I’ve written a number of articles on leadership and have a complete leadership series here (or on PDF)  for you to enjoy if you haven’t seen it before but I thought a list of ways to be a leader would set more examples and provide a starting point for being more of a leader as well.  Actually, I decided to run this after seeing a list of 100 ways to show boldness by Armen @ TimelessInformation.com which he got the idea from Luciano at Litemind.  I’d love to see some of my readers make a list on new subjects and keep these lists and links going…

Becoming a better leader takes time and determination. It helps to have your own Business Cards to allow you to branch out and become more influential.

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Leading People

1. Volunteer to help before you know what you are really needed for
2. Show up early for a meeting and welcome everyone with a handshake as they arrive
3. Facilitate a meeting for someone you work with
4. Prepare for a meeting before you attend and present your thoughts on the meeting topics first.
5. Highlight several strengths or skills you see another person has and tell them<
6. Admit a mistake you have made
7. Tell stories of times where you have learned something new from a failure
8. Apologize for some wrong doing or hurt you have caused to someone
9. Display or publish your own personal values to your co-workers
10. Introduce yourself to anyone you don’t know in the workplace
11. Start a relationship with a colleague outside of work12. Develop and use a consistent positive response to greetings like, “Hi, how are you?”
13. Share with someone one of your vulnerabilities
14. Always treat others respectfully
15. Outline for your boss each month all your accomplishments, plans and lessons learned
16. Make calls to maintain your network and to keep your contacts informed of your presence and lend an offer of help should they need it
17. Be transparent and share personal stories
18. Provide regular feedback to others about behaviors and actions you can see and hear19. Share your vision
20. Dream big
21. Define, build and maintain your reputation
22. Spend more time with those performing well than those not
23. Keep business performance and expectations independent of any personal relationship (business is business and personal is personal)
24. Admit when you are not right
25. Communicate clearly, inquire deeper and paraphrase often
26. Spend time communicating with people in private
27. Ask about and learn what motivates other people to help them achieve it

Leadership Skills and Development

28. Start an informal learning time at lunch with colleagues and pick various topics to cover on a regular schedule
29. Send out on email your favorite learning websites
30. Tell others about how you learn new skills
31. Offer to help someone develop an area you are already familiar with
32. Teach a skill you have learned to others
33. Learn the DiSC profile (or another type of behavior/personality profile) to help describe and communicate more effectively with others
34. Put at least one thing into action from every course / book you ever complete
35. Show empathy and compassion to others
36. Find a mentor to focus your own development with
37. Mentor someone else in an area or role you excel at
38. Create/write your own training manual and share it with others
39. Write down all of your goals with end dates and ensure they are measurable
40. Write your desired legacy or epitaph
41. Increase communication by using open ended questions
42. Actively pursue and encourage continuous improvement for yourself and others
43. Continue to grow and raise your expectations over time

Leadership Actions

44. Accept responsibility for your own actions and make that point known
45. Smile at the first people you see each and every day
46. Complete the one thing you have procrastinated the most before anything else!
47. Start procrastinating things a leader doesn’t do.
48. Encourage and promote change. Be a change agent.
49. Add enthusiasm and passion to your presentations
50. Say no to unimportant requests
51. Bring up and engage in a difficult subject or conversation
52. Keep your actions and decisions aligned with your values
53. Read books and share them with others
54. Be first to demonstrate and practice the Golden Rule
55. Choose to promote someone else’s idea over your own
56. Pick 3 low value things you can stop doing and stop doing them from now on
57. Listen and think more than you talk
58. Show appreciation and thanks to others
59. Be bold in your actions
60. Tackle your biggest fear by facing it to overcome it

61. Step up your business attire a notch and keep it that way
62. Memorize and share your favorite leadership quotes
63. Be persistent
64. Do one new leadership action every day
65. Maintain and uphold any professional ethics
66. Practice what you preach
67.Be confident in your abilities and decisions
68. Strengthen your unique attributes
69. Do what you say and carry through on your commitments
70. Work hard and play hard, you need to show an ability to balance both
71. Let go of perfectionism for yourself and others
72. Be willing to take risks
73. Take initiative
74. Reduce and even eliminate things that are distracting
75. Set time aside for planning and strategy
76. Review and recap your progress and accomplishments

