Excellent Daily Habits

 

What Are Your Daily Habits?

Here are my top 5 daily habits to help me lead, learn and continue to grow.  What separates you as a successful leader or as a successful professional from the rest?

Follow-up

By now the Building Circles audience knows my golden rule about the 3 keys to following up: follow-up, follow-up and follow-up.  The sooner you embrace this, the sooner you make this part of your everyday makeup, the more successful you are going to be.

Are you following up or are you talking about how you follow-up?  Check your list today. Ask yourself:  "What are you following up on?" or a better question to ask, "What should you be following up on?"

Listen

Sometimes this is easier said than done.  I'm guilty from time to time for not listening. Effective listening is a tough and yet important component in communicating with others. What is the other person saying or communicating?  Listen to them closely, pay attention to body language and their choice of words.

Stop talking is one way to listen more effectively.  When the other person is talking, most of us are already preparing/thinking about our response. Wait a moment to let what the other person is saying to sink in first.  Repeat in your own words what the other person said and ask if you understood them.  Then respond with your answer or comment.

Ask Questions

This one occasionally gets me into trouble! I have difficulty answering a question if I do not fully understand it or do not understand why it is being asked.  I ask a question to clarify.  Some people do not like it when you answer a question with a question!

Ask more questions to show you want to learn and understand what the other person is saying.  Communication works two-ways.  It helps when you ask questions to encourage the other person to share more information.

There are many times when it takes three to five questions to get to the root of the situation and to fully understand what the other person is trying to tell you.

Take Responsibility

Regardless of the situation, who did what and when, take responsibility for yourself, your team, your company and the situation at hand.  Blaming others or making up an excuse will quickly result in you losing credibility.

Here is a classic example of being the leader and taking responsibility a few years ago:

We met with a new prospective client for our introductory meeting.  When we handed out our proposal, it was then I noticed there was something wrong.  Our documentation had the incorrect company name on it!!!  It was the name of another company with a similar name as the prospective client.  Oh no!  How would you handle this situation?

I stopped the meeting as soon as I noticed it, called it out in the open and took responsibility for the mistake.  The other person said they liked everything they heard, up to now, paused (to make me sweat a little) and said to keep going.  The other two in the meeting mentioned they noticed the error and did not want to say anything.  My business partner at the meeting supported my actions and we had a very interesting discussion on the way back to the office.

Take responsibility.  Leaders stand up, support their team and take responsibility.  It does not matter if I made the mistake or someone on our team did.  Everyone in the meeting did not care if it was me who made the mistake or if it was someone on our Team.

We were welcomed to continue the meeting because we demonstrated how we handle challenges, mistakes and tough situations.

Just Take Care Of It

I know it sounds too simple and yet it is: "Just Take Care Of It".   The good news is to tell yourself you can do it and guess what?  You guessed it: Just Take Care Of It.  Go out and accomplish it.

Sure, you may fail, you may hear no and get doors slammed in your face.  That is part of our journey and part of what builds our character or as some say, "gives you thick skin". Well I have a lot of thick skin.  It's from doing it, right or wrong, just going out and do what you feel is best for everyone.  As long as you stick to your core values with best of intentions you will do well.

Learn from your mistakes, learn from the naysayers, learn from the negativity and keep plugging along.  Learn from your successes, your mentors, your Team and learn from others who have accomplished good things.  You will amaze yourself at what you can accomplish when you "Just Take Care Of It".  Go for it and do not procrastinate or say you cannot.

What are your daily things you do to strive for success?

(Originally published on 09.11.19)