BUILD TRUST

In Build Trust, Ron Blackburn and Mike Moore share how nothing of value happens without

trust and how to develop a culture of trust within your business. In Build Trust they will help you understand how your intentions, motives and purpose create the trust that will improve your business. If you've been working hard and struggling to build the relationships to grow your business, Build Trust reveals how your intentions could be misaligned and blocking your road to success. You'll learn how to adjust, adapt and make the changes needed to unlock your ability to make the connections and build the relationships that create and sustain lasting success. If you believe building relationships built on trust can improve your business, then you will enjoy reading and applying the, lessons, examples and wisdom found in Build Trust.

By Mike Moore

11 Keys To Peak Performance

For over 40 years I’ve studied, taught, trained, coached, observed and learned from, peak performers.

All of this exposure has allowed me to see the good, the bad and the ugly in myself and others in nearly every possible type of situation imaginable. During all that time, I’ve studied and made notes about the attitudes, skills and actions of peak performers and I’ve narrowed them down to these keys. I’m sharing these keys so you can realize that the things peak performers do are mostly about attitude and effort. Peak performance is more about who they are, than their skills, but in my opinion who they are, becomes their biggest advantage!

My message to everyone I share this with is simple...There isn’t one thing peak performers do regularly that you can’t do. None of these keys requires you to have anything you weren't born with the ability to develop. The only thing holding you back from becoming a peak performer in life and your profession is you. So, stop waiting, complaining, making excuses and start on your mission today!

KEYS TO PEAK PERFORMANCE...

1. Focus on always helping, serving and doing what's best...They make people more important than things!

2. Always work to build trust by being a likable, trustworthy, expert in their field.

3. Have a positive attitude, mental toughness and give a maximum effort.

4. Hold themselves accountable for their results...They never blame others or their company and always accept full responsibility for their attitudes, skills and actions.

5. Have a plan and work their plan.

6. Are focused and know the importance of not allowing their time to be wasted by email, technology, social networks or routine tasks that distracts them from their priorities.

7. Continually learn, grow and improve and in doing so are open minded, embrace change and look to others to gain knowledge, information and insight.

8. Know the most important assets they have are their own time, effort and attitude.

9. Treat people with respect by being open, honest and direct at the same time being kind, caring and compassionate.

10. Set and hold themselves accountable to standards far surpassing what others would expect of them.

11. Are goal oriented in everything they do and understand how being goal oriented gives them self-discipline.

By Mike Moore

Build 'It' And Everything Improves!

Locker Room Leadership

I've learned many things from great coaches about leadership. The first and place becoming a winner starts...Winning is about more than the score. 

Coaches who win are leaders, and leaders don't measure winning by the scoreboard. They measure winning by the positive effect they have on people's lives. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying, anytime they keep score, it's important to play to win. Playing each game, day or event in life to win, making the effort, exhausting oneself in the pursuit of a worthwhile cause, is what exposes the opportunities to learn, grow and become the person who can win the bigger battle of developing into a lifelong winner.

Leaders, coaches and mentors view the score as a lifelong process, a marathon not a sprint. Don't ask them what today's outcome was...Ask them in 10 years how the people they led are doing, judge them by how they have influenced the people they led. Vince Lombardi, yes the one the trophy is named after, once said, "The most difficult thing I do is getting them ready to play each week". Winning in sports, business and life is more about who you are than your strategy or tactics...People make things happen and leaders help people become those who make the best things happen.

My father was a football coach, teacher and leader.  He raised me, taught me and prepared me to become a coach and teacher. In the processes he taught me leadership. I grew up in his coaching office watching game film, on the practice field and in the locker room. I spent time with him learning to game plan and plan practices to prepare athletes to execute these plans. I watched him prepare his players to perform and was on the sidelines and heard the in-game coaching,  halftime adjustments and post game speeches. These were always to get them ready to perform again.

My father exposed me to many of the great coaches of the past 50 years and I learned from all of them. Coaches like Vince Lombardi, Bear Bryant, Tom Landry, Red Auerbauch,  Don Shula and Chuck Knoll. 

As time passed I studied coaches like Bill Walsh, Bill Belichick, Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Tommy Lasorda, Bobby Cox, Bill Cowher, Mike Tomlinson, Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh. The one who influenced me the most after my father, was in my opinion the greatest coach of all time...John Wooden.

