Horizon Point Consulting

Category: General

Horizon Point writes about dozens of leadership, career, workplace, and workforce topics. Sometimes we write whatever we want. Read this category for general blogs from the HPC team.

  • Leadership Lessons from College Football

    WHAT NICK SABAN HAS TO SAY ABOUT DOING THE LITTLE THINGS RIGHT

    With football season fast approaching, my house is all-abuzz with excitement.  You would think my husband (and my dad, and my brother, and well, most of men in my life) were five year olds anxiously awaiting Santa coming down the chimney.

    With the all the buzz, my husband’s inbox, twitter feed, and texts have been dinging football talk, and I get forwarded anything that he feels is a “must know” for this season.  Every good wife in the state of Alabama surely needs to know what high school standout Nick Saban has just signed, right? We also need a daily countdown of how many days (and even hours) it is until the season kicks off.

    But a few weeks ago, he emailed me a story about Nick Saban, with the words “You need to use this article for a blog post.”   It was about Nick Saban speaking to a group of Mercedes Benz employees.  The Mercedes plant is just a few miles outside of the home of the Crimson Tide, and Saban was there to talk in a ceremony where the “steering wheel” of the plant was being handed over to a new Mercedes North American President.

    He praised the workers of the plant for their 99.4% attendance rate, but discussed how with each success, such as 3 out 4 of the last National Championships in the highly competitive college football arena, the next success becomes harder to achieve.

    Do the little things right

    What struck me as the most important take-away from what he said about that nearly perfect attendance rate is that success comes from doing the little things right, like simply showing up.   Want to be a champion? You’ve got to show up before you can even begin the hard work of getting there.   Want to be a champion?  Well you’ve got to continue to show up even when you think, or even when you know through your winning record, that you’re the best in the business.    Want to be champion?  Its actually harder to do the little things right when things are going well than when they aren’t.

    In working to coach individuals towards success, my focus more than anything is on helping them create habits to create success.   These aren’t ground-breaking habits, but simple ones like showing up, doing small things right consistently in order to create performance cultures.  Its not rocket science, it’s the science of habit and behavior. But like Saban, I find that the habit breaking happens more when the habits have created success and the thought process becomes, “Well I’ve gotten success, I don’t need to do this anymore.”  And then the success diminishes.

    If you want to be a championship-like leader, keep your eye on the ball.  And that ball encompasses the small things, like showing up 99.4% or more of the time.

    What habits do you find are the most important to your long-term success?

     

    More next week on what Saban has to say about being around mediocre people.

  • Beyond the Lemonade Stand

    Beyond the Lemonade Stand

    ENTREPRENEURSHIP AS A CAREER EXPLORATION STRATEGY

    Information Interviews, Job Shadowing and Internships are all a great way to learn more about your career interests. If you want to put your career exploration in full throttle, consider working for yourself in high school or college in an area that interests you as well as where you can provide a marketable service or product.

     

    An Example:

    While interviewing students for a highly competitive ambassadors program at a high school, the interview panel came across a student that ended up being at the top of the heap of candidates.  Why? She demonstrated her ability to be a self-starter and a hard worker through her business.  That’s right, she’s 16 and owns her own business.  She’s a dancer and realized that there was a huge need for people to cut recordings of music for dance competitions.  She bought some software to do this and taught herself how to cut and mix music.   She loves it, is learning more about the field, and is making money.

    Where could you be a student entrepreneur?

    • Like video games?  Teach yourself to code and design your own to market. Same goes for apps.  Outsource your coding services to businesses that need it.
    • Are you a social media fanatic?   Who would pay you to post for their business to in order build their brand?
    • Interested in accounting?  Take a class in high school or college and see if you can get small businesses to outsource their book keeping to you.
    • Considering being a writer?  Explore where you can submit freelance pieces. How about an editor?  Explore where you can proof articles on contract.
    • Want to design things? Make stuff and sell it on Etsy or explore where your services like graphic design could be contracted out to others.
    • Want to be a baker or chef?  Where can you market your cakes/pastries/desserts to an already open storefront for them to sell directly to the public?
    • Want to get into the business side of the medical field?  Learn medical coding, billing, or transcription and explore doctors’ offices that would like to outsource this to you.
    • Have a knack for fixing things?  Market yourself online as a resource for fixing anything from cars, to toys to computers.

    There is no need to wait to explore career fields, the best way to learn if you like something or not is to do it!  Sell that lemonade!

    What type of work would you want to do as an entrepreneur?

  • August Leadership Carnival- Best Advice for New Leaders

    “The most important thing: Get to know and care about the people you are leading/managing. Who are they, what they like and don’t like, what they are most proud of, what their strengths and weaknesses are, how they see themselves contributing to the overall success of the organization, etc.  Leaders make more leaders and realize that results are achieved through people, not task lists.  If you don’t know your people, they won’t do their best for you.  Read Leadership and Self-Deception for more food for thought on seeing people as people.

  • How To Replace The Lies In Your Head

    How To Replace The Lies In Your Head

    Every day we hear little lies within our minds. We often tell ourselves that we’re not good enough, we don’t have the money, or that no one cares about us.

    You may not realize this. But those words are lies!

