The power of Gratitude

I came across an inspiring quote sent to me by Charbel Khoury at Atlantis financials From The Secret Daily Teachings:

“It is when you no longer feel the need for money that money will come. The feeling of needing money comes from the thought that you don't have enough, and so you continue to create not having enough money. You are always creating, and when it comes to money, you are either creating the lack of it or the abundance of it.”

And Charbel explains after the quote the importance of gratitude in one’s life. Here I couldn’t just stop without sharing with you the importance of gratitude and the wonders it has done to my life.

to read the full blog log on to www.ideasgroupblog.com

Overcoming stage fright

Does your heart pounds, your hands shake, your forehead sweats, your mouth goes dry and your stomach feels like a blender on high speed every time you are about to speak or present to a group?

Well the good news is that you are in the majority, and that almost everybody shows the same symptoms when they are asked to speak or present to a large group. Even the most experienced speakers still feel stage fright at times.

The other good news is that with simple techniques you can use stage fright to your advantage.

Below are 5 tips extracted from our stage fright section of our “Public Speaking and Presentation Skills” workshop:

To read the full blog go to www.ideasgroupblog.com

Using Criticism; a Leader’s success attribute

The first thing that most people do when criticized, is to jump on the defensive side and justify themselves, trying to prove that the other party is completely wrong. What these people don’t realize is that by blocking any chance of taking anyone else’s opinion, they may lose the chance of perhaps getting an excellent advice. However such reaction to criticism is a natural innate reaction, similar to the “fight or flight” response our pre-historic ancestors had.

According to the British Psychological Society, “ The main reasons that get to leaders derailment is that they acquire an inflated sense of self-importance, grandiosity and entitlement, with weaknesses such as sensitivity to criticism, poor listening skills, a lack of empathy, a dislike for mentoring, and an intense desire to compete.”

To understand how successful people deal with criticism, we have studied 18 personalities from several industries, and came up with the 5 most important “must haves” that enable leaders to accept criticism and work with it turning it to their advantage.

To read the full blog go to www.ideasgroupblog.com

Almost half of UAE professionals may quit their jobs after the summer holidays

Dubai, UAE,  30^th August 2010 – New research from Regus reveals that UAE professionals may quit their jobs after the summer vacation due to lack of promotion and bosses that do not know, or do not communicate the company’s goals.

To read the full article visit www.ideasgroupblog.com

Five essential elements to conduct a one on one feedback session

Giving feedback to team members is not the most enjoyable thing that a manager likes to do, however as Kelvin Lord puts it, “You cannot improve what you cannot measure” and as a Leader or a manager your job is to look for constant and never ending improvements.

To make things easier for you, we have come up with five essential elements that will make the feedback session easier for the employee and the manager and most essentially link it to sustainable organizational performance.

Full blog on http://www.ideasgrp.com/blog

“When you lose something, you are just making space for something bigger”

I have received a call last week from one of my clients, who for internal reasons had to cancel one of the  biggest contracts we have signed this year. To tell you that I wasn’t deceived would be lying; The news could have ruined my whole day, week or even month because of the magnitude of such contract. However as I am committed to have a high EIQ (emotional intelligence quotient), I had to analyze the choices I had, so I quickly drew the below mindmap (click to enlarge).

As you can see, by just changing my paradigm from deception to choices, a multitude of options started flowing  and I was suddenly enveloped with a warm feeling of happiness. It is strange and weird but in the nicest possible way.

So I continued my analysis and tried to come up with computer and IT analogies; when we delete files in our computers we are just making space for another file, the same goes in our lives; when we lose something we are just making space for something bigger.

A lost opportunity = more focus on a bigger one
A lost job = a chance for doing what you love
A lost family member = more love for other family members, or more focus on continuing what the lost one has started
A lost friendship = opportunities for a better one

And the list goes on...

