How to Develop an Executive Personality

The ability to develop a good executive personality and outstanding leadership derives from a number of qualifications that a man builds up over the years. He "grows into" them from long training and experience.

Here are some signs by which top management can predict, with reasonable safety, that a man with a given opportunity will rise to those characteristics which distinguish a good executive:

Sixteen Qualities of Executive Leadership

• Good personality
• Above-par intelligence
• Wide experience
• Good judgement
• Originality
• Keen mental attitude
• Receptiveness
• Stimulativeness
• Administrative ability
• Delegating ability
• Teaching ability
• Skillful human relations
• Courage of convictions
• Tenacity and perseverance
• Long-range vision
• Applied psychology

Early Start in Life

At seven when most children are still fascinated by dolls and toy guns, Gwendolyn Brooks was already stringing verses. She scored her first triumph at 13 by selling a poem to  the American Childhood Magazine. But that was just her first step on the ladder of success. She had to slave for 19 years more before winning the most sought-after award among men of letters.

Which shows to prove that the younger one starts in life, the earlier one reaches his goal.

There is no such thing as genius without anything behind it. The greatest genius are the hardest workers. For life is a little growing. One must pass the different stages of life. Most of us must start from a small beginning and grow steadily on. It is only in digging a well that one has to dig from the top and work towards the bottom.

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Getting Along

In business, for example, you should certainly go out of your way to get along with the people who work with you or for you. No matter what echelon you rate, the workers below you are entitled to your constant thoughtfulness and consideration. You never know when someone in your department or elsewhere will come up with ideas or suggestions that may be extremely valuable to you. But only if you make him feel that he may talk to you freely. That is where a good personality enters the enters the picture and frequently decides the difference between good and bad human relations.

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When you talk to a man, give him your full attention and consideration. When you listen to his ideas, put some smiling pleasantness and interest in your manner. When you shake hands with a man, put some warmth, cordiality, and grip into the operation. Hardly anything so promptly lights the quick-burning fuse of a man's resentment as to receive a hand clasp that has the vigor of an invalided kitten, the geniality of a drippy fog and the spirit of a cold buckwheat cake. Make your handshake human and you will make a human being out of yourself in the process.

Finally, when an employee comes to you with a complaint don't listen with an attitude of bored resignation; put some human sympathy and understanding into your manner and let your kindly, genial, warm personality take over. Remember that, as the manager of the department or the top executive of the business, it is your outstanding personality that has helped you to build up your reputation for fair dealing and sympathetic understanding.

If managers would only learn to listen more feelingly and sympathetically to their workers and associates, we would see much less concern over human relations and labor relations, in business today!

Results of Good Personality

One of the outstanding results of a good personality is the ability to get along well and satisfactorily with your fellow workers, with your supervisors and executives, and most importantly with your customers! Stop right now and think it over -- isn't it a fact that the highest incomes and the most satisfactory jobs go to the individuals with the most favorable personalities? When have you seen a man or woman with an unpleasant, disagreeable personality in a position of importance?

Certain elements of personality may be more important than others. For example, consider this statement by Dr. J. Frank Dame, Head of Business Education, Florida State University. Tallahassee:

  Personality can and should be made a matter of attention for the individual. Personality is improved like most things -- through practice. It is something which evades specific definitions, but it is made up of many elements which include the way one talks, the way one looks, the way one walks, the way one smiles, and the very words one uses as well as mannerisms.

Being Satisfied

It may surprise many people to learn that the average age of the men who reply to self help advertisements is closer to forty than to twenty. But it is not hard to understand why this is true.
Most young men are satisfied with their progress in business. Their native ability and energy are enough to win them regular promotions and salary increases. They find success only a matter of time.
But then the day comes, often with a shocking suddenness, when this easy and casual progress ends abruptly. Many a man wakes up with a start in his thirties or forties to find that his income has leveled off and that promotions have ceased. “I’m not getting ahead as fast as I should,” he says to himself. “Where am I going to be ten years from now?”

