Any entrepreneur worth their salt has dreamed of becoming a public figure. Even considering they are slow to the stage, the majority of entrepreneurs do not wish to toil behindRead More
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]]>Any entrepreneur worth their salt has dreamed of becoming a public figure. Even considering they are slow to the stage, the majority of entrepreneurs do not wish to toil behind the curtains forever. Since the turn of the century, we have been graced with the presence of a variety of entrepreneurs and visionaries that have been able to deliver lasting changes in a wide range of different fields.
From the many well-known authors we have had on The Entrepreneurs Library, I have come to learn that any entrepreneur who is thinking about becoming a public figure will excel quickly by learning from other leaders that have found tremendous amounts of success. Here’s a closer look at the essential steps that many leaders today when they first started becoming a public figure.
Andrew Carnegie is one of the first entrepreneurs that we are taught about. He was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth and grew up in a lower class household. His poverty stricken family left his native Scotland to come to America and raise their quality of life. Carnegie used his impoverished childhood as motivation.
Once Carnegie became wealthy, he was not content to sit on top of his stack of money. He reached out to those who were less fortunate, donating tens of thousands of dollars to fund hospitals and libraries. He was also one of the first entrepreneurs who wrote a book about his success, imparting his secrets to others who were in the same position he used to be in.
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past 20 years, you have heard the name Oprah Winfrey. Oprah is a testament to what you can achieve if you have the willingness to overcome the bad things that have happened in your past and continue to work towards your goals.
Oprah has become an influential public figure because of her eloquence and her ability to speak passionately about the experiences that shaped her. Because of this, people do not see her as a billionaire who is above them, she is seen as a peer, which makes more people want to purchase her products.
No matter who you are or where you are from, you have heard of Steve Jobs. While Jobs may be a polarizing person to many, there is no question that he is an influential public figure. Even in death, his quotes and philosophies are still discussed. The main lesson to be learned from Jobs is to always be yourself.
Jobs has been criticized for his sometimes abrasive approach, but he was able to command respect and become an important public figure because of his honesty and unwavering commitment to his own personal principles.
The Social Network was more than just a movie about the creation of Facebook, it also displayed Mark Zuckerberg‘s best and worst tendencies. While some entrepreneurs would be reticent to allow themselves to be portrayed in an unfavorable light, Zuckerberg gave Hollywood the permission to tell his story, warts and all.
Every entrepreneur is not going to receive the opportunity to tell their story on the big screen. By telling your whole story, you allow your audience to relate to you on a whole new level. It has the effect of humanizing you and showing people that you are far from invincible.
The Huffington Post has become one of the Internet’s most trafficked websites, making a star out of the site’s creator, Ariana Huffington, in the process. Because she provides an important publication service and educates her readers about current business, political and entertainment issues, Ariana Huffington has developed a much higher profile in recent years.
When an entrepreneur provides people with more than a simple product or service, it increases their appetite for knowledge about the person, which eases their transition into a public figure. She has gone from unheralded blogger to the pages of Time magazine, without having to pander to the lowest common denominator.
Martha Stewart is a name known throughout the world and even a prison stint could not deter her businesses. She has been able to endure as a public figure because she has successfully diversified her portfolio. While some may know Stewart from her television persona, others may know her because they purchase her linens or her magazines. Martha even makes appearances on shows like The Apprentice and Comedy Central’s Justin Bieber roast.
Martha’s media presence is varied, which gives her the unique ability to speak to a plethora of different audiences and ensures that her shelf life as a public figure is not artificially shortened. Some entrepreneurs are content to live a low profile life, working in the same field, but to become a public figure, you must be able to reach different segments of the population.
Some may know Mark Cuban as the man who was smart enough to cash out before the tech bubble burst, while others may know him as the outspoken owner of the MBA’s Dallas Mavericks franchise. Mark Cuban is able to remain in the spotlight because of his transparency and ability to tell it like it is.
For instance, Mark was one of the first major entrepreneurs to harness the awesome power of Twitter. His official, verified account now boasts nearly 3 million followers, many of whom do not even follow basketball. He gives his followers valuable insights into the business world and as a result, he has become a beloved public figure.
