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Articles by Andrew Cox
Overcome The Wall Through Worthy Goals
The Wall and worthy goals go together. Notice how the Wall only appears on the truly important, demanding, stretch goals? The goals that spell real progress, real success and real accomplishment? The Wall saves itself for the really important things.
Turn Negative Expectations Into Positive Outcomes
How often do we let negative expectations create negative results? If you're like me, it's more often than I like to admit. And yet, when I work to overcome negative expectations and project positive behavior, I am pleasantly surprised. Things end up better than I expected. What I've learned is to spend more time on positive behaviors, and less time trying to dwell on the reasons for negative expectations.
Qualities Of Resourceful Leaders
Resourceful leaders get more done with available resources than less resourceful managers. It results in outcomes that far exceed expectations. It What are the qualities resourceful leaders share - regardless of position within an organization? We asked our clients - here's what they identified as eight essentials for resourceful leaders.
How To Increase Your Personal Energy
Successful people have an energy about them. It's one of their most valuable resources. We asked many of the most successful people we know where they would put energy on the scale of requirements for success. All placed it in their top three. How do they get and maintain their high level of personal energy?
Organizational Silos - How To Deal Effectively With Them
I was driving through dairy country in Virginia, and the silos at every farm reminded me of a client I was working with at the time - a successful manufacturing company undergoing change. They had organizational silos - much tougher to deal with than the ones on the farm. But they do share certain characteristics.
Eleven Ways Leaders Create Focus
Focus is a key Personal Skill of leaders. The ability to bore into the most important things and stay attentive and focused on them, and continue that behavior as a means of solving problems, contacting prospects, writing a report, preparing a presentation, doing an analysis, maximizing the value of a meeting, is key to success. Focus maximizes time - it results in more being done in less time.
Ten Ways To Ensure Your Goals Are Leading You To Success
Success,energy, passion and commitment are created by success - success at accomplishing the goals we have set for ourselves, and the goals that others have set for or with us. Nothing is more powerful than accomplishment. At the same time, our goals can work against us. Read on about ten ways to make sure your goals work for your success.
How To Create Survival Tools For Tough Times
Tough times are a big part of what makes us successful, as survivors and leaders. Getting through them effectively and positively depends on how we treat that space. Our personal survival tools go a long way to getting us through tough times. Some may call them coping tools - they're much more than that. We're talking about tools to help us stay positive and focused and optimistic.
Five Ways To Gain Self - Knowledge - Key To Success
Accurate self knowledge is the key to successful relationships. Notice the use of accurate? Who you think you are and who others think you are is often very different. The closer our understanding of our own behaviors, attitudes and personal skills is to how others perceive us, the better our chances for success - in anything.
Ten Key Questions - Renew Commitment Or Seek New Opportunities?
So much is written about finding the right job, the right relationship, the right career. Little is written about how to know when to stay committed to the present course or seek new opportunities. Knowing when to move on - look for new opportunities, relationships, and challenges - is critical to success.Use the ten key question sets to make the best possible decision for you.
Procrastination - The Tomorrow Effect On Your Success
Nothing, nothing at all, will screw you up more than putting off until tomorrow the important things you know must be done today. Read on - now - to learn about the Tomorrow Effect on your success.
Goal Setting - Six Steps To Keeping Focus
We ask every leader we work with what they would do more of, better, or more often when they look back on their career, and the top answer is "Focus." When asked how they would do that, they answer that they would be even more goal oriented than they had been. In their opinion, goals create focus that creates accomplishment.
Plenty For Everybody - Project Team Success Depends On It
Project team success depends on a number of variables, but the one that shows up as most important involves the willingness of team members to collaborate. And collaboration requires a belief that there is plenty for everybody. And it's tough to spot as the reason a highly qualified, highly resourced, experienced, interdisciplinary team just did not click.
Ten Ways To Make Time For The Important Things
Making time for the important things in life is a real challenge. Have you ever ended the day with the feeling that you were as busy as you could possibly be, but didn't make any progress on the really important things? Have you been resentful of the time and energy you have to spend on meeting the demands of others? Here are ten ways you can make time for the really important things in your life.
Lessons In Survival - A Critical Leadership Skill
To survive - to hang in there - to keep your head while all around you others are losing theirs - to stay in play - is a critical skill of leaders. Let's face it - even the most astute, successful person will suffer setbacks, and surviving and overcoming those setbacks is the true measure of a leader. Read on for an example of survival and leadership.
