LEADERSHIP STARTER KIT

To demonstrate competence as you start in leadership, begin with the basics:

Work Hard: There is no substitute for a good work ethic.  People respect someone who works hard.

Think Ahead: Because your decisions affect your team, beginning with the end in mind and identifying priorities are doubly important.

Demonstrate Excellence: The better you are at your job, the higher your initial credibility.

Follow Through: Good leaders bring things to completion.

From "Good Leaders Ask Great Questions" by John C. Maxwell

TALKING AND THINKING

One of the things that I feel strongly about -- something that I will talk about when I speak at clinics -- is that the two most important things a coach can teach their team is to TALK and to THINK.  It's not passing, dribbling, shooting or closeouts -- it's TALKING and THINKING.  Now the critical point to understand is that effective talking and thinking make the execution level in all phases of basketball rise.

Today, as we prepare for our first official practice tomorrow, I have been reviewing some of my basketball notes including some from Jeff Van Gundy.  A few of his thoughts that give credence to my theory of the two most important things that we can teach our players include:

"We like talk to be ELC -- Early, Loud, Continuous."

"Never heard a team that talked early, loud and continuous that was not intense."

"If you can talk it, you can do it."

"The game comes down to decisions."

HOW CAN YOU STAY FOCUSED?

The following guidelines for maintaining your focus comes from "How Successful People Think" by John Maxwell.  It is a quick, easy read but one of my favorites from Maxwell:

1. Remove distractions: Removing distractions is no small matter in our current culture, but it’s critical. How do you do it? First, by maintaining the discipline of practicing your priorities. Don’t do easy things first or hard things first or urgent things first. Do first things first—the activities that give you the highest return. Second, insulate yourself from distractions. I’ve found that I need blocks of time to think without interruptions. I’ve mastered the art of making myself unavailable when necessary and going off to my “thinking place” so that I can work without interruptions.

2. Make time for focused thinking: Once you have a place to think, you need the time to think. According to researchers, “If you’re trying to accomplish many things at the same time, you’ll get more done by focusing on one task at a time, not by switching constantly from one task to another.”

3. Keep items of focus before you: Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great transcendental thinker, believed, “Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.” To help me concentrate on the things that matter, I work to keep important items before me. I’ll also keep a file or a page on my desk so that I see it every day as I work.

4. Set goals: I believe goals are important. The mind will not focus until it has clear objectives. But the purpose of goals is to focus your attention and give you direction, not to identify a final destination. As you think about your goals, note that they should be:

• Clear enough to be kept in focus.

• Close enough to be achieved.

• Helpful enough to change lives.

David Belasco, who says, “If you can’t write your idea on the back of my business card, you don’t have a clear idea.”

5. Question your progress: Take a good look at yourself from time to time to see whether you are actually making progress. That is the most accurate measure of whether you are making the best use of focused thinking.

BRIAN TRACY ON STRATEGIC THINKING

The Quality of Thoughtfulness
The ability to think and plan strategically is perhaps the most important single skill of the effective executive. In a longitudinal study of leaders who, in retrospect, made the best and most effective decisions, the single quality that stood out from all others was the quality of "thoughtfulness."

Thoughtfulness may be defined as a careful concern for the secondary consequences of each decision and each action. This is the essence of strategic thinking.

Your Most Powerful Tool
The most powerful tool that you as an executive have to bring to bear on your work is your mind - your thinking ability. Everything you do that sharpens and hones your ability to think with greater clarity before acting, will benefit you and help you to move upward and onward more rapidly in your career.

Use a Two Pronged Approach
The best way to approach strategic thinking is two pronged. This means to work simultaneously on the personal and the corporate.

Increase Your "Return On Energy"
In personal terms, strategic planning is an exercise in increasing "return on energy." Your greatest single asset is your earning ability. And your earning ability is nothing more than the total of the mental, emotional and physical energies that you can apply toward getting valuable results for yourself and your company.

Anything that you can do to increase your return on energy invested will increase your overall levels of effectiveness and contribution in every area of your life, especially, and most importantly in your work.
Be sure to check out www.BrianTracy.com

JOHN MAXWELL: MAKING GOOD DECISIONS BETTER

This article comes from www.SuccessMagazine.com written by John Maxwell.  As a coach, you simply have to love the title of his piece: "Making Good Decisions Better"

Noted philosopher William James said that once a decision is made, you should stop worrying and start working. It’s not always what we know that makes it a good decision. It is what we do to implement and execute it that makes it a good decision… maybe even a great one!

