Achievement orientation is a skill that shows your capacity for permanent improvement.

Setting high goals and working hard to achieve them, calculating – but ultimately taking – the appropriate risks in order for them to be accomplished, is the perfect definition of Achievement Orientation.

 

Achievement Orientation generates new interests and gives you a reason for continued learning and the expansion of your horizons.

But before we go on, let’s remember that any Emotional Intelligence skill refers to how you manage yourself, your relationships and the situations you encounter daily.

All the competencies, in fact, speak to us about a different way to be smart. Fortunately, Emotional Intelligence is something that we can all learn and improve.

Achievement Orientation, in particular, is one of the key features that can help us achieve our dreams. It falls under the umbrella of self-management and it is nurtured by a positive outlook.

Furthermore: it is a distinctive trait in successful entrepreneurs and leaders.

In this article, we will unveil all the secrets to mastering it.

 

What will be covered here?

Is your passion enough?

What is Achievement Orientation?

Motivation and Persistence

Main features

Note to Leaders

Route map

A coach can help

 

Is your passion enough?

We all have dreams and want to pursue our passion in life. We know that following your passion is the secret fuel that keeps you going forward.

But, is it really?

I mean: when you find an obstacle along the way, when you experience a setback, or when you are challenged beyond your limits, is it your passion that keeps you going or there is something else?

The truth is that dreams and passion are not enough to achieve your goals: achievement orientation is the critical element for success.

 

What is Achievement Orientation exactly?

This key competence entails striving towards your goal whilst maintaining a standard of excellence, accepting the challenges you might encounter en route, not in a blind way but in a calculated way, and at the same time, improving performance to be ready to welcome the opportunities whenever they present themselves.

 

The importance of Motivation and Persistence

For this Emotional Intelligence competency to flourish, you need to welcome motivation and persistence in equal parts, especially in the face of setbacks.

Motivation is a powerful tool you can fuel on a daily basis by remembering your values and goals. Motivation, which belongs to the self-management area of Emotional Intelligence, is the hidden force that will drive you, relentlessly, to your final destination. If accompanied by enthusiasm, it is invincible.

External factors like prestige, money, power, are the typical external factors that ignite motivation, but the internal force of persistence is the one that makes the difference, converting a dream into an attainable goal.

For that, those who feel the need to get better and better by improving performance attaining more and moving up the ladder, are those who feed their motivation with their unquenched desire for, simply, achieving.

 

In short, an achievement-oriented person will look forward to

👉 learning the new and improving the old
👉 fostering excellence
👉 encouraging feedback
👉 accepting  challenges
👉 daring to explore
👉 knowing how to calculate risks
👉 going out of their comfort zone
👉 being open to innovation

 

One trait that every person with achievement drive distinctly presents is their unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Like the renaissance man, knowledge is seen as a mark of distinction, and being open to innovation; a passport to the future.

Leaders who have developed this skill are able to create an achievement culture within their organizations.

They set the scene for performance orientation by encouraging each member of the team to feed their own personal achievement orientation and thereby enable the whole team to make good use of it.

Great leaders coordinate actions and act with empathy, fostering relationship building and opening channels for better communication.

 

Achievement Orientation Top Tips Learn to detect and feed your motivation. Be ready to adapt yourself and to explore and conquer new horizons. Take a piece of paper and make four columns. Complete each one with the following: What are my core motives? What goals have I set? What I am doing to achieve them? How can I make room for improvement?

 

What steps should be taken to hone this skill? 

Route map

📍 Give yourself time to de-stress: a relaxed mind is a successful mind
📍 Develop the ability to gain (and regain) focus with ease
📍 Identify your next objective in the “big picture” of your plan
📍 Design a step-by-step strategy
📍 Calculate the risks
📍 Divide the next objective into small, attainable goals
📍 Identify the external resources you might need (people, materials, hard skills)
📍 Identify the internal resources you might need (motivation and balance, soft skills)
📍 Once each little goal is achieved, reward yourself
📍 Constantly monitor progress towards your ultimate goal

 

How can a coach help to develop, cultivate and improve this skill?

Mainly by working to identify your motivations and remove your internal blocks, help with self-esteem and challenge assumptions.

The right coaching can also support you throughout your strategy planning journey and help you create new spaces for growth and exploration.

Coaching can also help you to gain focus and create new habits; small actions performed in a consistent way can act as precursors.

