The traditional mentor-mentee relationship is history! You no longer have to personally know or physically meet with the person you call a mentor. This is in large part due to advances in technology and the use of social media by great leaders and mentors. I used to always say, “I wish I had a mentor or coach to meet with me that could teach me life and business lessons and help me to be more successful.” This type of thinking is now flawed and can actually prevent you from personal and professional growth. Mentors are waiting for you out there, you just need to seek them out and engage them in new ways.

Consider these benefits to having a mentor:

• Draw on their wisdom and experience: A mentor is a great person to consult when you need objective wisdom and sound advice. Often we are surrounded by people that have an emotional stake in our decisions, which can cloud our judgment. Connecting with someone outside of your current situation to get advice will help you make better decisions for you and your team.
• Receive encouragement and support: The best mentors are ones that share how they have overcome their personal struggles and challenges in life and business.  They give you hope when you are feeling like you have failed or that it is too difficult to continue on your course. Depending on the relationship, they also are able to hold you accountable to your disciplines, goals, and overall results.
• Challenge your way thinking: Mentors are excellent at challenging your current way of thinking. I will often engage one of my mentors with the sole purpose of learning how they would approach an issue or challenge versus how I am currently handling it. I look for blind spots in my thinking and strategy that I would normally not see without the input from someone else.
• Learn new strategies for success: My favorite characteristic of a great mentor is their desire for continual improvement and the sharing of ideas.  No one can afford to do things the same way as we have always have. Most of our industries are moving and changing too fast for us to not consider new and improved strategies for growing and developing our business. Finding a mentor that shares strategies and new approaches to business is essential for your growth as a leader.

Here are some great tools to use when engaging a mentor you cannot meet with face to face or over the phone:

• Twitter: Twitter is an excellent way to experience the day to day thoughts and actions of a CEO or leader of a company. Twitter provides you with an insight into how business leaders connect with their team and what they are reading and paying attention to.
• Blogging: This is my favorite way to connect with leaders that I am being mentored by. Reading blogs from leaders provides you with a deeper connection than most other forms of social media. You can comment on posts, engage other readers, and potentially even connect with your mentor individually. I was shocked to learn that most of the leaders I follow actually personally respond to blog posts and engage with you if you reach out to them first.
• iTunes – Podcasts: A wonderful way to grow and learn from a mentor is to find their audio teachings online via services like iTunes’ Podcasts. I currently listen to three different podcasts each week from leaders across the country that talk specifically about working with clients, building teams, and leadership. Listening to podcasts is a great way to spend your idle drive time or even when you working out at the gym.
• Web Tools/Resources: Most of my mentors have written books or have websites where they offer online resources and tools for you to download. Great mentors are not afraid to give their tools and resources away for free. I’ve downloaded budgets, team building exercises, personal growth tools, business planning tools, and many more tools for free just by visiting my mentors website and looking for the RESOURCE tab.

Over the years I have been blessed to have the following mentors in my life and business:

• John C. Maxwell – John is a great spiritual and business leader. His books and audio teachings are priceless and have helped me develop into the leader I am today. John and I have never met personally or even talked, but his impact on my life has been profound.
• Barry Engelman – Barry is my personal business coach and friend. He and I meet a few times in person each year but spend most of our time engaging over the phone. Barry holds me accountable to my plans and priorities in life. He is someone that goes beyond the role of a mentor. He is vested in my personal and professional development and has challenged me to be a better husband, father, and business leader.
• Michael Hyatt – Mike is a mentor that I was encouraged to follow via twitter and blogging a little over a year ago. He is a best-selling author and CEO of Thomas Nelson publishing. Mike has been a huge encouragement to me in the areas of leadership, productivity, and the use of social media in my leadership style. My wife and I had the privilege of meeting Mike at the Building Champions Experience in 2009. Before that event, I had never met him or communicated with him, yet his impact on my growth as a leader had been huge.
• Todd Duncan - If you are someone that is in sales or leads sales people Todd Duncan is someone that you need as your mentor. Todd’s books helped me discover my passion and purpose as a coach and leader. He has helped my team with his unique approach to selling and client engagement. I’ve never met Todd but he has shaped my personal life and helped my team immensely.
• John Eldredge - If you have not read John’s books Wild at Heart or Fathered by God, you need to stop reading this and go buy them! John is someone that seems to have an insight into every man’s soul and an understanding of why we were created. His spiritual guidance has helped me grow closer to God and my own family. His website has wonderful tools and a podcast that enables you to engage him and his ministry.

