Who You Are Is Who You Attract and Connections- Jennifer Pool

I am on week 5 of my 10 week Leadership training with Scott Speight and LOVING IT!!!  We are discussing The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell. (revised and updated 10th anniversary addition) If you do not have this book.... I suggest getting it! There is so much I want to catch up on from the prior meetings but I would sit here for days and still not be done sharing everything with you that I have taken away from this!!

Scott is a leadership and life coach from Jacksonville, FL. He has been speaking to audiences of all sizes and on a variety of topics for over 20 years. He is passionate about coaching individuals and organizations to Live Beyond Limits.  

Today he talked about, Who You Are Is Who You Attract. Do you want someone like you in your business? Or do you want someone with different strengths?

Think about it... someone with different strengths than you can open up doors!! You want to create the ideal business partner. Don’t EVER pre-judge anyone. You want people who believe what we believe but think different thoughts.

You may be saying to yourself, I’m not crazy about the people I am attracting. Am I stuck with my situation? NO!!! If you are dissatisfied with the leadership ability of people you are attracting, then work to increase your leadership skill. If you want to grow an organization, grow the leader. If you find the people you attract to be unreliable or untrustworthy, then examine your character. Developing stronger character can be a more difficult road, but the payoff is huge. Good character improves every aspect of a person’s life.

The other topic we talked about today is connection. Leaders touch a heart before they ask for a hand.  It is a must to connect with more on a heart level. But the first heart you must touch is your own.

How do you connect? Whether you’re speaking in front of a large audience or chatting in the hallway with an individual, the guidelines are the same:

1.  Connect With Yourself
You must know who you are and have confidence in yourself if you desire to connect with others. Be confident and be yourself. If you don’t believe in who you are and where you want to lead, work on that before doing anything else.

2.  Communicate With Openness And Sincerity
People can smell a phony a mile away.

 3.  Know Your Audience
When you work with individuals, knowing your audience means learning people’s names, finding out about their histories, asking about their dreams. You want to speak to what they care about, not just what you care about.

 4.  Live Your Message
The most important thing you can do as a leader and communicator is to practice what you preach. That is where credibility comes from.

 5.  Go To Where They Are
Try and speak the other persons language. Go to where they are. Try to be attuned to others’ culture, background, education, and so on. Adapt to others. Don’t expect them to adapt to you.

 6.  Focus On Them, Not Yourself
The number one problem of inexperienced speakers is they focus on themselves, not others. You will always connect faster when your focus in not on you.

7.   Believe In Them
It’s one thing to communicate to people because you believe you have something of value to say. It’s another to communicate with people because you believe they have value. People’s opinion of us, leaders, has less to do with what they see in us than it does with what we can help them see in themselves.

 8.  Offer Direction And Hope
People expect leaders to help them get where they want to go. But good leaders do that and more!!! When you give people hope , you give them a future!!!

~Jennifer Pool