How do you get better when you’re already so good?

Posted on May 14, 2012 by pdncoach

“How do I get better when I’m already so good?” 

OK, so maybe you would never really ask this about yourself, let alone your team or your organization. I believe you could say it though, with all honesty.

I believe most people, individually and in groups, are just fine the way they are. A few people, however, want something more. Good enough is never good enough. They want to achieve more, do more, have more; they want to become more. Of these few, fewer yet – I estimate less than FIVE PERCENT of all people – are willing to pursue the difficult journey of tapping into their hidden potential to achieve greater success.

Read on…if you want to be one of the FIVE PERCENT who will do the difficult things that less successful people won’t do. 
Sooner or later you find yourself awake at night wondering. “What else is possible?”

Better yet, you find yourself fully awake during the day, more awake than you have ever felt in your lifetime. You are wondering… and something just clicks, “Now is a time for action.”

  • Maybe it was something you read, saw or heard. 
  • Maybe it was a missed opportunity. 
  • Maybe it was a difficult activity you faced with dread, yet from which you now feel the joy of accomplishment. 
  • Maybe it was an obstacle you could not overcome, a reprimand from a superior or a doubt expressed by someone important to you. 
  • Maybe it was the action of another that inspired you. 
  • Maybe you realized that circumstance has controlled you for too long. 
  • Maybe you just realized how much of your future you have ahead of you. 

How can you turn your “maybes” into goals that you will achieve? 

Whatever the catalyst, you realize more clearly than ever that you (or your team, your business unit, your entire organization) – you realize you are capable far beyond current achievements. You realize you have so much more potential to do more, to have more, to become more than you already are. But how?

This wondering is the opportunity of a lifetime. I don’t want you to miss it. 

Maybe you can’t always do your best, but you can always do your better.

Everything you have accomplished up to this moment makes you who you are. Everything you are capable to achieve in the future represents your potential.

Allow your Courage to become a reflection of your growing desire to become the kind of person you want to become, to have the kind of life you deserve, and to be the successful leader you were meant to be.

Join me at the Intersection of Purpose & Now.
Posted in coaching, courage, dreams, goals, opportunity, possibility, potential | Leave a comment

How Do You Measure Success, Simply?

Posted on May 7, 2012 by pdncoach

I want to be a person whose children, wife, friends and clients feel comfortable and confident in coming to me with anything – any thought, feeling, fear, joy, regret or experience they choose to share with me.  That’s a very clear daily affirmation, but a rather intangible goal. So how do I measure success?

Well, when my teenage son asks, “Dad, a friend asked me if I was born again; what does that really mean?” – that’s a measure of success. When he reveals to me that he is reading St. Augustine’s “Confessions” and wants to borrow my copy of Boethus’ “Consolation of Philosophy” – another success.  When my wife says, “You amaze me…”  When my oldest son calls me immediately after being robbed at gunpoint…

Keep your measures simple.
There are volumes written about how to measure success and the achievement of goals in business and in life.  I have learned to keep it simple, at least for starters, then add more sophisticated metrics when appropriate based on the return on effort.

In my business as a coach, a simple measure of success is when my clients come to me and say,

“Mark, never before in my life have I been this focused on what is truly important to me.  I know what I want; I know my true priorities; I have the courage now to act On Purpose; and I am getting the results I’ve always wanted.”

A simple measure I use and teach in sales is the “4-Point Productivity Plan“, in which my goal is to get a minimum of four points each day based on this scale:

  • 1 point – Get a lead, an introduction or a referral 
  • 2 points – Make an appointment with a decision-maker 
  • 3 points – Have a meeting with a decision-maker
  • 4 points – Close a sale

Another simple sales measure stems from one of my basic sales principles: People want to buy what they need from someone who understands what they want. So my goal is to understand, and my simple success measure is when a prospect or client tells me that I “get it”, that I understand their circumstance and their desires, whether I can directly meet their need or not. In fact, the sales “pitch” they say “yes” to is typically their words which I repeat back to them.

I lead a group of youth in our church and I have a simple success measure in that role, too. It’s very similar to the one with my sons and wife. When a young person requests, in private, “Mark, may I ask you a question?” or when they have the courage to ask the same question of a group of their peers, or they publicly share a doubt, belief, joy, regret… That is success. It’s not what they know or understand so much as it is the sign that they know who they want to be.  I have helped create a safe environment for them to be open, honest and authentic. I have succeeded.

In leadership and coaching, my simple measure is helping others move forward and succeed, by “never telling someone anything I could ask instead.” This takes particular discipline and patience, but I love the results when I succeed and I help someone find clarity and commitment to right action by asking them questions. Yet I’ve told them absolutely nothing, especially of my own experience, advice, opinion or recommendation. I merely asked them to keep talking about their thoughts.

If there is anything that keeps me sane (let alone successful) it is the fact that I cannot be more invested in your success than you are.  But I am responsible for my own success. And I’m more successful when I keep things simple.

What are your simple measures of success? Please take time to comment on your examples; we can all learn from them.

[Oh, and by the way, my son Dylan did read my copy of Boethius, and posted several quotes for his peers to read on Facebook!]

Join me at the Intersection of Purpose & Now.
Posted in 4-Point Plan, leadership, measure, parenting, questions, sales, success | Leave a comment

Leadership: The Quest for a Whole New World

Posted on April 30, 2012 by pdncoach

“Why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal?” President John F. Kennedy

Formal Leadership requires Personal Leadership;
Personal Leadership requires Self-Esteem;
Self-Esteem requires Self Love;
Self Love requires finding Purpose in Serving humankind.

In other words, leadership starts with authentic self-expression that adds value through relationships. Leadership excellence is a function of the love one finds in the pursuit of a compelling and sometimes irrational dream.

Young Talia Leman came up with an effective business model that empowers kids to solve global problems when she was only 10 years old. Even she admits she didn’t know what her goal meant at the time.

What you do (as a leader) merely serves as the proof of what you believe. People don’t buy or follow WHAT you do, they buy and follow WHY you do it! Even Forrest Gump had hundreds of people who followed him as he ran across the country, not because they wanted to run (what he did), but because they wanted to experience running with him (why he did it). We are not always rational about following leaders, and leaders aren’t always rational about where they are leading.

“True leaders exceed all rational expectations,” as my friend, Russ Hagberg, says. Russ is the retired senior vice president and chief of staff for Santa Fe Industries and Santa Fe Railroad.  Russ reminds me that when president John Kennedy challenged Americans to “go to the moon” by the end of the decade of the 1960s, he was irrational! But he was authentic and believable to enough people – the right people – to achieve what many people thought was impossible; and it happened long after his tragic death.

Remember, Martin Luther King gave the “I Have A Dream” speech, not the “I Have A Plan” speech. People still hold to that dream 50 years later. Even president Ronald Reagan asked the one thing of the former Soviet Union that few thought would happen at the time, “Tear down this wall.“

What is your dream? Where do you really want to go that you’ve never been before? What must you tear down or build up to get there? What keeps you running? What do you love and believe in so much that, even though it may currently seem just beyond your reach, brings Cause to your every thought and action? 

The measure of a leader is not just about enlisting people in a quest for new results. The measure of a leader is about enlisting people in a quest for a whole new world.  Leadership is about enlisting people who choose to engage in a dream – even with their discretionary actions.

Join me at the Intersection of Purpose & Now.
Posted in dreams, Forrest Gump, irrational, John F. Kennedy, leadership, Martin Luther King, measure of a leader, Purpose, Ronald Reagan, Talia Leman, why | Leave a comment