…And How Are YOU Playing these days?

I came home to a voice mail from Ruthie, a really good friend. The message was short but it ended with Ruth painfully proclaiming, “Well another lousy golf game today.”

It is spring here in Seattle and Ruth is ready to get her golf game out of the winter closet and back on line. Her golfing buddies of the last couple of years weren’t available to play this year so she found herself looking for new ones.

Ruth is a professional food server in a high end restaurant here in Seattle. She’s the kind of woman you love to have serve you. She listens well and asks questions to clarify your preferences and just generally makes everything to make your dining experience enjoyable gets done.

Even though Ruth is in the public service sector of our economy I would not classify her as particularly “outgoing.”

In fact I’d say that Ruth is really a bit of an introvert. She re-fuels either by being alone or with a friend or two playing golf.

But in order for Ruth to play golf this year she was going to have to meet other golfers. She found herself having to join a ‘golfing club” — something way out of her comfort zone. Now she’s in the company of lots of other women during the time she’d really like to be recharging.

But worse, her relaxing game of golf just got really serious. Ruth has to determine her handicap. That means every stroke counts. Every one.

No longer is the game just for fun and a way to relax! Suddenly every stroke is being recorded and used to determine just how “good” her golf game is.

Ruth is now focused on the one thing she has absolutely no control over, the “results” of her golf game.

It all sounds a bit familiar doesn’t it? Now, what I know about golf you can put into a thimble and shake, but I asked Ruth if she’d play along with me for a minute to see if we could take some of the pressure off. Even if you’re not a golfer, I think you’ll be curious how we did this…

I asked her how she felt when she got up to hit the ball. “Tense. I know that every shot counts toward that handicap.” As Ruth talked a bit more she realized that she was also afraid she might not remember exactly how many shots she took so she was being hyper vigilant about writing it down. Bottom line Ruth was acutely aware of her score every time she picked up her club.

What was Ruth focused on? Results, results and more results.

I asked Ruth, “What do you think you need to remove to make your game more fun?”

She said that when she played with her old friends for the last couple of years there was no pressure on score. She cared and felt good when she played a “really good game” but there wasn’t the pressure to do so. If she didn’t need to be so vigilant about her score it might help.

In thinking about that, Ruth remembered a “stroke counter” she’d seen, a keychain-looking thing with beads on it that worked a bit like an abacus. If Ruth got one of these she wouldn’t need to remember her score until after the hole was finished. She would just move a bead over and at the end of the hole count them up.

Ruth and I have been friends for years. We share the belief that awareness is in and of itself curative. But often we work too hard at trying to fix something rather than trusting in watching ourselves as we move through the activity. In this case Ruth was trading the fun in her golf game for worry about the number of strokes it took to move the ball toward the hole.

What needed to change? Not her golf stroke but what she was feeling and thinking as she was taking her stroke. So along with the stroke counter Ruth decided to simply be aware of how much she was enjoying her game (or not!) as she played.

Can you see the similarities between golf and MLM? Can you relate to the feeling of struggle Ruth was working through? Maybe you’ve lost the ‘fun’ in your business lately too.

We spend so much energy worrying about our recruiting results or product sales (golf score) that we eat up the fun we can have if we just enjoyed ourselves in the process.

I think we can find simple tools to make our work easier too…

Do you have your elevator speech ready to go so you don’t have to “think” about what to say when someone says “What do you do?” Do you have a good referral card ready to hand someone to make your close easier or leave the road open for a call later? Are you ready with a comfortable way to ask for referrals?

These are easy tools much like Ruth’s stroke counter that will take the pressure off.

And here’s something you can do right this minute that will take almost no energy and every one of us can do it.

• Be aware of how you’re feeling when you’re working your business.

• Be aware of how you’re feeling when you’re doing the admin duties.

• How are you feeling when you’re talking to a team mate?

• How are you feeling when you’re talking to someone about your product?

• How are you feeling when you’re talking to a prospective business builder?

Then ask yourself what is it that is preventing you from having a better more enjoyable time while you do these things. Not only might the answers surprise you, but I’ll bet things start changing simply because you are aware.

Take a few minutes now and write some answers down won’t you? You might just find the fun in your business again.

As for Ruth, I’m not sure what will happen to her game, but I’ll let you know. And I’d love to know about any changes you see in yours.

In today’s Coach’s Corner, I’d like us to think about the difference between short and long-term thinking in our businesses. It’s worth exploring, especially if you feel you do a lot of rushing around…

As with everything at Savvy Sponsoring Strategies, feel free to use the coaching questions at the bottom with your team.

A Solution Versus An Answer

Definitions

Solution – the process of resolving a difficulty

Answer – something needed to address a question or problem

Comparisons

immediate vs. long-term

Example

Jeannie thought that the answer to her financial concerns was to increase the sales of her business. In fact, the solution was to double profitability through cutting costs, improving leadership, and letting go of unproductive team members.

