Category: Leadership

The Crucial Steps in Taking Advantage of Opportunities

One of my mentors explained to me that being in the right place at the right time has nothing to do with success. Instead, it’s critical to be in the right place at the right time with the preparations and awareness required to take advantage of the situation.

How critical is it? Imagine being in a public place requiring medical attention because you have stopped breathing. Who will be able to help you? Will it be someone that just happens to be there? Probably not. It will be the person that is trained in CPR and aware that you need help.

Think of the opportunities you want. Are you prepared with the proper skills, abilities, and services? How will you recognize the need? Do you have what is necessary to allow you to take advantage of the situations that occur throughout your day?

1. Increase Your Awareness. Increased awareness will help you see an opportunity. Learn from others. Spend some time with people that have accomplished what you want to accomplish. Connect with a mentor or coach. Discuss your experiences, and learn from their experience. Develop the ability to recognize when you can add value to a situation. Sometimes you may even need to slow down to become aware of the people and events around you.

2. Be Prepared. To achieve the highest levels of success, you must continuously invest in yourself. The world changes, and your skills become outdated if you are not growing. This is not just a phenomenon in technology. You can observe this in terms of generational differences between people. The success you desire exists within a dynamic world. To embrace it, you must continue to transform also.

Awareness and preparation is the foundation for success, but it also requires that you follow through with action. It is the awareness and preparation that will give you the confidence to act. In most cases this means stepping out of your comfort zone, because that is where the highest levels of success are found.

When have you found yourself prepared and in the right place at the right time? When have you recognized an opportunity but realized you were not quite prepared?

5 Fundamental Lessons to Change Your Thinking About Risk

The more you risk failure, and actually fail, the greater your chances of success. It is rare that anything of value is created or accomplished during the first attempt. Failure, reflection, evaluation, adjustment, and persistence creates your path for success.

Most of us limit the risks we take. We work to avoid failure. We view failure as a negative, and become stuck in our comfort zone. We want more, but are unwilling to risk more.

Here are four lessons that may help you view risk from a different perspective.

1. Who cares if you look bad? Sometimes it is better to care less about looking good. Don’t let the fear of looking bad keep you from taking a risk. Would you rather look good, or find success? Step back and ask yourself this simple question, “Who cares if I look bad?” You normally don’t look good doing something the first time. So just do it.

2. Why are you waiting? Are you waiting for the perfect circumstances before taking action? If you find yourself continually evaluating your options, and gathering more data, stop analyzing. Stop thinking about why you need to wait, and think about why you need to act. You will never have all the data. The faster you move forward, the faster you reach success.

3. Do you have a budget? Create your own budget for risk and failure. Set a goal for your failures. The budget can be based on money, time, or effort. It could include all three. Plan on spending it every month. Make it a habit. This practice provides visibility to how much risk you are actually taking.

4. Where is your inspiration? Is your inspiration based on the value you place on your goal? This may seem obvious. But when your actions are driven by the wrong motives, this question may remind you to get back on track. Are you inspired and motivated by the right reasons? When your values and actions are aligned, you will find risks easier to accept. You are able to move forward faster.

You may read these questions, and think this does not apply to me. I take risks. I am action oriented. It may be true. However, my experience has shown, no matter what level of risk you are used to, everyone has the opportunity to grow in this area. We tend to overestimate the risks we actually take.

This week’s challenge is to evaluate where you are taking risk, and where you are risk adverse. Challenge yourself to find the opportunities that are waiting for you. You may discover something great that you have been avoiding.

Heartfelt Recognition Makes a Difference

In one of my leadership positions, I implemented a recognition award for my team. Every quarter I accepted nominations for the winner, who would be selected for their efforts over the previous quarter.

There was nothing special about this process. You have probably seen similar programs at some point in your career. There was nothing special about the award itself either. In fact, there was no monetary consideration, and the award was a traveling trophy. If you were recognized, you were able to keep the trophy on your desk for the quarter, but then it was passed to the next recipient.

What made the award special was public recognition, and the letter which accompanied the trophy. The letter detailed the specifics of why the person was being recognized. It was written in a story format, and the story came from the heart of the people impacted. The stories had impact.

When I reflect on the success of that process, I can see the importance far beyond the award itself. Here are three main benefits we enjoyed.

1. Displayed Sincerity and Authenticity. The awards allowed the leadership team to model sincerity and authenticity to the organization. We researched and validated the activity being recognized to verify accurate representation.

2. Increased Awareness of Great Effort. Since we were not recognizing people just for doing a great job, but for specific actions, the team became more aware of opportunities for recognition. The staff began to learn how recognition within their own team can impact all parts of the organization.

3. Celebrated Shared Values. This might have been the greatest benefit. The entire organization began to develop an understanding of what we valued as a team. It created the culture we desired. It energized the entire workforce.

As I think of the impact of this one simple program, I can’t help but think that everyone must already be doing this. But I have heard from many of you, that it is not true. Many organizations, spend their time on problem solving, and fire-fighting, with little to no effort placed on recognition.

With such a large payoff, how can we ignore recognizing our people? What do you want to change in your organization?

Increase Your Ability to Connect

If you are trying to strengthen a connection with someone, get out of your own head, and get into theirs. If can discover how people spend their time and money, you will learn what they value. If you know what they value, you will have gained valuable insight in how you may improve your connection with them.

It seems like such a simple approach, but all of us live life through our own perspective. You have to intentionally refocus your thoughts to achieve another perspective. Here is how you can apply this simple tool.

1. Understand both time and money. If you want to understand someone, you need to see both aspects. Together they will give you a better understanding. Where do they spend money? When do they pay for premium, and when do they buy just average products (clothes, car, food, etc.)? How do they spend their time at work? How do they spend their free time? When are they the happiest? What activities do they enjoy? These simple questions can give you great insight.

2. Find common ground. Once you feel you understand what someone values, you need to determine what you have something in common. At times this is easy to recognize, and in other cases you will have to dig deeper. Making a connection with someone with whom you share an interest or hobby can be easy. But if you need to connect with someone when you don’t see common ground, you should consider values, ideals, and thoughts. This can be a tougher option to uncover.

3. Take action to connect. How can you meet their need? How can you create a connection based on the shared common ground? This is the action step. You may be able to develop your connection through shared goals, and interests. You might also be able to develop a connection by modifying your behavior to match what they value, in order to build rapport. However, always be authentic, and always maintain your own values. Never become something you are not just to make a connection.

Take a minute and think about someone you know fairly well. Think about how they spend their time and their money. What does that tell you about what they value, and what is important to them?

Now think about someone you want to connect with. Do you know how they spend their time and money? If not, your first step is learning more about them. If you do, then how would you describe their values? Does it give you any ideas on how to strengthen your connection with them?

This is a simple tool, but can be powerful at moments when we struggle to connect!