Tag Archives: Be a Mentor
FindAMentor.com helps companies’ structure communication flow so employees are engaged
4 important tools for your mentor program and the mentors.
Mentors need tools — make sure they have them.
Tools help your mentor lead discussions and facilitate expanded learning in mentoring.
1st. Make formal training programs part of a formal mentor program. It makes it easy for mentors to facilitate conversations if the mentee is enrolled in formal education of some type. The mentor and mentee can discuss how the training or schooling is going and the mentor can offer experiential feedback. If you are administering a corporate mentor program, make sure mentees have access to outside training and they are listed as an item in the session agenda.
Professional associations make it mandatory for their members to update best practices through industry approved training, which gives them credits that meet the association standards. If a particular position in your company doesn’t have a mandatory upgrade knowledge credit system, create one for your employees.
Seek out programs that enhance the mentees ability to serve. An example of formal training outside the company might be a communications course for those wanting to improve their conflict resolution skills. Another one might be special safety training for a company involved in construction projects. Leadership training is attractive to most employees and many jump at the opportunity to learn these skills. Universities offer many adult education programs that may fit with your industry. Have someone research them.
Send sales people to sales courses outside the company training system. Send IT people to courses for new development ideas or maybe on-line marketing. Search out on-line programs — there are many available for almost any field. Mentors will have fun talking about these courses.
2nd. Make sure the mentor program and session structure allow for some communication training and discussion. The number one business challenge that continually comes up for employees when we survey businesses is effective information and communication flow. When I talk to individuals about challenges at work or home, communication is often cited as the block.
Making communication and information flow part of the mentor-mentee session discussion automatically puts a focus on improving it. What humans focus on, expands. When mentors and mentees discuss communication effectiveness constructively, it improves for both.
Search out a communications course source that all employees can take to enhance their ability to communicate in tough circumstances and tense situations. Give mentors and mentees opportunity to learn and grow their ability to communicate effectively and your company will grow and communicate effectively.
3rd. Mentors need is a guide to follow in their mentor sessions with mentees. A form to fill out. They can have the mentees fill the form but having one to follow helps. Make sure it includes a list of different types of goals and objectives — short term and long term. Most of these items can be reviewed quickly. Others may need more time.
- Hard skill goals; ie. Industry skills, computer skills, etc.
Soft skill goals; ie: emotional attributes to build on, communication skills, etc.
Career goals; what does the mentee want their career to look like? Where do they want to be in 6 months, five years and ten years?
Financial goals.
Relationship goals. (if it’s a work environment, focus on co-worker relationships. Although depending on the mentor-mentee relationship, this may move into discussion about personal relationships outside of work.)
4th.Give mentors feedback. Mentors typically want to help and when they are guided on how they could do this better, they like it. Have a system in your mentor program for mentees to give feedback to the mentor on how he or she sees the mentors’ effectiveness. This needs to be done gently with a good communicator, and may need a third party leader or facilitator, and permission has to be given by the mentor to receive it. The program administrator may be a good resource providing he or she has mediation skills.
These four tools can help you make your mentor program great. Thank you for reading.
Mike Garska
President. FindAMentor.com
The 7 steps to Find Your Passion and Purpose in Life
So you can love how you live and love what you do…
1. Listen to your inner self. Write down your longings and discontents.
- What are your longings? Write them down.
- What are your discontents? Write them down. Marry Morrissey says your longings and your discontents are messages from the universe to your authentic self.
2. Write down everything you love about life.
3. Write down your goals that you can think of right now.
- Short term goals.
- Long term goals
4. Decide which goals, longings and discontents give you the strongest feeling inside. Think of pride, desire, love, confidence, passion, drive.
5. Make a decision about the one passion or love in your life that runs deepest, and is inclusive of some of the others, and think of a simple 3 to 7 word statement that can define a purpose for you. Your purpose is the best way for you to offer service in this life. People are on this planet to serve in some way. We all do it. Align your purpose and passion with service. Think of a service you can offer others that can fully, or at least somewhat, align with your purpose right now. Act on it. Some examples of purpose for people I know are:
- I bring people together.
- I make music.
- I make art.
- I help people find purpose.
- I bring health into people’s lives.
6. Do something that activates your mind and actions so you can learn more about your passion and purpose and become an expert over time. Go to school or get some work experience in a field that aligns with your purpose. Start right now, no matter your age. It will be fulfilling and rewarding to your authentic self and you will be rewarded in many ways over time. Start now!
- Enroll in some training on-line or get into a school that offers courses on the service that aligns with your purpose.
- Get a job, even if it’s at the bottom of the ladder, with a company where you can learn the ins and outs of the business where your purpose can be brought out in some type of service. Living your purpose means building a strong self serving in some way even if it’s being a part of a greater service. People have started out as janitors or mail room clerks and moved up to become the leaders of the company because they had a passion for the service that the company they worked in, provided. Their job, in some small way, aligned with a purpose and a desire to serve with the purpose in mind.
7. Begin now to fulfill your passions and work with your purpose using mentors and mastermind partners. Join the FindAMentor lifelong learning EPIC Mentor Network and find a mentor for free in a category that aligns with your passion. Use the FindAMentor.com unique feature to build a mastermind group in that category. Check other mentoring sites. FindAMentor.com lists many in their mentor websites and resources page.
You might want to watch our FindAMentor, free for members, People Tune Up life coaching video series to get you pointed in the right direction for your thought and emotional processing.
Thank you for reading.
Mike Garska,
President, FindAMentor
People Tune Up, Login
Don’t Bog Down The Mentors
The EPIC Mentor Network Blog for companies.
Avoid these 3 mistakes with your mentors in your corporate mentor program, and they will serve you and their mentees better. Their commitment to the program will be stronger.
It’s very important to track process and progress in a corporate mentor program and mentors play a role in reporting. Be careful with your time requests on mentors.
A goal and benefit of a mentor program are mentee growth and achievement — measured in many different ways depending on the company and what they do. Tracking mentee objectives and progress in Mentor-Mentee sessions is important. The tracking shows the benefits.
