How To Become An Opinion Leader

"How do I get good people to listen to me?"

When's the last time you asked yourself that?

Part of the reason marketers everywhere have such a tough time getting people to listen to them is because their audiences (i.e., us) don't believe them entirely.

So how can they become an opinion leader?

Problema...

We all know the marketers are "selling" whatever (they're professionals aren't they?) and that they'll say whatever nice words and make whatever promises they have to, to make the sale.

So we, as marketers, are suspect. Yes, including network marketers. Because a normal consumer doesn't know if we say the nice things to sell it and make a few shekels, or because we really love it ourselves.

Here's the good news...

We ALL like to buy stuff, don't we? So ask yourself: What kind of person do YOU most like to buy FROM?

Here's what I do. For anything that matters, I seek out a member of the club, so to speak.

As an avid tennis lover, if I'm thinking about a new tennis racquet, I'd not go to Wal-Mart to buy one. Instead, I have usually gone to a good tennis coach, took a lesson or two, and asked them for a recommendation. I go to the best tennis places and people I can find. Because I love tennis.

And yes, of course I know the person or shop is making something on the sale, I don't care. What matters is that they know and love their tennis.

Say you, as a consumer, know that nutrition matters. You know you need to supplement. And you want whole food based products, no synthetics.

Or you're someone concerned about how your skin looks, and you believe that the ingredients in the skin care products you use make a difference. E.g. no chemicals or no animal products.

So who would YOU rather buy from?

A. The sales rep who sells various nutritionals or skin care products as part of their 'line',

or

B. Someone who cares about nutrition like you do, or about skin care and chemical-free products like you do, and who sells a specific line because THEY love it and use it themselves, too?

This is where network marketers have a very big edge over regular marketers. If you sell it because YOU love it - because of how it helped you - you are like the tennis coach recommending a racquet so an aspiring player. You are an instant 'opinion leader' to tennis players and tennis player wannabes.

The regular marketers are all abuzz about what it takes for a corporate spokesperson to be perceived as an opinion leader, so they'll be listened to when they deliver their product pronouncements.

In a survey by a prestigious PR firm, they asked, "Who is a respected opinion leader?"

Findings:

"68 percent of respondents said: 'A person like yourself or your peer' is the most credible spokesperson about your company."

Isn't that what we just said? A member of the club (or even more passionate than you), or your peer or better? Someone like you or even more so?

Regular marketers have a much bigger hill to climb than network marketers. Many don't use what they market, and they don't market it because the products have changed their lives. They are usually NOT a member of the community of those who care about X.

They just try to sell stuff to people who care about X.

People who care about X, being consumers, don't like buying from people who really don't care about X in their own hearts and lives.

We want to buy X from X lovers.

X lovers are X opinion leaders.

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How One-on-One Executive Coaching Can Work For You

Does your company need a jumpstart? Is revenue low, morale declining, and your leadership tactics no longer making an impact? This may be the perfect time to look into leadership coaching.

A good executive coaching program should do more than just set you up with a speaker reading over a PowerPoint presentation. Team up your senior leaders with a good corporate coaching program, and you could be discussing fostering relationships, building strategy, and improving revenue and communications all while hitting the slopes, climbing a mountain or rafting some white water. It’s easy to connect in an environment where you can be creative, and think outside the box.

A good leadership system can make all the difference in your organization. It effects; communication, human performance, accountability, delivery and measurement. A one-on-one approach, and a program that is tailored to suit your organization’s specific needs, is the best choice in executive coaching.

There are a few important things to consider if you want to engage in an executive coaching program. Look for a company that will provide you with someone who is more than just a speaker. You want to be paired up with someone who will be a trusted advisor to you as your organization grows and changes. Also, a good coaching program will include industry consultants to provide expert advice in some technical areas. Talk to your consultant about the specific goals you want your leadership program to meet. Every business or organization needs direction in a different area or department. This is what makes a one-on-one coaching program so unique; you work on meeting goals where your company needs it the most.

To learn more about your possible executive coaching program, please visit www.maxcomminc.com today.

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How Business Benefit Immensily From Leadership Programs

If you are planning to build a admirable career, maybe you should go through some basic training. Nowadays, there are actual acknowledged administration programs actuality developed. Leadership programs will advice you to access some actual all-important skills. Administration programs will accord you the bare ability to accomplish the best both in your career aswell as in your life.

Leadership programs will be the management-training affairs you are attractive for. Aswell as acceptable able training, they will advice you accretion aplomb and self-respect, things that are actual accessible in your clandestine life. These programs are assuredly a actual able way to accretion the assurances that you will charge to be accessible for a affluent career and life.

