Imposing self-discipline is a victory.  We can celebrate it when we do it, and it produces other victories to celebrate, as well.

Have you noticed people who succeed long-term, tend to make others feel important – and they do it sincerely.  As a result, other people want to help them.  Think about the successful people you know (and admire).  Don’t they make you feel important when you are around them?

The challenge?  People are different.  What makes one person feel important, may not work for someone else.

Get to know your people; get to know your customers.  Get interested in them.  The attention you give them will make them feel important.  AND, you’ll know what else you can do to create an environment where they feel appreciated – to feed (what William James, the father of modern psychology called) their craving to feel appreciated.

While it doesn’t guarantee international fame, money, and power, it does guarantee richer relationships, increased influence, and becoming the person people want to know and want to help.

By the way, principle #9 from Dale Carnegie’s bestseller “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is – Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.  Try it.  It works.

Credibility creates trust.  To be trusted, we must be trustworthy.  We may admire what others have; we may respect what they do.  However, we will not trust them until we feel we know who they are.

Credibility comes from what we do consistently – under pressure and over the long term.  Leaders remain consistent.  Leaders stay true to their values.

If you’ve been leading people for any length of time, they know what you value.  If it differs significantly from what you’ve been saying, you are killing your own credibility and eroding your own leadership foundation.

Usually, we don’t examine that reason – we don’t even think about it.  We don’t do things intentionally.

But, what if we always understood the intent behind our actions?  Would we make better choices?  I think so.

The implications could be life changing – couldn’t they?

That’s one reason why writing our goals and reviewing them regularly is so powerful.  These two actions identify and reinforce our framework  and helps guide the selection of what we do daily.  Subconsciously, we make better choices.  Better choices yield better results.

Writing and reviewing our goals creates a direction for us and frees us from the need to constantly examine the reason behind every action.  So, I guess goal-setting is a life skill and a time management skill.

In less than 9 months, he has had significant positive impact on the growth of his company’s bottom line – in a down economy.

He is a “franchise” player.

We love the ”franchise” player.  They work longer and harder, need less attention, solve more problems, and raise the bar for everyone (who wants to play in their league).

The problem?   “Franchise” players present a different leadership/management challenge.  While we don’t have to discipline them, we do have to discipline ourselves. 

Give them all they can handle, but not all we want them to handle.

Otherwise, we risk losing them – to our competition, or to burn out.  In either case, our organization will be worse off.

One of the graduates was talking about what he gained from his twelve weeks in the program.  His realization – everyone’s got a story.

We often (usually?) make judgements about others based solely upon what we see.  It’s like looking through a keyhole in the front door of a mansion and claiming to know where everything – rooms, paintings, tapestries, furniture, silverware, closets, beds, linen, etc. – is inside.  We can’t even see the entire front hallway.

Dale Carnegie said, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested you.”  It’s amazing, when we strive to “Become genuinely interested in other people” (principle #4), they do become genuinely interesting to us.

The hard part is getting past our own initial judgement, so we can at least open the door and see the hallway.

I could “slap” the ball down the fairway accurately enough to shoot in the mid-90’s.  Yes, it was all arms and shoulders.  And, yes, by the end of the round, I was worn out.

A couple of years later, feeling the urge to improve, I signed up for group lessons with Chuck Campbell (a 70-year old American playing professionally on the senior circuit in Japan).

As Chuck began changing my swing, my scores went from the mid-90’s to a high of 127.  I remember my boss’s comment one day, “You have no idea what’s going to happen when you hit that ball, do you?”  And, he was right.  Later that day, I accidently hit the ball directly at him.  By the way, he was standing about 40 yards away, 90 degrees off my line of aim, and directly behind me – the ball went between my legs.

But, I stuck with it.  (Heck, I couldn’t get much worse.)

Shortly afterwards, my scores began to change.  Within a couple of weeks of my 127-stroke “high” score, my game began to change dramatically – my average dropped into the mid-80’s.

I was hitting the ball further, straighter, and with less effort.

The difference was group lessons.

When Chuck was standing next to me, watching my swing, I forced myself to do all the things I knew were right.  So, what he saw was NOT what I normally did.  When he walked away to work with someone else, I’d relax and do what I normally did.

Chuck watched me when he was “working” with someone else.  So, he was able to correct what I was actually doing.

When you coach your people, are you coaching their “best” behavior or do you catch them unawares so you can correct what they are really doing?

Lawyers respond to requests for information by inundating their opponents with mounds of paperwork.  Buried deep is the exculpatory evidence needed by the defense.

Access to information can be limited by its absence or by its burial in overwhelming amounts of data.

So, we look for “filters” to help us make sense out of our daily data oceans and convert them to information we can use to make good decisions.  These filters have tremendous power to influence our points of view.

Sales, marketing, news – they all help filter information for us – and influence our viewpoint.  The key?

Understand everyone has an agenda.  When we keep that in mind, we may be fooled once – not twice.

One key difference – the results produced by engaging, long-term, in one behavior or the other.  Manipulation, over time, leads to resentment and compliance; motivation leads to cooperation.

The challenge is to determine which we engage in most often.  It’s made more difficult because the ultimate arbiter is the other person.  All we have to go on is our own perspective.

So, how do you determine if you’re manipulating?  Actually, it’s pretty simple.

If you think you’re manipulating, you are.

At 1:00 am, the maze of orange cones, orange barrels, flashing lights, concrete barriers and reflective tape was very noticeable in the pitch black.  What was not noticeable?  The entrance to the labyrinth.  I’m sure the traffic engineer who designed this knew exactly how traffic was supposed to navigate through it.  But, it’s not intuitively obvious at 75…. errrr at 65 miles per hour.

I slowed to a crawl, found the entrance, and breathed a sigh of relief when I finally saw the “end construction” sign several miles later.

What’s it like for your prospect navigating through your company’s sales process; or your customer navigating your customer service process; or maybe one of your employees navigating some new software or procedure?

Just because it’s obvious to you (the builder) doesn’t mean it’s obvious, friendly, or easy to anyone else.  While we can rush right through it, they need to slow down, get their bearings and at least see the entrance.

When your sales, customer service, and human resource professionals try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view, they’ll be more able to reassure, guide, and build trust with with your prospects, customers, and employees