These benefits translate into ROI for the company in the form of improved employee retention, productivity, effective and efficient on-boarding and training — knowledge transfer from the baby boomers and/or high achievers to younger or newer employees, and improved information and communication flow resulting from team collaboration.
Mentee growth, achievement and loyalty happen in a formal mentoring program because mentees are forced to write down their goals and report progress to the mentor.
Gail Mathews of Dominican University did a study on goal writing and being accountable to another person. “Research conducted by Matthews shows that people who wrote down their goals, shared this information with a friend, and sent weekly updates to that friend, were on average 33% more successful in accomplishing their stated goals than those who merely formulated goals.” (Source)
Do you want your employees to be 33% more successful in goal achievement? As T.Harv Eker would ask, yes or yes? A formal mentor program incorporates the concept of having mentees write down their goals and being accountable to someone.
Keeping mentees on track and accountable is key but:
1) Don’t bog down the mentors with filling out session forms. Typically mentors are senior employees or high achievers in the business. They are very busy people. Anything that can be done to reduce their time required to participate in the program is helpful.
Have the mentee fill out the session forms and simply get the mentor to sign off. This gets the mentee in the habit of writing down his or her goals, which is a great thing. After sign-off, have the mentor forward the form to someone for filing in the employee coaching file. These session forms are helpful to have during the employee’s annual performance review. With the FindAMentor Easy Start Mentor Program we suggest having a legal file for employees as well as an employee coaching file, which is reviewed annually in the performance review.
2) Avoid asking mentors to do program evaluations or surveys more than once a year. In the first year of the program you might ask for it twice, in an effort to adjust program structure after program implementation. These evaluations are important but don’t have mentors do them too often.
I think it’s important to have mentors come together once a year with the other mentors and program administrators in a meeting to discuss the effectiveness and best practices of the program from the mentor’s perspective, so adjustments can be made to program structure.
3) Don’t make Mentor meetings too long. Make sure the mentors are given agenda’s and a planned time frame for the meeting. Make sure you provide a strong meeting chairperson to keep expectations of the mentors met.
I hope these suggestions help you improve the commitment of the mentors in your corporate mentor program.
Mike Garska,
President, FindAMentor
12 simple Tricks to Success – Part 9
This is the ninth blog of a series, “12 Simple tricks to Success” from FindAMentror.com. We reveal one trick each month for you to read and practice so that in 12 months you’ll have developed some habits that can expedite your success. Enjoy!
Just like every trade and profession has its’, “tricks of the trade”, all very successful people have 12 tricks they do, no matter what industry or institution they work in. They do those things consistently. They are important processes that great and successful people follow.
12-tricks-to-sucess-part-9
Trick number nine:
Get in touch with your feelings;
. . . Especially your positive ones like Gratitude, Confidence, Enthusiasm and Love.
High energy is extremely important to becoming successful. Feelings are energy. Successful people have energy and create energy in others. We can feel it. We’ve all heard statements like,
“You could just feel the energy in that room shift when he walked in — what a change.”
What we typically describe as a desire for success is more specifically a desire for the positive feelings associated with reaching our goals. We all want confidence, joy, excitement, peace, security—and many other uplifting emotions that we associate with successful people.
We set goals because we know that achieving them will make us feel good about ourselves and the world. The feelings are first and foremost, not the goals. We will change a goal in a second if we think we can achieve another goal that will bring us the same feeling sooner. So what we really desire is positive emotion.
The myth is that positive emotion only comes when we get what we want and when events outside of our control happen to trigger it — that the positive emotions we feel are governed by circumstances and situations outside of us. We often blame outside people or circumstance for how we are feeling, and ultimately for our plot in life.
The truth is that we can have power over our emotion. Outside circumstance can trigger emotions, but we can exercise our power of choice to shift them. We can shift emotions with thought control. We can invoke positive emotion when we concentrate with thought, on certain things. When we control our emotion to be positive, we attract more positive people and circumstances into our lives which results in feeling more positive emotion again and again.
But trouble occurs when we can’t sort out the tangled web of emotions most of us have, and we can’t identify the specific negative feelings we have, that are holding us back, or the specific positive feelings we want, that can propel us forward. Emotions often camouflage themselves and we have a tough time identifying or articulating them. We want to hide negative emotions from ourselves so we don’t have to deal with them consciously. It’s the kind of situation that leaves us feeling directionless or lost.
Revealing and acknowledging our emotions allows us to confront them. It allows us to choose to keep the positive emotions and shift the negative ones.
Often we don’t want to admit we are feeling negative — or we are happy to justify our negative feeling by outside circumstance. Ignoring negative emotions, or pretending they do not exist, slows our journey to becoming the best person we could be. It prevents us from going the extra mile and providing great service in our work so we can achieve success. Denying emotion blocks healthy relationships from unfolding and keeps us stuck in the same old patterns. If we want to break patterns and change our life, it’s absolutely critical to be aware of our emotions at all times. Awareness is key.
Step one is to acknowledge the negative emotions and clearly articulate them. Be clear. This takes practice in my experience. We are not used to clearly identifying and articulating emotion. There have been times people have asked what I’m feeling and I’m at a loss for words and description. Using a list helps. You can find a feeling list online at Center for Nonviolent Communication: feelings-inventory
Step two is to shift the negative emotion by changing the thought pattern. Once we are clear about our emotion, we can often ground it out by simply acknowledging it and sharing it. Other times it takes persistent thought control discipline.
Positive thinking offers a powerful way to replace negative emotions with positive ones. It can head off negative reactions when a feeling triggers us. It can help us turn roadblocks into building blocks or adversity into an advantage. It is the key to changing our emotions.
The process of positive thought invokes positive emotion. Real positive thinking requires real commitment to changing fundamental habits of thought and underlying emotions, if it’s going to work for the rest of our lives.
It’s a good idea to develop your own list of feelings that you habitually experience. List the negative auto responses and the negative feelings you experience that keep you stuck. Beside each one, list a positive feeling that is easy for you to invoke that shifts you out of the negative. Then practice your shifts every time you feel negative.
