Brian Tracy's Tips to Success

Self-promotion is the business of getting ahead more rapidly in your life by selling yourself more effectively to more people in more places more often. When you become good at self-promotion, you can make the same progress in five years that someone else might make in 15 or even 25 years, if at all.

The starting point of self-promotion is to set a goal and make a plan to become one of the very best people in your field. The better you get and the more respected you become, the more you will have in common with other people who also are farther along on the road of life. You must ask for advice and follow it. You must make every effort to overcome the obstacles within yourself that might be holding you back. You must develop the essential skills that you need to join the top 20 percent in your field.

The wonderful thing about this aspect of self-promotion is that it is totally under your control. It depends on no one else. It is an ongoing journey. As Denis Waitley says, “It is continually viewing yourself as a ‘do it to yourself’ project.”

At the same time, you should be getting to know more and more of the most important people in your community and your industry. This is the second aspect of self-promotion. As you are getting better at what you do, you deliberately and systematically make efforts to meet more people whom you can help and who can help you.

People in any field eventually take on the attitudes and behaviors of the other people in that field. Your peer group has a powerful effect on the person you are today and on the person you will become tomorrow. The friends you socialize with after work and on the weekends have an enormous impact on everything you do and accomplish.

Every major turning point in your life will coincide with the development of a new group of friends and associates. I have seen many occasions where an average salesperson joined a company that was full of top salespeople; within three months, he or she also was a top salesperson in the industry. The act of changing reference groups often leads to a complete change of aspirations, goals, work routines and levels of achievement.

Many people’s lives, unfortunately, are a series of random or haphazard events, like bumper cars at a carnival. They take whatever job is offered to them. They have lunch with whomever is available, and they socialize with whomever they run into or whomever happens to be going out the door at the same time. Their human relationships are largely unplanned and uncoordinated. Their lives seem to go back and forth, and they make very little progress.

Successful people, on the other hand, are deliberate about their choice of friends, associates and colleagues. Successful people make a plan for their lives, and then they look around them to see which people fit into their plans for where they are going in the years ahead. Successful people are very specific about what they need to do and whom they need to know if they want to get ahead rapidly.

Baron Rothschild, one of the world’s wealthiest men in his time, wrote in his rules for success, “Make no useless acquaintances.” To some people, this seems a little undemocratic. Aren’t you  supposed to like and hang around with anybody who happens to be there, regardless of personality or direction? Not if you want your life to take a specific, upward path.

One study found that the top 20 percent of high achievers strongly identified with other high achievers, even before they had had a chance to accomplish very much in life. Their role models were men and women at the top of their organizations. The high achievers did not identify with the average people around them. Their sights were set much higher. And in almost no time at all, they were up among the top 20 percent, exactly as they had planned it.

There are a variety of things that you can do to promote yourself to the head of the pack. You can bring yourself to the attention of people who can help you quite rapidly, simply by engaging in the same behaviors that others have used over the years to rise rapidly in competitive careers.

Start with your work. As I said earlier, you must be very good at what you do and continually get better if you want to get ahead in your company. Sometimes, people are convinced that they can play politics to get ahead. However, it has been shown again and again that politics and gamesmanship will get a person only so far before he is found out. Management consultant Peter Drucker said, “Only the truly competent person can rise above politics.”

Politics in organizations has to do with gaining control of people and resources. If you are one of the most valuable people in your organization, you will not have to engage in very much politicking because you will be one of the precious resources  others will be eager to court and influence. You can rise above petty politicking simply by getting better and better at what you do. When you reach the point where you are making an invaluable contribution, everyone else, including your boss, will come to you. Being good at what you do is the key to gaining the respect and esteem of people around you.

Now let’s say you’re in an organization that has quite a few people who are good at what they do. How can you stand out from the crowd?

In a study of 104 senior executives, the vast majority said that the key to rapid promotion in their organizations was twofold. First, they said, an individual had to have the ability to set clear priorities, to focus on what was valuable and relevant rather than waste time on what was small and insignificant. Second, they said, the employee had to have a “sense of urgency,” a desire and a drive to get the job done fast.

