Top Performance

by Zig Ziglar

  You can choose to take the necessary steps to help you succeed as a manager, or you can choose to ignore the experience of successful managers and take the consequences for you and your employees. We must teach our employees that they are responsible for their attitudes and their conduct and that in life, every choice we make, whether it is good or bad, has consequences! Once those consequences are thoroughly understood, it’s easier to make the right choices. Common sense, gratitude, loyalty, and discipline are some of the right choices that Top Performers make.

  Back to the Airport

  At the airline counter I had another choice. I could have ranted and raved and whooped and shouted and snorted and screamed and hollered. I could have made an absolute idiot of myself and embarrassed everybody around me as well as myself by screaming, “That’s crazy! That’s idiotic! I’m tired! I’ve been gone all week! My family wants to see me and I want to see them! Who made this decision, anyway? Who runs this outfit?” Yes, I could have chosen that as the second reaction. And the next flight still leaves at 6:05!

  Innocent—or Guilty?

  Question: Have you ever been heading for work, driving along, minding your own business, your mind “in neutral,” when suddenly somebody cuts sharply in front of you at an exit? You manage to avoid him by hitting your brakes full force while at the same time sounding your horn, shaking your fist at the offender, and even yelling, “You dummy! Why don’t you watch what you’re doing? I could’ve been killed and so could you!” Have you ever gotten upset about an incident like that and taken your anger to work, where you proceeded to tell everybody in earshot about this crazy driver who pulled in front of you and almost killed you? Did you wonder out loud why they allow people like that to get licenses? How could anybody have made such a foolish mistake? And you go on and on and on as you describe in angry terms how you almost got killed on the way to work. “They ought to keep people like him off the streets!” you declare with righteous indignation.

  In the meantime, the man who committed the dastardly deed rides merrily on, completely oblivious to the fact that you even exist or that anything unusual has happened. And yet he is in complete control of your life. He is in charge of your mind and your emotions. He is affecting your productivity, your relationships with others, even your very future, and (once more) he doesn’t even know you exist! One of our greatest gifts is the ability to choose the way we think, act, or feel, and the ultimate personal put-down is when we permit someone like the above-mentioned driver to take charge of our lives and our attitudes.

  Think with me for a moment. If you are the way you are because “when your mother was pregnant with you, she was scared by a runaway horse, and consequently you have been scared of big brown animals ever since …” If you are the way you are because they “snatched you off the potty too soon …” If you are the way you are because of someone else, then here’s what you do: You take the person who’s responsible for the way you are to the psychologist, the psychologist will treat him or her, and you will get better! See how crazy that is? If you fall and break your arm, you don’t send a friend to the doctor to have his arm set. You don’t even send the one who pushed you! You go yourself—you take personal responsibility! It’s the same for your mental and emotional health. You must accept personal responsibility.

  Yes, I know that your past is important, but as important as it is, according to Dr. Tony Campolo, it is not nearly as important as the way you see your future. Here’s why! The way you see your future determines your thinking today. Your thinking today determines your performance today, and your performance in the todays of your life determines your future. This is especially true when you learn to respond and not react to life’s daily challenges.

  It’s been said before and it will be said again: You cannot change the past, but your future is spotless. You can write on it what you will. In order to do so, however, you need to learn to respond to the positive and the negative. Fortunately, you have far more control than you realize. For example, all of us have on occasion been guilty of saying, “He/She makes me so mad!” That simply is not so. As a wise man said, you can’t stir the soup unless there’s some soup in the pot to stir. Nobody can make you act mad unless there is already some mad in you. Mad reactions are learned behaviors, and consequently they can be unlearned. This is a key principle. Top Performers know that they cannot keep adding positive new information without burying some of the old input.

  You can watch a person go about his daily activities for days or weeks and learn a great deal about him. However, you can watch a person under adverse circumstances for five minutes and see whether he has learned to respond or to react. Actually, you can learn more about him in a few minutes under trying conditions than you can in days of just watching him involved in daily activities.

  THE LIGHTS ARE ALWAYS ON

  AND THE CAMERA IS ALWAYS ROLLING.

  Your response—or reaction—to the negative reveals what’s inside of you. It exposes your heart and shows the kind of person you really are. The problem is that most people have a tendency to react instead of respond and to blame everything and everybody for their difficulties in life.

  Question: Do You Respond or React?

  I’ve been beating the bushes a long time, but I seldom hear anyone make a habit of blaming someone else for his success. He doesn’t say, “It’s all my manager’s fault. He/She spent a lot of extra time with me and made me study, drill, and prepare. He’s/She’s the reason I’m successful today.” Most of the time we don’t even say, “It was my spouse’s or parents’ fault. They kept after me night and day until I did what was necessary, and that’s the reason I’ve been successful.” No, most of us have a tendency to blame somebody else for our difficulties but keep appropriate credit for our success to ourselves. What about you? Do you respond to the negative and make it better, or do you react to the negative and make it worse?

