What Is Your Crown Jewel for Success?

In the world of business there are limitations or restrictions of which you need to be aware when you want to achieve goals and ultimately succeed. There are some things that just, well, fall into place without compromise. Curious what restrictions need to be in place for you to succeed? Great! What about not compromising? Wondering what's not up for compromise?

For one, your attitude! Your attitude needs to be in what your crown jewels are encased, much like Queen Elizabeth’s crown is made of gold; your success crown is made of attitude, allowing you to show off the jewels within you. With a positive attitude, a little self-discipline and a certain level of knowledge, you're empowered to make sound decisions along your journey to success even when a challenge might raise its pretty little head. Your attitude can not be compromised by anyone but you. You are in complete control of your attitude, and being in control of your attitude means your limitations are set by you and only you.

In a previous article I talked about why your foundation for success needs to be built not just on stone but must also include sand to allow for flexibility and growth. Knowing where your foundation is enables you to then focus on identifying your crown jewel and gaining clarity on the steps it takes to achieve your goals. Your crown will, of course, have more than one jewel held within it but jewels (or, here, skills) that need to be on display for others to notice.

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Leadership and Marketing

As a leader, main man, top dog or any other pet name you can think of for yourself when referring to your role as decision maker, there will be times you will be faced with when to refocus, redefine or repurpose the financial resources of your organization depending on the challenges you may be facing. Change is all around you, and keeping a steady course during those times is a challenge all in itself. One of the common areas that most entrepreneurs will immediately look at cutting is the area of marketing. As an entrepreneur your budgets (if you follow one) are not normally as flush as those of Fortune 500 companies. As a result, your ability to refocus or repurpose resources becomes a lot more stressful and difficult to do.

We’ve heard of the different types of marketing, and it can be very confusing. I'd like to support you in reducing your stress regarding marketing; there are amazing marketing coaches out there who can support you in creating a full marketing plan, outlining what is specific to you and your organization. But today let's bring your focus back to the basics so when you decide to hire that coach or consultant, you have an idea of what marketing means to you and your business.

So what is marketing, or a marketing budget, and why do you need one? Simply put, marketing is defined as the process used to determine which products or services are of interest to your clients and outlines the strategies best used in the sales, communication and development of new business. Okay, that wasn't so simple; but basically, it means matching your product or service with your client. The budget piece is the estimated cost of running these programs and projects. The "why" is basically all about transparency and empowering you to stay focused and moving forward in the right direction with each decision you make regarding spreading the word about your wonderful products.

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Hocus Pocus, Let There Be Focus

Life is full of roles, responsibilities and consequences; therefore, being able to stay focused is important when seeking balance in any overwhelming experiences life decides to throw at you. Success in life is nothing without being able to share it with others, and having the ability to focus will allow you to stay present when working and playing with others. In life there are believed to be three states of focus in which you can be engaged: 1) being in focus; 2) lacking focus; and 3) being focus obsessed.

The benefits of being focused in life could almost be considered unlimited. One benefit is the confidence you feel, and with increased confidence you're given the ability to step out of your comfort zone and make improved decisions. With improved decision-making capacity, you are able to find purpose in your life, have the passion to take on life’s stresses as they come your way, and ultimately improve your overall well-being. So simply putting focus first helps you live life to the fullest and allows you to experience the best in everything you do.

Life is short, as they say, and there's no time to be wasted being unfocused. But how do you stay focused or engaged? For some staying focused on tasks and current situations can prove difficult, and doing so thus takes practice to improve. A great tip for learning to increase your ability to stay focused involves giving yourself a reward for meeting "being present" goals. For one week keep track of how well you stay focused on tasks. For example, say you need to write a blog that is 500 words in length. Look at the clock when you sit down to begin writing. Note the moment your focus wavers from this task, and look at the clock to note the time. When you're able to refocus on the task at hand, note the time again.

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Surviving Reality: Compassionate Competition

To a lot of people, the word competition is ugly and holds a negative connotation. When we think of the word competition, we often think of professional sports, athletes, Survivor the reality show, "others" on the dating scene, or the younger generation entering the workforce who may just beat us out for the next big promotion. But in reality competition can be what empowers us to be more than just a survivor and the reason we flourish and succeed. We can amp up the level we achieve by embracing compassion within our actions during times of competition.