Servant Leadership

77. Take a day off work to go volunteer for a non-profit group
78. Always give credit to those you work with or who work for you
79. Admit and accept fault for what you are involved in even if its not solely yours
80. Don’t judge others, offer help to promote change instead
81. Be open minded for other people’s ideas and opinions
82. Stay calm and control emotional outbreaks in all situations
83. Sacrifice your own time or personal goal to help achieve a collective goal
84. Take on a task or trade a task for one that no one else wants to do
85. Contribute for free to personal and career development systems like wikis, blogs, articles, interview, speaking opportunities or other related systems
86. Find your own passions and connect with others in a community sharing that passion
87. Engage in a conversation with a stranger
88. Do something nice for a complete stranger or homeless person
89. Use the 5W questions to investigate learning and teaching
90. Keep complacency at bay and drive through resistance from others
91. Let go of having things done your way and accept alternative paths
92. Let others share their opinions before you
93. Express gratitude and appreciation for what you have
94. Put love into what you do and how you do it
95. Build trust by offering to trust people before expecting it to be earned
96. Rely on and reveal your spiritual guidance that helps you be the leader you are
97. Make decisions that build a team, not an individual
98. Do the right thing even if it won’t be liked
99. Give first and without any expectation
100. Be humble and willing to serve others

Posted by Mike King under Success | 44 Comments »

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t

Gladwell continues to intrigue me with his unconventional research, presentation and writing.  I’ve enjoyed both of his other books, The Tipping Point and Blink and so I fully expected another enjoyable book.  I can happily say he delivered yet again as I definitely enjoyed his latest book, Outliers as well.  Outliers is a book not unlike his others, where he presents a collection of findings and stories that uncover a truth that is not your expected outcome.

There are two basic messages that Gladwell outlines in the first half and second half of the book.  First, there are those who have surprising success not by their skills, work ethic and own abilities, but by circumstances, advantages and inheritances from there life and environment that contribute to those individuals’ success.  The notion behind this is explained with various examples of how our environment shapes our lives and behaviors to a large degree as well. One example used is how professional hockey has ended up with a high statistical number of players born very early in year and extremely few players born near the end of the year.  This is caused by how age categories are split from hockey players at young ages when developing their skills.  Those who who born early in year are older and statistically have more months of practice by the cut off point for each age group.  This gives them a serious advantage from an early age and it is these players that get coached the most, move up the leagues and become the superstars more than the players born near the end of the year.  These age categories result in similar distributions in other sports and in other countries where different birthdates and splits are used.  They all seem to have a bias or advantage based on factors outside the skill of the players.

The second message is how an individual’s intended contribution is largely a factor of the time required to become an expert in some area.  He reveals that this time frame is around 10000 hours of practice in order to become an expert.  Those who are considered to be more skilled or even genius are really just evidence of a person who has put in more time to become a 10000 hour based expert sooner than others.   So while it is typically believed that there is a huge difference between very smart or talented students over average, his findings show that this is really just a case of practice.  Students who are initially worse at a skill or expected to be worse develop just as well as the next student who seems to impress others and appears to be a smarter or quicker student.  This implies that anyone, regardless of circumstance can become an expert if the time to practice is applied.

Aligning Expert with Circumstance

Gladwell takes things even further then at examining the 10000 hour expert level.  Not everyone who becomes an expert in something by practice also has the circumstances contributing to them to help them find success.  Therefore, there is a required alignment of expert level practice and contributors from one’s environment that must both occur to truly bring someone into the highest success levels.  The examples in the book not only highlight some of the evidence for these findings but also make evident the problems that many of our societal systems impose limitations on people or put unintended hardships for success in place.  Overcoming this requires that our systems look not at categorizing or classifying people early on, but instead provide equal opportunities for those who do put in expert levels of practice

In finishing this book, you will have a very different idea of what makes a person extraordinary.  It’s not their intelligence or skills as much as it is the circumstances and environment that contributes or triggers them to develop key abilities.  The date a person is born, the social atmosphere one learns their work ethic from or even the attitude one develops from overcoming hardship are key items that shape a person’s behaviors and ultimately their lives.  This is contrary to most people’s beliefs and the book directly challenges some of our political and social development systems which is one of the reasons I really like it.  I see a lot of parallels with problems areas I’ve already been exposed to, especially school systems and this book makes one think twice about the typical success factors we tend to focus on.

