Make Your Own Lane: Say, What You Mean

I can give a dozen examples outside business however since this blog is mainly for first time entrepreneurs or someone trying to establish an alternate career, I will stick to this for the time being.

Type A

“I wanted to work with you. I have a fantastic offer for you. It is a great opportunity for potential income. When can we discuss?”

How does this sound when this comes from someone with whom you lost touch for several years? Just when you are happy that they took the initiative to connect with you, the inside voice warns you of a hidden agenda.

So finally, when you discuss, you find the whole great opportunity just narrows down to one more PPL scope – pay per lead.

It helps to allow the one who is in the receiver’s end to conclude if at all, this is a great opportunity or if they are even remotely interested in your offer.

Will this experience lead you to doubt people's intentions or be skeptical in future? Ideally, it should not. Because what you should make of this experience is this - Move on.

Trigger curiosity.

Trigger hope.

But before all that,

Trigger trust

Trigger abundance mindset

Trigger generosity

Be direct - It helps clear the cloud and start with fresh thoughts – Transparent and clean. It builds trust and reliability.

Manipulative strategies, duplicity, deceitfulness in speech or conduct, speaking and thinking differently, double - dealing can be spot miles away.

Type B

“I cannot afford you at the moment, as I am bootstrapping, so can we work on a revenue sharing model for every lead you generate or nurture to a successful deal?”

Who would you personally prefer to work with, if at all you want to – Type A or Type B?

Just look at the irony of the whole thing, the one who needs assistance is the one who talks about offer. Such round about talk is a thing of the past. Any one with some acquaintance about natural laws and spiritual awareness knows, how easy it is to be direct, imperfect, vulnerable and yet have things your way.

Another thing that brings concern is when someone wants to do something for free – Why on earth, you wonder and even begin to worry, what obligation is this leading to?

Be Direct

“Hey, if I promote your services in my social media channels, will you pass on the leads relevant to what I do as a return favor?”

I love it. How simple and easy is that?

I hate free soaps anyways. I, for one, always think, there must be something wrong with its expiry.

Image Credit: Canva Design

The god of all business strategies is being human and adhering to natural laws.

Do no let past interactions and experiences cloud your judgment. 

Based on the BECKON Framework, we evaluate the background of each individual / freelancer/ first time entrepreneur/ BECKON Aspirant keen to be BECKON Coaches for an effective learning road map.

Here are three quick give-aways to recognize duplicity traits

A)  The language is always the same – Discussing problems and people

B) Observe the questions they ask - That is almost always doubting your integrity - An excellent reflection of what is going on in their mind

C) I, Me, Myself first - Self obsessed.

In my next blog, I will address "Give, before you seek - traits of abundance mindset 

Here are a few enlightening words from Brene Brown - The research-storyteller to awaken your spiritual intelligence

Empathy is the skill or ability to tap into our own experiences in order to connect with an experience someone is relating to us.

Compassion is the willingness to be open to this process

Concluding thoughts.

When you actually meet people in personal and professional life with such traits, even if you choose not to do business transactions, use both of these - Empathy and compassion. 

It is mostly how they are conditioned that govern their belief system and thinking patterns. With empathy and compassion, they will soon learn to say, what they truly mean to create a win win environment, for both parties involved.

Write to advocating.outcomes@gmail.com for pitch scripts

Make Your Own Lane: Ground Rules For Virtual Team To Support Large Assignments

When I work with virtual team for large projects or ongoing assignments, there are few ground rules that is exchanged with the team.

Live Coaching:

When they work with me they are being trained step by step to handle clients independently in future – both online and offline - when they are ready to offer their skills / services.

When they are confident to bid, quote and execute orders without assistance or being front ended by a project lead, they are on their own.

Image Credit: Canva Design

A few critical rules are listed here for BECKON Aspirants:

Habit Building

1] Read everything twice.

2] The first time you read everything may not register in your brain

3] Many can be non-readers and are used to receive verbal instructions in their primary occupation

4] Many have repetition as their learning style. Reading twice helps better comprehension and communication.

Correspondence with Project Lead

1] It can be me or someone else in the team who has won the order that will lead the team, liaison between team and client.

2] Phone calls and Watsapp message are not allowed for clarifying doubts and seeking assistance from lead. 

3] Only formal email communication so that the quality check of finished product can be cross checked with ongoing instructions exchanged on mail. 

4]  If team member needs clarity from project leader before sharing quote for their particular scope of work, they need to ask that and draft/ frame their response/ logic accordingly (Example research time required, sources, complexity, methodology etc. to justify their quotes)

5] Even if the task seems difficult, there is absolutely no reason to panic or lose confidence as the project lead will provide adequate guidance for execution because after all it is the project lead’s client relationship that is on stake.