Compassion isn't just for the strong, educated or well read; it's for everyone, and our success can be easier when it's not built on the shoulders of those we pass over but rather on our supportive interactions with our competitors. By encouraging them to do more, be better and go for the gold, we in turn become stronger. When you look toward wanting a more successful professional life, you normally envision yourself climbing the Corporate Ladder—which means you need to put up with certain elements in the work environment to get to the next rung. And as I've mentioned in past articles such as "What's Your Edge?" that there are many things you can do to ensure you have an edge. But we encounter competition in many different areas of our lives, and it's important to understand that how you embrace your competitor in one sector will reinforce how you interact in another.

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A Stone Foundation Supports Your Success

As we look around at others in our lives, we often wonder what it took for certain individuals to succeed: how they made it so far, so quickly or what motivated them to keep going even when times were difficult. There are many qualities that make a great leader or support you in becoming one; there are unlimited opportunities for you to experience and gain the skills you need to become successful in life, but one of the elements people often overlook is their foundation. Examining the foundation on which your life is built is not about going back and pointing the finger at our childhood. It's about looking forward to your ultimate goal and asking yourself what it takes to get there to achieve and manifest your goal.

We all know the building parable "Is your house built on sand or stone?" When it comes to achieving success, understanding that your experience and academic portfolios are the building materials you use to build your life house means it's important to ask which pieces of your experience are stone and which pieces are sand. While moving through life, our foundation needs to actually be comprised of both elements, for science reminds us that sand is actually very small stones.

In life flexibility is critical to our learning and adopting new information, allowing us to mold and bend when necessary and stand firm in our beliefs and values. Using me as an example, people often wonder why I would choose to make certain decision in life; and for the most part, my decisions were based on following my heart and my desire while staying true to my dreams and values. When first embarking on the new role of coach, I did the exercise most of us have done when deciding to take a turn in our careers and wrote down how my life experiences (both professional and academic) supported this turn. When looking back to even my teenage years working at a boat marina, my work experience has always ultimately supported either directly or indirectly my recent life decisions.

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What’s Your Edge?

For all those who strive to be successful in their professional lives, whether they work for a corporation or they are an entrepreneur, there are a few things they (or should I say you) definitely need to have in order to achieve and keep their edge.

Having a vision is critical to being able to climb the corporate ladder. Your vision is what will allow you to stay motivated while working toward achieving the goals you've set for yourself. Goal-setting isn't always easy, as there is an art behind it that involves knowing how to set realistic and achievable goals while also managing your time and energy as you spend time completing the necessary actions to meet your milestones along the way that ultimately lead you right into the hands of success.

Knowing your vision and taking action to make it a reality takes more than just yourself. You need a support network that will act not just as cheerleaders to help keep you motivated but also to be the "naysayers" and play devil’s advocate. These elements, when combined, create a recipe for success. In order for you to earn the promotion to the next rung, you need something we call respect. Respect is a two-way street. Not only do you need to hold respect for those to whom you report, but those who report to you and those on the same level must do the same.

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Employee Motivation: A Secret Society?

Motivation is a key ingredient to success. This is not a news flash by any means, and all managers and good leaders embrace some degree of motivational program for their employees; whether they do this consciously or subconsciously, they all do it. Motivation is not some secret society either, but the secret to motivation is the "what" behind it. So what is the "what" anyway?

It's a great question and one that every great leader seeks to answer—although the answer is never the same twice! So that is what makes motivation part of a secret society, remembering and understanding the same employee will have different motivators at different times of her life? And yes, different times can be as often as yearly, monthly or even daily. This is the "what" behind keeping your employees motivated and feeling empowered.

Now that you're a part of this secret motivational society and you’ve been let into the inner sanctum, you're reading this and still thinking, "What? That isn't a news flash, either!" And yes, you would be right—but the news flash is the remembering that translates into engaging in some form of communication with your employees regularly to ensure you're in the know of what their current motivator is or might be. Regular communication is the real secret ingredient to realizing your success as a great motivational leader.

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Business Leadership: Leading with Social Responsibility

Over the last several years that I've been working with business owners, entrepreneurs and those seeking to begin their own businesses, there seems to have been an underlying theme revolving around leadership. I recently wrote an article ("The Meaning and Essence of Business Leadership") and thought it would be beneficial to continue this topic with the focus on Social Responsibility. We know leaders are not made; nor are they "born," even though there are individuals who seem to exude all the necessary qualities that make a great leader and are therefore are referred to "born leaders." But what is this sought-after set of skills and abilities that makes you a great leader, and do you possess the desire to become a great leader? If you are asking yourself these questions (as well as can you do if you want to acquire these leadership skills not just from a business perspective but possibly from a personal one), read on.