Top Dog: How To Impress and Influence People Around You by Andy Bounds
Credibility by Jim Kouzes
Powerhouse by Mike Clayton
Pocket Man by Scott Jordan
Charisma on Command by Charlie Houpert
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]]>Public speaking ranks as one of the biggest fears when the general public is polled on the matter. There are those out there who actually fear public speaking more thanRead More
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]]>Public speaking ranks as one of the biggest fears when the general public is polled on the matter. There are those out there who actually fear public speaking more than death, which is quite silly when you stop to think about it. When it comes to public speaking, there is no reason to be afraid.
Entrepreneurs often experience fear before public speaking engagements. Their opportunity to convince clientele and investors of their products’ worthiness hangs in the balance and this can cause a speaker to become tongue tied and sweaty. But when you follow these effective public speaking tips for entrepreneurs, you can overcome the crippling fear that keeps so many from reaching their goals and dreams.
Of course, this is a cliché, but the reason why clichés endure is because there is a great deal of truth to them. There is no skill in life that cannot be improved by practicing it over and over again and public speaking is no different. Write your speech down and read it to yourself several times. This will help you make sure that you did not use any language that does not make sense and ensure that the speech flows naturally.
Enlist friends and family who are not afraid to tell it like it is. Getting friends and family that are known for sugarcoating the truth will not help your speech either. You need as much honest feedback as you can possibly get. Those who know you are bound to be much more forgiving than those who are considering investing their resources in your product.
The more you practice, the better your delivery will become, which allows you to develop a greater connection with your audience. It also decreases the chance of your audience becoming bored and restless during your speech. As you practice, larger portions of the speech become committed to memory and you are able to increase the level of eye contact you have with audience members.
Developing more comfort with your speech is crucial. You can begin to add jokes or humorous anecdotes to spice things up and take the time to include every one of your most important points, while also trimming the fat to ensure that you do not run over the time you’ve been allotted.
Before giving your speech, it helps to take a trip to the space that you will be using, so that you can learn more about the acoustics of the area. It will also help you to walk around a bit on the stage or to stand at the podium. The entrepreneur can mentally picture a room full of people and make sure that their voice will be easy to hear.
Taking these sorts of steps ensures that you will not be caught off guard by any minor issues related to the room being used. Checking out the room you’re going to be speaking in is a great use of your time and should be done by any entrepreneur who is looking for ways to calm their nerves prior to the day of the speech.
A greater understanding of your surroundings is pivotal to giving a great speech. Removing the element of surprise from your speech is a boon to both you and your audience.
When you are preparing your speech, it is best to know what kind of audience you will be speaking to. Is your audience younger, with a shorter attention span? If so, you may want to add some visual ads and incorporate slang terms that can help to get your point across when necessary. Use any method that can help the speech resonate in the mind of your audience.
Or you could be speaking to an older, more seasoned audience. They may not be as apt to respond to visual ads and will want cold, hard facts to help them in their decision making process. No matter who you are speaking to, knowing the audience and being able to decipher their needs and wants is important.
Another component to be aware of is your virtual audience. More and more speeches are being live tweeted and streamed for interested parties all around the world. If this is true for your speech, make sure you include content that has a much greater chance of being able to go viral.
This sounds deceptively simple enough, but there is a difference between speaking about yourself and speaking about the goods and services you provide. It is good to tie in some personal facts about yourself during your speech, but not at the expense of any knowledge that could be dispensed about the product you’re speaking about.
The best speeches are those that do not come across as sales pitches, while still giving the audience all of the pertinent information that they came to hear. Walking the line between being informative and entertaining is an incredibly difficult balancing act. The person who is able to do so will have a captive audience for the duration of their spiel.
When you are formatting your speech, know which points you want to take and what knowledge you would like to impart. This will help you to tie in important information, while still being able to remain entertaining. No one wants a speech filled with personal anecdotes or one that is larded with dry facts that do not hold their interest.
