Everyday Leadership

Has anyone ever had this affect on you? Do you think that you have ever had an impact on someone else's life? "Lollipop moments" happen everyday, imagine the difference you could make in the world by making one person smile every day!

Check out the video here!

6 People Who Determine Your Future

This is a great article from Inc that talks about the influence and importance of the people who are close to you. Take some time to think about who you network with!

The most successful people in the world have a small, structured network of core contacts. Here's how you can, too.

 

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How many "best friends" do you have? Social scientists say most people count just four friends with whom they can discuss very important matters, but the maximum possible number of such friends is around six. With rare exceptions, it's just not practical for anyone to maintain close, truly meaningful relationships with more than six people.
Super-successful people know this better than anyone. In the survey research I did for my book Business Brilliant, I found that the wealthier you are, the fewer "best business friends" you have. Specifically, when asked to count how many people they closely network with in order to source new business, the average number was 4.8 for millionaires who have a net worth over $30 million and 5.7 for millionaires who have a net worth below $10 million. Ordinary middle-class people? They reported an average of nine close contacts. That's right. The people at the lowest level of financial success counted the highest number of close networking contacts.
The reason is very simple. If you count nine people as very close, the odds are you're not really close to them at all, which means they won't be inclined to offer their close network connections with you. If, on the other hand, you are very close to six highly-connected people, as most super-successful people are, those six people will make their networks available to you, giving you potential access to 36 more people, as well as access to their networks, by which time your effective network numbers in the hundreds.
Size Is Only One Part of a Strong Network 
Researchers who study networking, however, say that network size isn't the most important thing. Network structure makes an even bigger difference, and the strongest networks are structured strategically with a small core that branches out to encompass lots of people who, most importantly, don't know each other. Build a network like that, and you put yourself in the center as a connector who can make introductions, summon resources, and create valuable interactions in ways no one else can. Being the linchpin, the go-between, is what entrepreneurship is all about. Entre, after all, is the French word for "between."

So while there's nothing wrong with counting 500 or 5,000 people in your online networks, the more important thing to do is to follow the example of the super-wealthy and design your core network to be tight, strong, and, above all, made up of just a few select people who will need you in order to reach each other.

Here's how to do it:

1. Write down a list of a dozen key people.

These are the people you would go to tomorrow for help in finding new work of the kind that you do best. Last week I wrote about how luck always favors people with focus and purpose. That's especially true with networking. You first need to identify your ideal work situation or type of business deal. Only then are you ready to take stock of whom you'll need to help find it.

2. Rank the top six people who are best positioned to help you.

Let's say you lead a cake-baking business. As a baker, you might rely on business referrals from a dozen or more caterers, wedding planners, and party planners. From this list, sort out those people who are strongest and most likely to send high-value work your way. Then, after ranking the top six, figure out if any of them know each other. Maybe your top six includes a caterer and a party planner who often work closely together. If that's the case, drop the one with the least clout and pick a replacement from your original list of 12.

3. Label six file folders from one to six.  

You've now identified the six people on whom your livelihood and dreams depend, at least for the near future. What do you think you'll need to know about such important people? Collect all the information you can in each of your six ranked folders. (These can be electronic folders, physical folders, or both.) Fill each folder with items from company websites, corporate board memberships, charity involvements. Don't forget the names of spouses and children. These are your six best business friends, after all.

4. Make a seventh folder.

This folder serves as your "bench" folder, where you can toss information about all the peripheral players in your network, the ones you might need to call on when the value of one of your regulars falters. Networks are always in flux. People come and go, your priorities might change. Having six people in your core and another dozen or so on your bench maintains a healthy balance between focus and flexibility.

5. Make network maintenance a regular Monday morning event.
Most super-successful people consider their networks one of their most precious assets. Treat your network accordingly. Manage it as you would any asset portfolio. You want to be on the lookout for new promising network members and consider dialing back contact with connections who are no long aligned with your goals.
The other key thing to remember about this science is that social networks tend to grow in the direction of whatever you feed them. If you fill your network with college buddies, you'll get lots of invitations to events that might have interested you back when you were in school. But if you manage your portfolio of contacts wisely, and feed it with people who are important to your work and command greater resources than you have access to, you'll be growing in a direction that positions you for sustained future success.

Six Leadership Styles and When to Use Them

Taking a team from ordinary to extraordinary means understanding and embracing the difference between management and leadership. 