I encourage you to re-think the traditional relationship of a mentor and mentee. There are so many wonderful opportunities for you to be mentored by leaders. Look outside your home town, your company, and even your industry. Engage them with the tools I mentioned above and start growing personally and professionally with the help of great leaders. The choice to engage is yours!

Question: How are you uniquely connecting with a personal and professional mentor?

Make it a great day!

Coach Dan

Find Your Mentor Today! is a post from: Purpose Driven Broker

Related posts:

1. Belief in Yourself
2. My Role as a Servant Leader
3. 13 Questions and Goodbye
4. Learning from Failure
5. Demonstrate Leadership While Working With Clients

I am often asked by friends and clients (as well as my six year old daughter and four year old son) what I do each day in my role is as a branch manager for Prudential Northwest Properties. Actually, I am not a big fan of the title, branch manager, because I believe that the real estate industry has moved beyond the need for those in leadership positions to be just managers. If you are in charge of a team, responsible for a budget, and accountable for a team’s performance and profitability, you will need to do more than just manage; you must lead. How you lead and your personal leadership style will ultimately define your role as well as the influence and impact you have on others.

When I was in sales it was a joy to serve others as I helped them to buy and sell property. Yet it was not my true passion. I have always been drawn to participating in the personal and professional development of people. It took me a while (and several different jobs) to understand the true meaning of this and know that to be happy I would need to use my gifts and talents in the way that God designed me to use them. Over the past few years I have focused a great deal of my time and effort on defining my purpose, mission, and ministry in my business. These 3 areas will always be fairly consistent in my life no matter how my job description evolves.

For you to better understand my role as a servant leader, I want to share with you the high-payoff activities that I focus on each day.

Coaching – I make it a point to meet at least twice a month with my admin staff and the brokers on my team to discuss goals, successes, challenges, and key improvement projects. These sessions are often the highlight of my day for they allow me to get to the heart of helping those on my team develop into leaders in all aspects of their personal and business life.

Training – My goal is to be providing a training experience for my team at least once and hopefully twice a month. My training program is divided into three different categories. First there are the training courses which focus on hard skills. These include instruction in real estate contracts and the laws, rules and regulation of the state of Oregon. The second category is soft skills; courses which focus on the development of sales skills, understanding different personality types, and developing a “sales voice”. Third and finally, there is the “Champion Training” program which helps agents identify their own unique value proposition based on their gifts, their talents, and their skill set. The goal for this program is for agents to learn to focus their time and efforts within their strength zone. As an extension of my team training I am blessed to help coordinate the training and development for our entire company and management team at Prudential.

Recruiting – Our management team jokes that recruiting is very similar to evangelism. This part of my job allows me to share my vision with non-Prudential brokers and ask them to consider joining our team. This is when I have the opportunity to listen to people’s needs and desires and to know if I can offer that one item of value that is missing in their current firm. This is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job and by far the most challenging. When you truly believe in your vision, your team, and the direction of your company you want to share that with others and create a desire to be a part of your team. This requires great patience as you might not have positive results for many months. However, when you do have a new recruit, it can be like a cold glass of water on a hot summer day; both satisfying and rewarding.

