So often the key to overcoming a difficulty—whether it’s in the workplace or at home—is to stop talking and start listening. I often like to joke that if God had wanted us to talk more than listen, he would have given us two mouths.
Yet few people have mastered the art of listening. Why is this seemingly simple skill so difficult?
Research published by Wendell Johnson in the Harvard Business Review examined one way the listening process goes wrong. Johnson found that because of how our brains work, we think much faster than people talk. As we listen to someone talk, we have time to think of things other than what the person is saying. As a result, we end up listening to a few thoughts of our own in addition to the words we’re hearing spoken. Usually, we can get back to what the person is saying, but sometimes we listen to our own thoughts too long and miss part of the other person’s message.
To sharpen your listening practices, learn to apply these skills:
These are successful skills.
Resist the Temptation to Jump In
Sometimes people need time to formulate their thoughts. Particularly if you’re an extrovert, control the impulse to finish people’s sentences or fill silences with your own opinions and ideas.
Listen with your eyes as well as your ears. Watch a person’s face and body movements. Are they avoiding eye contact? What about the tone of their voice—do you hear confidence, eagerness, or perhaps irritation? Be aware of clues that their silent behaviors provide while being sensitive to your own nonverbal signals. For example, is your body language encouraging someone to continue with a conversation, or silently telling them to stop?
This is not about interrogation or control. Use well-thought-out questions to seek information, opinions, or ideas that will help you understand exactly what is being said. Use open-ended questions to encourage communication; for example, “Can you tell me more about that?” Ask clarifying questions to check for understanding; for example, “When did this happen?” Ask prompting questions to encourage deeper thinking; for example, “What do you think caused this to happen?”
Acknowledge any emotions the person is expressing and show them you understand by restating their feelings back to them in a nonjudgmental way. This demonstrates that you not only understand their message but also empathize with their feelings.
Paraphrase
Again, resist the temptation to respond with your own thoughts. Instead, restate in your own words what the person said. This demonstrates that you heard what they said and assures that you heard them correctly.
Summarize
State in a nutshell what was communicated during the entire conversation. Don’t worry about repeating the exact words. What’s important is to capture the main points and general sequence of what was said. This is where you want to reflect the speaker’s conclusion back to them to indicate that you understand.
These practices are not easy—they require time and effort to master. But once you do master them, you’ll build more satisfying relationships. You’ll also avoid a lot of the errors, frustrations, and inefficiencies that come from unclear communication. Think of how our homes, workplaces, nation, and the world could change for the better if we all learned to listen to one another.
People have been writing about leadership–what makes a good leader, what makes a bad one, and how come–since just about as long as there have been leaders. It’s only relatively recently that the study of leadership has taken a scientific turn. Now, behavioral scientists are discovering some dimensions of leadership that turn conventional wisdom sideways by counter-intuitive leaders.
Counter-intuitive leaders traits.
A good leader needs to be extremely persuasive to get people to follow her and to push people hard to stretch what’s possible. That persuasion comes with expressing strong opinions. Think of the best leaders in history–Mandela, Churchill, King, etc.–and you’ll see a pattern: they tell great stories, with boldness, absolutely convinced that they are right. They both inspire and grab attention.
The problem with opinionated leaders is that even the smartest people get things wrong, and many leaders fear to change course once they’ve expressed an opinion for fear of appearing weak.
How can you apply counter-intuitive thinking to leadership? Leaders should not only share their vision for the future with the people within the company but also step back and engage employees during informal group meetings with questions such as, “Does this make sense for our organization?” and “What do you think?”
In the end, the organization rallies behind the leader, giving their all to make the vision a reality. When the top executive can get other believers to support his or her vision through counter-intuitive communication, those members of the constituencies will believe the vision is theirs as much as it is the leaders. The buy-in is increasingly higher, as the positive view of the vision increases exponentially. The constituents desire to make the vision their own.
These are eight counterintuitive habits displayed by truly authentic and enlightened leaders.
They help others succeed
Leadership is a team sport. Leaders only win when those around them succeed. There’s no shortage of personal development advice for leaders themselves, but experts largely agree that effective leadership also rests on developing others’ skills and talents.
And one of the main ways leaders empower others is by providing feedback. In one important study on expert performance, researchers found that learning and improvement slow down dramatically without competent feedback.
That makes intuitive sense as well. Consider those leaders who’ve brought out the best in you. They challenge you to strive for more than you’ve attained thus far and then help you acquire the knowledge and skills to accomplish what had previously been impossible. As Richard Branson has famously said, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough, so they don’t want to.”
Employ advisors who can tell them why they are wrong
When you hold a certain belief or unconsciously decide on something, you’ll tend to focus on information that supports your belief or decision. You do it without even realizing it. Psychologists call this confirmation bias.
While this is a fundamentally human foible to which neither the brilliant nor the principled are impervious, unchecked in a leader or decision-maker it could lead to damaging – even catastrophic consequences.
Studies of the 1986 Challenger Disaster that killed all astronauts on board suggest that confirmation bias inherent in the decision-making process led to the egregious error in declaring the space shuttle safe for launch. This was despite awareness of a known (and ultimately fatal) variable that was dismissed by decision-makers as it conflicted with their line of thinking.
Authentic leaders ask their advisors always to empower them to speak to the power. Every important argument should be accompanied by the reasons why it could be wrong.
Warren Buffet counts on his vice-chairman, Berkshire Hathaway ‘s Charlie Monger, to point out flaws in his reasoning. “If I talk it through [with him], it’s because deep down I know I might be doing something dumb, and he’ll tell me,” Buffet shared recently on CNBC.
Don’t force motivation
Many leaders think it’s their job to keep team members continuously motivated. For many, this means either dangling a carrot or waving a stick. But the science cautions against both approaches.
