When we don’t develop ourselves, we are damaging ourselves. When we don’t develop our teams, we are damaging our teams. Why don’t we develop ourselves and others?

There are many styles of leadership, and different leadership principles that I discuss throughout my website and my videos. One thing I have learned over the years is, there is not one size fits all. In other words, every individual and team is different. Every circumstance and situation is different.

Just because one principle or style worked with one person, doesn’t mean it is guaranteed to work with the next person. It takes hard work to understand our people, and how we can help them and add value to them.

I have worked with many leaders who said that they made a success of themselves in a previous leadership role. So, they came to work with us thinking they could behave, lead, and treat us in exactly the same way, and it would be another success. How they were wrong.

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They didn’t understand that there was not one size leadership style fits all. They thought their new leadership role with us would be a breeze, when actually it was much, much harder than they thought. Some of these leaders learned from their mistakes, and did their best to work hard with us, and help us.

Others were too stubborn, and in the end were removed from their position because they were making things worse.

1. The Priority Of Leadership

Organisations are far too focussed on results, when they should be focussing on their people and their culture. When organisations bring in new leaders, their main objective and priority is to improve the results. I am not saying we shouldn’t focus on results, but they should not be the priority.

The people should be the priority. Protecting the culture and living the company values should be another priority of the leaders. Having respect for the people should be another priority. Without respect for the people, there is no way of protecting, or keeping the right culture and environment for the people to work and thrive.

Focussing on processes and results will damage the culture, will damage the environment, and most of all damage the relationship with the people.

The leaders who were stubborn were not willing to let go of what they had learned about leadership, unlearn it, and then relearn new leadership principles that would help them in their situation. They were failing in their leadership of us and their other teams, but were not learning from their failings.

To unlearn, and then relearn something new, that is the mindset of a highly effective leader. You need a strong mindset, and be willing to accept and admit that you don’t know it all. We need to be learning every day. That is why highly effective leaders work on themselves every day.

2. The Right Mindset

The mindset of a highly effective leader is to be constantly improving. Their thinking is, if I improve myself, I am making myself more valuable to my team. By being more valuable to my team, I am in a great place to help them become more valuable too.

How valuable to your team are right now? Do you feel that you are adding value to your people? Are you willing to challenge yourself, and work on yourself every day to become more valuable?

There are two principles I would like you to focus on when working on yourself:

1. Continuous improvement
2. Respect for your people

You should focus on continuous improvement 20% of the time, and focus on having respect for your people 80% of the time.

Respect for your people is the most important principle, which is why we focus on it the most. It is the foundation of leadership, and will support every other leadership principle that we study, practice, and improve. Highly effective leaders think about respect for the people more often than they think about anything else.

They spend 80% of their time thinking about how to respect their people.

When highly effective leaders focus on continuous improvement, they are working on themselves to become more valuable. By becoming more valuable, they will continuously improve on the value they can add to their team. Continuously improving on their value will in turn make their team more valuable.

Adding value to their team, and helping them become more valuable is how to respect their team. When the team feel respected they will improve. If they feel disrespected, they will not improve. Highly effective leaders spend 20% of their time thinking about continuously improving.

When leaders want to implement new ideas, or bring in a new change, it is imperative that they work hard on influencing their people to buy-in to the new idea or change. What is the best way for them to achieve that? By respecting the people.

3. Respecting The People

If the leader has respect for his/her people, the people will respect them in return, and will buy-in to the new change. If the leader dis-respects his/her people, the people will dis-respect them in return, and definitely won’t buy-in to the new change.

When highly effective leaders want to increase their influence with their team to create buy-in, they must first work on themselves to develop their character, and competency. They focus on developing their character 80% of the time, and they focus on developing their competency 20% of the time.

Developing character is how a highly effective leaders improves how they lead their team, and how much they respect them. Developing competency is how a highly effective leader improves how they manage the processes and policies they have accepted the responsibility for.

Leadership is focussed on people. Management is focussed on processes, policies, and things.

Most organisations provide the training for the people so that they can improve and develop their competency. This is so they can carry out the day-to-day job they were employed to do. However, they don’t provide the leadership development training so that they can improve and develop their character.

This is why you have highly effective managers rather than highly effective leaders.

The leaders of these organisations focus on competency over character. When focussing on competency development more than character development, they are focussing 80 – 90% of their time on continuous improvement, and 10-20% of their time on character development.

May be even less time on character development. They have it the wrong way around.

The leaders of these organisations don’t even think about developing their own character, never mind the people in their charge. It’s an unfortunate fact, but these organisations are prioritising and focussing on the wrong things. This needs to change.

Low performing leaders will tell their people that they are developing them, but they actually aren’t. They manipulate their people to get what they want by telling them, “This task is part of your development.” When actually, it is a task that they have done many times before, or has nothing to do with what their team is about.

They manipulate their team for very selfish reasons. They do not think about how their team thinks or feels.

4. Developing Character Over Competency

To be a highly effective leader, you must increase your influence with your team. To increase your influence you must develop your character, and you must also develop the character of each of your team members, so that they can increase their influence.

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You must also help your team to develop their competency so that the processes improve along with the people. To be a highly effective leader, you must become a highly effective leader. Focus 80% on character development, 20% on competency development.

The more character you develop, the more respect you will have for your people. The more respect you have for your people, the more character your people will have. Remember, to grow your people, you must grow yourself.

What is your business about? People, things, or results? Focus on the things, you are not developing your people, and not producing results.

Focus on the results, you are not developing the people, and nothing will change. Focus on the people, and the things will become easier, and results will get better.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Check out my other articles by Clicking HERE

All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)

Solving your team’s problems for them automatically makes you responsible for the problem. Asking them questions about the problem that will help them to solve it, automatically makes them responsible.

I like to talk quite a bit about asking questions of your team, rather than giving them the answers, and solving their problems for them. The reason for that is, questions is what a highly effective leader relies on.

They use questions as a tool to get their message across to their people. They use questions as a tools to gain buy-in from their people. They use questions as a tool to increase their influence with their people.

1. What Questions Do You Ask?

When I learned, and decided to stop trying to solve problems for my team members, I always had the same question to whatever their question was. My first question was always, “What’s the problem?” My team would get confused by that question because they think they have just told me.

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But, asking “What’s the problem?” made them think again and dig a little deeper. I wouldn’t stop asking that question until they had thought a little deeper, and come back to me with the actual problem.

A lot of the time, my question should have been, “Who is the problem?” because the problem did usually start with the person seeking help. The only real problem was, they didn’t know that they were the problem.

And, they didn’t know that to solve the problem, they had to think a lot deeper than what they were thinking, or if they were thinking at all.

After a while, the team knew that if they came to me with a problem, I would ask them the same question every time, “What’s the problem?” So, they did their thinking beforehand, and when they did that, they realised that they didn’t need to come to me anymore because they had already solved the problem.

I must admit, I did find it quite fun when the team would come to me with problems, and I would ask them, “What’s the problem?” because I would go and observe them thinking deeper about the situation, and it gave me a sense of pride.

It made me feel good that I had prompted my team to think a lot deeper and solve their own problems. It was a very simple, but very effective thing to do.

2. Different Kinds Of Questions

When I was a leader of a team in the railway, we were responsible for solving train problems, especially when they broke down in service. So, if I saw a team member trying to solve a train problem while sitting at his desk, I would change my question from, “What’s the problem?” to “Where’s the problem?”

If they were going to get to the root cause of an engineering problem on a train, wouldn’t it be better to be exactly where the problem was?

When I asked the team that question, they knew immediately to leave the office and go to where the problem was. I used to do this myself when I was a young engineer, but in those days it was rare you could get out of the office because the manager always wanted to keep his eye on us.

3. Casting Your Vision For The Future

However, a highly effective leader is very visual in how he/she thinks. That is why casting a vision of the future for the team is so important.

They also know how important it is to see a problem, not just rely on spreadsheets, data, and information being told or sent to them. Whenever I got the opportunity to see a problem, I knew I had a much better chance of solving it.

So, if you have a team member who is responsible for a problem, then you need to give them the best chance they can at solving it. That means letting them go to the problem. Don’t keep them in the office so you can keep your eye on them. Give them the freedom, and the tools to solve their own problems, wherever they may be.

If you don’t give them this freedom and opportunity to solve their problems, then you will ultimately be responsible because you are responsible for your team member.

I liked to ask my team that when they think they have solved a problem, they should report back to me with a report or presentation. This would give me the opportunity to ask more questions, and get my team thinking even deeper, and assure me that the team have done everything they could.

The type of question I would ask during a presentation are, “How do you know that the problem is solved?” If they could answer that question well, then I was satisfied. However, if they answered me with, “I just know.”

Then that would not be acceptable. Especially if they had seen the problem and they were just relying on information passed to them by somebody else.

There are far too many big decisions being made in organisations that are based on poor data, poor information, and hearsay. They are the main problems in a lot of organisations throughout the world.

Big decisions need to be made together as a team, and based on actually seeing and solving problems in the right way. We cannot make decisions based on gut feelings, or information we found in the system from a year ago.

I know it takes a lot more time to give your team the opportunity to solve problems correctly. But, take it from me, it takes a lot more time when you make a decision on something based on poor information, and you have to start all over again or backtrack.

Asking questions until you cannot ask anymore is the only way you can be 100% sure everything has been done to solve a problem.

4. Showing Your Team Respect

As I have said before, when you ask your team questions, and you are helping them to solve their own problems, you are showing your team respect.

They will feel a lot more valued, and will follow your lead by asking each other questions when they are collaborating on problems. When collaborating on problems, and asking questions of each other, they are showing each other respect too.

Earlier, I told you that one of my old managers wouldn’t let me go to see problems on trains in service because he wanted to keep his eye on us. Well, this same manager would often ask us questions too. He would often ask, “Why are you doing that Tom?” or “Who told you to work on that?”

Whenever he would ask those questions, I would feel nervous or intimidated because what he actually meant was, “What you are doing is wrong.” Or, “I don’t want you to work on that.” So, they were asking the wrong questions.

When I started to ask questions, I had a completely different outlook. I thought like a child did. Why? You might be asking. Well, if a child asks you, “Why are you doing that?” they do not want you to stop what you are doing, they actually want to know so that they can learn from you.

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That is exactly the frame of mind I have. I actually do want to learn from my team. I have no interest in getting them to stop what they’re doing, or telling them that they are doing it wrong.

When I explain to my team why I am asking them, “Why are you doing that in that way?” they are a lot more relaxed and open to explaining it to me. They know that I do genuinely want to learn from them.

It’s a great feeling when you begin to see your team asking their teammates the same kinds of questions, and because they genuinely want to learn. They do not want to stop them from doing anything, or blame them in anyway.

Problems are there to be solved. But, how do you solve a problem? Should you first see the problem before you can solve it? Or, should you work from information and data that you got from somebody else? It’s your choice.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Check out my other articles by Clicking HERE

All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)

If you don’t have awareness, then you don’t know that you don’t have awareness. If you can’t see what you need to have awareness of, then you don’t know that you can’t see what you need to have awareness of. To grow to your full potential, you must have awareness. How do you raise your awareness?

By becoming a highly effective leader, there are a lot of things that you need to be aware of, and one of those things is to have awareness. When it comes to the differences between an ineffective leader and a highly effective leader, one of those differences is how aware they are. A highly effective leader’s awareness level must be higher.

1. How To Raise Your Awareness Level

To help you raise your level of awareness, you must keep working on yourself every day in both the competency and character areas. Reading this post is a great start in making you more aware. However, there are hundreds of self-development books out there that can raise your awareness level even more.

So, when you finish this post, don’t stop there. Keep searching through my other posts that can help you continuously improve as a highly effective leader, and eventually create a team of highly effective leaders.

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You will learn about more people (besides me), and their stories throughout their lives and career. The more stories of highly effective leaders you can relate to, the better it is for you.

To help make you even more aware, increase your influence, and help you raise your leadership level then read through my other articles, and keep an eye out for my future posts. You can check them out at here.

I have been reading self-development and leadership books since 2009, and with every new book I read I am becoming a lot more aware. I read daily, and this is a part of how I work on myself every day. I encourage you to do the same. You can learn from me in my other posts about working on strengths and weaknesses.

To work on your strengths in the area of competency, reading will help with that. To work on your weaknesses in the area of character, reading will help with that too. Being deliberate in these areas is a must…every day.

Highly effective leaders take action every day with their development and personal growth. They are also constantly seeking response and feedback from their leaders and teammates on how they are doing.

Highly effective leaders have very high levels of self-awareness, but there are times when they can’t see everything. So feedback from teammates helps them in the areas they can’t see for themselves.

2. Focus On The Right Things

Being aware and being focussed is the ultimate goal when it comes to a highly effective leader and their team. One thing a highly effective leader has great ability in is the ability to focus on what the team is trying to accomplish, the mission.

However whilst being focussed on the mission, they also have awareness of what the organisation is trying to accomplish, the objective. By being able to do both, nothing will be lost. The team will be able to achieve both their own mission and still contribute to the organisation’s objective.

We have talked in detail about motivation and inspiration. As a highly effective leader is working on themselves every day, and increasing their awareness level every day, they are in a great position to help their teammates increase their awareness level every day too.

As we now know, a highly effective leader can motivate their teammates with ease. A highly effective leader is inspired from within to help develop their teammates and their personal growth.

3. Know What Your Mission Is

They don’t need any motivation from anyone else to be able to do that. A highly effective leader’s mission is to grow their teammates and increase their influence.

This is who a highly effective leader is. They are part of the team so they can add value to the team. It is what they do. They are so aware of themselves, and know themselves inside out, better than anyone else. They are fully aware of their own purpose, and they are fully aware of their own passion.

They use their purpose and passion to help the team, and give them the most benefit possible from it. A highly effective leader is not seeking any type of reward or recognition for it, they are happy to be in the background remaining highly effective.

4. Look Forwards Not Backwards

For many years as I was going through my career, and living in different places, I caught myself looking backwards a lot. I would think of Scotland and wonder “I wish I was still in Edinburgh.” Or, I would think of my hometown Liverpool, “I should have stayed home with my family, I miss them.”

These are nice things to think about, but the past is something we shouldn’t dwell on or criticise ourselves about. When we learn something new, we imagine what our past life, or our past job would have been like if we knew this new thing we have just learned.

We think, “I should have done this is I’d known.” Or, “I could have done that if I’d known.” The past is something we should think about and reflect on, not dwell on. What we should focus on is the future.

Now that we are learning new things every day because we are working on ourselves every day, we should look forward. We should be excited for what’s in store for us with our newly found skills and insights. It is thinking like this that will keep our awareness level high, and it is thinking like this that will raise our awareness level.

When I stopped dwelling on my own past and instead began to reflect on it, I started to learn more about myself. I reflected on my past mistakes, learned the lesson from those mistakes and vowed to myself to do my best never to make those mistakes again.

The more I reflected, the more I learned. The more I learned, the more aware I was becoming. I wasn’t just becoming more aware of myself, I was becoming more aware of those around me.

It’s amazing what you feel and realise when you change how you think about your past, and use it as a way to learn, not as a way to beat yourself up or criticise yourself.

When you look inside yourself right now, how do you feel? Are you beating yourself up? Are you criticising yourself? A highly effective leader is constantly looking inside themselves, and learning about themselves. They are also looking at their teammates and learning about them too.

A highly effective leader is so aware of both themselves and their teammates. By being aware of others on your team, you will know exactly how to motivate them and how to influence them.

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The more you learn about yourself, and you start doing things differently, you will not only become a highly effective leader, you will become a better person overall. Highly effective leaders don’t just have to do things better, they have to be better.

Raising your awareness level isn’t just about your competency and what you can do, it is about your character, and who you are. We discussed that to be a highly effective leader that competency and character must work in harmony.

Well, to raise your awareness level, do better, and better, then again competency and character must work in harmony.

How do you feel about your teammates, your friends, and your family? If a person is not important to you, then there is no way that you can make them feel important.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Check out my other articles by Clicking HERE

All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)

Effort is great, but great results are even better.

To increase your influence, you must do more than is expected of you or the bare minimum to get by. If you learn the principles that I share, and eventually turn these principles into habits then the world is your oyster.

You must become an excellent team member, not just an average one. If you want to climb the ladder into more senior positions then it will be up to you to get there.

1. Don’t Be Like Other People

I have worked with far too many people who complain that they are told what to do, even though they want to be told what to do. That confuses me, why do they want to be told what to do and then always complain about it. The reason they do this is because they don’t want any responsibility for their own actions.

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I’ve asked people to do certain tasks in the past and some of their most common responses are: “I don’t get paid enough to do that”, “I don’t come here to use my brain”, or “I’m not paid enough to think about it”. Then comes my favourite: “That’s not my job”.

I think every supervisor I ever worked with said the last phrase of “That’s not my job.” They said this whenever they were asked a question by one of the team, and they didn’t know the answer.

These supervisors were only average, not excellent. They were pretty good people, but they were not prepared to put in that extra effort and try to find the answer.

Most of the time we either escalated it to their line manager (like the facilities team member did to me when he asked for the mop), never got an answer at all, or we figured it out for ourselves.

2. Start Taking Responsibility

If you are one of those people who waits to be told what to do, but you want to become an excellent team member rather than an average one, then you need to stop waiting. How do you do that?

You take responsibility and go to your boss and ask what your next task is. This is a small step, but it’s important because this will stop you from hanging around, and waiting for your boss to come to you. This is also a first step to increasing your influence with your boss, and any other leaders within the organisation.

Always be on the lookout for your next task, and be thinking how you and the team can accomplish it. How much help will you need? Will you need special tools? How long will it take? If you show that you are willing to make the first step with your boss and ask, you are on the right path to excellence.