In short, developing a reputation for speed and dependability, for doing the right things, doing them right and doing them quickly, is the most important reputation you can develop with your boss. It’s invaluable to getting ahead rapidly.

Make a list of everything you’ve been hired to accomplish. Take the list to your boss and ask your boss to organize the list in order of priority. What does your boss consider to be the most important thing you do? What does he or she consider to be the second most important thing?

Discuss the list with your boss so that you and your boss are perfectly clear about exactly why you are on the payroll. Then concentrate on doing an excellent job at the things that are most important to him or her. I have discussed this with thousands of managers all over the country. They all say nothing pleases them more than to have an employee working hard on something that the managers consider a top priority.

Continually ask your boss if there is anything he does on a regular basis that you can take off his shoulders. Every boss has tasks he or she dislikes. If you can take one or more of these tasks away and learn how to do them yourself, you will be promoting yourself in one of the most professional ways possible.

Self-promotion also means looking for every opportunity to help your boss and co-workers look good at their jobs. Concentrate on cooperation rather than competition. If you help others get ahead, it will come back to you exponentially. And the more you help others, the more they will help you in return.

According to the Law of Sowing and Reaping, the more you give of yourself, without expectation of return, the more will come back to you from the most unexpected sources. Successful people in every organization are always looking for ways to help, always looking for ways to put in more than they take out. As my father once said, “It’s amazing how much you can get done when no one cares who gets the credit.”

In self-promotion, you never need to worry about who’ll get the credit. The more credit you give away, the more will come back to you. The more you help others, the more they’ll want to help you. The more you help your boss look good and stay on top of his or her work, the more your boss will want to open doors of opportunity that enable you to get ahead.

Herodotus, the Greek historian, wrote, “All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.”

Your job is to engage in deliberate self-promotion by becoming very good at what you do, by becoming indispensable to your boss and your company, and by becoming better and better known to the important people in your field. The rewards that will come back to you eventually will be much greater than the efforts you have put in. And there is no limit to what you can put in.

In Leading and Motivating: Part I, I spoke about the first three qualities a leader should have in order to lead and motivate well. We spoke about vision, integrity, and courage. In a way, it is easy to develop a big vision for yourself and for the person you want to be. It is easy to commit yourself to living with complete integrity. But it requires incredible courage to follow through on your vision and on your commitments. You see, as soon as you set a high goal or standard for yourself, you will run into all kinds of difficulties and setbacks. You will be surrounded by temptations to compromise your values and your vision. You will feel an almost irresistible urge to “get along by going along.” Your desire to earn the respect and cooperation of others can easily lead to the abandonment of your principles, and here is where courage comes in.

Courage combined with integrity is the foundation of character. The first form of courage is your ability to stick to your principles, to stand for what you believe in and to refuse to budge unless you feel right about the alternative. Courage is also the ability to step out in faith, to launch out into the unknown and then to face the inevitable doubt and uncertainty that accompany every new venture.

Most people are seduced by the lure of the comfort zone. This can be likened to going out of a warm house on a cold, windy morning. The average person, when he feels the storm swirling outside his comfort zone, rushes back inside where it’s nice and warm. But not the true leader. The true leader has the courage to step away from the familiar and comfortable and to face the unknown with no guarantees of success. It is this ability to “boldly go where no man has gone before” that distinguishes you as a leader from the average person. This is the example that you must set if you are to rise above the average. It is this example that inspires and motivates other people to rise above their previous levels of accomplishment as well.

Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia, was one of the most superb leaders of all time. He became king at the age of 19, when his father, Philip II, was assassinated. In the next 11 years, he conquered much of the known world, leading his armies against numerically superior forces.

Yet, when he was at the height of his power, the master of the known world, the greatest ruler in history to that date, he would still draw his sword at the beginning of a battle and lead his men forward into the conflict. He insisted on leading by example. Alexander felt that he could not ask his men to risk their lives unless he was willing to demonstrate by his actions that he had complete confidence in the outcome. The sight of Alexander charging forward so excited and motivated his soldiers that no force on earth could stand before them.

The fourth quality of motivational leadership is realism. Realism is a form of intellectual honesty. The realist insists upon seeing the world as it really is, not as he wishes it were. This objectivity, this refusal to engage in self-delusion, is a mark of the true leader.

