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Digging For Your Gold

August 9, 2010 in Leadership, Quotes with 3 Comments

Digging For Your Gold 300x197 Digging For Your GoldAlright, so last week I refreshed on one of my favorite authors, Norman Vincent Peale. Dr. Peale is definitely the champion when it comes to positive thinking. He built an industry on his powerful philosophy, including dozens of books, thousands or lectures, over fifty years of radio programs, and the widely read magazine, Guideposts. But positive thinking alone did not make him such a success…underlying all was hard work.

“Nothing of great value in this life comes easily. The things of highest value sometimes come hard. The gold that has the greatest value lies deepest in the earth, as do the diamonds.” – Norman Vincent Peale

Dr. Peale’s hard work involved mining deep into believing in yourself in order to attain your dreams. Like miners who dig deep for gold, you also have to dig deep to find your own gold and diamonds…the priceless personal values that make you who you are.

Hard work to attain business goals require a lot of effort that few will ever notice. It often involves confronting you fears. For example, it’s hard work to remain positive when presenting a new business idea if it generates nothing more that an initial lukewarm response. Taking action and not giving up produces solutions.

Mine your inner values of perseverance and dedication to achieve your goals. If you think you can do it, you will do it. It may often be rough-going at times, but no one ever said success comes easy.

What methods do you use to keep positive when digging for your success?

Leaders Demonstrate Integrity

August 6, 2010 in Business, Leadership with 14 Comments

Integrity 300x225 Leaders Demonstrate Integrity In the world of work, concern that propels us to take responsibility for what needs doing translates into good organizational citizenship.

Psychologist Daniel Goleman, Author of Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, knows that empathy, or concern for others, is a manifestation of social intelligence. If your organization has a reputation as being “cut throat,” it does not value empathy. For example, certain organizations use layoffs and cutbacks to increase profit margins, to appeal to the investors best interest. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of the workforce. The underlying message from leadership suggests that the company values the shareholders over the employees. This is never a good message – ultimately morale is affected and productivity suffers.

Since people do not operate in a vacuum but but take their lead from others, goodwill must come from the top echelons. You must promote empathy as a core value and not just some promotional stunt to foster a better public image when you are a company leader. Leaders who demonstrate integrity in their personal behavior and corporate actions promote goodwill among the rank and file. If you haven’t been clear about you organization’s values, now is the time to make an action plan. First, address past actions, and then slowly make changes. It all starts with you at the top – then the other will get the message and follow your lead.

Building a Team with Team Meetings

August 3, 2010 in Business, Leadership with 7 Comments

Team Building 300x213 Building a Team with Team MeetingsMeetings are ubiquitous. Even Vince Lombardi had to suffer through team meetings. No doubt he had to hold many as well.

Do everything you can to make meetings productive. If your team knows your meeting will follow these rules, they will look forward to them rather then dread them.

Meeting Rules:

  • Have one very specific goal for each meeting. Don’t try to cover every concern in one meeting.
  • Stick to your goal. Don’t get sidetracked talking about things everyone wants to talk about and don’t let other participants move the meeting off-topic.
  • Insist on punctuality. Lead my example.
  • Be organized. Make sure everything is done prior to the meeting.
  • Give everyone a chance to speak.
  • Set a timeframe for the meeting and stick to it. If you said the meeting will go from 1:00 to 2:30, don’t pretend to be oblivious that it is almost 3:00.
  • Be aware of the schedules of attendees. If three of the people you need in your meeting have two other meetings that day, find another day to meet.
  • If you are not the right person to be the leader of the meeting, pick the right person and let that person take over. Teach your team how to lead meetings, and insist that they do.

“Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything. – Vince Lombardi

The Power of Positive Thinking

August 2, 2010 in Education, Family, Featured, Fitness, Health and Wellness, Leadership with 11 Comments

Postive Thinking 225x300 The Power of Positive Thinking“How you think about a problem is more important than the problem itself – so always think positively” – Norman Vincent Peale

One of the first “motivational” books I ever read was one by Norman Vincent Peale. His book titled Power of Positive Thinking was an instant bestseller when it was published in 1952 and sold over twenty million copies to date. Dr. Peale formulated a three-step process for positive thinking: the first step involves prescribed exercises, the second attaining divine power, and the last urges to eliminate negativity in your life. Continue Reading…

The More Experiments the Better.

July 30, 2010 in History, Leadership, Quotes with 12 Comments

Ralph Waldo Emerson 222x300 The More Experiments the Better.In the 1830s, progressive thinking was unfamiliar territory amongst America’s elite. Most intellectuals were members of social clubs where they forged their political, religious, and business alliances.

