Key Concept ~ I had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Patricia Raskin, host of syndicated Positive Business Show, earlier last week. I must tell you, it was one of the most compelling interviews I’ve done! You’re welcome to listen to the podcast below:
© 2012, Terry Murray.
© 2012, Patricia Raskin, The Positive Business Show™.
Filed under Leadership, Media & Interviews
For Immediate Release
Entrepreneur, Author, and Business Strategy Architect Terry Murray will be appearing live on Patricia Raskin’s nationally syndicated, call-in radio program, Positive Business™, Friday, July 13th at 3:00 p.m., E.D.T.
Terry Murray, author of “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart & Spirit For Breakthrough Business Success”, is scheduled for a live interview with renowned radio talk show host Patricia Raskin, Friday, July 13th, at 3:00 p.m., E.D.T.
“I’ve done many radio interviews, but this will be the first live show with callers participating in the conversation.” commented Mr. Murray. ”It should be a lot of fun!”
Terry’s book provides a step-by-step approach for creating and sustaining breakthrough performance in today’s volatile world. Looking beyond conventional wisdom, Terry re-examines his entrepreneurial experiences to examine the human elements that consistently drive creativity, innovation and success. The book was recently cited in the March, 2012 edition of the academic Journal For Economic Literature.
“We’re well past the Industrial Age, and in fact we’ve moved beyond the Information Age. We now live in the Idea Age,” adds Terry. ”In today’s global economy, intellectual property is the driver of value creation. The source of commercially viable ideas are people. Highly engaged, talented, passionate people. Human beings, and our remarkably creative and adaptive abilities, are the raw material for business in the 21st century. The traditional, Industrial Age approach to leadership, strategy and organizational culture must also evolve in parallel with this evolutionary shift.”
Listeners are welcome to call into the show at (888) 345-0790. The program is syndicated throughout the United States and will stream live at http://www.790business.com.
Ms. Raskin has interviewed more nearly 2,000 guests on her show. Her past guests include such luminaries as Dr. Mehmet Oz, Maya Angelou, Gay Hendricks, Debbie Ford and Dr. Andrew Weil. In addition, she has written over 700 newspaper articles and produced and hosted 500 television programs and documentaries.
A podcast of the program will be posted on Terry’s blog site shortly after airing.
© 2012, Performance Transformation, LLC™.
Filed under Associate Engagement, Leadership, Media & Interviews
Key Concept ~ Here’s part two of a series of excerpts from my book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur”, exploring a mindful approach to cultivating the right organizational culture for today’s Idea Economy.
~ Reaping What Has Been Sown
Businesses have a difficult time addressing things they cannot measure, yet there are real costs associated with these veiled issues. The greatest hidden cost that erodes organizational performance is employee disengagement. Gallup®, Inc. has been measuring employee engagement levels since the beginning of the decade and reports on these surveys in the Gallup Management Journal. The study indicates 29% of employees in America are engaged (meaning they work with passion, energy, and are emotionally connected to their organization), 56% of employees are not engaged (meaning they are physically present but do not work with passion or energy), and 15% are actively disengaged (meaning they actually are working at cross purpose with their fellow associates). The study estimates the annual, aggregate cost of employee disengagement is anywhere between $237 and $270 billion in lost productivity.
A recent study published in the Harvard Business Review® indicates that during what is now termed The Great Recession the percentage of actively disengaged employees has skyrocketed to 21%!
If we extrapolate these findings into a small business environment (even using the conservative numbers from Gallop), say one with twenty employees and payroll of $1 million, the impact of employee engagement becomes strikingly tangible.
In this scenario we can anticipate six employees are activity engaged, eleven are sleepwalking through their day, and three are actively working to undermine the company’s mission. If we give the sleepwalkers the benefit of the doubt, that they’re perhaps contributing at 50% of their capabilities, we can assume that at a minimum, $425,000 of our million dollar payroll is providing no return on investment whatsoever. This doesn’t take into account the value the actively disengaged employees are actually destroying through their efforts beyond the lost wages we are paying them. Conversely, we are only enjoying a full return on investment on thirty percent of our annual payroll through our associates that are actively and passionately engaged with the mission!
