Tag Archives: success

Posted on

3 Ways to Pursue Productive Failure

Winston Churchill declared, “Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

He wasn’t the only leader who recognized the reality of failure on the journey to success. Late Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy admitted, “When you fail, you have to start all over again from a lesser position.” Before discovering a major breakthrough, inventor Thomas Edison insisted, “I have not failed. I’ve found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Alexander Pope imparted, “To err is human.”

Ultimately, the only way to avoid failure is to never attempt anything new – which can prove the greatest failure of all in times of change. Failure should never be the goal, but it should be a tool. After all, not all failures are equal.

Since we’re all sentenced to fail periodically along the way, let’s be proactive about the types of failure we leverage in our pursuit of success.

Posted on

Don’t Sabotage Your Own Success

When you’re new to the workforce, enjoying leadership success can be a far off goal. The main focus is finding the right role and doing quality work. I know that was the case for me. But with time and experience (and a lot of hard work) come new opportunities to lead at higher levels. You go from joining a team to leading a team to eventually leading a department or major organizational function. Each time the strategy shifts.

A couple years ago I was privileged to have Mark Miller guest post on my site about surviving success. We all need a game plan to kick off a new opportunity. But our behavior needs an adjustment as well.

In his bestseller What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, executive coach Marshall Goldsmith shares twenty habits that can be largely overlooked at lower organizational levels, but have the potential to absolutely derail a senior leader who doesn’t change course. There isn’t room to share them all in this post, but I’d like to highlight five extra critical ones. Fail to implement them, and your best people may go looking for a new leader.

Man Stuck on Ladder

Posted on

Surviving Success

Today's guest post comes courtesy of Mark Miller, Vice President of
Organizational Effectiveness at Chick-fil-A and bestselling author. Receive his updates by visiting his website Great Leaders Serve or following him on Twitter.

Success is a lousy teacher. The best leaders know this and are always on guard against complacency. I recently received a question from a leader who has just completed a season of success. She is concerned her team won’t stay motivated.  How do you keep your team fully engaged in the wake of success?

This is a very thoughtful question. Most leaders are focused on “What’s next?” as we should be. However, the leader who posed this question has an intuitive sense that a let down could be around the corner. Without her leadership, she may be right.

Businessman Trophy

Posted on

What a Rock Star Taught Me About Perseverance

For the record, I never wanted to be a rock star. But as a college freshman I decided I was going to make an album. I hadn’t quite grown out of my belief that I could do absolutely anything I set my mind to. It was a good sentiment from my growing up years, but in this particular case it didn’t prove very helpful. I knew how to play the guitar and a buddy played the piano, so we decided if we wrote one or two songs each semester, we’d have an album by the time we graduated. In fact, I was so sure I would graduate with a diploma in one hand and a record in the other that I even volunteered to write the first song.

Schottsy

Back in my dorm room, I sat down to with my guitar, a pen, a notebook, and my thinking cap. Nothing happened. Somewhere during the next five long, lonely minutes, I decided songwriting just wasn’t in the cards for me. So I told my buddy, “I got nothin’” and got back to my business management homework.

Posted on

Leadership Profile: Truett Cathy

I grew up in the midwest and didn’t get to experience a Chick-fil-A sandwich until I enrolled in college in Tennessee. Boy was I in for a surprise. Not only was the sandwich (and fresh squeezed lemonade!) amazing, but people were thoughtful and caring. My senior year, I was assigned to research how Chick-fil-A influenced people in positives ways. I decided it wouldn’t hurt to see if my team could interview the founder of the company, so I made a quick phone call. Believe it or not, Truett Cathy agreed.

Truett Cathy

What we learned on our trip still influences how I think about leadership. But for now, I’d like to share a few notes about the man who invented the original chicken sandwich.

Posted on

Leadership Profile: Zig Ziglar

I had the privilege of meeting the late Zig Ziglar (1926-2012) a couple years ago at a seminar in Richmond, VA. Zig’s words and ideas have impacted my life probably more than any other thought leader out there. It was truly one of the highlights of my year getting to meet the man who literally wrote the book on success. I realize not everyone has been acquainted with America’s “Master of Motivation,” so six weeks after his passing, I’d like to pay tribute to Zig Ziglar in my first leadership profile of the new year.

Me and Zig

Both Zig Ziglar and I will see you at the top!

Posted on

Coach Bill Snyder’s 16 Goals for Success

I’m a sucker for leadership philosophies embraced by successful athletics coaches. Whether it’s Coack K on teamwork or Coach Burton on developing high school kids, I always come away with something powerful and enriching. I think the reason is that athletics provides one of the greatest leadership development opportunities out there because players learn to work as a team toward a common goal in a competitive environment. In short, it’s leadership development training for life.

Coach Bill Snyder

If you follow college football at all, you might have been surprised when Kansas State University climbed to #1 in the BCS Poll at one point this football season.

Posted on

The Value of Asking “Why?”

Why? It’s one of my all-time favorite questions. I’m told I asked my parents, “why?” over and over again as a kid and apparently I’ve never grown out of it. There’s no quicker way to cut to the heart of what’s most important, which is one of the greatest responsibilities leaders have. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. In his landmark book Getting Things Done, David Allen shares six distinct ways asking, “why?” adds value. They are too good to keep to myself, so I’ve listed them here below with my own short commentary.

Why

Posted on

The Felix Baumgartner Guide to Living on the Edge

On Sunday, October 14, Australian skydiver and daredevil Felix Baumgartner set the world record for skydiving over 128,000 feet (over 24 miles) from a helium balloon following his ascent for over two hours far into the stratosphere.

Felix Baumgartner Leaving PodI hope you got to see the jump.  I was watching a football game with friends but we had the jump coverage streaming on the computer nearby.  The fact that my friend Sean and I had gone skydiving for the first time over the summer caused me to get sucked in even further.  As the countdown neared, we paid less and less attention to NFL Sunday and held our collective breath as “Fearless Felix” finally went hurdling through the stratosphere, breaking the speed of sound on his own free-fall back to earth.  4 minutes and 19 seconds later, Baumgartner deployed his parachute and soon after landed safely on the ground in Roswell, New Mexico.

Since Red Bull had sponsored the “Red Bull Stratos” project, it didn’t take long for them to begin flooding promotional materials and videos online.  In particular, I found this video on YouTube, posted on 10 days before Baumgarter’s final record-setting jump, which I believe can teach us several lessons about how to live – and lead – on the edge, Felix Baumgartner-style.

Posted on

The Courage to Lead

The more time I spend with military and national security leaders, the more I’m convinced of the magnitude of a certain leadership quality: courage. That might not surprise you; everyone knows military service members need courage to put their lives on the line every day. There’s no debating that, but the courage I’m talking about applies to all leaders everywhere, whether your organization is made up of hundreds of thousands of people, or just a handful. Let me explain.

Courage

Posted on

First, Do No Harm

First Do No HarmWhat could you do to completely ruin the leaders in your organization? By that, I mean what could you do to destroy their motivation, deplete their energy, defuse their creativity, replace their confidence with cynicism, and then cause them to leave – or worse, have them stay? Go ahead, make a list. I started my own list, in no particular order, just to help get your thinking going: