Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 11:25am by JRed

This chapter titled The Success Delusion, or Why We Resist Change concludes Section One of this book.

One thing that really struck me from this chapter was the powerful statement the author makes about how all of us in the workplace delude ourselves about our achievements, our status, and our contributions.

* We overestimate our contribution to a project

* We take credit - - partial or complete - - for successes that truly belong to others

* We have an elevated opinion of our professional skills and our standing among peers

* We conveniently ignore the costly failures and time-consuming dead-ends we have created

* We exaggerate our projects’ impact on net profits because we discount the real and hidden costs built into them (the costs are someone else’s problems; the success is ours)

He astutely points out that all of these delusions are a direct result of success, not failure. That’s because we get positive reinforcement from our past successes, and, in a mental leap that’s easy to justify, we think that our past success is predictive of great things in our future.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but our delusions become a serious liability when we need to change. We’ll sit there day-in-and-day-out with these feelings and when someone tries to make us change our ways we regard them with bafflement and resentment.

So, which of the above “delusions” applies to you?

I’m willing to bet that at one time or another we’ve all been guilty of each and every one of them.

I know I have!

Are you willing to change? In my experience, people only change their ways when what they truly value is threatened.

Don’t wait and put off what can benefit you and your career today.

Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 12:43pm by JRed

Growing up through High School I always loved CliffsNotes. When I got to college I remember that SparkNotes was also pretty big. While I’ve never been exactly sure who “Cliff” is and why he felt he needed to create “Notes” for his classmates and students everywhere, but I thank him wholeheartedly for his efforts.

A few months back when the calendar turned to the New Year, I issued a blog that had a tentative weekly schedule for this site. For the most part, I’ve held myself to that excpet in one area - - Book Reviews. In fact, I’ve only published one post  in this category and that was a Chapter 1 expose on the book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.

I felt it was time to resurrect this feature so that I don’t get too far behind with my reading. So, without further adieu, here’s a brief snapshot of Chapter 2. Consider this series the JeffsNotes of professional reading material.

First off, any chapter that’s only 4.5 pages in length is fantastic by me! With so much to do over the course of any given day this is exactly the type of thing I could tackle over a few sips of my morning coffee.

In Chapter 2 the author gives us a little background on himself. It was interesting to note that his career as an Executive Coach had its roots in his role advising HR departments about identifying future leaders in their companies and creating programs to form them into better leaders. Naturally, that got my attention given the industry playground I’m a part of.

The author goes on to discuss his first “test case subject” and he explains that his job is to not make successful people smarter or richer. His job is to help them to identify a personal habit that’s annoying their coworkers and to help them eliminate it so that they can retain their value to the organization.

His job is to make them see that the skills and habits that have taken them this far might not be the right skills and habits to take them further. Thus, what got them here won’t get them there.

Interestingly enough, the author also takes the time to point out that he doesn’t just work with only the super-successful Peak Performers. He maintains that there is no correlation between an individual’s standing in the corporate pyramid and what his coworkers think of his interpersonal skills. His core audience is anyone who is successful in their own minds, but who want to be even more successful.

Lastly, I must say that these 4.5 pages did a lot to generate interest and excitement and I find myself eager to continue reading the next chapter. In closing, I’ll leave you with this excerpt:

Read the rest of this entry »

Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 10:42am by JRed

Growing up, I remember that whenever my mom thought that my sister and I weren’t doing what we were told she liked to say that we were hearing her, but we weren’t listening to her.

Actually, mom had it right! It’s an important distinction.

The former implies that we simply let the words that came out of her mouth go in one ear and out the other. The latter implies that we actually heard, processed, retained and applied the words that came out of her mouth.

Peak Performers in Sales are clearly strong listeners. No question, no doubt about it. If you’re weak in this skill set you might not be as successful as you could be. If you’re looking for ways to improve start here.

What should you do if you want to measure a candidate’s abilities in this key area?

Robert Wendover in his book Smart Hiring suggests that when you interview prospective employees, ask them to write up the “minutes” of the interview.

What they produce will often give you an indication of how much they were paying attention, how well they retain information, and how organized their thought processes are.

A simple and yet extremely effective solution.

Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 3:31pm by JRed

The book opens with several endorsements from some impressive and well-known CEO’s who have worked with the author over the years.

You gotta love any book that begins by saying:

“Some people actually go through life with this unerring sense of direction. What all of these role models have in common is an exquisite sense of who they are, which translates into perfect pitch about how they come across to others. A few people never seem to need any help in getting to where they want to go. They have a built-in GPS mechanism. These people do not need my help.”

I came away from the first chapter intrigued.

I learned that there’s definitely the potential for trouble with success. With success you run the risk of allowing your previous successes to prevent you from achieving even more success.

Consequently, according to this author there are 20 distinct workplace habits that Peak Performers need to break.

You don’t have to be a CEO to benefit from this book. Simply look at your own “personal map” and trace the distance between your vision of “here and there.”

“You are here. You can get there. But you have to understand that what got you here won’t get you there. Let the journey begin.”

An inspiring first chapter to say the least!