Famous Leadership Quote

Aligning Your Time, Money and Values

“We can tell our values by looking at our check-book stubs” – Gloria Steinem

How can you and I possibly use this leadership quote?

Do you align your values with where you spend your time and money?

This is a simple and very powerful exercise to help you decide what is important to you and what you value. Are you are matching those things with where you spend your time and money? You might say that you already have goals and values in your life and would rather read more quotes on leadership. Stick with me!

Relax!

I want you to find a time and place where you can clean your mind. Take your bank statement with you with you for use a little later on. Relax! Take a clean sheet of paper. Letter-size or A4 is good. Have the paper in landscape format – so the long side is across-ways. Pick up your pen and draw two vertical lines to divide the page into three equal sections.

Write down your values

On the left-hand side, write down the six to ten things which are the most important to you, in terms of your values. We are not talking about goals here! Goals are different. “Make a million by the time I’m 50” is a goal, it’s not a value. Values are things like family, peace of mind, control, spirituality, love. Think about the times when you are at one with yourself. What has been happening leading up to that? That is probably associated with one of your main values.

You don’t have to rank your values. And if you can’t think of more than four or five, that’s fine. You might find it useful to check and see if things are duplicated. If they are, either cross one out or merge it with the other one. Spend a while on this. I’m sure you will want to revisit it and it’s really useful thing to do every few months. As you think about it, as it sinks in, then you will come to terms with the idea and maybe alter it.

Where do you spend you time?

Now, in the middle section of the paper I want you to jot down where you spend your time. I know this is not a full time log and if you want to do that then great. For this purpose, you just need to estimate where you spend most of your time rather than try to analyse down to the last minute. Again, you must be honest. This is for you, nobody else. In this middle section of the page, write down 6 to 10 things you spend most of your time doing. You can leave out sleeping!

What about your money?

Now, do the same thing your bank statement (or your check-book stubs – does anybody write checks these days? Not me!). I’m sure you are catching the drift now. Honesty and an overview are in order. If you want to categorise your spending and do a detailed analysis, then fine.

Compare, decide and adjust…

When you have these three lists, compare them. Do your values match where you spend your time and money? If one of your values is to build a successful business and yet your time log shows that second on your list is playing computer games, then you are well out of alignment…

A ready note of quotes on leadership is helpful, but you will find this list we just made is a very helpful document to have. I strongly recommend repeating it every six months. It will become easier each time you do it and it will be a real crosscheck on what you are doing, how it matches your values and purpose in life.

Now you can adjust what you do to make sure your values and actions match more closely.

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Motivation Is When Your Dreams Put on Work Clothes

by Graham Speechley Leave a Comment

“Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes” – Benjamin Franklin

How can you and I possibly use this leadership quote?

Motivation is the desire to do things. It’s the difference between staying in bed and getting up in the morning. It’s the crucial part of setting and achieving goals.

As Ben Franklin implies in his famous leadership quote, dreams are not enough. You need to set forth your goals in line with your purpose and values. Then you must prepare for the work, set your stall out and begin. Persistence will require further and regular motivation. As Zig Ziglar says “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” What a great way to express the fact that motivation will drift away if it is not reinforced regularly. These two great leadership quotes work hand in hand as we talk about motivation.

Influence your own motivation

You can influence your own motivation. In fact, the only true motivation comes from within. If you are in a position to motivate others then I suggest you accept that fact. You can provide the conditions for the motivation of others and the leadership to help them find a way but they must have the intrinsic spark, the desire, to move, to overcome the inertia of the status quo and change things.

Respect and trust

So, in my view, the famous Hawthorne experiments of Elton Mayo proved in the late 1920s showed that motivation comes from respecting people and trusting them. What the experiments also showed was that the factors affecting motivation in human beings are extremely complex. There are those who say “people are motivated only by money”. That is not a quote about leadership I would recommend. Indeed there are those who absolutely insist on that fact. Perhaps they are reflecting their own approach to motivation. I take a much wider view. There is no doubt that in some cases money is a factor. If you are not familiar with the “Hawthorne Effect” I suggest a read through the Wikipedia article which gives some excellent background and detail.

