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Intentional Leadership — D4, W4, M8 — Change

August 22, 2013 by llpllc

As we come to the end of this month focused on Change, spend some time reflecting on your past…what is your history when dealing with change?

Write down two of the biggest changes in your life. Spend some time with your journal, exploring how you recognized the need for change, how you handled it, what lessons you learned, and what you would do differently if you had the opportunity to do it over.

What can you learn from these previous experiences that will allow you to recognize the need for change sooner, and navigate your way through change more smoothly in the future.

Remember, experience is NOT the best teacher! In fact, experience alone will not teach you anything. The wisdom is gained by reflecting on our experiences, so we can glean some lessons and apply them to other situations in the future.

Courage doesn’t always ROAR! Sometimes, courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try, again, tomorrow. ~Mary Anne Radmacher

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Intentional Leadership — D3, W4, M8 — Change

August 21, 2013 by llpllc

What is the change you need to bring to your team or organization?

What would the benefit be, if you can bring your vision to fruition?

Is it worth the work, investment, and sacrifice?

Spend some time with your team, or appropriate peers, today to cast your vision about the change and get their feedback. Be open to responding to questions, hearing their input, and be willing to fine-tune your vision based on what you receive. Together, create a strategy and implementation plan for moving forward.

Remember, casting a vision is big stuff, and getting all your peers / teammates on the same page may take some time and effort, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t get through it all in one meeting. But, if you don’t start today, when will you?

Write it out:

What change would you like to make?

How will it benefit your team/organization?

What steps do you think you need to make to implement your plan?

Schedule meetings with the people who will be affected and begin to communicate and promote the change. Be sure to let them know what role they will play, and how important they are to the success of your endeavor.

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Intentional Leadership — D2, W4, M8 — Change

August 20, 2013 by llpllc

Have you noticed how confidence can be contagious? When you, as a leader, have confidence in your ability to succeed, it also instills confidence in your team.

Great change agents typically identify the need for change, cast a compelling vision that allows them to bring their teams/organizations to agreement about the need for change, communicate the change effectively, and implement a strategy for the change.

What change is needed in your team or organization?

Do you have the confidence you need to cast the vision and bring your team to the same place — understanding the need for change?

Do you have the capability and capacity to bring about the needed change?

If not, what are you missing? What would allow you to be more confident in moving forward.

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Intentional Leadership — D1, W4, M8 — Change

August 19, 2013 by llpllc

How strong is your self-confidence when it comes to changing the future?

The Steve Jobs movie has just been released. Have you seen it? I have not, yet. However, I think it’s safe to say Steve Jobs is well known as a game-changer in the computing industry to be sure. In fact, he has had tremendous influence over how we work and play…personal computing, iPod, iPad, iPhone, computer animation. Regardless of what some might say about his leadership style, the man had a vision and the drive to move it to reality. And, as a result, the way we live, connect, and interact with a variety of media has been forever changed.

When he was younger, he dreamed of a creating a home computer, but didn’t know how. He persuaded a friend to help him. Together, they created the first compact personal computer. Unfortunately, no one knew about it! They were unknowns, with almost no money and not reputation or credibility in their industry. Jobs sold his Volkswagen to finance Apple Computers. It wasn’t an overnight transformation, but it was a success, and I think most of us know  a lot of the rest of the story.

Are you aware that Jobs was inspired by a calligraphy course he took, and this is why, today, we have so many fonts to choose from with our Apple computers? He didn’t want people’s creativity to be limited to the old, boring, sans-serif fonts…and we benefited from that vision, as well.

Jobs and Wozniak were pioneers in their field. They envisioned change and made it happen. As they began to have some early successes, their confidence grew and they (eventually just Jobs) moved on to bigger challenges, enacting more and more change in how we compute, connect, listen to music, view other kinds of media, and create.

It’s my opinion that Steve Jobs will forever be remembered as a world-renowned leader.

Today, spend some time in reflection — think back to a time when you successfully brought about change. What gave you the courage to move forward?

What did you need to do to stay on track?

How did it give you confidence for other changes in your future?

What can you learn from the experience that will propel you even further in the days, months, and years ahead?

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Intentional Leadership — D5, W3, M8 — Change

August 16, 2013 by llpllc

Happy Friday! Wow! What a week, I just had. Spending time with the John Maxwell Team is all at once energizing, soul-filling, enlightening, thought-provoking, and the impetus to stretch myself, yet again, into changing the way I think and act and respond. It’s one of the few times I can say I am fully-engaged, totally “on” for 12-15 hours at a stretch, for several days in a row. When our time together comes to an end, I equate the disconnect as being similar to pulling the plug on a power cord…exhausted — but in a really satisfied way.

