The 10 Things I Am Thankful For This Year

Each year, around Thanksgiving time, I think about what I am thankful for. This year, I decided to once again take the time to make a list. A list of 10 things I am thankful for.

What's on your list this year?  And, what's on your list this year that wasn't on last year's list?

Here is my list:

• Family and friends
• Employment, and a year of positive evolution for my workplace
• Technology, Blogs, Twitter and all social media sharing tools that help me to be a constant learner
• Health and all those who help me stay healthy and encourage me to reach my 2016 fitness goal -- which included running 80 races (a combination of 5K and 10K races) this year benefiting a variety of mostly Kansas City area nonprofits and charities, 
• Setting business and personal goals and working hard to reach or exceed them
• Good books (including ones the book club recommended)
• Nonprofit organizations that provide vital services and ways for me to volunteer and donate
• Music
• The ability to travel for vacations
• Readers, followers and guests of my Blog and of Twitter @ericjacobsonkc

Wow, I have a lot to be thankful for this year!

How To Build A Great Business

When you start reading Mark Thompson’s and Brian Tracy’s book called, Now…Build a Great Business!, you may feel like you are reading 200 pages of Blog posts, but the bite-sized approach to providing tools, practical steps and ideas, rather than theory, is precisely the authors’ intended approach.

The book thoroughly explains the seven keys for how to achieve business success:
1.  Become a great leader
2.  Develop a great business plan
3.  Surround yourself with great people
4.  Offer a great product or service
5.  Design a great marketing plan
6.  Perfect a great sales process
7.  Create a great customer experience

You’ll find a checklist at the end of each step (each chapter) where you can write down your action plan for applying what you’ve learned.

Particularly interesting is the chapter on strategic planning, where the authors recommend you should ask yourself these important questions before you act to create or reinvent the direction of your organization:
•  Where are you now? What is your current situation?
•  How did you get to where you are today?
•  Where do you want to go from here?
•  How do you get from where you are today to where you want to be in the future?
•  What obstacles will you have to overcome? What problems will you have to solve?
•  What additional knowledge, skills, or resources will you require to achieve your strategic objectives?

When it comes time to surround yourself with great people, Thompson and Tracy remind us that great people are:
•  Good team players.
•  More concerned with what’s right rather than who’s right.
•  Intensely results oriented.

And, great people accept high levels of responsibility for the outcomes required of them, and consider their company a great place to work.

Mark Thompson is an entrepreneur who sold his last company for $100 million and today coaches executives on how to lead growth companies. Brian Tracy speaks throughout the country about the development of human potential and personal effectiveness.

Six Things Effective Leaders Do That Don't Cost Money

I had the pleasure of interviewing Leigh Branham a few years ago. He's the author of the popular book called, The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave.

He said that in research that he has done about the leaders of companies that have won "Best-Place-To-Work" competitions in 45 U.S. cities, that there are six things these effective leaders do that don't cost money. They do, however, cost time and effort. But, that is time and effort that can pay big dividends.

Here are the six things you can do:

1. Make the commitment to create a great place to work.
2. Inspire employee confidence in decisions and clear business direction
3. Work to build trust based on honesty and integrity
4. Practice open, two-way communication, especially in times of uncertainty
5. Look out for the organization before you look out for yourself
6. Believe employees should be developed and retained; not burned out and discarded

Thanks for these great leadership tips, Leigh!

Resolve To Find A Mentor In 2017

Having a mentor is one of the best things you can do to advance your career as a leader. So, decide today to secure a mentor who will work with you during 2017. Make that one of your New Year’s resolutions.

A mentor can benefit leaders new to their leadership role and they can benefit experienced and seasoned leaders, as well.

A strong mentoring relationship allows the mentor and the mentee to develop new skills and talents, to build confidence, and to build self-awareness.

Proper mentoring takes a commitment from both parties and it takes time to develop and to reap the rewards of the relationship. Plan to work with your mentor for no less than three months, and ideally for six months or longer.

When seeking out a mentor, think about these questions:
1.  Will the relationship have good personal chemistry?
2.  Can this person guide me, particularly in the areas where I am weakest?
3.  Will this person take a genuine interest in me?
4.  Does this person have the traits and skills I want to develop?
5.  Is this a person I admire?
6.  Does this person have the time needed to properly mentor me? And, do I also have the time to devote to a mentoring relationship?

Most often, you’ll find your best mentors are not your supervisors, but instead are other individuals in your workplace, at other companies in your city, or are members of organizations to which you belong.

Before you start to search for your mentor for 2017, take some time to learn more about mentoring — how mentoring programs work most effectively and what to expect from a mentoring relationship.