Know yourself, know others

In understanding the fundamentals of why people do things, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a good grounding. The Wikipedia article will help with a basic grounding in that theory. You will find it helps you to understand your own motivation. Once you know yourself a little better, it becomes far easier to know others.

You can help your own motivation for yourself by reading the leadership quotes and articles on this site – and then you have to apply the learning from them!

So figure out what you want, push yourself through the pain and procrastination and start being who you want to be, living the life you want to live. Starting right now.

If you enjoyed reading this…

What Should You Do in a Value Struggle?

by Graham Speechley 1 Comment

“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” – Albert Einstein

How can you and I possibly use this leadership quote?

Early on in my career, I had been running a small factory and a new boss took over. We really couldn’t see eye to eye so I ended up leaving. It’s a longer story than that – maybe the subject of another Quote of the Week. I’d been eyeing up the opportunity to go and learn something new anyway. I grabbed a great opportunity to learn to sell windows and doors to consumers in their homes.

Let’s see what we can discover from Einstein’s words, one of the most inspirational leadership quotes of all time.

The Guy Was Good!

I sat in a classroom with about 20 other hopefuls and listened to a first-class salesman give us the tools and techniques to enthuse people so that they put our product up their priority list and bought it over and above the other places I could choose to spend their money. The guy was good! He taught me some great things and they really worked. I learned a huge amount from him and continued to absorb the tools and techniques of the salesman after I left the classroom. I learned some lessons which I have used through the rest of my life.

A lamb to the slaughter?

I practised my new skills by implementing the learning in people’s homes in the evenings and I found that I could sell in many circumstances. One day about a month later, I found myself in a man’s home and he had a clear requirement for some extra windows. I went through the sales process with a huge amount of enthusiasm as I had done many times in the previous month. He really needed the windows and they would solve a big problem for him. He signed and the order was placed. A lamb to the slaughter.

Cancelled

The next morning, he called me and said he was going to have to cancel the order. He was very polite and apologetic about it and the reason he gave struck right to my core. He said “You knew I needed the windows and you also knew that I couldn’t afford it.” He was absolutely right. In my enthusiasm I had ignored the fact that he really didn’t have enough money. It wasn’t even a big sale and I was making really good money at the time anyway on the commission only arrangement which we all had.

A jolt

This experience brought me up with a jolt. I had never really sat back and thought about how my values matched with making money. How far was I prepared to go? The answer is that I wasn’t prepared to carry on putting myself in that position where I would inevitably sell again to people who couldn’t afford it.

The definitive test is your values

So, I quit. I didn’t have a job to go to, I had a pregnant wife and I’d been earning more money than I could have dreamt of a few weeks before. But I couldn’t allow myself to continue to be put into similar circumstances. And I knew I would sell because I could and I would be caught up in the adrenaline rush which is the successful sale. I’m not perfect and the older I get the more I realise that. I strongly recommend to you that in addition to exploring other famous leadership quotes, you sit down and check that what you do matches with your values. The definitive test is your values. There is no other compass for your life.

If you enjoyed reading this…

How to Drive Your Own Continuous Learning Ethos

by Graham Speechley Leave a Comment

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other” – John F. Kennedy

How can you and I possibly use this leadership quote?

Of all the things you and I must do to maintain our position of leadership, our attitude of mind towards learning is the key above all. We must keep in the forefront of our thinking that we need to learn in order to reach our goals and fulfil our purpose.

Frustration

In the 80s, I was travelling regularly from England to Germany as part of my work as an engineer, developing automotive components with Ford Motor Company and General Motors. I really enjoyed the travel and like many English-speaking people, I convinced myself that all Germans speak English. This was largely true in the more senior levels and especially in the American owned automotive companies. It wasn’t true for the population in general, as I soon found out when I started to go out into the shops and pubs. Also, one of the big things I noticed was that whenever my customers wanted to discuss something between themselves and they didn’t want me to understand, they switched to German.