Your lists, if you chose to develop them, would be as individual and unique as you are. Some may feel that lists of emotions are a rather artificial means of developing positive personality traits. I like to think of lists as tools for examining my character more objectively. Emotions are deeply complicated, interconnected things and difficult to sort out at the best of times. Developing lists may assist in that process.
For some, the process of attracting wealth into their lives through positive thinking and feeling takes a long time. It’s simple enough to change a few thoughts, but real change occurs when positive emotions become strong enough that they’re habitual or second nature. This process sometimes requires a great deal of commitment, but when positive feelings become habitual, positive circumstances begin to happen habitually.
When I’m having a real tough time shifting from a negative feeling, I’ll often choose to go to a thought pattern of gratitude. When I felt worried about money, I changed my thinking to something like, “I have enough money to eat today, I have a roof over my head, and I feel grateful for that.” That pattern of thought helped me feel gratitude, a very healthy, positive emotion — more healthy than the worry I felt. Gratitude is a positive emotion and a great shifter. There is always something in life to be grateful for, even if it’s life itself.
Other times I’ll simply go to a happy place in my mind that takes me back, or forward, to a place I love about life.
Another trick is to think about the good I’ve done so far in my life or the accomplishments I’ve already made. This eventually leads to the idea that the current negative is only part of a process I’m on right now, and it will shift. The fact is, emotions always shift from day to day or moment to moment. Sometimes it will take me a half a day, or even a full day to feel better. The key is to keep going—persevere with the shift of thought until the emotion is shifted. Achievement or growth is an up and down journey—remember there is always an up after a down and vice versa.
Patience, a very healthy and positive emotion, is key to changing habits. Changing habits can take ten minutes or twenty years, depending on how deeply ingrained they have become. Personally, it took me eighteen years to deal with my fear of not having enough.
Eventually negative triggers happen less as we build positive thought and emotional habits. We begin to attract more positive people and situations into our lives as we think and most important — feel more positive.
If you are struggling with the discipline necessary to shift negative process on your own, seek some support in the form of mentors or mastermind groups — people whom you can trust with the secret parts of yourself. When we share negative perspective with a trusted person that is committed with us to a journey of growth, they can help us shift when we struggle. We can do the same for them.
We could look for support and guidance in places that might include our church, our personal network of trusted friends, a local university offering free basic counseling services from interns, inexpensive or free group organizations such as AA and internet clubs, or reading articles such as this one. There are others. Think in options!
Another method for shifting negative is to seek professional support, a good psychologist.
So to recap:
- Be aware of your negative emotion and own it.
- Change your thought patterns and it changes your emotion.
- Get support through mentors or mastermind groups to help when you are struggling to do it on your own.
- Get support from professionals.
Make the choice! Start with gratitude. Confront your negative emotions and fears. Then move forward with confidence.
12 simple Tricks to Success – Part 8
This is the Eighth blog of a series, “12 Simple tricks to Success” from Findamentror.com. We reveal one trick each month for you to read and practice so that in 12 months you’ll have developed some habits that can expedite your success. Enjoy!
Just like every trade and profession has its’, “tricks of the trade”, all very successful people have 12 tricks they do, no matter what industry or institution they work in. They do those things consistently. They are important processes that great and successful people follow.
12-simple-Tricks–to-Success—Part-8
Trick number Eight:
Develop Healthy Communication Skills
. . . including self-awareness, speaking from “I” point of view, listening,
clarifying, and paraphrasing.
Effectively communicating with others is one of our most difficult challenges as humans. Early in the history of human communication, people made pictures on rock to communicate or commemorate events in their lives. Over many thousands of years, humans evolved combinations of pictures that were less like representations of physical things and more like symbols of ideas.
These eventually turned into the world’s alphabets, as we know them today. Language in all its forms is a tool for communicating with others in order to influence them, learn from them, or share with them.
Today, there is not only language, but also many theories about how to use it effectively. In business and personal relationships we can use a number of well-known techniques to increase the effectiveness of our communications. I recommend to anyone wanting to enhance their communication skills to take communication workshops. These allow us a little time to practice with others, but more importantly they show us how that practice may be continued in everyday life.
When seeking a communication workshop, make sure it offers the following techniques as part of the curriculum:
self-awareness, speaking from the “I” point of view, clarifying, paraphrasing, and, most important, listening.
Communication begins with the self. “Becoming self-aware” involves learning to ask why whatever we’ve heard, tasted, smelled, or touched has caused us to think and feel in certain ways. It’s about questioning our thoughts, feelings, intentions, and actions. When we become self-aware, we are able to more clearly communicate with others about who we are at any given moment.
Speaking from the “I” point of view means acknowledging that what I feel may not be the same as what you feel. In our society we often speak from a “you” point of view. Consider, for example, the difference between this statement, “You know how you feel when someone steals from you,” and this one: “When someone steals from me I feel invaded.” The second is more clear and direct. It owns the thoughts and feeling and does not project it on the other person.
Speaking from the “I” point of view offers a clear way of sharing what we are experiencing without assuming that another is thinking or feeling the same thing. It is a pattern of speaking that encourages us to take responsibility for our own thoughts and feelings. In a workshop, you will learn the different ways of speaking from the ‘I’ point of view.
Paraphrasing and clarifying refer to repeating in our own words what we think another has said. It’s about getting clearer and can be about asking for additional information. Their purpose is to confirm or expand our understanding of what someone has said, which leads to more effective communicating.
They are particularly useful when we’re disagreeing with someone, having difficulty understanding, or wanting to let another person know that we understand.
In these situations, we can try beginning more of our sentences with, “What I hear you saying is . . .” Then ask; Am I correct? It’s amazing how often we misinterpret others’ words.
Effective listening is a skill that takes continual practice. Often while others are speaking, we turn our thoughts to what our response will be. Doing this interferes with true listening and may negatively affect an interaction because we haven’t heard everything that’s been said.
The more we listen, the more we hear, and the more informed we are before we speak. God gave us two ears and one mouth as a hint that we can listen twice as much as we speak. Take the hint. Listen more than you speak and you will have greater opportunity for learning.
