Calvin Coolidge was the 30th President of the United States.  He was a small government Republican.  Comments on his presidency are eerily similar to what is being played out in US politics today.    Many historians look favorably on the reduction of the size of government programs during his presidency.  Others feel that the federal government under Coolidge should have been more involved in regulating and controlling the economy, and are not so quick to heap praise on his administration.

Coolidge was known as “Silent Cal” as he was a man of few words.  But when he did speak, he came up with some gems.  One of my very favorite life and career success quotes comes from Silent Cal Coolidge…

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”

I was skimming through Napoleon Hill’s classic book Think and Grow Rich the other day when I came upon his thoughts on persistence.  They reflect President Coolidge’s…

“One of the main causes of failure is a lack of persistence.  You may overcome this weakness through effort and intensity of desire.  Will power is the basis of persistence; increasing your will or desire will help to strengthen your persistence…Persistence is not reliant on education or intelligence, and requires only a little bit of time and effort.  There are four simple, but necessary, steps that will lead to the practice of persistence:  1) a stated purpose, backed by burning desire, 2) a definite plan, expressed in continuous action, 3) a mind closed against criticism and discouragement, and 4) a friendly alliance with at least one person who will encourage you to follow through with your plans.  Persistence should become a habit.”

I really like Dr. Hill’s third and fourth points.  Tweet 49 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Surround yourself with positive people.  Hold them close.  They will give you energy and help you create the career success you deserve.”  Tweet 50 says, “Jettison the negative people in your life. They are energy black holes.  They will such you dry; but only if you let them.”

Persistent people, successful people, surround themselves with positive people – people who are both positive by nature, and positive about their life and career success.  Positive people are optimistic; and optimism is the first step in building your self-confidence and life and career success.

As Napoleon Hill points out, positive people help you feel good about yourself and become more persistent, because they feel good about themselves – and life in general.  They help you build your self-esteem because they have a strong sense of self-esteem.  Positive people are there when you begin to doubt yourself or when you want to give up.  They are not threatened by you or your success.  They realize that self-esteem is not a fixed pie.  There is an unlimited amount of it to go around, so positive people are always giving it away.  You can build your self-confidence and jumpstart your life and career success by spending your time with upbeat, positive people.

It’s pretty simple.  When you surround yourself with positive, self-confident people, you become positive and self-confident.  On the other hand, when you surround yourself with negative or cynical people, you become negative and cynical.

The choice is yours.  I choose to surround myself with positive people.  Not only do they help my self-confidence, they are more fun to be around.

I’m a big fan of Mark Twain.  One of my favorite quotes of his gets at the heart of surrounding yourself with positive people and jettisoning the negative people in your life…

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Mark Twain and Napoleon Hill thnk alike when it comes to negative people.  Negative people are a drag on your goals and your ambitions.  They can hamper your chances of becoming a truly persistent and successful person.  They are quick to tell you what you can’t do, offer little encouragement, and hate to see you prove them wrong by succeeding.  Hold these kinds of people at arm’s length.  Don’t spend time with them.  Instead, invest in friendships with positive, upbeat people; the kind of people who not only don’t belittle your ambitions, but do what they can to help you make them a reality.

Cynics are negative people.  They are also dangerous, because they are seductive.  They always have something witty to say about others – usually others’ shortcomings.  At first, they seem to be funny and amusing.  But spend time with cynics, and you’ll find that they have little joy in life except in pointing out and reveling in others’ problems and failures.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  Persistence will help you create the life and career success you want and deserve.  But as Napoleon Hill points out, no one — no matter how persistent — can go it alone.  Follow the career advice in Tweet 49 in Success Tweets.  “Surround yourself with positive people.  Hold them close.  They will give you energy and help you create the success you want and deserve.”  Positive people are great.  They feel good about themselves and life in general.  They are enthusiastic – and their enthusiasm is contagious.  When you surround yourself with positive people, you’ll become more positive and enthusiastic.  And, you’ll be on your way to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.  Who are the most positive people you know?  Get to know them better, spend more time with them.  Don’t let negative people into your life.  Follow the career advice in Tweet 50 in Success Tweets.  “Jettison the negative people in your life.  They are energy black holes.  They will suck you dry, but only if you let them.”  Avoid cynics.  They are jealous and petty, unhappy when others succeed.  Avoid jerks too  – people who are rude, insulting, sarcastic and two-faced.  They will only drag you down.  Make a conscious choice to spend time with positive, optimistic people.  Avoid negative, pessimistic ones.

That’s my career advice on how positive people can help you become more persistent – and to achieve the career success you deserve.  What do you think?  Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  Thanks for reading my daily thoughts on life and career success.  I really appreciate your support.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site last September.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  You can find out about the membership site by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

Joe Paterno passed away over the weekend.  You probably know this but he was the football coach at Penn State for the past 46 years.  He has more wins than any other coach in Division I college football.  He was known for running a very clean program with no recruiting violations or scandals.  Besides building a winning football program, Joe did a lot for Penn State, giving millions of dollars to the university to expand the library.

