13 Tips on How to be a Star Performer (Part 2) By Babatunde Oladele

2. Confirm Expectations and Requirements

All of us are fulfilling several roles across different strata of life. One person may have multiple roles with functions that he or she has to fulfil based on his or her roles. A woman in her mid-30s can be wife to her husband, mother to her children, daughter to her parents, sister to her siblings, staff in an organisation, unit head or team member in that same organisation, member of a church or some voluntary organisations, and member of one or more units in that same institution.

All these are roles performed by one person, and each comes with its own distinct demands. If you therefore desire to turn in a five-star performance in each of these roles, then you must know the specific tasks required of you for each of them, because each role has different responsibilities attached to it that may not be applicable in the others. You should know what you are supposed to do on a regular, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis to fulfil your role. Taking steps to know what is expected or required of you helps you to have a complete picture of what you ought to do.

3. Ascertain the scope and coverage of your responsibilities

How long do you need to do what you are doing? How far do you need to go? How wide do you need to cover, in terms of the range of your responsibilities? You need to ascertain the scope and coverage of what you are supposed to do if you want to be a star performer. This is important so that you do not dissipate your energy in the wrong direction or do much where you are supposed to do little. You can even use quantity to measure your turnout where applicable: how many of this do I need to produce?

Using the home as an example, a man can ask, how much do I need to bring for the house upkeep? In a work setting, you can ask, how many of these am I supposed to do? How far do I need to go? What do I need to do at this stage that I am? How many miles do I cover? What do I need to do to get to the next stage? You need to know the scope and coverage you are meant to cover. In an office setting, the best person to talk to about these is the management or your line manager. What are the things I’m expected to do? For how long am I expected to do this? How many of these am I expected to turn in on a daily basis? These are questions that star performers ask before they hit the road running.

4. Identify your productivity and result metrics

What constitutes productivity for you? The Bible says, ‘all things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial.’ You are permitted to do as many things as you want, but it is not all things that will constitute productivity for you.

You must know how your result is going to be determined. Is it by meeting your annual target? Is it getting your husband’s meal ready by 7pm? Is it by making sure your girlfriend gets N10,000 every month or by your parents receiving credit alert at the end of every month? What are the measurements you are going to be measured by? Knowing this will help you align yourself to do what you are supposed to do.

God put us here to flourish, when we get back to heaven we will be judged based on our fruitfulness and how we have been able to turn over the resources and talents He has bequeathed to us. Forget about activity or doing the rounds, it is possible to sit by the computer from 8am till 5pm and get nothing done. It is not that you are not doing something, but are those things productive? Once you know the metrics you are going to be judged by, it helps you align yourself to where you should be and what you should be doing.

5. Set goals and objectives

What are the goals you are expected to meet? Even if you are not given any by your employer or line manager, set goals for yourself. Having known what you are expected to do and how far you are to go in doing those things and you also know the things that will be used to measure your success or non-performance; you should now set goals for yourself: These are the things I’m going to accomplish, based on what I know. You should set yourself objectives you are driving towards. Star performers are goal-driven; they do what needs to be done, when it ought to be done, and how it is supposed to be done, not the way they feel or think, but how it ought to be done.

You have to set goals for yourself. For example, you know your target revenue in a year is N5million; that is a goal. You then need to plan how to accomplish the N5million mark. How much do you need to bring in on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis? That helps you to know whether you are on track or not. What are the things I’m not doing right that I need to stop? What are the things that I can intensify so I can get more results? You need to set goals for yourself; that is how you know somebody who is a star performer, they are goal-driven. They focus on the end result but do not lose sight of the process; they align with the process that will take them to that end result. You need to have objectives for what you are doing.

13 Tips on How to be a Star Performer (Part 1) By Babatunde Oladele

God created all of us to be star performers in our different and specific spheres of calling; He did not create anybody to be an also-run. He created us for impact and significance. He is excellence-driven and He wants us to function same way – that was why He created us like Him (according to His likeness). Jesus also confirmed that God is delighted when we bear fruits, and that is one way we prove our discipleship.

Performing wherever you are should be a given; particularly for Christians who have the Holy Spirit who guides, motivates, and helps them.They ought to achieve more than those who do not have such aid. The Holy Spirit is there to help us and infuse us with all we need to be star performers; be it as a wife, mother, child, husband, member of a corporate setting, and in every calling.

An anomaly common among Christians is to carry spirituality on their head in the workplace at the expense of official responsibilities. Except for those who work in a church, nobody gets employed or paid for his or her level of spirituality. In a corporate setting, the length of your prayer time, the number of scriptures you can quote do not impact on your salary. Outside the workplace even, as a husband, the number of scriptures you know does not translate into being an effective husband to your wife or father to your children. Life is in compartments and we are meant to thrive in each of these compartments.

Now let’s consider the 13 all-important steps that will elevate you to the status of a star performer.

