All of us can always use a few tips on how to become a better and more effective leader, especially if we are business opportunity or franchise owners.  In his new book, “Win,” best-selling author, leading pollster and communications expert, Dr. Frank Luntz focuses on the nine key principles that he believes leaders in business need to follow if they want to elevate their game from being “ordinary to extraordinary.”

“Winning,” Luntz says, “means charting a new course, setting the agenda and convincing everyone else to follow.  It’s about transforming and completely revolutionizing products, processes and even people.”

To be extraordinary in business as well as in life, all of us would do well to follow these nine key principles, according to Luntz:

1. People-centeredness―A gift that most successful business people have is that they can see where there is something missing in our human existence, a void that must and should be filled.  They address this emptiness by identifying or creating a product or service that fills that space and makes life better for people.
2. Paradigm breaking―Luntz says, “Winners are not improvers; they are game-changers.”  They never settle for what is conventional.  They engage in purposeful reinvention, and they use skilled communication to lead people in a new direction.  He further delineates between innovation, or the “language of the good,” and breakthrough, which he deems to be “the language of the great.”
3. Prioritization―Asserting that this principle may be the “single most important component of successful communication,” Luntz says winners know how to gauge what must be done against what should be done.  In addition, he reminds us that first impressions are everything and we need to make the words we speak first count the most.
4. Perfection―“If you’re not driven to perfection, you’ll never reach excellence,” Luntz says.  Business people who do not strive for perfection in all that they do run the very real risk that their competition can and will leave them behind.
5. Partnership―Collaboration makes up for the fact that none of us is infinite in our wisdom or unlimited in our resources.  Partnering up when and where we need to ensures that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
6. Passion―All winners are passionate about what they do.  They communicate confidence in all aspects of their business and themselves.  They focus on results and solutions to problems.  And they are always clear in their objectives and actions.  Passion is not about volume of speech, pontificating in absolutes or demonstrating technical prowess.  It is about intensity, focus and drive.
7. Persuasion―Winners tell you why you should accept their point of view.  They don’t preach, according to Luntz.  “It’s not what you say but what people hear that matters,” he says, and the art of persuasion is “referencing that which people already believe and then using it as a springboard for the leap of faith you want them to take.”
8. Persistence―Winners know that “winning is defined by repeat performances and increasing achievements.”  They “never give up, never accept defeat, and work as long and as hard as it takes to get the job done right.”
9. Principled action―Winning in business is wonderful, Luntz says, but it isn’t everything.  The world is littered with people who may have attained professional and financial success, but who have lost everything else of value in their lives.  And that’s not winning at all.  Perspective and balance are the principles that guide true winners.  After all, as Luntz asks, “What good is winning at work if you lose at life?”  Indeed.