Let me explain. On June 14, 1969, my wife Margaret and I got married. That was a good decision. But, 41 years later, I’m here to tell that good decision has become a great decision. It’s become great because of what we have done after we made the decision.

Too many people overrate decision making and underrate decision managing. There are two possibilities in making a good decision:

•Manage incorrectly and have average results.

•Manage correctly and have great results.

We need both good decision making and managing for our decisions to get off the ground and become great. It starts with prioritizing. With all the decisions we make daily, how do we prioritize the decision-making process?

What’s the Main Event of Your Day?

I want to give you a very simple approach that I have used for years. Every morning, I take five minutes, look at my calendar, and I ask myself a very simple question: Of all the people I’m going to see, and all the things I’m going to do today, what is the main event?

How do you know what your main event is? Here are a few questions I ask myself to help me come up with my main event. I call them the three R’s of prioritizing:

1.What is required of me?

2.What gives me the greatest return?

3.What is rewarding to me?

Each morning, spend five minutes going through these questions, and once you have come up with your main event, I want you to spend more time, energy and focus on that main event than any other task in your day. You don’t have to be good at everything you do throughout the day, but you want to be prepared so you can accomplish your main event of the day.

Decision-Making Traps

Too often, leaders fall into traps that cause them to make faulty decisions. They may not realize that their methodology is flawed or their thinking lacks the necessary precision. Here are some specific pitfalls that can sabotage your efforts to express yourself wisely and decisively:

•Procrastinating. If you tend to dread the finality of taking a stand or calling the shots, you may be tempted to put off the decision.

•Surrendering. Exceptionally hard decisions can deplete so much of your energy that you finally cave in. Rather than surrender, break a big decision into its components and address those segments bit by bit.

•Hiding Behind Information. Many managers’ exacting standards crave unending stacks of data before rendering a decision. The more facts and figures they accumulate, the more they still want before they feel ready to decide.

•Saying Yes to Everything. You’re not making true decisions if you’re always giving the go-ahead thumbs up. Charles E. Nielsen nailed it when he said, “When, against one’s will, one is high-pressured into making a hurried decision, the best answer is always no because no is more easily changed to yes than yes is changed to no.”

Click here to read the entire article: http://bit.ly/bCvByE

YOU MUST THINK OR FAIL

The Success Strategies of Henry Baldwin Hyde
founder of The Equitable
(taken from Selling Power July/August 1997)

WORK HARD...When a reporter asked Hyde for the secrets of his success, he replied, “In order to succeed you must rise earlier, sit up later, and work harder and more skillfully than those around you.” Hyde believed that there was pure genius in hard work saying: “You may say that this is a hard life. It may or may not be hard, according to disposition of the individual. The successful man derives more pleasure and real satisfaction from his hard-working life than ever comes to the one who neglects his business and suffers the penalty which such neglect brings.”

IMPROVE EVERYTHING...Hyde made it a practice to thoroughly investigate each department. From time to time he would review the work flow, question the validity of established routines and systems, analyze records, watch workers do their jobs, scrutinize his managers’ performance and make suggestions for improvement.

INNOVATE...In 1987 he purchased land to build the first office building for The Equitable. At that time there was not a single office building in New York with passenger elevators. Against the advice of experts, Hyde ordered the elevators and proved that the new technology increased efficiency and enhanced the company’s image.

LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMER...Hyde was an enthusiastic salesperson and enjoyed spending time in the field. He traveled extensively through the country, visiting agents’ offices. He listened to customers and often encouraged his agents to use listening as a sales tool saying, “Don’t talk too much. The tongue is a dagger which often assassinates success.”

INVEST YOUR TIME WISELY...Hyde firmly believe that time was more important than money. He told his staff, “At the close of each day, think of what you have done, and not how much time you have wasted. You can do a great work if you will never let a day pass without gathering some valuable result, and you will be surprised at the end of the year by the progress you made.”

THINK BIG...Hyde didn’t hide his ambition and encouraged others to aim high, saying, “It is astonishing how much more a man can do if he has in his mind a definite object that he is striving to accomplish than if his efforts lack purpose and concentration.”

