Leadership Success TODAY

Do Your Homework!

2011-08-11T20:31:00.000-05:00

Pat Riley, the infamous basketball coach, has often said, “If you’re not getting better at something, you’re getting worse”. However good you are at something today your knowledge and skill are becoming obsolete at a rapid rate. Just as you can build your physical muscles through physical exercise, you can build mental muscles with mental exercise.

Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field. Refuse to allow a weakness or lack of ability in any area to hold you back. Everything in business can be learned, and what others have learned, you can learn as well. Dedicate yourself to becoming one of the most knowledgeable and competent people in your field. There are many ways you can do this:

Read in your field for at least an hour every day. Take every course and seminar available on key skills that can help you. Attend the conventions in your profession or occupation. Purchase audio recordings or listen to podcasts. The greater your knowledge becomes the more confident and motivated you’ll feel. The greater your confidence, the more capable you’ll be of achieving much more in your field.

Become a lifelong student of your craft. School will always continue for the ambitious professional.

What are the key skills that can help you most in achieving better and faster results? What are the core competencies that you’ll need to have in the future to be a LEADER in your field? Whatever they are, set a goal, make a plan, and begin developing and increasing your ability in those areas. Resolve to be the best in your field. The best at what you do.

MOTIVATE Yourself To ACTION!!

2011-02-27T21:02:00.000-06:00

MOTIVATE Yourself To ACTION!!

To perform at your best, you must become your own personal cheerleader. You must develop a routine of coaching yourself and encouraging yourself to play at the top of your game.

The majority of your emotions, positive or negative, are determined by how you coach or speak to yourself on a daily basis. It is not what happens to you but the way you interpret things that determines how you feel, and thus your experience. It is your version of events that largely determines whether they motivate or demotivate you, whether they energize or deflate you.

When you continually visualize your goals and ideals and coach yourself in a positive way, you’ll feel more focused and energized. You’ll be more confident and creative. You’ll experience a greater sense of control and personal power.

GOING FORWARD—What can I do to improve?

Control your thoughts. Remember, you become what you think about most of the time. Be sure that you are thinking and speaking of the goals you want rather than the things you don’t want.

Keep your mind positive by accepting complete responsibility for yourself and for everything that happens to you. Refuse to criticize or blame others. Resolve to make progress rather than excuses. Keep your thoughts and your energy focused forward, on the things you can do to improve your life, and let the rest go.

RENEWAL—Priority One.

2010-12-08T21:09:00.000-06:00

It’s the end of the year and that time for discussing your goals and objectives for next year. It seems to be on the mind of every person right now—what do I want my life to look like next year? What do I want to accomplish? What have I learned through my recent experiences? This thought process is called “RENEWAL” and when you look at it on a macro level, many great companies do this all the time as well. If you look at perennially successful companies they often have one common ingredient, namely, R & D (research and development). It is quite difficult to be successful perennially without a passion for R & D—it’s what keeps great organizations at the top of their industry. They understand the importance of RENEWAL to keep things ‘cutting edge’, at the top of their game and their industry—they don’t just do it, they obsess about it, every day.

Think about your own R & D, your own RENEWAL—how often do you contemplate it? How often do you actually work on it? If you acquire a personal R & D/RENEWAL mindset, you’ll focus each day on developing creativity and personal growth, basically on ‘auto-pilot’. If your daily focus becomes continual learning and commitment to growth, you have embodied the R & D mindset, and can place yourself at the head of the pack (in a leadership position).

Every project, assignment, position/role/job should be an experience that you can learn from, and therefore embody RENEWAL. If they are not, you should re-consider the amount of time you’re devoting to each and move onward. Why is continual learning and renewal so important?

1) Simply, to make a better living for yourself

2) To improve your problem-solving and decision-making skills

3) To cultivate an openness to new/other possibilities

4) To increase your ‘brain power’

Questions to ask in developing and maintaining your renewal mindset:

1) What have I learned in the last week? the last month? Repeat frequently.

2) Does my current project/role/assignment have specific learning goals? If not, restructure it.

3) What have I learned in my current role? Is the learning experience positive? Is the learning what I had expected? If that learning experience has not broadened you, you should reflect on the time and commitment you’ve invested and consider alternative paths to place you on the route to renewal and continual learning.

Don’t wait to start your own personal R & D/Renewal/Learning Plan. Chances are someone else has already made that personal commitment for some time and they may have beaten you to the punch (career-wise or R & D-wise) just by sheer determination for personal or career growth….

How's Your ATTITUDE?

2010-11-10T13:37:00.000-06:00

If You Believe You Can, You Can. Did you know that it took Thomas Edison ten thousand attempts to find the right materials for the incandescent light bulb? Edison had a quality that can be difficult to possess in tough times—POSITIVE ATTITUDE. Edison himself stated: “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” He developed the modern research laboratory and was the eternal optimist, stating, “If we did all the things we were capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”

If Edison hadn’t been such a positive person, he never would have achieved the great level of success as an inventor. Those who achieve lasting success in any profession almost always possess a positive attitude and positive outlook toward life. If you desire to be an effective leader, having a positive attitude is essential. It not only determines your level of happiness, but also has an impact on how others interact with you.

