Newsletter 27 - 20 July 2005

Meet Productively, and Improve Performance! This is the newsletter for www.mindtools.com. You have received this newsletter because you have subscribed to our double opt-in newsletter. This newsletter is published by James Manktelow of Mind Tools Ltd, Hardwick House, Prospect Place, Swindon, SN1 3LJ, United Kingdom. To contact us, please email us from this page.

Contents: In This Issue... Listen, and Improve Performance "How to Lead" Preview Mind Tools Survey Effective Meetings Store & Special Offer A Final Note

In this issue, we wrap up our four-part series on effective listening. In this final article, we provide you with an effective listening “cheat sheet,” one you can keep handy for future reference. And we bundle all our listening articles together into a PDF which you can pass on to your colleagues, helping you and everyone on your team become more effective listeners.
We ask you to answer a quick and easy survey, which will give us the information we need to develop Mind Tools over the next year. As a way of encouraging you to do participate, we are offering three prizes of $100 of Amazon.com vouchers, to be awarded to randomly-selected survey respondents in our late-August newsletter. Click here to answer!

And, because of the excitement our soon-to-be-launched “How To Lead” program is already generating, we thought it fitting to examine at least some the information in this curriculum and provide you with a “behind-the-scenes” look, with a chance to learn more about one of the many tools it contains.

Speaking of tools, we take a look at a simple tool you can use to run effective meetings. We look at the simple, common-sense actions you can take to run a focused, effective and useful meeting, and avoid the dull, ineffectual meetings which can soak up so much of our time.

And in our store, we offer an exciting summer promotion for our subscribers: The opportunity to purchase our hugely-popular Make Time for Success! personal effectiveness course for its original launch price of $19.95. Currently, non-subscribers are paying $37 for this comprehensive program. This special discounted offer will only run until 26 July, so take us up on this offer now! (Of course, if you are a newsletter subscriber and have just purchased Make Time for Success! for $37, please let us know and we will gladly refund the difference.)

Please remember, we encourage our newsletter readers to share the information in these newsletters with others. We also hope you will let us know if there is any topic you would like to see covered, or any applicable service or product you would like to read more about. We remain committed to providing you with tools that help you reach new heights of success and to do this, we rely on your feedback.

Best wishes, and enjoy this issue!

James & Kellie

Teleclass Report:
"Design Your Life" Goal Setting Program
Rachel Thompson reports on July’s teleclass program

Participants in the "Design Your Life" teleclass on 5th July heard first-hand from Mind Tools' goal setting expert, Rod Moore, about his Goals Magic System for goal setting.

In introducing the program, he talked about how he came to research and develop the system as he created his own life plans, and explained how, through workshop, seminars and teleclasses, more than 10,000 people now benefit from using the system.

During the teleclass, he showed participants how to use this comprehensive life planning and goal-setting tool, and motivated them to get the very most out of it. He explained how to complete dream activation worksheets (used to think through the things participants want to have, do and be); showed how to create compelling visions of the "end states" they want to reach; and helped them set the goals needed to achieve these end states. And he demonstrated powerful visualization and language programming techniques for creating vivid, compelling goals and for motivating their achievement.

Inspired by Rod’s enthusiasm and real-life examples of successful people such as entrepreneur Richard Branson and author Mark Victor Hansen, participants in the program have gone on to design their own life goals and action plans. Following the class, here’s what two participants had to say:

“I really enjoyed participating in the goal setting teleclass last Tuesday. I am excited about the possibilities. The e-classes are a great follow-up and motivator to keep me on track with my goal planning.”

Tim Sox, South Carolina, USA

"I have to say I enjoyed yesterday's teleclass immensely! I'm looking forward to getting deep into the process of setting and accomplishing my goals! ...Thanks again for your input and wisdom... "

Elizabeth York, Hawaii, USA

Newsletter readers who missed the teleclass can experience "Design Your Life" in e-class format by visiting http://www.mindtools.com/rs/DesignYourLife. This program includes the audio (MP3) recording of July’s teleclass.

Listen, and Improve Your Performance!
The final in a four-part series on effective listening.
By Kellie Fowler

In the last issue of the Mind Tools newsletter, we shared with you information on the most common hurdles that stand in the way of effective listening and provided some common sense tools you can use to clear these hurdles and to become a more effective listener in no time at all.