The truth is that no one can motivate someone else to work hard.
The truth is that no one can motivate someone else to work hard. Sure, you can entice with monetary rewards or threaten repercussions for poor performance, but the effects of those tactics are temporary.
The only reason a leader should ever need to motivate someone to do their job is when they’ve hired someone who doesn’t like their role in the first place. As long as your team members are satisfied with their work they’re charged with doing, your job as a leader is simply to set clear expectations and equip them to carry them out.
Leaders behind some of the world’s most successful companies know that to build great products or companies they have to choose areas in which to be weak deliberately.
What’s more, it’s about being unapologetic about it.
No company can provide a product or service that is the cheapest, fastest and of the highest quality. If they aim for all three, they’ll end with an offering that is, at best, mediocre.
Professor Frei cites Apple and Zappos as examples of companies that are deliberately bad in certain areas, to offer a product or service that is ultimately excellent.
Counter-intuitive leaders … serve others
Great leadership depends on trust. Leaders who are respected do what they promise, even when it’s hard. In fact, a survey of 1,000 senior public-sector administrators found that integrity was the most desired characteristic in leaders.
That might not be surprising, but it does hint at an important obligation that often goes overlooked: Leaders need to serve those they lead. Otherwise, the integrity that their success relies on can never be built or sustained.
We tend to admire leaders who serve their organizations’ interests, create value for shareholders, launch successful products, and interpersonal dynamics that make all that happen from within. Even the most headstrong leaders require the trust and collaboration of their teams, and that starts by looking out for their teams with real integrity.
They acknowledge that they are biased
Leaders who are aware of their hidden biases or ‘blind spots’ as Mahzarin Banaji, a professor of Social Ethics at Harvard calls it in her book, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, can be consciously on guard to ensure it doesn’t carry them in directions they don’t want to go.
“Eternal vigilance is a personal ideal that reduces the likelihood that our unconscious prejudices are influential in the things we do and how we construct our lives.”
Based on this awareness, authentic leaders can then take the steps needed to counter the effects of their biases and stereotypical beliefs.
Professor Iris Bohnet provides an example of changes that can be introduced in a workplace environment to initiate this.
“When we evaluate job applicants or make promotion decisions, we cannot help but be influenced by stereotypical beliefs about what a typical or ideal kindergarten teacher or professor looks (or should look) like. To hire and promote the best people rather than those who conform to our stereotypes, we need to change our evaluation procedures. For example, we have musicians audition behind curtains as many orchestras do, evaluate job candidates comparatively to increase the accuracy of our judgments, and hire and promote in bundles to allow for diversity to emerge.”
Counter-intuitive leaders … they are likable
The Machiavellian adage that it’s better to be feared than loved has always been a matter of debate. But there’s now a growing body of research suggesting that the great Italian thinker had it wrong.
In fact, effective leaders tend to be pretty likable. When people see their leaders favorably, they tend to work harder, more creatively, and more productively for them.
Above all else, leadership is relational.
Why? Because above all else, leadership is relational. All parties–leaders as well as those they lead–have to want to be in the relationship. If you’ve ever had a manager you dislike, you’ve probably spent plenty of time and energy resisting their directives that you could have used more productively.
They use their time well
Every leader has periods in their lives in which they find themselves “in the wilderness” – metaphorically speaking. Perhaps they’re out of favor (no one is infallible – everyone makes mistakes), out of office, stepped out of the limelight – or they just maybe at a junction in which they find themselves lost, confused and without direction.
According to Harvard’s David Gergen, a professor of public leadership and former advisor to four U.S presidents, these periods in the wilderness offer opportunity for growth, development and even reinvention, likely leading you on the path to becoming who you’re meant to be – your most authentic self.
The successful leaders used these times to learn new skills, forge new friendships and reinvent themselves. The more that you can use the difficult times in your life to dig deep and find new purpose or strength, the more resilient you will be.
The bottom line
Typically, articles or books about leadership begin with some definition of leadership. But, in keeping with the counterintuitive theme of this piece, I’m choosing rather end with one. Professor Frances Frei offers this:
“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making it last in your absence.”
Making it last in your absence. That counterintuitive nugget may well be the hallmark – and the legacy – of a truly authentic leader.
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.
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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.
When discussing your passion, it is important to understand the difference between passion and strength. That will help you recognize if you can live your passion.
Passion is “An intense desire or enthusiasm for something.” This means that although you may be passionate about something, you may not be good at doing it yourself. For example, I have a passion for Japanese anime. But I can’t draw it, animate it, or even understand it without subtitles. All I can do is appreciate it and feel strongly about it. This is one thing that separates a passion from strength.
Strength is a bit more complicated, but when applied to this question the best definition is probably “A good or beneficial quality or attribute of a person or thing.”
In other words, strength is more than just how you feel about something. It’s a quality that you have; you can use that. Many things can be seen as strengths depending on how you use them. In certain situations, being shy can be a strength. Being skilled at a certain activity can be a strength. And of course, there’s being physical, mentally, or spiritually strong.
In reality discovering passion is when:
You are not certain of succeeding, but still feel it’s worth failing at
You think less about what you will ‘become,’ and more about how best you can do
You do not care as much about being good at, as much as you care about learning until you become great
You do not stop after becoming great, but something you love learning forever
You are not doing it as an escape(like a hobby), but because you can immerse yourself in it
You do not feel a hurting stress after working hard, but a joyful exhaustion
Your happiness is not dependent on success but lies in the doing It is when success becomes a bonus side effect.
Are you continuously working to find what you love to do? Perhaps starting with your personal development? A very good idea these days … where change is the name of the game. Aim high. Explore. Stretch your boundaries. Let yourself fail some.
