Posts Tagged “advisor”
Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Blog, Executive Coaching, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
When you awake each morning, the day presents you with literally thousands of possibilities. Human existence is chocked full of possibilities. But the important questions is, what is probable? And the more important question is, how can you make the right possible things probable – how can you select the right probabilities from all those possibilities? This is one of those areas when more education can be a real liability.
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Executive coaching my way leads me to work with highly educated and literate people. Most of my clients have a Master’s degree. In some ways, working with these people is a joy. For example, they have been trained to understand and work with complex ideas. Their grasp of the language is such that conversations about complex ideas are possible. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Life Coaching, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
Socrates observed that ‘a life unexamined is not worth living’. Nowhere is that more true than when we act against our own self-interests and suffer the consequences – pay the bills for our own rash actions.
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“It’s what you do without realizing it that can really mess things up.”
That’s the way one of my early mentors used to put it. Jim was constantly pointing out those things I did without thinking – and the effect of my having done them on future prospects. Now don’t get me wrong, Jim was not an advocate of “staying low and not making waves”. Far from that, he made more than his share of waves and was a real change agent in his business and personal relationships. He insisted that you had to realize the likely impact of doing this or being that way on what you wanted to get out of life and the people around you. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Blog, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, Alice, Alice in Wonderland, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management, Wonderland
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
Doggerel you say? Incoherent mutterings. Nothing much to pay attention to. Foolish person – there is all of life – the whole deep meaning of it – in the fart of a flea. You just have to learn how to listen!
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There is no freedom like being able to say what you truly mean – not what others want you appear to mean – nor what you might say in the throes of an adolescent tantrum – but to clearly say in a measured fashion exactly what you mean. Here’s the rabbit hole – down we go. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Blog, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
We look in them every day – and use them as metaphors for achieving deeper self-knowledge. Every person we meet is one and what they show us can be far more valuable than any highly polished surface.
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I won’t sugarcoat it – mentoring can bring some very aggravating experiences. Sometimes it takes forever to achieve just a small illumination. Then there are the times – backsliding – when months of work seems to be washed away by a recidivist tendency. But then there are the other kinds that make the occasional frustration fade into the background. Let me tell you about one of these experiences. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Blog, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
Understanding where the other person is coming from radically increases the probability that you will understand what they are trying to say to you.
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I recently met with a young entrepreneur – let’s call him X – well, to be technically accurate, a wannabe entrepreneur – he had never successfully built a business before. The meeting was a chance one at a networking event but my reputation for helping build business had preceded me. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Blog, Executive Coaching, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
The deer in the headlights – we all know the story – the car rounds the bend on a dark night – the deer stands frozen in the glare and cannot move even as its death approaches. Humans sometmes act this way – and sometimes with similar consequences.
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Most of my work is done with middle-market companies – by that I mean well established operations with a proven senior team that has worked through most of the big inter-personnel issues and found a way to work productively together. Under the leadership of a CEO who values open communication and camaraderie – and does not tolerate turf battles and information hording. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Advisory, Blog, Turnaround Management, Venture Capital, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
Sometimes management teams lose focus on the fact that the principal goal of business involves producing increasing revenues. Sometimes they get caught in the trap of incessantly talking about increasing revenue.
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I recently facilitated an all-hands session for a company. We were focusing on the results of an extended process of reorganization and re-resourcing. Both of the efforts had been very successful and the company was poised to move forward. However, as the meeting got under way, I sensed a general reluctance to moving on to the next phase – implementation. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Venture Capital, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
Have you ever done a favor for someone only to find out that you did them no favor? What to they say about the road to hell? Oh yes – that it is paved with good intentions.
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About a quarter of my work is with companies that have been funded by angel investors. During the first couple of months of any engagement, I work to identify the underlying causes of the condition that the company is in. It is rare that I am called to help with a company that is hitting its projections and generating a return for the investors. Most often, the return is slim or non-existent and the investors are beginning to run out of both patience and any interest in sending good money after bad. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Executive Coaching, Leadership, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
Self-knowledge is the crucial component of self-improvement. How can you improve what you don’t understand? Of course, the other side of that coin is ‘what you don’t understand can cause you great harm.
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The Perfectionist: During a recent coaching engagement, I came to realize that a CEO I was working with had a tendency to accentuate the negative. She was heavily committed to building her first successful business – driven to the point of almost maniacal focus on correcting the mistakes of her team. Her behavior was corroding the enthusiasm of her team. I decided to arrange a one-on-one session focused on her management style. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Advisory, tags: advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
Change is one of those altars that is well worshiped at – not one of those forgotten gods whose supplicants infrequently visit their shrine. But wanting is not the same as having – it is sometimes not logical – but I have found it to be true.
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One of the inevitable results of growth is change. This maxim is as true for organizations as it is for individuals. When ‘what has been’ morphs into ‘what is new’, opportunities proliferate but dislocations occur that affect every part of a company. I recently helped one navigate these perilous waters. The experience brought several important lessons into focus. Read the rest of this entry »
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