• They perpetually drag you down and make you feel lousy about your work
• They persistently don’t do what they tell you they are going to
• They hold on to the power within your relationship and refuse to allow you to be in control
• Even after confronting them on your issues with them, they still exhibit the same behaviors

Sound familiar anyone?

Well, my friend, it is time to break up with this toxic co-worker. They are killing your mojo and you need not waste anymore time getting sucked into their negative vortex.
If you are an entrepreneur the solution is a bit easier than if you work in a company where you may be forced to have to interact with this person. And of course, each situation like this is highly contextually driven and there is no one answer fits all kind of a response.

For my entrepreneurs: I suggest one of two avenues, depending on how critical they are to your business relationships or future. The easy first route is to simply distance yourself from them and move towards colleagues and peers who bring you satisfaction and positivity when working together. However, if the toxic relationship is one that is very essential to your business and that you really can’t afford to lose right now, here is what I would suggest: Setting up one final meeting, eyeball to eyeball where you state your frustrations in the relationship and let them know that you cannot continue to work this way. Ask them what needs to happen for you to be able to shift towards a more productive and positive and trusting relationship. If they don’t hold up these agreed upon new terms in the relationship, then it is time to cut your losses and move on. You simply cannot afford to work under these situations. And this person is likely undermining you behind your back anyways to clients and colleagues. Run quickly!

For my corporate folks: It’s time to hold your toxic co-worker accountable and this is going to involve a lot of courage and initiative on your end. First, if you are comfortable, I would suggest the same two suggestions above. However, if they both flop and you are still left in the same bind, it is time to escalate this situation to your managers. It would be wise to first have a conversation with your boss alone and them know the objective and specific facts about the person’s toxic ways and how that behavior is impacting the overall business. The third most critical point to be able to make in this conversation is what your suggestions are for remedying the situation. From here, it should be up to your boss how they want to handle this situation. Ideally he will confront the toxic co-worker and enforce clear repercussions if the person does not improve their behavior. However, you should be prepared for the toxic co-worker to potentially present a list of complaints that they might have about you. The most important key is to get some resolution in the situation and shift you both out of the toxic bind that is occurring today.

Good luck and let me know how things go!

I share this with you because it has highlighted a lesson I thought I knew all too well, but that I clearly need to have reinforced again and again. So that means some of you out there might also benefit from my story.

I can admit now, today, (but trust me yesterday I was still mad!!) that the final decision to ultimately turn down an AWESOME opportunity is the right decision for myself, for my business and for my family.  But, a few days ago, I was drooling at the chance to make this possibility a reality.  For now, I have chosen to close the door and give it some time.

Rather than boring you with the details of the ins and out of my particular experience, I would like you to think about these questions when you are also faced with a huge, juicy, incredibly tantalizing opportunity:

1)      As yourself WHY you need this opportunity. Consider what ‘it’ in particular will offer to you that you can’t do for yourself today.

2)      Whose GAIN is this opportunity? Is there more to gain from the person who is offering you the opportunity versus to you yourself?

3)      Is this really the best TIMING for you with this opportunity?  If you are currently going through a very demanding time in your personal life (young children, relationship difficulties, medical issues, financial stress, etc), do you really have the bandwidth to take on all the implications of this opportunity?

4)      WHO serves on your personal advisory board?  If you don’t have one of these, you need to start building one today. Everyone needs an inner circle of people who are looking out for your best interests and whose opinion you respect.  You need to make sure you consult these people before you make any big decisions.

I’d love to know your thoughts on these points and if you ever have found yourself in a situation like mine where in retrospect you are happy or regretful about the decision you ultimately made.  Thanks everyone!

•  The best PR efforts start with the brand. PR should nurture and nourish your brand, and ring true to your audience.
• Human beings love great stories. Find your most compelling stories, and tell them strategically.
• Consider your audience. Reach them where their interests intersect yours.
• Hone your messages. Simplicity. Clarity. Focus on just 3 or 4 messages, and perfect them with great writing.
• Provide great visuals. Compelling graphic design and iconic imagery make your message stick.
• Prepare and rehearse. Anticipate questions. Practice answers. Be sure the people who will deliver your message are equipped to succeed with proper social/media training.
• Control your own media, and frame the conversation for others. Tell your stories directly and engage your audience with blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr and eNewsletters.
• Boutique PR firms like ours offer great creative chops, are cost effective and have experienced people. The people you initially meet should be the ones who work on your account.
• Build authentic relationships. Meet face-to-face with the media whenever possible, and share your stories with confidence and transparency.
• Engage your employees, friends and vendors. Expand your inner circle to include everyone who can spread the word and feed the energy. Trust them with the truth.
• Define what success looks like. Always articulate what you are trying to achieve with a PR campaign – so that everyone will know when you’ve done it!

