How many times in your business career have you been in an organization where real energy was expended to building collaboration and sharing? How successful were these efforts? Building collaboration in the workplace is not an easy job, is it? But we’d all agree that the payoffs certainly outweigh the efforts, wouldn’t we?
The notion of a lone genius has always been a myth. As W. Brian Arthur observed in The Nature of Technology, innovations are combinations, so it is unlikely that anyone ever has all the pieces to the puzzle. Even Steve Jobs depended on a small circle of loyalists. Today, however, the ability to collaborate is becoming a key competitive advantage.
Over the years in my career, I’ve had the good fortune of being exposed to many smart people and worked as part of many teams trying to build collaboration and sharing. It never ceases to amaze me how just a few moments of discussion, or sitting and listening to well-thought-out debates, can open your mind to ideas you can’t believe you didn’t think of on your own.
In General Stanley McChrystal’s efforts to transform the Special Forces in Iraq, he ran into challenges trying to get diverse teams to work together. Yet he saw that by building connections between units he could build a “team of teams” that was able to effectively coordinate action. In One Mission, his aide-de-camp, Chris Fussell, describes two strategies used to achieve this effect.
The first was to leverage high-performing liaison officers to build personal connections among disparate units. The second, called the “O&I” forum, was a daily video conference that was designed to create informal connections between officers at an “operational cadence.” Since leaving the military, McChrystal and Fussell have had similar success implementing these strategies in civilian organizations at their consulting group.
Creative convergence depends on group collaboration … how well do you work in groups?
I have always found the wisdom of others to be something of a gift: free of charge, no limit to its value. No limits to its value because these pearls of wisdom can be connected to some of your ideas to produce something greater than what you might have created on your own.
For example, consider this example. It takes a great entrepreneur with the vision to start a business, but it requires strong leadership collaboration skills and the collaboration of many people to make it a success.
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals. Note that collaboration is NOT cooperation … it is more than the intersection of common goals, but a collective determination to reach an identical objective by sharing knowledge, learning, and building consensus.
Collaboration is an attribute that cuts across many businesses and business processes. We need to make it an intentional process and cultivate it into the team’s culture.
We recently came across an interesting IBM Report: Charting the Social Universe.
In an atmosphere where your value is defined by your ability to share your expertise rather than safeguard it, collaboration is crucial. In this Center for Applied Insights study, Charting the Social Universe, respondents were asked how they defined the term “social business.”
Their response? It’s all about collaboration: 74 percent defined a social business as one that uses social technology to foster collaboration among customers, employees and partners.
Collaboration doesn’t happen overnight. To better understand organizations’ approaches to adopting social, they were asked which social capabilities they had deployed, and for what business purposes. From these questions, four important ideas were derived:
Drive both internal and external collaboration
Build and educate employees
Gain customer insights and engage them
Use what you learned to improve business processes
Examples of collaboration in the workplace.
Let’s examine driving internal and external collaboration, which was the most common entry point for organizations. This idea includes social capabilities such as collaborative apps, enterprise social networks, and social media marketing. The study outlines some additional key findings, but here are the insights from organizations focused on driving internal and external collaboration:
Because this ambition is often a company’s entry point into social, many are still in a relatively immature phase:
43 percent of respondents say they’re in the early stages of adopting these types of capabilities. But that will soon change as 53 percent say they’ll have an enterprise-wide strategy for these capabilities in the next two to three years.
69 percent have no formal qualitative metrics to assess the effectiveness of these social capabilities. Instead, they have a general, informal sense of their performance. But, interestingly, their #1 concern when deploying these capabilities is uncertainty in the return on investment.
It’s all about encouragement:
What was their #1 catalyst for deploying these capabilities? 39 percent say employee evangelists championed the use of these social capabilities.
52 percent say the best way to drive adoption of these capabilities internally is a regular encouragement.
And two wildcards jumped out to the study team:
54 percent have a published set of guidelines for these capabilities.
For social media marketing, Facebook is most commonly used, followed by Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.
Are you looking to drive internal and external collaboration within your organization? Want your employees to share their unique knowledge and expertise instead of keeping it to themselves?
Here are a few tips you need to consider:
Develop formal metrics to prove the value of your social efforts.
Successful collaboration in the workplace.
Pursue an enterprise social strategy.
