Did you know there are two distinct styles of doing business — a man’s way and a woman’s way? Neither is wrong or right. But this information could make a huge difference when writing a business email, starting a new project, or even making a pitch. This article is all about this question, how do you do business in today’s world?
People often tell me that in business my approach is pretty direct. I usually get straight to the point in meetings. I want to know the important information and whether we can do something or not. That’s called a man’s way of doing business. I learned this method when I worked in the Corporate World, otherwise, you were never heard, being a woman. But, I can also change my style when the situation requires me to.
Here’s the Nitty Gritty on business:
A woman’s way of doing business involves talking about things at length. You have to communicate differently with a woman and discuss how things could /should work. She loves to be asked, “What do you think about this idea?” She usually comes at things with her “emotional side“.
There have been times when I got into strife by treating someone like a man when they wanted to do business as a woman. As soon as I realized this, I changed my approach and asked them how they were doing, what they did over the weekend, or how they felt about the project we were working on. And our communications changed immediately.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re actually a woman or a man. In any workplace, you’ll come across men who like a woman’s way of doing business and women who do business like a man.
So look around at the people you work with. Do they do business like a man or like a woman? What about you? Do you prefer a man’s way or a woman’s way?
Use this awareness to have more fun in your business
Here are 3 additional tools to add to your repertoire.
Women, you don’t have to be a bitch
I’ve come across women who have decided that they can only succeed by being big, bad, tough businesswomen. That’s simply not true! Women can be great manipulators in business. Ha, is this YOU?
Manipulation is considered crafty or even deceitful, and that’s one definition of the word. It also means handling a situation easily and skillfully —that’s the kind of manipulation I’m talking about. When I see women operate as if they’re nasty or mean, I’m tempted to say, “Do you know how easy things would be for you if you used a little manipulation?” Are you one of these types of Business Women?
Even when people know you’re manipulating them, it still works in business
What if you could have fun with manipulation?
Never confront
Asking someone questions is a great manipulation. A question is designed to dissolve any conclusions you might have and create a totally different outcome. It also allows the other person to give you feedback and ask their own questions.
If there’s a difficult conversation to be had with someone, the first thing I say to them is: “I’m confused. Can you help me with this?”
If you force a confrontation, people have to fight you. No, not by using fists!
SAY WHAT?
When you say you need help, perhaps because you missed something, the other person will try to fill in the blanks; they will try to help you.
This tool really works!
What you’re looking for are greater clarity and more awareness. It’s not about right or wrong or winning and losing.
The only time confrontation may be helpful is when you desire to control a situation or to end a relationship.
Men, you don’t have to be the commander-in-chief!
As I mentioned, a man’s way of doing business is quite direct. Many men have been taught that they have to give and follow orders.
They think they have to be the authority at all times and people should simply do as they’re told. This approach can lead to blind followers and that’s something you don’t want in your business. Do you really want that?
Invite the peopleyou work with tocontribute to your business
Every person in your company or business has a different perspective and their own awareness. So are YOU willing to tap into that? I’ve noticed that entrepreneurs rarely act like “commanders-in-chief“.
Their usual approach is, “What does this person know and what can they contribute?” Entrepreneurs constantly ask questions about every aspect of a business.
You can only do business as a man or a woman, but that could limit what’s truly possible in your business. Use this information to have ease of communication.
What if changing how you do business is as easy as changing your clothes?
Hit me up in the comments below and let me know what your opinion is!
One simple way you can practice radical giving in your business is to be generous with your content marketing. Instead of making all of your content focused on you and what you can do, focus on providing value to your readers or listeners. To Create Radical Giving in Your Content you will need to be a little creative, but below are some great ideas of the ways you can do that.
Here are a few easy ideas you can use to create content that serves:
Curate Content from Other Bloggers
Don’t be afraid to tell your community about the bloggers you admire or link to their amazing content. You can’t serve everyone and even if you could, that would quickly get exhausting. There’s more than enough attention and applause to go around, so take some time to focus on content curation.
Curating valuable content lets you share brilliant ideas and fresh insights with your community. Plus, it gives you a chance to introduce your audience to experts in your niche that they should follow.
