SELF IMPROVEMENT AND MOTIVATION

Becoming excellent in closing sales is an inside job. It begins within you. In sales, your personality is more important than your product knowledge. It is more important than your sales skills. It is more important than the product or service that you are selling. In fact, your personality determines fully 80 percent of your sales success. Take Charge of Your Life The biggest mistake you can make is to ever think that you work for anyone but yourself. From the time you take your first job until the day you retire, you are self employed. You are the president of your own entrepreneurial corporation, selling your services into the marketplace at the highest price possible. You have only one employee—yourself. Your job is to sell the highest quality and quantity of your services throughout your working life. View Yourself as Self-Employed In a study done in New York some years ago, researchers found that the top 3 percent of people in every field looked upon themselves as self-employed. ...

When you become your colleagues' supervisor, it is important to make a smooth transition to get their cooperation IN TODAY'S economy, reorganisations are common and you may find yourself suddenly overseeing employees who were once at the same level as you. While transitioning into a supervisory role can be exciting — possibly signalling a new phase in your career — it also means a shift in dynamics with colleagues, especially those who will now be reporting to you. Your success in taking on a leadership role is dependent on building positive working relationships with direct reports and being able to exercise authority when necessary. Here are some steps to help make the transition from peer to manager as smooth as possible: Meet with your team One of the first items on your agenda should be to meet with those you will oversee. Arrange one-on-one conversations with each direct report to make sure everyone understands his responsibilities. These may have shifted due to recent st...

Gen X-ers and baby boomers have more in common with Gen Y employees than they think   WHATEVER label you use — the millennial generation, Generation Y or the ken lao zu generation — these young people are the leaders of tomorrow's business world. But a survey of 1,341 people by recruitment agency Hays reveals that in the workforce, Generation Y employees — the future of our skilled workforce — are not too dissimilar to the remainder of the working population. Of those surveyed, 35 per cent of respondents were from China, 13 per cent were from Hong Kong and 52 per cent were from Singapore. The survey compares the views of Generation Y, Generation X and baby boomers across Asia towards workplace issues such as expected tenure, flexible work schedules, preferred management style and ideal employers. The aim was to paint a picture of Generation Y — generally defined as those born between the late 1970s and mid 1990s — and compare this view with that of the remainder of the working popu...

In a fast-changing, turbulent, highly competitive business environment, you will have a crisis of some kind every two or three months. You also could have a financial crisis, a family crisis, a personal crisis, or a health crisis with the same frequency. Take Charge Immediately When the crisis occurs, there are four things you should do immediately. Stop the bleeding. Practice damage control. Put every possible limitation on losses. Preserve cash at all costs. Gather information. Get the facts. Speak to the key people and find out exactly what you are dealing with. Solve the problem. Discipline yourself to think only in terms of solutions, about what you can do immediately to minimize the damages and fix the problem. Become action-oriented. Think in terms of your next step. Often any decision is better than no decision. Practice Thinking Ahead One of the key strategies for business and personal success is "crisis anticipation." This strategy is practiced by top people in ever...

Today's business leader has to bust myths about workplace diversity if he wants his multicultural employees to work as a team A STUDY on managing diversity and bridging communication gaps was conducted by the Singapore Human Resources Institute (SHRI) in September 2008, and it revealed that a majority of workers (77 per cent out of 272 participants) in Singapore felt that their organisations' leaders were not able to motivate and enable staff to achieve both individual and corporate goals. How then can these managers become more effective? In today's diverse workplace, effective corporate managers and leaders need to be able to command respect and motivate a multicultural team, and to separate the facts from the myths. Workplace diversity refers to differences among people working in an organisation. Besides the usual race, ethnic group, age and gender differences, workers also come with different religions, personalities, cognitive styles, tenures, organisational functions...

When you fail to get the desired results, what's the first thing you must do? Take credit for it. If you don't take credit, you don't learn the extremely valuable lesson for which you've just paid dearly. If you don't take credit and own your failures, you'll continue to experience more of them. Instead, go ahead and take complete credit and ownership of your failures. Because when you take full ownership of your failures, you fully empower yourself to successfully get beyond them. What you own, you control. When you choose to own your results, then you put yourself in control of those results. When you own your results, you can decide what those results will be. And they can be whatever you wish to make them. Admit your failures, take credit for them, embrace them, and own them. When you willingly take responsibility and ownership even for the failures, you're positioned for magnificent success.   When you don't understand something, that's an...