Keep in mind, with an average team member, the boss usually does all the thinking for them. They will need to speak to a few team members to acquire the right information, so the person knows exactly what to do and how to do it. You want to become excellent, so we are going to rise above that and think for ourselves.

When an average team member is hanging around and waiting to be told, to them it means less time working, but still getting paid for it. So, to them it feels like they’re beating the system.

You may hear them saying things like: “Hanging around and waiting is fine by me, I still get paid”. WRONG! Imagine what other people in earshot of that comment will be doing. They will be spreading the word that they are slacking and reducing their chances of; climbing the ladder.

They are also reducing their chances of better pay and increasing their influence throughout the organisation.

3. Do You Want To Be Average?

By the time you become an excellent team member, you will not be average anymore. So, there will be no more hanging around or waiting for your boss to come to you. There will be no more “That’s not my job” or “I’m not paid enough to think about it”.

You will be craving to increase your influence and make as big a difference as you can within your team, and the organisation. Excellent team members feel embarrassed if they are seen just hanging around and waiting for things to happen. Excellent team members make things happen.

I believe that you can be an excellent team member. In fact, I believe you can become the best person you can be. But, you need make changes within yourself to turn things around.

4. Do You Want To Be A Highly Effective Leader?

To be a leader within your team and increase your influence throughout the organisation, you need to SEE FASTER and GO FARTHER. By that I mean, start to recommend to your boss what your next task should be, beat him/her to it. See what is required next before they do.

Then, from the information you receive from the tasks you are completing, see what is required two or three steps down the line. That is what the best team members in any industry in the world do.

Things will start to change for you because you have begun thinking for yourself. Not only that, you are proving to your boss that you can become an excellent team member and eventually a highly effective leader.

You are showing your boss the way, and not the other way around. With the recommendations you provide, you are increasing your influence within your own team and the organisation. When your boss sees this, they will spread the word about you to their peers and superiors.

Sometimes what you recommend to your boss might not be what they or the organisation want, but don’t let that hold you back. The information that your boss has is a lot more than what you have, and they know more about what the vision is for the department and the company.

However, your boss will still appreciate your offer of help and the effort you are putting in to recommend solutions and ideas.

If your boss is a good person and believes in developing the team, then they should first explain to you why they don’t want your recommendation. Then they should explain about the vision for the team, the department and the organisation.

The more you learn about what the organisation is striving towards and what your boss wants for the team, the more accurate your recommendations will become in the future.

The better you are at recommending tasks that will strive towards the “bigger picture”, then the more value you add to the organisation.

The reason your boss may not have shared with you their vision, or the vision for the company is because at the moment you are an average team member, and you hang around waiting to be told what to do.

There would be no need for you to know that information if you are not going to put it to use. However, I now know that you will become an excellent team member and want to learn all you can. You want to do this to firstly help yourself, then the team and then your boss.

The more you help, the more you will be helped.

It will take courage to start helping your boss and recommending new tasks or steps. It will also take time to get them right or learn the expectations of your boss.

But, I promise you, when your boss is happy with what you are recommending, you will very quickly become the “go to” person for solutions and ideas. That is when you know that your influence is increasing.

When you are the “go to” person, your level of responsibility also increases. Then, eventually (depending on what type of company you work with) they may increase your pay.

Don’t be worrying about pay at this stage. Trust me, the more you offer to help or recommend new ideas, solutions and next steps, they will increase your chances of a pay rise in the future.

So, start to put into practice what I am sharing with you and learn as much as you can. Be prepared to receive some insults from team mates, but don’t let it get to you (easier said than done, I know).

It is them with the problem, not you. If you work on making yourself a more valuable team member, you will become more successful. Not the other way around.

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Put yourself in your boss’s shoes. Who would be the most valuable to you? A team member who hangs around and waits for you to tell them what to do next?

A team member who comes to you and asks you what you want them to do next? A team member who knows what your vision is and what the company is striving towards? Or, a team member who recommends to you ways that you can achieve what you want and what the company wants? The answers are easy.

The truth is, to become that excellent team member and the best person that you can be, then start looking for opportunities to improve yourself. Then, have the courage to give your ideas and recommendations to your boss, and see the difference that you can make.

Always strive to surprise yourself. If you can surprise yourself, then surprising everybody else is easy.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Check out my other articles by Clicking HERE

All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)

What happened to me throughout my life is not who I am. What I decide for my life is who I am.

Now that we’ve discussed working on ourselves over my previous posts, what have you decided to work on and apply first? It is my hope that you will pass on what you have learned, and increase your influence.

Which in turn will multiply my influence through you. I hope you have done a lot a lot of thinking when going through these posts, and reflected on what you have learned.

I know that you have the potential to strive towards, and become a highly effective leader. The purpose of this post and my website is to help you realise that potential, and working on yourself every day so you can fulfill that potential.

1. What Does Every Team Need?

You’re still reading this post, so that is how I know you have the potential to become a highly effective leader. If I am being totally honest, every single one of us is crying out for a lot more highly effective leaders.

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Your team needs a highly effective leader. Your department needs a highly effective leader. Your organisation needs a highly effective leader. Your community needs a highly effective leader. Your country needs a highly effective leader. Our world needs lots of highly effective leaders.

We need highly effective leaders who are willing to go that extra mile for their people. We need highly effective leaders who are going to climb the leadership ladder, then climb back down and help others climb. Is that you?

I believe it is, because you are still reading. So, don’t prove me wrong.

When you have decided what area of your leadership to work on and apply with your team first, how are you going to apply it? Are you going to tell your team what you have learned, or are you going to show them what you have learned?

Are you going to transform your team with what you have learned? Are you going to inspire your team with what you have learned? Are you going to motivate your team to apply what you have learned?

When you apply what you have learned with your team, you are creating change.

2. What Do Highly Effective Leaders Focus On?

Highly effective leaders focus on the people and their personal growth, not their goals. They do this by leading by example, and being a role model for their team. They also expect their team to be the same role model for others.

Highly effective leaders inspire their team to embrace change. They motivate their team to implement change that for the good of themselves, the team, and the organisation.

As you are going through these posts, I have been describing and advising you on leadership principles. They are principles that I have applied in my career. It is now up to you to do the same, and then teach your team the same principles.

To transform yourself first, you must listen to what you are telling yourself, nobody else. The advice I have shared will not transform you, it has to come from you, and the effort you put in to apply it.

We discussed being a transformer in an earlier post, so that will help you with this. Are you willing to be that transformer?

My role through writing this post is to try to influence, and inspire you to be that transformer. But, also for you to help to transform others too. To make a start on this, take your team through a 30 day book study with a leadership book.

For example, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you do this, then it will be a great start in transforming your team from followers to leaders. This will also be a great start in you becoming a highly effective leader.

The message in the book is to first master being a follower, and then to work on leadership. If you help your team through this, then you will all be well on your way to climbing the leadership ladder together. With each team member helping one another up that climb.

As you work on yourself to grow and develop every day, you will also be growing and developing your team. Then, you can stretch your influence by helping your peers, and their teams to grow.

You can help them develop and increase their influence. This will again multiply your influence within the organisation even further. You don’t need permission to help other teams, and increase your influence with your peers.

3. Are you willing to stretch yourself and help other teams?

It is not about authority, it is about influence.

If you feel that you have taken a lot from this post and you are going to apply what you have learned, then share this post and my other posts with your peers. When you do that, take them through a 30 day book study also.

Show them what you have applied, or are planning to apply with your team. Show them how they can do the same. If you truly believe in leadership and what we discuss on this site, then recommend it to your organisation’s leaders.

Encourage them to share these posts for their leadership teams. Most organisations are willing to buy personal development resources for their teams, so don’t be discouraged by anyone.

The more you help your team, your peers, and their teams. The more it will get noticed. Especially by the senior leaders within your organisation. You will become known as a person who promotes leadership to all, and who is willing to help others.

You will become known as a highly effective leader, and the opportunities will open up to you because of what you are doing. You will be given the chance to lead bigger teams, and climb the leadership ladder.

When you start applying what you have learned, please be clear that things will not start to improve overnight. It will take some time before you start seeing transformations.

It is usually months, and then years. That shouldn’t discourage you or stop you from working on yourself every day.

If you work on transforming yourself every day, then your ability to transform others will increase. If you do not work on transforming yourself every day, then your ability to transform others will decrease.

4. My Purpose For My Articles

As I have said before, the purpose for this and my other posts was to inspire you to learn the principles and then apply them to your life, your team, and your organisation.

The pride I feel that you are going through these posts, and are willing to apply these principles is huge. I am so proud of you that you are doing this. I really hope you pass on your new skills to others, and teach them through leading by example.

These leadership principles are what I have learned and practiced over the last 20 years of my career. So, I want to help you get ahead by learning them quicker than I did, and by applying what you learn.

Keep practicing what you apply. Share and teach what you have learned with others. Increase your influence with everyone you interact with, whether that be at work or at home. Bring into the conversation what you have learned, and inspire others to do the same as you.

