Driven to Business with Eddie Mayfield

Assuming you’re ever on a death bed (as Jerry Seinfeld quipped, “why would you ever buy one of those?”) taking stock of your life, the criteria by which you measure success will be relationships.  Relationships with God, family, and friends.  And, probably nothing else.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that nothing trumps relationships, and that’s true both in your personal and business life.

Here’s a few thoughts about that:

1. Relationships require investment.   
2. Relationships require humility.
3. Relationships are one on one; Facebook is not a relationship. 

Author Malcomb Gladwell in his book “Tipping Point” says that our electronically interconnected world has had the effect of renewing the desire for personal touch.  Gladwell says that we are re-entering (I’m not convinced we ever left) the age of “word of mouth.”

Think of this in your own life.  All of us are inundated with marketing messages every day in various forms.  We’ve developed filters, almost an immunity to them.  But, if someone whom we know well and trust tells us about a restaurant or a movie, we give that recommendation instant credibility.  That’s the power of a relationship. It does, trump all other marketing.

Jeffery Gitomer, author and business coach wrote “The Little Black Book of Connections” some years ago.  I’ve read it several times, and have even given copies to friends.  In addition to his book, Gitomer has written numerous blogs on the subject.

Here’s a few highlights from him:

1. Make the focus of the relationship the other person, not you.  No one wants to be used.
2. Don’t worry as much about customer satisfaction, as about customer loyalty.  This is huge.  Loyalty requires a relationship.
3. If you lose a job to a current customer to a competitor on price, it means the competitor has a better relationship than you do.
4. If you think you will make a sale because you have the best product, price, or service- you’re kidding yourself.  50% of sales are made on the basis of friendship. 

So, how do you start to build relationships?  Slowly.   Harvey Deutschendorf suggests:

1. Learn to be a great listener.  Everyone wants to be heard and understood.  We naturally bond with people that really hear us, and we want to spend time with them.
2. Ask the right questions.  Be sure you understand them by digging deeper.  One way is to say, “if I understand you correctly, you said… ”  When others sense that you’re sincerely trying to understand them, then tend to open up.  This deepens the relationship.
3. Pay attention to the whole person.  We tend to remember and appreciate people who ask us if everything is OK, even if we haven’t told them anything is wrong.   It tells us that they are paying attention to us.
4. Remember things that are important to them. People will tell us what they value, if we just listen.
5. Manage your emotions.   People who tend to have mood swings have a hard time building deep relationships.  Erratic shifts in mood tend to push people away.  If this is a problem for you, work on it.
6. Share your story, but only when the time is right.   We all know people that begin sharing intimate details of their lives before we’re ready to hear it.  Pace yourself, and wait till the right time.   IF you have an experience that relates to the other person’s experience, it’s usually good to share it.  But, here’s a caution; don’t upstage their experience with yours.
7. Be genuine and fun.  People enjoy being around positive people who are comfortable in their own skin.

Finally, go places and do things.   Don’t give a customer a ticket to a ball game, take them to a game, and if possible, take their family.

Gitomer suggests an I-Max movie for the whole family.  And do NOT bring up business there, unless they do.

Don’t have time for all this relationship building stuff?  Then maybe you’d better find a mundane job where it doesn’t matter.  Because in every significant job, it does.

Eddie Mayfield

You will not go far in your career without learning negotiating skills. Daniel Pink wrote “To Sell is Human” and in there he defines selling as moving a person from one position to another. Deepak Malhotra in his book “Negotiating the Impossible” defines negotiation as the process by which two or more parties who perceive a difference in interests or perspective attempt to reach an agreement.

I read an interesting Bloomberg blog recently by Jim Camp titled “Business Schools Teach Negotiating Tactics that Don’t Work.” 

He states that most of these tactics make the mistake of assuming any agreement is better than no agreement.  We’ve said at EMA for years that there are worse things than failing to land a project, and that’s getting a project you shouldn’t have.

Camp makes a great point that no one should come to the negotiating table with preconditions, assumptions, or expectations for gaining agreement.  The smart negotiator recognizes that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

I heard a Montgomery Ward executive speak many years ago about his experience as a young manager trainee.  The store sold a wood heater to an elderly couple, the stove malfunctioned and caused damage to their home.

The senior management assumed the worst, thinking the couple wanted an exorbitant amount of money or settlement.  They sent the young trainee out there, and he asked the question no one else had bothered to ask: “what would you like us to do?”

