Growth is not automatic; it does not necessarily come with experience, nor simply as a result of gathering information.  Personal growth must be deliberate, planned, and consistent. – John Maxwell

I came across the practical steps for personal growth in the book, Developing the Leaders Around You, by JOHN MAXWELL.

JOHN MAXWELL, who was listed as number one  in my post on  the Top Ten Leadership Gurus, outlines these five practical steps for personal growth:

1. Set aside time daily for growth. John Maxwell shares with us the two important concepts in this step:

First, time for growth must be planned.

Second, the time set aside must be set aside daily – for no fewer than five days a week.

Reading books and informative magazines while traveling and waiting is also good for personal growth.

When I was reassigned from the regional office  to the central office, I made my daily schedule of reading books and other resource materials, at least one hour when I wake up early in the morning and one hour in the evening, to prepare me intellectually to the bigger responsibilities I was facing.

2. File or copy quickly what you learn. Always carry with you a small planner or notebook where you could write what you learn from your readings or from the tapes.

3. Apply quickly what you learn. Choose a learning that you want to apply each week.

4. Grow with someone. The best way to grow is to share your knowledge with someone.

5. Plan your growth and follow it for a year. If you want to read one book per month and listen to one tape per week, you will be able to read twelve books and listen to 52 tapes in a year.

According to John Maxwell, personal growth is like investing.  It’s not your timing.  It’s your time in.  Get them going now.

Your friend,

Nimia Acebes

One day, one of my supervisors came to my office and requested that one of his employees shall be reassigned due to poor performance in his office.  When I called the attention of the employee for his poor performance as verbally reported to me by his supervisor, he reacted: “Is he kidding, Madam?  He always gave me a “Very Satisfactory” performance rating every rating period.”

At the end of the rating period, the employee just simply copies his or her previous performance appraisal forms and submits them to the supervisor for confirmation and signature.

On the other hand, majority of the supervisors are not honest in rating their employees.  The supervisor gives a “Very Satisfactory” rating to the employee even if he or she doesn’t deserve it, as the supervisor is sick of getting arguments from his people when they didn’t get the rating they thought they deserve.

An appraisal is supposed to be informative for you and your employee.  It ought to inform him how he’s doing in relation to performance targets.  It is supposed to identify his strengths and the areas where he needs improvement.  Conducted correctly, it can help you get the performance you need.  But if you rate employees higher than they are worthy of, they begin to think they’re okay and might not be urged to do better.

Here are the four effective ways to make performance appraisal easier for you and your employee:

1.  Make sure to evaluate employees fairly.  Don’t play favoritism in rating employees.  Establish uniform performance standards as your guide.

2.  Stick to facts and shun evaluations of performance based on casual observations. Gather data and keep written records of performance of employees as basis of evaluation.

3.  Keep a better balance between praise  and criticism during your performance evaluation meeting. Commend the employee for the areas where he excels in performance and point out the areas where he needs improvement.

4.  Select one or two goals for the employee to work toward instead of trying to change everything overnight. For the areas where he needs improvement, set two goals for him to achieve for him to improve his performance.

I know you also have your own list in mind and I am glad if you could share it with us by leaving your comments below this post.

Your friend,

Nimia Acebes

I have just read one of the popular posts of Bob Bessette titled “Cubicle Bliss: 10 Steps to create an inspiring workspace” at his website at http://totallyuniquelife.com or you may also reach it by visiting www.bobbessette.com.  I like the intelligent way he presented his steps.

He listed down these 10 steps to create an inspiring workspace:

1. Keep it clean!

2. Get a comfortable chair and keyboard.

3. Surround yourself with words to live by.

4. Quotes, quotes, and more quotes.

5. Display your weekly tasks prominently.

6. Display your yearly goals prominently.

7. Buy some cool stuff for the cubicle.

8. A pic says a thousand words.

9. Collect artifacts and display them.

10. Soothing Sounds.

I agree with his steps but step number 2 depends upon the availability of funds in the office where you are connected.  For the pictures,  place them in a folder in your laptop, or in a photo album or in a scrapbook.  For ease of performance,  keep decorative objects and  personal mementos in a spot where they won’t get in your way or distract you.

It is important that you make your workplace an inspiring and livable one because you spend more of your waking hours at the office than at home.  Another step that I could add is color coding in the office, including files.  It is a remarkable innovation because it makes the work area bright and a cheerful place to work in.

I know you also have your own list of steps and I will be very glad if you could share it with everyone by leaving your comments below this article.

Your friend,

Nimia Acebes

Whenever I call the attention of  some of the supervisors or subordinates on lapses in their offices, they always respond that things or processes were already there or were already done that way when they reported in that office.