But be sure and put learning in your skill bag. All of these are useful to remember for growing knowledge of your enablers for success. Enablers for success that are essential for your personal and professional development and in doing what you love.
We are all aware of Steve Jobs Stanford commencement speech given in 2005, where he talks about doing what you love. It is a classic talk on this subject. He encourages his student audience to keep looking and don’t settle.
Jobs goes on to say as with all matters of the heart; you’ll know when you find it. Ah, but finding it.
To do something well, you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We’ve got it down to four words: “Do what you love.” But it’s not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated. And often unattainable for some.
I recently read an interesting book on the topic of how to find what you love to do. The book is by Cal Newport: So Good They Can’t Ignore You. The themes in Newport’s book are bound by a common thread: the importance of ability.
His thesis is that the things that do a great job great are rare and valuable. If you want them in your working life, you need something rare and valuable to offer in return. In other words, you need to be good at something before you can expect the job that you love.
Mastery by itself is not enough to guarantee your love and satisfaction: The many examples of well-respected but miserable workaholics support this claim. The main thread of the argument moves beyond the mere acquisition of useful skills and into the subtle art of investing career capital into the right types of working life traits.
The path to what you love – at least as it concerns what you do for a living – is more complicated than simply answering the classic question “What should I do with my life?”
So here is the kicker from this book: when it comes to creating work you love, following your passion is not particularly useful advice. In fact, it is seriously flawed. It not only fails to describe how most people end up with compelling careers but for many people, it can make things worse: leading to chronic job shifting and unrelenting angst.
“Follow your passion” might just be the worst possible advice. OK then, what should you do instead? Don’t follow your passion; rather, let it follow you in your quest to become so good that they can’t ignore you. Move your focus away from finding the right work, toward building your skills and expertise in what you do, and then eventually build a love for what you do.
If a young Steve Jobs had taken his advice and decided only to pursue work he loved, we would probably have been one of the Los Altos Zen Center’s most popular teachers. But he didn’t follow this simple advice. Apple Computer was decidedly not born out of passion, but instead was the result of a lucky break – a “small-time” scheme that unexpectedly took off. Probably works that way for a large percentage of us, doesn’t it?
Think of it in another way: The most likely predictor of someone seeing their work as a calling is the number of years spent on the job. The more experience they have, the more skills and expertise they have developed and the likely they are to love their work.
The happiest, most passionate employees are not those who followed their passion into a position, but instead, those who have been around long enough to become good at what they do.
Newport points out that motivation requires that you fulfill three basic psychological needs:
Autonomy: the feeling that you have control over your day, and that your actions are important
Competence: the feeling that you are good at what you do
Relatedness: the feeling of connection to other people He introduces the craftsman mindset which is based what you can offer to others.
This mindset asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is “just right,” and instead put your head down and plug away at getting great at what you do and contribute. Regardless of what you do for a living, approach your work like a true performer. Adopt the craftsman mindset first, and then the passion follows.
Put aside the question of whether your job is your true passion, and instead turn your focus toward becoming so good they can’t ignore you.
If you want to love what you do, abandon the passion mindset (“what can the world offer me?”) and instead adopt the craftsman mindset (“what can I offer the world?”).
Newport believes three traits define great work and contribution: creativity, impact, and control. These traits are rare. Most jobs don’t offer their employees great creativity, impact, or control over what they do and how they do it.
If you want something that’s both rare and valuable, you need something rare and valuable to offer in return.
Newport shares the story of when Steve Jobs walked into Byte Shop he was holding something that was rare and valuable: the circuit board for the Apple I, one of the more advanced personal computers in the fledging market at the time.
The money from selling a hundred units of that original design gave Jobs more control in his career, but to get even more valuable traits in his working life, he needed to increase the value of what he had to offer.
What is your passion in life?
It’s at this point that Jobs’ ascent begins to accelerate. He takes on $250,000 in funding from Mark Markkula and works with Steve Wozniak to produce a new computer design that is unambiguously too good to be ignored.
There were plenty of other engineers in the Bay Area’s Homebrew Computer Club culture who could match Jobs’s and Wozniak’s technical skill, but Jobs had the insight to take on investment and to focus this technical energy toward producing a complete product.
The result was the Apple II. And Steve Jobs was now too good to ignore. The traits that define great work are rare and valuable. These rare and valuable skills are your career capital derived from a craftsman mindset.
Because of this, you don’t have to worry about whether you’ve found your calling – most any work can become the foundation for a compelling career. But certain jobs are better suited for applying career capital theory than others.
Most individuals who start as active professionals change their behavior and increase their performance for a limited time until they reach an acceptable level. Beyond this point, however, further improvements appear to be unpredictable Newport claims.
This learning is not done in isolation: You need to be constantly soliciting feedback from colleagues and professionals. Do projects where you’ll be forced to show your work to others. A good career mission is similar to a scientific breakthrough – it’s an innovation waiting to be discovered in the adjacent possible of your field.
If you want to identify a mission for your working life, therefore, you must first get to the cutting edge-the only place where these missions become visible.
To maximize your chances of success, you should deploy small, concrete experiments that return concrete feedback. Explore the specific avenues surrounding your general mission, looking for those with the highest likelihood of leading to outstanding results.
Comedian Steve Martin, in his brilliant memoir Born Standing Up, says that he is often asked about the secret to his incredible success. His best advice for people is, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
Live your passion … strength and passion don’t always line up
You can work hard to become stronger at your passion, but that doesn’t mean you’ll succeed. I could practice drawing all day, and as a result, I might become better at making anime. But I may never become good enough to call anime one of my strengths.
Looking at it the other way, you can try hard to feel passionate about your strengths, but some things are just “things that you’re good at” and nothing more. One of my strengths is retail sales and management…but I am not passionate about it. If I have to use that strength to earn money, I will. But my passions lie elsewhere.