Succeed by managing your environment to cultivate a healthier corporate culture DO YOU often struggle with the "inadequacies" of others who seem to be hindering your ability to succeed? Do you sometimes feel that if you could change the attitudes or perceptions of those around you, you could be more effective, successful and fulfilled in your work, business and even relationships. You may complain and sometimes attempt to change other people, telling them how they should act. But can you really change others? The truth is you cannot. But the good news is that you already have everything you need to succeed, and you can influence behaviours, attitudes and even competencies. One of the biggest hindrances to your peak performance is rooted in emotions — yours and those of others around you. If you understand the inner workings of group culture and the emotions that nurture it, you can harness your greater self. A person's internal emotions may be the exact opposite of...

Understand why it is important to have good time management skills WHEN the clock chimes 12 at midnight, everyone is given a very special gift: time — 24 full hours — to spend as he pleases. Yet, when you fast-forward your clock by a day, how much would your gift remain unspent? Has your day yielded deficits that stretch ahead, ready to be painfully paid for by borrowing from the following day? Or are you one of the lucky few who always seem to have more than enough time for everything they wish? Chances are if you recognise this "spend-borrow-spend" cycle, this means you use poor time management techniques. If you feel you are one of those constantly time-challenged folk, then you probably are. Why time matters In 388BC, Aristophanes said: "Men of sense often learn from their enemies." If you want to improve your time management, a good place to start is with a better understanding of yourself, and the challenges that you face. Here is a simple question for you: ...

Follow these seven steps to get more out of your day LET'S face it — time is probably our greatest resource. But we never seem to have enough of it, and it seems to pass so quickly. What we can do is make the most of the time we have. Here are some simple steps you can take to get the most out of your day. 1. PLAN YOUR DAY THE NIGHT BEFORE At the end of each day, write out all the things you need to do the following day to achieve your goals. Pull together all the information you will need, such as phone numbers and relevant paperwork. 2. PRIORITISE THE LIST Number each item and do the difficult jobs first. There is always the temptation to do the easy jobs first. However, think about how the thought of doing the difficult jobs hangs over you as you do the easy stuff. Think how good you will feel when the tough tasks are out of the way, and how motivated you will feel. 3. STICK TO YOUR LIST Tick off each item as you finish it, and do not let yourself...

You can increase your efficiency and your effectiveness by becoming better and better at your key tasks. One of the most powerful of all time management techniques is for you to get better at the most important things you do. Your core competencies, your key skill areas, the places where you are absolutely excellent at what you do, are the key determinants of your productivity, your standard of living, and the level of achievement you reach in your field. Work Excellence The market pays excellent rewards only for excellent work. You are therefore successful to the degree to which you do more things better than the average person. Your great responsibility in life is to determine what things you can and should do very well and then develop a plan to become very, very good in those vital areas. Key Question Here is the key question: What one skill, if you developed and did it in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on your career? Your weakest important skill set...

Your success in life is determined, to a large extent by your ability to think, plan, decide, and take action. The stronger your skills are in each of these areas, the faster you will achieve your goals and the happier you will be with your life and career. Personal strategic planning is the tool that takes you from wherever you are to wherever you want to go. Difference between Train and Plane The difference between people who use strategic planning to organize and direct their lives and those who do not is like the difference between taking a train and taking a plane. Both will get you from point A to point B, but the plane—personal strategic planning—will get you there much faster and without frequent stops. Systematic Way of Thinking Skill in personal strategic planning is not something you are born with, like eye color or perfect pitch. It is a systematic way of thinking and acting and is, therefore, something you can learn, like riding a bike or changing a tire. With practice, yo...

