Anger isn’t a good foundation for friendship.

Neither is jealously or fear or passive aggression.

You become like the people you spend the most time with.

Which means if you hate and fear and crave and spend your time people who just do the same thing, all the worst parts of you get amplified.  You create bigger monsters to tame later.

Monsters those friends can’t help you tame.

You need people around you that can help elevate your skills.  Which means the best parts of you get promoted.

Hope, possibility, opportunity.

Instead of emoting reactively against what happens to you, you find yourself working proactively to attract champions who get behind you and make you better.

Friendship should be a motivation.  Not a disruption.

If you aren’t getting better you aren’t going the right direction.

Think about that the next time you think your friends are crazy.

Maybe they are.  Maybe you shouldn’t be.

A lot of books on leadership will tell you that under-performers should be fired.  Jack Welch, the highly successful CEO of General Electric for 20 years made it a religion to fire anyone rated in the bottom of the company.  Year after year, thousands of employees were cut loose to make room for “high performers”.  Out with the bad.  And in with the better.

And while that sounds sexy. It is often not the right move.  Especially in today’s fast-moving economic churn.

The fire-and-hire cycle just leads to even worse results.

Frankly, the executive you think you should fire was probably performing like an all-star when you hired him.  Given your skill at knowing what your company needs, you hand-picked that person.  For their talents, their charisma, and a work ethic. They were the right fit.

And they probably still are the right fit for you now.

Life just got in the way.  That’s what happens.  Life happens.  Busy executives have personal lives that get confused and chaotic.  Sometimes, for no fault of their own, life deals them a unfair hand.

That extra pressure, that stress, can make him appear cynical.  They can seem combative and argumentative.  They don’t do their job as fast or as expertly as they used to.  They just aren’t as creative.   There’s no extra genius.  No innovation.

The seem “washed up”.  But the wrong approach is to fire them.

It’s not good for you as a company and it probably won’t teach any lessons to them either.

The truth is your under-performer is in a lot of pain.

They are hurting.  And they know it.  They might not want to share all their pain with you, but they know that they aren’t performing like they used to.  And that’s how it has to be for right now.

The truth is that it is easier for them to underperform and use their emotional energy to fight the other hurts in their life than it is to perform for you like they used to. Their personal issues are more important then your business issues.

That’s the case most of the time.

Pain and fear beat the innovation and creativity out of talented business executives.  Their personal challenges change them from the person they used to be to the shadow of an all-star they are now.

And firing them won’t change that.

For your company or for them or for you.

To help them, you have to heal them. To help yourself, you have to help them first.

That’s the secret.  You have to help them solve their personal problems.  You have to lead them to make the next few right decisions.  And even though at times that is sticky and uncomfortable, the end result is rewarding.

That journey might take days or weeks or months or years.

Candidly, you might not be willing to invest that.

It might just be easier to fire and hire and hope the new executive has better luck than the old one.

But if you can care and heal — and if you do, you will have saved a person and grown your business and inspired all those around you.  You will have changed the world.

And that’s probably why you got into business in the first place.

Almost isn’t good enough.

If you almost got the job that really means you didn’t make the final cut.

If you almost won first place that really means you ended up losing.

If you almost finished the job that means you really left your mission incomplete.

If you almost care that really means you don’t care at all.

If you’ve almost did the right thing that really means you ended up doing the wrong thing.

If you have almost made it in time that really means you ended up being late.

If you almost figure it out that really means you still have questions and unsolved problems.

If you almost have enough to do what you want to do that really means you can’t be where you want to be right now.

If you almost are happy that really means you’re still dissatisfied.

If you almost always do something then that really means you might not be as disciplined as you should be.

If you almost have your mind made up that really means you’re not as confident yet as you want to be.

If you almost have the answer that really means you’re still looking for it.

If you almost are successful that really means you still have more work to do.

If you almost worked hard enough that really means you just didn’t put in enough effort.

If you’ve almost stopped a bad habit that really means you’re not as “in control” as you want to be

Almost isn’t what you want for you.

It is close.  At times it looks like the real thing.

But it’s not good enough.

It’s almost the right thing.

