Hello, my name is Chris and I Love Leadership

For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by LEADERSHIP. I enjoy reading biographies about great leaders and the characteristics that make them successful. Also, I have kept a personal journal for the last 10 years of observations of behaviors that I have seen in outstanding and "not so" outstanding leadership. My readings and personal journal will be the foundations of a book that I have planned to complete within the next 5-10 years.


If I were to sort and categorize those characteristics and behaviors I believe that make successul leaders, there are several that would be a common theme across a high percentage of successful leaders. Here's a brief snapshot of the dimensions of successful leadership from my observations and readings:

1. Integrity - #1 characteristic. Without this, a leader is not a leader because they have no followers. In my opinion, this is the cornerstone of outstanding leadership.


2. Desire - Outstanding leaders have a strong and burning desire to be leaders and to succeed. Almost an obsession-like focus. Most people are looking for leaders, these people want and know they are leaders.


3. Results Orientation - Leaders are in leadership roles primarily to make things happen through other people - get results. They are very goal oriented, planful, organized and focused when it comes to achieving challenging results.


4. Focused on People - I have met and worked with many good leaders that talk the talk on people focus but don't show the behaviors. They may be 3s on a 5 point scale. The best leaders ( the 4.5s and 5s on a 5 points scale) deeply care about their team and each individual. Outstanding leaders take the approach that their team is their #1 customer and the #1 customer needs to be treated as such. They realize that nothing happens without their team and the development of their team is crucial to the success of the mission.


5. Vision - Vision can be an "overused" word in leadership. I view vision as the ability to innovate and create the needs and plans for the future while the team is focused on the current mission. Without vision, the organization becomes stale and complacent. Complacency is a tragic flaw in leadership. Outstanding leaders have the "pedal to the metal" 95% of the time, if not a 100%.


6. For my sixth and final dimension, I will select passion. The "cream of the crop" leaders have a burning within them about their expertise, people and business. They gather as much knowledge as they can about their business on a daily basis. They enjoy what they do and thrive on teaching their team and others. Their work ethic is second to none because they are so passionate about what they do. Outstanding leaders can get others "fired up" about their business because they can transfer their passion to the audience.

I realize that I have not mentioned dozens of characteristics and behaviors such as communication, interpersonal, social, technical and financial/business skills. This list is my top 6 and ones I have observed in my career.

I would love to hear your comments on this list and other views of leadership. That's what makes leadership such a great topic - we could discuss and debate for hours. If you are ever interested in doing that, give me a call I'd love to participate.

Until next time, Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will...

http://www.destinyahead.com/

Give Yourself To Others - Inspire Someone

We all have known a person in our lives that inspired us to set challenging goals, provided advice and wisdom along the way and celebrated the victories in life that we achieved. Many times these people are teachers, parents, supervisors, church members or sports coaches.

What if you could become one of these people or even enhance your ability to inspire others? How would that make you feel? How would that make the other person feel? In my opinion, it’s a win/win situation for everyone involved.

I like the list Michael Angier developed on ten simple ways you can inspire people (family, friends, co-workers) to be their best:

• Be a good example. People watch what you do more than they listen to what you say. Be someone worth emulating.


• Care about others. People don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care. Ask questions. Take a genuine interest in people.


• Encouragement. Everyone goes through tough times. When you support people and encourage them through these times, you’ll be inspiring them to see the best in themselves and in the situation.


• Be inspired yourself. Look for people, ideas, environments and knowledge that you find inspiring and motivating.


• Share from your own experience. You have more to share than you realize. Mine the rich experiences of your life and share your wisdom from your unique point of view. You may be the only one who can touch someone with your inspiring message.


• Be vulnerable. Be willing to share your failures as well as your successes. Others will relate to you. They’ll understand that they’re not the only ones with challenges.


• Tell stories. Facts tell and stories sell. They inspire, too. We learn best from parables and we all need to develop our own inspiring stories.