Identify employee evangelists to spread the word about social capabilities.
Focus on employee adoption – keep encouraging them to use social, and remind them why.
The bottom line
Creative ideas on how to build collaborative teams must include exploring, imagining, experimenting, and learning with others. Most of all, it requires reaching out to others to collaborate. The sum of group collaboration is always greater than the work of each individual.
The notion of a lone genius has always been a myth. As W. Brian Arthur observed in The Nature of Technology, innovations are combinations, so it is unlikely that anyone ever has all the pieces to the puzzle. Even Steve Jobs depended on a small circle of loyalists. Today, however, the ability to collaborate is becoming a key competitive advantage.
So how do you focus and motivate a group of individuals to share their knowledge and collaborate as a team?
What do you believe is a fundamental requirement to support innovation in a team environment? We believe collaboration and teamwork are fundamental to good innovation sessions and we work hard in our workshops to build these qualities.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Helen Keller once said: When one door of happiness closes, another opens. But often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. Have you ever given this Helen Keller quote any thought? Think about it for a moment. How does it play into leadership behaviors?
Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others’ success, and then standing back and letting them shine.
Nothing really prepares you to be a leader. In most cases, you get the opportunity to lead by being good at something else. However, while being a strong performer gives you the credibility to lead, it says nothing about your ability to lead. Leadership is a skill in its own right and, for the most part, it’s one you learn on the job.
Ever wondered how the best leaders handle being at the top so effortlessly? The truth is, these highly successful people do stumble, worry, and doubt themselves.
It happens to them, just like the rest of us. But they are very good at mastering the way they are perceived.
Let’s examine 8 leadership game changing behaviors that can help in the way you are perceived:
Get into action
It is critical that you learn the importance of the start. This relative to whatever you have been postponing. Just do it, as Nike likes to tell its customers and potential customers.
If you wait for the perfect time to start, it will never happen. You will have accomplished nothing.
Great leaders don’t work in existing systems. They change the systems to give them what they want.
They don’t delay the start. They come up with new options for jobs, projects, and professional development. Many of these their bosses hadn’t even thought of.
They see an opportunity coming their way before most of the rest of us have even looked up from our laptops. They don’t hesitate to seize the initiative, do they?
Observing and learning from those around you makes you stronger, better. Never fail to see its value.
Your peers, as well as competitors, can usually teach you more than your friends. Let them. Learn from them.
To be a great leader, you need to have a strong will and an even stronger stomach. At the end of the day, you need to remind yourself that your job isn’t to make everyone happy. Rather, it is to improve the organization as a whole.
Good leaders are constantly trying to improve. They surround themselves with the ablest people they can find. They look squarely at their own mistakes and deficiencies.
They ask frankly what skills they and the company will need in the future. And because of this, they can move forward with confidence. Confidence that’s grounded in the facts, not built on fantasies about their talent.
Leadership behaviors … ask for help
Never, ever, hesitate to ask for help in anything you are doing. You can’t possibly know and keep up with everything. Ask, listen well, and learn.
Leadership behaviors … keep things in perspective
Find balance in everything you do in life.
A man should never neglect family for business.
It’s important to have work-life balance. Never be so consumed in business activities that you neglect the individuals whom you need the most.
But aside from this, great leaders know they need a balanced life. A life so that they’ll learn more about other people, gain perspective, and grow their own knowledge.
It’s easy to fall into the idea that our work is all that matters. You are not the center of all things important. The lives of others don’t revolve around you. Don’t act like they do.
Persistence is key. Always keep up the effort as you will never know how close to success you may be.
Think about your energy. It’s not just about what you like best, but about what feeds you. It is also what depletes you. And who.
Do what you can to increase the good stuff and decrease the bad. You just need to realize you have the power to accomplish it. Much more than you may have imagined.
Eliminate whatever it is in your life that’s draining you. Replace it with something that inspires you. This will definitely help your persistence.
No fear of failure
No matter how confident someone may seem, everyone is afraid of failing. All of us are afraid of screwing up or afraid of looking stupid.
But great leaders know that everyone they interact with is also afraid.
These people are successful because they act in the face of fear. They go after what they believe, seek change, and, ultimately, make a difference.
They also believe they can take a risk because even if they fail, they’ll be able to learn from it and overcome it.
