It takes hard work and dedication to achieve a successful sales career, even with the resources AIL / NILICO provides. It also takes talent, and a love for the job. If you’re selling American Income Life insurance and don’t love what you do, people can tell. There’s no faking it.

A diving accident left Matt with a broken neck and damaged spine. Unfortunately, Matt’s spinal cord was not repairable, resulting in paralysis below the chest. Many people might throw in the towel, but Matt has an amazing ability to overcome any obstacle. Matt has worked hard to regain a level of independence, and also can’t wait to resume representing NILICO, the subsidiary of American Income Life Insurance Company.

How amazing is that? Matt looks forward to his career. How many other people do you know who would list returning to their job as something they’d want to do after recovering from an accident? Matt Ficarra is someone who definitely has passion and loves his career. Matt’s positive outlook during recovery has kept him focused on the future, and getting back to achieving even bigger and better goals.

We join the Oldham-Bianchi Agency and Matt’s Regional Director, Steve Jubrey, to wish Matt a speedy recovery. American Income Life and National Income Life also share Jubrey’s sentiments: we can’t wait to have you back in action Matt!

Do you love your career as much as Matt does?

Source: http://www.syracuse.com/

No matter where you are in your career development in American Income Life, there is always opportunity for boosting your Agency’s overall performance. Bottom line is that we can always do more to push to that next level.

American Income Life Regional Director of Sales - Murray Horowitz

A great way of doing this is to identify and eliminate “bottlenecks,” or things that are holding you back. Are you reaching your hires number? Are hires turning into codes? Are codes turning into submitting agents? Are submitting agents turning into bonus earners? Are bonus earners becoming managers? Are your managers strengthening the foundation of your organization by growing their hierarchies? Are you developing and growing your Agency so that it can reach its fullest potential?

So how do you identify these bottlenecks?

One approach is to use the Theory of Constraints (TOC). This helps you identify the most important bottleneck in your processes and systems, so that you can deal with it and improve performance.

Understanding the Theory

You’ve likely heard the adage, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” and this is what the Theory of Constraints reflects. It was created by Dr. Eli Goldratt and was published in his 1984 book “The Goal.”

According to Goldratt, organizational performance is dictated by constraints. These are where bottlenecks occur that prevent an organization from maximizing its performance and reaching its goals. Constraints can involve people, supplies, information, equipment, or even policies, and they can be internal or external to an organization.

The theory says that every system, no matter how well it performs, has at least one constraint that limits its performance – this is the system’s “weakest link.” The theory also says that a system can have only one constraint at a time, and that other areas of weakness are “non-constraints” until they become the weakest link.

You use the theory by identifying your constraint and changing the way that you work so that you can overcome it. It’s most useful with important or frequently-used processes within your organization. Think recruiting systems, training systems, and management systems.

Nobody should expect to be right 100 percent of the time in identifying the constraint. Besides, you don’t always have to be right in order to come out an overall winner. So, don’t get hung up waiting for all of the facts before coming to a conclusion. Satisfy yourself that you understand the issue and have weighed all of the options. Test the alternative solutions among those who know the situation and will be impacted by the decision. Identify, Decide. Act.

Learn to trust your intuition in decision-making. Hunches are not random bolts out of the blue. They are rooted in all the knowledge and experience one has accumulated in general and with regard to the issue at hand.

Applying the Theory

Let’s look at a step-by-step process for using the theory:

Step 1: Identify the Constraint

The first step is to identify your weakest link – this is the factor that’s holding you back the most.

Start by looking at the processes that you use regularly. Are you working as efficiently as you could be, or are there bottlenecks – for example, because your people lack skills or training, or because you lack capacity in a key area? If you build into those you lead, and make them better, you will add value to your Agency and survive mistakes, challenges, downturns and other obstacles that will inevitably occur.

Here, it can help to use tools to map out your processes and identify what’s causing issues. Are you tracking your results, do you really know what is happening in your organization?

