Executive Coaching for the Non-Executive

1. Intro: Executive Coaching for the Non-Executive: hi there and welcome to executive coaching for the non executive. I'm Stephanie Smith, and I've been coaching executives for close to 20 years. People ask me all the time what executives know that the average person in the business doesn't know. And how can they learn it in this class? I'm going to teach you the same skills that I've been working with executives on in my work as an executive coach. I want each of you to have the influence, the power and the knowledge to change the things that you want to change, to get the jobs or promotions you want to get and to help create the successes that await you. The top five topics that executives want to talk about during our executive coaching meetings are understanding systems, understanding and managing themselves, communicating intentionally, supporting others to succeed and thinking strategically. Now I'm gonna give you a quick overview of each of these topics here, and then we'll dive into them and more deep and more depth in the other videos. So number one successful executives understand systems, systems air all around us, and they're everywhere in the business world as well. What is a system. It's a system is the sum of related parts. They create a whole. For instance, your body is a system. Your family is a system. Your car is a system. Your computer. Ah sports team is a system in work settings. Systems can get increasingly complex with multiple systems, making up many portions of the business. Understanding how systems work is vital in order to keep the system running smoothly. To be a highly successful person, you'll want to start paying attention to the systems. Your in How do they work? Who's involved? What are the roles and responsibilities and the relationships? By paying attention to how your systems work, you'll be much more apt to notice when things are running smoothly and when they're not in time, when they're not, then you'll want to determine if and when you can be a solution. Number two successful executives understand and manage themselves. Now let me tell you a secret. This is the one place where executives and not executives, struggle all the time you sing. Knowing yourself means understanding how you are in relationship to other people or as part of a system, and it could be very hard for you to see yourself clearly when you're part of a team or a group that is busy and chaotic, try to pay attention to how others see you and interact with you so that you can start to show up as a consistent leader or find someone in your life who can help you see how others see you and take steps to use that information constructively. Number three successful executives communicate with intention to be a successful executive , you need to communicate effectively and intentionally. If you don't know how to communicate what you mean in a way that can be easily understood by others, you won't have the impact you'd hope for. You need to be able to communicate clearly whenever you're working with other people, and it's not just what you say, but it's also how you say it. Most people understand that their choice of words is critical to most communication, but so is your choice of clothing, your body language, with whom you communicate when you communicate, and by what means you communicate etcetera. You see sending an email is very different than a face to face conversation, which is very different from a text. When you communicate with intention, you must choose the communication style that will add to your message and not take away from it. Number four successful executive support others to succeed Now, to be a great executive, you need to know how to support others to succeed as well. You'll be engaging with people all the time, and in order to lead others effectively, you have to build the skills to help them succeed. Executives get a lot of the work done through others, so knowing how to influence others becomes critical to your success and to theirs. Now it could be difficult to know how to help other people bring their best forward. They have their own doubts, fears, distractions and limitations that can get in their way. And if you want to succeed in business, you need to know how to support the people around you, to develop their skills and to push themselves to new heights. When several people help one another to be better, they create an environment of success, and most of them are able to accomplish things they hadn't believed possible. Number five successful executives think strategically, finally, to be a successful executive you need to think strategically, taking a look at how smaller decisions will affect things in the big picture. When you think strategically, you're taking a bird's eye view of the situation to determine what the problem is, where you are in relation to the problem and to determine where you want to go, and then figure out what steps will get you there when you're thinking strategically, you weigh the pros and the cons of the action Jill take, or that you're encouraging others to take to determine whether the actions are going to get you where you want to go. Now strategic thinking is used all the time. When we played games that are not based on chance. You've probably been thinking strategically situated child, but no one ever called it that. So, in summary, learning to think like an executive is a powerful way to enhance your ability to show up and stand out in an organization. I'll be digging into each of these topics more fully, with some examples and worksheets in the following videos. I'll see you there 2. 