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The Next Level of Leadership

Guest post by: Steven Smith

Article Overview: If someone told you that humility is the key to being a more competitive company and influential leader, how long would it take before you tuned out and started waiting for the leadership training to end? As it turns out, humility is one of the ultimate competitive advantages in business. In Jim Collins' Good to Great research, he discovered two unique traits of leaders who moved companies from average performance to great: 1) intense professional will, and 2) extreme personal humility. But while humility is an nice trait, who wants humility if it’s incompatible with winning? For most people, tradition holds that the opposite of excessive ego is humility, when in fact having too little ego is as dangerous and unproductive as having too much. Humility is the equilibrium between the two extremes and catalyst for healthy ego.

The Next Level of Leadership

If someone told you that humility is the key to being more competitive as a company and a more influential leader, how long would it take before you tuned them out and started looking at your watch waiting for the leadership training to end? As it turns out, humility is a key leadership skill or trait that separates great leaders from everyone else, and one of the ultimate competitive advantages in business.

In Jim Collins' landmark Good to Great research, two-thirds of the companies he studied who didn't make the leap from good to great were weighed down by the "presence of gargantuan personal ego that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company." For the 11 of 1, 435 companies that made the cut, Collins discovered two unique traits of leaders throughout their cultures: 1) intense professional will, and 2) extreme personal humility.

The Next Level

He called the rare combination "Level 5" leadership. The leaders of those companies outperformed not only their competitors, but the market in general by an average margin of difference of 688%, and sustained that difference for 15 years. Humility isn't just a nice trait to have; to build a great organization with unmatched results, humility, and the leadership training that teaches it, is a necessity.

As Collins described his "Level 5" findings to a group of executives before his book was released, a newly appointed CEO spoke. "I believe what you say about the good-to-great leaders," she said, "but I'm disturbed because when I look in the mirror, I know that I'm not Level 5, not yet anyway. Part of the reason I got my job is because of my ego drives. Are you telling me I can't make this a great company if I'm not Level 5?"

Avoiding a definitive "yes," Jim simply pointed to the evidence validating the findings. The group sat quietly for a moment, and she followed with her next question, "Can you learn to become a Level 5?" He answered there are two categories of people; those who have it, and those who don't:

The first category consists of people who could never in a million years bring themselves to subjugate their egoistic needs to the great ambition of building something larger and more lasting than themselves. The second category of people-and I suspect the larger group-consists of those who have the potential to evolve to Level 5; the capability resides within them, perhaps buried or ignored, but there nonetheless. And under the right circumstances-self-reflection, conscious personal development, a mentor, a great teacher...they begin to develop.

That's where Collins' answer to her question stopped.

Why Humility?

But why did humility separate company cultures capable of making the leap from good to great from those who couldn't, despite equal resources, access to talent, ambition, drive, etc? To answer that Good to Great question, and the CEO's question of Collins, you have to get past traditional, and misleading, definitions of humility to understand what it really is, and why it's so powerful in business transformation. Our experience is that people are hungry for the answers; 83 percent of people surveyed wish their organizations had more humility.

Despite the desire for it, humility has a mystery about it that's both appealing and unsettling at the same time. Among appealing words like modest, polite, respectful, patient and unpretentious, humility is surrounded by unsettling negatives:

• apprehensive

• content

• fearful

• hesitant

• ordinary

• quiet

• self-conscious

• sheepish

• simple

• submissive

• tentative

• timid

• unambitious

Words that don't exactly leave a favorable impression.

While humility is an admirable trait, there's suspicion about its weaknesses-who wants anything to do with humility if it's incompatible with winning? That question wasn't easy at first to square in our own minds. In a relentlessly competitive business environment where we're paid to aggressively take market share from competitors, drive revenue and profit, and compare and rank people internally for a limited supply of compensation, where and how does humility fit in to leadership and business performance?