Communicating effectively requires much practice. At first the new ways of speaking may feel awkward, but as we practice more, our speech becomes more natural and our communication with others becomes more effective. Some develop new habits quicker than others but we can all develop new habits.
Learning a new habit can be time-consuming. It took about five years for some of the communication skills I learned to become habitual. Fifteen years later I still catch myself speaking less than effectively at times. Be patient with yourself, but don’t procrastinate. The longer you put off learning effective communication skills and making them a habit in your life, the longer it will take to grow your networks and achieve your goals.
12 simple Tricks to Success – Part 4
12-simple-tricks-to-success-part-4
Trick number four:
“Build your networks wisely.”
. . . Find mentors, Coaches and Key Advisers.
The people we associate with, personally and professionally, become part of our network and affect our success rate. Each of us has a unique set of friends, associates and colleagues.
Our networks can help us advance or hold us back. When our networks expand, our careers build. When our networks stagnate, our careers stagnate. Networking has the potential to greatly determine how much opportunity we encounter.
Building our networks involves meeting as many people as we can. This was easier in sales careers than others in the past, and as a result, the sales profession created more millionaires than other professions. It’s different now.
Social media and the internet has changed the world and expanded opportunity. Regardless of our career choice, we have many opportunities for creating and expanding our networks and our careers.
Aside from going the extra mile at work (which helps influence networks positively), we can go the extra mile in building networks — work and personal. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pintrest, Youtube, LinkedIn and other social media sites can generate many new contacts. Signing up to blogs, email lists and listening to podcasts can help us too.
Don’t forget the personal face-to-face networking options though. They are very important. We can become involved in school functions with our children, corporate sports teams, community associations, chambers of commerce, or adult education courses. There are many options, personal and online, but remember — it’s up to each individual to follow through on them. You are the only person who can build your network.
Although each person’s network is unique, everyone’s network would benefit from the addition of a few key advisers. First and foremost are good mentors — people we can trust and talk too openly and who have expertise in an area of life we are working in or have a passion for. Mentors can save us much time in the world of trial and error.
Being part of mastermind groups is also key to positive networking and success. “When two or more people come together in common focus, a third invisible intangible force is created likened to A THIRD MIND.” …Napoleon Hill. Get the third mind working for you. Everyone is part of different mastermind groups. Masterminding is an expansion of the peer mentoring concept and can take different forms.
When a mentor and mentee come together to help the mentee, a mastermind group is formed. When two or more mentees work together to bounce ideas between them, with a focus on improvement for each other, they are masterminding. Work teams are mastermind groups: A sales team is a mastermind group focused on increasing sales. An accounting team is a mastermind group focused on tracking funds. Often, work mastermind teams could benefit with more focus on goals and communication structure. Hiring a coach to facilitate might help your work mastermind teams be more effective.
Even families are a type of mastermind group. They typically focus on maintenance and expansion of love.
Get the third minds working for you! Make sure members in your mastermind groups are on the same page — that they are clear on goals and progress for the group, and the goals for individuals in the group. Set a schedule for meetings and keep to it. Even if one member can’t make it to a meeting, do the meeting with who can.
It’s a good idea to acquire two additional network components. When I was starting my cellular phone business, a mentor told me to make sure I had good advisers for legal and accounting processes. Especially when we are self-employed, but even if we are not, having a good lawyer and accountant keep us safe and informed on legal and tax matters.
If we are determined to proceed on the path to success, we will without doubt need accounting and legal advice at some point—whether we’re buying a house, doing our taxes, or closing a deal on a corporate merger. As our wealth builds, good accountants and lawyers become more important.
I think it’s important to have a couple communications mentors. Communicating is something most people could become better at. I’ve found, when I survey employees for companies, it’s the most identified issue for improvement in businesses.
When we are faced with crucial conversations and difficult circumstance, how we communicate is very important. I will often make a phone call to a communications expert before I tackle a tough situation or conversation with others. I encourage those I coach to do the same.
Another key adviser might be a good psychologist. There are many obstacles on the path to success — career setbacks, emotional struggles, and self-doubt to name a few. A psychologist can help us deal with complicated emotional processes during difficult periods. Psychologists are expensive, however, so if funds are unavailable, we can seek a life process mentor—a compassionate friend or advisor whom we trust enough to share the intimate details of our life. Typically, this is someone we respect and admire, and he or she will have experienced the same situation or issue we are experiencing in our life.
Be careful with life process mentors and psychologists. We don’t want one that will enable us, and allow us to stay stuck in our past emotional traps and dysfunction, justifying our inability to move forward. We want to acknowledge our dysfunction and get tools to move through it, over it, under it, or around it when it triggers. Progress is what matters if we want to grow into all that we can be.
For successful people, the process of building networks continually shifts. People in our network can play different roles at different times. When I was deciding to move my cellular phone business to a larger store, I hired one of my mentors as a consultant/coach to help me complete a business plan and hire sales people. He coached me on what to say to the bank in order to get financing and on how to interview prospective personnel. In essence, he coached me on making decisions, like he always had as a mentor. During this period, the relationship was similar but intensified because I was paying him for a specific purpose. Mentoring is free, coaching is done for a fee. Later the relationship shifted to one of peer mentoring.
For successful people the process of building networks seldom stops. They understand that the more people they know, the more advice they will receive, the more sales they will make and the more fun they will have. If they can think of one or two people they’d like to adopt as mentors or peer mentors, they adopt them. We can do the same.
We do not have to accept everything our mentors, accountant, lawyer or psychologist says as the absolute truth, but we can listen and decide what is best for our situation. The more opinions we collect from people we trust, the more options we become aware of, and the easier it becomes to make decisions. We can save ourselves a great deal of time and hardship by listening to capable people whom we trust to have our best interest in mind.
Go out and build your network. Shift it where it needs to be shifted. Be open. Be confident and grow.
Have a great day.
Thanks for reading.