The answer is simple: Sheer ability and energy can carry a man to the midway point in business. But only a thorough knowledge of a business fundamentals and the right kind of business personality can help him beyond point.
 What is the right kind of business personality? There is just one way to improve your personality -and that is, to work at it! Select th particular points on which you think you need improvement -and go on from there steadily and regularly. Time is of the essence – don’t waste it.

Read more: http://bizcovering.com/business/are-you-satisfied/#ixzz1MA0WvOSn

The 14 Winning Steps

Every businessman who has attained success has learned, usually the hard ways, all about the Fourteen Major Steps to Winning Personality. He has learned that honesty and integrity are still in style and are the-top essential qualities. He knows that enthusiasm, attitudes initiative, human relations, and all the other pertinent qualities are vital links in the chain of success. Here are the Fourteen Major Steps for winning:

1. Character - A man's character is what he is inwardly, for character is the combination of qualities, traits and virtues that distinguishes the individual. It has been said that every man is three different individuals--the man he thinks he is, what others think he is, and what he really is. In the words of Hames: "A good character is, in all cases, the fruit of personal exertion. It is not inherited from parents, it is not created by external advantages, it is not necessary appendage of birth, wealth, talents or station; but it is the result of one's own endeavors." Each individual has his own distinctive qualities, and these qualities are what help to develop his reputation for honesty, integrity and fair dealing. Just as George Washington once said: "I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an 'honest man.'"
2. Enthusiasm - What is enthusiasm? The word is used so often that it has almost become interchangeable with excitement. And yet it also includes emotion, ardor, sincerity, eagerness, fervency, and intensity. "Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm," said Bulwer Lytton; "it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it." And to quote Bishop Doame: "Enthusiasm is the element of success in everything. It is the light that leads and the strength that lifts men on and up in the great struggles of scientific pursuits and of professional labor. It robs endurance of difficulty, and makes a pleasure of duty."

Let us beware of losing our enthusiasms, for a man who is full of enthusiasm about his work and his company can overcome a multitude of sins of omission and commission. A spirit of sincere enthusiasm will help a man over many a rough spot, and will carry on from one job to another. A man who is known for his enthusiastic personality is always in demand.

3. Grooming - Good grooming is a distinct promoter of a winning personality. A man's appearance is extremely important in this modern world, because people generally judge more from appearances than from reality. Everyone regardless of his station, affects a particular look and exterior, for a while all men have eyes, very few have the gift of penetration. There are so many details involved in good grooming that it is both unnecessary and embarrassing to mention them. Johann Kaspar Lavater said, "Dress is an index of your contents." To this we must add that famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy. But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man." Those who think that in order to dress well it is necessary to dress extravagantly or grandly make a great mistake. Naturally, in contacting both your company associates and outsiders a good first impression is most important - you don't always get a second chance to correct a bad first impression.

Good Strategy for Business

In business today, you should certainly go out of your way to get along with the people who work with you or for you. No matter what echelon you rate, the workers below you are entitled to your constant thoughtfulness and consideration. You never know when someone in your department or elsewhere will come up with ideas or suggestions that may be extremely valuable to you. But only if you make him feel that he may talk to you freely. That is where a good personality enters the picture and frequently decides the difference between good and bad human relations.

When you talk to a man, give him your full attention and consideration. When you listen to his ideas, put some smiling pleasantness and interest into your manner. When you shake  hands with a man, put some warmth, cordiality, and grip into the operation. Hardly anything so promptly lights the quick-burning fuse of a man’s resentment as to receive a hand clasp that has the vigor of an invalided kitten, the geniality of a drippy fog and the spirit of a cold buckwheat cake. Make your handshake human and you will make a human being out of yourself in the process.

Finally, when an employee comes to you with a complaint don’t listen with an attitude of bored resignation; put some human sympathy and understanding into your manner and let your kindly, genial, warm personality take over. Remember that, as the manager of the department  or the top executive of the business, it is your outstanding personality that has helped you to build up your reputation for fair dealing and sympathetic understanding.

If managers would only learn to listen more feelingly and sympathetically to their workers and associates, we would see much less concern over human relations and labor relations, in business today!

Read more: Today's Business.