Every year, Fortune Magazine spends an inordinate amount of time rigorously evaluating companies by size (Fortune 500, Global 500), reputation (World’s Most Admired), growth (Fastest Growing), 
worker satisfaction (100 Best Companies to Work For), commitment to society (Change the World), commitment to the future (Future 50) and overall performance (Businessperson of the Year.) Fortune’s recently published 2017 Blue Ribbon list highlights 32 companies that appear on at least four of the eight aforementioned lists.
While you most likely recognize Amazon, Facebook and Salesforce.com which appeared on six lists, you may be unfamiliar with Nvidia. This artificial intelligence company is the inventor of the GPU, which creates interactive graphics on laptops, workstations, mobile devices, notebooks, PCs, and even more.
What differentiates all Blue Ribbon ranked organizations from competition is their ability to lead versus simply manage. Influencing employees’ choices at every rank within the organization and helping them to achieve their goals enables these winning companies to collectively differentiate themselves and ultimately conquer their respective marketplaces.
Today’s successful business leaders don’t just bark orders, they inspire and motivate in companies both large and small, and consistently apply the following ‘Be a Leader’ principles from Dale Carnegie:
- #22 Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
- #23 Call attention to people’s mistakes
- #24 Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
- #25 Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
- #28 Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
- #29 Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
Do you or the people in charge at your employer understand the difference between managing and leading? Truth be told, a good manager doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she is a good leader! Successful leaders don’t push people to achieve, rather they pull them into succeeding in their roles.
Perhaps you recognize the need for change in your management style or the powers within your organization, or you have been vying for a leadership position without any luck thus far. If so, the Dale Carnegie Leadership Training for Managers course—which has enabled millions of managers to transform their leadership style from good to great, is worth exploring. In both the three full-day seminar and seven-week formats, participants learn how to:
- Understand the distinction between personal leadership and organizational leadership
- Create an innovation process and understand the planning process
- Understand the performance process and accountability
- Create a coaching and appraisal process
- Improve problem analysis and decision-making
- Recognize human potential
- Employ a delegation process
- Handle mistakes
- Build quality communication to lead and facilitate more effective meetings
- Strive for continuous improvement
Whatever the likes of the ‘Blue Ribbon’ award may be for your industry, perhaps 2018 is the year in which to invest in leadership skills to take your organization to the next level to ultimately outperform the competition. It only takes one person to be an agent of change for a huge positive impact to ensue. Will it be you?