He was surprised to hear them say, that they just wanted their carpet replaced in the room with the stove.  This reiterates Camp’s point.

How do you learn what you don’t know?  Very simple, you ask questions.

This isn’t to say that you don’t prepare for negotiations, but your research is to help the negotiator ask the right questions, not to instill assumptions.

The best questions are open ended what, how, and why questions.

Deepak Malhotra suggests that you negotiate process before substance.  Many of us have had the frustration of a long negotiation only to have the other person say, “well, I have to get my boss’ approval.’ We thought he WAS the boss.  It’s imperative that you understand and negotiate the process before getting to that position.

Selling to the wrong person is a time honored sales mistake, and it should be avoided.  You should clarify and reach agreement on the path to a decision.

Peter Bourke in his book “Un-Selling: Sell less and win more” suggests that you clearly understand the time factor.  Many negotiators and sales people will ask “when do you plan to make a decision on this project,” and then just accept what is said.  Bourke suggests asking a followup question, “what bad things will happen if you don’t make a decision by that date?”

If the answer is, in essence, “nothing,” then that’s not a real deadline.

Negotiation:  You’d better get skilled at it.

Eddie

I once heard Atlanta pastor Andy Stanley say, that “if you have the only hotdog stand in town, your hotdogs don’t have to be that good.”  Most of us don’t have that option.

Business Coach Sue Miley wrote a blog recently on leveraging your points of difference. Sue rightly insists that if don’t leverage what makes your company unique, then you are the same as everyone else.

She gives 5 questions to help determine your point of difference.

1. Who Buys from you? Go a little deeper than women or men and determine as best you can exactly “who” buys from you.
2. Why does your customer buy from you?
3. Why do they buy from you and not from your competitor?  This is where you begin to list qualities that are unique to your business and important to your customers.
4. Are your unique qualities sustainable? I especially like this question.  In the industrial business that I’m in, some might say that we’re the only person in the SE stocking a particular part. But, what if a competitor begins stocking it? Is that still a unique quality?
5. Are your unique qualities real? “We offer great customer service” is not a real point of difference.  What does that even mean?  ” We will have an A/C technician at your house within 2 hours-” is.

The more you can target, focus, and refine your market, the more successful you will be.  And by being certain that the value proposition you present contains real points of difference the easier it becomes to target.

I used to do a lot of trade shows.  There was always a tension between getting numbers of people to visit your booth, and getting qualified people to visit.  At these male dominated shows, you could ensure heavy booth traffic by having an attractive female on display, OR by raffling away sports tickets.

But I came to the conclusion early in my career, that smaller was bigger.  We didn’t just want people tramping through the booth, we wanted people that were interested in our products and services, and had the ability to buy them.

Remember, your target customer doesn’t have to be an existing customer, in fact, they may not even be aware you exist.

But if you’ll spend the time determining what your points of difference are, what target market that appeals to , and then relentlessly focusing on it.  You’ll find success.

One final thought..   these are moving targets.  Especially where technology is concerned, what was a viable business a few years ago, may not be now.  Know your business!

Eddie

The term “common sense” is often used to describe what we think of as obvious to most people.  However, as some have quipped, “common sense isn’t always common.”

I feel that way when I see people and businesses violating the most fundamental rudiments of business, without any realization they are doing so.

Here are a few:

• Ignoring Cash:  Out of cash, is out of business.  It’s really not more complicated than that.  It’s a business fundamental, that while obvious, is commonly violated.  When I was flying airplanes, we were often told the first rule of flying was to watch your airspeed, and the second rule of flying, was again, watch your airspeed.   The reason is the moment air is no longer flowing past the wings at a sufficient rate, you stall.   In business, that rule is cash.
• Look at your business through the eyes of your customers:  If they say your service is bad, your service is bad.  It makes no difference what you or your employees think.  Violate this business fundamental, and your customers will put you out of business.
• Price your products and services properly: Prices should be set by the value that customers assign.  Many businesses fall into the “markup” trap.   You pay $100 for a part; you figure 10% is a reasonable return, so you sell it for $111.11 (by the way, you divide your cost by .9, you don’t multiply by 1.1 to achieve a 10% margin) .  However, that part has a value of $1000 to the customer.  Sell the value, not the cost.   Not every job or sale goes well, and if you are pricing yourself with little or no margin, it will eventually catch up.  Price by value, as determined by the customer.
• Your job is to create and keep customers:  It is not to have nice furniture, or a snazzy website.  All of those may be nice, but the fundamental priority is to create and keep customers.
• Hire the right people:  I learned this the hard way.  At one time, I hired strictly based on skills, paying little or no attention to personality, temperament, or values.  I was often surprised, naively, that employees weren’t as nice to customers or their colleagues as I’d hoped.  Hire honest people that have the skills to help you grow the business, that fit your culture, and are friendly.  A bad hire costs you a lot more than a wasted salary, it can cost you your business.  I go a step further, hire people that you enjoy being around.  It sure makes running a business a lot more fun.

