Business Leadership Skills 02 (Feb 13 - Apr 15)

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"It's a lot easier to do good work when you have good words to say and work with good people."
- Mark Harmon

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"Profit is a reward for satisfying the desires of others. The more you satisfy those desires, the more you will profit."
- Harry Browne

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"If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough."
-- Edward Everett Hale, Clergyman

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Creating a Blueprint fo your Life by Brian Tracy

Do you know the common characteristic of top salespeople? They have taken the time to sit down and create a clear blueprint for themselves and their future lives.

Even if they started the process of goal setting and personal strategic planning with a little skepticism, every one of them has become a true believer.


Becoming a True Believer

Every one of them has been amazed at the incredible power of goal setting and strategic planning. Every one of them has accomplished far more than they ever believed possible in selling and they ascribe their success to the deliberate process of thinking through every aspect of their work and their lives, and then developing a detailed, written road map to get them to where they wanted to go.


The Definition of Happiness

Happiness has been defined as, "The progressive achievement of a worthy ideal, or goal." When you are working progressively, step-by-step toward something that is important to you, you generate within yourself a continuous feeling of success and achievement.

You feel more positive and motivated. You feel more in control of your own life. You feel happier and more fulfilled. You feel like a winner, and you soon develop the psychological momentum that enables you to overcome obstacles and plough through adversity as you move toward achieving the goals that are most important to you.


Determine Your Values

Personal strategic planning begins with your determining what it is you believe in and stand for-your values. Your values lie at the very core of everything you are as a human being. Your values are the unifying principles and core beliefs of your personality and your character.

The virtues and qualities that you stand for are what constitute the person you have become from the beginning of your life to this moment.

Your values, virtues and inner beliefs are the axle around which the wheel of your life turns. All improvement in your life begins with you clarifying your true values and then committing yourself to live consistent with them.


Fuzzy or Clear?

Successful people are successful because they are very clear about their values. Unsuccessful people are fuzzy or unsure. Complete failures have no real values at all.


Build Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem

Values clarification is the beginning exercise in building self-confidence, self-esteem and personal character. When you take the time to think through your fundamental values, and then commit yourself to living your life consistent with them, you feel a surge of mental strength and well-being. You feel stronger and more capable. You feel more centered in the universe and more competent of accomplishing the goals you set for yourself.


Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, decide for yourself what makes you truly happy and then organize your life around it. Write down your goals and make plans to achieve them.

Second, begin with your values by deciding what it is you stand for and believe in. Commit yourself to live consistent with your inner most convictions - and you'll never make another mistake.


Source: Brian Tracy International

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"The ability to communicate with everybody, regardless of who are you are, is a great thing."

- Bobby Bonilla, Baseball Player

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"You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do."
-- Henry Ford

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Agenda for an efficient meeting

In the workplace, time is of the essence, and meetings can be the ultimate timewaster.

How can you avoid wasting time and run the most efficient meetings possible?

Try these tips

- Start and finish the meeting on time. If there’s more to consider, plan the appropriate follow-up actions or schedule another meeting.

- At the close of the meeting, ask if participants are comfortable with the outcomes.

- Make sure all meeting participants know that you expect them to be on time and prepared to discuss their agenda items.

- Encourage everyone to speak up. Quieter people may have valuable contributions, but they may need some encouragement to share them.

- Provide a detailed agenda for each meeting. It should include topics for and the purpose of discussion, as well as a discussion leader and time allotment for each topic. Distribute the agenda a couple of days before the meeting so that meeting participants have time to prepare.

- Assign someone to take notes in each meeting. That way, decisions and follow-up action items are documented and can be circulated to the meeting’s participants.

- Determine which meetings are really necessary. If the objective of a meeting is to simply update others about ongoing projects, it might make more sense to send a memo or group e-mail, or to post the information on your company’s computer network. However, for in-depth discussions, meetings generally work best.


Source: www.wisdomtips.com

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Attitude Versus Aptitude

Did you know that a major source of stress in your life is the "fear of rejection" or "fear of criticism"? This fear of rejection manifests itself in an over-concern for the approval or disapproval of your boss or other people.

The fear of rejection is often learned in early childhood as the result of a parent giving the child what psychologists call "conditional love." Have you ever experienced this type of fear?


Rise Above the Need for Approval

Many parents made the mistake of giving love and approval to their children only when their children did something that they wanted them to do. A child who has grown up with this kind of conditional love tends to seek for unconditional approval from others all his or her life.

When the child becomes an adult, this need for approval from the parent is transferred to the workplace and onto the boss. The adult employee can then become preoccupied with the opinion of the boss. This preoccupation can lead to an obsession to perform to some undetermined high standard.


Avoid Type A Behavior

Doctors Rosenman and Friedman, two San Francisco heart specialists, have defined this obsession for performance as "Type A behavior." Experts have concluded that approximately 60% of men and as many as 30% of women are people with Type A behavior.


Don't Burn Yourself Out

This Type A behavior can vary from mild forms to extreme cases. People who are what they call "true Type A's" usually put so much pressure on themselves to perform in order to please their bosses that they burn themselves out. They often die of heart attacks before the age of 55. This Type A behavior, triggered by conditional love in childhood, is a very serious stress-related phenomenon in the American workplace.


Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to deal with the fear of rejection, criticism and disapproval.

First, realize and accept that the opinions of others are not important enough for you to feel stressed, unhappy or over concerned about them. Even if they dislike you entirely, it has nothing to do with your own personal worth and value as a person.

Second, refuse to be over concerned about what you think people are thinking about you. The fact is that most people are not thinking about you at all. Relax and get on with your life.


Source: Brian Tracy International

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Don't be too busy doing "stuff" that it prevents you from achieving real accomplishments.

- Craig Ballantyne

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"Change before you have to."

- Jack Welch