Keeping staff morale high is hard enough - who's going to help you stay energised? MOTIVATING staff is an important function of any team leader or manager. This can sometimes be hard work and with the constant focus on others, we can sometimes forget to motivate ourselves. This in turn leads to a problem: if you aren't motivated, then it is likely that others around you will lose motivation and will not strive to take action. Before that happens, follow these seven simple steps to motivate yourself to improve your own performance. 1. MIX WITH POSITIVE PEOPLE Spend your time associating with positive people who are winners or successful in their chosen fields. People with a negative mindset love to see others fail or falter when faced with a challenge. You will learn negative thoughts and behaviours from negative people and positive thoughts and behaviours from positive people. Positive people exude positive energy and a can-do attitude. 2. ERASE A NEGATIVE MINDSET A nega...

If you are not enjoying your work, your performance will suffer in the long run I WAS talking to a friend recently who was at the top of a pretty big company for several years. He was running a business that was bringing in nearly a billion dollars in revenue annually, and there were only a few layers between him and the chief executive officer. He had a great salary, tons of people reporting to him, credibility in the organisation and a pretty nice annual bonus. He was miserable. The politics at that level of the organisation was incredibly challenging. The expectations were extreme with respect to the amount of work that was generated, and the scrutiny on the weekly and monthly numbers was intense. My friend was spending every moment of his 80-hour week managing, and none leading. He had a huge organisation that counted on him for leadership and yet he was mired in the reports, the meetings and the bureaucracy. Although he wanted to take his business to the next level and be the kind...

saying "thank you" at work goes a long way IMAGINE the surprise of almost 500 Operations & Technology employees at Citibank one morning when they were greeted with breakfast, personally made by their senior managers. Or how about the staff at Secured Finance who were not only served homemade food by their managers, but were also offered shoulder massages and shoe polishing services? These gestures were just some of the many surprise "thank you" activities that were specially created by managers for their staff on Citi Appreciation Day. The event is one of several initiatives that aims to embed a culture of appreciation and recognition within Citi.   "Creating job satisfaction goes beyond compensation and opportunities for career development, mobility and work-life balance. "We believe that recognising our people for effort and performance is key to engaging and motivating them. In fact, we take it a step further by empowering our people at every level ...

You don't have to be a gifted public speaker to be effective. You can learn the science behind the art PUBLIC speaking is defined as the act or process of making speeches in public and the art of effective oral communication with an audience. But the process of making speeches in public goes far beyond the stage time. It involves a lot of background preparation work before those speeches can be delivered. Likewise, defining public speaking as an art involves more than just oral communication. It is the entire package of the speaker, the stage, the lighting, the layout, the sound system and a whole lot of other items. This is where the conventional definitions of public speaking do not do justice to the act of delivering a great speech. Here are some of the common myths surrounding public speaking: Myth 1: Public speaking is about talking to a large audience It may not necessarily be. It could be a one-person audience or an audience of thousands. As long as you a...

Maximise the potential of all employees, and not just the best performers STAR performers, or top talent, typically grab the limelight in every organisation. They are seen as being most capable of driving businesses forward, and as such they are usually a priority group when it comes to employee engagement. But what about the employees at the other end of the performance spectrum? Today, the pressure to control bottom-line costs are rising, and organisations need to maximise the potential of all workers. This includes those with lower performance levels who may be under-utilised or disenchanted but, more importantly, still capable of contributing to the success of their companies. Earlier this year, Towers Perrin, a professional services firm specialising in human resources and financial services consulting, undertook a survey that examined the differences between top talent and the developing capabilities group. The latter describes employees who have potential for improved...

It's the season for get-togethers, so make sure your business card enhances your image. A BUSINESS card makes a statement about who you are and what your business is about. It needs to convey the quality of your business and give an insight into your personality. I have been handed business cards where the first thought to go through my mind was "cheap and tacky design". It didn't help that the card was made of low-quality paper. How I perceived the card then became my overall impression of the business. Don't let people think the same thing about you or your business. Here are some ideas: Use colour Use elegant shades instead of the usual black and white cards other people have. But don't use "day-glo" colours unless you are running a children's art shop. You want your business to come across as a serious and classy operation. Show your face Put your photograph on your card. It will help people remember you. The photo needs to face into th...