The bottom line
Probably the most important motivator for happiness is that they feel we are working towards a meaningful goal. Some of the world’s most talented people forego monetary rewards to pursue careers in cutting-edge research.
Gary Hamel emphatically states that in order to compete companies must build a “community of purpose.” Jack Welch emphasizes the need to make values authentic. Both stress the need for leadership to provide meaningful goals and for employees to believe in them. Mere lip service will not do.
Mike Schoultz likes to write about the topics that lead to small business success. He also likes to share his many business experiences. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
In a crowded job market, even landing an internship isn’t easy. While it may be tempting to take the first offer that drops into your inbox, it’s not always the wisest decision. Not every internship is going to suit your specific needs; after all, taking on an internship is usually a tactical step towards securing a full-time role in your industry of choice.
So whether you’re looking for internships in London, New York, or Tokyo, it’s important to remain mindful of your long-term career goals and how an internship can place you on the path to success. So here are four key things to look for in an internship.
A Mentorship Program
Guidance and insight from mentors can be vital as you progress along your career, so it’s a good idea to ensure that your internship offers some sort of mentorship program. Most large companies that offer internships also have mentorship programs, but you can ask for details during your interview.
Ideally, your program will give you some access to higher-level management; this communicates that your prospective firm is serious about offering a helping hand to their junior employees. Soak up as many tips and as much guidance from your colleagues as you can; it’ll give you a competitive advantage when you strike out on your own.
Happy Employees
If you can, speak with employees at the company where you’re considering an internship. Are they happy with their work? Are they excited and fired-up by the opportunities that come their way? The answers to these questions will help you work out whether the work environment is positive and progression-focused.
Interning for a firm with widespread dissatisfaction is a recipe for disaster. If you can’t access employees directly, look at employee reviews to help you determine the company culture; Glassdoor is a good place to start.
A Chance To Apply Your Skills
Look for an internship role that will allow you to apply the skills you’ve already learned in school or previous training. This will help validate your career choice and allow you to test the waters of your chosen industry. You don’t want to choose an internship that doesn’t directly relate to your existing skills, qualifications and aspirations.
At its heart, an internship should be a platform from which to kickstart your career; so take on a role that allows you to exercise your skills and build up a portfolio of work and experience that you can use when applying for future roles.
A Sense of Community
Interning, especially in a foreign city, can be a lonely business. While you’ll probably build strong relationships with your colleagues, sometimes you just want people of your own age and career level to kick back with.
An internship program that offers some sort of community program – be it a community of current interns or connections to existing alumni – can help lighten the load that comes with beginning a brand-new job. Having friends around you will ensure you’ve got the support you need – and your working life will improve as a result.
Bottom line
An internship can be an excellent bridge between your education and your full-time career, but only if you choose wisely. Keep these tips in mind as you search for an internship to ensure you find the best opportunity to help you meet your career goals.
If you’d like to find out more about Beyond Academy’s range of internship opportunities, why not head along to their website and see if they offer the right internship for you?
Keep trying new things. There’s another phrase I think about quite often. Keep trying new things. On the surface, it sounds so normal – duh, of course, I should keep trying to build good habits. But think about our daily schedule: Most of us go to work, come home, maybe work out or watch TV, then do it all over
Good Habits.
again…for the rest of our lives. Another thing to add to my list of needed good habits for productivity.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it
– Henry David Thoreau
And yet, this list of tiny productivity habits has the potential to alter everything. So let’s examine these habits to see which ones can make a difference in your life.
Productivity habits.
Establish an early morning routine
Are you a morning person? I certainly am. Give me 1-2 hours of undisturbed time early in the morning and I am immensely more productive later in the day. How many of you nurture your bodies in the morning with water, a healthy breakfast, and light exercise? How about nurturing your minds with meditation, inspirational reading, or journaling? It is amazing what a difference these habits can make.
Good habits … focus on priorities
Ultra-productive people know what their “Most Important Task” is and work on it for one to two hours each morning, without interruptions. What task will have the biggest impact on reaching your goals? What accomplishment will get you more success in business metrics? That’s what you should dedicate your mornings to every day.
Productivity models
For example, here are three ways of thinking about productivity:
The 2-Minute Rule: If something takes less than two minutes, do it now. The goal of this rule is to help you stop procrastinating and take action.
The Ivy Lee Method: Create a to-do list by writing down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow, prioritizing those items, and working on them in order. The goal of this method is to help you work on the most important things first.
The Seinfeld Strategy: Pick a new habit and draw an X on the calendar for each day you stick with the behavior. The goal of this method is to help you maintain consistency and keep your streak of good behavior alive.
Are any of these models perfect? Not. But try combining them. Then you have a strategy that can help you take action right now (The 2-Minute Rule), a strategy that can help you plan your day more effectively (The Ivy Lee Method), and a strategy that can help you maintain consistency in the long-run (The Seinfeld Strategy).
Good personal habits … have balance in life
Intel’s Andy Grove once said, “There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done.”
Highly successful people know what they value in life. Yes, work, but also what else they value. They know success is a ‘whole life’ metric. There is no right answer, but for many, these other values include family time, exercise, and giving back.
Let me share a story with you:
The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday morning. Perhaps it’s the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.
Reference: Fall II 2009 NL – Concordia University Irvine, https://www.cui.edu/uploadedFiles/AcademicPrograms/Graduate/Coaching/Fall%20II09
A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it:
I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.
“Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well, but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It’s too bad you missed your daughter’s dance recital,” he continued; “Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my priorities.” And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a “thousand marbles.”
“You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52, and I came up with 3,900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I’m getting to the important part.
It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail,” he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1,000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.
Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.
There’s nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.
What do you think about life balance now?
