• The key to building a culture based on Trust and Personal Responsibility is getting all employees to be committed to the organization’s Vision and the Values That Build Trust.

  • 85% of business leaders agree that traditional differentiators alone are no longer a sustainable business strategy.

  • The number one fear in the world is public speaking. “You” vs. “I” messages are powerful tools for capturing your audience’s attention.

  • Corporations can work five times harder and spend five times more money to gain new customers, or they can keep the ones they have.

  • Change is constant. To implement change you must listen, engage, and empower individuals in the change process.

  • 70% of organizational changes fail and these failures can be traced to ineffective leadership.

  • Leadership is being the best you can be, and helping others be the best they can be.

  • It costs 10 times more to gain a new customer than it does to keep an existing customer.

  • The key to keeping customers satisfied and loyal is to value and train employees while making them an integral part of corporate success.

  • No one of us is as smart as all of us – when teams function well, miracles happen.

  • If you want 1 year of prosperity, grow rice. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people. – Chinese Proverb

  • Learn something every day. Never stop learning.

  • The brighter you are, the more you have to learn.

  • Effective coaching is a key method for increasing productivity and profitability in an organization. Recent studies have shown that 85% of the workforce wants holistic coaching so that they can continually improve and grow.

  • Employee loyalty builds customer loyalty, which builds brand loyalty. It’s as simple - and as difficult - as that.

  • The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor. Vince Lombardi

  • A survey of 350 executives across 14 industries, 68% confirmed their companies experienced unanticipated problems in their change process. – International Consortium of Executive Development Research.

  • It is estimated that 80% of mergers and acquisitions that occur today fail to meet initial expectations.

  • First, people don’t grow and change much unless they’re in a supportive environment where people know what they want to do and encourage them to do it.

  • Companies Don’t Solve Problems.
    People Do.

  • 25 of every 27 customers who have a bad experience fail to report it because they don’t believe anything will change.

  • 50 – 70% of how employees perceive their organization can be traced back to the actions of one person – the leader.

  • The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving. Oliver Wendell Holmes

  • People are the core strategic asset. To be successful, a company must listen, involve, encourage, nurture, support, empower, and reward all its constituencies.

  • Leadership IQ being equal, it is believed emotional intelligence – how we manage ourselves, our emotions and the emotions of others – accounts for 85 – 90% of what separates the most outstanding leaders from their peers.

  • Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. Winston Churchill

  • "High performing organizations are constantly focusing on improving their capabilities through learning systems, building knowledge capital and transformational learning throughout the organization.” - Ken Blanchard

  • 78% of consumers say their most satisfying experience occurred because of a capable and competent customer service representative.

SoJo - Ways to Achieve Magnetic Leadership

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Posted on February 1, 2013 by SoJo's Guest Contributors

What do the leaders of top companies do to create an inviting workplace filled with fully engaged and enthusiastic employees?

The best leaders are people who know how to listen, can make a promise and deliver on that promise, and have stepped up to the plate and made the necessary investment to successfully engage their employees.

The best leaders motivate, inspire and energize people by connecting the vision, values, purpose and business goals of the organization to individual values and needs. Here are some of the top actions I recommend to people seeking to improve their success as a leader.

1. Develop Your Vision. Make sure you have a vision with the purpose and values to make it real. State where you are going clearly. State your purpose simply. Express your values – the things that you use to guide every action people take at work – directly.

2. Identify Your Leader Type. Knowing who you and what type of leader you are helps you and others identify where, when and how to best behave and act to focus their energy to achieve the goals and objectives you set out for them.

3. Track Your Leadership Development Progress. Keep a leadership log to document what you do and what happens. Review what happens regularly. Reflect on what you are learning and how you are changing.

4. Recruit and Retain the Right People. Identify what makes individuals successful in your culture, and recruit for those skills. The culture will keep them loyal and happy, and exceed all expectations. Improve your interview and listening skills so you can hear what your employees are saying. Document and take immediate action when you identify something that needs to be improved.

5. Engage, Empower and Enrich Your Employees. Invite employees to become part of your vision. Empower them to be a force of change and be enriched by your culture. Make your employees part of the solutions, by giving them a role and the responsibility for implementing solutions to major business issues.

6. Create a Work Environment that Fosters Creativity and Innovation. Go beyond simply improving the physical environment. Focus on how people feel to work there. Evaluate the energy when you walk the floors. How connected to their teams do virtual or remote workers feel? Make changes to ensure that the work environment fuels your objectives and helps to achieve your goals.

7. Appreciate and Reward Your Employees. Develop and deploy a schedule that regularly and meaningfully rewards employees to create a culture of appreciation. Assess and improve the way you reward people so that you are sensitive and responsive to the differences in age, education, maturity, and demographics.

8. Focus On the Things That Inspire Your People. Identify what inspires you and your employees. Do they need more education and training, more creative time and cross-training opportunities, wellness programs to promote less stress and better health, or even a sabbatical? Develop and improve the key programs that your people need to stay engaged and loyal.

9. Improve The Most Important Things First. Identify the most significant of your short comings head-on. Identify what is impacting your own progress and what is holding you back. Are you a poor listener, a technophobe, or do you yell and rave? Admit it. Then take action to get help, fix your problem, and improve your own performance, skills and abilities.

10. Visualize the Future. Identify where you see yourself in 10 years, 20 or even 30 years? Define the characteristics of the leader you want to be and what the future looks like for you. Describe the way you will balance your personal life and that of your organization and its people. Document how you will build loyalty and trust with your leadership.

Written by Dianne Durkin, author of The Power of Magnetic Leadership

About our guest contributor: 

Dianne Durkin is the president and founder of Loyalty Factor, a consulting and training company that enhances employee, customer and brand loyalty for some of the nation’s most prominent corporations and smaller businesses. She has a very unique background including finance, direct sales, international marketing and training and development.

Widely recognized as a visionary thinker who has a rare combination of creativity and a strong business sense, Dianne has been interviewed as a Loyalty Expert by ABC News. She has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily and the Boston Globe, among numerous other publications. Dianne was the subject of two cover stories in Learning and Training magazine and Sales & Service Excellence.

Dianne is the author of two books: The Loyalty Factor: Building Employee, Customer and Brand Loyalty and The Power of Magnetic Leadership: It’s Time to get R.E.A.L.

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