With that in mind, my plans for the weekend involve unpacking and lots of laundry! Reconnecting with my family, reconnecting with my normal daily schedule, prep for the next week. I will be beginning the Empowerment Mentoring series of lessons, again, (it’s a revolving series of lessons, so one does not need to start and stop on any particular lesson) on Tuesday with the Purpose, Vision, Goals lesson; will spend some time reviewing the material in preparation. Need to go through a week’s worth of mail; do some banking; and plan for next week.

Monday will be busy with a series of meetings, preparation for a full-day off-site team-building and vision workshop on Friday. Continuing some team-building and vision work with the maintenance team I’ve been working with. Have several coaching sessions scheduled, a couple of mentoring sessions, as well.

Plenty of reflection and writing to do to download everything I learned over the past week. And, of course, looking ahead to plan for September activities.

What’s on your agenda for the weekend?

What relationships need nurturing?

What time do you need to devote to yourself?

What activities would you like to fit in and how much rest do you need?

What do you need to do to prepare yourself for a great start to your week on Monday?

What do you need to be thinking about, and doing, to set yourself up for success in the coming weeks?

We will finish our month of focus on Change next week…can’t believe it’s going so quickly. So, I’ll “see” you on Monday.

In the meantime, make your time intentional!

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Intentional Leadership — D4, W3, M8 — Change

August 15, 2013 by llpllc

More journal time, today! Spend some time thinking, and writing, about the pitfalls of resisting change or the effects of being so confident in your strengths that you fail to adapt to change (remember Marshall Goldsmith’s What Got You Here Won’t Get You There!).

I believe it was Peter Drucker who suggested that the only way to manage change successfully was to create it. Essentially, we are more likely to have better outcomes when we are the ones instigating and driving the change.

Based on your experience, do you agree or disagree with this thought?

Why?

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Intentional Leadership — D3, W3, M8 — Change

August 14, 2013 by llpllc

Have you ever worked in a company that was failing in some way – production, safety, financially? If so, and if the company made it through that crisis, you were likely helped through the transformation by a change agent.

A change agent is someone who sees how things should be – especially in terms of human performance potential and organizational systems – and acts on behalf of the group/company to enact the changes that will make things better.

Sounds simple, right? Simple, yes. Easy, no!

Over the past 5 years, I’ve worked with two companies that were going through significant turn-around processes and both were helped along the way by change agents, although the styles and areas of focus of these individuals were amazingly different, both were effective – at least in the short-term – of turning the business around.

On a more personal level, I have been blessed to have connected with a number of change agents throughout the course of my life; mentors and teachers and coaches, who have offered me the benefit of their experience, wisdom, and insights, which have allowed me to develop a new perspective on my world, potential, and future.

Of course, those were the positive or enjoyable change agent experiences; I’ve had my share of the not-so-delightful ones, as well. But the point is, I’ve learned, stretched, changed, and grown because of them.

What has your experience with change agents been? Today, I encourage you to spend some time in reflection on a specific change agent from your past. What characteristics or qualities did they possess that made them a good change agent? What behaviors did they demonstrate?

Write down your observations in your journal and give some considerations to how you meet the criteria you’ve just outlined.

What are your strengths in this area?

What areas could you be working on to improve your effectiveness as a change agent?

After you’ve thought this through, and written down your thoughts, choose three characteristics and/or behaviors that you could model when you face change today. Write them down on something you can carry with you, and refer to them throughout the day.

At the end of the day, spend a few minutes in reflection with your journal, noting what happened, how you acted, reacted, or responded, and what the outcomes were.

How can you grow from this experience tomorrow?

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Intentional Leadership — D2, W3, M8 — Change

August 13, 2013 by llpllc

Have you heard the saying that sometimes our strengths can also be our greatest weaknesses? It’s true. You see, sometimes we rely so heavily on our strengths that we use them in a super-concentrated fashion, which isn’t necessarily effective. Or, we might rely on them so much that we forget we need to work on them to keep them sharp, and our performance falters.

Over the past several years, I’ve worked in several manufacturing environments in which I’ve been exposed to the Kaizen process. Kaizen is often included in lean manufacturing processes as a way to simply and fine-tune how people do their work. It has been very successful in Japanese companies. Essentially, Kaizen focuses on making continuous, incremental improvements or changes. It’s effective because of its focus on small changes. As you are no doubt aware, when faced with a big change, we are often daunted, overwhelmed, fearful. Small changes don’t seem to evoke the same levels of stress and fear.

So, consider how this approach might be applied to you. What if you took a Kaizen approach to growing and improving in your areas of strength, learning or strengthening new skills, and more clearly defining your strategy and action plans?

Do you think you could implement this kind of approach to your personal growth?

What benefits might you enjoy?

Would you be less likely to be caught unaware when the winds of change blow in your direction?