The last time I spoke to legendary Major League Baseball Manager and family friend, Bobby Cox, he reminded me that I was doing what my father raised me to do...In business and life, rather than in sports.

My Dad spent my childhood, teenage years and early adult life preparing me and helping me refine my coaching insights and skills. He and I talked for hours on end about how to apply what we both knew about coaching to business leadership and management. We found that all he had taught me applied to coaching, executive leadership, sales management and salespeople. In addition, I learned something from every coach I ever played for, every person I ever worked for and every client I every consulted with or trained...Every single one of them!

I found that life and business are both a performing experience, just like sports. I also learned that people performed best when 'coached up' by a leader. I believe that sports are important to society not because of who wins or loses but because of the lessons we can learn about peak performance, coaching, teamwork and leadership. Don't get me wrong, winning makes playing the game more fun, just as achievements make life more fun, and coaching and leadership is about preparing people to have more fun!

After using all I had learned to lead, coach and manage people, I began writing, speaking, teaching and training people about what I had learned that would help others prepare to perform to their peak and produce their best results. 

I was blessed in 1996 to have John Wooden take the time to meet with me. We spent hours discussing coaching, leadership and teaching. John graciously spent those hours at his home in Encino, California where we shared ideas about how leaders should view winning, losing, relationships and life. He opened up and shared his wisdom and insights and patiently answered all my questions. I lost my father, Charles Moore, in 1992 and John in 2010. I miss them both and feel very fortunate to have called them my mentors and coaches...I love them both.

Their influence and impact on me, and many others is their legacy and the reason they will never be forgotten. The lessons I learned from my father, John Wooden and the other great coaches have served me well and helped me serve others.

Now, I am teaching leaders, managers and coaches how to build businesses, teams and individuals that can keep growing, learning and improving their peak performance. The following are some of the high points I teach in my 'Locker Room Leadership' seminars and coaching sessions.

1. Great leadership, coaching, teaching and managing is an act of will.
2. Leadership is something you do with people, not to them.
3. If you stop learning you'll stop leading.
4. In a locker room, boardroom, sales office or any group, if you pay attention, you can hear and feel the attitudes of the people.
5. If you pay attention you can tell if people are ready to perform.
6. Peak performance is a Spirit (Attitude), Mind (Knowledge and Skill) and Body (Actions) experience...To win in sports, business and life, they have to always be in that order.
7. Leaders don't worry about averages or excellence they raise the standards...The lowest form of behavior that's acceptable.
8. Who you are as a coach or leader is the lowest form of behavior you except...It's not your average or top people's performance but your lowest producing performers...That's who you are as a leader.
9. Winning coaches spend time with the people they least want to engage...The people who need to improve the most.
10. Leaders assign, monitor and teach to generate improvement.
11. Leaders manage the atmosphere...the air! They do this by managing attitudes because attitudes create behavior that results in winning.
12. Leaders inspire, motivate and hold people accountable to be their best.
13. Leaders challenge people to change their average thinking, so they can grow and improve.
14. Leadership skills can be taught, learned and improved but need insight, intuition and a personal touch to become most effective.
15. Great leaders love people...That's where their insight, intuition and personal touch comes from.
16. Most managers and coaches sabotage the results they want by trying to manage the results.
17. When you manage results you’re too late to lead.
18. Results, the score and winning, can’t be managed. Winning comes from preparing the spirit, mind and body.
19. Results, the score and winning come from the intentions, attitudes, skills and actions that were present long before the results.
20. Intentions, attitudes, behavior and skills can be taught and managed through the discipline of preparation.
21. Winning will take care of itself when leaders manage the things that create the score.
22. Leaders lift people to accomplish beyond their own expectations through preparation.
23. Never forget that your standards define who you are as a coach or leader.
24. Leaders never compromise their standards, instead they use them to teach, motivate and inspire.
25. Leadership is about people first but no one person is more important than the team.
26. Treating everyone the same is the fastest way to show favoritism.
27. It takes courage to treat each person the way they deserve to be treated…The way that's best for them.
28. Leader’s help people grow and become their best by working with them, to get them to do the things they don’t want to do, that will create the results they both want.
29. Leaders manage people’s intentions, attitudes and dominant thoughts that create the behavior that produces the results.
30. Leaders pay attention and listen to manage the atmosphere by managing the attitudes and state-of-mind of people.
31. Great leaders get uncommon results from common people by requiring them do the work to become uncommonly prepared.
32. In the absence of leadership, mediocrity will lead and failure is assured.
33. You won't know how good a job you've done until you see how the people you've led, mentored and coached turn out...Sometimes that takes years.

