Inspiration Corner

Motivational Speaker Says, ‘Setbacks. Are inevitable - And Often Helpful’

2007-06-14T12:06:00.000+01:00

Setbacks can happen through no fault of yours. And overcoming them can be mightily instructive. Check the memoirs of the great tycoons. You don’t read far before there’s a big crisis that puts their calibre to the test. “Been through the mill” is a tribute to someone’s character and judgment. (Some religions actually thank the Gods for sending them problems.)

Another Insight Into Self-Marketing Culture By Motivational Speaker And BBC Broadcaster Carole Spiers. Meet her in person at her Self-Marketing Bootcamp ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit’ in central London, Thursday June 28th 2007.

And discover the fastest way to grow your new business, gain clients, boost profit – all on a zero budget! Click here www.turnyourpassionintoprofit.co.uk to book your earlybird space before all tickets are sold out.

Carole Spiers – International Motivational Speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile BBC broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association. Carole is Author of Tolley’s ‘Managing Stress in the Workplace’ and ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit’

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiersgroup.co.uk to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers Says, ‘Your Health Really Does Come First’

2007-06-13T15:17:00.000+01:00

A rule often ignored, probably because it sounds uncool - too much like teacher’s pet. Yet anyone who’s pushed themselves too far will urge you passionately to ignore the common cries. “A little drink will set me up for the day.” Recipe for total dependence. “Lunch is for wimps.” Pseudo-macho nonsense. “No time for exercise.” Seriously reconsider your time management policy.

Another Insight Into Self-Marketing Culture By Motivational Speaker And BBC Broadcaster Carole Spiers. Meet her in person at her Self-Marketing Bootcamp ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit’ in central London, Thursday June 28th 2007.

And discover the fastest way to grow your new business, gain clients, boost profit – all on a zero budget! Click here www.turnyourpassionintoprofit.co.uk to book your earlybird space before all tickets are sold out.

Carole Spiers – International Motivational Speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile BBC broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association. Carole is Author of Tolley’s ‘Managing Stress in the Workplace’ and ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit’

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiersgroup.co.uk to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers Looks At The Anatomy Of A Typical Goal

2007-06-07T15:22:00.000+01:00

Writing down your main goal is an essential starting-point, to which many people are hesitant to commit. But a declared goal needs to face the test of repeated scrutiny before you press the launch-button. Pin it up on the wall. Ask your colleagues what they think. If it still looks good after a week, go for it. Any entrepreneur will tell you: temporary enthusiasms are the curse of business.

Another Insight Into Self-Marketing Culture By Motivational Speaker And BBC Broadcaster Carole Spiers. Meet her in person at her Self-Marketing Bootcamp ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit’ in central London, Thursday June 28th 2007.

And discover the fastest way to grow your new business, gain clients, boost profit – all on a zero budget! Click here www.turnyourpassionintoprofit.co.uk to book your earlybird space before all tickets are sold out.

Carole Spiers – International Motivational Speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile BBC broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association. Carole is Author of Tolley’s ‘Managing Stress in the Workplace’ and ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit’

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiersgroup.co.uk to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers says ‘The First Few Seconds Are The Most Important’

2007-05-24T11:12:00.000+01:00

Framing that initial snapshot that registers so deeply on your audience.

A business meeting around a table is no different in principle from a large conference. In both cases, certain speakers have to gain the attention of an audience, hold that attention, and drive home an argument with force and conviction.

And the initial impact is everything.

Remember that less than ten percent of your audience’s attention will be fixed on the actual subject of your presentation. Ninety percent of it will be assessing your face, your voice, your hair, your clothes… and searching for a mass of other hidden clues about who you are and where you’re coming from. The managing of that initial impact is a formal study, cultivated by professional speakers.

When you get up to make that presentation or conference speech, you are entering the world of public speaking, which is a branch of show business - performing for money. Except that in your case, it’s performing for career-points, which is notionally the same thing.

So it makes sense to observe some of the standard wisdom of actors and presenters in developing and polishing-up their act.

Making your entrance: asserting command

Whatever you’ve heard about the importance of first impressions on an individual, they’re ten times more crucial when you’re addressing an audience.

As the young female newscasters always complain, clothes and makeover seem to attract more attention than wars and revolutions.

But clothes and makeover are a big part of the image you present to the world, whether consciously or not. And there are a mass of other signals that register on an audience before you’ve had a chance to utter a word.

These ‘non-verbal interventions’, as they are classified, should be aimed at exuding confidence and making each member of the audience feel that you are addressing them exclusively. So you start by looking around with a welcoming smile, and then repeat this gesture periodically, with equal attention to all zones of the room. This makes a regular suggestion that we’re all enjoying ourselves. Hands should be open and involving (never in the pockets), drawing the audience in.

And don’t let Powerpoint get you into bad habits like turning your back or too-obviously reading the bullet-points. They are simply your aide-memoire, not for reading out.

Fear of audiences - killing a speech stone dead

If you’re nervous about getting up and speaking in public, you’re not alone. It’s actually the commonest phobia of them all (stage fright), and good actors make a point of working round it.

First, you must realise that it’s an irrational reflex, like fear of having an injection - dreading something that doesn’t really hurt at all, imagining the worst. It is rooted in a web of insecurities about the impact of your face, voice and manner on an audience - almost certainly exaggerated, usually not confirmed when it comes to the event.

There is also the somewhat more logical fear that an executive audience may be full of people who know more than you do - so who are you to lecture them? The answer is that you are not lecturing them. You are offering them a little snapshot of their subject taken from a fresh angle, and delivered with originality and engaging wit. On another level, you are also offering them a few minutes of yourself as a character and a personality. It is not strictly a lecture at all.

It’s actually a sort of combat. That audience is a stallion that needs breaking, and you must go at it with a fierce conviction. If this is bordering on arrogance, it’s better than diffidence. Ruthlessly train yourself out of hesitancy - any of those ‘er-um-y’know’ intervals which suggest under-confidence or ultimately fear. If you show fear, you’re finished. So get into a fighting mode, and nobody in that audience will ever guess you were afraid of public speaking.

If they’ve heard you before…

If you find you’re regularly addressing much the same audience, exploit this repeated opportunity to build presence. It’s like being a popular character-actor with his catch-phrases or a fresh orchid in the buttonhole. They’ll love you for it, and will feel cheated if you don’t play up to it.

This is actually brand-building. It sets off associations which strengthen a little more each time, and can heighten your credibility and authority. Especially if you’re trying to sell one particular agenda.Let’s say you’re talking about post-traumatic stress and the need to make plans for psychological de-briefings and first-aid. They’ll probably file that away under ‘worthy but boring’, like checking the fire-extinguishers. But the second time round, they’ll start to take a bit more notice, as long as you are not repeating the identical message. Present fresh angles on the same theme. Spice it with new anecdotes. And before long, they’ll move the post-trauma issue a bit higher up their list of priorities: your brand-building programme will have helped to sell the product.

And next time you get up to speak, they’ll have all those associations front-of-mind.

Good Chairmanship

Instead of being a speaker, you may find yourself in the role of Chairman, either at a business meeting or at a conference.

This requires just as much stage presence, but not so as to eclipse the speakers themselves. It is meant to complement their speaking skills.

As the anchor between speaker and audience, you must build a good relationship with both. This takes a particular mix of firmness and friendliness. On one hand, you must be able to control the event, rationing interruptions from the floor, as well as tactfully pointing out if a speaker is over-running his allocated time. On the other, you should encourage a relaxed atmosphere, introducing each speaker with a short profile, well-researched in advance, preferably including an anecdote the audience won’t have heard before.

In this way, your stage presence has a profound influence on the success of the event.

Six points of presentation technique, as practised by Carole Spiers

1. Focus your thoughts
Rehearse that opening statement exactly; the rest will follow

2. Control your nerves
Breathe deeply and regularly, to avoid gasping or gulping

3. Free up your body-language
Let your movements and gestures flow gracefully and naturally

4. Develop your presentation style
Your idiosynchrasies will help to make you more memorable

5. Relevant Anecdotes
A necessary break from formal sequences of subject-matter

6. Make eye-contact
Try to meet everyone’s eye; establish more intimacy of dialogue

Another Insight Into Self-Marketing Culture By Motivational Speaker And BBC Broadcaster Carole Spiers. Meet her in person at her Self-Marketing Bootcamp ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit’ in Central London, Thursday June 28th 2007.

And discover the fastest way to grow your new business, gain clients, boost profit – all on a zero budget! Click here www.turnyourpassionintoprofit.co.uk to book your earlybird space before all tickets are sold out.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiersgroup.co.uk to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers says, ‘It all starts with a strategy’

2007-05-23T10:08:00.000+01:00

Where do the success stories usually begin? Forget the colourful anecdotes about bright ideas scribbled down on the back of your hand. It usually comes down to a good, sound strategy worked out in detail and followed-through with determination and persistence. Securely rooted in this deep foundation, your dreams can soar.

Carole Spiers – International Motivational Speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile BBC broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association. Carole is Author of Tolley’s ‘Managing Stress in the Workplace’ and ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit’

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiersgroup.co.uk to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Carole Spiers Motivational Speaker Says, ‘Business Networking Is A Two-Way Relationship’.

2007-05-20T08:14:00.000+01:00

Your networking agenda is like any other kind of relationship-building. It’s a two-way interaction. If your potential networking partners think you’re only looking for what you can get out of it, they’ll soon cool off you. Either return the goodwill directly, or convince them that the two of you together are bigger than the sum of your parts.

Congratulations – You’re About To Learn How To Market Yourself On A Zero Budget and Grow Rich!

If you’d like to discover proven marketing formulas and the fastest way to grow your business, get more clients and boost your sales, grab the opportunity at our Marketing Bootcamp, ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit! in Central London on 28th June - Click here www.turnyourpassionintoprofit.co.uk for full details.

Carole Spiers – International Motivational Speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile BBC broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association. Carole is Author of Tolley’s ‘Managing Stress in the Workplace’ and ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit’

Carole will reveal the insider secrets to marketing your business on a zero budget at her one-day MEGA Marketing Bootcamp ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit’! Thursday 28th June in central London. Grab your opportunity to book your earlybird place and go to www.turnyourpassionintoprofit.co.uk NOW!

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiersgroup.co.uk to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers says, ‘You’re not the only one afraid of Public Speaking’

2007-05-19T17:38:00.000+01:00

It’s the commonest phobia of them all. So manage it - as good actors do.

When you step up on that platform, you’re stepping into show business.
You may only be in it for a few minutes, at an occasional wedding or conference. Or as a professional speaker, you may be in it for a career.

Either way, you’re always liable to experience the same kind of stage fright that secretly afflicts many fine actors, and which you need to get a handle on, if every forthcoming speech is not going to make a misery of you.

Frightened of nothing: the irrational reflex

It’s rather like fear of having an injection. You’re dreading something that doesn’t really hurt at all - imagining the worst.

This may be traced back to an actual memory of a stage disaster. But more likely it is rooted in a complex web of insecurities about the impact of your face, voice and manner on an audience - almost certainly exaggerated, usually not confirmed when it comes to the event.

There is also the somewhat more logical fear that an executive audience may be full of people who know more than you do - so who are you to lecture them? The answer is that you are not lecturing them. You are offering them a little snapshot of their subject taken from a fresh angle, and delivered with originality and engaging wit. On another level, you are also offering them a few minutes of yourself as a character and a personality. It is not strictly a lecture at all.

Preparation - your most effective safeguard

Most of your problem can be handled by the simple drills of thorough preparation.
First, you ought to memorise your speech, for the same reason that an actor does. Theatrical effects often depend on a well-rehearsed sequence building up to a climax. Your speech ought to suggest some kind of drama, with rhythm and tempo that may need a lot of practising. But like an actor, you should be able to make it sound entirely spontaneous.

Unlike an actor, however, you may not be reciting it quite verbatim. You may want to refer to something the previous speaker said. You may need to respond to an interruption. And of course, you must be ready to adapt it at short notice (or no notice) due to the last-minute change of schedule that’s suddenly going to chop it in half. For this, you need to decide in advance which sections you would leave out or merge together. In any case, you must always allow for the real thing to be about 20% longer than what you rehearsed in private, where you are liable to speak faster, and acoustics are not taken into account.

That fighting attitude: getting psyched-up

Yes, it’s a sort of combat. That audience is a stallion that needs breaking, and you must go at it with a fierce conviction. If this is bordering on arrogance, it’s better than diffidence.

Those awkward questions from the floor, for example. Don’t just trundle out some appeasing answer. Rehearse by getting one of your colleagues to throw some really nasty questions at you, and sharpen-up a withering reply to each of them. (The only notable thing about the young Margaret Thatcher was her extreme confidence at silencing hecklers.)

The commonest mistake is to talk humble about how honoured you are to be there. Make them feel honoured to be there. And ruthlessly root-out any signs of hesitancy, any of those ‘er-um-y’know’ intervals which suggest under-confidence or ultimately fear. If you show fear, you’re finished. So get into a fighting mode, and nobody in that audience will ever guess you were afraid of public speaking.

Carole Spiers – International Motivational Speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile BBC broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association. Carole is Author of Tolley’s ‘Managing Stress in the Workplace’ and ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit’

See Carole live at her one-day MEGA Marketing Bootcamp ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit’ – discover how to market your business on a zero budget! On Thursday 28th June in central London. Grab your opportunity to book your earlybird place and go to www.turnyourpassionintoprofit.co.uk
Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiersgroup.co.uk to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers on: How To Remind Your Contacts That You’re Still Alive!

2007-05-14T07:35:00.001+01:00

A Motivational Speaker is just as vulnerable as any other SME to the curse of the silent phone.

You sit there scanning that new-business database you’ve built up with such care. Hundreds and hundreds of well-placed people who could become lucrative clients. But day after day, the phone still doesn’t ring. And the last few times you dialled-up a contact out of the blue, you were politely told where to go.

Well, I’ve been working for myself for over 20 years, and I figured out early on that if I couldn’t find ingenious ways to activate my market, nobody else was likely to do it for me!

So think round corners, like me. Try these few little tips - or a whole lot more too, in my new Marketing e-book ‘Turn Your Passion into Profit’: and discover how to multiply your income on a ZERO budget!

And also find out how to activate your database like me. Click here: http://tinyurl.com/28oyav

Maximise Your Lists

The longer your lists, the greater the chance of something coming up. So keep tabs. If you’re planning to be still around in a few years, try to log details of every single contact, however unpromising. Today’s junior will be tomorrow’s manager sooner than you think. People who can’t use you this year may move into jobs where they can. Some relationships take many years to mature. (That’s one reason why it helps if you get yourself clearly remembered - or branded - from the start.)

Persist, Don’t Pester

Where potential clients respond coolly to your overtures, note the date of your call, and don’t try again for about 9-12 months. If it’s ansafone, take the opportunity to leave a clear message reminding them who you are, preferably giving an incentive for them to ring back. If they’re people you’ve met and got on quite well with, you can try a Merry Christmas call as an excuse to ask them their news and check their movements, as well as discreetly asking about mutual contacts in the cheery Yuletide atmosphere.

The Blog As Subtle Reminder

This is really an amazing one. The internet provides a big opportunity to keep your name in front of your database contacts, via well-crafted mailings that promote yourself and your service during the intervals between your calls. Unfortunately mailings sent out cold may be rejected as spam, and you won’t know which. If relations with your contact are reasonably friendly, get them to subscribe to a regular Blog, accessed via an RSS feed, which automatically overrides spam-detectors.