Let’s put it into action and find out. Today, pick a strength, skill, or strategy to which you could make small, incremental changes to each day over the next week. Track your activities and your progress each day.

Consider this, if you can make a 1% improvement each week, you would have improved your performance by 52% over the course of the year! That’s huge! Take it one step farther…what if you could improve by 1% each day…that would be a 365% improvement over the course of the year! Again, monumental change, but made in small, doable steps.

I can’t wait to hear what you’ve come up with and what your results are!

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Intentional Leadership — D1, W3, M8 — Change

August 12, 2013 by llpllc

What is it about change that so many of us find so stressful? What if we could look at it in a new way? What if we could think of change as an opportunity? An opportunity to exercise and expand our creativity? An opportunity to learn and grow…to become more than we are today? What if we could embrace the unknown, rather than face it with fear?

Think about the things that have changed in the last 5, 10, or even 20 years of your life.

My husband just bought a new Blu-Ray DVD player (we’re not always early adopters!), replacing the DVD player we’ve been using the past 10 years. This made me think back to when I was in college and the first couple of years after school, when we would rent VCRs from the video store to watch movies on the weekend. I remember being assessed a 50 cent fee for not rewinding movies, on occasion, before we returned them…and how some people even bought VHS tape re-winders, in addition to the VCR, just to do this faster!

In looking back through photos recently, it occurs to me that while we still have one camera that actually requires film, we haven’t used it for nearly 10 years. I’m not confident I would know where to buy film for it now!

I could go on with additional examples, and I’m sure you have your own list of all the things that used to be “the” thing you had to have, which are now collecting dust in the attic, the basement, the local thrift and antique stores…things change. Time goes on. We have to adapt or be left behind.

As a leader, we must change; we cannot rest on our laurels.

I’m reading several books right now (I don’t have them all with me right now, so plears forgive me for giving you the exact reference for this), and in one of them there is the story of a company that manufactured horse whips – back in the time of horse-drawn carriages. The company was totally focused on making the absolute best whips available; and they were successful. The problem was, this was the time when automobiles were becoming more popular and available, and fewer people we traveling in horse-drawn carriages. Hence, the need for horse whips decreased dramatically. The manufacturer was caught unaware, and his business failed.

He wasn’t paying attention to what was going on in the market around him and he missed the winds of change. The result for him and his employees was life-changing and not in a good way.

Today, spend some time reflecting on your attitude toward change. In what ways are you anticipating a future that is different from today’s reality?

What do you need to be doing to prepare for that change, so you don’t miss the boat (so to speak) and end up with the VCR re-winder and the horse whip manufacturer?

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Intentional Leadership — D5, W2, M8 — Change

August 9, 2013 by llpllc

So, here we are, at Friday, again, and what an amazing week! Got a lot of things done; isn’t that often the case when we are pressed for time and have a lot to do? I don’t know about you, but if I have only one thing to do in a day, it takes me all day to do it; however, if I have 20 things to do in a day, you can count on me to complete most of them, or at least get them moving in the right direction if it’s not possible to complete them in a day.

But I digress, already! Today, I am in Orlando, Florida, with the John Maxwell Team for a week of training. Not just training, but reconnecting with folks I know, connecting with new members of the team (there are ~2,800 of us, and counting, from 90 countries around the globe!), refreshing some skills, learning from the Masters in the areas of coaching, speaking, leadership, communication philosophy, and Masterminding…exchanging ideas, swapping stories, getting re-energized. It will be another life-changing experience with this amazing group of people. At the end of it, I will be emotionally and spiritually recharged and excited about the future, and most likely, physically exhausted – but in a good way!

So, my weekend is full of connecting, communicating, learning, and putting the principles into practice. I will stay connected with family via email, phone, and text. I will sleep less than normal, but am committed to continuing my yoga practice.

The good news for me, in prepping for next week, is that my agenda has been defined, in many ways, by the JMT with the schedule for our learning while here in Orlando. I will, however, still lead my Empowerment Mentoring class next Tuesday, on Authentic Journaling. I can’t believe we’ve gone through the first 12 weeks of this program already (well, actually 13, as we skipped a week while I was in Guatemala). I will also meet with others engaged in Empowerment Mentoring, and with The Deeper Path Team.

I will spend time with John Maxwell, the Mentors (Paul Martinelli, Scott Fay, Roddy Galbraith, Ed DeCosta, Christian Simpson, and Melissa West), and will meet Nick Vujicic (motivational speaker and author of Life Without Limits), and reconnect with the fabulous Les Brown. What a week!

What are you up to this weekend? What have you planned that will allow you to rest, get required stuff done, nurture relationships, have fun, and set yourself up for success on Monday and in the coming weeks?

As we are focused on Change this month, what changes might you need to make in how you approach and move through your weekends that will better position you to attain what you want in your life?

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