I want you to listen to an interview with the great Colonel Sweeney. Listen and ask yourself how am I leading under the changing economic environment? Read the Colonel's background and you will realize that you are listening to a real American hero. The link for the MP3 is at the end of this article. Enjoy and give some feedback for others to reflect upon.
Integrity, Commitment, Enthusiasm.
They're the attributes of great leaders, great team members and great humans. They're also the attributes that make Lt. Colonel Kevin Sweeney a captivating storyteller and inspirational icon who shares a wealth of experiences and tools necessary for success.
In today's rocky economy, too many individuals are focused on just keeping their jobs let alone excelling in their business and personal lives. The Colonel's approachable style and sage strategies from both the military and corporate worlds combine to provide a gripping, entertaining and motivating session that will resonate with audience members for years to come.
Who Is The Colonel
Lt. Colonel Kevin Sweeney has an extensive military career culminating in the receipt of the Distinguished Flying Cross from the United States Air Force. His incredible success as a sales leader in an American top 50 company is inspirational as are his sports leadership experience. The Colonel now shares his valuable insight into both business and personal success in two memorable sessions:
Conversations With The Colonel
Imagine getting the opportunity to sit in your living room and have a conversation with this gentleman who has been a leader of thousands of men and women. A man who battled the physical loss of both engines on the left wing of his airplane during a night combat mission in Desert Storm and won! A man who has achieved surmountable success as a sales leader and corporate executive and who led his college basketball team to it's highest ranking in history. Well... imagine no more.
Conversations With the Colonel puts you and your team front and center, up close and personal with Lt. Colonel Kevin J. Sweeney, the author of "Conversations with the Colonel, Lessons of Life, Leadership and Wisdom" and "Pressure Cooker Confidence, How to Lead When the Heat Is On." The Colonel will discuss with you an authentic, ethical and realistic view of the attributes needed for successful performance under pressure. The Colonel shares his extraordinary experiences across a wide and varied spectrum that few, if anyone, can match.
Pressure Cooker ConfidenceTM
How to Deliver Peak Performance When the Heat is On
Pressure Cooker ConfidenceTM enables you to say "I can, I will, I expect, and I did it"- when the pressure is on. The Colonel's flagship presentation built around his dramatic life or death flight during a mission in Desert Storm introduces the five principles of Pressure Cooker ConfidenceTM. Learn why the hard work you do beforehand matters more than the work you do when the pressure is on.
Colonel Kevin J. Sweeney will position you mentally in the cockpit with him to personally live through his incredible experience and challenge of having the two engines on his left wing come completely off his airplane while on a Desert Storm combat mission. You will feel the skill, resolve, and team attributes necessary to lead your team to a successful landing in such a dire circumstance. You will learn how to apply these same principals to your personal and professional life to excel under pressure. Team performance does not just happen. Creating effective teams take talent, time and trust. You will learn how to become the ‘go to' person in your organization when the going gets tough.
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Some people go around saying, "It's not my fault. I had to do it. I have to work. I have to take care of.... I have to... I have to...." They always feel like somebody else is forcing them to do whatever it is that they are doing. Their basic premise is: "It's not my choice. I have to do this."
I'm going to free you up for a second. And I really want you to hear what I'm going to tell you, because it's a powerful lesson in the map of accountability.
There are no "have to's" in this world. It's a myth. The only "have to" is that you have to die. The rest of the "have to's" are what you create in your head.
"Wait a minute!" you might say. "Hold on a second! I can think of about twenty ‘have to's.'" You've got this mental map of a picture of your kids and your house and paying your bills and you say, "Hey, I have to work!" But you don't. "If I didn't work," you say, "I couldn't pay my bills." That's true. But you don't have to work.
Work is like anything else. If you don't work, there are consequences for that choice. One consequence might be that you can't pay the bills, but you don't have to work. You get to work. You don't have to. You would rather work than be unable to pay the bills. So you choose to work. You have a choice. You always did.
Every time I explain this, somebody always says, "How about taxes? We have to pay taxes!" And I'm telling you right now that you don't have to pay your taxes. Are there consequences? Absolutely! You may get three meals a day and an address that says Leavenworth, but you don't have to pay your taxes. Do you want to go to jail? No? Would you rather pay your taxes than go to jail? Then shut up and pay your taxes. You don't have to pay your taxes. Given the circumstances, it's your choice.
If you feel like you're living your life on a "have to," it slows you down. You build resentment. You have stress. You have anger. You may even resort to things like drinking, just to relieve the tension, because you feel like you have to.
One of the things about feeling that you "have to" is that it creates these little things called IOU's. They're paybacks.
Whenever we feel like we have to do something, we may do it, but we pay it back. We slow down. We procrastinate. We drag our feet.
