Tweet

OUTCOME THINKING®: Getting Results Without The Boxing Gloves

Guest post by: Anne Warfield

Article Overview: Your employee Jill, is often late to work and leaves early. Her work is behind and other employees in the department seem to always be picking up the slack for her. Jill is polite and friendly and, while she's at work, seems to be concentrating. She rarely socializes with anyone at work, preferring to keep to herself. How would you handle this situation?

OUTCOME THINKING®: Getting Results Without The Boxing Gloves

Your employee Jill, is often late to work and leaves early. Her work is behind and other employees in the department seem to always be picking up the slack for her. Jill is polite and friendly and, while she's at work, seems to be concentrating. She rarely socializes with anyone at work, preferring to keep to herself. How would you handle this situation?

You have another employee, Mary, who is hardworking. She often brings work home with her and works through her breaks. Her husband recently left her so she is juggling her work and her children. This means she often misses late meetings by leaving early. And, if things don't go smoothly in the morning, she arrives late. Sometimes you see her looking sad and vacant at her desk. Her coworkers are often picking up the slack for her at work. How do you handle this situation?

What thoughts and feelings did you have about Jill? About Mary? What if I told you they are one and the same person? How does that change your perspective?

"Remember that when you come at a person with a strong emotion, they will usually react in accordance with that emotion and not with the outcome you desire."

In most situations we react from our perspective and usually do not have all the information. We make assumptions about people based on our experience, our reality. What is difficult to realize is that no two people ever have the same experiences throughout their lives and that our perspective is not necessarily the correct one.

How do you slow down and see things from other people's perspectives, namely your employees? You use a skill called "Outcome Thinking®" that allows you to respond in alignment with the outcome you want instead of just reacting to the situation.

First, start by realizing that there are many correct answers to any given situation. This will allow you to step back, validate your answer, and then try to find out what other answers exist.

Second, try to think in positive terms of what the other person's perspective might be. Realize that your first contact with them should be an open one that gathers more information rather than blasts them with your opinion.

Let's take Jill for example using Outcome Thinking® by seeing things from her perspective. You would think thoughts such as, "Perhaps she is not aware of the extra work everyone is doing." "Maybe things are going on in her personal life that is making it tough on her". "She wants to do a good job and be part of the team." "Maybe she is looking for ways to be more effective."

You will find that after thinking positively, your anger or frustration with the other person will lessen. So when you approach Jill, you will approach her more from the angle of, "Jill, I have noticed that a lot of work seems to be shifting to others. I know you are very conscientious and I wanted to get your ideas on how to get the area back on track." This will allow Jill to open up to you and talk about the situation without being defensive.

Remember that when you come at a person with a strong emotion, they will usually react in accordance with that emotion and not with the outcome you desire. For instance, if you came to Jill angry about her tardiness, thinking she is inconsiderate and that she does not realize the extra work she is putting on everyone, then Jill would most likely respond to your anger and become angry back. She might then think, "You have no idea what it is like to have your husband leave you and try to raise your children on your own." Yet she may never say that. Instead she might just resent and avoid you.

Thirdly, you need to think about the way you talk to yourself. Keep in mind that the way you talk to yourself is the way you talk to others. Think about the critical voice you use. Are you harsh and critical of yourself? Do you often cut yourself down, even if it is jokingly? Do you get upset when you make a mistake or do you look at how you can learn from it? When someone criticizes you, do you take it personally or do you step back and assess if what their saying fits?

If you notice your critical voice tends to be negative, then work at changing it. When you catch yourself thinking a negative thought, immediately stop, say "cancel", and then rephrase the statement to be more positive. Practice saying positive statements to yourself on a daily basis. You may feel silly doing this, but you will start to see positive results!

• When utilizing "Outcome Thinking®", remember to think through the following:

• What is the other person's perspective? Think only in positive terms.

• What is my critical voice and how can I phrase things more positively?

• What can I say that will let this person open up to me and help bring about the outcome I want?

• If you still are having problems phrasing things positively, try role-playing with another person. Get them to play the devil's advocate with you.

Remember that your perspective is not necessarily the correct one. Our differences in our experiences are what allow us to stretch and change. Be open to what the other person has to say and concentrate more on the result you want than trying to make sure they know your feelings. In business, it is your IQ that often gets you your job, but it is the way you communicate with others that gets you promoted.

