By Ross Clennett

As I resume each working year, I always take time to reflect on my results from the previous year and look at what habits have been working for me and what new habits might improve my performance and satisfaction. 

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
 - Aristotle

Stephen Covey's highly influential book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, defines a habit as the intersection of knowledge, skill and desire.
 
Defined simply as follows:

Knowledge:   the theoretical paradigm, the what to do and why

Skill:  the how to

Desire:   the motivation, the want to

Here are some questions for you to consider in each of these three areas as you ‘get back into the saddle' in 2010.

Knowledge

• Do you understand how top candidates are using the Internet to look for work?
• Do you know more about your Top 10 clients than any of your competitors?
• Do you know the exact source of every candidate you placed last year and therefore where to best spend your time and money this year in seeking great candidates?
• Do you know exactly what it will take to win the business of your Top 5 prospect clients?

Skill

• Can you gain exclusivity on every job you want exclusively?
• Do 100% of your candidates accept offers made by you?
• Does each client see all your short-listed candidates?
• Do you gain quality referrals from a large proportion of your top candidates, regardless of whether you place them or not?

Desire

• Who in your company could provide valuable feedback and coaching in an important area for your development? Have you asked them?
• Are you using your work time most productively to ensure you don't work more than 9 hours a day and can leave the office in time to ‘have a life'?
• Do you maintain a constant interest in what action you could take to improve your performance or are you stuck in a powerless paradigm of waiting for something to change or someone else to do something so that your performance improves?

Higher performance is never about having more luck.  It is about understanding how to improve your knowledge, skills and desire in areas that will make the biggest difference to your performance, and then ensuring your resulting new habits become second nature so that better results come in less time and with more ease.

What are the new habits you could adopt now that will take your performance to a whole new level in 2010?

Ross Clennett runs Australia’s first professional development website for recruitment company owners and managers. He is also a popular speaker, trainer, writer and coach on recruitment trends, recruitment skills and the recruitment industry. For more information on Ross’s services please visit www.rossclennett.com  or email ross@rossclennett.com