Posts by: Denis McLaughlin

Denis McLaughlin is the author of the best-selling book The Leadership GPS, which reached Number 1 in Amazon’s Job Markets and Advice, and Top 25 in Team Management and Leadership. Featured in John Maxwell’s “What I am reading, Spring 2013 edition,” The Leadership GPS was highlighted by Kirkus Reviews as “An engaging, unusual business book full of practical advice,” and “Its leadership lessons are on point and lavishly illustrated with stories of great leaders past and present, from Michelangelo to Steve Jobs.” Of the author, Kirkus Reviews says that “McLaughlin’s storytelling format brings each stage of leadership to life.” Denis has held executive leadership positions at several leading banks over the last twenty-five years. Along with his executive responsibilities, he also speaks, teaches, and mentors on leadership both in the workplace and externally. Denis was trained and mentored by some of the most well-known leadership experts today including John Maxwell – International leadership authority, Paul Martinelli – President of The John Maxwell Team, and Bob Burg – Best-selling author and expert on influence and success.

How do teams work?

Teams work best together when they work to accomplish the same objectives.

Stewart Butterfield is the founder and CEO of Slack – a cloud-based service that brings teams and tools together in one place. Their website says, “It’s the foundation for teamwork.”  Butterfield interviewed Andre Iguodala of the NBA champion Golden State Warriors on teamwork at a Slack sponsored conference and his answer on how teams work was, “You should have the best talent, but everything fails if everyone’s just out for themselves.”

Butterfield summed up the talent versus teamwork discussion in this thought, “You can take a team of absolute all-stars in terms of their native abilities, but if they are not working together, they are much less effective than a team where there is less native ability but a higher degree of teamwork and cohesion.”  

Teams work best together when they work to accomplish the same objectives. If you want your team to work, you have to define the objectives, align the objectives, and assign the objectives.

Define the objectives.What are you trying to accomplish?  That is the most important question you can answer for a team.  Before you start anything, you have to define success. From the biggest goal to the smallest goal, the purpose of the team, its objectives, and the work it does must be established.

“When you’re surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible.”– Howard Schultz

Align the objectives.The goals are set, but is the team aligned with the plan to achieve the objectives?  This is the second most important question in teamwork.  Notice, I didn’t say does everyone agree with the plan, that is a different bar. There will be many ways identified to achieve the objectives.  Once the plan is set, it is important that the entire team execute the same plan.

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford 

Assign the objectives. A team is made up of individuals. These individuals are unique and bring different strengths and abilities to the team.  It is the best teams that look for ways to capitalize on this breadth of talent and allow each person to give their all in the way they do best to support the objectives.

“We can’t all be good at everything. This is partly the logic behind having a team in the first place, so each role can be filled with the person best suited for that role and together, every job and every strength is covered.”– Simon Sinek

Service as Success

You don’t hire people to work for you, you hire people so you can work for them.  Your job as a leader is to help people succeed.  In his book, The Stuff of Heroes: The Eight Universal Laws of Leadership, William Cohen said, “Helping your employees is as important as, and many times more so than, trying to get the most work out of them.” 

You start with service. The basis for your actions as a leader should be the service you are providing to your team.  What are you doing to help them succeed? That is the number one question.

“It is high time the ideal of success should be replaced with the ideal of service.” ― Albert Einstein

You will get to know yourself through your service.  Helping other succeed causes us to dig deep into our knowledge and abilities.  Pulling from all you can to provide the best individual service to each person will hone your skills and perhaps lead you to solutions you might never have otherwise seen. 

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

Your success is defined by the success of those you serve. Leaders like to win, so how do you keep score in the area of service?  Simple, it’s the success of those you serve.  Their success is your success.

“True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not to enrich the leader.” ― John C. Maxwell

Believe – It’s not if you can, it’s how you will.

Do you have doubts about your abilities?  Of course, we all do at some point.  What sets apart those who are the most successful is not whether they have doubts, it whether they believe those doubts.  

It takes belief.  If you believe you will succeed, you will search for ways to accomplish your goals.  If you believe you will fail, you will search for proof that your plans are not working.  In the end, you will justify your belief, whatever it is.

“If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you won’t, you most assuredly won’t.” – Denis Waitley

It takes acting on that belief.  Believing you will succeed is only the beginning.  You have to be willing to step out find the way to success.  Each action you take will bring you closer to your goals.  Even if it means knowing which way not to go next time. 

“Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.” – Gail Devers

It takes reinforcing that belief.  The path to success is filled with road blocks and detours.  Expect them to happen and prepare yourself by reinforcing your belief.  One of the best methods is to remember and recount the success you have achieved already.

“It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.” – Muhammad Ali

Surround yourself with the best.

We don’t have be alone on the journey to achieve all that we are capable of.  In fact, the success of a journey often depends more on who you are with than where you are going.

There are three questions that you should answer to help you achieve all that is possible:  Who do you observe? Who do you learn from? Who do you partner with?

Who do you observe?  Whose accomplishments do you admire?  Someone who has not only done great things for themselves, but who has benefited the lives of others in a profound way.  These are people whose you should get to know and whose qualities you should seek to understand and make your own.  Some might call them your heroes.

 Warren Buffet said, “The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.” He sites three people as his heroes: his father Howard, his college professor Benjamin Graham, and his business partner Charlie Munger.

Who do you learn from?  Who is your teacher?  Who will guide you, mentor you, show you how to be your best?  Be specific and seek out those who are great at what you want to do.  Don’t settle for average.  Be bold and learn from someone who knows what it takes to perform at the highest level.

 “To be the best, learn from the best.” – Darren LaCroix

 Who do you partner with? Who supports you? Who challenges you? Who do you support and challenge?  Find those who want the best for themselves and who want the best for you and from you.

 “My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.” – Henry Ford

 

 

When it has to be great.

There are some areas of your life where it will likely be good enough to be good enough.  It’s not that you won’t try to do well, but we can’t possibly be perfect at everything.  There are other areas that are so meaningful, so paramount to your dreams, that nothing less than great will be accepted. You have to decide for yourself which of those areas you are operating in, and when you focus on being great, you have to consider the price.

When you consider the price of greatness, ask yourself if you’re willing to invest to be the best.   In the book Grit – The Power of Passion of Perseverance Angela Duckworth discusses her research and findings on the psychology of human accomplishment.  In the formula below, Duckworth points out that while “talent” is important, “effort” appears twice in the equation.

“Talent + Effort = Skill.  Skill + Effort = Accomplishment.”

It takes twice the effort to move talent to accomplishment.  When it has to be great, you must be willing to put in twice the effort that it takes to be good enough.

Take Stock.  Before you start on your path to great, you should understand what it will take and gear yourself up for the task.  Research others who have achieved great results and look for common attributes.  If possible, focus your view specifically on those in the area you aspire to succeed.  Take stock in the price of success and determine that you will pay that price.

“I know the price of success: dedication hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.”- Frank Lloyd Wright

Take Action.  Start.  You will never reach the finish line if you don’t get moving.  You know the price. Now set your plan in motion.  Achieve the first goal, pay the first price.  Each time you do you will be energized to keep going. Take action.

“The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.” – Meister Eckhart

Take Heart. Greatness. It’s hard to explain but once experienced it’s harder to not want more.  Once you exert that extra effort it takes to be better than good enough you will reap the rewards of being great.  Then the price of success becomes something enjoyable to pay.  Take heart, the process becomes its own reward.

“You do not pay the prices of success, you enjoy the price of success.” – Zig Ziglar

When it all becomes clear

We all have a moment, or moments, when something we knew only by rote memorization becomes something more.  We move from repeating what the answer is, to understanding why the answer is.  This is when the light bulb is turned on and what was once hidden becomes visible.  When that happens, it expands your ability to use your understanding of why, to make the what happen.

Quantum Mechanics in Chemistry

The eminent scientist Linus Pauling earned his Ph.D. in 1925 and the following year he accepted a fellowship to study under several leading physicists who were pioneering Quantum Mechanics – Neils Bohr, Erwin Schrodinger, and Arnold Sommerfeld.  Here, according to Sam Kean in his book The Disappearing Spoon, “Pauling figured out how quantum mechanics governs the chemical bonds between atoms.”  It was for this that one of Pauling’s colleagues noted that, “Chemistry could now be understood rather than being memorized.”

From this point forward, the ability to use the chemical properties improved dramatically.  Pauling himself worked on projects that produced synthetic antibodies and substitutes for blood plasma and many others on his way to receiving two Nobel prizes.

It wasn’t knowing only that chemicals reacted in a certain way, it was using Quantum Mechanics to explain why they reacted this way at the molecular level that allowed this to happen.