And even though at times the difference is small, you can tell between being almost satisfied with your life and truly feeling a sense of accomplishment from what you’ve done.

From what you have achieved.

Don’t let almost be the enemy of awesome.

Achieve more.

You’ve been there before.   You are negotiating a complex business deal and moving point-by-point to get the person on the other side of the table to sign off on the components of the deal.

“Does that work for you?” you find yourself asking.

And with a nod and a handshake you find yourself standing up from the table with a successful deal negotiated.

Only later you learn that the deal you thought you had wrapped up isn’t really closed after all.

“We’ve changed our mind,” says your client on the other end of the telephone call.  As you listen in disbelief, anger and outrage rise to the surface.

You can’t believe it.  ”What happened?” you stammer in semi-protest.

Thoughts of lost revenue and hard answers you have to give to bosses are a swift punch to your gut.  ”What really happened?” you find yourself thinking.

It’s overwhelming when people change their mind.

Psychologists tell us that any time someone in a community begins to shift their thinking that the group as a whole experiences significant stress.  It’s difficult to handle for everyone involved.  It’s more than just business deals too.

Business, religion, politics, marriage, finances, personal relationships — these matters disrupt our sense of self.   When others question their long held opinions about life, we begin to question our own beliefs.  That creates a temporary sense of uncertainty and confusion.  That’s the science behind what you are feeling.

You panic when people change their mind.  That emotion is natural — but frustrating and confusing.  If you’re not careful you’re quick to be distracted and demotivated.

It’s important to understand why people change their opinion.

Ultimately, what you realize is that even though the topics and situations are different, your opinions change just is often, and just as seemingly random, as those around you.

But you have to be aware of what is really going .

So, why do people change their mind:

1. Their mind wasn’t made up in the first place. — They are still on the fence.  Sometimes “leaning your way” can seem like agreement.  When they lean back you realize that you hadn’t done your job convincing them.
2. New life experiences give them a new perspective. — New experiences, good and bad, provide more options.  More education and different friends and locations can easily shape a new perspective.  And it doesn’t take much.
3. The chaos around the discussion makes a decision confusing. — There aren’t just two sides of an issues.  There are endless perspectives.  Sometimes after looking at all of that, a clear choice becomes no choice at all.  Doing nothing is easier than risking making the wrong choice.
4. They are under physical or emotional pressure to make that decision. — Someone is twisting their arm.  Sometimes literally.  An angry spouse or business partner can be more convincing that your logic.
5. They don’t like you or want to help you. — It’s always personal.  In business and in life, people are influenced by those who lead or influence widely held opinions.  It can be easy to dislike a “thought leader”  and in parallel reject their line of thinking.

Think about it more practically.

Every day you’re learning something new that will impact the decisions you make tomorrow.

It might be noble to declare that your opinions never change, but that’s probably not even close to true.  Even if you don’t share your changed opinion with anyone else, that doesn’t mean you haven’t made up your mind in a new direction.

The solution then is not to call people who change their mind a liar, but to assume they are doing the exact same thing you are wired to do.  To evolve. To keep learning.

It can be confusing when you’re not sure why an opinion has changed.

You can feel hurt or disrespected, but perhaps a changed mind is an opportunity for you to learn.  A chance to see intimately into the minds of those brave enough to share their own confusion and confliction.

This is the same whether you are negotiating a business deal or debating a hotly contested cultural issue.

Refuse to panic.  Pursue excellence.  Think for yourself.  Decry cruelty.

And when things change, relentlessly examine every opportunity to be amazing.

The phone rings — breaking you out of your concentration. You’ve been focused on a complex task. Trying to solve a problem that has stumped you for hours.

As the phone rings a second time, your hand moves from your mouse to the edge of the phone, ready to pick up the handset. Your eyes glance at the name showing on the screen.

You pause for a second.

As the phone rings a third time, you realize that you have just a second to make a decision. Do you take the call or do you get back to solving the hard problem that you have been working on all morning?

That’s reality.

You just happen to be on the other side of the call. You’re the one doing the interrupting. Jolting executives out of their concentration as they try to solve serious problems that have them confused and frustrated.