“Think! If you don’t think, you deserve to be a failure. Perhaps you say you haven’t time to think — you have too much work to do. But heedless work is profitless. You must think or fail. Take your choice.”

THE PIECES OF THINKING

From "How Successful People Think," by John Maxwell:

You need all the thinking “pieces” to become the kind of person who can achieve great things. Those pieces include the following eleven skills:

1. Seeing the wisdom of big-picture thinking.
2. Unleashing the potential of focused thinking.
3. Discovering the joy of creative thinking.
4. Recognizing the importance of realistic thinking.
5. Releasing the power of strategic thinking.
6. Feeling the energy of possibility thinking.
7. Embracing the lessons of reflective thinking.
8. Questioning the acceptance of popular thinking.
9. Encouraging the participation of shared thinking.
10. Experiencing the satisfaction of unselfish thinking.

HOW TO BECOME A BETTER THINKER

1. Expose yourself to good input: Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out. Read books, review trade magazines, listen to tapes, and spend time with good thinkers.


2. Expose yourself to good thinkers: Spend time with the right people. As I worked on this section and bounced my ideas off of some key people (so that my thoughts would be stretched), I realized something about myself. All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are thinkers. The writer of Proverbs observed that sharp people sharpen one another, just as iron sharpens iron. If you want to be a sharp thinker, be around sharp people.

3. Choose to think good thoughts: To become a good thinker, you must become intentional about the thinking process. Regularly put yourself in the right place to think, shape, stretch, and land your thoughts. Make it a priority. Remember, thinking is a discipline.

4. Act on your good thoughts: World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker said it all when he remarked, “I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through—then follow through.”

5. Allow your emotions to create another good thought: To start the thinking process, you cannot rely on your feelings. If you wait until you feel like doing something, you will likely never accomplish it. The same is true for thinking. You cannot wait until you feel like thinking to do it.

6. Repeat the process: One good thought does not make a good life. The people who have one good thought and try to ride it for an entire career often end up unhappy or destitute. They are the one-hit wonders, the one-book authors, the one-message speakers, the one-time inventors, who spend their life struggling to protect or promote their single idea. Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of golf that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.

From John Maxwell's "How Successful People Think"

MAXWELL ON DECISIONS: MAKE THE RIGHTS, MANAGE DAILY

“Successful people make right decisions early and manage those decisions daily. The earlier you make those right decisions and the longer you manage them, the more successful you can become. The people who neglect to make those decisions and to manage them well often look back on their lives with pain and regret — no matter how much talent they possessed or how many opportunities they once had.”

-John Maxwell

CHARACTERISTICS OF CREATIVE THINKERS

1. Creative thinkers value ideas

Annette Moser-Wellman observes, “Highly creative people are dedicated to ideas. They don’t rely on their talent alone; they rely on their discipline. Their imagination is like a second skin. They know how to manipulate it to its fullest.”

2. Creative thinkers explore options

As Albert Einstein put it, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Good thinkers come up with the best answers. They create backup plans that provide them with alternatives.

3. Creative thinkers celebrate the offbeat

Creativity, by its very nature, often explores off of the beaten path and goes against the grain.

4. Creative thinkers connect the unconnected

Because creativity utilizes the ideas of others, there’s great value in being able to connect one idea to another—especially to seemingly unrelated ideas. Tim Hansen says, “Creativity is especially expressed in the ability to make connections, to make associations, to turn things around and express them in a new way.”

Creative thinking works something like this:

Think > Collect > Create > Correct > Connect:

Creative thinkers don’t fear failure: Charles Frankel asserts that “anxiety is the essential condition of intellectual and artistic creation.” Creativity requires a willingness to look stupid. It means getting out on a limb—knowing that the limb often breaks!

From John Maxwell's "How Successful People Think"

MAXWELL WITH FOUR OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THINKING

Here are four observations from John Maxwell about thinking that may help you hang tough when you’re trying to land a thought.

1. Thoughts never begin fully formed. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a complete idea come to me immediately. This certainly would be a more efficient way of thinking, but it simply doesn’t work that way.

2. Thoughts take time and others to reach their potential. Notice I didn’t say it takes time or others to develop a thought. It takes both. Thought maturation works best when it occurs over time and with input from other informed, thinking people.

3. Thoughts are very fragile in the beginning. The quote from my friend says it all. “John,” he said, “ideas are like soap bubbles floating in the air close to jagged rocks on a windy day.”