  To be a Top Performer, you must make the proper choices. Now, if you have never had instruction on how to respond positively or what Top Performers do to become Top Performers, then you have a “built-in” excuse. But wait a minute! I’m not going to let you hang your hat on that excuse. Together, we are going to look at how, what, who, why, when, and where to make the proper choices so that you can get the most out of yourself and others! The following story from Krish Dhanam is a tremendous example of responding or reacting.

  * * *

  A couple of years ago, I found myself standing outside a hotel waiting for the shuttle that would take me to the airport. It had been a successful trip. Looking back on that moment, in which I felt grateful for the opportunities that exist in America and my career in general, you could say I was riding higher than a kite, and nothing was going to bring me down that day.

  The shuttle driver was running late and I decided to be proactive, pick up my own bags, and place them in the shuttle bus that was standing in front of the hotel. My thought process was fairly simple. If I put the bags in, we would save that amount of time when the driver arrived and we could be on our way.

  If you take a look at the picture on the jacket of this book, you will notice that I look different. My ethnic looks, coupled with the traveling gear I was loading into the shuttle bus, led to some mistaken assumptions by my fellow travelers. You could say that they mistook me for a baggage handler who could not speak English, as is evidenced by their subsequent actions.

  The first random act of ignorance was committed by the woman standing next to me as she beckoned me to repeat the process she had seen me undertake. Simply put, she used nonverbal commands to ask me to place her luggage in the shuttle. I obliged and then returned to my rightful spot and continued the wait.

  The next act of ethnic profiling was committed by a gentleman who suggested I do the same with his luggage. Once again I obliged. This time, however, I needed to make a statement of my own. Instead of reacting, I remembered Zig Ziglar once telling me that in life you need to respond, because the lights are always on
and the camera is always rolling.

  As a training ambassador for Ziglar Training Systems, I have an obligation to represent my company with the highest standards I can attain. Yelling at those people that day would have satisfied me more than anything I can imagine. I am an educated, hardworking, honest, tax-paying citizen, and these people assumed I was a baggage handler—many of whom, I must tell you, are also educated, hardworking, honest, tax-paying citizens. That was kind of presumptuous, if I say so myself … and most folks would have reacted, but I chose to respond. So with a smile, I extended my open hand to each of them and netted nearly four dollars—what a country!

  The reason for telling about something that was painful at the time it happened is twofold. First, it is to show that responding was the better thing to do of all possible options available to me at that time. Second, it is to share with you what the man said to me when I boarded the shuttle and he realized that he had made a mistake. He simply said, “I wish all my employees had your disposition.” Years later as I participate in the process of categorizing Top Performance principles, I am grateful that a cooler head prevailed that day, and in my heart I know that I emerged a greater victor than the two people who got caught up in perceptions and mistaken assumptions.

  * * *

  PERFORMANCE PRINCIPLES

  * * *

  Regardless of your past, tomorrow is a clean slate.

  Every obnoxious act is a cry for help.

  Don’t waste time placing blame; fix the cause!

  The choices you make today will determine what you will be, do, and have in the tomorrows of your life.

  Top Performers learn to make the proper choices.

  Top Performers know that when they continuously add new concepts and ideas into their minds, they are burying some of the archaic ideas already in place.

  Causing Others to Want Your Leadership

  Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  I thoroughly enjoy promoting my books, but the schedule is generally hectic. Over the years the media, with few exceptions, have been extremely kind to me. Bookstores have been delighted to sponsor autograph parties because they usually sell lots of books, which is why they are in business. I had been out late promoting my book Secrets of Closing the Sale in New York and didn’t arrive at my next destination, a beautiful Houston, Texas, hotel, until 2:30 A.M. I was really excited, since I had experienced a truly incredible day where everything had gone exactly right. Wonderful interviews, friendly people, lots and lots of sales. And my first interview the next day wasn’t until 11:00 A.M.

  A Sense of Humor Will Help

  As I approached the desk to register, a quick glance at the night clerk told me things had not been going well for her. Her facial expression indicated she not only had lost her last friend but had also had some M & Ms melt in her hand, and she might even have received some junk mail with the postage due. Despite her melancholy countenance, I enthusiastically approached the registration desk, and the following exchange took place.