Thankfully, the intentions and congruent actions of authentic leadership can re-engage many of the sleepwalkers by cultivating an atmosphere of trust and inclusion.
The fifteen to twenty-one percent that are working to undermine their fellow associates simply need to go. Their participation in the enterprise frustrates passionate associates and serves to foment further disengagement with the sleepwalkers. This is a great example of addition through subtraction.
Creating a shift in culture to one of trust and engagement begins with authenticity; the suspension of managerial ego in the daily interaction of the business. Altruistic intentions combined with congruent actions resonates positive energy and engages associates to be fully present and contributory. A genuine concern for the well being of associates that is consistently expressed will ignite the collective consciousness of a fully present team.
You’d be surprised how quickly leadership can turn around associate disengagement. In the 1990’s I was working as the Vice President of International Marketing for a major medical device company. My responsibilities brought me into close and frequent contact with the European managing directors for each country we operated in throughout the continent. Moral was very low as the corporation historically had operated as a classic U.S. exporter into the region. Products, services, pricing, and business methods were not tailored for the individual cultures and markets. Everything was developed and dictated from the U.S. corporate office. This situation was exacerbated by a veritable turnstile of senior management being assigned from the states that was not sensitive to the various cultural and operational nuances that existed country to country and quite often within the nation states themselves.
The first thing I did as the new Vice President was to begin listening to the concerns of the managing directors and repositioning our portfolio to more closely align with their particular business needs. This quickly escalated into my advocating with corporate the need to begin manufacturing products in Europe for Europeans and to expand our services within each market. The European associates began to witness my actions matching my words and a new found faith in the future of the organization began to emerge. For the first time in years the European associates began to feel the company aligning with their interests, markets, and corresponding opportunities for career success.
Within a few short months I found myself promoted to Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Not only was I faced with the challenge of relating to a wide spectrum of cultural perspectives but I was also twenty years younger than all of my direct reports (European hierarchies tend to move much slower than U.S. companies when it comes to promotions). With my new level of authority I began empowering the managing directors to conduct business in the manner that best suited their opportunities and constraints. I knew I had secured their trust when my managing director for Eastern Europe and the Middle East, Thanassis Bouzabardis, spoke up during a business dinner in Madrid with all of the managing directors, “Terry, I think I can speak for all of the directors when I tell you we don’t view you as another American coming here to manage our business…we view you as a fellow European.”
To this day I feel that was one of the greatest complements I’ve ever received regarding my leadership style and abilities. By listening, expressing authentic empathy for their environments, and acting congruently I began shifting the culture of the business from a place of poor morale to re-engaging the European associates. All of this took place within six short months. The European team also increased sales by more than $16 million in that same timeframe!
Early stage companies have the advantage of starting with a relatively blank slate. Enlightened hiring practices will attract enlightened talent. Authentic leadership will attract authenticity. Sharing the Vision during the hiring process will help in this regard as will following one’s intuition.
The compensation plan offered to new hires can also weed out people simply looking for immediate gratification versus people in search of being a part of something more meaningful and of greater significance in their lives. The compensation package can reveal if a person is looking for remuneration based solely on their perceived individual value or if they are willing to work for a reasonable, competitive wage buoyed by incentives derived through team value creation and the tangible contribution of achieving shared goals.
The courage of visionary conviction will not miss out on what may appear to be the minimum talent threshold necessary for performance. It will, in fact, reveal human beings capable of continuous growth and cooperation. Fully engaged, eclectically talented associates, build the creative bandwidth necessary for adaptive problem solving along the way.
Existing organizations are faced with a more challenging task in the cultivation of positive, collective consciousness. It cannot be achieved overnight, but through the application of authenticity and consistent, conscious leadership it can happen in a surprisingly short period of time as my experience in Europe proved. The expression of empathy combined with the vibrant cultivation of trust can rehabilitate the most disengaged workforce in a few short months.
Supported by honest accountability, starting with self-accountability, a conscious leader will begin to engage associates that have developed conditioned behaviors of self-preservation that dilute creative contribution. The onus is on the leader to reach out and begin to display and communicate their dedication to the well being of each individual on the team. Leadership that chooses to serve the team as a primary approach towards serving the business.
to be continued…
© 2011-2012, Performance Transformation, LLC™.
