When I Get To The Top, Then I'll Learn To Lead

Leadership is very similar. If you want to succeed, you need to learn as much as you can about leadership before you have a leadership position.

Good leadership is learned in the trenches. Leading as well as they can wherever they are is what prepares leaders for more and greater responsibility.

Becoming a good leader is a lifelong learning process. If you don’t try out your leadership skills and decision-making process when the stakes are small and the risks are low, you’re likely to get into trouble at higher levels when the cost of mistakes is high, the impact is far reaching, and the exposure is greater.

Mistakes made when you’re at the top cost the organization greatly, and they damage a leader’s credibility.

How do you become the person you desire to be? You start now to adopt the thinking, learn the skills, and develop the habits of the person you wish to be.

It’s a mistake to daydream about “one day when you’ll be on top” instead of handling today so that it prepares you for tomorrow. As Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden said, “When opportunity comes, it’s too late to prepare.”

If you want to be a successful leader, learn to lead before you have a leadership position.

A position gives you a chance. It gives you the opportunity to try out your leadership. It asks people to give you the benefit of the doubt for a while.

But given some time, you will earn your level of influence – for better or worse. Good leaders will gain in influence beyond their stated position.

Bad leaders will shrink their influence down so that it is actually less than what originally came with the position. Remember, a position doesn’t make a leader, but a leader can make the position.

To think that life “at the top” is easier to think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Being at the top has its won set of problems and challenges.

In leadership – no matter where you are in an organization – the bottom line is always influence.

You do not need to be the top dog to make a difference. Leadership is not meant to be an all-or-nothing proposition.

If being someplace other than the top has caused you great frustration, please don’t throw in the towel. Why? Because you can make an impact from wherever you are in an organization, even if you face additional obstacles.

Being a leader stuck in the middle brings many challenges. You can learn to navigate them.

Becoming an effective 360-Degree Leader requires principles and skills to lead the people above, beside, and below you in the organization. You can learn them.

Individuals can become better leaders wherever they are. Improve your leadership, and you can impact your organization. You can change people’s lives.

You can be someone who adds value. You can learn to influence people at every level of the organization – even if you never get to the top. By helping others, you can help yourself.


BusinessSummaries.com is a business book summaries service. Every week, it sends out to subscribers a 9- to 12-page summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of books printed out in the United States. For more information, please go to http://www.bizsum.com.

When is Talent Alone Enough?

Talent is often overrated and frequently misunderstood. French poet and dramatist Edouard Pailleron pointed out, “Have success and there will always be fools to say that you have talent.” When people achieve great things, others often explain their accomplishments by simply attributing everything to talent. But that is a false and misleading way of looking at success.

If talent alone is enough, then why do you and I know highly talented people who are not highly successful?

Many American business leaders are obsessed with talent. Some think talent is the answer to every problem.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, notes that many companies and consultants put finding people with talent ahead of everything else. He says, “This ‘talent mind-set’ is the new orthodoxy of American management.”

Certain companies hire dozens of MBAs from top universities, promote them quickly, reward them lavishly, and never accurately assess their performance. The prime example he gives is Enron.

Its talent focus was legendary. For example, Lynda Clemmons, who started Enron’s weather derivatives business, went from trader to associate to manager to director to head of her own business unit in only seven years!

Gladwell asks, “How do you evaluate someone’s performance in a system where no one is in a job long enough to allow such evaluation?”

Talent is never enough. Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, said, “There seems to be little correlation between a man’s effectiveness and his intelligence, his imagination, or his knowledge... Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results.

By themselves, they only set limits to what can be contained” If talent were enough, then the most effective and influential people would always be the most talented ones. But that is often not the case. Consider this:

More than 50 percent of all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies had C or C-averages in college. Sixty-five percent of all U.S. senators came from the bottom half of their school classes.

Seventy-five percent of U.S presidents were in the Lower-Half Club in school. More than 50 percent of millionaire entrepreneurs never finished college.