You should also brainstorm constraints with team members to identify possible issues. Openness often leads to better problem-solving. Be transparent and allow your team to help you find solutions to your largest challenges. You don’t have all the answers, and science is showing that a group of committed collaborators trumps a single genius for finding amazing solutions. One study revealed that highly engaged employees outperform their peers by as much as 28 percent. The study also revealed that organizations with low employee engagement saw an average decline in operating income of more than 32 percent. Get your people involved.

Remember that constraints may not just be physical. They can also include intangible factors such as ineffective communication, restrictive agency policies, or even poor team morale.

So, you need to decide which factor is your weakest link and focus on it.

Step 2: Manage the Constraint

Once you’ve identified the constraint, you need to figure out how to manage it. What small changes can you make to increase efficiency in this area and cure the problem, without committing to potentially expensive changes?

Your solutions will vary depending on your team, your goals, and the constraint you’re trying to overcome. For example, it might be changing personnel or reevaluating your process and systems to make workflow more efficient, or cross-training team members to give you extra capacity in the constraint. All other organizational processes should also focus on eliminating the constraint. For example, can you move some types of work out of the constrained area and into other processes, thereby eliminating the constraint?

Step 3: Evaluate Performance

Now review how your system is performing with the simple fixes you’ve put into place. Is the constraint still causing a bottleneck? If it is, you need to do whatever you can to solve the issue. For instance, do you need to invest in new equipment, outsource certain tasks, or take on more staff?

Again, you’ll also find it useful to brainstorm possible solutions with people in your team, and to use problem-solving tools to identify the real issues behind the problems you’re having, so that you can come up with good solutions.

Once you’ve identified possible solutions, test your ideas for a period of time and be prepared to continue making changes to the solution.

Step 4: Start Over

Once you’ve eliminated the constraint, you can move back to step 1 and identify another constraint. The Goal is to have Continuous Improvement (CI) which is an ongoing effort to make incremental improvements to products, services or processes over time. Processes are constantly audited and modified based on their efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability. CI is often referred to as a management process, but this does not mean that it needs to be executed by managers. Continuous Improvement dictates the decisions and directions of the processes being improved and of its own application.

Note:
Remember that the theory says that every process has at least one constraint. While this may be true, be sensible in how you apply the theory – sometimes removing this constraint will have a minimal impact on performance.

Key Points

The theory says that every system, no matter how well it performs, has at least one constraint that limits its performance. You use the theory by identifying your constraint and restructuring the way that you work so that you can overcome it.

You can minimize constraints and work more efficiently toward accomplishing your goals by working through these steps:

1. Identify the constraint.
2. Manage the constraint.
3. Evaluate performance.
4. Start over.

Sometimes, to combat that feeling of discouragement, all we need to set us right again are a few inspiring words. When you feel you’re not at your best, or just need something to boost your spirit, the quotes below can have a profound impact. So read on, move on, and get back in the game!

