Prized influence skills
An Executive’s Key Career Challenges
Ace these skills to assure your acendance
Building Executive Presence
“Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.”
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Are you already regarded as an expert, yet you sometimes get frustrated when not being able to persuade others when it’s most needed, despite picture perfect logic and compelling data?
What if your presentations, funding pitches, in-person proposals, and even your mere presence were to command more attention? What would it mean to you to end up with a career promotion, a new business project funded, or breaking into a new circle of influence?
Raleigh knows how to coach to excellence on executive presence and persuasive presentations. He got elected to City Council after having lived in a new town in a new state for only just over a year. He has come "out of nowhere" to win many times. Chosen for Interim Executive roles as second-in-command to startup CEOs, Raleigh was told, " . . for your skills, but more for your interpersonal style."
At one point, Raleigh took a sabbatical from his management consulting practice to become certified with the state Department of Education to teach science and math. He took an assignment at a rough inner-city Title I high school. He applied his executive management and persuasive interpersonal style to inspire even the most disenfranchised students. Raleigh turned his classroom around to the point that the school created a Math Honor Roll to recognize the achievements of C students who became A and B students.
“You won’t be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
Providing Dynamic Leadership
“Adversity causes some to break; others to break records.”
Do you have a basic understanding of people, but wish you could better resolve interpersonal tensions among your colleagues and emerge as a more powerful and effective leader?
What if you found critical new insights from applied psychology, medical science, and interpersonal neurobiology? What could that mean for your ability to break through to a higher level of leadership performance, career rewards, intellectual stimulation and influence?
Raleigh knows how to coach to excellence on executive presence and persuasRaleigh strives to produce breakthrough leadership, which sometimes requires deep reflection and testing of new assumptions. Once he found a certain rapid promotion less satisfying than expected. Furthermore, it brought great tension in several key relationships. He borrowed from the wisdom of Albert Einstein who is credited with saying, “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” By intentional reconnection with nature and family in Yellowstone National Park, he re-invented himself in a career pivot in 2008. Raleigh launched a successful consultancy in the Great Recession, bringing more harmony to all his relationships while meeting aggressive professional goals. He did it by intensive study and leverage of social charisma and being inspired by beautiful natural structures integrating art, science, and business.
Raleigh’s career brought him from coast to coast and across the northern and souther borders, including from New England to Arizona and back again. In the first year of his return to New England, he engaged in a “listening tour of duty”. Raleigh then immediately launched a successful campaign for City Council so he could make a larger community impact.
“Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a new way to stand”
Wining Intractable Negotiations
“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”
Are you a thoughtful negotiator, but wish you could turn even the difficult negotiations into more valuable deals? Are you facing important negotiations in the near future?
Just suppose that you were able to clearly recognize what type of negotiation you are in and have a superior strategy for getting what you really want? What could it mean for you to look forward confidently to even difficult negotiations so you can create deals that transcend expectations?
Raleigh has a passion for coaching in negotiation, particularly when executives he’s working with realize that what they have been taught or have always done is no longer working. One time, Raleigh negotiated a 42% pay increase within the same company. Another time, he got hired into a six-figure senior staff department head role by a 'Fortune Most Admired' company after being 'off the radar' and out of corporate America self-employed in the boondocks for 3 years.
In addition to thorough study and application of best practices in negotiation, Raleigh draws on rich life experience from reading interpersonal dynamics in executive boardrooms to inner city schools. He also has several years of combined experience and coaching mixed martial arts and wrestling.
Raleigh has employed interpersonal versatility for uncommon results. He had developed the reputation as the best and easiest person to work with, both inside and outside the company. Heading into the Great Recession of 2008, most building products businesses saw double-digit declines, but Raleigh’s businesses grew in both profitability and sales (some by +40%) despite serious economic headwinds.
“The wise negotiator knows that only one person in the negotiation can feel okay, and that person is the adversary.”
Achieving Career Resilience
“My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength.”
Are you dealing with a business or career crisis? Do you sense opportunity all around and see some of your peers getting all the luck with apparently little opportunity left for you? Are you looking for answers as to why?
Just suppose that you understood the structure in the chaotic environment around you, and you felt confident in your ability to engineer a breakthrough in tough times? What would it mean to you if you could proactively 'self-perturb' to create elegant solutions in seemingly impossible situations and were able to bring many others along with you?
From early in his career, Raleigh immersed himself in the world of consumers, end-users, and constituents. He realized that a key aspect of being ready for change is to discern what is already ‘in-motion’ and then leverage crucial environmental and social context clues. Recognizing that a desire for change may come before a full situation analysis, Raleigh models the discipline to discover the elements that will respond best when a situation needs to rebound quickly.Before his business management success, Raleigh earned a Master’s Degree in Engineering. His problem-solving mind has analyzed the reasons for his successes and failures, and he has built a body of knowledge and insight around influence and resilience to help others achieve similar results. He resonated with Churchill’s “never give in” philosophy and a more affirmative version of Socrates’ proposal “an examined life is more worth living.” Raleigh has conducted a reflective journaling effort that spans multiple major life events, economic upheavals, monumental successes, and occasions where he has “miraculously recovered’ after being “shot out of the saddle”.
Over 15 years, he’s reflected and recorded insights with over 4,000 handwritten journal pages that include critical analysis and field testing of over 100 popular, classic, and some hidden gems in groundbreaking business, negotiation, persuasion, and applied psychology books. He also draws heavily from 7 years of studying mixed martial arts under an accomplished master in the John Barrett and Chuck Norris styles, and served as an Assistant Instructor for his two sons who earned Black Belts.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
Mastering Discovery Selling
“Some people see a wall, and assume that’s the end of their journey. Others see it, and decide it’s just the beginning.”
Are you opening up more relationships within your client or stakeholder organizations, only to realize you need a way to develop deeper rapport more quickly?
Just support that you had better ways to build credibility as a strong strategic partner, demonstrating detailed insider knowledge and inspiring higher trust than your competitor? What could it mean for you and your organization if you were able to bring unique and valuable strategic insights about their customers?
In Raleigh’s corporate product development and brand marketing career, he developed and launched over 50 new products with major corporations. As an interim executive and management consultant with smaller companies, he’s helped launch more than 50 additional new businesses across diverse sectors. These new business initiatives were above and beyond the many existing current businesses he managed. New ventures require a more extensive array of elements in the selling process because the potential buyers are largely unaware of their need for the new product or service, and the customer’s internal systems are optimized to their current purchases.
Raleigh discovered that considering the full array or launch elements, rather than making premature assumptions about customers and markets, resulted in fresh insights on current businesses. Furthermore, even though these “old” products and services may be very familiar to the company offering them, they are “new” for new customers and new markets. That’s why Raleigh trains, coaches, and mentors in “Discovery Selling” approaches.
“Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.”