For most people, tradition holds that the opposite of excessive ego is humility, when in fact having too little ego is just as dangerous and unproductive as having too much. Humility is the equilibrium between the two extremes. But since there's a natural tendency to deviate from the equilibrium, when we move just right or left of center, we begin to lose humility, or genuine confidence. Imagine that the spectrum of ego is magnetic, with the strongest pull coming from the two ends.

At the center, the magnetic pull on either side has little effect on us. But the closer we move to the extremes, the more the magnetic pull affects us and the harder it is to make our way back. The longer we stay off-center, the more comfortable we become being off-center. If we don't quickly recover, we're more likely to develop egotistical habits.

When an entire culture or team is off-center, it's rarely the responsibility of only one person-but it can't start without the permission of at least one person, and the steady agreement of others. But whether we're consistently or momentarily off-center, ego's drive is so strong only humility can pull us back.

If you were to put humility under a microscope to discover the DNA of humility at equilibrium, you would uncover three primary properties:

1. We, Then Me (unmatched devotion to progress)

2. I'm Brilliant, and I'm Not (balanced strengths and respect for other's strengths)

3. One More Thing (constructive discontent)

The most concentrated "dose" of humility is at the intersection of those three properties. Because "we, then me" establishes the driving ambition of humility, let's explore it first.

1. We, Then Me

The core drive of humility is a remarkable devotion to progress. In business, that devotion translates to the progress of our company; the project we're on, the client in front of us, the market we serve, the we're a part of, and so on. That devotion requires a sequential focus: company first, me second. Devotion to progress doesn't exclude what we personally need, it just prioritizes the focus.

At first glance, devotion to progress could sound like a nice, but naïve idea-naïve because, according to most, that's not the way we currently do business. In a Rutgers and University of Connecticut poll, 58 percent of workers believe most top executives put their own self-interest ahead of the company's, while 67 percent don't believe their bosses have the firm's best interests at heart. The only realistic way to change that number is if we believe that by putting the company's needs first, both we and the company will ultimately be better as a result. And, before anyone would buy a more selfless approach to business, we need to ask an ironic question; what's in it for me? The ironic answer is that the less we focus on our needs first, the more likely our needs will be met. Let's explore the idea.

Imagine for a moment you're a salesperson for IBM (or any company). In a high-performance culture, the pressure is on. Like every salesperson, you have a monthly quota. Hitting your quota could mean many things: commission, promotion, reputation, college tuition, weddings, house payments, retirement, and so on. With that pressure, you have a sales presentation to make on a several-hundred-thousand-dollar proposal. If you walk into that meeting and begin making your presentation with your focus first and foremost on your needs-to hit your numbers and get your commission-are you more or less likely to make the sale? The answer is less likely. But why?

As soon as the client senses a me-first intent from you, that intent taints the interaction on both sides. You may oversell product features, rush through a technical explanation, mistake understanding for agreement and enthusiasm, smooth over objections, or push too hard for the close. As the client feels your intent, they grow suspicious of what you say, become guarded about what they say, and don't give you access to information or people they otherwise would. In turn, their trust in you goes down, you lose the sale and your company loses the revenue. In fact, maybe you have a better product than your competitors, and the client loses the economic benefit of not getting the best solution. Everybody loses.

In sales, the more important it is to meet your numbers, the more important it is to forget about your numbers and help clients meet their numbers. In other words, the more important it is for you and your company to progress, the more important it is for you to suspend the focus on that progress and devote yourself to the progress of your clients first. The irony is that in suspending your own needs, the more likely you are to meet your client's needs, which in turn advances the progress of your company, and therefore more likely to meet your needs.

The same sequence of whose needs we focus on applies whether we're working to meet external or internal client needs. If progress is truly our primary motivation, we won't let individual passion and commitment to a project or idea drift into a me-first, team-second view. That doesn't mean we shouldn't argue passionately for our ideas, but we should be guided by what's best for the business, not just our individual part of it. To the point, Jerry Useem of Fortune recently wrote:

Economists have long assumed that success boils down to personal incentives. "We'll cooperate if it's in our self-interest, and we won't if it's not (sort of like lions)." Then a team of researchers led by behavioral psychologist Linnda Caporael thought to ask: Would people cooperate without any incentives? The answer was--gasp!--yes, under the right conditions. Participants often cited ‘group welfare' as motivation. To economists, shocking. To anyone who's been part of a successful team, not shocking at all. "[The] boss who assumes that workers' interests are purely mercenary will end up with a group of mercenaries."

