pretty cool press about the job offers happening on Facebook and Twitter. But one must remember, these people have been laid off! Perhaps they wouldn’t have lost their job in the first place had they left the social networking for personal time!

Relax! You’re normal if these ideas are making you nervous. But you’re crazy if you don’t embrace any of them. Times are insane and everything about the way we engage in business is changing. As tough as it is for us to write and for you to read, businesses are expecting more from everyone, and everyone has to work harder than ever before. You want to hang on to your job? You want to be indispensable? Then it’s time to think survival of the fittest! Embrace these ideas and you’ll build your personal brand. Share them and you’ll build your business brand.

About Dr. Kevin Freiberg and Dr. Jackie Freiberg: World-class speakers, thought leaders, and authors of the best-seller NUTS!, its sequel GUTS! and recently BOOM! The Freibergs’ messages inspire and equip individuals and organization to build distinguished Brands recognized for accountability, commitment, innovation, performance and a reputation that blows the doors off-business-as-usual!

Posted under Leadership Development, Motivational Speakers, Organizational Excellence

Representing the leading thinkers in sales, marketing, management, etc. for speaking engagements is, in some ways, like having a life-long pass to the world’s best business school. “Best practices” teaching from the likes of Marcus Buckingham, Pat Lencioni, Kevin and Jackie Freiberg, Keith Ferrazzi, Ken Blanchard, and many more is constantly flowing through our office. Most recently, I’ve learned some brilliantly simple lessons from Pete Luongo, former President and CEO of The Berry Company and author of 10 Truths About Leadership.

Published last summer, 10 Truths is a little book packed with lessons Pete learned during his 33-year career at The Berry Company (and the great teacher called “life”) such as:

“The people who care about us the most are those who stand shoulder to shoulder with us during our most difficult times.”

“Finding and keeping good people must be the number one priority for all organizations!”

“Rules are for the weak. Uncompromised Standards of Excellence are for the strong.”

“Winners do things they don’t like to do. Average people follow their natural likes and preferences.”

“As leaders, we’ve got to give employees a sense of purpose, a set of principles, a vision, a dream, and most importantly, an environment where they can get what they want.”

The message is so simple, yet so desperately needed. There is a flood of new paradigms, new laws, new formulas, etc. coming our way every day. Yet here is a guy who has been at the top, who has achieved great success – he led The Berry Company through a period of record sales growth and established the organization as an industry leader and “a great place to work” – and he’s reminding us that the true key to organizational and personal success is… people.

What about the bottom line? What about marketing strategy? What about meeting quotas? All important, no question. Here’s what Pete says: “My belief is that, beneath the spreadsheets, strategies and psychological tests, the truths really are pretty straightforward. This book is about the ten truths leaders understand will lead to success, time and again.” It’s a focus on people that is key; not a focus on Wall Street.

And for those who still need to see the hard data, Pete wants you to know, “I’m extremely proud to share with you that in every case, the data backs up what my intuition was telling me all along.”

If you’re looking for a good read on management and leadership, I encourage you to check out this book. I can’t recommend it highly enough. And if you do pick it up, come back and share your feedback.

– Shawn Ellis, Founder and President, The Speakers Group

Posted under Book Review, Organizational Excellence

The first line of a post titled “Mastering the Art of Motivation” on BNet.com grabbed my attention: “According to the Harvard Business School, 85 percent of companies report that employee motivation drops after the first six months on the job.” Wow!

I suppose that shouldn’t come as a great surprise. We can all remember back to when we started our job for the first time… It was new! Exciting! Challenging! Invigorating! By the time you’re six months in, it’s familiar. Routine. Mindless. Exhausting. That’s just one side of the story, though. Look at what else happens to new hires within the first six months on the job:

1. They become more familiar with their boss and co-workers… and they realize they are all helplessly flawed!
2. While they love the core responsibilities of their position, they realize there are some necessary activities (TPS reports?) that just aren’t as much fun… and they seem to take more time than the work they love.
3. In the midst of the “routine,” they lose sight of the purpose of the organization and even their position which initially connected with their passion.

The list goes on, but these are all very real issues. As the BNet post indicates, it is largely the responsibility of managers to watch over their employees and make sure their motivation does not reach dangerously low levels – and there are plenty of preventatives and remedies at the managers’ disposal. One “tool in the toolbox” should be a connection to personal and professional development authorities who can help business leaders create and maintain a workplace that fosters motivation for all employees. For each of the toxic issues noted above, there are speakers standing by with the exact antidote. For example:

Rick Brinkman, co-author of Dealing With People You Can’t Stand and a very funny, yet relevant, keynote speaker on “Conscious Communication,” is a great help in addressing situation #1 above. It is inevitable that we will cross paths with people we “can’t stand” in the workplace, but Rick’s message hits home with situations that people find themselves in every day and empowers them with practical solutions.

Marcus Buckingham, author of the bestseller, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, and co-author of bestsellers such as Now, Discover Your Strengths, is in high demand by companies seeking to bring the strengths movement into their organizations. Those employees who find themselves bogged down with activities which are not their strengths within six months will only experience further deterioration of their motivation level as time goes on. Within a few years, they’ll only be a shell of the person they were when hired. Marcus can help leaders and managers create a business that plays to the strengths of its greatest assets – its people. The measurable benefits of creating a “strong company” are amazing.

What about employees who lose sight of their – and their company’s – purpose? It is a sense of purpose that drives each of us. Take it away and we are lost. Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg, co-authors of books such as Boom! 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-As-Usual, can be great resources to leaders, managers AND their employees. Reminding their audience members that they are “designed to choose,” they help individuals reclaim their sense of purpose and as a result, boost performance to levels higher than ever before.

And for a universal solution to keep everyone running at optimum levels, consider Harry Paul, co-author of the book, REVVED! An Incredible Way to Rev Up Your Workplace and Achieve Amazing Results (and also co-author of the popular FISH! book series about the Pike Place Fish Market).

These are just a few examples of speakers who can partner with business leaders to prevent the motivation drop-off of new/recent hires, and maintain peak levels of motivation for everyone in the organization. The investment in a speaker can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, but what might the benefit be from having a motivated workforce showing up every day? Or, alternately, what might it cost to have an unmotivated workforce showing up every day?

Posted under Organizational Excellence, Planner Tips, Speaker Recommendations