Nelson Mandela

Don’t stop at good, go for great

good to great nelson mandelaI have been working in business for thirty years and have a successful career.

I started writing in addition to my career because I saw it as a way to reach and teach many more people than I could just one-on-one or speaking to groups. I still mentor, teach, and speak today and enjoy every opportunity but I also write a blog and have a following on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter where I share my thoughts on leadership. That was a big step for me to now reach over 10,000 people regularly.

Three years ago I published my first book, The Leadership GPS, and it became an Amazon Best Seller.

These have all been steps on my personal journey from good to great and I’m not done – I am in the process of writing my next book. You see, I call my goal from good to great, Change The World Through Leadership Now.

After each step towards my goal I could see the next step I needed to take. It is just like Nelson Mandela said, “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”

I want to share with you the three steps I consistently take on my journey from good to great:

Sharpen your focus. Life can be full of issues that need to be resolved. We can get really good at managing them. Many of these issues are important and need your investment – it’s ok if you take care of them, just don’t let this become your life’s work. Keep focused on your good to great goal and get back to it regularly – and if you can, perhaps you can use solving the issues as part of your good to great goal.

“Managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great.” – Jim Collins, Good to Great

Accomplish small steps. Great things are rarely achieved with the first try. It’s a process that builds on itself. With each small step of success ask yourself “What’s next?” And use what you’ve built to reach the next step.

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent Van Gogh

Finish with great. Great is a life-long dream. Believe you will reach it and keep climbing.   No matter how many times you may slip, pick yourself up, learn from what happened and get going again.

“Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.” – Napoleon Hill

 

The Three Cs of Leadership Success

Leadership successHow can you achieve leadership success? Bill Walsh, former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers said, “The score will take care of itself.” His teams were known for focusing on the basics and not the score. This advice coming from one of the winningest NFL head coaches in history.

You too can achieve Leadership Success by following these three C’s:

 

CLARITY Why are you in that position, at that company, at this time? What is your purpose? What are you going to accomplish? How are you going to get there?

Have it-You have to know what you are supposed to do. Without clarity of purpose you cannot lead.

“More important than the quest for certainty is the quest for clarity”- Francois Gautier

Write it-A dream remains a dream until it is written down into a goal. You aren’t really committed until you put pen to paper.

“Your mind, while blessed with permanent memory, is cursed with lousy recall. Written goals provide clarity. By documenting your dreams, you must think about the process of achieving them.” – Gary Ryan Blair

Speak it-A leader has to lead other people to achieve their goals. Unless you can communicate your purpose you will lack followers.

“Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.”- Jim Rohn

COURAGE We all have fears that can keep us from moving forward. What is your fear? What has been holding you back? Move forward.

Admit it-Fear is a normal emotion. You can’t deal with it unless you admit it’s there.

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear” – Mark Twain

Face it-The more you think about fear the stronger it gets. Stop thinking and start doing.

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” – Dale Carnegie

Conquer it-All your fears won’t disappear, but you can succeed anyway.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” – Nelson Mandela

CONSISTENCY Find something that works and do it right – over and over.

Try It-Success comes from consistently trying. Don’t just take my word for it, test it out yourself.

“For the novice runner, I’d say to give yourself at least 2 months of consistently running several times a week at a conversational pace before deciding if you want to stick with it. Consistence is the most important aspect of training…” – Frank Shorter

Do it-Once you see the positive results, keep doing what got you there.

“Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius. “An Wang, the founder of Wang Laboratories

 Achieve it-Like Bill Walsh said, “Let the score take care of itself.”

“In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics you get shortsighted, if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.” – Tom Seaver

 Scroll to top