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| Supersonic Eye Openers to Sharpen Your Type A Smarts |
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You can’t escape who you are.
It happened again this week. I was talking with a fellow I had just met when he suddenly observed, “You’re like a lightning bolt!”.
Yes, that me. A lightning bolt. I can’t help myself. It’s in my DNA.
In my first ‘real’ job, I got sick of listening to my co-workers sit around and whine about how overworked and underpaid we were, so I petitioned our employer – the city government – to raise our wages.
The suits on the city council were shocked and appalled that a 21-year old, fresh-out-of-college female would have such audacity to question the status quo. They called my boss and demanded to meet “the militant troublemaker”. I found it all quite amusing.
A few months and one whopper of a pay raise later, a co-worker presented me with lightning bolt earrings and a lightning bolt t-shirt. Giggling, she said, “Cannon, those guys never knew what hit them!”
Four years later, emboldened by success, I zapped, scorched and incinerated my way to record setting profits in my first big leadership role. Determined to succeed regardless of the cost, I left a trail of charred and smoldering souls in my wake. Intoxicated with my own power, I had morphed into a lightning bolt bully.
Then one day I went up in my own flames. My mother’s childhood admonishments echoed through my head, “You shouldn’t play with fire! Someone’s going to get hurt.”
It was only then that I realized the full responsibility of being a lightning bolt.
Over time I mastered the fine art of tossing lightning bolts to illuminate instead of decimate and to catalyze instead of paralyze. In the darkest and most menacing of storms, a friendly lightning bolt is a flashlight for the soul. It shows you where it’s safe to step and helps you see your way to the desired destination.
With some work, I transformed myself from a lightning bolt bully to a lightning bolt leader.
It’s true. You can’t escape who you are… but you can master the fine art of who you are.
Thirty years later, I still can’t stand whiners… I still have the audacity to question the status quo and… I still occasionally get called a ‘militant troublemaker’ because I refuse to play the ‘good enough game’. And I’m still a lightning bolt… in a more artful and masterful way.
Have you mastered the fine art of who you are?
To Give or Not to Give? What Do You Think?
I’ve been talking to pink slip professionals – talented, highly motivated people who are now searching for a job. Sprinkled throughout our discussions on job search strategies and survival how-to’s, these exasperated and bored professionals frequently exclaim: “I would work for free just to get out of the house and feel like I’m contributing.”
That got me to thinking about the enormous amount of unemployed intellectual capital gathering dust and the power of free samples.
What if pink slip professionals adopted the pink spoon strategy made famous by Baskin-Robbins and gave away small, tasty samples of their expertise and talent to organizations and businesses who needed that particular expertise and talent?
It’s no secret that many independent professionals give away small samples of their expertise as a key part of their marketing strategy (like complementary coaching sessions, free special reports or no cost teleconferences).
Giving away a sample the pink slip professional gets a break from the monotony and frustration of job hunting, enjoys the satisfaction of engaging in tangible work, escapes from the house, demonstrates the value of their work to potential employers and expands their network to help in the search for a paycheck. On the other side, the receiving organization gets important work done and meets a new resource and potential employee.
It sounded pretty good to me… Then I tossed the pink spoon idea out to a self-employed IT professional and he disagreed.
“Giving away services (even in a recession) is never a good idea.”
What do you think?
Talking out of both sides of Microsoft’s Mouth
Microsoft’s new ad campaign, People Ready, is now trumpeting what most of us have known for years – the old mantra…’It’s not personal, it’s just business’…. is a bunch of malarkey. 
In what first appears to be an editorial filled with typical CEO mumbo jumbo, Microsoft uses a red highlighter to cut through the BS leaving just a few words that emphasize Microsoft’s new marketing message…’Because it’s everybody’s business’.
Interesting that this marketing campaign coincides with Microsoft’s announcement they are laying off 1400 people today and 5000 over the next 18 months. Now that’s what I call personal.
Guess it’s only ‘everybody’s business’ at Microsoft when sales are strong.
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It’s time to wake up and smell the truth. Like gas guzzling relics, traditional Type A’s are becoming passé. In the good ole’ days, with their steely-eyed focus and turbo-charged tactics, Type A’s could dominate the game by slicing, dicing and sacrificing. That pricey party is over. Award-winning executive coach Kay Cannon offers a funny insider’s look into the secret world of top performing Type A individuals and redefines how these talented and smart superstars can get great results without collateral damage.
Hot at 50
A trip with my grandfather was like riding the roller coaster at Six Flags but without seat belts or a sissy bar.
In typical Type A fashion, he drove like a bat out of Honolulu while talking a mile a minute pointing and looking everywhere but the road ahead. There was always so much to see, to say and to do.
Each afternoon my grandfather would race up in his green Chevy chariot amidst a thick cloud of caliche and announce that he was there to pick up his girls to help him check on the cattle. (If you’re not from Texas, I’ll let you in on a secret. Checking on the cattle is a time honored ritual in ranching families.)
My mother would just close her eyes and send up a quick prayer as my sister and I eagerly climbed into the dusty cab filled with pliers, buckets, worn work gloves and a wiry white-haired rancher with a wicked twinkle in his blue eyes.
With his straw Stetson tilted back on his head and one hand casually draped over the steering wheel, my grandfather would floor the accelerator as we barreled and bounced over limestone ledges laughing all the while. On more than one occasion, I remember biting my tongue when my airborne butt unexpectedly hit the hard bench seat or my body slamming into the dash board when he unexpectedly braked to point out a jack rabbit or a cow snake.
More often than not, when our ranch chores were done, the three of us would sneak out to the highway and down to the local soda fountain where Papa Lee and his buddies engaged in the sport of gossip while my sister and I drank Cokes fizzing with peanuts.
When we finally returned home, we’d all be caked with caliche dust from stem to stern, smelling of hay, sweet feed and motor oil and full of Coke, peanuts and the latest gossip. As you can imagine, my sister and I loved to see that green Chevy truck coming down the road.
I’m delighted to tell you that this year my sister and brother-in-law gave the old girl a spiffy makeover for her 50th birthday. As you can see in the photo, Papa Lee’s 1959 Chevy Apache is now an award-winning hottie turning heads and grabbing hearts… once again.
What are your Type A roots?