This is a natural thing for them to do but boy, did it frustrate me! I can tell you that it was the overriding reason why I decided to learn German. This great leadership quote by John F Kennedy summarises one of the most important things I learned from that experience.

A plan as well as a reason

Another part of my job involved a lot of driving to visit customers in England. I was driving over 50,000 miles a year. Let’s call that 1,000 hours. I decided to use a good portion of that time in the car to learn German from cassette tapes. Over a period of about two years I absorbed tape after tape, learning the structure of the language and the vocabulary.

Quotes about Leadership: Determination

Some of my colleagues at the time were amazed that my progress. They decided to learn German from tapes as well. None of them managed it. What I did sounds simple and it was. But it wasn’t easy. It needed persistent hard work and dedication. What drives that is motivation. I had motivation because I was going to Germany every month. I really wanted to learn German to reduce my frustrations in the business meetings and to enhance my experience in the country. I also had a belief that I could do it and the new knowledge that they didn’t all speak English! All these things together combined in a virtuous circle to motivate me.

Unexpected consequences

As an aside, there is no doubt in my mind that my ability to speak some German at that stage put me head and shoulders above the other candidates when I took up a great opportunity to work for a big German automotive Tier 1 supplier. From then on my career took off. You never know what positive benefits your learning will have!

The Silver Bullet

From this story and from this quote on leadership I want to share with you the magic silver bullet I found. Like I said, it is simple but it’s not easy. It is this: find a way to develop and maintain an overriding urge to learn. There must be an overwhelming reason. You must find a way to drive your determination to learn those things which you need to know to reach your goals. Visualise yourself being able to do the things you are learning, imagine yourself in the position where you already have the knowledge or the skill and. Imagine the results. Imagine what you will see, what you will hear, what you will feel. Do this regularly and do it over and over. Create that overwhelming determination to learn and you will do it.

If you enjoyed reading this…

Understanding Your Decision-making Process

by Graham Speechley Leave a Comment

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Theodore Roosevelt

How can you and I possibly use this leadership quote?

Do you have a great decision-making process? Do you actually know what your decision-making process is?

You and I have always known that there is more to our gut instinct than we give credit. A lot of recent research is leading us in the direction that our subconscious makes decisions and then our conscious and highly developed rational brain justifies them. Consequently, there are several other quotes on leadership that express this idea. For most of the decisions which we take in the course of a normal day, it’s fine to rely on this huge background computer.

So, when I need to decide whether to have muesli or toast for breakfast, I’m sure you can believe me when I tell you I don’t sit down with a piece of paper and look at the various pluses, minuses and interesting points which I am likely to come across depending on the decision I have taken.

Systematic?

Having said that, do you have a systematic process when you need to arrive at a rational business decision over a period of time and working with others? If you only rely on gut instinct, then, depending on what is made up your experience and knowledge, you may have a knack of taking the right decisions.

Some would argue that this is specifically a trait of a good and experienced leader. However, you can also be sure that most great leaders and good, experienced managers have a process which will not only rely on their gut. The really good ones will know and understand that process.

A great investment

If you can’t readily sit down and formally state your decision-making process, a great investment of time for you will be to sit down for half an hour and give it some proper thought. Look back on those decisions you have taken in the past and make a note of what was good and what was bad.

Over the next few weeks, make a note when you reach decisions and work on analysing your process. Review your decisions over a period of time, look back on them and decide which ones have worked well and how you arrived at them.

Trust your gut and combine

Trust your gut and combine that with analysing your process so that you better understand yourself and you will find yourself progressively making better decisions. Books and quotes about leadership and decision making can help you if you aren’t willing to invest in a proper examination of the way you yourself do things, find out what’s wrong and make the necessary changes.