Join us at the younique gold tribe to gain the education and precious metals, like gold and silver, needed to secure your financial future!

Source: Robert Kiyosaki Blog

A very good friend and ex-client of mine runs a highly successful information technology service in the South of England and his private-sector customers include many Times Top 100 companies.

We often exchange opinions and I recently asked his views on leadership, because I have always been impressed with his commitment to “people development”

He believes leadership is all about bringing out the best in the firm’s 1800 employees. “We have a very informal, non-hierarchical structure,” he says. “The task of our leaders is not simply to issue orders but to act as role models in providing our customers with what they want in terms of teamwork, friendliness, delivery and, in general, supplying a top-class service.” Many of those who join the company are former customers. “We first of all put them through a programme which helps them to understand what we are trying to do, then a management team shows them how our ideas are put into practice.”

When trying to identify future leaders, he and his management colleagues adopt the premise that anyone possessing sufficient motivation can become a leader. “But obviously some are better than others, and the best are likely to end up as managing directors,” he says.

“I believe that leadership is something that can be taught, but that’s not a reason for trying to teach everybody everything. We need good team players, and the leaders are those who enable them to give off their best.”

The ultimate test of a leader, he believes, is whether the individual can generate trust in others.

“We are not one of those companies where self-interest is dominant,” he says.

He would not comment on the general quality of British management, often portrayed in a negative light in the media. “I don’t know whether we are ahead of other firms in our thinking, but we are certainly doing something different. I don’t know anywhere else where the staff can talk to the boss in the frank and informal way that they do here. I go around meeting each member of the staff individually twice a year to brief them on what’s going on and on our plans for the future. Because they know they are not going to be shot for speaking their minds, they’ll all have a go at it. It’s not just one-way communication.”

I find it very difficult to comprehend reporting to a leader I couldn’t trust – it has to be one of the key characteristics – doesn’t it?

News: And staying on that theme, you might enjoy my article over at Top Sales Management today,  “Sales Leadership – The Changing Role” or “The Four Step Process I Use When Probing for Pain” over at Top Sales World – bit of a JF day then!

Source: Jonathan Farrington’s Blog

Colorful smoke image from Bigstock.

“Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. Twice would have been quite enough.”
Confucius

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.”
Eckhart Tolle

One of my biggest problems used to be that I thought too much. I overthought any little problem until it became a bigger and scarier thing in my mind. I overthought positive things until they didn’t seem to be that positive anymore. I overanalyzed and deconstructed things until the happiness that comes from just being in a moment and enjoying it fell apart.

This locked me into analysis paralysis. Little action was taken. Opportunities were rarely used. Life stood still and felt confining. And when I took action I tended to overanalyze things. That lead to more nervousness, second-guessing and me performing worse when I was doing whatever I was doing.

Based on the emails I get I’m not alone in this. One of the most common questions I get is about how to not think so much. In this article I will explore 5 solutions and habits that work for me.

1. Set up simple, unhurried days.

Crazy and overwhelming days are nothing one can avoid entirely. At least not if you want to live a full life.

But you can set up your day to make it more likely that you will be able to stay reasonably calm on the inside and outside. And this will make it easier to keep your thinking simple and focused too.

A good start.

I have mentioned this about a thousand times by now but the start you give your day often sets the tone for the whole day. Start your day with a few simple habits like a good breakfast, maybe a bit of exercise and then get started with your most important task of the day. Or if that feels too hard, no worries, instead start with an easy task to get the day rolling.

Single-tasking + regular breaks.

If you just work and work your whole day then your body and mind will become overwhelmed. Thoughts will start running wild and often down negative paths as stress rises in your body and mind. To prevent this and to do focused work without tearing yourself down schedule regular breaks.

I do this by setting my kitchen timer for 45 minutes. During those 45 minutes I do focused, single-tasking work. When the bell rings I drop everything and take a 15-20 minute break. Then I return for another 45 minutes of work.

Minimize your input.

Too much information, too many times of  ”just taking a few minutes” on Facebook, Twitter and in the email inbox add more and more input and thought clutter into your mind during a day. The clutter and extra input shoots your thoughts off in more ways and gets your mind extra active. To keep your thinking simple, simplify and reduce the input.

