Liz Guthridge's Page
www.connectconsultinggroup.com
http://connectconsultinggroup.com/blog/
Liz Guthridge, founder of Connect Consulting Group LLC, is a coach, consultant and facilitator. She works with leaders to turn their blue-sky ideas into greener-pasture actions. She helps them clarify their thoughts, plans and actions so they can inspire others to get involved and achieve their...
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
How to be a whiz at career reinvention
“You have to embrace new ideas and new technologies even when it’s painful. The whiff of obsolescence can kill you,” observed Marilyn Moats Kennedy in an interview with Chicago Score for a case study several years ago. This past January ovarian cancer killed Marilyn way too early. Nevertheles...
April 19, 2017
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
How to recognize others in kind, classy, and brain-friendly ways
Decorative sign for sale spotted in the window of Noddy Charleston, gift shop of southern-made goods: “Honestly, F*** you. The new thank-you. You’re welcome.” No thank-you. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer to keep things kind, classy, and brain-friendly, especially when appreciating others....
April 19, 2017
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Adopt these 3 powerful features of brain-friendly meetings
Brain-friendly meetings are invigorating for participants, presenters and facilitators alike. Don’t take my word for it. Read these online survey write-in comments from participants after their day-long, brain-friendly BIZcamp at the Charleston Digital Corridor, which I recently designed and ...
April 19, 2017
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
How to respond to ambiguity with clarity
“Communication. Understanding. Clarity.” – Character from Dave Egger’s novel The Circle explaining that communication should never be in doubt with all the technology available to us. What a pipe dream! Ambiguity hinders our ability to achieve clarity. Ambiguity in all its types – such as vagu...
April 19, 2017
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Why and how to avoid playing the blame game
If you love to blame others rather than take responsibility for your own actions, please stop reading this post now. Don’t bother wasting your time on a topic that is irrelevant for you. On the other hand, if you find yourself playing the blame game every now and then, you should find this con...
April 19, 2017
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
How to create energy, emotion, and edge in your meetings
Do your meetings have the energy, emotion and edge needed to keep you and others engaged, performing at your peak, and achieving the results you want? If not, how would you describe your meeting experiences? You probably will refuse, but I hope you will take a moment to answer a few questions ...
September 30, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Why and how you need to help people pay attention
Pay bills. Pay respect. Pay attention. If you’re a responsible adult, you do these actions, often without prompting. Yet, even when you want to pay attention to your leaders, co-workers, and trainers and learn from them, you may fail. Attention is necessary for learning, and it’s a very co...
September 30, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
3 ways to be empathetic ─ and powerful
Don’t blame it on the youth. We adults – especially those in powerful positions ─ are guilty too. Even though we’re born with the ability to understand and share others’ emotions, we don’t always practice empathy. Worse, some of us point fingers at others, especially the young, complaining a...
August 31, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
How to improve your leadership skills by doing more improv
When leaders I’m coaching lament that they’re having trouble getting stuff done, I take them back to the basics. We examine their will (motivation), their skill (ability) and their ability to get over the hill (overcome any real or perceived barriers in their organization or personal environme...
August 31, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
How to toast my late mother, mentor, and dog
Please join me in toasting the memories of my late mother, a mentor, and Gustav who’s featured in an important new book on animal transitions. All three taught me valuable lessons that you may benefit from as well. As background, over a seven-day stretch in August, I lost my 85-year-old mother...
August 31, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
How to find value in bad role models
“If you can’t fix it, feature it.” This maxim came in handy when I was trying to role model good meeting behavior last week. By definition, respectable meeting behavior means showing up on time. And if you’re the meeting leader, you express your respect by being a few minutes early. And if t...
August 15, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Are you disappointing or reassuring with your crisis messaging?
Stay quiet or speak out to your employees about the latest crisis? Yes, this is another dilemma facing CEOs and other leaders in our VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world. Some employees say they expect to hear from their leaders whenever something terrible happens inside or...
August 15, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
5 ways a golden thread improves your focus and clarity
Trying to tighten the linkage between business strategy and operations on either the organizational or individual leadership level? If so, don’t talk “alignment.” Instead, emphasize the importance of knitting a “golden thread” throughout everything you do. The thread connects all of the operat...
August 15, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
How to admit to a biased brain and overcome the backlash
Co-workers criticized me for talking about this topic, and then declined to work with me. Individuals – white and black – told me I was encouraging people to cop out. PBS chose not to air my comments for “America After Charleston.” (The show was a conversation about race relations related to ...
