10 Ways The Best Leaders Reach Goals
Joe Folkman
Co-Founder, Global Authority in Psychometrics and Research, Leadership, and Change. Best-Selling Author, Speaker, Executive Coach.
Things I really ought to do -
- Be more considerate of others
- Listen more
- Get in shape
- Eat more vegetables
- Recycle more waste
- Finish that project I started several years ago
Like me, you know what you ought to do, and it’s important to do it. Occasionally you are reminded by others, but the core list of “must do’s” never seems to get done. So, what could happen this year that might make it possible for a few things on this list to go away? Rather than give you advice that is generally not very helpful and tends to either make you feel guilty or pump you up for one day, I am going to give you some research that may help.
The first bit of research I have found and validated with thousands of leaders is that after you make a list of all the things you ought to do, review the list and narrow it down to just the top three. Make your selection by considering first, what you want to do. If you have some passion or energy to do something, the probability of succeeding goes up considerably. Second, think about what would personally benefit you the most in your life. My firm Zenger Folkman has found repeatedly in our research that leaders who were skilled in just a few competencies were rated as very effective leaders, and from that data we concluded a person does not need to be perfect to be effective. If you can just accomplish even one key thing on your list, life will be better and others will be very impressed.
The second piece of research comes from a global sample of more than 1,400 people that I looked at who were highly confident in their ability to succeed. I then did an analysis on the characteristics of these people that made them more confident. Below is a list of the top characteristics we found...
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