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The Power of People Skills

John C. Maxwell, a leadership expert and executive coach, recognizes the value of people skills below.  We couldn't agree more! 

"By far the greatest obstacle to success that I see in others is a poor understanding of people. A while back the Wall Street Journal published an article on the reasons that executives fail. At the top of the list was a person’s inability to effectively relate to others.

One day I was talking to someone who was complaining about not winning a business contract that he had bid on. “It wasn’t fair,” he told me. “All the people involved knew each other, and we didn’t have a chance. It’s all politics.” But then what he went on to describe wasn’t politics. It was relationships.

Authors Carole Hyatt and Linda Gottlieb indicate that people who fail on the job commonly cite “office politics” as the reason for their failures, but the reality is that what they call politics is often nothing more than regular interaction with other people.

If you haven’t learned how to get along with people, you will always be fighting a battle to succeed. On the other hand, making people skills a strength will take you farther than any other skill you develop. People like to do business with people they like. Or to put it the way President Theodore Roosevelt did: “The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.”

You can view the originial blog post by John here.  For more on the author and his leadership advice, visit http://johnmaxwellonleadership.com/.

Attitude

Attitude:

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

--Charles R. Swindoll

7 Habits of Extraordinary People!

Dumb Little Man suggests seven straightforward ingredients for life success.  For more in depth explanation, visit the original article here.

1. The Habit of Awareness
Don’t close your eyes to problems you have, but be aware of them and act accordingly.

2. The Habit of Self-Investment
Invest time in yourself by reading books, fictional or not, searching the internet for specific information about time-management, personal growth, productivity and other important areas of your life.

3. The Habit of Early Rising
Not only does it give you many more hours in your week, but it also opens your mind and gives you room to think, feel and be.

4. The Habit of Exercising
Not only does it give you many more hours in your week, but it also opens your mind and gives you room to think, feel and be.

5. The Habit of Self-Love
Practice self-care on a daily basis by journaling, eating well, unplugging, playing and resting.

6. The Habit of Gratefulness
Create a Top 10 list of things you’re grateful for and update it constantly to never get out of touch with the abundance that surrounds you.

7. The Habit of Relationships
There’s so much to be learned in this world and what better way to do that than from those who share your attitude of self-empowerment?

Six Thought Provoking Quotes from Albert Einstein

Review the original article here. 


1.  “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”

2.  “To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”

3.  “The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions…Our inner balance, and even our very existence, depends on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to our lives.”

4.  “Life is all about choices. How many people are trapped in their everyday habits: part numb, part frightened, part indifferent? To have a better life we must keep choosing how we’re living.”

5.  “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

6.  "There are only two ways to live your life: one is as though nothing is a miracle; one is as though everything is a miracle."

Friday Quote!

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

- Leo Tolstoy

Tips on Managing Oneself!!

Peter F Drucker - Managing Oneself - a synopsis from mutex07

Invaluable career and personal development advice!  Click through the slideshow for a good overview, and this link takes you to the original article.  Focusing on my strengths has made a huge difference in my performance and attitude.  Since I've realized that looking at my natural strong points is the way to go, my enthusiasm is at an all time high!

Friday Quote:

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction

between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure;

his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He

hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision

of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves

others to determine whether he is working or playing. To

himself, he always appears to be doing both.

—Lawrence Pearsall Jacks

Big Failure, Big Success: 12 People To Keep You Going!

Short and simple inspiration from Danielle LaPorte.  This keeps things in perspective for us!

: Oprah was fired from one of her early anchor gigs, after being labelled “unfit for TV.”

: Tim Ferriss had 26 publishing rejections for The 4-Hour Workweek – which spent months on The New York Times Bestseller list.

: Twilight author Stephenie Meyer had 9 rejections from literary agents, and then…a $750,000 three-book deal.

: Lady Gaga was dropped by Island Def Jam Records after only three months.

: Project Runway winner Christian Siriano was rejected by the Fashion Institute of Technology. After winning Project Runway, his fashion line brought in $1.2 million in the first two years.

: Abraham Lincoln had less than five years of formal education.

