More ways to be Brilliant

Invest in relationships – it’s the only way to keep them strong.

Hearing is easy, as it only requires your ears. It’s a passive skill. Listening is much more difficult because it’s an active skill. To listen effectively you need to use your ears, eyes, emotions, intuition, in fact all of your senses. You can listen at word level. This is when the words go in one ear and out of the other. You can listen at meaning level, which requires interpretation of words and body language. To be brilliant, you can listen at essence level. This requires you to have an excellent understanding of what makes people tick, a real understanding of human beings. What do the words really mean? What is the person really feeling? 

Think of ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’. Efficiency is ‘doing things right’ and effectiveness is ‘doing the right things’. You are living life as an emergency, trying to do everything properly, but you may be neglecting the jobs that really matter, those that will achieve long-term results. Stop living life as an emergency. Spend time reviewing how you work and ask yourself whether you are being efficient or effective. Do the jobs that matter and spend time with your people. Build trust and respect. Work on skills and attitudes. Support with coaching. Teamwork will naturally follow.

Any business is only as good as its employees. Invest as much time as possible in developing your people. Remember, leadership isn’t about how high you can climb, but about how many people you can take with you. Coaching is a great way of drawing out true potential.