Use a notebook
Richard Branson has said on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t have been able to build Virgin without a simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever he goes.
In one interview, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis said, “Always carry a notebook. Write everything down… That is a million-dollar lesson they don’t teach you in business school!”
Ultra-productive people free their minds by writing everything down as the ideas come to them.
Productivity habits … reduce attention to email
Ultra-productive people don’t “check” their e-mail throughout the day. They don’t respond to each vibration or ding to see who has intruded into their inbox.
Instead, like everything else, they schedule a time to process their emails quickly and efficiently. For some, that’s only once a day; for others, it’s morning, noon, and night. Manage your inbox, don’t let it manage you.
Skip meetings whenever you can
Mark Cuban once said, “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.” Meetings are notorious time killers.
They often start late, have the wrong people in them, meander around their topics, and run long. You should get out of meetings whenever you can and hold fewer of them yourself. If you do run a meeting, keep it short and solve simple objectives.
Productive work habits … observing
Carefully watch things around you to help gain insights into, and ideas for, new ways of doing things. Pay particular attention to areas outside your natural areas of interest.
Don’t fear to say no
Billionaire Warren Buffet once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” Remember, you only have 1,440 minutes in a day. Don’t give them away easily.
Insanely productive habits … use the 80/20 rule
Known as the Pareto Principle, in most cases, 80 percent of results come from only 20 percent of activities. Ultra-productive people know which activities drive the greatest results. Focus on those and ignore the rest. You don’t get extra credit for solving trivial action items.
Insanely productive habits
Creating change
I loved this post from Seth Godin’s blog:
The problem with complaining about the system
…is that the system can’t hear you. Only people can.
And the problem is that people in the system are too often swayed to believe that they have no power over the system, that they are merely victims of it, pawns, cogs in a machine bigger than themselves.
Alas, when the system can’t hear you, and those who can believe they have no power, nothing improves.
Systems don’t mistreat us, misrepresent us, waste our resources, govern poorly, support an unfair status quo and screw things up–people do.
If we care enough, we can make it change.
Delegate often
Ultra-productive people don’t ask, “How can I do this task?” Instead, they ask, “How can this task get done?” They take the I out of it as much as possible.
Ultra-productive people don’t have control issues, and they are not micro-managers. In many cases, good enough is, well, good enough.
Be decisive
How many times have you opened a piece of regular mail — a bill perhaps — and then put it down, only to deal with it again later? How often do you read an e-mail and then close it and leave it in your inbox to deal with later? Highly successful people try to “touch it once.”
If it takes less than five or ten minutes — whatever it is — they deal with it right then and there. It reduces stress since it won’t be in the back of their minds, and it is more efficient since they won’t have to re-read or re-evaluate the item again in the future.
Take care of yourself
You can’t make more minutes in the day, but you can increase your energy to increase your attention, focus, and productivity. Highly successful people don’t skip meals, sleep, or breaks in the pursuit of more, more, more.
Instead, they view food as fuel, sleep as recovery, and breaks as opportunities to recharge to get even more done.
The bottom line
We’re often told that innovation is about ideas, but that’s only partly true. If your idea is revolutionary enough, your biggest problem won’t be having it stolen, but getting anyone to take it seriously at all. That’s why the hardest part of innovation is not coming up with an idea, but getting it adopted. Talent will only take you so far; you also need the good habits and grit to stick with it.
So what habits do you need to add to this list to be more productive AND successful?
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?
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 reading on mentoring from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Leaders should be reliable without being predictable. They should be consistent without being anticipated.
– Mike Krzyzewski
Developing these habits is a lifelong learning by doing a process. You are never done with these experiences. Every great leader always looks for ways to build and improve these habits.
Leadership can be especially challenging for entrepreneurs. Balancing the need to run a business (i.e., products, investors, customers, etc.) and the need to lead company personnel is quite a task.
Related: How to Create the Best Leadership Accountability
Active leader habits as an entrepreneur mean that you can “make things happen,” instead of just “letting things happen.” The quality of leader influence involvement is required in many activities.
It is involved in a variety of situations and problems, from the very simple to the very complex.
Leaders must influence others to achieve goals, and they must gain the respect of followers to change them. This is no easy task, but if you want to have the respect of your followers you have many trusted leader habits.
Here are 13 leader habits Digital Spark Marketing uses with clients to improve their ability to develop to be the best leaders they can be:
Great leaders … foster teamwork
Peter Drucker made an interesting point when he said that leaders don’t train themselves not to say “I.”
He’s implying that leaders innately work with others and let the team get the credit. They don’t force themselves to say “we.” “We” is natural for them, and it’s the way they’ve always thought.
We believe that employing an “employee of the month” or a “who gets credit for what” attitude is not a good process.
You work as a team when you don’t care who gets the credit.
Great leaders of today … encourage growth in others
Some companies follow the motto: “Hire for character, train for skill.” You hire people that are eager to learn and are very “raw.”
They don’t have a ton of competence; but as a leader, you teach them, and they become better. They grow with your company and contribute to its success.
You see this with football coaches. In football coaching, it’s almost unheard of for someone with no experience to be hired as the head coach of a team.
Most people start in a low-level position (i.e., video coordinator, quality control assistant, scout, etc.) and gradually move up if they become successful in their roles.
Sometimes it takes more than thirty years before they finally get a chance to be the head coach.
The same can occur in business. George Bodenheimer is the former president of ESPN. He started out working in the mailroom of ESPN.
It would have been tough for him to rise to the presidency if he hadn’t had a boss who wanted to help him grow and succeed in the company.
Employee attitude is so critical that it can’t be overemphasized. It trickles down from employers.
Your business isn’t optimized if you don’t optimize for employee happiness.
Leaders should make employees feel good about themselves.
