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- Never Give In
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- About
- Home
- Legal Shield
- Resources
- The Great Works
- Great Poetry
- Great Speeches
- A House Divided
- Acres of Diamonds
- I Have A Dream
- I've Been to the Mountaintop
- Inaugural Address – JFK
- Never Give In
- Number One Speech
- On The Constitution
- On Women's Right to Vote
- Self Reliance
- Tear Down This Wall
- The Gettysburg Address
- The Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth
- We Shall Overcome
- What is an American?
- Great Works of Art
- About
I like to add a lot of commentary sometimes. This time?
Merry Christmas
To be a great leader you must commit to personal development. It is not some over-hyped excuse for gurus to make money.
Personal development includes the study for you, your profession and the study of others. It could be Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, Dale Carnegie, Henry Ford or a person specific to the industry you wish to excel in.
I have heard that self knowledge is the beginning of personal development. While I understand the logic, I must disagree. I believe the beginning of personal development is the commitment to the process.
Most people do NOT have a good knowledge of themselves and that’s where they need to begin. They need to be willing to create a plan, work the plan and be open to the things the learn and find out about themselves. I can honestly say that any individual that undertakes this path has looked in the mirror at some point and not liked what they saw.
What you see in yourself in the present or past is not the critical piece. What is critical is what you CAN become.
Take a look at the keys to personal development and see if you can become a self improver.
Here are some keys:
- Commit to the process.
- Create a PDP (Personal Development Plan).
- Set aside 30 minutes a day to work on this plan.
- Start today.
- Assess where you are at and who you are.
- Take personal responsibility for where you are at.
- Become a life learner.
- Commit to a level of excellence
- Be honest – First with yourself and then with others.
- Focus on an area to improve
- Embrace Mistakes
- Embrace Change
- Define your value to the market and commit to improving your value.
- Commit to balance
- Develop your gratitude
- Self Affirmation – You are a valuable member of this society.
- Never give up
- Follow-up and review
The key to long term success in personal development is being willing to start and committing to the process.
How do YOU feel about your committment to personal development?
What will you do today to START!?
Robert H. Wheeler
The leader must get things done if he or she is to be affective. They must be an executor.
Now, I know some of you are thinking “executor”? That sounds like someone is using a guillotine to eliminate the competition as well as under-performing employees.
The truth is that to lead you must get things done. Many leaders give instruction and yell out orders but never lead by example. If you want to lead you must first prove that you can get things done. It takes someone who knows how to get things done.
Leaders are very rarely born. More often than not, they are developed from life experience or trials. That’s why execution can be measured. Recent history goes a long way in determining execution or even ability to perform over the long term.
Hiring practices need to be based on performance. Leaders need to hire and surround themselves with doers.
You may have heard the saying that there three are types of people:
- Those who watch things happen
- Those who make things happen
- Those who wonder what happened
Which one of those groups do you fall into? If you are honest with yourself, you may be able to shed some light on whether you have what it takes to be a leader.
There are some steps you can take to become an executer, one who will get things done:
- Become a doer. Set some small goals and see if you can “get them done”.
- Surround yourself only with people who are doers.
- Challenge those around you to do the same.
- Start NOW
I know that each of you has a leader locked within. Start today to become the leader and doer that gets things done and makes a difference in this world. We need more doers in this world.
Let me know the results of your execution attempts, I know you will teach me some things as well.
A leader has the ultimate responsibility to focus on income activities. He or she bears the load of ensuring that everyone has food on the table and the goose that is laying the golden eggs stays healthy.
The leader that embraces this responsibility and endeavors to complete the task can change his/her business forever.
So, how does one go about creating this environment? Here are some ideas that should give you a good start.
1. Sales, sales, sales
Sales and the income that comes from it will cure many ills in a business. Money in enough amounts will solve all ills.
2. Joint Ventures
There are plenty mutually symbiotic partnerships that will create profits and a lot of them.
3. Networking, Word of Mouth Marketing
The activities surrounding sales will help you come in contact with many people who can facilitate success.
4. Partnering
There are opportunities with other industries that can assist in promoting your product of service.
These are some small ideas from the top where you can take advantage of those around you to catapult your business or idea to the top. You as a leader are responsible for the success of you, your company and those surrounding you.
Take seriously the responsibility to focus on the money making ideas and activities. Don’t shed this massively motivational set of techniques.
Leaders are people who know who they are and have taken the time to become self defined. They have developed and chosen to adhere to a definition of themselves that is realistic and doable.
A leader must make the choice to develop the necessary skills and traits that will eventually lead to the success he or he chooses. So, how do you develop those traits? What steps can you take that will help you become a more well defined individual? There are some questions below that will help you become better defined. They are not the entire answer to your self definition, but they give you an honest start to becoming what you truly want.
Who do you want to be?
What do you want to do with your entire life? If you had $1,000,000,000, what would you do with your life? Is there a direction you would like to pursue, but never have? Go for it!! Don’t let your past dictate your future. Be who YOU want to be. Do what you want to accomplish. You will be much more effective if you are doing what you love.
Does who you want to be align with your values?
