Great article by Donna Ferm. Enjoy!!
By Donna Fenn
November 3, 2010
Before last week, the last time I’d seen Larry O’Toole, he was carrying my favorite chair on his back, down a narrow staircase in a Beacon Street brownstone in Boston. I was moving. Or more accurately, O’Toole, then brawny and bearded, was moving me. That was 26 years ago, but I still remember what a pleasure he was to work with and how gently he treated my meager but precious possessions. O’Toole’s Somerville, MA-based company, Gentle Giant Moving, now racks up $25 million in revenue, and I’m betting that the thousands of customers he’s moved since I first met him have had similar experiences to mine. And that has a lot do with how O’Toole hires his staff, a subject he talked about last week at the Inc. Magazine and Winning Workplaces Leadership Conference.
“My grandfather told me that if you pee in your soup, it’s bloody hard to get it out,” says O’Toole, who frequently slips into an Irish brogue. The business lesson: if you hire the right people in the first place, you won’t have to worry about how to get rid of them later on. So O’Toole has a very unconventional, but highly effective, interview strategy. Anyone who wants a job as a mover at Gentle Giant must run the 37 sections of stands at Harvard Stadium - training exercise that the six foot six O’Toole regularly performed as a varsity rower at Northeastern University. Sure, he wants his movers to be fit, but there’s more to the stadium run than just a demonstration of physical prowess. “People reveal themselves at the stadium,” he says. Here’s what he’s looking for in job candidates:
Enthusiasm: “We tell them that after six to ten sections, your body is going to tell you to stop and that’s when you have to reach down deeper,” he says. “We don’t want quitters working for us, so it’s better to identify them there.”
Honesty: “They may try to skip a section and we’re looking for that,” says O’Toole. He wants to be sure he’s hiring movers who, for example, wouldn’t even consider keeping an envelope full of cash discovered on a moving job.
Positive attitude: “The stadium is great for identifying whiners,” says O’Toole. “When things get tough, you have to tackle it with humor, enthusiasm, and support for one another.” So while you may finish all 37 sections, if you’re a whiner, you won’t be invited to be a Gentle Giant.
O’Toole knows that his employees, who always run on a job when they’re not carrying something, are the key to differentiating his company in a commodity industry. If he spends time on recruiting, hiring, and training, then the customer service that the company is so famous for will essentially take care of itself. “We’re not just a moving company, we’re a leadership development company,” he says. “We always have people moving up so they can replace people who are leaving. We’re all about consistency.” Gentle Giant, by the way, was Winning Workplace’s Top Small Workplace in 2007.
While O’Toole certainly doesn’t recommend that every business owner put potential employees through their paces at the local stadium, he does feel strongly that all CEOs should come up with an interview challenge or test that will tease out the character traits that are most likely to lead to success on the job.
Showing posts with label success traits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label success traits. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Five Ingredients of Personal Growth
Another great article by John C. Maxwell. Enjoy!!
As any farmer knows, the growth of a crop only happens when the right ingredients are present. To harvest plentiful fields, the farmer has to begin by planting the right seed in rich topsoil where sunlight and water can help the seed to sprout, mature, and bear fruit. If any of the ingredients (seeds, topsoil, sunlight, or water) are missing, the crop won't grow.
Growing as a leader also requires the proper ingredients. Unless the right attitudes and actions are cultivated an aspiring leader will sputter and fail rather than growing in influence. Let's look at five basic qualities essential for growth in leadership.
1) Teachability
Arrogance crowds out room for improvement. That's why humility is the starting point for personal growth. As Erwin G. Hall said, "An open mind is the beginning of self-discovery and growth. We can't learn anything new until we can admit that we don't already know everything."
Adopting a beginner's mindset helps you to be teachable. Beginners are aware that they don't know it all, and they proceed accordingly. As a general rule, they're open and humble, noticeably lacking in the rigidity that often accompanies experience and achievement. It's easy enough to have a beginner's mind when you're actually a beginner, but maintaining teachability gets trickier in the long term especially when you've already achieved some degree of success.
2) Sacrifice
Growth as a leader involves temporary loss. It may mean giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, or relationships that have lost their meaning. Whatever the case, everything we gain in life comes as a result of sacrificing something else. We must give up to go up.