(If you’d like to know more about how Blogs will earn you money, we’re making a special study of it at our Marketing Bootcamp, ‘Turn Your Passion Into Profit: Marketing You And Your Business on a ZERO budget! In Central London on 28th June - Click here to catch your earlybird place - www.turnyourpassionintoprofit.co.uk .)

Exploit Business Gossips…

Identify a few of your more sociable colleagues who are natural gossips who enjoy boasting how well they’ve kept up with who’s-gone-where. Once a year, give them a really good lunch - they’ll be volunteering valuable data over the coffee and liqueurs.

…But Don’t Go The Bar-Room Route

People who talk big in bar-rooms usually talk small in boardrooms. Making plans over drinks is generally for losers. Especially mistrust new contacts who make urgent hurry-hurry business propositions in bars. (If they’ve got such a desperate panic on, what are they doing hanging around the pub in the first place?)

Friendly To Receptionists And PA’s

Receptionists, switchboarders and PA’s often have to put up with a lot of rudeness, and they can’t walk away. So they particularly appreciate good manners and common decency. Get them on your side, and they can give you access to a key manager when he’s free, advise you who else to approach and how, or tip you off about newly-appointed managers before your rivals hear about them.

And More MarketingTips Where These Came From…

If you think these little pointers might be useful for promoting yourself and your business, I can offer you the ultimate Marketing book.

As a Motivational Speaker, I always get a warm reaction to my empowerment talks, ad people often come to me afterwards, asking for the book of the speech. So now I’ve provided one, which is on sale at all the venues where I appear - or conveniently downloadable in the form of an e-book whenever you want.

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Remember failure? Forget it.

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Carole Spiers – inspirational Motivational Speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Marketing and Personal Development. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile BBC broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers says 'Efficient v. Effective is the difference between doing the job right and doing the right job

2007-04-25T20:56:00.001+01:00

In my role as a Motivational Speaker at business conferences and seminars, I have often have to point out that ‘efficient’ and ‘effective’ may sound similar, but they are in fact quite different forms of time management.

For example, the supervisor of a dozen building sites in London’s western suburbs had worked out a logical routine for beating the rush-hour, in order to spend less time in his car and more time on-site.

He visited each site in sequence, in a particular orbit that would allow him to ‘reverse commute’, heading out of town in the morning and back into town in the evening.

This was efficient. But it was not effective - because it ignored the priority-status of the sites with the problems needing most urgent attention.

In other words, he had done the job right, but not the right job.

Distinguishing between Efficient and Effective is an important branch of Time Management - one of the major specialities on which motivational speaker Carole Spiers regularly addresses blue-chip corporate clients. It is a difference that bulks-up big in all workplace contexts.

For example, it marks the difference between the old-style secretary and the new-style PA. The secretary had to be efficient - arriving punctually, typing neatly, passing on messages correctly. But she did not have to be effective - making decisions, forecasting outcomes, thinking round corners in a semi-executive role, as today’s PA increasingly must.

Efficient v. Effective is also the test of how we handle our two kinds of working time - Control Time, where you control the duration of the job, and Response Time, where you react to interruptions which control you.

Two managers are working separately on a major report, which requires deep concentration and cannot be written in periods of less than half-an-hour. Meanwhile both are also having to allow time for dialogue with the rest of the department.

Manager A puts in half-an-hour on the report, then his concentration starts to slip, so he decides to take a break by ‘doing the rounds’ in a part-social, part-business atmosphere. One colleague needs a problem sorted, and this takes half-an-hour - longer than expected. It is at least an hour before the manager is back at his desk. Ten minutes later, the boss rings to fix a meeting for sometime that day. “How about now?” says the manager, and goes off to meet him.

Manager B faces an identical situation, but handles it differently. She starts by ringing up one of her department, to say she’ll be doing the rounds in half-an-hour - knowing that she’ll need a break by then. At the appointed time, she conducts her tour, and sure enough one team-member has a problem that needs fixing. “Come and see me in half-an-hour, when I’ll be ready for another break” she says. The colleague arrives by appointment, and they duly fix the problem, which also takes half-an-hour. Ten minutes later, the boss rings her too, to fix a meeting for today. “How about half-an-hour’s time?”, she says, and returns to another focused session on her report.

The difference between these two scenarios is that Manager A has only spent the first half-hour in Control Time, while Manager B has managed to arrange three half-hour sessions in Control Time. So limiting your availability is a key factor in achieving effectiveness.

How to stop your time managing you…

Time Management has a lot to do with showing Time who’s boss.

In fact, your time will automatically try to manage you - unless you prevent it.

The Interruption factor
The average manager gets interrupted every 8 minutes. It’s something you can’t schedule - but there are practical ways to cut the chat.

How Meetings squander time
Everything from latecomers to attention-seekers or just an unclear agenda. Make sure it’s necessary, then keep it brisk and businesslike.

Logging the time-waster elements
List everything that tends to hold you up - desk clutter, drop-in visitors, long-winded talk, confusion of roles, false alarms - and tackle them.

You can find out about these and many other aspects of Time Management in a major training toolkit: ‘Hurry Hurry! – Every Second Counts’. The true and false dynamics of urgency at work’, available right here on my website - www.carolespiers.com

Suitable for all levels of management and employees, this toolkit comes with Powerpoint sildes for easy presentation, as well as a workbook that can be copied in any number. It has proved equally popular in many different kinds of organisation, at seminars and training sessions, and also with my general audiences as a motivational speaker.

Click here to see full details and buy… See a useful improvement in your time management soon. http://www.carolespiers.com/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=24

Motivational speaker Carole Spiers occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational Keynote Speaker Carole Spiers says “Don’t count your Valentines. They don’t count that much.”

2007-02-11T07:51:00.000Z

In the world of empowerment and self-development, the Valentine Card should have no place - a dubious ritual that just leaves a lot of girls feeling lonely and left out.

So what do we do? Ban it from the office - as we’ve banned the girlie-calendar and the wolf-whistle?

No. That would make us (empowerment advocates) look humourless, about a topic that should largely be treated with humour.

Valentines are basically a bit of fun

It is doubtful if they alter anyone’s lives. After all, if that card is unsigned, you’re meant to know who it’s from, and nearly always it’s from your steady boyfriend anyway. Like a little good-morning kiss - an impulse gesture, not a profound piece of communication.

Of course, a girl does feel a flutter of interest when she’s just received a mystery card, provided it’s not from some sinister stalker. It injects a little twist of magic into that one particular day, when she briefly lets herself dream about who the sender might be, before returning to the real world again. But it’s still only a game.

It is when people take it all too seriously that the trouble starts

Like when a married couple feel they ought to keep up a formal exchange of cards, like a ‘marital duty’ - that joyless phrase.

Then there’s that sense of competition you sometimes notice, especially with multiple cards. “I got more Valentines than you!” Or the temptress who wants to boast that she’s broken the office record this year. Or the girl who needs the reassurance that she’s received more cards than she’s sent out.

These are seldom the ones with the most satisfying love-lives. Yet that is just the kind of thing that sets up jealousy and envy in the less-confident girl, adding to all her insecurities, most of which turn out to be groundless in due course.

Valentines? More or less harmless. And they keep a few printers in work. But remember, there
are 364 other days in the year when loving impulses can be expressed too. Perhaps with more sincerity.

It Doesn’t Need A Valentine Card To Put You On Top Of The World…

You can get yourself a first-class ticket through life - by attending to your own personal empowerment and self-development agenda. Click here http://www.carolespiers.com/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=34
for details of my book ‘Turn your passion into profit’ - new this week, latest from Carolespiers.com, the website to watch – www.carolespiers.com

Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers says: ' Important v. Urgent!

2007-02-09T08:16:00.000Z

Two conflicting scales of priority that can seriously pull you apart!

You may see no great difference between ‘urgent’ and ‘important’. But as a motivational speaker on Time Management, I have taught many blue-chip managements an important difference between the two. See it this way:

With much effort, you’ve managed to clear aside a whole day for tackling a major problem that must be solved by the end of the week.

Just as you’re getting dug down deep into it, someone knocks on the door with one of those so-called panics, wanted for today, instantly snapping your concentration and putting you back in a shallow and superficial mode, from which no great insights are likely to flow.

The nuisance-value of this kind of interruption may be compared to an express train being derailed by a brick on the line - a little thing getting in the way of a big thing.
Yet it is very hard to walk away from that so-called emergency, however trivial. We are programmed to ‘drop everything’ and respond at once to anything that anyone chooses to call urgent.

Prioritising our tasks according to logic, not panic, is an increasingly vital part of Time Management. And the obvious first step is to define ‘Urgent’ and ‘Important’, relative to each other.

‘Important’ indicates a task that will impact heavily on the corporate agenda, with serious consequences if not performed in a reasonable interval.

‘Urgent’ indicates an emergency factor, with some degree of penalty if not performed at once.
This sets up four distinct categories of priority, and you should practise automatically classifying each task into one or other of these:

1. Important and urgent
2. Urgent but not important
3. Important but not urgent
4. Not urgent or important

Clearly, a No.1 task should not be interrupted on any account. And a No.4 task can safely be left till a quiet afternoon, or even dropped altogether.

It is the battle for attention between Nos. 2 and 3 that causes most arguments, and you need to have your policy worked out.

With a No.2 task - often quite a minor one - the temptation is to slip it in quickly ahead of the more important No.3., especially as postponing it would set up even more of an emergency. This looks logical enough. But you then have to find some way to stop people identifying you as ‘good scout’ and simply declaring urgency as a lazy way of getting quick service.

A No.3 task needs serious planning, in order to guarantee enough sustained concentration to deliver satisfactorily on time. When you’re dug deep into a No.3 and someone threatens you with a quick ‘panic’, you should question whether it’s really a No.4, and if not, whether this fairly minor task could be entrusted to someone else.

And other ways we can manage our time better…

· Dare to delegate
Yes, it can be hard to let go. But you’ll find that you do need to limit your availability. The power to delegate is identified as a key quality in top management.

· The Paper Tide
Ration paperwork ruthlessly. Bin what you can. Cut corners by phone. Even colour-coded folders and see-thru files can save crucial time.

· The art of prioritising
Amazingly, you can save up to 10 hours a week by keeping a Time Log, charting the progress of key agendas and rating your daily performance.

You can find out about these and many more aspects of Time Management in a major training toolkit: ‘Hurry Hurry! – Every Second Counts’. The true and false dynamics of urgency at work’, available right here on my website - www.carolespiers.com

Suitable for all levels of management and employees, this toolkit comes with Powerpoint sildes for easy presentation, as well as a workbook that can be copied in any number. It has proved equally popular in many different kinds of organisation, at seminars and training sessions, and also with my general audiences as a motivational speaker.

Click here to see full details and buy… See a useful improvement in your time management soon. http://www.carolespiers.com/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=24

Motivational speaker Carole Spiers occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output.

Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers says '‘Can YOU make a difference to someone’s life?’

2007-01-21T13:27:00.000Z

You’ll doubtless already have read some of the numerous New Year’s blogs and emails exhorting you to get fit, reflect on the past year’s failed resolutions, turn over a new leaf, write your action plans and set your goals.

But realistically, a year from now, many of us will almost certainly be in the same position again. We start out with sincere, good intentions – the beginning of a new year is going to make a difference! But will it? Unfortunately it probably will not!

For most of us, another January is just another date in the calendar - albeit one when we have to find the money to pay the bills for all the Christmas presents we couldn’t really afford!

I want this year to be different, so I am going to ask you to consider some questions that are a little deeper than ‘How you are going to improve your life or double your income?’!

This year, how about making a moral resolution?

The real questions are:

1. Did you make a difference to someone else’s life last year – anybody’s life, any difference?
2. What action did you take last year that will be remembered by someone else? Anything?
3. What words did you say to someone which touched their hearts and have remained in their mind until today? Anything?

Like most of us, I too lead a frenetic life. But having just returned from Cape Town, with my partner, amongst the palm trees and flowers, having spent three weeks of training and coaching disadvantaged men and women in the townships of the Southern Cape to become self-sufficient in micro business skills, I can truly say I feel humbled by the gratitude expressed by so many of those to whom we gave of our time.

Many, with tears in their eyes, thanked us for our efforts, and told us how just those few hours had given them a renewed confidence and a much-needed boost to their skill-set and self-esteem.

Helping the disadvantaged to take that crucial first step up

We gave many of them contacts with other aspiring business people who, like themselves, are just starting out with the same problems and similar worries – people with whom they can now network and share solutions. We took video film of them making their very first presentations, and some cried when they saw themselves on screen, for the very first time.

But many were so impressive - speaking in perfect English of their goals - that we too had tears as we watched people, so appreciative, so grateful and so determined. There is no doubt who were the most privileged – we will not forget - just as they will not.

My partner and I have been working in the townships for three years now, and each year we have come out during our holiday periods. I have always wished it could be for longer, but as ever my own business gets in the way. So I have to content myself with the time that I am able to give.

Touching people; making a difference to someone’s family; empowering them to feel good about themselves; giving confidence to someone when they feel down (and out); teaching entrepreneurship skills where they are needed; offering love and open-ended support. This is what has made a difference to me for the forthcoming year. This is what will stay with me, in the coming months, when I am rushing from the streets of London to Internet City in Dubai.

Of course, my business has returned to its hectic pace. But for now I am truly taking stock of what we have been able to achieve by spending just a few weeks in the townships of South Africa.

Reality has to take over and tell me that if I have been able to make a difference to just a few families during this festive season, then that has been well worth while.

Those families have gone away with their action plans for the New Year, and the knowledge that it is up to them to put these into practice. They know that they cannot rely on anyone but themselves; however they also know that I am at the end of a telephone line or email – and will return to see them again during the year.

Join me in this important mission - ethical and enjoyable

I am sure there are many others who also earn well and would like to give something back. And to give back in a tangible way. If you would like to give your support and make a difference to the families of disadvantaged people in the townships of South Africa, then contact me – cs@carolespiers.com or call me on + 44 (0) 20 8954 1593.

Or, if like me, you are a motivational Speaker and would like to learn more about how you can raise money for an African charity of your choice, then log onto http://www.speakers4africa.org/. Either way, this is the time… this is the moment… this could be your opportunity to make a genuine and lasting difference to someone else’s life…

Carpe diem (seize the moment) and make that your New Year’s resolution. TRULY MEANINGFUL!

Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers says, 'that Open-door Policy can encourage lazy interaction'

2007-01-07T07:22:00.001Z

As a motivational speaker, I’ve addressed many blue-chip clients about the management policy that says “Any problems, my door is always open…” And I’ve found that it depends very much on what you call a problem…

The air-conditioning has broken down or the boilers are overheating. You can hardly say “Apply to my secretary for an appointment.”

Or a staff-member is wanting to come out with some private anxiety affecting their work - maybe marriage trouble or some worsening addiction. Naturally that is to be encouraged, before they have second thoughts and go back to hiding it.

The trouble is that almost any office-task can be described as a problem. Indeed, this is encouraged throughout business. ‘Problem: solution’ is the standard executive drill.

Managers delegate problems precisely so that they don’t have to worry about them till the other person delivers the solution. And this is where an Open Door policy brings out the lazy side in the appointee.

Take a junior in their first few weeks with the firm, having to familiarise themselves with a product or service that is entirely new to them. It may be quite a struggle, digging down into a new subject, while also acclimatising to working life itself, and this is meant to be a major test of intellect, judgment and character. So they should not expect to have their hand held at this time.

But if the manager’s door is always open, they’ll be tempted to keep cutting corners and going in to ask things they ought to be deducing for themselves.

That is a particularly obvious example of the negative effect of open doors. But many other kinds of personnel may also be tempted into lazy habits, sliding into casual conversation, in lieu of the formal memo that was asked-for, or just those time-wasters who’ll grab any excuse for a chat instead of working - in this case, exploiting the manager’s wish to appear democratic and unstuffy.

