There is something magical that happens when a small group of talented and busy leaders pull away from their desks, leave their offices, trade in their suits for jeans and check out of their homes and into an environment that is different than the norm for a day or two.

The experience of an off-site retreat can be of incredible value.

About a month ago, our Business Development team was scheduled to have an all-day review and planning meeting, and I was challenged with the same decision many of my clients deal with. Should we invest the time and money to rent the facility offsite or can we pull this off for free and with ease in our own office?

Sure, we could have stayed in our office.  But we would have missed out on the benefits of the different and more relaxed setting. We would have missed out on the community and relationship-building stuff that happened as we carpooled together, prepared meals together and walked together in a different setting.

So of course we rented the suite on the river and went on our grown-up field trip.

What we leaders must remember is that the health of our team directly impacts the performance of our team. And the health of our team is greatly reliant on the depth of trust and relationship we have with one another.

I absolutely believe that off-site retreats are a best practice of high-performing teams, and that teams must do some life and work together outside of the confines of their conference rooms and cubicles.

We believe so strongly in this principle that at this year’s Experience, we are encouraging some of our clients who are attending with their teams to rent houses rather than stay in individual hotel rooms. Not only will they save money, but they will gain the benefit of growing closer together as a team.

As you are planning for the remainder of the year, make sure you have at least one off-site retreat planned for your team. The entire organization will benefit.

Let us know if we can help,

The problem is that many have lost perspective. It is easy for this to happen when we have lost things such as love, friends, income, jobs, family norms…and the list goes on. We can easily fall into the trap of thinking about how to protect ourselves rather than how we can help others.

So ask yourselves these questions daily if you want to increase your levels of passion, purpose and overall fulfillment:

• Not what can I get, but what can I give?
• Not who can serve me, but who can I serve?
• Not what can I take, but what can I add?
• Not what can I learn, but what can I teach?

The best leaders bring this mindset to their teams.

The best teams bring this mindset to their customers.

The best sales professionals bring this mindset to their clients and partners.

And the most successful people in life bring this mindset to the world.

In trying times or during a long season of struggle or loss, it is common for us to lose our perspective and to find ourselves most concerned about ourselves, looking out for No. 1.

If that is you, take a day to reflect on your Life Plan and Vision. If you are not seeing enough giving in what you read, revise it. If it’s already there but you just haven’t been doing it, come up with one action you can implement in the week ahead. Maybe starting your day off with the above questions will be help enough.

We believe so strongly in this philosophy that we made it our theme at this year’s Experience. If you are looking to find more ways you can make a greater contribution in your business and life, consider joining us this September.

It is more blessed to give than to receive, and it is a much better way to live and lead.

Our company, Building Champions, has five convictions that act as filters for our decisions and clarify what our teammates belong to. One of those convictions is as follows: “We are lifelong learners. We can only give away what we possess.”

I think most of you would agree that at the end of the day — or at the end of your life — you want to have led a life of contribution. You want to have made a significant difference in the lives of those around you at home, at work, and in your community.

My encouragement to you is to get off the fast-moving treadmill once in a while. Make sure that you are continually challenging yourself to learn and grow in the areas of your life that are most important to you. This is where having a Life Plan can really make a difference.

Be proactive and create a development plan that is so specific with how and when you will grow that your actions are schedulable. Don’t just hope that you will lead a life and business of value. Instead, be one of the very few who are clear on this conviction of lifelong learning, so that you can give away more as the result of possessing more.

At this year’s Experience, our theme is Contribution. We all have more to give, and if you are serious about developing yourself so that you can contribute more, consider joining us in September.

Here’s to living and leading proactively and intentionally, and to ultimately making a greater difference!

Are you hearing and believing any of the following?

• I am just trying to survive, I have nothing left over to give.
• I am slammed, way too busy to add anyone or anything else to my plate.
• The best is behind me. I used to think I could contribute but my mistakes have taken me out.
• What does it matter? Who cares anyway?
• I have nothing special to contribute.

I can tell you that I know that these are not true! They are lies and must be fought with vigor.

I am not trying to discount your situation in any way. What I want to communicate is that no matter what your situation, you can still contribute and make a difference and others are counting on you to do so.

For some it is to parent and train up future leaders or good hearted servants; for some it is to apply your skill to your trade of passion; and for some it is to serve and lead your teams and organizations.

Sometimes we lose our way, but we can always find our path back if we know our WHY.

