Leadership

If you want to have greater influence with people, caring for and nurturing them is a “must.” It may be cliche, but it’s true that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. If you do not show that you care about people, your message will not be heard. However, if you demonstrate a genuine concern for others you will gain influence rapidly.

This may sound “soft” for the business world, but nurturing your team is vital for developing great team chemistry. The more your team knows you care for their well-being individually and collectively, the more they will follow you. They will trust you more. The more they trust you, the more efficient and effective the team will become.

John C. Maxwell states in his book “Becoming a Person of Influence” that when you nurture people, they receive the following benefits:

• Positive self-worth
• Sense of belonging
• Perspective of their value
• Feeling of significance
• Hope

Nurturing others makes a huge difference in their lives. Many people are not receiving positive affirmation at home or work. When someone steps into their lives to encourage and care for them, it can refuel their emotional and mental tanks. When that happens, their spirits are lifted and they are going to achieve greater success and feel a greater sense of significance.

You have the power to make a powerful impact on the lives of those around you. Be intentional with showing you care and helping others achieve their goals. Being a person of influence is about valuing other people and helping them become all that they have the potential to be.

Be Intentionally Great by nurturing others and watch your influence soar!

To learn more about gaining greater influence with others, sign up for my upcoming “Becoming a Person of Influence” tele-seminar by clicking HERE.

Developing and keeping your integrity is an inside job. While many external factors affect our daily lives, integrity affects our character and relationships. Having integrity gains trust and influence. Lacking integrity will cost you dearly.

In his book Becoming a Person of Influence, John C. Maxwell says “The need for integrity today is perhaps as great as it has ever been. And it is absolutely essential for anyone who desires to become a person of influence.” We live in a world and culture where people of high integrity are becoming harder and harder to find. If you desire to have greater influence in the lives of those around you, developing and maintaining high integrity is of critical importance.

To have integrity, consider the following:

• Integrity is revealed in how you handle the small things.
• No position or title can substitute for a life of high integrity.
• If you take care of your integrity, your reputation will take care of itself.

5-Session Tele-Seminar Offer!

Above are just a few key points regarding integrity found in John C. Maxwell’s book Becoming a Person of Influence. I want to invite you to join me for a 5-week teleseminar study of this book lasting from March 21-April 18, 2016 from 8-9:30 pm each Monday night.

Click HERE for more information and to reserve your spot. Not only will you receive in-depth teaching on this book’s key topics, but I will also provide a one-hour 1-1 coaching session to help you develop an action plan to intentionally become a person of influence personally and professionally. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity. Register today!

Everyone wants to be a part of a successful team. However, many teams are loaded with talent but don’t find themselves experiencing the success they desire. As a team leader, it’s important to find ways to help your team grow so they have the chance to succeed.

How do you grow your team? The answer may surprise you.

You as the leader must grow first!

If you are growing as a leader and helping your team members grow, you will start to see the team achieve greater results and climb to new heights. If you don’t make growth a priority, you will see your team become stagnant and eventually start to deteriorate.

In John Maxwell’s book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John teaches “The Law of the Lid” which states that “a person’s level of effectiveness is determined by his leadership ability.” The same is true for a team. The team’s level of effectiveness and success is determined by the leader’s leadership ability. If you are a growing leader, then the lid for your team will rise, which means the effectiveness will increase. If you are not growing, you are being a lid on the team’s potential.

Are you raising the lid for your team or are you holding the team back?

Are you growing and helping team members grow or are you stifling the team’s growth and results?

If you want to grow your team, it starts with you as the leader. There is no way around it. In order to recruit the high-level team members you desire, you have to become a leader that attracts such talent. If you are a 5-level leader (on a scale of 1-10), you will attract 3s and 4s. To attract higher level talent, you must become a higher level leader. You will only be able to attract and retain leaders by being a leader they desire to follow. A level 8 leader will not want to work on a team with a level 5 team leader. Even if they come on the team for a season, they won’t last long. They will grow frustrated with your level of leadership ability.

Make a commitment today to grow. Also make a commitment to help your team members grow. As you raise the lid for yourself bring your team along. Share with them what you’re learning. Model greater leadership ability for them. Leadership is more caught than taught. Be an example of a growing leader and watch your team climb to new heights.

Be Intentionally Great today!

It’s been said that experience is the best teacher. However, that’s not completely true. If experience is the best teacher, then people who have accumulated loads of experience would be much wiser than those with less. However, we can see in our society it’s not true. Many people are no different today than 20 years ago.