1. “You don’t close a sale, you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise.” ~Patricia Fripp
2. “Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.” ~Thomas J. Watson Jr
3. “Everyone lives by selling something.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson
4. “In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.” ~Nikos Kazantzakis
5. “How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.” ~Gilbert K. Chesterton
6. “As you travel down life’s highway…whatever be your goal, you cannot sell a doughnut without acknowledging the hole.” ~Harold J. Shayler
7. “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” ~Zig Ziglar
8. “And old Dave, he’d go up to his room, y’understand, put on his green velvet slippers – I’ll never forget – and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want.” ~Arthur Miller (1915 – 2005), Death of a Salesman, 1949.
9. “A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.” ~Mary Kay Ash
10. “Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.” ~Karl Marx
11. “On any given Monday I am one sale closer and one idea away from being a Millionaire.” ~Larry D. Turner
12. “It’s just called ‘The Bible’ now. We dropped the word ‘Holy’ to give it a more mass-market appeal.” ~Editor, Hodder & Stoughton The Daily Telegraph, 30 Dec 1989.
13. “It used to be that people needed products to survive. Now products need people to survive.” ~Nicholas Johnson
14. “Most people think “selling” is the same as “talking”. But the most effective salespeople know that listening is the most important part of their job.” ~Roy Bartell
15. “If you work just for money, you’ll never make it. But if you love what you are doing,and always put the customer first, success will be yours.” ~Ray Kroc
16. “I have never worked a day in my life without selling. If I believe in something, I sell it, and I sell it hard.” ~Estée Lauder
17. “A smart salesperson listens to emotions not facts.” ~Unknown
18. “Everyone lives by selling something.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson
19. “Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.” ~Malcolm Forbes
20. “Day by day, what you do is who you become.” ~Heraclitus
21. “The wise man puts himself last and finds himself first.” ~Lao Tsu
22. “Good ideas are common – what’s uncommon are people who will work hard enough to bring them about.” ~Ashleigh Brilliant
23. “Falling down is how we grow. Staying down is how we die.” ~Brian Vaszily
24. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” ~Albert Einstein
25. “The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.” ~Martina Navratilova

What does it take to motivate yourself or your agents? Please share with the American Income Life community!

Quotes source: The InsideView Blog

Kevin Dunn – American Income Life Director of New SGA Development talks about using momentum in order to keep moving forward. Read his message to find out which are the qualities of a true leader:

Don’t let past glories slow you down. True leaders have new objectives waiting in the wings that they immediately begin to pursue, the moment the present objective is complete. It’s the momentum that keeps you moving forward. Keep the energy high or things can change from good to bad. Its momentum that ensures that your team maintains their enthusiasm and remains in motion

You are going to need discipline, drive and determination to be a true leader. The price that one pays for mastery is discipline. You can’t have success without it. Every day you need to devote yourself to the perfection of the path you have chosen to peruse. By doing this you will achieve self mastery. Achieve self mastery and you will have developed the essence of a great leader. Discipline is about developing powerful habits and at one point those habits will become your identity.

If you have the discipline you will keep moving forward. Keep moving forward to provide growth for you and your team in character, in strengths and virtues.

Albeit Einstein said that compound interest was the most powerful force in our society. Discipline and perseverance are a lot like the principle of compound interest – the more committed you are towards your objectives, the greater the momentum you will build. In the beginning your progress may seem small, but as one success gets stacked upon another, the momentum you generate will make you a force to be reckoned with.

The opposite result is to decay over time.

Always Know – What is your New Objective?

Always be a Leader.

If you’re not sure – act like a Leader and support others like a Leader.

“What really makes greatness is white hot action around red hot ideas. A genius idea alone has zero value” – Robin Sharma

Even before the end of your current task you should be asking: What is my New Objective?

It’s strange that when you research the topic of Leadership there is no clear definition. Leadership is a very broad concept and there are many different types of Leadership. There are a number of words that describe the qualities that many leaders possess, I believe that many of these qualities you too can’t help but possess. Here are the qualities that many of the world’s top leaders possess – believers, listeners, kindness, disciplined, imagination, excellence, determined, enthusiastic, responsible, humility, influential, vision, they reinforce core values, attitude of ownership, refuse to lose attitude, great habits, mental toughness, understand emotions, pro-active, love, focus, action orientated, persistent, patient, integrity, passionate, creative, flexible, compassionate, confident, calm, optimistic, assertive, courageous, decisive, accountable, to list just some. Is it any wonder that Leadership is defined in so many different ways by different people?

Keep practicing Leadership in every little task you perform and many of these qualities will be yours to enjoy.

Note: Based on an Article by Lee Coates, Leadership Articles Magazine and Website.

The illustration highlights the milestones in life, and shows that insurance needs change depending on where your customer is on the curve. The need for insurance and the benefit amounts should increase or decrease – like the shape of the Bell Curve – as your customer’s earning potential and responsibilities increase or decrease. This gives American Income Life insurance representatives an opportunity to sell additional products to existing customers throughout their lives.