Clearly talent isn’t everything. Most leaders understand the dynamics of ownership, shared responsibility, division of labor, committee governance, and delegation.

Often leaders accomplish great tasks by dividing a job into its parts and coordinating the whole effort. Remarkable feats, such as the building of the pyramids or the Great Wall of China, were accomplished in that fashion.

However, there are some tasks that are not improved by adding more people. Brook’s Law states, “Adding people to a late software project makes it later.” More isn’t always better, and some things are best done by an individual.

A wonderful, simple illustration of the importance of talent can be seen in a sports event like the high jump. Winning the high jump requires one person who can jump seven feet, not even people who can jump one foot.

Such an example may seem obvious, yet don’t we often believe that we can accomplish more by throwing more people at a task? That isn’t always the right solution. In fact, there are many tasks that call for talent more than numbers. Like high jumping, they require the extraordinary talent of one person, not the mediocre talent of many.

Business book summaries in Acrobat PDF, Powerpoint, PDA, HTML, Mindmap, Video and Audio formats where you can get the freshest business ideas and tactics in minutes! Visit http://www.bizsum.com.

Disciplined Emotions

People have just two choices when it comes to their emotions: they can master their emotions or be mastered by them. That doesn’t mean that to be a good team player, you have to turn off your feelings. But it does not mean that you shouldn’t let your feelings prevent you from doing what you should or drive you to do things you shouldn’t.

A classic example of what can happen when a person doesn’t discipline his emotions can be seen in the life of golf legend Bobby Jones. Like today’s Tiger Woods, Jones was a gold prodigy. He began playing in 1907 at age five. By age twelve, he was scoring below par, an accomplishment most golfers don’t achieve in a lifetime of playing the game. At age fourteen, he qualified for the U.S. Amateur Championship. But Jones didn’t win that event. His problem can be best described by the nickname he acquired: “club thrower.” Jones often lost his temper – and his ability to play well.

An older golfer whom Jones called Grandpa Bart advised the young man, “You’ll never win until you can control that temper of yours.” Jones took his advice and began working to discipline his emotions. At age twenty-one, Jones blossomed and went on to be one of the greatest golfers in history, retiring at age twenty-eight after winning the grand slam of golf. Grandpa Bart’s comment sums up the situation: “Bobby was fourteen when he mastered the game of golf, but he was twenty-one when he mastered himself.”

People who often experience relational difficulties are tempted to look at everyone but themselves to explain the problem. But we must always begin by examining ourselves and being willing to change whatever deficiencies we have. Critic Samuel Johnson advised that “he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he purposes to remove.”

The human mind has a tremendous amount of power in our lives. That which holds our attention determines our actions. Because of that, where we are today is the result of the dominating thoughts in our minds. And the way we think determines what our attitudes are. The good news is that you and I can change that. You can control your thoughts, and because of that, you can control your attitude. The point is that your thinking prompts your emotion. Why is that important? Because your attitude is your emotional approach to life. It’s the framework through which you see events, other people, even yourself. That’s why you can believe in the saying, You are not what you think you are, but what you think… you are.”

Business book summaries in Acrobat PDF, Powerpoint, PDA, HTML, Mindmap, Video and Audio formats where you can get the freshest business ideas and tactics in minutes! Visit http://www.bizsum.com.

"The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable"

Check out our new business book summary for this week!

"The Black Swan: The Impact of the
Highly Improbable", by Nassim Nicholas Taleb


A black swan is a highly improbable event with three
principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries
a massive impact; and, afterwards, we concoct an
explanation that makes the event appear less random
and more predictable than it was. The astonishing success
of Google was a black swan and so was 9/11.

For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost

everything about our world - from the rise of religions
to events in our personal lives. But because humans are

hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused
on generalities, we are unable to truly estimate opportunities
and are not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine
the “impossible.”

Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black
Swan is a landmark book that will change the way you look
at the world.

The revelations in this book explain everything you know
about what you don’t know. It offers surprisingly simple
tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.

Go to BusinessSummaries.com to access this book summary!

Lasting Lessons from the Corner Office

Lasting Lessons from the Corner Office uncovers the secrets behind the success of the great CEOs through their lives and personal stories.

Why did Ray Kroc's plan for McDonald's thrive when all the other burger joints failed? How can we apply his lessons to Krispy Kreme? How did Walt Disney's most dismal day as a young cartoonist radically change his career direction?

We learn about their biggest challenges and failures, and how they successfully rode the waves of demographic and technological change. When Estée Lauder was a child in Queens, New York, the average American spent $8 a year on toiletries.

How did she spot an opportunity in high-priced cosmetics? Why did she pound on the doors of Saks? How did Thomas Watson, Jr., decide to roll the dice and put all of IBM's chips on computing, when his father thought it could be a losing idea?

Lasting Lessons from the Corner Office not only fascinates with the personal lives of these CEOs, it shows how we can transfer their ideas today to the triumphs and struggles of Sony, Dell, Costco, Carnival Cruises, Time Warner, and numerous other companies trying to figure out how to stay on top, or climb back up. The featured CEOs in this book were not candidates for sainthood. Many of them knew "God" only as a prefix to "damn it." But they were devoted to their businesses, not just to their egos, personal bank accounts, and yachts.

Extraordinarily fresh and deeply thoughtful, Todd G. Buchholz's Lasting Lessons from the Corner Office is a truly enjoyable and fun—yet serious and realistic—look at what we still have to learn and absorb from these former CEOs.

This book blends the lives and the business challenges of the featured CEOs in order to expose their strengths and the circumstances they had to overcome. This book features CEOs who relied on more dependable, more human drives. Drives that took them on fascinating rides.

Come find out.

Pilgrimage to Warren Buffet’s Omaha

Pilgrimage to Warren Buffet’s Omaha A Hedge Fund Manager’s Dispatches from Inside the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting By Jeff Matthews

The Big Idea
They come to Omaha by the tens of thousands, flocking to an annual meeting that has become legendary for investors, businesspeople, and fans of one of the savviest capitalists on the planet. They come to eat steak, buy furniture at a discount, and bask in the brilliance of value investor extraordinaire Warren Buffet.

Hedge fund founder, financial blogger, and professional skeptic Jeff Matthews got his own highly-coveted ticket to the 2007 and 2008 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meetings that covered the 2006 and 2007 fiscal years and held only for shareholders and their guests, and proceeded to post reports on his blog, offering tempting glimpses into the much-discussed meeting. This well-written, easy-to-read book is an expanded version of Jeff Matthews’ original essay.


Why You Need This Book
Matthews delivers a full-length account of his adventures at this infamous financial hoedown, and answers many questions, including:

Does Buffett's famed penny-pinching cripple his companies?

Why does Buffet – a bridge partner and best friend of Bill Gates – not own any technology stocks?

How does the extremely rational Buffett square his well-known social progressiveness with his lily-white audience of investors?

Is Buffet really an "Oracle"?
What information, insights, and ideas do the meeting's attendees pick up, and how do they put this information to use in their own investments?

Will Berkshire-Hathaway survive his death?

Matthews also applies his financial acumen to harvesting potent lessons from his experiences that you can use as you survey the investment field, from finding how the world’s greatest investor evaluates not only businesses but the people who run them, to the importance of “just reading and thinking” and the value of having a smart, cynical partner.



Why Omaha?
As great as his track record is, and as wise as his pearls of wisdom are, Warren Buffett’s investment philosophy does seem narrow-minded and old-fashioned. He focuses on a handful of industries he knows well – insurance, home furnishings, business services, and anything else that fits within his famed “circle of competence.”

And the rest he leaves alone.

