Autumn turns up!

Autumn hits the Blue Mountains. It's so good when there's still some green as well as some brown and orange leaves!

Time for Relaxing

Tree on the park, Gladesville Hospital

In April I spoke at the MEAA freelance journalists' conference. In June I'll be speaking at the 16th Annual Pacific Rim Help Desk and IT Service Management Conference (The topic, determined by them is Advance your Career with Strong Communication Skills - who writes this stuff?).

It's coming into Autumn, and oddly enough I've returned to some old business - in a previous life I worked for a client doing process improvement, and now I'm subcontracting others to do it (When a client returns after 15 years, and does so repeatedly, I figure it's a message). I had a whale of a time analysing the problem, and we saved the client about a million dollars for 8 days consulting. THAT's what it's about isn't it?

The 15 years gap since I sat in meetings with people determining what will change in a processing area shows me I'm more self-possessed than I was then (who'd have thought it!). Oddly enough I'm also very much aware that years ago when I decided sub-contracting was not how I wanted to leverage my business, I was right. Now that I spend less time making money, I ironically have more time to make money through others. As an aside, if you have process improvement skills, email me, who knows where all this will lead?

If you do follow one link in this email, let it be this one to add funds for mammograms. I'm doing some training for the Breast Cancer Network next week, and I just clicked again. Too many people (men and women) are affected by it. Let's do what we can to stop it.

Finally, check out Ludic Creative's Story telling workshop on June 23 2007, and our next Life is not a rehearsal on July 7 07. Both Workshops are in North Sydney on a Saturday from 1 - 5pm. Come play with us! Special deal for ezine readers - enrol yourself at $297, and you can bring a colleague or a friend along for free.

Cindy

p.s. I almost forgot. I have finally put Consulting Mastery (being good is not enough) into ebook form. You can read the introduction here. There are no more paper copies left. You can buy the ebook now!

In this month's ezine we have:

• Improving your consultancy: A few tools for your business; tips on printing documents
• Managing better: Helping people hear you, and managing emotions in the workplace
• Fascinating: influencing better, laughter helps
• Fun: conference games, a PC game, special offers for our fun workshops

Your Consulting
business

The beauty of electrickery

More tools for your business

Business Performance has a range of tools you can download for free - A Skills Gap Worksheet, Work Culture Checklist, Project Definition, Session Plan Template, Project Master Sample, and Training Tracker Sample. Check them out.

And you’re probably familiar with the tools on my own web page: an Invoice template, some suggested Terms and Conditions, Timesheet, Action Plan, Client Record Form, the famous Magic Formula Spreadsheet Calculator (to work out what you can afford to charge), a Briefing Form, Consulting Skills Checklist, and the Personal Business Plan template. I'd be interested to know which of these has been the most valuable in your business.

Tips for printing

Microsoft have published some good tips for preparing documents to send to a printer. It includes a plug for their 2007 Office suite - apparently you can now just save as a pdf from within their applications, which may make upgrading more attractive given the cost of Acrobat. I've had acrobat for years, and am still stunned when someone sends me a CV or an information sheet in Word or Excel instead of PDF format.

And of course you know you can get free software print to pdf too now. I just googled "generate pdf" to find this one - you can do your own research!

Managing better

Ferns reflected in the water. Such cool colours!

Helping people hear you

Don't read to people, it overloads them. Research shows that reading people things while they are looking at the same words can put them into overwhelm so they don't actually understand or retain it. Death to powerpoint!

Being nice when you feel grumpy takes effort

Wharton - Why does affect matter in Organisations - Looks at the effect of grumpy people and those who are permanent rays of sunshine. Discovers it's detrimental to do "emotional labour" pretending to be cheery or empathetic when a customer is being difficult. Although the Wharton article outlines an alternative, I can't quite understand what it is - is that my own lack of emotional intelligence perhaps? Read it yourself.

Fascinating

Fog in the Blue Mountains, a light through a tree.

Face to Face for women is more persuasive

Robert Cialdini's book, Influence - the Psychology of persuasion is one I go back to all the time for insights and reminders. He's done some research that says if you're trying to persuade a woman to do something you will do better face-to-face, but men are equally persuaded by phone, face-to-face or by email. Like Deborah Tannen's research into gender preferences in communication, it's a generalisation (so only try most of the time), and a fascinating one.

Health Benefits of Laughter

Go check out the many health benefits of laughter. There are links to all sorts of sites (including the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor)!, and assert that laughter reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, elevates mood, boosts the immune system, improves brain functioning, protects the heart, connects you to others, fosters instant relaxation and makes you feel good. Check it out and laugh a little.

And Fun, fun, fun

Sweeping staircase - Everglades, Leura

Fairy tale trees, Leura

Play some games at work

Found this site of conference games. it won't necessarily give you everything you need to do the activity, but is a great reminder if you've seen it played and want to play it yourself (or give you ideas to design your own.

Ride the line - great fun!

Not a game but a toy, according to its maker - go play Line Rider - draw a line and a little tobogganist skates along it. Too steep, he falls over. Too short, he goes off into oblivion. How agreeable can you make the curves so they are fun, but not too hard? A metaphor for life, really!

The best fun - impro and story with Ludic

Remember there's a special discount for Ezine readers to attend the Ludic Creative Story telling workshop on June 23 2007 (2 for 1). Just put Ezine in the discount code, and your friend's name in the Special Instructions. Our story telling workshop is about using story to be more persuasive, relevant and have more fun, at work and at home.

And once you've been to one of our workshops, you can continue to come to any repeat of it, so you can refresh yourself as often as you like. And of course there's the Life is not a Rehearsal improvising in business workshop - it's on July 7th 2007. Enrol in both workshops and you can bring a friend to both and you the combined cost (for a total of 4 people) is $500 - which is $1188 worth of training for only $500. Yes, we can "split the bill".

The workshops are held at Sydney Venue, our favourite venue in Sydney.

And impro, of course

Scared Scriptless' Theatresports®, famous as the show which I'm actually in most Friday nights, continues at the Clarence Hotel, Petersham (in Sydney). Doors open 7:30, show starts at 8. Drinks at pub prices, food available. There's a second show (The Late Show) at 10:30, so catch them both for an unheard of $5 whenever you're near Petersham in Sydney.

I would be interested to hear from you if any of these ideas spark something good for you and yours!

C

Cindy Tonkin The Consultants’ Consultant
Certified Management Consultant

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This month's images are original photographs ©2007 Cindy Tonkin. See more here.

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