Success and Personality

Research demonstrates that when a person fails in their career, 90% of the time it is attributed to their behavior, not skills, education, knowledge or experience. When we put this together with the data that has been amassed from the over 40 years that the Winslow Personality Assessment has been around, we can identify which personality traits have the greatest influence of behavior that leads to success.

So what does this do for me, you might ask. When I was a kid I would ponder the Falling Rock Zone sign on the NY State Thruway. What is the point of knowing that, I would wonder. What could you do if a rock fell on your car? Now I realize that the sign alerts you to a possibility so that you are better prepared in the event that a rock has fallen or falls while you are driving. Well, being aware of the impact of personality traits on behavior and personal awareness of how these traits show up in you are akin to knowing when you are in a falling rock zone. You can choose to change your behavior accordingly, be extra alert for falling rocks.

The three personality traits that are most closely associated with success are ambition, tough mindedness and self-confidence. Think Oprah Winfrey, Dirty Harry, and Martha Stewart. We all fall somewhere on the continuum that ranges from high to low.

Ambition is about drive. Those with high ambition are goal-oriented, striving, competitive, set high standards and experience success as a major source of personal satisfaction. The down side is if you may never be satisfied and lack life balance. Low ambition can lead you to be happy with less than your best, complacent, and unmotivated.

Tough-mindedness is resilience, being undeterred by obstacles, and easily handling criticism. Those who are tough-minded are cool under pressure.The down side is that you may be insensitive and lack tact. Those with low tough-mindedness are easily deterred, require lots of positive encouragement and can take offense when none is intended.

Self-confidence is the unfaltering trust in self. Those high in self-confidence are self-assured, welcome challenges, are comfortable expressing ideas, and have unshakable nerve. The down side is that you may be unaware your own limitations. Those with low self-confidence don't believe in their own abilities, are apprehensive and easily intimidated. Their insecurity can be paralyzing.

Where are you in the continuum of these personality traits? Do you see something that is driving a behavior that is an obstacle to your success? Is it possible to improve your chances for success if you fall low on the continuum of these personality traits? The answer is yes!!

The first step is to acknowledge the need for development. And the best approach to development is to control your behavior rather then to try to change your personality. If you find the motivation and apply commitment, discipline and patience, you can create behaviors that will move you closer to success.

Resolutions Part 2

Do you brush your teeth every day? How does that go for you? Do you have to think about it and give yourself a pep talk to get yourself into that bathroom and do  it? While you're pondering these questions, let me throw in one more. Did you make any resolutions about a year ago? If so, how many of them have you kept? If you're like many of us you have made and repeatedly broke resolutions. This really erodes your confidence. It's not keeping your word to yourself and that makes you feel bad about yourself. 

Now I hope you're wondering what these questions have in common. The short answer is that self-discipline does not work, change is hard and it's possible, but self-discipline is not the route. Studies have shown that we are all born with a finite amount of self-discipline that does not change over the course of our lives, so there is just about nothing you can do to get more. 

Let's take a simple example of a business related New Year's resolution. You resolve to grow your business by doing more follow up in the coming year. Monday Wednesday, January 2, 2013, rolls around and you make follow-up calls to five potential clients with whom you've had conversations. You do that again on the 4th and the 5th. On the 6th you get busy with a new project and you just make 3 calls. On the 7th you have a meeting that takes up your entire morning and you just don't have the energy to pick up that phone. The weekend rolls around, then it's Monday the 10th and you just have a ton of paperwork to get through. You don't give much thought to follow-up calls. The calls start to get sporadic, you're not really sure how many you're doing, and one more resolution goes down the drain. 

How come you brush your teeth everyday without struggle, without really using any energy thinking about it, without becoming distracted from it? The reason is that brushing your teeth is a well-established ritual. No effort, no thought, you just do it. You were not born with a brushing your teeth as ritual gene. You developed it as a ritual. Given the benefit derived from brushing your teeth over your lifetime, the effort and time that it took to establish it as a ritual is minimal. If you would like to make changes, make a resolution and keep it, change your focus to creating a ritual, and forget using self-discipline. Not to say that it starts off with no effort, but if you focus on creating a ritual for a relatively short amount of time, it quickly becomes effortless and you've got a new ritual that  is moving you towards your goal. 