Those of us who are married know how to pay our spouses back whenever we feel like we have to do something. I do. I'm a trained professional in teaching this stuff, but I know how to get my wife upset within ten seconds. I'm not proud of it, but I know how to do it. And she knows how to do it back to me. If you're married, you know exactly what to do to get each other's goat. It's called payback.
Live your life on a want to basis not a have to basis.
Then you won't need payback. You won't need IOU's. You won't need any excuses. You'll be getting results.
Remember there are only two things you can be doing in your life. You're either getting the results you want, or you are making excuses for why you're not getting those results. You always have a choice.
Sometimes, when I tell people, "You always have a choice," they look at me kind of funny. There's this kind of gulp! Then their eyes get a little wider. And finally, they choke out the words, "Yeah ... I guess that's right, isn't it?" Not like they like it. They realize it puts the burden on them. There's no more blaming other people. No more saying it's not their fault that things didn't turn out differently. No victims. No bad guys. There's just the ability to make your own choices. And that gives you the power to change.
Once you really understand how amazing it is to have this power, you'll never be the same. You'll be sort of like Spiderman, when he realizes that he has the ability to fly through the air with his webs. At first, he's freaked out by it. Then he swallows hard and takes a running jump off a building. He's scared it's not going to work. But it does. And he gets it. "I can do this! It's amazing. It really blows my mind. But this is in my power!" Then nothing can stop him. He soars through the city, from building to building, fighting the bad guys and saving the day. He comes into his own. And you can too.
Living a life that's dull, unhappy and without meaning is like being Spiderman but never even giving your new powers a try!
Whether you've ever used it or not, you have the power of change. That means you can change your job, improve your relationships, have more fun, make more money or do just about anything you can think of.
But I've got news for you: It's even better than that.
You can choose to make all of that stuff more meaningful. Real quality of life isn't about having more cool stuff. It isn't about living in a bigger house or better neighborhood. It's not even about finding the perfect job or perfect mate. The quality of life is about your experience of those things.
Let me give you an example. Have you ever gone on vacation that you didn't enjoy? Have you ever spent a fortune on car or boat and found that, after the initial rush wore off, it didn't make you any happier?
That's because the quality of your life doesn't come from those things. It comes from inside of you. Cars, boats and houses don't have any meaning on their own. They only have the meaning we give to them. Even the perfect job and the perfect mate are only wonderful to us because of the way we experience them, because of the meaning they have for our lives.
How much meaning do you have in your life? The skills you'll learn from the Harley Attitude will give you a remarkable ability to achieve things, to change your life in incredibly powerful ways. But don't forget the importance of living a meaningful life as well.
A meaningful life will make you excited to get out of bed in the morning. It will make you feel satisfied with your day, when your head hits the pillow at night. It will bring you happiness and contentment that goes beyond the things you have and things you do every day.
Begin by asking yourself this: What do you value most? What do you want to be sure to accomplish before you die? Why are you here?
These are actually deep, philosophical questions. They cross most people's minds at some point, but it takes a lot of thought to answer them. It's easier to brush them aside. So that's what most people do. But take a look around. Most people aren't living fulfilling lives.
What would you do to guarantee you had more meaning in your life? Would you be willing to spend some time thinking things over, asking yourself hard questions, like: What really matters most to me?
If so, let me give you a hand. There are three key things to consider: your purpose, your vision and your values. Once you know what your purpose, your vision and your values are, you will know how to live a meaningful life. The only thing left will be setting your goals to achieve it.
A while back, I had a rare opportunity to visit New Iberia LA. I met the most impressive business man I have ever seen or heard in the last quarter century of working closely with successful business people. He was as profound in his thinking as he was in his execution. He was so focused on his vision that strategies were in place to correct actions that would be counter productive to the vision. He took his enemies and turned them into defenders of his inventory. His belief in being sovereign was so strong that he actually created cooperation with other farmers. His culture was truly based on love they neighbor; it was his duty. He found ways to make every person around him better.
You ask how can this be true and be competitive in this market place called business. A market that is changing daily with laws, financial requirements, product price points and the options customers' seem to have available to them. How can a farmer be like your business?
Farmer John is a real farmer. He grows sugar cane. When I first meet him we were guests of a friend. We were on a tour of the real Cajun country so I was told by my host. This is not the stuff you see in New Orleans but the authentic Cajun stuff you find in the bayou.
When we pulled up the gravel driveway of Farmer John's farm house he was on a gray tractor with front end loader moving oak branches around. He looked like your classic framer. He wore a straw hat that was torn and well worn to keep the hot sun of his face and neck. He was wearing bib overalls that looked like they had had a seasons worth of work. As we were getting out of our SUV he shut down the tractor and quickly approached us with a warm greeting that made me feel like I was the most important person in the whole world. I had no idea how my wife or the other couple with us felt. Later that night I found out they felt the same caring energy.
