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Your Guide to Personal and Professional Success

publication date: Oct 22, 2009
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author/source: Dr. Bud Bilanich
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By Dr. Bud Bilanich

Self Improvement Association Success

You want more out of life than just a job. Whether you work for a large company, a start-up, a nonprofit, or you are an entrepreneur, you want to be a star – a complete and total, personal and professional success.

But success is elusive and complicated. There is more to it than just good performance. To succeed and become the star you are meant to be, you need a success blueprint.

Here is the strategic blueprint for success that I’ve developed and use with my coaching clients. It comes from my book, Straight Talk for Success.

Research shows that all successful people have five things in common:
  1. Successful people are self-confident.
  2. Successful people create positive personal impact.
  3. Successful people are outstanding performers.
  4. Successful people are dynamic communicators.
  5. Successful people are interpersonally competent.
To become self-confident you need to do three things:
  1. Become an optimist. Learn from, and then forget yesterday’s mistakes. Focus on tomorrow’s achievements.
  2. Face your fears and take action. Action cures fear. Procrastination and inaction compound it. Failure is rarely fatal. Do something, anything that will move you closer to achieving your goals.
  3. Surround yourself with positive people. Build a network of supportive friends. Jettison the negative people in your life and just as important, find a mentor to help build your confidence and guide you along the way.
To create positive personal impact, you need to do three things:
  1. Develop, nurture and constantly promote your personal brand. Figure out the two or three things for which you want to be known. Consistently act in a manner that will get you known that way.
  2. Dress for success; be impeccable in your presentation of self. Look in the mirror on your way out the door. Make sure that your appearance shows that you respect not only yourself, but the people you will meet that day.
  3. Finally, know and follow the basic rules of etiquette. If you know the rules for a given social situation, you can concentrate on the conversation without having to worry about if you are acting appropriately. Remember the most important etiquette rule of all is simple – make the people around you feel comfortable.
There are three things essential for becoming an outstanding performer:
  1. You have to remain technically competent. The half-life of knowledge gets shorter every day. Become a life-long learner to remain technically competent throughout your career.
  2. You need to set and achieve high goals. Set milestones to help you keep on track with your goals. Focus on your goals every day. Do at least one thing every day that moves you closer to accomplishing each of your goals.
  3. You need to be well organized. Manage your time, stress, workspace and lifestyle well.
There are three keys to dynamic communication:
  1. You need to become an excellent conversationalist. Listen more than you speak. Show a genuine interest in other people and what they have to say. Do what you can to help them reach their goals.
  2. You need to write in a clear, concise, easy-to-read style. Write like you speak; imagine yourself in a conversation with the person reading your writing.
  3. Finally, you need to present well – to groups of two or 200. All successful people have the ability to make dynamic presentations that move their audience to action.
Interpersonal competence is the final key to success. To gain interpersonal confidence you must:
  1. Become self-aware. Understand yourself and your impact on others. Use your self-awareness to better understand others and to increase your influence with them.
  2. Build solid, long-lasting mutually beneficial relationships with other people. Relationships are the key to long-term success. Treat other people with dignity and respect, and they will reciprocate.
  3. Find ways to resolve conflicts with a minimal amount of problems and upset to relationships. Conflict is inevitable in business and life. Find ways to resolve conflict in a manner that enhances, not detracts from the relationships you’ve worked so hard to build.
Finally, if you want to succeed, you need to commit to taking responsibility and accountability for yourself and your success. It’s that simple. You cannot succeed if you are not willing to take personal responsibility for your life, career and success.

Personal responsibility is at the root of all personal and professional success. Success is all up to you, me, and anyone else who wants it. We all have to take personal responsibility for our own success. I am the only one who can make me a success. You are the only one who can make you a success.

Personal responsibility means recognizing that you are responsible for your life and the choices you make. It means that you realize that while other people and events have an impact on your life, these people and events don’t have to shape your life. When you accept personal responsibility for your success, you own up to the fact that it’s not what happens to you, but how you react to what happens to you that’s important. And you can choose how to react to every person you meet and everything that happens to you.

The concept of personal responsibility is found in most writings on success. Stephen Covey’s first of the Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People is, “Be proactive.” My friend, John Miller’s book QBQ: The Question Behind The Question, asks readers to pose questions like, “What can I do to become a top performer?” In his book and his speaking, John suggests that the key to success is taking personal responsibility for your life and career.

The Secret is one of the world’s best selling videos and books. It outlines the Law of Attraction: Ask, Believe, Receive. While I believe that we attract what we put out into the universe, I also worry that people who take The Secret at face value may be doing themselves a disservice.

“Ask, Believe, Receive” sounds great. However, I think something is missing. My personal Law of Attraction works like this: “Ask, Believe, Work Your Butt Off, Receive.”

I have a framed quote from Paul J. Meyer hanging in my office. It reflects my view of the law Law of Attraction and personal responsibility: “Whatever you can vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act on, must inevitably come to pass.”

There are no two ways about it; whether you prefer to think of it as “working your butt off,” or “enthusiastically acting,” the point is clear. You have to take personal responsibility for your success. I have to take personal responsibility for mine.

In the end its simple. Take personal responsibility for your success. Then use the five keys to success—Self Confidence, Personal Impact, Outstanding Performance, Dynamic Communication and Interpersonal Competence to unlock you personal and professional success.

About the Author

Bud Bilanich - Self Improvement Association AuthorBud Bilanich, The Common Sense Guy, is an executive coach, motivational speaker, author and blogger. He is the Official Guide for Executive Coaching at www.SelfGrowth.com, and the Careers Group Coordinator at www.FastCompany.com. He is a member of the USA Today Small Business Advisory Panel. He writes the popular blog www.SuccessCommonSense.com to which he posts five days a week.

Dr. Bilanich is Harvard educated and has a no-nonsense approach to his work that goes back to his roots in the steel country of Western Pennsylvania. His approach to personal and professional success is a result of over 35 years of business experience and 10 years of research and study of successful people and the application of common sense.

Bud is the author of seven other books, including Straight Talk for Success: Common Sense Ideas That Won’t Let You Down, where he presents his blueprint for career and life success:

• Develop your self confidence.
• Create positive personal impact.
• Become an outstanding performer.
• Become a dynamic communicator.
• Become interpersonally competent.

His clients include Pfizer, Glaxo SmithKline, Johnson and Johnson, Abbot Laboratories, PepsiCo, AT&T, Chase Manhattan Bank, Citigroup, General Motors, UBS, AXA Advisors, Cabot Corporation, The Aetna, PECO Energy, Olin Corporation, Minerals Technologies, The Boys and Girls Clubs of America and a number of small and family owned businesses.

Bud is a cancer survivor and lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife Cathy. He is a retired rugby player and an avid cyclist. He likes movies, live theater and crime fiction.

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