The Alternative Open Door - ‘Walking the Talk ’

Aware of the limitations of the Open Door policy, some managers have tried to re-invent it in reverse, going round the departments informally to pick up atmosphere - or ‘Walking the Talk’. This offers certain advantages that go with neutral territory. For example, it encourages people to mention matters that they might hesitate to raise at a formal meeting - yet if it can be seen as a time-wasting issue, the manager is free to move on tactfully without actual confrontation.

The drawback is that it sets up the curious prospect of the manager inadvertently wasting the time of a busy achiever, in the interests of looking like a good team-player and ‘one of the lads’.
Whichever form your Open Door policy may take, it can be shown-up as inefficient by reference to the two kinds of working time: Controlled Time and Response Time.

In Controlled Time, you are working on a job whose duration you can control. In Response Time, you are reacting to an interruption - which may take up any amount of time. As a manager gets interrupted on average every eight minutes, this greatly limits his Controlled Time, so the conclusion is that interruptions should be discouraged as far as possible.

And More Time Management tips Where These Came From…

As you can see, the Open Door policy is just one aspect of Time Management that needs active questioning.

Others range from prioritising your tasks and rationing paperwork to identifying false emergencies and how to keep meetings brisk and brief.

You can find out about these and many more in a major training toolkit: ‘Hurry Hurry! – Every Second Counts’. The true and false dynamics of urgency at work’, available right here on my website www.carolespiers.com

Suitable for all levels of management and employees, this toolkit comes with Powerpoint slides for easy presentation, as well as a workbook that can be copied in any number. It has proved equally popular in many different kinds of organisation, at seminars and training sessions, and also with my general audiences as a motivational speaker.

Click here to see full details and buy… See a useful improvement in your time management immediately. http://www.carolespiers.com/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=24

Motivational speaker Carole Spiers occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally.

To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational speaker Carole Spiers says 'use Internet Marketing to make you money!'

2007-01-05T07:03:00.000Z

As a motivational speaker, I was delighted to be invited to Dubai in November 2006 in order to speak on the topic of post trauma support at a health and safety conference staged by IIR.

In order to raise the profile of this trip, we did all the usual pre-trip promotions, spoke to contacts, my team emailed our database, blogged eCademy and so forth.

Internet Marketing

These efforts did receive some good interest but our Internet Marketer, Chris Clark, made the suggestion – why not send out an On-line Press Release – not the usual ones, but a new type of ‘Social Media Press Release’. Well, as ever I was intrigued as to how this was going to leverage our profile in the UAE.

He explained that this differed from standard Press Releases in that we could now add photos, video and audio clips, pdfs etc. We could also add links to other client sites, add testimonials, and use the vital keyphrases to target the release into niche markets.

This sounded all pretty good, especially as he said – ‘just leave it up to me, (don’t you just love it when that is said to you) - and just watch your rankings shoot up on Google!’. So this is what I did. I gave him the copy. He did whatever Internet Marketers do and know best (and I don’t need to know either!) – he made it all happen!

The UAE Tour

So the UAE tour went live on 18th November and the conference started on 26th. In addition, Chris suggested that I do two blogs about the conference in the intervening period.

Well, would you believe it….. things happened very quickly after that. I took a call from a Dubai company in Dubai Internet City who had found us through the press coverage, and we signed a training deal before I left.

We received incredible coverage with the Release picked up by Yahoo News and others. (Naturally uploaded to our website). Our blogs were picked up and reposted, and the article that we ran was viewed over 500 times and is still being read!

We also saw a huge uplift in our Google presence for our website www.carolespiersgroup.co.uk.

So by the time I arrived at the Dubai conference, there certainly was a good deal of buzz, I had made a new international client and received considerable feedback from the coverage.

Will I be doing this again? You bet!

In my opinion, keep to what you know and do what you do best!.

Outsource what you can't do and give it to the experts. I am a motivational speaker - I speak for a living and that is what I do best….Chris Clark is an Internet Marketer – that is what he does for a living and that is what he does best! Catch Chris at www.clarkmarketing.co.uk or chris.clark@clarkmarketing.co.uk.

Call in the experts! Remember …you can’t be all things to all people…

PS Have a look at our train the trainer post trauma powerpoint slide and workbook product that we specially created for the Dubai conference and is now on sale worldwide. Click here http://www.carolespiers.com/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=32

Carole Spiers – motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Keynote Professional Speaker Carole Spiers says ' we have to measure the practical value of leanring and make sure we follow through!

2006-12-10T15:22:00.000Z

In order to achieve success we have to measure the practical value of learning and make sure we follow through!

When we meet someone, how often do we lose an opportunity and not follow up. We go to all the trouble of getting out bed early and getting dressed up for that networking event but how often do the business cards just get filed away and no contact is made. Often that person is looking for some learning from you that may help their business.

So have you ever measured the practical value of learning?

The hint you picked up in a newsletter on Monday, a comment from a mentor or peer on Tuesday, a question from someone who gave you their business card, that when combined in a new idea you put into action, won you an engagement, or an order on Friday.

People often speak of learning as a lofty ideal empowering, energising and doing more. But often it's the practical applications of the little and practical things that make the fastest and biggest impact to your business.

For example, did you know that simply by using the rules file feature in Outlook to route all the emails to your website's 'enquiry@...' address to a special Outlook folder marked 'Enquiries' pretty much guarantees you will never miss a new lead in amongst all the daily email traffic.

Or as my colleague Chris Clark says, did you know one strategically placed Capital Letter in a Google adword could double its pulling power and reduce it's cost per click.

Measure the practical value of learning this week.

Listen out for a hint in an email or newsletter on a Monday, or a piece of mentors advice on Tuesday or look behind the question of your enquirer. See if applying an idea from the combined learning could reward your business, and that of someone who gave you their business card this week in some way by Friday.

Happens every week for me!.

Carole Spiers – keynote professional speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Chris Clark is an internet marketer who helps clients phones ring more frequently, increases email enquiries for their services, and makes their on line cash tills ring more often. Catch Chris at chris.clark@clarkmarketing.co.uk, web www.clarkmarketing.co.uk

'Trauma strikes when it likes', says Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers

2006-11-21T20:43:00.000Z

So be rehearsed for the worst, Carole Spiers tells Dubai audience.

The high-powered business community of Dubai will be listening in keenly as Post Trauma consultant and Motivational Speaker, Carole Spiers speaks on ‘Evaluating Rapid Response and Post-trauma Support’ at the Middle East Safety Management Congress staring on November 28th 2006.

Carole speaks from twenty years’ experience of advising blue-chip clients all over the world on handling the aftermath of traumatic events in the workplace, whether caused by man-made or natural disaster. She explains how you can train yourself and your colleagues to get over the shock quickly and into certain constructive drills that will impact on your sustained performance.

Trauma Strikes When it Likes!....so be ready for its effects!
With this 2-part Management Training Toolkit system.
Click here to to order this NEW product - Powerpoint presentation and delegate workbook + FREE best selling e-manual downloadable in any number - http://www.carolespiers.com/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=32.
On promotional offer until 30th November 2006 only!

Management interventions divide naturally into two stages - immediate action for getting your human and material resources back in operation (Continuity Planning), and long-term monitoring and diagnosis of trauma-related effects (Psychological debriefing). The three key inputs come down to counselling, training and consultancy, in all of which Carole has extensive first-hand knowledge.

For her many prestige clients across government, industry and the profesisons, Carole utilises a Post-trauma Support Model, used as a standard reference-point all over the world in this important yet still largely unfamiliar area of management responsibility.

The Safety Management Conference starts on Tuesday 28th November 2006 at Dubai’s Metropolitan Palace Hotel, a major venue that is attracting record numbers of business leaders and politicians, who will acquire new expertise about this subject, which is both topical and enduringly relevant.

PS Dont forget - Trauma Strikes When It Likes! - check out our NEW Training Toolkit system
http://www.carolespiers.com/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=32 - on promotional offer until 30th November 2006 only!

Trauma Strikes When It Likes - Contents of delegate workbook -
Introduction
Defining a traumatic incident
At risk groups
Those effected directly and indirectly
Post-trauma stress: Definition
Immediate reactions to trauma
General symptoms of post-trauma stress
Typical effects of post-trauma stress
Organisational responsibility
Risk Assessment
Post-trauma support strategy
The role of line management
Basic listening (or counselling skills)
Dealing with anger
Business management issues
Contingency planning
PTSD diagnostic criteria
Methodologies in the management of trauma victims
Trauma support model
Practical application of the trauma support model
Initial stage: Defusing
Middle stage: Trauma support session
Final stage: Monitoring people over a period of time
Post-trauma counselling
The role of external agencies
Key learning points
Appendix A
Coping strategies during and after traumatic events
Appendix B
An example of a leaflet for use with clients and their families
Appendix C
Brief screening questionnaire for PTSD
Book list

PPS Call us on 020 8954 1593 and we will be happy to answer any of your questions.
PPPS Be prepared for the unexpected!

www.carolespiersgroup.co.uk
info@carolespiersgroup.co.uk

Keynote professional speaker Carole Spiers on the value of empathy

2006-11-11T21:24:00.000Z

- to optimise business dialogue as well as improving relationships.

Someone said that good dialogue is the difference between hearing what you say and seeing what you mean.

And the difference is made by achieving empathy - a quality that can be taught, as demonstrated in one of my keynote presentations.

See me live at Ecademy in London
mms://www.qmsstreaming.com/e2006/epnnov2006carole.wmv

You have only to listen to people trying to conduct business on their mobiles to see just how much dialogue is wasted - a mass of words missing their mark, failing to convey the intended meaning or sentiment, and often leading to misunderstanding and conflict.

Empathy comes from that area where professionalism and good manners touch hands.

Take a small example: remembering people’s names correctly.

It is remarkable how much this can impact on a relationship, out of all proportion to the simple act itself. A forgotten or mis-remembered name immediately brings the other person down to office-boy level, even if quite unintentionally. Yet remembering someone’s name correctly after a long interval can put out a highly favourable signal, taken as a deep compliment. It actually goes to the roots of recognition and respect, earning particular gratitude from people newly arrived in a strange country, where their name may be hard to pronounce, and their self-image may be very humble.

On the wider scale, empathy is defined as the ability to identify and understand another’s situation, feelings and motives. (Boardrooms are all about making rapport between people with little in common, and you must be especially able to put yourself in the other person’s mind while choosing your words.)

Some people, of course, have a natural gift in this direction. But most people need to develop it consciously, and it should be treated as an important area of business instruction, no different from marketing or software engineering.

Other tips, which I can tell you much more about, include:

Don’t interrupt - allow the other person their say, even if they’re not articulate. Perhaps nobody else has ever heard them out, so you may earn much loyalty for minimal input.

Be there for them - don’t be half-concentrating on your watch or your screen; re-assure them that they have your undivided attention.

Listen and interpret - pick up on their unconscious signals, like vocal inflexions or body language. You may be able to see what they’re trying to express, while others can’t.

Cheer them up - except in cases of severe reprimand, maintain an optimistic atmosphere, give praise when it’s due, make them feel generally welcome on the team.

Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

That Business Card - How To Get It Kept And Read!

2006-11-09T22:37:00.000Z

Your Prime Opportunity To Design A Pocket Poster That Works For Years..

A female motivational keynote speaker is not a unique commodity - far from it. So when I hand someone my card, I have to make sure it’s not just destined for the nearest bin. My card is in every way my advertisement, and it must mark me out from the competition, favourably and memorably.
Whatever business you’re in, you’ll face the same situation. So, keep front-of-mind that your card is your advertisement. And apply the rules of good advertising. Of which the first and best is… the safe way is the wrong way!

For example, that plain white card with your name and title in copper-plate lettering to indicate reassurance and gravitas… What are you, for goodness sake? A funeral director in 1950?
Short of actual silly gimmicks aiming to shock and without a real message, you’ll be amazed at how well people respond to a less-usual business card.

Let me give you an example from my own career - not as a motivational speaker this time, but as a stress consultant. Now it is a fact that stress will restrict blood-flow, making your hands colder than normal. So I often give my clients a tiny peel-off sticker that shows a different colour for each temperature-range when they place their finger on it.

One day I experimented with the idea of applying this tiny sticker to my business card, and explaining the significance of it to new contacts. As many of these people were senior blue-chip management, I reckoned that some of them might possibly reject it as a bit gimmicky, but that more of them would find it interesting and memorable. As it turned out, the response was 100% favourable. Not a single person reacted negatively. One director actually kept it on his desk for five years, showing it to all his visitors, while another stored it in his wallet as reference for when he wanted a good keynote speaker. (We’re still doing training courses for his employees - years on).

Truly the safe way is the wrong way!

Let me offer you a few other ideas for making your card stand out from others, while adding that an advertising art-director will be able to give you professional advice that could easily pay for itself in weeks.

· Double-sided card - twice the impact
That blank reverse-side is simply a waste of good advertising space. It’s like publishing a magazine with its outside back cover left blank, when that slot actually goes at a hefty premium. At the very least, you could duplicate the same image on both sides, for almost no extra cost, so that your message is seen whichever way up the card is left lying. But you may also take the opportunity of displaying a different message on the back, so that you make two impacts, not one.

· 4-pager - the perfect mini-brochure
If you have an interesting story to tell, consider a 4-page version of your card, whose inside spread will make an interesting ‘reader’ element, absent from most cards. (For this, it is worth investing in a high-quality illustration.) I heard of one client who printed his cards in a 4-page version, using some of the artwork from his 6-page DL brochure. He found the card worked so well, he almost didn’t need the brochure!

· My own preferred format
Front for persuasion. Back for information. Let the front be your poster, expressing one message with great clarity. If you’re going for a witty and memorable strapline (which often invites a good accompanying photo), make sure it doesn’t obscure the basic fact of what you do for a living. On the back, display your contact details in a straightforward but tasteful way, with phone and e-mail in bold, and summary of your services, perhaps in two listings, e.g. products one side, locations the other.

Finally…

Don’t wait… till you’ve used up your existing cards before you re-design. That’s a false economy and a short-sighted policy.

Don’t wait… more than a week or so to follow-up a contact to whom you’ve given your card. That can cost you vital momentum.

A creative card could be the first step towards a full-scale programme of successful promotion for yourself and your business, all conducted in the same bold spirit. In fact, your card may well signal this attitude to an important new-business contact - a big part of that formative first impression.

Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Insider Secrets On How To Read Body-Language

2006-10-30T23:52:00.001Z

Interpreting vital meanings signalled by posture, gesture and expression

You expect a professional keynote speaker to know a bit about body-language. But when her main subject is self-empowerment, you can be sure you’re getting an extra special brand of insight into the mysteries of non-verbal communication.

“It’s more spontaneous than speech, and often more revealing” says popular motivational speaker Carole Spiers, who regularly addresses management audiences all over the world on a theme that she has made her own: sustainable success.

To be able to interpret that huge hidden vocabulary of body, hand and face is clearly a major asset in business (as well as social life), and should be part of any manager’s toolkit of soft skills. By improving your reading of people, it will improve your reading of whole situations. It can give you the advantage in tough interviews or sales pitches, by providing you with tactical intelligence that you can react-to on the spot. Altogether, it simply turns you into a higher grade of communicator.

As a motivational keynote speaker, Carole has both interpreted and utilised body-language to a high degree, and few people are better equipped to enlighten you about it.

The following tips are just a sample of the many fascinating insights into body-language that Carole has acquired from in-depth study and first-hand observation across twenty years:

When standing…

(i) Head posture
The position of the head reveals much about your attitude towards the other person. The erect posture indicates a neutral position, suitable for inviting a newcomer to state his business. A sideways tilt expresses active interest and encouragement. The lowered ‘charging bull’ angle means hostility and suspicion.