But remember: you need to balance all the skills and work in tandem with them to really perform at your maximum potential. Isolated skills, even if at 100%, will leave you with a sense of imbalance and won’t add any real value to your work.

 

There is always room for improvement, so it doesn’t matter if you’re a “natural” and motivation is your daily fuel, or if you need a little push now and then.

Achievement drive can benefit us all: freelancers and entrepreneurs, leaders or employees.

By cultivating this skill we will be able to perform any task, to the best of our ability.

Marketing Automation ethics: this week I have a different kind of article for you, and it has come as a result of a video I published last Thursday on Linkedin, talking about an automated email I received.

The many comments left, publicly and privately, led me to reflect on the topic of Automation, GDPR and our work in the Marketing industry more deeply.

For that reason, I decided to dedicate this blog post to this topic, specifically to how and when to apply automation and the ethics that need to be considered.

Personally, I think marketing automation benefits are multiple.

It is a fantastic method that can help any business owner and it can be applied to many things (emails, social media, customer journeys, website, etc); but we need to remember that we do business with people and for that reason, ethics are involved.

What will we be covering here?

Introduction

Personal use vs. Marketing Automation

A matter of Ethos

Automation: a simple definition

The do’s and don’ts

Best practices

7 recommended Automation Tools

The Artificial Intelligence era has brought many new terms (and practices) to our daily lives and Automation has been “the” buzz-word of recent years.

Automation is a practice that has become more and more common for everybody. But it is not a new thing, at all.

Remember that rule you created years ago in your Outlook, the one that forwarded all the emails received from a specific sender into a particular folder, so you could have all those emails in the same place and save yourself time?

Well, that was also automation.

The difference, in that case, was that the tool you used to create the automation and its results affected only you and in fact, saving yourself time and improving productivity were the reasons that made you create the rule.

Automation is fantastic at optimising performance, especially with some of the more repetitive tasks.

A completely different question arises when automation (and the algorithm used) affects others, as in the case I mentioned in the video.

This includes all the practices that allow you to have data and use it to communicate a message to your targeted audience, at each step of the customer journey. Here, we are talking about Marketing Automation.

This is the automation you use in your marketing practices, including everything from Social Media posts to messages like the email I received.

In short, automation here is directly related to your ethos (or the ethos of the company you work for), and this point is paramount because it will define the limits of your automation as well as how you use it, when you use it and with whom.

And the truth is that, when done correctly, it can produce the highest ROI.

This major topic has been under debate for some time. So I want to simplify things here and give you a short overview of automation and its uses.

Automation: let’s break it down into a basic definition:

Automation refers to any action that is being carried out automatically thanks to the use of certain tools. It can be applied for personal use or within the context of any small business or organization’s marketing plan.

Let’s take a very simple, daily automation as an example: you write a Social Media post today and schedule it to go live in a week, using a tool (like Buffer, Hootsuite or any other), so you can reach your audience at a precise time (you can then use that time to do something else).

So, why do you use automation in this example? Well, the goal is similar in both the personal and business contexts: to save time and increase efficiency but mainly from a marketing perspective, the ultimate goal is to generate more revenue.

Automation also makes dialogue between a couple of apps possible even though they are not necessarily connected.

For example, you can use automation to save email attachments to your Google Drive, improving productivity and helping with general file organisation.

But if a business uses segmentation in their email communications (a particular technique that divides email accounts into groups to better target the message), the goal is to provide a better service to the reader but also, and ultimately, to gain or keep a customer.

This is the realm of so-called “Inbound marketing” where a business uses all the data to better understand the client’s interest and offer them the right information at the right time, so they can make a purchase.

The Do’s and Don’ts (just a couple of particularly important ones)

It is evident to those of you, working in the marketing world, that the “customer journey “concept is important and here, one of the most important things to remember is that relationships take time to build.

So, the very first step is to have a good plan with a solid pipeline, so when you send out your content (based on your audience’s needs), that content is seen as relevant.

People do business with people, so remember that even if you use automation, we need to treat our leads and customers with utter respect, and if possible, make them feel special.

If you receive a message that is tailored to your needs and moreover, to the need you have in a certain moment, you will be inclined to pay attention to the content and probably willing to close a deal.

But the right moment is crucial: too soon can be seen as threatening; whereas too late would be useless.

So, what was wrong with the message I received?