One of the reasons why I wait with checking my social media accounts and email inbox to the end of my work hours is because then it is easier to focus on the most important things during the earlier part of the day. Instead of getting lost in tangents, daydreaming, worries, overthinking and so on.

2. Set limits for thinking.

I sometimes think there is some kind of wish when overthinking that thinking will somehow replace action. A wish that if you just think enough you can find some easy way out or get what you want without having to actually do something.

Without taking action you’ll most likely not get what you want. Thinking is however seldom as scary or uncertain as taking the leap into the unknown and taking action.

Getting the day off to a good and action-oriented start, as described above, is one thing that have helped me to become more of a person of action. Setting deadlines for decisions work well too. For small decisions like if I should get started with next important task of the day, go do the dishes or work out I give myself 30 seconds or less to make a decision.

For somewhat larger decisions that would have taken me days or weeks to (over)think through in the past I may set a deadline for 30 minutes or for the end of this work day.

Now, of course for some important things you need to take more time. But in many cases you can make good decisions more quickly and get started with moving towards your destination. And through that build a new and helpful habit.

3. Be here and now.

By being here and now you don’t obsess about the past or create worries or overthink things that are or might be coming up in the future. Of course, it is good to plan for the future and to learn from the past but that seems to happen pretty naturally and in a more balanced way when I focus on spending most of my time in the present moment.

The first section in this article with a simple and unhurried day where I single-task and keep thought clutter down makes it a lot easier to stay with the present moment instead of drifiting away on thought clouds. But if I do drift away, then I usually sit down for a minute or two and use all my senses to take in what is happening around during these seconds. The sounds, the sensations, what I see and what I hear.

That usually brings me back to now again.

4. Be finished with your day.

Taking breaks every hour during your work hours is important. Putting a stop to your work day and doing other things is just as important to keep the overthinking, stress and overwhelm away. So if you are in school or work from home with your own business set a stop time for your work day. Mine is at 7 o clock in the evening. If you go to a regular job do not bring the job home.

Make a firm decision to spend your evenings with other things than thinking about your work. Fill that time with other activities that recharge and relax you.

When you catch yourself with floating back into work thoughts or school thoughts, remind yourself of the consequences of doing so. Such as increasing stress levels, missing the other important parts of your life like friends and family, reinforcing negative habits like overthinking and the risk of having a burnout.

5. Be conscious of your challenge.

Find ways to remind yourself to stay aware of how you are thinking.

• A written reminder. A written reminder posted somewhere where you cannot avoid seeing it every day with words like: “Keep things extremely simple” or “Am I overcomplicating this?” can work wonders.
• A silent vibration on your cell phone. An alarm with just a silent vibration on your cell phone a couple of times a day can remind you to snap out of overthinking or the past or future and help you to build positive thought habits.

By being conscious of your challenge it will over time become easier and easier to stick a simpler way of thinking.

If you found this article helpful, then please share it with someone else by using the buttons below. Thank you! =)

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Want to learn much more about living a simpler, happier and less stressful life where you dare to follow and achieve your dreams in 2012? Then have a look at my four premium courses and guides:

The Self-Esteem Course – Stop feeling lousy about yourself and start living a life of self-happiness where you live up to your potential and dare to follow your dreams today.
Simplicity – My monthly membership course on how to simplify six of the most important areas in your life.
The Art of Relaxed Productivity – How to triple your productivity, minimize stress and free up more time for yourself starting today.
The Power of Positivity – How to become a more mindful, motivated, action-taking optimist.

Copyright 2006-2012 Henrik Edberg.

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Source: The Positivity Blog | Increase Your Happiness and Awesomeness

Welcome to Week 4 of our group study of The 5 Levels of Leadership! This week we’ll be diving into Level 2: Permission. Are you naturally people-oriented or task-oriented? You’ll discover that everyone in your group naturally defaults to one or the other. They’ll assign the highest value to either getting things done or building [...]

Originally posted at: John Maxwell on Leadership
Copyright 2009-2011. All rights reserved.