Ask a Friend for Help
Interview Industry Leaders
Another way to practice radical giving in your business is to interview industry leaders. You can do this through podcast episodes or by creating webinars where you feature an authority in their area of expertise.
When it comes to interviewing others, create a list of questions. Try to avoid questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no.
Instead, make sure your questions invite detailed responses from your interviewees. Generally, questions that start with “How…?” or “Why…?” get the most interesting answers and can create thought-provoking conversations.
Be a Big Giver
Add A Bonus to a Great Product
When you find a product you’d like to promote to your community, go the extra mile and give back. Offer a juicy bonus that only your buyers will get. This bonus could be a short report, an audio course, access to an upcoming webinar, or any other product you can think of.
The important thing to do with this is to make sure your bonus is relevant to the actual product being sold. For example, a great bonus for a product all about Facebook Advertising would be 50 Facebook-ready images.
Promote Others on Social Media
Don’t be afraid to use social media to promote others in your industry. If you’re reading a great article that is challenging the way you view your niche, tweet about it. If you stumble on a funny video that you think your community will relate to, share it on Facebook.
Make sure to tag the original creator on social media so they’ll see your promotion and be encouraged. You also want to do this so your audience will be able to click through and follow the thought leader you’re linking to. Create Radical Giving in Your Content by utilizing other people in your industry.
Use Others to Support You
Here’s a great article to read to help you with creating content:
Therese Kienast of Radical Leadershiprecommends that online business owners create more content. She says, “Don’t wait, create!” If you wait, you’re less likely to follow through and publish excellent content.
Instead, try to capture inspiration the moment it strikes. If you can’t right then, try to do it as soon as possible. This will keep your enthusiasm and energy revved up as you create and share your new content.
Arielle was committed to being a radical giver in her business and she wanted to build a community of like-minded entrepreneurs. So, she started looking online for groups that she could join. Becoming part of a community of givers was so important to her as she felt it would help her with her success.
She found one Facebook group filled with positive, encouraging posts from members and decided to join. Once she was accepted into the community, Arielle focused on doing a few key tasks.
Be Accessible to Others
Answer Questions from Members
When another member posted a question about publishing a blog post to her WordPress website, Arielle responded and explained how to do it. She even linked to a helpful tutorial she found on YouTube.Someone else wanted to know what landing page software was the best. Even though Arielle wasn’t using software for her landing pages, she did some research and shared the three most popular options.
Share Your Journey with the Group
Arielle didn’t just focus on helping other members. She also openly shared her journey with the group. She posted about searching for a new WordPress theme, then she posted again when she’d decided on one that fit her needs. As she was installing the theme, Arielle asked a question about customizing themes and received several responses. She finished the edits to the theme and then posted a link to her new site, thanking everyone that helped along the way.
Help Others in the Group
Try a Test Run for Someone Else
Dana posted to the Facebook community that the shopping cart software she’d just installed didn’t appear to be working correctly. So, Arielle took a few minutes to test out the cart and created an account on Dana’s site.Arielle wanted to share what she was seeing with Dana so she used Screencast-O-Matic to take a quick screen capture. She uploaded the video to the site and shared it with Dana so she could see exactly where in the order process the error occurred.
Welcome New Members
Whenever Arielle saw new members join the group, she made it a point to welcome them. Then she went on to ask about their business and who they enjoyed working with. This gave her a chance to get to know new members and meant Arielle knew who to refer a client to when they needed a specialized service or product.Arielle went a step further and would follow up with newbies after a week. She’d listen to their ideas, ask about their goals, and share suggestions if they were stuck on a particular project.
Create A Thriving Community
Within a few months, Arielle had built a strong network of entrepreneurs she could rely on. She loved being able to support them and receiving encouragement in return.
If you’re like Arielle and you want to give back to others, find a group on Facebook that gives back. Then actively participate and engage with members, so you can build your own thriving community.
Once upon a time, creativity was thought to belong to artists and poets. It had nothing to do with the real world and certainly nothing to do with the rest of us. Creativity was something you were born with, and that was that. So how does becoming creative fit in with today’s world? Let’s check this out and see what we can find out!