(ii) The hands
Arms crossed or held across the stomach indicate a defensive stance, discouraging an approach. Hands behind the back assert formality, perhaps calling us to order. Hands in pockets clearly show disrespect, and hand-wringing means uncertainty. Best keep the hands loosely held at the sides, casual but alert.

When sitting…

(i) Facial expression
This should normally be kept neutral to avoid distractions and encourage steady dialogue, except when occasionally smiling agreement or registering mild surprise. Fully-raised eyebrows indicate disbelief, half-lowered brows show puzzlement and fully-lowered brows signal anger.

(ii) Gestures
Open palms invite confidence. Gripping the chair suggests inhibition. Thumb gestures indicate control, but may be found disrespectful. Steepled fingers inspire confidence, but can look patronising. A single nod can improve the atmosphere remarkably, as well as relieving an awkward stare.

Communication skills are only one area of Empowerment and Personal Development in which keynote professional speaker Carole Spiers has acquired her enviable niche on the speaking circuit in the UK and abroad.

See Carole live at London Ecademy – lst November 2006
http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=meeting&mid=12163

Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Insider Secrets On How To Read Body-Language

2006-10-30T23:52:00.000Z

Interpreting vital meanings signalled by posture, gesture and expression

You expect a professional keynote speaker to know a bit about body-language. But when her main subject is self-empowerment, you can be sure you’re getting an extra special brand of insight into the mysteries of non-verbal communication.

“It’s more spontaneous than speech, and often more revealing” says popular motivational speaker Carole Spiers, who regularly addresses management audiences all over the world on a theme that she has made her own: sustainable success.

To be able to interpret that huge hidden vocabulary of body, hand and face is clearly a major asset in business (as well as social life), and should be part of any manager’s toolkit of soft skills. By improving your reading of people, it will improve your reading of whole situations. It can give you the advantage in tough interviews or sales pitches, by providing you with tactical intelligence that you can react-to on the spot. Altogether, it simply turns you into a higher grade of communicator.

As a motivational keynote speaker, Carole has both interpreted and utilised body-language to a high degree, and few people are better equipped to enlighten you about it.

The following tips are just a sample of the many fascinating insights into body-language that Carole has acquired from in-depth study and first-hand observation across twenty years:

When standing…

(i) Head posture
The position of the head reveals much about your attitude towards the other person. The erect posture indicates a neutral position, suitable for inviting a newcomer to state his business. A sideways tilt expresses active interest and encouragement. The lowered ‘charging bull’ angle means hostility and suspicion.

(ii) The hands
Arms crossed or held across the stomach indicate a defensive stance, discouraging an approach. Hands behind the back assert formality, perhaps calling us to order. Hands in pockets clearly show disrespect, and hand-wringing means uncertainty. Best keep the hands loosely held at the sides, casual but alert.

When sitting…

(i) Facial expression
This should normally be kept neutral to avoid distractions and encourage steady dialogue, except when occasionally smiling agreement or registering mild surprise. Fully-raised eyebrows indicate disbelief, half-lowered brows show puzzlement and fully-lowered brows signal anger.

(ii) Gestures
Open palms invite confidence. Gripping the chair suggests inhibition. Thumb gestures indicate control, but may be found disrespectful. Steepled fingers inspire confidence, but can look patronising. A single nod can improve the atmosphere remarkably, as well as relieving an awkward stare.

Communication skills are only one area of Empowerment and Personal Development in which keynote professional speaker Carole Spiers has acquired her enviable niche on the speaking circuit in the UK and abroad.

See Carole live at London Ecademy – lst November 2006http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=meeting&mid=12163

Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Hot Tips For First-time Public Speakers!

2006-10-28T21:17:00.002+01:00

Yes, they came to hear you in person - so be confidently yourself!

Take it from a professional keynote speaker: nothing succeeds like confidence, and nothing turns-off an audience more than modesty and self-effacement.

Motivational speaker Carole Spiers gives presentations to all levels of corporate managers on the secrets of career success, and one favourite subject is the challenge of first-time public speaking, where the subject is most likely to be you and your career.

The personalisation dilemma

As a first-time speaker, your main inhibition is a familiar one called ‘Little Me?’ You cannot believe they actually want to hear the life-story of someone as unimportant as you feel you are.

Well, that’s why they came along in the first place. So for the duration of your speech, you are not unimportant at all. They’re looking forward to a confident performance, full of interesting revelations about your speciality - strongly personalised to yourself. If they wanted a purely factual digest, they could go to a library or the web. At a live show, they’re expecting to learn new things, and be entertained along the way by a speaker who can strike up rapport, and make each of them feel that you’re addressing them personally.

That leads to the second inhibition - individual or collective appeal?

On one level, you are addressing them individually, as on TV, where first-time speakers have to be reminded that they are not addressing a crowd of five million but just chatting to that couple on the sofa. So for example, you learn not to say “I expect some of you have been to Mexico…”. You personalise direct to the listener: “You may have been to Mexico…”

But on another level, you cannot act as though you’re just greeting one individual stranger, starting with small talk about the weather and nice to see you. Up on a platform, the warm-up chat is a sign of fear, almost appeasement, an apology for what is to come. Up there, you’re the showman in charge of an audience, and you have to master them with extreme confidence, possibly even verging on arrogance - the right mix of cheek and charm. And you have to start at once.

Four basic drills to remember

1. Come out punching
Your opening statement should be the opposite of small-talk, which is everything people expect to hear. It should be everything they don’t expect to hear (short of a pure gimmick based on no substance.) It should astonish, challenge or intrigue - definitely leaving them wondering what’s coming next.

2. The so-what factor
It’s worth taping your speech and screening it for any statement that fails to say something new or interesting. It is all too easy for a single so-what remark to lose the whole attention of an audience. You should even avoid “Nice to be here in Nottingham”. Analyse that, and you’ll find it’s a complete so-what.

3. Humour - that two-edged sword
Strictly, your speech ought to be strong enough to work without humour. Also there are many speakers whose personality simply doesn’t suit humour, so the comedy then sounds forced. Yet audiences find it unnatural not to laugh now and again, so the odd (new) joke could help flavour the mix.

4. Dramatising your career as the subject
If they want to hear about your career, tell it like a proper story with a beginning, a middle and an end, tracing the course of your progress. Remind them how humbly you began. Tell them about the people who influenced you. Describe the turning-points in a dramatic way. And reassure them how they could excel too.

Public speaking skills are only one area of Empowerment and Personal Development in which keynote professional speaker Carole Spiers has acquired during her enviable niche on the professional circuit in the UK and abroad.

See Carole live at London Ecademy – lst November 2006
http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=meeting&mid=12163

Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

The Truth Behind Your Good and Bad Listening Habits!

2006-10-25T23:37:00.000+01:00

How your reactions to dialogue can steer whole interviews your way!

“Half the conversational skill is listening - and it is the neglected half” says keynote professional speaker Carole Spiers, who regularly addresses blue-chip corporate business on self-development and the formula for sustainable success.

It’s true. All the famous tips on dialogue management seem to be about speaking. The supposedly passive listening role is seldom touched-on.

Yet listening is far from passive. It can be performed in many different ways and has a rich vocabulary of its own. By actively steering conversations (including key interviews for example), good listening is a major engine of persuasion and change, and should occupy an important place in any management skills portfolio.

As a motivational speaker, Carole Spiers has introduced many management groups to the subject of good and bad listening for the first time, drawing attention to three main factors:

Unfocused listening - through divided attentionYou need to identify certain common obstacles that inhibit good listening, and try to manage them. One is the clash of rhythms. We listen four times faster than we speak, so we may irritate the other person by trying to finish their sentences for them. Or if we’re bored, we may slip into the cocktail-party “Mmm…”, while thinking of something else. Or if the subject is going over our head, we may ‘parrot’ some of the statements, to give a false impression of understanding. Naturally any outside hubbub will also compete for our attention (and theirs), affecting comprehension and upsetting the atmosphere.

Active listening - guiding with minimal interventions
Professional counsellors often have to draw out reluctant interviewees - perhaps trauma victims or people who won’t accept that they need help. At these times, it is necessary to adopt a special ‘active listening’ mode that stimulates a continuing momentum of dialogue from the other person, through minimal interruption. Discreet hand-signals and invitations like “And then…?” can get over awkward silences. Periodically give brief reassurances that prove you have not only heard but interpreted the dialogue, however obliquely coded, sometimes via their body-language.

The Empathy factor - essential catalyst of rapport
Nothing gives more impetus to an interview than a feeling that the other person warmly empathises with you. By being genuinely yourself, you encourage them to respond in kind, and the dialogue will be far more revealing and productive. Obviously, exploit everything you have in common. But if your differences are greater than your similarities, you must try hard to visualise the other person’s emotional landscape, as though you were writing a novel about them. By sharing their experiences rather than judging them, you gain important access to the world they live in.

The difference between good and bad listening is one of many original insights into the field of Empowerment and Personal Development by professional keynote speaker Carole Spiers.

See Carole live at London Ecademy – lst November 2006http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=meeting&mid=12163

Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations

http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

The Inner Secrets to Asking Questions

2006-10-24T23:00:00.000+01:00

The art of the interviewer - commanding and controlling dialogue

“The adroit handling of conversation is a major instrument of empowerment” - says keynote professional speaker Carole Spiers, who regularly addresses blue-chip corporate business on self-development and the formula for sustainable success.

Among that toolbox of key stategies, a well-honed conversational skill could greatly amplify your powers of persuasion, control of events and building of relationships.

And nothing drives a conversation more effectively than carefully-chosen questions that stimulate without appearing to interrogate.

Professional interviewers, journalists, barristers, detectives, psychiatrists… all have found it invaluable to study questioning techniques in-depth, as part of their professional armour and ammunition.

But whatever your job or other circumstances, it will pay you to do the same - starting with this simple breakdown of the four most basic types of question, and what each of them is intended to achieve.

· Closed questions - inviting one-word answers

Precise, quiz-type questions, suitable for eliciting hard information. Often used as the ‘opening shot’ in a longer debate, establishing the subject via a short, brisk exchange, before exploring it in a more sensitive manner. Also appropriate for speeding-up dialogue or for getting a drifting conversation back on course, with a suggestion of “Now let’s get down to brass tacks”, as well as for ending an interview on a businesslike note. Closed questions should be used sparingly, as too many of them could sound like an interrogation, and set up a negative atmosphere.

· Open questions - encouraging detailed response

These are aimed at generating answers that convey meanings and attitudes in depth. They tend to start with the trigger-words ‘How? Where? When?’ etc (though you should ration your use of the more confrontational ‘Why?’.) If you can make interviewees feel flattered that you want their opinion, they are more likely to release ‘free information’, or revelations they might otherwise keep to themselves. It is possible for a question to be too open, as when a wife may ask her husband “What sort of day?”, and he finds it too broad a picture to focus on, and just mumbles an unsatisfactory “Not bad.”

· Leading questions - subtle moving of goalposts

An ingenious way of nudging the other person towards your way of thinking (and also speeding-up dialogue in the style of the Closed Question.) It discreetly suggests that your opposite number has already moved halfway towards agreeing with you, and is weighing-up a somewhat different decision from the one originally proposed. It exploits most people’s tendency to say “Yes” when asked “Do you agree?” or “Don’t you think?” - simply because it’s easier. A salesman will always ask which you prefer of two items, rather than asking whether you’re interested in either of them in the first place.

· Rhetorical questions - engaging empathy

These are questions that do not expect an answer, but are simply statements, dramatised in the form of questions. Their effect is to make the other person feel as though the question is being addressed by both of you to some imaginary third party - and that you are sitting beside each other, not opposite. So it represents the supreme anti-confrontational stance. A good salesman might use a string of these questions for greater impact: “Who could possibly resist that new deep-sprung sofa? Doesn’t it blend with cream wallpaper? Don’t you love the feel of the leather?” etc. etc.

These aspects of Self-empowerment are among many original insights into the field of Personal Development by motivational speaker Carole Spiers who will be speaking at London Ecademy on lst November 2006 –http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=meeting&mid=12163

Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

'Don’t take everything so personally' - International keynote professional speaker Carole Spiers says count ten and stay out of that defensive mode...

2006-10-21T17:31:00.000+01:00

As a motivational speaker who has counselled and trained vastly differing kinds of people in business, I have noticed how widespread is the tendency to interpret ordinary straightforward statements and questions as personal criticism.

This misunderstanding clearly causes much enmity and bad blood, as well as hampering important meetings and generally slowing down the pace of business dialogue.

Being a woman, of course, I know I’m in the danger zone myself (“You women always have to personalise”), as I was reminded not long ago when I was Event Host at a large conference, where my hosts were particularly quick to point out my supposed errors of stance, posture, movement and dress, every time I came off the platform. My first instinct was to reject this tactless intervention out of hand. Instead I counted to ten, calmly considering what had been said, and then thanked them for their input. While I did not agree with much of it, I could regard it as professional feedback from paying clients who were entitled to their point of view. (And I would accept that feedback has its value to a platform artist - we do actually need to be updated on how others see us.)

That little pause for thought…

So you see, a few seconds was enough to shift the emphasis from personal to professional.

I wish another recent interviewee of mine had taken similar thought, when I needed to tap him for some detailed information on his speciality, in which I was a total novice. It is true that I had to ask some quite penetrating questions, which I tried my best to put to him in a non-inquisitorial manner. Unfortunately he interpreted this as some kind of oral exam, with his expertise under review, and he felt it necessary to keep explaining how well-qualified he was. It is easy to recognise this as a deeply defensive response, and as such, highly impulsive. It did not occur to him that he had meanwhile failed to supply the answers I was needing.

If he’d counted to ten, he probably would have done.

“You” doesn’t always mean you personally

One typical high-risk zone for over-personalising is the customer-service department, where you are always being told that ‘you’ have failed to do this, that and the other. Especially as the complaint is liable to be made in angry and insulting terms.
At those times, you must remember that the complaints refer not to you personally, but to the organisation as a whole. Of course, you may feel defensive on behalf of the organisation too. But in framing your response, remember that the situation has everything to do with the caller’s situation, possibly a sudden crisis, in which you may have found yourself at some time. And that should make you feel a lot less defensive on your own part - and more professional at the same time.

Again, ten should do it!

Carole Spiers – inspirational keynote professional speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

See Carole live at London Ecademy - lst November 2006
http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=meeting&mid=12163

‘Workplace Bullying - Employers in the Frame’ - says Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers

2006-09-07T20:08:00.000+01:00

‘Vicarious’ liability confirmed in court, as City woman wins £800,000

Two recent court cases have confirmed the ‘vicarious liability’ of employers in cases of workplace bullying, and highlighted the need for corporations to institute and operate a formal anti-bullying strategy.

In one case, an audit co-ordinator at Guy’s and St. Thomas’s NHS Trust managed to get his line manager suspended after she imposed unrealistic performance targets on him, as well as abusing him in public and treating him differently from other staff. She later chose to resign.

In another case, which really hit the headlines, a woman bank worker won more than £800,000 in damages after a bizarre campaign of bullying by four women colleagues, which witnesses described as ‘slow, systematic mental abuse’ and ‘extreme bitchiness and mob culture’. (Those who feel this was excessive might note that she suffered several nervous breakdowns and has had to abandon her City career altogether.)

Her case was helped by a recent House of Lords decision that employers were ‘vicariously liable’ for bullying by employees in the course of their work, even if management was unaware of it.

This means that anti-harassment procedures are only a start. Employers must now be seen to take active steps to impose good practice on their staff in order to eradicate bullying from the workplace altogether.

