After 40 years in the martial arts, I have learned that balance of mind, body and spirit is absolutely critical.  In the physical realm, without balance one over extends in striking actions and ultimately may fall. If there is no balance in the mind one will allow fear to overcome and lack of self-discipline to take over.  And with no spiritual balance one may get into things that can destroy families and relationships.

We see evidence of poor balance and lack of integrity in many areas of life, from hearing about recent religious figures who are unfaithful to prominent sports figure who lose their balance and sell off their integrity for a few moments of pleasure.  Leaders need to know that they affect not only themselves but also their teams, organizations, family and friends.

In the martial arts we teach the law of action and reaction.

That for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  When I teach youth groups I give a simple example with a ball by just bouncing it on the floor and then catching it. The throw down is the action and my catching the ball is the reaction.  I then bounce the ball again and I say “Choice, result.”

Each choice we make will produce a result.  So leaders, be careful with the choices and decisions you make as many are counting on your integrity of choice.

I know all of us have in some way have felt the impact of this economic downturn,  whether it has affected friends, family or affected us in a personal manner.  This economic meltdown has certainly affected me over the last two years.

I was involved in the southwest Florida real estate market when it dropped over 50% and it literally happened overnight.  The last two years have been very difficult for me and my wife, Marcia. We have been paralyzed by fear and like many others in this country our faith has been tested down to our very core.

You know FEAR is simply False, Evidence, Appearing, Real and many times God does not say he will remove the fear or the adversity but he will walk with us through it.  If he removed every adversity we would never grow.  I always loved the poem “Foot Prints” as I can always picture him carrying me through the difficult times. “The best way out is always through.” Robert Frost

Well, I have some good news – after a few moves and false starts we have landed in Dallas, TX area and with the help of some old friends and the good Lord answering many, many prayers we are onto a new start with new jobs. It is refreshing to know there are old friends out there that have made an impact on your life and career and to know you have also made an impact on their lives as well.

So remember when the fear sets in keep the faith…when it looks the darkest your miracle may just be around the corner.

Let’s look at how you unearth your unique promise of value as well as look at your values, vision, purpose and passions. Your personal brand is your unique promise of value or your value proposition. It is what you are known for. Think of Volvo, they are known for safety or Apple is known for thinking different. Basically it is where your reputation precedes you. It is your calling card.

These five steps will help you uncover your unique value proposition:

Take a close look at the following:

1.Vision/Purpose
2.Values
3.Visual
4.Voice
5. Variety

This part takes some real soul searching and time. When I did these exercises it was grueling and I had to really slow down and take some deep personal reflection time. It is hard work, but no pain, no gain as they say.

Before you can clearly describe your personal brand, you need to look at the bigger picture: your vision and purpose. Your vision is external. It is what you see as possible for the world. Your purpose is internal. It is your role in the bigger picture.

Joseph Murphy, author of “The Power of the Subconscious Mind,” says, “We go where our vision is.”

Write down your vision and purpose. One of the best ways to do these deeper exercises is to get off somewhere by yourself that is quiet and just start writing, or what we call brainstorming. Write the first thoughts that come to mind with no order or pre-judgment. Then you can go back and add or delete and rank order them.

Some questions to ask:

Where do I see myself in one year, three years and five years?
What does all this mean to me?
What are my goals that go along with the above time frames?
What do I absolutely love to do?
What excites me the most? What would I do even if I did not get paid?

Values: The values you believe will be at the core of your branding message. They are your operating principles and your belief system. Some examples include: intelligence, integrity, flexibility, independence, honesty and family.

Some value questions to consider:

What do I believe?
What is the most important thing I want others to know about me?
What am I passionate about?
What is non-negotiable?

Visual is also a part of your ongoing brand. This will be important as you start to push your brand and image out to the marketplace. It even considers your dress and favorite colors, along with a consistent visual logo and your motto.

The following are what I call the four Cs of team building as I have learned in my years of building high-performance sales teams.

