KEEP YOUR ENEMY CLOSE

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Everyone knows the saying, everyone likes to say it thinking they're Al Pacino, and almost everyone doesn't know what it really means. I say almost everyone because all the wise guys from Vegas to Rochester know that not knowing its meaning can result in a nice screwing where the sun don't shine. Catch my drift?

Keeping your enemies close doesn't eliminate the problem of having enemies in the first place (and if you're sitting there smiling like a clown thinking you don't have enemies because you're such a sweet guy, I've got news for you -- if you don't have enemies, it's because no one thinks you're significant enough to worry about). Any man with direction in his life will have enemies, but keeping them close can prevent an unexpected strike. It doesn't take Einstein to figure out that the toughest and most destructive blow comes when it's unexpected.

Who is your enemy?

So before you keep close tabs on certain people, figure out who qualifies to be on your exclusive enemy list. If I were summing it up for a moron (are you listening Vincenzo?), I'd tell him that an enemy is anyone who doesn't support him.

It can be a friend, business partner or even family. An enemy is anyone who will give you the evil eye or who has even entertained the idea of how much fun it would be to put a voodoo curse on your head.

The more powerful you become, the bigger the list of nemeses because you become a bigger target or opponent for someone else, whether it's the suit in the cubicle next to you or a rival captain in your famiglia. It's a Catch-22 of success: The more successful you are, the more people there will be lining up with baseball bats earmarked for your head, and the harder you'll fall if you don't keep track of what your enemies are up to.

And take it from someone with experience: Just about everyone is a potential enemy or backstabber. In fact, the guy with the biggest smile and the largest slap on your back is usually the one with the sharpest knife.

Why keep him close?

Now, let's be realistic. We can't all keep our enemies close. I don't see George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein having Sunday brunch together, no matter how much Bushie (that's what they call him in Washington) wants to know everything about Saddam, including how many hairs he has spurting out of his nose.

But most enemies (especially the ones that cause the most damage) come from your inner circle, so you can easily keep your eye on these guys. It's important that you don't break the lines of communication with them (I'm sounding like a freakin' sex therapist).

Keep tabs on your enemies. Staying in touch, talking with them (even briefly) and reading their body language are some of the ways you can get a sense of the cafones' true intentions. Any information is potential ammo for me.

LIFE IS WHAT YOU MAKE FOR IT

I’m not perfect. I make mistakes and I say things I don’t mean. I have an indecisive and over analytic brain that’s beyond my control, even though I always try to control it. My heart only speaks for itself and once it’s got it’s own mindset, there’s nothing I can do to change it. There’s two sides of me; the side that everyone sees and the side that only a handful of people really get to know. I’m not a judgmental person, but I’ve been guilty of judging a book by its cover. 

Sometimes I lie because I’m too scared for people to see what’s really hidden behind closed doors. I can be pushy, selfish, and overconfident. But also, I can be beyond negative, careless, and I can feel as if all the weight in the world is placed on my shoulders. I can be the happiest person on this planet, but also I can feel as if I’m just done with everything. I get good grades but I also get bad ones.

I’m not a perfect person and throughout my whole life I’m going to be disappointed, brought down, and discouraged. However, I’m also going to disappoint, bring down, and discourage. Life is full of ups, downs, lefts, and rights. It’s full of lessons and it’s full of mysteries. Achieving perfection is nothing but a myth. The only way we can really achieve perfection is by making our own definition. I guess all I’m trying to say is I’m only human — along with everybody in this world. I’ll continuously hurt and be hurt, laugh and make someone laugh, and also love and be loved. It is what it is. Life’s only what you make of it.

You only get as much as you put into it. So don’t waste time dwelling on how imperfect life can be, but just keep trying on making it your definition of perfect. People can only give you so much advice, but when it all comes down to it the decision will always be yours. We can only lay out the blue prints, but you’re the one who executes the plan.

PRISON TO PARADISE

This article was published in The Blue Spruce.