Like pay phones in a wireless world, Buffett seems increasingly antiquated – even irrelevant – to more flexible, wide-ranging investors who have grown up in a highly connected, technologically independent world.

Of course, neither Buffett nor his “quality shareholders” express any remorse over missing Google or Apple or even Microsoft, outside his circle of competence as those investments are. After all, while many investors have had better years than Warren Buffett, and some may have had better decades, Buffett’s track record over the long haul is, quite literally, unsurpassed.


The Newspaper Generation
Almost every person sitting around, waiting for the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting to begin, is reading a newspaper. It is an open, relaxed, inviting, approachable kind of posture.

Blackberry readers, on the other hand, tend to be hunched over, head bowed, reading the text. It is a closed, tense, uninviting, not-very-approachable posture.

It’s no wonder that Warren Buffett reportedly makes it a point never to trade stocks when he’s in New York City.



The Oracle of Omaha
If there is one word that describes Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha,” it is not oracular. Nor is it prophetic, divinatory, clairvoyant, extrasensory, or telepathic. While he may be known as “the Oracle of Omaha,” there is in truth absolutely nothing oracular about him.

Yet it is true that in May 1969, near the peak of that era’s bull market, he wrote to the investors in his partnership that “opportunities for investment… have virtually disappeared,” closed his partnership, and kept only two stocks: a retailer that he later sold, and an old-line textile company named Berkshire Hathaway, which he decided to keep.

And it is true that in October 1974, after the Dow Jones Industrial Average had collapsed and with the American economy mired in gasoline shortages and price controls, Buffett made perhaps the most unequivocally bullish – and correct – utterance on the subject of investing ever recorded by any business publication when he told Forbes magazine: “Now is the time to invest and get rich.”


Budding Buffetts: Where to Begin
The question is, “What should I do to become a great investor?”, and it is asked for the first time by an earnest 17-year old from San Francisco who says he is attending his tenth consecutive meeting.

Buffett’s emphatic answer is simple and straightforward: “Read everything you can,” he says with finality.

Buffett’s reading habits did not stop when he was 10. He still reads literally thousands of financial statements and annual reports each year – as he has done for each of the last 50 or more years that he’s been investing.

Of course there is more to what has made Buffett a great investor than this. But it all began by reading.

Each time the question is asked, Buffett makes it clear he is not sure where the world is going and what will happen now, but things are about as good as they’ll ever get. “Corporate profits as a percent of gross domestic product have increased from 4 to 6 percent to 8 percent.”

“You have lots of businesses earning 20 percent on tangible equity in a world where corporate bonds are yielding 4 to 5 percent. That’s astonishing. If you read a book, it would say it’s not possible.” Buffett holds his palms wide apart to illustrate the high level of profits. “Namely labor.”

Buffett also discusses the “extraordinary” profits now prevailing in the banks and the financial sector. “We’ve invested in and owned banks. If 20 years ago you’d asked me whether it was possible, in a world of 4.75 percent bonds, that countless banks would earn 20 percent-plus returns on tangible equity, I’d have said no.

Munger, Buffett’s business partner and friend, follows with his own observation, one that will prove, in retrospect, at one unremarkable yet quite profound. “A lot of profits are not in manufacturing or retailing,” he says somberly,” but in financial sectors.

There’s been a huge flow of profits to banks and investment banks. Buffett finishes with a coda for the times: “Corporate America is living in the best of all worlds – and history has shown this is not sustainable.


Secrets in Plain Sight
The “secrets” to Warren Buffet’s success are hidden in plain sight. He talks about his methods freely with anybody who asks. Buffett gives perhaps his best advice to a teacher at an Orlando community college who asks what she should be teaching her students about financial matters.

“How would you treat it?” Buffett asks rhetorically. “You’d read the owner’s manual five times; you’d change the oil twice as often as you do now… Buffett’s own most noteworthy habits – frugality and rationality – have certainly followed him throughout his life. And they have made him, for the moment, the richest human being in the world.