1. Understand Systems: Hi, I'm Stephanie Smith. This is the beginning of our executive coaching for non executive coaching Siri's. This is the 1st 1 understanding systems, So a system is a group of related parts that move or work together. Think about how your body is a system. You have different organs and body parts that by themselves don't work great. But when you put them all together, you get well. You. It's a system because in orderto work, each part is important to the whole to run smoothly. Each part needs to inform the whole. So if you bump your head, the rest of your body comes to a stop to figure out what happened, even though no other part of your body was bumped. This is true in most systems. If one part is disrupted by something, the rest of the system is disrupted as well. Now, if you want to be highly successful in the business world and in life, ah, critical skill is the ability to see systems understand how they work and to be able to intervene when something in that system is failing. If, for instance, you work in a company with four employees, then we would say that you work in a simple system, but if you work in a larger company with multiple departments, we'd call that a complex system. Now let's assume you work for a larger company that has multiple departments like Sales Team, a customer service team in a marketing team. You can see that the company as a system is far more complex because each of those teams would be considered a subsystem. Now, asking yourself questions about the systems you're a part of or interacting with can be a very helpful way to start to understand systems. For example, let's say you work in marketing and you want to start thinking like an executive. You take a step back and look at the marketing department and ask yourself, How does this system work? What's its purpose for existing? What does success in this system look like? How do the parts interact? Are there written rules, regulations and processes? Are there unwritten rules or implied norms? By paying attention to how your system works? You'll be more apt to notice when things were running smoothly and when they're not. Now let's get a little more complex. We're still assuming that you're working in marketing and on a regular basis, you need to meet with the sales team, which is also a system. Now you have two systems that are interacting to better understand how they work. You would ask similar questions about their system, but the goal is to understand the interaction of these two systems. How did these two systems work together? Who's involved? What's their purpose for interacting? What does success look like? How did the parts interact? Are there written rules, regulations and processes, other unwritten rules or implied norms? When a system is running smoothly, each part of the system is successfully interacting with the other parts. But when systems aren't interacting well with one another, things can go haywire. We often see this when departments are well intended but heading in two different directions. So questions to ask yourself when you suspect the system isn't working effectively are what are we trying to achieve? Are the roles, responsibilities and relationships in each system clearly defined? How and when do we interact? Who determines what success looks like? What are the relationships that are critical to success? Howard decisions made now the Golan asking these questions is to start to understand where the system might be bumping into trouble just is when your body is not feeling well, you scan it to see what's happening. When you're in a work system, you want to scan it to see where the source of pain is coming from. When a work system isn't working well, you'll often see high turnover, miss deadlines, unproductive meetings, low engagement and low profitability. Making changes within one department can often help the whole system to begin to heal. Now, understanding systems can really increase your value in an organization. You can help interrupt problems before they completely derail a project. Because you know toe look for what is disrupting the system. Be sure to download the worksheet that has thes questions and gives you the opportunity to practice seeing how systems work and how to start to identify when a system isn't working. Well, please be sure to join me in the next video on how to understand and manage yourself. See you then 3. 2. Understand and Manage Yourself: hi and welcome back to executive coaching for the Non Executive Today. We're gonna talk about the next piece of being a great executive which is understanding and managing yourself. I'm knowing yourself means understanding how you are in relationship to other people or as part of a system. Now we all struggle with this. It's not easy to know how we are experienced by others. We cant see ourselves as others see s and as always, before we can understand how others see us. We have to understand how we see the world. Each of us sees the world through the lens of our own history and experience. This lens is shaped by the impact that our family of origin and early experiences had on our emotions, thoughts and behavior. You didn't have a choice in shaping this lens as much of it was developed when you were quite young. Understanding what the impact of that lens is on. Your choices and behaviors today is extremely powerful and allows you to grow in ways you can't imagine. Let me explain the first system you ever had to negotiate was your family of origin this Then that's the family you were born into. My professor used to say it was the first company each of us ever worked for. And that's because at its basic level, ah, family is a system each person's actions affect the whole. Now, as a child, you had no idea you were in a system. You were just in your family. And as a member of that family system, you learned the spoken and unspoken rules about functioning and surviving. What you learned in your family system taught you how you show up in other systems. Because you, of course, generalized your experience. For example, if in your family system you were the oldest and felt responsible for taking