Happy New Year. I’m tucked away in the mountains. Snow falls. Life’s paused. Words flow.
And so I wrote these words for you on this first day of 2013:
THE PROJECT
By Robin Sharma
Within each of us lies The Project.
An idea longing to be nourished, cherished, launched and completed.
Writing a novel. Starting an enterprise. Raising a family. Freeing a nation.
Our deepest desire is to do The Project. To express our vision. To carefully and patiently watch it unfold. To present it to those who will benefit by it. And to experience the pride of the job beautifully done.
Yet, a million distractions battle for our attention. And one hundred doubts fill our hearts. And so slowly and subtly, we recite the excuses that construct our reality. And we shelve The Project. Postponing it for a better day.
But postponing The Project is life’s greatest lie.
Picasso and Basquiat, Einstein and Edison, Jobs and Jay-Z didn’t wait for an ideal day to do their dream. They started. When it was hard. Though they had little. While they were alone.
So many of the world’s troubles are symptoms of The Project undone.
Pain is the result of potential denied. And when you avoid The Project, you dishonour your gifts. Your Talents. Your Genius.
A portion of you goes numb. Silent. Quiet. Scared.
The moment you start The Project, everything shifts. Purpose, focus, passion and peace returns to your life. Eyes sparkle. Energy explodes. Inspiration flows. And your days become supported by coincidence, power and peak possibility.
This very day, the first of a fresh year–presents your greatest opportunity. To be a lion not a sheep. To walk with giants versus among the meek. To celebrate your best instead of succumbing to the worst. To lift others up versus tear others down. To pour creativity, mastery, courage and light into a world aching for marks of heroism.
So please, step up. Release all chains. Dispute all doubts. Start The Project. Do the dream. And change the world.
2012′s coming to a close. It was a hard year for people behaving as victims. And a superb year for people like you showing up as leaders (and world-builders).
I’m in reflection mode as I review the past 12 months, record what I learned in my journal and set precise and clear goals+plans for 2013.
I wanted to share 50 of my best lessons learned (or reinforced) from 2012. So here you go:
Hard work is a force multiplier.
Don’t participate in recessions.
Exercising for 20 minutes first thing in the morning is a game-changer.
If you’re not innovating daily, you’re on the path to obsolescence.
If you want an A-Level company, you can’t afford to hire B-Level players.
Procrastination is an escape mechanism for people scared to do their best work.
Give your customers 10X the value they expect and they’ll tell everyone they know about you.
Don’t do it if you’re not having fun.
If you’re not scared a lot you’re not growing very much.
Invest the time to create great social media content and your base will go global + viral.
There’s never been a better time to be a social entrepreneur.
It’s never been easier to be of service to a large amount of people (and few things are as rewarding).
When no one else believes in your vision, you absolutely must stay true to your vision. (Have the guts to stay in the game far longer than makes any sense).
The quickest way to build a superb business is to quickly develop the leadership potential of every teammate.
A job is only a job if you choose to see your work as a job. All work is a noble sport. (The reality is all work is a chance to express your genius–and to inspire the world).
People are craving transparency+authenticity and community. Give it to them.
Creativity comes in seasons. There’s a time to harvest your ideas. And there’s a time to let the field sit fallow. (I’ve been working on integrating this lesson for years).
Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is relax (When you relax, your brain shifts into alpha state–the time when million-dollar ideas present themselves).
Change is hard at the beginning, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end. (And without change, there is no progress).
Someone’s going to win in your space. Why not you?
10X the size of your dreams because if you don’t, you’ll wish you did.
Pursue excellence versus chasing perfection.
Celebrate small wins and you’ll unleash a huge amount of momentum and positive energy.
Learn for an hour a day, no matter what. That’s not a waste of work time. It’s a brilliant use of your work time because you’re paid to know more than anyone who has ever done your job.
Why go for good at what you do when you can stand for iconic?
Transform your fitness and you’ll transform your business.
Delete victimspeak from your languaging. No more "I can’t" and "It’s not possible" and "It’s so hard." More "I will" and "This is awesome" and "What’s the opportunity here?"
If you inspire one person each day, you’re day hasn’t been a waste. It’s been a blessing.