Eddie Mayfield

Driven to Business, hosted by Eddie Mayfield, airs at 11 AM every Saturday on WAFS, Atlanta’s Biz 1190 AM.  The show is podcast on eddiemayfield.com and itunes, and streamed live on biz1190.com 

Simply the best business radio in Atlanta..  Driven to Business.

The alarm goes off, and you get a sick feeling in your stomach.  You do NOT want to go to work.  There’s only one problem, it’s your company.

That happens more often that you might think.  Most entrepreneurial types face burnout.   I don’t mean the feeling of being overloaded or frustrated, I mean burnout.

Per consultant Erica Diamond,  burnout is powerful and all consuming.  It’s the inability to feel at ease, happy, or restful.  Your mind is no longer your own, and for most, you can’t sleep.

I ran into this about two years after founding my industrial services company, EMA Inc. It seemed that despite my best efforts, I could never see the light at the end of the tunnel. My dreams and enthusiasm for growing a company had faded.  Just keeping up with the details, personnel issues, financial problems, sales, customer demands, and vendor problems consumed all my energy.

I was exhausted; I wasn’t running a business, it was running me.

I found myself, for the first time in my life, in a state of depression.  Something had to give.  I talked with my wife Vicki, with one of my Pastors, and with several other businessmen.  I prayed and thought about it and reached a conclusion.

I made a conscious decision to pull back from the business.  If it failed, it would fail, I just wasn’t going to lay awake at night worrying about it.

Amazingly, to me at least, after I did this, EMA began to prosper, and so did I.

I am thoroughly convinced that one of the primary causes of small business failure is founder burnout.

Erica Diamond gives 5 steps to combat it.

1.  Get help:   Find an objective ear and shoulder to lean on.  This may mean learning a bit of humility,
2. Get some balance:  You don’t have to stop, but you do have to balance.
3. Create a “worry” list:  She suggests that when something pops into your mind after hours, write it down and forget it till the next day.  Give yourself some mental space.
4. Learn your limits, know your needs:  I have learned what will set me off, and especially at night, I just will not read an upsetting  report or email till the next day.  You can’t hide (nor should you) from your responsibilities, but you do them on your time schedule.
5. Sleep: Sounds so simple, but one of my biggest issues was lack of sleep.  Lay off the caffeine a bit, get some exercise, and set a cutoff time an hour or so before bedtime for business.

I’m all about business success, and have been blessed to experience quite a bit of it.  But, life has value and meaning because of relationships; primarily those with God, family, and friends.

The investment of yourself into those areas, must not be allowed to decline in order to keep a business running.

We are geared in our culture to arrive somewhere, including success.  It’s kind of like going on vacation; we’re in such a hurry to get to the beach.  But, the vacation doesn’t start when you get to the beach, it starts when you leave the driveway.  The trip is part of the vacation.

Many business owners will tell you the most enjoyable and memorable times of their business life was before their businesses had any great success.  The trip was fun.

None of this is to suggest that you not work hard.  In fact, if you don’t your business will likely fail.

But, while you’re working..   “it’s only life, enjoy the ride.”  (Ricky Skaggs song)

Eddie

Many of us grew up with the assumption that if you went to college, you could land a job with a corporation and  live well until retirement.   That was etched into the American landscape after WWII, when so many young men went to college on the GI Bill, and made America great.

The question is: does that paradigm still work?  My suggestion is, in many cases, “no.”

In 2011, a number of underemployed lawyers filed class action lawsuits against several law schools, alleging the schools had misrepresented employment and salary prospects.  The graduates charged the schools had knowingly painted a more rosy picture of how much money they would make than was in fact the case.