July 27, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Second that emotion with precision
The business leaders I coach are thoughtful, high achievers. They make impressive professional and personal improvements while we work together. One area, however, remains a challenge for us. I often struggle to get them to express a one-word emotion they’re feeling toward each of the three go...
July 11, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Stop suffering from bad meetings
Life is too short to suffer through bad meetings. More times than I like to count, individuals contact me about meeting difficulties that they’ve been grappling with, sometimes for years. Almost always their meeting problems stem from bad meeting habits, based on these three root causes: No s...
July 11, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Why and how to declutter your mind
The dog’s unofficial code of conduct is: “If you can’t eat it, play with it or pee on it, leave it alone.” Meet Marcel. Even though he’s just 7 months old, we’ve noticed he’s intuitively adhered to this code ever since he came to live with us. (Granted, as a puppy, he defines “toys” very broad...
July 11, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Can you develop grit in yourself and others?
The late, great Mohammed Ali had grit. Grit is the combination of passion and perseverance that defines high achievers, according to University of Pennsylvania Professor and author Angela Duckworth. Highly successful gritty individuals ─ in all fields, including business ─ rely on both their d...
July 11, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
How to take full advantage of your cognitive edge
Are you a powerful player in today’s cognitive age or an authentic cog in the knowledge economy? What’s the difference and why should you care? It’s all about you as a human and how you interact with machines and information. The stakes involve your self-preservation. That means your physical ...
July 11, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
The 72-72 rule. It’s succinct, specific and gets stamped into your memory—once you learn what it is. The 72-72 rule says that the City of Charleston should be “as good a place for tourists who visit for 72 hours as it is for residents who live here for 72 years.” When he took office, Charl...
May 25, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Last January, when I read Adam Grant’s New York Times op-ed piece Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate, I winced. Adam Grant was describing the power of waiting, not the act of procrastinating. Even though I’m hardly an authority on procrastination, I know enough through my applied neuroscienc...
May 20, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Why you need to inspire and interpret more
Take it from these accomplished keynoter speakers who addressed the 2016 DIG SOUTH interactive conference in Charleston at the end of April. You need to work on your inspiration and communication skills. Here are some nuggets and insights I gained over the three days. First, some illuminatin...
May 9, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Don’t follow orders; pause and ask
Fast. Easy to work with. Get things done. Yes, the seal of approval for efficient knowledge workers. But wait. Knowledge workers are supposed to think too. Plus be agile and flexible. The implications? Take time to pause for the cause. When we’re crazy busy trying to meet or beat a deadl...
May 4, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Why you now obey your devices more than your mother
How influential is your mother? Your mother—like most wise individuals—may instruct you to eat more vegetables, get more sleep and exercise, reduce your stress level, and do countless other things, but… How often do you immediately follow her advice upon hearing it? And to what extent do you...
May 4, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
What your brain needs for optimal performance
Last week’s blog post Why your brain needs exercise triggered a range of reactions. Some loved it, a few questioned it, and others hated it to such a degree that they unsubscribed from any future posts and newsletters. No one though yet has asked these two questions: What about the role of ph...
April 22, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Are you guilty of using wordos?
Happy birthday, Wordnik! Originally incorporated on February 29, 2008, Wordnik is celebrating its first birthday since its successful 2015 Kickstarter campaign to add a million missing words to the dictionary. Wordnik’s mission is to “find and share as many words of English as possible with a...
April 12, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
5 lessons from the last frontier, our brain
What’s the last frontier left on earth to explore and conquer? Our brain. In the past 10 years, scientists have learned more about the brain than in all previous decades combined. Yet, many mysteries remain around this three-pound mass that consumes a disproportionate amount of oxygen and gl...
April 12, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Saccharine surplus vs. nice as a vice
Two competing trends are on a collision course, one primarily external and the other internal. Will we experience a multi-car crash or a capitulation? The “saccharine surplus” movement—as I’ve named it─is the tendency for companies to strong-arm customers to say not just kind but awesome thin...
April 12, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
To improve recall, use social learning
What’s been the biggest value of the pilot brain-based facilitation skills program I’m now completing with the NeuroLeadership Institute? Experiencing the AGES model as a student and grasping its power to make learning fun, sticky and invigorating. AGES stands for Attention, Generation, Emotio...
April 12, 2016
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Liz Guthridge posted a blog post
Want to increase your focus, reduce stress and improve your well-being? Take time to exercise your mind in addition to your body. By training yourself─and your mind─to be more mindful, you’re able to improve your ability to pay attention and your cognitive control. (The latter helps you manage...
April 12, 2016
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Liz Guthridge is now a member of Berrett-Koehler Community
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