The most important skill you will ever develop as a leader is the ability to elicit empowering emotional states in other people, and then link those states to the behaviours you wish them to engage in. You do that; you will become a force to be reckoned with.

After ten years of special operations and working with some of the highest performing people [in their field] in the world, I am convinced of one thing ….. you will never reach your potential in this regard unless you first have mastery over your own thinking and emotional states; no way. Why? Because self mastery precedes mastery of others; the ability to consciously direct your own focus and alter and shift your own emotional states is the foundation for consciously and consistently achieve the same with others.

How do you actually achieve that?

Click here to read more.

Did you read the March 2010, Australian Financial Review’s Boss Magazine which focused on REINVENTING LEADERSHIP ?  The magazine published an amazing article which was an excerpt of the speech Don Argus delivered at a Leadership Victoria dinner in December 2009.

His key comments around leadership were these:

“In my experience, success goes to those enterprises whose leaders mobilize their people and unleash their competence, creativity and commitment.”

“Those people who are to expand their enterprises were the ones who understood human nature and how to tap the best in people – they understood that the bottom line is ultimately the result of human endeavour.”

“The skill to make things happen comes directly from blending two sides of the leader’s personality: the tough, competitive side that demands winning performance and loves to win; and the softer, compassionate side that is caring and understanding of others.”

In reference to Marius Kloppers, the CEO of BHP BIlliton, he made the following statement:

“Marius quickly realised many organisations smother the potential of their employees under layer upon layer of control and bureaucracy. As a result, their human assets are painfully underused ….

What is really being underused is what might be called “peoples’ discretionary effort”, that is, performance above and beyond the expected minimum. It is their initiative, creativity, motivation and loyalty. This discretionary effort is the part of a person’s performance that is liberated or shutdown by the way their leaders treat them and the quality of their work environment.”

So what is the real message we should take away from this?

Exceptional leadership education, relevant to the needs of the modern business world, must focus on the behavioural elements of an organisation.  It must educate business leaders in new and more effective ways to:

1. Unleash competence, not manage behaviour – soft skills are critical in this pursuit;
2. Enhance individual performance, at home and work, as a foundation to realising bottom line potential – we must acknowledge the inter-dependence between employees personal and professional lives; and
3. Simplify the way leaders execute their business plans and manage their organisations.

Are you ready to step up and make the shift ?

Do you realise that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we’re kids? If you’re less than 10 years old, you’re so excited about ageing that you think in fractions.

‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m four and a half!’ You’re never thirty-six and a half. You’re four and a half, going on five! That’s the key

You get into your teens, now they can’t hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

‘How old are you?’ ‘I’m gonna be 16!’ You could be 13, but hey, you’re gonna be 16! And then the greatest day of your life ….. You become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony. YOU BECOME  21. YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There’s no fun now, you’re Just a sour-dumpling. What’s wrong? What’s changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you’re PUSHING 40 …. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it’s all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone.

But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn’t think you would!

So you BECOME 21,TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.

You’ve built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it’s a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into your 80’s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30 ; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn’t end there Into the 90s, you start going backwards; ‘I Was JUST 92.’

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. ‘I’m 100 and a half!’

May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!

Not my words … but certainly words to ponder are they not.

These are the words of George Carlin, may he rest in peace.

GEORGE LEE SYE

George Lee Sye

You may or may not be aware of this – more has been discovered in the last 10 years about performance and human achievement psychology than in the previous 100 years.

You may or may not be aware of this – more has been discovered in the last 10 years about performance and human achievement psychology than in the previous 100 years.

Albert Einstein, Milton Erickson, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were way before their time. They paved a way for us to explore this intriguing topic. They knew something that few realised at the time – most of what happens in our life is driven by our UNCONSCIOUS MINDS.

Who’s driving your car most of the time?

It’s a fact that more than 95 percent of the ‘neural’ activity in your brain is controlled by the unconscious component of your mind. Yep, you got it … that really means LESS than 5 percent is controlled by the conscious mind.  I’m serious!

You don’t have to think about breathing, balancing yourself while walking, moving all of the muscles required to clean your teeth or catch a ball in the air. You don’t even have to think about driving the car. ‘Mmmmm, I don’t remember driving that last 5 kilometres … ooops, my conscious mind must have been elsewhere.’

THINK ABOUT IT – when the unconscious mind does it’s job, the conscious mind is left to focus on important issues at hand at any given moment; issues such as a conversation, typing a sentence, playing a piece of music, answering the phone or coming up with some plan or course of action. But …. this most amazing process can also cause problems for us.

Out of rapport with ourselves – is it possible?

The truth is we struggle to achieve our goals when our unconscious mind is NOT IN RAPPORT with our conscious mind. When you want something, but your beliefs are out of alignment with that, you get what you believe, not that which you consciously want. For example you might WANT to sink that putt on the golf course, but unconsciously you EXPECT to miss it. The expectation is usually met.

How does this related to business or business leadership?

The challenge for leaders today might be viewed in this way. There are so many negative influences in the western environment, the unconscious mind is being conditioned in a way that disempowers or limits most people. People are generally so busy and so focused on engaging in activities driven by demand and deadlines, they inadvertently condition an unconscious pattern of reaction. The result – proaction becomes difficult to do.

Think about this – when do most people do something about their health or their wealth? That’s right, when it’s broken. You’ve only got to look at health and wealth statistics to see that I’m right when I say most people have in many ways conditioned an unconscious pattern of reaction to the demands of work and daily life.

You as a leader are focused on driving improvement and creating growth in your company or part of the business, but your aspirations beyond some average result are proving difficult to achieve.

Why?

My experience is that the weakness of your organisation is the collective limitations of the people in it. Unless the unconscious limitations, or unconscious patterns of thinking of your staff are changed, your aspirations will never be in rapport with the psychology of the people who are there to help you bring those dreams to life.

So what do you do about it?

In one word – education. You have to find out what is taking place right now when it comes to performance enhancement. And if you pursue one course of learning in the next year, choose to LEARN MORE ABOUT THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND, particularly how it behaves and how neural patterns are created and replaced. This information IS AVAILABLE to you, and it is the domain of the most remarkable leaders this century will produce.

Learn this and your effectiveness as a leader will be massively increased, of that I am certain!

Why not join me for a 3-hour session where we discuss this type of content in much more detail – you can view information about that event here.

Don’t have time to go to a course … hmmmm, it’s going to be very hard for you to keep up if that’s the case.

Here’s to your future success.

George Lee Sye