Flowers grow out of dirt

Part of your ability to succeed and grow is your ability to take crap and turn it into fertilizer.

Crap is easy to come by.  It’s paid for, by you, in the form of struggle and disappointment and even heartbreak.

The question is – can you grow flowers and watermelons in it?

Will you?

Don't be evil (I mean – stupid)

“Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.” – Margaret Atwood

If you are a business owner, manager or leader, you have a great responsibility.  And the larger and more significant your business is, the greater than responsibility is.

Why?  Because the civilized society is made up of businesses that provide the products and services and financial resources to employees and government to make the world go around; literally for us to survive.    Without businesses, we go back to loin clothes and caves and early death.  (Try telling me I am overstating my case.)

So as a leader of one of these cells of prosperity creation we have a responsibility to know how to make it work and exercise the personal discipline and energy to do so.

If we have remained ignorant or we are of poor character, we can cause a lot of damage.  And damage from poor performance as a leader is just as destructive as an evildoer getting hold of your business and doing bad things on purpose.

Businesspeople have a great responsibility – and the good ones who build organizations that serve their employees and customers well deserve respect for improving the lives of all of us.

Don’t mess this up. 

Don't be a YES man

We’ve all heard about “servant leadership”.  Sounds like a noble thing.  And we should be serving our team.

But we should do it in the most important ways, not the ways they think we should.  Your team doesn’t necessarily know the highest value use of your time (hopefully you do).

With some leaders, the team members figure out they can delegate to the leader by giving you problems to solve and tasks to do.  If your too much of a yes man, a pleaser, you wind up working for them.

This is fine if you have a small business, don’t want to grow, things are going good and you are happy.

Saying YES to anyone (inside or outside your business) who asks for a bit of your time, which in the end is all we have, is to lose control of your direction.

Empower your people to handle the stuff they come to you with, and say no to outsiders who want your attention and time, and use more of your time to do the thinking, make the decisions, and take the action that will make the future far better than today.

Start now.

Employee Engagement

When an employee feels valued, confident, empowered, and connected they will be engaged.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.  Emotions and engagement are deeply interconnected.

Every touchpoint of the employee experience can elicit emotions – some of which drive engagement and others that kill it.

This is language from Dale Carnegie Courses.  I bet they have some great courses on this subject and many others.

Be nice while being ambitious

As a leader, I’ve learned the power of being nice.  Even when somebody makes a mistake, be nice.

Who do you want to become while you are pursuing your goals?

I want people to feel that I am nice.

Don’t you?

Whoever asks the last question is in control

Often when we have a conversation, we feel good if we are talking a lot.  We come away saying the other person was a great conversationalist because we got to talk a lot.  But really we like others taking an interest in us. 

We don’t have to talk the most to make people feel good about us, or to be in control of a conversation.

In a conversation, if you are talking the most it does not mean you are in control of that conversation.

Whoever asks the last question is.

Think about it.  If I ask “What brought you here compared to other places?” and you spend ten minutes responding, you are responding to me and I am finding out what I want to know.

If after a few minutes I stop you and ask “But why did you like that about this place?” and you spend time responding, I am still learning what I want from you.

This is very important in sales too.

Ask questions if you want to be in control of a conversation.

You should listen to this audiobook now

If you are in business or part of one, you should listen to this audiobook.  I wrote and performed it in 2009.  

Robert Reiss has interviewed over 1000 CEO’s (that’s his business!) and read over 1000 books – and THIS one is his favorite.  “It rises to the top and is so full of practical wisdom in a compelling story – that I have read it over ten times!”

If you have read or listened to it in the past, listen to it again.

Get it at Amazon with the link below.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+highest+calling+audio+book&crid=1H0N9352X6FXY&sprefix=The+Highest+Calling%2Caps%2C99&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_3_19

Businesses solve problems for a profit

What problems does your business solve?

How well do you do that?

Obligation elimination

Are you on a committee or board where you have to show up each month for a half a day and listen and get nothing done?

Do you say yes to everyone that asks for your attendance, time or help?

Open squares on a future calendar are easy to give away….and there is no shortage of takers.

What cord could you cut that would save many hours in the future for you to be who you are here to be and create what you are here to create?

Who makes your life difficult?

(First, work on you and make sure you are emotionally healthy, have good people skills, want to see people on your team succeed,  and know-how to lead others.)

Now, who makes your life, and the lives of fellow teammates difficult?

Why don’t you let them go to another team and get them off yours?