Living in the past is disrespecting your future.
Build an amazing career but enjoy your lifestyle along the way. What’s the point of becoming a business legend but a failed human being.
Look people in the eyes when you talk to them. Smile at people when you see them. Say "please" to respect them. And "thank you" to appreciate them.
Don’t be on time–Be early.
The person who tries to do everything achieves nothing. Focus. Focus. Focus.
Spend the first 90 minutes of your work day on real work versus fake work. (Another game-changing tactic that served me so very well in 2012).
Spend time in silence each day. You’ll never do Jay-Z level work if you’re overstimulated by technology.
Goal-setting is mission-critical. (Review your Big 5, quarterly goals and daily goals constantly).
Your daily behavior broadcasts your truest beliefs.
To have the results only 5% of businesspeople have, have the guts to do what only 5% of businesspeople are willing to do.
World-class begins when you think you’ve done a great job but know you can do a better job.
Remember that your greatest gift is so much stronger than your deepest fear.
Everyone’s in Human Resources. And we are all paid to develop the talents of the people we work with.
Mediocrity is a mindset. Avoid the mental viruses of negative people.
Be the most honest person you know. It generally takes 30 years to build a fantastic reputation. And 30 seconds to lose it by a single silly move.
Become a lion–not a sheep.
People are always willing to pay for the best.
The more devoted you become to serving others, the more your career begins to build itself.
Problems come to test your commitment to your goals, hopes and dreams.
As you become more successful, get more hungry.
Join Traffic University. Use every possible moment in the car to upgrade your skills, polish your gifts and elevate your mindset.
Use your life to make the world a better place.
I hope these 50 ideas have helped you. And I so hope I’ve been of service to you in your business and personal life this year. I enthusiastically wish you and those closest to you an even better year ahead. Let’s make it wow.
Hi, I’m here on the magnificent island paradise of Mauritius. It’s a gorgeous day. We’re ending out the tour, and I wanted to take you through some quick ideas on customer experience, actually, being a merchant-of-wow in the work that you do, based on where I am right now. I’m at a place called Shanti. It’s a resort. It’s from the Nira resorts here in Mauritius. I’m on this island paradise. Mauritius is just magnificent. I mean, just check out the surf over there and the food and the people and the culture and the beauty. On this resort everything is just OAD (obsessive attention to details). They want to get every little thing right.
I was talking to the general manager when I came in and he said, “It’s the little things that make the big experience.” I think one of the things I want to show you is… They told me when I checked in, because I was sort of blown away by a number of the little details and the culture of this property. I asked, “How do you get it done? How come everyone is so amazing, for example, in terms of treating the guests with such care?” One of the things they showed me… Hopefully, we’re going to get this on the video, but this is the uniform that a lot of the people who work here wear. You won’t believe this, but literally stitched right into the collar of the uniform – I hope you can see that – but it says, “Guest is God”. Some of their core values are stitched actually into the shirt so when you put on the shirt every morning, you remember the core values. Is that not unbelievable?
Look, inside one of the areas of the shirt “perfection”. Let’s see where else. Okay, you know what? This is incredible. If you look inside as you put on your sleeve, you see the word – everyone of us needs to see this every day. Look at that, “passion”. Remember that. Let’s see what’s on the inside of… Oh, look at this. The pocket, the pocket of the shirt the word, you see that? I hope you can, “trust” and then the other sleeve is what we’re all about, what leadership is all about, which is “service”.
Oh, I just want to show you one more thing. All the employees carry this little booklet, and it’s so well done, and in the booklet – you can see it right here. In the booklet, the key values that they want to live by and think by and brain tattoo into their mind set so they do genius level work in front of their customers every day are right in this booklet. Here are some of the things. Number one – I thought this was great – guests arrive as residents, leave as friends and return as family. Is that not amazing? How about this? Number three, the answer is yes; now tell me the question. What an incredible mind set for a hotel or for any business? When the customer asks the question or before the customer even asks the question, the answer is yes. Now tell me what you want. Phenomenal mind set. Number five, core value number five. Perfection is a passion for the details. Number seven is great. The culinary art is sacred. And then, finally, we are devoted, number ten, we are devoted to pleasure for our guests.
