In a recent interview on the Today show, the musician Jon Bon Jovi told Matt Lauer how much he enjoyed working as an actor with Matthew McConaughey on the movie U-571. As an inexperienced actor, Bon Jovi looked to McConaughey as a leader and wasn’t disappointed. Bon Jovi said that it wasn’t what McConaughey said but what he did that helped him. Leaders teach by example whether they know they’re doing it or not. Do you remember the first time an adult said to you, “Do as I say, not as I do”? Did it strike you as ridiculous at the time? If it didn’t then, it certainly should now. Your development as a leader won’t go very far if you don’t learn this lesson. People inside and outside of your organization will learn more from you about leadership, for good or ill, from what you do than from what you say.

Learning about learning is a hot topic in many workplaces. Businesses in general have reached the conclusion that if they’re not learning about their customers, themselves, and their future on a daily basis they’re losing the race. I’ve observed many management team meetings where leaders have discussed learning strategies and opportunities for their people to get smarter. I haven’t listened in on conversations where they’ve challenged each other and reported on their personal earning goals. And that’s a problem. People will believe that learning is part of their job in your organization by watching whether or not you’re learning.

So, let’s talk about what you’re learning. I hope you can answer this question with two things in mind. First is that you’d be excited to share the skill you’re learning that will make you better at doing your job. It would be great if you could also share how you’re learning. Is it a formal process or a self-study situation? You would tell how you were taking what you’ve learned and practiced and applied it in a real-life situation. You would be willing to share how you might have failed as you tried new skills and how you appreciated the feedback you got from others as you practiced. You would look and sound excited as you described how this learning was making your work easier, more efficient, and more fun.

Then, you would move on to telling us about what you were learning in your personal life. Your face would light up as you described your movement into uncharted waters. Who your teacher was. How often you got to practice what you were learning. How you realized that this personal learning was giving you insights about your business situation—an unexpected bonus. How something could be frustrating and fun at the same time.

After a conversation like this, I’d know you were a lifelong learner and I’d be challenged. Way to go, leader!

Tip 76: Avoid the Term Negotiate When Possible.

The word negotiate connotes a winner and a loser, or at best a compromise between two dissatisfied people. Instead of “negotiating” use phrasing such as “come to an agreement,” “work out a plan,” or “arrive at a workable solution.” Wording goes a long way in establishing a friendly atmosphere where everybody feels like a winner.

Tip 77: Consider Several Kinds of Goals Before You Begin Discussions.

To make sure you don’t get sidetracked in talking, identify several different kinds of goals: your primary goal, your immediate goals, your long-term goals, your “nice to haves,” and your safeguards. Within each of these frameworks, set ranges. What is the “best” you can expect and what is the “worst” position you can accept? Keep all in mind as you work toward agreement.

Tip 78: Research Your Position and the Situation.

Take the time and make the effort to support your position or requests. Read. Gather statistics. Talk to experts. Survey others for majority opinions. When you get ready to talk, you’ll have adequate facts and opinions to support what you want done. And the more you know, the better your position to negotiate a win for everybody involved.

Tip 79: Set Up a Cooperative Atmosphere.

When the other person feels like a loser in your discussions, you’ll worsen your own position. Yes, work to get what you need, but work also to get the other person what he or she needs. Body language, tone, and word choice go a long way in establishing cooperation rather than competition.

Tip 80: Give Something at the Very Beginning.

When you start a discussion, be gracious enough to offer something for the good of the others involved: give them a small gift, buy them dinner, spend extra time with them, give attention to their hobby or family, or concede a point. Thoughtfulness in any of these ways returns to dividends. Giving something makes the other person feel as though he or she should reciprocate.

Tip 81: State Your Needs Up Front and Ask the Other Person to Do the Same.

You can both investigate invalid assumptions and find common areas of agreement before you tackle more difficult issues. Often people are surprised–pleasantly–that people’s wants and needs are easier to satisfy than they first assumed.

Tip 82: Mention Everything You Want Sooner, Not Later.

If you delay in mentioning a key issue until later in the discussion, chances are the other person will consider your attempt to be deceptive. To avoid casting doubt on your intentions, start with all the issues on the table.

Tip 83: Bring Success Stories to the Table.

As you begin discussions about conflicts or needs, suggest that both of you relate ways you’ve seen other people solve the same problem or conflict you’re facing. Tossing out these stories as alternatives offers a starting point for your own situation in a “safe” way–sharing them reminds both people that success is possible.

Tip 84: Make Good Eye Contact as You Negotiate.