Let’s summarise it in three main points:

👎 They open the email stating that they know which page I was browsing (which can be, let me tell you, pretty intimidating for anybody)

👎 They offer a trial believing that I was ready to try and buy (so, the automation failed in the segmentation and assumed I was in a different part of the customer journey)

👎 In the EU, you have to respect a regulation known as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679), which, in short, protects your privacy. So, they would’ve needed my consent (via email) to send me any sort of communication.

But, you know me.

I like to have a Positive Outlook on things.

What have we learned from this about when to use marketing automation?

👍 Revise your marketing plan periodically

👍 Use segmentation

👍 Use your funnel wisely

👍 Nurture your relationships (always, ALWAYS)

👍 Be patient and never, ever, pushy

👍 Respect the law

I use automation, privately and also for my business.

Some of the automation tools I can recommend (among so many others) are:

👉 Buffer for social media

👉 MailChimp for newsletters

👉 Autopilot for customer journeys

👉 Hubspot for CRM, marketing and sales

👉 Zapier for connecting apps

👉 Drift for conversational marketing

👉 Infusion soft for small business

But again, the tools perform a function; how you choose to use them relates, entirely, to your ethos.

If you are curious about how automation can be used in an intelligent, respectful way and benefit your business, book a free 15-minute consultation with me.

Chronotypes

Pay attention to your Chronotypes and Circadian Rhythms.

Discover the best way to function at your maximum performance level and be able to prioritise and manage your tasks.

What will we be covering here?

What is a Circadian Rhythm?

What is a Chronotype?

Knowing Larks and Owls

Dr Breus and the question of “when”

The four mammals

Synchronicity between your chronotype and your life

Manage your energy

Take an assessment

Get to know the Chronotypes and the Circadian Rhythms

What is a Circadian Rhythm?

In short, the Circadian Rhythm is a sort of internal clock, controlled mainly by the hypothalamus, which is the part of the brain that controls many things, such as your hormones, temperature, appetite, sexual behaviour and emotions.

This internal biological clock is reset every day by sunlight, and is different for each person, although its main function is exactly the same for all of us: to regulate the periods of sleepiness and wakefulness during the day.

So, this is the clock that tells you which part of the day you are more alert and which part you’ll find your energy levels lower and you feel more sleepy.

Because the circadian rhythm likes regularity, it functions at its best when you follow routines: going to bed at the same hour, eating at the same time each day etc.

This is why you might feel uneasy when you disturb this rhythm (for example, travelling abroad and dealing with jet lag).

What is a Chronotype?

When we talk about chronotypes, we are referring to the manifestation of the circadian rhythm, in the form of personal behaviour. Even though it is passed through the PER3 gene and therefore its origin is genetic, it might change over the years due to a number of reasons such as age, environment and hormones.

A more common classification describes people as either larks or owls, larks being the people that perform best in the mornings, and owls being the ones that are more alert in the evening.

Larks and owls can be differentiated, not just by sleeping patterns, but also by other behaviours and needs, such as appetite and exercise.

“According to conventional wisdom, there are three chronotypes: larks rise early, owls rise late, and hummingbirds are somewhere between the two.”

So, how can we adjust our daily performance for optimal business productivity in relation to these chronotypes?

If you’re a lark	If you’re an owl
Try to concentrate on analytical tasks during the early hours	Leave all analytical tasks for the late afternoon or evening
Leave all creative tasks for the afternoon	Try to do more creative tasks in the morning

To make it all easier, create a table with three columns where you can list your tasks and divide them into two big groups:

🖊 tasks that require focus, concentration and analysis

🖊 tasks that require creativity and expression

🖊 Then the third column is for notes.

If a task falls into both groups, you simply repeat the task in both columns and add a note about the aspect that you will tackle, specifically, during each part of the day.

Top Tip: For example, writing an article might require creativity (mainly with regard to the idea but also the writing), lots of research about the topic and of course, proofreading. Each one of those tasks would fit into a different column.

Top Tip: a task might belong to more than one column For example, writing an article might require creativity (mainly with regard to the idea but also the writing), lots of research about the topic and of course, proofreading. Each one of those tasks would fit into a different column.

Dr Breus and the question of “when”.

Dr Michael Breus, a psychologist and sleep specialist, described 4 different chronotypes following different structures but based on mammals. Mainly because we – humans – are not birds.