Some of those cases are still going on, although in general, the lower courts have taken a dim view of their claims.  Similar charges could be made against almost all colleges and Universities that lead students to believe a particular degree will result in a good salary.

All of us know college grads that are either unemployed, or working in fields that do not require a college degree.  Per the Huffington Post, college costs have increased 12 fold over the past 30 years, far outpacing the rest of the economy.  This is, in my opinion,  inexcusable. It has been driven by a number of factors, among them a lack of accountability, and easy access to federally backed student loans.  Loans for studies that are very unlikely to result in a successful career. It is to the shame of political leaders and educators this hasn’t been aggressively addressed.

Students that acquire loans to finance college owe an average of $27,000 upon graduation. That’s an average, many owe much more.  One in 10 will default on the loan.  That’s a huge debt load for a young person starting life, especially if they can’t find suitable employment.

Mike Rowe, the host of Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs” says that “in reality, a four year degree won’t make you successful any more than a gym membership will make you healthy.”

Rowe says that less than 12 percent of all jobs require a four year degree.  He thinks the country needs to stop selling the notion that “higher” education is superior to alternates, such as Trade Schools.

And, there is a big demand for skilled trades, and that demand is only going to increase as older tradesmen retire.   And per the research, job satisfaction among trade workers, is every bit as high, and often higher, than white collar jobs.

The economics used to strongly favor white collar jobs, but no more.  Experienced tradesmen can make six figure incomes, and they rarely graduate trade school owing any money.

As an entrepreneur, I take this a step further.  An experienced tradesman, that learns the business of his trade, as well as the skills, can open his own business and enjoy an income level comparable to a successful attorney.

This isn’t to denigrate a college education.  In fact, education is in my mind, a value unto itself, completely aside from career earnings.

I do think however, that parents and students should consider Trade Schools along with college.  And who is to say, that you can’t learn a trade skill, begin earning a good living, and THEN pursue a standard four year degree.?

In fact, that’s exactly what I did.  Wise people consider the times, and consider the options.  Be wise.

Eddie

George Wendt is the founder and President of Outdoor Adventure River Specialists (OARS –www.oars.com)

I love talking to business people of all types, but I especially enjoying talking to people whose passions have become their business.    OARS specializes in adventure river trips all over the western United States, and even does some international trips.  I’ve had the chance to travel with OARS on three different occasions, and it’s a blast.  I wrote a blog about a Grand Canyon rafting trip with them, and you can see that HERE.

George is an interesting guest, and he’s managed to build a highly rated and exciting  business.  He’s done this by having a sterling reputation, providing an excellent service, a great team, and smart business practices. George and I talked about the importance of a company’s reputation, about surrounding yourself with top notch people, and about treating customers well.

Business people of all stripes will enjoy and benefit from hearing George share his business philosophies and success methods.  George is also a person unashamed of his Christian faith, which  plays a big role in his life and business.

I told George that I’m not only a returning customer of OARS; I’m a fan of the company.  Visit their website, and listen in to the  Broadcast  of Driven to Business with Eddie Mayfield at 11 AM.  The program will be streamed live on biz1190.com and podcast on eddiemayfield.com . Don’t miss this broadcast.

Eddie Mayfield

Driven to Business with Eddie Mayfield airs at 11 AM every Saturday on Atlanta’s Business Radio, WAFS, biz 1190 AM.  Simply the best business radio in Atlanta..  tune in.

In Philadelphia, in 1776, the Continental Congress of the 13 Colonies argued fiercely about how to deal with an increasingly hostile British monarchy. Many, if not most, of the new world’s inhabitants considered themselves British subjects, and the idea of rebelling was unthinkable.

But continued provocations from the crown, including onerous taxes began to take their toll, and the unthinkable became the inevitable. They appointed a 5 man committee to write a declaration of their intent. One of the obvious appointments was Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was one of the most well known men in the world, and highly revered as both a philosopher and scientist. They also appointed a fiery outspoken attorney, John Adams. Additionally they appointed Roger Sherman from Connecticut, and Robert Livingston from New York. Perhaps their most unusual appointment was the youngest member of the congress, a shy Virginian, who rarely spoke publicly, named Thomas Jefferson.

When the five men met, they asked Jefferson if he would draft the document. Jefferson felt that it would be better if one of the older and more experienced men wrote it, but Adams insisted. Jefferson asked him why?

Adams replied, “Reason first: you are a Virginian and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second: I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third: You can write ten times better than I can.”