What has your most successful PR initiative been and what did you learn along the way?

Address Distracting Personal Matters

The first step to bouncing out of a work slump is evaluating what is going on in your personal life that could be influencing how you are performing at work.  If you are experiencing unexplained physical symptoms like lethargy or difficulty focusing, you should go see your doctor or care providers for an evaluation.  If you are going through a difficult transition in your personal life such as a divorce, or your children are leaving for college or your spouse is out of work, you may want to consider engaging in a form of counseling to ensure that you have an appropriate space to reflect on those experiences.  Sometimes it is difficult to be objective about matters going on in our own lives, so talking to someone you are very close with about this subject is very helpful.  And then of course, making sure you are organized outside of work so that you are getting adequate sleep, exercise and nutrition so that when you do show up to work you are putting your best foot forward.

Revamp Your Daily Schedule

When I see clients who are trying to work themselves out of a work slump, they are either burned out after having endured a stressful and demanding project or role or they have lost their confidence and are so worried about possibly losing their job that they have begun to behave strangely in an effort to disguise their inadequate feelings.  Whether your particular slump falls into the loss of motivation or confidence bucket, the second step I suggest taking at work is to enact a schedule into your day so that you follow a consistent routine.  The benefit of doing this will help get you back on track and be able to understand exactly where your pain points might be occurring versus simply viewing your entire work experience as ineffective.  For example, I have been working with a gentleman who was sent to me by his boss because he had begun exhibiting very ‘desperate’ behavior when he was attempting to close sales deals with clients.  When this client, Bob and I were discussing his behavior we identified that he was feeling very out of control with his ability to meet his sales goals and resultedly was behaving in a very desperate manner.  Once Bob began to structure his week he regained what we call his own internal ‘locus of control’.

Revisit Your Industry’s Best Practices

The most successful people are those who view themselves as lifelong students or learners.  Simply because you have completed your formal education, does not mean that you should ever stop investing in our own development.  For some a slump at work can occur because folks have become so distanced from the theory or best practices of their particular industry that they feel uninspired and undirected.  This is very normal and happens to all of us.  When this does occur, I strongly suggest that you dust off some of your favorite old classics and take your own refresher course of your industry’s best practices. Perhaps you might even want to sign up for a webinar or a community college course if reading a book or a blog is not enough for you to feel adequately refreshed.  The goal of this step is to re-boot if you will in order to get grounded back into the core of your job role and to make sure that you are staying abreast of new trends and developments that are occurring within your field globally.

Strengthen Your Work Relationships

Once you have addressed personal matters, instituted structure into your work week and revisited best practices in your industry, it is time to strengthen your work relationships.  Sometimes people can fall into a work slump because they have stopped connecting with people at work.  This is not so easy to do so start with simple gestures with the folks who you want to improve your relationship with like asking them for some feedback or input on something you are working on, or supporting them in an initiative they are involved with or asking them to go out to lunch with the simple goal of connecting with them beyond your work roles.  Often times you will find that you will be able to garner needed mutual support from your work relationships that will result in you feeling more confident, less isolated and overall enjoying your time at work.

What I found the most fascinating from all the juicy tips that I am about to share from her was her observation that we often dismiss the part of ourselves that we are most gifted. This is a lesson she learned when she first began her career. She believes that what impedes many of us from being more vocal and forthcoming about this one particular ‘gift’ is our fear of being dismissed and as a result being ‘crushed’ by this rejection (because we know it is our core strength). Michaela went on to explain that as she has matured and developed a stronger ‘ego’, she is now very comfortable sharing her gifts and not being wounded by potential rejection or dismissal, etc.  What do you think?  Do you think that you refrain from deeper and more revealing storytelling in order to protect and cover parts of yourself that you are perhaps ashamed of, don’t understand or are protective of?  Well, read on…..

Here are some of the key takeaways that I learned from her:

Every story should have a CONFLICT, CLIMAX and REUNION

Begin with a hook-and establish it and the tone of your story in the first three sentences.  After delivering the first three lines, pause, let the audience ‘come in’

SHOW rather than TELL-tell a descriptive story rather than give an example.