Eight Times When Good Enough Beats Perfect
When does Good Enough beat Perfect? When Good Enough clears space for action and accomplishment - for moving forward. Perfect, on the other hand, almost always gets in the way of action and accomplishment - it keeps real progress from being made. Waiting for perfect is a sure recipe for failure. Here are eight times when "Good Enough" will beat perfect:
Ten Ways Leaders Overcome Analysis Paralysis
One of the biggest challenges leaders have is to ensure that preparation and analysis add real value and provide the framework for action. The biggest enemy to action is analysis paralysis. Analysis paralysis is the graveyard of many organizations and careers. Here are ten ways leaders have ensured they and their organizations don't fall victim to analysis paralysis.
How To Keep Top Candidates From Falling Through The Cracks
Top people are scarce - just ask any organization how tough it is to attract the best, let alone select the best. At the same time, I'm willing to bet that more top people - the right people for the right jobs - slip through the cracks in the selection process than anyone could imagine or admit. Here are ten of the top, invisible ways those cracks occur.
How To Increase Your Personal Value
Your personal value is the most important value you can create. Unfortunately, 7 out of 10 people in the US underestimate their personal value. It's easy to do - without even knowing it. It shows up in invisible ways - in risks not taken, jobs not applied for, opportunities not identified, relationships that never occur.
How To Gain Optimism Through Accomplishment
Nothing creates a greater sense of optimism than accomplishment. And optimism is one of the core beliefs and attitudes of successful people. It's estimated that only 30 percent of our population are optimists, but that the majority of successful people are optimists. That estimate says that the better chance of accomplishment and success lies with the optimists.
How Leaders Increase Their Personal Energy
I recently posted an article titled " How Leaders Create The Energy Essential To Success." It dealt with ways leaders create energy in their organizations through their beliefs and behaviors. This article deals with how leaders sustain and increase their personal energy.
How Leaders Create The Energy Essential To Success
Leaders know high energy individuals, workgroups and organizations create success. How to create and sustain that high energy is the key challenge leaders face every day. The following behaviors and beliefs are keys that leaders we have worked with have found work to achieve consistent high energy with their people.
Become More Effective - Keep It Simple
It's goal time. I'm getting all tangled up in the complexity of goal setting and getting it right. Then it hit me - I needed to work on a goal that will help me be more effective - in every way. Read on the see what I mean.
How To Choose Your Response - The 24 Hour Rule
How often have you made a snap decision and lived to regret the outcome? Read on to acquire a behavior tool that can help you improve your decision making skill by choosing your response to any situation.
Think Outside The Box - A Key Question To Make It Happen
Think outside the box - how to do that? My experience tells me to look to others, ask the key question "what do you think?" and then use collective thinking to form a solution no one person would be capable of coming up with. The most important belief in thinking outside the box is that the product of focused thought and collaboration and communication of a knowledgeable group is the best way to arrive at new and unique solutions.
Create Focus - Eliminate Self Inflicted Distractions
I was trying to focus on my 2008 goals; it's been tough going and my mind kept moving to all the other things I could/should be doing right now. And the idea for this blog came to me. A self inflicted distraction. I have a lot of them.
Think Outside The Box - Cultivate Your Inner Voice
Thinking outside the box comes in lots of different sizes - from the smallest to the really big, sweeping, high leverage things. And while the really big, important changes that occur get the most attention, and are the most sought after, the sum total of all the little changes and habits of thought that happen every day are what lead to the really big stuff. And that's where our inner voices play such a big role
Think Outside The Box - Take The Time To Look Up
Think outside the box. How do I do that? I suggest you take the time to look up A personal story to illustrate my point:
There's a secret to gaining respect - one that I had the good fortune to learn early in my career - and from a most improbable source. The secret to getting respect is to give respect. Read on to see how that lesson was taught to me by a very special person.
Career Suicide - Proclaim Yourself A Victim
There is no quicker way to career suicide than to proclaim yourself a victim. No one likes victims – people are attracted to problem solvers and people in the know – they are repelled by self proclaimed victims. A true story to describe my point:
Perseverance And Commitment - Never Give Up
Never give up. I just finished a terrific book - The Road by Cormac McCarthy. In it was a quote that struck me - it has to do with perseverance and commitment and dreams, and how you will know if you are pressing forward, or giving up.
A Leadership Tool To Encourage Thinking Outside The Box
Thinking outside the box is a critical Personal Skill - one that will make the difference between success or failure. The real critical leadership skill is accessing the thinking of others to help see what possibilities lie outsidethe box – outside the individual world of thoughts and beliefs and biases. Try this tool to get the "out of box" thinking flowing with your “universe” of people.
Eight Bad Assumptions We All Make And How To Remedy Them
These eight assumptions have the potential to get us in trouble - big trouble. They destroy clarity, create distrust, and stand in the way of organizational success and personal success. These assumptions are the ones we make based on our own behaviors, attitudes, and skills.