Your call only adds to that confusion.

But it also adds some clarity.

Your client only has a few seconds to make a gut-level decision about your value to them. That’s it. There’s no time for complex arguments or for them to scan your latest white paper.

In a few seconds, every thing that you have ever done for them pops to the forefront of their decision-making ability.

It’s raw and gritty. It might make you uncomfortable. But it’s the most honest of business relationships. There is a decision — do they take your call or do they shrug you off?

They know the truth.

Do you provide value to them or do they know that you’re calling to “just check in on them” — probably peddling another technology solution that’s close to the one they already bought from you last year. Sure you might be calling to ask them to hang out with you for a beer or to grab a quick lunch, but they know that that’s all part of your plan to extract more money out of them. To close more deals.

And in a second or two it’s all becomes clear. You can’t fake it. You have to live it. The ringing phone demands a solution.
Which brings us to the point of this discussion.

You can’t provide value when you need to get results.

By then, it is too late.

The opportunity to create lasting memories is over. You have to start caring right now — even when it seems like you don’t really need to care.

The truth is, you’ve never needed to care any more than you do right now. Right now is all you have. There is no tomorrow unless you start caring today.

• There are no phone calls.
• There are no e-mail exchanges.
• There is no extra revenue.

It doesn’t work.

Nothing works until you start loving people.

Until you love the people that you want to do business with.

If there’s one thing that we’ve all learned in the last half decade of economic decline around the world, it is that people are frail and hurting beings. We’ve learned that we’re a little more fallible than we thought we were before. We’ve realized that destruction and utter chaos is a possibility. Sometimes an inevitability.

Which is why the conversation needs to change from value and solutions and service to something much more powerful. To something much more potent.

Discussions with your clients needs to be about the gritty, personal side of life. You don’t need to be corny but you do need to be caring. This isn’t about passive aggression or manipulation; it’s about a heart-felt interpretation of life and the people doing business in that life.

To grow you have to love people.

Economic patterns come and go. Businesses will fall and they grow.

Most of that will never be in your control, ever — no more than you can cause the sun to shine or the rain to fall.

You are helpless when it comes to cosmic change. But you can change your own attitude about those you do business with. You can give a hand up instead of looking for a handout. You can be genuine instead of going for the jugular. You can love and care and cry instead of twisting and cajoling and pressuring.

The decision is yours.

As the phone rings, your business intentions stand naked before the judgments of your customer. No excuses. No explanations. Only the value you’ve created stands to persuade your client to pick up the phone and hear you out.

When you give as a strategy. When you give with intention. When you give more than people deserve to get, you create a relationship that drives your client to engage with you. They’re still busy, still frustrated, but willing to hear you out. Willing to give you a chance.

Because you’ve given them much more already.

It takes emotional courage to be kind when pointing out the flaws of your opponent will make you gratified right now.

It takes emotional courage to be professional and candid when passion aggression and situational dishonesty allow to you solve symptoms instead of addressing the uncomfortable underlying issues.

It takes emotional courage to smile and and ask someone else “how you can help” when you feel like you need so much help yourself.

It takes emotional courage to be different when populist peer pressure is easy to blindly adopt.

It takes emotional courage to resist being a bully even when you think the facts are on your side.

It takes emotional courage to make a difference.

Not brains or brawn or business braggadocio.

Emotional.  Courage.

Think about that the next time you’re faced with a tough business choice.

Most people will never know how brave you really are.  But that’s OK.  It’s your life to live anyway.

So live it standing up.

Outside and inside.

That send us into a rage.

And reality is that it’s not one set of “things” that does it.  It’s a bunch of them in a lot of different little places.

Some of those frustrations are caused by stress in the office. Others are caused by poor personal relationships, bad financial decisions, and unrealized life goals.

Together, this “life baggage” creates feelings of helplessness that can seem to overwhelm anything positive around you in your life.  It is almost as if there is an evil plot brewing in the universe against you.

It all leads to raging failure.

Anger is a dangerous weapon.

It can drive you to rise up on behalf of the weak.  On the other hand it can destroy good intentions with fear and chaos and reckless distraction.