One nice benefit of having mentoring as a New Year’s resolution is you’ll have a dedicated partner helping you to fulfill your resolution!

Follow Through On What You Promise

Set a good example for your employees and follow through on everything you say you are going to do.

If you promise to get an employee an answer, get it for him or her. If you say you'll send a team member a report, do so. As the Nike campaign/slogan so aptly says, "Just Do It."

Too many leaders don't follow through. Perhaps they get busy. Perhaps they forget. However, following through is critical to keeping your team effective and efficient. And it's necessary for gaining respect from your employees.

Following through also means doing so in a timely fashion. If you take too long to follow through, it's as bad as not following through at all.

How To Get The Feedback You Need

Getting feedback is an important way to improve performance at work. But sometimes, it can be hard to seek out, and even harder to hear. 

“Feedback is all around you. Your job is to find it, both through asking directly and observing it,” says David L. Van Rooy, author of the book, Trajectory: 7 Career Strategies to Take You From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.

As today's guest post, Van Rooy offers these six tips for how to get the feedback you need to improve performance at work.

Guest Post By David L. Van Rooy

1.      Don’t forget to ask:  One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming things are going perfectly (until they make a catastrophic mistake). By not asking, you’re missing out on opportunities for deep feedback: the difficult, critical feedback that gives you constructive ways to improve.

2.      Make sure you listen:  Remember, getting feedback is about improving your performance, not turning it into a “you versus them” mentality. Your reaction is critical. Do not rationalize the feedback or explain it away. Do not blame others or get angry. If you react in any of those ways, you are less apt to get accurate feedback from that person again. All too often, people let feedback that is given with positive intentions spiral into a negative situation by reacting destructively.

3.      Ask clarifying questions:  If feedback surprises you, it may be a matter of miscommunication or misperception, and asking questions will give you a clearer picture. Staying clearheaded enough to ask questions and listen to specific suggestions will help you understand the full scope of the feedback and ways that you need to take action to improve.  

4.      Take time to digest:  This is especially important if the feedback is difficult to hear. Taking time to digest and process before you respond helps you react constructively. Say something like “Thank you for the feedback,” and schedule a later time to follow up. Then, you can come back with additional clarifying questions and a plan to change and improve.

5.      Don’t just look to bosses for feedback:  Some of the best and most insightful feedback will come from colleagues and direct reports. These are the people who get to see and interact with you the most. Instead of relying solely on guidance from a supervisor, ask colleagues and direct reports to provide feedback, because they may spot potential problems before you or your boss would notice. Seeking feedback from people in other departments lets you hear different perspectives from people focused on other sides of the business.

6.      Get feedback through observation:  Learning from your successes and failures is a kind of feedback that helps you change your course of action. Consider the example of a speaker who notices people looking confused or inattentive and uses that feedback to change his approach and recapture their attention.

How To Be A Healthy Leader

If you're like many leaders, you're "too busy" to exercise on a regular basis. And, you don't give yourself time to renew and refresh. Truth is, there are ways to fit exercise and healthful habits into your busy day that will pay off in dividends.

From Experience Life magazine, here are 10 tips for how to fit even just moments into your day (at work, on the road and at home) to help you become more healthful:

1. Make a plan to exercise. Include exercise times, even if they are just in 10-minute increments, on your calendar.
2. Find time to exercise and build on that time. Start off by walking for five minutes at lunch and add to that every few days until you've worked up to 30 minutes every few lunch hours.
3. Limit screen time. Set a timer for how long you'll watch TV or surf the Net. Then, use the time you aren't in front of a screen to exercise.
4. When you are watching TV, do squats, pushups, lunges, yoga poses and crunches.
5. Think positive. Psychologists suggest that you replace "I am too busy to work out" thinking with "I choose to make myself a priority."
6. Hold a "walking meeting" where your group walks together instead of sits in a meeting room. This can be particularly beneficial for brainstorming meetings.
7. Work out when you're traveling. Pack a jump rope. Do push-ups and crunches in your hotel room. Use the hotel's gym. Ask the hotel if they have guest passes or discounted rates at a nearby health club.
8. Exercise first thing in the morning. Don't let a long day end with "no time to exercise."
9. Wear a pedometer. By age 60, most people are down to about 4,500 steps a day. Your goal should be to walk 10,000 steps per day.

10. Negotiate a discounted rate for you and your employees at a gym near your office building. And then use the facility and encourage your employees to do the same.

I participate in 5K and 10K runs throughout the year. They give me a goal to continually improve my times. My entry fees go to support local nonprofit organizations. And, to prepare for each race, I have to schedule times during the preceding weeks to practice and exercise.