Building rituals requires defining very precise behavior and performing those behaviors at very specific times. It also helps to be clear on your motivation for the behavior. Most of us don't brush our teeth when we think of it. Some people do it as soon  as they get out of bed, others after breakfast, but whenever it is, the time is  the same every day, and you are doing the same thing every time. Your Mom, or whoever got you doing it, was highly motivated by wanting you to be healthy (and maybe saving on those dental bills). 

Back to our example.  You decide that to grow your business you need to do follow-up calls. You make it a New Year's resolution. You will do five a day, at 9AM every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This is an unbreakable appointment that you put in your calendar. In January, it's an effort, you have to force yourself to keep that appointment sometimes, but you really want to grow your business, so you do it. It's easier in February, and by March, it's kind of like brushing your teeth! 

This applies to any change that you want to introduce into your life, and can be done at any time of the year. It works, although, it works best if you limit yourself to one or two at a time. So do it now, think of one or two rituals that you would like to introduce into your life and commit to a regular time to practice them.  Do it today, and soon it will be as easy as brushing your teeth.

Resolutions Part 1

"Oh yeah, no bikes left, it's January."  "I think I'll just run outside until January is over."  "Such a pain, there's no parking spots, it's January."  "You have to get here so early to get into class, can't wait until January is over."  These are the self-satisfied complaints of gym regulars this month, and I admit,  me included! It is a pain that the gym is so crowded, and it feels good to know  that we are not there because of soon to fade resolutions. We will still be there next month. But we weren't born going to the gym regularly.  

How do you become a regular? You become a regular by making it a ritual so that it becomes just one of the things that you do. Resolutions that you turn into rituals are goals that you attain.  

A couple of other tips about resolutions:  
Make it part of a big goal. For example, don't make it about going to the gym. Make it about being healthy so you will be able to play with your great-grandchildren.  
Work on one at a time.   
Pick something that you really want to achieve, not something you should achieve.  

My daughter just said to me that she finds projects "so fun" because of the way that you feel inside when you complete them. I hope that these blogs help you to find your resolutions "so fun". and that you feel so good when you attain  them.

Listen With Confidence

I was recently at a networking event. There was a person there who could not stop talking. Anything that anyone said to him got a long-winded canned response about his business. I noticed people avoiding eye contact with him in the hope of not being engaged by him. He struck me as being very unsure of himself, needing to gain confidence and listening skills.

I am willing to bet that you have been involved in a meeting or conversation where people are not listening to each other. The participants are just waiting their turn to speak, and what they have to say is not about what was previously said. They just want to shine a light upon themselves. These are not people whom inspire you to do business or spend time with them.

People who have high self-esteem are better listeners, which lead to better personal and business relationships. They are not focused on what others will think of them and how to impress them. They are focused on what is actually going on, and able to be more spontaneous. If there is an agenda they are more able to comfortably work that into a natural flow of conversation.

When you ask good questions and listen to the answers, you will be remembered in positive light. People want to be heard and recognized, they want to have their uniqueness perceived and acknowledged. When you provide this for someone in a conversation or meeting, you present yourself as a confident, attractive person; someone with whom people want to do business and spend time.

You come across as confident when you don't need to do all the talking. In a business situation, listening will also give you the competitive edge, as you will learn things about your potential customer and their service needs and they will remember you for how well you treated them.