Those who exhibit the quality of realism do not trust to luck, hope for miracles, pray for exceptions to basic business principles, expect rewards without working or hope that problems will go away by themselves. These all are examples of self-delusion, of living in a fantasyland.

The motivational leader insists on seeing things exactly as they are and encourages others to look at life the same way. As a motivational leader, you get the facts, whatever they are. You deal with people honestly and tell them exactly what you perceive to be the truth. This doesn’t mean that you will always be right, but you will always be expressing the truth in the best way you know how.

The fifth quality of motivational leadership is responsibility. This is perhaps the hardest of all to develop. The acceptance of responsibility means that, as Harry Truman said, “The buck stops here.”

The game of life is very competitive. Sometimes, great success and great failure are separated by a very small distance. In watching the play-offs in basketball, baseball and football, we see that the winner can be decided by a single point, and that single point can rest on a single action, or inaction, on the part of a single team member at a critical part of the game.

Life is very much like competitive sports. Very small things that you do, or don’t do, can either give you the edge that leads to victory or take away your edge at the critical moment. This principle is especially true with regard to accepting responsibility for yourself and for everything that happens to you.

The opposite of accepting responsibility is making excuses, blaming others and becoming upset, angry and resentful toward people for what they have done to you or not done for you.

Any one of these three behaviors can trip you up and be enough to cost you the game:
If you run into an obstacle or setback and you make excuses rather than accept responsibility, it’s a five-yard penalty. It can cost you a first down. It can cost you a touchdown. It can make the difference between success and failure.

If, when you face a problem or setback, and you both make excuses and blame someone else, you get a 10-yard penalty. In a tightly contested game, where the teams are just about even, a 10-yard penalty can cost you the game.

If, instead of accepting responsibility when things go wrong, you make excuses, blame someone else and simultaneously become angry and resentful and blow up, you get a 15-yard penalty. This may cost you the championship and your career as well if it continues.

Personal leadership and motivational leadership are very much the same. To lead others, you must first lead yourself. To be an example or a role model for others, you must first become an excellent person
yourself.

You motivate yourself with a big vision, and as you move progressively toward its realization, you motivate and enthuse others to work with you to fulfill that vision.

You exhibit absolute honesty and integrity with everyone in everything you do. You are the kind of person others admire and respect and want to be like. You set a standard that others aspire to. You live in truth with yourself and others so that they feel confident giving you their support and their commitment.

You demonstrate courage in everything you do by facing doubts and uncertainties and moving forward regardless. You put up a good front even when you feel anxious about the outcome. You don’t burden others with your fears and misgivings. You keep them to yourself. You constantly push yourself out of your comfort zone and in the direction of your goals. And no matter how bleak the situation might appear, you keep on keeping on with a smile.

You are intensely realistic. You refuse to engage in mental games or self-delusion. You encourage others to be realistic and objective about their situations as well. You encourage them to realize and appreciate that there is a price to pay for everything they want. They have weaknesses that they will have to overcome, and they have standards that they will have to meet, if they want to survive and thrive in a competitive market.

You accept complete responsibility for results. You refuse to make excuses or blame others or hold grudges against people who you feel may have wronged you. You say, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” You repeat over and over the words, “I am responsible. I am responsible. I am responsible.”

Finally, you take action. You know that all mental preparation and character building is merely a prelude to action. It’s not what you say but what you do that counts.

The mark of the true leader is that he or she leads the action. He or she is willing to go first. He or she sets the example and acts as the role model. He or she does what he or she expects others to do.

You become a motivational leader by motivating yourself. And you motivate yourself by striving toward excellence, by committing yourself to becoming everything you are capable of becoming. You motivate yourself by throwing your whole heart into doing your job in an excellent fashion. You motivate yourself and others by continually looking for ways to help others to improve their lives and achieve their goals.

You become a motivational leader by becoming the kind of person others want to get behind and support in every way. Your main job is to take complete control of your personal evolution and become a leader in every area of your life. You could ask for nothing more, and you should settle for nothing less.

It’s been said that “Leadership is not what you do, but who you are.” This, however, is only partially true. Leadership is very much who you are, but it cannot be divorced from what you do. Who you are represents the inner person, and what you do represents the outer person. Each is dependent on the other for maximum effectiveness.