Having just published Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson was emerging as a serious literary figure. Disgusted with the state of intellectualism, he and his contemporaries, including Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott, formed the Transcendental Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1836.

“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talk about experimenting. The group met sporadically and kept out those who excluded any topic from examination. From morality to mysticism, the members explored new thoughts, ideas, and concepts previously uncharted. Emerson emerged as a great public speaker whose strong personal belief system gave him the courage to buck popular trends. As a result, he was well rewarded in a career that indulged his passion for provocative thought.

Focus on a vision and work on it from different angles. This will allow for experimentation during the process.

As a leader, you need to envision the future and experiment as much as possible. You just might find the answer you are looking for.

Bad Writing is Like a Virus

July 28, 2010 in Education, Leadership with 9 Comments

Writing 164x300 Bad Writing is Like a VirusI’ve recently come to the conclusion that bad writing is like a virus: everyone becomes a victim sooner or later. From verbose language to dangling modifiers, not to mention passive voice clutter that not only the pages of unfinished books, but also quarterly and year-end reports, business plans, and presentations. Effectively written communication gets the message across…essential for any leader to succeed. Whether you are pitching for new business or looking for venture capital, you need to get to the point. Good writing uses fewer words, not more. This is something that I still wrestle with today!

In her business writing blog, Lynn Gaertner-Johnston (whose mission is “to quash bad writing habits that linger in the classrooms and cubicles of the 21st-century)” says the number one goal is to keep it simple. In today’s hyberbolic world, you lose your audience’s attention quickly. This is especially pertinent in markets where competition is fierce. Worse, you send a subconscious message of uncertainty in your verbose sentences. Don’t use jargon of phrases your reader won’t understand. That technique often looks like you are trying to hide something.

“I believe more in the scissors than the pencil.” – Truman Capote

The next important stage in editing: Don’t settle just for grammatical corrections and perfect punctuation. Take the time to add value by reworking your message. Don’t be afraid to redraft any weak points. This will help other understand your vision and help you stand out against the competition.

How do you go about proofreading and editing your writings?

Fishing For Your Team

July 20, 2010 in Leadership with 8 Comments

Fishing For Your Team 300x221 Fishing For Your TeamWhen fishing for high-quality team members, your organization needs to be your lure. Build a great organization, and you will be able to fish the future leader pool with confidence that your organization can attract the best. In his best book, The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas J. Stanley argues that the wealthiest Americans spend the least amount of time collecting high-status objects. The same principle holds true for most businesses. Most organizations can draw good team members without fancy gadgets, the latest desktop computers, polished words, or smoke and mirrors. They just need to be people oriented.

“If you have great confidence in your lure, you’ll fish with confidence.” – Thomas J. Stanley

Create a place where you team members brag to others about where they spend their day. Making sure your organization is family-friendly and allows members to design flexible schedules to meet family and childcare needs. Until health care stops being job dependent (I’ll touch base more on this in a separate post), offer the best health care, find a way to get the best group plan you can. Find other ways to reward and compensate, like flexible spending accounts or even things like group-plan pet insurance.

Create such a place where yourself and others can share ideas and collaborate.

There are many ways to be creative to make your organization a great lure to the community so that you can go fishing with confidence…and one of the greatest lures of all is to have a great group of people working together at the same goal within your organization.

How confident are you with your current lure and how do you see it helping others achieve their goals?

Failures That Fuel Our Future Success

July 19, 2010 in Leadership with 7 Comments

Future Success 300x218 Failures That Fuel Our Future SuccessNapoleon Hill was a pioneer in the genre of books on business success and leadership. His most famous book, Think and Grow Rich, is still on of the bestsellers of all time.

Hill believed that having a purpose or a plan is essential to attaining success. He advised readers to think their way through a failure, to view failure as a small part of a plan that will ultimately benefit them. If you analyze failure…see it as a plan with a purpose…it will prepare you for bigger challenges. In this way failure can only make you better because it prepares you for greater responsibilities.

Identify your life’s purpose and proceed with passion. Only you know what to do with it.

Hill’s official biography says he was born in a two-room cabin into wretched poverty. He began working at the age of thirteen as a reporter for small-town newspapers in rural Virgina. He later put himself through college. Meeting the powerful industrialist Andrew Carnegie and hearing his ideas led to Hill’s lifelong project, interviewing the most famous and wealthy men of all time (I will be touching base on this on a later post I have planned, using Tim Ferriss‘ approach discussed in The 4-Hour Workweek). What Hill learned from these men became the basis of his successful books.

An amazing fact is that Hill never mentioned the word “achievement” in Think and Grow Rich…he felt that readers would benefit most by discovering the keys to achieving their goals themselves as the result of his winning philosophy.

How do YOU transform your failures into success?

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