12 simple Tricks to Success – Part 3
This is the third blog post of a series, “12 Simple tricks to Success” from Findamentror.com. We reveal one trick each month for you to read and practice so that in 12 months you’ll have developed some habits that can expedite your success. Enjoy!
Just like every trade and profession has its’, “tricks of the trade”, all very successful people have 12 tricks they do, no matter what industry or institution they work in. They do those things consistently. They are important processes that great and successful people follow.
Trick number three:
Keep your agreements — spoken and unspoken.
. . . Do what you say you will and re-negotiate when you can’t.
As a businessman, I discovered early the most successful people are reliable in almost every aspect of life and they keep their agreements.
I also discovered early that many people break small agreements often enough to condemn themselves to mediocrity. Many feel that seemingly small agreements can be broken because they’re unimportant. They believe that being late for a meeting won’t hurt anyone or that a client won’t really mind if a call isn’t returned exactly when promised or that a project may be late but it won’t ambush anyone else’s plans. They say to themselves ‘the consequences will be small and everyone can handle them.’
The consequence of breaking small agreements is eventually loss of trust, respect and opportunity. It brings upon us a habit of unreliability. Each of these losses writes the label of mediocrity larger and larger on us as we go through life. Other people are chosen for important projects, promotions are not offered to us, opportunities are presented to those that show capability of excelling, not those who are doing an ‘okay’ or a ‘good enough’ job.
Managers, co-workers and peers may say, “He’s a pretty good worker” or “She’s usually on time” or “He always gets the job done — not always on time, but so what?” Many might perceive these statements as nice compliments, but consider the difference between “He does a good job” and “Her work is exceptional.” Who would you want on your team? Do you want be part of a pretty good team, or do you want to be part of an exceptional one?
Most people are good workers. They do their jobs and will be employed. Many of us want to stand out and to be considered leaders. But despite the desire of many to stand out and lead, few people excel in their careers. Those who do, go the extra mile often and especially when it comes to keeping their agreements and re-negotiating when they can’t. All agreements matter. When we keep them, they build trust and honesty.
The old saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” comes from experiencing a common situation: an inability to follow through with promises. A key part of human interaction is trust, and a key part of building trust involves keeping our agreements, even the little ones and unspoken ones.
As humans interact with other humans, agreements are made. Some of them are written, some are spoken, and some are unspoken. A common spoken agreement is, “I’ll have that done by tomorrow for sure.” Common unspoken agreements are, “When I speak, I am telling you the truth.” Or “I’ll be on time for work.”
Every time I break an agreement with another person, a layer of trust is stripped away because expectations are not met. When we are late for work or a meeting, we can call and let someone know that we will arrive at a different time. Re-negotiating helps maintain trust and manages expectations.
Sometimes we make agreements quickly without thinking things through and we regret the decision. In that situation, we can create an opportunity to renegotiate. Sometimes this is embarrassing. Pushing through embarrassment to be honest and renegotiate an agreement is critical to success.
I believe that our willingness and courage to be honest is intimately linked to our ability to keep agreements, communicate effectively and be successful. When we are not honest, we attract dishonesty. A spiral of dishonesty begins that interferes with our, and others’ ability to communicate and succeed. Communication often breaks down when people cannot trust us to follow through with agreements or tell the truth — after that, success breaks down to failure.
All of us set limits on how much dishonesty we find personally acceptable. We do it to protect ourselves and to keep ourselves from feeling vulnerable and judged. Sometimes our small dishonesties are even encouraged by society.
But there is usually a greater degree of honesty available to us when we really search within. I may tell myself that my dishonesty falls within the standards acceptable to society and everything is fine. But is it? If we accept that lies attract more lies, it’s easy to see how quickly even a small “untruth” can lead to more lies and eventually a very messy situation.
On the other hand, when I continually challenge myself to be honest and strive to keep all my agreements, I attract honest people and my ability to be honest increases. With practice and compassion, I can make honesty and keeping agreements a rewarding habit.
Spoken and unspoken agreements are part of life. People who keep all their agreements or re-negotiate when they can’t are few and far between. But then, so are successful people. People who succeed in life arrive at meetings on time. They phone when they are late. When they say they will do something for a customer or a co-worker, they do it, or they phone the customer or co-worker and explain why they can’t.
They understand, however, that constant re-negotiation is the same as not doing what they say they will. Re-negotiation has more credibility if it isn’t part of every agreement.
When we keep our agreements, we gain respect and trust. We are viewed as reliable people with integrity. People depend more on us for leadership, advice, troubleshooting, and even friendship. Good management recognizes leaders and rewards them with promotions and raises because it knows that reliable people are the foundation of a successful business.
I built a cellular phone business from the trunk of my car to 3 stores and 3 million in annual sales over a nine year period. When I moved from selling phones from the car trunk to selling them from a small store, the lease agreement was made with a handshake. After we had done all the leasehold improvements and been operating for three months, the landlord said to me, “We better get something in writing here.” Two days later we signed a one-page document.
I had known the landlord for almost five years. I met him when he interviewed me for a job 5 years earlier. I chose not to work with him directly then, but we stayed in touch. He became a mentor and a customer before he was my landlord. The point is that because both of us knew and trusted each other’s commitment to keeping agreements, the business transaction was very smooth, comfortable and allowed for a kind of peace of mind we don’t always find when operating a small business.
These kinds of transactions occurred often for me when building a business because my handshake was considered as good as my signature and my networks include people with the same type of character. People trust me to do what I say I will do. People who keep their agreements tend to associate with other people who keep their agreements.
The benefits of being perceived in this way are not just professional. Co-workers, peers, and friends outside of work need reliable people as much as business.
When we build the habit of keeping agreements into every part of our lives, we will eventually find ourselves surrounded by people who are reliable and help us succeed. We gain the confidence we need to become successful. No great undertaking is achieved by one person. Great people have other great people working with them.
But how do we practice getting better at keeping agreements? It’s difficult if we believe the agreements are insignificant and the consequences are trivial. However, if we accept the opposite, then it becomes easier to practice keeping the promises we’ve made — all of them, even when we’re scared. It’s really very simple: Acknowledge the fact keeping agreements is important to success. Trust your basics intentions to be trustworthy. Commit to integrity. The more we practice, the better we get at it. Eventually keeping agreements becomes a habit and it drives us nuts if we can’t keep one. This is the state of being, successful people reach.
