Leadership When the Heat's On Lesson Two

 

Use Problems to Enhance Your Career

I've broken the sound barrier over 1,000 times at the controls of everything from the F-86 Sabre, to the F-102 Delta Dagger, to the F-101 Voodoo to the F-16 Viper.  I have knocked off more than my share of plaster and broken way more than my share of windows.  My extra duty job in the Air Force was to speak to groups of upset, hostile civilians and convince them that those sonic booms were "the sound of freedom."

 Having built a reputation in the military as the "sonic boom salesman" I got into sales when I stopped flying. Those hostile audiences must have been an excellent training ground because the transition went smoothly.  I did so well at my first job as a salesperson that the company asked me to manage one of their sales offices after only one year of experience. One year later, the same executives who had put me in that little office the year before showed up again and told me I was being promoted to manager of the top office in the 36-office chain. 

That's when I started making the same kind of mistakes nearly every manager makes.  I urged my people not to think of me as their boss, but as a friend who was always right.  My goal was to turn everyone in that office into a copy of me.

 It made perfect sense at the time.  Turning the entire office into Danny Cox clones seemed to be what my bosses wanted me to do.  If I could get my salespeople to do their jobs exactly the way I had done mine when I was in their shoes, they wouldn't bring me any problems that I hadn't already solved. 

Under my management, the number one office plummeted to number 36 out of 36.  One day, as I was scratching my head trying to figure out the problem, my boss showed up in my office, unannounced, without his usual smile and pleasant demeanor.  "Cox," he said through clenched teeth.  "I can now see that it was a mistake making you the manager of this office and I feel it's only fair to tell you that I'm already looking for your replacement."

That was the shortest and most effective motivational seminar I ever attended.  I needed to learn how to lead­­­­––and I needed to learn fast. 

I sought out the counsel of many successful people and soon learned that I needed to work on myself, not the salespeople.  Salespeople get better right after their manager does.

The techniques I began using had such an immediate effect that within two weeks my boss stopped looking for a replacement.  We were heading back to number one.

 Here are three ways you can start turning problems into opportunities:

Think of a problem in the past that turned out to be, a positive.

Choose a problem that you can turn into a positive if you apply the right attitude and plan.

Decide on one thing that you can do in the next 24 hours to improve your leadership style.

“High performance is often the result of a sudden change in direction.”

Three Driving Forces

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.”

Thomas Edison

What drives no limits people? That’s what I wanted Jim Newton, author of Uncommon Friends to reveal. He didn’t disappoint me.

I met him thirty years ago when he was in his late seventies. During his early twenties his circle of friends was Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Alexis Carrel and Charles Lindberg.

This group has been called the men who invented the 20^th Century. During the hundreds of hours he was with them, he took notes, actually five or six boxes full of them. This treasure trove became the basis for Jim’s book, “Uncommon Friends.”

Of my many conversations with Jim one is a standout. I learned one of the biggest lessons in my life. I said, “Did these great high achievers have any common driving forces?”

Three interlocking and self-supporting forces, he explained, motivate these high achievers. First of all, no-limits people are inspired by an unshakable sense of purpose. This sense of purpose supports and reinforces (and is supported and reinforced by in turn) two more driving forces. The no-limits person has an unquenchable spirit of adventure and a desire for continued personal growth. These people know they don’t know it all. (Anyone who does think he or she knows it all is in what we used to call “the graveyard spiral” in the flying business.)

As I say, these three motivations don’t operate in a vacuum. Although the sense of purpose (which is sometimes described as a “sense of mission”) initiates the cycle, it connects with each of the other two motivations, and is constantly strengthened by them. Take a look at the diagram, which I developed after a discussion with Jim. It makes the process a little easier to understand.

The cycle starts in the middle—the no-limits person has developed an incredibly strong sense of “what needs to happen and why.” This is the awareness and planning stage, the part of the cycle where goals are developed. Without a firm sense of purpose, without a mission, without a strong goal orientation, there is no such thing as a barrier-breaker.

So the goal’s established and a plan is in place. Then the no-limits person launches that plan and embarks on the adventure of actually achieving the goal. Of course, there are challenges and temporary setbacks along the way; problem solving is part of the adventure. This is the second phase of the process, and it’s very exciting.

Even after the goal is achieved, the no-limits person is motivated—this time, to prepare for the challenges of the future. That third element, the desire for continued personal growth, is a commitment not to “rest on laurels” or “stick with the formula” because it’s always worked before. No-limits people are about positive change, positive growth, and forward movement. For them, the cycle is not complete until there’s evidence of renewal and new understanding.

All three motivations support and reinforce one another. All three are essential forces for the development of a no-limits life.

These are the driving forces that no-limits people use to put their lives into “afterburner” mode, to use Air Force terminology. With practice, you can use these forces to change your life, too!

Immediate Action: Review the three forces that drive no-limits achievers. Jot them down on a separate sheet of paper.

Point to Ponder Before You Go On: No-limits people are those who commit to pushing themselves outside of the comfort zone, those who know what they want and are willing to commit fully to the adventure of achieving their goals, and those who are willing to say, as my friend Jim Rohn says, “In order to do more, I’ve got to be more

All Heroes Have Heroes

My boss had just told me he was looking for my replacement. I had taken the company’s top office to the bottom of the 36-office chain in the three months I had been the manager.

Learn fast was the answer, but how? No time to join a college management class or try to find one seminar with all the answers. Were there answers around me that I wasn’t aware of? Yes, was the answer. “Don’t sit down in the meadow and wait for the cow to back up and be milked––go after the cow,” was the way a philosopher from a century ago put it. I launched my “cow hunt” by scouring local newspapers and magazines looking for stories of successful business leaders, perhaps someone who started out with nothing or led a turnaround in a company. When such a person was found, I called him or her, told them my failure story and my determination to rebuild and invited them to lunch. My motto was “Take somebody to lunch before somebody else eats yours.” My learning curve and action curves went way up.

With the help of these one-on-one mentor lunches, seminars I attended and books that I devoured we were back up to #1 in 120 days.

Caution: When contentment in the way you’re doing your job sets in, progress stops. Habit’s goal is to freeze you at your current level of competence. Remedy? Keep learning.

Develop a custom designed personal growth curriculum. Begin by asking yourself two very important questions. Be sure to take notes so you can use this as your growth plan.

1. If I could spend ten days on the beach with ten great people that I could REALLY learn from, one person per day (living or dead) whom would I pick?

2. To help me focus my learning, what’s the one thing I find most interesting about each one?

NOTE: The question is not “What’s the one thing they have in common?”

• Remember these are not your ten favorite celebrities but people you can really learn from.

• Take your spouse or a good friend out for dinner and play this two-question exercise. See if you can

guess three of their ten. There’s a great victory if you know three of theirs.

Now start researching on the Internet for each of your ten. Take notes. How about books on your heroes? Maybe documentaries.

Once you’ve learned all you can remove, that name and replace it with another.

If you’re involved in this with someone who knows you well, you’ll find conversations become very interesting as each of you reveal what you’ve learned from the heroes.

There is a legend that “when God was equipping man for his long life journey of exploration, the attendant angel was about to add the gift of contentment and complete satisfaction. The Creator stayed her hand––“No, He said, “If you bestow that upon him you will rob him forever of all joy of self-discovery.”

Higher up and farther on! The best is yet to be!

Danny