I’m a Penn State alum.  Joe was the head coach when I arrived there in the Fall of 1968.  I was always proud to be a Penn State alum.  I was especially proud of the football program and is reputation for fair play.

That all changed for me last Fall when one of Joe’s longtime assistant coaches was charged with several counts of child sex abuse.  You probably know the story.  In 2002, one of Joe’s assistant coaches, Mike McQueary observed Sandusky, who was retired but still had access to the Penn State football facilities, raping a young boy in a shower.  McQueary told Joe, who reported the incident to the Athletic Director.

Sandusky was never barred from the Penn State training facilities, and it is alleged that he continued to abuse young boys up until his arrest last Fall.  Many people, myself included, feel that Joe Paterno should have done more to follow up on what McQueary told him.  Make no mistake, he did what was required of him by law – he even testified at the Grand Jury investigating the allegations.  But doing what’s legal, isn’t necessarily doing what’s right.

Joe Paterno will forever be regarded as a great football coach, but one who gave tacit approval to child sex abuse.  And that’s the career success point of this post.   Your personal brand and reputation are important.  Guard them with all your might.

Last Friday, I was doing an interview for my membership site with Van Horsley, President of the Colorado operations of a large national bank.  I do these interviews to give my members inside advice on life and career success from successful people.  If you would like to see what the membership site is all about, go to http://www.MyCorporateClimb.com.  In our interview, Van concluded his remarks by saying, “Your integrity is an asset.  And once you spend that asset, it’s gone forever.”

As I listened to the coverage of Joe Paterno’s passing, I was reminded of Van’s remarks on integrity.  Joe Paterno spent his integrity when he didn’t follow up on the allegations about Jerry Sandusky.  By not doing so, and by continuing to let this man have access to the Penn State athletic facilities, Joe lost his integrity – which is too bad, because by all accounts he is a man of high integrity.

But that’s the way it goes.  It takes a long time to build a reputation as a person of integrity.  One foolish move can destroy all that.  All of the coverage on Joe’s passing said he “was a great football coach, BUT…”

Tweet 62 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Your personal brand should be unique to you, but built on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.”

According to Wikipedia, “Integrity is consistency of actions, values, methods, measures and principles.”  Integrity and consistency are intertwined.  People who are consistent in their actions are seen as people with a high degree of integrity.

Oprah says, “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”  This is true.  If you practice situational ethics – doing the right thing only when you’re in the public eye — you aren’t really a person of high integrity, you’re just pretending to be one.

Besides, it’s hard to act one way in public, and another in private.  So to be safe, resolve to act like Oprah.  Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do – not because you’ll get credit, or avoid getting into trouble.

John Maxwell is a well-known business author.  One of his books sends the same message.  It’s called, There’s No Such Thing As Business Ethics: There’s Only One Rule for Making Decisions.  According to John, that rule is the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  In other words, do the right thing.

There’s a practical side to this too.  Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”  In other words, if you’re always a person of high integrity, it’s easy to be a person of high integrity; there are no complicating factors – like remembering what you did or said in a given situation.

Polonius gave similar advice to Hamlet.  “To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the day the night, thou canst be false to no man.”  Roy Blackman, my father in law, passed away a few years ago.  This quote was his epitaph.  It was on the program handed out at his funeral.  Roy embodied it in how he lived his life.  It was the only piece of advice he gave his grandson, Matt, as he went off to college.

Oprah, John Maxwell, Mark Twain and Shakespeare are all in agreement on one common sense piece of career advice.  If you want to become known as a person of high integrity – and I believe integrity is the cornerstone of any personal brand – act as a person of high integrity all the time – not just when it suits you, or when someone might notice.

Here’s a story to illustrate this point.  Cathy, my wife, was a flight attendant for 36 years.  Seniority is a very important thing in the airline industry.  It governs how you bid for trips, positions on the airplane and vacations – almost anything important to a flight attendant’s quality of work life.

Cathy was very active in her union.  And seniority was one of the union’s most sacred principles.  A few years before she retired, Cathy’s airline made a big push into the international market.  International flights were plum assignments; they went to people with high seniority.

However, the airline realized that it would be to their advantage to have some flight attendants who spoke the language of the country to which they were flying on these international flights.  Most flight attendants in her airline spoke English only.  The airline proposed putting two “language speakers” on each international flight.  Many people, including Cathy, were upset with this arrangement as they felt it violated the seniority concept.

Cathy used to fly from the US to London.  One day I said to her, “This whole language speaker issue doesn’t really affect you.  You fly to London; there are no language speakers on those flights.  Why do you care so much?”  She said, “I believe in the concept of seniority.  It doesn’t matter if I’m affected by language speakers.  It’s the principle of the thing.”  That’s consistency – and integrity — in action.