Hopefully many of you are already familiar with the Life Planning process we use at Building Champions. This is a process I have been benefitting from and coaching others on for many years. I am a firm believer in its ability to aid us with making better proactive and intentional decisions in life and business.

Your Life Plan should be a dynamic and living document that is continually being reviewed, lived out and adjusted where and when needed. One of the ways you might want to improve upon your plan is to assess how you see yourself contributing to each of your accounts.

Look at where you are doing well and where you think you could contribute more. Then, map out a plan to make sure you are making the greatest impact you can in your life, your business and your community. We believe so strongly in this theme of contribution that it will be a central part of our Building Champions Experience this fall.

The truth is that we all have the ability to make a greater difference in the lives of those around us.

On behalf of those lives you will touch, thank you for your contribution.

This is a parenting issue.

Just a few weeks ago, my wife Sheri and I had the privilege of leading a parenting workshop at the Building Champions Experience. We called the presentation, “Are you Raising Kids or Growing Adults?” I think the question is worth pondering.

We began the session by letting all of our attendees know that we are NOT trained parenting experts. We do, however, have some years of experiences and observations. We are two people who really enjoy being parents and have been blessed with four great kids ranging in age from 7 to 20. Not only are we parents, but we have taught Sunday School classes for years and have intentionally made our home a gathering place for kids of all ages in our community.

The session was filled with some great Q & A. We also shared our Guiding Principles for growing adults.

1. Train them up in the way they should go.
2. Keep a long term perspective. Have a target for them.
3. If you are married, make your marriage your priority and make it rock!
4. Be consistent and unified as a couple.
5. Be present and engaged. They can read your heart.
6. Respect is theirs to lose — let them see and know this.
7. Allow consequences to teach, don’t handicap them.
8. Don’t delegate training them up. You must own this.
9. Talk to your teens as if they were adults, and more importantly, listen to them.
10. Your kids are not your report card. Don’t worry about what the “Joneses” think.
11. Think before you respond to avoid the little battles and maintain a healthy relationship.
12. They are watching you. Your actions will teach them more than your words.
13. Love them no matter what!

Sheri and I unpacked each of the above points during our session. My hope is that they are clear enough to add value just as they are, but I would love to hear your thoughts or to answer any questions you might have.

For me, being a dad has been one of the greatest highlights in my life. Parenting has truly become more enjoyable each and every year. I’ve learned that we don’t need to fear the seasons ahead, but instead we should be intentional in our parenting with a clear target in sight.

My challenge for you business professionals who are mothers and fathers is to improve your skills. Spend at least 25% of the time you spend developing your professional skills in developing yourself as a parent. The ROI will be immeasurable!

To Growing Adults,

During the Experience, there are main-stage lessons and small breakout sessions on topics ranging from life planning to exceptional customer service to best practices for strategic thinking. With this wide range of topics, there was one question I was asked more than any other during the week, and it is the basis for this post.

“How have you assembled such an amazing team of caring and incredibly talented people?”

I know why they asked this question. Given the chance to see our team in action, as they did during the Experience, it becomes obvious that most of them have talents and skills that exceed my own.

Over the years, I have found that when you’re looking to add new people to your team, they either have IT or they don’t. What is IT? Here is a series of questions that have really helped me to find IT people.

• • Are they really passionate about the products or services you offer? They have to really dig IT!
• • Would they build IT, sell IT, account for IT, systematize IT, or do IT for free? If so, figure out how to pay them well for doing IT.
• • Do they want to serve others on the team in order to make IT awesome? They must want IT to be done more than they want recognition.
• • Are they willing to fight for IT? They have deep convictions about how IT makes businesses, people or the world better.
• • Is there more to them than just IT? Hire people who are well rounded and place a high value on people and interests outside of the IT factory or office.
• • Do they have fun in life? If they do, they will bring more energy to work, and will do IT better.
• • Do they want to be the best at IT? Hire lifelong learners who are humble enough to admit they will never have IT truly mastered.
• • Do they want to share IT? If they don’t want to tell their friends and family about IT, they don’t really believe in IT.
• • Do they keep pursuing you because they want to play their role in making IT happen? Hire those who know that great things are worth pursuing relentlessly over time.

I hope this helps you to build and grow your own talented team.

Do you get IT?

]]> http://www.danielharkavy.com/2010/09/finding-those-who-have-it/feed/ 9 http://www.danielharkavy.com/2010/09/the-building-champions-experience/ http://www.danielharkavy.com/2010/09/the-building-champions-experience/#comments Wed, 15 Sep 2010 05:23:13 +0000 Daniel Harkavy http://www.danielharkavy.com/?p=460 Hey there readers,

I will not be writing a regular post this week. My team and I are out of the office, leading our third annual Building Champions Experience in central Oregon. I will do my best to share key thoughts and insights from the week via Twitter, and you can also follow along on our BCE Blog.

