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Category Archive: Core Values

The Power Of No

Posted by on March 14, 2018

This idea changed my approach to personal leadership, which eventually changed everything I do and don’t do in life. The concept was first introduced by Stephen Covey in 7 Habits when he demonstrated just because something is urgent does not mean its important. I eventually became very efficient in doing all the wrong things faster. The only way to stop the madness was to identify those major Yes’s in my life. This Forbes post will help:

“Here, though, I will focus on one of the key things I have seen these influential leaders do very well, and it’s something that others struggle with. It may indeed be one of the biggest difference makers in the number of lives an influencer impacts and the results they achieve.”

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Why You Should Always Lead With Your Values

Posted by on September 20, 2017

Leveraging the best productivity practices and empowering teams are great strategies to drive results. However, what we must always avoid is giving higher value to efficiency over effectiveness. This means that the Why of what we are doing will always be more important than the How. This Forbes post drives this truth home:

“A few years ago, Simon Sinek made a huge splash in the business world when he delivered his TEDx Talk, “Start With Why — How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” His claim is that every team on the planet knows what they do, some know how they do it, but very few know why they do what they do. And by “why,” he means their purpose and beliefs — the reason they exist.”

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How To Know What's Important: Calendars and Checkbooks

Posted by on June 18, 2017

We all want to accomplish the things that are really important in life and learn the discipline to walk away from everything else. Most of us have not taken the time to write down specific goals in a life plan that involves everything personal, family, faith, friends and our professional lives. Best practice Living Forward by Michael Hyatt.

So how do we know if we are just filling our schedules with things to do without any serious evaluation or if those are the things that should even be done at all? We don’t want to get to the end of our lives and look back realizing that a lot of our time was totally wasted on things that don’t really matter.

A great place to start is to evaluate how we are spending our time and our money. Calendars can tell us a lot about our core values and priorities because they reflect the choices we are making. No doubt some of our time is not our own to schedule but how we are spending a large percentage of it reflects what is really a priority and what is not.

Are you making time for the people and relationships that you care about the most or are they getting the leftovers at best? If you really want to know, take the time to track how you are spending your time for at least a month. You will be amazed how much of it is scheduled based on what appears to be urgent at the time but in the end is not really important at all.

The next big indicator of what is a priority in our lives is to look at how we are spending our finances. If we are living beyond our means and accumulating unnecessary debt then we have a major character problem that must be addressed.

More stress is brought into marriage by this one area than almost anything else. The only solution is again to write down a budget that includes all of your expenses and then have the discipline to post all your transactions and make necessary adjustments to live within your income.

You may think this sounds like way too much work to me and I am already busy enough. Trust me you are already using calendars and checkbooks anyway but you may not be gaining any of the benefits of leading your life instead of just letting it happen.

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How To Make Time For What Matters Most

Posted by on May 15, 2017

The skill sets involved in personal productivity will ensure that you can get more things done faster. However, they can not tell you if those things should be done at all. Everyone really needs to develop a life plan that defines the major priorities in their life. Michael Hyatt’s Living Forward is an excellent tool. This post by Sherry Swift is also helpful:

“So many of us suffer from the unrealistic, anxiety-based feeling that “there is never enough time.” This feeling usually comes from living a distracted life — one that is constantly interrupted by something noisy and new. As a result of this lifestyle, we are often left feeling disjointed, incomplete and unsuccessful.”

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Why Gratitude Is So Important In The Workplace

Posted by on November 30, 2016

Most of the behavioral issues I deal with in the workplace are because the person I am coaching has lost their perspective. They focus in on a series of small hurts and dwell on them to the point they become bitter and negative. In every situation without exception, the key core issue is they are no longer grateful for all the good in their lives. This Fast Company post deals with why this is so important:

“Gratitude is absolutely vital in the workplace, says UC Davis psychology professor Robert Emmons, author of The Little Book of Gratitude: Creating a Life of Happiness and Wellbing by Giving Thanks, and a leading researcher on the subject. “Most of our waking hours are spent on the job, and gratitude, in all its forms, is a basic human requirement,” he says. “So when you put these factors together, it is essential to both give and receive thanks at work.”

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The Value Of Significance In Life

Posted by on September 13, 2016

We all need to ask ourselves what we really want out of life. For many, it is success and all the outward benefits and rewards that come from achievement in the corporate culture of our day.