care of the younger kids, then when you got your first job, you were more likely to be worried about what other employees were or were not doing. It's your first impulse, because that's what you learned about functioning in a system. And if you were the youngest, you may have found the you were usually told what to dio. So in your first job, you are more likely to sit back and wait until someone told you what you should be doing, because that's what functioning in the system looked like to you as Children are. Worldview was shaped by a system in which we had limited power by virtue of our age and that we were dependent on to survive. And I mean that literally we needed the system for food, clothing, shelter and love. Now none of this was our fault. Humans air born completely dependent on others for survival. But as adults, we have the power to understand and change how we relate to the world. When we understand our filter, when we enter into other systems as we get older, our reference for functioning and surviving is that of a child. But we honed it as we aged, but the fundamental structures are there. For the most part, we all handle being part of a system pretty well. Other than otherwise, there really would be utter mayhem. But when we're afraid or angry, things can go from good to bad pretty quickly. A good way to understand your lenses to ask yourself, What do I typically do when I feel afraid? Now here are some real examples from executives I've worked with over the years, and of course, I've changed their names. So just go with me on this. When Jim is afraid, he lashes out at others. It's someone else's fault. Always, he's a blamer and his family of origin. His experience was that they spent a lot of time blaming other people for their failures. When Zoe, a different executive, is afraid, she isolates herself to figure things out. She was one of nine kids, and and in her family system, help was not available, so she needed to go off and find solutions by herself. When Danny is afraid, she gets angry. She was from a military family, where fear was seen as weakness, so she transforms her fear into rage. When Mike is afraid, he gets paralyzed. His family was alcoholic, so he was often afraid as a child, and he felt safest when he did nothing at all. Now, as you can see, all four of these executives are dealing with their childhood experiences as adults in the workplace. Imagine working for Jim. It would be really hard to feel blamed by him. Are working for Danny, who gets enraged, are working for Mike, who becomes essentially ineffectual when things get tense. I think you get the picture. They each had more credibility and power when we understood and managed their reactions. So the next time you find yourself in a situation where you feel yourself reacting, ask yourself. What am I afraid of in this situation? Are you afraid you'll look stupid or incompetent? Are you afraid you won't be heard or that your voice won't matter? Next? Ask yourself. What do I typically do when I'm afraid? Are you quick to play mothers? Do you get loud and yell, or do you shrink back and get quiet and finally ask yourself if I felt safe, what would I do? Think about if you were having this conversation a safe environment without fear of being judged? Would you be able to really listen deeply? Would you sit up at the table and continue to engage in the conversation and speak with impact? If you felt safe, you would probably be better able to influence others and be willing to be influenced by others as well. And that's true leadership. When you understand and manage yourself, you know what things are going to push your buttons and why it's an important part of being a successful leader. So the next time you find yourself reacting during a conversation, pause and ask yourself these three questions and see if you can manage your own emotions and behaviour to become an influential and impactful leader. The next topic we're gonna cover is communicating intentionally. I look forward to seeing you their season. 4. 3a. Communicate with Intention: Listening: Hi. Welcome to executive coaching for the non executive Communicate with intention to be a successful executive, you need to communicate effectively and intentionally. If you don't know how to communicate what you mean in a way that can be easily understood by others, you won't have the impact you'd hoped for. Good communication skills can really help set you apart as a leader, whether personally or professionally, building your communication skills is at the heart of stepping into your leadership and successfully interacting with others. Now, when I talk about communicating with intention, I'm talking about the ability to really listen to others to share your point of view thoughtfully, confidently and with an open mind and the ability to interact respectfully through the challenges and obstacles that will likely come your way. Now there are two key communication skills that I'm going to review with you in this video and in the next one, listening and speaking. Now we're going to start with listening because it's often more important than speaking. There's an old saying that goes something like God gave us two years and one mouth for a reason. You should always listen before you speak now listening doesn't mean that you're sitting passively while someone talks at you. Listening is about being fully engaged with the information they're sharing so that you can determine your next move. There are three key components to listening like a pro. First, lean in second, listen to the whole of what is being said in third paraphrase, so first lean in listening well requires your ears and your body. You need to lean in and really pay attention to what the other person is saying. Give them your full attention. That means putting away your cellphone, not looking at your computer and getting rid of any other