I will be back to my regular blogging next week.  I appreciate you reading what I have to say, and your additions and comments!

Cheers,

]]> http://www.danielharkavy.com/2010/09/the-building-champions-experience/feed/ 0 http://www.danielharkavy.com/2010/07/can-you-feel-it/ http://www.danielharkavy.com/2010/07/can-you-feel-it/#comments Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:36:34 +0000 Daniel Harkavy http://www.danielharkavy.com/?p=428 I had a coaching session last week with a client who owns a great company here in the Northwest. Like many business leaders, his natural behavioral style is on the dominant side, which means he is a take-charge kind of guy. For those of you familiar with the DISC behavioral language, he is a High D.

I know this type very, very well.

Studies have shown that there is a correlating emotion for each behavioral style which emerges when that person is frustrated or challenged. For a High D, the emotion is anger.

In this session, my client shared that he feels some very real physical changes when he is being challenged or threatened. What he experienced has everything to do with Emotional Intelligence, or EQ.

The physical sensations he described are tunnel vision and tingling in the hands. Many people also feel shortness of breath, painful tension in the neck or back, and the inability to sit still.

We experience these physical dynamics in the heat of interpersonal battle because when we encounter stressful situations, certain hormones flood our system and impact which part of our brain does the thinking. Studies have shown that our primal thinking takes over; we stop thinking rationally and begin looking to fight or flee. In these situations, we think in the same way we would if we were seconds away from being hit by a train. We go into survival mode.

When this happens, chances are we’re about to make a bad situation even worse.

My client — who has no training on the topic of EQ — is smart enough to know that he needs to take a break when he is in a conflict and feels the physical changes that take place prior to being emotionally hijacked. He recognizes that those feelings of tunnel vision and tingling hands are going to lead to more problems if he doesn’t “pull the rip cord” and get out of that situation for a moment or two. That’s higher EQ.

EQ is a fascinating topic, and studies have shown that it has more to do with our ability to successfully lead others than does our IQ.

At the Experience this September, my fellow coach and brother Greg Harkavy and I will be leading a great breakout session together on EQ. I look forward to diving deeper into this critically important skill in the weeks ahead.

When you feel the warning signs of low EQ, step back. Take a walk, breathe deep, and regain your composure. You – and those around you — will be glad you did.

]]> http://www.danielharkavy.com/2010/07/can-you-feel-it/feed/ 2 http://www.danielharkavy.com/2010/01/asset-or-advantage/ http://www.danielharkavy.com/2010/01/asset-or-advantage/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:13:13 +0000 Daniel Harkavy http://www.danielharkavy.com/?p=229 Last fall, at the Building Champions Experience, I gave the opening presentation.  The topic was centered on best practices for success in challenging times. Earlier in the year, as I prepared for this presentation, I interviewed several clients and friends who serve as leaders of large organizations to identify the most common behavioral disciplines. 

During my interview with a client who is the CEO of a UK based petroleum additives organization, the topic of team came up.  He said that he believes we fall short as leaders when we see our teams as an “asset.”  He explained that people do not want to feel owned, or to have their value summarized on a corporate balance sheet. 

His belief is that our team is more than an asset.  They are our competitive advantage.

I agree with him that a leader’s strategies and actions are different when they see those they lead as their competitive advantage rather than an asset.  When we believe our team is our competitive advantage, our culture becomes much more focused on development and learning.  Those that have this mindset allocate more dollars to coaching, workshops, and professional education. 

I think there is an even bigger difference that exists within this type of a culture.  When a leader believes that his team is the organization’s competitive advantage, he will encourage much more collaboration around strategy and innovation than will the asset minded leader.  The advantage-minded leader knows that the success of tomorrow rest in the minds of his team today, and he is more intentional and skilled at tapping into them for ideas and solutions.

This was yet another great lesson for me, not only in preparation for that opening presentation, but as a Coach and CEO.  Since that conversation in the first half of 09, I have been thinking about our team at Building Champions a bit differently. 

This improved thinking is causing my disciplines to change as well.  I have always believed that my team is responsible for everything good that happens for us as a company.  Seeing them as more than an asset — as our competitive advantage — is a definite improvement in my thinking.

How do you see the team you lead?

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