: Marilyn Monroe was booted from 20th Century-Fox, after producers declared her “unattractive.”

: Beethoven was almost completely deaf when he composed “The Ode To Joy.” He removed the legs from his piano and placed it on the floor, letting the vibrations resonate through his body.

: Emily Dickinson had just a handful of poems published during her lifetime–out of over 1,800 completed works.

: Louisa May Alcott was encouraged by her family to find work as a household servant. She wrote Little Women, instead.

: Verdi was rejected from a prestigious music conservatory in Milan, because he “wasn’t talented enough.” He wrote 28 operas, including La Traviata, Aida, and Othello.

: Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.

11 Books Every Young Leader Must Read

A recent article from Harvard Business Review suggests eleven books for those interested in improving their leadership skills.   Enjoy the list!

Marcus Aurelius, The Emperor's Handbook. Emperor of Rome from 161 to 180 A.D., Marcus Aurelius is considered one of history's "philosopher kings," and his Meditations were perhaps his most lasting legacy. Never meant to be published, Marcus' writings on Stoicism, life, and leadership were the personal notes he used to make sense of the world. They remain a wonderful insight into the mind of a man who ruled history's most revered empire at the age of 40 and provide remarkably practical advice for everyday life. This is the translation I've found most accessible.

 

Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning. Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who survived life in the Nazi concentration camps. Man's Search for Meaning is really two books — one dedicated to recounting his frightening ordeal in the camps (interpreted through his eyes as a psychiatrist) and the other a treatise on his theory, logotherapy. His story alone is worth the read — a reminder of the depths and heights of human nature — and the central contention of logotherapy — that life is primarily about the search for meaning — has inspired leaders for generations.

 

Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full. Tom Wolfe founded the New Journalism school and was one of America's most brilliant writers of nonfiction (books and essays like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) before he became one of her most notable novelists. Often better known for his portrait of 1980s New York, The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full is his novel about race, status, business, and a number of other topics in modern Atlanta. It was Wolfe's attempt, as Michael Lewis noted, at "stuffing of the whole of contemporary America into a single, great, sprawling comic work of art." It's sure to inspire reflection in burgeoning leaders.

 

Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker. One of the first books I read upon graduating college, Liar's Poker is acclaimed author Michael Lewis' first book — a captivating story about his short-lived postcollegiate career as a bond salesman in the 1980s. Lewis has become perhaps the most notable chronicler of modern business, and Liar's Poker is both a fascinating history of Wall Street (and the broader financial world) in the 1980s and a cautionary tale to ambitious young business leaders about the temptations, challenges, and disappointments (not to mention colorful characters) they may face in their careers.

 

Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't. What does it take to make a great company, and what traits will young businesspeople need to lead them? Jim Collins introduced new rigor to the evaluation of business leadership in his instant classic Good to Great, with a research team reviewing "6,000 articles and generating 2,000 pages of interview transcripts." The result is a systematic treatise on making a company great, with particularly interesting findings around what Collins calls "Level 5 Leadership"that have changed the face of modern business.

 

Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Persuasion is at the heart of business, where leaders must reach clients, customers, suppliers, and employees. Cialdini's classic on the core principals of persuasion is a sterling example of the cross application of psychological principles to business life. Based on his personal experiences and interviews — with everyone from expert car salesmen to real estate salespeople — Cialdini's book is riveting and, yes, persuasive. It serves as a great introduction to other works by modern writers like Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Levitt, who translate theories from the social and physical sciences into everyday life.

 

Richard Tedlow, Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built. Richard Tedlow taught one of my favorite business school classes, The Coming of Managerial Capitalism, and this book is something like a distillation of a few of the high points of that class. Giants of Enterprise chronicles the lives of some of the businesspeople — Carnegie, Ford, Eastman, Walton — who shaped the world we live in today. It's a brief introduction to the figures and companies who built modern business for the young business leader seeking to shape the future.

 

Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. Financial capital is at the heart of capitalism. Any young person aspiring to business leadership should understand the financial world we live in. Ferguson is one of our era's preeminent popular historians, and The Ascent of Money traces the evolution of money and financial markets from the ancient world to the modern era. It's an essential primer on the history and current state of finance.

