So we've all been to the doctor.  We know the feeling of getting marched into a sterile examination room, given a gown that only covers the front half of your body, aked to step on a scale, prodded with a thermometer, asked to pee in a cup.  Then there's what seems like an eternity of sitting on an examination table with your hind quarters hanging out waiting for the doctor to come in the room.  Then after what seems like an eternity the door bursts open and the doctor pronounces, "Hello, I'm Dr. Goofleblat..."

In my article How to Flex Your Quadrant II Muscle, I discuss Stephen Covey’s four quadrants of time management which categorizes your tasks:

• Quadrant I: Urgent and important tasks (e.g., crises, emergency meetings)
• Quadrant II: Not urgent, but important tasks (e.g., proactive goals, planning and prevention)
• Quadrant III: Urgent, but not important tasks (e.g., irrelevant meetings, unimportant emails/messages)
• Quadrant IV: Not urgent and not important tasks (e.g., avoidance activities, time wasters)

The model, also known as the Eisenhower Matrix (thanks to some readers for pointing that out!), was foundational in helping me minimize time-wasting activities and not get distracted by non-important tasks. More importantly, it helped me to allocate time to focus on things that are important but not necessarily urgent. It was groundbreaking for me and has helped me immensely ever since I implemented it over 30 years ago.

Because I feel this is so important in how we all manage not just our careers but our lives, I want to share with you my quadrant II (Q2) list and give you a boost on how to think about your own Q2 items.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

In Part 4 of Persuasion Atrophy, I talked in-depth about securing credibility. Securing credibility is job one when it comes to your persuasiveness. Credibility must be earned and reinforced; it’s rarely just granted. The final installment of this series uses the last of The 4 C’s of Compelling Presentations pillars: being concise.

An organization I belong to holds an annual convention, which includes bringing in several subject matter experts as speakers. I was especially interested in hearing one particular speaker. His credentials were impressive, having written several books on his area of expertise. I got to his session early to ensure I had a seat as I expected the room to be full. His session was right before a break for lunch, so there wasn’t another speaker people needed to run off to.

He took to the stage on time and started his presentation.

His content was a meandering mess. He repeated himself. He didn’t talk about the topics on his slide. He was difficult to follow. And he went way over his allotted time, acknowledging that the only thing people would be missing out on was lunch.

I expected to be inspired. Instead, I was bummed.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

So let's cut to the chase...

You may be a great consultant, one who effectively applies his or her wisdom and experience to help his or her client solve some tough business problem.   That's all fine and well.  When it comes to facilitation, though, it's a different ballgame and a very different approach to problem solving.  I like to think of the difference as follows:

In Part 3 of Persuasion Atrophy, I delved into the importance of connecting with your audience. Professionals now and in the future need to be intentional about how they build and exercise the persuasion muscle. This will ensure the skill doesn’t give way to equating persuasion to shaming—and thinking critical copy/pasting is in and of itself persuasive.

To continue with my case, I’ll use The Four C’s of Compelling Presentations as the roadmap for exercising the persuasion muscle and avoid persuasion atrophy. This installment focuses on securing credibility.

Some years back, one of my assignments was to research potential business process offshoring (BPO) partners we could potentially use for some finance and administration functions. A vendor caught wind of the initiative and asked to meet with me to discuss his company’s BPO capabilities.

The vendor came to my office, pulled out a presentation, and started reading the slides to me. I was genuinely interested in learning more about their capabilities and asked a number of questions. With each question, he responded, “I need to get back to you on that.”

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

Several years back a colleague of mine (I'll call the colleague "Nellie") was managing a very high-visibility project. This project was high on the radar of key executives all the way up to the CEO of the company and any major mis-steps would send fireworks up the chain faster than lightning.  This was one of those "thrill-seeker" projects; definitely high risk but also of high reward if the project was successful.  Nellie was up to the challenge and willingly accepted the assignment.

In Part 2 of Persuasion Atrophy, I did a deep dive on the importance of choreographing your content and delivery. Professionals now and in the future need to be intentional about how they build and exercise what I call the persuasion muscle. This will ensure the skill of persuasion doesn’t give way to equating persuasion to shaming—and thinking critical copy/pasting is in and of itself persuasive.

Continuing to use The 4 C’s of Compelling Presentations as the roadmap for exercising the persuasion muscle and avoid persuasion atrophy, my focus is now on connecting with your audience.

In my freshman year of college, I took a class on giving speeches. Aside from helping me meet core requirements, I also thought it would be an interesting class. The instructor was opinionated, potty-mouthed, and yelled at the students if they did something he didn’t agree with. It was required that we prepare and present two speeches to him and the entire class. The class would provide feedback, then he was supposed to provide his feedback.

The purpose of my first speech was to educate the audience on a topic of my choice. I decided to do the speech about musical notes using a pie as an illustration. The entire pie equated to a whole note. I sliced the pie in half to create half notes, then sliced each half to create four quarter notes, then sliced each quarter to create eight eighth notes. Pretty safe topic, right?

Not according to my instructor.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

Typically, career choices are made based upon responsibilities, compensation, or prestige where a businessperson makes a change to get a higher salary, more responsibility, or greater prestige. What about the situation, though, where the driver behind a career choice isn’t any of these; where it’s the needs of a child that drive the change? My choice was precisely that.

Trevor was a happy, normal, active baby. He was able to laugh, coo, cry, and do all of the other normal things that his big sister, Briana did at that age. To my wife Patty and me, everything seemed to be just fine. At about age two, we noticed that Trevor was hardly saying any words and was very into his own world with puzzles, coloring, and videos.