Filed under Associate Engagement, Customer Engagement, Leadership
Key Concept ~ Congratulations! You’ve reached sufficient traction in your burgeoning business to hire your first field sales team. You know it’s an expensive move, but a necessary step in the scaling of your business. But are you sure of what the real costs are of deploying field sales teams? Here are some insights from a project I did a few years ago that shed some well needed light on field sales, and the critical nature of mindfully leading your investment.
Several years ago, I was consulting on business strategy with a custom sales company called SalesForce4Hire®, LLC. I worked with them to help develop something we called Sales Prototyping®. Every company in the world prototypes a product before bringing it into production and the market, but rarely, if ever, did we witness companies prototyping their sales process. The company’s focus is primarily in the medical device space, so a typical sales launch from a traditional company would put upwards of 28 sales reps in the field to launch a new device. This provides ample coverage of the key population centers, and associated physicians and hospitals, around the country. This also represents an investment of around $5 million per year!
As we were refining our strategy, positioning and value proposition, I dug into the research to try to determine the true, albeit hidden cost, of field sales personnel in the industry. As I waded through the research, I was astonished at the inefficiencies that exists in many sales organizations. Two things immediately jumped off the pages of the research. First, industrial, business-to-business sales representatives take a lot of office days. With technology being what it is today, this, to me at least, seemed excessive. The second issue was how much time was wasted in sales meetings. Again, with the online meeting capabilities combined with the mobility enabled by smart phones and tablets, this seemed excessive. Between the two, 98 days a year are spent out of the field! That’s twenty work weeks out of the year or 40% of the available selling days per annum (including a two week vacation, but not including holidays). Forty percent of the company’s investment of $5 million for their sales team is $2 million!
So out of the 132 remaining sales days, how much time do field sales representatives actually spend in face-to-face selling time? According to the research, the typical field sales rep is spending somewhere between two and three hours a day actually selling to prospects (and let’s hope they’re true prospects). This is primarily due to poor planning resulting in excessive windshield time. You’d think with the 78 days of office time taken, sales reps would be more efficient once they got their butts out the door. What we’re left with is somewhere between 33 and 50, eight hour days, of face-to-face selling time for a typical field deployed, industrial sales representative, per annum.
Now, let’s get down to the brass tacks of the real cost of field sales. I’m going to use a fully burdened, annual cost per sales rep of $100,000 per year (this is conservative in many industries, as the annual cost can easily run upwards of $120,000 to $140,000 per year, depending on the geography and industry). At the end of the day, the cost of face-to-face selling time for many companies is running somewhere between $250 and $380 per selling hour. And you thought your attorney was expensive!
I realize a portion of this burdened expense is performance based, and thus variable, but it is critical, especially for a first time entrepreneur, to fully understand the significance of the investment they’re making in field sales professionals. Please keep in mind, these figures reflect fully engaged sales professionals. Rarely have I met a sales person that wasn’t ready to jump ship for greener pastures, and the employee disengagement numbers are simply dismal today (for a detailed analysis on the misalignment of employees today, please visit Igniting Creativity in Business).
The point we brought to the surface through this investigation is you had better have a really solid sales launch plan in place before you decide to deploy a field sales team. We were also able to make a strong case for our value proposition. Without a finely honed, well targeted plan, you may find your sales acquisition costs are exceeding your profitability.
© 2012, Terry Murray.
SaleForce4Hire and Sales Prototyping are registered trademarks and servicemarks of McGeever©, LLC.
Filed under Sales
Key Concept ~ I came across an article today in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Small Firms’ Big Customers Are Slow To Pay“. Hunting the great whale customer is always tempting to a small firm, but keep in mind the lessons of Jonah and Captain Ahab.
If you’re running a small, entrepreneurial firm, you’ll want to read this article. The companies that comprise the S&P 500 recent crossed the $1 trillion dollar threshold in cash reserves. One trillion dollars in reserves? Some of these CEOs should be featured on “Horders”. These are many of the same companies that are belly-aching over the fact they cannot find “qualified” candidates, want some other organization to train their talent base, have squeezed their current employees to the breaking point, and are usurping our democracy through hidden, unlimited contributions to PACs. Now they’re squeezing their small vendors to fatten their reserves as well.