The “Yes” Won’t Change
Buffett stripped down concepts ranging from investing for beginners to nuclear proliferation to their bare essence:

WHAT IT MEANS TO INVEST. “What we’re doing in an investment is we’re laying out money now to get more money back in the future.”

“We want a business with a durable competitive advantage, management we trust, at a price that we understand.”

WHY HE DOESN’T HIRE AUDITORS WHEN HE BUYS A BUSINESS. “If you think the auditors know more about making an acquisition than you do, you ought to take up accounting and let the auditors run the business.”

ON EGREGIOUS CORPORATE COMPENSATION. “The idea that you have to pay some guy a $10 million retention bonus to keep him around – I don’t know of a CEO in America that wouldn’t gladly do the job at half the price or a quarter of the price.”

HOW TO CHANGE EGREGIOUS CORPORATE COMPENSATION. “If the half dozen largest institutions would simply withhold their votes and issue a short statement why they’re doing it, it would work. Big shots don’t like to get embarrassed.”

WHAT A SMALL INVESTOR SHOULD DO TO START INVESTING. “Put it all in a low-cost index fund, like Vanguard.”

I can tell people ‘yes,’ and that won’t change. The $6.5 billion will be available whether a nuclear bomb goes off in New York City, or whether Ben Bernanke runs off with Paris Hilton.”

WHY THE DERIVATIVES MARKET GOT OUT OF HAND. “You had to read 750,000 pages to evaluate one security, and that was madness.”

WHEN REGULATION FAILED. “We had this organization called OFHEO [Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight] whose sole purpose was to oversee two companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac… They had 200 people going to work at nine every morning, whose sole job was to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they had two of the biggest financial scams ever, so they were two for two.”

WHY MASS TRANSIT ISN’T USED. “The American public doesn’t like mass transit. I used to be involved in bus companies, and you can make all kinds of rational arguments to people about mass transit. But one person per car seems to be an enormously popular method of moving around.”

WHY THE CHINA OLYMPICS SHOULDN’T BE BOYCOTTED. WHY NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION IS STILL A THREAT. You’ve got 6.5 billion people in the world, so there are close to twice as many people that wish ill on other people as you had when the population was 3 million.”

THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB IN LIFE. You provide warmth and food, and they’re learning about the world… and you don’t get any rewind button.”

The Berkshire shareholder meeting is more than a pilgrimage for 31,000 investors: it’s big business here in Omaha.

Will the phone at Berkshire still ring when Warren Buffett is no longer there to pick it up?

A lot of other people around Omaha certainly hope so.

BusinessSummaries.com is a business book summaries service. Every week, it sends out to subscribers a 9- to 12-page summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of books printed out in the United States. For more information, please go to http://www.bizsum.com

PLAY YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS: THIS NEW BOOK SHOWS YOU HOW

Miami, Florida, February 16, 2009—BusinessSummaries.com releases its new business book "The Red Rubber Ball at Work: Elevate Your Game Through the Hidden Power of Play", by Kevin Carroll, McGraw-Hill Books, 2009. Subscribers may now access PDF, PDA, Powerpoint, Audio, Video and Mindmap formats of “The Red Rubber Ball at Work”, and enjoy the book summary anytime, anywhere.

Miami, Florida, February 16, 2009—BusinessSummaries.com, one of the leading e-commerce sites for business book summaries, today releases the abridged version of one of the business bestsellers "The Red Rubber Ball at Work: Elevate Your Game Through the Hidden Power of Play", by Kevin Carroll, McGraw-Hill Books, 2009. This executive book summary is now accessible to subscribers in PDF, PDA, Powerpoint, audio, video and Mindmap formats.

Business success in any field whatsoever requires creativity, problem solving, and risk-taking. But many companies, despite all they try, fail to inspire their staff to be creative and take risks to solve the problems they face – and consequently also fail to succeed.

