May Newsletter - Tips for Business, Leadership, Board & Personal Development

moving you forward

In This Issue { Development }

	Business
	Leadership
	Board
	Personal
	New at half full

May 26, 2011

Tarrytown, NY

Getting Out of Your Own Way & Moving Forward with

Rebecca Twitchell

Register!

July 15-16, 2011

Palos Verdes, CA

Getting a Reality Check on Leadership with James Frager

Sept 23-25, 2011

Testing Your Inner & Outer Strength as a Leader with

Aron Ralston

Special Offer:

If you would like to have half full facilitate a themed Personal Development Forward as a Business Development Forward for your organization, we will discount the head count by as many employees that attended the Personal Development Forward.

(Up to 5 employees & group size min required)

Greetings!

It's May. And we're getting dangerously close to that great Season of summer. The Season when the grills are pulled out, graduations are attended and vacations are planned. Naturally, we all tend to relax a tad more when that energizing sun greets us in the morning.

Enter Debbie Downer, ahem ... half full.

The summer is a perfect opportunity to evaluate where everything stands in your business and in your own personal planning. In a business, you should be about 4-5 months into your annual strategic plan. As an individual, you are about 4-5 months into your New Year's Resolution.

This issue of half full's newsletter is meant to provide you with a few tips on how you can not only rejuvenate your spirit with the summer sun, but also your long term planning.

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Business Development:

The summer is a perfect time to reload your strategic plan if things slow down at the office. Take one day on the calendar when no executives are vacationing. Pull out the strategic plan you all blessed at the end of last year. Leave the vision and mission, but take a close look at those major objectives and measure your progress. Work through why you haven't hit objective goals, create new initiatives based on current realities and don't forget to celebrate your wins over a company-wide BBQ after the session.

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Leadership Development:

For the leaders out there, you know that leadership means always learning. And that doesn't just mean networking at conferences, chapter meetings and business luncheons ... it means learning about you--as a leader. Do you still have what it takes? Do you still want it? Does the organization you lead fit your own long term plans? Take time over the summer to strengthen your own leadership development. Start with that vision you have of yourself in ten years, then work on the decisions you need to make and the skills you need to get there.

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Board Development:

The summer is also a great time for Boards to create and/or validate their own plan. Many Boards take the summer off for a variety of reasons, but we advise that one day be added into the mix to work on the future.

How is a Board plan different than the organization's plan? All Boards need to make time to focus on their own development-visioning, succession planning, and to be honest, a reality check on "why" the Board even exists. We often get bogged down with the details of our assignments and forget the bigger picture. Taking a day to remind ourselves of why we are serving, who we are serving and how we will serve is important.

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Personal Development:

Attention: everyone! When is the last time you invested in yourself personally? Not a tub of ice cream on a Friday night to celebrate a tough work week done. Sure, that's great and tasty and everything, but it lasts for about 20 minutes (five if it was a really tough week) and then you just feel bad about it later.

We mean when's the last time you SERIOUSLY invested in yourself? A long term plan. Answers to what's next. Finishing something you started 3 years ago. If it's time you can invest and not money, then grab a pencil, a few sheets of paper, head to the beach by yourself and sketch out what you see in your mind as a "perfect day" in your life. Take the sketch home. Start a folder. As the days and weeks go on, walk through every day thinking about that sketch. Add articles to the folder, cut outs and symbols of things that tie into that vision. Presto! You just proved to your vision that there is commitment ... now let's get on that plan on how to get there!

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What's New with half full:

Bucket Dump: Hal Eisenberg, Executive Director of Windows of Opportunity, is this year's winner of the half full Bucket Dump. Each year, the call for nominations brings in amazing stories and very deserving individuals. WOO, a youth empowerment and leadership organization in NY is poised for growth and half full is thrilled to be assisting with that development. Stay tuned as Hal's story continues to unfold.

Forwards®: half full now provides Personal Development Forwards (retreats). Known for assisting executives and management teams develop their companies and organizations through its strategic planning retreats, we took our core planning process and created an exciting opportunity for individuals to work on their own personal plans for growth and development. Some upcoming PDFs are listed to the right. Future Forwards to look out for: empowerment, survival and saying no.

Aron Ralston: It has always been a goal to work with the individuals who have been an inspiration for our workshops over the years. While we are excited for his personal success, we are even more excited that survivor, author and subject for 127 Hours, Aron Ralston has teamed up with half full to co-facilitate our "Testing Your Inner & Outer Strength as a Leader" Forward in Aspen, CO in September.

If you like adventure, being the talk of your friends and the unknown, you should join us on this unique Forward. Sign Me Up!

Africa Bound: half full is heading back to Ibadan in August for the third year in a row to facilitate the "Empowering. Embracing. Executing." Forward for the Nagode Group. This is one of those stories you want to keep watching. Inspiring doesn't cut it.

Nagode's vision is to Inspire Africa through Global Success and they are determined to be the model company that other businesses will emulate, thereby crushing the stigma about the poor ethics of African companies. Never before have we seen such a comittment to maintaining values and empowering employees. Something we could all learn from.

Tagline: half full has changed its tagline to "moving you forward." Having entered into its 7th year of service, armed with an expanded mission and unique corporate responsibility program, it was time. Feedback so far has been that it sums up half full perfectly.

Your thoughts?

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As always, thank you for your continued support. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Cheers!

half full, llc

moving you forward