Re-Release-Learn How Connecting with Others Leads to Greater Success - Dr. Kevin Elko

As a high school football coach and teacher, I wanted to learn how to motivate my students better. So I began to study the topic of motivation and the more I learn the more it fascinated me. Too often motivation seems to be a topic we ignore or we leave it as one of the last areas we address whereas I believe motivation should be the first area we address.

I had a chance to apply my learnings on a larger stage when an old colleague of mine, Tom Donahoe asked me if I would help him with player recruitment for the Pittsburgh Steelers. So we started testing the players we were considering drafting to look for how they responded in various situations. What we were trying to understand is does the player have faith in themselves, are they able to learn from mistakes, do they raise others up, and how do they perform during an interview.

When it comes to running a small business successfully a key variable you need to have is the word “we”. There was a study done that looked at the most common factor successful small businesses had, which was dyslexia. What they found was those business owners that struggled with dyslexia, had to overdevelop their communication skills to be successful. Hard work and better communication skills are both key traits that can help you be successful in many areas of life, including business.

Connecting with others and bringing other people into what we’re doing has been found to be one of the strongest factors to success. The main factors that influence people to stay at a company are when they have friends there and they feel connected to the culture. You will find the same thing when it comes to your customers. When people come into our business we think they are deciding to purchase because we offer the best product, price, or some other logic-based reason. However, they are often making the decision based on how well you connect with them as a person. 

Even if being a people person isn’t your natural tendency you can learn to develop that skill. In the book, The War For Kindness, they found that if people said I can’t do something they never did but when others said I’m not good at a skill but I believe I can learn to do better they were able to improve that skill drastically. You have to have a growth mindset versed a fixed mindset. 

When it comes to learning how to deal with change you have to remind yourself these aren’t tough times these are changing times. When your environment changes you have to learn how to adapt. In my book, I Believe Mindset, I talk about how if you going around saying I believe these are bad times then you are just enduring trying to get to the end. But if you believe that these are changing times you will find a way to change along with the times and realize opportunities. 

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