1. Know Yourself

Know yourself. Know your strengths, limits, talents, gifts, deficiencies. Know where you will thrive and flourish; know where you will struggle and not be able to cope. All of us are not supposed to work everywhere; so, once you understand yourself, it helps you make decisions as to what you should orshould not do. You have to know your strengths and weaknesses. For example, if you are working in a bank and your job description does not match your strengths, you will be struggling and will not find joy in what you are doing. The kind of satisfaction that comes from doing what you are naturally cut out for will elude you.

Even though research has revealed that the Nigerian workforce work mainly for the pay and not out of interest, you still owe yourself the duty of making a choice as to where you want to work, such that going to work will not be something you dread every day.

Understanding yourself will also guide you in the choice of whom to marry. If you know the kind of person you are, even if someone is the gentlest of women, you will not go for her if she does not match your personality profile. She may even be the most brilliant woman around, if she will not complement you, then you will not go for her, the same applies to women.

Knowing yourself saves you a lot of hassles; it saves you a lot of money as well. Even in the area of business, it’s not all businesses that are suitable for you. It you want to go into any business, it should be in your areas of endowment, not one that is alien to you. It is not everything that promises money that gives money. Knowing yourself helps you to be a star performer. Knowing yourself gives you some level of confidence.

Be Free, Manifest and Succeed! By Babatunde Oladele

I got this insight after watching a movie entitled “Bubble Boy.”

Humans, when caged by self, dogma or fellow humans cannot be free, neither can they manifest their full potential nor succeed in their endeavours. The very thought of freedom, manifestation, and success suggests an image of outward flow of activities rather than an inward blossom.

However, freedom, manifestation and success do not happen without some degrees of internal and external struggles. These restrictions usually come in form of limitations imposed by the self, others or the environment; and it is to the extent that you overcome them that you will be free, become and succeed.

Therefore, to be free, to manifest or to succeed, here are three keys you may find very helpful:

1.    Go out: you cannot reach your full potential unless you go out of your comfort zone. Have you seen a tortoise moving before? No matter how big or small it is, it cannot move anywhere until it juts its head out of the shell. Humans are no different; there is no progress unless you go out of your shell. You cannot succeed unless you discard the limiting beliefs and self-doubts that have held you down for whatever length of time. To grow, you need to proceed from one level of reasoning or operation to the next. To succeed, you have to go out of the miry of nonchalance and average performance.

2.    Reach out: as you go out of your comfort zone or bland level to pursue your dreams and ideals, you also need to reach out to people and resources that will help you to achieve your objectives along the way. Fortune most often does not favour the taciturn. You need to identify the persons or association that can enhance you as a person as well as enable you to accomplish your aim, and then reach out to them. This is not limited to humans alone; as you are “going out” you will also encounter books, events and other resources that will be helpful to you. Reach out to them, subscribe to them, engage them and assimilate them.

3.    Launch out: to the extent that you have gone out and reached out, you also need to launch out with the idea and initiative you have been nursing, or those that occur to you as you become. A popular maxim holds that “people will not celebrate you for your intentions, but your actions.” To succeed, you need to have a sizable action quotient per day. And the key to doing that is making every hour count. Input substance into your hours and you will have a productive day. Never let an hour pass by without a substantial investment of rigorous thinking or effort with short, medium or long-term yield in it. Even the chunk of time you take to rest or spend with your family constitutes a judicious investment of time that will produce positives. So, don’t think it’s all about working alone.

So, dare the odds and discouragements to launch out and start that business, NGO, product/service line, and whatever it is that you have tucked in the recess of your mind for so long. Don’t fall victim of the paralysis that develops from over-analysis. You will never know all there is to know, have all you need to start, nor have a panoramic view of all there is to see about the idea anyway. So start where you are.

I conclude with a saying I heard some years ago, “instead of waiting for a perfect time, make the present time perfect.”

Principles for Overcoming Failure

1. Do not let fear control you

2. Check your attitudes

3. Do not make excuses

4. Never let failure get inside you

5. Change yourself

6. Learn from your mistakes

7. Let go of the past

8. Never give up

Some 22 Facts about Your Life Purpose

1. It is the key to your greatness
2. It is not determined by your past or present location
3. It has nothing to do with your family background or standing in the society
4. It may have nothing to do with your present career or the job you are doing now
5. It helps you to set your priorities in life and identify what is really important and what isn’t
6. It helps you to apportion and make use of time more productively
7. God will require an account of stewardship from you on what you do with it
8. It takes an accountability system to continually live and fulfil it maximally
9. It is what you will do with joy and look forward to doing everyday
10. It will bring you great contentment in life and give you a sense of fulfilment
11. It helps you to identify your destiny partners: e.g. who to marry, who to be friendly with, who to go into business with, who to hire as workers, who to submit to etc
12. In the field of your purpose, you are a king and a celebrity
13. It is in the Word of God
14. It takes God and His resources to fulfil it
15. You are not really successful if you are not fulfilling or living it
16. It guides you to make the right choices and decisions in life
17. It is not something you learn in school, seminars, workshops, or conferences
18. It has been in/with you all along, merely awaiting discovery
19. You might have been fulfilling it without knowing
20. You don’t have to leave your present job or career to start fulfilling it
21. You can make a career out of it
22. It can be commercialised to fetch you money and make you very rich