Their fear doesn’t hold them back. Instead, it springs them into action. They know not stretching themselves is worse than failing.
Dreams always follow those who have the courage to fail. Those that do, get up, and reflect and learn from the experience
Wear your passion
Always wear your passion in what you are doing. To do that, you must find those things that you love. Follow the passion.
Passion it is what gives you the strength to overcome the obstacles to everyday tasks. Passion is your power. It is what keeps you going when everyone else gets tired and gives up.
Continuous improvement
Always work hard at being a little better than you were the day before. Continuous learning is one of the most important attributes in both your work and personal environment.
Great leaders know that every step they take, every decision they make, matters in the end. They know they must strategize carefully, and then act decisively.
They know they must think ahead. Not just to their next step, but to the many steps after it.
The bottom line
We all have our talents, but the innate ability will only take you so far. In the final analysis, what makes transformational leaders different is their ability to transform themselves to suit the needs of their mission.
Practice these leadership behaviors often. Think ahead for your greatest leadership advantages.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your ability to lead. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, history may be providing ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
It’s up to you to keep improving your leadership learning and experience from all around in your environment.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your leadership better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Failure and persistence go hand in glove, don’t they? But not everyone can muster the success of these story examples of failure and persistence. We can all learn a ton from these examples and personalities. And when applied, these lessons can be the difference.
Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others’ success, and then standing back and letting them shine.
Social media is like a bank account. You simply cannot withdraw more value than you deposit into your account! Too many people wrongly view social media as an auto-pilot cash cow, money tree, or limitless personal ATM. I assure you… it is not. It requires effort and careful planning, and you will only get out of it what you are willing to put into it.
A quick splash of value-free content will only produce quick and limited results at best. Just as Chinese food always leaves you hungry an hour later, quick social media splashes always leave you dying of thirst in a social media desert sooner rather than later.
Failure can often be the highway to success. Tom Watson Sr. (of IBM fame) said, “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.” If you study history, you will find that all stories of success are also stories of great failures. But people don’t see the failures. They only see one side of the picture and they say that person had lots of luck on his side: “He must have been at the right place at the right time.”
I spent the first 17 years of my career at IBM before they sold the division I worked in. I learned a great deal about Tom Watson in those years. He was an awesome example of persistence in both business and life.
There is probably no better example of failure and persistence that I know of. Let me share Lincoln’s life history with you. This was a man who failed in business at the age of 21 ; was defeated in a legislative race at age 22; failed again in business at age 24; overcame the death of his sweetheart at age 26; had a nervous breakdown at age 27; lost a congressional race at age 34; lost a senatorial race at age 45; failed in an effort to become vice-president at age 47; lost a senatorial race at age 49; and was elected president of the United States at age 52.
Would you dare call him a failure? He could have quit anywhere along the line. But to Lincoln, defeat was a detour and not a dead end. And a great source of learning.
Story Examples of Failure … Colonel Sanders
Colonel Sanders, at age 65, with a beat-up car and a $100 check from Social Security, realized he had to do something. He remembered his mother’s recipe and went out selling. How many doors did he have to knock on before he got his first order? It is estimated that he had knocked on more than a thousand doors before he got his first order.
How many of us quit after three tries, ten tries, a hundred tries, and then we say we tried as hard as we could? Quite a lesson of persistence for us all, isn’t it?
Another story for you: Great Stories and Storytelling Can Have a Very Healing Influence
Wright Brothers
A New York Times editorial on December 10, 1903, questioned the wisdom of the Wright Brothers who were trying to invent a machine, heavier than air that would fly. One week later, at Kitty Hawk, the Wright Brothers took their famous flight.
As a young cartoonist, Walt Disney faced many rejections from newspaper editors, who said he had no talent. Even fired from one who told him he lacked imagination and original ideas.
One day a minister at a church hired him to draw some cartoons. Disney was working out of a small mouse infested shed near the church. After seeing a small mouse, he was inspired. That was the start of Mickey Mouse.
How many people would have received the spark of inspiration from that source? Not many I’m afraid.
W. Clement Stone
Have you ever heard of W. Clement Stone, the fantastic self-builder model? He was just 3 when his father died, leaving nothing but gambling debts and his wife and son in poverty. At age 6, he was selling newspapers on the street to help support his family.