  

Correspondence with Client 

1] When you correspond with real client, both buyer and seller may be working in different time zones – Will the seller be able to call him to check? Hence mail communication is recommended.

2] Without much thought, the length of the exercise/ assignment make virtual team member apprehensive and just to defend their situation, they tend to call to keep project lead informed in advance why something cannot be done. Read this quote at least three times a day.

Image Credit: Canva Design

3]  Every team member has to curtail tendency to

(A) React mentally

(B) Call and defend your situation

Virtual Team Member’s responsibility

1] Follow ground rules.

2] Consistency in efforts to make yourself reliable team member. 

3]  Micro learn to build skills. 

4] If any team resources has “Spoon feeding” level of dependence on coach that consumes a lot of bandwidth of project lead which could lead to termination and loss of future assignments.

Write to advocating.outcomes@gmail.com if you want to know more about the coaching framework

Alternate Learning: Are You The Skill Coach or The Will Coach?

Today, I just abruptly discontinued coaching session with a BECKON Aspirant who is being trained to manage my professional social media first – Pages, blogs, tweets etc. and then for other clients. According to the aspirant, this is the scope of agreed skill coaching.

Post discontinuation, here is the impact analysis on BECKON Aspirant

Psychological Impact

The aspirant is under the impression that the coaching session ended due to performance issues (poor learning and grasping ability) however the reality is – this circumstance is being created deliberately for mental training (Will)

Financial Impact

No further fees have to be paid if the work in scope (Social Media pages) is managed with immediate effect to my entire satisfaction. This is one of the learning outcomes in the agenda

Learning Impact

On job training for a new “Skill” with ulterior motive to trigger “Will” to learn on their own when the situation arise.

Social Media Management

I have to read more blogs than necessary to choose the right ones for my followers or to increase my own understanding of the market

To make my bandwidth available for core functions I needed someone to manage few of the pages and blogs I maintain on a regular basis.

It is not about merely sharing links, it is about outcomes to be achieved and that is definitely not mere vanity metrics or branding. The bottom line is revenue, customer acquisition and growth.

The content has to be useful for me and my followers

I did consider Crowdfire for twitter account however the points listed below kind of diffused my enthusiasm

1] Post on our behalf

2] Followers are not always high quality and relevant to the industry in which we operate

3] I am not sure if they filter out spam or fake account.

4] I follow users that tweet information useful for our business and scope of work we are involved in.

5] It is beside the point which I may read immediately or when I have the time.

6] It is handy and finds new people to follow or un-follow inactive users however the relevance and usefulness are questionable.

7] It is simple, quick, and easy to understand. It is not smart or great for my needs and the motive seems vengeful (for the lack of exact word) which is quite unprofessional. I do not necessarily have to un-follow some just because they do not follow me. I am the loser then as their tweet quality may be far superior to mine. I would definitely want to follow them.

So the BECKON aspirant will be gradually made to understand the nuances and needs to manage my account – live, on the job and who is not quite aware of it yet.

Phase I:    Doing

Phase II:   Thinking

Phase III:  Consulting

Thinking is a natural process lead by repeated doing. The more you do the same thing mechanically, the more you will question why, when it turns mundane

Why social media management?

What business problems are being solved by our product or service?

What benefits have target audience realized?

Why follow few influential people and few average people?

What is end purpose?

While we let the BECKON aspirant here to dwell on outcome driven learning process and unexpected twists and turns, you can write to advocating.outcomes@gmail.com if you are ready to be a BECKON coach. 

We will be glad to know more about case studies with your learning intervention towards measurable outcomes.

Make Your Own Lane: Being Trained and Learning Are Not Same

"When things are uncomfortable two things are happening:

You are learning (In the process of adopting new habits)

You are unlearning (Letting go off old habits)

If this is not painful, you remain the old version of yourself with limited knowledge, unprepared for the future of work.  "

Image Credit: Canva Design

That is an excerpt from my mail to one of the learners who was finding it extremely difficult to cope up with office, home, daily travel and learning curve.

Yesterday I had a SKYPE coaching session with her.

She still thinks that I was coaching her on a particular skill while the reality is – it was mental training to build a habit.

Learner Background

Two decades of experience in the corporate world across various functions –Executive support, administration, accounts, risk control and finance

She worked in different industries

She is comfortable with desktop/ tab and not used to laptop

She never had a face book account

She is an introvert as per human metrics test

I would like to capture what she thinks she is learning and what I am trying to achieve

She Thinks	My Goal
She is learning how to create websites on WIX Skill: Website	I was just letting her explore a site at your own pace and self-learn Mental Training: Self Learn new subjects/ sites
She is formatting a 25 pages word document Skill: MS Office	Attention to detail Mental Training: Develop critical eye for quick quality check to see errors
She is being introduced to Face book and Twitter because is not inclined towards them	Social Media Management Mental Training: Building habit to be digitally alive with a purpose
She is being coached through SKYPE Skill: SKYPE	Virtual Coaching Mental Training: Auditory learning. We do not use video/ just voice so that she focuses on what I say to learn and take notes.
Write service description about she is good at and can cater to clients independently Skill: Writing	Building confidence to deal with clients (not managers) Mental Training: Conviction and critical thinking.
It is not just skill training	It is will training

You cannot build habits in a day. Once habits are built, skill coaching is cake walk and mostly taken over by the learner without any external coaching.

