The Importance Of Getting Outside and Climbing, Hiking, and Playing

Today I read an article on UsaToday.com about the importance of “playing” during these difficult and stressful financial times. The author, Janice Lloyd, spends time reviewing Stuart Brown’s new book Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul. ( See the article here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-03-23-play-stress_N.htm)

Stuart Brown is a proponent of making sure that everyone, adults especially, take time to “play” and do things that are enjoyable and invigorating for them. Without doing this, it doesn’t just lead to boredom, but rather depression and discontentment.

Getting away from cell phones and computers and enjoying the outdoors is the best way to do this. Of course, leisure activities such as video game playing is still relaxing, but until you take action to get away from all things that can distract you, you won’t truly be refreshed.

I often find that when I get away from all the daily responsibilities and demands of running my company, I come back with a renewed vision and determination for Ascent Adventure Consultants success. Often, it can be easy to think, “There’s no way that I can get away….I will miss opportunities.” However, the opposite is true. If you don’t get away every once in a while, you will miss opportunities because you will get burnt out and discouraged.

This coincides with some of the postings we have done last year: Escaping the Normal Routine of Life

Visit our website today to: Take time to play and enjoy life! We only get one life…so make the most of it! Climb some cliffs, hike some mountains, or whatever else you may enjoy!

Tools for Dealing with Uncertain Times- Part 1

It is hard to find hope in these times of uncertainty.  What feels like an almost constant stream of bad news can cause anyone to have doubt about the future.  Or you may be a person who fears change even in the most stable of times.    If either of the statements sounds true, you may be suffering from learned helplessness.  The good news here is that there are tools for overcoming learned helplessness.  This blog entry will define learned helplessness. Future entries will give you tools for dealing with it.
Learned helplessness is the condition in which a person has learned to believe that they are helpless in a particular situation. They believe that they have no control and that whatever they do is futile. As a result, the person will stay passive in the face of an unpleasant, harmful or damaging situation, even when they actually have the power to change their circumstances.
Many people will suffer from learned helplessness at some time in their lives.  One example would be you have a talk with your manager where he or she appears angry at a trivial subject.    You are puzzled by the exchange, feeling there is nothing you can do about it.  Learned helplessness can occur in far more serious situations.  A study shows that most people in a disaster situation will do nothing until instructed to do so.  A person can learn to be helpless through the observation of another person encountering uncontrollable events even if the observer has not countered it themselves.
Learned helplessness can be a minor issue that occasionally keeps you from making decisions confidently.  Or it can be a significant problem that is keeping you from realizing your professional or personal potential.  So how does knowing about learned helplessness assist you?  The answer is found in the concept of your Explanatory style.  We will explore this concept in a future entry.

You can read about someone’s experience with Learned Helplessness by clicking here and visiting their blog.

This post was authored by Danny McCracken, a guide and trainer for Ascent Adventure Consultants.

Teambuilding is More Important than Ever in Today’s Recession

I read a great posting today at the Create Learning Teambuilding Blog. The authors point is an excellent one. With today’s instability in business and with the uncertainty of jobs, it creates instability in business, and companies need teambuilding now more than ever. Here is his posting:

Most of today’s organizations function in a team setting. These may be cross

functional or functional internal teams, client service teams made from internal
and external service providers, or other member compositions. Stability is
an essential component to the success of these teams. Why? Because teams go
through many stages before they become high performing — namely: forming,
storming, norming and finally, performing. Stabilty makes teams more
efficient and effective at doing their jobs.

In today’s recessionary, lay-off laden environment, stability is simply not a
reality. Does this mean organizations are going to suffer from less efficient
and less effective teams? Most likely. Now, more than ever, organizational
leadership must prioritize team building amongst it’s highest goals or risk
suffering an even greater setback from the loss of team members and the
environment of uncertainty we are in.

-Teambuilding Western New York Blog

I would also like to add a few points to this:

1. Teambuilding can also boost morale and can increase employee commitment and confidence in their company. I believe that by managers and business owners making the decision to have teambuilding programs conducted for their teams, that employees will be able to renew confidence and commitment in these times of uncertainty, thereby increasing productivity and success.
2. Business never is successful when everyone is just out for their own gain. In this economic downturn, people tend to fend for themselves, which means businesses NEED to pull their teams together.
3. Teambuilding is FUN! If nothing else, companies should conduct teambuilding programs just to escape from the normal stresses of life!

Check out our teambuilding programs, at www.ascentadventure.com

Dancing Elephants Newsletter

We got a great mention in the Dancing Elephants Achievement Group Newsletter this morning:

Every year starts anew and how great is that? We get to start off with a clean slate, learn from our mistakes and take new chances.

This year was no different. We have teamed up with Brandon Hensinger with Ascent Adventure Consultants, LLC and developed a series of training sessions called, “Ultimate Sales Training”. While we actually teamed up with Brandon last year, we had a successful launch last week with “Cold Calling for People That Hate to Cold Call”. It was fantastic! I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in this mixture of classroom and experiential training. The sales training from Tim was exemplary (as always) and Brandon had us smiling and laughing at ourselves as we learned where our pre-conceived notions took us.”

-Deidre Hughey

The Corporate Communication Cycle

There’s a corporate communication strategy model that I have found to always be so helpful. When I train clients on this, they are amazed at this simple concept. This is adapted from the book “Corporate Communication” by Paul Argenti. When you as a business owner, or marketing executive, or sales person, or PR representative, set out to communicate to the public, how do you evaluate whether or not your message is being responded to in the right way? Do you evaluate whether or not your message is being responded to in the right way? Here is a good feedback loop to apply. First, it is important that you know what a constituency is: the person to whom the end or object of the communication refers. 

 

The Business/Organization

1. What do you want your constituencies to do?
2. What resources are available to make them do it?
3. What is the businesses image/perceived image?

Messages/Images

1. Decide on your communication channel
2. Structure message carefully

Clients

1. Who are your constituencies?
2. What does each constituencies think about the organization?
3. What does each constituency know about the topic?

Constituency

1. Did each constituency respond in the way the organization wished?

NOW BACK TO THE BEGINNING (the Business/Organization stage). Use the responses from the constituencies to change your message, and keep going through that process and you will develop a great communciation strategy model.

I like what this author says over at the Corporate Communications Blog:

The true communication model of this type of relationship is no longer the unilateral and passive communication of television broadcasts. The new communication model is participatory, the free-for-all of the town square, the public forum, the market place in the sense in which that term was understood in ancient times, as illustrated by the way in which many town squares were called simply “Market Square”, a place where exchange, discussion, encounter would take place; in short a true meeting place of humanity in all its diversity.