Regardless of our industries, career titles, roles, functions or positions, we all desire excellence in our organizations, our teams, and most importantly within ourselves. If you were to ask most corporations what their top 10 core values were, over 90 percent would probably list "Excellence" in their top five. But how do we get to excellence? Is it a one-time achievement, or a perpetual on-going quest to be the best? Well, as a Peak Performance Expert, I've been fortunate enough to work with Fortune 100 organizations all over the world, and I've learned over the last 15 years, that Excellence is a Habit.
It's a skill that can be learned. What follows are seven keys that I believe will help any professional in any industry unlock that ever-elusive spirit of excellence in themselves and others.
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1) Desire excellence. If you want to be a person of excellence you must first desire to be that type of person. A person of excellence doesn't take short-cuts. They don't go for the cheap things. They have a genuine desire to be excellent and they have an attitude that is not willing to settle for half-baked, half-done and half-assed results.
2) Get an example of excellence. In order to cultivate excellence you must have an example. What does excellence look like in your industry? In your map of the world, what does excellence really look like? How does it sound, feel, smell, taste like? Excellence leaves clues you have to find them, and collect them.
3) Gain access to excellence. Once you've found an example of excellence you must gain Access to that example up close and personal so you can see the behind-the-scenes because excellence is 80 percent back-end and 20 percent what you actually see. And if you want to be excellent you can't just sit in the audience and enjoy the play, you have to gain access to backstage which where the real excellence is born. Sometimes gaining access to excellence may mean buying into that access. Investing in events, retreats, experiences, and or opportunities to get time with the people you want to gain access to. Do whatever you have to gain access.
4) Serve excellence. If you are blessed to gain access to a good example of excellence, serve excellence. Find a way to serve. Donate your time. Work for free. Don't ask for a single penny, because what you learn, you could never pay for anyway. As you Serve a person or an organization of excellence you will quickly learn that excellence is a crockpot process. No microwave results with excellence. It takes time. But if you have a humble and helping heart, you can serve your way into Excellence.
5) Study the details of excellence. Think about it. What makes a great dining experience excellent? What makes a great vacation excellent? What makes a car buying experience excellent? What makes a movie, play or production excellent? What makes a conference or event excellent? It’s the attention to the detail! If you want to be excellent, focus on the details that your customer, client or consumer cares about and over deliver on those details.
6) Demonstrate Excellence at Your Level. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make as they strive for excellence is they negatively compare their own excellence with someone who has been excellent for 30 or 40 years, and they get discouraged. Stop the madness. If they’ve been doing something for 30 or 40 years longer than you, yes they are going to be much better at it than you. So now that that’s settled, focus on being excellent at your level, with your resources, education, background, credentials, support system, know-how, creativity, and hustle. Be excellence at your level, and that will be more than enough for your tribe to love you.
7) Tweak Excellence. What makes people and organizations Excellent is their commitment to continually improve upon their last level of excellence. Think about it, the root word of Excellence is to Excel, which means to go above and beyond. As you do all 7 of these steps to cultivate excellence, know that you will always be making changes, improvements, modifications, and adjustments to grow your excellence on daily basis. Always remember, that your best… is your next!
Most recently named One of the Best Motivational Speakers in the World, Delatorro L. McNeal, II , MS, CSP, has been transforming the lives of people from all walks of life for over 15 years. As an internationally renowned peak performance expert, keynote speaker and bestselling author, Delatorro has delivered well over 3,000 paid presentations to major corporations, professional associations, conventions, pro-sports teams, churches, and leadership conferences. He is also the executive producer and star of a new business reality TV Show. "The Keynote," www.TheKeynoteCampaign.com, He has been featured on national and worldwide television networks like FOX, ABC, NBC, BET, TBN, Daystar and Oxygen.