• Be a good communicator. Increasing your ability to communicate effectively is a critical element for you to inspire others. Watch how you speak and what you say. Invest in your communication skills.


• Challenge people. Many of us have had teachers who at times seemed more like tormentors than mentors. They challenged us to do our best, and we were better for it. Practice "carefrontation"—the careful and caring confrontation of others.


• Read. It may not follow that all readers are leaders, but certainly all leaders are readers. Stay informed. Share what you read with others. Tell people about books that have inspired you. Share the knowledge.

Inspirational people can spread cheer, hope and optimism wherever they go and make others feel good about themselves. That's a guaranteed way to make friends, influence others and put a smile on peoples' faces.


Until next time, Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will!

Developing Ourselves...Just Do It!

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
- Aristotle

I think we would all agree that our world has become a very fast paced and ever-changing environment. It will only get faster as technologies and ability to communicate with anyone in the world increases. I truly believe that developing ourselves personally and professionally is critical, and not an option, in our new world if you want to be a true success. Personal development requires a serious commitment to your daily habits, on-going learning, networking and relationship building.

I’d like to share some practical tips that I learned along the way in my personal and professional life. Some may work for you, some may not. Pick the ones that may work for you to increase your focus and results around your personal development.

Put your action step for your development goal in your daily to do list and make it a top priority. For example, to listen to 20 minutes of an audiotape on Effective Selling Techniques may be a daily personal development goal.

Visualization is a technique that athletes use quite often and I have found to be effective in keeping the motivation strong. Visualize your goals so you see a crystal clear picture of what success looks like.

Learn from others. Our spouses, family and co-workers have knowledge. People love to share their wisdom with others. Just ask for advice or lessons learned. I remember before having children asking parents what advice they had for us as new parents and got a lot of great feedback.

Consistency. Do just one thing every day to move toward your personal development goals. In working with leaders in my past jobs, the top 5% percentile of successful ones said they spent at least 5-20 minutes a day on their personal development, whether that was reading a magazine or journal focused on a topic they wanted to become more knowledgeable in, or having lunch to seek advice from a mentor. They weren’t too busy to invest in themselves because they knew the investment would create positive results.

Limit your focus – Progress on 2-3 most important goals is more meaningful than having a laundry list of 10-15 things you want to focus on. Keep your focus tight and get laser focused on 2-3 things. Once you knock those out, move on to 2-3 more.

Take the time to reflect – Examine what happens when you focus on your development and the lessons you have learned from feedback and experience. Think about how you change and adapt based on those lessons. Ask yourself everyday “What have I learned?” and keep a journal and refer to it periodically to reinforce and remind yourself of what you have learned.

Consider investing in a top-of-the line self development program - My wife, Jewell, and I just completed the premiere self development product on the market and it has significantly changed the way we view our beliefs, marriage, family life, self-confidence and business. It has also helped us to get dialed in our priorities, mission in life and vision for the future. We invested 56 consecutive days in this program and it was time and money well spent.

Think of yourself as a company, You Inc., and ask yourself how you can make this company better, a leader in their market and more prepared for the future. Personal development does take time in our busy lives along with our career, family, leisure activities, and spiritual events. Start out by trying to spend 5-10 minutes a day investing in yourself, your success and your family’s destiny. If you can do that, I guarantee you that you are in the 95th percentile of all people. You may come to enjoy spending that time on yourself and will become more effective, knowledgeable and an expert in whatever you seek to learn. A wise mentor of mine once told me “it’s good to be considered an expert in something”.

We would love to hear your comments about your experiences with Developing Ourselves… Just Do It”. Please feel free to write back on our blog site with what you experienced. Also, if you know of others that may benefit from this, please pass our blog along to them.

Until next time, Control your Destiny or Someone Else Will!

Are You Open To Some Feedback?

