Today my entire staff and I are having a lunch meeting. In our staff meetings, each member of our team talks about the projects we have been working on, the results we have achieved, the struggles we have faced, and the things we have learned.
It’s a great time for all of us to get a sense of what everyone has been working on. It’s easy for everyone to see the “big” picture. We plan, develop strategies, and then implement.
Since I’m meeting with my team today, I thought I would write something on teamwork.
Your ability to work cooperatively with others is the most important skill you can develop if you want to achieve your full potential in your career.
A 20-year study at Stanford University examined the career paths of thousands of executives to determine what qualities or attributes they either had or developed that enabled them to move ahead the most rapidly. They concluded that there were two primary qualities that, more than any other, were indispensable for men and women who were going to be promoted to positions of great responsibility.
What I’ve learned is that teamwork is a simple and straightforward concept, but not necessarily easy. Being a good team player requires forethought, planning and commitment on your part. But, there are things that you can do on an ongoing basis that can really help you and bring you to the attention of people who can remove obstacles from your path and create opportunities for you in ways that you cannot now imagine.
Your primary job is to make the decision to be an excellent team player in everything you do at work and at home. Your aim should be to seek out every opportunity to demonstrate your ability to contribute to the success of a group of people in accomplishing large objectives. And you can use these ideas to start right where you are.
One of my favorite quotations from the Bible refers to this idea of starting small and growing as your capacities expand. It is the parable of the talents, where Jesus says, “Oh good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over small things, I will make you master over large things.” This simply says that as your ability to get together with a group of other people and get everyone working in harmony toward a predetermined objective becomes known, you will get more and more chances to demonstrate your skills.
A team is a group of two or more people who combine their talents and abilities to accomplish a specific goal or series of goals. A team, by definition, is largely made up of equals, men and women who are different only in their areas of skill, who are peers when they sit down together as a work group.
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You become what you think about most of the time. And the most important part of each day is what you think about at the beginning of that day.
Start Your Day Right
Take 30 minutes each morning to sit quietly and to reflect on your goals. You’ll find when you read the biographies and autobiographies of successful men and women that almost every one of them began their upward trajectory to success when they begin getting up early in the morning and spending time with themselves.
Feed Your Mind with Positive Ideas
This is called the Golden Hour. The first hour sets the tone for the day. The things that you do in the first hour prepare your mind and set you up for the entire day. During the first thirty to sixty minutes, take time to think and review your plans for the future.
Use Your Quiet Time Effectively
Here are four things that you can do during that quiet time in the morning.
Number one is personal planning. Take time to review your plans for accomplishing your goals and change your plans if necessary.
Number two is think of better ways to accomplish your goals and objectives. As an exercise, assume that the way you’re going about it is totally wrong and imagine going about it totally differently. What would you do different from what you’re doing right now?
Number three, reflect on the valuable lessons that you have learned and are learning as you move toward your goals.
Practice Daily Visualization
Number four; calmly visualize your goal as a reality. Close your eyes, relax, smile, and see your goals as though they were already a reality. Rewrite your major goals everyday in the present tense. Rewrite them as though they already existed. Write “I earn X dollars.” “I have a net worth of X.” “I weigh a certain number of pounds.” This exercise of writing and rewriting your goals everyday is one of the most powerful you will ever learn.
Fasten Your Seat Belt
Your life will start to take off at such a speed that you’ll have to put on your seatbelt. Remember, the starting point for achieving financial success is the development of an attitude of unshakable confidence in yourself and in your ability to reach your goals. Everything we’ve talked about is a way of building up and developing your belief system until you finally reach the point where you are absolutely convinced that nothing can stop you from achieving what you set out to achieve.
Everything Counts
No one starts out with this kind of an attitude, but you can develop it using the law of accumulation. Everything counts. No efforts are ever lost. Every extraordinary accomplishment is the result of thousands of ordinary accomplishments that no one recognizes or appreciates. The greatest challenge of all is for you to concentrate your thinking single-mindedly on your goal and by the law of attraction, you will, you must inevitably draw into your life the people, circumstances and opportunities you need to achieve your goals.
Become a Living Magnet
Once you’ve mastered yourself and your thinking, you will become a living magnet for ideas and opportunities to become wealthy. It’s worked for me and for every successful person I know. It will work for you if you’ll begin today, now, this very minute, to think and talk about your dreams and goals as though they were already a reality. When you change your thinking, you will change your life. You will put yourself firmly on the road to financial independence.
Action Exercises
Now, here are two things you can do every single day to keep your mind focused on your financial goals:
Number One:
First, get up every morning a little bit earlier and plan your day in advance. Take some time to think about your goals and how you can best achieve them. This sets the tone for the whole day.
