Brought to you by Jeff Thoren, DVM, ACC  

What’s the secret of enduringly successful people?  They’ve found a cause that they’re wholeheartedly committed to. They serve the cause, and the cause also serves them.  It recruits them, and they are lifted up by its power.  When that happens to you, a bigger, more engaging version of “you” shows up.

Want to lead a life of significance?  Read on!

Here’s this month’s feature ...

The Cause Has Charisma
by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, and Mark Thompson

From Leader to Leader - No. 43 - Winter 2007

Highlights from the article:

• When you put together deep knowledge about a subject that intensely matters to you, charisma happens.  You gain courage to share your passion, and when you do that, folks follow.
    

• When you feel pressure to pursue the elusive outcomes of traditional success, that pressure is often driven by the burden of making a living, pleasing others, or achieving status.  Ironically, it appears that success often will fade, vanish, or become the dungeon of your soul unless it is not your primary objective.
    

• People who seek to build long-term success by their own definition insist that success may never come without a compelling personal commitment to something you care about and would be willing to do with or without counting on wealth, fame, power, or public acceptance as an outcome.
    

• Opportunity comes from experience, not just luck, talent, and passion.  If you find it impossibly tedious to become an expert about what you think matters to you, then you’re not chasing a dream, you’re just daydreaming.
    

• Your willingness to become good at what you do - for its own sake - is a key to success.  And when you are good at what you do, doors open up in front of you.  People want to work with you and opportunities come your way.  You don’t have to go looking for them.  Success is always built on doing the job well that’s in front of you today.
    

• For the cause to have charisma, it must reach into your heart in a personal way to unlock all you have to give.  Once you’re focused on what you believe needs to be done, you will have the energy to persist despite inevitable resistance from other people.
    

• When you can come to the point where you accept yourself for who you are - “warts and all” - and you can embrace what you love, for better or for worse, you have a better chance of finding lasting success.
    

• You’ve got to fail on the path to success.  Adversity provides the opportunity to get better at what you do - to go from average to extraordinary - and to test what you really care about.  You’re going to make mistakes, face challenges and need the tenacity to persevere if you try anything that’s worth doing.

  
For the full text article, go to ...
http://www.leadertoleader.org/knowledgecenter/journal.aspx?ArticleID=8

   
Three Essential Elements of Success

In hundreds of interviews, authors Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, and Mark Thompson found that people find lasting success when three essential elements come into alignment in their lives and work.  How aligned are you on the three elements?  Rate your alignment on a scale of 0-100% for each:

1. Meaning.  What you do must matter deeply to you in a way that you as an individual define meaning.  What are you so passionate about that you lose all track of time when you do it?  What do you recruit other people to do and would continue to do despite criticism?
     

2. ThoughtStyle.  A highly developed sense of accountability, audacity, passion, and responsible optimism.  What is it that creates value for you and others that you can remain focused on despite all the distractions, crises, and complexity that life naturally sends your way?
     

3. ActionStyle.  Enduringly successful people find effective ways to take action.  How are you doing at turning meaning and thought into action?  Have you actually taken time to determine what’s meaningful for you before taking action in the first place?  Are you willing to do something because it is inherently worth doing, even if your actual outcomes don’t perfectly match up with your original ideal?

Properly aligned, these three elements - Meaning, a creative ThoughtStyle, and an effective ActionStyle - form the foundation on which you build and sustain the experience of success.

  
Next Month

We’ll look at eight factors that create the positive emotional state of mind that leads to long-term commitment, peak performance, and low turnover.  These factors define a new framework for improving organizational performance and productivity that extends beyond the present research on employee engagement and satisfaction.

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