The day your prospect was born he developed a need for final expense coverage. But, life insurance is not something he consciously thought about for the next few decades while growing up. When he became an adult, however, that likely changed as he hit new milestones in the life cycle. Is he married? Does he have children? Does he own a home? Does he have someone depending on him for income? If he answers, “yes,” to any of these questions, the need for life insurance increases dramatically. After all, life can change in a heartbeat! Your customers need to be prepared!

Will his death and the loss of his income negatively impact those who depend on him financially? You bet it will! Having appropriate life coverage in place will help to take care of his family financially.

What matters most is that your customers purchase life insurance – no matter where they are in the life cycle! But, by educating customers on their changing needs, you can present additional products throughout their lifetime.

Have you used the bell curve to talk to prospects about life insurance? Comment and tell us how it went!

American Income Life Regional Director of Sales, Martin Groves, gives insight into creating a solid foundation for your Agency to thrive:

American Income Life Regional Director of Sales, Martin Groves

The Foundation

The foundation of a house is what it all stands upon. Regardless of what walls, insulation, electrical wires, rooms, furniture – the basis of it all is the foundation. In business, the foundation is what anchors us. If the foundation is faulty, then we are building something that will give way. There is no way that we can sustain when the foundation is not intact. But, we sometimes forget about the foundation when we are building. The foundation is us; the part that we sometimes forget. Nothing can start without us creating it and that creating sometimes takes on a mind of itself. How we embrace it is how we remain grounded and grow. When things go awry is also how we learn and we grow but only when we return back to the foundation. The ground is something we stand on every day. It is what is beneath us and keeps us standing. When we are embarking upon a something new, we do so with such passion, excitement and fervor that we forget one thing – the ground beneath us.

Having worked with experienced American Income Life SGA’s, start up SGA’s and SGA’s that are in a re-building mode, the one thing that has been consistent with getting positive results has been a solid foundation. Once you have a solid foundation, and in AIL’s case a solid Leadership Team, you can build with strength and also at speed. A broader level of leadership at the entry level has demonstrated that an American Income Life Agency can grow quickly because of the excitement created by wanting to be in Leadership and the unlimited opportunity for growth.

Grounded

When the foundation is in place, you also have to be grounded. In business it is necessary to remain grounded as it keeps you focused. When we lose focus, we start to spiral and that spiraling is many times the beginning of the end. In running a business, there are many outside factors that we do not always expect that pop up that are not a part of the everyday operations. If the foundation is strong, your business has a much better chance to deal with the unexpected.

Mentors

The Leadership Team members are the mentors of your business. Choose your mentors wisely. A mentor is an individual, always more experienced, who helps and guides another individual’s development. So what does it take to be a business mentor? It takes the same level of interest, commitment and confidence in your own abilities that it takes to mentor a fellow colleague. It also requires that you be sincerely interested in someone else’s growth and success. You may not directly win an award, but if the person you mentor does as part of being successful, you will have the satisfaction of having done an important job.

Who becomes a mentor? Why do they do it? The answers are as varied as the people involved. Some of us were lucky enough to have had a mentor and want to repay that. Others just want to help out, be a positive influence, or give something to their community. Whatever your reason for being a mentor, you will find it a special experience. Nothing can quite match the self satisfaction you get from sharing your experience to help other business colleagues.

Many parts of the foundation have to be built and continually inspected. The basics structures of recruiting, training, selling techniques, business practices and coaching, to name only a few, represent the key components to the foundation of your agency. All components need to be strong for your business or agency to thrive. If the mentors are not trained correctly then the agents delivering the products and services will have a reduced chance of success. If the mentors are as committed to the success of their own business’s as you are to yours, then the chances of retaining agents increases dramatically. Success breeds success.

