Is there a checklist for success?

If there were a roster of do’s and don’ts for getting ahead and being a great boss, would you use it?

Is there a magic formula for success as a leader? A sure-fire to-do list you could read and check off? Or how about a never-do-this list, just to avoid the pitfalls?

Maybe there is. It’s a topic several LinkedIn Influencers weighed in on this week. Here is what two of them had to say.

James Altucher, entrepreneur

He listed some of the things that consummate failures do time and again:

“They believe in the word failure. We don’t live long enough to fail, like if a planet is around for 4 billion years and produces no life-forms, I would call that planet a failure,” Altucher wrote. “Everything else is an experiment… the more mistakes you make, the better you get… When you make a mistake, you repeat and repeat until you get it right.”

“Failures under-promise and over-deliver. Everybody is told a lie: to be a success you have to under-promise and over-deliver. This is the worst form of lack of integrity,” Altucher wrote. “You have to over-promise and over-deliver. Over-promise sets you apart from the people who under-promise. 
Over-deliver sets you apart from people who just delivered. It’s easy to slightly over-promise and slightly over-deliver because nobody else is doing it.”

“Failures take all the credit.  Failures are insecure,” Altucher wrote. “Give others credit all the time. Then you are the source of credit. Just like a bank. Credit is like currency. If you’re the bank, then in the long run you will end up with all the real credit.”

“They don’t have notebooks. I carry at all times a waiter’s pad. I have over 100 waiter’s pads,” he wrote. “How many times do you think of a great idea and you think, ‘this is so great I will never forget it’ and then you forget it?”

Marshall Goldsmith, author and executive coach

“As demands on leaders increase, there is less time to focus on making the changes you need to make to do the job successfully,” wrote Goldsmith in his post 8 Things Successful Leaders Do. “As more is expected of you, you find you have less time for development, and yet, improving your leadership skills is more important than ever.”

To get it right, he wrote, you have to “make the most of your surroundings and ask those around you for help… you have to enlist their support”.

To do this, and to keep developing as a leader, according to Goldsmith there are eight steps you must employ. The first several:

“Ask. Ask people ‘How can I be a better (manager, partner, team member, etc.)?’,” he wrote.

“Listen. Listen to their answers.

“Think. Think about their input? What does it mean?”

Thank people for their insights and respond positively when they give it. Once you do that, he wrote, you must:

“Involve. Involve people to support your change efforts.

“Follow-up. Follow-up regularly and stakeholders will notice the positive actions you’re taking based on their input.”

It sounds simplistic, Goldsmith wrote, but it’s also easy to use which makes it easier to “change to be even better.”