    These lies are what hold us back as we progress in our leadership. We tell ourselves these things so we’ll have excuses as to why we’re not getting things done or leading better.

    There’s some bad news and then there’s some good news. Let’s go over the bad news first.

    The Bad News

    I like to start with bad news because it shows us what the problem is. The bad news is that we talk down to ourselves. A LOT! More than we deserve.

    We’re able to shame ourselves or sell ourselves short. Our mind plays the game either due to confidence issues or because we fear the success and responsibility that will come as we take bigger and bolder steps.

    When we use negative self-talk, our effectiveness begins to decrease. We second guess our decisions, find reasons that our newest venture won’t work, or why people won’t follow us.

    That’s the bad news. Sounds pretty bleak, huh?

    Don’t worry faithful reader! There’s also good news. Great news, in fact.

    The Good (Great) News

    Whew, we got the bad news out of the way. But that’s good. Now we’re able to get to the good, or great, news.

    The good news is that we can change the way we talk to ourselves and rid our minds of the lies we’re telling ourselves.

    We can replace lies with truth that will help us succeed and thrive. Now that’s good news, right?

    Keep track of your successes: An easy lie that gets inside of our heads is that we don’t have any success in what we’re doing. Whether or not that’s true depends on how long you’ve been doing what you’re attempting.

    However, that doesn’t really matter. You can look back on past success and see that you’ve accomplished tasks you had never attempted before. So why should this be any different?

    Allow yourself to reflect on the past and see how far you’ve come. You’ll see you’re successful in more ways than you realize.

    Get rid of negative friends: This may seem harsh but it’s true. Negative friends have a way to bring us down and their negative words can create strongholds in our minds that help create the lies we believe.

    Instead, find friends who will uplift you and encourage your giftings. Before you know it, you can have a new mindset and the lies will come at you less and less.

    Stop reading your own reviews: You might not have a book or an open forum where people criticize what you’ve done. But you may walk into places and hear people talking negatively about something you’ve done.

    Stop going to those places. Stop visiting the review page. Stop letting other people dictate your self-worth.

    One of the craziest things about our minds is that we can see 1000 positive reviews/thank yous/letters and they won’t mean a thing when we hear one negative word spoken against us.

    Find a way to block out the negativity coming at you. You’ll be better off for it.

    As you begin to shift your mindset and environment, you’ll discover that the lies will begin to dissipate. I can’t guarantee you that they’ll be gone. As a matter of fact, they’ll still try to peak their head in time and again.

    Instead, you’ll have realized that you can control your way of thinking and listen to the lies less and less.

    Question: What do you do to combat the lies in your head? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

     

    This is a guest post by Joseph Lalonde. He is a youth leader at Oak Crest Church of God and leadership blogger at JMLalonde.com. Joseph shares leadership tools and encourages you to become a better leader. Connect with him on Twitter or at his blog.

  • 3 Steps to an Internship Game Plan

    Internships are a must these days.

    Internships are becoming the best way to strengthen your job prospects.  With statistics showing high rates ofunemployment and underemployment (in other words, you have a degree and you’re working in a job that doesn’t require one) for recent college grads, a key way to distinguish yourself in the job market, beyond pursuing an in-demand field is to get relevant experience.  Interning is a great way to do this.

    3 Steps to an Internship Game Plan

    I highly recommend the book, All Work, No Pay, to help you get an internship game plan, but here are some brief steps you need to take:

    1. Search-  You need to start your search about 6 months before you want to start interning, if not more.  So, for example, if you want to intern in the spring semester, you need to begin your search at the beginning of the fall semester. If you are in college, start first with your college career center.  They more than likely have employers that frequently source interns through them.  I found my internship in college through the on-campus career center.

    • Search for internships in your field.  Some great sites that allow you to search by industry areinternqueen.com, and internmatch.com.
    •  Search by the geographic area you are interested in.  Both of the above sites have ways to search by city and state. You can also do a Google search for internships in that area.  For example, we recently worked with a student who was interested in the music industry and realized Nashville was a good place to consider job opportunities in this field.  We referred her to the Chamber of Commerce site in Nashville to search for internship opportunities.   The Chamber of Commerce site in the area is usually a good place to start a geographic-based internship search.
    • Search by your dream company.   Want to get a job at ESPN in sports broadcasting?  One of our recent students did.   We recommended she try to get her foot in the door by interning with the sports broadcasting giant.  Go directly to your dream company’s website to search for internship opportunities.

    2. Apply- You will need a great resume and cover letter do this and you may be asked to submit work samples depending on the field you are pursuing.  Again, your campus career center should be able to help you with your resume and can usually provide assistance in reading through or organizing work samples.  Make sure you get other people to review and critique anything you are going to submit. Here’s a worksheet you can download to help you make sure your resume is results oriented.

    3. Knock their socks off!- You knock their socks off, in an interview and/or through the materials you submit to them, by:

    • Expressing true excitement about the opportunity.  You are better equipped to do this if you have already researched the company and have truly assessed your talents, passions and values to understand how they align with the company’s mission and values.
    • Being willing to do whatever it takes to do a good job and learn as much as you can.   Selection for internships spots, unlike full-time openings, is more about the will (or desire) to do the job than the skill (experience) you have.

     

    What advice do you have for people wanting to land an internship?