distractions. Listening to someone free of distraction whether it worked with a colleague or at home with your family is a sign of respect, and it's really an important part of leading in interacting with others. Second, when you're listening to someone listen for the whole of what they're saying, Don't pick apart their sentences. Looking for places where you disagree in order. Just not understand where someone is coming from. You have to hear their words and then mentally try on their experience. Ask yourself, What would it be like to be in their shoes, one of the worst mistakes we can make when listening to others. This assuming we know what someone is going to say or assuming we know what they've experienced. I was with a client named Justin who had a bad habit of listening fast. You see, he was in such a hurry to hear what people had to say, that he finished their sentences for them or summed up their experience before they had a chance to finish speaking. Now the problem with listening fast is twofold. First, he was wrong much of the time about what they were going to say or what they meant. And second, because he was such a bad listener, people stopped talking to him. Now he came to meet with me when he found himself essentially cut out of the loop with his colleagues, which was preventing him for being successful at work. Listening requires patients. Justin's chief complaint was that he didn't have time to listen, and his defense was that he was just trying to speed things up. Well, despite with Justin and many other people, think the research actually shows that listeners who take the time to listen up front, save themselves far more time than those people who didn't listen in the first place, going back to clean things up. It's a lot more time consuming than taking the extra two or three minutes required to hear someone out and finally summarized back, which you've heard, this is called paraphrasing When you paraphrase you, say something like So what I hear you saying is, or let me see if I'm understanding you and then repeat back the essence of what they said to you recently, I had an interaction on a board that I volunteer on where one member was going off on the other members. People were really losing patients with this rant, and it appeared things were about to escalate. So as soon as he paused, I said, Now, Jim, what I hear you saying is that you don't believe that the board took the time. We should have to get more information. Is that correct? Now you may not agree with what they're saying. I personally didn't agree with Jim on this issue, but that isn't it important at this point because my goal in your goal is to show that you have heard their perspective. It's extremely important to confirm with them that you've heard what they have said before you say anything in response now, Jim responded to my question by stating Will Exactly, That's what I've been saying. And then he stopped his rant because he understood that the group understood what he was trying to say. Remember when you listen to someone in here them out, it does not mean that you're agreeing with them. The people I coach often tell me they don't hear someone out for fear that they will look like they're in agreement. Listening fully Onley means that you respect that. They have a different experience or opinion, and you dio another quick example. If you were a manager and you had an employee who was always showing up late, you would sit down with him or her and explain that you've noticed there consistently showing up late how it's impacting the team in the company, etcetera. Then you'll want to give him or her a chance to share with you why they're coming late. You want to pay attention, lean in and really listen to what he or she is saying, then you want to listen to the whole of what they're telling you and hold off on any judgments. And finally, you want to summarize back to them what you've heard them say. And to be sure that you've understood. Once you've listened like a pro, your employees will likely feel heard and will be more apt to respond positively to the rest of your conversation, even though you still need to discipline them for coming late toe work. Now I trusted thes examples give you a sense of what it means to be an active listener. In the next video, I will share the key points of effective speaking with you. See you soon. 5. 3b. Communicate with Intention: Speaking: executive coaching for the non executive. Speaking in the last video I talked about the importance of being a good listener is key to good communication. The second part of communicating with intention is speaking. Rule number one, when it comes to speaking, is using I statements. Now. What's a nice statement? It's a sentence that literally begins with I and then describes your experience. If you're thinking like an executive, you're claiming your power with ice statement and not giving that power away. Here are some examples of what I mean Ah, powerless statement is something like You made me mad. Now why is this powerless? Well, because it says that someone else is ableto pull your strings and make you feel mad. Unfortunately, there's no power in this statement, for you stated instead, as an I statement. I'm angry with you or I'm angry about that. Wow, see the difference? You feel it and you own it. Another powerless statement is a blanket statement. Something like, Well, everyone knows that's not the way it works. Does everyone really know that? Maybe, but maybe not. It's a statement that someone can punch holes in rather quickly if it's stated as an I statement, you would say, I don't think that's the way it works. When you say it that way, you're sharing with people that you have a thought and you're owning your own experience. In each case, I hope you can see that when you use an I statement, you're speaking about your experience and your owning that experience as well, which