Creating Goals - Dealing With Reality - The Power Of Keeping Track
Keeping track – creating goals - dealing with reality – creates clarity and keeps me honest to myself. It keeps me accountable for my behavior - for my own choices. I find when I keep track, good things happen - probably because I am dealing with reality, and not with that enemy of clarity - selective memory.
A New Hire, An Aquarium And Overcoming The Status Quo
What does an aquarium have to do with the status quo and a new hire? More than you think. Read on and see how an experience in ignoring the rules of good aquarium management resulted in a lesson that has much broader application.
Act In Today - Nine Steps To Make It Happen
Act in today - take these nine steps to achieve that worthy goal - that day when accomplishment and achievement are reached - when the overhang of things waiting to be done is manageable, and guilt and remorse are replaced with optimism and confidence. That sure sounds good - and it can happen - starting today.
Act In Today - Nine Rationalizations That Stand In The Way
Acting in today takes hard work. It's the only way to succeed. And yet,for many people, the attraction of tomorrow is so great. But tomorrow thinking is a trap. And self talk is one of the biggest traps to tomorrow thinking – and failure. What follows are some of the most popular rationalizations of tomorrow persons.
Leaders Know High Expectations Lead To High Performance
Leaders know high expectations lead to high performance. Leaders know that the more people believe in themselves, and their leaders believe in them, the more they will accomplish - at all levels.
The Two Dimensions Of Thinking Outside The Box
Thinking outside the box is a skill highly prized by all kinds of organizations. The phrase “think outside the box “ creates this vision of cutting edge thinking that leads to innovation. It's a skill that provides real opportunities in both the Internal and External Dimensions. It's a skill that can create enormous competitive advantage – personally and organizationally. It's not for everyone – in fact – it's a top ten percent skill.
Leaders Provide Advice Critical To Success - Part Three
Certain advice, in the form of beliefs, statements and cinvictions, keep being brought up by leaders in our seminars and feedback sessions.What follows is Part Three of our series dealing with beliefs that are critical to personal and organizational success in the areas of Change, Choice, Behavior Self Responsibility and Accountability ยท
Leaders Manage Goals To Ensure More Is Not Less
Leaders manage goals to know when more becomes less. Leaders know there is a place where further effort, energy, knowledge, people resources and money don't really add additional value. In fact, more of anything after a certain point may be stealing from other requirements. Leaders know time, money and effort, by themselves, are really inefficient measures - results are what count.
Focus On Possibilities To Achieve Success
Focus on creating possibilities - it's the way to achieve personal success and organizational success. That conclusion came to me the other day - a day I fooled myself into believing was highly productive. I had been busy - worked hard - got a lot done. But I didn't feel like I had really accomplished very much. I had organized, managed, read, prepared and drafted a whole lot of stuff - but something was missing.
Leaders Provide Advice On Achieving Success - Part 1
After working with many leaders certain beliefs, statements and convictions keep being repeated in our conversations and seminars and feedback sessions. This is the first in a series of articles providing advice from leaders we have known on achieving personal and organizational success.
Five Steps To Achieve Personal Success - Today
Here are five actions can you take - today - at no cost other than changing your own behavior, that can lead to greater personal success.
Leadership Through Goal Setting - Vs - Brute Force Management
Setting goals as the way to create priorities is what leaders do to maintain direction and focus. Unfortunately, many managers take a tremendous amount of potential leverage out of their organizations by not prioritizing. Many do it by using the Brute Force style of management.
Success Depends On Knowing There's Plenty For Everybody - Believe It
Success depends on believing there is plenty for everybody. There really is “more” than we could possibly imagine – of everything – if we look for it. But it's almost impossible to look for “it” if we are busy envying or feeling jealous about someone else's good fortune – their getting some of that “plenty.”
Goals, Opportunities For Success And Paying Our Dues
What are the paths that come together to provide opportunities for success? How will we know when they come together? Will we be ready to recognize opportunity and act to succeed? What can we do to prepare for those opportunities? What does paying our dues really mean?
The Biggest Challenge To Change - The Status Quo
The Biggest Challenge To Change - The Status Quo Creating change, accepting change, making change work, being rewarded by change - all are resisted by that condition called the Status Quo. And most of the time we don't even realize it.
The Five Keys - plus a Bonus Key, can help you become more successful, quicker, in a new job. The Keys are from many successful leaders. Their experiences in new jobs - and as the boss of new jobs, can help you bridge those critical first few months and add to your success.
Hire The Right People - 10 Recommendations On Using Assessments
Assessments are powerful tools to use in selecting the right people for the right jobs. And the higher up in the organization the more critical assessments can be to successful selection. Here are 10 Recommendations to help you decide how to most effectively use these tools.