And that brings us back to Joe Paterno.  Here was a man with an incredibly strong personal brand.  He was known for doing the right thing in a business where too many people don’t do the right thing.  Sadly, his legacy is forever tarnished, because of what he didn’t do at a moment of truth.  I’m not writing this post to pass judgment on Joe – enough people have done that already.  I am writing it however, to reinforce my point of building your personal brand on integrity.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Creating positive personal impact is one of the competencies all successful people possess.  You create positive personal impact by developing and nurturing your unique personal brand, being impeccable in your presentation of self, and knowing and following the basic rules of etiquette.  Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but it should be built on integrity.  Follow the advice in Tweet 62 in Success Tweets.  “Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but built on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.”  As the sad ending to Joe Paterno’s career and life demonstrates, even a momentary lapse in your integrity can lead to serious consequences for a carefully crafted brand.

That’s the career advice I take from the sad ending of Joe Paterno’s life and career.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily thoughts on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site last September.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  You can find out about the membership site by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

I saw some great career success advice in a Facebook posting by Nancy Arroyo Perez the other day.  It was a simple quote…

“I do it because I can.  I can because I want to.  I want to because you said I couldn’t.”

I love what Nancy has to say here.  As we go through life, all of us encounter naysayers and negative people.  The best way to deal naysayers and negative people is to prove them wrong.  Even better, hold them at arms’ length.  That way you won’t have to waste time proving them wrong.

Tweet 50 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Jettison the negative people in your life.  They are energy black holes.  They will suck you dry; but only if you let them.”

I was leading a career success workshop the other day and I mentioned that self-confidence is the hinge on which career success swings, and that optimism and positive people are the most important ingredients in the self-confidence mix.  On the other hand, pessimism and negative can cause the success hinge to rust and become difficult to swing.  That’s why some of my best career advice is to hold tight to the positive people in your life and run – as fast as you can – from the negative ones.

For me, optimism begins with the ten points of The Optimist Creed.  I have given away a couple thousand copies of The Optimist Creed.  If you would like one, just go to http://budbilanich.com/optimist.

Let’s take a look at the difference between positive optimistic people and negative pessimistic people.

Positive, optimistic people tend to see problems, failures and setbacks as temporary.
Negative, pessimistic people tend to see problems, failures and setbacks as permanent – almost their destiny.

Positive, optimistic people see problems, failures and setbacks as isolated occurrences.
Negative, pessimistic people see problems, failures and setbacks as omnipresent – things from which you can’t escape.

Positive, optimistic people don’t take problems, failures and setbacks personally.
Negative, pessimistic people personalize problems, failures and setbacks.

If you read this blog with any regularity, you know that I am an incurable optimist.  I see problems, failures and setbacks not only as temporary, but as opportunities to learn and grow.  I expect things to go well.  When I run into problems, failures and setbacks, I’m always a little surprised because I don’t expect them.  I do, however, plan for them.  Finally, I never take a problem, failure or setback personally.  I’m a human being.  Sometimes I make great decisions.  Sometimes I make poor ones.  My self-worth is not threatened by the occasional problem, failure or setback.

And I choose to hang around with positive, not negative people.

I’m a big fan of Mark Twain.  One of my favorite quotes of his gets at the heart of surrounding yourself with positive people and jettisoning the negative people in your life…

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

Negative people are a drag on your goals, your ambitions and your life and career success.  They are quick to tell you what you can’t do, offer little encouragement, and hate to see you prove them wrong by succeeding.  Hold these kinds of people at arm’s length.  Don’t spend time with them.  Instead, invest in friendships with positive, upbeat people; the kind of people who not only don’t belittle your ambitions, but do what they can to help you make them a reality.

Cynics are negative people.  They are also dangerous, because they are seductive.  They always have something witty to say about others – usually others’ shortcomings.  At first, they seem to be funny and amusing.  But spend time with cynics, and you’ll find that they have little joy in life except in pointing out and reveling in others’ problems and failures.

Ambrose Bierce may well be the biggest cynic the world have even seen.  I often see quotes attributed to him on line.  In the early 20th century, he published a book called The Devil’s Dictionary.  Even I admit that some of his definitions are pretty funny.  However, I get tired and frustrated after reading more than one or two.  Here are a couple of quotes from The Devil’s Dictionary…

“Optimism:  The doctrine that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong… It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.”

“Calamities: Two kinds – misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.”

No wonder ole’ Ambrose was called “Bitter Bierce” by his contemporaries.  First, he bashes optimism, then he suggests that human beings see the good fortune of others as a personal calamity.

Here are a couple of other entries in The Devil’s Dictionary…

“Politeness: The most acceptable hypocrisy.”

“Perseverance: A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.”

Do you know any people like Ambrose Bierce?  If you do, my best career advice is to hold them at arm’s length.  While you may find them to be witty and entertaining at first, they will drag you down in the long run.  They will not help you create the life and career success you want and deserve.

Point 6 of The Optimist Creed says…

“Promise yourself to be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are of your own.”