makes it and you more congruent. Now let's take the powerless statement. Amy made me late and turn it into a nice statement. I'm running late, but let's assume I actually did get caught in the hall talking to Amy. Is it fair for me to say Amy made me late? Well, I could have said to Amy, I'd love to talk, but I'm heading into a meeting or any Diran, or I could have chosen to stay and talk to Amy as long as I owned it. Now, if Amy's my boss and she didn't give me the option to say no, then I might say to whomever was waiting for me. I apologize for running late. Amy and I were discussing something in the hallway again. It's a about cleaning your power and not being a victim. So well, Number one use I statements. Rule number two is speaking your truth and not the truth. When you own your own experience, you own your truth. That said, truth is kind of a funny thing. There is no one truth. There are different truth. In some ways, there are as many truce as there are people experiencing it. That's why communication can be so difficult. What we assume is straightforward is often not. Two people can see a situation very differently. Ask anyone who's tried to get an eye witness to an event view of five witnesses. That means you'll have five different interpretations of the same event. But when you speak from your truth, you're sharing your experience and acknowledging that someone else's experience could be quite different. The typical goal when speaking especially in a business environment, is to share ideas. Ideas are generated when people feel invited to share their experience. So as you think about what to say, ask yourself. Is this the truth or simply my truth? And you might be surprised. So the third rule for speaking effectively is to state your emotions but not to become them . It's only appropriate to state your emotion, but it is almost never appropriate toe Act out your emotions. It's far more effective to say in a measure of fashion. It's concerning to me that you're late again. Then it is to yell at someone, Why are you late? When you act on your emotion? It's hard for others to hear you, and they will dismiss you as being hot headed or unreasonable. You never want to be out of control when talking with your team or your staff or really anyone, for that matter. In fact, there's never any reason to yell at your team or staff members, period. If you're yelling at your staff, your being a bully, you're not managing. So going back to the example we used in the last video where we discussed listening skills about the employee who was tardy, let's talk about what you would say after you have listened to them. While this, while the employee described his or her circumstance, you were paying attention, listening to the whole of what he or she had to say and holding off on judgments, you summarize back to them what you heard. Now you'll want to speak like the pro that you are use. I statements in explaining how their tardiness affects you, the team and the company, something like when you're late, the team is short staffed and customers end up waiting on hold longer than they should, which puts an unfair burden on your teammates. Then speak your truth, not truth. In my experience, your chart Penis is the only thing keeping you from being a great employee. Yet it's impossible for me to run this department well when I can't count on staff to show up on time and ready to work. Three. State your emotions Don't be them. I'm disappointed in your behavior, and as much as I'd like to keep on the team, I can't. Or you could say, I'm disappointed in your behavior and I'm going to give you two weeks to show me that you can get here on time. If you're late again, I will need to let you go now. Obviously, what you say clearly depends on your goal and in this case, on their reason for being late. The point is that you can discipline a staff member even when you feel angry without being angry. so quick. Review Here the three key steps to speaking with intention Use I statements. Speak your truth, not the truth and state your emotions Don't be them. In conclusion, the most important aspect of communication is listening, followed by speaking. And as you're doing these two things, remember that your body language and your tone have to match what you're saying or doing. People will listen to your body language before they'll listen to your words. If your body language is contradicting your words, they will not pay attention to your words. They will on Li listen to your body language. So, for instance, if I say yes but I'm shaking my head, no people will see no and not here. Yes, The same is true of my tone of voice it has to be aligned with the words are the words are not believable. Sarcasm, anger or insulting tones are not really easily hidden behind happy words. So watch for those in yourself and in others. So I'd really like to encourage you to take time out of each day to practice your listening skills and your speaking skills. These are important building blocks to discovering the leader in you until next time, take care 6. 