Instead of having 20 years of experience many people simply have the same experience 20 times over. The former have learned from their experiences and keep growing to improve. The latter repeat their mistakes and often wonder why their lives are no different year after year.

One of the best learning opportunities is from our failures. We try to avoid failure at all costs. However, when we take risks and fail, we can learn lessons to apply to our next attempts. Every failure has the potential to teach us valuable lessons.

The next time you fail, take some time to reflect on the following questions:

• What went wrong?
• What part did I play?
• What was out of my control?
• What can I do differently next time?
• What is the key lesson from this failure?
• What will I do differently next time?

When you take on the posture of learning from failure, you will fear it less and be willing to take more risks. Failure isn’t final if you learn and grow from it. If you adopt the mindset of growing through your failures, you can keep moving forward in your life and be stronger because of the lessons you learn. Don’t let failure paralyze you. Learn from it and let it help you become the person you were created to be.

Be Intentionally Great today!

John Maxwell’s “Law of Influence” states that “Leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less.” This definition of leadership should encourage everyone! Everyone has influence with someone in their lives whether at home, work, or in the community. But influence requires connection.

Connection is critical because to have influence, you must earn trust. To earn trust, you must connect with people. To connect, work to implement the following practices from John Maxwell’s book Everyone Communicates, Few Connect:

• Connectors connect on common ground – find commonalities with the people you are communicating with
• Connectors do the difficult work of keeping it simple – make sure your audience can understand what you are saying; don’t speak over their heads or make things complex
• Connectors create an experience everyone enjoys – find ways to engage the person or team in an enjoyable or memorable way
• Connectors inspire people – find ways to give your team purpose that will motivate
• Connectors live what they communicate – be a model of what you expect from your team

Evaluate yourself using the following questions:

• Where are you strong?
• Where are you weak?
• What can you do to become a better connector starting today?

Regardless of where you rank in connecting currently, you can improve. Connecting is more skill than natural talent. Make the decision today to improve at connecting and watch your influence increase.

Be Intentionally Great today!

In our culture today, it’s easy to want instant results. Like a quick snack or a fast meal, we want our development to be microwavable. Unfortunately, growth is a lifelong journey. It is a process.

As we prepare to begin another new year, many people get wrapped up in making resolutions that don’t last. If you want to be successful over the long haul, your commitment to growth must be long-term rather than a weak resolution that will be forgotten in a  few days or weeks.

As a huge sports fan, one lesson I’ve learned from watching great teams over the years is that they look at each season as a process. They don’t expect to be great at the beginning of a season, but they focus on building each day to become better and better. They want to start strong, but they are more concerned about ending strong. They want to be the last team standing holding up the championship trophy. To get there, they develop a process to work on throughout the season.

Your life should be viewed similarly. Look at your life long-term. How do you want to be described by those closest to you at the end of your life? When you take a long view perspective, you can achieve many goals along the way, but you will always be a work in progress on your growth track.

To accomplish this, start with the end in mind.

• Who do you want to become throughout your lifetime?
• What do you want people to say about you at your funeral?
• What goals do you want to achieve along the way? 

Look at your growth process as a marathon, not a sprint. Pace yourself. Set intermediate goals along the way, but don’t become content just because you accomplish them. Look ahead to the next one and keep moving forward. Enjoy the process. Trust the process. Be intentional about the process.

Be Intentionally Great by committing to a lifelong growth journey. You’ll be glad you did in the end!

“Vision is foresight that comes from insight gained from hindsight.” – John Maxwell

Vision is critical to achieving the results you desire. Just like blurry vision in our eyes creates problems for us to see where we are going,  blurry vision in our personal and professional lives creates problems for us to achieve all that we dream of. You have to see the end result in your mind before you start if you want to be successful. Everything is created mentally before it is created physically. If you don’t like your current situation, check your vision.

• What do you want to achieve? – Begin with the end in mind.
• Who do you need to include? – Nothing great happens without a team.
• What resources do you need? – This could be finances, materials, etc.
• What is the timeline you need to execute the steps? – When to do something is as important as what to do.

Define your vision, then think through the steps that you need to accomplish it. If you start a project without an end in mind, you will run the risk of working tirelessly trying to achieve something that isn’t defined. You will wear yourself out. If you define your vision and write out a plan to accomplish it, you will be able to invest your energy and resources appropriately.