What More Can I Say by Dianna Booher
Charisma On Command by Charlie Houpert
EDGY Conversations by Dan Waldschmidt
Powerhouse by Mike Clayton
Credibility by James Kouzes
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Credibility according to James Kouzes: Introduction In this episode James Kouzes reveals all his insights on Credibility where he discusses how successfulRead More
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]]>In this episode James Kouzes reveals all his insights on Credibility where he discusses how successful leaders gain credibility, lose their credibility and why people demand credibility.
In his book Kouzes and co-author Barry Posner provide you years of research, case studies, and data that uncover 6 disciplines that build true, long-lasting credibility that leadership experts are good at gaining. The goal of the book is to help you understand the basics of building credibility and why it is important for the growth of your personal and professional success.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are involved in every aspect in managing a business yet need help reinforcing their leadership abilities and building trust with others.
Many people talk about integrity and honesty as a leadership quality and intuitively that makes sense. But a couple guys at a university take that question to be also an empirical one. As so we decided to do research on that topic and found that’s one of the fundamental differences between our work and other people who write on leadership. Our work is evidence based and backed by many interviews with people who are practitioners. This book also specifically addresses what leaders can do to earn and sustain credibility.
It’s important that you start with the first couple of chapters and take a look at how we arrived at the conclusion that credibility is the foundation of leadership. From there you can read what is most relevant to you at the moment.
Remember the phase credibility is the foundation of leadership and behaviorally that is defined as do what you will say you will do.
How we came to the conclusion that credibility is the foundation of leadership is we asked people what they look for and admire in leaders. So in the opening of the book we talk about what we discovered. We discovered that there are four qualities which people consistently and globally have selected as the most important qualities that they would look for in a leader they would willingly follow. At the top of the list is honesty and that’s followed by being forward looking, then competent, and then inspiring. Three of those four words that people look for and admire in a leader make up what researchers call source credibility which is defined as trustworthiness or honesty, competence or expertise, and dynamism or being inspiring and upbeat. Those three comprise source credibility or what it takes for you to believe in someone who is delivering a message. And when they are speaking you have to believe that the person has integrity, that they are expert in what they are talking about, and that they have some energy that they put behind it. With that as the foundation we asked the people that were involved in our research to answer the question what is credibility behaviorally, how do you know it when you see it. People look for somebody who does what he/she says they will do and that observation about behavioral credibility lead then to us taking a look at what one does to sustain credibility. We came up with a framework that has three parts to it. And from that there were six disciplines which are discover yourself, appreciate continuance, affirmed shared values, develop capacity, serve a purpose, and lastly is to sustain hope.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 04:37
“If you don’t believe in the messenger you won’t believe the message.” – Kouzes and Posner first law of leadership.
I am co-author of The Leadership Challenge with Barry Posner which was our first book. I am also Dean’s Executive Fellow of Leadership at The Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University.
Barry and I wrote our first paper together at Santa Clara University where we met on shared values make a difference and that was in the early 80’s. And as part of that research we asked the question what do you look for and admire in a leader. And we found then, and when we did research on our second publication together, we asked that same question again and found a similar response. And that response was that essentially credibility is the foundation of leadership and so we decided that our second book together would be about that topic.
Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer
Give and Take by Adam Grant
Buy Credibility by James Kouzes on Amazon today
Visit LeadershipChallenge.com to learn more about James and his books
Follow James Kouzes on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Prosperous Leader by Jacob Engel
Powerhouse by Mike Clayton
Pocket Man by Scott Jordan
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about What More Can I Say according to Dianna Booher: Introduction In this episode Dianna Booher takes a deep dive into her book,Read More
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]]>In this episode Dianna Booher takes a deep dive into her book, What More Can I Say, where she discusses why communication fails and what you can do about it.
In her book Booher gives you examples of messages that succeed along with a practical nine-point checklist that addresses the common reasons that your communication is causing you to fail your goals. The goal of her book is to help you build solid relationships, increase your credibility, get your point across clearly, and become a more influential communicator.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are trying to become credible public figures and need practical advice that helps them overcome the typical failures of communication.
I tried to base this book on sound research and not just on survey data.