According to writer and consultant Peter Drucker, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

Manager and leader are two completely different roles, although we often use the terms interchangeably. Managers are facilitators of their team members’ success. They ensure that their people have everything they need to be productive and successful; that they’re well trained, happy and have minimal roadblocks in their path; that they’re being groomed for the next level; that they are recognized for great performance and coached through their challenges.

Conversely, a leader can be anyone on the team who has a particular talent, who is creatively thinking out of the box and has a great idea, who has experience in a certain aspect of the business or project that can prove useful to the manager and the team. A leader leads based on strengths, not titles.

The best managers consistently allow different leaders to emerge and inspire their teammates (and themselves!) to the next level.

When you’re dealing with ongoing challenges and changes, and you’re in uncharted territory with no means of knowing what comes next, no one can be expected to have all the answers or rule the team with an iron fist based solely on the title on their business card. It just doesn’t work for day-to-day operations. Sometimes a project is a long series of obstacles and opportunities coming at you at high speed, and you need every ounce of your collective hearts and minds and skill sets to get through it.

This is why the military style of top-down leadership is never effective in the fast-paced world of adventure racing or, for that matter, our daily lives (which is really one big, long adventure, hopefully!). I truly believe in Tom Peters’s observation that the best leaders don’t create followers; they create more leaders. When we share leadership, we’re all a heck of a lot smarter, more nimble and more capable in the long run, especially when that long run is fraught with unknown and unforeseen challenges.

Change leadership styles

Not only do the greatest teammates allow different leaders to consistently emerge based on their strengths, but also they realize that leadership can and should be situational, depending on the needs of the team. Sometimes a teammate needs a warm hug. Sometimes the team needs a visionary, a new style of coaching, someone to lead the way or even, on occasion, a kick in the bike shorts. For that reason, great leaders choose their leadership style like a golfer chooses his or her club, with a calculated analysis of the matter at hand, the end goal and the best tool for the job.

My favorite study on the subject of kinetic leadership is Daniel Goleman’s Leadership That Gets Results, a landmark 2000 Harvard Business Review study. Goleman and his team completed a three-year study with over 3,000 middle-level managers. Their goal was to uncover specific leadership behaviors and determine their effect on the corporate climate and each leadership style’s effect on bottom-line profitability.

The research discovered that a manager’s leadership style was responsible for 30% of the company’s bottom-line profitability! That’s far too much to ignore. Imagine how much money and effort a company spends on new processes, efficiencies, and cost-cutting methods in an effort to add even one percent to bottom-line profitability, and compare that to simply inspiring managers to be more kinetic with their leadership styles. It’s a no-brainer.

Here are the six leadership styles Goleman uncovered among the managers he studied, as well as a brief analysis of the effects of each style on the corporate climate:

      I.        The pacesetting leader expects and models excellence and self-direction. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Do as I do, now.” The pacesetting style works best when the team is already motivated and skilled, and the leader needs quick results. Used extensively, however, this style can overwhelm team members and squelch innovation.

    II.        The authoritative leader mobilizes the team toward a common vision and focuses on end goals, leaving the means up to each individual. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Come with me.” The authoritative style works best when the team needs a new vision because circumstances have changed, or when explicit guidance is not required. Authoritative leaders inspire an entrepreneurial spirit and vibrant enthusiasm for the mission. It is not the best fit when the leader is working with a team of experts who know more than him or her.

   III.        The affiliative leader works to create emotional bonds that bring a feeling of bonding and belonging to the organization. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “People come first.” The affiliative style works best in times of stress, when teammates need to heal from a trauma, or when the team needs to rebuild trust. This style should not be used exclusively, because a sole reliance on praise and nurturing can foster mediocre performance and a lack of direction.

  IV.        The coaching leader develops people for the future. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Try this.” The coaching style works best when the leader wants to help teammates build lasting personal strengths that make them more successful overall. It is least effective when teammates are defiant and unwilling to change or learn, or if the leader lacks proficiency.

    V.        The coercive leader demands immediate compliance. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Do what I tell you.” The coercive style is most effective in times of crisis, such as in a company turnaround or a takeover attempt, or during an actual emergency like a tornado or a fire. This style can also help control a problem teammate when everything else has failed. However, it should be avoided in almost every other case because it can alienate people and stifle flexibility and inventiveness.

  VI.        The democratic leader builds consensus through participation. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “What do you think?” The democratic style is most effective when the leader needs the team to buy into or have ownership of a decision, plan, or goal, or if he or she is uncertain and needs fresh ideas from qualified teammates. It is not the best choice in an emergency situation, when time is of the essence for another reason or when teammates are not informed enough to offer sufficient guidance to the leader.