If your organisation doesn’t have a leadership programme, then inspire them to implement one for their people. Help them do develop it with your newly found knowledge.

If you get a rejection on the leadership programme idea, then don’t let that knock you back. There is nothing stopping you developing your own programme using the leadership principles you are learning.

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If you do this, the demand to be part of the programme from your team, your peers, and their teams and beyond will increase rapidly. People will want to know what you are doing.

So, when you get asked questions from people, then that is your opportunity to increase your influence with them by answering their questions.

You have an amazing opportunity with what you are learning. An opportunity to increase your influence through the entire organisation. It will take time, and you will get some resistance but do not let that stop you. Keep going, have patience, and lead by example. You can do this……I BELIEVE IN YOU!

Do you want to leave this earth with all the knowledge you have and not share it with the world? That would be a huge tragedy.

It would be great to hear your thoughts on how you have helped your colleagues and leaders and if I am putting you on the right path to climbing the leadership ladder. I would also love to know how you are doing by helping others to climb the leadership ladder, and beyond.

So, please feel free to leave a comment below.

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All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)

To become successful, you don’t need to have the best resources, you need to be the most resourceful you can be. What you believe in, what you value, and who you are will push you to success.

Being part of a team and being a highly effective leader, you have a responsibility to keep improving. Being the best on the team is not what is important. The most important thing is to work on yourself every day, and to help your teammates to do the same.

Your team are relying on you to keep working on yourself. They are relying on you to help them. They are relying on you to NOT QUIT. Keep striving to reach the next level and even further, and keep striving for your team to reach the next level and even further. DO NOT QUIT.

1. Who Do You Compare Yourself With?

At this moment in time, you and I have still not reached anywhere near close to our full potential. Your teammates have not reached anywhere near their full potential either. We all still have a long way to go to reach this level, so it is so important that we persevere and don’t get disheartened and quit.

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Try not to think of your teammates, or others within your organisation and industry as competition. People who are not at the same level as you are not your competition. People are around the same level as you are not your competition.

People who are ahead, and even way ahead of you are not your competition either. There is only one person who is your competition: YOU.

You are the only person you should be in competition with.

Highly effective leaders are only in competition with themselves. They compare themselves to the person they were yesterday, and so should you. They reflect on the person they are today, and so should you.

They compare themselves and look forward to the person they are capable of becoming tomorrow, and so should you. If becoming a highly effective leader is a commitment, then you are the only competition you will ever have. So, do not quit on yourself.

By working on yourself every day to become better will keep you fully aware of how you are doing, especially when comparing yourself to the person you were yesterday.

If you don’t work on yourself every day, then you have no comparison because you will still be in the same position. For example, I read leadership books, or self-development books every day, mainly to improve my character.

I do this to expand my knowledge and make myself better than yesterday, so the comparison is obvious and I can be honest with myself.

Working on myself every day also gives me the knowledge of how far I have come in a certain amount of time, and how far is left for me to come close to my potential. This is part of reflecting on who and where you are in the present day.

When thinking about and comparing yourself to the person who you want to and could become tomorrow, when you eventually reach your potential can sometimes be difficult.

However, it is absolutely necessary to make this comparison. You will realise how far you have left to go to reach your full potential, and how much you need to improve. You will give yourself a reality check that we all need to have, and again be honest with ourselves.

When you are making these comparisons, make a promise to yourself. The promise is to not let failure, or the fear of failure to pull you backwards, or worse…quit. Instead use failure as a way to learn from any mistakes you made yesterday, or today.

2. How Do You See Failure?

When people talk about failure, they are not actually referring to failure as final, they are referring to learning something new about themselves or someone else. In your case you will be learning about yourself.

When you are learning to drive, during the lessons your instructor doesn’t say you are failing to drive when you make a mistake. No, he/she tells you that you will learn from that mistake. We should be exactly the same way with ourselves when we make any mistakes. We are not failing, we are learning.

This trait is also an excellent trait to teach your teammates to make the same promise and commitment to themselves. The learning to drive analogy works well too because most will not give up on their driving as they want to pass their test and buy their own car.

We must not give up on ourselves when working on ourselves every day and becoming highly effective leaders.

When you or your team are starting something new, it is essential that you must get comfortable with making mistakes. If you don’t make mistakes at the beginning then you are not going to learn, or figure out how to do things better.

Some people call mistakes failures, and some people call mistakes… mistakes. It is up to you what you call yours, but the point is that we need to use our mistakes in a positive way to move forward.

The most successful people and the most successful teams in the world have made many, many, many mistakes. The difference between them and the unsuccessful ones is how they learned from those mistakes, and then took action to move forward.

A highly effective leader has made lots of mistakes too on their journey, and they know how to be comfortable with making them, and then learn from them. Mistakes will never make a highly effective leader to give up on themselves, or their team.

3. Striving Towards Your Potential

As you strive towards reaching your own potential, and as you strive towards helping the team reach theirs, you must do it with high intensity. By keeping the high intensity up, it will energise you and the team, and your willingness to succeed will ever increase.

Whatever influence you have on yourself and your team today, it can always be increased tomorrow. If you think that you are great already, then you can always be greater tomorrow, make no mistake about that.

The question is: Do you have what it takes to increase your influence, become a highly effective leader, and strive to reach your full potential?

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If you are then you must work on yourself every day and not give up on yourself. Your full potential is in the distance, but it can be reached. However, it cannot be reached if you only work on yourself once a week, or even three times a week. It can only be reached if you commit to working on yourself every day.

You can only become a highly effective leader if you work on yourself with high intensity. You can only become a highly effective leader if you help others to work on themselves every day too, and strive to reach their full potential.

You can only become a highly effective leader if you remain positive, and work to improve your character every single day. You can only become a highly effective leader if you commit to becoming a highly effective leader. The only way to become a highly effective leader is: DO NOT QUIT

Quitting on yourself and your team is the easy way out. If you start something, why not work on yourself every day, help others, and make it a success that you can be truly proud of.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Check out my other articles by Clicking HERE

All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)

A highly effective leader knows and understands that to build a high performing team, you can’t focus on the product, you can’t focus on the competition, and you can’t focus on results. You MUST focus on the people.

How would you describe the atmosphere in your team right now? Is it positive? Is it negative? Do the team feel that you care for them? The reason I ask this is because when people leave a team or an organisation, the main reason is not because of the job.

The main reason is because of the relationship they have with their boss. If the relationship is good, then they will tend to stay. If the relationship is bad, then they are more likely to leave. How is the relationship with your team?

1. Reasons Why People Leave Their Job

If you think back to your career, if you have ever left a job, what was the reason you left that job? Was it because you didn’t like the job, or you didn’t have a good relationship with your boss?

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I know for me, when I have left most jobs in the past, it was because of the relationship with my boss. Speaking with my friends and past colleagues, they left their jobs for the same reason too.

In some of the teams I have led, I have had people leave because our relationship was breaking down. That was a failure on my part, but it was something I learned from, and I never let that happen again.

What I found that was even worse was a team member, or team members who disengaged with everything we were doing. They were part of the team physically, but mentally and emotionally they were somewhere else, and didn’t care.

So, they have quit the team, but stay anyway, because they were getting good money. It was my responsibility to deal with that, and the best way to deal with it was to remove them from the team.

If I didn’t remove them then they would influence the rest of the team in a very negative way. My leadership and integrity would also be under question. I couldn’t allow that to happen and removed them ASAP. Once they were out of the team, things improved.

2. What To Focus On As A Team Leader

Your best performing team members is who you need to focus on, but if you have team members who are contaminating the rest of the team, then you need to remove them. If you don’t remove them then your best performers will move on.

Other companies or departments would happily take them, and you cannot afford that. So you need to look within yourself, and decide how much you want to keep your best performers. What lengths will you go to, to ensure they stay?

I’ve worked with some really great performers in my career, but I’ve seen some of them reluctantly leave the team, and the company. I was actually one of them.

The reasons we wanted to leave this time was not solely due to the relationship with the boss, it was because we were working with team members who didn’t want to be there.

But, they wouldn’t leave. I found it amazing that they would want to continue being miserable in life, and drag everybody else down to be as miserable as they were. In the end, because our leaders wouldn’t remove these people from the team, we had no choice but to move on.

Making the decision to remove a team member from the team was very tough I found. However, it is something that has to be done. Low performing leaders will not make this decision, and will allow the poor performers to remain in the team.

What the low performing leader doesn’t know is that he/she is dragging the team down by not removing the poor performers.

3. How I learned From My Mistakes

When I was engineering technical manager for a London based train operating company, I had an issue. The team was very big, and there were a number of poor performers in the team.

I allowed them to stay, and over time the team got worse. My best performers were getting very upset, so the poor performers were removed. What I was upset about was, I should have dealt with it a lot earlier. This was something I learned from, and wouldn’t let happen again.

The reason low performing leaders do not deal with the low performers by removing them, is because of what comes after. They don’t want to go through the process of hiring new people, and interviewing.