The starting point of motivational leadership is to begin seeing yourself as a role model, an example to others. See yourself as a person who sets the standards others follow. A key characteristic of leaders is that they set high standards of accountability for themselves and their behaviors. They assume that others are watching them and are setting their own standards based on what the leader does. They lead by example, exactly as though someone were following them around, surreptitiously taking notes and photographs of their daily actions for others to see and act on.

Motivational leadership is based on the Law of Indirect Effort. According to this law, most things in life are achieved more easily by indirect means than by direct means. You more easily become a leader to others by demonstrating that you have the qualities of leadership than you do by ordering others to follow your directions. Instead of trying to get people to emulate you, you concentrate on living a life that is so admirable that others want to be like you without your saying a word.

In business, there are several kinds of power. Two of these are ascribed power and position power. Position power is the power that comes with a job title or position in any organization. If you become a manager in a company, you automatically have certain powers and privileges that go with your rank. You can order people about and make certain decisions. You can be a leader whether or not anyone likes you.

Ascribed power is the power you gain because of the kind of person you are. In every organization, there are people who are inordinately influential and looked up to by others, even though their positions may not be high on the organizational chart. These men and women are genuine leaders because of their quality, their character and their personalities.

Perhaps the most powerful of motivational leaders is the person who practices what is called “servant leadership.” Confucius said, “He who would be master must be servant of all.” The person who sees himself or herself as a servant and does everything possible to help others perform at their best is practicing the highest form of servant leadership.

Over the years, we have been led to believe that leaders are those who stride boldly about, exude power and confidence, give orders and make decisions for others to carry out. That’s old school. The leader of today is the one who asks questions, listens carefully, plans diligently and then builds consensus among all those who are necessary to achieve the agreed-upon goals. The leader does not try to do it by himself or herself. The leader gets things done by helping others to do them.

This brings us to five of the qualities of motivational leaders. These are qualities you already have to a certain degree and that you can develop further to stand out from the people around you in a short period of time.

The first quality is vision. This is the one quality that, more than anything, separates leaders from followers. Leaders have vision. Followers do not. Leaders have the ability to stand back and see the big picture. Followers are caught up in day-to-day activities. Leaders have developed the ability to fix their eyes on the horizon and see greater possibilities. Followers’ eyes are fixed on the ground in front of them and are so busy they seldom look at themselves and their activities in a larger context.

George Bernard Shaw summarized this quality of leaders. In the words of one of his characters, “Most men look at what is and ask, ‘Why?’ I instead look at what could be and ask, ‘Why not?’ ”

The best way for you to motivate others is to be motivated yourself. The fastest way to get others excited about a project is to get excited yourself. The way to get others committed to achieving a goal or a result is to be totally committed yourself. The way to build loyalty to your organization, and to other people, is to be an example of loyalty in everything you say and do. These all are applications of the Law of Indirect Effort. They very neatly tie in to the quality of vision.

One requirement of leadership is the ability to choose an area of excellence. Just as a good general chooses the terrain on which to do battle, an excellent leader chooses the area in which he and others are going to do an outstanding job. The commitment to excellence is one of the most powerful of all motivators. All leaders who change people and organizations are enthusiastic about achieving excellence in a particular area.

The most motivational vision you can have for yourself and others is to “Be the best!” Many people don’t yet realize that excellent performance in serving other people is an absolute, basic essential for survival in the economy of the future. Many individuals and companies still adhere to the idea that as long as they are no worse than anyone else, they can remain in business. That’s just plain silly! It’s prehistoric thinking. We’re now in the age of excellence. Customers assume that they will get excellent quality and, if they don’t, they’ll go to your competitors.

As a leader, your job is to be excellent at what you do, to be the best in your chosen field of endeavor. Your job is to have a vision of high standards in serving people. You not only exemplify excellence in your own behavior, you also translate it to others so that they, too, become committed to this vision.

This is the key to servant leadership. It is the commitment to doing work of the highest quality in the service of other people, both inside and outside the organization. Leadership today requires an equal focus on the people who must do the job, on the one hand, and the people who are expected to benefit from the job, on the other.