Things To Ponder:

1) Your Attitude is a CHOICE. Many people wait for someone else to motivate them or perceive that your circumstances dictate how you think. No matter what happened yesterday, your attitude is a choice TODAY.

2) Your Attitude Determines Your Actions. Those that win have a winning attitude, not aptitude.

3) Your ‘Followers” Are a Mirror of Your Attitude. Simply, who you are is who you attract. If you display a poor attitude, don’t expect others around you to be upbeat.

4) Maintaining a Positive Attitude is Easier than Regaining One. Once the cycle of negativity or self-pity starts, it can literally distort reality and hold you back.

When you face new experiences, does a voice in your head say that you’re going to fail? If you’re hearing negative messages or thoughts, you need to learn to give yourself a pep talk and re-train your attitude toward a positive one—prevent your mind from going down a negative path.

How Can I Improve My Attitude?

• Feed yourself a diet of motivational material. You can become a more positive thinker and turn your attitude around by looking for the right material that helps you stay positive.

• Achieve a goal every day. Some fall into a rut of negativity because they feel they’re not making progress. Begin setting achievable goals for yourself every day. A pattern of positive achievement will help you develop patterns of positive thinking.

• Write it on the wall (or any place that you can see as a reminder). This will help keep your thinking straight.

The MIND is what elevates the ‘best’ to the highest level. If the mind is strong you can do almost anything you want to do.

Do You Have PASSION?

2010-10-08T11:22:00.000-05:00

Have you ever worked with a leader that is really PASSIONATE about what they do? Have YOU ever been passionate about something that you’ve worked on in your life? If so, you can’t mistake it—leaders that are passionate leaders will always be met by passionate followers, and thus a productive outcome. Many studies have been done, looking at the lives of effective, legendary leaders—what has made them successful? Most legendary leaders don’t fit into a stereotypical mold—Many CEO’s had a C or C- average in school. Many U.S. presidents were in the bottom half of their class rank. What makes it possible for ‘ordinary’ people to achieve great things? The answer is Passion. Passion can overcome any other deficiency you may have.

Your desire determines your destiny. Anyone who lives beyond an ordinary life (passionate) has great desire (look at Martin Luther King Jr., Bill Gates, Gandhi). Weak desire brings weak results. The stronger your fire, the greater the desire, and the greater your potential and achievements.

There is no substitute for passion. It is the fuel of your will to achieve—if you want something badly enough you can find the willpower to achieve it. The only way to have that kind of desire is to develop passion. Passion changes you. If you follow your passion, instead of others’ perceptions, you can’t help becoming a more dedicated, productive person. And that increases your ability to impact others. Your passion will have more influence than your personality, CV, etc. Passion makes the impossible possible. A fire in your heart can lift everything else in your life. A leader with great passion and few skills will always achieve more than a leader with great skills and no passion.

If passion is not a quality of your life, you’re in trouble as a leader. You can never lead anything you don’t care passionately about. Next Step—Questions to Ask Yourself:

How passionate are you about your life and your work? Does it show? You won’t become passionate until you believe it can make a difference in your life. What things are you passionate about in your life? Try to recapture your old enthusiasm and apply to your career and lifestyle. Do you associate with people who are passionate? Passion is contagious.

You’ve heard the old saying: Concentrate on what you do well and do it better than anybody else. What do you do better than anyone else? It could end up as your new passion…

Identify Your Limiting Factors

2010-09-14T17:02:00.000-05:00

What Is Holding You Back? What sets the speed at which you achieve your goals? What determines how fast you move from where you are, to where you want to be? Why haven’t you achieved your GOAL already?

Whatever you’re looking to accomplish, there is always a ‘limiting factor’ that determines how quickly and well you will achieve it. Study the objectives you’re looking to accomplish and identify the ‘limiting factors’ or constraints you’re facing—then focus all of your energy on alleviating that factor (s).

The 80/20 Rule applies to the constraints in your life and in your work: 80% of the constraints—the factors that are holding you back from achieving your goal—are internal. They are within yourself, your own qualities, abilities, habits, disciplines. Only 20% of limiting factors are external. In your own life, you must have the honesty to look inward for the limiting factor or limiting skill that sets the speed at which you achieve your personal goals.

How Can I Get There?

Identify your most important goal in life today. What is it? What one goal, if you achieved it, would have the greatest positive effect on your life? What one career accomplishment would have the greatest positive impact on your work life? Once you are clear about your major goal, ask yourself—What sets the speed at which I accomplish this goal? Why don’t I have it already? What is it within me that is holding me back? Whatever your answers, take action immediately. Do Something. Do Anything. But get started TODAY!