They see this as an obstacle, rather than embracing it as a change, or an improvement. So, they choose the easy way out and let the low performers stay. That is how I saw it until I made that tough decision, and would never let that happen again.

A highly effective leader will know very quickly who their low performers are. They will realise that if they cannot grow and develop them anymore, then they will remove them.

A highly effective leader will see this as an opportunity to strengthen the team, by hiring a new team member. By acting this way, the team will start to feel and perform better. Results will improve, and morale will be lifted.

The leader’s influence will increase, and the team will increase their respect and trust in him/her. While the team is one or two positions vacant, the existing team will not mind covering those vacancies. That will show that they respect what the leader has just done for them, by removing toxic people.

Then, when the new team member, or team members are recruited, the best performers will help bring them up to speed. They will lead this new change in the team, and increase their influence further. This will multiply the leader’s influence, and improve morale in the team even more.

At this stage in my life and career, and with the experiences I’ve had leading teams, I know that you need to focus on your best performers. Focus on them by being very deliberate with them. That is how you retain them.

The leadership principles that you are learning, if you apply them, then your best performers will not only stay, but they will thrive. By reading this post I know you want to create a high performing team.

4. What Kind Of Team Do You Want?

I know you want a team that values you as the leader. I know you want a team that value each other. I know you want a team that work well together. I know you want a team that love working with the organisation.

Your best performers will love increasing their influence, by helping the other team members. They will love multiplying your influence. If you apply what you are learning, you will be on the right path to making this happen for your team.

A low performing leader will more than likely have a team of low performers, and the reason for that is because the insecure leader is a low performer too. To attract and retain good performers, you need to be a great performer.

Then you can develop your good performers into great performers. That is what a highly effective leader does. Is this you?

When you start to apply these leadership principles and you begin to improve as a leader, your team will begin to improve too. As this is happening, you will gain other followers from outside your team.

You will begin to attract good performers who want to join you in the future. Then, as you are growing and developing your team, your best performers will become leaders themselves. They will become good enough to take up your position. Or, they could take up another leadership position within the company.

If they do, then you must feel nothing but pride, and encourage them to move on. Only if that is what they want, and they are ready. If they do move on, you will have attracted other good performers to take their position. So, the recruitment process will become easier for you.

I’ve discussed earlier about my relationship with my engineering director when I worked in Liverpool, and how he put me through University, and developed me.

However, he didn’t just develop me, he developed almost everybody in the engineering department. He was creating leaders within his department.

He focussed on improving everyone’s environment and the facilities, then he deliberately focussed on improving us. He wanted to create leaders, so he would put his best performers through development training.

Then he would give them opportunities to become stars. When he focussed on his best performers and developed them, he would fill leadership positions with the same best performers. The great thing was, they already had the leadership training, and opportunities to practice before they took up the role.

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As for me, a leadership position became available in Scotland as an engineering production manager, and he encouraged me to take up that role. The reason he did that was not to remove me from the team, it was because he knew it would be good for me.

He did tell me the pride he felt in helping me get to this position, and I will never forget him for that. He was a highly effective leader.

When you become a highly effective leader, you too will feel the same pride he, me and many other highly effective leaders feel when they help, grow and develop their teams.

A highly effective leader looks forward and pulls his team with him to the future. An insecure leader looks backwards and pushes his team from the past.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Check out my other articles by Clicking HERE

All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)

Working on yourself with purpose will lead to great things. Waiting for things to happen will only lead to exactly what you already have. What would you rather have?

When you start to put into action the principles you are learning, you will be working on yourself with purpose and taking action. Then you will start to see opportunities coming up that you MUST EMBRACE – EVEN IF YOU’RE SCARED.

Building relationships with new people and building your network will also lead to many more opportunities. You will find that people who you don’t know in your organisation will start to either talk to you or talk about you as you increase your influence. So again, embrace it.

Increasing your influence and building relationships will not happen overnight, it does take hard work. Personal growth is a lifelong journey, it is not an event or something that just happens once.

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You need to put the effort in when applying and then practicing the principles in this post. But, don’t get discouraged and NEVER GIVE UP. Keep working at it, and you will start to see the benefits. I promise you, things will start to change for the better, just believe in the process.

What I am sharing in this post are principles that I have applied to my own life by taking action on them. They are not principles that I have read about, or have been taught and not done anything with. These are principles that I have worked on for the last twenty years of my life, and I am still taking action on them right now.

Twenty years sounds like a long time, but it isn’t. I need to keep practicing, taking action and learning more about leadership I need to continue building trust and increasing my influence every day for the rest of my life.

1. Are You Applying What You Are Learning In Your Own Life?

You have decided to do the same, so start applying the same principles in this post, and take action. When you take action every day, you will also be learning every day too. You will be learning about leadership, building trust, increasing your influence and many other things. While you are doing that, the opportunities will come to you.

If you keep taking action every day and making sacrifices, then eventually these principles will become habits. When that happens you will start to practice them almost automatically. In fact, it will feel strange one day if you don’t work on yourself at all, as it will be uncomfortable for you.

Remember, make sacrifices today, so that your personal growth and your influence will increase in the future. If you have the will and desire to make sacrifices then your opportunities and relationship building will continue to grow too.

Always bring people with you on the journey. Everything you learn each day, please share with your team mates, your boss and other people within your organisation. Share with your friends and family too, especially any younger people.

When the learning flows from you into others and you see them doing better, that will in turn help you to keep doing better too.

2. How Much Do You Believe In Yourself?

In the future if you ever meet me, I want to learn from you just as much as you learn from me. I want you to take me on your journey, which is why I wrote this post. I want to share what I have learned with as many people as possible, and I in turn want to learn from them.

I have the belief that you can change. I have the belief that you can improve. I have the belief that you can increase your influence. I have the belief that you can become the best person that you can be. I have the belief that you can be a highly effective leader.

How much do you believe in yourself? How much are you willing to sacrifice? How much are you willing to risk? How much are you willing to step out of your comfort zone? How much are you willing to fail?

Not being afraid to fail is very difficult to grasp. But, it is something that we all have to do in life. Failing is how we learn. Just NEVER GIVE UP!

If you give up, then you have failed. If you don’t give up and keep trying, then eventually you will succeed. DO NOT GIVE UP!

3. How Do You Use Failure?

All the way through our lives, we have failed at things. When we were babies we couldn’t talk, we could just make noises. Then after a couple of years, after failing to say specific words, we eventually did start talking. Then after another year or two we could talk perfectly well like anybody else.

Nobody taught us really, we just listened, tried, failed, listened, tried, failed, listened, tried, and failed, until we could talk. Our parents supported us and tried to help but we learned all on our own.

When you are learning how to lead and increase your influence in your team, it is exactly the same. You will learn, try, fail, learn, try, fail, learn, try, and fail, until something works for you. Then you go through the process again. It is all trial and error, and the important thing is to NEVER GIVE UP!

You will come across obstacles on your journey, and some will be tough to overcome. The biggest obstacle that I came across, and still come across is myself. That is why I work on myself every day, to try to decrease the obstacle.

Try to think of every obstacle as an opportunity to learn. Whether that obstacle is you or from something/somebody else. Remember, EMBRACE NEW OPPORTUNITIES – EVEN IF YOU’RE SCARED.

You should be very proud of yourself that you have come this far, I am very proud of you. I know lots of “leaders” who won’t read a leadership book because they don’t think they have to. When actually, they need to read one more than anyone else I have met.

4. What Do You Think Is Your Responsibility?

With the knowledge you now have on leadership and influence, it is your responsibility to take action. It is your responsibility to practice and share what you have learned. Treat it as an obligation, do your best to make it work, and things will happen for you and your team.

If you have found this post valuable, then please encourage others to read it too. Forward this post onto your team, and encourage your boss to read it. If you forward this on to your team, it will show them that you believe in them and that they have the potential to go from average team members to excellent team members.

To increase your influence with your boss and the other bosses within the organisation, tell them what you have learned and what your plan for your personal growth is.

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Tell them where you want to be in the next 5 years, and share with them how you are going to strive towards that 5 year target. Encourage others within your organisation to share leadership principles with their teams.

I want to help you build a great career and become a leader not only within your team, but also in your industry, and throughout your life. We work in a world of business that needs more excellent team members and highly effective leaders. That is where you come in.

It would be great to hear your thoughts on how this post has helped you on your leadership journey, and also how you are progressing with increasing your influence. I would love for you to leave a comment.

Believe in yourself enough to take a risk! To create the future you want, you must ensure that it is not the same as your past.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Check out my other articles by Clicking HERE

All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)

By living your values, and leading from the front, you are building a stronger team, and a stronger culture. By sharing your values, you are creating highly effective leaders.

What do you value, and how do you think? Everybody has values, and everybody has a way of thinking. Being part of a team of people were each team member thinks differently, and has different values would be a very hard team to build.

For example, a highly effective leader thinks very differently to a low performing leader. They also have very different results because of what they value.

