Self-Improvement Tips For Success from Personal Development Coach

“I must be the best me in order to be the best for everyone else.”-Steve Scott

I like this quotation, not because it is mine, but because it underscores a fundamental truth to self-improvement.  When looking at self-improvement tips for success, which means building your confidence and self-esteem you have to start with yourself.

You have to be the best you in order to be the best for everyone else.  If you are not the best you, or striving for it, what are you giving to others?  You are giving them something average or below average.  No one gets excited about the word “average.”

If people asked you the following questions with these answers ask yourself how motivated you would be to connect, partner or do anything with them.

  • How’s your life?  Average
  • How’s your business?  Average
  • How was your upbringing? Average
  • How are you doing?  Average
  • How are your relationships?  Average
  • How are your children?  Average

I think you get the point.  There is nothing exciting about “average.”  There isn’t anything there that brings, energy, excitement, and most importantly, momentum to ignite the power of creativity, excitement and forward progress.  Here is what is critical.  There is nothing in “average” to attract people who are “above average” into your life.

Life is not a one-man band.  It is about creating partnerships, sharing thinking and exploring new opportunities.  That’s what can make it above average when people see you, not as average, but as someone unique and exceptional.

So, start with yourself and be committed, not involved, committed to being the best you.  How do you do that?  You must be selfish.  You say, “Oh, people will think bad of me if I am selfish.”  They may and if they do, when you are being selfish in the process of being the best you, then they do not need to be a major part of your life.

Selfishness is, first and foremost, about self-preservation.  It’s meaning has been corrupted over time to mean something negative when someone wants something from you and when they don’t get it they tell you that you are selfish.

Sometimes, I am accused of being selfish.  When I am, I thank the person who says that.  “Thank you.  Yes, I am into self-preservation.”  Most people don’t get it let alone know how to handle it.

In my personal development coaching as a personal development coach I encourage all my clients to be selfish in order to be the best version of themselves.  In turn, they will be the best for others.  That is one of the most important self-improvement tips for success.

 

Proven Use of Team Roles

Dr. Meredith Belbin defined a team role as “a tendency to behave, contribute an interrelate with others in aparticular way.”

He named nine such team roles that underlie team success. It is important to emphasize that these are not set instone behavioral patterns of individuals, rather these are preferences and attitudes team members will assume in agiven team situation.

Therefore a certain individual might perform a certain role within one team and accomplish a different role within another team. Often however individuals do have a tendency to fill a certain rolewithin all the teams that they are a part of or at least strive to fill this preferred role.

Remember: Belbin asserts that when a team is performing at its best, one finds that each team member has clear responsibilities. Also noticeable is that every Belbin role needed to achieve the team’s goalis being performed fully and well. However it is likely that a team will fall short of its full potential not because skillsare lacking but because the Belbin roles aren’t harmonized across the team.

Balanced Teams

Teams become unbalanced when all team members carry out the same behavioral team role. When team members have similar strengths and weaknesses this can create problems. If the strengths arethe same they may compete instead of collaborate.

With this information in mind, the team leader together with the team can implement the model and investigatethe team members preferred roles as well as explore the roles which are missing.

By understanding your role within a particular team, you can develop your strengths and manage yourweaknesses as a team member, and so improve your contribution to the team.

Belbin’s Team Roles Model

Belbin identified nine team roles and he categorized those roles into three groups:

  • Action Oriented
  • People Oriented
  • Thought Oriented

The nine team roles divided into the three groups are:

Action Oriented Roles:

Shaper (SH)

Shapers are people who challenge the team to improve. The Shaper is the one who shakes thingsup to make sure that all possibilities are considered and that the team does not become complacent.

Implementer (IMP)

Implementers are the people who get things done. They turn the team’s ideas and concepts into practical actions and plans.

Completer-Finisher (CF)

Completer-Finishers are the people who see that projects are completed thoroughly.

People Oriented Roles:

Coordinator (CO)

Coordinators are the ones who take on the traditional team-leader role and have also been referred to asthe delegate.

Team Worker (TW)

Team Workers are the people who provide support and make sure that people within the team are working togethereffectively.

Resource Investigator (RI)

Resource Investigators are innovative and curious. They explore available options; develop contacts, and negotiate for resources on behalf of the team.

Thought Oriented Roles:

Plant (PL)

The Plant is the creative innovator who comes up with new ideas and approaches. They thriveon praise but criticism is especially hard for them to deal with.

Monitor-Evaluator (ME)

Monitor-Evaluators are best at analyzing and evaluating ideas that other people (oftenPlants) come up with. These people are shrewd and objective and they carefully weigh the pros and cons of all theoptions before coming to a decision.

Specialist (SP)

Specialists are people who have specialized knowledge that is needed to get the job done. Theypride themselves on their skills and abilities, and they work to maintain their professional status.
In finding roles for actual or potential team members keep the above in mind. When a person has guidance on what role or roles (you can play more than one at a time) he or she can play for a team they will have clarity. With clarity they can take steps and provide thinking to fulfill their role, thus helping the team. They now have purpose.