So What Does Bullying Behaviour Look Like?

Bullies will typically:

· Make life at work constantly difficult for their targets
· Make unreasonable demands: constantly criticising
· Insist that their way of carrying out tasks is the only way
· Shout at victims, publicly, in order to get things done
· Give instructions and then change them for no apparent reason
· Allocate tasks which they know the person is incapable of achieving
· Refuse to delegate when appropriate
· Humiliate their targets in front of others
· Block promotion, refuse to give fair appraisals or refuse to endorse pay increases or bonus
awards
· Exclude the victim from meetings or other legitimate business activities
· Constantly make attacks on the professionalism or personal qualities of their targets

If this type of behaviour is being exhibited by any of your staff, it’s important to stop it in its tracks, because research shows that once bullying behaviours become established, they are far more difficult to break.

Your First Move – Our Specialist Trainer Toolkit

Whether you’re an HR specialist or a general manager, you’ll benefit immediately from this one-stop training pack with PowerPoint slides and downloadable manual.

'Back Off!': Combating Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace, is produced by international stress guru Carole Spiers - trainer, broadcaster and keynote motivational speaker to blue-chip corporations.

It sets out a clear overview of the causes, symptoms and techniques through which to defuse unacceptable behaviour - including case studies, quotes from victims, procedures for monitoring bullying situations, and special do’s and don’ts for particularly sensitive areas such as sexual harassment.

Get A Clear Overview Of The Management Interventions You Should Be Implementing

Policies and procedures
· The value of a clear written policy produced in co-operation with the unions.
· Handling complaints and appeals.
· How to encourage whistle-blowing.

Monitoring and mediation
· How to use exit interviews for information gathering.
· Choosing and using an impartial investigator when informal resolutions fail.

Standing up for your employees
· Evaluating a bullying charge against a highly-rated staff member.
· Assessing the odds of a malicious false accusation.

Even if you've never analysed bullying and harassment before, you'll soon acquire a workable knowledge of this important subject, with the help of easy-to-understand charts, diagrams and listings written with the authority of a leading international consultant on bullying and harassment.

To download your trainer toolkit, go to http://tinyurl.com/ldurw.

PS Book Carole as a motivational speaker on the subject of workplace bullying at your conference or symposium.

Carole Spiers is a motivational speaker and founder of Carole Spiers Group, one of the UKs leading stress management consultancies, whose psychological insights have improved productivity for clients such as Sainsbury’s, Unilever, the Bank of England and many others. www.carolespiersgroup.com gives authoritative advice on both the human and the legal aspects of workplace stress, including workplace bullying, violence, post-trauma, redundancy, absenteeism and stalled negotiations.

Their publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for their FREE stress management updates and stress tips – click http://tinyurl.com/zxbgo or for more information email info@carolespiersgroup.com or telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593

The Empathy Dividend

2006-09-04T07:17:00.000+01:00

Motivational speaker Carole Spiers on the value of empathy
- to optimise business dialogue as well as improving relationships

Someone said that good dialogue is the difference between hearing what you say and seeing what you mean.

And the difference is made by achieving empathy - a quality that can be taught, as shown in the popular presentation by keynote professional speaker Carole Spiers.

You have only to listen to people trying to conduct business on their mobiles to see just how much dialogue is wasted - a mass of words missing their mark, failing to convey the intended meaning or sentiment, and often leading to misunderstanding and conflict.

Empathy comes from that area where professionalism and good manners touch hands.

Take a small example: remembering people’s names correctly.
It is remarkable how much this can impact on a relationship, out of all proportion to the simple act itself. A forgotten or mis-remembered name immediately brings the other person down to office-boy level, even if quite unintentionally. Yet remembering someone’s name correctly after a long interval can put out a highly favourable signal, taken as a deep compliment. It actually goes to the roots of recognition and respect, earning particular gratitude from people newly arrived in a strange country, where their name may be hard to pronounce, and their self-image may be very humble.

On the wider scale, empathy is defined as the ability to identify and understand another’s situation, feelings and motives. (Boardrooms are all about making rapport between people with little in common, and you must be especially able to put yourself in the other person’s mind while choosing your words.) Some people, of course, have a natural gift in this direction. But most people need to develop it consciously, and it should be treated as an important area of business instruction, no different from marketing or software engineering.

Other tips, which Carole can tell you much more about, include:

Don’t interrupt - allow the other person their say, even if they’re not articulate. Perhaps nobody else has ever heard them out, so you may earn much loyalty for minimal input.

Be there for them - don’t be half-concentrating on your watch or your screen; re-assure them that they have your undivided attention.

Listen and interpret - pick up on their unconscious signals, like vocal inflexions or body language. You may be able to see what they’re trying to express, while others can’t.

Cheer them up - except in cases of severe reprimand, maintain an optimistic atmosphere, give praise when it’s due, make them feel generally welcome on the team.

Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and current President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

You don’t need to buy better employee performance - says international keynote professional speaker Carole Spiers

2006-08-28T22:53:00.000+01:00

Salary is always assumed to be the biggest factor in job satisfaction - the official index of status on-duty, and the key to your life-choices off-duty. Superficially this stands to reason.

Interesting then, that research often comes up with quite different findings, as explained in an important new presentation by popular motivational speaker Carole Spiers.

The most obvious counter-argument is that many famous firms pay quite low salaries, yet people stay on for years, knowing they could be earning more elsewhere. Clearly these firms must be doing something right.

Principally, they have got the pay-factor into proportion. Wages need to be adequate, of course, and you must preserve the differentials. But high pay is not always put there to match high performance. Just as often, it’s a kind of compensation, even an apology, for bad working conditions or excessive pressure. Even then, it only patches-up the problem temporarily, as you can tell from the many long-running strikes that involve highly-paid workers.

In other words, a pay-rise does not usually get to the root of the grievance, which may be quite unrelated to those official terms of employment that can be re-negotiated on paper. It usually comes down to a mix of private dissatisfactions which may need to be addressed through skilful human relations.

Acknowledging individual identity

Nothing alienates an employee so much as being treated as something faceless and nameless. In fact, putting a name to a face is both a good professional habit and an act of personal respect. Criticism will be heeded more closely if it is viewed as a careful diagnosis, not just slagging-off. And praise should not only be personalised, but copied-on to relevant managers, to ensure appropriate recognition. Unless someone is actually in disgrace, you should try to greet them politely, with enquiries about family, hobbies or sporting life, to show interest in their general welfare, while avoiding the impersonal “Have a nice day” touch. For example, when you ask “How are you?”, don’t walk on before you’ve heard the answer.

Encouraging team spirit

Try to give your employees a heightened sense of involvement in the company by presenting them with a detailed picture of its activities, its policies, its successes and failures in various markets. Make them feel part of an important mission that will engage their interest and enthusiasm. Try to include them also in the decision-making process, where they may be able to provide new insights out of their day-to-day contact with particular agendas. Generally it is worth asking people for their suggestions about the running of their department, even if you are not able to take these up.

Developing talent

It is becoming rarer for someone to perform the same job-function ‘man and boy’ right through till pension time. The job, or even the skill itself, may go obsolete at short notice. All the emphasis now is on developing employees’ skills, both for the sake of their own empowerment, and to fit them for the evolving nature of the company. Helping employees to improve their own marketability within the firm is obviously good for morale. And cross-training improves efficiency by helping people to understand each other’s jobs, as well as promoting good teamwork.

…and those little gestures

It’s the end of a heavy project, which has kept everyone working late for a month, and nerves have been getting frayed. “Drop everything, team. It’s a lovely morning, and I’ve got us all tickets for a Thames riverboat jazz-lunch. No more work today!” Extravagant? Not compared with the hidden costs of absenteeism, low morale or mental stress.

Sometimes it’s the little things…

Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Motivational Inspirational Speaker Carole Spiers says "Weekly brainstorm that saves you from tunnel vision"

2006-08-05T07:34:00.000+01:00

Tackling your problems with a little help from friends and colleagues
- where six minds are better than one. We call it Wednesday Club.

We live in an age where problems seem to multiply and mutate faster than we can keep track - often leaving us feeling helpless and ready to give up.

At these times, it’s especially important to avoid tunnel vision, to keep things in perspective and in proportion.

If a problem shared is a problem halved, then you should try an unofficial networking arrangement, which we call Wednesday Club.

Ideally, there should be about six of you, made up of friends and colleagues, and it is important that you should be like-minded people, but with different training and professional backgrounds - most likely to be able to provide useful tips in a sympathetic and constructive spirit.

The only rigid rule is that you must meet regularly, in order to maintain the integrity of the project and keep up momentum. Once a week is ideal, but less-frequent fixtures will work, provided that they are regular and well-attended. Group size should be around six, for credibility and manageability. You should allow an hour for the official agenda, followed by about half an hour for any follow-up thoughts, before winding-up.

Cross-pollination for fresh insights

If you’ve recruited the other members with suitable care, you’re going to find that this team is truly bigger than the sum of its parts, representing a body of expertise far more impressive than you had imagined. Someone you already knew quite well may turn out to have qualifications (or qualities) you never dreamed they had. You’ll soon find you’ve got more in common with other people than you thought. And you’ll probably find that you’ve got more to contribute than you thought too.

Getting out what you put in

The balance between giving and taking is key. You may have joined ostensibly to solve some overwhelming problem - say troubleshooting an advanced software package. Then you find that the lady who runs the florists (and whom you identified solely with tulips and carnations) has been trained on that very package, and can instantly tell you 90% of what’s been baffling you. Meanwhile she’s got a son who’s looking for a left-handed guitar. Sure enough, you’re left-handed yourself, and haven’t touched that old guitar for years. All it wanted was a good home…

Even with only six of you, it will be truly astounding just how much expertise you can pool in the way of professional experience, useful contacts, technical know-how, family wisdom, emotional support and general health and happiness.

Little rituals to spice the mix

Even an hour’s session can drag, if it does not have some fixed points to give it shape and character - like each person declaring what was the most heartwarming incident of their week, or even a semi-religious invocation, perhaps giving thanks for health and freedom.

And although there should be no official leader, there does of course have to be a convenor, who may also double as time-keeper, monitoring the meeting to ensure that nobody hogs the limelight and everyone gets value.

Carole Spiers – motivational inspirational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Human Development potential. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 http://www.carolespiers.com

'If you’re indispensable, something’s wrong!', says Carole Spiers, female keynote speaker.

2006-07-27T21:58:00.001+01:00

Indispensable.

A label that is both flattering and frightening.
It does not in fact benefit any organisation when one person is so crucial to its survival.
But it’s easy to see where the indispensability myth starts.

Self-reliance taken too far

For the best reasons, a career-beginner is encouraged to be self-reliant, to work to the highest standards, to root-out bad habits, and to be intolerant of low performers. And the underlying proposition is based on individual responsibility - with a strong suggestion of being indispensable on the small scale.

Later, when they move up and start supervising others, they try to enforce these high standards right across the department - and inevitably there are teething troubles. Along with certain popular cries:

“In the time it takes to explain it to this newcomer, I could have done the job myself”

True, but not the point - and in fact a thoroughly short-sighted view of the position.

If you did the job yourself, you would be neglecting other, more heavyweight tasks which represent a better use of your time.

When the newcomer eventually gets the hang of the job, the system will be working correctly.

“The job simply hasn’t been carried out to the standards we’ve been achieving.”

Yes, that’s teething - and your system must allow for it. Like losing a bit of acceleration when you change up a gear.

For an initial period, you’ll be having to spend more time than usual checking the work in detail.

The ‘rule of three’ has been found reliable: your newcomer will probably take three shots to get the routine right. Only after that should you declare the situation problematical.

“Letting go is the hardest part…”

Delegation is always hard, but it’s like adjusting your vision from short-range to long-range.

As leader, it is for you to focus exclusively on the big picture, the strategic overview - and make sure the others understand their responsibilities relative to it.

Identify the tasks that only you can do, and leave all the rest to those you have delegated, making sure that the systems are firmly established and understood.

Carole Spiers – successful entrepreneur occupies a special niche as a motivational speaker who brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and current President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 20 8954 1593 a href="http://www.carolespiers.com/">http://www.carolespiers.com/

Motivational Speaker Carole Spiers Discusses Your Fear Of Public Speaking - understandable, unnecessary, and curable!

2006-07-24T21:11:00.000+01:00
It can happen to the best of us. Even great actors can suffer stage fright for no logical reason. You’re up on that platform, and suddenly the audience looks like a huge enemy force, out to destroy you.

The causes of this illogical syndrome can vary. It may stem from some early humiliation, perhaps in a school play, which might indeed register hard on a young person. Or it may relate to some long-running insecurity about voice or appearance. Or more likely than either, it’s just a simple fear of performing badly in front of people who influence your career and your livelihood.

What is certain is that it is unnecessary.

This is the Communication Age. You must be able to present, convince and sell.

If you’re in any kind of business or professional career, you will have to acquire presentation skills as a matter of routine. Contracts are overwhelmingly awarded on the strength of a spoken pitch, perhaps quite short, that manages to swing the whole decision. It is simply part of the territory, and you can’t dodge it, any more than a salesman can dodge learning to drive.

Curing yourself - identifying the problems and rooting them out.

Keep a log of those bad moments on the platform. What seems to trigger them?
Forgetting your lines? Then you must train yourself to recover your poise before they’ve noticed. Audiences don’t particularly register words, as such. They register meanings and attitudes, put across with confidence and conviction. They respond better to cheek and charm than to hesitant modesty.

An unexpected interruption? Be actively rehearsed for this kind of moment, and don’t let yourself be thrown by it.

A difficult audience? Try to remember that a difficult audience is basically a naughty child, challenging you to show who’s boss. Give as good as you get. Cover-over with humour if you can, without appeasing them. Never show fear.
However bad the moment, get right back on that platform as soon as you can, before you lose your nerve.

And ignore the buffoon who tells you that one little drink will set you up for the session. That leads only to helpless dependence and fatal loss of mastery.

Asking advice from professional speakers - and perhaps becoming one

If the self-cure isn’t working well enough, you may need advice from some of the many experienced professional speakers who have - believe me - suffered the same symptoms.

You might attend a presentation skills seminar or take a course in public speaking offered by your local community college or other continuing education provider.
Or you may be interested to know that the Professional Speakers Association (www.professionalspeakers.org) includes many topics for speakers at its regular meetings, and it would be worth contacting your nearest branch for a first visit. I am President of the London Chapter so feel free to get in touch with me – cs@carolespiersgroup.com and pop along to one of our meetings and give us the opportunity of welcoming you to the London community. Be that motivational speaker that you dream of becoming....

But if you don’t want to go on a course or join an association, then the best advice is to embrace your speaking agenda with enthusiasm, get yourself invited up on platforms large and small whenever you can, and your persistence will eventually pay off in the form of a practised skill that will be in demand everywhere.

Carole Spiers – successful entrepreneur occupies a special niche as a motivational speaker who brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and current President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.

Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com

Female Keynote Speaker Carole Spiers Talks About How To Prevent Email Overload …

2006-07-13T13:50:00.000+01:00

Q: I run a small business and I’m at my wits’ end trying to hold back the constant tide of incoming emails. What can I do?

A: Email was meant to make our lives easier, but many people have ended up feeling stressed-out by their inboxes. Thanks to email, mobile phones and text messaging, we’re expected to be on call 24/7 – even when we’re out of the country. So all of us need the skills to manage emails more efficiently, before our stress levels increase even further.

The ideal would be to tackle email overload at its source – by preventing emails from arriving in the first place. Most email programs have filters to separate ‘spam’ emails from the ones we actually want, but can still direct emails to the wrong mailbox. It’s important therefore to check your junk mailbox as regularly as your inbox, and make sure that ‘junk’ emails really are before deleting them - otherwise you’ll end up simply adding to your problems.