Always criticizing and pointing out the flaws in an employee is a sure fire way to decrease morale and performance.
Action
Orient toward action. Don’t just talk about it, do it.
If it didn’t go as well as you had hoped, learn from it and change it for next time.
Transparency
We deserve openness, honesty, and transparency about our work together.
If something is unclear or is causing concern, let’s chat. When in doubt, over communicate.
Be an optimist
People want to follow an optimist, a person always looking to prioritize and solve problems.
Be willing to be misunderstood
This isn’t an excuse for being a jerk to employees. To colleagues in your industry, sometimes an invention is at first misunderstood before it becomes a revolution.
So if you aren’t willing to be misunderstood, you may never be a pioneer in your industry.
A good example of a willingness to be misunderstood as a business leader is Netflix. It was an entirely unique way to receive movies.
In the late 90′s, if you wanted to rent a movie, you’d have to go through your cable or satellite provider or get one at Blockbuster or something similar. Getting rental DVDs via mail was unconventional.
Undoubtedly, Netflix leadership needed to be willing to be misunderstood. They were pioneering and attempted to change the way people watch movies.
Get people to follow you
You earn leadership by what Anne Mulcahy calls “followership.”
“I think sometimes we forget that we’re not anointed leaders, we have to earn it and we have to have people that trust us and are willing to follow. I think that is the differentiator between great leadership and average leadership.”
– Anne Mulcahy, Former Chairman, and CEO of Xerox Corporation
Even if a leader is anointed, it doesn’t mean that they’ll have followers. The manager needs to gain the trust of the supporters. It has to be earned because not many people will mindlessly follow a leader.
Inspire people
Inspire and motivate to get the most from each team member and succeed based on your ability to work with others.
A quality of great leaders can clearly articulate ideas and get people excited and inspired about them.
It’s not selling people on an idea; it’s inspiring them.
Wear your passion and enthusiasm
Always wear your passion and enthusiasm for what you are doing. To do that, you must find those things that you love.
Follow the passion; it is what gives you the strength to overcome the obstacles to everyday tasks.
Passion is power … it is what keeps you going when everyone else gets tired and gives up.
Be a continuous learner
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, but rather to improve the organization as a whole.
Good leaders are constantly trying to improve, surround themselves with the ablest people they can find.
They look squarely at their mistakes and deficiencies, and they ask frankly what skills they and the company will need in the future.
And because of this, they can move forward with confidence that’s grounded in the facts, not built on fantasies about their talent.
Always work hard at being a little better than you were the day before.
Continuous learning is one of the most important attributes in the work and personal environment.
Show persistence
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 and 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.
Respect
Everyone brings multitudes of skill and insights to the table. We need to honor people’s voices and talents.
Autonomy is a fundamental human need.
Kindness
Sniping, backbiting, bullying, and general meanness have no place in either our personal or professional lives.
Everyone deserves a happy work environment.
Conflict
Productive, healthy disagreement can get us through roadblocks. Lean into conflict rather than shy away from it. The path to resolution does not start with avoidance.
Limit your fear of failure
No matter how confident someone may seem, everyone is afraid of failing. All of us are afraid of screwing up or worried about 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, because they know not stretching themselves is worse than failing.
Be a good listener
You don’t gain insights by talking. Ideas can come from anywhere, so it’s important to keep your ears open to new ideas and insight.
Focus on hearing everything that’s being said so you can make the most informed decisions.
Listening helps a leader get multiple perspectives. When making a decision, a good leader always looks at some different people.
They know they own the final determination but always make sure they get input from multiple people.
The bottom line
Business leadership skills, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it … it takes lots of consistent practice. You need to dive into the pool as soon as possible.
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.
Practice these leadership behaviors often and think ahead for your greatest leadership advantages.
Need some help in capturing more improvements in 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 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.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to 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:
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.
Yes, Seth, we agree that your best customers are far more valuable than your average ones. And you get the best by continuously building better relationship management, don’t you? Think about the process of developing and managing customers’ individual relationships with your firm – through the Web site, a loyalty program, the contact center, at the point of purchase, or in after-sale service. All take continuous attention to detail.
Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
–Seth Godin
Business is a “people activity” … people like to do business with people they know, like, and trust. Ones with whom they have relationships are at the top of the desirable business option list. The stronger the relationships with your customers, the greater will be their trust and loyalty in your business.
Before we continue, let me ask you a question.
What works best for winning customers in your business? 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.
Studies show time, and again, your best and most loyal customers are the aptest to tell their friends about your business, creating strong word-of-mouth marketing. Word of mouth marketing is the most important element of any marketing campaign.
Making new friends is becoming the most important element of social commerce. Creating positive experiences for building customer relationships often will take some serious thinking. But hopefully not at the expense of the things you can do to build customer relationships.
So there are many important reasons to focus on building strong customer relationships. Here are eight tips to help you forge new, and strengthen existing, relationships:
Relationship management … identify customers
Do this on an individual basis, as you can’t have a relationship with an audience or a population. So before you start relationships, you must target your priority customers. You don’t have to have each customer’s name and address, but you need to know that the customer on the phone right now is the same one who was in the store yesterday, or on your Web site the day before that.
Acknowledge that I am there
As soon as you possibly can. Don’t make your customers frustrated by making them wait. If you are busy with another customer, inform them you will be there shortly.
Smile and introduce yourself. Have a nametag and personalize it to help create meaningful conversation.
To differentiate is essential.
Relationship management skills … differentiate
All customers are different from each other, regarding both their value to your business and what they need from your business. What a customer needs from you will drive behaviors that you can observe. And behaviors will create (or destroy) value. So pay close attention.
