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Asking the Right Questions to Lead Your Team to Success

Nov 20, 2022 | Business Growth, Business Owners, Goal Setting, Leadership, Strategic Planning, Success, Uncategorized

Are you asking the right question to lead your team to success?

What Really Matters Most in life, leadership, and organizational development?

As we prepare to move into the coming year, let’s take a deep dive into this question. Essentially is it a question? Or is it a matter of focus? I believe it’s both.

In order to focus on your life, leadership, and organization, you must first address “What Really Matters Most?” as a question. To transform it from a question to a focus, you must assess where you are now compared with where you want to be.

Rather than reacting to past results and current circumstances, focus on “what really matters most” requires an awareness of and commitment to your vision and purpose. As the saying from Proverbs goes “without a vision, people perish.” There is no pragmatic way to determine how to spend our time, effort, energy and resources without answering this question.

Without focus, you become a victim of current achievements, constantly reworking to compensate for unintended outcomes. We must do some deep work to design our vision.

Today’s leaders face unprecedented positive and negative forces on organizational management. These forces of change present special challenges to leadership and to the workforce. To become a results-driven team, you need extreme clarity on your vision, purpose, and strategy communicated to all involved in supporting its execution. Organizational performance measurably improves as everyone develops an absolute focus on results. This companywide focus on ‘what really matters most’ allows all members to consistently create, develop, and track the results in tandem.

You also need to develop your leadership team, creating programs that give them tools to change their thinking and behavior to achieve sustainable results, growth, and profitability. By developing your people into self-leaders, they will grow and move forward to answer “What Really Matters Most” for your business.

Future looking leaders will use the competitive edge found in developing self-leadership in employees at all levels of the company. Your people are the ones to make it happen. Hence the need for clarity, focus, and a real understanding of “What Really Matters Most” at all levels. Do you have a winning strategy to get you to What Really Matters Most?  

Take your Resolutions from Goal to Reality

Nov 14, 2022 | Goal Setting, Motivation, Strategic Planning, Success

Three Game Changing Words to take Resolutions from Goals to Reality

 

It is time for New Year Goal Setting and people are taking their resolutions much more seriously than in years past. This is no surprise for leaders in the field of business strategy, productivity, and leadership because we know the critical importance and power of goal setting. 

 

There is a lot of optimism that this coming year will be better.  You will see realization of your hopes and dreams with a rigorous planning process to kick off the new year.  There is no doubt that life and business will continue to change because change is the only constant. Management guru Peter Drucker wisely said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” 

  

Setting goals or resolutions is not enough.  Studies continue to show that less than 10% of people who make resolutions succeed. How can you beat the odds?  These three areas are key to success in every endeavor: Clarity, Focus, and System.

 

Clarity.  Far too many people have clarity around what they don’t want rather than what they truly want their future to be. Hazy goals produce hazy results, but SMART goals get you to the finish line. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Tangible goals.  Paul J. Meyer, founder of Success Motivation Institute, said, “Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass.” A crystal-clear strategy and a daily routine of habits will drive you toward your goals.  Your goals must be in alignment with your core values; people never make difficult changes for goals that don’t support their most important values

   

Focus. Goals provide focus and direction.  You should only have a few significant goals at a time. The more goals you have, the less resources you can commit to them.  “If you aren’t making the progress you would like to make and are capable of making, it is simply because your goals aren’t clearly defined,” explains Paul J Meyer. Focus is so important because you will only achieve goals you are fully committed to.

 

System. To achieve an important goal, it is critical to have a system. John Dryden said, “We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”  Your daily routine, daily huddles and focus on high payoff activities are the backbone of your personal and professional life.  You will never achieve your goals until you change your daily habits and routines.   

 

At Achievement Unlimited, we have the tools, systems, and software to make your New Year goals a reality.  

 

Getting Results Through Others By Communicating More Effectively

May 4, 2021 | Leadership, Leadership Development, Productivity, Success

Probably the number one challenge for companies that I have found through working with my is  communicating effectively on a consistent basis. We have more ways to communicate than ever before in our history and yet in most cases do a terrible job at it. Many people in business communicate but few truly connect or are understood which leads to a lot of mutual mystification. For this reason, I want to review some way that we can communicate more effectively.  

