Leadership Done Right

Brandon W. Jones

Leadership Done Right Blog

Nature Vs Nurture And Leadership

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When it comes to nature vs nurture, there are some leaders that are successful no matter where they go because of who they are and there are some leaders that will thrive is some environments but not in others.  This is very apparent in sports.  Coaches that fall into this category can go to a new team that is not doing well and completely turn it around.  They can also take a team that is successful and help them win a championship. These coaches are highly sought after because they have come up with a system that leads to success.  There are also coaches that haven’t figured out a successful system, so no matter where they go they fail even if they are in a great environment.

Nature Vs Nurture

The implication is that, as a leader, you must do all you can to figure out a successful system for your team or organization.  From there you can use it to be successful.  It may be challenging, but once you figure it out, you will be a hot commodity.

Nature vs Nurture

Have you heard of the debate between nature vs nurture?  Some people believe that you are born great while others think greatness is an acquired quality.  Do people learn their traits and qualities or are they born with them?  Are you born into life to be what you will be or do you have a choice in determining where you end up?  Do you have control over your own destiny?  There is an age old debate between nature vs nurture. [Read more…] about Nature Vs Nurture And Leadership

Learn To Prioritize Effectively

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How do you prioritize effectively?  In life there are many choices that must be made on a regular basis. There are choices in all aspects of life including family, work, religious activities, education, etc. All the choices alone may seem insignificant, but they lead to the type of person you are as a whole.  When making choices it is very important to prioritize effectively so you make the most effective use of your time. A little while back I heard a speech given by Dallin H. Oaks.  He spoke about how to prioritize effectively and make correct choices. He spoke about the difference between good, better, and best choices.How can you prioritize effectively?

Prioritize Effectively

To prioritize effectively, it is important to think about what activities, tasks, responsibilities, etc. are most important to you and deserve your time.  So how do you decide what is “important?”  I use a simple criteria to define what is important and where I spend my time.  I define things I can do as good, better, and best.

Good

There are many good things that one can spend time on.  A first step to prioritize effectively is to identify what is even worth an ounce of your time.  In the speech Dallin H. Oaks gave, he said, “We should begin by recognizing the reality that just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them.”  There are so many good things we can do with our time.  When I prioritize, a good thing is something that falls under a the thought that, “some day this may be something I will do, but today is not that day and right now is not a good time.” [Read more…] about Learn To Prioritize Effectively

Blog Writing For a Busy Audience

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Blog writing is a very common topic on the internet.  Many people have done well financially by starting a blog for themselves, their company, or a product they sell.  So what does it take to do well at blog writing?  What does it take to keep people reading your blog posts?  In a world with leaders blogging about leadership and other topics on a regular basis, how do you keep your blog relevant?  I have seen three suggestions to keep your blog relevant and help you to be successful at blog writing.

Learn the talent of blog writingand

Blog writing for your audience

First, write great content!

The first key to successful blog writing is to produce great content.  Ask yourself the questions, “Of all the blogs out there, why does my blog stand out?  What is my niche?  How do I keep people coming back to read more?”  By asking these questions you will be able to define your target niche and target audience.  From there, your blog writing can be directed towards that specific audience so your content is very relevant to their needs.  Your content is king in getting people to come to your blog regularly.  When blog writing, it is important that you understand the topics you write about.

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Learn Effective Listening Skills

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Listening skills are extremely valuable in leadership.  Some leaders learn to be good listeners at a young age while others spend many years learning to listen and still struggle.  As a leader, you probably have many interactions with other leaders.

I am sure many of you have dealt with leaders that didn’t listen to anyone.  You may have also seen leaders that only listened to the advice of their very close friends or immediate coworkers.  In these situations, was it hard to deal with the leader?  How did you manage to work together as a team?  Leaders that fit this mold have not learned good listening skills.

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The Importance of Listening Skills

As leaders, it is very important to learn listening skills.  Listening effectively is far more than just hearing the words coming out of the mouths of others.  When you have good listening skills, you fully engage with those you speak with.  You not only hear the words people are saying, you pay complete attention to understand everything they are saying.