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So, in order to build this kind of team, it takes discipline, sacrifice, responsibility, and engagement. A highly effective leader will definitely have value these traits. However, a low performing leader definitely won’t.

1. Working With Difficult Teams

I’ve met and worked with a lot of people who were part of difficult teams, but they did not have the discipline, they did not make the sacrifices, they did not take the responsibility, and they did not engage enough to help make their team better. The reason for this was because they did not share these values.

I have also met and worked with people who were part of difficult teams, and they did have the discipline, they did make the sacrifices, they did take on the responsibility, and they did engage enough to make the team better.

In which they eventually did help their team improve. I was part of some of these teams too. We have discussed previously that to make something happen then we must be willing to work on ourselves every day, and help others at the same time. That is the price we must pay.

We must pay the price and have the courage to increase our influence with our team if we want to see it improve, and achieve better results.

2. Having The Respect Of Our Team

For our influence to increase within our team every day, then we must have the respect of our teammates. People who demand respect have false influence, and they are usually the boss.

Teams will respect the position of the boss, but they will never respect the person if they demand respect. People who earn respect will be able to increase their influence authentically, and their team will them as a person.

We hear leaders talking a lot about culture, and how we need to change it. What we value, how we behave, and how we feel to be part of the team is what culture is.

3. Changing The Culture

So, to change the culture, firstly we need to know what each team member values, how those values are making them behave, and we need to learn how they feel at this present moment in time.

Why do we need to know these things? Because to change the culture, we need to change the values of the team, so that we can change the behaviour of the team, and then help our teammates to feel differently about being part of the team.

To be a highly effective leader we need to live and breathe the values that a highly effective leader believes in. We need to set the example and model those values and behaviours every day.

As this is the only way we can influence our teammates to change their values, and adopt the same as ourselves. We cannot force them to change their values, it all comes down to our ability to influence, and how we set the example.

When it comes to determining your future, and what your vision is for your career, and your life, it starts with how you think. What you value in your life produces your thoughts, and then how you feel because of your thoughts.

From your thoughts, you then decide what you are going to do, or what action you are going to take. From the action you then take will determine what results you produce. From the results you have produced will lead to the circumstances you are currently living in.

I talk a lot about working on ourselves every single day to become highly effective leaders, and to continually grow. If you don’t value working on yourself every day, then you will not become a highly effective leader, and you will not continually grow each day.

If you do value working on yourself every day, then you will think about working on yourself every day too. What you value is the beginning of all of your thoughts, produces your first thoughts of the day, and all of your thoughts throughout the day.

4. How To Become A Highly Effective Leader

So, to become a highly effective leader, you must share the values of a highly effective leader, which will then fuel your thoughts of becoming a highly effective leader.

Whatever thoughts you have will then determine how you feel. If you currently don’t feel like a highly effective leader, it is because you are not thinking like a highly effective leader.

Your feelings influence what decisions you make and what action you take. If you want to start feeling like a highly effective leader, then you need to change your thoughts, and think like a highly effective leader thinks. When you start thinking differently, you will feel differently.

How you feel will then influence what decisions you make, and what action you take. We can all be influenced by different people. So what we are thinking, and how we are feeling can be influenced by different people too.

If we are influenced to think and feel negatively, then we may be influenced to act in a negative manner. If we are influenced to think and feel positively, then it is highly likely that we will act positively because that will make us feel good.

The results we produce will come from the action we have taken. If we act in a negative manner, then we will produce negative results. If we act in a positive manner, then we will produce positive results.

Whatever decision we make will determine what action we take. So, if we want to produce good positive results, then we must make good and positive decisions.

Our current circumstances have come from the results we have produced throughout your life and career. If we are not happy with your current circumstances then we must go back to the beginning and change what we value.

The root cause of our circumstances have come from what we value. A highly effective leader knows this, and to help others change their circumstances, they must first help to influence them to change what they value.

Ultimately, it should be the leader of the team to influence the team members to change their values, and change their behaviours. But, if the leader is not capable, and isn’t a highly effective leader, then someone else will have to do it.

Otherwise, nobody will do it, and the team will not be a team at all. They will be a group of individuals, all with different values.

What usually happens with a group of individuals with different values is, they have to follow certain rules to keep everyone in line. For example, what time they start work, who does certain tasks, when they do those tasks, and then what time they finish.

If everybody shared values, and were striving towards the same vision and goal, then there would be no need for rules.

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If the leader of the team is weak, then a highly effective team player will put their hand up to take over. A highly effective leader will talk to each team member individually to find out what their values are.

If everyone has different values, then the highly effective leader will share their vision and values with the team, and influence them to adopt the same vision and values.

Leading by example, and showing the team the way is how they influence the team. Are you willing to take over from a weak leader, share your values, and lead from the front as a highly effective leader?

What is it you aspire to be? Do you aspire to become a highly effective leader? It’s easy to aspire, it’s very hard to achieve.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Check out my other articles by Clicking HERE

All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)

When you look in the mirror, who do you see? Do you see someone you love or someone you don’t like? To love yourself, you need to be able to master yourself, otherwise you will be mastered, and constantly see someone you don’t like.

When I worked in Liverpool for their train operating company, it was about 2009. I was invited on a 3 day leadership development training course with, in a group of senior managers, heads of departments, and a couple of directors.

At that time I was a project manager, so I didn’t have the same authority as the senior leaders. The course would take place in a hotel, away from Liverpool, so it was a 2 night stay over affair.

In my group there was about 20 people and they were not all senior leaders. There were some that were my level too, so we weren’t overpowered by seniority.

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It wasn’t all engineering either, there was finance, HR, operations and customer service. It was a great way to network with other people in the organisation, and to increase our influence with each other.

1. Why Do Organisations Deliver Leadership Training?

The main reason for the leadership development training, was to help the senior leaders brush up on the leadership skills. But, also to try and develop the rest of the business into leaders. At that time it was the leadership positions that were making all the decisions, and coming up with the ideas.

However, the organisation decided they wanted to change that, so that everybody else got their chance too. The concept and the purpose of the training was great, and I enjoyed the 3 days.

I felt great on the last day of the training. I felt like I had everything in front of me, and I was ready to go from employee to leader. I was transforming, and I was amazed at how the other people in my group felt the same too. All of this in just 3 short days was great.

It was great during the breaks, and when we had dinner in the evening. We were talking about the changes we wanted to make. I didn’t have my own team back then, but I felt like I could make a difference in the teams I was working with. Everybody was so positive, and was full of ideas.

When the final day of training ended, we were all asked to give a 5 minute talk on what we had learned. We had to plan what we were going to take away, and how we were going to implement what we had learned. The first person to speak was one of the senior leaders, however he didn’t seem to be as upbeat, or as positive as the rest of us.

2. Do You Put Into Action What You Learn?

A couple of his team members took the same 3 day course two weeks earlier than us, and he said that when they came back to work, they were positive, and wanted to make a difference. Then after a couple of days, they went straight back to the way they were before they took the course. They went back to being negative and bitter.

Then, as soon as he said that, the other senior managers basically agreed with him. They had the same issue with their team members who had also previously taken the course.

The course trainer asked this particular senior leader to go into more detail, and he basically just said, “The guys came back from your 3 day course, and they were really excited with what they learned, and what they were going to do. But, after a couple of days the fire that was burning inside them went out, and they fell back into their old routine of waiting to be told what to do.”

I saw this as an opportunity for me to make a contribution to the group, so I interrupted and asked, “What are your thoughts on why this happened?”

He replied to me by just shrugging his shoulders, basically telling me he didn’t know why, and that he hadn’t even thought about it. I didn’t want to overstep the mark with this person, but I wanted to help him.

So, I told him, “They went back to their normal selves again because of you.” He gave me a dirty look and said, “What would you know, you’ve never managed a team before.” I didn’t reply to that, and the rest of the group stayed silent for a minute or so.

3. Do You Embrace Opportunities To Help Others?

But, what I was trying to do was to help him look within himself, and take responsibility for his team. Not to look outwards and blame his team members.

The course trainer took this conversation over from me, and then said to the senior leader, “I agree with Tom. They have come to my course and learned new skills, and were excited to make a difference. Did you allow them to? Or, did you create the environment for them so they had the opportunity to make that difference?”

He said, “I suppose not.” I could tell that this leader did not lead his team well, and was an insecure leader. The trainer knew this too.

I knew that the same thing was going to happen to everyone in every single group. They would come in for 3 days, change themselves and their thoughts. Then when they go back to work they will be exactly the same as they were before.

So, we didn’t and couldn’t truly transform ourselves during those 3 days, so we went back to normal. This indeed was the case with every team member. The sad thing was, the leaders blamed the trainers. They said that there training wasn’t good enough.

When in reality, the reason the team members went back to being their old selves, is because of the leaders of the company. They were unable to lead their teams at the level required.

During the course, every team member was released to pursue their leadership potential. Then when they came back to work, their leaders drove all the positivity and hope out of them. So, the team went back to only doing what was expected of them, and being told what to do.

