Leadership Mastery

8 Requirements to Be a Successful Professional!

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As you advance in your career, or climb up the corporate ladder, it’s important to learn to be open to new ideas and people. Unfortunately, we love to judge others, often too quickly and negatively. As a result, we lose our effectiveness and close the doors to new opportunities.

Success is an inside job and requires improving your people skills. Developing these skills takes time, practice and discipline, and will enable you to work with and through others to achieve your goals, develop an amazing team, become competitive, and improve your company’s bottom line.

8 Key Requirements:

  1. Do what you say you’ll do on time and as promised. Apologize when you “drop the ball.” Then, adjust your attitude and systems to ensure you’re not continually “dropping the ball.”
  2. Develop the discipline to do the right things the right way. Remember, your decisions will impact today’s situation — and tomorrow’s too.
  3. Get to know what is of interest and/or concern to your customers, internal and external. (This includes your boss and Board of Directors!)
  4. Learn to listen to new ideas and new ways of achieving results.Great ideas can “erupt” from anyone, at any time – if you’re open to hearing them!
  5. Respect everyone on the team regardless of his/her opinions and/or personality. Stop negatively judging others because of how they speak, how they present their ideas or how they disagree with you. Everyone can be a contribution to your success, if you’re open to learning from them and value their input.
  6. Acknowledge others for their time, efforts and contributions. Make it a practice to say “Please” & “Thank You.” (A disappearing courtesy that needs to be revived.)
  7. Keep confidences. (Hint: Sharing secrets and gossiping are two of the fastest ways to sabotage your career.)
  8. Forgiveness. Take the time to forgive others, and, more importantly, yourself. Learn from your mistakes and theirs too! Success is an on-going process, not a one-time event.

Successful people have learned these 8 key requirements, and use them to advance professionally.

©Jeannette L. Seibly, 2015 All Rights Reserved

Need to transform your management practices? Contact me before it’s too late! http://SeibCo.com/contact

Jeannette Seibly is an award-winning and internationally recognized business advisor. For the past 23 years, she has helped thousands of people work smarter, enjoy financial freedom, and realize their dreams now.  She has an uncanny ability to help her clients identify roadblocks, and help them focus to quickly produce unprecedented results.  Each client brings their own unique challenges, and her gift is helping each one create their success in their own unique way. Along the way, with her commitment, she helped create three millionaires.

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Want to achieve your 2014 goals? It requires commitment.

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Setting goals for the new year can be exciting—it’s a time for creating new opportunities. For many, it’s also the time to put aside failed results from last year’s goals. But in about thirty days, our 2014 goals will lack their initial luster too, and we will struggle to stay in focused action.  Why is it so hard to stay on track? Various internal and external business factors may be the culprit. But it’s more likely that we have simply failed to develop the muscles and mindsets to manage the design, planning, implementation, and fine-tuning required of any project.

Follow-through isn’t just a problem for individuals. Organizations struggle with it too. Although many companies create annual goals, few effectively manage the process required to achieve them. It’s a challenge that many business professionals face every year with their employers, or as business owners themselves.

Here are some suggestions that can help you stay focused and continue to chip away at your goals until they’re met:

Be Realistic. Hire a business advisor who can help you blast through your reticence when you get stuck or want to make things too hard. An advisor can also help you create realistic goals and focused action plans, offer tactics and strategies for reaching them, and help you see your progress.  An advisor will encourage you to talk with your co-workers, clients, and boss to share your goals and plans. Be open to others’ insights and recommendations.  They will help you streamline your efforts and avoid lots of effort with little payoff.

Divide Work into Small Chunks. Set up quarterly goals. The immediacy of short-term goals can make all the difference in getting and staying in focused action.  Many people plan for the entire year, but a year can be a long time, and a lot can happen in 12 months to take us off track. Shorter-term goals will also help alleviate detractors, commonly known as the “shiny objects syndrome.”

Celebrate Progress. Too often we focus on what isn’t working and fail to see what we have achieved. Take time daily to recognize your accomplishments and use those successes as motivation to achieve your larger goal.  Appreciate when you have taken responsibility for honoring your commitments to yourself and your company, no matter how small of a step it appears to be to you. It’s one step closer.   Get your copy of 5 Simply Steps to Improve Your Results: https://seibco.com/books/eguides/5-simple-steps-to-improve-your-results/

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2014

Laser coaching requires you to stop managing

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Effective bosses know that everybody has their own learning style. Instead of telling your employees how to get the job done, provide assistance that is focused on a quality process and an intentional end result. As a manager, take time to listen, ask the right questions, and use qualified assessments to become a laser-focused coach with the ability to guide your team and provide the necessary adjustments. Encourage your employees to interact with one another, other teams, and their clients to develop new processes and systems to achieve the required end results:  satisfied customers and a positive return on investment. (http://SeibCo.com/assessments)

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

CEOs achieve their goals easier

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Hiring a coach is a wonderful gift to give to your executives, even when they don’t believe in the value a qualified coach can provide them! It’s a gift that keeps on giving! Hiring an outside business advisor or executive coach can help you achieve your goals easier and with less effort while improving results. Remember, most executive management team members are focused on driving the enterprise’s financial and strategic performance. They are not coaches and don’t have the interest or expertise to be one.