Learning listening skills

When you are a leader, there are three groups of people you are required to listen to regularly.  They are your employees/subordinates, coworkers/equals, and the bosses/higher-ups.  You will want to have enhanced listening skills when you listen to these three groups to be an effective leader.  So why should you listen to each group? [Read more…] about Learn Effective Listening Skills

The Power Of Choices

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Do you understand the power of choices?  Everyday brings new choices and challenges.  You have to choose what to eat, what to wear, how to spend your time, what projects to work on, where you spend your money, who you spend your time with, etc.  We have to make many choices everyday.  Some of the choices are hard and others are easy.  As a leader, it is important to make good choices.  In this post I will share three important aspects of choices for you to consider to help you understand the power of choices.

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Your power of choices as the leader

The power of choices is very evident as a leader.  You make choices all the time that almost always effect someone else.  Many times your choices have a major impact on those you lead.  In addition, the choices you make, as a leader, directly effect the behavior of your followers.  You set the example.  As you make good choices, there is a good chance those you lead will follow suit and make good choices as well.  At the same time, when you make bad choices you send a message to your followers that bad choices are okay.  (Have you seen the companies in the news with multiple people making bad choices?)

Do you understand the power of choices?

Ultimately, you have the power of choices and with that, you can choose between three types of choices.

  1. Good Choices.  There are many choices that are good.  Many of the good choices will help you move in the right direction in your life.  They allow you to do good things that will help yourself  and others.
  2. Better Choices.  However, even though there are many good choices, there are also better choices.  The better choices come in disguise because they are a little harder to see right off the bat.  The better choices help you reach your goals a little faster than the good choices.  They help you to move in a right direction but at a quicker pace than the good choices.
  3. Best Choices.  In addition to the good and better choices, there are also the best choices.  The best choices help you reach your goals the quickest.  They can be looked at as the top level choices.  As leaders, you should always seek the best choices.

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Four Lessons From A CEO

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I love learning lessons from a CEO.  I am a younger leader, but have been a leader in different capacities for many years.  Through my time in leadership, I have always been fascinated by CEOs because they have reached the top leadership position in their organization.  There are many lessons from a CEO that you can learn as you review their behavior and responses to different actions.

A few years ago I read a case study about Gary Loveman and his transition as the CEO of Harrah’s.  The case study explained that he went from being a college professor to the CEO of a large organization without a long history of leadership.  When he joined Harrah’s, he started out as the COO and then became the CEO after five years.  This case study helped me learn lessons from a CEO.

Lessons From A CEO

Four Lessons From A CEO

Gary Loveman changed the system at Harrah’s.  He changed the system because of the person he was and the approach he took to leadership. There were four lessons from a CEO that we can learn from his success.
1. He gained credibility with the employees/management team.
2. He worked to understand the existing system
3. He had high expectations.
4. He led by example.

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How To Set SMART Goals

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I feel to invite everyone to rise to the great potential within you.  I do not ask that you reach beyond your capacity, I hope you will not nag yourselves with thoughts of failure.  I hope you will not try to set goals far beyond your capacity to achieve.  I hope you will simply do what you can do in the best way you know.  If you do so, you will witness miracles come to pass.  ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

I really like the above quote.  For goals to be worthwhile, they must be SMART goals.  Each year I set SMART goals for myself and my employees.  The SMART goals range from personal and team development goals to process improvement goals.  When I set those goals, I make sure that they are not easy to accomplish.  At the same time, they are not goals that are far beyond reach and/or unrealistic.

So, what are SMART Goals?

The word “SMART” in SMART goals is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.  For a goal to be a SMART goal, it must meet the following criteria.

Are you setting SMART goals

Specific Goals

It is very important to set very specific goals.  It is easy to set a lofty, “up in the air” goal that cannot be  understood.  A goal that is not specific and “up in the air” is ambiguous and leads to confusion.  An example of this type of goal would be to say, “We want to make the organization better this year.”  How will you make the organization better?  What changes will you make?  How can you know if you reached your goal if you don’t know what your goal is?