4. Thoughts only reach their full potential in a healthy environment. In this kind of setting, criticism is constructive, not destructive. Hard questions are asked to clarify and define an idea, not to attack it or tear it apart. Thoughts may be challenged, but the overall atmosphere is positive, not negative.

HOW SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE THINK

Talking about juiced this morning! A new John Maxwell book for me to read -- didn't get much sleep last night! Below will give you just a smidgen of what you can find in "How Successful People Think."

What’s a successful person’s greatest resource in difficult times? Good thinking!

Good thinkers are always in demand. A person who knows how may always have a job, but the person who knows why will always be his boss.

Good thinkers solve problems, they never lack ideas for building an organization, and they always have hope for a better future. Good thinkers rarely find themselves at the mercy of ruthless people who would take advantage of them or try to deceive them, people like Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, who once boasted, “What luck for rulers that men do not think.”

Those who develop the process of good thinking can rule themselves – even while under an oppressive ruler or in other difficult circumstances. In short, good thinkers are successful.

I’ve studied successful people for forty years, and though the diversity you find among them is astounding, I’ve found that they are all alike in one way: how they think!

That is the one thing that separates successful people from unsuccessful ones. And here’s the good news. How successful people think can be learned. If you change your thinking, you can change your life!

HOW TO BECOME A BETTER THINKER

Do you want to master the process of good thinking? Do you want to be a better thinker tomorrow than you are today? Then you need to engage in an ongoing process that improves your thinking. I recommend you do the following:

1. Expose Yourself to Good Input
Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.
Read books, review trade magazines, listen to CDs, and spend time with good thinkers. And when something intrigues you-whether it’s someone else’s idea or the seed of an idea that you’ve come up with yourself-keep it in front of you. Put it in writing and keep it somewhere in a favorite place to stimulate your thinking.

2. Expose Yourself to Good Thinkers
All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers. Now, I love all people. I try to be kind to everyone I meet, and I desire to add value to as many people as I can through conferences, books, audio lessons, etc. But the people I seek out and choose to spend time with all challenge me with their thinking and their actions. They are constantly trying to grow and learn.

The writer of Proverbs observed that sharp people sharpen one another, just as iron sharpens iron. If you want to be a sharp thinker, be around sharp people.

3. Choose to Think Good Thoughts
To become a good thinker, you must become intentional about the thinking process. Regularly put yourself in the right place to think, shape, stretch, and land your thoughts. Make it a priority. Thinking is a discipline.

Recently I had breakfast with Dan Cathy, the president of Chick-fil-A, a fast food restaurant chain headquartered in the Atlanta area. I told him that I was working on this book and I asked him if he made thinking time a high priority. Not only did he say yes, but he told me about what he calls his “thinking schedule.” It helps him to fight the hectic pace of life that discourages intentional thinking. Dan says he sets aside time just to think for half a day every two weeks, for one whole day every month, and for two or three full days every year. Dan explains, “This helps me ‘keep the main thing, the main thing,’ since I am so easily distracted.”

You may want to do something similar, or you can develop a schedule and method of your own. No matter what you choose to do, go to a special thinking place, take paper and pen, and make sure you capture your ideas in writing.

4. Act on Your Good Thoughts

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date. World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker said it all when he remarked, “I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through-then follow through.”

5. Allow Your Emotions to Create Another Good Thought

To start the thinking process, you cannot rely on your feelings. In Failing Forward, I wrote that you can act your way into feeling long before you can feel your way into action. If you wait until you feel like doing something, you will likely never accomplish it. The same is true for thinking. You cannot wait until you feel like thinking to do it. However, I’ve found that once you engage in the process of good thinking, you can use your emotions to feed the process and create mental momentum.

Try it for yourself. After you go through the disciplined process of thinking and enjoy some success, allow yourself to savor the moment and try riding the mental energy of that success. If you’re like me, it’s likely to spur additional thoughts and productive ideas.

6. Repeat the Process
One good thought does not make a good life. The people who have one good thought and try to ride it for an entire career often end up unhappy or destitute. They are the one-hit wonders, the one-book authors, the one-message speakers, the one-time inventors who spend their life struggling to protect or promote their single idea. Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years. To become someone who can mine a lot of gold, you need to keep repeating the process of good thinking.