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Posts Tagged ‘Reflection’

Intentional Leadership — D4, W1, M9 — Attitude

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , on August 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Spend some time with your journal today, writing about someone you consider to be a role model in having a positive attitude. What do they do that demonstrates this?

What impact do they have on you and others?

How might you benefit by making an adjustment in your attitude?

Also, take some time to write about the insights you’ve had this week, our first week of focus on Attitude. How can you apply what you’ve learned about the importance of attitude on the outcomes in our lives?

How can what you’ve learned help you to become a more effective leader?

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Intentional Leadership — Month 9 — Attitude

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , , on August 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Eleven years ago, I went through a life-changing leadership training process. During the course of that journey, we studied the Fish! Philosophy, based on how the fishmongers at the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, WA, approach their work. Essentially, there are four things these men are focused on as they approach their work, and really their daily lives, and one of them is this: Choose Your Attitude!

It really made an impression on me, because truly it is a choice. We have no control over what life will throw at us, what others will do or say to us. All we have control over is how we choose to react or respond. We can choose what our attitude will be about what happens to us. And frankly, if we don’t choose, we put ourselves in the victim mode. I don’t know about you, but I’m not cut out for that. Yes, I do have my less-than-stellar moments of frustration, impatience, etc…but I typically recover pretty quickly and move on to problem-solving so I can move forward.

Olympic Gold Medalist, Scott Hamilton, said, “The only disability in life is a bad attitude.” Well put, I say!

No matter what happens to each of us in our lives, the best way to create the kind of life and success we desire is to commit to having a positive attitude. When you do this, you don’t waste your time and energy complaining or wishing things were different. You recognize you are the captain of your ship, and have the power to navigate your course. This allows you to focus your energy on creating more of what you do want, and moving farther away from what you don’t want.

As you do this, you become the kind of leader that attracts others. Think about it: Whom do you want to spend a lot of time with — someone with a positive, up-beat attitude, or with someone who has an negative attitude?

Think about your attitude,  and ask yourself this: Is my attitude an asset or a liability? Will it allow me to propel myself forward into living the life I desire, or will it hold me back? Will it attract other like-minded, talented, creative people to me, or will it attract those who are focused on doom and gloom?

How important has your attitude been to your success in life so far?

What do you allow to influence your attitude — both in positive and negative ways?

What kinds of choices can you make each day to maintain a positive attitude?

How has your attitude made a difference in your role as a leader?

Tomorrow, we will begin our four-week journey focused on Attitude. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the subject.

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Intentional Leadership — D4, W4, M8 — Change

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , on August 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

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 — D1, W4, M8 — Change

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2013| Leave a Comment »

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

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 16, 2013| Leave a Comment »

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, W2, M8 — Change

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , , , on August 8, 2013| Leave a Comment »

As you may remember, I recently went through a growth process called The Deeper Path; a coaching process facilitated by my colleague and mentor, Kary Oberbrunner. Part of the premise of this process is that for one to grow and realize one’s potential, we must embrace acute pain to end chronic pain in the various areas of our lives that aren’t working.

Today, spend some time in reflection with your journal. Take some time to think about the present path you are on in your life. What pain are you experiencing?

What’s not working?

What adjustments do you need to make to position yourself for success?

What three things do you desire to happen in your life over the next year?

What obstacles do you face in achieving these goals?

What changes do you need to make in your thinking and approach in order to get there?

Once you’ve spent some time identifying these things, take some time to map our an action plan for moving forward — starting today.

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Intentional Leadership — D3, W2, M8 — Change

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , , , on August 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Today, I encourage you to focus on change externally.

Who do you know who is facing a significant change in his/her personal or professional life?

What could you do to help this person? Sometimes, it’s as simple as spending time with them and listening; others, help requires taking action of some sort.

As you spend time with this person, and listen to his or her story, could you help them to see the situation from a different angle? As a coach, this is one of the things I do with my participants — help them to see another perspective that might allow them some new insight or ideas they may not have otherwise considered.

You might be able to help them come up with a couple of different solutions, and evaluate them…decide if they need to do something new, stop doing something they currently do that no longer serves them, or maybe even both (Yes! use the tool you learned yesterday — Know, Evaluate, Act/Change).

Who do you know who is facing change?

How much do you know about their situation?

What options are you aware of that they might want to consider when developing a solution or action plan?

Does the situation call for them to start something new, stop something in progress, or some combination of the two?

What is the best thing you could do for this person at this point in their life?