Let’s look at a couple of areas:

The first area is communication factors.  Our communication consists of 3 factors: the words we use, the tone and inflection of those words and body language which includes facial expressions. Profesor Albert Mehrabian of the University of California in Los Angeles studied communicated and found that of our total communication message the words represent only 7%, the tonality is 38% and our body language is 55%. Right here we can see lots of ways for our communication may be misunderstood.

You can also use other models, such as the DISC model to understand communication styles. DISC is the universal language of observable human behavior. It creates a report that tells the assessment taker HOW they do what they do. One of the great values behind the DISC model is you can take an assessment and in 10 minutes identify your style and you can also learn the style of everyone on your team. Knowing each others’ communication style and adapting your style to communicate better is an excellent way to improve the communication of your team.

There are also barriers to Effective Communication that we must be aware of and seek to overcome. The first is attitude. The truth is people do things for their reasons, not ours, so we have to be in tune to their attitudes and values. Another is lack of trust – trust is earned and not bestowed, so it is important to develop a trusting relationship with the people we are communicating with in the workplace and every area of our lives.  The third is distractions – internal and external. External distractions surround us daily such as people, notifications on social media or e-mail, background noise. Internal distractions are our head trash, internal dialogue and/or lack of interest. We must seek to eliminate distractions whenever possible. Our preconceived thoughts and ideas can also negatively impact communication. These can include personal prejudices, perceptions, and personality traits. As we increase our own self-awareness, we can more easily identify which personal factors may be inhibiting our communication with others.  Lack of communication skill is another issue. Most people don’t really know how to connect and listen, it is important to study communication styles and practice effective communication.  Lack of concentration can cause us to miss important information and talking too much means we are not listening. Having an “I” focus is another major barrier to communication. When you are all about you and not the other person, you are not REALLY hearing what they are saying.

A Few Commandments of Good Communication

  1. Develop trust and credibility. It’s not automatically given; it must be earned. Authentic sincerity helps to create an atmosphere of trust.
  2. Effective communicators use the 5 C’s in their message: Clear, Complete, Concise, Concrete, and Correct.
  3. Every perspective is a perspective.
  4. What we hear and what we see depends largely on what we are listening and looking for.
  5. Openly communicate more than you have to or need to. Make it your top priority. Say what you mean. Say exactly what you mean.

The real question is: How do you know if you are successful at communicating? 

The Secret to Getting More Done

Mar 22, 2021 | Business Owners, CEOs, Productivity, Success

A principle that operates in every area of our life and business and one that can help you become more effective is the 80/20 Pareto Principle. The 80/20 Rule is one of the most important and helpful concepts of all time. It is also called the Pareto Principle after its founder, the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who first discovered it in the early 1800’s.

What it means is that approximately 20% of the ACTIVITIES you spend your time, effort, energy and resources on will produce 80% of your RESULTS. We call those top 20% of activities your High Payoff Activities or Wealth Creating Activities. Twenty percent of your efforts will produce eighty percent of your results.

On the other hand, 80% of the activities that you spend your time, effort, energy and resources on are producing only 20% of the results! We call them Low Payoff Activities. These low payoff activities will make little if any impact on your goals and your results. This means that only a small portion of your activities are vital and those contribute the most towards you goals and accomplishments.  This implies there may be just a handful of activities, perhaps only 2, 3 or 4 activities that are producing 80% of the results you currently experience! Focus on the 20% activities that drive your results. Focus on those 20% of activities that make the greatest impact to unlock higher productivity, greater profits and rewards in your business and personal life. You should spend 80 percent of your time doing the things that you do best. Typically, this means that if you have a list of 10 items to do, two of those items will turn out to be worth as much or more than the other eight items put together.       

The bottom line is we all have the same 24 hours in a day to accomplish our goals.  As business owners you must constantly ask: what is the highest and best use of my time right now.  Am I working on the highest payoff activity I can?

Critical to your success is learning to say no to any activities, to anything that is not really a good use of your time.  Constantly ask what really matters most in my organization. Time is going to pass anyway so you may as well make the best use of it.

We all have the same 168 hours in the week to work with. What happens is we get enslaved in the 80% of the activities that are only producing 20% of the results. We spend 80 percent of our time doing unproductive and meaningless things, and by the end of the day we feel exhausted, frustrated, and angry.