It seems that , for some of them, since things were done that way years ago, is a justification for not introducing any innovation.

According to Louise Heath Leber “There’s always room for improvement, you know-it’s the biggest room in the house.”

This reminds me of the concept of productivity which is: “One can do better today than yesterday and better tomorrow than today.”

When we assume a new office or reassigned to another office, we must always identify areas that need  improvement.  Even though how efficient our predecessor was, always remember that no one is perfect. Yes, there are always better ways of doing things.

Here are the guides on how to know what areas need improvement and if improved will give the greatest outcome to the organization:

1. Focus on costs.  Whatever your organization is, whether you are operating for profit or with a budget, like a government agency, the good result of initiating with a cost reduction is great.

This doesn’t mean that we eliminate necessary services, such as income-generating activity, in order to reduce costs.  It means producing more products and services for every amount that the organization spends.

You must analyze and act assertively on how the present operating expenses can produce more products and services or or how the same volume or products and services can be produced at lesser costs.

2. Is it causing delay? Determine what causes delay in processes or in operations.  The cause of the delay is a rich area for improvement.

3. Is it stealing too much of your time? Identify if an activity is taking much of your time and preventing you from doing more productive work. This activity is a good area for improvement for it is perhaps costing the organization more than it should.

4. Has it slided unnoticeably in the wrong direction? For example, when quality of customer service is no longer given attention because the company focuses on increasing quantity of orders.  This is another fine area for improvement.

5. Is it keeping up with the current world changes?  When an organization does not keep up with current trend in technology, it will lag far behind.

6. Is there no innovation in the job or process? If a job or process is done the same old way as it was many or even a few years ago, then it is ripe for improvement.

7. Strategic Goals Must Accompany Efficient Operations.  To provide for innovation and control, the organization must have a regular review of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, the effect of the major trends to the organization, its missions and strategies.

A Manager is conducting a goal-setting with his employees

8. Watch what is being produced, Not Just Costs.  A business is described as a three major elements: inputs, activities, outputs.  The best manager must see all these three elements always and determine which of the elements need improvement.

9. Conduct Performance Planning and Review. This must be done at least every six months to get commitment from the employees in the attainment of goals and targets during the planning session.

During the performance review, the supervisor and the subordinates shall identify which goals and targets are not well attained and what are the areas that need improvement for each of them.

10. External Conditions Affecting the Business. The business is part of the community  where it is located, so its improvement is affected by the regulations, service, general economic health, educational, roads and transportation systems and many other characteristics of the community.

The corporate image of the business in the community also influences its improvement activities.  I suggest that the business entity shall conduct a customer satisfaction survey and use the result as a tool to identify areas of improvement.

American Author and Speaker Anthony Robbins says: “Commit to CANI! – Constant And Never-ending IMPROVEMENT”

Improve and make a difference!

Your friend,

Nimia S. Acebes

Since yesterday, I have been re-reading Developing the Leader Within You by John Maxwell.  The five levels of leadership which the author brilliantly described caught my attention.

Level 1: Position

This is the basic entry to leadership.  People follow the leader due to his title which is often gained by appointment.  People will not follow a positional leader beyond his stated authority.  People who stay at this level get into territorial rights.

Level 2: Permission

The leader leads by interrelationships.  John Maxwell says, “People who are unable to build solid, lasting relationships will soon discover that they are unable to sustain long, effective leadership…Needless to say, you can love people without leading them, but you cannot lead people without loving them.”

John Maxwell advises us not to skip a level.

Level 3: Production

People here are results-oriented.  People follow the leader because of what he has done for the organization.

Level 4: People Development

People follow the leader because of what he has done for them.

Level 5: Personhood

People follow the leader because of who he is and what he represents.  Only few make it to this level.

Most of us are in the position level yet.  To advance to level 2, John Maxwell listed below some characteristics that must be exhibited with excellence:

• Know your job description thoroughly.
• Be aware of the history of the organization.
• Relate the organization’s history to the people of the organization (in other words, be a team player).
• Accept responsibility.
• Do your job with consistent excellence.
• Do more than expected.
• Offer creative ideas for change and improvement.

Here are my choices for the 101 best leadership quotes arranged alphabetically according to author’s first name.

Adolf Hitler

1. The art of leadership . . . consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention. . . . The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belong to one category.

Andrew Carnegie

2. No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.

Anthony D’Angelo

3. You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.

Anthony Jay

4. The only real training for leadership is leadership.

Arnold Glasgow

5. One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.

6. A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.

Arthur Carmazzi

7. Leadership is NOT about changing the mindset of the individual or group, but in the cultivation of an environment that brings out the best and even inspires the individuals in that group to do what needs to be done.