From Prison to Paradise

Written by Lewis Carlyle

FIVE years ago, Wally

FIVE years ago, Wally Long stepped out of prison without a dime to his name. Today, he’s one of the most successful business owners in the state of Colorado. He travels the nation giving motivational speeches, coaching business owners on methods for success, and is in the final stages of his autobiography, From Prison to Paradise.

“I was broke and drunk for twenty years,” Long recalls as he sips coffee with his family in the living room of their log cabin in the hills of Woodland Park. “And out of those twenty years I spent about 13 in and out of federal and state prison.” Long came to Colorado in 1987 as a 23 year old high school drop out. “One night I picked up a hitch hiker, and two hours later he and I were robbing two guys coming out of a restaurant.

There was a low speed chase for about an hour and then a big scene in Castle Rock where they had us spread out on I25.” Serving four years of an eight year sentence, Long emerged from his first stint in prison in 1991.

“At that point, I hadn’t learned anything, in fact I was worse. I had a huge chip on my shoulder. When I was younger I thought I was going to do some cool things with my life; but after getting out of prison I had kind of adopted that I was a criminal. I was out for a year when I went back to prison. From 1987 to 1996, I spent about six of those nine years locked up.”

In June of 1996, Wally Long was in federal custody on an indictment for mail fraud when his father passed away. “That was my epiphany,” recalls Long, “my moment of clarity. I was a three time loser, facing seven more years in prison, my son was three years old, his mother and I were not getting along, I had no education, no money, no future. . . And then something interesting happened. In the days following my dad’s death, I began to stop and think: my father’s last memory of me was that I was in prison again. Looking back, I realized how pathetic I must have looked in his eyes.”

At that point, Long decided it was time to start searching for an answer. He took solace in three books that would soon change his life: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey, You Can Work Your Own Miracles, by Napoleon Hill, and Real Magic, by Wayne Dyer. “The lesson I took from these books was that we’re all completely responsible for our own actions. I had spent my entire young life blaming the judges and the prosecutors and all these other people, and never taking responsibility for my own actions.”

Long then began to learn about the law of attraction, which is theorized in the writings of Napoleon Hill and Wayne Dyer. “We create our lives by the nature of our thoughts,” says Long, “so I began to write out what an awesome life for me would look like, down to the last detail.”

Long’s list consisted of a home, a loving wife, an education, financial stability, and perhaps most important, that he was a man of character. “All of these things seemed a one in a million shot for me,” Long recalls. “But I would read this list, meditate on it, and visualize it every day for seven years.”

Since there was little he could do about building a financial empire while in prison, Long concentrated on pursuing one very important precursor: education. “I tell people I went to jail, not Yale,” Long says with a smile. “I went to the state pen, not Penn State.” During the final years of his incarceration, Long used a small inheritance from his grandmother to take correspondence courses and earn enough credits for a law degree and an MBA. “It was actually quite funny,” Long remembers fondly, “I would get a final exam and the cops would take me into an empty cell, pat me down and lock the door, and that’s how they would proctor my exams. I used to crack up wondering how many law students got a full shake down before they went to take their finals.”

When he finally emerged from prison five years ago, Wally Long had a new lease on life. “Everything that I had visualized for those seven years, I would take consistent action towards achieving. I wouldn’t do anything that was counter intuitive or hypocritical.”

Things were not easy at first. Long struggled for six months to find a job. Having a serious criminal record did not work in his favor, especially in a post 9 Eleven environment. “Recently, there have been so many violent situations in institutional, work place, and educational environments that employers are very sensitive

to the liability of hiring a former convict.”

When he did manage to find work at a local heating and air conditioning store, Long was quick to recognize that many of the business’s methods could use improvement. Drawing upon his education, he presented a newly designed marketing and customer service module to the owners. His ideas, however, fell upon deaf ears. Over the next few months,

Long approached every HVAC business in town with his new plan, again to no avail. It was then he decided to take matters into his own hands. With the help of his wife, Janet, Long started his own company from his living room. “Our first office,” recalls Janet, “was a card table with a few folding chairs and a phone.” Regardless of its meager beginnings, the company amassed over two million dollars in sales within the first year. Year two: three and half million.