This is 180 degrees from what Ambrose has to say.  Successful, self-confident people aren’t jealous or upset by the success of others.  They are genuinely pleased when they see others succeed.  They see the success of others as an inspiration.  They use it to motivate themselves to achieve bigger and better successes.  Negative people choose to see others’ successes as a personal affront.  Take it from a career success coach, these kinds of people will not help you create the life and career success you want and deserve.

Don’t let negative people into your life.  In my career success coach talks, I tell people…

“Allowing a few negative people to make themselves at home in your life is dangerous.  Their poison will quickly infect you.  Negative people try to clone themselves.  Spend too much time with them and you run the risk of becoming one yourself – and of limiting your chances to create the life and career success you deserve.”

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  Successful, self-confident people don’t let negative people hamper their life and career success.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 50 in Success Tweets.  “Jettison the negative people in your life.  They are energy black holes.  They will suck you dry, but only if you let them.”   Cynics are negative people.  Avoid them.  They may be amusing at first, but in the long run they are jealous and petty, often unhappy when others succeed.  They will only drag you down.  Make a conscious choice to spend time with positive, optimistic people.  Avoid negative, pessimistic ones and you’ll be on your way to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s the career advice inspired by Nancy Arroyo Perez’ Facebook post, “I do it because I can.  I can because I want to.  I want to because you said I couldn’t.”  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, you can download a free copy of my latest career success book Success Tweets Explained.  It’s a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

The June 2011 SUCCESS Magazine arrived over the weekend.  As you know, I’m a big fan of SUCCESS.  It has tons of great common sense career success advice.  If you’re not already a subscriber, I suggest you go to http://www.success.com and subscribe as soon as you finish reading this post.

The new issue has a small story called “5 Tips for Creating a Powerful Personal Brand.”  I think that a powerful personal brand is the first step in creating positive personal impact – a key ingredient in your career success mix.

The article lists these five keys for building your brand…

1. Brand yourself through your professional presence.
2. Brand yourself as a valued partner.
3. Brand yourself with strong communication skills.
4. Brand yourself by staying one step ahead.
5. Brand yourself as being social savvy.

I agree with all five of these common sense personal branding tips.  If you page through my career advice book Success Tweets, you ‘ll see that I mention all of them in one way or another.

I do have one additional common sense personal branding tip to add though…

Brand yourself as a person of integrity.

Tweet 62 in Success Tweets says… “Your personal brand should be unique to you, but build on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.”  Like all of the tweets, this is simple common sense.

According to Wikipedia, “Integrity is consistency of actions, values, methods, measures and principles.”  Integrity and consistency are intertwined.  People who are consistent in their actions are seen as people with a high degree of integrity.

Oprah says, “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”  This is true.  If you practice situational ethics – doing the right thing only when you’re in the public eye — you aren’t really a person of high integrity, you’re just pretending to be one.

Besides, it’s hard to act one way in public, and another in private.  So to be safe, resolve to act like Oprah.  Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do – not because you’ll get credit, or avoid getting into trouble.

John Maxwell is a well-known business author.  One of his books sends the same message.  It’s called, There’s No Such Thing As Business Ethics: There’s Only One Rule for Making Decisions.  According to John, that rule is the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  In other words, do the right thing.

There’s a practical side to this too.  Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”  In other words, if you’re always a person of high integrity, it’s easy to be a person of high integrity; there are no complicating factors – like remembering what you did or said in a given situation; more common sense.

Polonius gave similar advice to Hamlet.  “To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the day the night, thou canst be false to no man.”  Roy Blackman, my father in law, passed away a few years ago.  This quote was his epitaph.  It was on the program handed out at his funeral.  Roy embodied it in how he lived his life.  It was the only piece of advice he gave his grandson, Matt, as he went off to college.

Oprah, John Maxwell, Mark Twain and Shakespeare are all in agreement on one common sense piece of career advice.  If you want to become known as a person of high integrity – and I believe integrity is the cornerstone of any personal brand – act as a person of high integrity all the time;  not just when it suits you, or when someone might notice.

Here’s a story to illustrate this point.  Cathy, my wife, was a flight attendant for 36 years.  Seniority is a very important thing in the airline industry.  It governs how you bid for trips, positions on the airplane and vacations – almost anything important to a flight attendant’s quality of work life.

Cathy was very active in her union.  And seniority was one of the union’s most sacred principles.  A few years before she retired, Cathy’s airline made a big push into the international market.  International flights were plum assignments; they went to people with high seniority.

However, the airline realized that it would be to their advantage to have some flight attendants who spoke the language of the country to which they were flying on these international flights.  Most senior flight attendants in her airline spoke English only.  The airline proposed putting two “language speakers” on each international flight.  Many people, including Cathy, were upset with this arrangement as they felt it violated the seniority concept.