I will never forget an interview that I saw with Tom Brady after he had won his last Super Bowl. After he talked about all the fame and fortune he had achieved, he then made the following statement, “there has to be more to life than this.”

There is and it is called significance, which is all about adding value to other people. I have talked with a lot of people near the very end of their lives.

The common denominator for all of these conversations is that when it is all said and done all that really matters is have we made a difference in the lives of other people.

Today if we are not careful, we are in danger of reducing all of our important relationships down to a few words on a voice mail message, likes on social media or a picture attachment to a text message.

Can someone be professionally successful and realize personal significance at the same time? Absolutely.

Everyone who has accomplished both has come to the critical understanding that professional success is only the means to the end of having personal significance through helping other people.

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Why Is Rinsing Your Cottage Cheese Important

Posted by on August 26, 2016

There were many profound conclusions reached by Jim Collins research team that were documented in his bestselling book Good to Great. The principle of rinsing your cottage cheese received a small amount of space in the book but may be one of the key principles that separate those organizations who merely survive in this economy and those who thrive.

This analogy comes from a disciplined world-class athlete named Dave Scott, who won the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon six times. Even though he had a training schedule that would burn at least 5,000 calories per day he would still rinse his cottage cheese to get the extra fat off.

From a business planning model this represents the last 10 percent of work that most people are not willing to do or even know exists to make their project or program the best it possibly could be. Most people are willing to settle for 75-90% effort and feel that should really represent the best they can produce.

Sometimes the last 10% represents seemingly little things like a spot on the carpet or windows that have not been cleaned. However, that can be the very thing that a customer will notice and come to the conclusion that if you do not care about those areas what else are you not doing to be your best that they cannot see.

Collins writes, “Everyone would like to be the best, but most organizations lack the discipline to figure out with egoless clarity what they can be the best at and the will to do whatever it takes to turn that potential into reality.” Bottom line they lack the character and the discipline to rinse their cottage cheese.

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The Value Of Character

Posted by on July 27, 2016

Simply put everything you eventually accomplish in life will be based upon you personal leadership DNA. What you do is based upon who you are.

Someone has well said: ability may get you to the top but it takes character to keep you there. If you do not believe that then just ask the former chairman of the DNC.

I had to learn the importance of this lesson very early in my career. I changed jobs four times in five years right out of college because I did not realize that the major problem was not the company I was working for or the supervisor that I had, the problem was me.

All I did was move from company to company and take all of my unresolved character problems with me expecting different results. I learned the hard way that if you are consistently failing where you are there is no real reason to believe that you will be successful somewhere else.

However, if you learn how to be successful where you are regardless of your circumstances and become an A Player then there is every reason to believe that you can be successful anywhere.

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The Real Test Of A Leaders Legacy

Posted by on July 4, 2016

In a day when markets and shareholders demand short term rewards for their financial investment it is extremely difficult for leaders to have the courage to lead with the long term as a priority. The temptation to make easy decisions that will make the leaders bottom line look good today are setting up good companies for failure down the road.

This mentality usually results in a strong almost dictatorial leadership style that builds the business around the charisma and determination of the celebrity type leader. There is very little delegation and certainly no succession planning taking place because that does not serve the crisis of the moment mentality.

The real test of any leader’s success must not be simply measured by the timeframe when they are working but by what happens to the organization when they leave. If everything seems to fall apart and all positive momentum is lost then you cannot believe the leader set the team up for future success.

John Maxwell makes the point when he writes, “Achievement comes to someone when he is able to do great things for himself. Success comes when he empowers followers to do great things with him. Significance comes when he develops leaders to do great things for him. But a legacy is created only when a person puts his organization into a position to do great things without him.”

When we value the success of others over the long haul more than any short term success we may have for ourselves, then we are leading with integrity. Anything less than that is nothing more than selfish ambition and that is not true leadership.

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How Much Is Enough

Posted by on June 6, 2016

We are challenged at every level to make sure we are not wasting our time so we can get the right things done. What we fail to see is that sometimes we set the bar too high and actually do too much and need to dial back our expectations for success. Michael Hyatt drives home this point:

“It’s easy for me to overdo things. I know, shocker. What can I say? I like getting things done. But the problem is that when I overdo, I underperform. For people driven to achieve, it’s a common trap. Even if we pare things down to the essentials, we can plow so deep into those that we’re just wasting our efforts—even while we think we’re making headway.”

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