He frequently told the story of his early business life which started with the selling of newspapers in restaurants. At the time, this was a very novel thing to do, which deviated dramatically from the normal practice of young boys hawking newspapers on street corners.
This story showed the persistence, style and initiative of Stone … one that would stay with him for his entire very successful career.
Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 82nd on its list of The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
A high school dropout whose personal struggles with drugs and poverty culminated in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Having persistence and failure is not easy, is it?
Lee De Forest
In 1913, Lee De Forest, inventor of the triodes tube, was charged by the district attorney for using fraudulent means to mislead the public into buying stocks of his company by claiming that he could transmit the human voice across the Atlantic. He was publicly humiliated.
Can you imagine where we would be without his invention?
Thomas Edison
One day a partially deaf four year old kid came home with a note in his pocket from his teacher, “Your Tommy is too stupid to learn, get him out of the school.” His mother read the note and answered, “My Tommy is not stupid to learn, I will teach him myself.”
And that Tommy grew up to be the great Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison had only three months of formal schooling and he was partially deaf.
The bottom line
Do you consider any of these people failures? They succeeded in spite of problems, not in the absence of them. But to the outside world, it appears as though they just got lucky.
“I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.”
For some reason, many of us have been conditioned to be more afraid of failure than we are of inaction. However, failure, in addition to being inherently valuable as a learning process, contains within it the chance of success. And no matter how small that chance is, it’s better than the chances of success when we choose not to even try.
Successful people don’t do great things, they only do small things in a great way.
All success stories are stories of great failures. The only difference is that every time they failed, they bounced back. This is called failing forward, rather than backward. You learn and move forward. Learn from your failure and keep up your persistence.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to innovate your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More inspirational stories from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Never Give Up Your Dreams
The Story of Tank the Dog or Is It Reggie?
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
It takes a great entrepreneur with vision to start a business, but it requires strong leadership collaboration skills and a collaboration of many people to make it a success. And belive me Neil Patel would know about leadership collaboration skills.
How good are your leadership collaboration skills?
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, Note that collaboration is NOT cooperation …it is more than the intersection of common goals, but a collective determination to reach an identical objective by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus.
According to an old military axiom, the weakest point always follows success. At those times it’s hard to resist the temptation to loosen up, take a breather, and abandon the intense concentration needed to fight your way up the next hill.
Once a battle is won, soldiers are liable to ignore the sound of a twig snapping beneath the boot of an approaching scout, or overlook the glow of a distant campfire. Like soldiers, mountaineers say the most dangerous moment of their ascents is after they’ve reached the peak of a mountain. That’s when they’re most likely to fall into a crevasse or slip on a ledge.
Surgeons, too, can find it difficult to stay focused once an operation has apparently succeeded. Until then, the demands of operating absorb their attention so completely that the scalpel seems almost to move itself.
Collaboration is an attribute that cuts across many businesses and business processes. We need to make it an intentional process and cultivate it into the team’s culture.
That’s where leadership comes in as a key ingredient, to drive the collaborative process to make the whole team better than the sum of the parts.
If you don’t mind, let me ask you the importance of collaboration in your business team? We would love to hear an example of it. As a favor, please share it below. It would be greatly appreciated by us and our readers.
Let me illustrate a point about difficulties with collaboration with this story.
Once upon a time a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.
The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn’t see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back. Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.
“Hellooo Mr. Frog!” called the scorpion across the water, “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?”
“Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?” asked the frog hesitantly.
“Because,” the scorpion replied, “If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!”
Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. “What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!”
“This is true,” agreed the scorpion, “But then I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of the river!”
“Alright then…how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?” said the frog.
“Ahh…,” crooned the scorpion, “Because you see, once you’ve taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!”
So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog’s back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog’s soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog’s back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
“You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog’s back. “I could not help myself. It is my nature.”
Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river…
Well, I guess scorpions are going to be scorpions.
And people are always going to act according to human nature.
We can try to fight it and resist it, but at the end of the day, people are going to be people.
So here it is … it all starts with how to be the leader in your own life, but then extends to learning the following skills for building a great collaborative team:
Build and maintain trust …trust is a key element we all need to set aside vulnerability, but it is hard to build, and easy to lose. It is not built on words, but through actions and evidence. Only when it works can a team address the necessary issues to win.