4. Support Others in Succeeding: welcome back to executive coaching for the non executive Today, we're going to cover the next topic, supporting others and succeeding. Executives who work with me often want my help to support others in succeeding, because executives get a lot of the work done through others. Knowing how to influence others becomes critical to both your success, and there's executives pulled together expertise from the experts around them. Good executives are on Leah's good as their executive team. They can't do it all, so there are four key components to supporting others in succeeding number one. Understand what needs to be done. Number to be respectful. Number three. Remove obstacles and number four facilitate action. The first component is understanding the job that your team needs to accomplish Once you understand that you'll be much more effective at helping them do their job successfully because you're holding the vision of what success looks like. You can't know what needs to be done if you can't articulate what it should look like when you're finished. Number to be respectful. It's important in the rush of the day today to remember that you are helping people to succeed. They have dreams, aspirations fears, disappointments and lives outside of work. People want to be seen and heard. It's a basic human need, and that includes in the workspace is well. Number three. Remove obstacles. Helping others succeed sometimes requires getting things out of their way so that they can accomplish that which needs to be done. Running interference is also a way of removing obstacles, but because it allows them to complete their assignments unimpeded, be careful, though not to become a baby sitter when possible. You'll want to empower your staff toe, learn to self problems on their own, not to come running to you with every little issue. Here, we're talking about the bigger obstacles that require a manager support and number four Facilitate action, understanding what needs to be done. Being respectful and removing obstacles are Onley effective. If you can also facilitate action, people have to accomplish something to be successful. There's a wonderful quote that articulates this well. No one ever plowed a field by turning it over in their mind. You can think about applying of plowing the field. You can drop plan for how you'll approach. It gets support from others to do it. But until you get out there on the tractor and start going back and forth, the field will never get plowed. Action is key. Let me share an example of these four items in action. At 18 I got my first job managing a team. I was working for the Forest Service as a team lead of a crew of 10 kids aged about 14 to 16 years old. Our job was building and maintaining the hiking trails in the force of Southern California . We would hike into a trail spread out a mile or so over the trail and using shovels, axes, picks and assorted other tools make the trail a safe experience for park visitors. You day one, we arrive at the trailhead we have out of the van, and I tell everyone that we're going to be clearing the 1st 8 miles of the Canyon Trail today, 10 teenager snarled at me with discuss. So I told everybody to grab a tool and said, Well, let's get to it. Honestly, I felt pretty good about myself in that moment for sharing with everyone what we needed to do. Clear the 1st 8 miles of the Canyon trail. Step one of helping of their succeed. Once we all had our tools, we headed out to work on the trail. I claim my spot on the trail and started working on digging out a route that was a tripping hazard to the pathway. When my boss came along and said, What do you think? You do it? I said, somewhat sheepishly working. My supervisor seemed annoyed and looking over. His ray bands said, I know you're working, but you're not making sure they're nailing it. You have to do both. I remember saying, um what? Ah, the sophisticated language of an 18 year old. But what he said stuck with me and I have been helping other 16 since he said to me, Walk the line. Your job is to make sure that everyone is successfully working on their section of the trail, right? They knew what to do, but it was my job to make sure that they did it successfully. So I walk the line. I would ask people how they were doing. If they were drinking enough water, it was upward of 90 degrees. Most days we were on the trails. So second step Ire is respectful of the fact that they were hot and tired, then third step. If someone was struggling, I help them figure out how to get around the obstacle. Sometimes that meant finding a different tool, finding a different route or having both of us work on it together. And finally, I facilitated action. By midday, the heat was intense and the trail with steep and overgrown to keep things moving and to keep spirits up, I split the crew into five teams of two. I had one team spend their time just sharpening tools so that they were able to take a break from the heavy work of cutting brush. Then I rotated the five teams so that each group had a chance to sharpen tools. But they were still working and contributing to getting things done. My crew worked hard and we worked collaboratively. The three months we worked together was a lot of fun. Despite being demanding physical work, my team was recognized for their work. We actually won the most trail cleared award, not quite an Oscar, but close, and I was acknowledged for my leadership. My success fueled their success and their success fuelled mind. Join me next time when we'll explore thinking strategically, see you soon 7. 5. Think Strategically: welcome back to executive coaching for the non executive today. We're going to cover the next topic, thinking strategically. As I mentioned in the overview, most of us first learned to think strategically by playing board games and sports as Children, checkers, monopoly, Scrabble and chess, or just a few of the board games that develops strategic thinking on the field. We learned to think strategically, playing soccer, baseball, softball and even tag when you think strategically, you're looking at your options 12 or even 10 steps ahead of where you are right now to determine what will lead you to your desired outcome. Great chess players are said to be 10 to 15 steps ahead of their next move and have multiple moves in mind, depending on what their opponent does To think strategically, you need these three things Number one, a vision for where you want to go. Number two. You need to identify the obstacles that are keeping you from getting there, and number three you need a way around the obstacles. Let's break these down first, a vision for where you want to go. Thinking strategically requires knowing what you