Specific goals explain exactly what you want to do and how you are going to do it.  In line with the goal mentioned above, what will you do to make the organization better?  Will you increase profit by 20%?  If so, how will you increase the profit by 20%?  A specific goals would sound more like, “This year we will increase the profit by 20% by eliminating down time between shifts.”  From there you would set specific subgoals that would break down how you would eliminate the down time.  Each goal would be very specific. [Read more…] about How To Set SMART Goals

Be Prepared For The Worst

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A little while back I had an experience that taught me to be prepared for the worst. I went to work for the day after spending a lot of time the night before working on Leadership Done Right. At the time, I was beginning to get a lot of traffic on the site and things were really starting to pick up. Then midway through the afternoon, I received a text message from my wife asking me if I had done something to Leadership Done Right when I was home for lunch. I texted her back that I hadn’t done anything and asked her why she was asking. She had gone on the site to check some things out and found that all she got was a message that said, “Sorry! This site is not currently available.” She immediately thought that I had done something to this site.

Learn to be prepared for the worstWhen I got her message, I immediately went to the site and got the same message. I then tried to go in through the back door as an administrator and got a message saying that the site I was looking for did not exist. At that point I almost had a panic attack… Okay, not really, but I was very nervous because I heard a story a little while back about someone that had their website canceled by WordPress.com without receiving any message or warning. They didn’t even get an explanation for why their site was canceled.

In the back of my mind I was wondering if the same thing had happened to me. Was my site going to be canceled? Well, long story short, later this afternoon the site came back on board without me having to do anything. The only explanation I can think of is that there was some type of a glitch that temporarily shut down the website. [Read more…] about Be Prepared For The Worst

Advice For New Leaders

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I was recently asked, “What would you give as advice for new leaders?” To answer this question, I think you have to go back in time to when you were a new leader.  As a new leader there are many things that go through your head. You may feel excited, overwhelmed, nervous, and/or a wide range of other emotions. These feelings are normal and expected.

As a new leader, you are in a position where you have a lot of control over things that you didn’t have control over in the past. Once you get over the initial range of emotions, it is time to get to work. So what is my advice for new leaders?What would your advice for new leaders be?

Three Pieces Of Advice For New Leaders

Change slowly at first

As a new leader, it is easy to get change fever.  You will want to change the whole world by making sweeping changes ranging from how things are run to what people do.  My advice for new leaders is that it is okay to make changes, but you need to do it slowly at first. Before you make sweeping changes, try to understand the existing processes.

What roles do people have?  Who is responsible for what?  Which processes are effective and which ones have been problems for years that people were too afraid to bring up?  Once you understand how things are currently run, you will be able to identify how to best change things going forward. You can make changes that help the processes to move more smoothly. If you make sweeping changes without understanding the background and reasoning behind the existing processes, you may find yourself changing something that doesn’t need to be changed. [Read more…] about Advice For New Leaders

Maintain Balance In Social Media

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A little while back I heard a story from a friend of mine that struggled to maintain balance.  The story was about a leader that was dedicated to what he did that he became the very best in his field.  The leader made impressive breakthroughs because he spent so much time working.

His dedication caused to spend long hours at the office.  During that time his children grew up and he and his wife grew apart.  Once his children were grown, they didn’t even feel they knew him.  He was so focused on his work that he didn’t maintain balance in his life and lost his wife and children in the process.  They didn’t die, but he was not part of their lives.  He became a workaholic.

He didn’t maintain balance.  He spent so much time working that he lost sight of what was truly important in life.  He didn’t set aside any time for himself, his family, or anything else important to him in life.  So where did he go wrong?  Wasn’t he dedicated to his work and became very successful?  He failed to maintain balance.

Maintain balance in social media.

Maintain Balance in Social Media

Social media is different than regular work life for most people, but it is just as important to maintain balance.  Within social media there are many platforms.  You can have a blog, be on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.  That’s just a few of the many platforms that you can use.  Once you get on a social media platform, there are many things you can do.  You can connect with many people and could spend your whole day communicating with others on that platform.  If you got on every social media platform that exists, you could spend every minute of every day on a social media platform.  It can be a challenge to maintain balance. [Read more…] about Maintain Balance In Social Media