Related: Building Collaboration and Sharing Skills in your Staff
Expect conflict to reach consensus … conflicts and fights are not the same thing. Conflicts are normal and required factual push backs in business, whereas fights are emotional, often personal, disagreements which do not lead forward to consensus.
Embrace change …change is the only constant in business, so make it your competitive advantage. Initiate change rather than react to it, and give clear instructions to help the team understand why the change is necessary, and how it will make the situation better.
Establish a level of analysis, structure, and control …the challenge is to strike the right balance. With none, things fall into chaos, but too much can have the effect of stifling innovation and creativity.
Make decisions …in general, any decision is better than no decision. Usually a blended approach is the best, between independent decisions, and collaborative decisions factoring in the best team input. Picking the best team members is a the right starting decision.
Foster continuous communication …communication is the glue that forms the bond between leaders and teams, and holds great teams together. Credibility is a required base.
Provide recognition.
Provide recognition …recognition drives motivation and human behavior, and human behavior drives results. Recognition validates people and their purpose. Intangible rewards can have an even greater impact than tangible ones, but they must be relevant.
Create learning experiences …we all have a desire to learn and grow. The best learning opportunities are experience and sharing .
In today’s fast-moving digital business age, we face an entirely new environment for innovation and collaboration. The best companies are the best collaborators.
In the new networked world, more and more business will be done through collaboration within, as well as, between businesses. This will occur for a very simple reason: the next layer of value creation – whether in technology, marketing, service, or manufacturing- is becoming so complex that few companies or company departments are able to master them alone.
The bottom line
We all have our talents, but the innate ability will only take you so far. In the final analysis, what makes transformational leadership different is its ability to transform themselves to suit the needs of their mission.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy innovating your social media strategy?
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Baldwin hits the nail on the head with his quote on change, doesn’t he? He begs the question of the importance of knowing yourself. Knowing yourself is the key to undertaking life lessons learned, isn’t it?
Nothing really prepares you to be a leader. In most cases, you get the opportunity to lead by being good at something else. However, while being a strong performer gives you the credibility to lead, it says nothing about your ability to lead. Leadership is a skill in its own right and, for the most part, it’s one you learn on the job.
The vast majority of people have a morning ritual that involved some type of mindfulness. Getting your head straight and your priorities in line so you could face the day doing what matters to you.
What leadership characteristic is your strength? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? Be the one who starts a conversation.
How you ever used checklists to improve your learning … or perhaps your positive mental attitude? How well did they work for you? Do they refresh your thinking on important life success lessons?
We often use checklists to achieve our goal to create the attitude that can see opportunity in every difficulty.
After college, I spent almost two years training as a naval aviator. An essential element of that training was the use of checklists in the learning and refresher process. Checklist utilization remains an important part of my life, both in the personal as well as the business realm.
I keep a stack of 10 or so lists that I rotate and update occasionally. This is one of them, despite the fact that I am a retiree (at least part of the time). I pull out one checklist to read and contemplate for five minutes as a way to start each day. I find it puts my thinking in the right frame of mind.
Here is a checklist of 10 of my favorite life lessons reminders I have found to improve the odds of long-term success. They are based on life lessons learned along the road of my 40 years of experience:
Focusing on value add
In everything we do, we should concentrate on adding value. Gear efforts to results rather than work. Begin with the question, “What results are expected of me?” rather than with the work to be done, let alone with its techniques and tools.
Life lessons learned the hard way
Customer-centric focus
Focusing on the client makes us more resilient.
What I have found is: start with the customer and work backward.This experience comes from my training and expertise in systems engineering.
When you work from the end, you start with the customer and their needs and problems. This is the opposite of what some people do, which is: they think up ideas, build a product, and then see if customers like it.
Life lessons learned … develop a vision
Vision. We are always fascinated by this skill. And it is a great skill to have in our view. Does it mean you see everything? Certainly not. It does say that you have the ability to see what many cannot. And then act on these. Vision doesn’t count without action. And not without managing the needed work required to implement.
That idea of staying the course for the long term has been the key to success. Vision requires the long term. Be stubborn on vision and have flexibility on details.
