10 Characteristics that Separate the Winners from those who Struggle…

This is an interesting article on ten characteristics of winners and we owe it to ourselves to make sure we are accountable for our growth and development if we are interested in advancing in our careers.

1. ENERGETIC: If you want to get ahead, maintain a high commitment to health and fitness. There is a direct connection between sweat and success!
2. PASSIONATE: People with a strong sense of mission and purpose have a strong sense of direction. Perhaps more than any other factor of performance, your passion for your work is a highly visible indicator of long-term success.
3. OPTIMISTIC: To compete successfully in this perform-or-perish global economy requires a positive and enthusiastic attitude. When was the last time you saw a person with a negative, self-defeating attitude get ahead? I have never seen a monument dedicated to a pessimist, have you?
4. SELF-DIRECTED: The ability to connect the dots from your organization’s mission to crystal-clear goals is the hallmark of vision-inspired leadership. People with a poor ability to transform their mission into clear targets spend a great deal of time running in circles, rather than in direct pursuit of the goal.
5. WELL-PLANNED: The ability to make plans to support your goals and objectives is critical the higher up you rise. People with the inability to plan ahead quickly find themselves left behind.
6. FOCUSED: How often do you confuse the urgent with the important? The ability to quickly prioritize projects, tasks and “To Do’s” is a major driver of success, and is a highly visible indicator of your career power. People with a strong ability to focus on getting the right things done, right now, are 8 times more likely to rise to the top of their respective professions than people who are consumed by distractions and urgencies.
7. SUPPORTIVE: The ability to build strong teams and develop powerful interpersonal synergy is a major driver of personal and professional success. If you have strong communication skills, with the ability to share your goals and visions, you are more likely to work at the top than people without those attributes.
8. SYSTEMATIC: It isn’t how hard you work, it’s how smart you produce results that matters. If you frequently confuse effort with results, your career horizons are limited. Find a way to systematically get more done each day, and if nothing else, you’ll drive your co-workers crazy!
9. TIMELY: If you do not have outstanding time management skills, you may want to immediately focus on improving this area of your performance. In an instant-everything internet-driven economy, it is no longer a survival of the fittest model… but a survival of the fastest new world order. A little too little, a little too late might have gotten you by 10 years ago, but is now seen as a fatal flaw.
10. PROACTIVE: If you are frequently seen as someone who is perpetually “getting ready to get ready”, you will not experience the career growth you desire. The key to growth in this action-oriented, hotly-competitive global economy is, in a word, Action! You can quickly rise to the top if you learn to quickly take action, especially in the face of the three great killers of motivation: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

Yes, to successfully compete in today’s results-driven global economy; you need to be Energetic, Passionate, Optimistic, Self-directed, Well-planned, Focused, Supportive, Systematic, Timely and Proactive.

If your performance, day in-day out, could be described with these 10 words, you would not only be the highly successful employee that employers would fight to keep, but have the career of your dreams and would be exposed to opportunities that will even advance your career further.

The line is clearly drawn between people who have the ability to turn their career potential into career power, and those who look outwards for job security and income growth. Therefore, take charge of your career, be the best you can be and be truthful to yourself - get the developmental tools and training needed to become a better you.

E. R. Haas & Kent Madson of ThinkTQ

http://thinktq.com/training/story/tqs_story.cfm?id=706DC54DAED21C266FC9BD9731C747E4