Greetings!
Welcome to our latest monthly newsletter for your reading enjoyment. As a leader in your business, you are faced with many choices and decisions every day. If not in your business, certainly in your personal life. In this issue we offer some helpful insight into how you can make a good attitude be contagious and how by making leadership contagious within your company, you can achieve the results you want. We hope that we are adding value to you and your business.
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Happy reading!
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Bill Spreitzer 919-388-3600
We welcome your comments and feedback on our newsletter and would love to hear from you on how we can be of service. |
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Attitude of a Leader is Contagious
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 As a leader in your organization, you are fully aware that people pay attention to what you do much more than to what you say. So how can you ensure that your attitude (that underlying ingredient to behavior) is positive and is generating the behaviors and actions that you want your team to emulate?
Well, below are 10 techniques or ways to maintain and/or create a positive and powerful attitude both at work and at home.
- Be Grateful - Frequently take a mental inventory of all those things and people in your life that you are thankful for. Writing down your inventory has an even more powerful impact on your attitude.
- Be A Giver - Be in service to others with a clear intention of unconditional giving and watch what you get back. Remember that "we reap what we sow".
- Get Rid of the "Poison" - Find someone you trust completely and vent your frustrations, negative feelings and thoughts. Do this on a frequent basis to prevent the negative build-up within you, which is sure to spill over into what you say and do at work and at home. Make sure that the other person doesn't spread the poison you're unloading. By venting to someone outside of your organization you increase the likelihood that the poison won't spread.
- Set Written Goals - Big and small...Make sure to measure your results and to celebrate your successes along the way. A sense of accomplishment does wonders for your attitude toward life. "Success breeds success."
- Surround Yourself with Positive People - You've heard the old adage, "Misery loves company." Well the opposite is true with people who are striving for excellence in their lives vs. mediocrity. "Eagles like to soar with other eagles!" You may not always have a choice as to whom you work with, but you sure do have a choice in your personal life.
- Exercise Routinely - We all know about the body's magical chemical called "endorphins". Let me say that after I work out - be it a 30 to 45 minute jog or vigorous walk in the fresh air, I tend to look at my life challenges in a more positive light. It must be those darn "endorphins".
- Do Things You Enjoy Doing - Treat yourself when your attitude begins to show signs of negativity. The objective is to catch this "downward spiral" early by talking with a friend, going to a movie, reading, playing a round of golf, playing tennis, eating your favorite dessert or meal, listening to music, etc..
- Use Affirmations - Write down 3 - 5 affirmations on three 3 X 5 index cards. Place one on your bathroom mirror, one on your refrigerator, and one in your wallet or purse. Recite out loud these affirmations 3 times a day - first thing in the morning, at lunch or midday, and last thing before you go to bed. Say each affirmation 3 times per session. Structure your affirmations in the present tense. A suggested format is, "I am a person who __________." Do this for 30 days in a row and I promise you that your attitude toward yourself and life will improve.
- Laugh and Smile - Even if you don't feel like it! Physiologically, laughter triggers healthy physical changes in your body that strengthens your immune system, boosts your energy, and acts as a powerful antidote to stress, pain and conflict.
- Discover Your Purpose in Life - Take time to discover what your meaning for living is. Once you are clear about your purpose, live it with passion - choose to live a purpose driven life.
"Attitudes are contagious. Are yours worth catching?"
By Dennis and Wendy Mannering Copyright protected, all rights reserved worldwide. ©2009 Bill Spreitzer - Excellerate Solutions, Inc. |
Leadership and Achieving the Results You Want
 Business owners and executives know that their leadership has a direct impact on the success of their business. What's more difficult is determining what needs to be done to make their leadership be the difference in the success of their business. One successful leader is passionate, demanding and involved and another is unemotional, understanding, detached and able to see the big picture. So, what is it that truly makes the difference?
What we've learned in our work is that the one common characteristic in all successful leaders is their focus on setting goals and achieving the desired results. The individual characteristics of the leader become secondary. Okay, you may say, I'm setting my goals, but I'm still not where I want to be. In other words, how do I achieve my goals and the results I want as the leader in my business?
The answer to this question requires everyone in your business becoming a leader in some way. We believe there is a sure-fire way to make this happen and this is through a process of alignment and individual goal setting/achievement.
Here are some steps to get there:
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Create the direction for your business, by developing a strategic plan with the key leaders in the business.
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Drive the plan down to specific goals that the leadership team is taking to accomplish the objectives of the plan.
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Communicate the goals and the plan to everyone else in the business in a cascade fashion.
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Have each person set their individual goals that are aligned with the plan.
When employees are engaged in a way that they see how what they do every day links to the results of the business and how achieving their own goals is helping the company to be more successful, then they are more positive and motivated.
One of my clients has followed this process for the last three years. Initially, he created a strategic plan that had goals of increasing sales, improving operational efficiencies and investing in his infrastructure. He was doing very well in growing his top line and bottom line until the recent recession caused a dramatic drop in his sales. By focusing on profitability as the primary result he desired, he reset his goals to dramatically restructure his infrastructure and operations. Through alignment of everyone in the business to the changes taking place via individual goals that they set, he has actually improved the profitability of his business in the face of sales that are some 20% lower than the previous year. Not only has he accomplished this result, but he has also sustained his high customer and employee loyalty results in the face of the changes. With his new streamlined infrastructure, he is now positioned to take advantage of a turnaround in the economy to increase his sales at an even more profitable level than before.
In these challenging times we have the opportunity to rethink our fundamentals. By making everyone a leader in the business you maximize your potential to not only survive, but also to thrive no matter what happens to the economy. Give us a call if you would like to discuss how to make a difference with your leadership.
Copyright protected, all rights reserved worldwide. ©2009
Dave Vogelpohl - Excellerate Solutions, Inc.
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Upcoming Events
Re-Building Your Business from the Bottom Up
Business Advisory Partners Seminar
November 19, 2009 11:45am to 1:00pm
Coastal Federal Credit Union - Raleigh, NC
Click Here
To Learn More and Register |
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Motivational Quotes
"Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference."
By: Winston Churchill
"So often time it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key."
"Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things."
"A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes."
By: Mahatma Gandhi
"We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them."
By: Elbert Hubbard
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