BRILLIANT AT THE BASICS
As of today, we have identified 32 micro skills that separate the great influencers from the good ones. We are in fact micro skills collectors as we continue to observe and work with great talents. For each micro skill exists a training segment we call a micro adjustment. On average, a one-day workshop will include 3 or 4 micro adjustments, in other words 3 or 4 training segments.
And you don’t want more than that in a one-day workshop. Because another reason why training often fails is because we cram too much stuff in it. To that point, we do like half-day workshops. Less money for us, but better results. Exceptions may apply.
These micro adjustments are not presented as a sales model. They are “accelerators” you put “on top” of your own sales model. [Insert your best steroid analogy here].
EVERYTHING WE DO IS PRACTICAL (NOT ACADEMIC), RELEVANT (NOT TOUCHY FEELY) AND FAST (NEVER SLOW OR BORING).
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH, HERE ARE THE NAMES OF A FEW OF OUR MICRO ADJUSTMENTS/TRAINING SEGMENTS:
- Being Professionally Provocative. Assertiveness. Shaking Things Up!
- Optimizing your Mindset. Acting with Positive Anticipation.
- Hooks: you have 8 seconds…
- Fishing for Self-Talk. Encouraging Candour.
- Setting Micro Goals. Increasing Your Own Task Tension.
- Listening to Understand (not to reply). Going for a Deep Understanding.
- Float like a butterfly (…). Your arguments wrapped in powerful metaphors.
- Perspective Taking: Easier Said Than Done.
- Showing Intense Interest: How Curious Are You? Interested vs Interesting.
- Resilience 2.0.
- Prepare a little for God’s sake! Prepare, adjust, adapt.
- Tight Five.
- Accountability: no time for excuses or convenient truths.
- Intimacy matters.
- Less is more.
- Ooomph!
TOO MUCH LANDSCAPE TO CONSIDER AT ONCE
When making the huge investment to bring your people together for a skill enhancing workshop, the temptation is great to cram everything into one workshop and to apply the newly acquired ideas to every possible product, solution, or service. Don’t fall for that temptation. Self-efficacy (one’s belief in their ability to reach a goal) is a critical component to learning. When you overwhelm participants with too much information, they quickly make the decision that while change may be beneficial, it’s just not possible. The key to getting results from a workshop is not to raise the bar but to lower it, ensuring your people quickly develop momentum in a new direction. Most workshops out there ask participants to focus on too many things. And it’s not working so well as there’s just too much landscape to consider at once. Guiding Principle #1: Less is more.