Whatever size your business, you’ll also be familiar with colleagues who feel the need to copy you on every email they send – whether or not they’re relevant to you. And then there are all the people who requested your email address when you signed up for a flight / concert ticket / online purchase etc – all of which makes managing your inbox even more challenging.

Research suggests that many people are starting work earlier and earlier, simply to deal with the emails that confront them every day. I know many people who come into work an hour earlier each day and work an hour extra at the end of the day – just to catch up.

If this is happening to you, 12 simple rules will help ‘control the inrushing tide’. You need to manage your email the same way as you manage your time: being organised is the key to ‘good email management’!

1.Set aside time to deal with your emails – don’t just react when the prompt sounds. Deal with email once or twice a day, but don’t spend more than half an hour on it at any one time.

2.Return unwanted emails – only then will the sender realise you didn’t want them. Don’t do this with unsolicited email though, as this can confirm to the sender that your address is ‘active’.

3.Don’t open emails with attachments from people you don’t know – they may contain viruses.

4.Structure your mailbox – use folders to keep your messages well organised.

5.Have a box for urgent, non-urgent and nice to read, so that when you need a break away from your day-to-day working, you have your reading email box waiting for you.

6.Be careful to flag up everything you have read. It’s very easy to read an email and THINK you have responded when you haven’t. This can be a problem if the recipient asks if you have given a response and you think you HAVE when you HAVEN’T!

7.Before sending an email, select the best medium for your message. Is email the most appropriate and do you really need to send one? Many people have stopped phoning or walking round the office to see a colleague rather than emailing them.

8.Make the purpose of your email clear. Put as much detail as possible in the subject line to help the recipient.

9.Use short words and sentences, and check your attachments before sending – many are unnecessary and could just as easily be included in the message itself.

10.Show consideration to the recipient by allowing time for a response. Expecting one immediately is unreasonable.

11.Never send an email when you’re tired or angry.

12.Always check the addressee(s) and don’t just copy everyone. You can cause considerable upset by emailing the wrong person!

Your company may or may not have an email policy, but this needs to be the responsibility of each and every individual. Be responsible for each email that you send out. Does this individual need to be aware of the information you are sending them? Do they need to be copied in on this email?

Email is a wonderful tool but it needs to be managed. Keep in control of it – rather than it being in control of you!
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. Carole is President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Assocation. Check out her ecommerce site for personal development products - CD's, books, audio - http://www.carolespiers.com/

Gamblers Always Lose Out!

2006-07-05T23:36:00.000+01:00
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

If you know someone in danger of gambling addiction, get specialist counselling before that wheel spins out of control

A group of young men are drinking in a pub. One of them is playing the fruit-machine. The others are wanting to move on. They ask him to finish off and come with them. He looks at the coins in his hand and says. “Hang on. Just wait till I’ve…”

He doesn’t usually finish the sentence. Because it would be “Just wait till I’ve lost this lot.”
Notice that he’s not saying “Wait till I’ve won the Jackpot”, because they’d be there all night. No, the message is clearly “Wait till I’ve lost.”

That little cameo of small-time gambling reflects a psychology which bulks-up big in those serious cases where huge money is blown away, and whole careers and families wrecked. It proves that on one level, gamblers want to lose.

It stands to reason.

You look at the sumptuous furnishings of the casino… the flash bookie with his stretch-limo… the huge fortunes of the dotcom gaming promoters…

Who’s doing all the winning ? Not the punter. And he knows it - only a little below that shallow surface where he can still pretend he’s about to scoop the pool. Which mostly reflects a desperate lunge at recovering losses.

What Your Gambling Addiction Says About You

You have to face the unflattering truth that a gambling addict is basically an inadequate and immature character.

Leave aside the depressing spectacle of the all-day drunks lurching in and out of the betting-shop, so obviously going nowhere in life.

Try a respectable casino, and take a look around that roulette table. One or two big swaggering figures, perhaps with dubious connections. But mostly ordinary little people. All the shy and sheepish types who would never dare take a risk in the real world of business, or in the other real world of romance. (And don’t fail to notice the sad little elderly widow who always seems to be there, so obviously looking for substitute excitement.) All the ones who might be called losers.
About to become losers in another form.

Knowing deep down that they can’t win-out, then, what is the buzz ?

One is the sheer fantasy world they are allowed into at second hand - James Bond, Monte-Carlo, the Mississippi riverboat. A world of triumphant winners (as often portrayed garishly on fruit machines and pin-tables) with their cigars and buxom mistresses. Remember, gambling addicts are chiefly the sort of people who will never experience one single day of life beyond the office and the train home.

Another is a kind of snobbery concerning effortless wealth - the feeling that a flick of a card here means enough for a world cruise, a few chips pushed casually across the green cloth could be a sports car. This is essentially sneering at those who strive and earn. It is a deeply deceptive idea of an elite club of special people who are too good to work, and of course deeply unreal. Those who sneer at effort are usually rotten to the core.

Gambling Compared To Other Addictions

But seeing that it doesn’t directly damage health, you might still rate gambling addiction as less serious than other habits. Well, here’s a first-hand comparison.

A famous entertainer’s wife and agent once described her husband’s three addictions: alcohol, drugs and gambling.

Alcohol was the least of it, she said - not ruinously expensive, mostly just boring. Drugs were somewhat worse - dangerous and messy, with sinister people hanging around the house. But neither was as bad as the gambling. Nothing, she said, was so depressing as to watch four or five-figure sums disappearing over that green cloth in a matter of minutes, especially as she had been the financial brains behind their fortune.

The Need For Specialist Help

When you do face up to your condition as a gambling addict, you’re going to need more than a sympathetic chat. You’re going to need trained specialist help by counsellors directly experienced in tackling gambling addiction.

Carole Spiers Group (CSG) can boast twenty years’ experience of counselling and consultancy to blue-chip corporations on a vast range of stress-related conditions, including many kinds of addiction.

So call in an expert specialist from our nationwide team without delay.
And stop that wheel before it turns once too often.

For more information on CSG’s services including in-house and public stress management training, post trauma support, mediation, impartial investigations, nationwide employee counselling team, and coaching and mentoring services, please contact us:

Carole Spiers Group
International Stress Management & Employee Wellbeing Consultancy
Gordon House, 83-85 Gordon Avenue, Stanmore, Middlesex. HA7 3QR. UK
Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8954 1593 Fax: + 44 (0) 20 8907 9290
Email: info@carolespiersgroup.com
Web: www.carolespiersgroup.com

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

Could Your Mobile Actually Be Slowing You Down?

2006-07-05T23:18:00.000+01:00
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com
Time Management means questioning every assumption and thinking the unthinkable...

The miracle of the mobile phone!

How we celebrated this new liberating influence in our lives - business and social. Doing deals on the hoof. Cutting out formal meetings. No more waiting around for calls. Arranging little parties on a whim…

It looked like a whole new culture of high-speed living and working - cutting a thousand unnecessary corners, speeding and streamlining executive dialogue, and generally getting a whole lot more done.

Well, let’s agree that it’s certainly made a quantum difference. But not in the way we expected. For this great liberator has also had the effect of enslaving us, so that we can never avoid its demands at any time. (Try ignoring that flashing message from your biggest client, even if it’s midnight.) And as for more efficient dialogue, well, take the classic case of noise pollution via mobiles…

“I’m on the train…”

Rail journeys are now a downright embarrassment, with everybody’s inner thoughts suddenly being played-out at full volume, indeed often louder than necessary, you notice, as though in protest at decent manners and respect for peace and quiet.

Irritating enough is the ordinary social and family chit-chat. Almost unbearable, however, is the so-called urgent business talk, often dragging out to the full length of the journey, leaving you earnestly praying that the next stop will be his.

You have only to listen to a minute or two of this scrambled dialogue to see that it is unnecessary.
It stems partly from a snob-reflex, dating from when mobiles were new, reflecting high status on the speaker; and partly from a childish urge to ‘play soldiers’, generating an artificial sense of heroic emergency action.

In other words, it has no rational basis at all, and any transcript of the conversation would read like pure nonsense. The messages and meanings would be better conveyed in a single itemised e-mail at the end of the journey - and his time would be better spent privately (and silently!) composing it.

This little cameo of an everyday business situation should cause you to ‘think the unthinkable’ about mobiles.

And this is all part of Time Management, which has a lot to do with questioning common assumptions about the effective use of our time.

The true and false dynamics of urgency at work

Not surprisingly, www.carolespiers.com places a good deal of emphasis on Time Management as part of your personal journey towards that First-class Ticket through life.

Carole’s Time Management philosophy is clearly reflected in the best-selling manual by her colleague John Perry, a University Senior Lecturer in Psychology.

Titled ‘Hurry Hurry - the True and False Dynamics of Urgency at Work’, this downloadable e-book is widely used at Carole’s own executive training sessions for blue-chip corporate clients. Among the issues you are invited to question are these :

How We Manage Our Time…

· “Not enough hours in the day!”
But not all hours are equal. 80% of key tasks are often performed in 20% of the available time. Limit your availability. Delegate for time-efficiency.
· The Paper Tide
Ration paperwork ruthlessly. Bin what you can. Cut corners by phone. Even colour-coded folders and see-thru files can save crucial time.
· The art of prioritising
Amazingly, you can save up to 10 hours a week by keeping a Time Log, charting the progress of key agendas and rating your daily performance.

How Our Time Manages Us…

· The Interruption factor
The average manager gets interrupted every 8 minutes. It’s something you can’t schedule - but there are practical ways to cut the chat.
· How Meetings squander time
Everything from latecomers to attention-seekers or just an unclear agenda. Make sure it’s necessary, then keep it brisk and businesslike.
· Logging the time-waster elements
List everything that tends to hold you up - desk clutter, drop-in visitors, long-winded talk, confusion of roles, false alarms - and tackle them.

To download this valuable aid to empowerment and self-development,
http://www.carolespiers.com/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=24

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

What constitutes the perfect stress busting holiday?

2006-06-22T22:45:00.000+01:00
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

Every year thousands of people set forth on their annual summer holiday.

They take a mandatory two weeks and set of on an adventure with their family. This precious time is regarded a chance to recharge batteries and forget about the office. For many it does exactly that and in Europe many companies even have an annual 2 week closure to ensure all their employees get a break and chance to chill out.

Sadly in Britain today many chose not to take their full entitlement of annual leave and at best make do with short breaks whilst still in contact with the office. The fear culture is really biting. If I am away too long will I be replaced – will the company decide they can manage without me and make me redundant – what if I lose business whilst I am away.

The advent of short term contracts and move towards self employed status does make it more difficult for individuals to force themselves to take an annual holiday and so the demon stress is given a chance to breed both within organisations and individuals themselves. Stress is contagious and one individual who refuses to acknowledge that he / she needs a break can cause havoc in an otherwise health organisation

To perform effectively we all need to take a decent holiday!

So what constitutes a really good stress busting holiday?

Well, it is certainly not a long weekend away with mobile phone and computer in constant contact with the office. To truly unwind there are certain ingredients necessary to ensure you return to work refreshed and ready to tackle the pressures of 21 century living and working.

Short breaks are really good for you. Your body needs to recharge its batteries and this should be done on regular basis. So dont just save up all your holiday and think you can recharge your body in one hit.....go away for a couple of nights....a weekend.....and let your body switch off from the frenetic living that we all do.

7- tips for you

1. Choose a holiday that is not going to put you and your family under undue pressure – a
fourteen hour, non stop drive to the South of France is not really a good idea if you have
toddlers.
2. Plan your trip well in advance. Pre book seats on trains boats and planes where possible.
3. If you are driving, research your route and make sure your vehicle is fit to undertake the
journey. Allow for plenty of comfort stops.
4. If you are feeling especially stressed try and take your holiday in a familiar area travelling by a familiar route so reducing the actual stress of the holiday
5. Think carefully before planning a holiday with friends. A day out with them may be fine but do you really want to spend two weeks together? Sitting on the beach recently I overheard a
group of four friends on holiday together discussing the plans for the coming days. One
couple really did not want to spend time on the beach they likes touring around and had great
plans. The other couple just loved being on the beach and wanted to spend more time there.
Already the tension was building between them and it was only day one!!
6. Do not set an ambitious itinerary. Allow yourself time to just relax and read a book, sit on the
beach or just generally chill out. Give yourself permission to just sit and let the clouds roll by if
that is really what you fancy doing.
7. Once away from work stop fretting about it. Enjoy every moment of your leisure time and
when its time to go home go with the knowledge that you have enjoyed every moment of your
holiday.

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

How To Exploit Failure!

2006-06-21T23:28:00.000+01:00
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation.

New strengths and insights that can follow from a humbling experience

If you’ve never known failure, you’re one of the lucky ones… perhaps.

Or does it just mean you’ve never known success either - just trogged along in that middle rut ?

The truth is that a high achiever who has never known failure is almost unheard-of. Time and again, great tycoons make their big leap in the wake of some kind of disaster. It may just be a long grim repair job that steadily builds character. It may be a case of learning important lessons directly from mistakes. Or it may be the famous ‘iron entering the soul’ after a searing humiliation. But you need to view both light and shade in order to form a sharp picture of the world you live in. And you will certainly lead a large workforce with more conviction if you are able to empathise with people on the wrong end of life.

The view from below

When you’re lying at the bottom of a well, that little circle of blue sky seems to you much more beautiful than it looks to people at the top. Those people are the ones who have never known failure.

This tells you that we should be a little wary of those whose path has been too smooth. Although well-qualified, successful and often doing useful work, they tend to mix only with their own kind, and their view of life lacks depth and contrast. And for all their high status, they will tend towards a dissatisfied state, because they take so much for granted.

Your experience of failure - hopefully coupled with other experiences of success - will provide a much more balanced view of the world, in which you can feel active, joyful gratitude for health and strength, light and heat, freedom and privacy. This endows you with a robust philosophy that will stand many tests, and bodes well for the next stage in your journey.

Victory out of defeat

Notice how new parliamentary candidates are always given an impossible seat to fight in their first election. Why do the parties go in for this apparently time-wasting exercise ? Because they want to see how the newcomer copes with failure. Is this the sort of person who gives up at the first setback ? Can they remain gracious and positive under the all-day-and-night pressures of being an MP ? Do they have the stomach for the long, hard struggles that may lie ahead ? One of these candidates - who lost four times running and almost quit - declared “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” And who was speaking ? One of the most ground-breaking politicians on earth: Margaret Thatcher.

Curio Corner
Post-it Notes - prime case of success through failure. That ‘non-adhesive’ fixative on the back was actually a failed version of a permanent adhesive that the 3M company was trying to develop. The failure was the one that succeeded!

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation.

What to say when you don’t know what to say!

2006-04-10T21:27:00.000+01:00
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

Women are often tasked with managing personnel issues. If you are, you have a key role in the development of a ‘listening culture’.

For organisations to be successful, a ‘listening culture’ is vital. It brings greater performance, higher productivity and more staff buy-in, because when staff feel valued and recognised they do more to support the business.

As a woman you’re often seen as having caring and nurturing skills, which is why there are more women than men in Personnel Departments. It also means you have a vital role to play in the effective communication that is key to developing a listening culture.

This may not be easy. People aren’t born to be good listeners. It takes training and confidence-building to do so. And individuals are often promoted because of their academic prowess rather than their people management skills, and receive insufficient training in this invaluable management tool.

Time (or more specifically lack of it) can also be a factor; and it can be easy to find yourself getting out of your depth in a conversation and not knowing what to say next – discouraging you from engaging in similar discussions in the future.

