How to Succeed Courageously

Hundreds and maybe thousands of books and articles have been written on what it takes to succeed in life. I’d think that it is not as complicated as most people make it. As the year is coming to an end in a few more days, here is my list on how to succeed in life. Take what is best for you and leave the rest.

1. We are in this together! I can’t think of a single “success story” that has a cast of only one. There are always multiple players involved. Each of us brings talents, skills, abilities and contributions to the outcome. Focus on what you do best—know your strengths—and surround yourself with those that are strong where you are not. It takes guts to own your challenges and is a sure sign of a winner to seek out those that bring other talents to the team… be courageous.

2. Actions First… Feelings Follow! If you feel that you are not where you want to be today, take action. Tomorrow will be no different from today if you do the same things you have always done. That old classic definition of insanity comes to mind here: doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results. Change happens TO you, transformation happens WITHIN. You may not feel like trying something different, do it anyway… your feelings will follow.

3. You are what you think! Remember those signs in your elementary school hallways: “You are what you eat”? I say, “You are what you THINK”. It’s true that thoughts become things and that whatever you think about most is what is most present in your life. Henry Ford was right when he said, “Whether you think you can or can’t, you are right.” Think you can, ALWAYS!

4. It’s all on you! Your life really is yours! You get to make all the choices, you get to choose the cast of characters and you get to write your ‘book’. Just like all stories, though… there will be an end. What’s important in life is not just the journey, but the quality of the journey. That’s why it’s important to make every day the best it can be, because this moment is all any of us can really count on.

5. Be true to you! Take time for yourself every day—even if only a few minutes (10-30) to honor you and show yourself the “love”. For you, maybe its meditation, maybe its physical activity like working out, maybe it’s reading a book or taking a bubble bath. Whatever the choice for you, do it! You must recharge your battery, or you’ll have nothing left to give. You can’t run on caffeine, little to no sleep and sheer determination for long.

6. Back up and Re-group! If you hit a wall, find another way to make it work. There is always more than one way to achieve something. Quitting never wins… perseverance will. Whatever the *it* is for you, stick with it. You may get an outcome other than what you expected, however don’t look at that as failure. You have most definitely learned something and that is a tremendous gift. Remove the word “failure” from your vocabulary… it’s not failure… only feedback. Learn from it! Then try, try again; another way!

7. You’ll pick up what you are putting down! You always get back what you put out there. If you want help, serve others. If you want open and honest relationships, guess what! You have to be a model of openness and honesty. If you want acceptance, then you must accept others. The real power in this ‘law’ is just like Zig Ziglar said, “You can only get what you want if you help enough other people get what they want.”

Choose to live life to the fullest every moment. Choose to surround yourself with those that compliment you and give you positive energy. Choose to keep at it no matter the challenges. Choose to treat yourself with kindness and love. Choose to take action even when you initially don’t feel like it. Choose your thoughts wisely, as thoughts become things. Choose to put out there what you want back and choose to live, laugh and love in every moment.

What say you, fellow leaders, what are your keys to courageous success?

FIVE Signs That Say you are NOT Business Savvy

Do you own or lead a business? If so, you will need to do a lot of background work before you can be successful in your professional venture. The very first diagnostic activity is whether you have good leadership skills. Here are five signs that say you should NOT be a business owner – do you recognize any of these as describing you?

1.    Non-existent communication skills – when you run a business you need to know how to communicate effectively. This is the first and the last of not just good but great leadership skills. You need to be a people’s person. If you are a grouch by nature, an introvert, it is very doubtful that you would be able to develop a successful network or a worthy customer base.

2.    You cannot decide – a good businessperson can and is often required to take split-second decisions; hard decisions. Are you good with taking decisions? This is a very important trait among leadership skills without which your business will definitely flounder and fail. If you are an indecisive person, forget about being a business owner.

3.    You are an ‘I, me, myself’ type of person – leadership skills are a must if you want to run a business successfully; and not into the ground. For this you need to have a basic humility about yourself so your employees would feel motivated to work; which in turn, would attract more business. If you are an egotistic maniac, you will not last too long in this field.

4.    You cannot face unpleasantness – possessing good leadership skills does not mean that the path to success is all milk and roses. As the head of your business, your employees and customers would often create unpleasant situations that require confrontations and arguments. Are you afraid of unpleasantness or confrontations? If yes, business is not your cup of tea.

5.    You are not ready to work hard – leadership skills do not come by wishing for it; neither does success. It takes hard work, great efforts and a lot of time. Do not, for one single moment, think that because you are the owner and head of your business you can cut yourself slack. On the contrary, as the head and leader you would often be required to put in double the efforts of others. You need to be disciplined about your business, which in turn will motivate your employees to give their best. If the leader is lazy, the employees will follow suit. The result would be a disaster for your business.