1. Highly Communicative — Communication is absolutely imperative for success. Open communication fosters trust and trust is the basis for all successful relationships. To improve your communication:

- Be Candid — Your goal should be to speak truthfully but deliver with kindness.

- Be Quick — State your concern or issue within 24 hours. Do not let it fester.

- Be Inclusive — Do not hoard information. Be discreet if need be, although open communication increases trust, trust increases ownership, and ownership increases participation.

2. Highly Collaborative — All your strength is in union.

- See teammates as collaborators, not competitors. This is huge in that you must not have glory seekers for oneself on the team.

- Be supportive, not suspicious of teammates.

- Focus on your team, not yourself. It is a relay race, not a sprint. There is no “I” in TEAM.

3. Highly Competent — You cannot build a great team without great players. You can lose, but you cannot win without them.

Great players:

- Are committed to excellence — Excellence gauges our value on our own potential not on a comparison to others.

- Never settle for average — They always give their all.

- Pay attention to detail — Dale Carnegie said, “Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones tend to take care of themselves.”

- Perform with consistency — They give their best all the time.

4. Committed — “The harder you work the harder it is to surrender.” Vince Lombardi.

- Commitment is found in the midst of the battle.

- Commitment has nothing to do with your gifts or abilities.

- Commitment comes as a choice not conditions.

-Commitment lasts when it’s based on your values. Tie your commitments to your values. There is no such thing as a half-hearted champion.

These are very tough times that we all face. As team leaders and team players we need all the positive, high-performing employees we can get on the team. As we manage through this current chaos let’s all remember we can change our attitudes and ensure we have a positive mental attitude. Additionally, we can take personal responsibility to be change agents and be the best team players we can be through living the four Cs of team building.

Employers want and need leaders who are change agents that can communicate clearly, are collaborative, competent and committed. They want problem solvers. Are you ready to break through the barriers and be a team leader? It will add value to you, your employer and others of highly effective teams.

In this day and time of global economic crisis, fear and uncertainty from all business fronts, employers and employees alike need to have a focused and positive mindset. Every leader of an organization or smaller team must first look at themselves. You cannot build a team without first looking at yourself. It always starts with you. You can effectively teach only what you consistently model.

I have more than 25 years as a Senior Sales Executive for Fortune 500, mid-size and start-up companies motivating, empowering and coaching highly successful high-performance sales teams that delivered, enviable sales results. It all started with me having a positive mental attitude and passing that along to my team. You cannot tolerate negativity in teammates or the organization as a whole – it is like a cancer and it must be cut out.

Negativity will suck all the energy out of a business – like a vacuum, you will find it is hard to be energetic when negativity is the prevailing atmosphere. In order to have energy, you must remain positive, for energy is a by-product of a positive attitude. You can’t feel positive and lethargic and drawn out at the same time. Yes, you can experience fatigue for working long hours, frustration for not getting enough done on a certain day, fearfulness of making that presentation or calling that prospect, but you cannot lose your energy when you have the power of positive thinking at your back!

Therefore, the first thing that must be evident is the leader must be positive in mind, body and spirit. Secondly, the leader must be adaptable or flexible. He or she must model this and expect this from each team member.

“Inflexibility is one of the worst human feelings. You can learn to check impetuosity, overcome fear with confidence, and laziness with discipline. But for rigidity of mind there is no antidote. It carries the seeds of its own destruction.” Anton Myrer, “Once An Eagle”, pub.1968.

It is the reason you are in business.  Yet one of the biggest marketing flaws in business today is their ability to not reap all the benefits of knowing and marketing their competitive advantage.

In his book “Gaining & Sustaining Competitive Advantage” Jay B Barney, he gives this definition to competitive advantage, ”A firm is said to sustain competitive advantage when it is implementing a value-creating strategy not simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors and when these firms are unable to duplicate the benefits  of this strategy”.

Every company that is in business for a profit or is a nonprofit must know what their competitive advantage is.  Jack Welch of GE was known to be a fanatic about being number one or two in any of GE’s businesses or selling them off.