Number Two:
Second, reflect on the valuable lessons you are learning each day as you work toward your goals. Be prepared to correct your course and adjust your actions. Be absolutely convinced that you are moving rapidly toward your goals, no matter what happens temporarily on the outside. Just hang in there!
SMART goals are absolutely essential to motivating employees for people in management roles. Using them will help you create an environment where they can win, and feel like winners.
The 10/90 rule in smart goal setting says that the first 10% of the time that you spend developing absolute clarity about what is to be done will save you 90% of the time once you begin. It can also save you 90% of the mistakes, the costs, and the time of other people involved.
You’ve heard it said that, “You can’t hit a target that you can’t see.” And the follow-up that is, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
So without further ado, here are my 5 tips for using SMART goals in management.
Pay close attention to the specific goal-setting techniques designed to encourage and motivate your entire team to hit their targets.
1. Use SMART Goals and Objectives
What are SMART Goals?
SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound objectives you wish to achieve.
You have most likely heard of the S.M.A.R.T. acronym in setting business or personal goals.
SMART Goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Bound
S.M.A.R.T. stands for:
S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Achievable
R = Relevant
T = Time-bound
Specific
It is perfectly clear to everyone who must be involved in its achievement. A child can tell you how close you are to accomplishing it. It is clear and unambiguous. Most of the problems with goal achieving stem back to a lack of clarity in setting the goal in the first place.
Measurable
It can be defined in numerical or financial terms. It can be broken down into steps, each of which can be measured as well. The more clear the measures, the easier it is to focus and concentrate on achieving those numbers.
Achievable
It can be accomplished within the constraints of time, money, the external environment, the economy, the skills and abilities of the team members and the other constraints contained both inside and outside the company.
Realistic
It is within the bounds of reality and is something that people can develop a high level of confidence in achieving. In goal setting, many goals are “merely aspirational.” They do not reflect reality. They are more wishes and hopes than goals.
Time-Bounded
When you have specific schedules for the attainment of each part of the goal, and the completion of each part of the task, it is much easier for people to achieve the goal on schedule.
2. Break it Down by Tasks and Accomplishments
Defining winning can be a major factor in motivating employees. For a person to win, he has to know where the finish line is. He has to know how you define winning. He has to know exactly what he has to do to complete the task and cross the finish line. This is the first step in creating a smart business.
The smaller and tighter the increments, the easier it is for the other person to feel like a winner. Each time that the staff member achieves a mini-goal, he or she feels like a “mini-winner.” It is the manager’s responsibility to help the employee see that they are using proper goal setting techniques and setting reasonable milestones for them to achieve. Be sure that these small increments add up to big wins that are in line with specific business goals.
When you assign people a large, multitask project, that may take many months to complete, be sure to set up a series of milestones and benchmarks so that people can have short-term targets to aim at, and can continually generate the feeling of winning.
3. Motivate Employees with Successful Experiences
For a person to feel like a winner, he must succeed at the task. He must achieve the goal. He must accomplish the responsibility and get the result that he was tasked for. Not only is it the job of the manager to motivate employees, but they must also help each person experience success.
If a person has been given a job that is too much for him, the job of the manager is to adjust the job, assign parts of it to someone else, and make it more manageable for the employee. The focus is always on making sure that, whatever job the person has, they are capable of doing it successfully sooner or later.
The best way for motivating employees who are new is to give them a series of small jobs that are clearly within their ability.
4. Practice Individual Recognition and Make Goals Attainable
They say, “Children cry for it; grown men die for it.”
Everybody needs to be recognized for their individual accomplishments by the people around them, and especially above them. Since your team members are intrinsically motivated, it is the anticipation of the recognition they will receive for the completion of a task that motivates them internally to “go the extra mile.”
A good tactic for motivating employees is to give positive recognition for an accomplishment, which raises a person’s self-esteem, improves their self-image, and motivates them to do even more and better in the future.
5. Provide Rewards
This is the icing on the cake. You can only get by with praise and recognition for task completion for a limited amount of time. At some point, you must give some kind of reward to acknowledge superior results. Along with motivating employees, if there are no rewards following extra efforts, people lose their enthusiasm and conclude internally, “what’s the use?”
Rewards, however, can be tangible or intangible. A tangible reward is material or financial in some way. It may be a briefcase or a gift certificate. It may be a bonus or a pay increase. These rewards are great for motivating employees and act as a continuous spur to better performance.
Rewards can be intangible as well. An intangible reward can be something as simple as taking the person out to lunch to celebrate their success. It can be a bigger office or desk. It can be a new office chair or a new computer. I learned that the best financial reward for motivating employees is a specific bonus tied to completion of a specific task. It is a one-time affair. It is not a permanent pay increase that goes on month after month.