Wasted time! Wasted effort! Wasted energy! Wasted resources!
Stop wasting your precious time right now and start applying the 80/20 rule to your business by spending your time, effort, energy and vital resources on those HPA’s that are going to return tremendous investment back to you.

It’s not the hours you put in that count; it’s what you put in the hours.

 

 

The Right Questions Lead You to the Right Vision

Nov 10, 2020 | Business Growth, Business Owners, CEOs, Goal Setting, Strategic Planning, Success

How has your vision changed for your business and personal life over the past few months? Have you taken the time to think about how the current pandemic and economic turmoil has impacted this vision? Is it the same as it was before or completely different? Hellen Keller once said “The only thing worse than being blind is having no vision.” Even though we cannot completely know what will happen tomorrow or even five minutes from now, it is important to have a detailed image in our minds of what we want to achieve in the long-term. This may change and this is ok, too. But we must always be able to imagine how achieving our goals will look to us and the world around us. We might also imagine how it might feel to achieve those goals and how we might benefit the people in our communities.

A business vision is a crystal-clear image of the future we wish to create. It describes what our company aspires to be and how the world could be impacted, hopefully positively, by our company’s actions. If we want to consistently move toward our vision, we must know what it is, inside and out. We can ask ourselves questions to better understand this vision and in doing so, we can gain clarity on how to achieve it.

There are two main types of questions we can ask, inward questions and outward questions. Inward questions allow us to discover information about ourselves and our business. Some examples of inward questions include:

What do we do best?

 What are our strengths?

What is an ideal organization and how can we be that organization?

How do we want to influence the world around us?

Outward questions lead us to uncover information about our industry and customers. Some examples include:

How is our industry changing?

What is our competition doing in response to market changes?

What are we hearing from customers about their needs?

If you answer these questions you will have a solid jumpstart on developing a vision for your business that takes into account today’s reality and consumer needs. If you want to continue building this vision and begin designing a strategy to achieve it, join the FAST TRACK Challenge beginning November 16th. Click Here for more information.

I Challenge You!

Nov 9, 2020 | Goal Setting, Strategic Planning, Success

I hope you have received my hints that creating a strategic plan is critical to your success in business and in life. If you have not or if you do not believe me, think about what Jim Rohn said, “Success is 20% skills and 80% strategy. You might know how to succeed, but more importantly, what’s your plan to succeed?” The end of 2020 is nearing and there is no better time to set aside some “think time” and create a plan for 2021.

Do you know what you want to achieve in 2021? Do you have a clear and specific, written plan for how you are going to achieve those goals? Do you think you could benefit from LIVE coaching on developing your plan? I will be hosting the Fast Track Strategic Plan Challenge with Marc Daniels, CEO of ResultsBI, beginning November 16th. Over 5 days in one hour zoom sessions, we will walk you through creating a strategic plan for your company. Here is a brief glimpse of what we will go over in those 5 days.

Day 1 – Vision: It all starts with your vision. Where are you going? Why are you doing this? What really matters most to you? What are your core values?

Day 2 – Foundation: Who is your target market? When you get this right, it provides context for all you do. Who are you speaking to in your marketing efforts? What is your brand? How are you positioned in your market?

Day 3- Long-Term: We will cover two well-known analyses that will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of your market and help you identify your strategic moves: 5 Competitive Forces & PEST Analyses. Have you taken a look at your competition recently? Do you know what they are doing to overcome the current challenges faced by your industry? Have you defined your Long-Term Strategic Moves?

Day 4 – SWOT: We will discuss the old standard SWOT Analyses and go over the SWaTOL for leveraging trends and identifying strategic projects.

Day 5 – Execution: What does it mean to be an Effective Execution Leader?

Larry Bossidy is quoted as saying, “Execution is the ability to mesh strategy with reality, align people with goals, and achieve the promised results.” Are you ready to stand up to this challenge?

Over the next few weeks, I will dive into greater detail about some of the topics mentioned today but now is the time to start thinking about the answers to the questions I presented to you and maybe even write those answers down. If you want to find out more about the Fast Track Strategic Plan Challenge, click here. Space is limited and registration closes November 14th.