People who keep agreements prefer working with people who are the same. Would you rather work with someone who does what they say, or, with someone who does what they say — some of the time? The choice is clear.
The choice is yours. You can develop the habit of keeping agreements, being honest and being recognized as someone, super reliable or you can be in the habit of renegotiating many agreements. It’s the super reliable people that are most successful. Be one of them. Develop the habits of reliability in every aspect of your life. Be the choice of integrity and attract more integrity.
Have a great day keeping agreements, every day.
Thanks for reading.
FindAMentor.com
12 simple Tricks to Success – Part 1
This is the first blog of a series, “12 Simple tricks to Success” from Findamentror.com. We’ll reveal one trick each month for you to complete and/or practice so that in 12 months you’ll have developed some habits that can expedite your success. Enjoy!
Just like every trade and profession has its’, “tricks of the trade”, all very successful people have 12 tricks they do, no matter what industry or institution they work in. They do those things consistently. They are important processes that great and successful people follow.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” …Lao- Tse
First things first: Write or type your goals or have your smart phone do it for you — just do it . . . even the little ones!
All very successful people have written goals. Write your goals down and have it done in the next 30 days before you read the next blog. Why?
A mid nineteen hundred graduating class from Yale met at a 20 year reunion. Researchers asked how many of the former students had achieved written life goals. Five per cent said they had. Seventy per cent of the class had never set meaningful goals. Twenty-five per cent had New Year’s resolution type objectives or goals they could articulate, but they were not written down. Only five per cent had written goals. The ones who wrote their goals all achieved them or variations thereof.
The researchers had each person complete a financial asset work sheet. The five per cent of the class that had written goals controlled ninety-six per cent of the group’s net worth.
Five per cent is better than average. Only three per cent of the general public writes down goals. Ninety-seven per cent do not have a clear, written idea of where they’d like to be in six months, five years or fifty. Why? They have never been taught the simple rules of success, the first one being to record your goals. Every successful business person records their goals in the form of business plans, operational plans and projections. Banks won’t lend them money if they don’t.
It’s been the way of people for thousands of years. 5 % learn the rules of success and follow them. Most others don’t learn them or have a hard time disciplining themselves to follow them once they know them. Some give up. I wonder why we don’t teach this in school. It’s so important, but there are many important life processes that they don’t, and could, teach us in school.
It’s time to change. Everyone deserves success and deserves to know the secrets of success. It’s time to increase the numbers of successful people on the planet. I was angry when I learned that these simple rules were not taught to me, and to all our children, in school. It‘s time to spread the wealth. Together we can do it.
Writing down and recording our goals — small ones, big ones, personality ones, business ones, and relationship ones — gives us an inventory of our desire and is the beginning of knowing our purpose in life.
Desire is like the starter on a car. It sets everything else in motion. But without a key in the ignition, we can sit behind the wheel all we want — we won’t be going anywhere. A full list of written goals puts the key in the ignition and creates the spark in the starter that fires the engine. With today’s technology, we can speak our goals into our smart phone and it types them for us. One of the best ways to fire the engine of careers is to begin a ‘To Do’ list.
Start with small lists, things you can achieve in a relatively short period. You might, for example, want to call someone you have been meaning to contact for a long time. Maybe there are small projects to do around the home. Maybe you just want to relax all weekend instead of running errands. Whatever your small goals are, write them down and do them.
Soon, you will find yourself regularly crossing goals off lists. The biggest benefit to crossing goals off a list is that our confidence and gratitude build. Positive emotions are key to success. Any action that can build our positive emotions is good to do.
When we become more certain of our ability to achieve what we put our mind to, we find ourselves setting bigger, longer term goals, and our self-esteem continues to grow.
Almost every success coach will tell you to feel and see yourself in possession of your desire. Imagine you already have it. Successful leaders have done this for millenniums. Do it every day with important goals.
There is no absolute time frame for accomplishing recorded goals. We don’t have to tell anyone about them. They are ours and we are allowed to keep things to ourselves. We can review our lists and adjust them, and time frames, as often as we want.
We are the ones who determine what short-term and long-term mean. We are the ones who decide what pace works best for us. Our really big goals, some call them dreams, may take 20 or 30 years to cross off the list — maybe even a lifetime — but recording and acknowledging them will keep us moving in the direction we want. It keeps us working towards purpose in life, which is a great thing.
Eventually, with determination and confidence, all our goals get crossed off, either because we achieved them or because they no longer matter.
In the movie, ‘The Ten Commandments’, the Pharaoh often said, “So it shall be written, so it shall be done.” For thousands of years humans have achieved what they have written down, recorded and committed too. Join the achievers! Record your goals!
The following offers you a simple guide for keeping track of your goals — all of them, even the little ones. Take the next month to record all your goals. You can make lists on your smart phone and in your calendar on your computer.
Personal Inventory of My Desires (Goals)
DREAM LIST
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
GOAL LIST (DAILY)
CAREER
___________________ ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,,
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
PERSONAL
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
GOAL LIST (SHORT TERM (6 months -Year)
CAREER
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
PERSONAL
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
GOAL LIST (LONG TERM)
CAREER
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
PERSONAL
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
PERSONALITY GOALS (THINGS ABOUT ME THAT I WANT TO CHANGE)
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
GRATITUDE LIST (EVERYTHING FOR WHICH I AM GRATEFUL)
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
___________________, ___________________, ___________________, ______________________________________,
Read other parts of this series here.
If You Want Your Life to Change, Get Better at Masterminding!
Masterminding
I first learnt about masterminding reading Napoleon Hill’s books. He wrote many books on the subject of being successful and growing rich. Basic success principles haven’t changed for thousands of years. Hill interviewed thousands of the world’s most powerful and influential people throughout most of the 1900’s — Ford, Churchill, Gandhi, Bell, Edison, Roosevelt, Carnegie, etc. Writing about success was his life’s mission. In every book he devoted an entire chapter to the masterminding principle. He said everyone he interviewed told him they owed much of their success to the mastermind principle.