In this, the final article of our four-part series on effective listening, we provide you with a “cheat sheet” that contains an outline covering tried and true suggestions for becoming a more effective listener.

As we conveyed earlier, please feel free to share this information with your colleagues, as the ultimate goal should be to educate the entire team on this topic so that everyone may become better listeners and even better communicators. To make this easier, we show you how to download the articles in PDF format, so that you can distribute it freely to co-workers and your team.

Stop Talking
We start by simply reviewing the basics, which start with the most common mistake made when striving to be a more effective listener. Simple as it may seem, the most important thing to remember is to stop talking.

Pay Attention to the Purpose and the Words
Once you do this, commit the time and attention needed to actually hear the sender’s message. In doing this, you may find it most useful to, whenever possible, establish your purpose for listening even before the communication begins. For instance, consider what you want your listening efforts to achieve. This can help ensure the results you (and the person you are listening to) can be obtained.

Eliminate Distractions
Next, concentrate on the message by eliminating internal and external distractions. For instance, if you are listening as a member of a group, work to ensure other members do not enter the meeting late, or exit early – both of which can distract the person speaking, as well as disrupt those listening. And, if you are having a one-on-one meeting with someone, work to eliminate distractions such as phone calls or interruptions from another colleague.

Take Notes Using Shorthand or Key Words Only
While listening, it’s perfectly acceptable to take notes. However, when taking notes, make sure to pay close attention, which includes making periodic eye contact, asking questions and paying attention to the non-verbal messages (body language, tone changes, etc.) being sent to you by the speaker. Even the best listener will find this difficult. Therefore, when taking notes, write down only key words or phrases, the things you will need to trigger the message instead of writing down complete thoughts or sentences, which can distract you from listening. (Obviously, remember to expand notes afterwards, while the meaning of these key phrases is still fresh in your mind).

Ask Questions
As we previously explained, questions are a vital component of effective listening. Instead of interrupting the speaker, try jotting down a word or two that will help you recall the questions that come to mind while you are listening. Again, this should not interrupt your listening; rather enhance it. This way, when the speaker has finished talking, you have what you need to ask relative, informed questions, which will help ensure you interpret the sender’s message correctly.

“Parroting” is a Must
Parroting, as we explained in detail in the last newsletter, is one of the strongest tools you can use to ensure you are an effective listener. You may remember, this includes repeating the message back to the sender. This allows the sender of the message to clarify any misunderstandings.

Follow-Up is Key
Once you are reasonably sure you have heard the message and understand the message sender’s intent, you will undoubtedly find it beneficial to follow-up with a written clarification, one that serves to highlight the most important parts of the message, such as deadlines, project goals, costs, concerns, etc. This can be done in a quick email or memo. When doing this, it is most productive to request a reply. This is just one additional step you can take to ensure you heard the message and interpreted it correctly.

Remain Flexible and Observant (before, during and after communication process)
Most importantly, when working to optimize your listening skills, remain flexible and observant. Work to understand the reason the communication is taking place (considering the objectives of the sender, taking into account any mental, emotional, physical or even environmental or cultural factors that may influence this). Observe the sender and be flexible and open to his or her needs. This may require agreeing on a meeting place that is quiet, or perhaps even neutral (not one of your personal office spaces, but a meeting or conference room) or even on a meeting time outside of the times you normally would attend meetings. For instance, if you know the sender of the message is at his or her best in the morning, consider adjusting your schedule ever so slightly to better accommodate this individual preference.

By taking extra steps such as this, you put the message sender at ease, which will help alleviate any confusion and allow you to hear loud and clear everything the sender is working to convey.

Balance Ensures Effective Listening Success
As always, balance is the key to effective listening. The conversation between the message sender and the message receiver is a delicate dance and, even though your goal may be to simply hear the message, it requires give and take from both parties, from the beginning stages of the communication process down to the end, or to the last word.

Click here to download all four effective listening articles, packaged into PDF format for easy reference. And please feel free to email this PDF to friends, co-workers, and anyone who might be interested. (You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your PC to open this. If you don't have it installed, visit http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html for the free download.)

Coming Soon:
“How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You”

Written by Mind Tools founder James Manktelow, world-renowned leadership expert Felix Brodbeck and knowledge transfer specialist Namita Anand, we hope that you will find that Mind Tools’ “How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You” is one of the most practical, useful and accessible resources on leadership available today.