want to achieve, the more precise the vision, the better you can figure out how to get there. Ah, vague vision is usually tough to achieve. A vague vision is, I want to be successful. A precise vision is I want to be a manager by June of next year. Ah, vague vision is I want to make more money. Ah, precise vision is I want to be earning $20,000 more than I earn now by next year. Second, you need to identify the obstacles that are keeping you from getting there today. Sometimes it helps to get a bird's eye view of the situation so that you can determine how to get from point a, where you are to point B, where you want to go by the most direct path people often refer to. This is 30,000 foot thinking. It is if you're looking down from a plane at 30,000 feet to see the lay of the land. At that height, you can see all the obstacles that you can't see from ground level. Getting a bird's eye view. It's easier with a vision that requires blazing an actual path, trying to see a personal or a business vision is often less direct. So we need to get data that we can analyze to determine what things look like from this higher level, as we can get to and from Aziz, many perspectives as we confined. Ask yourself, What are the obstacles that air getting in the way of living my vision? Right now I use the word obstacle purposefully. I'm not asking you to list problems. Problems can be solved. Obstacles exist in relation to your vision. If there were no vision, there would be nothing obstructing it. You cannot fix obstacles. You must to respond to impacto go around and obstacles. You are identifying the boulders in your road to your vision. When you identify the obstacles, I'd like to ask that you not use the term lack. While it is tempting to say you are lacking time money or some specific resource, that is not usually the case. The truth is typically more that you have not made spending the time on your vision a priority in your life or you have set up your life in such a way that you cannot save money . So instead of saying I like the money, say I have committed the money I have to other things we can work with that it's best to write your first thoughts about what the obstacles that there are that are getting in the way of living your vision right now so that you can see them looking over your first thoughts. You want to identify the key themes that emerge. For example, there may be a number of things about not having certain skills, not having the right education and having spent years doing work you don't like. The obstacle might be something like, I don't have confidence by my ability to make the change, or my background will not be seen as credible right down the themes that emerged so that you can formulate a path forward. Now, when you look over your themes, you can identify the 5 to 6 obstacles that air getting in the way of living your vision. Right now, you may need to combine some of the themes or rewrite them so that you focus on what's truly in the way. But when you're done, you should see in writing the boulders that get in the way of living your vision right now . Now, take a moment to look over the obstacles. Do you find yourself weighed down? Do you feel a bit anxious about whether you can ever live your vision? If you do, you're experiencing what everyone experiences when they put all the obstacles to their vision in one place, not toe worry. Knowing these obstacles are in your way will help you develop a plan for getting around them and moving closer to your vision strategically. And that brings us to the third step, a way around the obstacles. This is where the rubber hits the road. You should be able to take your data points and combine them into a series of options that you contest to see which one gets you closer to your desired outcome. Ask yourself what 2 to 3 actions can I start with toe? Help me get around the obstacles and live closer to my vision. Identify actions that build on your existing strengths, relationships resource is and opportunities to overcome impending beliefs, assumptions in habits, intervening outmoded patterns and behaviors, and get around current blacks that move you in the direction of your future. There are things you can do now to move yourself forward this involved shifting from thinking about all the things that can be done to get you around those obstacles to making decisions about what you will actually do. Get curious. If you want to be a manager by next year, then you might ask yourself, What are the management skills I currently possess? What skills do I need to gain to be taking seriously as a manager? Are their management positions at my current job that I could fill? Then ask yourself, Does my boss No, I want to be a manager. Does my boss believe that I have the skills to be a manager? Is there anyone else who can support my desire to be a manager? Now? These questions don't solve the problem, but they they create goals that help you create a path forward. So if you don't have all the skills required to be a manager than perhaps, you can take classes to increase your abilities. Or your boss might not know you want to move into a manager role, and so having a conversation with him or her could go a long way toward achieving your vision. Take a moment now to look over your actions. Do you feel hopeful? Do you find yourself thinking it's going to take some work? But I can do this? Do you find yourself already thinking of ways to bring these toe life? If you don't take a moment to go back over and review your actions, the goal here is to build on skills. Resource is relationships, etcetera that you already have to propel yourself around the obstacles. As you can see, thinking strategically can help move you closer to your vision and closer to the life you want to create for yourself. Whether you're an executive or not, that's it for this Siri's. I'll see you in our next class, take good care.