 

Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.Clay Christensen was recently ranked the world's greatest business thinker by Thinkers50, and his breakout book was a thoughtful tome on innovation and "disruption" called The Innovator's Dilemma. All of Christensen's books are essential reads, but this is perhaps the most foundational for any young leader wondering how to drive business innovation and fight competitors constantly threatening to disrupt his or her business model with new technology.

 

Stephen R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey's book represents the best in self-help. His advice — about prioritization, empathy, self-renewal, and other topics — is both insightful and practical.Seven Habits can be useful to the personal and professional development of anyone charting a career in business.

 

Bill George, True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership. A hallmark of next-generation business leaders is a focus on authenticity. Bill George has pioneered an approach to authentic leadership development articulated well in his second book, True North. George (who, full disclosure, I've coauthored with before) conducted more than 100 interviews with senior leaders in crafting the book, and offers advice for young leaders on knowing themselves and translating that knowledge into a personal set of principles for leadership.

Opening Day of Keeneland!

After an intense month long competition, six of our Account Managers won a day at Keeneland for the opening races!  Congratulations to all of you, and we expect to see you for the closing weekend at the end of October!

See more pictures on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/INERTIAinc.

The 5 Most Common Regrets of Young Adults

Our Assistant Manager, Kim, recently presented these common regrets to us during our morning meetings.  I'm currently working on the "physically fit" part, so that it will not be one of my regrets!  A link to the original article on WallSteetOasis.com is here.

Daniel Gulati, from The Huffington Post, apparently interviewed 100 young people between the ages of 25 and 35. Yes, that is not exactly what I would call an scientific sample size either. Nonetheless, Gulati asked these young people what they regretted the most. At the end of it all, he got some pretty deep answers. The introspection went something along the lines of these five most common regrets:

1. I wish I was doing something useful
Without a doubt, the overarching regret of the people I surveyed centered around their life's purpose. With the natural excitement of their first jobs now muted, many were staring down the barrel of a career in corporate America ("Five years down, 35 to go," one quipped) or somewhere else in business. Accordingly, many concluded that their jobs, and indeed their lives, did not serve a purpose beyond the mere superficial. When I dug deeper, "doing something useful" often meant "doing something useful for other people." This regret was so common that it seemed fundamental.

2. I wish I didn't waste so much time earlier in life
In a surprising finding, many young people desperately wanted to turn back the clock to their "even younger" years. Most referred back to their college days as time spent socializing, partying and, as one put it, "experiencing the edges of life." Looking back, many perceived this era as lost setup time. There was a feeling that, knowing what they do now, many would actually use all their college years as a platform for something other than what they were currently doing. Showered with endless free time and world-class resources around campus, this was a lost opportunity to do something, as one put it, "Zuckerberg-great."

3. I wish I had I travelled more
Having earned the disposable income to travel overseas, many recounted with delight stories of offshore adventures. Some boasted of exciting relationships forged across continents, and almost everyone wanted to rack up more mileage than they had been able to. But, with many now married or in long-term relationships, their short-term focus has turned to spending time with their spouses, with many planning for their first or second child. With those overseas adventures on the backburner for the next five to 10 years, it was obvious that some still hadn't quite shaken the travel bug.

4. I wish I was physically fit
Building solid careers and relationships takes time, and for many, physical fitness was an early casualty. Some young men and women recounted their "glory days" on the high school football field or basketball court, and those who weren't gym class heroes simply wished they had taken better care of their bodies as they rage towards the middle of their lives. Physical fitness, many argued, was all-pervasive: By maintaining it, you held the key to a better work life and a better life at home. The oft-cited enemy? "After-work drinks."

5. I wish I learned to live in the moment
Many of those in the room were taught all their lives to set goals, work hard to achieve them, only to then set a still higher bar. In the process of living a life looking forward, many felt they had lost the capacity to look down and enjoy the moments that today's life presents. Many recounted days when time seemed to move slower, "days where you could just sit in the backyard all afternoon." But those days, too many, seemed all but over, after the skill of living in the moment had long left them.