That question is “when.” “When” is the ultimate life hack. It’s the foundation of success, the key that unlocks a faster, smarter, better, and stronger you. – The Power of When

In his book, The Power of When, Dr Breus highlights the fact that our ancestors were deeply connected to their bodies, knowing when to perform certain acts like hunting, cooking or procreating.

Daylight and night time were perfectly distinguished as well.

Later on, civilization imposed its own rules and now, the modern era sees us doing all kind of activities in a perpetual “night”, with artificial lights, in front of all sorts of monitors.

The Four Chronotypes

Let’s take a brief look at the four chronotypes and their relationship with periods of alertness and drowsiness.

Dolphins: they wake up feeling fatigued and in fact, they can continue to feel tired late into the evening. They are totally alert late at night and might even suffer from insomnia. Their productivity ebbs and flows throughout the day.

Lions: they wake up early and do not feel tired until the late afternoon. They can fall asleep pretty easily and they are more productive in the morning.

Bears: they are slow risers as they do not wake up feeling fresh and awake. They tend to feel tired by the evening. Their productivity peaks before noon and they feel most alert from mid-morning to the early afternoon.

Wolves: they are evening types, so waking up in the morning can be a difficult task. They don’t feel tired until midnight or even later, so it’s in the late evening that their productivity is at its best.

Let’s take a look at the ideal routine for each chronotype, according to Shana Lebowtitz’s chart published on Business Insider and based on Dr Breus’ book.

But, what happens when your schedule and your chronotype cannot sync?

Let’s say you are a wolf, and your work (a well paid and interesting job) requires you be at the office by 8 a.m.

Well, you force yourself to adjust. Knowing your internal rhythm can help you to alleviate the burden and make the most out of the situation.

Manage your energy as it is needed, when it is low, try the following:

📌 Do some exercises to help you with your focus and concentration (young lady or old lady?)
📌 Close all the unnecessary windows on your computer
📌 Get some fresh air and replenish your energy
📌 Do some breathing exercises to increase your stamina (like breath of fire)
📌 If you can, take a 15-minute nap

Going beyond your type, there are some universal recommendations that work for everyone, both morning and evening types:

📌Set meal and sleep times and try to stick to them
📌Breakdown your work into manageable tasks
📌Take regular breaks
📌Plan your breaks in advance

If you want to know what type you are, try taking any of the following assessments:

AutoMEQ: Automated Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (AutoMEQ)

Dr Michael Breus’ Chronotypes

 

“I define mindfulness as paying attention to our present moment experiences with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be with what is. It is a deliberate application of attention. ”

-Diana Winston, The Little Book of Being

 

I’ve been asked about this topic a lot lately. Mainly because it is one of those things everybody talks about but not many truly understand.

Moreover: it can be confused with so many other things.

The fact is, that Mindfulness is a practice that definitely helps your business. A lot. Because it is based on information we already have about how our brain functions.

Neuroscience and psychology have worked closely together over the last 20 years, making discoveries that are reshaping the way we see the world, and ourselves.

So… I propose that we break the myth and explore the following together…what is mindfulness? What is not mindfulness? How do you practice it?

What will we be covering here?

What is mindfulness?

What it is not?

Which are its benefits?

How to practice it

Breathing

Attentive Observation

Self-Awareness Practice

Mindful Presence

What is it 👉

Mindfulness refers to the ability to be aware of yourself and be fully present with what is going on, in the actual moment. When you function as an impartial observer, you are a witness of the processes and experiences occurring in the “now”.

What it is not 👉

It is not praying; it is not meditation; it is not a religious or “new age” thing.

What are the benefits of practising?

📍 more connection with the present and self-control

📍 better communication (improving your active listening)

📍 ability to pause before a decision or action

📍 developing patience and openness

📍 more attention and concentration capacities

📍 increased efficiency and productivity

📍 stress reduction

Living in the present is something that is difficult to achieve; you constantly make mental references and comparisons to the past, and your hopes and dreams can place you in the future too much, a future of which you cannot be certain.

Rooting yourself, with the body and the mind, helps you fully experience the here and now, creating a space of calmness, focus and serenity.

Awareness of the present moment helps you to better cope with situations and emotions.  Both can be a source of stress and anxiety.

How to practice it 👉

By using different techniques, including (but not exclusively) meditation, breathing exercises, body sensations and emotions, visual exercises to gain focus, word repetition, optical illusions etc.

