This groundbreaking leadership research by has received extensive endorsements and enthusiastic reviews from well-known prominent business, political, and academic leaders who either participated in the study or reviewed the research findings. You will discover the proven success habits and secrets of people who, in spite of difficult or life threatening challenges shaped their own destiny to become successful, effective leaders. The full results of this research will be presented in the upcoming book by Dr. Howard Edward Haller which is titled “Leadership: View from the Shoulders of Giants.”

The nine initial prominent successful leaders who overcame adversity that were interviewed included: Dr. Tony Bonanzino, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, Monzer Hourani, U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, Dr. John Malone, Larry Pino, U.S. Army Major General Sid Shachnow, Dr. Blenda Wilson, and Zig Ziglar.

The data from these nine research participants was materially augmented by seven more successful leaders who overcame adversity interviews including: Jack Canfield, William Draper III, Mark Victor Hansen, J. Terrence Lanni, Angelo Mozilo, Dr. Nido Qubein, and Dr. John Sperling.

Additionally, five internationally known and respected leadership scholars offered their reviews of the leadership research findings including: Dr. Ken Blanchard, Jim Kouzes, Dr. John Kotter, Dr. Paul Stoltz, and Dr. Meg Wheatley.

This is a short biography of one of the principal participants who generously contributed their time and insight for this important research into the phenomenon of how prominent successful leaders overcome adversity and obstacles. This Blenda’s story:

Blenda Wilson grew up in a small New Jersey town in the 1950s. Most people believed that the best Blenda could hope for was a low-paying office job, and that college was unrealistic and beyond her economic reach.

Blenda’s family had experienced racial discrimination. Her mother “was a bright black woman who had graduated from ‘normal school’ in the racially segregated deep south” of America, during the Depression. According to Blenda, her mother was a “very, very intelligent woman, [with a] powerful mind and fortitude.” She said, “My mother moved from Georgia . . . the north didn’t accept normal school [teaching] credentials, and so she became, throughout her working career . . . a white-collar worker, [a] salesperson at Sears, an elevator operator . . . [and] a girls’ supervisor in a juvenile detention home.”

Blenda’s father “went to technical vocational school . . . completed the [electrician] certificate, and in those days, to become an electrician, you had to be apprenticed. He was black and he could never get an apprenticeship, so he could never be an electrician.” He became a laborer instead of an electrician.

Blenda shared that her mother, who had experienced racial discrimination, insisted that her children “didn’t go out of the house dirty and slovenly . . . because she [had] lived in a really segregated south.” Her mother shared “stories where, if they were in town, and a white person was walking down the street, black people stepped off into the curb.” Blenda then described her own experiences with racial, gender and age discrimination.

Despite her membership in the National Honor Society at her high school in Woodbridge, New Jersey, her guidance counselor refused even to talk to her about going to college. Blenda’s comment was, “She was really mean to me. She never, ever gave me any counseling about college; she never invited me to college prep stuff.” Wilson said that on the contrary, “Actually, she told me to ‘take a typing class’ . . . then said, ‘You’re nice looking, and you might be able to become a secretary.’ Now that’s supposed to be a compliment.”

Wilson recalled, “Fortunately, I was riding a bus and heard some women talk about college opportunities, and how they had heard that women’s colleges were providing scholarships for smart black students. I thought, ‘That’d be me.’” Their conversation convinced Blenda that she could find such a college for herself and a way to pay for tuition, books, food, and housing.

Wilson wrote many colleges, seeking more information, applied for admission, and asked for full scholarships. “I got admitted to all of the colleges I applied to, and these were the colleges you know, they were the ‘seven sisters.’” She received scholarship offers from several major colleges, but initially they offered only one-year scholarships with a series of renewals.

Blenda commented, “I would just write them [the college] back and say, ‘I’d really love to come, but you have to give me more money!’” She continued, “I was determined to get a full four-year scholarship, to ensure that I could get completely through college, since I knew my parents could not afford to pay for me to go.”

