Mark J – 7 Things You Can Do Right Now To Improve Your Team – Guest Blogger

7 Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Your Team

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BEST WAY TO IMPROVE THE TEAM

“The best way to improve the team is to improve oneself.”  John Wooden

There seems to be this insatiable appetite for leads, lead generation and lists….like that will solve all the problems we encounter on the way to obtaining our objective.

Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth.  While it never hurts to find prospects we need to be more concerned with the conversion rate than the number of prospects.

Hyperbole is a great way to put this in perspective, to gain an insight.

LET’S PLAY WITH NUMBERS

 If you started with 10,000 prospects and made 200 bucks on a sale…..and sold 1 in 10,000 …would it really matter if you got another 10,000 prospects every month?

Course not.

We built an organization of over 10,000 people from 337 names and numbers.  The organization began producing over 2.5 million in sales by the end of the second year……

Not bragging or complaining…..but it was the steps we took to improve ourselves that made the achievement possible.

HOW DO WE IMPROVE?

Ultimately, our communication skills will decide our fate.  If we can improve this skill everything gets better……

We become better:

• Prospectors
• Recruiters
• Coaches
• Trainers
• Leaders

KEY:::> “If communication is not your top priority, all your other priorities are at risk.” Aronson

BUY A COURSE?

Nothing against them ….but most of them are generic and just rehash the same stuff and talk about lofty stuff and won’t help anyone discover the blind spot or spots.

Additionally, most them them are about how to manage people…….that is a red flag.

People don’t want to be managed……do you?

I rest my case  🙂

“We manage things….we work with people”  Wooden

You need to find out exactly what you can do, tomorrow….or better yet …what can you do right now to improve.

ASK FOR FEEDBACK

Here is a little 7 step feed-back formula you can implement every 90 days….and it will pay dividends on many, many levels.

Do this with your leaders……ask them to be harsh…..to say what they mean.  Assure them you are interested in improving, not being patronized.

You can do it on a conference call and email this list to them…..print out the feedback and ask others you trust of go over it and see if it covers all your areas that need improvement or are there others?

The 7 questions are below the video

1. Ask: When I communicate, do you understand me? Am I clear about the message, wishy-washy, vague, precise?  Am I …..to detailed…..not detailed enough…..boring….to fast?
2. Ask: Do I favor one type of communication too much? We all have a tendency to favor one type of communication over all others.  Find out if there is a more preferred method…..and/or if the method you are using is an area that needs improvement.  EXAMPLE: Maybe you do webcasts and always start late….or you are too fast or to slow with the material.  EXAMPLE 2: Maybe you always use email….they are too long or cover too many things at once…..any you’ve forgotten email, like all communication, is a two-way street.
3. Ask: If I could improve one thing when communicating with the group, what would that be? You might be surprised, we sure were.  I used a lot of audio and covered lots of things.  My folks let me know this felt one way…..they’d click on a link and hear me…..but did not know how to respond and the messages were, as a key rep wrote…..TOOOOOOO LOOOOOOONG.  Get to the point and make it once I was told ….instead of making the same point 2-3 ways.  Most understood I was trying to make sure they understood but I was able to discover that my earnest efforts were coming across as condescending.  Wow, did that help.
4. Ask: If I could improve one thing when communicating with you personally, what would that be? Folks seem to be OK telling you about the group communication but hesitate about the one-on-one stuff.  With a little encouragement…telling them you want to improve….they’ll unload.  Feel blessed, never defend and believe they just gave you the keys to the vault.
5. Ask:  Do you feel you have enough support?  Listen, do not defend.  We discovered a huge blind spot….people felt supported when they could get us but felt getting us was difficult, nearly impossible.  We simply made ourselves available for 4 hours each on Fridays.  It changed everything.
6. Ask: Would you please name at least one area I need to improve in? By now they’ll be rolling and you’ll be learning how to lead better and communicate better.
7. Ask: Could you please name something we are not doing that we could that would help you specifically? This is great, they feel part of the planning process and what ever they tell you, pull out your appointment book and schedule it.

We continued to run this to lots of teammates for 3 years…..and it paid massive dividends.  It gave a clear direction about where we could improve and it yielded some darn good suggestions about what to implement team wide.

We improved, the team appreciated it and the leaders duplicated our actions by running the same questions by their teams so they could improve

…..the lines of communication swung open…..and….open lines, with constructive feedback…..fosters trust, accelerates growth and lowers cost.

believe

mark januszewski

World’s Laziest Networker

Linda Anderson – Guest Blogger

Wow! All I can say is that was one of the most heart felt blogs I’ve read so far! And you’re right about the feelings…..I had a few of them myself in the last 4 weeks, but something inside me said, “not this time, Lisa”….”you are going to see this to the finish line!” I used to be a competitive swimmer….not sure when I lost the competitive nature to never give up, but I did. This course is bringing it back with a vengeance! I’m glad you’re a winner Walt!