Jefferson then agreed, and sequestered himself to write. Jefferson penned the phrases that came to represent the cause of not only a new country, but a new way of looking at the relationship between government and the governed.

He wrote that governments governed only by the consent of the governed, and that human rights came not by government grant, but from God.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It would be difficult to overstate the impact of what this brilliant young man wrote. It gave a moral compass to the fledgling nation’s struggle for independence, and has for centuries been an inspiration and encouragement for people all over the globe.

On July 4th, 1776, the congress unanimously approved and signed the Declaration of Independence. They signed it knowing that it meant a hangman’s noose if they were captured by the British.

As Americans, every July 4th, we celebrate the genius of Thomas Jefferson, the bravery of the patriots that signed it, and give thanks for our nation. A nation that God has blessed far beyond what the signers envisioned. Whenever we begin to lose our moral compass, the Declaration of Independence calls us again to the revelation that we answer to God, and governments answer to us.

We are citizens, not subjects. Happy 4th of July, and God bless America.

Eddie Mayfield

Courtesy of Lumen Strategies

Growing should be a decision, not a given (see Grow or Die, is that true?) but IF you choose to grow, there are pains and considerations.   To be sure, there’s pain associated with not growing, but we tend to expect that.  What’s often unexpected, are problems that accompany growth.  Many would argue these are problems they want, but they’re problems nonetheless.

Tim Keller wrote an article- The Process of Church Growth- aimed obviously at growth strategies and considerations for the growth of a church.  But, I find his ideas helpful in terms of business growth.

• A large business is not simply a bigger version of a small company.  They are two different creatures. 

The leadership skills, communication methods, team building, and decision making processes required are very different.  This is why many businesses plateau in growth; they don’t recognize or incorporate the changes necessary.

• Imposing a “size culture practice” on a business that does not have that size will wreak havoc, and eventually force the business back into the size with which those practices are compatible. (Keller, loosely paraphrased)

I notice this more with founders and leaders who cannot bring themselves to relinquish control.  This reticence is understandable.  Many small business founders poured everything they had into starting the business, working long hours, and pinching every penny. In fact, that micromanagement  was essential to survival.

Now, their business has grown, they have other people employed, and they still want to minutely manage every aspect of the business.  Two things happen:

1. You cannot keep highly motivated and energized employees
2. You overlook business opportunities. 

I managed a growing and very profitable service department for a company.  The founders of this successful company had founded it on a shoestring, and had worked hard to build it up.

On one occasion one of them came to me furious after discovering that we’d overlooked invoicing some overnight freight bills.  It amounted to about $100.  He insisted that I go through boxes of invoices to determine how many others we’d overlooked.

After spending about an hour doing this, with no results, I went to his office.  I asked him to reconsider whether  he actually wanted his national service manger spending time hunting down small amounts of overlooked freight bills?  Thankfully, he said “no, just please make sure we have systems in place to ensure they are being invoiced.”

His initial response is emblematic of the issue many founders have to face.   You can’t run a company with numbers of employees like you ran one with two.  The economies of scale simply don’t work for chasing pennies and overlooking large dollar opportunities.

Delegation is more than assigning jobs; you have to trust the people to whom you delegate.  And that means trusting them to make decisions.  If you think that’s easy, then you’ve never founded a small company and watched it grow.

Changes are necessary for growth.  Stacy Karacostas says she uses three rules of thumb to know when changes need to happen.

1. I have months of data showing me I am not on track to meet my goals.
2. I find myself complaining about the same problem three or more times.
3. When presented with a better idea or system for my business.

Want to grow your company?  Great, have fun; just be aware of the issues.

Eddie

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart  is famous for saying that while the definition of pornography might be vague, “I know it when I see it.” Not to equate leadership with porn, but most of us know it when we see it, whether we can define it or not.

John Maxwell, author of “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” says that “everything rises and falls on leadership.”  He’s exactly right.

All of us have experienced bad leadership in some form.  Napoleon Hill wrote “Think and Grow Rich” many years ago, in which he interviewed the most successful men and women in America over a twenty year period.  Many people have noted the attributes that Hill detailed for being successful.

But he also listed 10 major causes of failed leadership.  They are:

1. Inability to organize details
2. Unwillingness to render humble service
3. Expectations of being paid for what you know, rather than for what you do.
4. Fear of competition from followers
5. Lack of imagination
6. Selfishness
7. Intemperance
8.  Disloyalty (to his associates, those above him, and those below him)
9. Emphasis on the ‘authority’ of leadership
10. Emphasis on title

I want to talk about a few of those, but add something related: Leaders that fail to lead.

