Today is the final part of the Cycle of Achievement which comes to the most important part…Seeing Counsel. Many people are coming to me SEEKING COUNSEL about Social Media Marketing Tactics and Strategies.

Cycle Of Achievement

Experience is not the best teacher; other people’s experience is the best teacher. For this reason, leaders must find a credible mentor so they are not forced into a trial-and-error process.

Receiving mentorship may be done in person or on the phone with someone interested in sharing his or her wisdom. It may come from studying historical figures with relevance to the undertakings of the leader. It may come from studying the materials provided by a speaker or author who can provide wisdom and experience to a leader. Or it may come by subscribing to a autoresponder list like this one and receive educational emails that will help you grow and develop your skills. By far the best type of mentor is the one that is personally concerned and connected to you and willing to give you time and attention through face-to-face interaction, telephone calls, and emails. Such a mentor is priceless in the career of a leader.

I can call my mentor up anytime and say, “Hey, can we meet this week? I need to talk to you about some things, ideas, struggles I have having with my business, etc.” and he will make time for me. I am so lucky to have that kind of relationship with my mentor because I have tried other network marketing businesses and other investment projects, but because I didn’t have a mentor I was stuck and didn’t know what to do and lost money. Because I now have a mentor who is guiding me, I am making money in my business ventures.

Even when a leader is clear on objectives and implements a well-thought-out game plan, things can go awry. If a leader is going from point A to point B and goes off course a little bit and continues that off course path they will be very far from their goal by the time they stop their journey.

If the same leader has his or her mentor walk with them the mentor can make mid-course corrections when the leader is going off the correct path. By the end of the journey the leader will be able to make it to Point B because of the guidance from his or her mentor.

In the book, Launching A Leadership Revolution by Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward, there are several reasons laid out as to why a leader seeks counsel from a mentor. Today I will discuss a few of those reasons.

A Leader Seek Counsel to Learn

Leaders know they always have more to learn. What can a leader learn from mentorship? On a personal level a leader can gain information, attitudes, perspectives, judgments, strategies, mind-sets, priorities, and objectives. On a business level a leader can learn a new system of marketing their home based business just like the techniques I went over with you for the past 8 days. However, this can never occur without humility on the part of the leader. A leader must humble himself before a mentor and agree to take counsel.

When a leader counsels with a mentor it is time to open up and honestly report results. If the results are lacking, leaders need to hold themselves accountable to their mentors for improvement. Now is not the time for the leader to impress his mentor. It is time for the leader to be held accountable for his actions so he can improve his leadership skills.

Mentors are not there to make leaders feel better or inflate their egos with unearned praise. Mentors rise above mere friendship and provide needed, straight-ahead guidance. At times this may be uncomfortable for a developing leader, but the price of discomfort with a mentor is much less than the price of discomfort that comes with mistakes in judgment or poor performance in the field.

A Leader Seeks Counsel to Receive Feedback

Just like a student receiving a report card, leaders obtain feedback on their performance. A mentor can provide a positive outlook, where a leader sees only his own failures. Sometimes we can be our own worst critics. Sometime we can be very hard on ourselves and only look at the negative things we do and not see all the good we are doing. Mentors show us the positive things we are doing so we can keep a good balance of what we are doing right and what we need to improve upon.

A mentor can also keep the developing leader’s head from “swelling” by shining a light on areas for further improvement. This is where it is a big help if goals have been set correctly and game plans are clear and will structured. Mentors can provide feedback on how well the leader is working according to priorities, on the mid-set and attitude of the leader, and on the leader’s progress toward the goals.

A Leader Seeks Counsel to Grow Personally

The overall goal of mentorship is to grow the leader. It is a fact of life for leaders that they have to get better. And they must commit to growing on a regular basis. Mentors are there to provide guidance and place a continued emphasis on personal growth.

A mentor must communicate with the leader constantly so that he / she knows that the leader is growing personally.

The leader must have the hunger inside them to reciprocate that communication so they know they are getting all they can from their mentor. It shouldn’t be the mentor’s job to keep tabs on the leader. It should be the leader seeking out the mentor. The mentor does need to make sure they set time aside for the leader to make sure that the leader is constantly growing.

A Leader Seeks Counsel to Earn Respect

To be respected by the respected is every leader’s desire. Money and fame and power and prestige may all have some charm, but here is nothing like earning the respect of someone who has been instrumental in teaching and guiding our own growth and success. Leaders know this about themselves and strive to earn the respect of their mentors. This is true because in our business when we earn the respect from our peers and really feel that we’ve people are learning from us, buying from us, and wanting to partner with us it makes us feel like we have really arrived and have received the respect that we’ve been working towards all this time.

I want to encourage you to partner up with a mentor if you don’t have one yet. This could be a mentor from your company or it could be someone that is not affiliated with your company but has the knowledge of how to market in the social media world and that will spend the proper time with you to help you and develop your skills so that you can go out there and improve and increase your business.

The Cycle of Achievement Summary

It is the interactive Cycle of Achievement loop that leaders deploy in their planned attack on status quo.  Understanding each of the parts and using it as a road map allows leaders to improve their performance on a continuing basis. The Cycle of Achievement gives leaders one way to describe that improvement process and keeps them on track as they rotate the cycle over and over again. With every rotation, the leader improves, and betters himself.