As you conclude 2015 and look forward to a new year, spend time developing a vision for what you want to accomplish in the next 12 months. Write down action steps and a timeline that will help you achieve it. Reflect on your past to learn lessons that will help you move into the future. As the saying goes, “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.” Learn from your past and apply those lessons to achieve your vision for the future.

Be Intentionally Great Today!

As an executive and personal coach, I help people clarify their vision for their lives and organizations. We then develop a plan to take the steps to achieve the desired results.  Contact me today if you are in need of an objective partner to become all that you are designed to be.

It has become a bit cliche to use the airplane oxygen mask illustration, but if you don’t help yourself first, you won’t be able to help others.

When it comes to becoming more valuable in your family, marriage, friendships, and workplace you have to invest in yourself. If you are the same person five years from now that you are today, you won’t be nearly as valuable as you have the potential to be. If you don’t start developing yourself today you are hindering your growth tomorrow.

What do you want to be remembered for? Are you working on becoming that person yet?

What level do you want to achieve in your career? Are you positioning yourself to achieve that level by how you are developing yourself today?

I recognize that it is difficult to do the grinding work today when you won’t see results until later, but if you don’t fight through those feelings you will not move forward to meet your hopes, dreams, and goals down the road.

I was greatly impacted by a John Maxwell video I watched several months ago. He asked “What is your goal for 10 years from now?” Then he asked “What do you need to do in the next 30 days to move towards that goal?”

10 years may seem like a long way off, but when you look back on your life, it will feel like the years flew by. Before you know it, another decade will pass. Will you have done the work needed to see the results that you desire?

Don’t let another day, week, month, or year slip by without taking action to move towards your goals. Invest in yourself. As you do, you will become more valuable to the people around you. Your growth will spill over onto the people in your life.

Be Intentionally Great Today!

My mission as a success coach and leadership trainer is to help you take action to become the best version of yourself. Contact me today to discuss how I can help you and/or your organization achieve greater results!

Perhaps you’ve heard the saying that we should have “the attitude of gratitude.” While that sounds great and inspiring, it is not always an easy virtue to live out. I believe we are all thankful for various people and things in our lives. But do you express it?

Think about the people you have influence with. Are you thankful for them? If so, do they know it?

It is Thanksgiving week. During the month of November each year you can find people posting on social media about who and what they are thankful for. This is nice, but I believe it falls short. We should be expressing regularly throughout the year our thankfulness. And it doesn’t have to be on public display. It can be a private conversation.

Gone are the days of “leading” people with the attitude that they should be glad to have the job they have and their paychecks are thanks enough. Yes, their paychecks are in response for the work they do. However, to lead people well today the best leaders are thankful leaders. They share with their employees and coworkers that they value them. They write notes and emails expressing their thankfulness. They look them in the eye and let them know regularly that they are thankful that they are on the team.

This needs to be authentic. If you are not thankful for someone on your team you need to explore why and address that issue. Assuming you are thankful for them, you need to share it with them.

As Thanksgiving arrives yet again, reflect on who you are thankful for and why. Write them a note. Stop them in the hall and tell them. Invite them to lunch or to have coffee and share how you value them. Be creative!

It is easy to let days, weeks, months, and years slide by without expressing thankfulness. If you have to make a note in your calendar to remind yourself to share your gratitude, do it! Your team members will appreciate it and you will build greater rapport and credibility as a result.

If you are not a thankful leader, I encourage you to reflect on why that is. What is keeping you from being grateful? Explore that deeply. This could be a breakthrough moment for you and your team members.

Be Intentionally Great (and Thankful) Today!

If I can be of service to you or your team in building a more thankful culture please contact me. I would love to partner with with you!

In “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” John Maxwell’s “Law of Magnetism” states that “who you are is who you attract.”

Are you pleased with the team around you? Are you pleased with the friends and acquaintances you have? If not, then it’s time to look in the mirror. Are you becoming the person that you want to have around you?

Determine your ideal team members and/or friends. What characteristics and qualities do you want to have surrounding you?

Once you’ve made this list, evaluate yourself. Are you displaying those qualities? Are you a living example of them?

Do you want to be more successful? Work on your personal and professional development. Become the person that attracts top talent and high-quality friends.

Do you want to have a higher caliber team? Become the person you are wanting so you can attract people of that quality.

In order to have or achieve more in life, you need to become more. Where do you need to start today?

Be Intentionally Great Today!