Good doesn't get you business

Good doesn't get you business. You have to be
clear - concise - compelling. You have to engage.
- Ed DeCosta

Ed goes on to say that engaging people is the key to business growth and 96% of your growth comes from engaging people in ongoing conversations.

I love stats when they come from such a high level and respected professional sales professional as Ed.

You have to start a dialog as if someone is listening

- Ed DeCosta

This is another blog post that is as much about marketing as leadership. So, how does this apply to helping leaders lead leaders?

Here it is -

- You're around people everyday, engage.
- You're leading and following other people - every day, engage.
- Start talking like a leaders, engage.
- Start a blog and writing like a leader, engage.
- Tweet, like a leader, engage.
- Post to Facebook and LinkedIn, like a leader, engage.

While you're doing all this, you're talking to yourself. You're engaging with yourself. You're leading yourself and as you learn to lead yourself better, you'll lead others better.

You'll help others lead better.

To that end...

 

Notes from the book "The Talent Masters"

Notes from Conaty and Charan's book "The Talent Masters" -

1. An enlightened leadership team, starting with the CEO. We find that such leaders invest at least a quarter of their time in spotting and developing other leaders; sat companies such as GE and P&G, it's closer to 40%.

2. Meritocracy through differentiation. Warning....differentiation breeds meritocracy; sameness breeds meritocracy. Talent masters dig into the causes underlying performance so that they can recognize and reward leaders according to their talents, behaviors, and values.

3. Working values. By whatever name the values are called, masters repeat and repeat and repeat their values, and reinforce them by linking recognition and rewards with them.

4. A culture of trust and candor. A company can develop its people only if it has accurate information about their strengths and development needs.

5. Rigorous talent assessment. Talent masters have the same goal and results orientation in their people processes as they do in their financial systems.

6. A business partnership with human resources. Talent masters use human resource leaders as active and effective business partners.

7. Continuous learning and improvement. Talent masters recognize that a fast-changing business environment requires constant change and updating of both their leaders' skills and their own leadership criteria.

A couple of my thoughts - Conaty and Charan's background lends their writings to experience, not opinions (this is good). As I read this book, I'm taking notes and underlining (as I do in most books), but I'm finding that I'm tending to correlate much of what they have to say with others.

This is also good and gives credibility. I'll bring those out in coming posts.

Good stuff!!!

To that end.....