Techniques to build customer relationships … be knowledgeable
Know all about your products and services. Always assume customers have done their homework and product research. If you don’t know, DON’T BLUFF, but do offer to do some research. If you don’t have a product or service that can solve their problem, recommend someone else’s product if you can.
Offer free resources, information, and solutions … with no strings attached.
relationship management examples … don’t sell
Use your knowledge and experience to help customers decide. Help them in their search. Pushy sales pitches turn customers off. But personally relevant and interactive conversations switch them on.
Engage
Interact with customers. Almost by definition, a relationship depends on some engagement between two parties. You want those interactions to be cost-efficient, so drive more and more interactions into more efficient channels. But you also want them to be effective — that is, to tell you something about their needs or value, for instance, that you can’t learn simply by observing. Make customers feel important. Create conversation … seek out common interests by asking effective questions.
Listen well
Hear and remember the ‘remarkable’ for their next visit. Make sure you understand their question(s). Then answer them as simply as possible.
Help them save time
Time is the customer’s most valued passion. Help them save it. Avoid seeking other help, or ‘handing them off.
Be easy to work with
Exceed expectations whenever you can. If your business doesn’t have what the customer wants, offer alternatives, including other businesses.
Be honest
If you don’t know, say so. But use that question to research so as to be prepared next time. You don’t want to be saying you don’t know often.
How to build strong relationships with customers … alwaysdo what you say
Do what you say and keep your promises.
Follow through promptly
Keep them informed until you can close. Remember time is of the essence.
Building great relationships … tell the truth
Always tell the truth with no hidden agendas and ulterior motives. Marketing puffery is not the truth. Remember consumers are very educated on products and services.
Customize
The “pay-off step” for managing a customer relationship comes when your business behaves differently toward each customer. We call this “customization” even though we’re not necessarily talking about it regarding literally customizing the product or service. But whenever I treat Customer A differently from Customer B, based on what I think I know about their differences, I am “customizing” the customer’s treatment.
These are not things that we do not already know, of course.
These little things list simply reminds us of what we already know but may have forgotten. Then it is up to us to put these lessons of building customer relationships into daily use through persistence and practice.
The bottom line
We are entering a pivotal era. We are currently undergoing four profound shifts, that include changing patterns of demographics, migration, resources, and technology. The stress lines are already beginning to show, with increasing tensions over race and class as well as questions about the influence technology and institutions have over our lives.
Remember … allcustomer-facing employees need to be engaged in customer relationship building.
Businesses, do you refresh this list with your staff frequently?
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 winning new customers by relationship building. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
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.
Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer experiences? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job and pay for results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas to make your customer experiences better.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
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.
A lack of day-to-day persistence has been my biggest career mistake.
Something I am always working on … persistence.
Persistence is the key to success. 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 and 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, and replace it with something that inspires you. This is what helps me the most.
“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.
More reading from Digital Spark Marketing’s blog library:
How about learning something useful by giving awesome compliments?
How easy do you find it to pay great compliments? An authentic compliment. Difficult for you? Seemingly a common thing, right? But difficult to do uncommonly well, don’t you agree?
As a leader or even as a peer, great compliments have never been more critically important than today. Not because they are expected, but to help in team motivation and engagement. While everyone is wrapped up in their own performance, people hardly take the time to recognize the work of others.
Whether you’re dealing with bosses, subordinates, or peers, a well-placed compliment will make you valuable, noteworthy, and better suited for leadership.
Why compliments?
When you recognize people’s skills and achievements, it makes you seem more selfless. Your attention to detail is appreciated. And if you believe what some scientific studies have to say on the subject, people who pay others compliments are seen as smarter. And more humble … a critical leadership quality.
Be specific
Understand what motivates people you work with and focus on paying compliments that will give attention to those things. For a business leader, it may be addressing and inspiring a crowd of subordinates. For a secretary, it may be her knowledge of office details. Regardless, compliment them accordingly, in the most natural way possible.
Timing is essential
Compliments are all about timing. They are usually most effective immediately after someone does something they deserve praise for. It’s right after the fact that most people want to hear that they did well. Let time pass and they will calm down, or convince themselves that they did well and don’t need anyone else’s approval.
But timing also involves calibrating someone’s mood. If you see a co-worker in a slump, a well-placed compliment might motivate him and remind him that what he does is significant.
The bottom line
“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
More reading from Digital Spark Marketing’s blog library:
Have you noticed? When it comes to success, the little things make all the difference. They are often the bad habits that do it. Often with poor control over your emotional intelligence.
Bad habits.
You are the sum of your habits. When you allow bad habits to take over, they dramatically impede your success. The challenge is bad habits are insidious. They creep up on you slowly until you don’t even notice the damage.
Breaking bad habits requires self-control — and lots of it. Research indicates that it’s worth the effort, as self-control has huge implications for success.
University of Pennsylvania psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman conducted a study where they measured college students’ IQ scores and levels of self-control upon entering university. Four years later, they looked at the students’ grade point averages (GPA) and found that self-control was twice as important as IQ in earning a high GPA.
The self-control required to develop good habits (and stop bad ones) also serves as the foundation for a strong work ethic and high productivity. Self-control is like a muscle — to build it up you need to exercise it.
Quit sabotaging success with bad habits. Practice flexing your self-control muscle by breaking the following bad habits:
Bad habits … wondering around the internet
It takes you 15 consecutive minutes of focus before you can fully engage in a task. Once you do, you fall into a euphoric state of increased productivity called flow. Research shows that people in a flow state are five times more productive than they otherwise would be.
When you click out of your work because you get an itch to check the news or Facebook, this pulls you out of the flow. This means you have to go through another 15 minutes of continuous focus to reenter the flow state. Click in and out of your work enough times, and you can go through an entire day without experiencing flow. Not a good thing, is it?