The benefits of effective communication
By comparison, effective communication reduces the incidence of misunderstanding and consequent errors, and enables employees to be more readily aligned to the vision and leadership of the organisation, and to work more efficiently. This in turn reduces the opportunity for disharmony, discontent or dissatisfaction, and supports a healthy working culture.

Effective communication enables managers to be more aware of the internal and external pressures on employees, and promotes the opportunity for flexible and efficient management – for example by enabling the provision of suitable interventions in the instance of sickness absence, care issues or bereavement that might benefit from temporary, flexible working arrangements.

The importance of active listening
It goes without saying that effective communication includes active listening skills - engaging with the person you’re listening to and responding appropriately.

The ability to listen actively enables the person who is speaking to talk without interruption or contradiction and, by virtue of having a ‘sounding board’, clarify his or her opinion or circumstance. The positive effect of this is to improve self-confidence and encourage a better assessment of any proposed action, prior to it being taken.

Unfortunately, it’s often the very people who require the most help who will deny they’re in need of such support. They will frequently assure colleagues that they can manage and are in control of a situation, when the reality is not only that they can’t cope, but that they have never been actively encouraged by the organisational culture to seek help.

Active listening should therefore be seen as an essential managerial tool and part of effective people management. It should be within the skills portfolio of all managers, and available to be used in the maintenance of a stress-free work environment and the avoidance of disruption or discontent within the workforce.

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

The Gift of a Woman’s ‘Positivity’

2006-04-10T21:22:00.000+01:00

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

An employer has come to think of his department as a well-assembled machine - all the right categories of staff in all the right places. Then one of them leaves, and suddenly everyone’s saying ‘It’s not the same without Anne-Marie … she’s left behind a huge gap.’ So what is this quality that marks out the person who is so sorely missed? Is it their qualifications or good track record? No, the special X-factor in such a woman is the positive charge she generates from within.

It is something beyond normal logic. Such women are often described as ‘magic’ or ‘special’, and are often able to bestow some of this quality on other people - creating new, unsuspected reserves of effort and goodwill, apparently out of nothing. There is something about them when they are in the room: they exude positive energy and are great to be with. Unlike negative personalities, they attract people to them and their positivity often rubs off.

It’s therefore worth trying to define this quality of ‘positivity’, with its huge range of impacts on everything from efficiency and punctuality to reduced staff turnover and improved customer relations. And clearly it starts with attitude - the root of all behaviour - which in turn dictates performance.

The Workplace as Theatre
The word ‘performance’ reminds us that the workplace is partly a theatrical arena, where people have to play certain roles in order to achieve a desired outcome. Actors have to play comedy on days when they may be feeling low, and in the same way, you have to speak on the phone in the same professional manner - whether it’s to a favourite colleague or a nuisance salesman.

Actors are there to carry conviction, to exude sincerity, or in other words to perform - brilliantly. They soon lose impact if they are seen to be just reciting lines written by someone else. So, for example, you should avoid the “Have a nice day” and plastic smile of the Disneyland waitress, even though for much of the time you may be having to say things you do not necessarily mean - possibly out of deference to a boss or client, or by way of the small-talk that lubricates dialogue with nervous colleagues or strangers. (Try saying what’s really in your mind, unprocessed and undisguised, and you probably won’t last two minutes!)

One half of your ‘positivity’, then, will be a successful act. But the other half has to be genuine – a core philosophy that defeats cynicism and gives you an indestructible optimism. This is what really connects, and will be missed about you when you’re gone.

Think for a moment about your legacy and what you are going to be remembered for. You might not be a Mother Theresa or Anita Roddick– but you might leave behind a winning smile, a happy demeanour, a positive energy that people want to package.

Your positivity is what you will be known for - and that is what will really be missed!

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

PASSION - the fuel that powers your career vehicle!

2006-03-16T22:53:00.000Z

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

A dynamic career-man is often described as a ‘driven’ man.

His personal drive may be merely a by-product of abundant energy and self-discipline. But more likely, it stems from a fundamental passion that motivates his actions, year in, year out - like a high-octane fuel that powers a high-performance vehicle.

By living your passion, and making it work for you, you will find yourself exploiting your gifts to the greatest effect - known to be the principal root of happiness and fulfillment.

Passion on the big scale

It is well-known that most of the great industrial success-stories can be traced back to the private passion of one individual.

Giant strides in agriculture, medicine, transport, entertainment, have their origins in the passionate belief of one person in the promise of a new and unfamiliar system of thinking and working.

It is almost the first law of invention that a new concept is considered unworkable, crackpot or immoral until proved otherwise. So when you consider the amount of ridicule and abuse that often greets these pioneers before the balloon goes up, you can see that they would need every ounce of passion they’d got. (A less committed entrepreneur would simply shrug and cut his losses.)

Equally, when the enterprise starts to grow and diversify, that same passion needs to be communicated to whole departments if the momentum is to be kept up. The development of big organisations through their various growth-stages depends largely on maintaining a high enough level of inspiration and belief in the future of the product and the enterprise.

For a captain of industry to see his original private passion blossoming into a great institution, a famous name, a major employer, perhaps with international influence, must be one of the great moments of human achievement.

Passion on the small scale

Some of the most heartwarming success-stories are not on the big scale.

Small-scale career-passions often represent the triumph of the individual over the mass, and may contribute much to the colour of our daily life.

An obvious example is the self-employed artisan, the illustrator or engraver, perhaps crafting some of those hand-woven place-mats or greeting cards that can unexpectedly brighten up our day.

Then there are the thousands of obscure little specialist trades and professions that we remain largely unaware of. Someone has to grade the particular wool that makes doll’s hair. Someone has to manufacture church equipment. Someone has to visit trade shows to represent freelance coppersmiths, violin repairers, or welders of ornamental horse-brasses. When we occasionally meet these obscure backstreet traders, we often notice a quality of special pride and satisfaction in their work out of proportion to their income, which may be very modest indeed.

As many of these specialists are also in demand by mainstream industry, these are not just quaint little folk-stories. They signify a kind of gland, without which the main body cannot function.

Living your passion is a privilege if you can achieve it. But it is also a kind of duty to yourself. And it has the effect of inspiring others to follow your visibly successful example, in addition to all the unexpected bonuses that flow from someone wanting to put more in instead of just wanting to get more out.

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

Coping With A Woman In Tears - a men’s guide (by a woman!)

2006-02-22T07:51:00.000Z

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

You are reading this in English - which means you are living in one of those countries with a puritan heart, scornful of any breakdown in self-control. Elsewhere, both sexes may weep loudly and openly; it is part of their passionate self-expression, almost a ritual drama. But here, it is something to be bottled-up, hidden away, apologised-for.

Weeping as a healthy release

This does not stop us encouraging a ‘good cry’ when we see it’s going to happen anyway. “Better get it out of your system”, we say at those times. It means we appreciate its therapeutic effects, while disapproving of it as a habit. Anyone can see (and hear) that it’s a necessary release of tension and stress - a great rushing-in and rushing-out of the tide, leaving us cleansed and purged.

But that is strictly in private. In public, it is seen as childish bad behaviour. Weakness in a man. And in a woman, a serious loss of face, a cheapening show of emotion, after which she cannot really hold up her head or preserve any dignity in front of those who have once seen her in that state.

A response to what ?

Women cry for any number of reasons, not always stressful (those ‘tears of laughter’ for example). But a woman in tears is generally a challenge to a man’s ability to cope. Whatever he does or doesn’t do, he is liable to be condemned, for we are in a zone well beyond logic. Indeed, her state of weeping may have been triggered by too much relentless logic and reason (left-brain, the male half), against which mother-nature rebels in her own time-honoured way. It is easy to see how the pressure on women to pursue the boardroom life all day and night could set-off this kind of reaction. Still more when they’re expected to be a dedicated creature of the boardroom and of the home and family at the same time.

Still, the cause is more likely to be found somewhere in her emotional depths, where pressures may steadily harden into stress, all unknown to her menfolk. Perhaps a recurring obsession with her weight or appearance. Perhaps a little piece of unfinished business from the past, still festering and nagging. Perhaps her secret protest at an insensitive streak in an otherwise supportive husband.

In the absence of a rational explanation, a man must try to read the situation as best he can within the limits of his intuition.

When to leave her alone

A woman in tears is not always signalling for a big consoling hug. Often she will be quite happy if she can be left alone in peace while she takes her time pulling herself together. A favourite author or composer may be the best therapy. Or it may be a moment for a woman-to-woman talk, comparing notes in confidence. At these times, she may actively resist male intervention, however well-meant.

Sincerity is the least worst formula

Experience shows that women respond badly to ‘duty sentiments’ or meaningless cliché reassurances, even though these may be the first things a man instinctively comes out with.
Practical help is more acceptable - that little tissue and a glass of water, for example. Or a promise of an impulse-treat, off to the theatre or a new restaurant. Or maybe a little story to take her mind off everything, rather like cheering-up a child. And although forced humour and jollying-along doesn’t work, you may find you’ve said something that tickles her unexpectedly and made her laugh again.

For laughter is the other side of tears.

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

Ten Minutes From Now, You Could Be Genuinely Happy...

2006-01-27T19:02:00.000Z
…by simply rejecting all the misleading signals around you
that generate needless unhappiness and stress, day after day.

Strange how few of our friends could actually be described as happy.

In a world full of golden opportunities that our grandparents could only dream of, we seem to spend most of the day in a state of anxiety and stress about our private circumstances. And looking out at the wider world, we just go on year after year, vaguely feeling that we live in worrying times.

This constant state of dissatisfaction is one of the strangest effects of our age, especially as it can be shown to be mainly unjustified - an awful lot of worrying about nothing. So we should try to suggest at least a few clues about it, in order to fight it down.

The dazzle of media messages
Clearly the press, TV and the internet have a lot to do with it, firmly dictating what we see and hear, and if we’re not careful, dictating what we think and feel.

The media is really entertainment with an advertising agenda, and our attention is keenly competed-for all day and night. Therefore we are exposed to many wonderful and inspiring images which could make us optimistic, alternating with terrifying doomsday scare-talk which is known to rivet the attention and keep audiences watching.

Children - powerless and happy
Ask yourself why small children are naturally happy. They own nothing. They can’t influence events. They don’t see the point of planning. Yet they exude this sunny optimism that can spread joy around them. Philosophers down the centuries have tried again and again to revisit the child-mind, seeking to recapture its valuable secrets. Perhaps we should too.

The elderly are in somewhat the same position - often cheerful and serene, when they don’t have anything obvious to look forward to. Notice that wonderful defiant smile that says “I’ve had my life and you can’t take it away from me.”

This tells you that people quite unaware of Afghanistan or the Dow Jones Index - or dwelling in pitiful ignorance, as some would see it - are able to maintain decency and good cheer without setting a ruinously irresponsible example.

Grateful for good health
One lesson those elderly folk would certainly tell you for nothing - if you’ve got your health, you’ve got a lot to be grateful for.

Or even, just part of your health.

Not long ago, a popular American broadcaster suffered terrible burns in a house-fire, losing the use of both his hands. His reaction? “I used to be able to do 10,000 things. Now I can do 9,000. And I concentrate on those 9,000 - not the 1,000 I’ve lost.”

And you can’t summon a smile today, just because you’ve got a headache, your shares have gone down a point, you’ve managed to stain your jacket, and the electrician didn’t turn up on time ?

Do not waste time blaming others - review your own example
If you are thinking negative thoughts, shout them away - aloud
Escape the self-limiting mindset - never say 'I can't'
Observe the confirmed wisdom of aiming at fixed, realistic goals
Realise just how much control you have over your on life
Now click here (www.carolespiers.com/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=26) for leading Social Analyist, Graham Pepper’s e-book on the subject: ‘That Attitude Book'- Positive Reactions To The Accelerating Pace Of Change
Explore these themes, and many others:
Bewilderingly fast-changing times, where you can easily feel that you are just yesterday's goods.
All this technology at your service - while you run around at the service of technology.
Exaggerated worship of the super-glamorous - causing intelligent teenagers to ruin their health.
Endorsed By Dame Judi Dench And Sir John Harvey-Jones With Reassuring Wisdom From Many Other Achievers Down The Centuries...
This book can be downloaded as an electronic book (ebook) in a flash (you could be reading it in as little as 5 minutes from now). On a typical dial-up connection, it takes just four minutes to download! And of course, there are no shipping or postal charges either!
Bring happiness back into your life! (www.carolespiers.com/productdetail.cfm?ProductID=26)
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

Value What Is Precious In Your Life Every Day!

2006-01-26T22:28:00.000Z

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

Just seconds after take-off, suddenly our lives are in danger.

5th January arrived and it was time for us to leave our South African friends behind, telling them that we would see them again, hopefully in the Spring.

Leaving Cape Town international airport in brilliant sunshine, we were tired after a day’s traveling by car. But our trip had been a great success. We had re-visited townships and old friends and had spent time satisfyingly providing essential business skills workshops to local communities.

We board the 747 hoping that the night flight would get off on time and our journey be uneventful. We could not have been more wrong.

Sitting in the upper deck just aft of the flight-deck, we strapped ourselves in and were disappointed to learn there would be a delay of about an hour as they attempted to fix a computer problem with the electrics. We watched as the technicians and cabin crew went back and forth along the aisle and the door to the pilot’s cabin opens and closes and we all look on anxiously. We are leaving late – that much we knew, but we were not aware of the problems that were actually being experienced on the flight-deck. Computers are shut down and rebooted until finally the engineers give the OK.

We are late, but we might be able to make that time up and so shouldn’t arrive too late into London.

The engines rev, waiting for the final OK from the Cape Town control tower and we lurch forward along the runway, gathering speed for take-off. Rising slowly, ever so slowly, off the ground, there are three bangs in quick succession – not loud but nevertheless frightening enough to indicate that something clearly had malfunctioned.

The plane starts to shake as we climb and we feel an immediate chill creep up our spines as our brain tries to come to terms with the fact that our lives may be in immediate danger.

The PA system breaks into our consciousness. The pilot’s voice, steady but with a heavy South African accent, informs us that we have lost one of the engines and that we will be turning back to Cape Town airport after dumping 50 tonnes of fuel. The loudspeaker goes dead. The young woman next to us starts to cry and I try to comfort her, as I hold Michael’s hand tight.

The 747 continues to gain altitude, however, and after about thirty anxious minutes, the captain comes on again to tell us that everything is under control, that he has been instructed to fly on to Johannesburg – instead of returning to Cape Town – as there they have facilities for repairing the engine and where we will have to disembark to stay overnight. However, we still have to dump fuel before arriving but the good news is that we will not now have to make an emergency landing. The captain thinks the engine damage might have been caused by a bird entering the engine at take-off.

The passenger next to me is still upset so my own personal thoughts and anxiety fall away to give her support. Some people stay in control and others don’t – we all react differently in a time of crisis.

Within a short space of time (which seemed like an eternity), we are flying to JB where land safely with the expert direction of our captain.

We land – we clap – we look around at each other – with the gratitude that one can only experience when one comes out the other side of a traumatic situation. We, and others, say a silent prayer of thanks. Life looks somehow more valuable than just an hour ago.

But why is it that only at times of trauma, do we thank God for life and living. Why is it only at times of trauma or crisis, are we there for each other….why is it that it is often only at times of trauma, we view our lives with a different perspective?

Our learning can only be that we should bless each and every day of life, just as if we are on a plane that might have to crash land.

If you want to make changes in your life, then do it now…..if you have dreams, make sure that they become a reality….don’t wait for a crisis to focus your mind on your future! Don’t wait for happenings – make sure you make them happen.

Be positive, knowing full well that this is in itself not enough to bring about change because you need to have strategies and step-by-step plans that are followed through, for them to really happen. If you want to bring about change, then you need to know how to make it last.