Sharing the Team Vision – I love sharing my team’s vision and it is vitally important for me to do this with my team as well as with our community leaders, the general public, and brokers that do not currently work with me. I do this to demonstrate transparency and to encourage a dialogue about our current reality and envisioned future. A team vision lays out a clear and concise road map for what you want to achieve in the strategic areas of the business. Vision provides your team with hope and direction in challenging times. Vision also helps me to make good decisions while providing me with clarity each time I share and discuss it with others. A leader’s vision acts as a “pull” towards their company as opposed to a “push”. Most people I know do not want to be pushed toward anything; instead they want to learn about someone or something and feel naturally “pulled” towards it. This is known as the Law of Attraction and sharing my vision allows me the opportunity to attract (or pull) people towards my company and team.

Connecting with our Community – It is very important for me to be connected with the communities served by my team. I must admit that this is one area where I often struggle and must make an extra effort to concentrate and focus. It is important to give back to the communities you profit from through your services. Over the years I’ve connected by volunteering my time on the City Planning Commission, chairing events for the Chamber of Commerce, and giving presentations to local groups like Rotary and Kiwanis.

Maintaining a Social Media Presence – While this might sound like “playing”, social media is quickly becoming one of the most important strategic areas in the business world. I utilize my blog (www.purposedrivenbroker.com), Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn to keep my team, my vision, and my brand in front of as many people as possible.

Branch Administration – This aspect of my role includes the review of financial statements, budget setting, purchase decisions, handling human resource issues, leading my administrative staff, and reviewing every listing and sale that my team generates while handling all client relations. I am blessed with an amazing that staff that makes this part of my job very easy and in turn allows me to operate in my strength zone.

By maximizing these 7 high payoff activities I am driving the “vehicle” of real estate management in a way that brings me closer to my purpose and allows me to engage in my passion of developing people. In life and business our roles (vehicles) may change but the passion and purpose we have for our mission and ministry does not. In this season of my life, my role is that of a Servant Leader for Prudential Northwest Properties.

My role is relatively easy to understand, challenging to execute and the greatest part is that I wake up every day excited to go to work!

My question to you is: What is your role and how do you impact others while bringing value to your organization, team, and community?

Here are some great resources that will help you answer these questions:

• Life by Design by Todd Duncan
• Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
• Talent is Never Enough by John Maxwell
• Becoming a Coaching Leader by Daniel Harkavy.

These four books have had a profound impact on me personally and helped me to shape my mission and ministry as a business leader. I hope that you will find them just as valuable as you develop a plan to lead with purpose in your life and business.

Make it a great day!

Coach Dan
www.purposedrivenbroker.com

e: dfoster@prunw.com
t: www.twitter.com/coachdanfoster
f: www.facebook.com/purposedrivenbroker

My Role as a Servant Leader is a post from: Purpose Driven Broker

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2. 13 Questions and Goodbye
3. Find Your Mentor Today!
4. 11 Traits of the Best of the Best
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I read this post from Rick Warren last week and thought it was so good that I needed to share it on my blog. I recently took some time to outline the convictions (values) and purpose for the teams I lead at Prudential and it was a fantastic experience. It helped me to refocus and be recharged about what we do each day in serving others. Rick’s message below was a confirmation of the process I went through as well as challenge to look at my personal convictions (values).

Coach’s Questions: What influences are defining your values? Have you identified 3-5 core values that will stand the test of time and that you are willing to live by no matter what happens?

Success is Living Your Values by Rick Warren

“We should choose to follow what is right. But first of all we must define among ourselves what is good” (Job 34:4 LB).

Everything you do is influenced by your values. Your actions in life are largely determined by the values you hold. Every time you make a decision, you’re relying on your values to tell you what to do.

Unfortunately, some of the values you operate by are counterproductive to your success and a hindrance to your satisfaction in life. You see, many of the unconscious values you live by are ones you didn’t choose; they were imposed on you by parents, peers, and the culture around you. (Today television is the #1 values shaper in our society.) You may be operating on incorrect information and values that don’t stand up under pressure.

Just like the set of the sail determines the direction of a sailboat, your values chart the course for your life. The question is: In what direction are your values leading you? Are they going to deliver what you hope or will you eventually be disappointed?

Here’s another fact about values: they cause a lot of your stress! Stress occurs when what you say you believe and what you actually do don’t line up. For instance:

• When you say, “My family is important to me,” but you’re always too busy or too tired to enjoy them.