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Level Up, Week 4: Permission

Source: John Maxwell on Leadership

The latest installment of Tom’s “Mother of All Presentations,” or MOAP, is now available at ExcellenceNow.com. You can download the PowerPoint version or a PDF. We’ll be releasing a section every other week throughout 2012.

Part 4 introduces Tom’s conviction that encouraging your people to make friends in other functions of the organization should be a top priority. Tom says you should reward such behavior, make it an agenda item. Download Part 4 of Tom’s Mother of All Presentations, and learn how and why cross-functional socialization (read, idea-sharing) is essential to business excellence.

Source: The Tom Peters Weblog

How personal development expert Zig Ziglar can help you prepare for your personal and professional triumphs.

Source: All SUCCESS Channels

I first became seriously interested in objective sales team assessments in 1993 when I created my own consultancy. Up until that point, I had used various psychometric tests for recruitment purposes, and they were useful, but somehow, they always left me wanting more. In fact a couple of years ago, I wrote an article called “Psychometric Tests and Professional Salespeople — Happy Bedfellows?” and I said:

“You see, returning to my Attitude + Skills + Process + Knowledge formula, at what point does a psychometric finding have reliable relevance?

The attitude element is uncertain and for me this is critical, as it drives the motivation of all the other elements: Skills, including; negotiation, presentation, account management, relationship building, opportunity assessment etc, cannot be assessed. The individual’s commitment to appropriate sales process which might include; forecasting, pipeline development, activity analysis etc, cannot be assessed. And finally, knowledge, that includes industry knowledge, sector knowledge, company knowledge, product knowledge and even self-knowledge, cannot be assessed.

Having recruited, trained, mentored, coached and developed more than 70.000 thousand front-line sales professionals and sales leaders since 1994, my question is a simple one:

“In the field of professional selling, have we been seduced into allowing psychometric testing to become our bedfellows?”

All of this compelled me to begin work on my own set of highly relevant, sales specific assessments – ASP Profile.

ASP Profile is the most cost effective sales competence assessment tool available.

It represents the culmination of eighteen years ongoing research and experimentation. It has involved consultation with hundreds of individuals including, captains of industry, psychologists, professional buyers and front line salesmen and women from every industry sector.

The end result is that we are now able to recognize the three levels of selling that exists — four if you include sales management — and as a consequence, we have produced a model at each level that accurately profiles the characteristics and working styles of the very best performers.

It assesses existing strengths, limitations and ongoing development requirements in three specific areas: Attitude, Skills and Process.

ASP Profile is a unique concept which is rapidly gaining recognition as a world class product in the field of sales team performance assessment and has already been adopted in earlier and current forms by hundreds of forward thinking organizations around the globe including: – Autodesk, France Telecom, Global One, Computer 2000 Group, Northumbria Water, ISI Group plc, F.I. Scotland, CISCO, Platinum Technology, Computer Associates, Belle Systems, Allied Dunbar Assurance plc, Exodus, Mclaren Consulting, Domino UK Ltd and Parker Hannifin.

However, I would add that it is appropriate for organisations of all sizes from F.T.S.E. 100/Fortune 500 companies to the S.M.E sector and furthermore, it is not industry specific.

The sales team is our forward line, if they are not scoring regularly; we cannot possibly
achieve our overall commercial objectives i.e. nothing happens until somebody sells something and all of that investment in costly accounting systems, and new office equipment, expensive IT systems etc. will count for nothing.

The primary aim of ASP Profile is to assist management in making effective human resource decisions objectively; the decisions made about people, their recruitment, ongoing development
and promotion. This will enable organisations to minimise the cost of recruitment and selection and also improve the overall quality and therefore productivity of their existing staff.

In summary, I believe that this initiative is an essential first step towards developing
‘Optimum Performance’ levels.

As you will have probably already seen somewhere, my new consultancy, JFA (Jonathan Farrington & Associates) is launching on April 17th - and more about that soon – so as a pre-launch “taster,” we are offering you the opportunity to sample ASP Profile for a massively discounted price.

If you are serious about becoming the best you can possibly be – or, as a sales leader, you wish to benchmark your team against the best in your industry, then I urge you to learn more HERE – it might just be one of the smartest decisions you make in 2012!