Short term rewards and bonuses are just as motivating as long-term pay increases. Another intangible reward is time off. When one of my staff members does a great job on a project, I tell them in advance that they need not come in on a Friday. I always give them time to plan their day off in advance, rather than telling them at the last minute.
HOW TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS FASTER THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE
7 Habits of Successful People That Will Make You Feel Unstoppable in 2019
Many people wonder how they can become highly successful, not realizing that they hold within them everything they need to achieve all of the success they desire.
Successful people are where they are today because of their habits. Habits determine 95% of a person’s behavior.
Everything that you are today, and everything that you will ever accomplish, is determined by the quality of the habits that you form.
By creating good habits and adopting a positive behavior, you too can become successful and live a prosperous life.
These 7 Success Habits are Good Predictors of Greatness
For thousands of years, success in human life has been studied by great thinkers and philosophers. I have personally studied the subject for more than 30 years. What I have found is that the very best people have developed good habits.
I have identified seven valuable habits that you need to develop if you want to perform at your very maximum in everything you do.
1) They are Goal-Oriented
The first habit is to become goal-oriented.
You need to be a habitual goal setter, and dedicate yourself to working from clear, written goals every day of your life, forming daily habits. All highly successful people are intensely goal oriented. They know exactly what they want, they have it written down, they have written plans to accomplish it, and they both review and work on their plans as a daily routine.
The second habit of highly successful people is being results driven.
This is made up of two practices.
The first is the practice of continuously learning so that you become better at what you do.
The second practice is that of time management. This means setting very clear priorities on what you do and then concentrating single-mindedly on the most valuable use of your time.
All really successful people are intensely result-oriented.
3) They are Action Oriented
The third major habit you need to develop is that of continually taking action.
This is really the most important habit for material success. It is the ability to get on with the job and get it done fast. It is your ability to develop and maintain a sense of urgency, and a bias for action. Fast tempo in whatever you do is essential to your success.
You need to overcome procrastination, push aside your fears and launch 100% toward the achievement of your most important goals. The combination of goal orientation, result orientation, and action orientation, in themselves, will virtually assure great success.
I highly suggest you learn to use SMART goals to list achievable targets that you can measure and track.
4) They are People Oriented
The fourth habit you need is people orientation.
This is where you put relationships in the center of your life. This is your decision to cultivate within yourself the habits of patience, kindness, compassion, and understanding. Virtually all of your happiness in life will come from your ability to get along well with other people.
The good news is that you can become a wonderful human being in your relationships with others when you decide to.
As Aristotle said, the only way that you can learn any habit is by practicing it on a regular basis. The more you practice being a truly excellent person in your relationships with others, the more you will internalize those qualities and actually become that person.
Focusing on being more pleasant with the people in your life is a great technique to promote a positive thinking lifestyle.
5) They are Health Conscious
The fifth habit that highly successful people develop is health consciousness.
This means that you must fastidiously watch your diet, and always eat the right foods in the right portions. You must exercise on a regular basis, continually using every muscle and joint of your body to keep it limber and fit. And finally, you must have good habits of rest and recreation that will enable you, in combination with diet and exercise, to live out your years in a healthy state.
Remember, your health is the most important single thing you have, and it is completely subject to the habits that you develop with regard to the way you live.
6) They are Honest
The sixth habit is that of honesty and integrity.
In the final analysis, the character you develop as you go through life is more important than virtually anything else.
Honesty means that you practice the “reality principle” in everything you do. You are completely objective with yourself and with the world around you. You set very clear values for yourself and you organize yourself around your values. You develop a vision for yourself and then you live your life consistent with your highest ideals. You never compromise your integrity or peace of mind for anyone or anything.
This attitude of honesty is critical to your enjoying all of the other good habits that you are developing.
7) They are Self-Disciplined
The seventh habit, and the one habit that guarantees all the others, is that of self-discipline.
Your ability to discipline yourself, to master yourself, to control yourself, is the most important single quality that you can develop as a person. The habit of self-discipline goes hand in hand with success in every area of life.
If you would like some help staying motivated during your journey to the life of your dreams then checkout these inspirational success quotes.
Every one of these habits, being goal oriented, results driven, action orientated, people orientated, health conscious, honest and self-disciplined can be developed. You are where you are and what you are today because of your habits. Your habits have been developing, mostly accidentally, from the time you were an infant.
Today you can take complete control over the shaping of your character and personality, and everything that happens to you in the future, by making the decision, right now, to find the definition of the habits that will lead you to great success.
And when you develop the same good habits possessed by other successful people, you will enjoy having success in common. Your future will become unlimited.
Summary
The seven habits of successful people are:
They are goal oriented
They are results driven
They are action oriented
They are people oriented
They are health conscious
They are honest
They are self-disciplined
What habits of successful people do you need to learn?