It's important to remember that devotion to progress abides by an economic reality; since the company is investing for the return and living with the risk, its needs factor in heavier. For instance, if an employee makes a mistake that costs the company money, the company eats the cost-it doesn't come out of the employee's pocket directly. As a result, the business comes first. But even with that reality, it doesn't make sense that a company would be interested only in its progress to the exclusion of the needs of its employees.

It's equally ineffective for an employee to pursue individual progress to the detriment of the company. A company shouldn't skew the balance to 90/10 in favor of its needs, but individual contributors should be clear the balance isn't 50/50 either. When either side miscalculates the ratio, they misjudge the consequences to a culture. When people perceive unfair disparity, they hold back, and devotion to progress evaporates in favor of "doing their job" and collecting a paycheck. Not all strikes from work are on picket lines with signs of grievances.

Devotion to progress doesn't mean you can always meet everyone's needs, but you can diligently consider them before you make a decision. Those considerations will be subjective, and only you can determine your motive behind them. The sequence of focus we're suggesting doesn't eliminate selfishness, or guarantee selflessness, on either side. It does, at least, provide the opportunity to strike the right balance between we and me.

2. I'm Brilliant, and I'm Not

Because of the real confidence humility produces, we can be both bold and modest at the same time. We can be as comfortable passionately making a point as seeking understanding of another's opposing point. Humility can follow the lead of someone else one moment, and just as easily be the leader the next. That duality is the second unique property of humility.

Duality fuses traits that otherwise appear to be in conflict, adding complements to our strengths so they don't become one-dimensional. Take, for example, someone with the strengths of intense passion and fierce determination. At first glance, those characteristics seem incompatible with traits like meekness and flexibility. That perceived incompatibility is a false dichotomy.

Many leaders believe that some traits they have are incompatible with others they would like to acquire. During a leadership training on power and leadership taught by Dr. Roderick Kramer of Stanford University, he asked participants which leadership qualities they wished they possessed more of. "Despite their proven success," said Kramer, "these leaders felt they were still too nice and too concerned about what their employees thought of them."

In other words, they wished they were tougher. One executive said, "I would love to have Carly Fiorina's ability to stare down her opponents." When we're unaware of duality, we believe it's either this or that-either we have to be tough (and stare people down) or we have to be nice (and too soft).

But humility isn't a dichotomy-it's a duality. As such, humility has the capacity to say I am something and I am nothing-at the same time. I am accomplished, and at the same time, unfinished; talented and average; special, and better than no one; extraordinary and ordinary; popular and unknown; deserving of respect, and no more deserving than another. "The test of a first rate intelligence," said F. Scott Fitzgerald, "is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

When we embrace humility's confident, dual nature, the early warning signs of ego are eradicated. Comparison weakens because while we can strive to be something significant, we don't suffer from the delusion we can be everything. Seeking acceptance is uneasy next to humility because we're at ease being both loved and disliked. Showcasing can't occupy the thoughts of a person who acknowledges his brilliance and yet understands that it's not the only brilliance on the planet, or even in the room. Defensiveness can't penetrate our management style when we're willing to admit that, although we're often right, we're also often wrong.

As a powerful balance to ego, duality doesn't erase our identity, but simply balances and elevates the traits we already have. Duality doesn't force us to become something we're not.

What Color is Real Leadership Confidence?

Humility isn't the architect of plain personalities. It is the engineer of stronger ones. In how our personalities are engineered, Dr. Taylor Hartman, an expert in personality theory, suggests that we're born with a certain personality type as unique and genetic as a fingerprint, and that our core motive drives our behaviors.

