Leaders Are Made, Not Born

Great leadership is a skill that can be acquired by anyone. A leader is a person who influences, and if you are breathing, then that means you. I want to share with you this article by author and speaker Brian Tracy.

The Key Leadership Abilities

Your ability to negotiate, communicate, influence, and persuade others to do things is absolutely indispensable to everything you accomplish in life. The most effective men and women in every area are those who can quite competently organize the cooperation and assistance of other people toward the accomplishment of important goals and objectives.

Everyone is Different

Of course, everyone you meet has different values, opinions, attitudes, beliefs, cultural values, work habits, goals, ambitions, and dreams. Because of this incredible diversity of human resources, it has never been more difficult and yet more necessary for diplomatic leaders to emerge and form these people into high-performing teams.

Do What Other Leaders Do

Fortunately, leaders are made, not born. You learn to become a leader by doing what other excellent leaders have done before you. You become proficient in your job or skill, and then you become proficient at understanding the motivations and behaviors of other people. As a leader, you combine your personal competencies with the competencies of a variety of others into a smoothly functioning team that can out-play and out-perform all its competitors. When you become a team leader, even if your team only consists of one other person, you must immediately develop a whole new set of leadership skills.

Focus On What's Right vs. Who's Right

Whenever you have problems, misunderstandings, or difficulties within the team, you reexamine your values, your goals, your activities, your assignments, and your responsibilities. You are more concerned with what's right than with who's right. Leaders are more concerned with winning than with not losing. High-Performing teams run by excellent leaders, are determined to perform in an excellent fashion. All members know that their ability to work together in harmony and cooperation is the key to the success of every one of them.

Aim at a Common Goal

The wonderful thing about becoming a leader in your work and personal life is that you can practice the skills of influencing and persuading others toward a common objective. You can promote the principles of excellent teamwork by establishing your values and goals, determining your activities, and then leading the action. And you can improve yourself by continually evaluating your performance against your standards.

Only Compare Yourself With Yourself

One of the marks of excellent people is that they never compare themselves with others. They only compare themselves with themselves and with their past accomplishments and future potential. You can become an even more excellent person by constantly setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing everything possible to live up to those standards.

The more proficient you become at getting the results for which you were hired, the more opportunities you will have to get results through others. And your ability to put together a team and then to lead that team to high performance will enable you to accelerate your career and fulfill your goals faster than ever before.

To lead is to serve,

Coach Carolyn

Being Servant First

And now, a page from The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader by Dr. John Maxwell.

When you think of servanthood, what do you envision? Servanthood is not about position or skill. It's about attitude. You undoubtedly have met people in service positions who have poor attitudes toward servanthood. And just as you can sense when a worker doesn't want to help people, you can just as easily detect whether a leader has a servant's heart.

The truth is that the best leaders desire to serve others, not themselves. True servant leaders:
~ Put others ahead of their own agenda.
~ Possess the confidence to serve.
~ Initiate service to others.
~ Are not position-conscious.
~ Serve out of love.

Servant leadership is never motivated by manipulation or self-promotion. In the end, the extent of your influence depends on the depth of your concern for others. That's why it's so important for leaders to be willing to serve.

To lead is to serve,
Coach Carolyn

Leadership and Self-Talk

"The most influential person you will talk to all day is you." ~ Zig Ziglar

I just read this fabulous article from business and motivational speaker and author, Zig Ziglar. It has confirmed my belief about talking to yourself. I do it all the time; this is when I can brainstorm some of my best material!

It's okay - talk to yourself. Dr. Joyce Brothers says that people who talk to themselves are above average in intelligence so, for those of you who indulge in that little mind-building exercise, be happy as you do it! Factually, the most important conversations you will have with anyone on any given day are the conversations you have with yourself. Despite this fact, there are many people who deny that they talk to themselves. However, these same people have been seen heatedly talking to someone in a car three blocks away. They even talk to golf balls, telling them to "stay in bounds," or "get in the hole!"

Scientifically speaking, according to the March, 1990, issue of U.S. Air magazine, what you say to yourself has a direct bearing on your performance. That's why you should be upbeat, optimistic and positive when you talk to yourself and others. Use positive statements instead of negative ones. For example, parents should not say to the child who wants to help with the dishes, "O.k., but be careful - don't break them, this is our best china." To do so would be to give precise directions for breaking the dishes.