  Zig: “Good morning, how ya doin’?” Night Clerk: “Oh, I suppose I’ll make it.” Zig: “I bet you not only make it, I bet you are going to win!” Night Clerk: “Well, you certainly feel good though it’s so late!” Zig: “Yes, I do. When I woke up this morning, I knew I was ahead of the game, because some people did not wake up this morning.” (She almost smiled at that.) Night Clerk: “Well, I suppose that’s the best way to look at it.” Zig: “It definitely is.” Night Clerk: “I suppose so, but I need to get you to fill out our registration slip.” As I handed the slip back to her, she said, “Now I need a major credit card.” Fortunately, I was able to comply with her request, so I handed her this version of a truly major credit card.

  When she saw the card, she burst out laughing and even demonstrated some real enthusiasm as she said, “You know, I’m delighted you came along. I definitely feel better—but I’m going to need some other form of identification.” With that comment I turned the card over, and when she saw what you are now looking at, she almost did the proverbial roll on the floor:

  Question: Do you think she was a better employee the rest of her shift? I’ll answer it for you. You betcha! Question: Why? Answer: A change of attitude.

  I include this little episode because I believe that in our high-intensity world, a sense of humor can play a major role in our physical and emotional health. Humor helps us relate to others and will help make them want to know us, to please us, and to follow our leadership and direction.

  Actually, I believe management goes beyond leadership, because management is that special kind of leadership in which the goals of the organization must be combined with the goals of the individual for the good of both. If the individual’s goals are more important than the organizational goals, or are in conflict with organizational goals, the organization will suffer. Similarly, if organizational goals overshadow individual goals, or are in conflict with individual goals, the person will suffer. Excellent managers of people cause others to want them to channel energies for the maximum benefit of both.

  This obviously applies whether we are talking about an office, an athletic team, a church, a home, or any situation where two or more people are gathered with a potentially common interest. Our objective must be to foster this common interest and be sure that individual and organizational goals complement each other as much as possible.

  Leaders Deserve—and Get—Cooperation

  No matter how brilliant or how technically capable you are, you won’t be effective as a leader unless you gain the willing cooperation of others. For example, let’s think together about the number of people you can really “force” to cooperate. Eliminate the boss, because he is over you. You can’t force those at your level, because they are equal in authority. You can’t even force a subordinate to obey without his filing a complaint, quitting, or developing so much resentment that his output will suffer, directly or indirectly. Realistically, if you have a subordinate who always agrees, watch out! It’s probably because he lacks self-starting qualities or the ability to think for himself, or both. Remember, cooperation, like leadership, is not getting the other fellow to do what you want. Rather, it means getting him to want to do what you want. And there’s a great deal of difference by the addition of this one word—want.

  True cooperation generally depends on certain feelings that have been established over a period of time. It’s the responsibility—and opportunity—of the leader to understand and develop these deeper feelings and then to work with them rather than against them. Now let’s look at some basic rules and thoughts for getting cooperation. You succeed in getting cooperation by giving your people DOSES of leadership—leadership that is Dynamic, Organized, Sensitive, Effective, and Strong-willed. The following examples were collected by Krish Dhanam as he interacted with the people mentioned over the years.

  Dynamic. Leaders who are dynamic understand that they need fluidity in their style of leadership so as to be able to get along with everyone. Leadership involves getting along with, and getting maximum production from, everyone, including those with whom we disagree. This flexibility is what dynamic leaders possess that allows them to guide their teams through both the good times and the tough ones. Paul Horgen, president and CEO of IBM’s Credit Union in Rochester, Minnesota, exemplifies this trait. At the time when the popularity of savings and loans was not at an all-time high, he was using his dynamism to guide his own organization through some remarkable periods of growth. When Paul attended one of our events in Dallas, he proved that even though he was already a leader in his field, he was still keen on being a student who could continue on the path of learning as he improved himself to be a better leader for his people.

  Organized. Organized leaders carefully plan their projects and choose the time and place when their ideas are most likely to be accepted. Once the ideas are organized, they present them in a clear a
nd concise way. Kevin Small is the president of INJOY, a leadership training and development company in Atlanta. Designed to deliver the teachings of leadership luminary John Maxwell, INJOY and its counterpart, Maximum Impact, have done remarkably well in assembling some of the brightest leadership minds in very effective satellite broadcasts able to reach thousands across the country at the same time. Kevin is one of the most organized and effective people I know. I first met Kevin when he was organizing the logistics for John Maxwell seminars in the early ’90s. His meteoric rise to the head of that organization is a testimony to his belief in the importance of being organized. Kevin is truly a Top Performer.

  Sensitive. Sensitive leaders know that to get real cooperation they must understand that they do not have all the answers. In all probability, the facts and figures required to make a decision might lie with others. Leaders who are sensitive to the feelings of others can get cooperation from those around them.

  Effective. Learning to look at things from the perspective of others is a sign of effectiveness. Successful leaders are very rarely comfortable. Successful leaders are expected to be effective. The difference between comfort and effectiveness is called growth, and growth is what separates Top Performers from the rest of the pack.