By this time, Long was a major player in the HVAC market, and began buying the very companies which had closed their doors to him not two years prior. “It wasn’t always easy,” Long remembers, “there were times when we were making payroll on personal credit cards. Looking back, I just believed there was a cooperation from the universal energy that kept pushing me along. We would put one foot in front of the other; we stayed sober, stayed focused, and refused to compromise on our principals of service. And things just unfolded. It’s been amazing. People always ask me: ‘how did you do it?’ And the truth is, I just believed it for so many years.” Today, Long and his wife, Janet, own a home on Maui, a string of Papa Murphy’s Pizza restaurants in Denver, Wright Total Indoor Comfort (one of the largest heating and cooling businesses in the state), and ITSUP2U Media. “I have a business partner in Denver who, ironically, is an ex-cop,” Long says fondly of his partner.

 About a year ago, Long’s constituents convinced him to begin putting his story down on paper. He soon conceived Prison to Paradise, an autobiographic reflection of one criminal’s transformation into one of the most successful business owners in Colorado. “People need to know that you can change your life by changing your thoughts,” Long recalls. Setting out upon his long term goal of writing a book on the shores of Hawaii, Long wrote 2000 words a day at his home in Maui. Today, the book is in the early stages of publication, and still adheres to Long’s most important message: “Take responsibility for your actions. Elevate your thinking and create your own destiny, whatever it may be.”

10 COMMON LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT MISTAKES AVOIDING UNIVERSAL PITFALLS

It's often said that mistakes provide great learning opportunities. However, it's much better not to make mistakes in the first place!

In this article, we're looking at 10 of the most common leadership and management errors, and highlighting what you can do to avoid them. If you can learn about these here, rather than through experience, you'll save yourself a lot of trouble!

1. Lack of Feedback

Sarah is a talented sales representative, but she has a habit of answering the phone in an unprofessional manner. Her boss is aware of this, but he's waiting for her performance review to tell her where she's going wrong. Unfortunately, until she's been alerted to the problem, she'll continue putting off potential customers.

According to 1,400 executives polled by The Ken Blanchard Companies, failing to provide feedback is the most common mistake that leaders make. When you don't provide prompt feedback to your people, you're depriving them of the opportunity to improve their performance.

To avoid this mistake, learn how to provide regular feedback to your team. (You can use our Bite-Sized Training session on Giving Feedback to gain an in-depth understanding of feedback, and to learn how to provide it effectively.)

2. Not Making Time for Your Team

When you're a manager or leader, it's easy to get so wrapped up in your own workload that you don't make yourself available to your team.

Yes, you have projects that you need to deliver. But your people must come first – without you being available when they need you, your people won't know what to do, and they won't have the support and guidance that they need to meet their objectives.

Avoid this mistake by blocking out time in your schedule specifically for your people, and by learning how to listen actively to your team. Develop your emotional intelligence so that you can be more aware of your team and their needs, and have a regular time when "your door is always open", so that your people know when they can get your help. You can also use Management By Walking Around, which is an effective way to stay in touch with your team.

Once you're in a leadership or management role, your team should always come first - this is, at heart, what good leadership is all about! 

3. Being Too "Hands-Off"

One of your team has just completed an important project. The problem is that he misunderstood the project's specification, and you didn't stay in touch with him as he was working on it. Now, he's completed the project in the wrong way, and you're faced with explaining this to an angry client. 

Many leaders want to avoid micromanagement. But going to the opposite extreme (with a hand-offs management style) isn't a good idea either – you need to get the balance right.

Our article, Laissez Faire versus Micromanagement will help you find the right balance for your own situation.

4. Being Too Friendly

Most of us want to be seen as friendly and approachable to people in our team. After all, people are happier working for a manager that they get on with. However, you'll sometimes have to make tough decisions regarding people in your team, and some people will be tempted to take advantage of your relationship if you're too friendly with them.