Most companies I have dealt with do not have a clue of what their competitive advantage is!  Or if the CEO knows, the rest of the company does not know what it is and they cannot clearly articulate their company’s competitive advantage.

Jim Collins in his book “From Good to Great” asks these three questions

1. What can your business be the first at?
2. What can it be the only at?
3. What can your business be the best at?

Any one of the above will give you a competitive advantage but once you know your competitive advantage you must be able to communicate it to your employees and your customers.

Here is what some CEO’s and executives say about their annual business planning process.

1.     It seems like we start earlier every year, and yet we get less out of the process.

2.     The plan we complete in November and present to the board in December seems to have little value by April.

3.     Our executive team loves to talk about planning, but it is difficult to get it into written form that is usable.

So what is the answer?   The One Page Business Plan will do the following:

1.     Provide a simple straight forward process

2.     Produces a tool that is useful throughout the year

3.     Presents a process that fosters cross divisional communication

4.     Proves to be a simple One Page process. Five elements to the plan work in any profit, cost or support center.

Remember profitability is not an accident nor is it a guarantee. But you must always start with a plan. So what road are you going to take this year? Maybe a good idea to keep it to One Page!

Check out my website at http://www.breakingthroughthebarriers.com for more help on building your One Page Plan to increase your profits in 2010.

Are you ready to break through your fears? The negative news and press today from global economic and security challenges to Wall Street and bank failures all spell FEAR. What is FEAR? -False Evidence Appearing Real.

If we allow it in our lives, and give in to FEAR, it will surely paralyze us. If we do not change our thinking and put positive thoughts in to our minds we will easily be devoured by the enemy. Think about what FEAR is, what some of the FEAR Barriers that we all face are and what are some FEAR busters actions we can take to head off the enemy before he gets a strong hold. You see it all starts with one thought and God has given man dominion over all creation with the ability to reason to choose our thoughts. The choice really is ours. “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe we can achieve.” W. Clement Stone

Some FEAR Barriers:

• Uncertainty – We need to get used to uncertainty and change: the one thing that remains constant in life is change
• Impossible odds – No light in sight: this can be demotivating and steal hope away
• Risk – We must lead off the base to steal second: you have to take risks to get ahead.

The opposite side of FEAR is faith, so the question is, “How strong is your faith?” How do we come through the adversity which will always be present in our lives? How will we handle uncertainty and risk that we can surely count on in our lifetime? You see God wants us to seize uncertainty and allow him to do the impossible.

The Creator has given us dominion over all other creatures on earth. We all have the power to think.  What we think is our choice. James Allen in his book, As a Man Thinketh, stated, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”. For us to start to consciously create the life of our dreams, we must take total responsibility for our lives.  As we take full responsibility for what happens to us, we discover that we create our lives by our thoughts.  Everything on the outside is a reflection of what is happening on the inside.  Read some of the greatest wisdom from the greatest teachers of our times and you will see that they all knew that thoughts have power.  Our thoughts create our lives.

Think about it.  If our minds are filled with contention and strife, then that is what we experience.  If our minds are filled with happiness and joy, then that is what we experience.  Yet we all know that controlling our thoughts is often not an easy task. Unwelcome thoughts often pop into our heads unbidden and unexpected.

Yet we need to turn those thoughts around.  Our thoughts are literally our lives.  Our reality doesn’t exist without our thoughts to give it form.  Thoughts become things. Think the good thoughts!  Be kind to yourself and affirm yourself often!

Change is one thing every business can count on.  The question is how you handle it.  Companies today need leaders who are change managers and who can lead their teams through the dynamic global business environments.  They all seem to share 4 common characteristics.

1. Communicative – Open communication fosters trust
2. Collaborative – Not competitive but willing to share information
3. Competent – Know  their business inside and out
4. Considerate – Puts others before self – Servant hood leaders

All are common characteristics of great leaders.  However, putting others first is probably the number one attribute of great leaders.  Great leaders are the first to give credit to the team when positive things happen and the first to step forward when problems occur. What kind of leader will you be?