A women in Lebanon has lost her son in a water sports accident, and after grieving him for a while she felt that her life had stopped; You just can imagine how hard it is to loose a child. But one day she woke up and asked herself the following question: What is the reason that my son was taken away from me at a young age? What is the message behind it? How can I use this incident to serve others?

A week later she has started a foundation with a purpose of making parents aware of the dangers of inattention when it comes to their children. So going back to her choices, she had two choices; either grieve her child for the rest of her life, or help thousands of other households save their children. With the latter choice she now feels that her son’s decease was a rebirth for a thousand more child.

“When you lose something, you are just making space for something bigger”

So if you just think about a loss as a free space, you will not get stuck in the past and will start generating opportunities for the future. It is all about using your energy- any kind of energy; negative or positive - and turning it into choices that will get you closer to your goals.

To know more about increasing your efficiency and how to generate healthier choices, visit our website: www.ideasgrp.com

Social Mania

At First Companies have rebuffed all social media, claiming that it was a waste of time for their employees and that it weights on corporate productivity. Then, as soon as some success stories rose about the use of social networks to make money – the likes of dell making $ 3 million in less than 2 years just out of twitter, and Perez Hilton becoming the friend of celebrities just by blogging about them, all corporates wanted to have facebook profiles, a presence on linked-in and a need to tweet. However this was done the wrong way.

Before jumping on the Social Networks extravaganza, companies, or even people who are looking for a personal branding e-campaign, should ask themselves the below five questions:

1- How is our SEO (Search engine Optimization) benefiting from our social network sites?: Social networks play an amazing role getting our website discovered by the search engines ( google yahoo, bing etc). Using key words on our social network will increase the rankings, if you don’t have a corporate social website its time to do so.

2- Are all of our social profiles and websites interlinked? What makes any website/webpage powerful is the amounts of links directed to that site, when connecting websites with links to each other, then you are creating your own web of sites and thus empowering your reach.

3- Are all of our profiles homogenous? Having different info on different social websites will confuse the visitors and weaken your reach. All the introduction texts in the “About us” section should say the exact same thing, and when updating one social site all the others should be updated in the same time.

4- Are we heard by the right audience? A lot of companies think of adding followers or members randomly. When choosing a “follow-ship” companies should be speaking at the right audience. A good way of building a great database of potential customers is to have a blog that can only be read by inserting contact details. Those blogs can be easily made of subjects that only interest your type of clients.

5- Are we offering to our public something of value? Some social profiles only portray publicity and ways of eliciting customers. The web 2.0 audience is always looking for something of value and for free….Wikipedia, Youtube, mashable, and …. Are perfect examples.

The social networks should be handled the same way we handle the traditional media, you should have a social media strategy, social media officers and an alignment between your overall strategy and online strategy.

Camil El Khoury

Are we born Charismatic?

Some people are just trusted by their colleagues, clients and friends; others struggle to gain that trust. Looking at trust and rapport in more depth, we find that this is something that you can work on, and not only born with.

True, some people are charismatic by nature, however studies have shown that 87% of charismatic people have worked on their development to become appealing.

What did they do? They have mastered the art of professional etiquette in all its forms. Charisma can be established and nurtured if you simply look at the following etiquette tips:

1. Business attire: How many times have we judged people by the way they dress? Unfortunately this holds true to most people. If you want to look like a banker dress like one, if you go to a meeting unshaved or with a flashy makeup and casual clothing, your clients wont take you seriously. As Queen Elizabeth once said "Dress gives one the outward sign from which people can judge the inward state of mind. One they can see, the other they cannot."

2. Business communications: Do we differentiate between business and casual communications? At home or with our friends, there is a greater chance that people will understand what we mean by our sentences because those people know us very well, on the other hand, at work, we have to use very straight to the point sentences, words that everybody will understand. In addition to that, we have to be very careful with how do we greet people, how do we talk on the phone and what gestures to use.