This collaborative effort represents years of experiences and successes in this field, and it helps readers uncover the leadership ability lying latent within them. Not only does it help readers understand leadership, it helps them take stock their own leadership strengths and weaknesses, showing them how to manage weaknesses and make the most of their strengths. It then moves on, showing them how to build an inspiring vision of the future, motivate their teams with a passion to achieve, turn vision into reality, and help themselves and their teams become the very best they can be.

Set to be released on 14 September, “How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You” introduces readers to the modern view of leadership, which is that through patience, persistence and hard work, anyone can become an effective leader.

The premise of this comprehensive course is based on the principle that leadership is a decision and not a position. Now, take a look around your workplace. Surely you have witnessed situations where the person in charge did not excel in a leadership role. Similarly, you have undoubtedly witnessed individuals without any defined authority, who casually slip into a leadership role.

Take a minute to ponder this. Think about the reasons you think that boss did not function as an effective leader. And, why was the person without any formal authority able to take over the role of leader?

If the boss really wanted to lead, could he or she not have become an effective leader? And if the leader did not want to lead, could he or she have actually assumed leadership? The answer is quite simple in most cases, which brings us to the conclusion that the desire to lead is the most necessary pre-condition to become a leader.

Once you decide you want to lead, you don’t have to wait for anyone else to come along and appoint you leader. Instead, you just have to go out there and take the leadership challenge. Now, this is not to say that desire is enough to convert you into a leader. On the contrary, becoming a respected, effective leader is not easy: Specific skills have to be developed and enhanced and an immense amount of discipline and focus is required.

However, if you want it badly enough and are prepared to work hard enough, you can. And the tools within “How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You” show you how.

In the next issue of the Mind Tools newsletter, we discuss specific tools in “How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You” with Felix Brodbeck, co-author of the course and Professor of Organizational and Social Psychology, Head of Department, Work & Organizational Psychology, and Director of the Aston Centre for Leadership Excellence (ACLE) at Aston Business School, UK. Felix is also a member of the coordination team of GLOBE (Global Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness, Wharton School of Management), a 62 nations research program founded in 1994 and an acclaimed author on the subject of leadership.

Mind Tools Development Survey

As we mentioned in our introduction, we’re currently thinking through how we’re going to develop Mind Tools over the next year. What we need for this is a good understanding of your current experience of what we do, and how you would like us to develop in the future.

Please click here to answer our survey: It should take no more than 5 minutes to complete.

As a “thank you” for participating, we are offering three prizes of $100 of Amazon.com vouchers, which will be awarded to randomly-selected survey respondents in our late-August newsletter. Click here, answer the survey and qualify for this!

And please believe that we really do listen: Our information on communication skills, personal effectiveness and leadership is only here because readers asked for it in previous surveys. And upcoming Mind Tools courses on career development, relaxation techniques and team building are only being worked on because newsletter readers wanted to know more about these essential skills areas.

Tools Reviewed: Running Effective Meetings

While meetings are wonderful tools for generating ideas, expanding on thoughts and managing group activity, this face-to-face contact with team members and colleagues can easily fail without adequate preparation and leadership.

The Importance of Preparation
To ensure everyone involved has the opportunity to provide their input, start your meeting off on the right foot by designating a meeting time that allows all participants the time needed to adequately prepare.

Once a meeting time and place has been designated, make yourself available for questions that may arise as participants prepare for the meeting. If you are the meeting leader, make a meeting agenda, complete with detailed notes. In these notes, outline the goal and proposed structure of the meeting, and share this with the participants. This will allow all involved to prepare and to come to the meeting ready to work together to meet the goal(s) at hand.

The success of the meeting hinges on the skills displayed by the meeting leader. To ensure the meeting is successful, the leader should:

• Generate an agenda to all involved in the meeting
• Start the discussion and encourage active participation
• Work to keep the meeting at a comfortable pace – not moving too fast or too slow
• Summarize the discussion and the recommendations at the end of each logical section
• Circulate minutes to all participants

While these tips will help ensure your meeting is productive and well-received, there are other important areas that need to be touched on to make sure your meeting and negotiation skills are fine-tuned and ready to take to the boardroom.

Managing a Meeting
Choosing the right participants is key to the success of any meeting. Make sure all participants can contribute and choose good decision-makes and problem-solvers. Try to keep the number of participants to a maximum of 12, and preferably as few as 6 or 7 people. Make sure the people with the necessary information for the items listed in the meeting agenda are the ones that are invited.

If you are the leader, work diligently to ensure everyone’s thoughts and ideas are heard by guiding the meeting so that there is a free flow of debate with no individual dominating and no extensive discussions between two people. As time dwindles for each item on the distributed agenda, you may find it useful to stop the discussion, then quickly summarize the debate on that agenda item and move on the next item on the agenda.

When an agenda item is resolved or action is agreed upon, make it clear who in the meeting will be responsible for this. In an effort to bypass confusion and misunderstandings, summarize the action to be taken and include this in the meeting’s minutes.

Issuing Minutes
Minutes record the decisions of the meeting and the actions agreed. They provide a record of the meeting and, importantly, they provide a review document for use at the next meeting so that progress can be measured - this makes them a useful disciplining technique as individuals' performance and non-performance of agreed actions is given high visibility.

The style of the minutes issued depends on the circumstances - in situations of critical importance and where the record is important, then you may need to take detailed minutes. Where this is not the case, then minutes can be simple lists of decisions made and of actions to be taken (with the responsible person identified). Generally, they should be as short as possible as long as all key information is shown - this makes them quick and easy to prepare and digest.

It is always impressive if the leader of a meeting issues minutes within 24 hours of the end of the meeting. And it's even better if they are issued on the same day.

Visit http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/RunningMeetings.htm for more on running effective meetings, and http://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/PresentationPlanningChecklist.htm for more on planning for a presentation.

The Mind Tools Store:

Newsletter Subscriber 7-Day Special Offer!

We’re pleased to offer an exciting July promotion to newsletter subscribers: The opportunity to purchase our hugely-popular Make Time for Success! personal effectiveness course, for its original launch price of $19.95.

Make Time for Success! teaches 39 essential time management and personal productivity techniques, which help you beat work overload, and become focused and highly effective in your career.

Currently, non-subscribers are paying $37 for this comprehensive program. This special discounted offer will run for 7 days only (until 25 July), so click here to take us up on this offer now!

(Of course, if you are a newsletter subscriber and have just purchased Make Time for Success! for $37, please let us know and we will gladly refund the difference.)

Also From Mind Tools:

• The Mind Tools E-book: All of the articles on the Mind Tools website in one convenient, easily-downloadable, easily-printable PDF file. We have excluded advertising to enhance clarity and have formatted sections to be easy to read, print and use. More >>
  
  
• Mind Tools Relaxation MP3s: Download 15-minutes of intense relaxation in MP3 format with our relaxation MP3s. Put stress behind you, and face the rest of your day with renewed energy and enthusiasm. More >>
  
  
• Personal Coaching from Career Excellence Professionals: Find career and life direction, bring your job under control, build self-confidence and put yourself on the path to long term success with a Mind Tools coach. Our coaches give you the focused personal coaching you need to make the very most of your career and life. More >>
  
  
• Design Your Life E-Class: This e-class gives you the resources and recordings from our “Design Your Life” life planning and goal setting teleclass, in a format that’s easy to use at a time and in a place that suits you. More >>
  
  
• The Stress Management Masterclass: This e-book shows you how to tackle the deep structural problems that cause stress in your working life. It introduces you to relaxation techniques, shows you how to win control of your job and career, cope with politics and manage stress effectively. More >>

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A Final Note From James

If you participated in our recent Design Your Life teleclass, I look forward to hearing your thoughts and sincerely hope you will take a minute to complete the feedback form we’ve just emailed to you. This will help us “grow” this exciting program. As always, our intent is to provide you with tools you both want and need to achieve success and I remain eager to know if you share our enthusiasm for this program and for the teleclass format in general.

As we mentioned earlier, in the next newsletter, we'll talk to Felix Brodbeck, co-author of How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You. We’ll find out more about what Felix considers to be the “nuts and bolts” of leadership and explore the areas of this course he thinks are most helpful.

We will also look at stress management tools and provide our newsletter readers with some “breaking news” about our Stress Management website and the Stress Management Masterclass, both of which are currently undergoing “facelifts” to keep material fresh and up-to-date.

Best wishes, and until next time!

James & Kellie

James Manktelow & Kellie Fowler

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