You can read it all the way through or jump in and out where needed.
I would give you two; the first one is that words matter. Words control how you think. The second one I would say to never depend on logic alone to build a persuasive argument, you have to address the emotional side of an issue as well.
What More Can I Say has nine counter-intuitive principles for success in getting your point across, expanding your influence, and persuading others to change their mind and behavior.
If I had to say what the most important law was it would be the trust law. If you don’t trust someone you are never going to believe them. Most people don’t realize how they can communicate distrust and there are many ways that you can communicate distrust that you are unaware of.
The second law that I talk about is the difference between monolog and collaboration. Often when leaders make a decision they think of the pros, the cons and go through all the reasoning and then they announce a decision and expect people to go along. The way other people often look at this approach is that they were given no chance for input. People believe their own data and like to have a part in that decision making.
Another law I talk about in the book is why communication fails to persuade sometimes and it’s because complex. Complex language obscures ideas and priorities; people don’t know which fire to fight. If things look hard or feel hard than people are slow to do them. But communication that is really successful in persuading is clear and simple. Clear language sharpens the focus and drives action.
These are just a few of the principles that are in the book about persuasion that I think were fascinating. If you can actually base what you are doing to be persuasive on concrete research then you know where you are going.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 06:52
“You can change your world by changing your words; remember death and life are in the power of the tongue.” – Joel Osteen
I have been working with executives and people that want to improve their communication for about three decades. I have been coaching people, teaching business writing, technical writing, presentation skills, and just working with organizations who want to improve their productivity by increasing their effectiveness.
For months we have been in to the situation where both sides politically are engaged in what I call an uncivil discourse. In business everything that happens, happens as a result of communication so when I sat down to unravel miscommunication in a business or organization I wanted to know why it was that people can’t change others minds. I started researching why some people can’t persuade effectively and that’s the reason why I wrote the book.
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
Buy What More Can I Say by Dianna Booher on Amazon today
Visit WhatMoreCanISayTheBook.com to learn more about Dianna’s book and additional resources
Follow Dianna Booher on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Charisma on Command by Charlie Houpert
Powerhouse by Mike Clayton
EDGY Conversations by Dan Waldschmidt
Relevant advice and tips:
How To Become an Effective Communicator in the Business World
7 Steps To Improve Networking Skills For Entrepreneurs
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Unstoppable according to Pete Wilkinson: Introduction In this episode Pete Wilkinson shares his book, Unstoppable where he shares his expertise on becomingRead More
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]]>In this episode Pete Wilkinson shares his book, Unstoppable where he shares his expertise on becoming super determined, motivated, and focused.
In his book Wilkinson provides a roadmap to eliminate procrastination, seeing plans all the way through, and doing more than you ever thought possible. The goal of the book is to help you focus your attention on key goals, improve the relationships in your business and personal life, learn how to be an effective leader, and build an action plan around your main strengths.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who want to be driven, determined, and unstoppable, yet lack the proper motivation techniques to make a move in the right direction.
Unstoppable is a four part system and a process to becoming unstoppable. It isn’t just about giving you a couple of tips but rather the whole foundation of the book are my one, three, five action plan. It’s not just a book to read but I also answer some of your questions you might have and help you with the process. The main reason the book is different from others is because I am sharing a system that I have proven time and time again with other entrepreneurs on how to be unstoppable and make the most of yourself.
This book is really designed to be read from front to back. I created four different parts of the book that you could jump into separately if you wanted to.
You must answer the question if I was the very best version of me, what could I achieve. Once you answer that question you need to have a crystal clear vision of what success and happiness looks like for you and make that happen.
I built the book around four different parts. Part One I have called The Beginning and the reason just to go into the background of why I believe it’s important to develop an unstoppable attitude. I am very passionate about how important attitude is and I think you need to have a very process driven attitude that allows you to achieve what you’re capable of achieving. Part one emphasizes as to where you are now is not where you need to be. You don’t need to just stay where you are now if you want to improve. This first part frames and goes into detail on what I call the one, three, and five action plan which is the foundation of the unstoppable attitude system.