3. Cross-cultural differences: When dealing with people from other cultures you have to keep it as simple as possible; your goal is to minimize misunderstanding and reach a common point. In order to do so, you have to be very patient and keep a steady voice (yelling at the other person, won’t make them understand better). When traveling ask someone who lived in or has been to the country you are visiting about acceptable behavior such as what jokes would be appropriate, what are the definite “not to do’s”.

4. Basic workplace etiquette: When in the office, some behaviors are not acceptable at all, and still; some people carry on with those actions. It is ok to share with a colleague or two some of your private issues, however what is not ok is to talk private issues on your cell phone in front of all your colleagues; this will disrupt them and make them feel uncomfortable. So keep your phone ring on very low and if you want to take a private call, its better to take it outside the office. Second, If you lost your pen, or ran out of posts it, do not take them from the desk of your colleague without asking them; some people are very organized and loosing stuff from their table will de-focus them when accomplishing a task. And last, show appreciation when people do stuff for you; thanking someone and being nice is very essential, especially for the janitor or the tea person.

5. Netiquette: Now that we are all present on Social Media, blogs and specialty websites, it’s extremely important to have a Netiquette (Internet Etiquette). Do we do a google search on our names from time to time? It’s extremely vital to periodically check what is being written about us and what images of us are available on the web. Do we also portray a good image of ourselves on the social networks? I have once decided not to hire a qualified candidate for a job because of their facebook profile, which broadcasted a totally different image than the one in the interview. We also tend to forget that emails are permanent so if we gossip or talk behind the back of someone over an email (even private email addresses), there is a big chance that this person will see what you have written; IT professionals can restore deleted data.

Business Etiquette while being broad can be improved by very simple measures and very little effort. Walk that extra step in order to build your own confident persona. Camil El Khoury

New year resolution will definitely fail unless

Have you ever decided on a new year’s resolution? Of course you did…. And did those resolutions fail over and over again? Of course they did….

Lets us have a look at the top 5 most common resolution over the past 10 years

5- I want to be nice to people around me (family/friends/colleagues)

4- I want to make more money

3-I want to hit the gym

2- I want to quit smoking

1- I want to start a diet

Now if we examine why did we fail over and over again in applying those resolutions, we will notice that once we start applying any of them, the daily habits will kick in and takes us back at square one. We would start justifying our actions by sentences like: I need this cigarette; I have too much pressure, or a bar of chocolate won’t hurt me now; it is just one.

Al of this is natural for two reasons:

1 - We don’t commit to ourselves: as long as no one is scrutinizing what we do, we don’t have a clear discipline and will tend at breaking our promise to ourselves

2- The goal is not worthy enough; we will end up saying that by smoking a cigarette or grabbing a piece of cake it’s not the end of the world.

But what is the end of the word?

This year, resolutions are pointing to a very different, yet focused point; saving the world and more specifically saving the world from Global Warming. Everyone is taking that resolution seriously and that is mostly due to 2 events that have happened in the last quarter of 2009: Copenhagen summit and the movie 2012. In the later, the difference that we have witnessed compared to other similar movies is that, the end is very near and that is, not even in 2 years. We need to take action and action starts at home. By turning off that light we don’t need by turning of the TV and DVD plugs when not in use and by closing the water tap when we brush our teeth or shave, we would be contributing in saving that world. It also goes to using our cars; do we ever car pool? Do we walk to the shop that is 200 meters away? Being environmentally friendly follows us at the office, we don’t need to print every single document that we use, we shouldn’t use plastic and paper cups but replace them with our glass cup or mug, and we should be recycling everything we use.

If we commit this year to a green resolution we will for once be doing a good deed not only for ourselves but for people around us and generations to come.

So let’s turn our green resolution into a habit and do something different this year.

The author Camil El Khoury is the Chief Vision Officer of ideas group; the Middle East leading experiential learning consultancy. www.ideasgrp.com

What are you giving this Christmas?

It’s here again…that magical time of the year is here again…oh yes it’s Christmas.

Usually every holiday, especially that time of the year, people start becoming forgiving, forgetting and all about giving, and making others happy.