Human Flight

In 1899, Wilbur Wright wrote a letter to the Smithsonian Institute.  He explained how he had studied the work of early aeronautical scientists and asked for all papers that the Smithsonian had published on human flight, “I wish to avail myself of all that is already known…” Wilbur and his brother Orville studied all the scientific books that they received, as well as one book titled Empire of the Air, by Louis Pierre Moullard which discussed the possibility of achieving human flight by studying the birds in flight.   The Wright Brothers observed the flight of birds looking for information on how they accomplished this feat.  “Learning the secret of flight from a bird, was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician.” – Orville Wright

Wilbur then began communicating with and questioning the most well-known aeronautical engineers of the time including Octave Chanute, who gave the brothers the idea to perform their experiments on the coasts of the Carolinas (where their famous Kitty Hawk flight took place).  In a letter Wilbur wrote to Chanute, he outlined what he and Orville now understood about flight, “What is chiefly needed is skill rather than machinery.”  And in a speech to the Western Society of Engineers, Wilbur shared that, “The bird has learned this art of equilibrium, and learned it so thoroughly that its skill is not apparent to our sight.  We only learn to appreciate it when we try to imitate it.”

We all know the rest of the story here.  The Wright Brothers did indeed build a plane and learn how to fly that plane which started the aeronautical revolution that let Elon Musk launch the latest Space X rocket last month.

It wasn’t knowing only that birds can, it was discovering why birds fly that allowed this to happen.

Takeaway

The takeaway for us is the knowledge of why things happen is out there for the asking.  Don’t settle for learning that something happens in a certain way, discover why it happens in a certain way and you will achieve great things – When it all becomes clear.

“Isn’t it astonishing that all these secrets have been preserved for so many years, just so we could discover them!” – Orville Wright

Don’t take the simple answer, take the simplest answer.

If you want the right answer to a given question or hypothesis, it is may not be the first one you come upon.  It is likely not one which is just simple, but it should be the simplest.  This means that in order to select the right answer you may need to look more than once to see all the potential answers clearly so that the simplest can be chosen.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” – Albert Einstein 

The most well-known version of taking the simplest answer is called Occam’s razor.  Named after William of Occam, a 14th century philosopher, it states generally that within a number of explanations for a set of facts, the one that is the simplest is preferred.  Occam’s razor is also known as “lex parsimoniae,” Latin for the Law of Parsimony. This idea is not just a philosophical notion.  In science, the Parsimony Principle says choose the simplest scientific explanation that fits the evidence. In statistical modeling, a Parsimonious Model is said to use the simplest model with the least assumptions and variables but with the greatest explanatory power.

Finding the simplest answer among the possible answers is good advice for every choice we make.  Here are three simple steps to find the simplest answer:

Expand your choices. When facing the need to make a decision, ensure that the relevant facts are known.  Don’t make decisions based on limited knowledge which will lead to the simple answer.  Instead, dig deeper to see what may not be immediately evident.  Challenge the limited assumptions.  Ask questions like, “If this assumption isn’t right, what else could be driving this outcome?”

Ask the experts.  It’s likely that there is someone who has at least attempted to solve the same question, if not one that is similar.  If you can, ask them personally to share their views.  If not personally, then read or listen to, what they have said on the topic.

Examine your choices. Now that there are multiple possible answers, they need to be analyzed to further understand the impact of each one being the right.   Challenge the many assumptions, “If this is true in this situation, what does that mean in another situation?”  Or, “If this is true at this point, what must also be true to support it?”

From these questions, the assumptions needed to support each answer will be known and can be compared.

Extract your one choice.  At this point, there are several potential answers with multiple assumptions for each.  Challenge the many answers, “What do I have to believe in order for this answer to be the one I choose?”

From this exercise you will settle in on the one that has the simplest assumptions.   And that is your answer.

 

When is the right time to have a vision?

Success is accelerated in every situation when you’re operating with a vision of where you want to go.

Let’s talk about setting a vision and achieving that vision:

Setting the vision.  Whether you acknowledge it or not, you are heading in a direction.  When you arrive, is it where you want to be? This is why you have a vision  – Decide where you want to go before you start.

“You have to know where you are going. If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll never know if you’ve arrived.”– Denis G. McLaughlin

How do you know what direction to head in?   No one can tell you what direction to head in – that decision is yours to make.  Whether you are thinking of your personal life, your professional career, your team or your company this is on you.  Jack Welch held nothing back when he said this about vision, “Good leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

You are the leader of your success.  You are the leader of your team and company’s success.  This is why you must have a vision for what success looks like.