This is yet another effect of the leadership crisis in corporate America. No sense of social responsibility, no moral compass, just greed, avarice, and selfish behavior at the highest level. The average CEO pay for larger organizations just passed $10 million per year. I wonder how these CEOs would behave if they didn’t get their paycheck until 180 days (or over 400 days, as one small vender commented in the article) after it was agreed to be paid?
We’ve gather more than a dozen research reports over the past two years that points to the depth of the leadership crisis and resulting employee disengagement crisis that all clearly identify the depths of this situation. If you’re so inclined, you’re welcome to thumb through the pages of http://ignitingcreativityinbusiness.com where we’ve posted the highlights in slides from these market studies along with the sources.
The vision that Adam Smith had for capitalism, which freed humankind from the servitude of the feudal and mercantile guild system, has been corrupted to the point that we’re now entering an age of corporate feudalism. It’s a shame; and it in no way reflects the values and beliefs this great country was founded upon. When is enough, enough?
© 2012, Terry Murray.
Filed under Random Thoughts
The need for creative thinking has moved well out of R&D and marketing departments. The speed and dynamics of today’s economic world require adaptive solutions to unprecedented challenges at every touch point within the organization. I recently had the opportunity to discuss how to go about cultivating the type of organizational agility successful companies require in the 21st century with Walt Shaw on the CBS Radio Network.
You’re welcome to listen to the interview on the player below:
© 2012, Terry Murray.
© 2012, CBS Radio Network.
Key Concept ~ Continuing our series on the three key elements for accelerating successful startups, here’s part two of three of excerpts from my book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart & Spirit For Breakthrough Business Success”, which was cited in the March edition of the academic Journal For Economic Literature for its contribution to thought leadership and the field of business management. It discusses enlightened strategic planning.
When I was a young executive working in Corporate America, I began to experience something that, at the time, I couldn’t quite explain. As I was given responsibility to create or turn around business units, I would always start by sitting down with my front-line managers and field associates to discuss where we were, what internal and external challenges were before us, and solicit their opinions as to what we should do to move the business forward. I felt strongly that by taking an inclusive approach I would begin to gain their trust and best serve the interests of the company by embracing the experience and day-to-day knowledge of what was really happening in the trenches. We would then embark on the strategic planning process during which time we would openly challenge our assumptions in lively discourse and stretch the boundaries of what was traditionally perceived to be possible. From this process a momentum would emerge, more rapidly and more powerfully than what any of us could have imagined!
I had come to appreciate that the strategic planning process was an iterative one, and the questions that we asked of ourselves were often more important than the answers we would eventually discover. Upon reaching agreement on the plan of action, I would travel to the field to communicate the vision and strategy that we had developed, again drawing the associates into a lively conversation of what was and wasn’t working. I emphasized we had a shared responsibility to ensure we were taking care of our customers and embracing the spirit of our strategic plan. I would continuously remind everyone that the strategic plan was a living document, it was not etched in stone, and everyone was empowered to help calibrate the implementation of the plan moving forward.
The one constant that I began to observe surprised me. At the point in time that we had perhaps fifty to sixty percent of our strategies implemented we would be on track to achieve our objectives! It seemed illogical to me at first. How could we be tracking 100% to plan when we were only half way through the implementation and execution of our strategies? What I know now is that I was observing the power of collective intention, the cumulative energy that accelerated the manifestation of our vision! This energy was a direct result of the culture we had co-created. A culture that was kindled by the intention and creative visualization that was expressed through the strategic planning process (we will explore this further in step-by-step detail in Chapter Seven).
The concept of employing creative visualization as the first step in manifesting a new reality is not new. Our intention helps us create a wondrous reality that we, as spiritual beings, are meant to enjoy. On the surface it may sound a bit New Age to some people, a bit beyond the pale of what we, as Westerners, consider realistic.
Yet haven’t we all observed a similar occurrence that is very common in athletics? We have all heard a broadcaster covering a football or basketball game suddenly exclaim how one of the teams has all the momentum. We cannot see the force behind the momentum yet we can observe its effects on the game. Suddenly, through a shift in attitude and energy everything seems to fall into place for one of the teams. In a matter of a few plays, one team is more dynamic than the other, and their execution becomes so well orchestrated the other team almost looks as if they are standing still trying to defend them. A quarterback or point guard is suddenly in the zone, their timing is in perfect alignment with their teammates, they’re somehow anticipating the defense…they just can’t miss. The announcer exclaims, “They’re really feeling it now!” It is the exact same phenomena I was witnessing in business.