 Here are some tips for being a good listener:

• Give you full attention to the person who is speaking. Don't wonder why the people over at the other end of the room are laughing or if the clouds outside the window mean it's going to rain. If you feel that your attention is wandering, it helps to shift your body position.
• Do your best to not interrupt. Even if you are listening, it can feel like you are not when you interrupt. Let the speaker finish.
• Make sure that you have fully finished listening before you speak. Know what  you want to say.
• Listen for the important idea or ideas. Pay attention to words that stand out, things that are repeated or sentences that contain phrases like, my point is, or what I really want to say.
• Remember to ask good questions. Care enough about what is being said so that you want to understand and know more about what is important to the speaker.
• Give feedback that indicates that you are listening. Your body and face say as much as your mouth! Look at the speaker, nod, smile when appropriate, say uh, uh, laugh, etc.

A great listening exercise is to get a friend and ask them to talk to you for 5 minutes without you saying a word. You can gain experience in active listening, learn what is challenging to you about listening, and get feedback from your friend about how you did.

Listen with confidence and you will grow your business and social network while having a great time!

Pay Attention

One of the 24 personality traits measured by the Winslow Personality Assessment is creativity. Synonyms for this personality trait are innovative, inquisitive, curious, experimenting, and theoretical. It is the desire to make improvements and create new ways of doing things.  It is not about artistic endeavors alone. In the rapidly changing world in which you live, creativity is a valuable asset. Professionally and personally, do you need to innovate to grow?

You can be more creative, if that is something that you want for yourself. Creativity, as stated by Tina Selig in her book inGenius, is just like math, music or sports. Some of us are naturally talented and some of us are not. We can all learn math, music, sports and creativity with training and practice. Selig talks about several ways that we can increase creativity. One of them is by paying attention.

How many people had stepped into a bath tub without noticing that their body weight displaced a certain amount of water. Eureka! Archimedes did and discovered that the volume of the water displaced equaled the volume of the body part submerged in the water. David Friedberg passed a bike rental shop on his way to work at Google. He noticed that it was closed whenever it rained. Eureka! Friedberg founded Climate Control, a highly successful company that sells insurance to protect businesses from weather related losses.

They were both paying attention. Archimedes and Friedberg both experienced the same thing that many others experienced bathing and commuting to work. The difference is that they noticed what they experienced. Active and focused observation creates opportunities to see problems and solutions.

You can be a more active and focused observer. Paying attention is a habit; like all of the other habits that you have, both good and bad. After you make a conscious effort to pay attention, it will become a habit and will not take a lot of effort. One way to develop the habit of paying attention is called "thinking like a traveler", by Tom Kelley, the IDEO General Manager. He describes choosing the attitude that we have when we travel internationally. We notice how the money, shoes, trains and coffee look. We become hyper aware. He further suggests that you capture your observations by writing them down. This is a great way to increase creative thinking. Another approach is to ask yourself lots of questions about wherever you happen to find yourself. The color of the walls, the people around you, the temperature, the lighting, etc., etc., etc. Another technique to develop your pay attention habit is to  take 10 full minutes to look at a photo and write down everything you see. Take it further and determine what conclusions you can draw from what you see and don't see in the picture. This can be done with a partner or a group.

Paying attention pays off with increased creativity and potential for innovation.

Two great men had interesting things to say about paying attention.

"The real act of discovering consists not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes."

Marcel Proust

"You can observe a lot by watching."

Yogi Berra

LIFE CHANGERS

In the course of my work with individuals, businesses and not for profit organizations I've witnessed profound change. I've created this list of concepts that have had the greatest impact from the feedback that I've received from my clients.

1-You don't have to do what you feel. Feelings are not actions, they come and go, they change all the time, all day long. They do not create anything. How
small would the world population be if someone died every time someone felt like they wanted to kill someone? 

In fact, we all do things everyday that we don't feel like doing. Did you get up when your alarm went off, even though it was raining, and you were feeling so cozy in bed? You can do everything you need to do to reach your goals, no matter what you feel, as long as you are aware of your feelings and you don't let them run you. (By the way, this is an excellent idea to share with your children when they say "I don't feel like it".)