The leaders were not willing to make the sacrifices required to work on themselves every day. So, they would never be able to transform into highly effective leaders. As the leader didn’t make those sacrifices, their team suffered. They were not inspired or motivated to go the extra mile, and could not follow a positive role model’s example.

4. How are you feeling about transforming yourself?

Are you going to be the same way as we were in 2009? Are you going to go back to work, and your life being exactly the same way as you were before?

Or, are you going to sustain, and apply what you learn by taking action? Are you going to transform yourself by working on yourself every day? Are you going to strive towards developing into a highly effective leader?

Are you going to help your team to do the same? Are you going to increase your influence with them, so they can increase their influence and multiply yours? Are you willing to make the sacrifices required to get to where you want to be?

I hope you decide to work on yourself every day, and I hope you decide to develop and grow into a highly effective leader. When I read my first leadership book and attended my first course, I made the same decision, and I have been working on myself every day.

If you make the same decision as I did, then your opportunities to lead will be limitless. Your opportunities to advance your leadership skills, and career will open up to you. Just keep working on yourself every day.

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If you decide to not do anything, and go back to the way you were before then this post and website has been a waste of time for you.

To transform yourself and your team, it is hard work, and you need to have strength to be able to do it. If you decide to transform. If you decide to work on yourself, and help others to do the same then you will become a highly effective leader.

You will touch many people’s lives, and you will make the difference that you are craving to make. So, do you want to just change or do you want to transform? The decision is yours!

When change happens, do you embrace it or do you run away from it?

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Check out my other articles by Clicking HERE

All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)

People who are pessimistic see failure as final. They put failure down to an obstacle that is impossible to move or change. People who have optimism see failure as an opportunity to change, or remove an obstacle so they can turn the failure into a success.

People who have optimism know that it’s important to have a vision. They have an optimistic view and a belief for the future. A view that the future is bright. A view that the organisation they work for is going to get better.

A view that their department is going to get better. A view that the team they are part of is going to get better. A view that their teammates as individuals are going to get better. Most of all, they have a vision that they as an individual is going to work every day to get better.

1. What Is Your Vision?

Highly effective leaders know that to make their vision a reality, then they need to take action. But, what exactly do they take action on, and how do they take action? Highly effective leaders take action on their team.

They lead from the front, and firstly show their team the vision, then take them on the journey to turn that vision into a reality.

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Highly effective leaders have optimism, and before you can have a vision, you must first have optimism. When you have optimism, it will help you to raise yours and your team’s level.

However, you cannot get to the next level on optimism alone. You must take action to bring your vision to life, and make it a reality. By focussing on your vision, and taking action, you will become a highly effective leader. You will also be on the right path to building a highly effective team.

2. How Vision And Optimism Works

As competency and character work in harmony, so too does optimism and vision. To have optimism, you must first have a vision. To have a vision, you must first have optimism.

When your vision becomes 100% clear and complete, your optimism will increase. As your optimism increases, the urge to take action grows. As you continue to take action, the more your vision will become reality.

To make your vision a reality, you will be required to make sacrifices for the sake of that vision. When you have optimism for your vision, you will realise that making sacrifices is necessary.

However, to begin making sacrifices and then continue making them, you must become disciplined. By having the discipline to sacrifice, your vision will become the priority until it becomes your reality.

Will sharing this post, or sharing what you are learning from this post help your teammates? If the answer is yes, then that is because the vision you have for your team is to help them become highly effective leaders just like you.

3. What Sacrifices Are You Willing To Make?

So the first sacrifice you are making is reading this and other posts, which takes up your time. Then the second sacrifice will be sharing what you are learning, which again takes up your time. But these sacrifices are necessary for you to help turn your vision into a reality.

The action you would be taking is reading this post, and then sharing it. Hopefully you are starting to see the correlation between sacrifice and taking action, and how important it is for both to happen.

Every vision has a price, and that price is sacrifice. If you have a vision to become a highly effective leader, then you must make the sacrifices necessary and the discipline required to work on yourself every day, and make that vision a reality.

If you have a vision to help your teammates become highly effective leaders, and build a highly effective team, then you must make the sacrifice of your time, and the discipline to meet with your line manager if he/she has final say on what happens with the team.

If you have the autonomy to make things happen, then you must make the sacrifice of your time and the discipline to meet with your team. During these meetings you must lay out your vision so everybody can see it with you.

Then map out the action steps to turn your vision into a reality for you and your team. Those steps could be taking your team through each post on this website so you can share what you have learned to become a highly effective leader.

If you have other action steps in mind, then they must be mapped out and acted upon. The price must be paid to make your vision a reality for both you and your team.

4. How Ambitious Are You?

Highly effective leaders are ambitious and they want to continuously improve. They also want to help others to improve too. To accomplish these things, you must be able to see what it looks like when it is accomplished (your vision).

Your vision will create an emotion inside you that will not let you detour away from your vision (optimism). Your optimism will give you the strength to pay the price to turn your vision into a reality (sacrifice).

Your sacrifice will give you the courage to not give up on your vision (discipline). Your discipline will enable you to accomplish what you saw in the beginning (result).

It is not easy to put into place everything that is required to make a vision a reality. As you climb the leadership ladder and take up higher positions throughout your career, more people will begin to rely on you.

5. Don’t Give Up On Your Vision

You may at times want to give up on your vision, but I am here to tell you, DON’T GIVE UP. Your vision will benefit so many people, including yourself. The higher you climb, your influence will increase across so many more teams. If you continue to have optimism, your vision will become a reality and a benefit for everyone.

As I climbed higher up the leadership ladder, my level of vision raised higher too. I always saw a vision of creating highly effective leaders, and highly effective team’s. But, as I started to take on more responsibility and more people, the harder it became to get the buy-in from everyone.

Especially when these people were low performing leaders. I had the optimism that I could influence these people, but on some occasions I had to leave them behind. I left them because I couldn’t have them dragging me, or the other optimistic team members who saw the same vision behind with them. We had to continue to move forward.

I got help from my team of optimistic team players who were on the journey to becoming highly effective. They tried to sell my vision to the low performing team players, but because of how stubborn they were, and the values they had, no matter what we tried they would not buy-in.

I know for a fact that they could see the team changing. We were disciplined to persevere with making the sacrifices and taking the action required to make our vision a reality.

It gives me hope that some of the low performing team players did eventually change their ways, and came around to the vision we had. Some of them even helped us in putting things in place and took the same actions that we did.

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It goes to show that with optimism, vision, sacrifice, discipline, perseverance, and hope, you can make things happen and bring people along with you. For the sake of yourself, your vision, and your team, just DON’T GIVE UP.

Your vision must become a commitment, if you commit then you are more likely to not give up on it. If you think you can turn your vision into a reality, then you will.

You are reading this post, so I believe that you have a vision, and I believe you have what it takes to make your vision a reality.

Successful people see failures as a stepping stone to ultimately achieve their greatest victories.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Check out my other articles by Clicking HERE

All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)

You cannot grow by accident. You can only grow on purpose.

You will have heard the term “develop yourself” before. People you know or who you work with have probably said that you need to develop yourself in some area. But, what does “develop yourself” actually mean?

It means, WORK ON YOURSELF WITH PURPOSE. It took me a while to figure out that you cannot develop or work on yourself accidentally, it has to be with purpose.

Have a think of where you are in your career and life today. How did you get there? Did you plan to be where you are or did it just kind of happen?

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The reason I ask these questions is because to “work on yourself with purpose” and to grow, we need a plan of action. That doesn’t mean create a plan and then stick it in the drawer.

1. What Is Your Plan Of Action?

It means create a plan that we must be extremely disciplined in acting on. If we don’t work to a plan, then within the next 5 years, you will more than likely be exactly where you are now. Or, you might be somewhere else, and who knows where that will be?

When I’ve told the story previously about my company paying for me to go to university, before that I didn’t really have a plan for growth.

But, my engineering director believed in me and wouldn’t let me go to university unless I had a plan of action for the next 5 years. So, with help from other team members I put a plan together and stuck to it rigorously.

When I started taking action on my plan, there were a lot of doors that opened for me. I had a 4 year degree to work on part time. I joined an engineering graduate scheme where I would do placements to gain more experience.

I went on courses to help me gain more qualifications, they would help me in my current and future roles in the industry. I started reading personal development books, including leadership books almost every day.

Working on myself with purpose really did help me attract things into my life too. I was able to do things that I never thought I would ever do.

If you were to do the same, then your boss and the other bosses in your organisation will notice this. They will see that you are working on yourself with purpose. They will start to realise that you are changing from an average team member to an excellent team member.

They will see that you are becoming a leader within your team. They will start to talk to each other about you, and work out ways to utilise your new skills and attitude for the better. So, expect more responsibility even if you don’t ask for it.

2. Are You Acting On Your Plan?

The opportunities will start to come to you, and the reason for this is because you are acting on your plan. Not because you have created a plan and put it in the drawer.