Conceive. Build. Sustain: How to Successfully Navigate the Triad

Every entity begins as an idea. However, it takes more than idea conceptualisation to see that idea become a reality, for it to thrive. As easy conceiving an idea may seem to some, to sustain what you started over a period of time with the same gusto with which you started and an increasing, progressive outlook is another kettle of fish entirely.

Even if you have conceived the right business idea and you have all the capital you need or the repertoire of resources at your disposal, there are certain attitudes, skills and key factors essential to taking a business or project from infancy to maturity. The absence of these essentials is largely responsible for most grand ideas that never transit from birth to growth. You don’t want that to happen to you.

This month at Thrive Academy, we will be discussing the topic:

Conceive. Build. Sustain: How to Successfully Navigate the Triad

Now, you can’t afford to miss this session!

Venue: 1A, African Church Close, off Coker Road, Ilupeju, Lagos.

Date: Friday, Nov 24, 2017

Time: 3:00pm

Attendance is free, but pre-registration is compulsory. To book your seat, please click: www.bit.ly/ThrivewithBabs or call: +2348110832280, +2348188708026.

10 Simple Ways To Know You Are In The Job You Are Naturally Cut Out For By Babatunde Oladele

Dear friends,

I found myself in the meditation mode not long ago and the object of my rumination was why some people seem to derive so much fun in their jobs – bubbling in their productivity therein – while some only do the required rounds, watch the clock and tick the day.

I know this is a much-discussed issue in the career industry worldwide, with various postulations and sophisticated theories. So, I was under no illusion that I was going to come up with a groundbreaking solution that would land me a Nobel Prize for solving a nagging human problem. However, the Pilot of my flight of consciousness was not discouraged, but kept on conducting me to a point where I was able to capture some bits on what usually separates an excited worker from a placid one.

The distinguishing factor is interest – borne out of the natural configuration of each individual. It is a fact that we are not all wired the same way; even identical twins may not have identical emotional sparks. Therefore, individual interest plays an important role in job gratification, which in turn results in productivity. That does not discountenance some external or psychological variables that may facilitate or hinder job performance, such as remuneration, work environment, and self-esteem, to mention a few.

So, on the fulcrum of interest only, I came up with the following 10 submissions that will help an individual to ascertain what kind of job s/he is naturally cut out for, and if s/he is presently engaged in one. I’m not sure the list below can be described as authoritative, neither is it exhaustive; so, I’ll welcome inputs from you guys.

Ok, now to the titbits: how do you identify the job you are naturally cut out for or ascertain the one you are doing now is it?

1.    You will enjoy doing what you do, and it won’t be a drag or drudgery to you.

2.    Time will not be “of essence”, and you will not be watching it, since you can start whenever you like and end whenever you like. I agree that this one may be a hard pill for the apostles of structure to swallow. But, check it out in the lives of those who are all fired up about their job.

3.    You flow seamlessly into the work, with minimal or no friction anytime, any day, and in most places. You also hands off your work with a teeny feeling of reluctance, but a soothing sense of accomplishing something.

4.    You are doing something by which people generally hail you or associate you whenever they see you or thoughts of you pop up on their mind.

5.    Money is not a major consideration for doing what you are doing. Although it is a necessity of life and a viable motivation factor, your primary drive is derived from your sheer involvement in and satisfaction with what you are doing.

6.    You want to learn all you can about the vocation, or certain aspects of it where you feel you can still be better.

7.    You want to make everyone who comes into contact with you an artisan in the vocation. You want to teach them, help them, guide them, and/or instruct them on how to do it. And you will be willing to do all these, even at no fee.

8.    You want to passionately defend, justify, or clarify certain notions about the vocation, or its operational aspects, that you feel is wrongly bandied or misconstrued by people.

9.    You are agitated when you see people who are similarly engaged doing the same work the way it ought not be done, either by underperforming, under-delivering, or not conforming to certain norms and standards pertaining to it.

10. You eagerly look forward to getting up from bed every day you have to work to get on the task or an assignment you have in hand. And you won’t mind sleeping late engaged in what you are doing. In the event you are busy doing something else, you are not so excited and you can’t wait to be done with it to get back to your love vocation.

Like I mentioned, this list is neither authoritative nor exhaustive. You may be presently engaged in the job you are naturally cut out for and not find yourself in any of the above bits. We will like to learn your own slant to this.

Cheers!