Great men and women around the world use masterminding principles in their daily life — always have. They build incredible networks where they source information to help them make wise decisions. Ask any successful person and they will confirm that their accomplishments happen as a result of using strong teams and implementing ideas from other people.
Using other people’s money is one way of getting help from others. It’s involves using a finance mastermind group for the business. One of Canada’s billionaires (Ted Rogers) once told me in a luncheon that he would borrow as much as people would lend him as long as he could cash flow the commitment. If they’ll lend him a million, he’ll take it. If they want to lend him a billion, he’ll take it, to help him achieve his goals. He used masterminds in every part of his business and made sure his people kept them effective. His team of vice presidents was the lead mastermind group and they coordinated the successful business culture through the many down-line mastermind groups.
Watch this video to learn more about Masterminding and peer mentoring:
In business, an accounting team is a mastermind, a sales team is a mastermind, a production team is a mastermind, etc. The leaders of these teams come together to form another senior management mastermind. There are four critical and simple masterminds to establish in any business that will assure success in almost any economy:
1. A mastermind group focused on happy customers.
2. A mastermind group focused on happy employees.
3. A mastermind group focused on happy suppliers.
4. A mastermind group focused on leading the above three groups to keep the shareholders happy.
It’s a four win situation and great success tool. In smaller companies, the mastermind groups may be smaller and some of the members may not be employees. An accountant, lawyer or business coach may participate in some small company mastermind groups.
In very small companies and start-ups the mastermind groups have to be assembled in the form of mentors, and/or service providers you might contract too, or buy from. We want to mastermind with people who don’t necessarily work for our company full time, or at all, in a start-up or very small business environment.
I started a cellular phone business in the late 1980’s from the trunk of my car and built it to three stores and 3 million in annual sales over a nine year period. At first I was working by myself with service providers to back me up. The service providers became part of my mastermind group for customer service. It enabled me to use the word ‘we’ when talking to customers about exceptional customer service, even though I was a one-man business at the time.
A very important word to consider using when talking to customers, suppliers or colleagues is ‘we’. A mentor once told me to always use the word, ‘we’, when talking to customers, even though I was a sole proprietor at the time. Using the word ‘we’ gives the large customers confidence they are dealing with a team that can meet their service requirements.
No-one accomplishes a major goal in life without the help of others. Success is a ‘we’ situation. Using the word ‘I’ is not inclusive of the team needed to service a customer or supplier, even if that team is not employed directly by my company. ‘I’ can be interpreted as egotistical expression — turning customers off. ‘We’ is accurate. If we’re selling a product, we bought the product from someone so it’s the manufacturer and my company providing the product and service. It’s not ‘I’, it’s ‘we.
Where do we find the people so we can assemble our mastermind groups for a start-up company? When building the cellular phone business, I had a minimum of four mentors to call to discuss challenges with. I would call different mentors for different challenges. I was very fortunate to have many mentors by the time I started my own business. Past managers, co-workers, suppliers and customers who I established relationships with while working for other companies became friends and mentors throughout my career. My mentoring network continues to grow vertically— more mentors and mentees.
I use mentors and mastermind groups for important aspects of my life. I have communication masterminds I consult with to keep my communication skills honed. I have spirituality masterminds I consult with to help maintain my integrity. I have business masterminds to help keep me successful. I see my family as a mastermind group for healthy loving. I see my network of friends as a mastermind group to keep my life balanced between work and fun.
Mastermind groups can be utilized in different formats. In a business the most common format is a face-to-face meeting. In a very small business the most common format is by contacting at least four different mentors on the phone in separate conversations, or in separate meetings. I talk to at least four guys about current issue or challenges. After listening to each, I decide which information is right for me to use, and act accordingly. In all cases masterminding uses more than one mind to discover and evaluate options and help make wise decisions.
Two minds are better than one, but what is the ideal group size for accomplishing goals? A mentor once shared with me what he called a ‘channelled from above’ idea on masterminding: “Four wise men close and two distant make up the nucleus of your mastermind. One of the four is two.” I was 17 when he shared it with me and I had read 3 of Napoleon Hills books by that time so I knew exactly what he meant by mastermind.
From the beginning of my work career I’ve watched and evaluated effectiveness of groups focused on objectives. The most successful teams I’ve been on, and witnessed, used the channelled mastermind formula. “Four wise men close and two distant make up the nucleus of your mastermind. One of the four is two.” ‘One of the four is two’ means to me that it’s best to have someone who can play devil’s advocate in the group — seeing both the positive an negative consequences of each idea. An effective mastermind group includes a participant that can explain two sides of any story.
‘Two wise men distant’ can mean having two members of the mastermind group that are not always present at the meetings but hear about the agenda and offer input through one of the four close members. An accountant or lawyer might be two distant members of a business mastermind group. Mentors of primary, ‘close’ mastermind group members might be the two distant members of a mastermind group.
In all cases, when I see four strong members in a business mastermind group I see success. In the early part of my sales career I was part of a four person sales team. We were all very young and inexperienced in the industrial rental equipment field and had just gone through a huge economic downturn. We were also starting an aviation rental business. The company we were working for fired their entire sales team and hired a new young sales force. All of us were under thirty and closer to 25 years old. Every night of the week this team met with our sales manager and each member discussed our entire day’s activity. We masterminded our sales process with the team every day. We all learnt from each other what the best words to use, or approach to take, would be with different types of people and different companies. I received raises every six months because of performance. Sales grew 30% year over year for 3 years until I left for another opportunity. I was sales manager of a large industrial rental company selling to large plants and construction companies at 27. At 28 I started a cellular phone business.
We used the channelled mastermind formula to help build the cellular phone business. I’ve been doing business consulting and coaching for 15 years now and we help customers build and adjust their mastermind groups using the same formula.