That idea has taken a 180-degree turn and bitten the dust. In our fast-moving times, whether it’s in science or business or many other areas, innovation and creativity are the things that lead to success. Without them, businesses stagnate and fail.
So, What is Creativity Then?
Two French mathematicians, Hadamard and Poincare, have defined the creative process in the following four steps.
Preparation – You discover a problem and try to solve it with established means.
Incubation – These methods don’t work so you go off and do something else.
Illumination – All of a sudden, the answer appears to you.
Verification – You assess the new idea to see if it’s any good.
It used to be thought that only two types of thinking led to creativity: convergent thinking where you draw on all your resources to solve a problem, or divergent thinkingwhen you solve the problem by seeing it in a different way.
What Do Psychologists Believe?
In the last few decades, psychologists have come to believe that there are many different ways to be creative. They think that creativity is simply a state of mind in which a person is ready and willing to entertain new ideas.
Psychologists also believe that almost all of us can learn to be more creative. Some of us may be more creative than others, but we can all be creative, especially in the areas of the 10 intelligence types, where we have our own unique strengths.
Many times we stifle our own creativity with the little voice that says,” It will never work.” Often we say that about other people’s ideas, too. The thing you need to do is challenge that anti-creativity with a counter-argument. When you do this, you give your own creativity permission to flow.
What Do YOU Think?
Ask yourself open-ended questions like…
– Is there another way to do this?
– What’s the worst that could happen if we tried this?
– Are there parts of this idea that will work?
– What’s good about this?
– How can we make it better?
– What can we do instead?
Practice non-judgmental idea gathering to enhance creativity. Do this and watch your creativity explode. I kid you not! It works, for most people, including me!
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, a remarkable book in which he discusses how our thinking can enhance our quality of life. He explains how a rich, strong, powerful person is no more in control of his consciousness than someone who is sickly, poor, weak, or oppressed. The difference is in whether he sees challenges as threats or as opportunities for action. This is a very interesting topic, a discussion on how turning problems into challenges can benefit you in your business. What do you think?
There are exercises that can help you think better, faster, more clearly. I hope you find some of them in this book, and here’s a link where you can purchase a copy on Amazon Flow. Geez, that’s amazing, right?
The Autotelic Self
What he calls the autotelic self refers to someone who has the ability to translate potential threats into enjoyable challenges, and thus has an internal balance. The term autotelic self means a person who has self-contained goals.
And then there are insights that can change your life. Autoletic thinking turns problems into challenges to be met and learned from. It is an approach that will change your life if you practice it. Now there’s the challenge for you, will you practice it?
Definition
adjective: (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.
For most people, goals are shaped by biological needs and social conventions – things that are outside the self. The difference is that the autotelic self, or the person who is capable of defining things for himself, is also capable of transforming threats into non-threatening challenges.
This can be done with a simple change of perspective, a shift in consciousness: that is, seeing a threat as a challenge that you can overcome. Isn’t that interesting?
Try a Trial
Once you can do that, the steps are simple:
Be crystal clear about the goal. Once you know exactly what the goal is, you have an understanding of what is needed to meet it. Then you can decide on a series of actions necessary to accomplish the goal. You can modify these actions as needed in order to meet the goal.
Become involved in the activity — This means commitment. This means action. Whether things are going your way or not, you consistently take action with the next best steps. This demands concentration, commitment, and follow-through.
Pay attention to what is happening – This really means that the project becomes more important than your own feelings about what is happening. Your concentration is on the results of the project. You invest your energy in the project. You are committed, you are involved – it’s about the project, not about you.
Enjoying the experience – the autotelic self is able to set goals, develop skills, be sensitive to feedback, get involved, and look past obstacles. The benefit of learning to be an autotelic personality is that anything that happens can be a source of joy because it is a source of learning and a step to the next goal. In other words, there are no failures, only learning experiences.
Transformation
This approach to thinking can mean the difference between living life in fear or living life in joy. Developing autotelic thinking will give you the ability to transform random events into learning experiences that eventually result in success.
Life is change – by definition and for everyone. Seeing that as a challenge to be accepted, enjoyed, and built on is the “secret” to successful living.
Now you can read the book at your leisure once you’ve purchased it and if you need any help at all, please contact me for a Free Call to see if I might help you with this challenge.