Keep it ACTIVE

Make every word COUNT

Communicate from within to my audience WHY I do what I do, what the work I do DOES for me on an emotional level. What’s the tipping point of my work-where people get what I do?

Every story should have a beginning, middle and an end. The beginning is the set up and hook (only share what the audience needs to know, which may mean omitting characters and condensing time). The middle is where you spend the bulk of your story-delivering the action and the climax.  The end is the climax and the denouement.

When you tell YOUR STORY, start with what scares you. Where is the resistance? What is something you have done that you can’t understand? Share something risky for you.

Thank you Michaela, Cindy and Natalie Molina Nino for making this event happen!

Hendricks offers some spot on questions to ask ourselves when we are attempting to identify exactly what erroneous and deeply internalized beliefs we have about ourselves that are holding us back TODAY from leaping toward that greater pie in the sky.

Take a look at these statements/questions and let me know which trigger for you the key to why you are denying yourself permission to unbridled success:

“I cannot expand to my full creative genius because something is fundamentally wrong with me”

“I cannot expand to my full success because it would cause me to end up all alone, be disloyal to my roots, and leave behind people from my past”

Did I break up the family’s spoken or unspoken rules to get where I am?

Even though I am successful, did I fail to meet the expectations my parents had of me?

“I can’t expand to my highest potential because I’d be an even bigger burden than I am now”

“I must not expand to my full success, because if I did I would outshine _________ and make him or her look for feel bad”

And probably no surprise to you, I recently came right up against that proverbial wall, some balls started to drop and sure enough, my little ‘ol tank was nearing empty.   Before I continued down this highly predictable road, I put a full stop on a majority of my activities, and implemented some serious CHANGES in my WAYS.  Along the way, I have also had some enormously enlightening conversations (or as they might call it, ‘interventions’) with people whom I hugely admire and adore.   And I will say, while some of these lessons below might seem highly elementary, it is amazing how different it is when you are really going through something and have lost the gift of clarity.  A woman in one of my seminars recently said a perfect quote that fits so well in this context: “I listened to you before, but I hear you now”.  Thank you to all the sacred people in my life who have and continue to support me in my journey—you know who you are.

Here is as a short list of what I have learned:

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should

I have learned that just because amazing and never before seen opportunities seem to continually be falling into my lap; it doesn’t mean that this is the right time to move ahead with any or all of them.  Timing is everything, and I have to resign myself to the fact that I cannot do it all right now (duh).

Structure, structure, structure my time (for play and work)

In my heart of hearts, I am a free spirit. That’s why I left Corporate America and started my own business. However, I have learned the enormous value of structuring my weeks so that I am clear on when I am at full capacity with clients and when I need to build in time for writing, managing the kids’ ‘stuff’ and heck, writing this enormously valuable blog.

Incorporate the Ying to my Yang

I need to work on incorporating more balance in my life so that it’s not all go-go-go-collapse.  For every run I go on, I am working on throwing in a yoga class. I have been referred to a Naturopath to help me with some herbal remedies for increased internal balance. This is a bit far out for me right now, but I took the woman’s card and will consider it down the road.

View everything happening as abundant & miraculous

A dear friend and I had lunch recently and she heard me ending a lot of my statements with conditional statements, like “Well, these are my plans, but that cannot happen for three years”.  She challenged me to view everything happening in my life right now as abundant and far exceeding any earlier expectation. In addition, she encouraged me to always be open to any and all opportunities and to try to let go of any limits or conditions I am assigning to situations or timelines. This shift in thinking has been enormously liberating, try it out.

The people whom you are closest with are the best barometer of how you are REALLY doing

When I am with clients or focused on a work project, I can really get in to the zone where I am so jazzed about what I am doing that I can totally shut off my own needs.  There is an adrenaline that rushes through me when I am in my work zone that allows me to perform at my best but also is hard to shut down.  Sometimes, just because I am no longer working and am actually with my family or friends, does not always guarantee that I am not thinking about work.  This is a serious problem. The people closest to me have been able to help me see instances of when this is occurring, how it affects them (not surprisingly it doesn’t make your loved ones feel great) and how to go about being PRESENT.

BE PRESENT

This is one of the toughest ones of all.  However, it is getting easier to do since I have gotten more structured in my days and more aware of where my mind is in given situations.