Cathy used to fly from the US to London.  One day I said to her, “This whole language speaker issue doesn’t really affect you.  You fly to London; there are no language speakers on those flights.  Why do you care so much?”  She said, “I believe in the concept of seniority.  It doesn’t matter if I’m affected by language speakers.  It’s the principle of the thing.”  That’s consistency – and integrity — in action; and a great career success model.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  Creating positive personal impact is an important career success competency.  You create positive personal impact by developing and nurturing your unique personal brand, being impeccable in your presentation of self, and knowing and following the basic rules of etiquette.  Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but it should be built on integrity.  Follow the career advice in Tweet 62 in Success Tweets.  “Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but built on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.”  Arnold Schwazanegger’s revelations yesterday demonstrates how a lack of integrity can lead to serious consequences for a carefully crafted brand.  Take a lesson from Arnold.  Build your personal brand and your career success on integrity.

That’s my career advice on personal branding – especially the importance of integrity to your brand.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, you can download a free copy of my latest career advice book Success Tweets Explained.  It’s a whopping 390 + pages of careersuccess advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.

The June 2011 SUCCESS Magazine arrived over the weekend.  As you know, I’m a big fan of SUCCESS.  It has tons of great common sense career success advice.  If you’re not already a subscriber, I suggest you go to http://www.success.com and subscribe as soon as you finish reading this post.

The new issue has a small story called “5 Tips for Creating a Powerful Personal Brand.”  I think that a powerful personal brand is the first step in creating positive personal impact – a key ingredient in your career success mix.

The article lists these five keys for building your brand…

1. Brand yourself through your professional presence.
2. Brand yourself as a valued partner.
3. Brand yourself with strong communication skills.
4. Brand yourself by staying one step ahead.
5. Brand yourself as being social savvy.

I agree with all five of these common sense personal branding tips.  If you page through my career advice book Success Tweets, you ‘ll see that I mention all of them in one way or another.

I do have one additional common sense personal branding tip to add though…

Brand yourself as a person of integrity.

Tweet 62 in Success Tweets says… “Your personal brand should be unique to you, but build on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.”  Like all of the tweets, this is simple common sense.

According to Wikipedia, “Integrity is consistency of actions, values, methods, measures and principles.”  Integrity and consistency are intertwined.  People who are consistent in their actions are seen as people with a high degree of integrity.

Oprah says, “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”  This is true.  If you practice situational ethics – doing the right thing only when you’re in the public eye — you aren’t really a person of high integrity, you’re just pretending to be one.

Besides, it’s hard to act one way in public, and another in private.  So to be safe, resolve to act like Oprah.  Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do – not because you’ll get credit, or avoid getting into trouble.

John Maxwell is a well-known business author.  One of his books sends the same message.  It’s called, There’s No Such Thing As Business Ethics: There’s Only One Rule for Making Decisions.  According to John, that rule is the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  In other words, do the right thing.

There’s a practical side to this too.  Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”  In other words, if you’re always a person of high integrity, it’s easy to be a person of high integrity; there are no complicating factors – like remembering what you did or said in a given situation; more common sense.

Polonius gave similar advice to Hamlet.  “To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the day the night, thou canst be false to no man.”  Roy Blackman, my father in law, passed away a few years ago.  This quote was his epitaph.  It was on the program handed out at his funeral.  Roy embodied it in how he lived his life.  It was the only piece of advice he gave his grandson, Matt, as he went off to college.

Oprah, John Maxwell, Mark Twain and Shakespeare are all in agreement on one common sense piece of career advice.  If you want to become known as a person of high integrity – and I believe integrity is the cornerstone of any personal brand – act as a person of high integrity all the time;  not just when it suits you, or when someone might notice.

Here’s a story to illustrate this point.  Cathy, my wife, was a flight attendant for 36 years.  Seniority is a very important thing in the airline industry.  It governs how you bid for trips, positions on the airplane and vacations – almost anything important to a flight attendant’s quality of work life.

Cathy was very active in her union.  And seniority was one of the union’s most sacred principles.  A few years before she retired, Cathy’s airline made a big push into the international market.  International flights were plum assignments; they went to people with high seniority.

However, the airline realized that it would be to their advantage to have some flight attendants who spoke the language of the country to which they were flying on these international flights.  Most senior flight attendants in her airline spoke English only.  The airline proposed putting two “language speakers” on each international flight.  Many people, including Cathy, were upset with this arrangement as they felt it violated the seniority concept.

Cathy used to fly from the US to London.  One day I said to her, “This whole language speaker issue doesn’t really affect you.  You fly to London; there are no language speakers on those flights.  Why do you care so much?”  She said, “I believe in the concept of seniority.  It doesn’t matter if I’m affected by language speakers.  It’s the principle of the thing.”  That’s consistency – and integrity — in action; and a great career success model.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  Creating positive personal impact is an important career success competency.  You create positive personal impact by developing and nurturing your unique personal brand, being impeccable in your presentation of self, and knowing and following the basic rules of etiquette.  Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but it should be built on integrity.  Follow the career advice in Tweet 62 in Success Tweets.  “Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but built on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.”  Arnold Schwazanegger’s revelations yesterday demonstrates how a lack of integrity can lead to serious consequences for a carefully crafted brand.  Take a lesson from Arnold.  Build your personal brand and your career success on integrity.

