Tag Archives: Winston Churchill

Making Every Day Pay Day

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to leverage your leadership influence. Reading time: 3:11.

Robins in a nest

Leaders get stronger by lifting others up.

Maybe that’s why Albert Einstein said only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile. And Winston Churchill said: “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what give.”

Leaders give of themselves to make every day pay day. The more they give, the more they get, as author Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”

Championing others a leader invariably unearths hidden resources, leverages differences, fosters greater productivity and mines increased profitability.

But in championing others, leaders know only too well that their date book is as important as their checkbook; their time as valued as their money. Continue reading →

Ending Your Speeches With a Drum Roll

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to end your speeches more emphatically. Reading time: 4:54.

Those two words, powerful on the lips of every effective leader at the end of a project, are powerless at the end of a speech. That’s why the most effective leaders find a more powerful, more productive and more permeating way to conclude a speech.

They drive toward their conclusion in high gear- with an attitude! Not a platitude (albeit politicians who can’t resist blessing America). Maybe that’s why of the 217 speeches listed in William Safires’s anthology: Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History, only seven conclude with “Thank you.”

Indeed, effective speakers leave their audiences thinking the way effective comedians leave their audiences laughing. Consider these different ways of leaving your audience thinking:

If you were concluding a speech on the importance of embracing change, you could say:

“Our tomorrows need new and different solutions today. We have to recall the insight of President Abraham Lincoln on the brink of the Civil War. Lincoln said,

‘The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present and future,
as our circumstances are new, we must think anew and act anew.” Continue reading →

Parlaying Your Podium Power

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to leverage your public speaking skills. Reading time: 2:38.

You’ve got your business degree in hand and your job is going well. Now it’s time to focus on getting that promotion.

Your climb to the top begins the first time you step UP onto a podium and exercise your power to persuade others to follow you.

In stepping UP onto the podium you get your chance to convince upper management of your discipline and integrity to represent the company — in general.

In stepping UP onto the podium, you reinforce your staff’s commitment and conviction to work more collaboratively and productively — in particular.

No wonder that alumni from the business school at the University of Michigan credited their communications skills more than their business or financial acumen in earning their first promotion.

To help you focus on developing your powers of public speaking, let’s scan the history books for what other leaders say about the potency of Podium Power: For example, with your public speaking skills sharpened you can become more durable than a king. Continue reading →

BEWARE: Your Habitual Behavior Can Kill You

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to keep you more aware of your surroundings.

Ten years before he would become Prime Minister of Great Britain; ten years before he would lead England to her “finest hour,” ten years before he would virtually preserve our democratic way of life in World War II, Winston Churchill should have been killed.

Winston Churchill (left) takes a walk in London in 1925, six years before his near fatal walk in New York City in 1931

In a car accident. His fault. By default.

Churchill committed the most egregious sin of all leaders, a sin he never forgot, the sin of reacting mindlessly to something he always knew instead of responding to something brand new. As Henry David Thoreau observed “We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.”

Indeed, think of yourself walking in Churchill’s shoes the next time you take on a new project in a new venue. Become more aware of your new surroundings. Adapt your behavior accordingly as the cliche goes.

“When in Rome do as the Romans do.”

Churchill’s body was in New York, but his mindset was still in London. And that misplaced mindset could have well changed history and cost Sir Winston his life. Here’s how it happened.

Churchill, visiting New York City on December 13, 1931, got out of a cab on Park Avenue and crossed the street between 76th and 77th Avenues. He was hit by a car.

“I should have been broken like an egg-shell,” Churchill grimaced while spending seven days in a hospital. But miraculously he was not badly injured. He was more embarrassed than hurt.

Churchill stepped into the street and looked Continue reading →

Reject Rejection and Eject Safely

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By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to motivate you to stay the course and achieve your goals.

Rejected again. You didn’t get that job or that promotion. Your last “great” idea bombed. Customers didn’t buy it. And right now your self-worth is so low you feel about as needed a pant presser in a nudist colony.

Sylvestor Stallone Fought Rejection In Becoming Rocky

When you’re feeling that low, that rejected, leaders re-frame the experience. They tell themselves they’re being EJECTED not Rejected. They think of themselves as if they were a computer disk ejected from the hard drive –not rejected.

Reject implies incompatibility to a given specific situation (i.e. the body rejects a heart). Eject implies versatility in finding a more supportive climate, much like a fighter pilot EJECTS when his plane is damaged.

Leaders facing rejection think of themselves as an ejected pilot. They know they will eventually land safely in an environment where they can thrive more than merely survive. The most effective leaders routinely reject rejection and eventually arrive at their Promised Land.

Here are a few examples of leaders who have turned a rejection storm of enormous discontent into an ejection norm of enormous content, brimming with opportunity and success.

Sylvestor Stallone was rejected more than 1,000 times by movie producers before Rocky became a multimillion dollar movie hit. Continue reading →