Nurture your relationships and yourself—they are really all that matter anyways

It is easy to slip into bad habits of taking your loved ones for granted and not caring for yourself as you would others.  For all that I am expending out to my family and my clients, I need to figure out ways to replenish my body, mind and soul.

The END:

Would love to know if anyone else out there has found themselves in the same conundrum and what you have done to ‘right your ship’.  Thanks everyone!!

1)      Re-Establish Trust

 All relationships must be built on a solid foundation of trust.  If there has been an incident in the past that has caused you to now mistrust your boss, you will want to start here in order to begin again, if you will.  The best way to do this is based on a cognitive tool called the ‘Johari Window’ which  purports that the best way to build trust is by sharing something about yourself that the other person does not know and then to seek their feedback about your relationship.  The more that you practice this together and open up yourself to the other person, the more they will begin to trust your intentions and motivations and vice versa.  Practice explaining your ‘line of thinking’ with your boss and ask questions of them so that you will understand where they are coming from and why.  Trust will grow exponentially as the two of you seek to understand one another more fully.

2)      Demonstrate Your Competence

 The two things that people most often want from their boss are more freedom and an opportunity to have a say in matters that impact their work life.  These two factors will likely increase when you have proven to your boss that you are competent and have earned these privileges. In order to demonstrate your competence, look for opportunities to display your expertise and your strengths. Some examples of this are: taking on a leadership role with a particular committee that overlaps with an area that you are passionate about, asking for an opportunity to try on a sales role for your company, offer a speaking engagement for your colleagues in which you can expose your expertise within a particular subject matter.  All of these scenarios will allow your boss to see you outside of your typical role and be exposed to a side of you that they may know nothing about. In addition, all of these scenarios require a great deal of courage and initiative-both of which are always greatly appreciated by management.

3)      Uncover their Values

 It is critical that you figure out what is most important to you boss if you want to learn how to better manage them.  Oftentimes folks can present to their boss what they perceive must be most important to them, but notice that many of their meetings end up taking a very different direction than what they were expecting.  Work towards asking your boss, point blank, what are the most important factors or measurements for them when it comes to the performance of their team/department, etc? If you are not comfortable asking them, this could serve as a great discussion to have with your colleagues.  Once you have uncovered what is most important to you boss as it relates to their responsibility of managing you—work towards beginning each of your meetings addressing that particular area first and foremost.

 4)      Use a ‘Directive’ Approach, when appropriate

 Now that you have established trust, demonstrated your competence and figured out what is most important to them—it is time to start using a ‘directive’ approach with your boss, when a situation calls for this level of intervention.  When a situation arises in which you have a legitimate solution to a pressing problem and the urgency for a resolution is high, it will serve you well to be very assertive or directive with your boss in suggesting a timely solution.  The more often that you are able to provide this needed level of support to your boss, the more personal power you will establish with them and thus giving you a larger opportunity to make your own requests and suggestions within the relationship.

Centered Leadership is a

There are 5 key capabilities of Centered Leadership when used together—are important predictors of these executives’ satisfaction with their leadership performance and their life overall:

Meaning:

Finding your strengths and putting them to work in the service of a purpose that inspires you

Positive Framing:

Adopting a more constructive way to view your world and convert even difficult situations into opportunities

Connecting:

Building a stronger sense of community and belonging

Engaging:

Pursuing opportunities disguised by risk

Energizing:

Practicing ways to sustain your energy on a long leadership journey

 Surveying Your Centered Leadership

Rate each statement accordingly: 1=Strongly Disagree, 2=Disagree, 3=Not sure/neutral, 4=Agree, 5=Strongly Agree

___ 1. I actively build communities of people who give and get support from each other.

___ 2. I proactively ask senior people for opportunities that will help me develop.

___ 3. I actively find ways to help others and ways in which they can help me.

___ 4.  I make sure I calm & prepare myself before going into situations where I may get upset or angry.

___ 5. My passion for what I do inspires others.

___ 6. I take time to reflect on what really matters most to me.

___  7. I engage in activities that draw on my natural strengths.

___ 8. Every day, I consciously do things to keep myself energized.

___ 9. I have a noticeable energizing effect on others.

___ 10. I recognize and step beyond my fears so they don’t keep me from seizing good opportunities.

___ 11. When I experience a mistake or failure, I quickly come up with a plan to recover.