So grab the day (carpe diem), go forward – write down what it is that is really important to you and put it into practice. Say the words out loud and only then will they become a reality.

Live your life and appreciate what is precious to you each and every day.

You don’t have to wait for an aircraft emergency to focus your mind – but regrettably, we often do…

Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. http://www.carolespiers.com/

David Adams' Take On Carole Spiers

2005-11-02T22:58:00.000Z
Carole Spiers is one of the UK's Leading Empowerment Gurus. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

Radically changing attitudes;
To achieve -
Your ultimate success.
Touchable inspiration
Bringing passion and
Motivation from
Five continents;
Russian prisons
Tibetan monasteries
War torn Yugoslavia
South African townships;
Triggering extraordinary insight
With the power of will;
With grit and determination.
Helping you
To change your world.
David Adams (www.poetryinbusiness.com)

Carole Spiers is one of the UK's Leading Empowerment Gurus. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

I Hope You Dance....

2005-10-26T22:44:00.000+01:00

Carole Spiers is one of the UK's Leading Empowerment Gurus. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

This was written by an 83-year-old woman to her friend - the last line says it all.

Dear Bertha,

I'm reading more and dusting less. I'm sitting in the yard and admiring the view without fussing about the weeds in the garden. I'm spending more time with my family and friends and less time working.

Whenever possible, life should be a pattern of experiences to savour, not to endure. I'm trying to recognise these moments now and cherish them. I'm not "saving" anything; we use our good china and crystal for every special event such as losing a pound, getting the sink unstopped, or the first Amaryllis blossom.

I wear my good blazer to the market. My theory is if I look prosperous, I can shell out £28.49 for one small bag of groceries.

I'm not saving my good perfume for special parties, but wearing it for clerks in the hardware store and tellers at the bank.

"Someday" and "one of these days" are losing their grip on my vocabulary. If it's worth seeing or hearing or doing, I want to see and hear and do it now I'm not sure what others would've done had they known they wouldn't be here for the tomorrow that we all take for granted. I think they would have called family members and a few close friends. They might have called a few former friends to apologise and mend fences for past squabbles. I like to think they would have gone out for a Chinese dinner or for whatever their favourite food was. I'm guessing; I'll never know.

It's those little things left undone that would make me angry if I knew my hours were limited. Angry because I hadn't written certain letters that I intended to write one of these days. Angry and sorry that I didn't tell my husband and parents often enough how much I truly love them. I'm trying very hard not to put off, hold back, or save anything that would add laughter and luster to our lives. And every morning when I open my eyes, tell myself that it is special.

Every day, every minute, every breath truly is a gift from God.

"People say true friends must always hold hands, but true friends don't need to hold hands because they know the other hand will always be there."

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance.

Carole Spiers is one of the UK's Leading Empowerment Gurus. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

Passion and Belief From South Africa

2005-10-25T22:48:00.000+01:00

Carole Spiers is one of the UK's Leading Empowerment Gurus. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chairs and Business Mentors who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

South Africa
December 2005

We drive along the road to a clearing where we can see a small hut. This is an initiation ceremony hut. This is where African boys are brought for circumcision, prior to them becoming a man.

Women are not usually allowed to visit these dwellings but with Clive our guide at our side, we were invited.

We are introduced to three young men all daubed in white paint. They have been initiated and are now waiting for the full 30 days before they go back to their homes for a celebration.

The General, Headmann (his nickname) comes over to me. He is wearing a hat stating his position and he holds a stick which he puts towards me as an act of friendship. His whole body is daubed with white paint and his only wearing a camisole and a loincloth. He stands erect with pride of his position.

He has been in the camp for 25 days and at the weekend, he will return back to him homestead. Headmann speaks perfect English and so we communicate easily. He has been the longest on the site and so because of this, he takes the title of General.

He is a young man of 17 years old with his birthday on 30th January. He will return for one more years study before going out into the world. He says with sadness that he does not know what he will do when he leaves his studies. He does not know if he will get a job.

His friends and family are able to come and visit him while he stays on the site but usually no-one else.

He tells me that when he leaves the site, he will burn his tent as his past is now left behind and his future lies before him. And as we look around, we see the ashes of many tents and people’s pasts that are left behind them.

He will go home wearing only a loincloth and he will have new clothes given to him for his future life.

There is much emphasis on burning the past and taking on the future.

When Headmann leaves the site, the symbolic hat will be passed onto another and another in time.

And so we leave Headmann and his many friends that surround him. The picture is one of everyone listening to our conversation. Many had not seem him communicate so clearly before – particularly to a white English woman.

And we say farewell, he offers me his stick again. I hold it and we shake hands in this way. We are not allowed to touch each other.

We smile, we have communicated and his story of an ancient tradition has been told.

I walk away knowing that I have been privileged to share in a very special part of Headmann’s life.

I turn around to say ‘goodbye’ again but as I do so, everyone has disappeared. There is no sight of them. It was as if this conversation and experience had not taken place. It was almost as if I had experienced a mirage.

But I hadn’t. The pictures are taken, the conversation is written and the memory banks are stored.

Carole Spiers is one of the UK's Leading Empowerment Gurus. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chairs and Business Mentors who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

Moments In Life

2005-10-08T15:50:00.000+01:00
There are moments in life when you miss someone so much that you just want to pick them from your dreams and hug them for real!

When the door of happiness closes, another opens;
but often times we look so long at the
closed door that we don't see the one,
which has been opened for us.

Don't go for looks; they can deceive.
Don't go for wealth; even that fades away.
Go for someone who makes you smile,
because it takes only a smile tomake a dark day seem bright.
Find the one that makes your heart smile.

Dream what you want to dream;
go where you want to go;
be what you want to be,
because you have only one life
and one chance to do all the things
you want to do.

May you have enough happiness to make you sweet,
enough trials to make you strong,
enough sorrow to keep you human and
enough hope to make you happy.

The happiest of people don't necessarily
have the best of everything;
they just make the most of
everything that comes along their way.

The brightest future will always
be based on a forgotten past;
you can't go forward in life until
you let go of your past failures and heartaches.

When you were born, you were crying
and everyone around you was smiling.

Live your life so at the end,
you're the one who is smiling and everyone
around you is crying.

Carole Spiers is one of the UK's Leading Empowerment Gurus. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com

Carole is in the business of ‘radically changing the attitudes and mindsets that can hold you back from achieving your ultimate success!’

The Rose Story

2005-10-06T19:52:00.000+01:00

The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn't already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned around to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being. She said, "Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I'm eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?" I laughed and enthusiastically responded, "Of course you may!" and she gave me a giant squeeze.

"Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?" I asked. She jokingly replied, "I'm here to meet a rich husband, get married, have a couple of kids..."

"No seriously," I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age.

"I always dreamed of having a college education and now I'm getting one!" she told me.

After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake. We became instant friends. Every day for the next three months we would leave class together and talk non-stop.

I was always mesmerized listening to this "time machine" as she shared her wisdom and experience with me. Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went. She loved to dress up and she revelled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up.

At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet. I'll never forget what she taught us. She was introduced and stepped up to the podium. As she began to deliver her prepared speech, she dropped her three by five cards on the floor. Frustrated and a little embarrassed, she leaned into the microphone and simply said, "I'm sorry I'm so jittery. I gave up beer for Lent and this whiskey is killing me! I'll never get my speech back in order, so let me just tell you what I know."

As we laughed she cleared her throat and began, "We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing. There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy and achieving success:

You have to laugh and find humour every day. You've got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die. We have so many people walking
around who are dead and don't even know it!

There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up. If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don't do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old. If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything, I will turn eighty-eight. Anybody can grow older.

That doesn't take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding the opportunity in change. Have no regrets..

The only people who fear death are those with regrets."

She concluded her speech by courageously singing "The Rose." She challenged each of us to study the lyrics and live them out in our daily lives.

At the year's end, Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those years ago.

One week after graduation, Rose died peacefully in her sleep. Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example, that it's never too late to be all you can possibly be.

These words that I have read, have been written in loving memory of ROSE.

The learning that comes out of this story is :

GROWING OLDER IS MANDATORY. GROWING UP IS OPTIONAL.

Carole Spiers is one of the UK's Leading Empowerment Gurus. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation

Welcome From Carole Spiers - THE EMPOWERMENT GURU

2005-09-28T01:08:00.000+01:00

Carole Spiers is one of the UK's Leading Empowerment Gurus. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation.
Carole is in the business of ‘radically changing the attitudes and mindsets that can hold you back from achieving your ultimate success!’

Carole's philosophy is crystal clear: 'No matter what obstacles lie in the way - with a positive mental attitude and overcoming limiting self-beliefs, you can move way beyond your personal boundaries to achieve ultimate success!'

Carole and writer and photographer Michael Halpern, have just returned from their third working trip on the townships of South Africa this year (2005),

Read for the first time about their trip.

Building Growth And Good Hope In South Africa
Carole Spiers and Anthea Rossouw, one an Englishwoman from London and the other, a white South African born and raised in Cape Town. Both are now highly successful and experienced career women – but career women with a difference! Their focus of their energies now predominately in the voluntary sector – helping the disadvantaged in society, those at the bottom who have no money but who are desperate to learn new skills in order to make something of themselves .

Carole, UK’s leading Empowerment Guru is the MD of an international stress consultancy and an entrepreneur in her own right who, nevertheless, worked for twenty years for the Samaritan organisation in London, assisting those whose lives appeared to themselves to be valueless, many so depressed that they considered suicide. She visited prisons and detention centres in the UK, helped with trauma victims overseas and campaigned against injustice. Carole, a vice-president of ISMA UK., the International Stress Management Association, a professional speaker and author, has a lifetime of experience in counselling those in need of emotional support and her life has interesting parallels with her associate, Anthea Rossouw.

Anthea, after many years as an executive on the South African Tourist Board, now uses her expertise for the work of the Dreamcatcher Foundation of South Africa (www.dreamcatcher.co.za) – an organisation that has in the past few years won many awards, both in South Africa and abroad, for its work in helping disadvantaged people help themselves. Dreamcatcher is recognised, by the S A government, as a pathfinder, a beacon organisation that has shown the way ahead for many South Africans to become self employed and self-sufficient. She has, almost single-handedly, raised the profile of the needs of those in the townships who are desperate to improve their lot – and she is, slowly but very surely, succeeding. Already, Dreamcatcher has branches in Canada, Holland and soon in the UK, dedicated volunteers who work together to raise funds to help realise Anthea’s dream of an equitable society where those who have no assets and, up to now, no opportunity to gain any, are given the chance to improve their lives and the lives of their families.

Anthea and Carole are both very determined women! Women, who are not easily dissuaded, discouraged or deflected from their goals. Their goals are to improve lives – in this instance, South African lives. They go where others fear to tread, but Nelson Mandela’s history and courage is a constant spur and a shining example that with determination and persistence, obstacles can be overcome and out of adversity can emerge the green shoots of success, a respect for human rights and equal opportunities for all people.

Both these women have an indomitable belief in the essential truth that what matters is not what you have but what you give and that it is not what you have learned so much as what you have taught. They realise that every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice empowers or encourages others to emulate their example. Living a life that matter, is one of choice and for Anthea and Carole, that choice is plain. They choose to empower others.

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An English Woman In South Africa

Our initial journey, flying out on a SAA jet from a rain-swept, Heathrow London airport was made on New Year’s Day, to Cape Town and subsequently onwards, east, along the famed Garden Route. This was followed-up by a return trip for two weeks at Easter and then by a further two weeks in August. Our fourth and final visit, this year, is scheduled for December, when we plan to stay for a month, to include also Christmas and New Year.

Our initial aim was to go outside the usual tourist trail, hotels and game parks to meet with the indigenous people of the region i.e. the ordinary working African man and woman and, in particular, those who were running – or wanted to run - small business enterprises. Currently, it is still a fairly novel idea for overseas visitors to move away from the established tourist itinerary and a little unusual for professionals from abroad to give time to local business on a pro bono, or any other, basis.

In fact, the region where we established our interest, crystallised as the Western Cape, with our base being the small, seaside town of Mossel Bay (east of Cape Town and a third of the way along the Garden Route) – home to a major gas distribution facility and with the second largest employer being a manufacturing plant of the Swiss company, Nestle, that produces dried milk powder for the local market.

The focus of our first trip was to endeavour to become familiar with the geography and a little of the history of the Cape and the surrounding districts and to learn something of the economy and the relationship and interaction between the three different communities: the blacks, whites and coloured.

The second trip at Easter was to improve and consolidate this knowledge and to embark upon a dialogue with various members of the African community living in the townships on the edge of both Cape Town and Mossel Bay. At this time, we were also introduced to Anthea Rossouw, the CEO of the Dreamcatcher Foundation, which is a national organisation, headquartered in Cape Town but with branches overseas. Its mission is to help and motivate local South African entrepreneurs (and small business start-ups) to succeed by offering training and professional assistance. They also encourage volunteers, from all over the world, to stay and work together with local communities on different projects. We both found an immediate affinity and empathy with Dreamcatcher and its South African born, passion-driven, dynamic, articulate and highly experienced, chief executive.

Our third trip in August was pre-planned, in association with Anthea Rossouw, to hold two, 2-day Empowerment workshops on basic marketing skills for small business enterprises and business start-ups

These sessions were held in Khayelitsha township, in Cape Town and were a great success.
The twelve attendees, who came from various locations (some many miles distant), were enthusiastic and eager to learn (new) basic skills in marketing their product or service and dealing with customers.
They were all in different occupations and in a wide age range and all, without exception, were eager and enthusiastic either to acquire new skills to improve their small businesses or to learn the basic skills of communication and marketing in order start new enterprises. One quality stood out with them all – a resilience that enabled them to strive to rise above the difficulties in obtaining finance to fund their ideas and invest in their chosen business ventures. They believed in themselves and their ability to ‘be someone’. This obvious trait made the training, for us, one of satisfaction, knowing that everyone attending the courses were so keen to better themselves.
It is to be hoped that these workshops will be the first of many and that we will be able to persuade other professionals, particularly from the UK, to spend some time in South Africa imparting their knowledge to the those starting and running small businesses who are in such need of professional advice and who are so keen to receive it.

We also hope to attract sponsorship to fund part of the many activities now being undertaken by the Dreamcatcher Foundation. Activities that are vital to the growth of the new South Africa – a land and people that have suffered so much in the recent past but which is now so full of promise. But we do need help to achieve our objectives in returning to ordinary, black, South Africans their pride, by helping them to a worthwhile, self-sufficient future.

South Africa is a land potentially rich in minerals and in people, but Thabo Mbeki and his government have a massive job in exploiting their country’s natural assets to create jobs and raise living standards, as well as to fighting an AIDS epidemic.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has helped heal the wounds of the recent past and we can now help these courageous people of Southern Africa by sharing our skills with them. Europe has gained from Africa and now we must reciprocate in helping their people build their economy.

As Nelson Mandela said in the moving words of his inauguration speech:
‘We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the millions of our people. We enter into a covenant, that we shall build a society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity. A rainbow nation, at peace with itself and the world’.
Carole Spiers is one of the UK's Leading Empowerment Gurus. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation.

What They Are Saying About Carole Spiers

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“Carole is a passionate, high energy speaker who is driven to make a positive difference to the success of her audience.” John Day, Fire Brigade Union

“She mesmerises her audience through the brilliant use of theatre and anecdotal stories that invariably enthral them.” Alan Bentley, Harrow Business

“Her inspiration is touchable as she provides you with the impetus to permanently transform the quality of your life, by reinforcing in yourself the absolute will and determination to succeed.”
Mark Stagg, HR, Maritime Coastguard Agency