Saturday, April 4, 2009

Are You Surrounded by The Right People?

The quality of your life is, in large part, a function of the people with whom you spend your time.

Never has this truism been more true than in these challenging times. Think of these as whitewater times. Wouldn’t you want to be navigating whitewater with as fine a crew in your raft as possible? Well, why wouldn’t you want to be navigating these tough times with as fine a crew as you can attract?

One of things that I have learned from my years of research on personal peak performers is that:
high performers are very proactive in surrounding themselves with the right team.
Peak performers build and maintain a team that provides quality support in every aspect of their life. Their teams include quality:

1. Mentors
2. Mentees
3. Role Models
4. Mastermind partners
5. Coaches
6. Accountability partners
7. Colleagues
8. Clients or customers
9. Professional advisors
10. Family & friends

In the coming blog posts, I will be sharing how each of these is important to your being the best you can be. For now, I just want to get across the message that:

your performance is a function of the quality of your team.

And, the quality of your team is one of your most important life choices.

So, how great is your team? On a scale of 1-10 (high) in each of the ten kinds of team members, score your current team. If you don’t have anybody in any of the categories (for example, you don’t have anyone is a mentee), give yourself a zero in that category.

If your score is less than 70, than I am confident that you could make a quantum leap in improving your performance, in all dimensions of your life, by putting in place the right team and opening yourself up to absorbing their wisdom.

If your score is more than 70, I am confident that you are someone who is doing well with the talents with which you are blessed. Congratulations! But, even you can improve your results in life by looking at how you can improve the quality of your support team. For example, if you have a coach, have you outgrown your coach? Are any of your mentors losing the impact they have historically had on you? Are you in a Master Mind group that has lost it’s way? Etc. Etc. Lifting your score by twenty percent, will…I am confident…have a concomitant improvement in the results in all dimensions of your life.

Life is a team sport. Our success in life is every bit as much a function of the quality of our team as it is in our singular capabilities. Those who will prosper in these tough times will be those who choose to surround themselves with a great team.

The choice is yours!

Coming Next: In this twelve part series, I will be addressing each of the types of members of a great personal team. In my next blog post, I will be sharing information on Attracting Great Mentors.


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