Athletics offer us a wonderful example of presence, which is a core attribute of conscious leadership, of being totally present in the moment, in the now. An Olympic gymnast is not thinking about all the details of a routine as they perform. A golfer cannot be thinking about the nuances of mechanics during his or her swing. They quiet their minds and enter into a near meditative state as they compete. They are conscious of their performance but not thinking about their performance. Athletes, when at the top of their game anticipate and act rather than think and react.
This phenomena is supported by hard science. When we are fully engaged and enjoying what we are doing we enter what renowned researcher and psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi refers to as flow. Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s research looked into the psychological state of a wide variety of professionals operating at peak performance. When they were fully engaged, focused, and enjoying their endeavor, their biochemistry reflected an increase in cortisol (part of the hypothalamic/pituitary/adrenal or HPA axis in our brains) which brought them to a place in which they were taking full advantage of their cognitive and physical abilities. If the HPA axis shot past this optimal point due to stress, adrenaline and cortisol levels continued to rise and performance rapidly diminished. His work proved that a person’s emotional state is a governing factor in cognitive and physical performance.
When a group of athletes are engaging in team competition (and doing it well) they manifest a cumulative energy. Their combined intention, their collective consciousness, elevates the team to an entirely new level of performance. We can achieve the same thing in business; fore it is not simply physical or mental execution but the collective consciousness of our team that generates this remarkable energy. The key is in creating a strategic plan and dynamic culture that empowers our associates to be present in the moment, to concentrate on creating and delivering value to our customers now, rather than being consumed with what may come tomorrow or concerned about what wasn’t done yesterday.
Strategic planning as a form of creative visualization that also enables presence may raise the question, “How are you in the moment when you are looking one, three, or five years ahead?” It is a logical question. Let me use an analogy to help explain this:
Let’s envision a business, just for a moment, as a tribe of hunters and gatherers living ten thousand years ago. As the leaders of the tribe, we are highly aware of our environment. As time passes, we begin to observe a change in the climate; with each passing year it is getting colder much earlier in the year and staying cold much longer into the spring. We observe the birds and other animals beginning to migrate south much earlier than what we have historically observed and notice they are also returning later in the spring. From our observations, from our awareness, we develop a Vision that these elongated winters may be less severe in the South. It stands to reason that if the migrating animals are leaving earlier and staying longer food supplies are most likely more abundant as well.
We establish a Goal of migrating south to ensure the tribe will continue to prosper. In order to do so, we must cross a large mountain range before the early autumn snows begin and block the high passes. We now have an Objective that is critical to the success of achieving our Goal; we must clear the high passes before the snow flies or we could become stranded and perish.
There are many passes we can choose from, some representing a more arduous climb, but are more direct, and others that offer a gentle slope, yet will take longer. We must now decide upon our Strategies. The amount of risk we are willing to incur and how we intend to balance the risk of each approach with the risk of failing to reach the passes before the snows begin.
Our Strategies reflect the constraints we have identified through a thorough Self-Assessment. We have examined our strengths and weaknesses. How many children and elders must survive this trek? Do we have ample supplies for the journey? Who are our harbingers for this journey that can blaze the trail for the remainder of the tribe? Have we carefully evaluated the landscape and challenged our assumptions of the risks involved? What is the Competitive Landscape; are there hostile tribes living along the way that may wish us harm? Might there be opportunities to partner with other tribes? Have we properly scouted our options and truly know what we face? Have we challenged our assumptions and appreciate the fact we still don’t know what we don’t know?
At the end of all this discussion and evaluation we realize that the only way we can manifest our Vision (abundance for the tribe) and achieve our Goal (to be in the South), and to secure our Objective (navigate the mountain passes before the autumn snow), is to walk south every day one step at a time, regardless of the Strategic path we have chosen. Our Tactics…for each of us, once the decision has been made to take the journey, must simply focus on taking one step at a time in the moment.
