“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.”
-Foster C. McClellan

Your behaviors determine your future. In the words of Horace Mann, “A behavior is a cable; we weave a thread each day, and at last we cannot break it.”  We all face defining moments that can transform our careers and lives. Personal effectiveness and personal accountability are all part of developing and maintaining the behaviors that will lead to your success. Develop the behavior of enthusiastic focused action, and your path to for personal effectiveness will become clear and unobstructed.

Look closely at the behaviors that are holding you back from reaching your peak professional presence and personal effectiveness. You can probably think of a few right away. Here are some common behaviors that negatively impact professional presence, courtesy of The Power of Focus, by Jack Canfield.  Do you see yourself in any of these?

• Not returning phone calls on time.
• Being late for meetings and appointments.
• Poor communication between colleagues and staff.
• Never updating your website.
• Not allowing enough travel time when going to meet clients or prospects for outside appointments.
• Not attending to paperwork quickly and efficiently.
• Wasting time on the Internet.
• Allowing bills to go unpaid, resulting in high interest penalties.
• Not following  up consistently on long overdue receivables.
• Talking instead of listening.
• Forgetting someone’s name sixty seconds (or less) after being introduced.
• Hitting the snooze alarm several times in the morning before getting out of bed.
• Working long days with no exercise or taking regular breaks.
• Not spending enough time with your children.
• Having a fast-food meals program that often is Monday to Friday.
• Eating at irregular times of the day.
• Leaving home in the morning without hugging your wife, husband, children and/or dog.
• Taking work home with you every day, or working all hours, every day, without conscious breaks for the rest of your life.
• Being glued to your phone when having dinner with your spouse.
• Making reservations at the last minute.
• Not following through on requests as promised.
• Not taking enough time off for fun and family-guilt free!
• Not cleaning up your emails. Remember, that’s just a virtual task queue!
• Controlling every decision, especially the small stuff you need to let go of!
Procrastinating on everything from filing taxes to cleaning out your garage.
• As we often have talked about here at EDSI in our blog, our materials, and programs, is that your outward behavior reflects the real you. Your inner perception of yourself can’t be recognized by others if your behaviors and behaviors don’t reflect who you are (or who you think you are).

Successful people develop successful behaviors, and here is how they do it.

Clearly identify your bad or unproductive behaviors.
Be brutally honest with yourself about your professional and personal behaviors, and how they are likely impacting your personal effectiveness and professional presence. Do you need to improve your active listening skills? How are you doing at giving consistent, positive feedback to your staff? Does your physical presence accurately convey your professionalism and potential?

Define your new successful behavior.
Your success is dependent on filling your current bad behavior space with a good behavior. What will yours be? If you talk over others in meetings, what will you do next time you get the urge to interrupt? If your behavior is to only give negative feedback in negative situations, how can you start to recognize opportunities to consistently inject positive feedback?

Create a three-part action plan.
Make a decision about which specific  actions you are going to implement and when. You must take action. Start with one behavior that you really want to change and focus on 3 immediate action steps and put them into practice. Remember, nothing will change until you do.

At EDSI, we have been resolving employee development, leadership, generational, professional presence, and personal effectiveness issues for over 30 years. Contact us to learn how we can help increase productivity and profits in your organization. Call info@edsiusa.com | 800-282-3374

 We deliver results-oriented training programs that increase productivity, effectiveness, & performance. Call 800.282.3374.