Makingandexecuting effective decisions
Results most often depend on making effective decisions. I learned that an active decision is always a “judgment based on dissenting opinions rather than on a consensus of the facts.”
What is needed are few, but key decisions. What is required is the right strategy rather than razzle-dazzle tactics. Act on the plan and pay attention to follow-through.
Valuable lessons learned in life
Learning from others is always important to me. For example, I have learned change from Amazon. They have one of the very best innovation cultures in an industry built on constant innovation and change. Why may you ask?
We believe there several good reasons. First, as one of the creators of the e-commerce industry, they know the industry is in its infancy and is built on a foundation of new technology and constant introduction of new ways of doing things.
Business is all about capturing intellect from every person. The way to engender this understanding is to allow employees far more freedom and far more responsibility.
Lessons learned in life sayings.
Experiment and change
Remember, change and innovate, BEFORE you have to. Change is a big part of the reality in business. New ideas are the lifeblood of business. And the basis for creative change.
Your life will be in constant change mode, and that is a good thing if you lead change in the direction of your success goals. To do that most successfully, you should try lots of new things continually. For things you like, get superb at them by lots of practice. But keep trying new activities.
I love this quote from Jeff Bezos:
If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness.
If you ask the best business leaders, they’ll tell you that experimentation is imperative for their business. It’s how innovations are born and how they stay competitive in the market. Experimentation is everywhere and is always happening.
Life lessons learned … your career is not your life
This was probably the most challenging of my experiences, particularly early to mid-career. To be successful in this lesson, you should develop breath to your list of activities and always put family and friends first.
To do both well, think about activities that maximize your friends and relatives, like coaching your children’s sports teams.
Dedicate yourself to continuous learning
I am a big believer in lifelong learning. You should always seek to be flexible and keep several alternative paths in front of you. Always be on the lookout for ways to reinvent ways for self-improvement. Our most favored quote on continuous learning comes from Charles Darwin:
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Just remember to substitute success for survival, and you will have a treasured life lesson on continuous learning.
Life lessons learned … grow kindness
All of these life experiences get better when you have a strong foundation in knowing how to be kind to others. I have never found a better way to stay happy. Kindness costs you nothing, and you’d be surprised how much in can do for your happiness.
Life lessons learned … find something to make you laugh
Another important factor in your happiness is enjoying a good laugh as often as you can. Making fun of yourself and your mistakes is a great place to start.
The bottom line
As you progress in your continuous learning and development, keep in mind growth is a long term, not short term endeavor. In reality, it should never end. It should be pursued consistently throughout your career, day by day.
To find real life lesson experiences, you have to try many avenues … and experience some failures along the way. I have learned this lesson well.
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All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Do you follow college basketball? If you do, you will recognize the name of John Wooden, probably the most successful college coach of all time. For us, this achievement and learning are all about the John Wooden leadership qualities.
John Wooden leadership qualities.
Coach John Wooden is best known for his 27-year legacy at UCLA, where he led the Bruins to 10 NCAA national championships . This is a record that will most likely never be repeated.
We like to read about and study people who generate this type of success. There is so much that we can learn from them.
Nothing really prepares you to be a leader. In most cases, you get the opportunity to lead by being good at something else. However, while being a strong performer gives you the credibility to lead, it says nothing about your ability to lead. Leadership is a skill in its own right and, for the most part, it’s one you learn on the job.
For Wooden, the ideal leader is someone whose life and character motivate people to follow. The best kind of leadership derives its capacity from the force of example, not from the power of position or personality. Much of what passes as leadership today is nothing more than threats and rewards.
That’s not effective leadership for the long-term. Authentic leadership seeks to motivate people from the inside, by an appeal to the head and the heart, not by use of command and coercion. Wooden influenced players through the character he displayed in everything he did, from the way he recruited student-athletes to the way he taught them to put their socks on.
Here are the 15 most essential leadership qualities we derive from John Wooden that we recommend for the development of people we influence:
Agree to disagree, but don’t be disagreeable
It is all about maintaining a positive attitude all the time. According to Wooden, “We can agree to disagree, but we don’t need to be disagreeable.”
Focus on character over reputation
Your reputation will vary. It’s your character that counts, and it’s what you can control. Wooden said, “If you make an effort to do the best of which you’re capable, trying to improve the situation that exists for you, I think that’s success, and I don’t think others can judge that, and I think that’s like character and reputation. Your reputation is what you are perceived to be, and your character is what you are, and I believe the character is much more important than what you are perceived to be.”