I apperceive from acquaintance that a leadership programs can calmly advance and absolute a being because I accept been teaching administration courses for years. If you go to a leadership programs with the appropriate attitude, assured that you admiration success, you will become a altogether afflicted person. Naturally, there are bodies who claiming the call of the administration programs. The success of the administration programs depends usually on the way they are taught. As bodies who advise administration programs are different, as altered are the profits you can booty from administration programs. From adolescent bodies to older, all of them accomplish the best use of any blazon of administration programs. You can accept amid about altered administration programs, although about all of them accept some axiological elements in common.

One of the key apparatus of all leadership programs is that they are aiming to body up abilities to assignment in a team. Some leadership programs alike access this architecture of team-working abilities as the centermost of the accomplished administration program. As an example, I will acquaint you that I accept heard about administration programs which centermost on the accomplishing of concrete tasks as appropriation every affiliate of the accumulation over a wall.

Of course, the point of this is not to accretion beef accumulation but to apprentice how to assignment as a team. This allotment of the administration programs will advise you how to seek anniversary member's strengths and weaknesses. Administration programs will advise you how to leave abaft the airs you accept and to put all your strengths into the accumulation work. This is apparently the best important assignment that the approaching baton will apprentice from the administration program.

The additional axiological basic of administration programs is that administration programs usually tend to accent on aplomb and self-esteem. A baton should be aboriginal of all self-confident. A administration affairs has to advise you how to be assertive that aggregate you say is important. The leaders accept not become leaders because they are added capable, or added able than added bodies are. Surprisingly, it may about-face out absolutely the adverse thing. The leaders accept become leaders because they added aplomb than the added bodies to argue that what they say is important.

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Hiding Your Leadership: The Jersey Joe Walcott Way of Leading

Former heavyweight champ Jersey Joe Walcott was training for a fight against a boxer who had a ferocious left hook.  Asked if he was worried,  Jersey Joe replied, "Nope.  I'll take his left hook and put it in his pocket."

Walcott's low key, wry, confident attitude matched his boxing style. He hardly looked as if he was fighting at all. It was more like Aikido than boxing, the martial art that controls an attacker by redirecting their energy instead of blocking it.

Jersey Joe didn't attack.  He lured his opponent to him.  He shuffled "the Walcott Shuffle."  He created ingenious punching angles.  He feinted not only with his hands but with his shoulders.  He threw a sneaky right hand counter and a counter-punch left. 

In other words, Jersey Joe, to better employ his boxing abilities, hid those abilities.  Jersey Joe Walcott provides a lesson in leadership.

To be a better leader, do what most leaders neglect to do, are even ignorant of: hide your leadership.

Why would you want to hide your leadership?  After all, isn't a leader supposed to stand out?  When you're a leader, aren't you supposed to be the center of attention, telling people to do things?

Yes, that way of being a leader is appropriate if you are viewing leadership in its conventional terms and getting average results.

But if you want to be a leader who gets consistently great results, remember Jersey Joe, if only for this simple, powerful dictum most leaders miss. People are more effective not when they are "ordered to ..." but when they "want to ..."  Having people "want to" through your leadership is the drive shaft of all great results.

Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, wrote 2500 years ago: "As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!'" In other words, the best leadership is the hidden leadership. 

Leadership is about getting results, however one may define those results.  If you can't get results, you won't be a leader for long. But, clearly, you can't get results by yourself.  You need others to help you do it. The "best" leader is the leader who gets the "best" results through the good offices of other people.

The best results are tied to a concept I've been teaching leaders for almost a quarter of a century: When they seek to get results, they should seek to get more results; they should seek to get faster results; and they should seek to get "more, faster" on a continual basis. 

(For a discussion of what results really are I refer you to my web site and the articles section.)

If hiding your leadership doesn't help you get more results, faster results continually then it should be taken no more seriously than the notion that the moon is made of green cheese.

How does hiding your leadership achieve these results?  The HOW is in "want to." But remember this: the people's motivation is not the choice of the leaders.  It's the choice of the people.  Leaders communicate, the people themselves motivate.  They make the choice to motivate themselves. When your leadership is exhibited not on stage but behind the scenes guiding them to be motivated to make that choice, you're creating the super-charged environment conducive to the establishment of more results faster, continually.

What is the best way to hide your leadership?  Hide your leadership by realizing the Leader's Imperative.  "I will lead people in such a way that we not only accomplish the needed results but that we together help one another grow personally and professionally."

This has two parts: results accomplishments and self-improvement.  You are never more powerful as a leader as when, in getting results, you are helping others be better than they are – even better than they thought they could be.  And when you're realizing the Imperative, you are advancing yourself in the best way -- by advancing them. 

