5 posts tagged “success”

What Clients Love: A Field Guide to Growing Your Business by ever-popular Harry Beckwith.

When's the last time you found a business book so entertaining you wanted to read excerpts out loud to someone nearby?

That's how I heard about this book.

And the person who eagerly read excerpts to me wasn't even in business. From the movie Pretty Woman to how heart surgeons dress and over 250 other culture references, Beckwith draws original insights for delighting your clients. He suggests the four significant social changes that most affect your ability to grow your business, with numerous examples for each. Then he describes how to design your business to benefit from these changes.

Beckwith concludes by outlining the traits we need to succeed in "this Evolved Economy." Also included in the book is the most usable planning guide I've ever found, a checklist of questions for building an "exceptional business," a list of "traits of clients love," and a reading list and closing interview. If you are like me, you won't be able to put this book down. Yet the chapters are short, some less than a page, so you can easily pick up where you left off if interrupted.

Any manager in business, government, or a nonprofit group can use this book to better attract and serve their clients.

In keeping with Beckwith's philosophy of demonstrating genuine, innovative care for your customers, see how you can offer them more value – with the right partners and offers. Join thousands of others who've enthusiastically adopted this marketing tool to grow their business faster, even in soft economic times.

Read Walk Your Talk: Grow Your Business Faster Through Successful Cross-Promotional Partnerships. Get started sooner by also listening to the companion audiotape as you drive.

Draw people to you. Bring out their best side so they naturally see and support yours.  Become sought-after. 

How? Read The Platinum Rule: Discover the Four Basic Business Personalities--and How They Can Lead You to Success by Tony Alessandra and Michael J. O'Connor.  You will be highighting every page and quoting it to others.

Many times we inadvertently offend others who don't "act right" -- like us. This is a great book for learning to work well with people of differing temperaments or background.

You can gain a deeper understanding of your personality type, recognize others' styles, and then behave in ways that demonstrate respect and inspire trust. As an improvement on the Golden Rule, the authors suggest the Platinum Rule: "Do unto others as they'd like done unto them." Find out what makes people tick and serve them their way.

This is a comprehensive guide for all parts of life, with the main focus on how to be more successful in the workplace, especially in sales or management. The authors’ approach appeals to women and men. They have applied these principles to running their businesses and training others for 20 years. This the most practical book I've found on understanding personality types to establish a connection.

To build on the relationship insights you gain with this book, learn a complementary method – how to move people away from conflict and towards connection – get LikeABILITY, which you can download immediately.

Give this to coworkers, family members, teammates, and friends to spark a helpful conversation on how to get along even better.

Read the bestseller, Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton.

Great book on how to recognize and use your best talents -- and those of your colleagues -- to optimize personal and organizational success.

Want to be secure and appreciated in your job -- especially in this weak economy? Then, from the authors of First, Break All the Rules get their new, groundbreaking book on how to improve your performance. Along with the classic Myers-Briggs tests, use this book to learn how to excel with others.

If you can identify your specific best talents, you'll recognize the kind of work in which you'll excel and most enjoy. Further, you can use the same talent-finder tool, outlined in this book, to become more successful in hiring, managing, and motivating others.

Focus on supporting others' strengths rather than attempting to train them out of their weaknesses and then penalizing them when you don't succeed. With the strengths approach, you'll build productivity and morale. That's the advice these enormously popular coauthors give after analyzing the interviews their Gallup Organization conducted with over 1.7 million employees from 101 companies and representing 63 countries, Only 20 percent of those interviewed believed they were using their strengths every day.

To hire for strengths that people will get to use much of the time on the job, the coauthors used their research to ascertain 34 positive personality traits (such as Achiever, Developer, Learner, and Maximizer). When you buy this book you gain access to an online test to find your top five inborn talents. As with their powerhouse previous bestseller, First, Break All the Rules, this book offers a breakthrough management technique.

This book and test will help you match the right people for the right roles in all parts of your life.

As a manager, business owner, or board or family member, use this book -- and give copies to others so you all learn to engage best talents more often together.

Once you've discovered your strengths and how to succeed by finding the opportunities to use those talents more often, then you're ready to learn about how to encourage others to use their best talents around you. That way you can attract smarter support sooner. Learn how in LikeABILITY, which you can download immediately.

Read the book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by foremost researcher, Martin Seligman.

It is the best book for learning how to become more resilient and successful in work and in relationships.

What makes some people more capable than others in maintaining close relationships and improving their performance? More than your IQ, hard work, or attractiveness, your level of optimism determines your success and happiness. That's what former American Psychology Association president Dr. Martin Seligman discovered.

To rebound from difficulties and capture more opportunities, learn from the most experienced researcher on the topic exactly how to be a clear-eyed optimist. After 15 years of studying helplessness and hopelessness, this pioneer in Positive Psychology turned his attention to studying optimism. Our physical and emotional health and capacity to maintain strong relationships and to get ahead in work are directly related to our level of optimism, Seligman found. He made another extraordinary discovery: you can actually learn to become more optimistic.

Unlike many shallow "think positive" books, this one is backed by sound research. As opposed to those who advocate boosting self-esteem regardless of one's abilities, Seligman teaches people to be positively proactive in light of their actual situations.

Seligman found that depressives have pessimistic thought patterns that are destructive. They focus on how things will get worse, believing that a bad situation is Permanent (will always be this bad), Pervasive (because this bad happened, I see the bad side of everything in my life), and Personal (most of all it happened worst to me). They often prove themselves right. If you want to step out of that downward spiral of destructive behavior, read and practice Seligman's methods.