  

2-Self-discipline does not work. Change is hard and it's possible, but self-discipline is not the route. Studies have shown that we are born with a finite amount of self-discipline that does not change over the course of our lives, and there is just about nothing you can do to get more. The way to change is by creating rituals. This is essentially the way you create all habits of daily life, like brushing your teeth. Any behavior that you turn into a habit can become as effortless.

3- Selfish is not a dirty word. When traveling by air you are told to put on your own oxygen mask before assisting children. This instruction, which most of us have heard countless times, is telling us to behave in a selfish manner. Take care of yourself so that you are able to take care of others.

Taking action that you gets what you need and taking excellent care of yourself is the way you get a solid base from which you can be more generous and supportive of others.

4-Setting annual goals and writing them down is great. However, 30% of us scale back our goals by mid January and by June most of us have given them up totally. Some of the reasons are a lack of specificity, no system for tracking progress, and neglecting to build in accountability, but the major mistake that we make is that we don't tie our goals to a vision, and we don't make them big. Research has demonstrated that the number one reason that we do not reach our goals is because they are not big enough.

Self-Assertiveness and Relationship

The practice of self-assertiveness is one of Nathaniel Branden's six pillars of self-esteem. It is the willingness to stand up for yourself, to be who you are, and to treat yourself with respect. This doesn't mean that you behave as a tyrant and trample over other people's rights or ideas. It means that you behave as your authentic self, as appropriate to context. Appropriate self-assertiveness is not the same with your family as it is at the workplace, not the same with a young child as it is with an adult.

Being self-assertive is a choice you make, and it can be a choice you make based on your situation. I attended a party during which the host gave a fortunately short piano concert, accompanying his spouse's singing. I thought it was pretty awful, but sat through it and politely and gratefully applauded at the end. I believe that this is common courtesy. However, I did not rush over to the performing couple and shower them with praise. When I attend my daughter's piano recitals, I give each and every performer, including halting renditions of Mary Had A Little Lamb, enthusiastic rounds of applause and say good job to every child that crosses my path. I'm being authentic in both situations.

An essential element of lasting intimate relationships is self-assertiveness, knowing and being known. The temptation to conceal our true selves is often strongest in our relationships with those that we care about the most. In my experience giving into this temptation is a huge contributing factor to unhappy marriages and divorces. The energy consumed by tamping down parts of ourselves wears us down, and creates unhappiness and distance from our partner. We are afraid that revealing parts of ourselves that our partner will not like will end the relationship. In fact, even your mom doesn't like every single thing about you, but I hope she still loves you. For a relationship to survive over the long run, you have to be your authentic self, warts and all. It is also a big hit to your self-esteem to only have the "acceptable" parts of yourself known. Feeling good about yourself requires that your life belongs to you and that you are not basing your behavior on someone else's expectations.

Self-assertiveness in the workplace benefits both the employer and the employee. I had a boss who asked me during my interview if I would be honest with him in the event that I disagreed with him. He wanted self-assertive employees; he didn't want to miss out on valuable feed-back and creative initiative. He worked at creating an organizational culture that supported self-esteem and the practice of self-assertiveness. Elements of that culture included that it was ok to make a mistake as it was an opportunity to learn, it really was safe to disagree with the boss, autonomy was encouraged, and creative problem solving was rewarded. At this point in time, this organization has survived economic challenges, and I do think that the culture is one of the factors that enable it to survive.

Here's some typical answers, gathered by Nathaniel Branden, given to the question, what would you do if you were more self-assertive:

-I'd be more candid.

-I wouldn't drag my feet about declaring bad news.

-If I didn't understand, I'd ask questions rather than pretend I knew.

-When I knew something impossible was being asked of me, I'd say so on the spot.

-I'd be more honest about my feelings.

-If someone wasn't doing the job that was needed, I'd e faster to react and insist on better performance.

-I'd be clear about my expectations and lay them right out there.

-When I knew I had done a good job, I'd make sure my bosses knew about it.

-I wouldn't be wishy washy about presenting my ideas, I'd stand up for them.

What would you do if you were more self-assertive? How would it impact your self-esteem and your relationships? Let me know!