It is all-consuming passion.

Instead of purposeful planning and thoughtful engagement, you find yourself vengeful, defensive, and passive aggressive.

All symptoms of raging failure.

It’s become radically more clear over the last half-decade.

The last few years of economic depression  across the globe have brought to the surface human emotions and bad behavior that further compound the business problems we find ourselves trying to untangle.  We’ve adopted hyper-combative atittudes in place of  kindness, charity, and compromise.

We’re angry.  And it’s robbing us of the bright spots in life.  It’s stealing from us our creativity to see beyond the obstacles in our way.

We’re so concerned about who is taking advantage of us that we don’t take advantage of the talents and resources we have at our disposal.

It’s the rage that blinds us.

Blinds us as we stumble stupidly towards impending doom.

Anger can never quench the fear you feel.

That takes something else.  Not rage.  But compassion.

Think about this.  You’re not the only one hurting.  You’re just like everyone else.  You want to feel a little better tomorrow than you do today.

That just as true for your business as it is for your personal life.

Simmer down.

However you label success for you doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you want to be successful.  At something.  Right now.

So it helps to start with understanding what you want to achieve.

The last thing is also the most important thing.

You can’t just take life as it comes and expect to end up where you want to be.  You’ll end up confused, frustrated — feeling helpless and powerless to change your situation.  Start with what you want to come last and then work backwards.

• Think about how you want to be remembered and then create those memories.
• Think about how much money you want to make and then put a plan together to get you there.
• Think about the people you want to be friends with and then build those relationships.
• Think about where you want to lead others and then begin to move them in that direction.

Make the last thing the first thing– and the every thing — that you spend your time and energy working towards.

It will keep you focused.

Insist on yourself. Never imitate.   ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Frankly, at some point you don’t have a choice.  Life forces you.  Maybe it’s when you take your first step as a toddler.  Or maybe it’s when you take the SAT test as a young adult.

At some point, you realize that even though information is being thrown at you, it is up to you to interpret what you hear, to make your own opinions,  and to do something about it.

Over time this becomes second nature.

It’s subconscious.  You make decisions without even thinking much at all about what you are doing. Based on experience and memorable life instances, you apply judgment in real-time.  As circumstances present themselves, you decide how to react.

And that is a tremendously exhausting experience.  It demands emotional commitment.  You have to pick a side. You have to make hard choices.  You have to filter truth from hyperbole.  So it is always easier is to stop the pain.  To stop thinking on your own.  To just let other people’s opinions become your own.  To accept anger and frustration as fact and excuse.

And even though you’re not investing the emotional effort that you used to exert, you’ll find yourself just as confused, and perhaps more frustrated.

The answer is to do it the hard way.

You have to think for yourself.

It’s tiring.  It demands focus.  At times you’re frustrated and unsure.  But it’s the key to breakthrough.  When you stop thinking for yourself, who you could be gets lost in the mimicry of everyone else’s opinion.

Simply, you lose your way unless you’re focused on finding it.  Unless you deliberately decide to make the right choice, right now.

It all comes down to a few simple uncompromising outlooks:

1. Challenge everything.
2. Trust your gut instinct.
3. Pursue creativity.
4. Look for what’s not there.
5. Decry mediocrity.
6. Focus on what’s important.
7. Keep trying.
8. Fight through the confusion.
9. Learn hard lessons the first time.
10. Don’t give in to peer pressure.

Demand more than implication and inference.

Think for yourself.

“Success begins with attitude, motivation, and intention. That’s why we’re called human beings; not human doings.”

Think about that.  You are before you do.

What you think about most you end up trying.

Business experts like to convince you that new tools or better tactics are the key to your business growth.  And great technology and savvy ideas do make a difference in the short term.

You might improve revenue in the immediate quarter, but sustainable growth demands that you change bad habits and build a culture that drives  performance improvement.

Without improving who we are as business leaders, we fail to drive innovation and change.  When incentives and novelty grow old, growth and market dominance becomes an unattainable aspiration.

You lose out by doing more and focusing less on who you are — as a leader and as a company.

Be amazing.

That’s the key to doing something amazing time and time and time again.