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4 Things Successful People Know About Self

Jun 10, 2020 | Business Growth, Business Owners, CEOs, Ethical Leadership, Happiness, Leadership, Leadership Development, Success

Self-awareness is a critical element for success. Organizational psychologist and author, Tasha Eurich, conducted a series of surveys which found that 95% of people think they are self-aware but only 10-15% of people truly are. Successful leaders make developing self-awareness a high priority because they know that there is a direct correlation between personal growth and success in life and in business.

Phil Bonstetter and Bill Bonstetter of TTI Success Insights hosted a webinar a few years ago that highlighted the 4 things successful people know about themselves. I want to share these with you today because I believe that developing an understanding of these four things will have tremendous value in your life as they have had in mine.

  1. Successful people know how they do what they do.

Successful people are aware of their own behaviors. They understand how they make decisions and how they best receive information and are also aware of their communication style. This awareness gives people the ability to adapt to their situation which improves their relationships with others and how they interact with the environment.

  1. Successful people know WHY they do what they do. They know what motivates them and have a strong sense of purpose for their lives. A person who understands their driving forces is better able to stay focused on their goals and what really matters most in life and in business.
  2. Successful people know what they can do. Successful people know what talents, skills and abilities they possess. They are also willing to step out of their comfort zone and take advantage of opportunities to develop new skills. Successful people learn from their experiences.
  3. Successful people know where they find happiness This gives them the ability to create their own environment and not let other people shape it. They establish careers and businesses in areas that match their passions which leads to a fuller, more satisfying life.

It is often argued that the meaning of success is subjective but having knowledge of these four factors will help anyone to achieve their own definition of success.

I will be speaking for the Presence Summit, a virtual event, at 9:15 AM on July 15th. The topic of discussion is – What Type of Communicator Are You? The Presence Summit is a full day of stimulating presentations and workshops to help you AMPLIFY and SHARE your value using video communications. Click Here to find out more.

How Will You Emerge From This Crisis

May 6, 2020 | Business Growth, Business Owners, CEOs, Leadership, Leadership Development, Strategic Planning, Success

If you are waiting to get back to “business as usual” you will be grossly disappointed. The world has changed, is changing, and will continue to change. Those who are waiting to go back to “business as usual” will be left behind.

So what do we do to thrive in the “new normal”?

As business leaders, our number one priority is to stay focused on strategy and provide direction for our teams.

You might be wondering what an effective strategic plan even looks like right now. Dennis Carey, Ram Charan and Tierney Remick wrote an article  in The Executive outlining 5 critical “pivots” CEOs must make right now to stay in business and ensure a successful future.

Make employees a top priority.
Keep the organization lean and nimble.
Redefine what a “responsible” balance sheet looks like.
Adapt to consumers’ changing needs.
Step up to social responsibility.
If you want your business to thrive you have to be intentional in your actions and not just reactive. Intentionality requires planning. Ask yourself these questions: Is your current plan still applicable?

Are your goals aligned with the aforementioned criteria? Are you taking action to achieve those goals? Are you communicating openly with your team and are you listening to their feedback?

How you and your business emerge from this crisis depends entirely on what you are doing right now. Are you thinking strategically and acting intentionally? Creating a One Page Strategic Plan is a good first step to ensure that you are.

Click here  for more information and to download the One Page Plan Strategic Checklist and get a jumpstart today!

Adversity is Transformational

Apr 21, 2020 | Business Growth, Business Owners, CEOs, Leadership Development, Motivation, Success

The old saying, “This will either make you or break you” carries a lot of truth. Every contact we have with adversity gives us the opportunity to grow personally and professionally and to forge a great character. It is our choice to accept the challenge and proceed forward or succumb to the pressure and surrender to defeat.

It is in moments of adversity that we see what people are truly made of. Adversity brings out our internal resources. The Roman poet Horace said “Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.” When everything is going well, we coast. There is little stress, and we are operating on autopilot.

But when adversity comes, we begin to draw upon every resource that we have in order to conquer the circumstances at hand. Adversity, then, keeps us sharp and strong. Body builders work their external muscles to build them up. Leaders must do the same thing with their internal muscles.

Adversity strengthens character How will courage, discipline and perseverance ever flourish if we are never tested?

If we look at adversity as an opportunity for growth, we will come out the other side better than when we started. We can use our influence, as leaders and coaches, to hep others improve themselves as well.

Take some time to reflect on these things: What part of your character is being tested and built up? What resources have you employed during this time that you have not used before? What can you learn from these interesting times about yourself and others?

Remember, Setbacks are setups for future success and breakdowns are setups for future breakthroughs.

If you haven’t had the chance to read Dan Sullivan’s “The Scary Times Success Manual” yet, here it is again: Click here (https://achievable.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Scary-Times-Success-Manual-Dan-Sullivan-The-Strategic-Coach.pdf) to download.