Part Two is where we really get into the detail and that’s where we start the foundation. We have various chapters in here and things emphasizing that the beginning is all about your habits and how successful people have successful habits. As we progress from the habits we then go into the actual components of the action plan which start with a crystal clear vision. In this section I share my vision and a hand written drawling of what my plan looked like. We talk about the different steps of creating a picture, describe what your perfect day look likes and imagine what life might look like when you achieve it. I show the reader a very systematic process of creating a vision by asking certain questions that would allow you to get a crystal clear vision. If you’re going to achieve this vision then you need to focus on three core objectives. Realizing that it’s not going to be an overnight thing but by breaking it down you are directing your attention exactly where you should be. The final part of the foundation process is the goal part. We all know we need goals but what I am suggesting in this system is to have five stepping stone goals for each objective. So what you have is a very simple vision up on top, you then have three core objectives sitting beneath that and then feeding from each core objective you have five goals.
We then look at key skills. I believe there are four key skills we need as entrepreneurs. We need to be better at leadership and I think we should start with self-leadership. We then need to look at personal organization; we then need to really focus on relationships and finally strength development.
Finally we look at Part Four which is the next 12 months. Here we do a review of various things, your product, your people, your team, and time. So what we are doing here is optimizing you to have the best next 12 months. And that’s where we go through a very simple process and we look at different levels of value. We look at how you need to go about making sure your products, team and time are right. It’s really from start to finish beginning with the idea of why to have this unstoppable attitude then showing you how to have an action plan to create a plan that fits on a single page so it’s very easy to use. From there we look at the execution skills and then finally looking at the next 12 months ahead.
“The key question many of us need to ask ourselves more often is if I was the very best version of myself what could I achieve?” – Pete Wilkinson
I am primarily in the space of focus and consistency – taking action. Everything I do whether it’s with clients, speaking or workshops, is around the focus and consistency and using my skills. So it’s all around the space of how to be focused and consistent to get the results that you should really be getting.
I was sharing the system that the book identifies with my clients but really only making a small impact in the number of people I was reaching. I was getting a little frustrated that people were making some really good gains with the system but it wasn’t being shared enough. The idea of writing the book was to give them a system that could be shared to a large number of people and have an impact with someone that they have never met before.
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Buy Unstoppable by Pete Wilkinson on Amazon today
Visit PeteWilkinson.com to learn more about Pete, his book, and blogs
Follow Pete Wilkinson on Twitter and LinkedIn
For questions contact Pete by email here
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Limitless Energy by Brandon Epstein | The Greatness Zone by Jay Forte | Powerhouse by Mike Clayton
Relevant advice and tips: 10 Bad Habits That Successful People Avoid
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about How to Solve Problems and Make Brilliant Decisions according to Richard Hall: Introduction In this episode Richard Hall takes a deep diveRead More
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]]>In this episode Richard Hall takes a deep dive into his book, How to Solve Problems and Make Brilliant Decisions, where he shares practical skill and techniques to think better, faster, and more productively.
In his book, Hall teaches you how to shape, train, and inspire your thinking to deliver more effective results. The goal of the book is to help you improve your thinking skills, become more confident in making decisions, and become more effective at problem solving.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who need to improve their decision making skills in order to achieve success at a faster rate than currently able.
This book is very accessible, practical, energetic and optimistic. If you read this book it will save you a lot of time reading a whole lot of other books. I summarized and used some of other ideas and made an accessible primer for anybody who wants to think about thinking.
It’s set out in such a way that the reader can go in and out of it or read it back to front. It is very user and reader friendly.
Look around yourself and see what is going on around you. Listen to people and learn to change your mind. I would like everybody to start thinking about thinking and that is a big step forward.
We know little about the brain but what we do know is that there are two parts of our brain, intuition and rationality. Through the book I have tried to look at the various things we need to have in business. I start the book with a reflection on what I think the most four potent words are in English language which are what do you think. We should all be asking ourselves these four words and it’s not easy to do. The book constantly advices us to slow down and don’t get so stressed because the more stressed you are the less effective you’ll be. I talk about how to think better and give advice for that. The first advice is to not multitask. The brain is not designed to multitask and you need to concentrate on one thing at a time. The second advice is to loosen up, take time and be in a good mood.