Related Articles
  Doing Poorly Until You Learn To Do Better
  Lesson #3: Give Them an Experience They Will Never Forget
  Lesson #1: “I learned to make people love me to get my message across.”
  Causing a Rumble in the Food Jungle: The Foreman Grill Goes for Gold
  Lesson #1: Fight the Limits That Are Imposed On You
  Five Steps for Success
  Make Peace with Your Task List
  The Power to Influence People
  Lesson #5: “I let negativity roll off me like water off a duck’s back.”
  Thinking about domains
  Favorite Small Business Franchises You Didn't Know About
  Find a Need and Fill It
  Conquer The Obstacles to Achieving Your Goals In Life
  Lesson #2: “I've learned that it doesn't matter what you do, if you learn to sell, you will never starve.”
  Career Growing Pains: Some Grow UP and Some Grow Old
  Creating the Right Mindset
  The Ultimate Fighting Champion: Dana White is Born
  Lesson #4: A Solid Reputation is Worth Its Weight in Gold
  Achievable avalanche opportunities
  How to Create Packages That Sell

Article Tags: communication, critical voice, message, outcome thinking, perspective, positive results, think positively



Related Forum Posts
Run a major competition - You beat me to the punch LoveInventions! I was just on my way to post this! The idea is simple: run a competition for a major prize to get people posting. In this case Darren put up a $729 Nikon DSLR up for grabs as the top prize. The winner was selected randomly and each post you wrote gave you another chance to win. [quote:1nc4sv0r]The Goal - the aim of the exercise was simple. To sign up new members to my forum and increase page views. My hope was to have a bumper month but also get new members signed up to have an ongoing impact on overall activity going forward.[/quote:1nc4sv0r] [quote:1nc4sv0r]Results: Traffic - Over the full month traffic was increased 66.7%.[/quote:1nc4sv0r] [quote:1nc4sv0r]Results: New Members - Recruiting new members to the forum was another goal of the competition. We’d had an influx in January of 1803 new sign ups as a result of a previous smaller competition but since had been around the 1200 per month. April however saw a boost in numbers by an extra 2823 members.[/quote:1nc4sv0r] [quote:1nc4sv0r]Results: Activity - Another bonus related to increased traffic is the increases in user activity on the forum. Here’s the increase in new ‘threads’ to the forum (up from the 1500’s to just over 4000 for the month). And here is the increase in new posts (up from 1400 per month to over 43000 for the month).[/quote:1nc4sv0r] [quote:1nc4sv0r] The Downside So far it’s sounding fairly rosy isn’t it. Increases in traffic, members, activity and even earning are all good. However there was two downsides. 1. Moderation Workload - I have an amazing team of moderators to DPS but the month of April was the hardest that they’ve ever worked. I totally underestimated the extra load upon them in setting up this competition. It has made me reconsider how I run future competitions. 2. Impact upon Quality of Reader Interaction - over all the increased activity of the site brought in some wonderful new members who are interacting on the site with genuine interaction. However a small number of new members were just there for the competition - even though I made it clear that spammy entries wouldn’t win. This impacted moderators workloads but also the overall morale on the site a little. I think we managed to contain it but again - next time I run a competition it’ll not be based upon post numbers but rather some sort of quality level of interaction.[/quote:1nc4sv0r] What do you guys think? Is it worth testing out? Considering we already give out over $1,000 in month prizes, what would be the ultimate prize that we award at the end of the competition?
$3000 per mo Site for Sale: $65,000 OBO - $3000 per mo Site for Sale: $65,000 OBO Content and Community Driven Pet Websites ________________________________________ Profile: Two Pet Related Websites Price: $65,000 OBO Age of sites: 2 years 4 months Monthly revenue: $3300 (plus or minus a couple hundred) Key details: Growth Year over Year: 641% Uniques: 200,000 per Month Page Views: 1 mil + per Month Referrers: 10,000+ Monthly Search Engine Traffic: 61% Members: 7500+/- Articles: 318 Blog Posts: 189+ Forum Posts: 256,000+ Topics: 19,000+ Adsense Revenue: $1500-$1700 per month Kontera Revenue: $900+ per month Direct Advertisers: $90 - $300 per month Monthly Server Costs: $100 Monthly Advertising Costs: $0 Total Profit Per Month $2500 - $3000 Organic Growth Month over Month: 10% +/- (Zero spent on advertising – all word of mouth and search engine) Software Licenses: All Open source and thus free: Linux, Apache, MySQL, Zen Cart, PHPLIST, WordPress, SMF, and the rest Custom Programming. Software Editions: All software running latest releases. Uniques Last Month: 200,000 Page Views Last Month: *2,000,000+ per month Referring Sources: 1,000 different referrers Referring Keywords: 60,000 Search Terms First