For me, it leaves me encouraged to continue to promote expert practice levels as obviously that is important in developing skills but it is also a wake up call to examine systems I’m involved in that form unintended prejudice because of circumstance or environmental influence.  We can’t really impact chance circumstances but in spending more time working towards something, we do increase our exposure to related areas which I think does improve our opportunities, as long as we can recognize them and take advantage of them.  Also, we ought to remove as many limits and boundaries imposed on people as possible and provide equal opportunity to teach, train, develop and coach anyone who is dedicated and committed, regardless of their environment.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 15 Comments »

In my last article I wrote about the importance of maintaining your resume at times when you don’t expect to need it and this article is related and about maintaining your business connections. Its related at least from the perspective that you don’t know when you will ever need to count on your business connections and that if you hope to get help from them at the time you need but have never made the effort to maintain them, then you won’t get very far.  Connections in business are just as valuable as your resume and skills and we’ve all heard the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know!”  Business connections are often a way to find new opportunities, new jobs and to get the support and help you need at times when it is desperately needed.  You cannot get that if you don’t maintain your business connections first, so here are some tips how to do that in your career.

Build your Connections

Building your connections means that you make extra effort to meet people, get to know them and to build a relationship with them beyond just the connection itself.  Unfortunately this is often a lot harder than it seems.  The world of blogging and social media (for those of you that are familiar) seem like this is easy to do with friends, followers and every other type of connection and RSS feeds that are out there.  This is where it SEEMS easy.  These types of connections are very shallow and not really all that helpful for either party involved.  What is needed is more effort to build the connection into a real relationship.  This can definitely be done in these social media systems but it takes more effort than secretly following someone to have a valuable connection with them.

Build connections by communicating both ways, learning about each other and by offering your.  Provide value to them and ensure that value is at a personal level. In the face to face business world this requires real relationships to develop and some interest on both parties to stay involved.

Another important thing with building connections is to no limit the connections you do build and develop.  In the world of work a network of connections can easily lead or branch out in ways you would never of expected.  A friend of your caretaker, the uncle of a hairstylist, an old school roommate’s new girlfriend, any of these people could add a value connection to your network which is exactly why you should never limit who you develop connections with.  In fact, it is important that you purposefully diversify your business connections and make an effort to branch outside your direct work circles because of these amazing opportunities that do come about via people you would least expect it to.
Give First Without Expectations
The easiest way for you to ensure others want to stay in touch and connected with you is to offer to help them or provide value to them if they should ever need it.  If you give first to the relationship more often than not you will end up having the same in return.  You can’t expect anything in return though because if you want to true give value to others, you ought to do it so they get more out of the relationship than you do.  At least they need to feel that way and be offered a chance for that.  If you do this and give first to a relationship it is quite likely you can build a strong connection with that person and that connection will last.

Keep Track of Your Connections

Building a few connections is easy without any system or methods for tracking.  However, you should be growing your known connections every month and so you will quickly find yourself needing to keep track of connections.  There are many options here and tools available for tracking.  You can use just an address book (paper or electronic) as long as it can add notes to each entry.  You might also want to combine your address book with a calendar to help schedule some and remind you of certain connections.  A customer relationship management (CRM) software is another excellent way to track your connections.

I find that one of the most important things with tracking connections is knowing when your last contact was and if there were any special discussions or actions that came about since or as a result of that last contact.  A regularly scheduled phone message or quick note on email is a simple task that is easy to schedule in any calendar or CRM software.

Ideally, you then continue to contact people that you haven’t frequently contact and just let them know you were thinking about them and wanted to stay in touch and that they are welcome to ask or contact you if they need anything from you.  Obviously you will not be able to fulfill any request but its the offer that counts the most.  It’s that offer that carries a lot of weight in the relationship with a business connection.

Rely on your Connections

If and only if you have had your connections for some time and that you have given first your offer of help to them, will you ever be able to rely on your connections.  Relationships need to work both ways and if you’ve made an effort to develop them, then you can much more easily rely on them.  Ask your connections for help if you need it. Get them to help you find a new position or to offer assistance or advice in a role you are struggling in.  Whatever the need is, if you’ve built your connections and put some time in yourself first, then you can always rely on them in your own time of need.  It’s an amazing feeling to know you have business connections who support you and help you out when the time arises.

Additional Tips

Obviously, there are some tips mentioned already about how to best build your business connections, here are those summarized with a few additional ideas.  I’d love to see any comments of additional tips to build your connections at a deeper level than your friend count in Facebook.  Please share your thoughts on this as well!

• Schedule time for weekly contact to your connects
• Use the phone or face to face whenever possible over electronic messaging, its more personal
• Offer yourself for help or advice when the chance arises with your connections
• Make at least one new connection per week
• Follow up with EVERY connection you have at least every 6 months, some more frequently
• Keep a diverse set of connections, it will expand the opportunities available

Posted by Mike King under Business | 11 Comments »

If there is one thing that people can probably recognize during a recession over anything else, it’s that anyone could find themselves out looking for work without warning.  This fact is one that simply reinforces the ideas in this article but I can’t urge enough that this has nothing to do with good or bad times and has everything to do with being responsible for your own career.  That is why you should always develop a great resume, a reference resume and be ready to use it on demand.  The last thing

Don’t Wait Until You Need a Resume

Whether you have been working at the same company for 10 years or have changed jobs every 6 months or are out of work, the best thing you can do to keep more career options open is to develop a great resume.  A resume is the tool that gets you an interview and it’s that all so important first impression of you.  Many people make the mistake of thinking that the resume is not that important and that it’s the interview that really matters, while that may be true for getting an offer, it isn’t true for getting that first call for an interview in the first place and so if you don’t get called, it will never do you any good.  The resume and cover letter are the first step, the interview the second and the negotiation is the third.  Each are all important and should be handled separately and carefully with any job search.

So don’t wait until you need a resume before you ever put any time into it.  Your resume is one of several of your career tools and it needs to be maintained to get the most out of it.  At any point in your career, you could come across a surprising layoff or cutback or a new job opportunity even if you are happy where you are.  It’s best to be prepared for that and have a ready and waiting resume that is up to date.  Put some time in a few times a year to review your accomplishments and update the content you have on your resume.  This is especially important if you have been with the same company for some time.  Updating your resume frequently will help you to capture your best accomplishments as your position at that company has progressed and it is a lot easy to think back over the last few months than it is over the last few years.

Resume Content

You should always have a resume to use as reference with all of you accomplishments and jobs over your entire career.  You use this as a reference since it will contain much more than you ever should deliver to a hiring company.  Keep a reference copy for yourself with all the detail you could ever need and then when you deliver a resume for a particular job, you have content you can pick and choose from that is most applicable to that job you are seeking.  The resume you actually deliver should always be tailored for the job, with relevant accomplishments and positions listed and nothing more.  As a hiring manager who has reviewed literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of resume’s I’ve seen that far too many people include a generic resume with all of their experience and no attention or focus on the most relevant points and experience.

Keep your resume short (1 page or 2 at the most) with specific points under each experience time frame that demonstrates the qualities expected for the role you are seeking.  Your points should always be based on the results you got and the accomplishments you had in doing the related tasks, don’t waste any space listing what the responsibilities were.  An interviewer or hiring manager is much happier learning about your responsibilities by seeing what you accomplished with those responsibilities.  Those accomplishments should be the areas you can talk about in the interview as well and will ensure you stand out from the competition.

Don’t put character traits or a description of yourself on your resume.  If you can’t prove it from the results and accomplishments you list, it won’t be believed anyway.  Saying that you are a hard working dedicated employee who loves to excel in their work and deliver results towards the goals of the organization is completely useless on a resume. Let your experience, references and interview demonstrate that for you.

Customizing a Resume for a Job

An objective is a great item to include on your resume, but ONLY if it is specific to the job being sought.  Trust me, nothing kills a candidates chances more than a vague objective proving they don’t know what they want.  Either make your objective specific to each job that you apply at or don’t include one.  A specific objective shows confidence and demonstrates the candidate is looking for the right job, not just any job they can get, which is very important if you want to stand out from the competition.

Next, your work experience and detail or summary points within each should be selected carefully for each job.  As mentioned above you should make your points about accomplishments and results in each role you’ve had and then pick those according to the role you are applying for. Ideally, your reference resume after you’ve spent time building it up with 10-20 accomplishments and results will leave you with a great set of items to choose from.  If you are applying for a technical role, pick the technical points that most demonstrate your abilities to succeed in that area.  If it’s for a leadership position then pick the points that show accomplishments where you have influenced a team or helped others to perform well in your previous work.  Select only 4 or 5 of your most appropriate points for each position.  You can leave an impression that that covers only a small amount of your accomplishments (which should be true anyway) by titling your experience areas according to the job as well.