Obviously, the plan will adjust and be changed from time to time, but don’t worry about that. What is important is that you are constantly working on the plan, and on yourself with purpose. You do this by acting on your plan. If something happens at a time when you didn’t expect it, don’t worry, it has happened. Just keep focussed.

For example, let’s assume that you are now at a level of excellence, and you are exactly where you need to be according to your personal growth plan.

The next steps in your plan is to move into a promotion within the company and that you need to be computer literate for the role. However, at the moment you don’t have the skills that are required for the job.

So, you are not fully prepared to apply for the role when it becomes available in the future. It is highly likely that someone else will be computer literate and has what is required to do the job you want. This is because you have not added computer skills to your plan.

If you only start working on your computer skills when you are “required to”, e.g. for a job, then you are not working on yourself with purpose. If you know that at some stage you are going to need to be computer literate for the future roles that you want, then you need to work on those skills with purpose.

3. How Are You Preparing Your Plan?

You need to be working on yourself much sooner. This way you will be fully prepared before you are “required to”. Otherwise you are just being hopeful.

Being hopeful is not preparation. But, you need to be hopeful to prepare.

Preparation within your plan is part of practicing your leadership skills as a team member. One of the leadership principles that I practice is to plan, and then act on the plan. If others see you do this, then they will start to follow in your footsteps and develop their own plans. This is you leading by example.

Another principle that we must practice when working on ourselves with purpose is sacrifice. I struggled with sacrifice for many years, in fact it is the leadership principle that I still need to work hardest on.

With your plan, you have a vision for the future. That could be for the next 5 years or longer. To make that vision a reality, you need to make some sacrifices. In order for you to make those sacrifices you need to believe very strongly in your vision, and have the desire to make it a reality.

If you don’t make the sacrifices required to make your vision a reality, then you will stay exactly where you are. Or, you might end up somewhere else, wherever that may be.

An example of sacrifice is giving up part of your social life to help your future. Are you willing to do that?

So, if you choose to work on your computer skills with purpose, you will be fully prepared for the roles you want in the future that require those skills. An example of this would be to enroll in computer skills courses, shadow a person who has these skills or, read books on the subject.

4. Avoid The Excuses With Daily Goals

What you must never do is find an excuse of why you don’t have the skills that you need. When it comes to your plan, there are no such things as excuses or blame. You are the only person that controls your plan, so you are the only person who can make it work or not.

How many excuses do you make a day?

I work on myself with purpose every single day, and you can too.

How I do this is to have one daily goal that I want to work on with purpose. I then choose the most important things that are required every single day to reach my daily goal, and do them until I reach the goal.

The goal doesn’t have to be huge, but it does need to be important so that will keep you focussed. By focussing on working on yourself and your plan with purpose is how you develop.

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Once you have reached your daily goal, you must then develop your goal for the next day and figure out what you need to do to reach that goal. Please ensure that this is not a “to do” list, it is a daily action plan that is designed for you to work on yourself with purpose.

An example of one of my daily action plans is to:

• Teach at least one person about leadership
• Share my leadership quotes on social media
• Write about my day and how I led my people
• Read part of a leadership book or blog

What are you going to do today, so that tomorrow you won’t have to?

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Check out my other articles by Clicking HERE

All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)

One thing we all need to realise is that we all work for ourselves, we do not work for anyone else. That includes YOU. You only work WITH others, this is also including your boss. Throughout my career, I have worked with few great bosses, some average bosses, and a lot more bad bosses.

As I grew in my career, I always felt the need to ask for more responsibility. A lot of my bosses were reluctant to give too much responsibility away because they were insecure, but I kept asking anyway.

I wanted to be “out of my comfort zone” so I could test myself and work on developing myself. The only way I felt I could develop was by challenging myself as much as possible, in anything I did.

I tried to vary my roles as much as possible, so I could keep challenging myself and so I wouldn’t feel stagnant. I have this fear that if I don’t challenge myself as much as possible, both in the workplace and in my personal life, then I’m not learning anymore.

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I hate the feeling of being bored in life, so the best way is to get out of my comfort zone as much as I can.

For example, when I worked in Scotland, I was there for three and half years and I must admit the job I was doing did get boring in the end because I wasn’t challenging myself enough. So since then, I have vowed to try not to let myself get bored and just drift around in life. I have vowed to challenge myself.

1. Are You Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable?

Change is discussed a lot in the workplace, and how important it is to embrace it. The reason I say that is because change makes everyone uncomfortable at first. So, it is very important that we work on being comfortable with being uncomfortable. When we do this, we are learning and getting better.

This is what personal growth really is. By walking into the unknown we are challenging ourselves. When we challenge ourselves we improve.

When I worked in Liverpool for the railway, I was offered the project engineer role. It was a new position within the company and a few other people applied for it. I didn’t have many years’ of railway experience, but I did have nine years of engineering experience.

I had also done a lot of good work since I had the meeting with my mentor and made the necessary improvements. I was offered the job and this made a few of the people unhappy. The reason they were unhappy was, some of them who applied had been at the company for a lot longer than I had.

I had worked in the automotive industry as an engineer, the heating industry as an engineer and joined the rail industry about three years earlier. So, I had experience of other industries which I believed to be an asset, as I could look at things from a different perspective.

But, a lot of people in the engineering industry seem to get angry and upset when a person with fewer years’ experience is offered the job that they wanted. 

Some of the other candidates had more than fifteen years’ experience working at the same company, and doing the same job. They hadn’t applied for anything before because they were comfortable in the job they had. In other words they were “inside their comfort zone”.

So, thinking about it, they really only had six months to a year experience. But they were repeating the same job many times for fifteen years. So, who had the most experience really?

Apart from me, nobody had any experience of project engineering. I got that experience through my graduate training and some of the projects that I was already working on.

The other candidates had worked on the shop floor as part of the maintenance teams, and it was very rare that they would be asked to lead any projects. Maybe this was something for the managers to think about.

Or, maybe the guys who applied for the role should have asked for more responsibility. They should have been recommending new ideas, solutions, and projects. If they did that then they could have led these ideas, turned them into projects, and gained the experience required.

2. Do You Like To Challenge Yourself?

I like to challenge myself and move “out of my comfort zone”. That is exactly what I was doing by applying for and being offered the project engineer role. I received training on how to use project planning tools that I had never used, and other essential courses that the job required.

Most of all, I built relationships with other people within the organisation that helped me to increase my influence further.

This website is entitled “Highly Effective Leader.” Most of what we will discuss is directed to your life as a team member, and a leader of teams in the workplace. However, the principles I am sharing can be practiced in any part of your life. Whether that’s at home, with your friends or in any social activities that you are part of.

You can “get out of your comfort zone” anywhere, not just at work. So, with that in mind, where else can you challenge yourself? How are you going to challenge yourself? When are you going to challenge yourself? What will you do to challenge yourself? How are you going to make yourself more valuable at home and at work?

I want you to challenge yourself at home, as much as you will at work. The reason for this is, this is how you will get ahead quicker, as opposed to others who only try to grow at work. It is probably something you haven’t thought about doing before.

Challenging yourself and “getting out of your comfort zone” at home is just as important. A way to challenge myself both at home and at work was to start this website, and help others.

I mentioned earlier that a lot of my bosses were reluctant to give away too much responsibility because they were insecure. Well, challenging yourself is how you learn more about yourself. By you knowing yourself better, this will make you more secure and less insecure.

You can be the most accomplished person in the world, but the most insecure person too. Work on yourself, know yourself, and make yourself more secure.

3. How Does Personal Growth Happen?

Personal growth doesn’t happen when you’re in a comfortable state. When you’re uncomfortable, that is when personal growth happens. To grow, we need to work on ourselves, push ourselves, and challenge ourselves. We cannot grow by accident or by waiting for things to happen. We need to make things happen for ourselves.

That is the only way YOU will grow.

Does your company offer you opportunities to grow (e.g. courses, mentoring, or change)? If they do, are you taking them up on their offers? If you are then keep taking them. If you are not, then you are losing out and not growing, which is the worst thing you can do.

If you are still waiting for your company to offer you these opportunities, then you are missing out too. You need to find these opportunities for yourself. Create the opportunities to change by recommending new projects or processes, as we discussed earlier.

Challenge yourself every day.

4. What Is The Foundation Of Leadership?

Always remember, trust is the foundation of leadership. Does your boss and other bosses within the organisation trust you? I ask this because a way to challenge yourself is to apply for higher roles. If the boss doesn’t trust you, then you won’t get the job.

If they do trust you then there is a high possibility that will get the job. Building trust is not easy, and is a challenge. We will discuss building trust on many occasions throughout my future posts.

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Do you know where you want to be in 5 years? If not, then you are already there.

When I first heard that statement, it really hit home. That was about 13 years ago, and I took personal growth extremely serious. I encourage you to really think about it too. Do your best to work out where you want to be in the next 5 years. When you know that, you can plan towards it, and work on yourself to strive towards that 5 year target.

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