If you avoid eye contact or look at the other person only briefly as you talk, that person may interpret your lack of contact as evasiveness, dishonesty, incompetence, or lack of conviction. To show your honesty and openness, look at people directly.

Tip 85: Start on the Less Important Issues and Work Toward the More Difficult.

You’ll gain momentum toward agreement, and you’ll have more time invested in finding a resolution. The more “success” you have in turning each minor point to a mutual advantage, the more emotional strength you’ll gain to work on the more complex issues.

Tip 86: Get Others to Invest in Agreement.

The more time, money, or effort people have spent in negotiating, the more likely they will continue trying to come to agreement. They hate to think all that work, money, and frustration, or delay has amounted to nothing. The more time they spend working with you to hammer out an agreement, the more committed they will be to working out any problems that crop up along the way.

Tip 87: Start with Goals, Then Move to Solutions.

If you start with solutions to a problem and one or both of you can’t accept the stated solutions, you may remain at odds forever. If, on the other hand, you state only your goals or motivations, then you can either accept or reject solutions as necessary and still come to an agreement that allows both of you to meet your goals.

Tip 88: Adopt a Brainstorming Technique to Generate Solutions.

Once you have stated goals or motivations, then generate possible solutions together as a team rather than as adversaries. After you have a list of possible solutions, select the best two or three solutions and focus on those. Finally, work out the details of each of those solutions and select the best.

Tip 89: Substitute “We” for “You and I.”

Let language imply your intention to work out an agreement to everyone’s advantage. Examples: “What would we have to do to get X to happen?” “What if we changed our criteria for hiring to include only five years’ experience?” “How can we design this schedule so your people don’t have to work overtime and so our people can meet the customer’s deadline?”

Tip 90: Tag the Other Person’s Unalterable Positions.

As you brainstorm solutions and test the details, tag unalterable positions the other person mentions or implies. Determine the difference between “won’ts” and “can’ts.” Once you tag the unalterables, you’ll know how much leeway you really have in coming to agreement.

Tip 91: Ask for More Than You Expect.

First, you might be surprised and get everything that you want. Additionally, you allow yourself room to move–trading coupons for other issues you want to buy during the discussion. Finally, you have some spare coupons to give to the other person to make him or her feel like a winner also.

Tip 92: Negotiate by “The Golden Rule.”

Treat others with the same respect for their best interests as you would like to have shown for your own best interests. This rule should set the stage and raise and lower the curtain on any successful discussion.

Audience: sales reps and managers
Message: Set some specific, long- and short-term goals.
Tone: motivational
Timing: 8—9 minutes

“The best way to predict the future is to create it,” says Alan Kay, director of research at Apple Computer. Any one of you can create your future around here—by deciding where you want to set the goal posts,… and then developing a specific plan to get there.

In today’s competitive marketplace, it’s not enough to build a better mousetrap; the world won’t beat a path to your door. You have to build them a superhighway. The need for an overall marketing plan is acute.

And that plan has to have three parts: Research your market…. Position yourself against your competitors…. Then develop a promotional plan to tell about your uniqueness.

Like any road map, that plan needs to be on paper to take you through important decisions to your destination. That’s our part—as management. We’ve designed the overall marketing plan.

But you have to have your own map to come along with us.

That means you need goals. But then that’s nothing new. We salespeople are notorious for goals—monthly quotas, quarterly quotas, annual quotas. But our superhighway goals—or maps—are inadequate by themselves. All the little farm-to-market roads are left off.

That’s the way it usually is with less-effective salespeople. They have very high goals and can articulate them well. But they never achieve great feats. Why? Because they don’t have a detailed map—one with all the farm-to-market roads—to get them to their destination.

You’re familiar with those maps you get at the rental car agencies. They have a blow-up of the immediate area and the rental car agency is marked with a “You are here” arrow. The problem with those maps is that they don’t tell you “how to get there from here.” You may know the finish line, the destination, but if you’re driving from Los Angeles to New York, you’ll need a few other state maps before you pull out the little blow-up of the local area.
Big goals and little, intermediate goals. You need both kinds for the complete trip.

Screenwriter Mark Caine said it this way: “There are those who travel,… and those who are going somewhere.” You’ve seen the difference in the airport traveler’s face. That big-picture direction—or lack of it—in a salesperson’s face is a dead giveaway to customers. The blow-up of the end destination will help you travel. But the intermediate road maps will get you where you want to be.

My point is simply this: If you want to become the top salesperson, you have to set intermediate goals for making those daily sales calls.