And with purpose, it is much easier for a team member to contribute to achieving the team’s goals. Also, I have found this process to be liberating. You have a specific role or roles and you understand, instead of worrying, how you can make a positive contribution to achieving what the team is tasked to accomplish.

The Having A Challenge Executing A Strategy?

To move forward in business, you or your organization must be good at execution. It sounds so simple, yet time and again the execution of a strategy or change fails. How come?

Any time you seek to execute a change in strategy you are asking yourself and other to change your human behavior. It may be the behavior of a few, a team or an entire organization.

The answer to good execution of strategy is to change the behavior of the people, to change the human element. You can have written goals, tactics and deadlines. These are good but they are only “on paper” change.

Without commitment and proven practices to follow to execute the strategy or change “on paper” you will fail to change the one component necessary to success. That element is human behavior.

Behavioral change strategies are very challenging. You can’t just put them down “on paper” and order, let alone expect them to happen. Behavioral change has a better chance of success when the system is changed and people are held accountable for their behavior.

The last part to successfully executing a new strategy is to start with something small. Too often, I see organizations try to fix everything. When they do it is like throwing everything into a blender. The result, very often, is chaos and failure.

I have talked about ways to overcome the challenge of executing a new strategy or incorporating change. It is good to have written goals where everyone can see them. There must be commitment to proven practices. People must be willing to embrace a new system and to be held accountable. Lastly, start with a small strategy or change, experience some success and build on it.

Take all of the above and add a fanatical discipline to make sure these things take place. For without discipline there is very little chance of successfully executing a strategy or change. Success in implementing a strategy or change will come from having the discipline to execute

What Is Failure?

Failure is nothing more than a few errors in judgment repeated ever day over a period of time.

How often have you or someone you know seen something that is not working in a business and take the attitude that it just doesn’t matter enough to do something correct it, eliminate it or even improve it? Most of us have been guilty of falling into this philosophical trap of “it just doesn’t matter.”

These errors in judgment get repeated because people don’t think they matter. Over time, accumulation of poor thinking leads to poor choices. Read more

The Stages of Team Building

The Tuckman-Jensen analysis of the stages of team building has become a foundational piece in understanding how teams come together or pull apart, how they perform well or fail to meet desired results.

Tuckman and Jensen state that teams go through five stages of team development:

1. Forming—the search for commonalities

2. Storming-breaking away from false harmony into individual power displays, leading to rifts between team members. There is a tension in this stage between unity and individualism.

3. Norming-behavior in this stage is more about consensus between team members and more of a shift from “I” to “We.” Read more

The Formula For Success

One of the questions we must answer to have greater success in business and life is this:

How can we change the errors in the formula for failure into the disciplines required in the formula for success? The answer is by making the future part of our current philosophy.

Both success and failure involve future consequences, namely inevitable rewards or unavoidable regrets resulting from past activities.

So what do we need to do daily to be on the path to success? We must develop the discipline to look down the road every day. Read more

Attitude

Attitudes are affected by what we know since what we know determines he decisions we will make. Where our philosophy deals with the logical side, our attitude focuses primarily on emotional issues.

What we know determines our philosophy. What we feel determines our attitude. Here is the key point to remember. In business and life it is our emotional nature that governs most of our daily conduct in our personal and business worlds.

I have heard many well intentioned people say to others: “Be more logical. Don’t be so emotional.” That’s an interesting statement. Interesting because there is a strong emotion attached to it. Be more logical. Read more

Culture and Change

When culture and change meet, culture always wins.

Lasting success lies in changing individuals first; then the organization follow. And organization changes only as far or as fast as its collective individual change.

To strategically change your organization, you must first change the individuals. Too often, change fails because we don’t start with the individuals.

To change, individuals within an organization have to redraw their mental maps. If people are not remapped then they cannot break through the brain barrier of exchanging the old, familiar way of doing things and embrace the new, change. Read more

Stop Drinking The Poison

love yourself“When you truly love yourself, you don’t have enemies. They may hate you but you’re too big to hate them back.” — Tony Gaskins. When you love yourself, you understand that hate is self-destructive. Hate is like drinking poison and hoping that the other person dies.

There is a huge opportunity for self improvement in truly understanding that you must love yourself first. When you do, hate starts to fade away. How do you go about doing this?

Self improvement, or personal development, is about how to change your habits to become the person you wish to be. When you start loving yourself more the consequence is that there is less room for hate. You love yourself more by finding the good in every person or situation, no matter how distasteful.

Practice being a “good finder.” When you do, you will be practicing gratitude. And gratitude is the first step in the path of how to change your life for the better. Hate cannot flourish in an atmosphere of love and gratitude. Read more