If you deliver a better service than you promise, your customers are delighted. If you don’t live up to your own guarantees, you will be flooded by complaints.
This is what makes the model of under-promising and over-delivering so relevant for companies. Customers will be positively surprised that you exceeded your promises and this increases the likeliness of them coming back to you for their next order and spreading the word that you are a great company to deal with to their family, friends and colleagues.
But how does this apply to leaders?
Studies from political science have found that the biggest reason that people hold politicians in such low esteem is that candidates make so many promises when they run for office that they can never deliver on them while in office.
Anyone who wants to be a genuine leader must realize that they must maintain absolute integrity, rather than relying on empty rhetoric. It is easy to make promises, but it always requires effort to accomplish what needs to be done. Those who are truly effective as leaders under-promise and over-deliver, never creating unfulfilled expectations. Nothing demotivates anyone as much as raising hopes and expectations and failing to deliver.
Strong leadership always begins with both a commitment to absolute integrity. That is why every service academy (West Point and Annapolis immediately come to mind) place a premium on integrity in leaders development. How can anyone believe in any leader they do not fully trust?
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
SMART Leadership
There has been more written about the various aspects of leadership and what it means to an effective leader than nearly any other topic.
However, effective leadership involves so many nuances that there is always more that can be learned about what it means to be a great leader!
Therefore, it makes sense to understand that smart and meaningful leadership often requires one's willingness to become SMART. What does it mean to be a SMART Leader?
A SMART Leader has real strength; combines moderation and motivation; realizes how attitude and aptitude produces impactful leadership; use and rely on both reason and personal responsibility; and make trust and trustworthiness their first priority.
Leadership STRENGTH combines having inner strength and fortitude, as well as motivating others and gaining their respect by leading in a strong and meaningful manner! Weak leaders often confuse this concept and take it to mean being inflexible or heavy handed.
Great leaders combine MODERATION and MOTIVATION. Leadership moderation means being open and willing to listen with an open mind to alternatives and alternative approaches. When a leader behaves in this manner, their behavior invariably motivates others to become more involved, caring more, and being more committed.
Great leaders maintain a positive and proactive ATTITUDE, but must also commit to capitalizing on their APTITUDE by gaining broad experience, expertise, and knowledge through a commitment to training and learning. True leaders need talent and a positive mindset!
A great leader must have the ability to REASON, while assuming personal and professional RESPONSIBILITY for their actions. A leader’s capacity to maximize potential to achieve objectives often depends on the combination of both of these behaviors.
Great leaders are committed to absolute TRUSTWORTHINESS. Unless a leader maintains absolute integrity, the organization's stakeholders at every level will rarely be interested in following their lead or becoming involved.
Do you want to be a SMART leader, as well as proceeding in a smart manner? Then commit to these five basic steps and concepts, and focus on how you can, rather than why you can't!
However, effective leadership involves so many nuances that there is always more that can be learned about what it means to be a great leader!
Therefore, it makes sense to understand that smart and meaningful leadership often requires one's willingness to become SMART. What does it mean to be a SMART Leader?
A SMART Leader has real strength; combines moderation and motivation; realizes how attitude and aptitude produces impactful leadership; use and rely on both reason and personal responsibility; and make trust and trustworthiness their first priority.
Leadership STRENGTH combines having inner strength and fortitude, as well as motivating others and gaining their respect by leading in a strong and meaningful manner! Weak leaders often confuse this concept and take it to mean being inflexible or heavy handed.
Great leaders combine MODERATION and MOTIVATION. Leadership moderation means being open and willing to listen with an open mind to alternatives and alternative approaches. When a leader behaves in this manner, their behavior invariably motivates others to become more involved, caring more, and being more committed.
Great leaders maintain a positive and proactive ATTITUDE, but must also commit to capitalizing on their APTITUDE by gaining broad experience, expertise, and knowledge through a commitment to training and learning. True leaders need talent and a positive mindset!
A great leader must have the ability to REASON, while assuming personal and professional RESPONSIBILITY for their actions. A leader’s capacity to maximize potential to achieve objectives often depends on the combination of both of these behaviors.
Great leaders are committed to absolute TRUSTWORTHINESS. Unless a leader maintains absolute integrity, the organization's stakeholders at every level will rarely be interested in following their lead or becoming involved.
Do you want to be a SMART leader, as well as proceeding in a smart manner? Then commit to these five basic steps and concepts, and focus on how you can, rather than why you can't!
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Your Results In ANY Endeavor Are the Result of Your Choices
In anything you do, your results are the consequence of the choices you make. There are three fundamental choices that determine your results, and it is important to spend time examining all three.
The three choices are your choice of beliefs, your choice of focus, and your choice of actions.
Your Choice of Belief
What you believe is the foundation of ALL your results in life. Your beliefs are your blueprints. But we spend far too little time reflecting on what we believe, why we believe it, and whether or not the beliefs serve us.
