In the last few weeks, there has been a lot of buzz about a book and movie called The Secret – Oprah has run at least three shows on it ad it was on Larry King as well.

The Secret is basically the law of attracting what you want into your life by focusing your mind on it.

So I thought we could look at ways for leaders to help themselves and their teams become more successful.

The principle behind the law of attraction is that whatever your mind focuses on intently will come to pass. For most of us, studies show that a majority of our thoughts each day are focused on negative things and on our past. If a leader can shift their thinking to the future and envision precisely what they want to see happen, they will increase their chances of that happening.

These visions can be money related, relationship related – the idea is to crystallize in your own mind what you want to see and eliminate the worry and anxiety about what might have happened before and what might happen in the future.

Another technique that is very powerful is visualization. So take your vision and look for images that will reinforce that vision. Make a cheque payable to yourself for a certain amount, take your bank statement and white out the balance and make it what you want. Describe the ideal employee or customer or boyfriend/girlfriend.

Then focus on those things each day – best early and late and pay attention to how the universe responds to that vision throughout the day.

Also, I have a seminar coming up March 21st in Windsor on how to become more persuasive in your communication. Visit leadershipwizard.com for all the info.

For more info on The Secret, the book is available at Costco and Chapters/Amazon. The DVD is excellent and was found at chapters. You can watch the 93 min movie online for $5 at:
http://www.thesecret.tv

Managers often struggle when they have to give someone corrective feedback at work. Let’s look at how to take some of the pain out of the process.

First of all, managers need to realize that by not confronting a performance issue it hurts the employee who may not know they aren’t performing, it hurts the good performers in the workgroup because they want the boss to do something and it hurts the manager themselves by causing continued stress and aggravation.

Most managers find it easier to confront a “results” type problem where the employee is creating a lack of production or quality problems – they find it less easy to tackle a behavior problem – like negativity. The behavior problem likely affects more employees in the workgroup.

Here are a quick few steps to take to be more effective and confident in confronting an employee performance problem:

1. Prepare – specifically describe what is happening and what you want to see happen

2. Meet – present to the employee what you are observing and the impact it is having on the organization, tell them what your expectations are, offer any assistance and set up consequences if the problem continues.

3. Follow-up – observe and signs the employee is making some strides in the right direction and offer some praise and encouragement. If the behavior problem continues, then repeat the steps and increase the consequence – verbal warning, written warning, suspension and termination.

Addressing employee performance problems takes time and yet the manager and work group will be better off as a result.