I know many of us read motivation books, leadership books and listen to audio and DVD’s for inspiration and guidance. One book that has intrigued me recently has been David Schroeder’s book called “Business in The Trenches” David’s book combines compelling military history with insightful business analogies. It demonstrates clearly how companies grapple with the same problems as armies at war. Here is one specifically on Foundation Principles.

The Importance of Foundation Principles

Air Combat began in World War One. The popular image is of brightly colored, fabric covered biplanes flying around shooting at each other with machine guns. Every now and then an aircraft falls out of the sky burning and crashes into the ground. This picture is actually pretty accurate. What is not accurate is the idea that losses in these dogfights were pretty even. They weren’t.

The two sides were roughly the Germans versus the French and British. While the French and British had almost three times the number of aircraft as the Germans, the Germans managed to shoot down three times as many French and British as they lost themselves. It’s like a business making three times as much money as its competition, while having a third of the assets.

The questions are “Why?”, “How?”, and, most importantly, “How can I do something similar in my business?”

You might be tempted to think the German advantage was technology. After all, they make pretty good stuff. But in World War One, both sides had comparable aircraft. So that wasn’t the reason.

The most basic reason is that German pilots had a distinct advantage over their adversaries. They had a SOLID FOUNDATION.

Both sides taught selected candidates how to fly airplanes. Obviously this is kind of important if you’re going to be a fighter pilot. You have to know the mechanics of what to do and how to do it. The problem for the French and British is that this was the end of pilot training before they were shipped off to combat. Their pilots showed up at their squadrons barely able to take off and land. Most only lasted a week or so before they were dead. Those that survived learned what they needed to know through their own “on the job” experience.

Training for German pilots was a very different experience. They trained their pilots intensively before sending them anywhere near the front. Not just on the mechanics of how to fly. They were taught FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES on how to fly in combat. Their best ace developed principles to guide them in the environment they would be working in. Adherence to these principles would make them successful. Those that became successful learned these principles and applied them to deadly effect.

The German pilots had assigned mentors. The mentors would show the “newbies” how to apply the Foundation Principles in combat. They showed them the ropes, and how to use their knowledge and skills to become as effective as possible.

Just knowing the mechanics of how to do a new job is not enough. Look at what happened to most of the French and British pilots. Their lives were literally counted in hours.

What matters is that you have a grasp on Foundation Principles, and can apply them. These come from those who have experience and know how to keep you focused on what will make you the most successful. They will keep you from dissipating your efforts. Doing this will give you the greatest chance for success.

Note: The above is a short extract from the book “Business in the Trenches” by David Schroeder (pages 331-332).

Let’s win the WAR against a weak foundation and build a solid foundation for success in 2012.

The AIL Representative across the office who makes twice the commission you do isn’t necessarily twice as smart, talented, or knowledgeable. But that Representative displays a ‘winning edge’ that allows him or her to make the sale when another agent may not. You can’t see it. You can’t touch it. But you can feel it, and so can prospects.

The winning edge is a psychological edge. To gain it, you must be willing to change your psychology – the way you think of yourself (self-concept), your prospects, and possibly the world in general.

Your self-concept is made up of three parts:

You improve your self-concept by growing your self-image toward your self-ideal, which helps to improve your self-esteem. It’s all connected! If you want to be the best in your Agency: look, act, talk, and dress like you already are the best. Before you realize it, your self-image has transitioned to your self-ideal, and your self-esteem has gone through the roof.

What does this have to do with selling? Once your self-concept is in the right place, sales success is not far behind because now you are ready to take on the world.

Think of it this way, if you’re at American Income Life, you’re already the best. Just realize that, and try to be even better! Seize your ‘opportunity unlimited’ and become the best version of yourself you can be.

How have you improved yourself this week? Try to consciously improve your self-concept for at least one day this week and let us know how it went!

Source: Summit IX, 2009

The first thing Richard noticed was how much the Representatives really care for the people they serve. Also, the income wasn’t bad either! That was enough to sell him on the Company. He came on board with Simon Arias’ Office and hasn’t looked back since. “You don’t have to be a gifted salesperson,” Sprigg says, “You just have to be willing to work and be coachable.”