If you believe that you can succeed against great odds, that belief will allow you to take actions that produce some result. Do you believe that you can compete against bigger competitors and win? Or, it is your blueprint that bigger competitors beat smaller firms? Those two different beliefs will provide you with some result, but one will be vastly different.
You get to choose your beliefs. You can shed old beliefs and replace them with new, healthier beliefs. Your beliefs underlie your focus.
Your Choice of Focus
Your results are, in large part, the result of your focus. If you focus your attention on negative ideas and events, your results will suffer. Likewise, if you focus your attention on positives, you will produce greater results.
You choose where you allow your mind (the most complex and powerful thinking device in the known universe) to focus. Your beliefs underlie your focus, and combined, your beliefs and your focus drive your actions.
Your Choice of Action
This is where the rubber meets the road: action. The actions you take and the actions you choose not to take also determine your results.
Did you take the actions that nurtured the relationships that you need to create and win an opportunity? Or did you spend the day with the weapons of mass distraction, surfing the Internet for sports scores and gossip?
Your results are made up of the actions that you take, and the actions you fail to take. Taking the right actions leads to greater results. Taking the wrong actions leads to poor results and, potentially, a career change.
The three choices are your choice of beliefs, your choice of focus, and your choice of actions.
Your Choice of Belief
What you believe is the foundation of ALL your results in life. Your beliefs are your blueprints. But we spend far too little time reflecting on what we believe, why we believe it, and whether or not the beliefs serve us.
If you believe that you can succeed against great odds, that belief will allow you to take actions that produce some result. Do you believe that you can compete against bigger competitors and win? Or, it is your blueprint that bigger competitors beat smaller firms? Those two different beliefs will provide you with some result, but one will be vastly different.
You get to choose your beliefs. You can shed old beliefs and replace them with new, healthier beliefs. Your beliefs underlie your focus.
Your Choice of Focus
Your results are, in large part, the result of your focus. If you focus your attention on negative ideas and events, your results will suffer. Likewise, if you focus your attention on positives, you will produce greater results.
You choose where you allow your mind (the most complex and powerful thinking device in the known universe) to focus. Your beliefs underlie your focus, and combined, your beliefs and your focus drive your actions.
Your Choice of Action
This is where the rubber meets the road: action. The actions you take and the actions you choose not to take also determine your results.
Did you take the actions that nurtured the relationships that you need to create and win an opportunity? Or did you spend the day with the weapons of mass distraction, surfing the Internet for sports scores and gossip?
Your results are made up of the actions that you take, and the actions you fail to take. Taking the right actions leads to greater results. Taking the wrong actions leads to poor results and, potentially, a career change.
Tuesday, February 04, 2014
Never Take it Personally
If you ask a non-salesperson why she so adamantly wouldn’t sell to earn her living, more than likely she’d say something like, “I couldn’t deal with all that rejection.” To a non-salesperson, a prospect’s “no” is seen as a harsh personal repudiation, a direct assault upon her sensitive ego—it’s so humiliating. A master salesperson is apt to roll her eyes at such a comment. As the gangsters say, “it’s only business”; a master salesperson never feels personally rejected.
Learn to never take “no” personally. Instead, take responsibility for it. In baseball, no batter gets a hit every time up and no salesperson closes every prospect. Selling is a numbers game, a law of averages marathon. My father-in-law always says, “You have to get the “no’s” out of the way, in order to get to the “yes’s.”
We live in a free country; everyone has a right to say no. To take it personally, to hang on to it for dear life, to keep replaying it over and over and over again is to surrender your power to someone who isn’t even a customer. Why would you do that? What possible benefit can it bring you?
If you go to your next presentation with that kind of baggage strangling your concentration, you’re allowing a “no” to do double damage to you and your career.
A salesperson must have skin thick as a rhinoceros; prospects can be downright insulting at times. It should go in one ear and out the other. You’re there to make a sale, that’s all that matters; indulge in anything peripheral to that sacred purpose and you’re being self-destructive.
Never take it personally; it’s only business.
Learn to never take “no” personally. Instead, take responsibility for it. In baseball, no batter gets a hit every time up and no salesperson closes every prospect. Selling is a numbers game, a law of averages marathon. My father-in-law always says, “You have to get the “no’s” out of the way, in order to get to the “yes’s.”
We live in a free country; everyone has a right to say no. To take it personally, to hang on to it for dear life, to keep replaying it over and over and over again is to surrender your power to someone who isn’t even a customer. Why would you do that? What possible benefit can it bring you?
If you go to your next presentation with that kind of baggage strangling your concentration, you’re allowing a “no” to do double damage to you and your career.
A salesperson must have skin thick as a rhinoceros; prospects can be downright insulting at times. It should go in one ear and out the other. You’re there to make a sale, that’s all that matters; indulge in anything peripheral to that sacred purpose and you’re being self-destructive.
Never take it personally; it’s only business.
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