Breaking out of your business activity trap prison

By: John D. Laslavic, LPBC

Business owners, CEOs and senior executives face a myriad of challenges in today’s business environment. Many of the challenges are related to understanding the ever-evolving business, economic, technology and political environments - not to mention the specific technical business changes presented in the professional field you and your team members embrace.

New and exciting products and services are continually being introduced to the market. These new business tools are available today and can be incorporated to assist your businesses to improve overall performance and profitability. However, the challenge we face is to find the time to invest in learning, adapting systems, and incorporating the new technology, tools and services while adjusting our current processes, maintaining our business efforts and dealing with a hundred other things. We must also keep the company mission in mind and lead our teams to success. This is no small task.

The trap we face is that it takes time, money and focus to step out and properly delegate our responsibilities and hold our associates accountable for results we have agreed upon. Stepping out of these day-to-day activities takes a tremendous amount of energy and effort. We get stuck in the business activity trap prison without a focused plan, resources and support. We do the same operational things that are important, day after day, subjecting our businesses to short term success but future harm. While our businesses earn revenue today, we sacrifice tomorrow. If you, as a leader, are not planning, looking at new innovations and adapting to the anticipated future environment, then who is? The answer is no one.

We know we must be open to change to be relevant in the long-run. We should be developing, introducing improvements, testing new tools and systems to help our associates but also to free ourselves from day-to-day technical and recurring business functions. Our goal must be to create, innovate and deploy better systems that produce more sales revenue and reduce our costs to gain a higher overall profitability. We can continually strengthen and grow our businesses through this process and applying best practices.

ThistleSea coaches have a fourteen-year track record of helping business owners, CEOs and senior executives free themselves from the business activity trap prison. This allows them to benefit from a more profitable business. In addition, ThistleSea clients understand the future, position their companies correctly and create a better life for themselves and their families with more time to pursue the things they value the most.

Give us a call for a complimentary discussion to see if a ThistleSea business coach might help you escape your business activity trap prison by starting the discovery process to build your action plan. Don’t hesitate to give us a call today.

“Because your business should lead to Abundance.”

Local Business Leaders Complete Specialized Training to Build Better Workplaces

Minneapolis, MN – June 29, 2018

Wiley welcomes ThistleSea Business Development of Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania to the Authorized Partner network of talented trainers, consultants, facilitators, and coaches who bring Everything DiSC® and The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team™ to organizations worldwide. Wendy O. Lydon and Terri Hammond have successfully completed JumpStart, the official Wiley business-building and training session that features the tools, theory, and research behind Everything DiSC and The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team. As an Authorized Partner, ThistleSea Business Development will use this advanced knowledge to help clients improve workplace relationships and achieve organizational effectiveness with these proven workplace solutions.

“As an industry leading developer of workplace assessments, Wiley recognizes your dedication to building better workplaces using our proven Everything DiSC and Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team solutions,” said Barry Davis, Vice President and General Manager of Wiley’s Workplace Learning Solutions Group. “I continue to be amazed by the superior results our Authorized Partners achieve with their clients, by applying what they have learned through the JumpStart process.”  

With the growing demand for learning assessments, Wiley continues to attract independent business owners who are committed to delivering the latest tools in workplace performance development.  “Our high-quality tools coupled with ThistleSea’s expertise in training and development will serve organizations well.  The need for skilled leaders in this industry has been leveraged with our training programs.  We look forward to supporting ThistleSea’s business growth,” said Davis.

About Wiley’s Workplace Learning Solutions Group
Wiley's professional development business creates products and services that help people become more effective in the workplace and achieve career success. We bring the ideas and best practices of thought leaders to life—serving workplace communities worldwide.

ThistleSea becomes an Authorized Partner of Everything DiSC

By Wendy O. Lydon, LPBC

At ThistleSea Business Development, we believe that interpersonal and communication skills are some of the most fundamental building blocks to support the relationships that grow businesses and build strong communities. Understanding human behavior has always been an important part of our coaching relationships. We're very excited to offer our clients new and more in-depth tools for human behavior training and understanding personal and business relationships.

ThistleSea Business Development now has the expanded ability to assist you, your team and your organization to gain a deeper and broader understanding of human behavior and relations. Using a research-validated learning model, each solution provides in-depth information including tips, strategies, and action plans to help you become more effective in the workplace.

We have become an authorized partner of Everything DISC®. Our ThistleSea coaches have been thoroughly trained and certified on these tools, and these new solutions provide rich, versatile learning programs that offer personal insights for individuals at every level of your organization, using a consistent language of DiSC.

Below is a brief overview of the new solutions we can provide to you and your employees:

Everything DiSC Workplace® can be used with everyone in an organization, regardless of title or role, to improve the quality of the workplace. This tool focuses on gaining an understanding of both yours and other’s DISC style and building more effective relationships.

Note: This behavior assessment serves as a replacement for the reports and training we have worked with so many of you and your teams with.

Everything DiSC® Productive Conflict explores workplace conflict. Clearly one of the most stressful, awkward and inevitable experiences in the workplace is inter-personal conflict. Now we have a tool and training focused on workplace conflict using the language of DISC. With all the attention placed on conflict resolution, it's to change our view of conflict and resolve to use it in a positive way in the workplace.

Note: We can certainly work with you and your teams in understanding conflict. Please stay tuned for future workshops and trainings focused just on resolving conflict – which is a perfect education for everyone, regardless of position and area of business or career path.

Everything DiSC® Work of Leaders helps you discover your DiSC leadership style and learn a simple three-step process to help you approach the fundamental work of leaders: crafting a Vision, building Alignment and championing Execution. Work of Leaders connects to real-world demands, generating powerful conversations that provide a clear path of action.

Everything DiSC® Management provides you with an understanding of how to manage more effectively by learning about your own management preferences and priorities, better motivate your staff and yourself and get more comfortable with delegation. We're excited that this tool also helps you gain insight into how to develop your employees – something that is so important to employee engagement and understanding how others might view you and your style.

Everything DiSC® Sales expands communication with your customers and reveals how to match your style to theirs. By helping people discover their unique strengths and limitations, this tool can convince even experienced salespeople that they can become more effective.

Everything DiSC 363® for Leaders combines the best of 360 feedback with the simplicity and power of DiSC, plus three strategies for improving leadership effectiveness. The result is a 360 experience that’s more productive and satisfying.

With these deeper and more powerful tools, ThistleSea can now provide you with a broader understanding of DISC and human behavior.

We have always valued the work of Patrick Lencioni and use many of his books as coaching tools. His book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, has always been one of the most important readings as we work through team building and understanding.

We are also excited to share with you that ThistleSea coaches have been trained and certified to work with organizations and teams through a new program and curriculum, The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team™. The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team™ Powered by Everything DiSC® helps teams understand how to apply The Five Behaviors™ model of Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, and Results to their work culture. By using Everything DiSC®, a tool that helps build effective team communication and relationships, this program allows participants to learn about their own DiSC style and discover how each style brings value to the team.

We look forward to continuing our work with you, and your teams and colleagues to learn, develop and build personal and professional effectiveness through better communication and relations.

Please reach out to us if you would like to learn more how we can use these tools to help support your continued success. And watch for information for future workshops and trainings!