The surest way to understand if learning is happening is to look for hints and changes in behavior

Changes observed in 7 weeks

Read epic mails I send  Acknowledge mails immediately No more use of SMS language Summarize discussion Organized writing with numbered points Queries are mailed - Only one mode of communication with me instead of Watsapp or phone.	Watch Ted Talk Attend SKYPE sessions Source quality links relevant to subject (Freelancing, Travel etc) that meets client's standards  Post links to Face book pages Micro learn at your own pace
Conceptual Understanding  1] Maslow's hierarchy of needs 2] Frame of reference 3] Mind Maps	Hands On training: WIX; Canva; Blogspot; Freelancing portal
Different types of learner - Visual; Auditory and Kinesthetic	Visual Communication through Smart Art
Different sources of learning - Online, Read, Social, Group, Micro, Coach	The series of excuses that was made initially for not completing home assignments died a natural death.
Build Knowledge Repository from the mails exchanged between us, where she captures critical  learning based on her own assessment. This is not just for reference but an enabler when she is ready to coach others with any challenges	Coaching is two times learning. She is encouraged to learn a thing or two on her own and explain it back to me.

When coaching is outcome driven, it makes no difference what syllabus you have to cover - the only thing that matters is change in behavior, leading the learner to apply learning in different situations to impact results that can be quantified.

These observations are just the beginning. 

The key objective is to build habits - strong and positive habits, while assisting the learner gather a skill or two.

To know more about qualifying criteria to be BECKON Coach, please write to advocating.outcomes@gmail.com

Learning: The Two Perspectives To Assess Learning Needs

Yesterday when half the world was busy with final match of ICC Champions Trophy between India and Pakistan, I had two aspiring entrepreneurs in my Kolkata apartment to discuss the future of their business.

It was informal chat with samosa and Ice Tea

Background

Both love to design clothes, have quite a few dedicated clients who trust their fashion sense that they use in their creations to maintain exclusivity. 

Both are open to providing (A) only designer services and (B) sourcing to provide finished products

Both cater to local market as of now and find this very limiting. 

Both have a full time job to cater to while they are keen to pursue this seriously and keep it as a pet project. 

Financial back up is not strong and they can operate with limited cash flow.

The Solution

Apparently it looks like one can provide the same solution to both as the nature of concern is more or less similar. 

Imagine, both these designers attend a training program or a coaching session on sales or  marketing.

Learning Road map 

 This is where a BECKON Consultant will explore multiple intelligence level of each participant to create a road map to address learning gaps. 

Most coaches consider target audience needs and individual needs as same while designing programs.

Now I will provide additional inputs on each participant to enable a consultant to draw that map, based on multiple intelligence parameters, preferences, life style choices etc.

Key Assumptions:

Parameters	Participant 1	Participant 2
Academic/ Mental	Topper in studies Graduate Occupation: Teacher Computer Literacy: Good	Average Possibly some college Occupation: Retail Store Computer Literacy: None
Emotional	Grand world / worm view of things in life	Grand world view/ worm view of things in life
Financial	Dual income stream	Single income
Social	Not very active in Facebook Limited to work life contacts	Active in Facebook Many acquaintances outside work life
Spiritual	Not inclined to practice	Inclined by faith Not inclined to practice
Other interests	Recycled stuff	Loves to travel and is part of different groups Try new recipe
Other information	Leonine traits Head held high	Capricorn nature Extremely dedicated to immediate and extended family

The more inputs you receive about participants the more it becomes obvious to a coach how a single session on marketing and sales will not be effective as every member in class room training/ webinar has different levels of existing knowledge and degree of motivation.

And yet the same feedback is rolled out by the end of training session to rate the program, rate the trainer, rate the infrastructure regardless of what the participant could make of that learning in real life?

AltLearn Ventures is keen to publish case studies and success stories with measurable outcomes adopting a certain learning / coaching approach. 

Write to advocating.outcomes@gmail.com as that is the qualifying criteria to be a BECKON Coach  

1] Have you learnt something new this year?

2] Can you measure the impact of that learning on self or environment, purely in numbers?

3] Have you coached anyone with a new skill?

4] Can you measure the impact of what you taught purely in numbers?