3) Security
To keep learning throughout life, you have to be willing, no matter what your position is, to say, "I don't know." It can be hard for executives to admit lacking knowledge because they feel as if everyone is looking to them for direction, and they don't want to let people down their people. However, followers aren't searching for perfection in their leaders. They're looking for an honest, authentic, and courageous leader who, regardless of the obstacles facing the organization, won't rest until the problem is solved.
It took me seven years to hit my stride as a communicator. During those seven years I gave some boring speeches, and I felt discouraged at times. However, I was secure enough to keep taking the stage and honing my communication skills until I could connect with an audience. Had I been insecure, then the negative evaluations of others would have sealed my fate and I never would have excelled in my career.
4) Listening
Listen, learn, and ask questions from somebody successful who has gone on before you. Borrow from their experiences so that you can avoid their mistakes and emulate their triumphs. Solicit feedback and take to heart what you're told. The criticism of friends may seem bitter in the short-term but, when heeded, it can save you from falling victim to your blind spots.
5) Application
Knowledge has a limited shelf life. Unless used immediately or carefully preserved, it spoils and becomes worthless. Put the lessons you learn into practice so that your insights mature into understanding.
As any farmer knows, the growth of a crop only happens when the right ingredients are present. To harvest plentiful fields, the farmer has to begin by planting the right seed in rich topsoil where sunlight and water can help the seed to sprout, mature, and bear fruit. If any of the ingredients (seeds, topsoil, sunlight, or water) are missing, the crop won't grow.
Growing as a leader also requires the proper ingredients. Unless the right attitudes and actions are cultivated an aspiring leader will sputter and fail rather than growing in influence. Let's look at five basic qualities essential for growth in leadership.
1) Teachability
Arrogance crowds out room for improvement. That's why humility is the starting point for personal growth. As Erwin G. Hall said, "An open mind is the beginning of self-discovery and growth. We can't learn anything new until we can admit that we don't already know everything."
Adopting a beginner's mindset helps you to be teachable. Beginners are aware that they don't know it all, and they proceed accordingly. As a general rule, they're open and humble, noticeably lacking in the rigidity that often accompanies experience and achievement. It's easy enough to have a beginner's mind when you're actually a beginner, but maintaining teachability gets trickier in the long term especially when you've already achieved some degree of success.
2) Sacrifice
Growth as a leader involves temporary loss. It may mean giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, or relationships that have lost their meaning. Whatever the case, everything we gain in life comes as a result of sacrificing something else. We must give up to go up.
3) Security
To keep learning throughout life, you have to be willing, no matter what your position is, to say, "I don't know." It can be hard for executives to admit lacking knowledge because they feel as if everyone is looking to them for direction, and they don't want to let people down their people. However, followers aren't searching for perfection in their leaders. They're looking for an honest, authentic, and courageous leader who, regardless of the obstacles facing the organization, won't rest until the problem is solved.
It took me seven years to hit my stride as a communicator. During those seven years I gave some boring speeches, and I felt discouraged at times. However, I was secure enough to keep taking the stage and honing my communication skills until I could connect with an audience. Had I been insecure, then the negative evaluations of others would have sealed my fate and I never would have excelled in my career.
4) Listening
Listen, learn, and ask questions from somebody successful who has gone on before you. Borrow from their experiences so that you can avoid their mistakes and emulate their triumphs. Solicit feedback and take to heart what you're told. The criticism of friends may seem bitter in the short-term but, when heeded, it can save you from falling victim to your blind spots.
5) Application
Knowledge has a limited shelf life. Unless used immediately or carefully preserved, it spoils and becomes worthless. Put the lessons you learn into practice so that your insights mature into understanding.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
My Top Four Pointers for Kicking Your Life into High Gear
Another great artcile by Chris Widener.
How would you like to kick your life into high gear? I can help you! Your life doesn’t have to be stale and full of drudgery. Your life can be lived at the highest levels, experiencing joy in every area! I want to give you my top pointers for kicking your life into high gear so you can get moving on the fast track to success!
But first… A secret key to understanding success.
Secret Key: Success isn’t just doing certain things, though we will certainly do certain things to become a certain kind of person. What kind of person you are is what determines your success in life. Yes, you can do right things and achieve a certain level of success, but not the kind of success I am talking about – true life success.
So what are my four tips? Here the are:
Become a person of Vision.
Vision is the spectacular that causes us to carry out the mundane. Vision is what sees us through the dark days so we do not give up and settle for second best. Vision is the grand scheme that we relentlessly pursue. Vision is the goal we aim for. The best way to kick your life into high gear and begin to succeed in what you want to succeed in is to begin to become a person of vision.
