I can across a really stunning post on failure by Tony Morgan, “10 Reasons Why You’re Probably Going to Fail” that is really worth sharing, so here is Tony’s list…

10 Reasons Why You’re Probably Going to Fail

1. It’s not your passion. If it doesn’t make your heart beat fast or cause your mind to race when you’re trying to sleep, you’re probably doing the wrong thing.
2. You don’t have a plan. You need a vision, and you need to identify specific steps to make that vision become reality. That includes a financial plan. (I happen to believe you need direction from God on this.)
3. You’re waiting for it to be perfect. Test-drive it. Beta-test that new idea. You’ll fall into the trap of inaction if you think it has to be absolutely right from day one.
4. You’re not willing to work hard. Everything worth pursuing in my life has involved discipline and perseverance.
5. It’ll outgrow you. Keep learning. Keep growing. But more importantly, build a team of people including leaders that can be who you’re not.
6. You’ve had success in the past. I’ve watched organizations hang on to a good idea for too long. Time passes. Momentum fades. It’s risky to let go of the past and jump on the next wave.
7. You’re unwilling to stop doing something else. Complexity is easy. Simplicity takes discipline. You can’t build a healthy marriage if you’re unwilling to give up dating other women. Who/what do you need to stop dating?
8. You won’t build a team of friends. Anyone can hire from a resume. You need to find people you want to share life with. In the long run, great relationships will get you out of bed in the morning.
9. You won’t have the tough conversations. When breakdown happens (and it always does), someone needs to put on their big-boy pants and initiate the difficult conversation that leads to relational healing.
10. You’re afraid of failure. When fear consumes you, it will cause you to do stupid things. You’ll let negativity distract you. You’ll embrace the known, and grow comfortable with mediocrity. The more often you fail, though, the more often you’ll find success.

Tony writes a great blog, worth reading. This is a really great list to work through when embarking on a new and challenging initiative. Any thoughts on what may be missing from this list?

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1. Three Reasons Why Good Strategies Fail: Execution, Execution…
2. 5 Reasons CEO’s Get Fired
3. Study Reveals Where Americans Fail at Setting, Achieving New Year’s Goals

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“The mediocre manager believes that most things are learnable and therefore that the essence of management is to identify each person’s weaker areas and eradicate them. The great manager believes the opposite. He believes that the most influential qualities of a person are innate and therefore that the essence of management is to deploy these innate qualities as effectively as possible and so drive performance.” – Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know

This is a critical skill that managers and leaders need to develop and one of the most difficult. The ability to recognise a person’s strengths, weaknesses, personality and style, then deploy them into positions that play to their unique individual qualities, makes great teams and great teams are the hallmark of successful leadership. However, before managers and leaders can recognise and leverage the strengths of others, they have to believe that:

Leaders grow most in their areas of strength!

The key challenge is our mindset. We are too often focused only on our weaknesses. In fact we are often so focused on our weaknesses we don’t consciously leverage or develop our strengths. Try this quick exercise, take a piece of paper and make a list of your top 10 weaknesses….. Now, take another piece of paper and list you top 10 strengths. How did you do? If you’re like most people, you found it more difficult to list your strengths than your weaknesses. Take some time this week to list your top 5 strengths and describe them in some detail. Looking at your strengths ask your self how does your current job, goals and vision leverage these strengths? Are you leading from your strengths?

Related posts:

1. How Do Leaders Learn, Develop and Grow?
2. Questions Leaders Ask Themselves

Photo by TheSportingLife

As leaders we need to be constantly learning and growing, one of the best way’s to grow is by having a few good mentors to guide you on your journey. A mentor is defined in the Wiktionary as “A wise and trusted counselor or teacher“. whilst this is a good definition, it only refers to the traits of a mentor, is does not really help one understand what an effective mentor should do. I like to think of a mentor as a guide, someone who can help us make our way successfully on our journey. To help one successfully navigate through life, a guide is a great help as…..

• …a guide has been there before
• …a guide has more experience than you
• …a guide shows you the way
• … a guide keeps you away from dead-end trials
• … a guide helps you steer clear of the quicksand

One of the failings of mentor / mentee relationships, is a misunderstanding of what the relationship should look and feel like. This is why this post by David Maister titled, “Are you being mentored?“, discussing what we should be getting from our mentors was useful to me. David challenges us by asking, do you currently have someone who:

• Is reliably, dependably on your side, but is not afraid to critique you?
• You can rely on to tell you the truth – gently, but nevertheless the truth?
• Helps you understand how you are perceived, inside your organization and in the marketplace?
• Helps you extract the right lessons from your disappointments and failures?
• Keep you from getting carried way with too much enthusiasm about your successes?
• Watches you and lets you know when you are failing to keep things in balance?
• Acts as your sounding board for your new ideas before you launch them, so that you can refine them (and sometimes abandon the crazier ones?)
• Suggests new things for you to consider?
• Helps you see things from fresh perspectives, and helps you think things through, without substituting their judgment for yours?
• Helps you understand the politics of the organization you are in or have to work with?

We all need mentors who can challenges us to stretch and grow. Usually leaders need more than one mentor to speak into their lives, as one would typically find one person who can fulfil the list described above, in the various areas of our lives.

• Do you have a mentor(s) that speaks into your life?
• Looking at the above list how healthy are is your mentor / mentee relationship?

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Photo by Dave Dugdale

“Have you defined what success means for you and for your life? Unless you have thought through the answer to that question, you are at risk of letting others define success for you or trying to keep up with their definitions of success. Only when you can define what is most important in your life can you set the right priorities for your life and become an integrated leader” – Bill George with Peter Sims, True North

Effective leadership requires that we have a clear picture of success. Every morning we’re faced with a myriad of things to do, each one competing for our attention. When we have a ton of things on our to do list, we very quickly loose perspective. And without perspective leaders quickly become ineffective. Unless leaders have a clear picture of success, they have no way of deciding between one task and the next. Without a clear focus, our to do lists overwhelm us, creating a passive response to life and knee-jerk reactions to everyday events.

A clear picture of success and big picture goals help leaders maintain their perspective, keeping their focus on doing the right things, rising above the distraction of the everyday events. Our big picture of success, keeps the focus on what our life is about and what we want it to be. To help shape your vision of success, consider the following questions…..

• What is the “it” that you want? What is the it: Spiritually, Financially, Physically, Family, Mentally, Socially and in your Work?
• What will it look like when you have it?
• What will you be doing behaviourally when you have it?
• Who are you doing it with?
• Where will you be doing it?
• How will your life be different from the way it is now when you have it?
• What aspects of your life do you have to overcome or change in order to get it?
• What must you do to have it?

Related posts:

1. Happiness, Success and Goal Setting
2. Leadership as defined by James MacGregor Burns
3. Book Review: Success Built to Last

I found this interesting post on Soul in the Sky – John Kwarsick Blog:

Mark Albion, Author of the book “Making a Life, Making a Living” cites a study by Srully Blotnick:

“A study of business school graduates tracked the careers of 1,500 people from 1960 to 1980. From the beginning, the graduates were grouped into two categories. Category A consisted of people who said they wanted to make money first so they could do what they really wanted to do later after they took care of their financial concerns. Those in category B pursued their interests first, sure that the money eventually would follow.

What percentage fell into each category? Of the 1,500 graduates in the survey, the money-now category A’s comprised 83 percent or 1,245 people. Category B risk takers made up 17 percent, 255 graduates.

After 20 years, there were 101 millionaires in the group. Only one came from category A, 100 from category B.

Some food for thought…..

Technorati Tags: Career, Passion, Leadership, Success, Research, Finance, Happiness

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