Ultimately, “Cedar Crest guaranteed me four years’ tuition, [a] travel budget, and a job.” She graduated from Cedar Crest College with a major in English and Secondary Education. She went on to earn a Master’s degree in Education from Seton Hall, and then a Ph.D. in Higher Education from Boston College.

Early in her career she experienced gender and age discrimination from African American males, both in the community and within her organization. Though she was more qualified and more educated than her competition, some people were vocal in their opposition to her getting the job as Executive Director of the Middlesex County Economic Opportunity Corporation. Blenda said, “The African American men in the community were pissed off that a woman would get this role. . . . One of the criteria was that they wanted someone with a Master’s degree. I had one. None of the African American men did.”

Blenda said she experienced several kinds of prejudice: “There’s prejudice from men, there’s prejudice from black men, there’s prejudice from white people.”

Wilson said taking a leave from her local high school teaching position to become the Executive Director of the Middlesex County Economic Opportunity Corporation “actually changed my life. I started doing the Head Start program. There was political turmoil. This was all in the ‘60s, with the war on poverty, the Office of Economic Opportunity. I was going to change the world.”

Blenda “was youngest Senior Associate Dean in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard,” and once again she encountered age discrimination. Wilson shared that she had “worked with and was tutored by Dr. John Gardner” after leaving Harvard. After she left Harvard she became Chancellor of the University of Michigan. After that she became the President of California State University, Northridge for seven years, from 1992 to 1997, and led the university’s recovery from the Northridge earthquake in January of 1994.

In addition to having served as a Getty Foundation Trustee for over a decade, Dr. Wilson is the President and CEO of the Nellie Mae Educational Foundation in Quincy, Massachusetts. She is also a past chair of the American Association of Higher Education. Dr. Wilson serves as a trustee of the College Board, and she is Deputy Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Dr. Blenda Wilson still takes time out of her busy schedule to mentor and coach select prospective female prospective leaders.

Copyright 2006 © Howard Edward Haller, Ph.D.

About the Author:

Howard Edward Haller, Ph.D. is the Chief Enlightenment Officer of the Coeur d’Alene, Idaho based The Leadership Success Institute. His Doctoral dissertation in Leadership Studies at Gonzaga Univ. included interviews with prominent US leaders in business, politics & education.

The nine initial prominent leaders who overcame adversity included: Dr. Tony Bonanzino, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, Monzer Hourani, U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, Dr. John Malone, Larry Pino, U.S. Army Major General Sid Shachnow, Dr. Blenda Wilson, and Zig Ziglar.

Then seven more leaders, who overcame adversity, were interviewed including: Jack Canfield, William Draper III, Mark Victor Hansen, J. Terrence Lanni, Angelo Mozilo, Dr. Nido Qubein, and Dr. John Sperling.

Five internationally known and respected leadership scholars offered their reviews of the leadership research findings including: Dr. Ken Blanchard, Jim Kouzes, Dr. John Kotter, Dr. Paul Stoltz, and Dr. Meg Wheatley.

http://www.TheLeaderInstitute.com

To excel in business we need conscious command of all our faculties, mind, body and heart to ensure our work/life balance. Then we can seize the moment of opportunity and create exceptional results.

Western business schools us in our physical and mental aspects of business. We learn the requirements for:

1. Great processes to deliver complex team results, and,

2. Great strategies to out perform the competition and deliver to our client’s expectations and beyond.

In contrast, Eastern business schools us in the discipline of our heart and physicality, to remain committed and involved to the outcome of the project, regardless of the distractions.

The image of the samuri comes to mind, waiting in absolute presence for his opponent to be distracted so that he can conclude the task at hand.

Western business gives us the opportunity to gain experience. From this we learn what we need to do to become physically and mentally competent for most situations, most of the time. It is also hoped that we will sort out any heart discipline issues that interfere with the delivery of our true potential.

