Archive for Maxwell Daily Reader
Leaders: Relate before you equip
Posted by: | CommentsAll good mentoring relationships begin with a personal relationship. As your people get to know and like you, their desire to follow your direction and learn from you will increase. If they don’t like you, they will not want to learn from you, and the equipping process can slow down or even stop.
To build relationships, begin by listening to people’s life stories — their journeys so far. Your genuine interest will mean a lot to them, and it will also help you to know their personal strengths and weaknesses. Ask them about their goals and what motivates them. Find out what kind of temperament they have. You may not want to equip a “numbers person” for a job that deals primarily with disgruntled customers.
And one of the best ways to get to know people is to see them outside of the world where you lead them (i.e. work, whether paid or volunteer). People are usually on their guard at work. They try to be what others want them to be. By getting to know them in other settings, you can get a glimpse of who they really are.
Try to learn as much as you can about your people and do your best to win their hearts. If you first find someone’s heart, they’ll be glad to offer you their hand.
Adapted from The Maxwell Daily Reader
Be impressed, not impressive
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Too often we think that if we can impress others, we will gain influence with them. We want to become others’ heroes – to be larger than life. That creates a problem because we’re real live human beings. People can see us for who we really are. If we make it our goal to impress them, we puff up our pride and end up being pretentious – and that turns people off.
If you want to influence others, don’t try to impress them. Pride is really nothing more than a form of selfishness, and pretense is only a way to keep people at arm’s length so that they can’t see who you really are. Instead of impressing others, let them impress you.
It’s really a matter of attitude. The people with charisma, those who attract others to themselves, are individuals who focus on others, not themselves. They ask questions of others. They listen. They don’t try to be the center of attention. And they never try to pretend they’re perfect.
Spend today listening to others and letting them impress you.
~ From The Maxwell Daily Reader
Are you moving toward breakdown … or breakthrough?
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Every major difficulty you face in life is a fork in the road. You choose which track you will head down, toward breakdown or breakthrough. Dick Biggs, a consultant who helps Fortune 500 companies improve profits and increase productivity, writes that all of us have unfair experiences; as a result, some people merely exist and adopt a “cease and desist” mentality. He continues,
One of the best teachers of persistence is your life’s critical turning points. Expect to experience 3-9 turning points or “significant changes” in your life. These transitions can be happy experiences … or unhappy times such as job losses, divorce, financial setbacks, health problems and the death of loved ones. Turning points can provide perspective, which is the ability to view major changes within the larger framework of your lifetime and let the healing power of time prevail. By learning from your turning points, you can grow at a deeper level within your career and life.
If you’ve been badly hurt, then start by acknowledging the pain and grieving any loss you may have experienced. Then forgive the people involved – including yourself, if needed. Doing that will help you move on. Just think, today may be your day to turn the hurts of your past into a breakthrough for the future.
Don’t allow anything from your personal history
to keep holding you hostage.
~ From The Maxwell Daily Reader, July 15
Vision: Are you moving forward… or in circles?
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One of the great dreamers of the 20th century was Walt Disney. Back when Walt’s two daughters were young, he used to take them to an amusement park in the Los Angeles area on Saturday mornings. Walt was especially captivated by the carousel. As he approached it, he saw a blur of bright images racing around to the tune of energetic calliope music. But when he got closer and the carousel stopped, he could see that his eye had been fooled. He observed shabby horses with cracked and chipped paint. And he noticed that only the horses on the outside moved up and down. The others stood lifeless, bolted to the floor. The cartoonist’s disappointment inspired him with a grand vision: Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
Vision is everything for a leader. It is utterly indispensable. Why? Because vision leads the leader. It paints the target. It sparks and fuels the fire within, and draws him forward. It is also the fire lighter for others who follow that leader. Show me a leader without vision, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t going anywhere. At best, he is traveling in circles.
if you lack vision, look inside yourself. Draw on your natural gifts and desires. Look to your calling if you have one. And if you stil don’t sense a vision of your own, then consider partnering with a leader whose vision resonates with you. That’s what Walt Disney’s brother, Roy, did. He was a good businessman and leader who could make things happen, but Walt was the one who provided the vision. Together, they made an incredible team.
Find your vision,
and let it guide you in
all that you do.
From The Maxwell Daily Reader,
January 25
Today’s Daily Reader: Put others first
Posted by: | CommentsToday’s blog post is an excerpt from The Maxwell Daily Reader. I loved compiling this book, with the goal of offering the reader one leadership principle per day for an entire year. Each one-page entry is drawn from one of my earlier (pre-2007) books, and is designed to be put into practice right after reading.
An added bonus: Besides providing a wide variety of leadership lessons, The Maxwell Daily Reader offers a good survey of my writing up until 2007.
What follows is the entry for today’s date: August 21.
Put Others First in Your Thinking
When you meet people, is your first thought about what they’ll think of you or how you can make them feel more comfortable? At work, do you try to make your coworkers or employees look good, or are you more concerned about making sure that you receive your share of the credit? When you interact with family members, whose best interests do you have in mind? Your answers show where your heart is. To add value to others, you need to start putting others ahead of yourself in your mind and heart. If you can do it there, you will be able to put them first in your actions.
But how can anyone add value to others if he doesn’t know what they care about? Listen to people. Ask them what matters to them. And observe them. If you can discover how people spend their time and money, you’ll know what they value.
Once you know what matters to them, do your best to meet their needs with excellence and generosity. Offer your best with no thought toward what you might receive in return. President Calvin Coolidge believed that “no enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others; or failing therein it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.”
(from Failing Forward)
Put others ahead of you in your mind and heart today.
