Walk The Talk Chock full of resources to inspire, motivate, encourage, and challenge you!

Weekly tips to help you and your colleagues become more effective and respected leaders.

What INeffective Leaders Have to Say …

Your effectiveness as a leader is based on the behaviors you exhibit – and that includes the things you say to the people who work with you and for you. Below are several telltale phrases of INeffective leadership:

Because I said so!

Of course I want you to take risks. Just don’t make any mistakes!

Hey, don’t blame me. This wasn’t my idea!

Don’t ask questions … just do what you’re told!

If I wanted your opinion, I would have asked for it!

Handle this … but don’t make any decisions.

I don’t owe you any explanations.

You’re not paid to think. You’re paid to do your job.

It’s my way or the highway!

So what if I said that yesterday … this is today!

It’s my job to make all the decisions and your job to carry them out.

Why can’t you be like everyone else?

Someday you’ll be in charge, and then it will be your turn to tell people what to do.

If any of these phrases (or ones like them) have been said to you in the past, you probably can remember how de-motivating they were to hear. So, if you’re ever tempted to say them to someone else, FIGHT THE FEELING!

Today’s lesson is from 180 Ways to Walk the Leadership Talk By John Baldoni

Purpose is the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s needs.
~Frederick Buechner

  Today’s quote comes to you from I Will Not Die an Unlived Life

If you could achieve any one goal in your life within twenty-four hours, which goal would have the greatest impact on your life?
  ~Brian Tracy

Today’s quote comes to you from The Power of Discipline:  7 Ways It Can Change Your Life

What are those values that we believe, deep down inside? They are our core values. And John G. Blumberg, author of Good to the Core, says that most of us want to be good to the core. Good to the Core: Building Value With Values can be experienced on two different but related perspectives. First, from a personal perspective: exploring our personal core values. Second, from an organizational perspective: thinking about the values that are the fabric of the cultures in which we work. It is his hope that we may become orchardists who plant seeds of our core values into the cultures of our organizations. As John says, “When personal values and organizational values align…exponential value is realized.” And it is my hope that by reading this book you may be inspired to truly live your core values…that you may be inspired to walk the talk.

To Your Success,

Good to the Core

This is a great book for everyone in your organization to read…and re-read. Because without core values, and your commitment to reinforce those values, there can be no long-term success….in business or in life.

Excerpted from Good to the Core

An assumption can be a dangerous thing. Especially when it comes to the core. And trying to live something that at best is vague, or at worst doesn’t actually exist, is virtually impossible! I had always assumed you could give most professional adults a blank sheet of paper and ask them to write down their core values, and with minimal effort they could list them. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Very few can. My assumption that outstanding college students know their personal core values delivers similar dismal results. When you ask most professionals to write down their organization’s values…the likelihood of them listing the values correctly gets even slimmer.

I am not the only one making an assumption. In fact, many of us just assume we know our values. Some will say, “I have a gut feeling about my values.” Or they might say, “I generally understand my company’s values.” I would say a “gut feeling” or a “general understanding” is a dangerous formula in a world that is moving exponentially faster each day. It is dangerous for both you and for the organization where you work.

When it comes to corporations, associations, universities or any other organization, the bottom-line is that values are valuable to their “bottom-line.” It impacts the mission, vision, retention, service, and ultimately the very culture of the organization. Even so, many organizations are winging it…Very few organizations probe deep enough to challenge employees to introspectively discover their own values…What I have also seen, among very busy people, is once they begin to think about it—once their inner flame is stoked—they have a natural burning desire to reconnect to their values. They are inspired when they reconnect to their core. And it is good. Very good!

My hope is this little book will challenge you to search inside.

1.    To investigate the value of knowing your core values.
2.    To indicate your own core values.
3.    To integrate your core values into the fabric of your life.

Copyright Simple Truths, LLC, all rights reserved and reprinted with permission

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
~Linus Pauling

Here is one of the greatest questions you will ever ask and answer: “What one skill, if I developed and did it in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my career?”
  ~Brian Tracy

There is a genuine solace in the shared experiences of others.
~Lee Woodruff

Today’s quote comes to you from We Carry Each Other:  Getting Through Life’s Toughest Times

Proactive people take the initiative and responsibility to make things happen. They cause action rather than being victims of circumstance.
~Chris MacAllister

  Today’s quote comes to you from Building Customer Loyalty:  The 21 Essential Elements…IN ACTION

I am living proof that women can reinvent and rebuild their lives, no matter what hardships they have faced.
  ~Jackie Speier

  Today’s quote comes to you from This Is Not the Life I Ordered:  50 Ways to Keep Your Head Above Water When Life Keeps Dragging You Down

In his book The Power of Discipline, bestselling author Brian Tracy writes, “Self-discipline is the key to personal greatness. It is the magic quality that opens all doors for you, and makes everything else possible. With self-discipline, the average person can rise as far and as fast as his talents and intelligence can take him. But without self-discipline, a person with every blessing of background, education, and opportunity will seldom rise above mediocrity.” Are you ready to discover your personal greatness? Read on to learn more about how the power of discipline can change your life.

To Your Success,

Eric Harvey
Founder and President, WalkTheTalk.com

The Power of Discipline

The Power of Discipline is about how discipline alone can be the difference between winning and losing; between greatness and mediocrity. Join Brian Tracy, best-selling author and sought-after speaker, as he gives you the tools to help make your dreams come true!

Excerpted from The Power of Discipline

The development of character is the great business of life. Your ability to develop a reputation as a person of character and of honor is the highest achievement of social life. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say.”

The person you are today, your innermost character, is the sum total of all your choices and decisions in life to date. Each time you consistently make good choices and decisions, your character is strengthened and self-worth increases. Conversely, each time you compromise your value system by consistently choosing poor choices, your character is weakened.

A person of character possesses a series of virtues or values. These are courage, compassion, generosity, temperance, persistence, and friendliness, among others. But the most important value in determining the depth and strength of your character is integrity.

It is integrity, living in complete truth with yourself and others, that most demonstrates the quality of your character.

In a way, integrity is actually the value that guarantees all other values. The higher your level of integrity, the more honest you are with yourself, the more likely it is you will live consistently with all other values you admire and respect. It takes tremendous self-discipline to become a person of character. It takes considerable willpower to always “do the right thing” in every situation. It takes self-discipline and willpower to resist the temptation to cut corners, to take the easy way, or to act for short-term advantage.

All of life is a test, ultimately proving our character. Wisdom can be developed privately, through study and reflection. But character can only be developed in the give and take of daily life, when forced to choose and decide among alternatives.

Copyright Simple Truths, LLC, all rights reserved and reprinted with permission