That’s my career advice on personal branding – especially the importance of integrity to your brand.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, you can download a free copy of my latest career advice book Success Tweets Explained.  It’s a whopping 390 + pages of careersuccess advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.

I saw a great movie over the weekend that brought up a great point about personal branding and career success: Win Win.  Paul Giamatti plays a small town lawyer whose practice is hurting.  He needs money to pay his bills like health care insurance, cutting down a dead tree in his front yard and fixing the furnace in his office.  He finds what he considers to be a safe way to take advantage of a situation and commits an ethical breach that comes back to haunt him. 

Win Win reminded me of the career advice in Tweet 62 in my career success book, Success Tweets.  “Your brand should be unique to you, but built on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.”

In Win Win Paul Giamatti thought no one was looking – and they weren’t at the time.  But as things played out, several people learned of his ethical breach and lost respect for him.  Things worked out OK for him in the end, but he was in real danger of losing his law practice. 

According to Wikipedia, “Integrity is consistency of actions, values, methods, measures and principles.”  Integrity and consistency are intertwined.  People who are consistent in their actions are seen as people with a high degree of integrity.

Oprah says, “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”  This is true.  If you practice situational ethics – doing the right thing only when you’re in the public eye — you aren’t really a person of high integrity, you’re just pretending to be one.

Besides, it’s hard to act one way in public, and another in private.  So to be safe, resolve to act like Oprah.  Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do – not because you’ll get credit, or avoid getting into trouble.

John Maxwell is a well-known business author.  One of his books sends the same message.  It’s called, There’s No Such Thing As Business Ethics: There’s Only One Rule for Making Decisions.  According to John that rule is the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  In other words, do the right thing.  Act with integrity all the time.

There’s a practical side to this too.  Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”  In other words, if you’re always a person of high integrity, it’s easy to be a person of high integrity; there are no complicating factors – like remembering what you did or said in a given situation.

Polonius gave similar advice to Hamlet.  “To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the day the night, thou canst be false to no man.”  Roy Blackman, my father in law, passed away a few years ago.  This quote was his epitaph.  It was on the program handed out at his funeral.  Roy embodied it in how he lived his life.  It was the only piece of advice he gave his grandson, Matt, as he went off to college.  When you act with integrity, you are being true to yourself.

Oprah, John Maxwell, Mark Twain and Shakespeare are all in agreement on one common sense piece of career advice.  If you want to become known as a person of high integrity – and I believe integrity is the cornerstone of any personal brand – act as a person of high integrity all the time – not just when it suits you, or when someone might notice.

Here’s a story to illustrate this point.  Cathy, my wife, was a flight attendant for 36 years.  Seniority is a very important thing in the airline industry.  It governs how you bid for trips, positions on the airplane and vacations – everythin that is important to a flight attendant’s quality of work life.

Cathy was very active in her union.  And seniority was one of the union’s most sacred principles.  A few years before she retired, Cathy’s airline made a big push into the international market.  International flights were plum assignments; they went to people with high seniority.

However, the airline realized that it would be to their advantage to have some flight attendants who spoke the language of the country to which they were flying on these international flights. 

Most flight attendants in her airline, and her seniority level,  spoke English only.  The airline proposed putting two “language speakers” on each international flight.  Many people, including Cathy, were upset with this arrangement as they felt it violated the seniority concept.

Cathy used to fly from the US to London.  One day I said to her, “This whole language speaker issue doesn’t really affect you.  You fly to London; there are no language speakers on those flights.  Why do you care so much?”  She said, “I believe in the concept of seniority.  It doesn’t matter if I’m affected by language speakers.  It’s the principle of the thing.”  That’s consistency – and integrity — in action.

Then there’s Tiger Woods.  Tiger had one of the best personal brands in the world.  He earned close to $100 million in 2009 on it.  If you were following the news in late 2009 and early 2010 (how could you miss it?), you know that the Tiger brand has taken som e serious hits because of his marital indiscretions which have come to light.

Sadly for Tiger, his integrity is now in question – and that’s being kind.  His wife has left him, taking the kids.  Several sponsors have dropped him.  And, his golf game is suffering.  It will be interesting to see how he does this week at The Masters.  I’m not writing this to pass judgment on Tiger – enough people have done that already.  I am writing it however, to reinforce my point of building your personal brand on integrity.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Creating positive personal impact is one of the competencies of all successful people.  You create positive personal impact by developing and nurturing your unique personal brand, being impeccable in your presentation of self, and knowing and following the basic rules of etiquette.  Your personal brand is really important.  Don’t mess with it.  Follow the career advice in Tweet 62 in Success Tweets.  “Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but built on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.”  As the movie Win Win and Tiger Woods’s case demonstrates, a lack of integrity can lead to serious consequences for a carefully crafted brand.  Take a lesson from Tiger – one he’s learning the hard way – build your personal brand on integrity.