So, what do you regret the most? Which of the five above do you find relating to the easiest? It may be possible to regret nothing, but how do you cope with regretful thoughts?

Four Laws of Effective Leadership

We are always looking for leaders in our business.  This post from Bill Zipp concisley explains four basic laws for effective leadership.  

There are laws that run the universe. Not civil laws, but physical laws like the law of gravity.

In the same way there are laws that run the universe of effective leadership. Not management laws, but principles that determine our influence with

people.

It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO of a large multi-national corporation or a single mom of three, the laws of effective leadership impact you. This is true whether you believe in them or not, just like gravity.

Fortunately, these laws are few and accessible to everyone.

We’re not talking about turning you into the next President of the United States (God forbid!). We’re talking about making you a person of influence with your staff, your vendors, your community, your colleagues, your family and friends.

I’ve summarized these in the following four laws of effective leadership:

1. The Law of Credibility

Like oxygen for breathing, leaders cannot lead without credibility. You cannot influence people who do not trust you. End of discussion. You may be able to order them around or manipulate them to do things for you, but that’s not leading and will not bring out their very best.

“We trust–and follow–people who are real, who are consistent, whose behavior, values, and beliefs are aligned,” write Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee in Resonant Leadership. “We trust people whom we do not constantly have to second-guess.”

So this is where effective leadership begins. Being real. Being consistent. Having our values define who we are, not just in our words but also in our actions. That’s the meaning of credibility. And credibility allows for trust and respect, the oxygen of leadership, to even exist.

2. The Law of Clarity

Based on credibility, you’re beginning to build effective leadership. Congratulations! Most leaders never get this far with their people.

Are you ready for the next law? Now you must know where you’re going. This is the law of clarity.

Clarity in leadership must exist on two levels for it to be effective: vision and execution. Or, as I like to refer to them, the forest and the trees. In other words, you must be able to see the forest, the big picture, to be able to lead.

But you must also be able to execute day to day, working in the trees, or you’ll never get anything done.

Vision (the forest) without execution (the trees) fails to deliver any of its promise. It paints a picture of glorious blue skies, but lacks the hard work of digging in the dirt.

Execution (the trees) without vision (the forest) is all hard work with little insight or inspiration. It doesn’t have a broader context with which to frame that work or a higher cause that work is serving.

You can motivate people through vision, but without execution even the most inspiring motivation will wane as people get the distinct feeling that the dream will never actually become reality.

You can organize people through execution, but without vision even the best organization fails to cross the finish line. This is because humans beings, who are creatures of emotion, need a sense that what they are doing actually makes a difference.

In other words, every plan needs a dream to empower it, and every dream needs a plan to complete it. You can’t choose between heads or tails on this one. You’ve got to have them both for effective leadership. That’s how the law of clarity works.

3. The Law of Collaboration

“Does not play well with others,” is a troubling epithet on any first-grader’s report card. We’re adults now, though. We’ve grown up. We know how to get along with people. Right?

Essential to effective leadership is “playing well with others.” What I mean by that is the ability to give and take, to speak and listen, to assemble a team that works together and not act like the Lone Ranger.

What I find happens with most leaders is that they swing between two extremes when it comes to working with people: confrontation and accommodation. In an attempt to get things done, many leaders assert themselves and become confrontative at every turn.

Then, awash with waves of guilt or just exhausted from the stress of confrontation, they back way off and let people do their own thing, accommodating every whim. That, of course, doesn’t work either, so they return to confronting, then accommodating, then confronting, then accommodating. This pendulum swing seriously undermines any sense of effective leadership.

Collaboration is different and delivers very different results. With collaboration a leader is fully engaged with the issues at hand, but also fully engage their people on those issues.

They speak up and assert their point of view, but let others speak up as well in open dialogue, discussion, and even debate. There is mutual respect and mutual give and take. This collaboration builds consensus, and consensus builds the camaraderie that any team needs to win in a competitive environment.

At the end of the day, better decisions are made and a better business is built because other people have a role in the process, not just one person. As the Bible puts it, “Iron sharpens iron.” That’s the collaboration that leads to more effective leadership.