It’s frustrating to attempt following a leader that refuses to lead.  Advanced Business Consulting cites a study that says 70% of employees have the feeling their leader has no idea of what they’re doing.

Leaders MUST lead.  They need to equip their followers with the tools and information they need to do their jobs efficiently.  Leadership is not a passive occupation, it’s hard work.  It’s also the key to success for any enterprise.

Leaders must be genuine.  

If you look over the list that Napoleon Hill compiled of failed leadership traits, you’ll note that many of them can be lumped under this.  The arrogant know it all,  lording it over subordinates, leaning on his title, and suspicious and jealous of his followers is precisely the person that no one wants to follow.

Many of us, including me, grew up with sort of a military philosophy of leadership.  The strong stalwart leader, standing alone, barking orders that are to be obeyed without question.

Interestingly, there are actually times when that kind of leadership works, at least temporarily.  Those times are always crisis situations. If an infantry platoon is ambushed, the leader doesn’t have time to be nice or seek consensus.  And everyone in the platoon accepts this because their lives depend upon it.

But, even in the military, that brand of leadership is not encouraged or practiced by successful officers outside of a crisis situation.  One of the reasons the soldiers obey his orders during an ambush, is that the officer has helped to prepare them. He’s trained alongside and helped them become proficient at their tasks.  He’s promoted an esprit de corps, and a shared vision.  The soldiers have come to see their platoon officer as a genuine leader whom they trust.

In Stephen Ambrose’s great book “Band of Brothers” he interviews members of Easy Company  about their beloved commander, Major Winters. One told him, “we would do anything for him, we just hated to let him down.”  That’s leadership.

Winters, a courageous tough commander, was also an humble servant, who viewed his job as helping his men be successful. This led to the organizational success he was vaunted for.  Look over the list of failing leadership traits listed by Hill again;  Winters exhibited none of them.

Be genuine

Leaders MUST communicate.  

I often joke and say that whenever I see two people in a fight, I always coach the one on the bottom, because that’s where I have the most experience!   I can coach leaders that communicate poorly, in part, because I’ve often fallen so short in this area myself.

Many people in leadership positions enjoy talking about their “vision.”  Here’s the problem, as long as it is your vision, getting it implemented is an uphill battle.   This where the dirty little work that all type A personalities hate comes into play, and that word is “process.”

You can not just “tell” your vision, you must move the ownership from you to your team.  The way this happens is that you open yourself up to input from others, and allow changes so that it becomes a shared vision.  Once that happens, great things can occur.

You must communicate, communicate, and communicate again to your team members and employees, and don’t overlook the less obvious team members.

Many years ago, I planned and promoted a significant  church event which involved considerable advertising.  I did a great job of assembling a team to help, went through a process, got buy in from everyone, and thought I had it nailed.

But.. I forgot to tell the people in the office that would be answering the phones.  People began calling in response to our considerable promotional activities, and the people answering the phone knew nothing whatsoever about. Very embarrassing.

We live in an age where people are bombarded with messages all day every day.  The idea that you can issue a memo, or an email and think you’ve adequately communicated anything, is a huge mistake.

Empower People

Empowerment is an amazing leadership tool.   Your legacy as a leader is not so much in what you accomplish, as it is what the people you lead accomplish.   Employees will gladly assume ownership once empowered.  It adds meaning and significance to their lives.

And finally..  learn to be humble.   

Renowned author and researcher Jim Collins says that the number one attribute of great leaders is humility.  In fact, in his book “How the Mighty Fall” he says the number one step to failure, is “hubris born of success.”  In other words, arrogance.

Arrogant people don’t learn, because in their minds, they already know everything.  The leaders most susceptible to this are those that have experienced some degree of success.  Because of their accomplishments, they assume they now know it all, and therein lay the seeds of failure.  The old Testament says that “pride goes before a fall,” and many leaders have learned that lesson the hard way.

Be successful, let your organization rise, not fall, on your leadership.  View yourself as an humble servant, work hard, and measure success by the accomplishments of those under you.

Famed Alabama coach Bear Bryant would always give his team players the credit when they won.   But when they lost, he always shouldered the blame. That’s the mark of a great leader.

Eddie