This is Your Time to Shine

Apr 14, 2020 | Business Owners, CEOs, Ethical Leadership, Leadership, Leadership Development, Success

Many of us have endured the OPEC oil crisis, hyperinflation, stagnation, Black Monday, the Asian financial crisis, the Dot.com crash, 9/11, the Gulf War, the Great Financial Crisis, and many other blows over the years and we survived and some even thrived through the mess of it all

The reality is we already have the necessary skills for dealing with scary times like this because for most of us we have already been through challenging times just starting and growing our own businesses.

We have faced all kinds of challenges on a daily basis and have grown from them. Entrepreneurs and business owners face uncertainty every day just by virtue of being who we are and how we’ve chosen to live our lives.

We are continually creating a bigger future for ourselves which gives a higher level of clarity, focus and results giving us greater confidence and capability to do it again and again.

Our future is something we always create from our imagination and now is the time to crank up our creative imagination and that of our teams to move forward. This is the time to bring your new ideas forward, to launch new goals, to be proactive, creative and resourceful.

Victor Frankl wrote, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” This is the perfect time to pull out our plan of action for the future and review and update our personal goals and business goals.

It is time to review our Strategic One Page Business plans and the ideal time to grow our mastery of key leadership skills that will help us and our teams moving forward. Now is the time to build relationships and create greater value for our employees, clients, and prospects.

Leaders, this is YOUR time to shine!

If you missed it last week, we want to share The Strategic Coach, Dan Sullivan’s “The Scary Times Success Manual” with our readers again this week. Click here (https://achievable.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Scary-Times-Success-Manual-Dan-Sullivan-The-Strategic-Coach.pdf) to download.

How Do We Cultivate the Necessary Knowledge to Inspire Change?

Feb 25, 2020 | Business Owners, CEOs, Ethical Leadership, Happiness, Leadership, Leadership Development, Productivity, Success

“Knowledge is power” is a phrase credited to Francis Bacon in his Meditationes Sacrae, published in 1597.

Since then, it has been quoted by many, including Thomas Hobbes and Thomas Jefferson, and debated by others who argue that knowledge is not enough to drive action or create change. I would have to say that I agree with both sides.

Lifelong learning is one of the core values of my company, Achievement Unlimited, Inc., and also one of my own personal values. So, yes, I believe that knowledge is power because it is the primary catalyst for action and change. The question we must ask, though, is how do we cultivate the necessary knowledge to inspire change, and once attained, how do we turn that knowledge into action?

I have coached many business owners, C-level executives, and organizational leaders, departments, and teams in goal-setting and strategic planning. Goals and plans are crucial to establish direction and define achievement and success. My experience and most research on the topic show, however, that most of even the best plans fail to be executed.

Why?

Depending on who you ask, there may be different reasons why business leaders, teams, and individuals fail to meet their goals, but I have come to believe it boils down to one reason – thinking. People struggle to meet their goals because they are repeating patterns of thought that stop them from achieving, succeeding, or even just being happy.

The workshop I facilitated last week with my mentor, Peter Demarest of Axiogenics, LLC, created awareness for its participants of how their own personal and individual ways of thinking are stopping them from achieving what really matters most to them in life and in business. We learned that human beings function at their “best” only 5-15 percent of the time. This is because people are stuck in ways of thinking that are counterproductive to achieving what they truly want.

Peter wrote posts for “Tuesdays with Michael” over the past three weeks that highlighted some of the core concepts we discussed in the workshop, including The Central Question, Valuegenic Self-Leadership, and Neuro-axiology, and he dove into greater detail during the workshop about what these mean and how they apply to each individual member of the group.

Each participant took the VQ Profile assessment before coming to the workshop and received their First Steps VQ Assessment Report, which provided them with an explanation of their greatest cognitive asset and two of their most dominant cognitive biases that have limited them in their journeys in business and in life.

Eyes lit up at the revelations made, and the participants discussed how accurate the reports were. A few members shared that they read their reports to their significant others, who responded in agreement to the report. Knowledge of this information is critical in defining the actions needed to break through our limiting beliefs, and we are often very unaware of why we do the things we do that bring us great distress and stop us from realizing our full potential.

This goes back to my beginning point that “knowledge is power” but it cannot stop there. Awareness is the first step, and then the real work begins. Peter gave each participant questions they can ask themselves to help them utilize their cognitive asset to overcome their cognitive biases and create a breakthrough. One participant wrote that the workshop provided “fantastic insight and valuable steps to become a better leader.”

Are you a business owner or C-Level executive who is tired of hitting a wall while striving to achieve your business and personal goals? Are you ready to make the changes necessary to finally achieve what you want with less stress and greater personal fulfillment? The next Self-Leadership Breakthrough is scheduled for Wednesday, March 18 and begins at 8:30 AM. Click here to register.