Make hiding your leadership a way of life.  Test every leadership situation against the Leadership Imperative.  Build the Imperative into your strategy, tactics, and have it be a driving factor in your interpersonal relationships.

Two points of caution.  First, don't mistake, or mistakenly communicate, the pejorative side of "hide." The word can have a negative connotation: i.e., that you have something to hide, or that you are running away from somebody or something, or that you are being secretive or sneaky.

Use the word in its positive sense; you are hiding your leadership to better realize the Leadership Imperative.

Second, hiding your leadership can turn into a failing if you don't hide it in a robust way. Hiding your leadership does not mean living an easy life for yourself – i.e., detaching yourself physically and emotionally from the people and doing your own thing.  Instead, hiding your leadership means living a hard life for other people – i.e., working hard, taking risks, and putting yourself out to promote their welfare.

You will never know how really good you are as a leader unless you are leading people to be better than they think they are.  You'll have a better chance of manifesting your best leadership when you lead the way Jersey Joe Walcott fought – and have the people say, "We did it ourselves!"

2006 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc.   All rights reserved.

The author of 23 books, Brent Filson's recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS.  He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. – and for more than 21 years has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results.  Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: "49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results," at http://www.actionleadership.com

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6 steps to make yourself and others feel better at work

We all want to be associated with a winner, be it a winning person, a winning team, a worthwhile cause or a successful organisation.  We all have sports people, teams, actors or artists that we consider “ours”.  When they do well, we bask in their reflected glory.  It’s the same at work - we want to be associated with a worthwhile “winning” organisation.  Our greatest reward is receiving acknowledgment that we have contributed to making something meaningful happen.  More than anything else, people want to be valued for a job well done by those they hold in high regard.

A famous study by Lawrence Lindahl in the 1940’s came up with some surprising results.  When supervisors and their employees were asked to list “What motivates the employees?” . . .

- Employees listed “appreciation of a job well done” as number one and “feeling in on things” as number two.

- Supervisors, on the other hand, expected the employees would rank these two items as eighth and tenth respectively (supervisors thought employees would put wages as number one and promotion number two!).

These results were replicated in similar studies in the 1980’s and again in the 1990’s.  In another recent study, employees were asked to rank job-based incentives – “personal thank-you’s” came first and “a note of appreciation from my manager” came second.  “Money” came in at 16th!

Praise, the thing that motivates us the most, takes so little time and costs nothing!  Famous management writer Rosabeth Moss Kantor once said “Compensation is a right.  Recognition is a gift.”

Have you appreciated the work of others lately?  Has the value of your own work been appreciated?  Here’s a quick test - over the last week, have you:

- Told someone they have done a good job?

- Looked specifically to find someone doing something well?

- Made someone else look good rather than taking the credit yourself?

- Thanked others for your own success?

- Passed on positive comments you have heard about others?

These are simple examples of the things we need to do regularly to acknowledge the good work of others.

You might say, “If it’s that easy, why don’t more people do it?”  There are many reasons, but they all fall into two categories – personal and organisational.

On a personal level, many of us are not comfortable giving praise.  We may be awkward about it, or perhaps believe that people are paid to do a job, so why do we have to praise them?

From an organisational perspective, it may be the culture that is holding us back, or perhaps technology preventing us from valuing the work of others.  For example, technology has changed the way many of us operate.  Email may have replaced personal interaction, so we no longer see what others do well – out of sight is out of mind, so how can we praise good work if we don’t see it?

Here are six ways we can put praise for a job well done back into our working lives.

1. Look for things people do well and acknowledge them for their good work.

2. Be a model of acknowledgment – show others it’s OK to give praise.

3. Have a conversation with a colleague about how to give praise for work well done.

4. When people have performed above the norm, write them a small thank you note.

5. Encourage others to thank one another and pass on stories of good work to your manager.

6. Work to create a culture of appreciation – make acknowledgment part of your daily routine.

The essential point is that praise must be frequent and given locally (by colleagues and managers).  It should not be seen as a corporate initiative or program, but merely “the way we do things around here”.

What’s not been said so far, is that praise must be genuine.  People in general are very good at spotting insincerity.  The message?  When you do praise someone, make sure it’s for the good work they have done and not just for the sake of it.

A final word of warning.  Many organisations turn acknowledgment into an event.  They distort it with extrinsic motivators (such as money) and taint it with internal competition.  Pure and simple, giving praise for a job well done is just that – pure and simple.

So, find someone doing something good today and simply tell them what a good job they’ve done!

If you’d like to give me some thanks for this article, you can do so at http://www.nationallearning.com.au/

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