Rarely do I hear a statement anymore from a professional athlete that really resonates with me. Too often it's just a series of clichés. However, a few months ago, Tiger Woods said something during his streak of five consecutive wins that really stood out for me. He said,

"You have to own your swing."

He was talking about his golf swing. He had hired a swing coach, Hank Haney, to improve his swing, and they had worked for a long time to improve his approach to various situations on the golf course. What Tiger meant by this statement is you have to be extremely confident in your approach to different golfing situations. You can't just go up there and swing away without knowing what you're going to do. You have to know how you're going to swing under different circumstances. And you have to know that so well that you feel like you own that swing.

That's great advice for our careers.

We have to know the approach we're going to use in different situations before the situations confront us. We have to be so confident in our style and in our approach to other people that we feel we own that approach. And here's a key point: there's no one right approach, no one right career swing.

I've seen extremely effective leaders who swear in every sentence and others who never swear but use a barrage of words so big I have to carry a pocket dictionary with me just to have a clue what they're saying. I've seen some highly effective leaders who barely raise their voice and others who could rival Martin Luther King, Jr. for their inspirational qualities. Some great leaders speak so calmly and with such a folksy humor they are like modern day Abraham Lincolns, and others speak with such an emphasis on technical areas that you need a Harvard MBA to decipher their messages.

However, the one common denominator of all great leaders that I've seen is they all own their swing.

Every truly great influencer I have ever seen or studied was extremely confident in their approach to influencing others. That confidence generates more confidence in the people around them. And these contagious environments of confidence allow these leaders to press forward and generate extraordinary results. Sometimes it takes a long time for the results to happen, but the underlying key is an exceptionally high level of confidence in their approach to situations.

What is your leadership swing? What is your approach to influencing others that you can rely on over and over again?

Give these questions some consideration. By thinking about them ahead of time, you can begin to craft your approach and then you can refine it over time through practice in real-life situations. And then, like Tiger Woods, you can one day own your swing. You can approach every situation with great confidence in the approach that you are going to use. Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

Accelerate Update This section is always current to the current month

I suppose every book changes an author's life to a certain degree. My first book, which was self-published in 1995, was called Inside Out: A Catalyst for Conscious Living. It's out of print now for a number of good reasons. The layout, which yours truly did, looks like something a first grader could do today. And the ideas are very theoretical, which doesn't fit my approach anymore. However, I read the book a few months ago, and I was pleased by how clearly I had explained my early thoughts on improving performance.

My second book, Corporate Catalysts: How to Make Your Company More Successful, Whatever Your Title, Income, or Authority was published in 2005 by Career Press. That book was a step forward in clarifying my ideas on improving performance and understanding how to write a whole book. It's one thing to dream about getting a book contract and another thing to write a 70,000 word manuscript.

My third book, ACCELERATE: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Momentum, which was published in May 2007 by Kaplan Publishing, has changed my business dramatically. Up until that book was published, I mostly did projects for four companies: McDonald's, Marriott, GSD&M, and Toyota. In the past 12 months, I've worked with business owners, executives, and managers within dozens of small, medium, and massive organizations in more than 20 industries ranging from boats to banks to software to financial services to trucking to lighting to home healthcare to hospitals to optometrists. It's been an exciting adventure.

If you want to see my speaking calendar for 2008, which we'll try to update every two weeks, please click here.

Currently, I have 66 speeches scheduled for 2008. If you would like for me to speak at one of your events in 2008 or 2009, feel free to contact me at dan@thecoughlincompany.com and I will be glad to see if we can make it work.

If you want to see my speaking topics and a video of footage from some of my keynote speeches, please click here.

Back to Newsletter Page

P.O. Box 1245 Fenton, Missouri 63026
Phone 636.825.6611 Fax 636.825.9831
E-mail info@thecoughlincompany.com