Organizations do not know when their business circumstances will change radically. What leaders will they require, who may not flourish in their current environment, to seize the presented opportunities for success?

How do we unleash the true potential of people who have great abilities that are inconsistently delivering on time and on target?

Humans are consciously and unconsciously emotionally-conditioned beings. “There is a plethora of elegant neurophysiological data suggesting that the nervous system is not capable of taking in everything, but can only scan the
outer world for material that it is prepared to find by virtue of its wiring hookups, its own internal patterns, and its past experience.”(1)

The brain’s development reflects this, with the emotional patterning center maturing in utero, whilst the rational center begins to mature at 4-5 years of age and reaches full maturation in the late teens to early twenties.

From our early explorations of how to be successful in this world, we have formed some linked memories of actions, thoughts and emotions. Some of these are strongly self-limiting. The priority of any change management program is to deactivate these associated memories that are potential landmines!

So Why Don’t We Have Schooling to Ensure our Hearts’ Discipline?

Hogan (2), through analysis of 300 published studies, has concluded that as human beings we are very poor judges of our own reputation: what others know of us, because we are preoccupied by our identity: what we would like to believe is true about us.

Our colleagues may hold a consistent view of our abilities as pushy and we cling to our beliefs about ourselves that are in opposition. We are seen to ‘not walk our talk’, or our heart is distracted and unsteady. However, we may not share this perception.

Some football teams unconsciously understand this. They taunt their competition until they have distracted them from their game. They then play their best football whist the competition turns to fighting them!

There are two choices here:

1. Winning: To be more disciplined in their hearts and remain focused on winning, or,

2. Losing: To be manipulated into losing by changing the focus to fighting the competition.

The discipline of our hearts’ requires us to learn the nature of these choices within us, to be willing to consistently choose, and, accept the consequences of our choices. Then we begin to learn the wisdom to be a great leader and achieve the success we seek.

NB. This process is not logical or linear as memories are stored by association. Non linear learning was pioneered by the Russians and has become popular through accelerated learning techniques in the West.

(1)2Dr Candice Pert is a Research Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Georgetown University Medical Centre in Washington, D.C. She was the first to map the receptor patterns of heroin in the brain and show its emotional ‘high’ characteristics. She lectures extensively throughout the country.

(2)Dr Hogan is an eminent psychologist whose personality and leadership profiles are utilized by over 50% of the Fortune 100 companies in the USA. He has over 300 publications to his name.

This article may be reproduced in printed or web format, provided the resource box below is included.

Rosemary Johnston is a professional corporate, business and personal coach. Working with executives from some of Australia’s largest and most successful companies for over 15 years as well as numerous professionals.
Rosemary’s new book, “How To Develop Your Leadership Style and Skills to Take Charge of Your Career and Life” is now available to download at her web site. Read about how you can share some of the success Rosemary has had coaching leaders in Australian blue chip companies. http://www.leadershipfirst.com.au

“It’s just been one of those days…I can’t seem to get anything done! I’ve got way too many things on my “To-Do List”. Oh the list started out innocently enough as a single handwritten column on one sheet of lined paper; but now it’s grown to a three-column table in a spreadsheet software program! I get no satisfaction from checking off each item as I finish it. For each task I complete, at least two more are added. I began my work day at 6:30 AM with grandiose plans of completing a special project before Noon. Now it’s 16 hours later (10:30 PM) and I still have not finished the project. My anxiety and frustration are mounting. Tomorrow’s list has already been written and it does not include the things left undone from today’s list! I don’t know if I’m going to make it through the week with all of the demands upon my time and energy. I need help…quickly!

A Juggling Act

I wrote the above entry in my journal several days ago. What a day that was! How about you…been there lately?

Life can be such a juggling act. Like professional jugglers, we try to keep 5 or 6 balls moving through the air at the same time. But unlike professional jugglers, we rarely succeed.