That’s my career advice on the importance of building your personal brand on integrity.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  And, as always, thanks for reading my musings on life and career success. 

Bud

I saw a great movie over the weekend that brought up a great point about personal branding and career success: Win Win.  Paul Giamatti plays a small town lawyer whose practice is hurting.  He needs money to pay his bills like health care insurance, cutting down a dead tree in his front yard and fixing the furnace in his office.  He finds what he considers to be a safe way to take advantage of a situation and commits an ethical breach that comes back to haunt him. 

Win Win reminded me of the career advice in Tweet 62 in my career success book, Success Tweets.  “Your brand should be unique to you, but built on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.”

In Win Win Paul Giamatti thought no one was looking – and they weren’t at the time.  But as things played out, several people learned of his ethical breach and lost respect for him.  Things worked out OK for him in the end, but he was in real danger of losing his law practice. 

According to Wikipedia, “Integrity is consistency of actions, values, methods, measures and principles.”  Integrity and consistency are intertwined.  People who are consistent in their actions are seen as people with a high degree of integrity.

Oprah says, “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”  This is true.  If you practice situational ethics – doing the right thing only when you’re in the public eye — you aren’t really a person of high integrity, you’re just pretending to be one.

Besides, it’s hard to act one way in public, and another in private.  So to be safe, resolve to act like Oprah.  Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do – not because you’ll get credit, or avoid getting into trouble.

John Maxwell is a well-known business author.  One of his books sends the same message.  It’s called, There’s No Such Thing As Business Ethics: There’s Only One Rule for Making Decisions.  According to John that rule is the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  In other words, do the right thing.  Act with integrity all the time.

There’s a practical side to this too.  Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”  In other words, if you’re always a person of high integrity, it’s easy to be a person of high integrity; there are no complicating factors – like remembering what you did or said in a given situation.

Polonius gave similar advice to Hamlet.  “To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the day the night, thou canst be false to no man.”  Roy Blackman, my father in law, passed away a few years ago.  This quote was his epitaph.  It was on the program handed out at his funeral.  Roy embodied it in how he lived his life.  It was the only piece of advice he gave his grandson, Matt, as he went off to college.  When you act with integrity, you are being true to yourself.

Oprah, John Maxwell, Mark Twain and Shakespeare are all in agreement on one common sense piece of career advice.  If you want to become known as a person of high integrity – and I believe integrity is the cornerstone of any personal brand – act as a person of high integrity all the time – not just when it suits you, or when someone might notice.

Here’s a story to illustrate this point.  Cathy, my wife, was a flight attendant for 36 years.  Seniority is a very important thing in the airline industry.  It governs how you bid for trips, positions on the airplane and vacations – everythin that is important to a flight attendant’s quality of work life.

Cathy was very active in her union.  And seniority was one of the union’s most sacred principles.  A few years before she retired, Cathy’s airline made a big push into the international market.  International flights were plum assignments; they went to people with high seniority.

However, the airline realized that it would be to their advantage to have some flight attendants who spoke the language of the country to which they were flying on these international flights. 

Most flight attendants in her airline, and her seniority level,  spoke English only.  The airline proposed putting two “language speakers” on each international flight.  Many people, including Cathy, were upset with this arrangement as they felt it violated the seniority concept.

Cathy used to fly from the US to London.  One day I said to her, “This whole language speaker issue doesn’t really affect you.  You fly to London; there are no language speakers on those flights.  Why do you care so much?”  She said, “I believe in the concept of seniority.  It doesn’t matter if I’m affected by language speakers.  It’s the principle of the thing.”  That’s consistency – and integrity — in action.

Then there’s Tiger Woods.  Tiger had one of the best personal brands in the world.  He earned close to $100 million in 2009 on it.  If you were following the news in late 2009 and early 2010 (how could you miss it?), you know that the Tiger brand has taken som e serious hits because of his marital indiscretions which have come to light.

Sadly for Tiger, his integrity is now in question – and that’s being kind.  His wife has left him, taking the kids.  Several sponsors have dropped him.  And, his golf game is suffering.  It will be interesting to see how he does this week at The Masters.  I’m not writing this to pass judgment on Tiger – enough people have done that already.  I am writing it however, to reinforce my point of building your personal brand on integrity.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Creating positive personal impact is one of the competencies of all successful people.  You create positive personal impact by developing and nurturing your unique personal brand, being impeccable in your presentation of self, and knowing and following the basic rules of etiquette.  Your personal brand is really important.  Don’t mess with it.  Follow the career advice in Tweet 62 in Success Tweets.  “Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but built on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.”  As the movie Win Win and Tiger Woods’s case demonstrates, a lack of integrity can lead to serious consequences for a carefully crafted brand.  Take a lesson from Tiger – one he’s learning the hard way – build your personal brand on integrity.