My wife, Jewell, and I have been giving each other positive and constructive feedback for 20 years. Many people think the way we give feedback is “weird” or “strange”. It works for us. I learned this technique in corporate America and brought it into the Team Tunstall household.
Many employees and even senior leaders I have worked with in my business career view feedback as a four letter word. Bad four letter words. Most of us instantly think of being called into the boss’ office and being given “negative” feedback on our performance or style. The best leaders use positive and constructive feedback as a way to develop their employees’ careers and motivate higher work performance. We believe this philosophy can be used in relationships as well.

Jewell and I do view feedback as a four letter word. That word is GIFT. It’s a gift to have someone care enough about you to be genuine, candid and honest enough to let you know what you are doing well and what you can improve in to be a better person, spouse or parent. It is such a strong message of “I care about you and want you to do well”. It is not meant to hurt the other person, which is manipulation.

The technique that Jewell and I use is to ask the other person for permission to provide feedback by simply stating “Are you open to some feedback?” Those six simple words set the stage to eliminate all defensiveness and ensure the timing is right for a healthy dialogue. We all have had times when now is not the right time for feedback, it happens and it’s OK. Jewell and I have had many instances where we said “not right now, maybe later”.

Keep in mind this technique is for positive feedback as well as constructive feedback. When we have examples of something wonderful that the other person did, we make sure we use those magic six words. This is critical because we don’t want ‘Are you open to some feedback?” to be only for constructive feedback. Remember, it’s a gift and we do it because we care.
A couple of critical things to keep in mind when giving feedback in this style are to make sure it is immediate and specific as possible. You don’t want to wait two weeks to give someone feedback. They may not remember the situation and you lose two weeks in modifying or continuing that behavior.

Specificity is critical. Eliminate general statements like “you seemed upset”, “you were angry” or “I liked your style”. Get in the details of what you saw or heard like “I noticed you were crying”, “Your face got beet red and you raised your voice to him” or “You walked with confidence by having great posture and making eye contact”. The more specific you are the clearer the person can replay a movie in their head of what they did in the situation. The better the person can refer to the situation the more likely a dialogue will take place. You want a dialogue to happen not a monologue.

I challenge you to give this technique a shot in the next week. It will feel awkward at first but all new behaviors feel a little strange in the beginning. Try the six magic words with positive feedback first. Positive feedback is always more comfortable to give than constructive feedback. Notice how the other person reacts when you ask permission to provide them feedback. Reflect on how it made you feel.

We would love to hear your comments about your experiences with “Are You Open to Some Feedback”. Please feel free to write back on our blog site with what you experienced. Also, if you know of others that may benefit from this challenge please pass our blog along to them.

Until next time, Control your Destiny or Someone Else Will!

MMA...

With this weekend's big Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Pay Per View Extravaganza, I thought this title might draw some attention.

This MMA is Manage My Attitude...That's my focus for the week.

Many people believe that attitude is everything. I believe attitude is extremely important in being successful, but isn't everything. Other critical areas of success include goal setting, relationships, action and reflection but this week it's all attitude for me.

Our attitude plays a key role in our relationships, career, and family life. Our attitude affects many people, whether we believe it or not. A crummy attitude can turn a great atmosphere into a "get me out of here" environment just as a positive attitude can turn a disengaged group into an inspired team. John Maxwell states, "Our attitude can be our best friend or our worst enenmy". We have that choice.

This week I have documented three "lessons learned along the way" in managing my attitude.

• Realize that I have at least two ways to look at things. Pessimism or optimism. Do I look for difficulty or opportunity in challenges? What can I do more of, better or differently to make a situation better? This week I will focus on the opportunity and look up instead of down.


• Use positive affirmations. When I started using this technique over 10 years ago, I thought it was "goofy" and not for me. I learned I was wrong. Zig Ziglar turned me onto this technique in his recordings. This has been a critical tool for me because I do believe the words we say to ourselves can impact our attitude. I use positive affirmations throughout the day and recently have set aside 15 minutes in the morning to focus exclusively on positive statements. I repeat statements to myself such as: "I have a vision in life for myself and my family", "I can use today to make myself a better person", "I look forward to helping someone today", "I have many things to be grateful for", "I will improve in my mind, body and spirit", "I will surround myself with positive people", and "I am a hard worker and will have balance in my life".


