• 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

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

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

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

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

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

  • 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.

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

  • Learn something every day. Never stop learning.

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

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

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

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

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

  • Companies Don’t Solve Problems.
    People Do.

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

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

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

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

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

  • 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

  • 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.

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

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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

Bellevue Business Journal - Dianne Durkin Examines Ten Critical Steps to Achieving Magnetic Leadership in New Book

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January 17, 2013 by Joe Kennedy in Books

Dianne Durkin, author of the book The Power of Magnetic Leadership, uses the lessons learned from dozens of successful company leaders to explain how the best leaders engage employees, set the example by showing how to play well with others, and inspire people by demonstrating that every action they take is relevant to them.

“The best leaders,” she says, “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 she recommends 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.

Magnetic_Leadership_Foreword_2012

The Power of Magnetic Leadership

Dianne Durkin with Carey Earle

List $ 19.95

Trade paperback, 9 in. by 6 in., 152 pages 

ISBN 978-1-4537-5123-7

Published by CreateSpace

The Power of Magnetic Leadership is a vault of valuable business strategies based on Durkin’s decades of experience changing the leadership course of major corporations. It provides insight on how leaders can lead magnetically by fully engaging and empowering employees, transforming them into innovative thinkers and major contributors to the organization’s success. Appreciating effort and rewarding results are underscored as the means to generate loyalty and impact profitability.

For more information www.LoyaltyFactor.com

About the Author

Dianne Durkin heads up Loyalty Factor, a consulting and training company located in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She has more than 25 years of experience in training and development, finance, direct sales and international marketing.

She has been Interviewed ABC News, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily and the Boston Globe, on several occasions. A graduate of Rivier College, Ms. Durkin holds a Master’s Degree in Mathematics from Duquesne University. She has also completed advanced management programs at the University of Santa Clara and Babson College. She is an adjunct professor at Plymouth State University and the University of Massachusetts in Lowell.

Copyright © 2014 Loyalty Factor. All Rights Reserved.