While personality and typical behaviors associated with each personality type can change dimensions, who we are and our core motivation never changes. "Your personality watches over you like a parent," says Hartman. "Without clear-cut personality traits to mark our paths through life, we would become lost." His four categories of personality include red, blue, yellow, and white:

1. Red: power; values productivity and to be respected

2. Blue: intimacy; values relationships and to be good

3. Yellow: fun; values being fully engaged in life, wants to look good

4. White: peace; values independence, to feel good, to be respected

So if you were to vote, what personality do you think would have the easiest time acquiring humility? When we ask that question during our leadership training, whites are the first voted in. Blues are easily voted into second place, while yellows are hardly mentioned and reds are a complete shut out.

After the initial vote we sit silent, and within seconds the debate among participants begins. Eventually, the class gravitates to general consensus: "No one has the easiest time acquiring humility." They're right. In our experience, there is little or no correlation between personality type and the capacity for humility. Duality isn't about blues switching their core personality over to white, yellows turning blue, or reds losing their color. Humility is not homogeneity. In terms of personality and the development of humility, nobody has an easy road. Duality doesn't require abandonment of who we are, but it does require adaptation.

Talent Balancing Act

Without sacrificing our personality, duality allows "opposing" traits to co-exist. That's why we need duality-it doesn't keep us locked into one-sided development of our strengths. By co-existing, our talents stay true to form-neither overdoing nor under-using each trait. Each of our strengths should be balanced by a compensating competence-ones we've developed ourselves, or those found in others who have what we don't.

Strength (Duality's balance)

Fearless (Discretion)

Determined (Flexible)

Decisive (Receptive)

Charismatic (Down-to-earth)

Motivated (Patient)

Certain (Open-minded)

Intense (Easy going)

Independent (Inclusive)

Competitive (Collaborative)

Direct (Diplomatic)

Ambitious (Selfless)

If either trait excludes the other, that particular trait weakens in the other's absence. For example, let's use the last two traits listed in the chart above; ambitious and selfless. If we over-rely on ambition in a debate, we crowd out other ideas or people to make our point.

We use over-the-top words like "always," "never," "everyone" or "nobody" to convey the passion of our argument, which sends a message to colleagues-this is oration, not conversation. On the other hand, if we lean too heavily on being selfless, we choose words so carefully hoping not to rock the boat that our point gets steamrolled in the process. Our passion is lost in politeness, and confidence loses out to deference and courtesy.

Unfinished Business

Since everyone is far from perfect and missing at least one balancing trait, we each have work to do. For some it may take minor remodeling, for others it may look more like demolition work. In either case, the scope of work to be done depends on the role we allow duality to play. "Many of the more conventional books on leadership show leaders as mythic and heroic figures," said Dr. Kramer of Stanford University. He continued:

Students want their leaders to be perfect and without any personal blemishes. What they fail to realize is that sometimes the very qualities that make someone imperfect also help explain their tremendous drive to succeed and energy to focus on one narrow realm of achievement. [Steve] Jobs is a great example. He is a creative genius and yet he has an amazing ability to alienate some people and drive them away from his organization.

But what is it about creative genius that alienates people and drives them away? It isn't creative genius that's the problem-it's what's missing from genius that's the trouble. Early in his career, Jobs was described as someone who "[ruled] by force of personality, making numerous enemies with his ridiculing of the ideas of others, his unwillingness to hear views contrary to his own, and his outbursts of bad temper."

But why argue for Jobs to add to his genius traits like inclusion or mutual respect when he's responsible for starting Apple in his parent's garage and growing his company within ten years to a $2 billion organization by the time he was 30? Why would "balance" even matter? Because what he accomplished to that point is a narrow view of what he was capable of achieving.

When we're too narrow in our development of traits, it limits what we accomplish. As it turns out, humility had a lesson in store for Jobs that would balance his creative genius, and as a result widen what he achieved. In his commencement speech to the graduating class of 2005 at Stanford University, Jobs' shares his lesson in humility:

And then I got fired [from Apple in 1985]. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down-that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard [co-founder of Hewlett-Packard] and Bob Noyce [co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, and known as the Mayor of Silicon Valley] and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.