If you are the recipient of the gift of coaching, learn how to be coachable and be open to hearing what you don’t know or new ways to be successful in this ever-changing global market. If a coach is mandated because of your poor performance, ineffective people skills, or failure to achieve intended results, listen carefully and take action faithfully—otherwise, the next step may be termination. (http://SeibCo.com/contact)

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Are you ready to align a misaligned company?

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Making organizational changes can be daunting when there are many siloes, turf wars, and lines of demarcation that prevent everyone in the company from getting on the same page at the same time.  However, putting off making the tough decisions for fear of emotional upsets will only continue to exhaust you and create more elephants in the room, land mines, and entrenchments.

Make a commitment to the new direction of the company and get everyone on board, starting at the top of your enterprise.

  1. First, don’t entertain the drama—instead continue to parrot the value of the new direction while listening to objective rationale and making required tweaks. No plan is foolproof.
  2. Second, support and keep your leaders on track by using objective data and real metrics to gauge progress. It’s imperative that you are actively involved in managing others, keeping them focused, and paving the way so they can do their work. Be open to suggestions.
  3. Third, hire a coach or business advisor for each of your executives so they can learn how to work with each other, ask the right questions, and move forward to achieve the intended results. Everyone needs an objective and confidential sounding board to keep them on track and moving forward.  (http://SeibCo.com/contact)

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Successful Leadership Is Evolutionary

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Every generation of leaders likes to believe they invented the newest and most effective way to manage people, build profitable companies, and “build a better mousetrap.”  The reality? We didn’t do it ourselves. The achievements of our businesses, inventions, and other ideas were an outcome of working effectively with and through others to achieve the intended results, and at the same time acknowledging our predecessors.

True leaders are humble and take great care of their teams. They set aside their egos, hubris, and other personality impediments to pave forward the pathway and open new doors to achieve their intended results. If they’ve made a lot of money, it is shared appropriately. If they created a lot of press, they generously include others’ contributions in their brag statements. (http://TimeToBrag.com)

Why are these insights important?

1.       When you understand that your success stands on the shoulders of your mentors, business advisors, bosses, and team members, you become humble knowing you didn’t go it alone. It makes it easier for others to want to work with you and share their knowledge and experiences, since it’s not all about you and your credentials or paycheck.

2.       It’s never solely your ideas or creativity that make the system or product work. Sharing the credit works wonders for current and future undertakings. Asking the right questions, listening and building upon ideas, and making available (or creating) the required resources are key traits of leaders. They ensure others stick with you during the design, launch, and refinement processes of your projects.

3.       Documentation of your process, including charts and graphs, helps others visually understand the progress. They can then see potential glitches and possible solutions, and not rely on any overly optimistic feelings of triumph you might have. Documentation also provides a foundation for you, and them, to build on for the next venture.

Remember, leadership and business, as most things in life, are evolutionary—they build on previous successes and learn from past failures to create the next victory.

©Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Learning Opportunities Can Be Priceless

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As a leader, it’s important for you to be receptive to new ideas generated through collaboration between different work groups. They foster teamwork and can bring about cost-effective and competitive-edge systems, procedures, and off-the-wall solutions. Create a safe structure for employees to take their ideas and run them through the company’s business model – doing so enables employees to understand how business decisions are made.  Include budgetary and other market-driven concerns in their learning repertoire. Remember, some of these innovations will work and some won’t— it’s how you handle the debrief that will provide priceless learning opportunities and encouragement.

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Are your colleagues claiming all the credit?

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Learning how to brag in a business-savvy manner requires you to be aware of the metrics and results of any project. Simply saying, “I’m the one who did that” will not elicit the notoriety you may deserve! First, get your copy of It’s Time to Brag! and complete the five simple exercises. (http://TimeToBrag.com) Second, share your brag statements with your boss and coworkers. Third, understand that a coworker claiming all the credit for a project may have a different point of view—don’t dis him or her. Have a conversation to see if you can meet halfway and share the credit.

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

Drama keeps you focused …

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… on the wrong things!  We create these distractions or ongoing noise to keep us from doing what we say we want to do, and we allow these circumstances to stymie us.  It’s safer to stay comfortable. We know what to expect. Taking that leap of faith can be scary—but the inherent benefits are that the effort builds confidence, competence, and clarity. Hire a business advisor or executive coach, and be prepared to soar.

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013

How has “drama” kept you from doing what you needed to do?

Money conversations

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Having fear-based beliefs that you can’t afford something important can create a lot of mischief in your enterprise. Although budgets, monetary controls, and other financial considerations must be handled in a fiscally responsible manner, doing so in a Scrooge-like way usually takes its toll on the company–particularly when it’s self-serving.

Teach yourself and others to become resourceful, honor budgets, and learn how to become fiscally responsible. Many employees have not had responsibilities in costing, pricing, or creating profit margins for products and/or services in a competitive manner. Don’t make it difficult to achieve intended results; simply be responsible for the financial outcomes of how and where you spend the company’s money.

(c)Jeannette L. Seibly, 2013