Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

The more specific you can be about your goal, the greater your level of success will be," explain authors  Tom Pandola  and  James W. Bird , in their book,  Light A Fire Under Your Business . "This is because once we have visualized something that doesn't yet exist, it causes our subconscious mind to make the decisions necessary to make that visualized goal a reality." The authors explain that all goals must have these  five elements : Goals must clarify a specific action or outcome. Goals must be measureable by being able to quantify the benefits of achieving them. Goals should be achievable with the resources available (or at least you should know that the necessary resources are in reserve and can be acquired). Goals must also be realistic for achieving based on your particular situation. Goals must also include the time period in which you want to achieve them. With a date or time period specified for completion, planning can be established in order for eval...

Jack H. Llewellyn , PhD is a sports psychology consultant who has helped a major league baseball pitcher become a Cy Young Award winner, A NASCAR driver go from number six overall to number one and with the Winston Cup Series Championship, and countless leaders at Fortune 500 companies. Now, he’s written the book,  Commonsense Leadership: No-Nonsense Rules for Improving Your MentalGame and Increasing Your Team’s Performance . This is an excellent book for leaders at any stage in their leadership career. It’s a results-driven guidebook that teaches you how to recover quickly from adversity, thrive on stress, preform on the emotional edge, and create a motivating environment (instead of trying to motivate people). My favorite chapter is the one titled,  Winning versus Surviving . In it, Llewellyn outlines the  life factors that can fuel your everyday success . Some of those factors include: No. 1  – Winners expect to win every day. Your plan as a leader should be based...

  Unleashing Your Inner Leader , by Vickie Condolff Bevenour, provides these six easy steps to help you find and work with a mentor:  Step 1 – Find the person in your company or industry that you most respect. Step 2 – Ask her or him to be your mentor. Step 3 – Agree with this person on the time commitment for mentoring you (e.g., 30- to 60-minute meeting or phone/Zoom-style call every month). Step 4 – Explain to this person the goal of the mentoring relationship (e.g. “My strength is _____and I want to find more opportunities to use it in my daily work.”). Step 5 – Describe the top three reasons why you chose this person. Step 6 – Explore together what success would look like and mean to you in the next six months.  Bevenour shares that, “Imagine that if you follow this plan, in five years you will have 10 people who know you and will help support you in your career. This is truly career gold.”  Thank you to the book’s publisher for sendi...

Beyond the helpful advice from Brian Tracy within his book, Earn What You’re Really Worth , are these quotes I find inspiring:  “The most delightful surprise in life is to suddenly recognize your own worth.” – Maxwell Maltz   “There are risks and costs to a plan of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.” – John F. Kennedy  “Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.” – Napoleon Hill   “We cannot do great deeds unless we’re willing to do the small things that make up the sum or greatness.” – Theodore Roosevelt  “Pretend that every person you meet has a sign around her or his neck that says, ‘make me feel important.’ Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.” – Mary Kay Ash  

  The book, The Hidden Leader , helps managers spot, cultivate, and keep the hidden leaders within their companies. It provides real-world examples and the specific tactics to take to identify those individuals and then nurture and encourage them.  Hidden leaders are distinguished by four key facets of character and behavior: Integrity , demonstrated consistently, even in difficult situations. A priority on leading through authentic relationships . Focusing on achieving results rather than completing tasks. Remaining highly customer purposed .  Read this book to hone your skills on how to find the hidden leaders within your company regardless of their position or title.  Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me a copy of the book.

  Vijay Govindarajan’s book, The Three Box Solution , is all about how to: Box 1 – Manage your present core business at peak efficiency and profitability. Box 2 – Escape the traps of the past by identifying and divesting business and abandoning practices, ideas, and attitudes that have lost relevance in a changed environment. Box 3 – Generate breakthrough ideas and convert them into new products and businesses. And, as leaders, he recommends that you e nsure your organization does now fall into any of these three traps: The Complacency Trap – where current success conditions a business to suppose that securing the future requires nothing more than repeating what it did to succeed in the past. The Cannibalization Trap – that persuades leaders that new business models based on nonlinear ideas will jeopardize your company’s present prosperity. In other words, don’t protect your present core business by resisting ideas that don’t conform to models of the past. The Co...

  “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.” -- Michelangelo