4. The Law of Encouragement

For those of you who don’t like headings that all begin with the same letter, you’ll like like the fact that this fourth law starts with an E. But look again, encouragement simply means “to fill another person with courage” (And yes, courage starts with a C).

In other words, effective leadership attends to the inspiration, motivation, and emotional well-being of the people being lead. In short, effective leadership gives people courage.

A survey of millions of American workers conducted by the Gallup Corporation discovered that 65% of them received no praise or recognition for the work they did in the past year. That’s right, for two-thirds of the workforce a whopping 52 weeks went by without any affirmation. It’s like we’re saying to our employees, “I told you I loved you when I married (hired) you. If it changes I’ll let you know.”

Is this what it’s like working for you? No praise given for work well done? No thanks offered for extra effort? No recognition awarded for accomplishment? No wonder your leadership effectiveness is waning with your people.

Here’s the crazy thing: praise is free! Bootstrapping entrepreneurs working on a limited budget have just as much access to this resource as the largest corporation.

It costs you nothing to thank someone and merely a stamp to send them a hand-written note. Giving a team member a standing ovation at a weekly staff meeting for going the extra mile doesn’t waste a single dollar. Yet all of these things are very, very powerful means of encouraging your people, and the lack of them undermines effective leadership.

“Because of its power, ridiculously low cost and rarity,” Gallup researchers Rodd Wagner an James Harter write in 12: The Elements of Great Managing, “praise and recognition is one of the greatest lost opportunities in the business world today.”

Credibility. Clarity. Collaboration. Encouragement. Get the laws of effective leadership working for you.

An interesting article from HBR.org explaining why sales experience is helpful for women to reach top levels of management.  View the original article here.

Women Who Sell Get Promoted

by Jill Flynn, Kathryn Heath, and Mary Davis Holt  |   7:00 AM September 13, 2012

 

It's no great revelation that women have exceptional selling instincts. In fact, Tom Peters has said that women make better salespeople than men. What we've found in coaching senior-level women, however, is a dichotomy of sorts: Women working in sales jobs are the best-in-class at what they do — and they love it. Yet, women in non-sales roles tell us they would prefer a trip to the dentist over selling.

Unfortunately, sales is just one of those things — like haggling and public speaking — that we avoid at our own peril. When we hear a woman say that sales is outside of her job description, we always beg to differ. Selling needs to be a part of every woman's career tool kit. After all, sales experience feeds the types of line jobs — where individuals have P&L accountability — that are a pipeline to the C-suite. And that is where women are at a disadvantage.

According to McKinsey & Company, research of the largest US corporations shows that 62% of women are in staff jobs — positions that provide service and assistance but don't directly generate revenue. These roles very rarely lead to major jobs in senior management. In contrast, 65% of men on executive committees hold line jobs. This helps explain why the number of women CEOs in Fortune 500 companies appears stuck around 3%.

What this really calls for is a mind shift. We've seen some of the best salespeople in action — and they are women. Just ask IBM's Ginni Rometty. As IBM's global sales leader before landing the Chief Executive role, Rometty lived and breathed sales. She was a leader of several important diversity initiatives at IBM as well — but it was likely Rometty's sales experience that opened the door to the C-suite.

And closing deals is eminently possible even if you, like Rometty, are not much of a golfer. One of our clients is always on the lookout for other types of social venues to host clients. After a night of dancing at a concert she said: "I knew these clients would be with me for life when we were jumping up and down together to Jimmy Buffett."

Selling is about making connections, using one's passion and gaining trust. As the consensus builders, the nurturers of relationships, and the well-networked passionate persuaders, women have all of the essential skills to bring in clients, money and monster deals. If you manage key relationships or even lead a team of customer-facing contributors, you can use the skills you are already comfortable with to become visible within your company by bringing revenue and customers into the organization. We've heard this called "Dancing close to the revenue line."

Another women we know told us very recently about a major deal she closed. She won a new account and went on to grow the revenue significantly in year one. She said, "My company is paying a lot of attention to me now." No big surprise. Rainmakers get noticed — and promoted.