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Personally Remarkable

January 30, 2012 in Development, Performance with 7690 CommentsPersonally+Remarkable2012-01-30+13%3A55%3A23Perry+Holley

US Marine Museum, Quantico, VA

I am preparing for a speech for a large group of sales managers and executives. As part of the preparation process I was interviewing the lead executive of this group and she couldn’t say enough good things about what her team accomplished in 2011. The challenges they overcame, the victories they won, what a team effort. As I presented my idea for the presentation I planned to give to her team I used the word “remarkable”. She approved of my idea, but she added, “Not everyone was remarkable, but the overall result was nothing short of remarkable.” As I walked away from this conversation the phrase, “not everyone was remarkable” kept ringing in my ears

Who Me?

I am sure that if I asked the audience during my talk for a show of hands on whether they think they were personally remarkable or not, most if not all would say their performance was indeed remarkable. We tend to give ourselves a break most time and judge ourselves on the curve. Continue Reading…

Pruning for Success

January 15, 2012 in Development, Growth, Productivity with 7602 CommentsPruning+for+Success2012-01-15+15%3A26%3A44Perry+Holley

Photo Credit - Paul Holley

My wife is a master gardener. There is nothing she cannot do when it comes to flowers, plants or trees. She studies it, she knows it, she lives it. So, why is it that when I see her snipping away perfectly good looking stems from her rose bushes I begin to object? She’s the expert, I don’t know jack, but it just does not seem right to me.

“You have to trim away the parts that keep the bush from reaching its full potential”, she tells me and I know that she is right. Left to its own the rose bush would become a tangled and unorganized mess instead of the long stemmed beautiful creation that we all love to admire. She has to cut away the dead stems and blooms, the stems or blooms that look sick or dying, and even some healthy stems or blooms that might look good, but are not the best.

Avoiding a Tangled Mess

If your life is the rose bush then that makes you the master gardener. The need for pruning is constant and that job falls to you. If you want to reach your full potential then you need to take on the intentional practice of pruning away the parts of your life that are holding you back.

Dr. Henry Cloud in his book, “Necessary Endings” says that, “growth depends on getting rid of the unwanted or the superfluous”. In my life, just like that of the rose bush I need to Continue Reading…

4 Questions for Growing into 2012

December 6, 2011 in Development, Growth with 7370 Comments4+Questions+for+Growing+into+20122011-12-06+12%3A57%3A40Perry+Holley

As the year comes to a close and we prepare for some much needed time with family and friends I wanted to encourage you to take your learning’s from 2011 and begin to form your plan for 2012. For years I would evaluate my performance and try and decide how to increase my performance. As I have grown I find that taking a growth-oriented approach is a better way to increase my results.

The Growth Approach

I developed the Growth Approach when I noticed my kids when they were young trying to impress me with their performance. It occurred to me then that that was EXACTLY the way I was living my life; always trying to impress others with my performance. It was exhausting! I also noticed at work how all the people that worked for me were doing the same thing, trying to impress me with their performance. So, I developed my 4 Questions for Growth and I do my best to apply it to every situation where being performance focused is a strong temptation.

I would like to encourage you to take a few minutes over the coming holidays to do an evaluation of 2011 and see where you have opportunities to grow in 2012.

1. What was the best thing that happened to you in 2011? What are you most proud of that you were able to accomplish? What were your best decisions? Where did you see the positive results? Take a moment to write it down and enjoy your success. Continue Reading…

Step by Step Toward Your Dream

December 2, 2011 in Development, Growth with 7280 CommentsStep+by+Step+Toward+Your+Dream2011-12-02+17%3A27%3A10Perry+Holley

As we head into the final month of the year, a month filled with family, friends and reflection, I wanted to encourage you to dream a little about the coming new year. I met with a young man this week who told me that he had a dream, but there was no way to get there from where he was now in his life. As crazy as that sounded to me I think this is more common than we would care to admit. It is easy to feel stuck in a situation where there seems to be no escape. Often times I think that is because we focus so much on escape. By that I mean that we want to just stop doing one thing and start doing another immediately. Since that seems impossible we set the dream aside. We allow our current circumstances to become a prison of sorts and we allow all thoughts of changing those circumstances to quietly fade away.

Be Encouraged

My encouragement to my friend and my encouragement to you is to take some time over the coming weeks to dream a little. What would you love, love, love to do in 2012? Put aside all those limitations that so easily enter your mind. Forget about finances. Forget about the time it would take. Forget about what others would think. Take a pen and paper and write down in as much detail as you can what you would love to do.

Step by Step

The next part is REALLY important. Now with your dream in mind, begin to Continue Reading…