Key Point

An answer is an immediate response to what appears to be the problem. A solution is an approach that goes to the source of the problem and prevents it from recurring.

Benefits

Look beyond temporary answers to permanent solutions.

Your Coach’s Corner Questions:

Are you in your business for the long haul? Even if you’re not sure, are you behaving as if you’re ‘just trying it out?’ How might you be wasting time and energy addressing
short-term problems?

What problem have you been fixing over and over again? What is the source of the problem and how might you solve it permanently?

The distinction “Solution versus Answer’ was originally created by Isabel Parlett and Thomas Leonard. Copyright 97, 98, 99, 00, 2001 CoachVille.

I find it very hard to follow the logic of war and make sense of the innocent people who die or who are compromised for the rest of their lives because of a political/religious fight. And although the news is heart breaking every day as so many are killed in Iraq and Afghanistan on both sides of the struggle, I’m also saddened to say that I had grown somewhat immune to the daily numbers of deaths. I didn’t realize that until the news about Virginia Tech and how it jolted me back to my senses. It seems harder when tragedy strikes closer to home.

It is such a bold reminder how quickly life can change – completely – for any of us in just a moment. Although I don’t think of myself as being a nationalist, maybe it was because it happened on my national soil that it literally shocked me back to my senses, to my feelings. I prefer to see the earth as a whole and we’re all connected and in this life together. But communities vary in size and in personal connection and what happened last Monday shook me to my core. My heart hurts.

If there is any “good” that comes out of such heartbreak for me, it is that people all over the world become people again and not statistics.

For any of you who are directly touched by the tragedies across the globe or at Virginia Tech we send our prayers, healing energy and white light to you and yours.

Peace
Jillian

In nearly every class I teach, someone sheepishly confesses: “I have call reluctance.”

When I ask, “What do you mean?” it turns out to be anything from making the initial call to doing a follow-up call. And as soon as I ask “anyone else” I hear, “me too,” or “so do I” from what sound like relieved voices.

It seems that although many of us have this overgrown bully of a telephone, we are not any more comfortable admitting it than we are picking it up!

Yesterday Carol was the brave student in my Wednesday How to Be a Savvy Sponsor program who said, that her phone felt like it weighed 500 pounds and was stuck to the receiver. And then there was the chorus of “me too.”

When I ask why the reluctance the answers differ.

Some say, “I’m not sure what to say.” For others it is fear about what the other person will say. For a lot of you the answer is simply, “I don’t know, I’m just afraid.” But sooner or later it becomes evident that bottom line:

We fear we’re not going to get our intended result. That we will once again fail.

In a business that takes lots of calls to build success this is the kiss of death. It typically means we are not willing to “keep at it” long enough to build a sustainable business.

This is a big statement but you can break through this mind set. It will take some work on your part (but what doesn’t) but it is doable. Very doable.

Peggy, a student in another of my Savvy Sponsor programs is beginning to break through just this issue. And Peggy had a bad case of “call reluctance.”

But Peggy’s call reluctance and her fear is being replaced by curiosity.

Strange huh? But it is.

And it’s not that she’s suddenly “sponsoring all over place” but her approach is
totally different.

Take a look at the triangle below (or pyramid if you prefer ). (The work triange is borrowed shamelessly from Tim Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Work.

In order for this exercise to help you exchange your fear for curiosity we need to agree that enjoyment, learning and results are interdependent. In other words for your results (or performance) to be any good on the job (any job) you also need to be enjoying what you do and learning as you
do it.

That said, where do you think the most emphasis is placed in this triangle? If we go back to Carol and Peggy’s experience and that of most of us, the answer is simple….it’s all
about results.

But do you really have control over your results? Not usually. Even if you’re not dealing with someone else (like making calls in your business) but are simply dealing with yourself – say in a sport – or maybe a better example would be yoga.

How much control do you really have to make yourself perfect in each of your yoga practices? Right not much and it’s
your body.

But you do have control over how much enjoyment you put into your yoga practice. And you have control over how you reflect over your practice to learn more about your body and yoga techniques.

By the way, what do you think would give you the best results in a yoga practice?

(a) To be all uptight about how well or how long you can hold a pose – (results)
(b) To enjoy every moment of the exercise and be curious to see what you’ve learned about how your body is changing
and feeling?

100 points for the right answer.

Now let’s think about picking up that 500 pound phone
of yours.

What do you think would happen if you:

(a) Found way to make every call more enjoyable –
every call…
(b) Took a moment after every call to check out how you felt while you were dialing and when you were talking.

Imagine “debriefing” yourself, that is, checking in to see what you could learn about yourself and maybe what you learned about the person you were talking with. Do this often enough and you just might find that instead of angst over each call you’ll begin to feel like Peggy and be curious about the
next call.

Like most things this is easier (and more fun) if it’s done with someone else. So get with your teams and debate away. I promise, you phone will start to drop pounds.

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