Achieving the vision.  Setting the vision is an important step, but it is only one step.  Once you decide what success looks like and have a clear picture in your mind, and on the minds of everyone involved with the vision, you need a plan for how to achieve this vision.

“Achieving your vision will be the culmination of many small achievements.” – Denis G. McLaughlin

The best way to build your plan is from the vision backward.  Start with what you want to accomplish and settle on the big successes that need to occur in order for that to happen.  Then move to closer to today and more granular goals.  Finally boil it down to what you should be doing on Monday morning. Then do it.

Recognize that the farther away from today you get, the more likely that your plan will change.  That’s ok.  Stay focused on the vision and adjust and adapt your plan based on the current circumstances.

“One of the best paradoxes of leadership is a leader’s need to be both stubborn and open-minded. A leader must insist on sticking to the vision and stay on course to the destination. But he must be open-minded during the process.” –  Simon Sinek

Let success be your calling card

If you want to make a difference in the world, you will need to set yourself apart, and be known and admired by the people you intend to help.  The best way to do that is to let success be your calling card.

During the 18th and 19th Centuries, calling cards were routinely used in social settings. These could be used for an introduction, or to communicate congratulations or condolences. There was strict etiquette on their use and format.  Cards were delivered to the recipient by placing the card on a tray at the entrance of the home. The purpose of the card could be indicated by folding the card at a corner and by writing certain initials on the card. These could also indicate the type of response that was requested.

At this time calling cards were very specific and meant to provide clarity for the recipient to introduce the deliverer, communicate the purpose of the visit, and set any expectations for a response. Today we might use the personal greeting card or the business card, but we are more likely to use email, text, or other electronic forms of calling cards. While these are important methods to connect with people, they do not alone set apart the sender

If you want to make a difference in the world, you will need to set yourself apart, and be known and admired by the people you intend to help.  The best way to do that is to let success be your calling card.

Introduction. We have all been at events where someone is brought up on stage with words that include “here is someone who needs no introduction.”  That only happens when your success precedes the introduction and people already know you from your accomplishments.  You should strive for success which gives you that kind of name recognition. When your name is seen in an email, you want people to open it up just because it’s you.  This can be right where you are at work, in the community, and for some on the broader stage of recognition.  This will happen when you consistently achieve success.

Communication.  Name recognition is powerful, but even better is to communicate what you have successfully accomplished. Then not only do the very people want to help know your name, but they admire and respect you for your achievements.  They want to be connected with you and be part of your success.  

Expectation.  This is where it all comes together. It’s time to set expectations for what it takes to achieve what you have.  This is how you make a difference in the world, by helping others make full use of their abilities and achieve their success.  Through mentoring, coaching, training, speaking, and others means you have at your disposal, you share your story of success with everyone you can.

If you want to make a difference in the world, you will need to set yourself apart, and be known and admired by the people you intend to help.  The best way to do that is to let success be your calling card.

Why don’t we ask?

Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”  The same holds true for receiving what you need.  You will not receive what you don’t persistently ask for.

What is stopping us from obtaining the very things that will make us successful? 

We might get advice that will be different than what we want to hear. “There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.” – Joseph Addison

We believe we already know all we need to know. “Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.” – Og Mandino

There are many ways to ask. The most obvious is literally just asking someone who you believe has what you need.  But have you considered that if the goal of asking is to obtain what you need, then we could define asking in much broader terms.  If you need information then asking is reading a book.  If you need experience then asking is trying something new.  If you need to be more physically fit then asking is starting an exercise regimen. The act of asking is merely that which will bring you what you need.    

Don’t skimp – Ask for everything. You might as well ask for it all.  What is the ultimate you would like to receive? Ask for that.  You may not get everything you ask for, but why start with anything less than everything? Define all you need, then using our new definition of asking, find an action that can potentially deliver it.  Read books written by the best in the industry. Take on roles that will stretch you to your maximum.  Plan an exercise program that becomes part of your daily life, not just a short-term effort.

“Asking is the beginning of receiving.  Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a spoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.” – Jim Rohn

Be persistent – keep asking.  You may not receive everything you need.  In fact, you may not receive anything you need – when you first ask.  That doesn’t matter.  If what you need is important to you, then ask again.  Ask differently.  But don’t give up.

“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal.  My strength lies solely in my tenacity.” – Louis Pasteur

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