 

Are You Working on It or Doing the Work? Part 3

Feb 18, 2020 | Business Owners, CEOs, Ethical Leadership, Happiness, Leadership, Leadership Development, Success

By Peter Demarest

In Part 1, we differentiated the concepts of “working on it” versus “doing the work.” In Part 2, we introduced the meaning of “breakthrough,” along with Valuegenic Self-Leadership and The Central Question as a power tool for creating breakthrough shifts in thinking that lead to unprecedented results.

Hopefully, you have been asking yourself this question: “What choice can I make and action can I take, in this moment, to create the greatest net value?”

Now, let’s empower you with some additional insight that can help you better answer The Central Question, so you can do GOOD Work.

GOOD Work

A core tenet of the science of axiology (value science) is a definition of “good” that is simple, universally true, and profoundly important to understand and apply: Something is GOOD to the degree that it has all the attributes required to fulfill its purpose.

If something does not have all the attributes required to fulfill its purpose, it can’t completely fulfill its purpose. A car without brakes is not a good car because it can’t fulfill the purpose of a car. Having a goal or purpose is important, but to fulfill that purpose you must have, acquire, or develop all the attributes needed to achieve that purpose or goal.

One of the most significant barriers to greater success that people, teams, collaborators, and organizations have is a lack of explicit clarity or agreement regarding purpose – the purpose of whatever they are trying to decide, do, achieve, or solve – and the value that the pursuit and achievement of that purpose can create. Yet, most conflicts center on disagreements and differing opinions about attributes while assuming everyone is on the same page regarding purpose.

Inherent in any goal or aspiration is also a value proposition. People will only pursue or do those things that they perceive have enough positive value. Of course, they are also motivated by a perceived threat or loss of value – a negative value proposition. While clarity of purpose provides direction, the value proposition provides the motivation to do the work.

To solve these problems, make it a practice to have explicit conversations with yourself and any collaborators to identify, clarify, and articulate the purpose of any endeavor.

  • What is something that you want to achieve, change, or make better in your life or work that is measurable or observable and would be unprecedented for you? This would be a meaningful goal or aspiration, big or small, short or long-term. This is a purpose.
  • What is the value of succeeding in this endeavor to both organization/team and each individual? Connect the dots. Again, if the value proposition is too low, people won’t engage in consistently doing the work.
  • What are ALL THE ATTRIBUTES required to succeed in this endeavor, and are there existing attributes that are barriers to success?
  • Where do we need to focus our time and energy?

Only after these questions are answered is it time to do the “The GOOD Work.”

“The GOOD Work” is focused on developing the attributes required to fulfill the purpose.

Doing GOOD Work is NOT about focusing on the goal/purpose/results; it’s about focusing on the development of ALL the attributes required to fulfill the purpose or achieve the desire outcome. If you develop ALL the attributes required you automatically succeed in the outcome. Goal-setting, strategizing, and making a list of actions is not enough.

One of the attributes required is the ability – the mental ability – to make good decisions and take effective actions. The No. 1 difference between people who succeed in achieving their goals and those who don’t is the ability to lead themselves in the development of the attributes required to succeed.

This brings us full circle to the difference between “working on it” and “doing the work.”

We all have some good ways of thinking and some not-so-good ways of thinking. We call them cognitive assets (good) and cognitive biases or liabilities (not so good). Research shows that 85-95 percent of our emotions, decisions, and behaviors are controlled by or highly influenced by our subconscious cognitive liabilities. It’s these not-so-good-ways of thinking that undermine our ability to stretch our comfort zone, to engage in deliberate practices, to make changes, and to develop the attributes required to achieve new things. It’s our cognitive liabilities that will prevent us from Doing GOOD Work while claiming to be “working on it.”

Breakthrough Requires Self-Leadership

A breakthrough is “a significant shift in thinking that removes barriers, reveals possibilities, and leads to unprecedented results.”

In the practice of SELF-Leadership, a significant shift in thinking means to be able to deliberately and purposefully shift your thinking to engage your best ways of thinking – your cognitive assets – rather than allowing your old habits – your cognitive liabilities – to dominate your thinking and actions (or inactions).

Asking yourself The Central Question – What choice can I make and action can I take, in this moment, to create the greatest net value? – is a powerful tool for self-leadership and at the root Doing GOOD Work. It will help your shift your thinking and support you taking actions that lead toward unprecedented results.

Moving Forward Toward Greater Success

In summary …

  • Be honest with yourself: are you “Doing GOOD Work” or just “working on it”?
  • Get clear on your purpose and its value proposition.
  • Determine what attributes you need to develop in order to succeed.
  • Focus on developing those attributes.
  • Use the Central Question to help you make better choices, take better actions, and Do Good Work.