If we don't let humility teach us first-like a stock market "correction"-circumstance will usually correct us. Stunned at the turn of events, and unable to explain why, Jobs said, "Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick."

Ejected from Apple, Jobs started his next venture; a computer company appropriately named NeXT. But NeXT didn't come close to producing the success of Apple. Seven years later, Jobs closed the factory, laid off half of the employees and shifted the company's direction to software development. Not until 1995 did NeXT turn a profit. In December of that same year, Apple bought the company for $400 million.

The same year Jobs started NeXT, he also bought a struggling computer animation studio named Pixar from movie mogul George Lucas. The Pixar story was a little brighter; two years later it won an Oscar for its computer-animated short film Tin Toy. In 1991 Pixar secured a deal with Walt Disney for three animated films, and started work on the blockbuster movie Toy Story.

But none of these events represent the most interesting part of Jobs' story. In 1997 it must have felt like déjà vu when Jobs was named "interim" CEO of Apple, which was in a near free fall. One of his first moves was to drop the very operating system that he developed at NeXT, and that Apple had purchased from him two years earlier.

That move wasn't the Steve Jobs of old. "Every year he's mellowed and matured," said Susan Kelly Barnes, NeXT's former chief financial officer. She's not the only one that noticed changes in Jobs. A biography by Kirk Beetz reveals what can only be described as a metamorphosis of Steve Jobs:

Although he was still certain that his vision for Apple was the only right one, Jobs' management style had radically changed from what it had been in 1985; he seemed more relaxed and open to ideas. In fact, he seemed to relish other people's ideas; perhaps his work at Pixar had improved his ability to work with the creative people at Apple. He wisely surrounded himself with top-notch executives in all the key corporate positions, and he held on to them rather than driving them away. Almost by willing it, he transformed the corporate culture into one in which employees wanted to come to work and where they saw themselves as part of a great company that had a mission to change the world for the better. Moreover, Jobs, the hobbyist of old, brought the fun back into tinkering with electronics.

The irony of duality is that when we acknowledge we're unfinished, we become stronger. Steve Jobs seems to agree. "I'm pretty sure none of this [NeXT, Pixar, his return to Apple, the iPod and iTunes] would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple," says Jobs. "It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it."

Duality is the admission that we are knowledgeable and ignorant, strong and weak, right and wrong, capable and at the same time incomplete. Let's now return to some of the less than attractive traits we mentioned earlier in the chapter that surround the word humility: submissive, meek, quiet, simple, cautious, soft-spoken, self-effacing, and passive. With duality, most of these traits now appear to have strengths when not isolated. Sometimes it requires more inner strength to be submissive than it does to be independent.

Duality exists in all of those characteristics-meekness and boldness, modesty and brilliance, self-effacing and self-confidence. Duality, as a unique property of humility, leads us to an appropriate sense that we're unfinished, and as such puts us on the doorstep to the final property of humility: one more thing (constructive discontent.)

3. One More Thing (constructive discontent)

In addition to "We, Then Me" (devotion to progress) and "I'm brilliant, and I'm not" (duality), the last unique property of humility is "One More Thing" (constructive discontent). Rock band U2 team members Bono and Larry Mullen epitomize the essence of "one more thing." As the lead singer of U2, Bono has won 14 Grammys and produced 15 albums that have sold 130 million copies. When asked what his favorite song or album is, Bono answered, "We haven't written it yet." Larry Mullen, U2 founder and drummer added, "We're constantly unsatisfied as a band. We've got all this stuff, but maybe we haven't earned it. There are contemporaries who have worked equally as hard as U2 and don't have as much success. We're uncomfortable with it; we need to prove ourselves." That pursuit of perfection and proving oneself is the power of "one more thing."

Constructive discontent works hand in hand with humility's devotion to progress. In fact, humility's total dedication is progress. And when it comes to progress, Toyota is a model citizen of constructive discontent. In reality, it's not "Toyota," but the people at Toyota, who are currently on track to make their company the world's largest automobile manufacturer. In fact, by the time you're reading this chapter, projections suggest they already will be.