• Desire and persistence. I truly believe the most successful people in the world have an excess of these two traits. I like to focus on using statements around the desire to keep to the work, keep believing, keep hoping and staying focused. I must believe I have the ability, persistently hone and develop my skills in areas of expertise and really have the confidence that what I am doing is important and significant.

I am starting to find that focusing on these three areas of my attitude first thing in the morning has helped me to start the day with the expectation that today is going to be a great day. If the expectation is right in front of you first thing in the morning, it is more likely to continue throughout the day. We get what we expect.

Thanks for taking time to read this about my attitude, and how I try to make it the most positive everyday. Doesn't work all the time but I do my best. Take a look at monitoring your attitude throughout the day and make changes if you need to. As Will Rogers said "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be".

Tomorrow is Laser Focus Friday - have goals set, and ready to roll....

Pride....

Pride is a word that I have been thinking about for the last several days. Webster's defines pride as "delight or elation arising from some act, possession, or relationship". I am always proud of my wife and children, unconditionally. One other aspect of my life that I am very proud of is my involvement with the Personal Development industry, specifically LifePath Unlimited.


I recently decided to leave Corporate America after 18 years to have more time and flexibility with my wife and 2 children. I desired more freedom, flexibility and the ability to control my destiny and income. I know that wealth and abundance is rarely realized in the corporate world by 99% of the employees. So after 2-3 months of consideration and research, my wife, Jewell, and I agreed to start our own business around our passion - personal development.


Jewell and I have been personal development "nuts" since hearing our first Zig Ziglar cassette in 1991. The cassettes that we would listen to on the way to work and on trips changed our lives. We experienced six years of infertility before we were blessed with our two children adopted from South Korea. The words, quotes and messages in the personal development cassettes and later on, compact discs, were the foundation that kept us positive on the infertility "rollercoaster" of physical and emotional stress. Looking back, I am very proud of how we handled 6 years of infertility - the doctor visits, the treatments, the shots, the medications, the monthly disappointment, the financial pressure. We believed Zig, Tony Robbins, Les Brown, Colin Powell, and many others were speaking directly to us. We would quote the messages and remind each other of positive affirmations when one of us was down.


Our life has drastically changed since those years. We have two beautiful and loving children that God has truly blessed us with. Payne and Kate were our destiny, we are sure of that. Our life has changed also in that we own our own business. We are so excited about this opportunity and new chapter in our lives. We have had naysayers say "how could you leave a good job in this economy?" and "what are you doing?". We also have had people congratulate us and express their admiration for our decision. We expected both types of responses. My pride comes in the fact that we took a risk, a big risk that we truly believe is the best journey we can take in life now. The key factor in our decision to start our own business was our passion in personal development and the belief that we can be successful in whatever we apply our persistence and discipline to.


We have been blessed to have found LifePath Unlimited in our research and become a part of the organization. It is a company that puts personal development first, and developing your own business second. It's the perfect match for us. We get to learn more about ourselves, develop our skills, open our belief systems, and run our own business while helping people. LifePath is a company of high integrity that supports their team members with top of the line training, support and positive energy. It has been the best 6 weeks of my life in a long time. I have met and talked with so many positive people that have big dreams and confidence. It has inspired us to think and dream big as well.


I am very proud to be a part of the LifePath team. I know Jewell is to. My dream is to be a leader within the organization and to help as many people as I can achieve their goals and dreams as well. As a corporate leader, the greatest satisfaction I received was seeing team members do big things, flawlessly execute tough assignments, earn promotions and develop their skills.

I know that I will get that satisfaction and sense of pride with our LifePath business.