The first quality is respect; individuals can easily look up to and respect you as a leader if you respect them. Their respect will be based on your ability to communicate easily and compassionately your expectations of them. This is the second quality of a great leader: being a compassionate communicator. Within your mutual respect, your communication style will be inspiring. Those whom you lead will feel empowered by you to step out and up into their reaching for their goals—one of which will be to "please" you and to live up to your expectations. So the third quality is being able to inspire those who follow you. Now that we’ve covered three qualities that support being a great leader, let’s look at what might be another quality on which we often focus and talk about less but is nevertheless equally (if not more) important; that is, business leadership is based on social responsiveness.

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The Secret Weapons of a Good Business Leader

"The very core of leadership is that you need to have vision. You can’t blow a hesitant trumpet." This is what well-known scholar Theodore M. Hesburgh said about leadership. Leadership is a very desirable attribute among successful people no matter what type of business they are in. And if you talk about business, then leadership is a must for carrying out your tasks effectively. Thus, every successful entrepreneur embraces some leadership quality within herself.

But the reality is that being a leader is not that easy. Everyone is not a leader; in fact, we cannot be leaders if there are no followers. Many people believe leadership as such is a human trait that is possibly related to genetics—that people inherit their leadership skills by birth. Leaders possess some unique qualities that allow them to easily motivate others. Let’s take a few minutes to review the different qualities or skills good leaders possess.

First, as a leader you need to have a unique ideology. If you look at the great business leaders such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Sam Walton, you will find each of them has their own ideology that allows them to step out and up, easily reaching such a top position. Thus, the very first component of leadership is having a unique ideology. Begin thinking about what makes you unique as an individual and how this translates into your being or becoming the great leader you want to be.

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The Meaning and Essence of Leadership in Business

Change is the only unchanging features in this changing world. Everything surrounding us changes with the passage of time to be in line with modernization. The ongoing business environment is no exception when it comes to this trend. Modern business is on a triumphant march through tracking changes via hard work from the most efficient business leaders.

Effective leaders adopt strategies and techniques to try to win or take the lead in the competitive market, which is ultimately a game of "survival of the fittest." In both good and bad times, there is always a need for quality leadership. The success of a business or an industry is mostly dependent on the leaders it gets or inherits. The successful implementation of desired leadership techniques is crucial for meeting the changing demands in business. The mystique of leadership in and of itself makes it one of the most widely debated, studied and sought-after commodities in business.

The Meaning of Leadership

Leadership is the social process of influencing the behaviors of others without posing any threats of violence. It is a process of influencing the thoughts, attitudes and behaviors of others by setting a direction that helps visualize what they can hope to achieve or what lies ahead for them. It's the capability of getting other people to do something significant through harnessing their efforts jointly.

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Revisiting the Seven Habits

It’s been almost a decade since I read the infamous self-help book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey, but it’s such a helpful tool that it came as no real surprise when I recently felt compelled to re-read it. As I did so, I found myself wondering if I had addressed or implemented the particular habit introduced in each new chapter. By the time I finished those chapters, I was delighted to find that I had, in fact, embraced them since my initial reading of the book. Of course, I had also adapted the suggestions or guidelines in the book concerning the habits to tailor them to my own unique needs and experiences. This discovery reminded me that we each determine our own level of success.

Covey encourages readers of his best seller, which has sold 15 million-plus copies in almost 40 languages since its first printing in 1991, to embrace the seven habits he outlines so they can implement them in their own lives to increase their success or effectiveness as well as become more satisfied with their accomplishments at the end of an established time frame. I think that almost all people can benefit tremendously from Covey’s book, whether it be in their personal life, professional life, or both. Indeed, reading and expanding your awareness of new trends, thoughts, and perspectives is an important part of embracing a life-long approach to learning.

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Mentoring Programs: Supportive of Success

When we set out to start our own business, we tend to look back at our previous experience and how the environment was either supportive or non-supportive of the employee’s success--to see what worked and what didn’t. One of the elements of a successful business is the openness to share our wisdom and passion of doing what we love with others. One of the easiest ways is to establish a mentoring program. Mentoring doesn’t always mean we are “grooming” new employees for their rise in the corporate environment; it can also mean mentoring high school students to gain much needed experience in the work place.

Today I would like to share with you a few advantages of how establishing a mentoring program can support your small business success while also touching on how setting up a mentoring program in a small to medium organization can help you develop your human resources and use those resources in the most efficient manner possible.

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