What Does Doing Your Best Really Mean?

In an article written by Brian Tracy and adapted by Gary Insull, Champions Club Community Founder, setting standards for excellence and backing them up with total integrity are the essential pillars for leadership excellence. Below Tracy answers the question, “As a leader, what does doing your best really mean?”

1. Commitment to Excellence

   Leaders have specific responsibilities and must fulfill certain requirements. One leadership requirement is the ability to focus excellence. A commitment to excellence is one of the most powerful of all motivators. All leaders who inspire people and change organizations are enthusiastic about achieving excellence in a particular area.

2. Be the Best!

   One of the most motivational visions you can have for yourself and others is to “Be the best you can be!” Many people do not realize that excellent performance in serving other people is an essential element for survival in the future economy. Many individuals and companies still adhere to the idea that as long as they are no worse than anyone else is, they can remain in business. That is just plain silly! It is 20th century thinking. Customers assume they will get excellent quality, and if they do not, they will go to your competitors so fast, your head will spin.

3. Have a Vision of High Standards

   As a leader, your job is to be excellent at what you do, to be the best in your chosen field. Have a vision of high standards in serving people. You not only exemplify excellence in your own behavior, but you also translate it to others so that they, too, become committed to your vision.

   Having a commitment to doing highest quality work in the service of other people, both inside and outside the organization, is a lofty and noble vision. Leadership today requires an equal focus on the people who must do the job, on the one hand, and the people who are expected to benefit from the job, on the other.

4. Integrity

   Perhaps the single most respected leader quality is integrity. It is complete and unflinching honesty with everything you say and do. Integrity underlies all other qualities. Your measure of integrity is determined by how honest you are in the critical areas of your life.

   Integrity means when someone asks you at the end of the day, “Did you do your very best?” you can look him in the eye and say, “Yes!” Integrity means this: When someone asks you if you could have done it better, you can honestly say, “No, I did everything I possibly could.”

   Integrity means that you, as a leader, admit your shortcomings. It means that you work to develop your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses. Integrity means that you tell the truth, and that you live the truth in everything that you do and in all your relationships. Integrity means that you deal straightforwardly with people and situations and that you do not compromise what you believe to be true.

5. Action Exercises

   Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

   Identify the area of your work or your life where excellent performance can contribute the very most to your personal productivity and effectiveness. Focus all your efforts in this area.

   Do your very best on every task and on your everyday interaction with others. Imagine that everyone is watching even when no one is watching. Imagine that everyone in your company or your family was going to do his or her work exactly the way you do yours. Imagine those high quality interactions with simply everybody you meet in a day! What would that look like?

Never compromise your standards!