Archive for May, 2008

Nice Guys Finish First!

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

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Last night the final winner of The American Idol show was announced — congratulations to David Cook! What struck me as different this season was that David Archuleta and David Cook were BOTH talented and nice. Perhaps nice is not the right word here — they demonstrated similar qualities of humbleness, gratitude, courage, and, emotion. I’ve done a number of posts around American Idol and what conference call leaders might consider as learning points. Consider this post my grand finale for the season! What can we take away from last night?

Social applications/social media/Web 2.0 are all the rage right now and for an interesting reason — there is something huge happening and it will probably make the original (early 1990s) foray of the public into the World Wide Web pale by comparison. I’m currently reading Groundswell and love it!

What do social applications and American Idol have to do with teleclass, webinar, and conference call leaders? Simply put — everything! People do business with people they know and like. Social apps are making it easier to find and determine the trustworthiness, credibility, and likeability of individuals and companies. What made Season 7 of American Idol unusual was that both Davids are just nice people. I’ll just put this out as a premise that can’t be proven yet — ungrateful, obnoxious, mean spirited, conniving, back stabbing, manipulative (get the point yet?) conference call, webinar, and teleclass leaders will appeal to a rapidly dwindling audience in the near future. Social apps will make it easy for anyone to track down a person’s digital footprints to assess the potential for doing business with that person. While being “nice” is a start, you’ll still need to be talented leader to win the respect and admiration of your peers and potential clients!

Posted by Byron Van Arsdale
Author — 16 Secrets to a Great Conference Call
ConferenceCallTraining.com

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The Lesson of the Four Master Guitar Players/Song Writers

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

On Monday, May 5, 2008, I had the immense pleasure of watching Guy Clark, Joe Ely (http://www.ely.com/), John Hiatt, and Lyle Lovett perform at Austin’s Paramount Theater. Imagine sitting in a small theater and watching four masters play and jam with each other. You may be asking, OK, what does this have to do with conference call leadership? In short, lots!

When possible, I love to see George Winston play piano on stage. Watching a master at play, regardless of the subject, is amazing. Now imagine not one, but four masters performing on stage in a casual and intimate setting. They started out playing solo — introducing the next person as they finished. Then, one would invite another one to play along has he sang. There were mistakes made, lyrics forgotten, laughing, impromptu accompanying jams, and amazing stories both of songs and life.

Three rows from the stage, I was witnessing four masters demonstrate the ideal project team meeting conference call.

    ~No ego — each was an accomplished master
    ~Creative self-expression — each person had a unique talent
    ~Frequent expression of gratitude — for each other and the audience
    ~Humble yet confident — nothing to prove attitude (no grandstanding)
    ~Leadership easily passed between them – collaborative
    ~Seamless transition between leadership and support role
    ~Made mistakes, laughed about them, and kept moving along
    ~Honest, candid, and concise comments
    ~Simple process — play logically went from one person to the next
    ~Flexible agenda
    ~Intention to fully support each other to play well

While it may be a stretch to compare playing music to leading a conference call, this does highlight one important point — the issue of transferable skills. We have many models around us, like music, that can be rich resources for us to develop our communication and leadership skills. In fact, looking outside of your business environment may be the smartest place to start when looking at your own skill development.

Question:
How do role models influence your communication and leadership skills?

Thanks to Austin’s County Line Restaurant for great food and making this evening possible!

Posted by Byron Van Arsdale
Author — 19 Best Practices of Teleclass Leadership
ConferenceCallTraining.com

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Proof That You Will See Exactly What You Expect to See!

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

Last week, my wife Bernice held her 2nd Annual Really Awesome Women in Real Estate Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This is the first and only real estate conference exclusively for women executives and owners. While many adjectives come to mind to describe just how amazing this group of women are, perhaps this statement from the final day sums it up best: “Over the past 3 1/2 days, I have not heard one negative comment.” This is a rather surprising comment if you have been reading the current media uproar about how devastating the USA real estate market is.

NOTE: if you look closely, you will see a direct correlation between negative news and high ad revenue/readership while positive news is correlated with low ad revenue and declining readership. Interesting tidbit, eh? FYI, the current mortgage rate is at a 40-year historic low.

The conference ended on Wednesday and I had a teleclass scheduled for Thursday afternoon. No problem — the conference would be done, I’d be packed, and the hotel graciously extended the check out time so I could conduct the training from the comfort of our hotel room. (Sandia Resort and Casino is a wonderful place to host a conference in Albuquerque!)

I recall leaving for Albuquerque with some confusion as to the exact time of my call. No problem, I’ll just check my email for the proper time and adjust for the time zone. Done it hundreds of times — piece of cake.

As you can imagine, my time and focus was 100% on the pre-conference preparation and making sure things went smoothly during the conference. On Wednesday afternoon, I checked my email for the Thursday call. Somehow, I looked directly at the 2pm EST confirmed time in my email, and saw 3pm EST. In all, I saw 2pm EST three different times and in all three cases, I continued to see 3pm EST.

Confident in my brilliant power of observation, I subtracted 2 hours to account for the change from Eastern to Mountain time zone. Imagine my surprise when I dialed into my training call one hour late.

While this is not the first time I messed up, it was the most surprising. I went back and looked at my email reminders and there, in multiple places, was the 2pm EST start time. Changing time zones is not normally a challenge for me. Yet, being part of the support team before, during, and after Bernice’s conference reminded me once again how easy it is to make mistakes when I have “conference” brain.

The takeaway here is to confirm and double check the date/time in the local time zone BEFORE arriving at the event. Then, I only have to trust my calendar and not that ever-creative right side of my brain that sees exactly what it wants to see!

Do you have a similar story? Please share it!

Posted by Byron Van Arsdale
Author — 16 Secrets to a Great Conference Call
ConferenceCallTraining.com

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