Your success will relate directly to how effective your mastermind groups are. Life and business is a team effort. Masterminding is happening in your life whether you like it or not. Are you directing it to your satisfaction? Are your outcomes what you want? Remember the definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” If you want your life to change and get better, get better at masterminding.
To get better at masterminding, you have to become a great communicator. Look for our next blog post on being a great communicator — communicating from the HIP (Human Interaction Process). Sign up to our newsletter below to receive posts directly in to your mailbox.
January is National Mentor Month. Be a Mentor!
Be a Mentor! January is National Mentoring Month.
Millions of people around the world and in your community are looking for a mentor. Be a mentor to someone new this January either online or in your community. “Mentoring Transforms Adversity into Achievement.” The Mentor News.
President Barack Obama issued a proclamation designating January as National Mentoring Month in 2014. He stated, “In every corner of our Nation, mentors push our next generation to shape their ambitions, set a positive course, and achieve their boundless potential. During National Mentoring Month, we celebrate everyone who teaches, inspires, and guides young Americans as they reach for their dreams.”
Around the world people rely on mentoring to maintain and grow their families, communities and businesses. It’s our duty to give back. Thought and emotional processes that are critical to success cannot be taught and learned in a classroom alone. Real life experience is needed to teach our new generations the success tools required to succeed in families, communities and businesses. Benjamin Franklin said: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and show me and I learn.”
I take on one new mentor each year from FindAMentor.com and then I hide my profile so I’m not flooded with requests. Most of us mentor many people and we have many informal mentors. I mentor my sons, their friends, my nieces and nephews, business colleagues, spirituality friends, etc. Some people I mentor once a month, others once a quarter or once a year. The mentoring relationship differs with each mentee and usually shifts over time in each relationship. Some of my mentors I only see once a year now. As a mentor, we can set the time frames for a mentee relationship. I allow 1 hour per month of time for new mentees. Often, after the first session, time requirements diminish.
Mentoring is a lifelong natural process we all do to different degrees as mentors and mentees. Remember, mentors often learn as much as their mentees in a mentoring relationship. They feel rewarded.
Make a list of the characteristics you are looking for in a mentee and what questions you want to ask them, so you can determine how to help now or if they can be helped:
- What type of experience do you expect them to have, if any?
- Are they involved in the field of interest of career now, or just wanting to be?
- How much experience do they need to have to be my mentee, if any?
- How old should they be?
- Should they be male or female?
- Ask the mentee questions to determine if they are a good communicator. What does a good communicator look like?
- Ask questions to determine what emotional process habits they have and if they are the right ones to succeed.
- Can you help them with confidence, patience, persistence and perseverance?
- Ask questions to determine what knowledge they have in your field right now.
- What do they need to know that they don’t now?
Peer mentoring or masterminding is a great option if you want to have far reaching affect. Masterminding is simply a group of people working together and meeting regularly to achieve common objectives. Napoleon Hill identified Masterminding as one of the common denominators required in achieving success of any magnitude after he interviewed thousands of the world’s most successful people. Any executive team is a mastermind. Sales teams, accounting teams or production teams, etc., are all mastermind groups. When a mastermind group is active, “a third invisible intangible force is created likened to a third mind’, writes Napoleon Hill. Hill devoted an entire chapter to masterminding in each of the many success tool books he wrote.
As a mentor, if you want to have a greater effect on more people, try leading a peer mentoring or masterminding group as a senior mentor. By leading a mastermind group you mentor more than one person at once and dramatically increase the learning curve in each of your mentees. Here’s how it can work best:
- Have 4 to 6 people in the mastermind group.
- The group identifies objectives each member, and the group, wants to achieve. Minutes are taken in each session by one of the members. Often the minute responsibilities are shared from session to session. Minutes are typed and forwarded to each member.
- The senior mentor shares the knowledge and emotional traits necessary to achieve objectives the group has identified.
- The mentees discuss how to utilize the knowledge and invoke the emotional traits determined necessary to succeed.
- In each session, each mentee identifies goals to be achieved and practical actions they are committing to accomplishing before the next session.
- In each session the mentees discuss their actions and goals achieved, or not, since the last session. Wins and challenges are discussed in detail by each mentee or mastermind member. Learning curves are increased dramatically when each person’s daily, weekly or monthly activities are shared and listened too. When there are two people sharing we learn twice as much, twice as fast. When four people share we learn four times as fast and four times as much.
The most successful masterminds I’ve witnessed in a business environment meet every week day. I’ve seen sales teams increase sales 30% year over year in a tough economy as a result of meeting daily. I’ve witnessed customer service teams increase product knowledge and improve customer service dramatically when the team meets daily. Meeting schedules are more demanding in a business team environment. Peer mentoring type masterminding with different purposes require much less time. I meet with a spirituality group once a week.
Common mentoring is a type of masterminding as well. When I meet with one mentor I am masterminding my development. When I call four different mentors and ask for an opinion on a challenge, I’m still masterminding using a different format. I take what fits for me from each mentor and discard the rest.
Having at least 4 mentors for every aspect of life that is important to you is a great idea. I personally have four or more business mentors and the same for spirituality mentors. I have 4 communications mentors. I have mentors for hobbies like construction or renovations. We can and do have mentors for many aspects of life. It’s a good idea to continue growing our mentor network. I meet new people every year that I use as mentors.
Be a mentor to one more person this year. Millions of people are in need of guidance and searching it out. If you find a new mentee on-line at FindAMentor.com or another website utilize the ‘Tools and Tips’ pages (top menu on home page) at FindAMentor.com. There are mentee and mentor questionnaire forms that you can use to help you verify the authenticity of someone you meet on-line as a prospective mentee or mentor. There are tips for being a good mentee and mentor. There are tips for the different types of mentoring you might be interested in utilizing for your company or organization.
If you need a daily inspirational email from us, join the emailing list. We won’t send you spam, we will just inspire you every morning with some inspirational quotes from a different mastermind group each day. We want to motivate you to achieve your goals. Go out and make it a great day. Thank you for reading.
Please tell your friends to mentor someone. Millions of people are looking for mentors. And we can all be a mentor to someone in at least one field of interest.
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