Never giving up your devices
This is a big one that most people don’t even recognize. The impact here is that it harms their sleep and productivity. Short-wavelength blue light plays an important role in your mood, energy level, and sleep quality. In the morning, sunlight contains high concentrations of this blue light. When your eyes are exposed to it directly, the blue light halts production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin.
Good habits: Habits of Highly Successful People: Learn These Useful Traits
The result makes you feel more alert. In the afternoon, the sun’s rays lose their blue light, which allows your body to produce melatonin and start making you sleepy. By the evening, your brain doesn’t expect any blue light exposure and is very sensitive to it.
Most of our favorite evening devices — laptops, tablets, and mobile phones — emit short-wavelength blue light brightly and right in your face. This exposure impairs melatonin production and interferes with your ability to fall asleep as well as with the quality of your sleep once you do nod off.
As we’ve all experienced, a poor night’s sleep has disastrous effects. The best thing you can do is to avoid these devices after dinner. Note that television is OK for most people as long as they sit far enough away from the set.
Bad habits … letting interruptions take control
Interruptions are a productivity nightmare. Studies have shown that hopping on your phone and e-mail every time they ping for your attention causes your productivity to plummet.
Getting notified every time a message drops onto your phone or an e-mail arrives in your inbox might feel productive, but it isn’t. Instead of working at the whim of your notifications, pool all your e-mails/texts and check them at designated times. This is a proven, productive way to work.
Good and bad habits list.
Conversation ‘phonitis.’
Nothing turns people off like a mid-conversation text message or even a quick glance at your phone. When you commit to a conversation, focus all your energy on the conversation. You will find that conversations are more enjoyable and effective when you immerse yourself in them.
Not able to say no
Research conducted at the University of California in San Francisco shows that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress. This includes burnout and even depression, all of which erode self-control. Saying no is indeed a major self-control challenge for many people.
Habits of millennials: Habits of Millennials: Which Ones Can Impact Marketing Campaigns?
“No” is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. When it’s time to say no, emotionally intelligent people avoid phrases like “I don’t think I can” or “I’m not certain.” Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments. It also gives you the opportunity to fulfill them successfully.
Just remind yourself that saying no is an act of self-control now that will increase your future self-control. It does this by preventing the negative effects of over commitment.
Billionaire Warren Buffet once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” Remember, you only have 1,440 minutes in a day. Don’t give them away easily.
Not writing it down at the time
Richard Branson has said on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t have been able to build Virgin without a simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever he goes. He knew the value of writing it down.
In one interview, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis said, “Always carry a notebook. Write everything down… That is a million dollar lesson they don’t teach you in business school!”
Ultra-productive people free their minds by writing everything down as the ideas come to them.
Letting the bad guys get to you
There are always going to be toxic people who have a way of getting under your skin and staying there. Each time you find yourself thinking about a coworker or person who makes your blood boil, don’t give in. Instead, practice being grateful for someone else in your life.
There are plenty of people out there who deserve your attention. The last thing you want to do is think about the people who don’t matter when there are people who do.
Multitasking
Not able to say no.
You should never give anything half of your attention, especially meetings. If a meeting isn’t worth your full attention, then you shouldn’t be attending it in the first place. If the meeting is worth your full attention, then you need to get everything you can out of it.
Multitasking during meetings hurts you by creating the impression that you believe you are more important than everyone else.
Little life prioritization
Intel’s Andy Grove once said, “There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done.”
Highly successful people know what they value in life. Yes, work, but also what else they value. They know success is a ‘whole life’ metric. There is no right answer. For many, these other values include family time, exercise, and giving back.
Not skipping meetings whenever you can
Mark Cuban once said, “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.” Meetings are notorious time killers.
They often start late, have the wrong people in them, meander around their topics, and run long. You should get out of meetings whenever you can. You should also hold fewer of them yourself. If you do run a meeting, keep it short. Also use them to solve simple objectives.
Talking too much
People who talk too much often derive pleasure from other people’s misfortunes. It often is fun to peer into somebody else’s personal or professional faux pas. But over time, it gets tiring, makes you feel gross and hurts other people.
There are too many positives and too much to learn from interesting people to waste your time talking too much about others.
Slow to act … indecision
Most writers spend countless hours brainstorming their characters and plots, and they even write page after page that they know they’ll never include in the books. They do this because they know that ideas need time to develop.
We often freeze up when it’s time to get started. It is because we know that our ideas aren’t perfect and that what we produce might not be any good. But how can you ever produce something great if you don’t get started? You need to give your ideas time to evolve.
Author Jodi Picoult summarized the importance of avoiding perfectionism perfectly: “You can edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank page.”
Trying to keep up with the Jones
When a sense of satisfaction is derived from comparing yourself to others, you are no longer the master of happiness. When you feel good about something that you’ve done, don’t allow anyone’s opinions or accomplishments take that away.
While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, you don’t have to compare yourself to others. You should always take people’s opinions with a grain of salt. That way, no matter what other people are thinking or doing, your self-worth comes from within.
Regardless of what people think of you at any particular moment, one thing is certain — you’re never as good or bad as they say you are.
Not using the 80/20 rule
Known as the Pareto Principle, in most cases, 80 percent of results come from only 20 percent of activities. Ultra-productive people know which activities drive the greatest results.
Focus on those and ignore the rest. You don’t get extra credit for solving trivial action items.
The bottom line
By practicing self-control to break these bad habits, you can strengthen your self-control muscle. More importantly, you can also abolish nasty habits that have the power to bring your career to a grinding halt.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration?
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 writes about topics that relate to improving the performance of business. Go to Amazon to obtain a copy of his latest book, Exploring New Age Marketing. It focuses on using the best examples to teach new age marketing … lots to learn. 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 reading on mentoring 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.