Everyone is so busy these days. Work is performed at a frantic pace and people are in such a hurry. There is an air of impatience and intolerance—a lot of frenetic darting to and fro that is almost out of control. It’s very difficult to keep your priorities in line when life is so fast paced. But the negative consequences of so much activity—stress, damaged or broken relationships, poor health—can wreak more havoc than what we think we will gain.

The Urgent

I tried for years to use a paper-based time management system with columns similar to this: “Must Do…Need to Do…Like to Do”. I’m sure you’ve used something like this (maybe even now). The problem I encountered was that I never seemed to get around to doing much in the “Like to Do” column, which was very discouraging. The “Must Do and Need to Do” items consumed all of my time.

So I switched to a simpler paper-based system with the following columns, “Urgent” and “Important”. Now, I was sure to spend my time wisely. Unfortunately, I found out that the urgent things monopolized my time and pushed the important things to the back-burner.

Here are three examples of “The Urgent”:

• Pressing or burning imperatives that must be completed immediately.
• Critical or vital tasks that someone else insists be performed without delay.
• Unrelenting and persistent routine demands on your time.

The Important

“The Urgent” often masquerades as “The Important”. However, not everything we do is important. To identify what’s important to you requires that you answer three questions:

1. Will the activity I am about to participate in make a significant and lasting positive impact on others?
2. Is what I am about to do an unselfish act that will bring happiness or joy to others?
3. Do my actions and activities promote balance in my life or are they all-consuming?

The Bottom Line

Identifying “The Important” requires focus—a concentration of energy, effort, and thought. “The Important” is where you should spend most of your time. Now, before you send me screaming emails, I don’t mean that you shouldn’t address “The Urgent”. Instead, consider the following:

Focus on “The Important”!

Priority is the key to managing “The Urgent” and focusing on “The Important”. Before you leap to complete a task, take a few moments to think about its true priority. Does it need to be done right at this moment, or is there something else on your list that should come first?

While others may demand that everything on your To-Do List must be done immediately, you and only you can really determine what should be done first, second, third, etc. (It’s not possible to do everything at once; priority must be given to each item).

Today, I’ve taken a dose of my own medicine and committed to focusing on “The Important”. So far, I’ve accomplished at least one thing that will have a significant and positive impact on others—finishing this article.

Althea DeBrule, entrepreneur and seasoned human resources executive, has focused for more than 30 years on helping people achieve their career goals. Creator of The Extreme-Career-Makeover™ and a founding partner of RADSGroup Organizational Consultants, she is recognized for her bottom line and practical application of career development and management strategies in a way that penetrates hearts and compels action. She speaks and teaches with inspired talent, humor and contagious zeal at management conferences and leadership retreats nationwide, and has been featured in CFO Magazine, Strategy@Work, Human Resource Executive Magazine. Althea is the author of Bosses & Orchards, a compelling and candid book about how to make your work relationship with your boss succeed.

To discover how you can take your career to a new level, visit http://www.extreme-career-makeover.com/

Whenever you feel lethargic and depressed by your situation in life reflect on how much worse things could be. This solution to depression sounds obvious and simplistic but it works.

Gratitude for what we have in life lifts the spirit especially when we realize how much more we have to be grateful for than many others.

In the Western, “High Plains Drifter”, Clint Eastwood, the hero, corners the men who had bullwhipped him years before when he was a young marshal trying to do his duty. He shoots one of them in the right ear.

The man cries out in plaintiff and astonished agony:
“He shot my ear off! He shot my ear off!”

His partner has little sympathy.

“Well he could of shot your whole damn head off!”

Whatever situation we are in, there is always a worse situation possible.

If you are being attacked by a rottweiler, you could have been facing a mountain lion instead.

If you are being mugged by two men, it could have been three!

If you lost ten thousand pounds, it could have been thirty thousand etc.

I once lost about $48,000 when I invested with an investment group which turned out to be the front for a group of ruthless con artists. I thought that was a big loss until I heard about a man who had lost $48,000,000.

Some of these are fanciful examples but you get the picture.

It is always worth being grateful that things are not worse.