Let’s check out some of these techniques in detail 👇

Breathing

Breath is a powerful way to connect with your whole body. It is a natural and automated function of your body, namely to bring in oxygen and flush out carbon dioxide.

Nasal breathing is important as it allows the coordination of the electrical brain signals in the olfactory cortex, which then coordinates the amygdala and the hippocampus, which are in charge of processing your emotions and memory.

Did you know that the discovery of the dominant nostril within Western civilization, back in 1895, is owed to the German physician Richard Kayser? Yoga and other ancient traditions have been working with this method for thousands of years. Occident and Orient arrived at the same conclusion, just at different times.

Practice: You only need one minute, but of course the more time you practice, the better the results.
You can be sitting, lying or even standing, but try to feel comfortable.

Top tip: if you can, set aside a regular time to practice, ideally on a daily basis, beginning with a minute per day and increasing the time little by little.

🔶 Inhale deeply through your nose whilst counting to 4
🔶 Hold your breath and count to 4
🔶 Exhale through your nose whilst counting to 4

If you get distracted, gently come back to the exercise. Even if your mind wanders a thousand times, you can always return to the present moment and try again, inhale for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4.

There are so many different breathing techniques and methods. If you lean towards the Yogic method, I highly recommend you pay a visit to Kia Miller and practice with her, even just for five minutes (to begin with).

Another option is the one that Diana Winston proposes here: Five-minute breathing. Also, you can try the Tummo meditation, which envolves also breathing and retention.

Attentive Observation

Learning to observe, as opposed to simply looking at or watching, helps you to be in the present moment and appreciate all the qualities of a certain object, person or situation.

This exercise takes just a minute, max. 2. and it is a simple and effective way to increase your awareness and relationship with the present moment.

🔶 To fully absorb the benefits of this, pick a random object, preferably in the natural environment
🔶 Be specific: if you pick a tree, look for a leaf that grabs your attention
🔶 Focus on its shape. What is it? Round or elongated? Does it have a distinctive colour? Is the colour uniform or does it have different tonalities to it?
🔶 Observe, as an impartial witness. Don’t judge or qualify (don’t think in terms of “pretty colours”). Just observe and mentally repeat “green” for example

Repeat daily, with different objects, and begin to notice how you feel both during the exercise and after it.

Self-Awareness Practice

We already spoke about this skill in my post Why is Self-awareness so important for better business. 

Doing the following exercise, you can regain control, simply by recognising your emotions at the precise moment they occur.

🔶 Pick two different moments in your day: one, when you are about to do something pleasant (let’s say you’re about to listen to some of your favourite music, after a long day of work). The other, when you’re about to do something that you have to do but you don’t enjoy (let’s say you have to write a letter of complaint)

🔶 Pay attention to the moment and all the emotions that arise from it: joy, tranquillity, pleasure, as well as the uncomfortable feelings: disdain, sadness. Make a mental note and stay with this feeling for as long as you can

🔶 Additionally, pay attention to how you manage your time with regard to that specific action: do you tend to procrastinate the unpleasant and overextend the pleasant moment?

🔶 Remember, no judgments, just observations. Stay with the moment

Mindful presence

This particular exercise is excellent if you find yourself worried about future events or dwelling on the past too often. It will help you gain sensibility, attentiveness and focus as well as helping you stop the fluctuation of your mind.

Therefore, it is an excellent method for reducing stress:

🔶 Pick a normal, daily action: turning on the computer, cleaning the house, shopping at the supermarket, commuting

🔶 Pay attention to each and every detail related to that action

🔶 Repeat the actions you perform, mentally: “I am going to put on my coat and open the door. I am closing the door now, and I can feel the wind in my face. It is cold. I am walking to my car. I get in the car and prepare myself to drive to the supermarket”

🔶 The more detail you can pick out, the better

This type of exercise helps enormously when you are trying to cope with anxiety, which usually manifests itself in form of impatience. Instead of focusing on the end result, concentrate instead on each specific part of the task.

Each part of a certain task is important in itself, and being mindful of each part leads to a better outcome and, without any doubt, to a more serene state of mind. This way, you can begin to enjoy the experience and open the door to creativity and emotion.

 —–

By now, you know that practising mindfulness can help you cope with anxiety and stress enormously, as well as help you improve your social and emotional intelligence quotients.