 By Mike Moore

The Tale Of A Coach's Son

"The most difficult thing I do is getting them ready to play each week." Vince Lombardi.

CHARLES MOORE

My father, Charles Moore, was a coach and leader.  He raised me, taught me and prepared me to become a coach and teacher. I grew up in his coaching office watching game film, on the practice field and in the locker room. I spent time with him learning to game plan and plan practices to prepare athletes to execute his plans. I watched him prepare his players to perform and was on the sidelines and heard the in-game coaching,  halftime adjustments and post game speeches which were always to get them ready again. Then I spent time listening to other coaches exchange ideas and heard coaches speak at coaching clinics. I am a coach's son, raised to be a coach and thankful for the lessons I learned.

The last time I spoke to legendary Major League Baseball Manager and family friend, Bobby Cox, he reminded me that I was doing what my father raised me to do...In business, rather than in sports.

My father exposed me to many of the great coaches of the past 50 years and I learned from all of them. Coaches like Vince Lombardi, Bear Bryant, Tom Landry, Red Auerbauch,  Don Shula, Chuck Knoll. Then I began to study coaches like Bill Walsh, Bill Belichick, Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Tommy Lasorda, Bobby Cox, Bill Cowher, Mike Tomlinson, Pete Carroll and Jim Harbaugh. The one who influenced me the most after my father, was in my opinion the greatest coach of all time...John Wooden.

THE HARBAUGH'S

My Dad spent my childhood, teenage years and early adult life preparing me and helping me refine my coaching insights and skills. He and I talked for hours on end about how to apply what we both knew about coaching to business leadership and management. We found that all he had taught me applied to coaching, executive leadership, sales management and salespeople. In addition, I learned something from every coach I ever played for, every person I ever worked for and every client I every consulted with or trained...Every single one of them!

I found that life and business was a performing art, just like sports. I also learned that people performed best when 'coached up' by a leader. I believe that sports are important to society not because of who wins or loses but because of the lessons we can learn about peak performance, coaching, teamwork and leadership. Don't get me wrong, winning makes playing the game more fun, just as achievements make life more fun, and coaching and leadership is about preparing people to have more fun!

After using all I had learned to lead, coach and manage people, I began writing, speaking, teaching and training about what I had learned that would help others prepare to perform to their peak to produce their best results. 

JOHN WOODEN

I was blessed in 1996 to have John Wooden take the time to meet with me. We spent hours discussing coaching, leadership and teaching. John graciously spent those hours at his home in Encino, California where we shared ideas about how leaders should view winning, losing, relationships and life. He opened up and shared his wisdom and insights and patiently answered all my questions. I lost my father, Charles Moore, in 1992 and John in 2010. I miss them both and feel very fortunate to have called them my mentors and coaches...I love them both.

Their influence and impact on me, and many others is their legacy and the reason they will never be forgotten. The lessons I learned from my father, John Wooden and the other great coaches have served me well and helped me serve others.

Now, I am teaching leaders, managers and coaches how to build businesses, teams and individuals that produce their best results. The following are some of the high points I teach in my 'Locker Room Leadership' seminars and coaching sessions.

1. Great leadership, coaching, teaching and managing is an act of will.
2. Leadership is something you do with people, not to them.
3. If you stop learning you'll stop leading.
4. In a locker room, boardroom, sales office or any group, if you pay attention, you can hear and feel the attitudes of the people.
5. If you pay attention you can tell if people are ready to perform.
6. Peak performance is a Spirit (Attitude), Mind (Knowledge and Skill) and Body (Actions) experience...To win in sports, business and life, they have to always be in that order.
7. Leaders don't worry about averages or excellence they raise the standards...The lowest form of behavior that's acceptable.
8. Who you are as a coach or leader is the lowest form of behavior you except...It's not your average or top people's performance but your lowest producing performers...That's who you are as a leader.
9. Winning coaches spend time with the people they least want to engage...The people who need to improve the most.
10. Leaders assign, monitor and teach to generate improvement.
11. Leaders manage the atmosphere...the air! They do this by managing attitudes because attitudes create behavior that results in winning.
12. Leaders inspire, motivate and hold people accountable to be their best.
13. Leaders challenge people to change their average thinking, so they can grow and improve.
14. Leadership skills can be taught, learned and improved but need insight, intuition and a personal touch to become most effective.
15. Great leaders love people...That's where their insight, intuition and personal touch comes from.
16. Most managers and coaches sabotage the results they want by trying to manage the results.
17. When you manage results you’re too late to lead.
18. Results, the score and winning, can’t be managed. Winning comes from preparing the spirit, mind and body.
19. Results, the score and winning come from the intentions, attitudes, skills and actions that were present long before the results.
20. Intentions, attitudes, behavior and skills can be taught and managed through the discipline of preparation.
21. Winning will take care of itself when leaders manage the things that create the score.
22. Leaders lift people to accomplish beyond their own expectations through preparation.
23. Never forget that your standards define who you are as a coach or leader.
24. Leaders never compromise their standards, instead they use them to teach, motivate and inspire.
25. Leadership is about people first but no one person is more important than the team.
26. Treating everyone the same is the fastest way to show favoritism.
27. It takes courage to treat each person the way they deserve to be treated…The way that's best for them.
28. Leader’s help people grow and become their best by working with them, to get them to do the things they don’t want to do, that will create the results they both want.
29. Leaders manage people’s intentions, attitudes and dominant thoughts that create the behavior that produces the results.
30. Leaders pay attention and listen to manage the atmosphere by managing the attitudes and state-of-mind of people.
31. Great leaders get uncommon results from common people by requiring them do the work to become uncommonly prepared.
32. In the absence of leadership, mediocrity will lead and failure is assured.
33. You won't know how good a job you've done until you see how the people you've led, mentored and coached turn out...Sometimes that takes years.

 By Mike Moore

The Road Ahead...New Leadership Required

We are headed for more trouble as many of you are witnessing and sharing with me daily. The majority of stories shared with me include faltering hopes, negative attitudes and a sense of doom from those on the front lines of business...salespeople. Frustration is mounting among many salespeople that their daily reality and their companies leadership approach aren't aligned. In fact, many salespeople feel their companies leadership is detached from their reality.

We are, and have been, in a transition to a 'new age of business' for many years. As a point of reference, the 'digital age' wasn't a transition to a new economy or age of business, it wasn't an age at all. It was the addition of advancing technology to the industrial age. The transition we are in now is a transition as significant as the one from the agricultural age to the industrial age and includes a shift to a 'new economy'. We have been experiencing the pain of this transition since 2008 because it was seen as part of the old cyclical economy instead of a major transition or shift.  

Leaders responded with old solutions to past cyclical downturns, instead of reacting to the transition with new ideas, thinking and actions.

Many business leaders are still suffering from 'economic normalcy bias'...They believe because it's never happened to them before it won't happen now. Their past experience and comfort clouds their vision. What they're experiencing is very much like the people who believed the earth is flat...Their belief didn't make it true, it only held them back and robbed them from exploring what was possible. It took new thinkers with a vision of a new world and the courage to fail, to explore the truth and succeed...Just as it will today. Mainstream economists are starting to acknowledge that we're not in a downturn but have entered a 'new economy'.

Too many leaders and almost all followers are waiting for and banking on a recovery that isn't coming...I am not sharing this with you as bad news, it isn't doom and gloom. In fact, this transition is good news! 

Great news, in fact, for those with clear vision, courage and the right attitudes to take advantage of the opportunities a 'new age of business' presents. The leaders in this 'new age of business' will experience great new successes just as those in the past did.

Struggling with this transition shouldn't come as a surprise though. It happened before. It's hard to be a successful leader from one age to the next because what made you a success in one doesn't assure your success in the next.

Contrary to most, I don't believe change is painful...I believe it's the resistance to change that causes the pain. The evidence of this is seen when we embrace change and become reenergized with new vision for the future or resist change and suffer in the fight to maintain our comfort with our status quo and past successes.

The old cyclical economy is broken and there is no recovery coming but there are many opportunities for new leadership to succeed today and in the coming years .

What we are experiencing is different, unique in fact. Changes in demographics, business and work ethics, consumer attitudes, economic debt, technology and globalization have all come together to drive this transition. There will be many winners in the 'new age of business'. The question is will you be one or will you get caught holding on until it's too late?

For those leaders holding on to the old economic model, the temporary short-term successes experienced, read or heard about, just help them hold on to the status quo a little longer and postpone their successful transition. 

For those with vision, who trust their instincts and truly believe people are a businesses greatest asset, new achievements and success are just around the corner.