6 Leadership Styles and When You Should Use Them
by Robyn Benincasa

15 Success Principles!

The 15 Success Principles You’ll Never Want To Forget By Joel on March 12, 2013 Success Principles You can’t assure success, but you can increase the chances of it happening. After all, opportunity favors the prepared. With the following 15 success principles, you can dramatically increase the chances of success in your life. 1 – Prepare The first success principle is preparation. It’s the foundation of success. With preparation you create your own opportunities. Once you have all the different elements lined up, it only takes a small opening to realize your goal. At the same time, taking advantage of big opportunities without enough preparation means risking your success, as you’re building without a well-laid foundation. 2 – Do something you love You have to work very hard whatever it is you choose to do. Your work or your project will dominate much of your time and your life. Therefore, find something that you enjoy doing and do that. 3 – Get started You have to start somewhere. Today is as good a day as any to start. Get into action today and start moving in the direction you want. Putting it off can only lead to failure, whereas if you start and see an early setback, at least you conquered that setback early on. 4 – Move in the right direction Keep everything moving in the direction you want. It doesn’t matter if things go slowly initially. As long as the overall direction is favorable, you’ll get where you want to go eventually. 5 – Use the power of dreams and your imagination What you dream and visualize today will become true tomorrow. You just have to work on turning it into reality. Just as your dreams can only influence your life if you let them, the cities you build in your imagination can only become real if you build them. 6 – Think big If you set your aim a bit too high you might fall short. If you set your aim too low you might achieve your goal… and miss out on the other opportunities. By thinking bigger, the only limit is what is possible. You’re no longer limited by what you think is possible. 7 – Focus on growth Seemingly impossible challenges are just cleverly disguised opportunities for growth. If you take those challenges and, in solving them, improve yourself, you’ll find yourself continually moving in the right direction. 8 – Maintain your determination With enough determination, you can succeed through almost any odds. Enough determination means you’ll find a way no matter the situation. 9 – Set a clear vision Think through where you’ll want to go. Develop a clear sense of what your final goal is, and keep this with you. By knowing the destination you want to reach, you can continually look at your current path and decide if it’s a route that will help you get where you want to go. 10 – Set goals along the way A final goal isn’t enough. You need intermediate goals that set the path. These goals should be specific, measurable, realistic, attainable, and timely. These intermediate goals define the steps that you need to take to get to the final one. 11 - Work out plans of action for your work For each goal, it helps to have plans to reach them. Your plan describes how you can reach each step from where you are, or where you will be. Keep in mind that the future is never certain. Things rarely work out exactly how you plan. Therefore, see these plans as showing one or more possible routes, not necessarily the route you’ll end up taking. Still, knowing the plan means you can avoid long detours that might compromise your chances of reaching a goal on time — or at all. 12 - Commit to taking action Once you start going, keep going. Never, never, never give up. If you find an obstacle in your way, chip away at it or go around it. The only way to really fail is to give up. If you keep going you’ll succeed. If you hit the limits of what’s possible, you can regroup and find another way. 13 - Use affirmations Affirmations are just short, positive, and above all direct phrases in present tense. Things like “I’m getting more and more successful.” The idea is that they reinforce a positive world view. With affirmations, you are defining your own reality. By transmitting a positive world view to your mind, it adopts this view. As your mind adopts this view, it helps shape the world around you to fit it, which means it helps make the world around you one that reflects a reality of you getting more successful every day. 14 - Get rid of negative influences Avoid harmful influences around you that might shake you from your goal. Keep people and ideas around you that support your success and your belief in yourself. 15 - Be grateful and appreciate what you have The final success principle is to appreciate what you have already. Realize that — by sheer virtue of the fact that you can be reasonably certain you’ll live from one day to the next — you already have enough. Enjoy it! Appreciate what you’ve achieved so far, and see that what you want, where you’re going, is not what you need or what you must do. Rather, these are things and actions that will make your situation even better. Article By James Meyer | Addicted2Success.com

3S Nomination for 2013 Best Place to Work!

We are very proud to announce that 3S Enterprises Inc has been nominated as one of the best places to work in Washington in 2013 by Washington Business Journal. There will be an event held today at the Hilton McLean that will recognize the company for it's efforts to provide training and advancement opportunity to it's employees. CEO Sers Sterlin II has plans to attend the event and receive the award. Thank you to everyone who helped to make this possible!