For example, if you are applying for a technical writer position, then label your experience section of your resume as “Technical Writing Experience” and labels your points or details as a summary of your accomplishments.  This leaves you with more to share if you are selected for an interview.

Additional Thoughts

Keep in mind most resumes are only looked at for a minute or less and so you don’t want anyone reading or even glancing over things that are not relevant and that is why you should only include the best examples and experience you have. If they like what they read, you’ve done your job and this will make you much more likely to get an interview.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 12 Comments »

Armen at TimelessInformation has always been a great friend to me in the blogging world and I appreciate the way he examines topics and he has produced a great blog well worth reading.  The value he has in his posts are a clear sign of the thought he puts into his site and he’s always made the effort to help me out by pointing out minor mistakes or new tools to use on my own blog.  He’s been a great example of why I love connecting to so many great bloggers and so I was thrilled when he asked if I would respond to a brief (yet very thoughtful) interview on a few topics common on our blogs.

Please go check out the interview at TimelessInformation.com

You can comment there with any thoughts or additions you have.

If you want to check out more of Armen’s content directly here are a couple of my favorites from his site:

• Your Main Source of Competition is Yourself
• Honesty Is Tough But Worth It
• Insert Goals Into Larger Goals

Posted by Mike King under Personal | No Comments »

What is it that comes to mind for you when you think of exceptional?  Can you define it or is it subjective to one’s experience?  If it is subjective what has contributed to what you believe to be exceptional?  Does what you believe to be exceptional change anything in your life or the expectations you set for yourself and others for what it takes to excel?  All these things I ponder as I see great differences in the aspirations of others in my life.

Exceptional Perspectives

Everyone of course has different perspectives in life and it is based largely on their experiences and understanding of things.  People are taught different in their upbringing, develop very different habits and work ethics and build their own unique beliefs around how things ought to be for themselves in life.  So of course there is no exact way to describe what is exceptional.

Comparing to the Exceptional

I think the only way to describe something as exceptional is to describe it in relative terms and quite likely, that is how you define exceptional as well.  Something that is exceptional is something that is much better than most similar things.  The same goes for a person if they are exception in one skill area.  They are comparatively better at that skill than most other people.  It’s that comparison that makes them exceptional.  The perspective comes into play again here though as the people or things you have to compare to are always subjective.  To one person, an exceptional athlete could be very different than to another if they have never seen anyone close in comparison in skill level.  So one might say they are exceptional and another person could meekly say they are average.  This is exactly what draws me to think more on this label of exceptional.

Making Exceptional Personal

Exceptional is therefore a perspective you can share with someone else but since you may have totally different levels of comparison it loses its value, at least with individuals who have a different basis.  However, it definitely has meaning to you as an individual based on your comparisons and personal experiences.  Making it personal allows you to see and recognize the best from your point of view.  After all of this, there is still no way to define what is exceptional but there are ways that individuals look at it and use it for comparisons in their life.  Then whether you use those exceptional ideals as an aspiration for future goals and achievements or by you recognizing your own exceptional abilities to be confident in or share with others, you are left with little way to portray it to others.

Exceptional Stories

Perhaps you don’t need to share the definition of exceptional though and instead the value comes from the experience and stories that set the beliefs of what exceptional things are all about.  So, asking for the stories from others of exceptional times in their life or career are an excellent way to see and learn what exceptional really is for those people and it shapes your own perspective of what it means as well. One can draw on those stories and share their own for the benefit of others to learn from as well.  Ask others to describe their own image of what they consider to be exceptional and encourage them to look for and use stories as the basis for that.

Stories have always been great learning tools and everyone can think of times where a story has inspired them to change or fed them new ideas and hopes for the future.  Stories are often remembered and shared because they add to your experiences and to the mind they are remembered as how something happened, even if you were not there directly and so they shift your beliefs and understanding. Because of this ability of stories, they allow one to form the ideas of what exceptional is all about and then models are created based on the most exceptional stories that are heard and shared.

Living to be Exceptional

So finally, my directional with all of this is in looking at how you can live to be exceptional and to experience exceptional things.  What if you actually plan to create your own exceptional stories and to do exceptional things?  Setting your own goals, standards and life plans around building exceptional things ensures you are striving to be the best you can be. The way it is always your own comparison so you need not answer to the expectation of others.  You can build your own stories, set your own ever rising standards and continue to seek out and learn from what you consider to be exceptional.

Posted by Mike King under Success | 8 Comments »