The key thing to know about problem solving is the brain is lazy and we worry more about what other people think. I advise people to just sit down, look out of a window and work things out. It’s amazing that when you are stopped and not rushing around your mind suddenly starts working in a way that you wouldn’t believe. Another important thing if you are going to be a good problem solving is to ask questions and listen to what other people have to say.
A second part of the book is about decision making. I used to think making decisions was very easy but it turns out that it is actually difficult because of all the things going on around us. Good decision making is well judged risk taking because some you win and some you lose. But in the end good decision making is based on experience, breaking problems down in to small pieces and giving yourself the most amount of time to make those decisions.
Creativity is another part of the book. The logic of creativity is searching for alternatives and the ability to make connections and I don’t think it’s more complicated than that. It’s not wacky or inexplicable but it’s about a form of thinking which enables people to look at what’s in front of them and say is there another way of doing this. The most important thing about creativity is that you need to be a bit of a rebel. I think one of the joys of good creative thinking is you need to have a sense of humor because if you make people laugh they behave accordingly. In the end if we don’t engage with other people and get them to do the things we want them to do, it won’t work. I have come to the conclusion that the only thing that makes a difference between success and failure is working with other people and getting other people to be on board with what you want them to be on board with. Increasingly we are living in a world which is group driven, not solo driven, and it really matters that people hear what you want them to hear. What matters is not what you said or what you think you said but what they think you said. And unless we crack the understanding of how to get other people to think then we are not going to be successful.
The key thing about the book is for people to make the most of the amazing engine they have in their heads.
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Mike Tyson
I have been around in business for a long time. My background is in marketing, advertising and consulting and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies. I have had a fantastic time and am very enthusiastic about the prospects of the changing world.
I have written a number of books before on presenting career development marketing and they are all very specific in their topics. I began increasingly concerned and aware of the fact that we’ve stopped thinking in the way that we used to and there are a number of reasons for that. And this seemed to be an issue worth looking at. The second thing is that it became increasingly clear to me that we don’t know very much about the mind at all. It seemed to me that if you are going to succeed in business today you need to be thinking about thinking at the top of all things that you do.
Enthusiasms by Bernard Levin
Back To Blood by Tom Wolfe
Buy How to Solve Problems and Make Brilliant Decisions by Richard Hall on Amazon today
Visit ColorfulThinkers.com to learn more about Richard and his book
Connect with Richard Hall on LinkedIn
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Powerhouse by Mike Clayton | The Discomfort Zone by Marcia Reynolds | The Upside of Your Dark Side by Todd Kashdan
Relevant advice and tips: 10 Bad Habits That Successful People Avoid
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Powerhouse according to Mike Clayton: Introduction In this episode Mike Clayton takes a deep dive into his book, Powerhouse, where he presentsRead More
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]]>In this episode Mike Clayton takes a deep dive into his book, Powerhouse, where he presents proven ways to boost overall effectiveness and start making an impact immediately.
In his book, Clayton shows you how to raise your personal effectiveness to dynamic levels, make solid decisions, stand up for your decisions, and gain tremendous support from others. The goal of the book is to help you be able to meet any challenge you cross while boosting your performance and making the right choices.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs that are not performing at the highest levels or are not brightening the outlook of everyone around and need a roadmap to craft a solution.
It goes beyond productivity to effectiveness and not just doing lots but making the right choices and carrying those choices through. Even beyond personal effectiveness I wanted to create a book which helps the reader to understand how to create contagious attitudes that will motivate the people around them so they too can be more effective and productive.
For the first time reader the reader will get a lot more from reading it from beginning to end. But if you don’t have time you can skim through and pick where you need to start.
There are two core ideas in there. The idea of the compelling cause, that to be a powerhouse you have to know exactly what you are focusing on and why. And then the idea of a powerhouse loop, the idea that if you follow that compelling cause blindly and you get tunnel vision, you run the risk of missing an even better opportunity. You must identify and analyze what’s going on to find your compelling causes, plan how you are going to do it and take action.