The successful person has a fully developed vision of their destination. So let me ask you a simple question:
Do YOU know where you are going?
And not only do you have a vision of where you are going, but is your vision fully developed? Now certainly we cannot know everything that will happen to us in the future, but we can develop the plan fully, allowing in our plan for a variety of contingency plans. “But Chris, that is a lot of work.” It is, but when you look across the board at people who have succeeded much, they are people who laid out most of their life and work before it happened. Life didn’t just happen to them. They didn’t just stumble into success. They planned for it and they created it.
The Tests of Vision
- Is it Clear?
- Is it Concise?
- Is it Inspiring?
- Is it Achievable?
- Is it Easy to Memorize?
Ask your self the questions above and let the answers begin to shape the vision you have for your life. The tighter and clearer the vision you have for your life, the sooner you will kick your life into high gear!
Become a person of Passion.
Passion. Mmmmm…. Passion. Passion is the burning of the heart. It is the unbridled running amuck of the emotions. It is the overwhelming desire to accomplish your goal. It transcends the mental assent to a set of ideals. It drives and thrusts you toward your goal. You MUST have it!
Those who consider themselves intellectuals will underestimate the power of passion. The fact is that the victory isn’t only in the mind. The truths of the mind are driven by the passion of the heart. So by all means, fuel the passion for life that resides deep within your soul.
Passion is like a fire. It can rage or it can smolder. Even if all you have is barely lit embers, you can fan into flame the fire of your passion for life, love, and the goals and vision you have for your life! Commit yourself to becoming a person who lives passionately!
Become a person of Priorities.
As I have worked through the years with people who achieve much and have lives that are constantly in high gear, I notice something amazing about them: They are people with an extraordinary ability to know what the right thing to do is and to actually do it in a timely fashion.
For example, a friend of mine was in charge of a three-day event a few weeks ago that was attended by close to 250,000 people and was featured on national and international television. Four days before the event he told me he had nothing to do and felt guilty. I encouraged him by reminding him that this was actually a sign of his incredible ability to have focused on and lived out his priorities throughout the whole year before the event took place.
When all was said and done, living and working out of his priorities enabled him to kick back and enjoy the fruit of his (and hundreds of his employees) labor. His life was in high gear and because he is a person of priorities, he is enjoying life. You can too.
Discern what the important things are that you must involve yourself in so as to have the life you want. Then relentlessly live out of those priorities. Say “no” to everything else!
Become a person of Excellence.
People who live life in high gear, succeeding in every area of life, are people who place a high emphasis on and strive for excellence in every area of life. Good just won’t do. The best is the target.
Even when they fail or do poorly, they make an inner commitment to do an excellent job the next time. They are people who want, and live for, excellence in their work, their play, their finances, their relationships – everything!
Do you long for a life lived in high gear? One that is filled with joy and achievement? It is possible! Give some time to contemplate how you can make changes in the next few days and weeks in the following areas and see if your life doesn’t kick into high gear!
Vision, Passion, Priorities, Excellence. They are yours for the taking! Go get ‘em!
How would you like to kick your life into high gear? I can help you! Your life doesn’t have to be stale and full of drudgery. Your life can be lived at the highest levels, experiencing joy in every area! I want to give you my top pointers for kicking your life into high gear so you can get moving on the fast track to success!
But first… A secret key to understanding success.
Secret Key: Success isn’t just doing certain things, though we will certainly do certain things to become a certain kind of person. What kind of person you are is what determines your success in life. Yes, you can do right things and achieve a certain level of success, but not the kind of success I am talking about – true life success.
So what are my four tips? Here the are:
Become a person of Vision.
Vision is the spectacular that causes us to carry out the mundane. Vision is what sees us through the dark days so we do not give up and settle for second best. Vision is the grand scheme that we relentlessly pursue. Vision is the goal we aim for. The best way to kick your life into high gear and begin to succeed in what you want to succeed in is to begin to become a person of vision.
The successful person has a fully developed vision of their destination. So let me ask you a simple question:
Do YOU know where you are going?
And not only do you have a vision of where you are going, but is your vision fully developed? Now certainly we cannot know everything that will happen to us in the future, but we can develop the plan fully, allowing in our plan for a variety of contingency plans. “But Chris, that is a lot of work.” It is, but when you look across the board at people who have succeeded much, they are people who laid out most of their life and work before it happened. Life didn’t just happen to them. They didn’t just stumble into success. They planned for it and they created it.