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Intentional Leadership — D2, W2, M8 — Change

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , , on August 6, 2013| Leave a Comment »

For many of us, we change only when we absolutely have to — literally pushed through it by forces beyond our control — when the pain of not changing is worse than the pain of the change. We change reactively, rather than proactively.

As a leader, you can capitalize on these moments because people are now ready to act.

There are times when we make decisions quickly and emotionally, without considering all the factors involved. These are the decisions born of reacting (immediate and emotional) rather than of responding (thoughtfully, and with consideration for the risks, consequences, and implications).

Here is a tool you might use in considering your options when faced with a decision involving change. This is based on the steps of knowing, evaluating, then acting (changing).

Know: What is the level of pain your organization is in? What is wrong, confused, or broken within your team or organization that is driving you towards a change? Take a few minutes to describe the situation.

Evaluate: Now that you are in pain, and recognize you must make some change, what are three potential solutions? For each solution, write down at least two benefits to moving in that direction, and two risks or implications that are associated with taking that action.

Act/Change: To make this change, do you need to start something new, simply stop something you are already doing, or go in an entirely different direction? Based on these considerations, what’s the best solution you’ve come up with and what do you need to do to make it happen?

What will it cost you to do nothing?

Whatever you decide is the best course of action, the time to act is NOW!

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Intentional Leadership — D1, W2, M8 — Change

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , , on August 5, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Approximately a year and a half ago, I attended the Chick-fil-A Leadercast, and Andy Stanley was one of the speakers. I don’t remember the entire content of his talk, but one part of it really stuck out for me and I remember it frequently.

He was telling to story of two executives, a few years ago, I believe at Dell. They were struggling with an issue that they had to resolve, and weren’t coming up with new ideas. You see, they were so firmly entrenched in their paradigms, that they couldn’t see their situation in a different light. They knew their way of thinking at that time wasn’t going to allow them to come up with the solutions they needed to change the direction of their business.

Finally, one of them had a stroke of genius and asked this question: “What would our successors (replacements) do?” You see, he recognized the dire situation they were in and was confident that if they weren’t able to change their way of thinking, and change their corporate strategy, they would soon be replaced with someone who could!

Pretty sobering thought, don’t you think?

This simple question allowed them to think as if they were someone else, with different beliefs, constraints, perceived barriers, etc…and they were able to come up with some ideas that were a bit out of the ordinary for them, but weren’t out of the realm of possibility. Having given themselves permission to consider ideas they wouldn’t normally entertain, they were able to come up with some better responses to their situation.

And that, as they say, made all the difference!

Take some time today to think back on a time when you had to change your way of thinking in order to succeed. What was the situation?

What “barriers” (either real or perceived) held you back?

What pushed you into a new way of thinking?

What were the results?

How have you used that experience with different situations?

Having had this experience, how quickly do you now move into a new way of thinking when faced with a challenge?

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Intentional Leadership — D5, W1, M8 — Change

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 2, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Good morning, and Happy Friday! Thank you for being here, reading my thoughts…this is my 201st blog post!

Again, the week has gone quickly for me. I spent last weekend and the early part of the week in Colorado visiting my mom and sisters. Haven’t had the opportunity to do that in a long time, so it was good, but too short. Now, as this is Friday, and the next weekend is upon me, I am already planning my weekend activities, as well as those of next week.

Tomorrow, I will spend with my son and my mother-in-law who has recently come to live with us. We will travel a short distance (a little over an hour) to visit a Children’s Museum, do a little shopping, and have a lunch date. It will be good for all of us to get out, for my son to explore, imagine, and experiment with the many interactive displays and activities at The Clay Center, and for my MIL to see some more of the area.

I will also spend part of the weekend doing some writing in advance and preparing for the next lesson in my Empowerment Mentoring program, “World Famous”. I will be traveling next Thursday, for a week in Orlando with the John Maxwell Team (oh, how I love being with these amazing, energizing, up-lifting, encouraging, like-minded, growth-oriented people, literally from all over the world!). It will be a week of learning, reminiscing, growth, new experiences, deep reflection, and fellowship. It will be, easily, 12-14 hour days fully engaged; which is energizing and exhausting! Thankfully, my yoga program is portable and I can practice in my hotel room.

What’s on your list this weekend? Will you focus on you? Will you spend time with others? Exercise? Read? Write? Rest?

What do you need to do to set yourself up for success on Monday? And in the coming weeks?

However you spend it, I hope your weekend is satisfying and intentional.

“See” you Monday!

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