From beautiful Mauritius, some ideas and some innovation. Was that shirt idea not incredible? The bottom line is great customer experiences and great organizations don’t happen by luck, they happen by all of these little innovative ideas executed on with mono-maniacal perfection.
Hi, it’s Robin Sharma, the author of “The Leader Who Had No Title.” I would like to welcome you to this issue of Robin Sharma TV. Well this issue is all about four tips to build a winning team. I mean I’m here in Stockholm, Sweden. I’ve just had the pleasure of spending three and a half hours with almost 700 people, talking about Lead without title and Stockholm is a
gorgeous city that I finished the presentation and I went for a great ride and got to know the city even more, smelled the smells, got lost a little bit and really just savoured the moment on this tour. The tour started off in Dublin then went to Macedonia over to Stockholm, Paris tomorrow, then down to Mauritius.
But let me get right to the point. At the session after the event I had dinner with some of the executives, or lunch rather with some of the executives who had showed up at the Lead without a title presentation and one of the questions I got was how do you build a winning team? How do you
motivate your team? How do I get teammates who are inspired to wow they’re customers, to be great teammates, to do great work, to help me build a great company that does our part to change the world. Four specific tactics were my reply.
Number one. LBE; Lead By Example. So a lot of CEOs come to me and say, “Robin I’d like to have more engaged employees.” Well the real question is how engaged are you? A lot of CEOs come up to me or managing directors saying, “Robin I wish I had employees or teammates who work like Picasso painted.” And I look at them and I feel like saying “well do you work like
Picasso painted?” Lot of CEOs come up to me and say, “Robin you know I wish my teammates were more passionate about the work they do.” And I feel like saying “well how passionate are you?”
And so this force point is really this. Few things are as powerful as leading by example. If you want innovative employees, if you want excellent employees, if you want ethical employees, if you want passionate employees, if you want employees who win, then you be the change you want to see in your employees to sort of paraphrase what Gandhi said. So the first point is really, the game-changer is, lead by example. I mean you model the behaviour and the performance that you want your employees or the rest of the team to live and the more you do that, the more you will do whatever a leader without a title does, which is influence people.
Number two. The second thing I said to this executive if you want to have a winning team do what one of our clients, Ritz Carlton does every morning. Before the door is opened up for the hotel, they have a huddle and there are a few things they do. In that huddle, they talk about one of the Ritz Carlton values. They just talk about one of the core values. You know maybe it’s customer wow and they talk about what it looks like, what it means and that simply just reinforces that key value in the minds of the team first thing in the morning. Second thing they do, they come up with a customer service story. You know one employee at Ritz Carlton doing something that made a huge difference in the life of a guest. Then another thing they do is they celebrate birthdays, something human. So the second tactic for building a winning team, a morning huddle. Do it from maybe 9:00 to 9:15 everyday. Pick a value you want to coach your team on. Pick a story that you want to inspire them on and then celebrate your team because as we know the team that celebrates together is the team that wins together.
Third tactic; coaching. Well we could spend a whole session here on Robin Sharma TV talking about coaching, but really your job as a leader is to grow more leaders. Your job as a leader is to inspire your team to do work they never thought they could do. Your job as a leader is to leave a trail of leaders behind you.
So the third tactic, the third tactic to building a winning team is find some time everyday, even if it’s 3 minutes, to coach someone on your team. And don’t say “you did something wrong”, say “I have an opportunity for you to get to your next level of wow.” Build a coaching organization where literally part of the culture is you developing talent, coaching talent. I
mean here’s what the latest researches say. The number one thing your talent wants is to be coached, to be developed, to do challenging work. It’s not money. They want to do work that matters and it’s your job to coach them everyday, to develop them, and help them get to the highest point of their own abilities.
Then the fourth tactic that I want to share with you to build a winning team is to have fun. I remember having dinner with a billionaire. He built a fantastic technology company. I said what was the single most important thing you did to build a world class organization, and a winning team and he said, “Robin, the company that celebrates together is the company that stays together.” And he called it shared human moments. We’re in a world right now with all the technology that’s out there, where your teammates are craving community. They’re craving human connections.
