BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS
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Key Factors to Success
Your Blueprint for Success is designed to be used both personally and professionally. It utilizes a massive database of scientific information on human behavior to help you understand and capitalize on your unique strengths.

You selected all the statements below when completing the previous sections. They represent key factors to your success. Put this information to work for you as soon as possible by sharing it with important players in your personal and professional life.

Dave's General Characteristics
• He is forward-looking, aggressive and competitive. His vision for results is one of his positive strengths.
• He is extremely results-oriented, with a sense of urgency to complete projects quickly.
• Dave is often frustrated when working with others who do not share the same sense of urgency.
• Nothing bores Dave more than the status quo, things becoming routine and people always agreeing, or pretending to agree.
• He is deadline conscious and becomes irritated if deadlines are delayed or missed.
• Dave prefers authority equal to his responsibility.
• When faced with a tough decision, he will try to sell you on his ideas.
• He likes to make decisions quickly.
• Sometimes he becomes emotionally involved in the decision-making process.
• Many people see his decisions as high-risk decisions. However, after the decision is made, he tends to work hard for a successful outcome.
• Dave may lack the patience to listen and communicate with slower acting people.
• His creative and active mind may hinder his ability to communicate to others effectively. He may present the information in a form that cannot be easily understood by some people.
• Dave may lose interest in what others are saying if they ramble or don't speak to the point. His active mind is already moving ahead.
• He tends to influence people by being direct, friendly and results-oriented.
• He tends to be intolerant of people who seem ambiguous or think too slowly.

Dave's Unique Talents
• Optimistic and enthusiastic.
• Change agent - looks for faster and better ways.
• Creative in his approach to solving problems.
• Positive sense of humor.
• Forward-looking and future-oriented.

Dave's Ideal Environment
• Work tasks that change from time to time.
• Nonroutine work with challenge and opportunity.
• Tasks involving motivated groups and establishing a network of contacts.
• Assignments with a high degree of people contacts.
• Freedom of movement.

Communication Style - Do's and Don'ts

When communicating with Dave
• Read the body language for approval or disapproval.
• Provide testimonials from people he sees as important.
• Motivate and persuade by referring to objectives and results.
• Provide questions, alternatives and choices for making his own decisions.
• Be clear, specific, brief and to the point.

Don't do this when communicating with Dave
• Take credit for his ideas.
• Legislate or muffle - don't over control the conversation.
• Leave decisions hanging in the air.
• Be dictatorial.
• Ask rhetorical questions, or useless ones.

Keys to Motivating and Managing

Dave wants:
• Working conditions with freedom to move and to talk to people.
• Excitement.
• Rewards to support his dreams.
• Independence.
• A support system to do the detail work.

Dave needs:
• To be confronted when in disagreement, or when he breaks the rules.
• To adjust his intensity to match the situation.
• To know results expected and to be evaluated on the results.
• To handle routine paperwork only once.

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Potential Roadblocks to Success
All of us have a few predictable areas in which we would like to improve. If we do not address these areas, they will remain roadblocks to our success.

The statements below represent problem areas you selected that deal with time and communication with others. Extensive behavioral research indicates possible causes and potential solutions to the problem areas you selected. Review each carefully and consider the recommended solutions.

Potential Time Wasters
LACK OF A WRITTEN PLAN
A plan in this context may be an overall business plan including mission, goals, objectives, task requirements and utilization of resources. It may also simply mean written priorities and a written daily plan of action.

POSSIBLE CAUSES:
• Action oriented, want to get things done now
• Priorities keep changing (self- or other-imposed)
• Have been successful without a plan in the past
• Want to "go with the flow" and not be stifled by a written daily agenda

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:
• Write down personal and job-related values and prioritize them
• Write out a long-term plan that will support those values
• Recognize that by having priorities clearly in mind, constant change will be replaced with change-by-design*

VACILLATION
Vacillation is the process of regarding an issue or a requirement in one way at one time and a different or the opposite at another time. It is the inability to make an immediate decision and stick with it.

POSSIBLE CAUSES:
* Lack confidence in information
* Fear making the wrong decision
* Lack a systematic decision making process
* Hope that time will eliminate the problem or issue

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:
• Acknowledge that the decision will be the best based on experience and available information
• Establish a time frame for making decisions
• Develop a method for analyzing a problem and choosing a solution
• Seek the advice or input from key people involved in the issue

SNAP DECISIONS
Snap decisions in this context are those decisions that are made too quickly without having all the necessary information.

POSSIBLE CAUSES:
• Impatience overrides need to wait for more information
• Try to do too much
• Failure to plan in advance
• Lack specific goals

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:
• Ask for recommendations
• Establish process for decisions prior to situation occurring
• Establish standard operating procedures and alternative procedures for possible problems

Communicating with Others
You have indicated that you experience difficulty when communicating with a person who is dependent, neat, conservative, perfectionist, careful and compliant:

• Prepare your "case" in advance.
• Stick to business.
• Be accurate and realistic. Factors that will create tension or dissatisfaction:
• Being giddy, casual, informal, loud.
• Pushing too hard or being unrealistic with deadlines.
• Being disorganized or messy.

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Contract With Yourself
This contract consolidates your responses and is the MOST IMPORTANT SECTION by far. If you keep this contract with yourself and act on the items listed below, there should be no limit to the amount of success and happiness that you can achieve.

1. How would your overall satisfaction both personally and professionally improve if more people understood your unique strengths?
A lot, as long as they understand that my strengths can easily be seen as weaknesses by others.

2. What specific actions are needed to make others more aware of your unique strengths?

STRATEGY/BARRIERS
A. I will need to do MORE of the following:
Sharing my analysis, be more patient and focus on listening better to others.

B. I will need to do LESS of the following:
Being intolerant and impatient with my children

C. I will need to BEGIN doing the following consistently:
Taking the time to socialize with friends and family

D. What obstacles or barriers could prevent you from making these changes?
Lack of time, the need for more business.

E. How can you work around or remove these barriers?
Start to reward myself for appropriate behaviours

3. What workshops, training programs, books, self-development activities, professional associations, etc., are you aware of that can support further development of your strengths?
Attend Dave Neely's new Emotional Intelligence Seminar

4. Who in your personal and professional life can help you accomplish these action items? And how?
My wife and a few trusted clients.

5. Who else can support your efforts to improve your effectiveness? And how?
Not sure

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Your Name: Dave Neely
Todays Date: 1/18/2002
Start Date:

Success Discovery Process : Version 1.0
Copyright © 2001 Target Training International, Ltd.