State of mind might seem like a ‘soft issue’, but part of the sales leader’s role is to motivate the team and keep them upbeat, positive and focused on success – a negative disposition can have a detrimental impact on the sales performance of an entire company.
Marshall Goldsmith, author of the now-famous book Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It, sums this up: “Imagine that your leader comes in every day and communicates the message, ‘I’m unhappy to be here.’ Well, what does that say about you? I don’t like you. This isn’t meaningful. What’s that say about the company? This place is a waste.”
Score With Success
Goldsmith spends a lot of time with highly successful people and he maintains they all have high scores on ‘mojo’ – a positive spirit or attitude towards what one is doing. Mojo is the opposite of inertia and apathy. And, he adds: “There is a clear cause-and-effect relationship between mojo and success.”
Of course it’s impossible to communicate a sense of joy in what you’re doing, or a belief that your work is meaningful, if you don’t feel those things. And while mojo is impossible to fake, Goldsmith believes it is possible to find or recapture.
Redefine Yourself
What you need are a couple of vital ingredients – identity, achievement, reputation and acceptance. All of these underpin happiness. You need to start off by defining who the ‘you’ is that you want to be.
“We get locked into unnecessary self-limiting definitions of who we are, but we don’t have to,” says Goldsmith, using the example of U2’s Bono to illustrate his point. He’s been a music lover, musician, rock star and humanitarian, redefining who he wants to be throughout his life while still remaining authentic. His secret, according to Goldsmith, is that he engages in work that is positive and meaningful.
“These people never act like their lives or their work are trivial – and that’s one of the reasons they’re great leaders,” he says.
Get a Mojo-Meter
Record and track your own mojo with a free download of the Rypple MOJO Meter App for iPhone or Blackberry. Go to http://www.mojothebook.com/download-mojo-app/