The Tests of Vision
- Is it Clear?
- Is it Concise?
- Is it Inspiring?
- Is it Achievable?
- Is it Easy to Memorize?
Ask your self the questions above and let the answers begin to shape the vision you have for your life. The tighter and clearer the vision you have for your life, the sooner you will kick your life into high gear!
Become a person of Passion.
Passion. Mmmmm…. Passion. Passion is the burning of the heart. It is the unbridled running amuck of the emotions. It is the overwhelming desire to accomplish your goal. It transcends the mental assent to a set of ideals. It drives and thrusts you toward your goal. You MUST have it!
Those who consider themselves intellectuals will underestimate the power of passion. The fact is that the victory isn’t only in the mind. The truths of the mind are driven by the passion of the heart. So by all means, fuel the passion for life that resides deep within your soul.
Passion is like a fire. It can rage or it can smolder. Even if all you have is barely lit embers, you can fan into flame the fire of your passion for life, love, and the goals and vision you have for your life! Commit yourself to becoming a person who lives passionately!
Become a person of Priorities.
As I have worked through the years with people who achieve much and have lives that are constantly in high gear, I notice something amazing about them: They are people with an extraordinary ability to know what the right thing to do is and to actually do it in a timely fashion.
For example, a friend of mine was in charge of a three-day event a few weeks ago that was attended by close to 250,000 people and was featured on national and international television. Four days before the event he told me he had nothing to do and felt guilty. I encouraged him by reminding him that this was actually a sign of his incredible ability to have focused on and lived out his priorities throughout the whole year before the event took place.
When all was said and done, living and working out of his priorities enabled him to kick back and enjoy the fruit of his (and hundreds of his employees) labor. His life was in high gear and because he is a person of priorities, he is enjoying life. You can too.
Discern what the important things are that you must involve yourself in so as to have the life you want. Then relentlessly live out of those priorities. Say “no” to everything else!
Become a person of Excellence.
People who live life in high gear, succeeding in every area of life, are people who place a high emphasis on and strive for excellence in every area of life. Good just won’t do. The best is the target.
Even when they fail or do poorly, they make an inner commitment to do an excellent job the next time. They are people who want, and live for, excellence in their work, their play, their finances, their relationships – everything!
Do you long for a life lived in high gear? One that is filled with joy and achievement? It is possible! Give some time to contemplate how you can make changes in the next few days and weeks in the following areas and see if your life doesn’t kick into high gear!
Vision, Passion, Priorities, Excellence. They are yours for the taking! Go get ‘em!
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The 11 Keys to Success
By Julie Jansen, author of "I Don't Know What I Want, But I Know It's Not This"
Great article! Always looking for those traits that one can identify and work on to help you be more successful in life!
In his best-selling book "Emotional Intelligence," Daniel Goleman writes, "There are widespread exceptions to the rule that IQ predicts success ... at best, IQ contributes about 20 percent to the factors that determine life success, which leaves 80 percent to other forces."
Goleman goes on to explain, "These other characteristics are called emotional intelligence: abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one's moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope."
This book is full of assessments, tools, resources and how-tos to help guide you in finding new work that will better meet your personal and financial needs. No matter which category you fit in, however, unless you are able to demonstrate and master a specific set of life skills and traits, you will find it difficult to find the work you want.
Observing people in the workplace has yielded 11 keys to success. Time and again, it is apparent that those individuals who exhibit these 11 keys and use them most productively are consistently the most successful and well-liked individuals overall. The good news is that most people are born with at least some of these keys or learned them at a very young age, and all of these keys can be developed or learned later in life.
These are the 11 keys to success:
1. Confidence: an unshakable belief in oneself based on a realistic understanding of one's circumstances; a trait that most people admire in others and strive to acquire themselves.
2. Curiosity: being eager to know and learn; always showing interest and giving special attention to the less obvious; always being the person who says, "I want to know more about . . . ."
3. Decisiveness: arriving at a final conclusion or making a choice and taking action; making decisions with determination even when you don't have all the information you think you need.
4. Empathy: demonstrating caring and understanding of someone else's situation, feelings and motives; always thinking about what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes.
5. Flexibility: being capable of change; responding positively to change; being pliable, adaptable, nonrigid and able to deal with ambiguity.
6. Humor: viewing yourself and the world with enjoyment; not taking life or yourself too seriously; being amusing, amused and, at times, even comical.
