Last week I had the great fortune of being invited to one of the annual conferences the IoD holds and has been going for 20 years now, in the beautiful Headquarters at Pall Mall – Bruce King’s ‘How to double your sales’.
I was hoping it wasn’t going to be either very corporate or very over the top ‘somebody high 5 me’ style, and I was hoping to gain a few interesting pointers to take back to the team and for my own personal development. Firstly, although a full on day, it was very insightful plus there were lots of interesting and lovely people attending the conference, which always helps!
I did take away some interesting findings I will be implementing with the team ASAP and wanted to share a few of them with you as well, to see if they can help you and your team:
Training yourself out of negativity
Bruce was very clear in pointing out that we, right from a very young age, are subject to negative news all the time and it does have a detrimental effect on our conscious and sub-conscious mind. Positive instruction and using a few methods to assist with this will have a huge impact on our behaviour and mental state and therefore success levels. He suggested a number of techniques to train yourself out of conscious negative thought and words, but if you remind yourself every day using the following phrase ‘I am success!’ (stick it to your computer and look at it every day) this will be a good start.
Having a goal
I know someone sounds like a Personal Trainer when they say this, but if you aren’t sure what you are doing all this hard work for, then it does make it much more difficult to keep on track and see results. Make yourself a mood board of what you would like to achieve in life (that new car, that lovely holiday, the bigger house… whatever it is you are working so hard to achieve) and stick it up somewhere you are able to look at it every day. Visually remind yourself of your goals and you will have something tangible to aim for and start ticking off once you have achieved it.
Time management
A biggie for me and something I must learn to master better than I am currently!
Something that I know I fail at doing and will try really hard not to do any more is making my to do list in the morning then starting with the easiest ones first so I can tick them off, then tackling the more difficult. I am just delaying the inevitable! Get the hardest job done first thing in the morning then the rest of the day will seem a doddle!
The 3D’s method was discussed as well – quite a fan of this one. Your tasks need to be quickly sorted into one of the following: Do it. Delegate it. Dump it. Everything will fall into one of these and in this way you will not be wasting your time on stuff you shouldn’t.
The best leaders
The top leaders in business of this and other countries have a number of things in common with each other and it is very interesting to think about how you fit in to this and if there are any improvements to any of the following that you could make:
- Create and stick to their goals
- Have a clear and concise vision
- Have 100% commitment to what they are doing
- Have complete determination to succeed
- Have a defined plan of action
- Are extremely persistent
So you know what my homework is going to be for a while then!
Enjoy, and remember ‘You are success!’
Rebecca x
