The Art of Improving Your Strengths

1. The Art of Improving Your Strengths Presented By: GeorgeBaker

2. Developing Your Circle of One Only the mediocre are always at their best. When you compare yourself to others, you are either conceited or defeated. Set your own standards. If you don’t impose change on yourself, you will impose obsolescence. • Visualize & Dream Craft a vision that is worthy of your pursuit. Read motivational books. Network with the best. Attend training conferences. Set aside time each week to dream and plan. Make Friday I-day. Helen Keller was asked, “What would be worse than being born blind?” She replied, “To have sight without vision.” • Energize & PlanReflect on your values and write out your own Personal Mission Statement.Formulate a Personal Development Plan in 4 dimensions. Post these in a prominent place. Set evolutionary and revolutionary goals with deadlines. A wish is a desire with no action. A goal is a dream with a deadline. A leader changes himself before he asks his followers to change. • Organize & Think Determine the most efficient use of your time. Develop a routine that can be replicated. Have your leadership team do a 360° evaluation on you to reveal your blind spots and blank spots. Practice positive self talk. • Exercise & Do Get to work. Start where you are. My motto: “No action; no satisfaction.” Set monumental goals. Don’t be overwhelmed or frustrated by the distance of the destination. Stay on track by setting short-term incremental goals to measure progress. Engage in Perpetual Performance Improvement Management – Not doing 1 thing 100% better, but doing 100 things 1% better, and 1% better. . • Determinize & Do Over Overcome obstacles with determination, tenacity, and perseverance. Never give up. Expect obstacles and list possible problems before you begin work. Team up with warriors not worriers. Henry Ford said, “Failure is nothing more than the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.” Always expect setbacks. Never accept failure!

3. Personal Mission Statement

4. Personal Development Plan

5. Developing Your Inner Circle Management is the beginning of competence. Leadership is the end of excellence. I have no desire to manage a work force. I want to lead a team! • Be on the lookout for leaders. A true leader is great not because of personal power, but because of the ability to empower others. • Carefully select trusted employees to form your organizational Leadership Team. They don’t have to be in your image. A complementary team is one where people’s strengths are made productive and their weaknesses are made irrelevant by the strengths of others. • Share your vision with the Leadership Team and ask for their perspective. Be prepared to make a vision correction. One person’s tunnel vision can never equal the panorama of a team’s vision. The most dangerous idea is having only one. • Ask your Leadership Team to develop their own Personal Mission Statements and Personal Development Plans. Discuss them and include them in future performance evaluations. • Model and teach empathic listening. Empathic listening is listening within the other person’s frame of reference. Stop talking long enough to understand. Ask yourself: Is what I have to say an improvement on the silence? Stop your half-hearted listening. Listen with your whole body. . • Formulate a Leadership Development Plan. Have team members complete leadership styles and conflict resolution exercises. Develop a Leadership team data base to identify member similarity, diversity, strengths and weaknesses. Assign books for team to read, discuss and pragmatize. • Have Leadership Team read “Strengths Finder 2.0” book and complete internet self-evaluation. Formulate a Key Strengths matrix chart for the team. Select super-ordinate goals (those that can only be synergistically accomplished) from your business plan. For each S.O. goal, list strength traits that are needed to accomplish the goal. Select L.T. members from the matrix chart that possess each strength and form a self-directed work team. Empower them and turn them loose.

6. Key Strengths Matrix

7. Developing Your Outer Circle A leader has a vision of the future and the courage to pursue it. Napoleon Bonaparte said, “No man can lead others except by showing them a future. A leader is a merchant of hope.” We are either a catalyst, showing our team a vision and moving them into the future, or we are a cataract, obstructing their vision and holding them in the past. • Be a person of influence not a person of infuriation. It’s impossible to influence someone and to antagonize them at the same time. You must be in control of your emotions. Being led through life by your emotions is like a prize fighter leading with his nose. Control devices: Don’t defend. Don’t speak. Let them vent. Busy yourself by writing notes. Imagine the combatant as an animal (Rhino). • Deal with chicken little problem children – Pitiful people who persistently proclaim problems. A tool you can use on these dreary people is Napoleonic completed staff work. The next time someone brings you a problem, ask them to bring back 3 possible solutions. This will transform them from problem squawkers into problem solvers. • Develop a Training Master Plan to insure that every employee receives at least one training opportunity per year. Increase budgets incrementally until you reach the necessary funding level. A wise woman once told me that, “Training is not an expense; it is an investment.” • Develop a Leadership Succession Plan. There is no success without a successor. • Develop a Core Task Cross-training Matrix. “Information is not power. The dissemination of information is power.” Share information. Share the workload. Develop people. Strengthen the organization.

8. Training Master Plan

9. Leadership Succession Plan

10. Core Task Cross-training Matrix

11. Circulating in New Circles To move from casual acquaintances to become trusted friends, you must move beyond conversation and into inspiration. You’ve heard of a venture capitalist. You need to be a venture enthusiast. You need to invest in people’s emotions; to stimulate their intellect; to ignite their passions. Inspire others by: • Taking the initiative to make a good first impression. • Making eye contact with your whole body (like a giant Cyclops). • Restating their name and engaging them with probing questions. • Listening first. Speaking last. Not interrupting. • Focusing on what they are saying not on your next response. • Showing an interest in what they are saying. • Restating what they said and reflecting their feelings. • Never giving advice (unless they put you in a headlock and demand it). • Asking open-ended questions to keep the ball in their court. • Waiting for them to stop talking or to ask you a question.

12. Drawing Others Into Your Circles To make new friends use the Iceberg Approach: I nitiative for follow up contacts. Create a relationship data base with personal facts for reference. C asual conversation leading into subjects of substance. Look for ways to help them. Add value to them to become a valuable friend. E mpathic listening focused on learning the other person’s perspective. Never share your perspective first. B e Quiet. Wait for them to ask you a question. E ngage them with probing questions. Don’t be thinking about what to say. Think about the next question to ask. R espond only to their questions or to their silence. Don’t unload your entire life history. Play the Mystery Game. G ratitude – Expressing gratitude always breaks the ice & breaks down relationship barriers. If you don’t listen empathically, focus on others, and express gratitude, the relationship will never deepen past the tip of the iceberg.

13. Drawing Others Into Your Inner Circle To develop deep relationships from friendships, use the Camp Fire Approach: C onfidence – Keep sensitive or personal information in confidence. A ttitude – It is you attitude and not your aptitude that determines your altitude in life. Many people suffer from psycho sclerosis; the hardening of the attitude. M ake more emotional deposits than withdrawals. Give more than you get. P lan – for birthdays, celebrations, special events. Create a personal data base to jog your memory. F riend – Henry Ford: “My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.” I ntegrity – Socrates: “The key to greatness is to be in reality what we appear to be.” Integrity is having no credibility gap between our words and actions. If people understand me, I’ll get their attention. If they trust me, I’ll get their action. R ecognize – Be sensitive to attitude changes. Ask if every thing is O.K. or if you can help. One of the tests of leadership is to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. E ncourage – Write thank you notes. Listen to and help with problems. Make hospital visits. Ask the difficult questions. Encouragement is the oxygen of the soul.