The book is divided in to 10 chapters and the first 9 follow a sequence. Each of the chapters has a theme hooked around a personal attribute that is going to bring effectiveness and real power to your work.
The first chapter is about self-control and the theme is really about doing the right thing. This chapter carries a lot of burden of the ideas of the book because it sets out the idea of a compelling cause and the idea that there are lots of things that you could be doing but what will make you successful is not scattering efforts across many ideas but making a real choice. I also introduce the idea of the powerhouse loop which is a cycle of identifying the opportunities, analyzing what those opportunities are and then making your choice of compelling causes to pursue. We then make time to plan on how we are going to deliver on those compelling causes and then take action. I think real effectiveness is about gauging your process at each stage and having taken action, getting a measure of the progress and identify what’s next.
The second chapter focuses on the idea of judgment and it asks the question why you are doing what you are choosing to do and it suggests that we need to do the right things for the right reasons. I give the reader some understanding of what I consider to be a good quality decision and the need for good proof for strong process. I also suggest that a good decision is not enough unless you are able to carry people with you.
Chapter three suggests that you have to do the right things right and this chapter really focuses on productivity. I divide it in to four stages which are planning, preparation, performance and my idea of post-paration. We prepare in advance, we post-pare after we have done something. I think a lot of work gets wasted when we do the bulk of the work and then we walk away and get caught up with something else.
Chapter four focuses on relationships to be successful in the world of work and creating a new business you have to work with the people around you. I talk about strategic networking and tactical networking in this chapter to give the reader ideas about to plan and manage a campaign of engaging stakeholders and building support for whatever it is that they are seeking to do.
Chapter five is also around people but now we are starting to take a leadership role and this chapter is about how to get the best from the people around you. In this chapter I talk about how to motivate your team, how to actively manage your team, and I introduce some of the ideas from a positive organization of psychology around evaluating, excellence and celebrating success. There is a pivotal diagram in this chapter that shows the difference between moving from under performance to standard performance.
My personal favorite chapter is chapter six. The idea behind this chapter is conduct and the need to get the best from yourself. What I like best about this chapter is it opens with an analysis of the different ways that we think and the ways our brains work. I also introduce the reader to other modes of thinking which they can use to round out their performance. The final step in this chapter is to articulate what I think are five important powerhouse attitudes.
Chapter seven is about perception and the need to be prepared for the unexpected. I talk primarily about two things. One is reading the future and how to be alert for what’s coming down the line. And secondly I talk about how to read people and suggest there are five critical questions we can ask if we want to understand the people around us and anticipate their actions.
Chapter eight recognizes something I have found very important when I was managing projects and starting new businesses. And that is the need to be resilient and handle the unexpected and also to cope personally with the challenges that the unexpected throws at us. This chapter gives a range of different tools such as different modes of working when things go wrong and understanding how we ought to respond the stress and overcome the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Chapter nine is about growth, knowing when and where to stop, and how to harvest the lessons that you may have learned from delivering on your compelling causes.
Chapter ten sets out seven principals for taking your personal effectiveness ideas from powerhouse and extending them to an organizational level. I articulate seven principles that an organization can apply to start to create systemic powerhouse performance in its people.
“The world is full of opportunities, start by focusing on the right ones.” – Mike Clayton
I am a business author and speaker. My background is as a consultant with Deloitte consulting when I was delivering projects and program management services for my clients. For the last 12 years or so I’ve spent my time delivering seminars and training all around the UK and some of Europe as well. And over the last six years I have developed a writing career and Powerhouse is my 13th printed book.
Some of the ideas have been buzzing around since a much earlier book called Smart to Wise. These are the more practical aspects of wisdom that I wanted to get across of how to get things done. The sources of these ideas come from my experience as a project manager, my fascination with personal psychology, and my interest in positive organization scholarship.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
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Related books: The Greatness Zone by Jay Forte | Hit The Mark by Erik Fisher | The Experiment by R Michael Anderson
Relevant advice and tips: 5 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Overcome Business Failure
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