No one is born with any of these leadership skills. The good news is that anyone can acquire these skills. It is never too late to seek help and set yourself up for success.

Five Key Qualities of Great Leadership

Good Leadership Is Both What You Do and What You Don’t Do

As you work with others in your leadership role, you will find that they face decisions, challenges and problems as often as you do. A good leader resists solving other people’s problems, but rather works alongside them to help them recognize opportunities and resolve difficulties for themselves.

It is critical for a leader to create an open environment that supports experimentation and discovery—key ingredients for both mistakes and successes. An open environment also includes time set aside for reflection, analysis and discussion about what is going well and what needs to be improved.

Key Quality I: Interpersonal Skills

This skill set reflects your ability to interact with others in a positive manner. Good interpersonal skills are vital to leadership development success. A leader who is empathetic, compassionate, fair, and encouraging will generate the personal trust and respect needed for leadership effectiveness.

Key Quality II: Self-Management Skills

Self-Management is the ability to prioritize and complete tasks in order to deliver desired out comes within allotted time frames. It is also the ability to control one’s emotions in challenging “pressure” situations. It requires self-awareness, valuing feedback, making decisions, and being willing to change. A leader who cannot effectively manage him/herself will have great difficulty in managing others. Leaders who have mastered self-management are more effective role models for everyone around them.

Key Quality III: Personal Accountability

This is a measure of your capacity to be answerable for your personal actions. Personal account-ability is leadership by example. A leader who has mastered personal accountability will inspire his/her protégé and team to exhibit the same behaviors and encourage leadership development within the team.

Key Quality IV: Influencing Others

The most critical key to leadership success is your ability to personally affect others’ actions, decisions, opinions, or thinking. Today’s leaders are in a position of influence, rather than power. To achieve results, you must be able to influence others to bring out the best in themselves as well as to do what you want them to do.

Key Quality V: Goal Achievement

An effective leader is one with the overall ability to set, pursue, and attain achievable goals regardless of obstacles or circumstances. This applies to the leader’s personal goals, as well as the protégé’s individual goals and team goals. Individual and team goals must be complementary to achieve the highest level of success.

Everyone has these skills to some degree. Some of these skill sets will develop a good administrator, but a good administrator is not automatically a good leader. It is the complete mastery of all the skill sets that creates the true leader.

Why Are These Skills So Important?

Your leadership effectiveness is measured through the results achieved by your team. Your role is to inspire and motivate them in ways that values their contributions while guiding them in a cohesive direction takes strong leadership skills. Effective leadership at any level demands that you be able to gain the trust of others, both one-on-one and in groups. They depend on you, their leader, to have a vision, see possibilities and work with them to create and achieve mutual goals. This is the cornerstone of the “art” of leadership!

Poor Leadership Skills Can Create Many Difficulties

A leader who has not developed good leadership skills can’t solve problems effectively. He/she may not have the empathy, self-confidence or motivation skills necessary to establish and meet goals or communicate them effectively.

 A true leader:

• Communicates a vision and a belief in its value

• Inspires others to peak performance

• Sets appropriate examples for others to follow

• Instills a sense of order, direction, and focus

• Responds to adversity without faltering

• Clearly communicates the “what”, “why”, and “when” behind every “how”

Leadership Skills Can Be Developed … They Must Not Be Left To Chance

An aspiring leader must create a personal development plan and pursue it at all times.

 As a leader you must learn to:

• Lead based on the foundation of your values, beliefs, and experience

• Share information with others; don’t hide news, feedback, critiques, or praise

• Support people when they make mistakes and help them learn from the situation

• Choose your battles wisely

• Be decisive

• Not make decisions for others

• Listen to others problems and help them define solutions

• Be persistent

• Encourage others to take initiative; reward them for independent decisions

• Not procrastinate

• Build teams and empower them to address problems

• Recognize the value of others contributions

The Best Leader Is The Most Effective Manager

A good leader inspires his/her team to constant improvement. A good leader recognizes that his/her own ongoing power and influence come from empowering others around them. A good leader nurtures leadership qualities within the team to complement his/her own development.

Beat the Time Bandits

We all have time bandits at work and at home. These are the people and things that block us from reaching our goals and getting through our daily To-Do lists.

The usual suspects are in our lineup:

Low-To-No-Control Gang

The Low-To-No-Control Gang harbors time bandits that are outside our span of control, unless we make profound changes to the world we live and work in. At work, these miscreants might include inefficient and redundant procedures, unclear priorities, too many low-priority tasks, outdated and slow equipment, too much paperwork and red tape, too many special projects, and so on.