The second quality, which is perhaps the single most respected quality of leaders, is integrity. Integrity is complete, unflinching honesty in everything you say and do. Integrity underlies all the other qualities. Your measure of integrity is determined by how honest you are in the critical areas of your life.

Integrity means this: When someone asks you at the end of the day, “Did you do your very best?” you can look him in the eye and say, “Yes!” Integrity means this: When someone asks you if you could have done it better, you can honestly say, “No, I did everything I possibly could.”

Integrity means that you, as a leader, admit your shortcomings. It means that you work to develop your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses. Integrity means that you tell the truth, and that you live the truth in everything you do and in all your relationships. Integrity means that you deal straightforwardly with people and situations, and that you do not compromise what you believe to be true.

If the first two qualities of motivational leadership are vision and integrity, the third quality is the one that backs them both up. It’s courage. It’s the chief distinguishing characteristic of the true leader. It’s almost always visible in the leader’s words and actions. It is absolutely indispensable to success, happiness and the ability to motivate other people to be the best they can be.

Next week, I will cover the final two qualities of motivational leaders as well as other tips to gain the motivational and leadership skills you strive to have.

Everyone wants to be physically healthy. You want to be mentally healthy, as well. The true measure of “mental fitness” is how optimistic you are about yourself and your life.

You can learn how to control your thinking in very specific ways so that you feel terrific about yourself and your situation, no matter what happens.

Control Your Reactions and Responses
There are three basic differences in the reactions of optimists and pessimists. The first difference is that the optimist sees a setback as temporary, while the pessimist sees it as permanent. The optimist sees an unfortunate event, such as an order that falls through or a sales call that fails, as a temporary event, something that is limited in time and has no real impact on the future. The pessimist, on the other hand, sees negative events as permanent, as part of life and destiny.

Isolate the Incident
The second difference between the optimist and the pessimist is that the optimist sees difficulties as specific, while the pessimist sees them as pervasive. This means that when things go wrong for the optimist, he looks at the event as an isolated incident largely disconnected from other things that are going on in his life.

For example, if something you were counting on failed to materialize and you interpreted it as being an unfortunate event, but something that happens in the course of life and business, you would be reacting like an optimist. The pessimist, on the other hand, sees disappointments as being pervasive. That is, to him they are indications of a problem or shortcoming that pervades every area of life.

Don’t Take Failure Personally
The third difference between optimists and pessimists is that optimists see events as external, while pessimists interpret events as personal. When things go wrong, the optimist will tend to see the setback as resulting from external factors over which one has little control.

If the optimist is cut off in traffic, for example, instead of getting angry or upset, he will simply downgrade the importance of the event by saying something like, “Oh, well, I guess that person is just having a bad day.”

The pessimist, on the other hand, has a tendency to take everything personally. If the pessimist is cut off in traffic, he will react as though the other driver has deliberately acted to upset and frustrate him.

Remain Calm and Objective
The hallmark of the fully mature, fully functioning, self-actualizing personality is the ability to be objective and unemotional when caught up in the inevitable storms of daily life. The superior person has the ability to continue talking to himself in a positive and optimistic way, keeping his mind calm, clear and completely under control. The mature personality is more relaxed, aware and capable of interpreting events more realistically and less emotionally than the immature personality. As a result, the mature person exerts a far greater sense of control and influence over his environment and is far less likely to be angry, upset, or distracted.

Take the Long View
Look upon the inevitable setbacks you face as being temporary, specific and external. View the negative situation as a single event that is not connected to other potential events and that is caused largely by external factors over which you have little control. Simply refuse to see the event as being in any way permanent, pervasive or indicative of personal incompetence or inability.

Resolve to think like an optimist, no matter what happens. You may not be able to control events, but you can control the way you react to them.

Action Exercises
Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, remind yourself continually that setbacks are only temporary; they will soon be past, and nothing is as serious as you think it is.

Second, look upon each problem as a specific event, not connected to other events and not indicative of a pattern of any kind. Deal with it and get on with your life.

Third, recognize that when things go wrong, they are usually caused by a variety of external events. Say to yourself, “What can’t be cured must be endured,” and then get back to thinking about your goals.