For the third year in a row, Toyota was awarded International Engine of the Year for the revolutionary hybrid, Prius. If you added the J.D. Power 5 Stars and Motor Trend Cars of the Year Awards, you would need an endless inventory of stars and trophies. In a Fast Company article on Toyota's dissatisfaction with satisfaction, Charles Fishman writes of a recent improvement the Georgetown, Kentucky Toyota plant made in how it paints cars. While their process wasn't "broken" by competitive standards, it wasn't perfect. That imperfection was incentive enough.

Fishman goes on to describe how they improved the painting; nozzles, paint cartridges, paint flush changes, processes, etc. "Cars now spend 8 hours in paint, instead of 10." writes Fishman, "The paint shop at any moment holds 25% fewer cars than it used to. Wasted paint? Practically zero. What used to require 100 gallons now takes 70." But the details of the specific improvements aren't really the point. Fishman continues:

[Improvement] is rooted in an institutional obsession with improvement that Toyota manages to instill in each one of its workers, a pervasive lack of complacency with whatever was accomplished yesterday.[What's] interesting is to compare how they think about work at Georgetown with everywhere else. How come the checkout lines at Wal-Mart never get shorter? How come the customer service of your cell-phone company never improves, year after year? How come my PC gets harder to operate with each software upgrade? It's almost as if Toyota people see the world with special four-dimensional glasses; the rest of us are stuck in 2-D.

When driven by constructive discontent, we aren't looking for a final destination thinking we're "finished." Instead, we value the movement along the way as much as, or more than, the end result. "We're all incredibly proud of what we've accomplished," said Chad Buckner, an engineering manager of Toyota's paint division. "But you don't stop. You don't stop. There's no reason to be satisfied."

His colleague John Shook added, "Once you realize that it's the process itself-that you're not seeking a plateau-you can relax. Doing the task and doing the task better become one and the same thing." What Toyota has realized is the difference between merely having a process for kaizen (a Japanese word for "improvement"), and a culture with a kaizen attitude.

The Toyota story is an example of small changes made inside a very large corporate machine. Important changes aren't always a vision that descends upon us, seizes us, and galvanizes everyone. If you just consider the paint change improvement as a snapshot, it wouldn't seem revolutionary.

But small, incremental changes accumulated over time make the bigger difference. That doesn't mean that constructive discontent is only about small, nearly indiscernible differences. Sometimes changes are revolutions, but most of the time they're not. Besides, whether the changes are big or small misses the point-it's the attitude, drive, dialogue and debate that analyzes opportunities and pursues change that matters.

To explore why, let's return momentarily to the work of Jim Collins in Good to Great. There was something about Collins' research that was different than any other in our study of the last 50 years of management writing. His work wasn't an investigation of companies who were great from the day they were born, nor was it a methodology for moderate improvement. It was a study of transformation: decades of good performance, marked by a transition period to great. In that transition, most of the good-to-great companies weren't forced by any urgent dilemma to change.

Market conditions didn't transform these companies-in fact, Collins created criteria to ensure it wasn't the market's "fault" they made the leap. Each company had to move themselves. In essence, these cultures appeared dependent on humility because they wanted to change, not because they needed to change-in other words, constructive discontent.

To a certain degree, Intel co-founder Andrew Grove's statement that "[o]nly the paranoid survive" is an extreme version of that very idea. That's why the acute awareness of the early (not late) warning signs is so important. They're signs that let us know progress has stalled. In the pursuit of progress, constructive discontent makes us less comfortable where we are, and less stubborn in making a change.

But when you carefully inspect the tasks required for that change, it becomes more apparent why humility surfaces so prominently. Collins first observed what he came to call the "first who, then what" strategy. That meant companies had to get the "right people on the bus" and the wrong people off, even before they decided what they were going to be or do as an organization. Once the seats on the bus were taken, each company had to discover what they could be best in the world at, regardless of what they were currently doing or wished they could be best at.