As an American Income Life leader, you are not only influencing others, but impacting them – for better or worse. We all have the ability to uplift or dishearten others. But by adopting a leadership mindset, we can ensure that to the best of our ability and intentions, we are impacting others in a positive way.

American Income Life Region Sales Director Steve Kafkis

Your impact stems directly from your mindset as a leader, because your mindset affects your behaviors, which then affects your results. So what is your mindset?

The term “mindset” means a mental attitude or inclination. Our attitude determines our behavior, and our behavior produces specific results. If you are getting effective results from those you are leading, you are having a positive impact on them, and therefore yourself. And vice versa.

Are we getting the results or having the impact we want, or are we experiencing unwanted results and outcomes? By looking at the relationship between our mindset, our behavior, and our impact, we can integrate all three components to generate the results we really want.

Your behavior is representative of your mindset. As an American Income Life leader, you want to maintain a leadership mindset. If your perspective is filled with negativity or limiting beliefs, then you have a mindset that will negatively affect others, and will not give you the results you desire. If your mindset however, is on abundance, strengths and positivity – which are qualities of a leadership mindset – then you will positively influence others and achieve your desired results.

We often engage in behaviors without considering that we have a choice in whether or not to engage in them. If our circumstances are not going the way we desire, we may feel and act like a victim. But if you make different choices about your behavior and change your actions, your results will change. You can stop being a victim of your circumstances.  

It is important to note that changing your behavior is not sustainable unless you change your negative mindset to a leadership mindset. A great example of this is what happens when people lose weight. If they just change their behavior – such as eat fewer calories – they lose weight. But if they don’t change their mindset around food, exercise and a healthy lifestyle, they rebound and gain their weight back because they haven’t changed the underlying problem – they haven’t changed the mindset that drives them to overeat.

Changing your behavior without changing your mindset is not sustainable. Changing your mindset, however, creates sustainable behavioral change.

Observe your impact on others, observe your actions as you carry them out, and observe your mindset as it fills your thoughts and shapes your attitudes. When you notice negative, limiting thoughts, make a choice and shift your perspective to an abundant leadership mindset.

Many American Income Life leaders constantly sabotage their own professional and personal growth by simply getting in their own way. Are you perhaps creating unconscious obstructions on the path to a higher level position, a greater income, more visibility within American Income Life Insurance Company, or “celebrity status” as a recognized expert in our industry? We are all susceptible to this insidious phenomenon, so let’s take a look at two fundamental self-limiting forces that often prevent people from experiencing the success they want and deserve. Learn to spot them and you’ll be able to start eliminating them.

1) Negative Self-Talk

One way we impede our own success is by having negative internal conversations in our heads. These conversations can happen anytime, but usually they occur when you are under stress or out of your comfort zone. They often take place when someone is meeting with a new prospect, interviewing for a top-level position, or asked to accept greater responsibility in the leadership spotlight. If you were to download the audio soundtrack of your internal conversations to your iPod, what would you hear? Chances are you’d hear insecurities expressed like this:

• What if I am not as good as the other managers?
• What if I fail at this position?
• What if my agency doesn’t respect me?
• What if I am too old to be a dynamic leader?

Stop playing the “what if” game. Yes, every successful American Income Life leader has had these types of deep internal conversations over the historical timeline of their career. But the really extraordinary AIL leaders quickly learn to embrace change – even when it makes them uncomfortable to experience exponential growth and transformation. They quickly become attuned to listen for the negative chatter. When they begin to hear that old familiar mental recording they instantly interrupt with positive dialogue. They extinguish the negativity and erase the destructive language from their internal vocabulary. Train yourself to listen for that negative channel and when you hear it, simply change the channel and replace the content with positive messages like:

• I am confident that I am as good as my peers.
• I know that without a doubt I am going to be a highly successful SGA/MGA/RGA/fill-in-the-blank.
• I feel humbled that my agency respects me as a leader.
• I have a wealth of life experience that contributes to my being a dynamic leader.