• When you say, “I value my health,” but you overwork, overeat, and never exercise.

• When you say, “I’m not materialistic,” but you become so in debt you must worry constantly about finances.

When two of your values conflict, that’s called a dilemma. My experience is that these incongruent values are the #1 cause of emotional tension among believers. What’s the solution?

Identify what is really important in life. “We can choose the sounds we want to listen to; we can choose the taste we want in food, and we should choose to follow what is right. But first of all we must define among ourselves what is good” (Job 34:3–4 LB).

You need to come up with a personal definition of success, not someone else’s definition but your own. Remember this: “Success is the feeling I get when I live out my values.” It’s not a destination. You can be successful at any stage of your life, based on your own personal values and goals. Begin by making a list of what you value most in life. Ask yourself “What is going to last?”

Begin eliminating those things that really aren’t important. “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:2 NLT).

—end of article by Rick Warren

Make it a great day!

Coach Dan

www.PurposeDrivenBroker.com

e: dfoster@prunw.com

t: www.twitter.com/coachdanfoster

f: www.facebook.com/purposedrivenbroker

Success is Living Your Values by Rick Warren is a post from: Purpose Driven Broker

Visit www.PurposeDrivenBroker.com for related posts.

“To reach your potential, you must first believe in your potential, and determine to live way beyond average.” – John Maxwell.

I’ve been re-reading a great book by John Maxwell entitled “Talent is Never Enough “. The quote above is from the book and it struck me as a truth that is easy to overlook during these challenging times. One of the greatest obstacles to success in life and business is your attitude towards yourself and more importantly your Belief in Yourself.

In my coaching sessions I have the opportunity to engage people with high self-esteem, belief in themselves, and knowledge of their potential. These people are on track in their business and life and have a plan to achieve their goals. The greatest asset they have though is not the plan but their belief in themselves and their commitment to take action towards achieving their plan.

As a coach, I also have the opportunity to engage with people that have a horrible addiction to negative “self-talk”, a poor attitude, and overall have no belief in themselves. This type of person imposes limitations on themselves that prevents them from ever achieving long-term personal and professional purpose and success. Usually, this lack of belief comes from negative influences and experiences in their past which they chose to never overcome or address.

It is one the most heartbreaking aspects of coaching to see someone with such amazing talent and potential but a lack of self-belief. Talent is wonderful but without belief in yourself it means nothing. You must combine your talent with a positive belief in yourself to be truly purposeful in life and business.

If you struggle with a poor attitude or with believing in yourself, I recommend the following steps to start the process of healing and growth:

1. Take full responsibility for your attitude and situation.
2. Make the choice today to change the way you talk, think, and act as it relates to your attitude and belief in yourself.
3. Make a list of your personal talents and gifts and a list of the activities in your life and career that bring you the greatest joy.
4. Embrace these areas you’ve listed above and take action in these areas. Remember hope is not a strategy for success. The only thing that will lead to change is to take ACTION.
5. Feed yourself daily by listening to positive music, reading encouraging books, spending time in prayer and meditation, and surrounding yourself with positive people.
6. Finally, SERVE someone by using your gifts and talents. Give away what has been given to you and you will discover an inner peace, joy, and sense of purpose.

Question: “What has contributed to your positive attitude and belief in yourself? Was it your family, faith, personal conviction, or personal experience?”

Make it a great day!

Coach Dan

www.PurposeDrivenBroker.com

e: dfoster@prunw.com

t: www.twitter.com/coachdanfoster

f: www.facebook.com/purposedrivenbroker

Belief in Yourself is a post from: Purpose Driven Broker

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2. You’re At The Top – Now What?
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IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

_______________________________________________________________

What an amazing declaration. What have you pledged your life, your fortune and your sacred honor to?

Make it a great day!

Coach Dan

Happy Birthday America! is a post from: Purpose Driven Broker

Visit www.PurposeDrivenBroker.com for related posts.