Leverage Your Special Talents and Abilities

2010-01-29T09:53:00.000-06:00

You are Different! You have special talents and abilities that make you different from every other person who has ever lived. There are certain things you can do, or learn to do, that can make you extraordinarily valuable to yourself and others. Your job is to identify your special areas of uniqueness and then to commit yourself to becoming outstanding in those areas.

Take stock of your unique talents and abilities on a regular basis. What is it that you do especially well? What are you good at? What tasks come easily to you? What do you do easily and well that is difficult for other people? Looking back at your career, what has been most responsible for your success in life and work to date? What have been your most significant accomplishments in the past?
You are designed in a way that you’ll most enjoy doing the very things that you can be the very best at. What is it that you enjoy the most about your work? What accomplishments do you enjoy the most? The fact that you enjoy something means you have the capacity to excel in that area.
Look at that various things you do. What is it that you do that gets you the most compliments and praise from others? What do you do that positively affects the work and performance of other people more than anything else?
Leaders take the time to identify what they do well and most enjoy. They know what they do, those unique talents that really makes a difference in their work-- Then they concentrate on that area of activity, exclusively, which doubles your chances of success.
Continually ask yourself these key questions:
What am I really good at? What do I enjoy the most about my work? What has been most responsible for my success in the past? If I could focus on any talent, ability, task at all, what would that be? Whatever your answers, move your focus to excel in those areas and get started TODAY.

Personal Branding Starts With Differentiation

2009-10-16T11:43:00.001-05:00

In my last post we talked about Branding Yourself for career success. Many career coaches today are talking about your need to develop a ‘Personal Brand’ which differentiates you amongst the rest, and propels your career. I just read an article this week where the author stated: “Differentiate yourself or die!” Sounds pretty bold, right? But it’s not too far from the truth. In this tough job market and economic climate if you don’t differentiate yourself from the millions of others trying to make it, your career and its possibilities will die quickly. So what does differentiation mean and how can I differentiate my ‘Personal Brand’ today from the rest?

Differentiation, in its simplest terms, means this: How do you show others (potential employers, stakeholders, business partners, etc) that you add value to their business? What value do you add and/or continue to add? What are you passionate about, and how do these skills or strengths add value to a potential business partner? Bottom Line—If you consistently add value by what you can offer, you will never be out of work. You will be In Demand.

When you develop your brand and differentiate yourself, you’re taking the first step toward Personal Independence—an independence that is freed from being dependent upon a ‘job’, corporation, etc. Is that first step scary for some? Of course! But your personal brand will always provide more opportunities for you in the long term then any corporation or job will do for you.

So where do you want to start with your Personal Brand? Make sure you don’t pigeon-hole yourself or set your scope too small. You want to differentiate yourself, but it’s important to not set your brand as one that is ‘valuable’ for today, only. You want to show that your foresight is strong and your value add can be used for months and years to come. For example if you’ve branded yourself as a Senior I.T. professional—show me how you’re different from the 4 million others with the same title. What value do you bring to my organization that will take this business to the next level in 6 months? These are REAL questions and you want to show that you’re at the TOP! Good Luck and show them that you’re different!

What’s the Fastest Way To Develop Your Online Leadership Skills and Become a Leader in Any Biz You’re In?

2009-08-27T09:26:00.000-05:00

BRAND YOURSELF! That’s right—develop your own leadership ‘brand’. How often do you ask yourself the question—What do I want to be? Or What is my brand? For most people it’s not often enough or for some, it’s never. Why is that?? Don’t have enough time? Or too many other worries on your brain?

Those that are successful in life as well as established leaders today, ask themselves that question almost EVERY DAY. Why? Because your brand changes throughout your lifetime and your skills, knowledge, and career desires change as well. Your brand will change with each of these changes in life, and the TRUE, SUCCESSFUL leaders will continuously improve upon their brands to propel themselves (and their businesses) forward--regardless of economic climate, industry changes, or business swings.

Do you have a BRAND? Here are some common traits of those with a BRAND vs. those who are just an ‘employee’:

BRANDED – Has an offering or work product worth paying for!

BRANDED—Routinely asks, Who Am I?/What Do I Want To Be?

BRANDED – Pursues Mastery of SOMETHING, has something important to say, and knows how to say it!

BRANDED – Does work that matters 100% of the time!

BRANDED – Selects customers/partners very carefully and rejects those who are a bad match!

BRANDED – Pays close attention to personal Packaging (aka Design)

BRANDED – Guards their reputation for Trustworthiness and Integrity!

BRANDED – Cultivates curiosity, takes every opportunity to learn something new all the time!

If you haven’t ever taken time to think about or address these questions within yourself, it’s well-worth it to do so. If you want to increase your opportunities (and eventually your income, success, etc) you have to have a solid value proposition (your BRAND) and look to continually increase your value to others. That’s the fastest way to move your career and desired lifestyle forward.

Stay Tuned for More Leadership Success Advice on the blog….