News: It’s changeover day at Top Sales Management, which means a fresh set of resources – for example, today’s article comes from Dave Kurlan “Are Your Salespeople Still Cold Calling? The Ugly Truth” HERE

Source: Jonathan Farrington’s Blog

It’s important to appear relaxed in selling situations even when you are new and a little bit (or a lot) nervous. Practice strategies for putting yourself at ease so you can pass that along to your buyers. Related posts:

1. Rapport Setting – Step 7: Giving Sincere Compliments
2. Rapport Building – Step 6: Finding Common Ground
3. Rapport Building – Step 1: The Power of Your Smile

Source: Tom Hopkins’ Sales Training Blog

Regular visitors here will know that over the past couple of weeks, I have been talking to some great fellow thought leaders and I am really enthused about all that is in store for 2012 – and the years to come!

But today, I have some exciting news that you don’t have to wait for ..

I am pleased to announce that Smartr Contacts for iPhone is now available in the iPhone App Store.

Many of you, like me, have been using Xobni’s products on Android, Gmail, Outlook and BlackBerry and have been waiting patiently for the iPhone version of Smartr Contacts.  The wait is over, it is available to you today!

Download Smartr Contacts for iPhone

What this means to you is that if you already use Smartr or Xobni on Gmail, Outlook, Android or BlackBerry, you can now access all those contacts on your iPhone.

In case you don’t already know, Smartr Contacts is a free app that makes it easy to search all your contacts, even those who aren’t in your iPhone address book – Automatically. See photos, job title, company info, message history, and social updates for anyone you’ve ever communicated with. Instantly know who your contacts are, how you know them, when you last talked, and who you have in common.

If I’ve sold you, click here to get started with Smartr Contacts for iPhone.

You can also check out this video to see the app in action.

If you like the app as much as I do, please share it with your friends - they really will thank you!

Full Disclosure: I am receiving no financial – or any other form of compensation - for this post, but Xobni are one of our sponsors over at Top Sales World and Top Sales Management. I am a big fan, and I want to share them with you! – JF

Source: Jonathan Farrington’s Blog

Tom has said, “We tell our kids to ‘be still,’ then tell them to ‘read history books’—which are replete (100%!) with tales of people … who never sat still.”

This is obviously not the ideal way to cultivate a talented workforce. The education system in the United States still seems to be attempting to churn out well-behaved factory workers. With the enormous pressure placed on teachers to produce sufficient test results, the classroom becomes more about test preparation than exploration and discovery. Albert Einstein, long since deceased, had this to say:

“It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.”

We recently heard from Matt Lintner, a teacher in Fairfax County, Virginia. He sent Tom his reflections on what children are learning, and not learning, in school in a piece he titled “Race to Nowhere.” Tom asked Matt if we could share his thoughts with you, and Matt kindly agreed. We urge you to take a moment, read what Matt has to say, and think about what you can do to help our youth learn what truly matters. Please, fan the flames of their curiosity.

Race to Nowhere

Management guru Peter Drucker famously said, “What gets measured gets managed.” But what if we’re measuring the wrong things? Consider the following: you can graduate from high school with straight A’s without ever having:

1. Searched for answers to unknown questions.
2. Budgeted your own time.
3. Discovered what most interests you.
4. Initiated a project requiring sustained commitment.
5. Taken risks or experienced failure.
6. Led a team in the pursuit of a worthy goal.
7. Practiced consensus building or the messiness of compromise.
8. Asserted yourself, even if it meant challenging authority.
9. Built something of value.
10. Created art that speaks to the soul.
11. Explored the natural world.
12. Interacted with people outside your age group.
13. Volunteered substantively in your community.
14. Apprenticed in fields of your choosing.
15. Started a business.
16. Traveled and gathered perspectives outside your comfort zone.
17. Acquired practical skills like saving and investing, handling tools, programming, growing food…

Perhaps most tellingly, you never learned to say “No.”

America can continue down the path of national standards, high stakes testing, longer school days, expanded calendar, merit pay, and all the rest—but none of it will cure what ills us if we’re not focused on what truly matters.

Matt Lintner

Teacher

Fairfax County, VA

Source: The Tom Peters Weblog