Much like the tribal elders in this analogy, business leaders have the responsibility of formulating a clear and concise vision, communicate it effectively so that others can share in it, and to discern the best path for the organization to follow through the mature evaluation of risks and rewards. In doing so, we can, in combination with a healthy, vibrant, and trusting culture, enable associates to concentrate on each step they are taking in the moment, to be truly present, to execute on the plan now and make it a reality for us all.
© 2012, Terry Murray.
Filed under Strategic Planning
Terry Murray, founder and Managing Partner of Performance Transformation, LLC™, discusses Equine Facilitated Leadership Development and the lessons in leadership he was taught during his service in U.S. Naval Intelligence, in today’s print edition of The Investors Business Daily. You can access the press release and full article from the Investors Business Daily by visiting Leadership Development and Team Building.
© 2012, Performance Transformation, LLC™.
Filed under Leadership
Key Concept ~ Most entrepreneurs share a common attribute; a burning sense of urgency. While intrinsic motivation is critical for someone striking out on their own or stepping up to launch and lead a startup business, some balance is required as well. Entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint, and how we regulate our own energy, focus and activities has a bearing on long-term success.
If you’re an entrepreneur you’re probably fairly familiar with eighty to one hundred hour work weeks, juggling multiple priorities concurrently, and literally living your business at times. If our own fire in the belly isn’t enough motivation, the constrained resources, limited bandwidth, competing priorities, and competitive pressures of leading a startup quickly remind us…there’s always work to be done. The question is, what happens to our productivity, our ability to creatively leverage our vision, business acumen and experience for the benefit of the business, when we simply find ourselves running too hard?
We all do it at times. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a habitual offender. It started in college. I launch my first company my junior year at business school and would commonly work sixty hours a week while going to college full time. By my second semester I scheduled all of my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which in my mind, left a complete five day work week for the business! I was the classic young man in a hurry. I did the same thing in corporate, working eighty to hundred hour weeks, flying 100,000 miles a year, and not taking a real vacation during a five year stretch.
My wife kindly forwarded an article to me last week that referenced a host of research studies, some going as far back as 1914 (Henry Ford conducted internal research on productivity, costs, and labor hours), all demonstrating how rapidly human productivity declines after working for eight hours a day or more than forty hours a week. Winston Churchill recognized this during the war and devised a clever work schedule to maximize his productivity and meet the demands of the Prime Minister fighting the Axis powers on a global front. He would rise early and work until mid-day, at which time he would go home, take a bath (while giving dictation to his secretary sitting just outside the ajar door), and then a long nap. He would then go back to work until late into the night. He was also known to have commented there’s never a good time to take a vacation. Take one anyways. And he practiced this even during the darkest years of the war.
The research referenced in the article made a pretty strong argument, and I’m not one to argue with Mr. Churchill, but there was still a part of me that was thinking, yea, well how do you explain my success…it was directly associated with my effort, right? My wife kindly reminded me that all of our company professional development programs and workshops are based upon peer-reviewed research. She then added, “Ignoring research on productivity wouldn’t be very authentic, would it?”
So I took the weekend off.
Let’s face it, sometimes a forty hour work week is impossible for us. But at what cost to our productivity? One thing is for certain, entrepreneurs would be well served to cultivate emotional resiliency in order to maintain our own optimal level of productivity. This is a core focus of our programs and workshops; the cultivation of competencies in emotional intelligence. Building our self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, and relationship management skills places us onto the path to self-mastery. There are actual, biological underpinnings that we can positively influence, for ourselves and those around us, that directly effect our productivity as well as our health (another critical factor, entrepreneurs can rarely afford the time to be sick).
Those capable of self-mastery, of mindfully engaging their emotional landscape (internally and externally), experience multi-dimensional benefits. First, they experience the physiological and psychological benefit called coherence.1 Coherence occurs when the oscillatory systems of the body (i.e. heart beat, respiratory rate, blood pressure, brain waves) synchronize and become entrained together in frequency.2 Coherence improves physiological function on a biochemical and metabolic level. We all know that unhealthy levels of stress have a negative impact on our immune system and the health of our heart. Being in a state of coherence is believed to have the opposite effect.