Page Results: Thousands of keywords and keyword combinations Indexed pages (Google): 65,000+ Indexed pages (Yahoo): 26,000+ Google page rank: 5-6 (Lots of 3’s and 4’s throughout the sites) Pages of Content: 60,000+/- Alexa site rank: 124,000 (way off the mark due to audience profile) Compete Site Rank: Much closer but still off.. See image Brand Value: All Original Creative and Content including Logo, Forum Template, Front-end, CSS, Code, Images etc. Extremely well made to render fast as well as accessible, to both humans and search engines. Search optimized throughout. Description: I actually posted this for sale almost 11 months ago but didn’t take any offers. Since then traffic has increased almost 650% and revenue has increase by almost as much, closer to 600%. Revenue comes from direct advertising ($150-$350 per mo) but primarily Google Adsense ($1500 - $1750 per mo) and Kontera Links ($700-$900 per mo). Letting go as I’m working full time and just started Business School… I just don’t have the time. However, these sites are ripe for one to build a better business direction. I started these sites as the pet industry happens to be exploding, exponentially and almost parabolically. Google “pet spending” to find a glimpse. Some articles you’ll find: “The Growing Pet Industry Is One Trend You Can Bank On” "In the past 10 years, pet spending has more than doubled to an estimated $38.4 billion for 2006." "According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the pet industry is now the seventh largest retail segment in the country." “We have only begun to see the tip of the spending iceberg" “Pet Spending at All Time High” "Pet ownership is on the increase in the US, and the amount of money spent on pets is dramatically increasing too." The two sites are content and community driven websites with 350+ health related articles on pets, a pet blog that discusses current issues, and a very active message board and community. They compliment each other perfectly and as such are being sold together as a package. The templates are completely custom designed and CSS powered. They would be XHTML Strict Compliant however we’ve included a couple of things that just wouldn’t let it pass. There are almost 8000 members between the two sites. Several hundred more between the blog subscribers and the email list subscribers. At one time we had a store (its all still there however it’s been shut off) and we had about 200 customers. The store lasted only about a month and a half as our careers just didn’t allow us to provide the customer service this site deserves. We also had a drop ship company that worked out really well, (and we still do if we want them). Much more work than our careers had time for. The logos are custom. I’ve got the logo in vector version for Signs and tee shirts. The Design is custom. All software front-ends are custom and running clean - open source applications. Runs extremely well. The entire 2 sites run on a dedicated server that runs about $100 a month.. The sites run on a LAMP environment, meaning Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. All of the software is open source and requires no fees. We run PHPLIST, Zen Cart, and SMF Simple Machines Forum. The blog is Word Press. The article system is completely custom however the back end panel is ran simple from phpMyAdmin – straight to the database. I think there is enormous potential with the two sites as the brands have a very loyal following and is growing by leaps and bounds. It has been mentioned in 10 or so online and offline newspapers (that I am aware of) as well as a magazine – all of which will be provided. The site was featured as Yahoo’s Site of the Week. The site was forever (and perhaps still is) the number one pet site viewed on StumbleUpon.com. The blog also has 177 links from 56 sites according to Technorati.com and ranks 52,000. The database is huge. It’s full of fully owned content, images, customer data, subscriber data, members etc etc. The brand really sells when it comes to tee shirts and calendars. We have a drop shipper when needed that we buy tee’s at 4 dollars a shirt. Each shirt sold for $20 so there was a great margin. The two sites have a solid existence and are trenched well into all the major search engines with perhaps thousands of first place results for keywords and keyword combinations. The majority of traffic is all organic from Google, Yahoo and MSN and it will stay that way forever. The site was built solidly by SEO pros with Search Engine Spiders in mind as every part of the site is search friendly. All pages have been correctly and lightly coded. The database powers the meta tags, title tags, h1’s, h2’s, image titles and bold tags. The site has tens of thousands of dollars put into the design and functionality. petsite4sale@gmail.com


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Pay Per Click Advertising

What Is The Foundation for Your Vision?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.