So find some time to have pizza lunches together or find some time to go to a restaurant together. Find some time to maybe go for a run together, and don’t talk about business. Have fun together. Have fun with your team. Laugh as a team. Get to know them as human beings. Get to know their family. Get to know their hopes and their dreams. The more you can connect with human beings at a very deep human level, the more they’re going to come back to the office and they’re going to like you, and they’re going to trust you, and they’re going to listen to you. They’re going to buy into your version because they truly care.
Those are four specific tactics to help you build a winning team because as you know so well, if you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business and the bigger your dream, the more important your team. So take the time to develop a great team.
If you want more tactics on high performance team building or peak performance or leadership or productivity or if you just want to get more inspired, go on over right now to robinsharma.com. You can grab a copy of my 120 page e-book. It’s helped people from around the world, get some game-changing results as my gift to you for free. I will see you again in the next issue of Robin Sharma TV. Thank you for watching. All the best to you. Bye bye.
Hope you’re great. For this month’s newsletter I want to help you refocus on what’s truly most important in business and in life. More than ever before distractions pollute our days and pull us into doing fake work versus the real work that changes the game.
So to be of service to you and your team, I’ve pulled out 7 of my most widely read articles for you to read, share and reflect on. Thanks for being a member of The Lead Without A Title Movement. Stay inspired!
1) The 50 New Rules of Work (20,800 Shares)
The global economy is in a state of acute disruption. Competition has never been more fierce. Consumers have never been so well-informed and loudly demanding. And what worked yesterday just might be obsolete today. But this time is also a great time, for the astonishing few who are ready to show leadership. …Click here to read the rest
2) How Remarkable Entrepreneurs Build Winning Teams (17,990 Views)
Building a winning team is essential to success. In this video I share with you the 5 best practices Remarkable Entrepreneurs use to build a team of superstars. …Click here to read the rest
3) 17 Tips To Double Your Productivity In 14 Days (6357 Shares)
One of the modules from The Remarkable Entrepreneur SuperConference is on “Doubling Your Productivity in 30 Days”, based on my work with some of the most successful entrepreneurs in business. I wanted to share 17 of the tactics I’ve learned that I know will help you lean into your productive best in this age of dramatic distraction. …Click here to read the rest
4) Create Great Relationships (3972 Shares)
The digital world is a beautiful thing. Apps boost our productivity and elevate our personal lives. eBooks make reading more accessible and elegant. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter connect us – and allow for the sharing of information in radically new ways. But along with the opening of new frontiers that technology brings, I’m witnessing a closing of something else. We just don’t personally interact in the same ways that we once did. Tempers have grown quicker. Conversations have become shorter. And good manners are becoming obsolete. …Click here to read the rest
5) 15 Ways To Do Your Best Work (3879 Shares)
1) Do your best work by challenging the way you did things yesterday. 2) Do your best work by allowing your passion to see the light of day. 3) Do your best work by becoming part of the solution versus growing the problem. 4) Do your best work by expecting nothing less than you playing at world-class. 5) Do your best work by giving away the credit (especially when you crave it) …Click here to read the rest
6) How Do You Define Success (3378 Shares)
Too many people are living their neighbors’ lives. So many amongst us are building our futures based on a definition of success sold to us by society+the media+our peers. That’s fine if you’re consciously choosing to live by those values. But what if – at truth – you have a different set of values. And the success you are currently chasing actually has little to do with what will make you happy when you review your life at the end? …Click here to read the rest
7) The 5 Big Opportunities of This Down Cycle (1118 Shares)
OK. We’re in some challenging times. Economies are shifting. Businesses are reconfiguring. And deep uncertainty dominates many peoples’ mindsets. But smart leaders get that crisis breeds opportunity. And so they train their brains to focus on nothing else. Here are 5 of the NBO’s (Nice Big Opportunities) I’ve been sharing with my clients. …Click here to read the rest
Keep Leading Without A Title.
P.S. Want to spend 2 days with me in Mauritius July 17-18 learning to be an elite performer in turbulent times? The Elite Performers Business Forum is your chance. Join me for 2 full days of learning on building a great team + company + life. For more details click here.
2012′s coming to a close. It was a hard year for people behaving as victims. And a superb year for people like you showing up as leaders (and world-builders).