That’s my career advice on the importance of building your personal brand on integrity.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  And, as always, thanks for reading my musings on life and career success. 

Bud

Competence is one of the four common sense coach keys to career success that I discuss in my new book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less.  You can purchase a copy of Success Tweets on Amazon.com or at your local bookstore, or better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com.

If you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve, you need to develop four basic but important competencies: 1) creating positive personal impact; 2) becoming a consistently high performer; 3) communication skills; and 4) relationship building.

You create positive personal impact in three ways.  1) Developing and nurturing your unique personal brand.  2) Being impeccable in your presentation of self – in person and on line.  3) Knowing and following the basic rules of etiquette.

Today’s career advice on personal branding comes from Tweet 62 in Success Tweets…

Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but built on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.

There are two common sense steps for developing and nurturing your personal brand.

• Figure out how you want people to think of you.
• Consistently and constantly act in a manner that will lead them to think of you that way.

While your brand should reflect you and your uniqueness, it has to be built on integrity.  According to Wikipedia, “Integrity is consistency of actions, values, methods, measures and principles.”  Integrity and consistency are intertwined.  People who are consistent in their actions are seen as people with a high degree of integrity.

Oprah says, “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”  This is true.  If you practice situational ethics – doing the right thing only when you’re in the public eye — you aren’t really a person of high integrity, you’re just pretending to be one.

Besides, it’s hard to act one way in public, and another in private.  So to be safe, resolve to act like Oprah.  Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do – not because you’ll get credit, or avoid getting into trouble.

John Maxwell is a well known business author.  One of his books sends the same message.  It’s called There’s No Such Thing As Business Ethics: There’s Only One Rule for Making Decisions.  According to John, that rule is the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  In other words, do the right thing.

There’s a practical side to this too.  Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”  In other words, if you’re always a person of high integrity, it’s easy to be a person of high integrity; there are no complicating factors – like remembering what you did or said in a given situation.

Polonius gave similar advice to Hamlet.  “To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the day the night, thou canst be false to no man.”  Roy Blackman, my father in law, passed away a few years ago.  This quote was his epitaph.  It was on the program handed out at his funeral.  Roy embodied it in how he lived his life.  It was the only piece of advice he gave his grandson, Matt, as he went off to college.

Oprah, John Maxwell, Mark Twain and Shakespeare are all in agreement on one common sense piece of career advice.  If you want to become known as a person of high integrity – and integrity is the cornerstone of any personal brand – act as a person of high integrity all the times – not just when it suits you, or when someone might notice.

Here’s a story to illustrate this point.  Cathy, my wife, was a flight attendant for 36 years.  Seniority is a very important thing in the airline industry.  It governs how you bid for trips, positions on the airplane and vacations – almost anything important to a flight attendant’s quality of work life.

Cathy was very active in her union.  And seniority was one of the union’s most sacred principles.  A few years before she retired, Cathy’s airline made a big push into the international market.  International flights were plum assignments, they went to people with high seniority. 

However, the airline realized that it would be to their advantage to have some flight attendants who spoke the language of the country to which they were flying on these international flights.  Most flight attendants in her airline spoke English only.  The airline proposed putting two “language speakers” on each international flight.  Many people, including Cathy, were upset with this arrangement as they felt it violated the seniority concept.

Cathy used to fly from the US to London.  One day I said to her, “This whole language speaker issue doesn’t really affect you.  You fly to London, there are no language speakers on those flights.  Why do you care so much?”  She said, “I believe in the concept of seniority.  It doesn’t matter if I’m affected by language speakers.  It’s the principal of the thing.”  That’s consistency – and integrity — in action.

On the other hand, there’s Tiger Woods.  Tiger had one of the best personal brands in the world.  He earned close to $100 million in 2009 on it.  He will earn a lot less in 2010.  If you were following the news in late 2009 and early 2010, (how could you miss it) you know that the Tiger brand is in serious jeopardy because of some of his indiscretions which have come to light. 

Sadly for Tiger, his integrity is now in question – and that’s being kind.  His wife has left him, taking the kids.  Several sponsors have dropped him.  And, his golf game is suffering.  I’m not writing this post to pass judgment on Tiger – enough people have done that already.  I am writing it however, to reinforce my point of building your personal brand on integrity.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Creating positive personal impact is one of the competencies all successful people possess.  You create positive personal impact by developing and nurturing your unique personal brand, being impeccable in your presentation of self, and knowing and following the basic rules of etiquette.  Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but it should be built on integrity.  Follow the career advice in Tweet 62 in Success Tweets.  “Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but built on integrity.  Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.  As Tiger Woods’s case demonstrates, a lack of integrity can lead to serious consequences for a carefully crafted brand.  Now, everyone is looking at Tiger and most people aren’t liking what they’re seeing.  So take a lesson from Tiger – one he’s learning the hard way — build your personal brand on integrity.

That’s my take on the career advice in Tweet 62 in Success Tweets.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud