Category Archives: Generation Y

Positive Self Talk Is Not Enough

Throughout your career there are many times when you will doubt yourself. Am I worthy of a promotion? Will my boss laugh at me when I ask for a pay rise? Can I really do this project that I have never done before? Will the audience really want to listen to what I have to say? Can I manage people who are older and more experienced than me?

For over 12 years I have coached leaders and developing leaders about the power of positive self talk. In simple terms, the words that you say to yourself in your head promote an image of success or failure in your mind. This image influences your performance.

Imagine that you were asked to do a presentation to senior management on a project that you had worked on. Throughout your university degree and career you have done your best to avoid presentations because you think that you ‘suck‘ at them.

In this example you are cornered. You can’t ‘run away‘ from this presentation. You have to do it. Imagine your self talk. “I’m going to be terrible doing this presentation. The senior management team are all going to know that I’m a terrible presenter. My future here is going to be damaged. Oh my god why did this have to happen to me!“.

No matter how much practice you did, if you maintained this type of self talk you will have created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Moments in to your presentation your mind will go blank. Then it will fill with the words, “See, I knew I wasn’t any good at presenting and now look at what has happened! My mind has gone blank and the senior management team now thinks that I am useless!

When your performance matches your self talk it re-enforces it which in turn re-enforces the image that you have of yourself either succeeding or failing. This can result in either a virtuous or vicious cycle that affects your performance.

The point of leverage is your self talk. You don’t have to create ‘fake‘ self talk. This is the type of self talk that even you don’t really believe. In the above example, ‘fake‘ self talk would be something like, “I’m going to be the best presenter the senior management team have ever experienced. I’m going to have them eating out of the palm of my hands.

You might have this type of self talk if you were already an accomplished presenter, but if you were coming off a low base then this type of self talk will be ‘fake’ and actually won’t help you (because you won’t really believe it!).

A more effective form of self talk is something like, “I’ll be the best presenter that I can be today. Period.” This type of self talk is believable and gives you the opportunity to see yourself as a ‘learner‘ rather than an expert. When you see yourself as a learner and you make a mistake it is far easier to recover than if you have used ‘fake‘ self talk.

However, self talk is not enough. It must be balanced with doing the right work and focus. The right work in this example relates to learning how to do an effective presentation and putting what you learn in to practice before you do your presentation to the senior management team. Focus refers to the skills and structure that support the action that you are taking. In this example your focus would relate to the core message that you want to convey, the key supporting arguments that you have for your message and the call to action that you want the senior management team to adopt.

These self talk principles can be applied to any situation.

If you aren’t doing the right work and don’t have focus, then all the positive self talk in the world will amount to nought.

How do you manage your self talk?

Gary Ryan enables talented professionals, their teams and organisations to move Beyond Being Good.

Dr Andrew O’Brien Interviews author Gary Ryan

Interviewed by Dr Andrew O’Brien, Gary Ryan, author of the new book What Really Matters For Young Professionals!, shares insights on each of the 15 practices featured in the book. This interview includes practical tips to enable you to accelerate your career.

Find out more information about the book at www.orsgthatmatter.com/WRMFYPBook

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Great service connects customers to your busines

Service quality pioneers Zeithaml, Berry and Parasuraman (1985) identified that service quality, reduced service problems and the capacity to promptly and appropriately resolve problems when they arise are significant factors that enhance customer retention, loyalty and referrals.

The challenge here is to do these three core service activities in a cost effective manner that either meets or exceeds the real expectations of the customer. As you will read in another article this does not mean providing a ‘5 Star’ level of service when the customer is expecting a ‘2 Star’ level. It means what it says – providing the level of service expected by the customer at a fair exchange for that service.

Think about it. You are already a potential expert on good service.

“What, I’m an expert?” you might say.

A potential expert.

You spend an enormous amount of your time as a customer, whether in a retail or hospitality context, or as a customer of other colleagues while at work. You know when you receive good service, just as you know when you receive bad service. You know what good service ‘feels like’. Therefore, you also know what poor service feels like. It then follows that good service that helps people to feel good helps them to stay connected to the organisation.

Please feel free to comment on this article.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

If ‘Everybody’s doing it’ does that make it okay?

The revelations of the systematic cheating by the Melbourne Storm Rugby League Club raises issues that extend far beyond Rugby League and the club itself. Assuming that the reported statement by the Melbourne Storm Chairman Dr Rob Moodie that Brian Waldron, the accused architect of the cheating strategy, told him that he had done what he had done because, “Everybody’s doing it!” is accurate, it raises an issue for all of us. (Please keep in mind that at the point in time of writing this article there is no evidence that Brian Waldron’s statement that everybody else is doing it is accurate.)

As appalling an excuse as this excuse sounds, my view is that many people do use this excuse for their behaviour. Whether it be taking illegal drugs, drinking too much alcohol, backstabbing another person behind their back, not telling your manager or direct reports the truth, people claim that their behaviour is okay because other people are doing it.

To me, leadership starts with yourself. If you can’t lead yourself, then you are going to struggle to lead other people. As we have seen with Brian Waldron many people would have considered him successful up until Thursday afternoon. After all he had guided the Melbourne Storm through a period of apparent on-field and off-field success. This story highlights that there are consequences for not taking a stand for doing what is right. It may be true that if Melbourne Storm had played according to the rules then they may not have won their (now lost) premierships. We will never know. We do know that their brand has been damaged and two major sponsors have already cancelled their arrangements with the club due to the clash of values that has come to the surface as a result of this exposure. If you have ever wondered whether there is a financial cost for lacking integrity in business, here is your proof!

This is why I always laugh when people talk about developing the ‘soft skills’ of management. To me, the so called ‘soft skills’, which include acting with integrity, are the hardest skills to master, which is why so many people struggle to properly develop them. The term ‘soft’ somehow suggests that they are easy. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

To me leadership starts with doing what is right from a personal point of view. This means that many people will never know when you have shown true leadership, because the vast amount of leadership takes place when no one is looking. I suspect that there are a lot of good people at the Melbourne Storm who possess high integrity. While this must be an extraordinarily difficult time for them I suspect that many will stay to rebuild the club’s integrity. In many ways, providing the people running the club at all levels honestly embrace the opportunity that they have before them, they could use this terrible event to create an organisation of the highest order. On many levels I hope that they can.

The final message for each of us from this story is to challenge ourselves not to do any behaviour just because we believe that other people are doing it. If our moral compass tells us that something is wrong, then we should listen and take action that is guided by that compass. It is far better to be able to look in the mirror and be happy with the quality of the person staring back at you, rather than seeing a smug person who is hoping they never get caught for doing what they know is wrong.

Please feel free to comment on this article.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Storm Damage – Why leading with integrity matters

While this article focusses upon the revelations of the systematic cheating by administrators within the Melbourne Storm Rugby League Club, the article is about organisational leadership and not sport.

The Melbourne Storm is a multi-million dollar business. It is in the business of elite-sport, television and entertainment. The deception not just a sporting deception, it is a business deception and legal investigations may result in charges being laid. Time will tell.
Today many thousands of people will wake up feeling betrayed and disgusted by the behaviour of a small number of people. Michelle Hunt from www.dreammakers.org suggests that leadership involves a serious meddling in other people’s lives. Many people will have their reputations tarnished simply because they work for the Melbourne Storm. If that doesn’t highlight the serious impact that poor leadership can have on other people, then I’m not sure what does!
On the morning of Thursday 22nd April 2010 I was compelled to add a comment to an article posted on the The Age website. I was unaware of the Melbourne Storm issue that was to unfold later in the day. The article was titled, “Congratulations you’re a manager….now what?“. I was drawn to the article because it mentioned a series of tips for first time managers. However, one of the sentences in the article’s introduction caused me some concern. The sentence was, “Is honesty always the best policy when managing up?”. I thought to myself, “Why wouldn’t it be?”. If you are honest when managing up and you got into trouble for that, then my view is your organisation is not worthy of your commitment and you have a choice to make.
The ‘war for talent’ still exists so if you have a strong and clear sense of your values and a good work ethic, then my view is that you have choice regarding where you work. Working for organisations that aren’t worthy of you commitment is therefore a choice.

To me preparation to become a leader starts well before a formal leadership role in an organisation is offered to you. It starts with becoming clear about your values and practicing them every day in all your life’s roles. Vision without an understanding of your values can lead to behaviour, such as systematic cheating, that is inconsistent with the vision. I don’t know the motives of the senior Melbourne Storm administrators for their behaviour. I do know that conscious development and mastery of your personal values takes time and is important for people to have mastery of their values before they commence formal leadership roles. It is my view that not enough people are clear about their values and how they are reflected in their behaviour at work. Are you clear about yours?

Please feel free to comment on this article.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

Gen Y – we are in safe hands!

Over the past few weeks I have been conducting programs for university students. Amongst other themes, these programs have included the identification and launching of community based projects. No less than 75 students have been involved in these workshops, and this week will see another 40 students involved in a similar program.

All these students are in their low 20s and gave up their holiday time to participate in the programs. For all of them, their academic performance will not be affected by not attending the programs. Yet they have not only turned up but have enthusiastically committed themselves to creating projects that will benefit their university and/or the broader community.

Sometimes I hear people of my generation (Generation X) or from the Baby Boomers complain about Generation Y. “They aren’t like us”, they bemoan. “They simply aren’t committed to anything other than themselves!” they complain.

Well, Gen Y aren’t like us. That is okay because they shouldn’t be. Otherwise we’d be stuck in some sort of time vortex. However, Gen Y are committed, very committed to helping to create a better world. Just like the older generations, there are sufficient numbers of committed Gen Ys who are there ‘having a crack’ at creating a better world. And they are doing it right now. I have the evidence of this because I am lucky enough to be able to work with them and the student projects that I have described above are practical examples of Gen Y hard at work.

So, Gen X and Baby Boomers, don’t worry, our future is in safe hands!

Please feel free to share your experiences of the positive work that Gen Y are doing to create a better world.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com

An interview with Gary Ryan, author of What Really Matters For Young Professionals!

Expertly interviewed by Dr Andrew O’Brien, Gary Ryan provides the background to the book and explains the key concepts that the book addresses.

For your convenience the interview has been split into small parts.

* What was the background to the book being created?

* What are ‘Employability Skills’?

* What is the background to the title of the book and who are Young Professionals?

* How can Young Professionals and the more senior staff they work with connect with you?

* How would you summarise the book?

* Why did you develop the Online Course?

* How might Young Professionals fund the Online Course?

For more information on the ebook and Online Course please follow this link.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com