Change, real change, is coming and it's bringing with it new amazing opportunities for those with the courage to truly put people first, hold them to a higher standard, embrace new thinking and take bold new actions. These people will become the leaders in this 'new age of business' and begin to writing the next chapter in history.

Welcome to the 'people first age of business'.

By Mike Moore

No One Sets Out To Be Average

How can you prepare to be more cheerful, happy and prepare to handle the hassles of a normal day? How can you assure yourself of not being average? 

When people wake up in the morning they have an expectation or intention for their day. It's a choice that separates average for extraordinary. What are your intentions or expectations for the day ahead?  I've asked individuals and groups, large and small, this question over the past two decades and the overwhelming number one answer is, “I want to have a good day”.  When I ask people to define a good day, the definition is, “A day with little to no problems or hassles”.   When I ask them how many days a year this intention or expectation is met, they usually answer, “None”.  Yet, they wake up each day and repeat this behavior without changing their expectation or intention. The vast majority of people start each day with an unrealistic expectation or intention, that when not fulfilled, makes them frustrated, upset and unhappy. When we set expectations that aren't met, we are usually disappointed.

Managing your own intentions and expectations drives your daily emotions and state-of-mind. Average people focus on their circumstances and not their solutions. This makes their circumstances the driver of their emotions. This will make their emotions or state-of-mind a roller coaster ride of peaks and valleys that sabotage their ability to create the results or life they want. 

First, let’s look at why people set an intention or expectation of no problems, no hassles and no worries, and defined this as a good day.  When we wake up each day we have a choice to make, “Better or Comfortable”.  Our human nature seeks comfort before improvement and is satisfied to be comfortable. We don't want to be average but have to choose to do things we don't want to do if we want to be above average. We don’t wake up each day driven to be better human beings or to make things in our life better.  So, the challenge is how to overcome our human nature and stop sabotaging our own lives. 

When we define a good day as no problems, no hassles and no adversity and then meet the first problem of the day, how do we react? If you said, “Frustrated” you'd be right.  Your expectation or intention has set you up to be frustrated. Not the best state-of–mind to handle life or work problems. This pattern of behavior begins a downward spiral of poor emotions. These emotions make you less capable of handling the next problem. Maintaining this emotional cycle may even make you avoid, withdraw or quit trying to overcome the obstacles in your day. The end result of this is average, at best.

How can you change your expectations or intentions to change your results? Remember, "Everyday the choices you make, makes you".  When you start your day, change your expectation or intention by changing your definition of a good day.  Let’s revisit the idea or definition of a good day. If your choice is comfort you define it as “no problems”. Think about when you feel best about yourself. Your self-worth or self-esteem is best when you overcome adversity, solve problems and help others.  So to change your results, to develop the emotional state-of-mind to make a difference in your life, you need a new definition of a good day.

This new definition can help you make a better first choice as you wake up each day. Define a good day as one where you find, meet and overcome problems and adversity. Yes, you need to wake each day looking for problems.  Problems to solve that will help people.  Just a note...You shouldn't be looking to make problems...that won't make for a better life. You need to look for and find existing problems, and then help solve them.  If you are part of a problem, stop complaining and start finding solutions. This definition will help you to stop avoiding conflict and endure difficulties with the proper emotional state-of-mind.  Armed with this new definition, when you find problems, you will be eager to meet them head-on and won't become frustrated.  You'll become an overcomer and not a victim of your circumstances.

Adversity and problems are the obstacles that stand between where you are and the results or life you want.  The first step to overcoming adversity and problems is to develop an attitude or emotional state-of-mind that can overcome the obstacles. Our attitudes are most affected by our intentions and expectations that create our daily choices and allow us to choose to be better rather than comfortable. This thinking will even start to help you embrace change and stop fighting to hold on to a status quo that may be keeping you average as well. 

Redefine a good day, expect problems and hassles. Become an overcomer, a solution finder, and then you'll begin to experience a, 'Good Day'...everyday. This cycle of behavior will make your life is a journey of solutions that serve others and rewards you with the results and life you want.

A final thought for leaders...You are responsible to teach, prepare and help people set expectations that will allow them to live and work towards a better life. Helping people understand how their expectations and intentions are empowering them or sabotaging them is a good first step.

Change your expectations to prepare for the hassles of life to increase your happiness and improve your results. Expect more of yourself and less of others...These is one of the top traits of leaders and peak performers.

By Mike Moore