Arthur W. Newcomb

8. Show me the leader and I will know his men. Show me the men and I will know their leader.

Barack Obama

9. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Bear Bryant

10. If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes real good, you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games.

Bill Bradley

11. Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.

Buck Rodgers

12. A real leader has the ability to motivate others to their highest level of achievement; then gives them the opportunity and the freedom to grow.

Claude Taylor

13. A leader certainly needs a clear vision of the organization and where it is going, but a vision is of little value unless it is shared in a way so as to generate enthusiasm and commitment. Leadership and communication are inseparable.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

14. You do not lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.

Elbert Hubbard

15. Power flows to the man who knows how. Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.

Frank Tyger

16. One of the greatest talents of all is the talent to recognize and to develop talent in others.

General Colin Powell

17. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.

Harvey S. Firestone

18. The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.

Harvey Mackay

19. A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.

20. If you wish others to believe in you, you must first convince them that you believe in them.

Henry David Thoreau

21. He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

Jack Welch

22. Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.

23. The world of the 1990s and beyond will not belong to ‘managers’ or those who can make the numbers dance. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders – people who not only have enormous amounts of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.

24. Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.

James Boren

25. It is hard to look up to a leader who keeps his ear to the ground.

James Crook

26. A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.

Jim Collins

27. I’ve never found an important decision made by a great organization that was made at a point of unanimity. Significant decisions carry risks and inevitably some will oppose it. In these settings, the great legislative leader must be artful in handling uncomfortable decisions, and this requires rigor.

Jim Rohn

28. A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

29. Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.

John F. Kennedy

30. Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

John Maxwell

31. A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.

32. Most people who want to get ahead do it backward. They think, ‘I’ll get a bigger job, then I’ll learn how to be a leader.’ But showing leadership skill is how you get the bigger job in the first place. Leadership isn’t a position, it’s a process.

33. Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

34. Leadership is more ? if not much more ? influence, rather than position.

35. Leadership is influence.

36. A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

37. People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.

38. Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.

39. Anyone can follow a path, but only a leader can blaze one.

40. Once our minds are ‘tattooed’ with negative thinking, our chances for long-term success diminish.

41. Character creates consistency, and if your people know what they can expect from you, they will continue to look to you for leadership.

42. Great communication depends on two simple skills—context, which attunes a leader to the same frequency as his or her audience, and delivery, which allows a leader to phrase messages in a language the audience can understand.

43. Earn the right to be heard by listening to others. Seek to understand a situation before making judgments about it.

44. Take the emotional temperature of those listening to you. Facial expressions, voice inflection and posture give clues to a person’s mood and attitude.

45. Credibility is a leader’s currency. With it, he or she is solvent; without it, he or she is bankrupt.

46. A highly credible leader under-promises and over-delivers.

47. The key to becoming a more efficient leader isn’t checking off all the items on your to-do list each day.  It’s in forming the habit of prioritizing your time so that you are accomplishing your most important goals in an efficient manner.

48. Talented performers flock to the best and brightest leaders, and these leaders in turn lift the lids off their people and uncork the latent talent inside of them.

49. Leaders don’t rise to the pinnacle of success without developing the right set of attitudes and habits; they make every day a masterpiece.

50. The best leaders are humble enough to realize their victories depend upon their people.

51. Passion creates energy and magnetically pulls co-workers and customers into a shared vision, and it is exceptionally strong when linked with a leader’s values.

52. Leadership involves the heavy burden of responsibility, and the fear of getting it wrong can paralyze a leader.

Ken Blanchard

53. Feedback is the breakfast of champions.

54. In the past a leader was a boss. Today’s leaders must be partners with their people… they no longer can lead solely based on positional power.

55. People who produce good results feel good about themselves.

56. The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

57. Too many leaders act as if the sheep… their people… are there for the benefit of the shepherd, not that the shepherd has responsibility for the sheep.

58. Vision comes alive when everyone sees where his or her contribution makes a difference.

Lee Lacocca

59. You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.

Marcus Buckingham

60. There’s something unique and different that makes a leader, and it’s not about creativity or courage or integrity…. A leader’s job is to rally people toward a better future.

Mark Sanborn

61. Your success in life isn’t based on your ability to simply change.  It is based on your ability to change faster than your competition, customers and business.

Marshall Goldsmith

62. To help others develop, start with yourself.

Mohandas Gandhi

63. I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

Nelson Mandela

64. It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.

Peter Drucker

65. Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

66. Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.

67. No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

68. Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Robin Sharma

69. The deeper your relationship with others, the more effective will be your leadership. People will not follow you if they do not trust you, and before someone will lend you a hand, you must first touch their heart.

