Earlier this summer, I had the honor of attending a seminar given by Jason Kuhn, a former Navy Seal sniper. Jason’s company, Stonewall Solutions, provides leadership training for corporations. His program is entitled The Fundamentals of Winning. All Day. Everyday. For Each Other.
Jason has not spent one day in any corporate job. His path to the Seals came after college and an unsuccessful stint trying to become a major league baseball pitcher. The leadership principles he teaches extend from the battlefield to the corporate office.
I want to share these principles. They are valuable and can help any commercial leader develop a winning company structure. Here are the principles and a few quick anecdotes with each.
The Top 10
- Be mentally tough – be confident, forget the past, interrupt the cycle, embrace the “suck.” Control your environment by what you choose, not outside forces you cannot control.
- Commit – be disciplined, do the hard things, be all in, all the time. Differentiate yourself by taking on the hard jobs, not the easy jobs.
- Live your mission – be passionate, fulfill purpose, act like you care. People want to be around you and follow you when you show positive direction and purpose.
- Team first – set aside differences, collaborate, understand the greater cause, be motivated. Leaders understand the big picture and learn to bring teams together by driving toward a common goal.
- Leadership – set an example, inspire, own the results of your decisions. Accountability within any organization can make good teams great.
- Communication – be calm, attack problems, not people, develop relationships. Your attitude and how you handle people, mostly when no one is watching, inspires and drives collaboration.
- Desire to win – “for each other,” standards are not changed or amended, work together. Establishing a winning attitude and culture drives results.
- High pressure – be free from the requirement of outcome, be thankful, use self-talk to spark confidence. How you handle pressure internally and externally determines outcomes.
- Failure analyzation – identify corrections, identify weakness and increase focus and effort, forgive yourself. Success is just a compilation of failures that did not matter.
- Never quit – break things into small pieces, 1 day at a time, do the right thing. Be committed to never looking back and driving toward future success.
What Can We Learn?
The fundamentals of winning extend from the battlefield to your personal and business life. These principles, if adopted, form the Mission, Vision, Values of a firm. They are the basics of what you stand for, and what that means when a client partners with you. They represent the intangibles that differentiate your brand from your competition.
The Bottom Line
Success on the battlefield, or in the corporate office is the same. Your plan, values, leadership, and authenticity drive your company. When your plan is not in place, you are vulnerable to failure.
Setting up your sales process for your sales team is critically important. The plan incorporates the Fundamentals of Winning. At Sales Xceleration, we specialize in developing your Playbook to address these needs.
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Dennis Boyle
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Dennis Boyle serves Portsmouth New Hampshire, and uses his combined 25 years of experience in sales and marketing to ignite and accelerate growth for his clients. Take Dennis’ 10-Question Sales Agility Assessment