Farmer John gave us a guided tour of his 3000 plus acre farm. The first part of the tour was to give us an understanding of the farms vision. He said every action we take moves us closer to our vision or we don't do it. His vision was to be a sovereign self sustaining business. He immediately wanted to demonstrate what he meant by moving closer to his vision. As we walked over to the row of tractors he was intensely interviewing each of us as to who we were and what we did as a profession. You could tell he was as much interested in us as we were him. He said you see these tractors they are all well used or were scrap at one time. He explained that his entire family was trained machinist and that they could build a tractor better than the original manufactures. They were beautiful tractors. In fact he said we invented these forks on the front of this tractor. They are designed to pick up the crops and dry it, cut it and send to the haulers after a hurricane. Not if there was a hurricane but after one. He knew his environment so well that the forks were one of their strategies to be prepared when a hurricane strikes. Wow I said that is forward thinking. The amazing part is that nobody else does it he said, they just wait for the government to help them. They rebuild or built all their tractors and equipment with only their imagination to solve the problems.
As we were walking through his crops he stopped and said looking down. "You see all the little lines in the ground that look like raised mounds? Those are red ants," as we all jumped back with fear. "These are ant highways and these guys are our friends we invite them onto our farm. They protect our crops from other insects that are harmful and could cause serious damage to our crops. They are my personal Army that is guarding our investment."
We all noticed that his sugar cane was greener and healthier then other farms around him. We asked why? "Very observant," he said, with a proud glow on his face. "I have found a processing plant down the road that produces a waste that they throw away. I get it free and use it for fertilizer." Immediately Todd my friend asked why don't the other farmers us it? "Good question," John replied. "But I think it is how they see themselves and what there vision is and how they make decisions regarding that vision or the lack of vision." Most farmers just see themselves as farmers not business people who need to constantly reinvent themselves as the market and the economy changes.
I asked how you as a farming businessman improve? I said if I want to improve my golf game I go to a golf coach, if I want to improve my speaking skills I go to a speech coach. What do you do? He just smiled and said I go to the best just like you. I went to the experts at growing produce; I go to the Amish in Pennsylvania who are the best farmers in the world. They can grow vegetables in cement. I went to learn from them and lived with them for three months to learn how they think about farming. I learned from the best and it is now one of my competitive advantages.
John had his entire operation on the computer with a program that tracks ever action his business takes and they were constantly evaluating the results. Each tractor had a computer so every member of his team know where they stood relative to the vision at any moment. Asking constantly what do we need to do different to get different and better results? There was no detail left to chance.
We then asked about the price of sugar and how that effects his decision making process. John asked us to get in the car and go for a ride. We drove for about two miles pulling up to this old guard gate and to my surprise a guard. Who waived us though at the site of John. And John yelled to him as we drove by to have a great day leaving a big smile on the guard's face.
We pulled up to this old rustic building with windows that looked to have dirt on them from the Civil war. This my friends is our co-op. We refine all our own sugar to make raw sugar crystals. We have complete control of the whole process from start to finish. We can better manage the price when we are the refinery. We took a tour of the plant that was shut down as a result of being the off season. The amazing part of this mill is the fact that they built it from scratch. The tumblers to the dryers they cut and welded themselves. Just like their vision states. He took the need to solve the problem of price by bringing his fellow farmers together to create a co-op.
Later that night he joined us for a Cajun feast. At first I didn't recognize him because he was all cleaned up and no straw hat. When he spoke and I heard what confidence sounds like. When he spoke you really wanted listen for fear you might miss something brilliant. Throughout the night, he spoke highly of every person at the feast. There were about 30 couples and he had something great to say about each person. He would say Jim let me introduce you to the smartest man on oil in the United States. I don't know if he was but I promise you this that if I needed to know something about oil he is the one I would call. He never said a negative word about one person, government or business that night. It was like he knew that negative thinking has a negative effect on you soul.
FARMER or FARMER JOHN?
As you move your business towards the next level of excellence you have to take time and ask yourself, am I a farmer or a Farmer John? (Do I have a vision that I believe in so strongly that I will do what it takes or make a change if it is not moving us closer to our desired outcome.) What is your vision? Do you give up too quickly when adversity sets in? Or do you have a strategy for red ants what ever the red ants may be in your business? Do you seek out the best of the best to find out what they are doing?
I hear all the time from business people that they want to be the best. First, you must have a vision. Then strategies to implement to achieve your vision. Devise and maintain a clearly stated, focused strategy.
You must execute daily the action items that will move you closer to your vision. Develop and maintain flawless operation execution. You might not always delight your customers, but make sure you never disappoint them.
Your business needs to reflect the culture of learning and growth. Develop and maintain a performance-oriented culture. Create a culture that holds high performance expectations and a great place for people to work. Farmer John's was fun but focused.
As a leader your job is to inspire people to go where they think they could not go and to remove the obstacles that get in the way. Farmer John is a great leader, a forward thinker and a creative problem solver. Are you focusing on the obstacles or a way around them?