The person who says to his mate, "Don't let me forget where I put my keys," has just given himself clear instructions, "forget where you put them." You should say, "I'm going to remember that I put my keys in the top drawer." The field goal kicker who says to himself, "If I miss this kick we lose the game," is far more likely to miss than is the one who says, "I will split the uprights and we will win the game!" The reason is simple. Words "paint pictures" and the mind goes to work to complete the picture.

Think about it. Say something nice to yourself and others, something positive and upbeat. It'll be a big help. So much so that if you do, I'll SEE YOU OVER THE TOP!

Here's wishing you all the most abundant and prosperous of new year's!

To lead is to serve,

Coach Carolyn

Leading with Passion

As I am a huge believer in living your passion, I thought this piece from Dr. John Maxwell was right on.

Experts spend a lot of time trying to figure out what makes people successful. They often look at people's credentials, intelligence, education, and other factors. But more than anything else, passion is what makes the difference.

Take a look at four truths about passion and what it can do for you as a leader:

1. Passion is the first step to achievement - Your desire determines your destiny. The stronger your fire, the greater the desire and the greater the potential.

2. Passion increases your willpower - There is no substitute for passion. It is fuel for the will. If you want anything badly enough, you can find the willpower to achieve it.

3. Passion changes you - If you follow your passion, instead of others' perceptions, you can't help but become a more dedicated, productive person. In the end, your passion will have more influence than your personality.

4. Passion makes the impossible possible - Human beings are so made that whenever anything fires their soul, impossibilities vanish.

A fire in the heart lifts everything in your life. A leader with great passion and few skills always outperforms a leader with great skills and no passion.

From The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader.

To lead is to serve,
Coach Carolyn

Leadership is Influence

A person's ability to make things happen in and through others depends entirely on their ability to lead them. Without leadership, there is no teamwork, and people go their own way. If your dream is big and will require the teamwork of a lot of people, then any potential leaders you select to go with you on the journey will need to be people of influence. After all, that's what leadership is - influence. And when you think about it, all leaders have two things in common: They're going somewhere, and they're able to persuade others to go with them.

As you look at the people around you, consider the following:
*Who influences them?
*Whom do they influence?
*Is their influence increasing or decreasing?

To be a good judge of potential leaders, don't just see the person-see all the people who that person influences. The greater the influence, the greater the leadership potential and the ability to get others to work with you to accomplish your dream.

From Leadership Promises for Everyday by Dr. John Maxwell

To lead is to serve,

Coach Carolyn

Equip and Empower Moment - Know Thyself

From a page of Leadership Promises for Everyday by Dr. John Maxwell.

Psychologist Sheldon Kopp says, "All of the significant battles are waged within the self." That's true. The greatest of the battles people wage is against their own flaws and failures. To have an opportunity to reach your potential, you must know who you are and face your flaws. To do that:

1. See yourself clearly.
2. Admit your flaws honestly.
3. Discover your strengths joyfully.
4. Build on those strengths passionately.

You can reach your potential tomorrow if you dedicate yourself to growth today. Remember, to change your world, you must first change yourself.

To lead is to serve,

Coach Carolyn

Leadership and Intuition

“Listen to your intuition. It will tell you everything you need to know.” ~ Anthony J. D'Angelo

“The only real valuable thing is intuition.” ~ Albert Einstein.

Intuition is defined as the ability to sense or know immediately without reasoning.

One of Dr. John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is The Law of Intuition. I love that Dr. Maxwell included this because we tend to think of leadership as hard and fast rules about leading people. The majority of leaders would look at intuition as being too spiritual, too airy-fairy, or just delving in the realm of the unknown.

As Dr. Maxwell states that “leadership depends on more than just the facts. Leaders see trends, resources and problems, and can read people. The law of intuition is based on facts plus instinct and other intangible factors. A leader has to read the situation and know instinctively what play to call. Leadership is more art than science.”

Intuition is a divinely inspired gift that we must learn to tap into. The tendency is for women to be the ones to only use their intuition, hence the term, “feminine intuition.” Well, I am here to say that female and male alike have this remarkable gift and ability. As leaders, we need to learn to tap into this gift more. We can all remember a time when we have had that little gut-wrenching feeling or that inner gnawing that there was something you should or should not do. When you went contrary to the feeling, you say to yourself, “I should have listened to my gut feelings about that!”

A leader has to be able to read the situation, as Dr. Maxwell says, knowing what decision to make based on something outside of reason. This is not a bad thing, in fact, it is very wise. A leader should access all of his or her available resources, the ones seen and the ones unseen yet very much felt.

To lead is to serve,

Coach Carolyn