Achieving coherence also has a positive impact on cognitive ability. When we are fully engaged and enjoying what we are doing we enter what renowned researcher and psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi refers to as flow. Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s research looked into the psychological state of a wide variety of professionals operating at peak performance. When they were fully engaged, focused, and enjoying their endeavor, their biochemistry reflected an increase in cortisol (from the hypothalamic/pituitary/adrenal, or HPA axis) which brought them to a place in which they were taking full advantage of their cognitive and/or physical abilities. If the HPA axis shot past this point due to stress, adrenaline and cortisol levels continued to rise and performance rapidly diminished. His work proved that a person’s emotional state is a governing factor in cognitive and physical performance.Still another benefit of coherence is its effect on our ability to positively engage and motivate those around us. When we express empathy for another being, entrainment of each person’s physiological rhythms ensues. Research conducted by Drs. Levenson and Gottman at UC Berkeley observed this phenomena between spouses.3 Research conducted by Carl Marci at Harvard University documented similar results of coherence and physiological entrainment between patients and psychotherapists during expressed moments of empathy by the therapist.4 When people connect emotionally we actually connect physiologically as well.
All of these things profoundly effect our productivity as entrepreneurs and leaders. We’re all different, but cultivating the self-awareness to see when we’re pushing ourselves past optimal flow can help us self-regulate and maintain our productivity by taking our foot off the gas, even if for a moment.
1.) R. McCraty, M. Atkinson, “Psychophysiological Coherence”, D, McCraty R, Wilson BC, eds. Emotional Sovereignty. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, forthcoming.
2.) R. McCraty, “The Energetic Heart – Bioelectromagnetic Interactions Within and Between People”. Institute of HeartMath, Boulder Creek, CA., 2003.
3.) R. Levenson, A. Ruef, “Physiological Aspects of Emotional Knowledge and Rapport”, In: W. Ickes, ed. Empathic Accuracy, Guilford Press, New York, New York 1997.
4.) C. Marci, “Psychophysiology and Psychotherapy: The Neurobiology of Human Relatedness”, Practical Reviews of Psychiatry, 2002; 25(3).
5.) M. Iacoboni, “Imitation, Empathy, and Mirror Neurons”, Annual Review of Psychology, 2009.
© 2012, Terry Murray.
Filed under Customer Engagement, Leadership, Productivity, Random Thoughts, Sales
Key Concept ~ I was recently invited back for a radio interview with personality Tron Simpson on KCMN in Colorado Springs. Tron’s a lively, fun host and it is always a pleasure to be on his top rated, drive-time radio program in the Rocky Mountains!
As part of our launch strategy for Igniting Creativity In Business, we’ve set off on another media campaign to drive traffic, market awareness, and revenue. Public relations is a key facet of our growth strategy, and one many entrepreneurs struggle to get their arms around. Traditional PR firms can be very expensive, requiring substantial monthly retainers while simultaneously guaranteeing they’ll to do their best to get you media exposure. That sentence is usually followed up with a caveat of the nebulous nature of the 24/7 news cycle and how all PR firms are constrained by the whims of the media.
This doesn’t have to be the case. Fortunately, we work with perhaps one of the only PR firm that actual works on a pay-for-performance philosophy. Our PR firm, E.M.S.I., is led by Marsha and Steve Friedman and their remarkable staff of seasoned, creative and talented media experts. They work on a set budget that guarantees media placement. They just don’t toss you to the lions, either. Senior Campaign Manager Alex Hinojosa and Creative Director Penny Carnathan work diligently to design and align a media strategy that truly optimizes our return on investment. Alex is a brilliant media coach as well. He thoroughly prepared me for how best to communicate my message during radio interviews. Rich Ghazarian, our radio campaign manager, has booked us on many syndicated, terrestrial radio programs that have high ratings and are heard throughout the country. These aren’t internet podcasts, we’re talking broadcasts.
If you’ve been burned by agencies that promised the world and delivered little more than a monthly invoice I highly recommend the E.M.S.I. team! They’re the perfect fit for entrepreneurs looking to build their credibility, visibility, and reach for a very reasonable investment.
You can listen to this morning’s interview with Tron Simpson by clicking the MP3 link here:
Interview with Tron Simpson 3:14:12
© 2012, Terry Murray.
© 2012, KCMN, Colorado Springs.
Filed under Leadership, Media & Interviews
