How Do You Learn To Celebrate With Others Instead of Ignoring Them?

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Scan your heat. Are you really happy and feel like party when a friend of yours calls to share his success with you? If most people were honest, they would probably admit to feelings of jealousy or envy when they witness others’ achievement. You might think that’s true if it’s not a close friends…Well I am afraid that is true no matter how strong the relationship is.  Myself, I’ve fought feelings of jealousy. But here is what I found out: if you want to win with people, you have to learn how to celebrate with them instead of ignoring or undermining them.  How???? This is what I am about to share…take some note.

1. Understand and accept that where you are today is because of the choices you made or continue to make. You need to stop putting the guilt on others. If today you are not where you wanted to be and someone else is, well dig a little bit more and you will see that and one point you made choices and he didn’t. He/she has been willing to pay a price of sacrifice that you haven’t been willing to pay and today it’s nothing but he/she payday.
2. Realize it’s not a competition. When I got married, I have some of my friends that come to me or called me to say they wish to be on the same seat very soon. At first I was like “hold on a minute…I didn’t get married because a friend of mine got married but because I met the heart of my life and couldn’t wait any longer to be united to her as one” but then after reflexion I was actually flattered by those statements.  I’ve realized that nothing of real significance can be accomplished only by one person. Success can be achieved only with others, lessons can be learned only from others, and legacy is left only for others. Whatever one does has an impact on the people around. All we have to do is to choose with our attitude how we we’d like to be impacted: positively or negatively? That’s all it takes to enjoy of someone success.
3. Become a party starter. Becoming a party starter means two things: celebrate your friends’ success and be one of the main organizer and second celebrate even what they don’t see as successful. I remember a year ago my wife got herself a new car (the Toyota Camry 2010). I was very happy for her but was wondering how I can show her my happiness. Then what I did was throwing a surprise party for her and I invited all her close friends at our place on Sunday while she was still at church. For her, buying a new car wasn’t much a sign of success even if she had to cut on some things to afford. She neglected the price of sacrifice she was paying and what I did and she appreciated very much was to show us that those little things that you do but tend not to consider as success are for us the real definition if what success really means. That worked for my wife and would work for any other person whether it’s a colleague, teammate, brother, sister, client, or boss.
4. Encourage, show support. When I watched the VMA (Video Music Awards) or the Oscars, there one thing that touched me the most: the people behind the scene whose names are pronounced by the winners as sign of gratefulness. Sometimes we think that we need to be part of the team to encourage or that we have to win something to encourage a peer. Well, what I notice is that when you show that you care and encourage someone to succeed, when that person succeeds, he/she most of the time will acknowledge the part you played in helping him/her succeed and his/her success become the success of the two of you.

I’ve learned from one the self-help book that I read the following: “A genuine friend encourages and challenges us to live out our best thoughts, honor our purest motives, and achieve our most significant dreams.” I believe that’s what we need to do with the most important people in our lives and maybe with simply everyone in our lives.

What do you think?

Is Reaching Success More About WHAT You Know or WHO You Know?

From the title itself, you can tell reaching success has to be one way or the other linked to the verb “to know” whether it means acquiring and having the knowledge or being connected to a person of influence. When I decided launching my company at Act2be.com in helping people and organizations find the Expert they need in sales, management, leadership, fitness and relationships in the US,  in France, and in Africa, one of the first actions I did take was to check what I knew about the targeted market, about the industry, and about the competition. At my very first business approach, the discussion was 90% about who do you know that I need to know and 20% about what is that I want to offer.

Last week-end I had a business meeting at my house with a person of influence in one of the main beverage company in Cameroon (Africa) and I introduced my business and we talked about how to serve that company business interests. Again, the discussion turned around who will give credit to  my service.

When I was Organizational Leader few years ago at the Southwestern Company, the main focus when prospecting, approaching, and signing up people was in getting names. With names it was lot easier to get other names, to sign up more deals, and to make more money.

Yesterday, I was having a phone conversation with a long-time friend of mine that I haven’t heard from since college. He works as account executive for a bank in Paris (France) today and when I asked him how he made it there he said at the job interview there were five other applicants with pretty much the same background but none of the others had an inside connection.

All those to say that, I believe education and knowledge is accessible to all. Whatever you do, whatever business you come up with today, someone else can reproduce it beat you on your market. But what can keep you on a safe seat and take you to success at whatever you can do or don’t know what to do but can learn how to do, is the level of influence people you know and the strength of the relationships you built with those people.

Is knowledge power? I personally don’t think so. I think relationship is power. What do you think?

Have You Lost Someone’s Confidence or Trust? Here Is How To Get It Back

At my wedding, I received so much gifts from friends, relatives, and people from my professional network that I ended up losing track of who offered what. Worse, I was so into the gift that I was paying much attention to who was the sender. As I sent out the thank you note, I left out a group of friends that actually moved mountains to attend to my wedding and I didn’t realize it until they give me a call to remind me: “how come we didn’t receive the your thank you note?”. After the call, I was devastated.

A good friend of mine who works as VP of International Sales for a video company called me once and said he screwed up. I replied: “OK! so what do you need from me?” And he said: “I can’t afford to loose this client, tell me how I can turn a screw up into a stronger relationship.”

I personally believe, one day or the other, we all screw up and this might be justified by our busy schedule, our lack of attention, our unawareness of relationships skills… Screwing up a relationship (professional, friendship, intimate) can make you loose a lot such as the person or organization’s trust or it can affect your rate on how reliable and accountable people see you.  So, how to gain back someone confidence and turn a screw up into a stronger relationship?

• Move first – Some people notice when they screw up and try to hide it which of course doesn’t help. What need to be done is to be an early bird. As soon as you notice your mistake, go out and reach to the people and apology. Do not wait for them to come to you. Moving first reveal a sort of humility and a request for apologizes that people will be sensitive to.
• Take responsibilities – Do not try to deny or to explain your fault. Just accept your fault, take responsibility, excuse yourself, and show respect and understanding to the person feedback about your screw up.
• Fix your mess – The first step in fixing your mess is in acknowledging your negligence. Once done, who you want to do next is to promise that it won’t happen again. BUT! BUT! BUT! Do not promise what you can’t or won’t deliver. You don’t to open the door to another future screw up so when you promise make a little start saying that: “mistakes happens and if this one happens again please understand it means that I’ve been facing a bigger issue.” Whatever you say, do not over promise that way you’ll never be in an under-delivering situation.
• Move forward – There is no point and it’s not even professional to talk about a mistake over and over. Once you recognize your fault, apology for it and made realistic promises, then wrap it up and change subjects. Try to choose a subject of great interest for the other person.

Screw ups happen and what is more important is how we handle them. Do you have any other suggestions?