3 Leadership Traits To Accelerate Your Career | Brian Tracy
Brian Tracy identifies three traits that accelerate careers: future orientation and visualization, like Jack Welch's approach to vision; an unshakably positive attitude paired with daily action, such as an author who wrote a 300-page bestseller by waking one hour earlier; and personal responsibility combined with integrity.
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Hello, I'm Brian Trazian. Today I want to talk to you about the three leadership traits that will help you accelerate your career and accomplish more things faster than you ever thought possible. Many people's greatest success in life comes as a result of their biggest failure. So when they have a failure, they say, what can I learn from this that will help me in the future? If you're stuck in a rut at work, it might be a sign that you're outgrowing your current position. And if you really want to challenge yourself and see your income and career take flight, a leadership position is an essential step upward. True leadership is about striving to become better in all areas of your life and empowering everyone around you to become the best versions of themselves as well. So to help you, I've put together my top leadership traits that will help you to stand out in your company, get you out of your rut, and land you that new role. These are the same qualities that I've taught to executives in more than a thousand major corporations across the world in the last 40 years. First, it's important to know that good leaders are future oriented. We say that you become what you think about most of the time. Well, successful people think about the future most of the time. The predominant quality of great leaders is that they think about the future all the time. Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, one of the great business executives of modern history, said that good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion. Leaders think about where they're going rather than where they've been. Leaders maintain a positive attitude and think about the opportunities of tomorrow rather than focusing on the problems or setbacks of the past. Only about 10% of people have this quality of future orientation. To think like a leader, you must practice idealization in each area of your life. To get the most out of the use of idealization, you should begin by imagining that you have no limitations at all in what you can be or do or have. Act as if there is nothing standing in your way. Act as if you have all the talent and experiences you need to be successful. You have all the friends and contacts. You are a no limit person who can do anything that you really put your mind to. Then ask yourself, if you were the very best professional business person that you could possibly be, what additional knowledge or skills or leadership qualities would you have developed to a higher level? When you begin to develop leadership qualities, you strengthen the long term thinking part of your brain and Pretty soon this type of thinking becomes a habit and then a way of life. If you want to be a great leader, you need to develop an unshakably positive attitude. In addition to being future oriented, top leaders maintain a positive attitude no matter what comes their way. While everyone else is thinking about the present and about the immediate gratification, you're planning for bigger and better things. You're thinking about the future. And the best leaders inspire other people, their friends and customers and associates and everyone around them because they are inspired themselves. We say that you can't give away what you don't have. You cannot inspire other people unless you're inspired. Is that you can only motivate other people to the degree to which you yourself are motivated. So top leaders are excited about the possibility of creating the ideal future for themselves and those they care about. They think about creating the ideal future for their customers in terms of the use of their products and services. Think in terms of writing a book. Leaders understand that every page written is a step closer to their goal. Even when progress comes slowly, they focus on the good that will come out of it, rather than dwelling on the feeling of foreverness. I met a very successful author who was a businessman. He had a lot of business experiences and had a lot of ideas about business success. But he had no way to get the time to write a book. So he figured, how am I going to get the time to write the book? And he looked at his day and he found that he had to be awake and alert to write the book. So he decided he would start getting up an hour earlier instead of 6am he started getting up at 5am and, and writing one hour each morning and then going off to work and working all day into the evening and so on. And what happened was by working an hour a day and then reviewing and then rewriting. Within a year he had written a 300 page book and gotten it published. And it became a best selling book. And it opened up ideas and opportunities for him that changed his life forever. But he started getting up at 5 o' clock in the morning so he would have his one hour of working time and you can do the same thing. Leaders are optimistic. They see opportunities and possibilities in everything that happens, positive or negative. They look for the good in every situation and in every person. They seek the valuable lessons contained in every problem or setback. This is very important as many people's greatest success in life comes as a result of their biggest failure. So when they have a failure or a setback, they say, what Can I learn from this that will help me in the future? They never experience failures. Instead, they write them off as learning experiences. Most of all, great leaders have a sense of meaning and purpose. And in each area of their lives, their behavior is purposeful and goal directed. And like a magnet, they are drawn closer to their goal and their goal is drawn closer to them every day. And because they have goals, which sets up a magnetic field of energy, they accomplish five or 10 or 20 times as much as the average person who operates from day to day today with little concern about the future. And finally, the best leaders accept responsibility. One of the most important leadership qualities is the acceptance of personal responsibility. Whenever they have setback or difficulty, they repeat to themselves the magic words, I am responsible. I am responsible. I am responsible. They don't criticize or blame other people when something goes wrong. Instead, they focus on the solution, on what can be done. Leaders are intensely action oriented. They are constantly in motion. They try something and then something else, and then something else again. They never give up. Finally, leaders have integrity. They always tell the truth. They live in truth with themselves, and they live in truth with others. The acceptance of a position of leadership is a great responsibility. It is both scary and exhilarating, like a parachute jump. Once you decide to become a leader in your life, you cast off the shackles of fear and dependency that hold most people back. And you pursue life with a positive attitude. With your own hands, you design your own future. You set yourself fully on the path to becoming everything you're capable of becoming now. I'd love to hear from you. So my question today is what leadership traits have helped you the most to accelerate your career? Leave a comment below and I'll be sure to follow up with you. Thanks for watching. And remember, if you want to change your future, take action and take action now. If you enjoyed this video and feel it was valuable in teaching you about these three leadership traits, share it with your friends or for more resources on professional development, visit my website@briantracy.com thanks for watching. And remember, if you want to change your future, take action and take action now.
