Do you have people with whom you can share intimate details with no repercussions other than a greater gift of self-awareness? Well according to former Medtronic CEO and author of the book, True North Groups, A Powerful Path to Personal and Leadership Development, you need to.  A True North Group is a group of between 6-8 trusted life and business advisors who you can turn to on a consistent basis to help you become better at work and at home.  Whether it is a life-threatening illness, divorce, or career change, your group can give you a perspective from many angles…angles that are easy to miss.

So if you believe there is room for improvement in your life, setting up your own True North Group just might be the answer. To do so, here are some tips from the book to get you started:

• Forming- Choose 6-8 individuals you trust
• Norming- Create habits, practices and rules characterizing your group’s behavior. Confidentiality is crucial in your group.
• Storming- As your group grows closer, passionate discussion may lead to storms. Open communication will insure you can weather them.
• Performing- Openly sharing and deep listening insure that all members find value in the experience.
• Reforming- Don’t be afraid to evolve to keep the group fresh. This will ensure longevity.

Ultimately, the greatest benefit of a True North Group is the opportunity to get feedback that will make you a better friend, father, mother, business owner or work colleague. As former secretary of education John Gardner said, “Life is an error-making and an error-correcting process.” Having your own trusted group will help you find your errors and correct them, as well as give you new ideas to make you a top performer at work and at home.

For some more great tips on forming your own group, listen to Brian Sullivan,CSP interview best selling author Bill George on his weekly radio show by going to http://www.preciseselling.com/on-radio. And for even more tips, stop by Amazon and pick up a copy of the life-changing book, True North Groups,  A Powerful Path to Personal and Leadership Development.

Winners are only judged in loser’s circles.
-Brian Sullivan

Recently, as I prepared to speak at a company seminar, I looked around the room as salespeople walked in to find their seat at one of the 25 round tables. I wondered how these salespeople would choose which seat was best for them. Just a few minutes before my speech, I asked the sales manager to identify who in the room were the A, B and C players based on attitude and performance. Sure enough, they seemed to be huddled in groups throughout the room…finding comfort in like-minded performers.

As expected, throughout the day the table full of As and Bs participated in the learning more actively than the Cs. The Cs (when not enthusiastically sharing their tired story about how hung over they were from the night before) were sitting in the back, and at times rolling their eyes while the As offered their own advice and sales experience.

So what about you? Are you and A, B or C? And regardless of what you are right now, what do you want to be? If you want to be a C, it’s easy. You just have to believe you know all you need to know, what has worked in the past will continue to work, and that your sales peers who are constantly honing their knowledge and skill are nothing more than corporate butt-kissers.

And if you want to an A, then stop hanging around Cs. They are poisoning you. Grab a salad and shimmy up to a top performer or leader at your next sales meeting. Then grill them with questions about what you can do to mimic their success. And while your buddies from of the back of the room judge your motive, give them a wink, knowing that you will be delivering their performance review someday.

There are two ways to be successful. Know a ton of people, and make sure more than a few of those people are well respected and influential. First, make it a habit to know the leaders and influencers in your organization. If you are a company employee and find yourself at a corporate convention where your leaders will also be, find a way to develop a conversation with as many as possible. This means you should NOT spend every free minute and eat every meeting meal with your group of business buddy associates who you already feel most comfortable with. And while they are calling out “Brown Nose!” as you shuffle past them to the leaders table, just give them a wink, knowing that your circle of influence is only 20 minutes from growing larger.

Next, remember not all “movers and shakers” reside in the Executive Suite. In fact, the most influential people often lack the fancy business card title but own the “street credibility” necessary to get things done. Don’t overlook them. In fact, go out of your way to help THEM increase their network and watch how the favor someday gets repaid.

Your next influence tip is to hone your speaking skills and USE THEM outside your company. Why? Because people in leadership positions often have to deliver both formal and informal “speeches.” And the ones who get to the top most quickly are often those can deliver a “talk” with poise and confidence.

And this is a skill that, when owned, is perhaps your single biggest weapon to increase your professional perception.  So find an area of expertise that you feel you know well. Then develop a 20-30 presentation on that topic. Practice it, rehearse it, and drill it until you impress even yourself. Then find a place to use. This could be a company meeting, an industry event, a Chamber of Commerce meeting, Rotary Club, or any number of organizations looking for an expert.

