About 10 years ago I heard Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker, talk about how he puts his arms out and takes a deep breath before giving a talk. He said he does this in order feel more powerful. In the past. I tended to dismiss many of Tony's ideas. In my experience, he gets his fans really motivated, for about 10 minutes. I dismissed this idea as well, at least until I heard about body language research by Amy Cuddy.
On May 6, 2016, I had a chance to attend Leadercast 2016. The event was live in Atlanta, GA, but I was able to attend via simulcast in Reston, VA. The speaker lineup included Dr. Henry Cloud, Andy Stanley, Chris Barez-Brown, Kat Cole, CMDR Rorke Denver, and Steve Wozniak. The event was both a source of ideas and energy
One of my long term friends posted this video of Paul Maritz. Paul is aboard member of Pivotal Software and was a key executive at VMWare software. Whether or not you care about Paul's company or the software industry, I believe there is considerable value in his talk. I really enjoyed his perspective in a couple of areas. Below are my paraphrases of his message.
I have been blessed to be part of two very successful companies in my career and have been well rewarded for my achievements. My work has been featured in industry publications, I have gone on numerous reward trips and I have had the opportunity to make significant contributions to the growth of business. Everything I have accomplished has been in the context of a great team. Those who know me in my business life might be unaware of someone in my extended team that is key to my success.
I recently mentored a young sales person regarding the nuances of the sales cycle. He relayed how much activity his firm generated by end of quarter. He exuded pride for the energy created from his sales managers’ added pressure and end of quarter discounts that bolstered sales. My friend was surprised to hear me say that, as a sales leader in my own company and my previous companies, I de-emphasize end of quarter sales pushes, and we rarely offer end of quarter discounts.
Recently Dan Sullivan of strategic coach challenged me during one of his 10x podcasts. He said that one of the difference between successful business people and average business people is that successful business people are comfortable talking about their failures. Challenge accepted
I hope you realized that this is a trick question. Great leaders will spend about half of their time on these two important key competencies. My focus on excellence in these two areas has been one of the keys to my success as a manager. In In the future, I will write articles that will focus on best practices for hiring great employees, but this article will focus on how to make sure your employees are productive in the first six months.