This Christmas, have you thought about what you want to give? And by this I don’t mean gifts or any materials items, I meant what do you want to give people around you?

This might seem selfish; however, to end up the year with a great achievement, what about giving people at the office something that will help them end their year on a better tone.

In order to do that, you have to practice, in a simple yet a very powerful way, the art of coaching, and more specifically how to make people feel understood.

By coaching people, you will strengthen your relationships, people will feel that you are a source of trust and you will feel like you have made a difference in your workplace.

If you are ready, then you are 5 steps away of becoming a workplace catalyst of change :

1- What’s in it for them: Often in our conversations we end up talking about ourselves and fail to understand or learn what people are truly saying.

In order to do that we have to Actively Listen; doing that requires that you give the full attention to people when you ask them a question, yes it means leaving your computer keyboard or your phone to concentrate on what they are saying.

2- Ask open questions: And that relates to point one, the question will have to be about them, and you will have to resist introducing your personal stories in the conversation unless you are asked to. A sample open question is: “What motivates you?” and if they answer growth or achievement resist the temptation to say “me too” or “yes I also like….. because it makes me….” Remember you want to be helping others so try to learn about them.

3- Encourage them to come up with their own ideas: If you asked them what motivates them or what makes them happy, ask them how would they like to take things forward, and by this I mean what are possible ways for them to reach their goals. Again here, resist the temptation of giving personal advice; instead encourage them to come up with ideas and solutions.

4- Listening to their ideas. Listening is a big part of helping others. When someone is telling you about a certain idea, try to learn what this idea truly represents. Summarize what they have said to make sure you got it correctly, this will also show the speaker that you are truly listening to them,

5- Help them turn their ideas into actions Ideas are useless unless they are executed. In order to make an idea happen, one has to turn it into a plan of action. A good way that will make their ideas happen is to make them fill a table like the one below:

What is the action point that you will execute	By when will that point be achieved	What Support do you need and from whom	How will you track your progress measure your success

Make sure they are specific when they fill the table, and ask them to choose a mentor ( it could be you) to follow up on those action points.

Christmas is a time of giving, and the self satisfaction from giving others new ways to think is priceless. So Merry Christmas, and good luck.

Camil El Khoury is The Author of "Do What you Love, Love What you do" and the Chief Vision Officer of ideas group; the leading experiential learning firm in the AME region (Africa and the Middle East)

Ideas group participates in the Leadership Best Practise conference in Emirates Palace Abu Dhabi

Ideas group , The Middle East and Africa’s most successful experiential learning consultancy, was again the proud sponsor of Etisalat Academy’s “ Leadership Best Practices conference” in Emirates Palace Abu Dhabi. This event was organized in partnership with the Ministry of Interior and under the auspices of His Highness Lt. Gen. Sheikh Saif Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Interior.

The Event welcomed more than 200 delegates, all eager to learn from the best practices on Leadership from four very talented speakers. This panel included Rowan Gibson, a bestselling author and international speaker, Alan Stevens the communication expert, author & managing director of Mediacoach, Prof. Christo Neil who is the head of centre for leadership studies for the University of Stellenbosch and Dr. Ahmed Shalabi a regional consultant on management. The event was chaired by Camil El Khoury, an international speaker, author and the Chief Vision Officer of ideas group.

Ideas group took the chance to introduce once again 4 new experiential learning programs:

· The Psychology of Success a talent development program that includes communications, time management, focus and building extraordinary beliefs.

· Getting down to business Write and present like professionals.

· Social mania getting results out of social networking while keeping your employees focused.

· No excuses only Results A sales and customer service winning approach to get more done.

Moamar Safi, Senior Client Partner at ideas group, said, “Our commitment to develop experiential learning as a substitute for training and development in the region has never been greater, and we are really proud of our partnership with Etisalat Academy”

Media Contact:

For Further information please contact ideas group media team on info@ideasgrp.com www.ideasgrp.com