And you have to put a time frame around those goals. When will you finish the market research on those five new companies in your area? By when will you develop a standard proposal as a model? By when will you send out that direct-mail piece to 16 new prospects?

Some people fear to set such specific goals with actions and deadlines. Because then they’re committed. And what’s more scary is to commit those specific goals to someone who can check up on you. So some people just never get specific about their plans.

Don’t let yourself get away with that. Sure, if you set such specific goals you’ll run into obstacles. The manufacturer may keep the price that you wanted to include in your direct-mail piece in limbo for two months. Or, you get caught up on the lengthy proposal for the big sale and make only ten of your 22 planned calls. Never mind those exceptions or “interruptions.”

Obstacles are always part of the picture. If you find a path with no obstacles, then it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.

Don’t be afraid to be specific with your goals and timetables. And don’t hesitate to commit those specifics to yourself and to others.

And don’t be afraid to think big. Ralph Charell put it this way: “Nobody succeeds beyond his or her wildest expectations… unless he or she begins with some wild expectations.”

Set your goals high. Imagine the results you want. Then make it happen for yourself. Never wait on “the big opportunity,” the big once-in-a-lifetime chance. That’s another reason sales reps fail to get anywhere. Rather than going out to look for customers, they’re out in the backyard, looking for four-leaf clovers.

Set specific goals—commit yourself with specific activities and deadlines. Accept obstacles when they come. Think big. Make your own opportunities.

And here’s a final consideration for goal-setting: Set risky goals. Your goals this year may be more than simply selling $(amount) worth of product. Experienced, exceptional salespeople eventually get their egos out of the way and work to make the business as a whole more profitable. That is, they’re not afraid to try something new. To risk…. To bring back to management an unfavorable customer comment on a product or service…. To encourage an improvement in the product. In other words, they even take risks in their selling. They’re not just satisfied to turn in acceptable numbers. They set goals to go after the hard sell. In short, they act like management.

These salespeople see selling as a creative experience. They learn from failure. They’re true team players and understand business success from the whole team’s point of view.

Whatever your long-term goal—whether it’s in terms of volume or in terms of creativity with high-risk customers—you will fail on occasion. Challenging, specific goals always dictate a few failures.

But so what? So what if you misjudged a customer’s walk-away point? So what if you’re wrong from time to time? We’re not going to march you out to the parking lot and shoot you.

Selling isn’t only a numbers game; it’s an intellectual game: Shutting your competitors out and locking your customers in.

The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed—with specific goals ahead. If not you, then who? If not now, then when?

Envision the target destination. Plan how you’ll get there—every day, little by little. Then strike out on a steady, straight path.

Audience: business, civic, or social groups
Message: You need personal and career goals to become successful.
Tone: motivational, instructional
Timing: 13-14 minutes

You’ve heard it said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Let me twist that a bit: The road to achievement is paved with good intentions. We call them goals.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. So it’s not enough just to “start out” in your career; you have to know where you’re going personally and where we’re going as a company.

“There’s no point in carrying the ball until you learn where the goal is.” At (company), we tell new hires right from the beginning that they have to let their managers know what their career aspirations are. Do they want to get into management? Do they want to stay in a technical field? Do they want to be a specialist? Or do they want to be a generalist? We have to know where their goal line is—and they have to know ours—so that we know who to give the ball to and when.

But then talk is cheap. Everybody talks about goal-setting. We have corporate mission statements and objectives. Department goals. Sales quotas. But really what’s their value? An old proverb from India sums it up like this: “No one was ever lost on a straight road.” And you’ll have to admit it, some companies have gotten lost in the global race for quality products.

Something like 90 percent of all products launched in the U.S. are failures. Our success rate at (company) is (number) percent—better than the average. And we’re always looking for ways to improve those odds.

So why don’t people set goals as methodically and frequently as corporations? Fear. Not having goals covers up for failure. We don’t have to face failure if we have no yardstick. If we don’t do much, nobody—including ourselves—knows. People without goals drift.

The most important thing about a goal is to have one. Goals focus our attention.

I like the story about the old man who was trying to lead a contrary donkey down the road. A passer-by stopped him and commented on the way the donkey was behaving. “Oh, I can make him do anything I want him to with just a kind word,” the owner said.

“Doesn’t look like it to me,” the other sneered.

“Sure, I can,” the owner said. Whereupon he climbed off the donkey, picked up a two-by-four beside the road, and clobbered the animal on the head, then explained to the onlooker. “I simply have to get his attention first.”