I have given this book to 43 very smart, successful men who created their own walls of depression in the midst of their achievement. They liked the concrete, research-based program to make real change.  Their wives and co-workers liked the changes too.

Take the questionnaire in this book to learn where you are on the pessimist-to-optimist scale. Read how your level of optimism is affecting your life. Then follow the suggested steps to lift your level of optimism and maintain it at that higher level.

Organizations as diverse as a major insurance company and the UC-Berkeley swim team have used Seligman's methods to dramatically improve morale and performance. I have read this book four times and given away over 50 copies.

This book is especially important for girls entering their teen years where their higher-than-average optimism tends to fall. If you've experienced recent failures, want to hire the best job candidate, or hope to support those you manage in becoming more successful, read this book. Every home, school, and counseling or H.R. office should have a copy of this book.

To brighten your life further, practice ways to bring out others' more optimistic side so you can become happier and higher performing together. Read how in LikeABILITY, which you can download immediately.

... to Move Past Procrastination to Savor Your Just Rewards

Remember the agitated, bleary late-night looks on your friends' faces in college as they attempted to cram a semester of learning into the night before a final? Perhaps you were one of those crammers.

Then you probably resented righteous-looking people like me who appeared to spend a pleasant bit of time each day on reading and class note taking before sailing through tests.

 You'll be happy to know that people like me all get our comeuppance in other situations. How? Because everybody gets mind blocks to doing some kinds of tasks.

Mind blocks have nothing to do with mental acuity. They're very much a part of the human experience, albeit an irritating part for which most of us emotionally flagellate ourselves about, as we continue to avoid the task, thus incurring double damage. We all have them.

 We just have different kinds of places we get stuck on different kinds of tasks. My blocks, for example, are with big or boring talks. I can easily slide into writing a brief article or going on a half hour morning run along the hills above my seaside village of Sausalito.

Give me a larger task, however, such as writing a book or going into the gym for an hour (minimum needed) work-out or a boring "time-waste" task like getting to the dry cleaners or gas station and I can become diabolically clever at deceiving myself into all the reasons why I can't start, right now anyway, but will sometime soon. Sound familiar?

 Here's some tricks to getting yourself into a kind of task you often find yourself avoiding and even finding ways to feel righteous as you savor completion.

Vividly Specific Contrasting Scenarios

Picture the worst and best case situations -- in all their emotional details -- for not starting an important task now.

How bad could the consequences be if you don't get it done or done right?

How exciting could it be if you did it on time and superbly?

What if you intend to start it later today?

How many things "beyond your control" can prevent you from getting started? If you did, in fact, start it right now, when is the soonest you might be done if you get clear and focused, and allow no other interruptions until you get to a crucial state of completion or actually finish it?

 What small indulgence could you give yourself when you're done? Take a break to savor time with a colleague who makes you laugh? Get a surprise gift for a friend who's been especially thoughtful recently? Dive into another, slightly less pressing task and actually get ahead of the curve for once?

 See Your Success Again and Again

 Since most nurses have time-pressed lives, allowing yourself to savor each success is akin to imprinting on your psyche the experience of satisfaction with a task completed.

Just as athletes learn new habits to improve performance by watching videos of master athletes, then store up memories of those images of successful work-outs for their constant internal play-back, your stored-up memories of ease in task completion can motivate you to have those satisfying experiences more often.

You are literally seeing yourself repeat your performance. That's new habit-forming. You will become more naturally inclined to dive in early and get more tasks completed in a state of inward and outward grace.

 Take on a Big Task, a Bite at a Time

 Large or unfamiliar tasks where you don't feel especially confident about your future performance are the ones you're most likely to avoid. Write down the steps to completion.

 Call this approach "going slow to go faster later."
 Writing will make the steps more real and doable to you and your commitment to the timetables you attach to each task become more vital. They are right in front of you. Post your " tasks and timetable" where you can't avoid seeing it. Tell others of your commitment to that sheet. These actions will place the task higher in your consciousness.

 
Reward Yourself and Savor Your Rewards

Plan your rewards ahead of time. Diligent nurse that you are, don't deny yourself the reward when you are done by rushing onto the next task. Life goes by too fast anyway. For example, when I complete boring tasks -- and not before -- I allow myself time to do something that gives me pleasure, such as a stop at a bookstore or time with a friend. When I finish a big important task I give myself a bigger reward such as a trip or new outfit.

 Sidelong Glancing at It

Sometimes facing a task straight on just makes you freeze. Try to picture how to do it by "sidelong glancing", that is getting small glimpses out of the corner of your mental eye about how you can most easily do the task.

One of the best ways is to literally get moving and looking around. In times of mind-blocks, anger or tension, men tend to act out more while women tend to shut down, moving less. You will be more aware of your emotions and motivations when you get into motion. Consider walking, showering, eating or otherwise being "on your way" to doing the task. You will let your mind go naturally free.

 When you are in motion and not focusing directly on what you have to do, especially if you can get outside into the fresh air and sunlight, you can literally see farther, gain a larger perspective and see how the parts of the task can fit together.

You will pull up ideas from lower in your consciousness, think of apparently unrelated ideas that do, in fact, have a bearing on ways to get the task done. Your unconscious mind becomes your friend in helping you recognize your best path to accomplishing the task. And the task will seem less onerous because you lift your mood when you put yourself in motion.