The score is hopefully a by-product of doing the right things. Don’t focus on the score, focus on what you’re doing and give your best.
Wooden said, “I wanted the score of a game to be a by-product of these other things, and not the end itself.”
John Wooden leadership book … the meaning of the best
The sense of being the best player is the one who gets closest to reaching their full potential. According to Wooden, whoever gets the closest to reaching their full potential is the best.
John Wooden leadership qualities: don’t let your limits limit you
Don’t let limits get in the way. Wooden — “Don’t let what you cannot do, interfere with what you can do.”
Lead by example
A doer makes mistakes
If you’re not doing, you’re not learning. Everybody makes mistakes. It’s what you do with them that counts.
Everybody is unique
Wooden learned early on the importance of paying attention to each. His teaching was built on this fact. He learned that he had to work with each a little differently and that no two are identical.
He knew that he must vary his approach to helping them unleash their best.
Continuous learning
Coach Wooden practiced life-long learning – as you would expect from a great teacher. This has continued to grow in importance in today’s environment.
John Wooden leadership qualities … balance is everything
He said this often – balance in life and balance on the court. He put balance only second to LOVE. Balance is everything. “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” This, in essence, is a balance; controlled action in all areas of life.
Little things make big things happen
Coach Wooden was a proponent of the principle that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. His practices were ferociously intense. There wasn’t any slack in practice where you could hang out and chat.
He found time in the beginning when players were coming onto the court to take a moment, to pull someone aside as he was ambling over to the practice and ask about how things were going.
Patience is a part of progress
Success comes slowly. Expect change to happen slowly and to have patience along the way. Wooden said, “Whatever you’re doing, you must have patience” and “there is no progress without change, so you must have patience.”
Lead by example
Wooden said that way back, during his early years of teaching, an accurate saying made a great impression on him – “No written word, no spoken plea, can teach our youth what they should be, nor all the books on all the shelves, it’s what the teachers are themselves.”
Failure is not fatal
Keep going. Don’t let setbacks stop you. Carry your lessons forward, and change your approach. Wooden said, “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.” Don’t fear change … it is a fact of life.
It’s the journey
It’s the getting there that’s fun. Wooden said, “Cervantes said, ‘The journey is better than the end.’ And I like that. I think that is — it’s getting there.
Sometimes when you get there, there’s almost a letdown, but it’s the getting there that’s fun.” Wooden would say, ““I liked our practices to be the journey, and the game would be the end … the result.”
Here is an interesting story of John Wooden that says miles about John Wooden the man:
At age 96, Wooden was back at the site of his first NCAA championship in 1964, prompting him to recall a message he had received “from above” right after the beginning of his 10-championship run at UCLA.
“We won on a Saturday night,” Wooden said. “The next day was Easter Sunday, and I planned on going out to a church … where the Rev. Bob Maneely was the minister. I had got acquainted with him. I used to attend a Fellowship of Christian Athletes conference in Estes Park, Colo.; he was there as a speaker. I planned on going out Easter Sunday, my wife and I. Sunday morning, we were outside the Muehlebach Hotel, waiting to get a cab to take us to the church. And a pigeon hit me right on top of the head. And I felt, ‘Well, we just won the national championship, the team did, don’t let it go to your head.’ And I think the Good Lord was letting me know, ‘Don’t get carried away.’ I’ll always remember that.”
The thought from Wooden that sticks with me more than any other?
It is that something I always need to pay attention to …
before you can be a successful mentor or coach, you must create a positive learning environment. So how did Coach Wooden go about creating this positive learning environment? He implemented one simple strategy. He used 4-5 positive praises for every one criticism. Wow! This sounds so simple, and yet as I tried to implement it in my leadership, I found out just how difficult it is.
So what is it from John Wooden’s legacy that you remember the most? Any comments or questions to add below?
The bottom line
We all have our talents, but the innate ability will only take you so far. In the final analysis, what makes transformational leadership different is its ability to transform it to suit the needs of its mission.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is entirely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your ability to lead. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, history may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
It’s up to you to keep improving your leadership learning and experience from all around in your environment.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