Lastly, spread the word on the web. Sign up for a Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter account, and as you keep learning, keep the world informed about who and what you know. And as you find new ways to share valuable information with others, you will find that you have become an irreplaceable asset in THEIR rise to the top. And when you become irreplaceable, you become unbeatable in business.

To listen to Brian’s radio interview on “how to increase your circle of networking influence” with Sheryl Nicholson, author of two Chicken Soup for the Soul books, go to www.preciseselling.com/Radioaccess.htm. Brian is author of the book, 20 Days to the Top-How the PRECISE Selling Formula Will Make You Your Company’s Top Sales Performer in 20 Days or Less. To learn more, go to www.preciseselling.com.

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
Mark Twain

Think of the five people (outside your family) who you spend the most time with. Are they successful, happy, positive, caring and selfless? If you want to be successful, happy, positive, caring and selfless, the formula is simple. Make sure those five people who you spend most of your time with share those same qualities. And here is the tough news. If those people don’t possess the positive qualities you wish for in yourself, it may be time to replace them with people who do. And while that is often a difficult task, it’s important to realize the negative thoughts and words that you are exposed to DO have a direct correlation on your ability to succeed. In short, their thoughts and words are poison to your mind and force it to be something that it doesn’t want to be.

Author of the book “Winning-How Winners Think, What Champions Do” Edie Raether told me this week that people’s incomes are usually the average of the top five people they spend time with. So if you are in sales, seek out the top performers in your company and build a closer relationship. If you are a leader in your company, first coach the negative employee, but be prepared to remove them from your team (tough love). If you are unhappy in your current position because of a belittling boss, offset the negative vibe with enough positive influencers. Then make a plan to move on to a more positive career.

The good news is, YOU have control over the influence you are exposed to.  And as you make the tough choices of who your influencers will be, be aware that the benefits of replacing the bad with the good far outweigh the pain associated with distancing yourself from those that hinder your ambitions. And by surrounding yourself with “greatness,” there is a 100% chance that you too will find the greatness you seek.

To learn how your mind can create greatness, go to www.preciseselling.com/Radioaccess.htm to hear Brian interview Edie Raether, author of the book “Winning.”  As president of PRECISE Selling, Brian Sullivan helps improve sales, customer service, negotiations, leadership, and presentation skills through seminars and Internet training programs. He also hosts “Entrepreneurial Moments,” a radio show on business and personal development. For more on his speaking, consulting or book, visit: www.PreciseSelling.com or email: bsullivan@preciseselling.com.

I think the one lesson I have learned is that
there is no substitute for paying attention
-Diane Sawyer

Imagine how much professional interviewers learn every time they sit down and do nothing but ask questions and pay attention to the responses given. If you believe that the answers to most of your questions reside in the heads of others, you are well on your way to the top. Because once you realize that, you will ask more questions, listen more attentively and pay attention to the knowledge being delivered.

So here is your task over the next seven days:

•    In every conversation, seek to LEARN something new
•    Ask more questions in EVERY conversation
•    Make these questions open-ended like great interviewers (How, What, When, Why, Who)
•    Don’t think about your response until the other person has finished their last word
•    Don’t feel the need to develop a counterpoint to what is being said

By doing this over the next seven days, you WILL be smarter. Keep doing it and you will have developed the skill that separates great interviewers, great leaders, great salespeople, great parents, and great friends from the average. And by doing so, everybody around you will pay attention to how much smarter you have become, how much more you care, and how effective you have become at positively influencing everybody you touch.

“Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself.
Before you can move their tears, your own must flow.
To convince them, you must yourself believe.”
-Winston Churchill

One of the greatest gifts God has given us is emotion. By showing your emotion, it allows others to get a glimpse of what the heck is going on inside of that skin of yours. And when you give others the ability to see what is in your head and heart, your ability to positively influence them is greatly increased. Think of some of the greatest leaders in history and how they used emotion to convey their message. Now think of that big meeting you have this week where you are trying to influence others, and jazz that presentation up with some raw emotion. Let others see that you firmly believe what you are “selling.” It will be that expressed emotion that will mean the difference between attaining your meeting objective and falling just a bit short.