But it wasn't the "company" that had to make those admissions. It was people; it was the leaders. In other words, human beings had to discern the difference between what they wanted to be best in the world at, and what they really could be best in the world at-a critical distinction not easily recognized with too much or too little ego. In their pursuit of great, every task that lay ahead of these leaders required uncommon dialogue.

In the pursuit of moving from good performance to great, the most difficult tasks that lay ahead of us require uncommon dialogue, intense debate and the leadership training that builds and promotes both. Humility is the catalyst in every conversation and decision that counts in making that move.

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Level 4 - Manager - Looks like I'm the first to Level 4! I'm a Manager!
Re: THE SECRET TO SUCCESS IS ALL IN YOUR HEAD...RIGHT NOW!!! - Hey Barry, [quote="Barry Sarner":ev3dumxj]"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing." - Abraham Lincoln WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS STATEMENT ???[/quote:ev3dumxj] It's true on two levels. Level 1 - Doing something for the first time to succeed. Level 2 - Coming back from failure and not resting until you've regained success. The scares maybe deep. The wounds tender to the touch. But it will always be man's resolve or lack there of that defines the limits he is willing to go to, to gain or regain succeed. Books, audios, videos, courses, seminars, webinars, & etc. are important and I can't get enough. But nothing can take the place of what a man must decide to do, deep down within himself, if he wants to succeed.
Re: Business Women Peer Mentoring Spotlight - Hi Everyone, Gosh, I REALLY appreciate your concrete feedback. This was far more than I expected and I'm glad you said what you thought straight out. Each of you have shared something of value and I want to take some more time to think and really go over what each of you have said. However, I can see there are some things I need to change right away. What an interesting point about a NEW program perhaps making people think they are guinea pigs! This is NOT what I want to convey! It's funny how we can see some things so clearly in others while not always seeing it for ourselves! I must admit there are a few things I've been meaning to change (like my bio which is very outdated). Obviously, these things need to be higher on my priority list. You caught me like the plumber who puts his clients first and doesn't get around to fixing his own tap! As far as my target market, I do feel quite strongly about working with Women Leaders and doing Leadership Coaching with them. It's non-negotiable in my books. In my Executive Coaching training, the terms "Leaders" and "Executives" are interchangable. To me, an Executive is a Leader and so is the Business Woman or Entrepreneur who is CEO of her own business. I love working with decision makers! What I did learn is that I need to avoid opening up the Leadership term beyond what I described above. I'm also wondering if there is a misunderstanding with the general public as to what Leadership Coaching really is. Leadership Coaching is all about developing your leadership skills, both as a people manager and in more effectively running and growing the business. There is ALWAYS room for growth in some way. As well, sometimes, we just need a sounding board to clarify what our next BEST step is. In fact, if a woman thinks she has nothing to work on, then we aren't a good Client/Coach fit anyway. How can she grow if she doesn't see the value of expressing ALL of the great ability within her? How can her company grow if she doesn't see the value of strategic planning for the next best level? Thanks again to you all! I will go back to my website and really question whether I am conveying the right message. I got more than I bargained for in this Spotlight... you generously offered way more than I was asking. I think we could be on to something great for the Forum. Now it's time to let someone else have the spotlight. It would be great if everyone took a turn! In gratitude, Tami
Re: THE SECRET TO SUCCESS IS ALL IN YOUR HEAD...RIGHT NOW!!! - [quote="ThePromotionalGuy":18e9nuiy]Hey Barry, [quote="Barry Sarner":18e9nuiy]"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing." - Abraham Lincoln WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS STATEMENT ???[/quote:18e9nuiy] It's true on two levels. Level 1 - Doing something for the first time to succeed. Level 2 - Coming back from failure and not resting until you've regained success. The scares maybe deep. The wounds tender to the touch. But it will always be man's resolve or lack there of that defines the limits he is willing to go to succeed. Books, audios, videos, courses, seminars, webinars, & etc. I love. But nothing can take the place of what a man must decide to do, deep down if he wants to succeed.[/quote:18e9nuiy] No matter what we all say it always comes down to one thing...the individual


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