I am always amazed when people come to me that are disappointed in their job, business or career that completely is in contrast with whom they say they WANT to be. Of course you are not happy! You are being incongruent with yourself. The only person you are fooling is yourself. Get in tune with yourself. Define yourself according to your values, NOT according to what career currently pays the bills. Look to the future you are creating and moving towards and you will be happier in the path that you are currently taking. You know where you are going. Now is just a stepping stone or a tool to get you where you want.
What can you truly accomplish?
Are you being realistic with yourself? Can you truly accomplish what you want to be? If you cannot sing, should you try to be a great singer like Luciano Pavarotti or Michael Jackson? If you are not of an athletic inclination, should you try to be Michael Jordan or Lebron James? If you are not creative should you try becoming a great fiction writer like J. K Rollins or Terry Brooks? The point is that each of us has some natural talents. We should learn to develop those talents and find the career or business that can best make use of those strengths
What are your concrete plans to accomplish this?
I cannot stress how important it is to create concrete plan or goals to accomplish your dreams, goals and desires. But if you want to be a leader, it is absolutely CRITICAL for you to set those to the written page and to daily reference those plans. There is very few builders that would build a building of any consequence without referring to written plans. There are few musicians who will improvise without at least knowing what key and chord progressions are coming. There are few boat captains that will leave port without at least a general direction of where they are going. Why should our LIFE DIRECTION which is much more important warrant any less critical attention. Well, it shouldn’t
When will you begin?
This is where most fail. Nike got it right when they trademarked Just Do It. You have to start the process. You will find errors along the way. Make adjustments and keep going. A rocket is off course 90+% of the time as it heads to the moon, but it gets where it’s going through constant adjustment. You, your career or your business will be no different. Move, adjust and analyze.
The real key to a leader being defined is the desire to improve. If you are constantly looking for ways to improve you will find the keys to success in your search. Some will take longer than others, but work first on yourself and then on your tasks. Define yourself to take advantage of knowing your strengths and challenges to better equip you and those whom you choose to work with to accomplish the things that are needed in your life.
I look forward to hearing many stories from each of you on your definition and your dreams.
In an earlier post I talk about Chaos and what creates Dissonance in your life. I will let that post stand on its own. For this discussion I need your full attention as we are going to approach congruence from a positive standpoint. The human brain lik
es the negative tilt. But, today we are talking about leadership and leadership must be approached from a positive aspect.
Congruence is the making sure that what you say matches what you do and what your goals and values are.
Therefore, it is harder to achieve. Many people are incongruent at a single time or with a single issue, but they are congruent overall.
A leader should be able to maintain congruence no matter the battle and he or she should be able to transfer that congruence throughout the organization. Now, we all know that not EVERYONE will get on board, but the majority will if the cause is just and the leader is congruent.
So, we must talk about just how to get to congruence.
First, the leader must be congruent with their personal self, values and goals. There are three aids that I think will help tremendously; Value Sheet, Personal Affirmation and List of Values. With these three and the explanation below, you should be able to define your core value set and align it to a personal affirmation.
With these tools you can begin to truly align your value sets with your goals and remove the chaos that this misalignment may have caused in your life.
WARNING: This drill may produce significantly different results than you were expecting. It did for me.
So, here’s how we do it!
Take the master list of values and circle every value that you really think aligns to you. Be generous and circle who you really are.
Go back and place a rectangle around the twenty or less that describe who you most want to be.
From that twenty, take a highlighter and highlight the 12 that are critical to you.
Number them from one to twelve.
Write the top ten on your Value Sheet.
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Second, the leader must develop a core group of similarly congruent leaders. These leaders must be on board with the leader’s direction and be willing to infuse them selves into the business with the same commitment (or more) to the process that the leader has. This creates a culture of success and the necessary emotion necessary to surmount the challenges that will inhibit success.
Third, there must be a clear plan of action and measurable results. Those results will be the only way of defining success within a congruent company and the buy-in mentioned in the second point is the key to gaining momentum.
As a final thought, congruence as a leader is created through self discipline, team discipline and a maniacal focus on the goals that you set as a team. However, the key is self commitment to your own congruence and teaching congruence throughout your organization. There MUST be consequences for those individuals that feign congruence but don’t live it and there MUST be a commitment to follow-through.
Wikipedia describes vision as a long term goal. Webster’s defines vision as the act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be: prophetic vision; the vision of an entrepreneur. OK, that’s a little closer. But, vision is so much more than that.
Vision is the ability to see the goal, see the clear path to it and the necessary tools to get there.
Vision is a "gift" developed by leaders by failing their way to success. The ability to see-the-big-picture or look at problems or issues as they affect the entire organization is special, but it is a developed skill. True, some people are better at it than others, but the critical fact is that you can learn vision.
Many people say that it is something that it is something that is inborn or "given". They are wrong. Vision is the clear and defineable process of successes and failures that allow one to become refined in "seeing" what is able to be accomplished and the resources necessary along the way.
Vision is a learned talent.
Many people learn it from corporate America. A few learn by taking their lumps along the way in building their own business. Even fewer learn by apprenticing under a great leader with vision.
I challenge you to refine your "VISION" according to your dreams and go out there and SEE just what you can accomplish.
If you leave a comment here, share YOUR vision with us!
