What I Learned At The Art Of Sales Conference

I attended the Art of Sales the other day courtesy of my good friends Robert Lavigne at The Digital Grapevine and Robert Kavanagh at the Art of Sales. I wouldn't have been able to afford to go on my own, and with the help of these fine gentleman, I was able to participate at a discounted rate and now I can spread some of the great knowledge I learned to the masses (LOL) who read this blog.

My Initial Takeaways From The Conference- Courtesy of Robert Lavigne:

Other Things I learned at the Art of Sales:

1- From Barbara Corcoran I learned that there are only two kinds of people in the world; expanders and containers. I also learned that when you combine expanders and containers (diversity) you can do great things.

2- I learned that when you ask someone to raise their hand as high as they can they never go full out the first time because they expect that you will always ask them for more from Seth Godin

3- I learned that I wasn't crazy for making a list of people who I needed to meet and interact with in order to further my career from Keith Ferrazzi

4- I learned that my challenge is to unlearn how to be boring vs. learning how to be fun from Sally Hogshead

5- I learned that business is the most power force in society from Jerry Greenfield. Church and Government used to play critical roles in our lives but as time goes on corporations are playing the roles that these institutions used to fill.

Seth Godin Getting Ready To Sign Some Autographs

Other Cool Things:

-I met two great gentlemen from Brantford, Robert Langley and Bill Jol
-I got a signed copy of Seth Godin's book, Poke The Box
-LinkedIn Canada was on site doing professional headshots. This was really cool, as my current pic is over 1.5 years old! New online visual incoming!

Overall, it was a great day and a worthwhile investment of time, money, and energy. The next Art of Event is in the Spring of 2012... stay tuned!

Real Leadership Is Shown AFTER The Crisis

Recently I had a very good friend come to me with an issue at work. Although she is a top performer and excellent at what she does, she had a meeting with a senior leader who gave her negative feedback in a very nonconstructive manner. She left the meeting feeling deflated, unmotivated, and really unappreciated.

I'll spare the details to protect all those involved, but to make a long story short, she was trying to figure out whether she should say something to her manager about the situation, or whether she should just let it slide. I called her and gave her a pep talk about how leadership has nothing to do with the crisis itself. Point being that she had a personal crisis, and that if she let it slide, she wouldn't be a very good leader for herself.

Many examples of this came to mind, both good and bad.

Good Example: When 9/11 happened, no one blamed Mayor Giuliani for the attack itself. However as soon as it started going down he didn't blame anyone (like he could of), but instead swung into action to provide support, leadership, and direction to a city that was in chaos. To this day, Rudy Giuliani is commended for his efforts after that tragedy. He knew what needed to be done even though it wasn't easy, and made the tough decisions that the average person wasn't able to make.

Bad Example: The 2011 American Congress' "Super Committee". America is in the midst of a crisis as we speak, and the politicians "swung into action" during the debt ceiling crisis by forming a committee and kicking the can down the road. Sure enough, we are merely days away from the deadline set forth by congress itself with little to no progress on negotiations. Real leaders would step up, lay out the hard decisions that need to be made, and help the country move forward. Instead we get rhetoric and party politics. Ironically enough, the Government is likely going to bring the US down in the long term, which is exactly what the founding father's were trying to protect against in the constitution.


So What Do You Do If You Are In This Situation?

If you are the leader giving negative feedback, you need to remember the following:
-No matter what you do, you cannot avoid the crisis. You can mitigate the risk, but it's a matter of when, not if the crisis will hit.
-Your followers will not lose faith in you because the crisis happened, but they will lose faith in you if you don't take the challenge to fix the problem head on in a constructive manner.
-Your employees want to do the best they can for you. Remember that they are significantly more upset than you are because they feel like they let you down.
-Giving negative feedback is pointless unless you deliver it in a way that encourages change in the person's behavior.  Making them feel like crap won't get you anywhere. Your job as a boss is to make people feel good.
-If personal issues/feelings/emotions are top of mind vs. the feedback you have to give, reschedule the meeting. DON'T give feedback while you are mad/angry/upset.

If you are the employee/colleague/friend in the pickle that my friend is, you need to remember the following:
-Everyone has a crappy day. You are having a crappy day, but your leader was probably having a crappy day before you sat down together. Try to put yourself in their shoes and understand why they might be upset.
-Remember that you are a valued employee. This one feedback session went poorly, but 99% of the time you are getting positive feedback, so don't let 1 bad day crowd out the overall good trend.
-Sleep on your thoughts and feelings. When you wake up the next day, reflect write down how the meeting made you feel.
-In a couple of days, meet with your leader to discuss the feedback session. Acknowledge the feedback you received and what you need to go work on, but also address how the previous interaction made you feel. Be sure to focus on how YOU feel- people can't argue with your feelings.

If you are a solid leader, or work for a solid leader, then it's likely the leader will already have reflected on this interaction and will be prepared to admit their mistake. Of course, if you work for someone that is always behaving this way and doesn't want your feedback, you may want to consider a change of employers.

Has anyone ever been in situation like this? How did YOU deal with it?

Jumping Out Of A Plane Will Make You Crave Adventure

My "quarterly update" is on it's way, but I'll write and post that one later. For now, I really want to share my entire story on the skydiving adventure. 

On July 16th Nick, Mallory and I went all the way up to Barrie to jump out of a plane. We got ourselves super pumped up, filled out the forms, watched the safety video (which was filmed circa 1984), and we were lining up to get our gear. And then it happened... "how much do you weigh?". I shared my (large) number and then I was informed that there wasn't anyone small enough to jump tandem with me! Needless to say we were super disappointed, but the good news was that there was a national skydiving champion who usually works at the place who could jump with me a few weeks later. 

We left that day disappointed, but fixed the whole situation by making our own pub crawl route up and down Yonge/Eglington area. :)

In the mean time, my good friend Dustin from university asked me if he could come jump with us (apparently it's hard to find people to do these things!) and of course I said it was a great idea!

Finally- On August 6th, 2011, we did it! The best part is, as we were getting our stuff ready, Mallory decided that she couldn't live with herself if she didn't also jump. She was worried about peeing her pants, but with some encouragement we got her to gear up! Here's a shot of us before we went up in the air:

I'm not a very religious person, but I do believe in something larger than us. Floating through the air was an absolutely amazing experience and it was literally life changing. What would you be thinking to yourself if this was you?

For me- it was as simple as "Holy Crap! I'm actually falling through the sky! This is amazing!". Somehow it really did touch me deep down inside... almost like I realized there are so many things in this world I've never experienced, which makes that drive to experience them that much greater.

In the end I landed safely, made some amazing memories with some of my best friends, and wet my appetite for more adventure. 

Would I do it again? Absolutely.

Will I do it again? Probably not- I want to seek out something I've never done before.