2) Are You Thinking Too Small?

When you think about your career journey with American Income Life are you thinking gigantically, or timidly small? Many AIL leaders, or high achievers, don’t think big enough so they continue to plod along in unremarkable careers wondering why they haven’t accomplished more. I encourage everyone to think big and cultivate a large vision of possibility and potential. There is a really big dream that lives deep down in your consciousness. Maybe you’ve kept it a secret from your friends, family members, colleagues and significant other because you assume they would consider it preposterous. You can keep it to yourself, but don’t diminish it – let it grow!

There are terms called fixed and growth mindset.  A fixed mindset describes those with a fixed theory of intelligence that believe they are born with a certain set of skills and their success is based on innate abilities. Plainly speaking, those people believe they either have a particular talent or they don’t.

I’m not a psychologist, but it appears that if someone has a fixed mindset, they are not open to self-improvement. Instead of finding ways to keep learning and evolving as a leader, they simply remain the same. Anything new is avoided because it may show weakness, and they are apprehensive to failure because it will mean a negative statement on their abilities. As a result, these individuals don’t reach their full potential.

When they get stuck in a rut, good luck to them because they will be there for a long time.

Now on the opposite end of the spectrum, those with a growth mindset view success as being based on hard work and learning. These individuals believe they can always get better at what they do and have untapped potential. They are willing to stretch their comfort zone, and look at criticism and failure as opportunities to grow.

Arguably, a growth mindset allows one to live a more successful life. And for those with a fixed mindset you’re in luck because one’s mindset, of course, can be altered.

One definition of mindset is a set of beliefs or a way of thinking that determines one’s behavior, outlook, and mental attitude.

Recognizing that we can choose whether or not to engage in certain behaviors is the first step toward changing your leadership mindset.

If you would like to change your mindset, here are a few tips:

Listen to the perspective of others

One of the best ways to get a clear picture of your behavior is to gather feedback from those around you. Gaining clarity on your existing performance helps identify weaknesses that need improving, as well as strengths that can be leveraged. Effective American Income Life leaders are open to feedback, both positive and negative, and will use it to improve their performance.

Be open to change

Defensiveness is a major blockage to accurate and comprehensive self-knowledge. Defensive people tend to overrate themselves in the eyes of others. To break the cycle, follow the rules of good listening without responding, then write down the criticisms and reflect on which ones might have some element of truth in them. Choose one area in which to focus your development.

Recognize your strengths

Building on an earlier point, understanding what your strengths are, and how you can leverage them to help mitigate any weaker skill areas, will prove crucial in your mindset transition. But don’t allow yourself to sit on your laurels, patting yourself on the back for past accomplishments. Instead, broaden and improve upon your strengths by finding new ways to utilize these skills. Becoming a mentor where you are passing along your knowledge to others is one of the best ways to hone your existing skill sets. Pursue challenges that stretch your skills even farther.

In short, the key to change is committing to a change in mindset. And we are oftentimes our own worst enemy in this department. Just remember, it really is all in your head.

If you are, good job! You’re doing the right things to make the most of your talent and skills. But, if you’re not, here are some helpful tips:

Go with the flow:
Like many professions, insurance sales requires lifelong learning. Sales techniques and processes that worked for you 10 years ago may not be as successful today. Technological developments like the AIL Laptop Sales Presentation have put the insurance industry on a new playing field. The days of pushing pen and paper are numbered. In the electronic age, your ability to adapt to change may determine your success!

Accentuate the positive:
Don’t forget to surround yourself with positive people. Sure, you can probably relate to the guy who complains the economy is bad. But hanging with that guy will make your life a reflection of his. Instead, talk with the woman across the hall who thrives regardless of the economic climate. Spend time with positive, upbeat people. It rubs off on both you and your production figures!

Experts needed to reply. Share your tips for producing here!