This doesn't mean that you can't socialize with your people. But, you do need to get the balance right between being a friend and being the boss. 

Learn how to do avoid this mistake with our article, Now You're the Boss. Also, make sure that you set clear boundaries, so that team members aren't tempted to take advantage of you. 

5. Failing to Define Goals

When your people don't have clear goals, they muddle through their day. They can't be productive if they have no idea what they're working for, or what their work means. They also can't prioritize their workload effectively, meaning that projects and tasks get completed in the wrong order.

Avoid this mistake by learning how to set SMART goals for your team. Use a Team Charter to specify where your team is going, and detail the resources it can draw upon. Also, use principles from Management by Objectives to align your team's goals to the mission of the organization. 

6. Misunderstanding Motivation

Do you know what truly motivates your team? Here's a hint: chances are, it's not just money!

Many leaders make the mistake of assuming that their team is only working for monetary reward. However, it's unlikely that this will be the only thing that motivates them. 

For example, people seeking a greater work/life balance might be motivated by telecommuting days or flexible working. Others will be motivated by factors such as achievement, extra responsibility, praise, or a sense of camaraderie.

To find out what truly drives your people, read our articles on McClelland's Human Motivation Theory and Theory X and Theory Y. Then take our test "How Good Are Your Motivation Skills?" to learn how to be a great motivator of people.

7. Hurrying Recruitment

When your team has a large workload, it's important to have a full team. But filling a vacant role too quickly can be a disastrous mistake. 

Hurrying recruitment can lead to recruiting the wrong people for your team: people who are uncooperative, ineffective or unproductive. They might also require additional training, and slow down others on your team. With the wrong person, you'll have wasted valuable time and resources if things don't work out and they leave. What's worse, other team members will be stressed and frustrated by having to "carry" the under-performer.

You can avoid this mistake by learning how to recruit effectively, and by being particularly picky about the people you bring into your team. 

8. Not "Walking the Walk"

If you make personal telephone calls during work time, or speak negatively about your CEO, can you expect people on your team not to do this too? Probably not!

As a leader, you need to be a role model for your team. This means that if they need to stay late, you should also stay late to help them. Or, if your organization has a rule that no one eats at their desk, then set the example and head to the break room every day for lunch. The same goes for your attitude – if you're negative some of the time, you can't expect your people not to be negative. 

So remember, your team is watching you all the time. If you want to shape their behavior, start with your own. They'll follow suit.

9. Not Delegating

Some managers don't delegate, because they feel that no-one apart from themselves can do key jobs properly. This can cause huge problems as work bottlenecks around them, and as they become stressed and burned out.

Delegation does take a lot of effort up-front, and it can be hard to trust your team to do the work correctly. But unless you delegate tasks, you're never going to have time to focus on the "broader-view" that most leaders and managers are responsible for. What's more, you'll fail to develop your people so that they can take the pressure off you.

To find out if this is a problem for you, take our interactive quiz, How Well Do You Delegate? If you need to improve your skills, you can then learn key strategies with our articles, Successful Delegation, and The Delegation Dilemma. 

10. Misunderstanding Your Role

Once you become a leader or manager, your responsibilities are very different from those you had before. 

However, it's easy to forget that your job has changed, and that you now have to use a different set of skills to be effective. This leads to you not doing what you've been hired to do – leading and managing.

Our articles Now You're The Boss and From Technical Expert to Manager provide more information on the additional skills that you need to develop to be an effective manager. Make sure that you learn these skills – you'll fail if you try to rely on technical skills alone, however good they are!

Key Points

We all make mistakes, and there are some mistakes that leaders and managers make in particular. These include, not giving good feedback, being too "hands-off," not delegating effectively, and misunderstanding your role.

It's true that making a mistake can be a learning opportunity. But, taking the time to learn how to recognize and avoid common mistakes can help you become productive and successful, and highly respected by your team.