What can we do when cornered by members of the Low-To-No-Control Gang?

We can learn, look for alternatives and shortcuts, and deal with them as effectively and efficiently as possible. At work, our senior leaders should constantly work to reduce or eliminate the time bandits that are out of our control. Our job is to adapt to things we can’t control, and remove the time bandits that are directly and indirectly in our control.

Direct-Control Gang

The Direct-Control Gang exists inside our own hearts and heads. We have direct control over our own behavior, and we can be as big a time bandit to ourselves as anyone or anything else, although it might be harder for some of us to admit. Some of the gang members include procrastination, low assertiveness, low self-discipline, low motivation, poor listening, disorganization, trying to do too much, doing unimportant things, doing things wrong the first time, and so on.

Indirect-Control Gang

The Indirect-Control Gang is made up of all the people in our lives: coworkers, bosses, friends, family, acquaintances, and passersby. People are born to steal our day, just like puppies are born to chew up our favorite shoes. But whose fault is it?

It’s our fault, in both cases. We shouldn’t leave our shoes out because we know how puppies are. We can blame the puppy, yell at the puppy, chase the puppy around with a rolled up newspaper, but it’s ultimately our fault. And if other people chew up our day, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Here is our Top 5 list for how to fend off the time bandits in the Indirect-Control Gang:

1)     Don’t be a bandit yourself

Just as you don’t want others to ‘bandit’ you, you should always be aware of your own ‘bandit’ potential. If you are true to your own self-leadership goals, this will come naturally, because you will be committed to not wasting your time or anyone else’s.

2)     Communicate what’s important

To effectively lead yourself and others, you need to have clear priorities and clue people in to what they are. It’s easier to communicate your need to stay on task when people buy in to your cause and understand the significant demands of your effort.

For example, our bosses are notorious time bandits. Why? Because their bosses are also notorious time bandits to them. There are things to meet about, special projects that need people, and special functions to attend. The world isn’t perfect, and we all have things to do we don’t necessarily want to do or that don’t fit into our definition of ‘important.’ Can we say, ‘No, I’m not going to attend that meeting,’ or ‘No, I won’t do that special project’? Not usually. If you have issues with the type of tasks you are asked to do at work, or conflicting priorities that impact your performance, you should feel comfortable discussing them.

3)     Coach and delegate

You coach people when you move them from reliance on you to reliance on themselves. Instruct and encourage people to be effective self-leaders and they will draw less and less on your time. The time you invest now will serve you well down the road when you can delegate tasks to highly capable people who don’t need you looking over their shoulder.

4)     Expect respect

Living your purpose and achieving your top goals are important to you and the people around you. At work, acknowledge the importance of your purpose and expect bosses and coworkers to respect that purpose. You don’t have to be a killjoy to establish your expectation that people respect (if not value) your time as much as you.

If people do not respect your time — if they invite you to meetings that they didn’t prepare for, send you e-mails that don’t have a clear connection to you, stop by without a clear purpose — you have three choices: (1) let them steal your day, (2) get rid of them as best you can, (3) coach them on what you expect from your business interactions.

5)     Scan for the good stuff

We are constantly bombarded with information, new technology, and profound changes to how we view and function in the world. In fact, a conservative estimate by researchers suggests that business information is doubling every three years. To make sense of everything coming at us, we have to be selective about what gets our attention.

For example, we can be buried by e-mails, although they can be important and effective when used correctly. Here are some scanning-for-good-stuff tips for your e-mails and other communications you receive:

Let people know that you are overwhelmed with information and that you tend to block out messages that aren’t concise, simple, or clearly relevant to you. Tell them that they can expect the same courtesy from you.

Consider reading and responding to emails only at designated times during the day, such as at the beginning of the day, before lunch, and again before you leave work.

Consider using the ‘10-minute rule’ to work through easy e-mails; get the small and simple stuff out of the way in one 10-minute sitting rather than putting them off and allowing them to build up until you have a large, time-consuming chore ahead of you.

Consider creating an ‘Additional Action’ folder to separate important e-mails that you need to revisit later when you have more time.

Finally, try to handle an e-mail only once (or as few times as possible). Once you read it, take action. Dump it, respond to it, print it, forward it, whatever, and then move on.

To beat the time bandits that steal our day, we must recognize who and what they are and take the lead in putting them away.

"Learn to use ten minutes intelligently. It will pay you huge dividends." --William A. Irwin

PS:

Magic trick illustrating why using little pieces of paper as a planning system is not a good idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxJg1aKef5o&feature=related

Enjoy!