However, according to bestselling author Kevin Carroll, famous for his bestselling Rules of the Red Rubber Ball (2007), the solution is simple: it’s child’s play!

Former 76ers athletic trainer Kevin Carroll has transformed an enduring passion for playing ball into a bestselling franchise. In this fun and thoughtful follow-up to his first book, Carroll moves the playing field to the workplace, where innovation, motivation, engagement, and teamwork are the headline issues.

He draws on “play profiles” from luminaries such as thought leaders, change agents, and business leaders, and uses their specific cases to illustrate how to bring a sense of play into the workplace to stimulate creativity, encourage risk-taking, achieve goals – and have a great time doing so.

This is an entertaining, pocket-sized book that builds on Carroll's self-help series with profiles of 33 successful workers who illustrate the value of "productive play" (as opposed to "playful play," which is not serious enough for work). The book is inspiring and clever, with a lively layout and energetic writing.

The successful “players” featured include futurist and thinker Andrew Zolli, ESPN president George Bodenheimer, bestselling authors Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell and Paulo Coelho, Food Network host Duff Goldman, South Bronx activist Majora Carter, actor and former professional wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and many others.

Every week, subscribers enjoy business book summaries of today’s business bestsellers in PDF, PDA, Powerpoint, audio, video and mindmap formats. The latest versions of the book summaries are all available online upon subscription to BusinessSummaries.com.

Outfluence

Outfluence The Better Way to Influence by Al Betz

The Big Idea
“Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.” - Marshall McLuhan

This quote underlines a truth that seems evident, yet few of us really think about the deeper meaning of how much influence is exerted upon us from our environment, seemingly many times without our conscious consent. There is a better way if you feel you don’t have all the authority, money, or clout you need to effect real, positive change.

Applied consciously, it creates a powerful, irresistible message that promotes growth in personal lives, relationships and businesses.

It’s called Outfluence.

Outfluence turns conventional thinking about influence upside down—making a powerful force available to anyone who chooses to use it.


Why You Need This Book
This book will introduce the power of silent communication and teach you principles and behaviors to help you become more effective in your day-to-day interactions. It will also teach you that the effort extended to show others that we care makes an impression – whether our approach is in the form of speaking, writing, listening, or practicing patience and respect.


What is Outfluence?
Outfluence is a lifestyle comprised of silent communication principles and behaviors. Outfluence is a focused form of nonverbal communication.

The philosophy behind the concept is that our silent communication often speaks more effectively for us than does our auditory communication.

Outfluence is a constant messaging process that we engage in purposely and, frequently, silently. It’s focused on the relationship between you and a current customer, on the budding connection between you and a prospective client, or on a developing personal bond.

Financial rewards are part of being a successful practitioner of Outfluence, but money is not the only benefit. Relationship building is a valuable reward when all parties to a business venture are inspired to do their best and are focused on making each other successful.


The Difference between Influence and Outfluence
Influence is an ephemeral power that operates without any direct or apparent effort. It is usually associated with prestige, wealth, ability, power, or position.

How do you influence if you don’t have prestige, wealth, ability, or position? You turn to social influence.

People bend to peer pressure in an attempt to fit in. They do it to acquire social influence.

Traditional methods of influence serve a purpose when honorably employed. But there is a better way to influence: it’s called Outfluence.

An Outfluencer always looks outward, desiring to help another person first, secondarily thinking about the Outfluencer’s positive purpose.


The Value of Silent Communication
Outfluence is valuable and accessible to you for these reasons:


OUTFLUENCE IS CONTROLLED BY YOU
Outfluence is delivered from the source (you) directly to the recipient when you are ready. When you implement Outfluence, you are always reaching the right person or entity.

