Sales Leadership Alliance Meeting – Aug 20, 2014

Leadership as a Hero’s Journey – Four Virtues for Transforming Uncertainty & Anxiety into Results

Presented by Eric Kaufmann, President of Sagatica 

Sales people are rarely, if ever associated with deep thinking. The exception being those who are truly sales champions.  Eric is one of those rare individuals who has done that deep thinking and applied that to corporate leadership

He says we need to grow and evolve to make better decisions. The common factor is how you relate to people, how you go forth on your hero’s journey. How you lead yourself is how you will lead others. Wisdom = Mistakes + Time

A survey of CEOs found their most valued characteristics are:

Setting vision 21%

Communications 45%

Problem Solving 65%

Engaging and Empowering 93%

Leader comes from Old English it means to Travel

Everything you have ever wanted …Begins one step beyond your comfort zone..! What are the steps? Start with thinking bigger than your current comfort zone. Leave the familiar, learn something new and bring it back to serve others.  Make sacrifices that make a difference.  Once you have decided to step beyond your comfort zone there are four virtues needed for success.

Four Virtues:

Courage is willingly walking towards something you fear

Faith is making a leap of faith or giving up something, going forward when there is no certainty

Grit is the tenacity to keep going when you are tired and don’t feel like going on. It is the most predictive element of success.

Focus: is answering the question what am I creating. The intentional beliefs and self-concepts we believe in.  Who we are and how we think and how we behave.

Are you the kind of leader a person would want to be with? If you are, you will attract people who want to follow you.

Set Goals, for goals to be valid your must: State it, Publish it and Share it.

Look at your own self talk, what are you saying in your head. What you are saying in your head is how you see the world. How we mentor ourselves is how we lead others. Take a close look at our self-talk in our heads. If you tell yourself, you are not good enough as how should it be. Have a vision a vision of yourself, as you want yourself to be. We don’t see the world as it is…. We see it as we are..!

It takes Courage, Grit, Focus and Faith to be successful when going beyond your comfort zone. Growth comes from going beyond your comfort zone to your growth zone. He pointed out that if you go too far outside your comfort zone you may enter the panic zone. It is ok to venture there every so often, just do not go too far and end up in the panic zone too often.

A deeper dive in to Eric’s sage advice can be found in his New Book “Leadership is The Hero’s Journey”

About Today’s Presenter:

Eric Kaufmann guides leaders to make better decisions and achieve better results. He has two decades of experience in sales, management and leadership at Lanier/3M and at Corning Labs.  In 1999 he launched and executive development consultancy which had served: Sony, T-Mobile, Genentech, Alcon Labs, Teradata and many senior manages of Fortune 1,000 companies. He is an Adjunct Professor at San Diego State University and Cal State San Marcos and is a speaker for Vistage International.

His book,” Leadership as a Hero’s Journey”, explores the four traits shared by successful passionate and creative business leaders. The book describes how they navigate through uncertainty and anxiety in order to improve the lives and livelihood so those around them.

Contact info:  eric@sagatica.com  www.sagatica.com or 619-668-8500

Upcoming Events:

San Diego, CA  -Chapter Meeting

Wed. Sept. 10, 2014

5 Steps to improve your messaging

By Fia Fasbinder, Executive Coach at Sagatica

Orange County, CA – Chapter Meeting

Wed. Sept 17, 2014

Presentation by Jamey Power, President of Power Family Associates, and Former SVP of JD Power Associates.