70. Mastery in work and in life is about committing yourself to being excellent in everything you do, no matter how small and no matter if no one is watching. Do you practice excellence in your most private moments?

71. The first fifteen minutes of your day should be spent planning your day. Set specific goals as to what you will accomplish. These clear goals will give you focal points on which you can govern your actions and provide your with a template you can live your day from.

Ronald Reagan

72. Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.

Sam Walton

73. Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.

Stephen Covey

74. Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.

75. In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.

76. Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

77. The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

Ted Turner

78. Innovate, develop, motivate, inspire, trust — be a leader.

Theodore M. Hesburgh

79. The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.

Theodore Roosevelt

80. The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson

81. Power consists in one’s capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, leading by reason and a gift of cooperation.

Tom Landry

82. Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.

Tom Peters

83. Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.

84. The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.

Unknown

85. Be enthusiastic as a leader. You can’t light a fire with a wet match.

86. Leadership is one of the highest forms of service. It is best exercised when it freely motivates others to a decision that is really theirs — but which may never have been reached without the leader’s beneficial influence.

87. A leader’s job is to look into the future and see the organization not as it is, but as it can become.

Warren G. Bennis

88. Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.

89. Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.

90. Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.

91. Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.

92. Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.

93. Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line.

94. Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.

95. Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

96. The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.

97. The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.

98. The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.

99. The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

Winston Churchill

100. The price of greatness is responsibility.

WoodrowWilson
101. The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”- Robert F. Kennedy

Every one of us is afraid to fail, especially of the consequences of our failures.   We hide, deny and ignore our failures.  Sometimes, we do not accept  our failures and blame them on somebody else.

We are afraid that because of our failures, people will criticize us, belittle us and distrust us.  Most of the time, this fear of failure prevents us from innovating and improving ourselves and our job.

John C. Maxwell, in his book The Winning Attitude, said that we must do everything to accept our failures.  By acceptance of our failures, he means an understanding that failure is a necessary step to success.  The man who never made a mistake never did anything.

Very few do not commit mistakes the first time they did something.

Successful men experienced failures before they succeeded.

According to Michael Jordan: “ I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”

In 1952 Sir Edmund Hillary attempted to climb Mount Everest, but failed. Yet, he did not give up. On May 29, 1953 he scaled the highest mountain then known to man-29,000 feet straight up. He was heralded as the first man to climb Mount Everest.

Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.

Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer.

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. Disney also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.

US President Barack Obama said: “Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”

There’s no such thing as failure, people only give up.  Just consider how many times the Wright Brothers did not get the plane off the ground! Yet they continued to try until they prevailed.

According to Christian Warren in his article, The Harder the Failure the Sweeter the Success: “Failure is the main ingredient in the recipe for success; its 10 parts education, 20 parts effort and 70 parts failure. So why do we hang our heads, lower our eyelids, and cover our mouths, drenched in shame and disgrace, when admitting our failures?”

It matters not how many times we failed as long as we learn lessons from our mistakes and we use these lessons as basis to innovate, improve our attitudes and habits and apply new ideas.

Here’s a beautiful poem on The Truth About Failure by Robert Schuller:

Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure…it does mean you haven’t succeeded yet.

Failure doesn’t mean you have accomplished nothing…it does mean you have learned something.

Failure doesn’t mean you have been a fool…it does mean you had a lot of faith.

Failure doesn’t mean you have been disgraced…it does mean you were willing to try.

Failure doesn’t mean you don’t have it…it does mean you have to do something in a different way.

Failure doesn’t mean you are inferior…it does mean you are not perfect.

Failure doesn’t mean you’ve wasted your life…it does mean you’ve got a reason to start afresh.

Failure doesn’t mean you should give up…it does mean you should try harder.

Failure doesn’t mean you’ll never make it…it does mean it will take a little longer.

Failure doesn’t mean God has abandoned you…it does mean God has a better idea.

We are either the masters or the victims of our attitudes.  It is a matter of personal choice.  Who we are today is the result of choices made yesterday.  Tomorrow we will become what we choose today.  To change means to choose to change. – John C. Maxwell

Everyone desires to be successful in his career,  relationship or in life as a whole and  he is only an attitude away from realizing his desires.  To improve, he must choose to change his negative attitudes, as well as, his habits and thoughts into positive ones.  The desired change would only be successful if he begins it with himself, because it is the only person whom he has full control with.

I came across a very beautiful poem on starting with yourself and I hope it motivates us to take the choice to change. Here it is:

Start With Yourself

Author Unknown

When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world.

As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country. But it, too, seemed immovable.

As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it.

And now as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realized: If I had only changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family. From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country and, who knows, I may have even changed the world.