If you are overweight, at least you can remedy this condition.

If you have a terminal disease, you cannot.

If there are books you have not read, at least you can still read.

A few daily moments of meditation on these lines can motivate us to be grateful for what we have and inspire us to get on with making the best possible use of all the advantages we still have.

About The Author

John Watson is an award winning teacher and martial arts instructor. He has recently written two books about achieving your goals and dreams.

They can both be found on his website http://www.motivationtoday.com along with a daily motivational message.

The title of the first book is “36 Laws To Ignite Your Inner Power And Realize Your Dreams Now! - Acronyms, Stories, And Pictures…Easy To Remember And Use Everyday To Grab Your Life And Soar With The Eagles”

The book can be found at this URL: http://www.motivationtoday.com/36_laws.php

The book uses acronyms, stories and pictures to help readers remember 36 laws that can gradually transform your life if you apply them.

You are welcome to publish the article above in your ezine or on your website so long as you do not alter it and keep in the words about the author and the 36 Laws.

To best communicate an idea, wrap it in a human being. Words can be superficial aspects of communication. True communication, for better or worse, happens through deep, human interactions that transcend words. Even though words may be exchanged and at times be necessary, they are not sufficient to explain or promote communication’s aggregate opportunities.

For instance, you’re having an argument with someone. You’re getting angry. You’re saying things you’re hardly aware of, things to defend yourself and attack the other person. You feel injured and want to justify yourself and make the other person see your side and maybe even hurt that person. You’re borne along on a current of hot emotion. Later, you may regret the words you used. Or you may get even angrier over the words the other person used. Later, you may think of something biting you should have said. The point is, the words, like froth on the roiling river of your being, were really a partial aspect of your experience. The words may have provoked anger in you and the other person, but the anger itself, the experience of it, the pain of it, the all consuming nature of it, and even quite possibly the perverse pleasure of it, goes beyond words.

This is a leadership lesson. Working with leaders of all ranks and functions worldwide for the past 22 years, I’ve seen that most either misunderstand this truth of human nature or miss it altogether. When communicating with others, they primarily go for a narrow band of information dissemination and overlook what can be of tremendous benefit to them, the broadband of human relationships and the rich development that can take place in those relationships.

The irony is that as human beings, we swim in relationships –good, bad or indifferent relationships –every day. However, relationships are so familiar to us, we ignore their uniqueness and their importance in driving leadership results. We grasp at meager bubbles while all around us and beneath us lies an ocean teeming with results-engendering opportunities.

How do we seize these opportunities? I teach a process to do just that. That process is the Leadership Talk.

The Leadership Talk has one objective: to help leaders get great results — far more results than if they do not use it. I call it, “More results faster continually.” Leaders can only get more-faster-continually by mining relationships through Leadership Talks.

The Leadership Talk is based on the idea that leaders speak 15 to 20 times and more a day: across a desk, at a water cooler, at lunch, in meetings, etc. When those speaking opportunities are manifested through Leadership Talks, the effectiveness of the leader is dramatically increased.

In my articles and books, I’ve explained the inner workings and the personal and professional benefits of the Leadership Talk. Suffice to say, whenever you intend to communicate as a leader, you should assess not only the information you want to impart but also the human relations aspects of how you will go imparting it — and then use the Leadership Talk to further those relationships and the results they engender.

For instance, the Leadership Talk teaches that the best way to get results is not to order people to do a job but to motivate them to choose to be your cause leader in doing that job. This is an obvious point. What’s not obvious is how you do it. One way is to transfer your motivation to others.

A key Leadership Talk process tackles this challenge. The process is called “the motivational transfer.” Its aim is to interact with the people you lead in such a way that they become as motivated as you about tackling the challenge you face. You can make that transfer happen by (1) imparting information to the people, (2) making sure that what you have to communicate makes sense to them, (3) making your experience their experience.