7. Intelligence: thinking and working smartly and cleverly; being sharp in your dealings; "not reinventing the wheel"; planning before acting; working efficiently and focusing on quality over quantity. (Important note: This is different from IQ, the common abbreviation for intelligence quotient.)
8. Optimism: expecting the best possible outcome and dwelling on the most hopeful or positive aspects of a situation; believing that the glass is half full rather than half empty.
9. Perseverance: having passion, energy, focus and the desire to get results. Motivation, persistence and hard work are all aspects of perseverance.
10. Respect: remembering that it is just as easy to be nice; protecting another person's self-esteem; treating others in a considerate and courteous manner.
11. Self-awareness: a sophisticated form of consciousness that enables you to regulate yourself by monitoring yourself, observing yourself and changing your thought processes and behaviors.
Which of these keys are among your strengths? Which of the 11 are among your weaknesses? Self-awareness, the 11th key, is really the foundation for understanding yourself. If you are not sure how self-aware you are, ask several people whom you trust which of these 11 keys they believe are your strengths and which are not. Again, while no one person possesses all of these keys in equal amounts, each of them can be developed and improved.
Julie Jansen is the author of "I Don't Know What I Want, But I Know It's Not This." She is a career coach and consultant who is also a frequent speaker at both nonprofit groups and corporations through the United States.
Great article! Always looking for those traits that one can identify and work on to help you be more successful in life!
In his best-selling book "Emotional Intelligence," Daniel Goleman writes, "There are widespread exceptions to the rule that IQ predicts success ... at best, IQ contributes about 20 percent to the factors that determine life success, which leaves 80 percent to other forces."
Goleman goes on to explain, "These other characteristics are called emotional intelligence: abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one's moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope."
This book is full of assessments, tools, resources and how-tos to help guide you in finding new work that will better meet your personal and financial needs. No matter which category you fit in, however, unless you are able to demonstrate and master a specific set of life skills and traits, you will find it difficult to find the work you want.
Observing people in the workplace has yielded 11 keys to success. Time and again, it is apparent that those individuals who exhibit these 11 keys and use them most productively are consistently the most successful and well-liked individuals overall. The good news is that most people are born with at least some of these keys or learned them at a very young age, and all of these keys can be developed or learned later in life.
These are the 11 keys to success:
1. Confidence: an unshakable belief in oneself based on a realistic understanding of one's circumstances; a trait that most people admire in others and strive to acquire themselves.
2. Curiosity: being eager to know and learn; always showing interest and giving special attention to the less obvious; always being the person who says, "I want to know more about . . . ."
3. Decisiveness: arriving at a final conclusion or making a choice and taking action; making decisions with determination even when you don't have all the information you think you need.
4. Empathy: demonstrating caring and understanding of someone else's situation, feelings and motives; always thinking about what it's like to walk in someone else's shoes.
5. Flexibility: being capable of change; responding positively to change; being pliable, adaptable, nonrigid and able to deal with ambiguity.
6. Humor: viewing yourself and the world with enjoyment; not taking life or yourself too seriously; being amusing, amused and, at times, even comical.
7. Intelligence: thinking and working smartly and cleverly; being sharp in your dealings; "not reinventing the wheel"; planning before acting; working efficiently and focusing on quality over quantity. (Important note: This is different from IQ, the common abbreviation for intelligence quotient.)
8. Optimism: expecting the best possible outcome and dwelling on the most hopeful or positive aspects of a situation; believing that the glass is half full rather than half empty.
9. Perseverance: having passion, energy, focus and the desire to get results. Motivation, persistence and hard work are all aspects of perseverance.
10. Respect: remembering that it is just as easy to be nice; protecting another person's self-esteem; treating others in a considerate and courteous manner.
11. Self-awareness: a sophisticated form of consciousness that enables you to regulate yourself by monitoring yourself, observing yourself and changing your thought processes and behaviors.
Which of these keys are among your strengths? Which of the 11 are among your weaknesses? Self-awareness, the 11th key, is really the foundation for understanding yourself. If you are not sure how self-aware you are, ask several people whom you trust which of these 11 keys they believe are your strengths and which are not. Again, while no one person possesses all of these keys in equal amounts, each of them can be developed and improved.
Julie Jansen is the author of "I Don't Know What I Want, But I Know It's Not This." She is a career coach and consultant who is also a frequent speaker at both nonprofit groups and corporations through the United States.
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