Time To Come Clean

OK, time to come clean, to bare my soul, to lay all the cards on the table (wow! that feels good). Last week I experienced some major computer challenges which caused me to fall way behind on my MKMMA requirements, i.e., blogs, tweets, etc. 

 Slowly but surely, the negative person inside of me started his ranting and raving: “Hey, you’re at a time in your life when you should be taking it easy and enjoying yourself.  You worked hard, you deserve this time.  Do you really need this aggravation, it’s only gonna get ya stressed out.  You know you are definitely computer challenged when you have to do all this blogging, tweeting, etc.  Let it go, it’ll make your life so much simpler.  Twenty-six weeks, ya gotta be kidding!”

Then a little tiny voice way in the background crept in.  It was that positive guy inside me who has been hidden and quiet for so long.  He was saying, “Give up! Are you kidding me?  Don’t you remember the reason you wanted to get involved with this alliance?  How can you give up so easily on your DMP?  You’re not only giving up on yourself but you’re giving up on the promises you made to yourself about taking care of your kids and grandkids and about being debt free for once in your life.  Man up!! Remember, ‘Quitters never win and winners never quit.’

I started thinking about why the negative person in me has been playing such an enormous role in my life.  Once again, the reason has to do with how we were brought up.  Just before I reached the age to commence grammar school, I thought my name was: No Don’t.  Then I attended parochial school from kindergarten thru high school.  If any of you had the same experience, you know that your knuckles do not like rulers!  Even religion was based on: Thou Shall Not!  “Don’t do this, don’t do that.  You can’t do that.  We never did that before.” No wonder some of us grow up neurotic!

I sat down and I read Emerson’s Law of Compensation.  I highlighted what really stood out to me.  To be honest, I had to read some of the paragraphs two or three times to understand what was being said.  Suddenly, “the sun was beginning to dawn on marble head!”  “Each thing is a half,” and it needs its opposite to make it whole.  There is dark and light; there is negative and positive; bad habits and good habits; yin and yang; north and south; one cannot exist without its counter part.  So while  there is a negative side within me, there has to be a positive side!

This is when the full realization of this MKMMA really appeared to me.  In order for this to work, I MUST be into it 100%.  Not 80 or 90%.  Is it difficult?  I’d be lying if I said yes.  It’s a whole new way of thinking.  Is it worth it?  I’d have to answer that by asking myself if my family is worth it.  The bad habits that I have accumulated all these years have led me to where I am today. Many of my decisions have led me to this banquet table of mediocrity.  In order to change, they must be replaced by good habits and the only way to accomplish that is by following the MKMMA program to the letter.

OK, why am I baring my soul?  Because there may be some of you who may be experiencing some or all of the difficulties and roadblocks I have experienced this past week.  If we only hear from people who are relating all of the great things that they are experiencing in the fourth week of this alliance, some of us may be asking ourselves, “What’s wrong with me?”  There is  nothing wrong with you!  Change is not easy but it’s worth it.  Remember the reasons you agreed to get involved in this program.  If you get up at 4 or 5am, it’s pretty dark out isn’t it?  Wait an hour or two and the sun comes up and grants us a beautiful day.  It may be dark right now during this 4th week but hang-in, there is a beautiful day about to dawn and we will all realize that it was well worth meeting the challenges.  The alternative is continuing to live a life of mediocrity.  We were put on this earth to be the best we can be.  It is within us to do so.

Conscious/Sub-conscious

I like to break things down into simple terms or examples so that I can better relate to them.

I play a snare drum in a bagpipe & drum band. When I first started, I had to learn various drum scores. At first, I found it difficult but the more I practiced, the easier it became. Once I got the scores down, I now had to learn to march while playing. Thought it would be easy BUT, “holy cow,” was I messed up! My conscious mind was telling me, “OK, do you want to play or do you want to march? But don’t ask me to do both!”

Once again, it took practice, practice and more practice. When it got embedded into my sub-conscious, I not only could I play and march but I could be thinking of something totally different while doing both. We called it “muscle memory” but it was simply taking one chore consciously and by practicing and not giving up, it became “second nature” because the sub-conscious had taken over.

That is exactly what we are doing by practicing, daily, the lessons learned in this MKMMA program.
If we stay with this program and don’t give up, no matter how difficult it may seem at first, in 26 weeks we will be totally different people and then “watch out world because we are comin ta get cha!”

MASTER KEY – MASTER MIND ALLIANCE

We are really made up of two people…our negative self and our positive self.   Because of the way we have been educated and brought up, most of us have lived most of our lives as our negative self.  The MKMMA is teaching me how to get in touch with my positive self and showing me how to cast off my negative self and to start living the kind of life I was meant to live.

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