Company/personal visions and mission statements abound! Many of them leave you more confused after you read them than before you started. This is why it is high time we took our gaze off the stars and checked what we are standing upon.
Building a house on bedrock is more advantageous than building it on sand. Building your business and defining what it and you stand for can amplify your results. Before we build on anything it may be worth a moment to examine what a platform is.
By platform I mean something fixed, something stable, something permanent (whatever permanent really means). It is an address where your customers and colleagues can find you, not in geographical terms, but in terms of integrity, what you stand for and represent. What you are looking to describe is your being before you start doing. Who are you when you stand in front of your customers and colleagues? What do you stand for and wish to attract?
Describing your being seems to be a tough call. When pressed, most of our clients can say a fair amount about what they do, but inviting them to describe who they are usually leaves them speechless. Again, describing your being is about identifying what’s present BEFORE you do anything; WHILE you are doing it as well as AFTER its done.
We are talking adjectives here, adjectives that describe you, your team and your company. Some examples are: Knowledgeable, Competent, Helpful, Quick, Comprehensive, Glad, Compassionate, Driven, etc… There are quite a few and each time we work with people and platforms we collect a few more.
How many adjectives? Usually you can find approximately three words which effectively sum up who you claim to be. These three words should contain, for you, all other words you may have thought of. For example, after racking your brain for a while, you may come up with three similar words like, competent, knowledgeable, and smart. Test each one of these words to identify which sounds and feels best when you say it. The combination of the word’s meaning, its mood along with its resonance when you say it should point to one of them being a stronger, better choice to use in your platform. Then proceed to find at least two more representing different properties you wish to showcase. Think of a three legged stool’s stability and simplicity.
Further distinguishing your platform from a goal. Many people I work with get caught up in describing “what they want to be when they grow up”. They use words like: want to, will, shall, think, seem, etc. These words talk about something in the distance, something abstract, not something present here and now.
Your platform is your presence! It is where you start from. It is where you are in balance. It is where you are BEING complete. You could even think of it as the pedestal on which to stand. What happens to you should you lose your balance or fall off? A choice, either find a more suitable pedestal or brush yourself off, hop back up and try again.
Plan to be tested, plan to learn and be grateful. Once you have chosen and declared your platform expect it to be challenged. For instance:
• If you declare yourself to be “professional” and act in an unprofessional way, expect to hear about it.
• If you declare yourself to be competent, expect to receive the most complicated questions testing that competence. If you declare yourself to be helpful, expect to be over-tested by being held hostage as someone’s slave.
• Should you want maximum results now, go and test your platform on some of your customers. Ask them for feedback on whether what you say is in tune with what they experience. Ask them to let you know when they experience you as something else. Using curiosity here is an advantage as maybe they suggest a word that fits even better than the ones you chose yourself. It is your choice to defend or to listen and learn.
These tests will either make you or break you. It is your choice to look at these tests as insurmountable problems or as opportunities to learn and grow. Each one will usually be tougher than the previous one and that represents progress, your progress.
Your platform and its leveraging effect. Soon you will feel more and more at home standing for and working from your chosen platform. In fact, you may begin noticing some interesting side effects.
• Your self-confidence will increase as you and others now know what you stand for.
• Other people’s platforms or lack of them will become more and more apparent.
• You will begin to question people deeper for understanding before taking a decision.
• People will begin to seek you out for help and advice on what you represent.
• You will become more attractive for both people and prosperity.
• Your boundaries and limits will become clearer and saying “no thank you”, when appropriate, will become easier.
• Count on being tested as long as you choose to grow.
Integrating your personal platform into your corporate one. The next natural step will be to create more leverage by integrating what you stand for into what your colleagues stand for. As like minded people think alike, there will usually be a group of common words that show up in most everyone’s of your co-worker’s platform. It is a powerful process to go through these words and agree upon which three or four describe what you as a group stand for.
When these words are clear, document them. Make them visible to everyone. These “personal core values” will resonate out from your organisation and attract both challenges and rewards.
Just remember the bigger the challenge, the greater the subsequent award!
NOTE: Our Platform Coaching Process
Expanding Understanding has developed a simple coaching process that you can use to define and build your own personal and corporate platform. It can be delivered in the form of a workshop, a tele-class, a workbook or (shortly) as a cd rom course.
A 10 year student of "the body's language" combined with 20 years of international business experience provides for some unique ways of solving issues of better health, prosperity and communication.
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