Goals get our attention. Losers stay busy doing things. Winners concentrate on planning before they ever make a move. For people who don’t give attention to long-term goals, the future is any time after tomorrow. But the future has a habit of suddenly becoming the present. And some 40-, 50-, and 60-year-olds are still asking themselves what they want to be when they grow up. To repeat: Goals make us focus.
So what are the characteristics of good goals?

Well, first, good goals are set by decision, not default. You have to set the long-term goal early on in any project. Have you ever started out for a Sunday afternoon drive with a friend without a particular destination in mind? And after a mile or two the conversation began to go like this:

“Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know—where do you want to go?”
“How about to Tony’s for dinner?”
“Well, we already passed that highway.”
“Okay, how about a game of golf?”
“The best golf course is all the way across town.”
“Well, then how about a movie?”
“Hmmm. It’s 2:45—everything’s already started now.”

I can tell by the nods, you’ve had some of those Sunday afternoons. John R. Noe, in his book Peak Performance Principles for High Achievers, sums up the experience like this: “By the time we are ready to make the big decisions, the options have been narrowed by our little choices along the way. If we do not focus our goals, our lives will be controlled by haphazard decisions.”

You’ve heard it said that not deciding… is deciding. In goal-setting, the same is true. Late goal-setting is not really goal-setting—it’s recapping after the fact.

The second characteristic of a good goal is that it’s a big goal—one worthy of your efforts. Someone has said that if you intend to succeed beyond your wildest expectations, you have to have some wild expectations. A few people wake up every day to go out and slay dragons. Most are satisfied to chase lizards.

If you’re an “average” performer, don’t set your sights on “above average.” Look at “excellent.” Whatever the average, look at what your colleagues would term a “reasonable” goal and then double it. That would be worth working for. That would be worth achieving. Consciously or unconsciously, you always get what you expect. So the secret to success, it seems to me, is to raise your expectations, to set goals worthy of your effort.

And don’t let fear that you won’t reach big goals keep you from setting them. Here’s what author and management consultant Peter Drucker has to say about that fear:

Objectives are not fate; they’re direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for making of the future.

Oliver Wendell Holmes agreed: “The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.” Unless you set big, worthwhile goals, you’ll never move beyond your current abilities.
The third characteristic of a good goal is that it has a completion date. Goals are dreams with deadlines. Always put a deadline on your goals, because deadlines wake you from your dreams to bring you to the reality of achieving them. Sleepwalkers don’t get around very well—at least not without a lot of bumps on the shins.

When talking to the authors of the bestseller Thriving on Chaos, Fred Brooks, a System 360 Chief Designer at IBM, had this to say about the lack of setting corporate goals: “How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.”

Set five-year goals. Ten-year goals. Six-month goals. Without deadlines for their achievements, goals are simply “Pie in the sky” plans.

A fourth characteristic of good goals is that they are followed up by a plan of action. The how. Will Rogers quipped, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” You’ve got to put the how-to to the goal. If you plan to switch careers, what new training will you need? Where can you get it? What college or corporate course?

If you plan to raise funds for a civic memorial, how? Which contributors do you want to reach—individuals or corporations? Do you want to use a direct-mail campaign or a fund-raising dinner? Or both? Goals are no good without plans of action to bring them into reality.

Successful companies have elaborate plans. You wouldn’t dare to go to work for them if they didn’t. “Buy low, sell high. Collect early, and pay late,” says educator and author Dick Levin. Sounds good in theory, but we’d be in trouble if we depended on a paycheck from companies that didn’t have a more complete game plan than that. Without plans, the only way businesses run is downhill. The same is true for individuals and organizations such as ours. We need specifics to be successful.

A fifth characteristic of good goals is that they can be broken into specific short-term steps and completion dates. Maximum achievements are the result of minimum steps. A big house is built with one little nail at a time. A suit is sewn one seam at a time. A business is built one employee at a time.

Next, good goals are written goals. Committing them to writing makes them real for you. You can review them. Modify them. Commit their accomplishment to others. They’re constant reminders of where you’ve decided you want to be at what point in your life.

Finally, good goals generate excitement. The late Malcolm Forbes said, “Men who never get carried away should be.” Don’t be afraid to show your commitment—some might even call it fanaticism—about reaching a goal. If you’re kicking and screaming about reaching or not reaching a goal, at least we all know you’re alive.

Let me run those by you once again. How to set good goals:

• Set them by decision, not default.
• Set big goals.
• Add a completion date.
• Develop a plan of action.
• Set short-term steps and interim completion dates.
• Write them down.
• Get excited about them.

Norman Vincent Peale may have oversimplified it, but I don’t think so. He said, “Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.”

If you don’t start, it’s certain you won’t arrive.