The latter is by far the most effective way to promote a motivational transfer. You have your experience become their experience simply by remembering those experiences in your life that had a strong impact on you and that provided a lesson to solve the problem of their needs — then simply communicating that experience and the lesson.

When your experience becomes their experience, you are on your way to delving into those deep, human, emotional aspects of their realities, aspects that are triggers for great results.

You are the absolute expert on your own experience. When that experience becomes a solution to their needs, it’ll become their experience too; and when it does, you’ll have laid the groundwork for becoming an exceptional leader.

2006 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

The author of 23 books, Brent Filson’s recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. - and for more than 21 years has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: “49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results,” at http://www.actionleadership.com and for more on the Leadership Talk: http://www.theleadershiptalk.com

PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.com

“Things is either done, or they ain’t done.” Marlon Sanders

Some of the greatest truths are the most obvious. But they are also the most overlooked. Many of us need to take a look at the importance of facing the facts and accepting that more usually needs to be done to complete whatever we are doing.

It is very easy to kid ourselves that we have done something or finished something when we haven’t. We need to be motivated by taking a thorough look at whatever we are doing to check that it really is finished and finished well.
If you are tired and think you have already done a good job it is tempting to stop work before the job is properly completed.

Whenever I mowed the lawn and considered it mown, I could guarantee that my mother would be able to point out long grass at the edges of the lawn that had not been properly mown.

She was right; the lawn had not been properly cut at the edges. The job was not done. No job can ever be completed perfectly but it should be completed well enough to pass some scrutiny.

Recently, a parcel sent to me at No 19 arrived at No 9. The postman had not bothered to read the number properly. The people at No 9 had to finish his job for him. He had not delivered the mail.

A few months ago, I came across a great account by Martin Avis of a talk given by Marlon Sanders, the great internet guru, in Birmingham, UK in January 2005. My thanks to Martin for giving me permission to copy his account of this talk.

I heard Marlon myself some years ago in London and he knows how to hold an audience. Before he even started his talk, he arranged to have the whole audience blowing bubbles. By the time he started speaking everyone was relaxed and ready to listen.

In Birmingham, Marlon told his listeners to remember:

“There’s only two things that matter:

‘Things is either done, or they ain’t done.’

As Marlon spoke his voice became louder and louder:

“When sumthin’s done you gotta product, you gotta promotion, you got sumthin’ that’s gonna make you money.

“When it ain’t done, it don’t matter if its half done or nearly done or gonna get done someday - IT AIN’T DONE.”

The volume reached the point where people in the hotel next door started paying attention.

“And if it AIN’T DONE, it’s jack.

“DONE equals making money, sitting on the beach, taking long vacations and havin’ fun. DONE equals a smiley face.

“AIN’T DONE equals nothin’. No product, no vacation, no beach, no money and no fun. AIN’T DONE equals a sad face.”

Marlon smiled and knew his point was made.

He said a whole lot more in four hours of sessions over that weekend, but from that day forward the 35 people there will always think in terms of DONE or AIN’T DONE. (Martin’s account ends here.)

Simple but powerful stuff. As usual Marlon goes right to the heart of success.

Success has been described as both doing what you plan to do and also not doing what you plan not to do. It could also be described as “getting it done and not half done.”

Success and failure could be summed up in the immortal words
“DONE or AIN’T DONE.”

About the author

John Watson is an award winning teacher and martial arts instructor. He has recently written two books about achieving your goals and dreams.

They can both be found on his website http://www.motivationtoday.com along with a daily motivational message.

The title of the first book is “36 Laws To Ignite Your Inner Power And Realize Your Dreams Now! - Acronyms, Stories, And Pictures…Easy To Remember And Use Everyday To Grab Your Life And Soar With The Eagles”

The book can be found at this URL: http://www.motivationtoday.com/36_laws.php

The book uses acronyms, stories and pictures to help readers remember 36 laws that can gradually transform your life if you apply them.

You are welcome to publish the article above in your ezine or on your website so long as you do not alter it and keep in the words about the author and the 36 Laws.