OUTFLUENCE IS SILENTLY DELIVERED
Outfluence will amplify your quiet voice and help you to navigate the obstacles to communication. Impact is delivered silently over time by using low frequency messages such as your thoughtful actions, respectful voice, and well-crafted writings. In the process, your confidence will grow and your timidity will subside.

OUTFLUENCE IS NOTICEABLE
The point is that people notice everything you do. Your silent actions have meaning. If you can silently perform your job with a deliberate strategy that focuses on giving rather than getting, you have a better chance at having your actions interpreted as you intend them.

OUTFLUENCE IS HELPFUL TO EVERYONE
The concept that Outfluence is helpful to everyone was demonstrated beautifully by a judge at a jury trial in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Maryland.

During the jury selection process, the judge spent about 25 minutes telling the jurors about the history of the jury system. The jury undertook their duties with an enlightened perspective on the depth of their responsibility to serve.


Inspired Performance
Inspiration makes the difference between a mediocre act and a stellar performance. When you’re in the presence of someone who is inspired, your blood moves a little faster, and your eyes shine a little brighter.

The feeling is magnetic, a natural high. The components of an inspired performance are:

• Desire – you have to want to perform exceptionally well;
• Compassion – you have to be sensitive to the needs of other people and care about meeting their needs;
• Courage – you have to be willing to step forward and risk failure;
• Faith – you have to believe in a positive outcome.

THE STEPS
Is there a formula for achieving an inspired performance?

PREPARE TO SERVE
In preparing to serve, it is necessary to first develop your knowledge base and your skills to your highest ability, and to maintain them at a high level. Service is meaningless without high-quality, inspired performance.

COMMIT – BEFORE YOU BEGIN
Before entering a business meeting, tell yourself that whatever happens from this point forward will be positive, no matter what. People enjoy working with cooperative, engaging, competent, inspired people.

You have surely noticed that when you get angry with someone, they tend to get angry back. When you smile at someone, they tend to smile back.


SELECT YOUR CLIENTS AND/OR EMPLOYERS CAREFULLY
Inspire your performance by identifying the profile of your ideal client. That will make it easy to inspire step three, which is to service them really well.

FIGHT FOR EVERY DETAIL
You want to fight for every detail in your work. Whether you are a new professional or an experienced professional, you should know the importance of fighting for every detail.

AVOID NEGATIVE PEOPLE
Negative people absorb your energy. Their attitude will influence your behavior unless you are emotionally and intellectually strong and aware.

If you fall into a pattern of complaining about life, you will attract more things to complain about.


How will you know when Outfluence has worked? You will know when your customer, or a prospective customer, asks one of the following questions.

“Will we see you again next time?” The form of the first question indicates that your customer wishes to do business specifically with you next time; the second question implies that your customer really is not concerned who does the work next time.

How else will you know that Outfluence has worked effectively?

WILL OUTFLUENCE WORK?
Here’s why it will: over time you will fine-tune your ability to accurately assess people in those first few moments of seeing them, greeting them, or interacting with them.
You will learn to respectfully move away from people and situations that put you at risk, either physically or psychologically, and you will confidently move toward people who exhibit Outfluence traits that make them appealing to you.

Outfluence is people relating to people. Outfluence principles?

Can you attract people into your life who are positive and uplifting? Can your life be better if you Outfluence other people? Good people lead you to other good people and good experiences.

OUTFLUENCE WILL ENABLE YOU TO INSPIRE EVERY DAY!
Outfluence can make you a better person, and inspired performance can make you better at your job. In combination, those two attributes can make your life and your work more interesting, more fun, and less stressful.

You have every reason to believe that your journey on the path of Outfluence and inspired performance will have a positive result. Know that as your life changes people will be watching, and they will follow your lead.

Be hopeful that as time passes you will begin to recognize your Outfluence progeny in the world.

BusinessSummaries.com is a business book summaries service. Every week, it sends out to subscribers a 9- to 12-page summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of books printed out in the United States. For more information, please go to http://www.bizsum.com