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Posts Tagged ‘Success’

Intentional Leadership — D5, W3, M9 — Attitude

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , on September 13, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Good morning! It’s Friday. Does that change your attitude toward your day?

For some, it really does because they know they are at the weekend. In some ways, I find that sad and a bit disheartening. What it says to me is that at some level there is something (maybe a little or maybe a lot) about how people spend their time Monday-Friday that is dissatisfying for them…that they are just putting in their time until they get to the weekend.

I’ll admit I do enjoy the weekends – more unstructured time and time with my family. At the same time, I look forward to the coming week because that seems to be a more likely time for more activity in connecting with and adding value to others.

only 20% of people have the opportunity to do what they do best every day.

I read a disturbing bit of research yesterday, from Gallup, stating that out of some comprehensive research (1.7 million respondents) only 20% of people have the opportunity to do what they do best every day. Only 20%! WOW! That’s a piece of information that should make business leaders stand up and take notice. No wonder so many just put in their time, longing for the start of the weekend!

So, what to do with this weekend? My usual activities continue — some writing, some reading, some prep for a lesson I have coming up on Attitude (how fitting for this month!), some prep for the next Empowerment Mentoring lesson on Perception. I’m working on being more disciplined in several areas of my life, and that work does not get a “pass” on the weekend. Family time, of course.

I also have some commitments to follow up on, as I’ve just started working with a new Coach, and need to keep myself on track with that work.

What will you do this weekend? Are you in the habit, by now, of thoughtfully preparing for your weekend?

I’m not suggesting your time needs to be fully structured and busy…merely thoughtfully considered and intentionally spent. Approaching it this way (well, not just the weekends, but all your time, actually) will put you on the path that will allow you more likelihood of achieving the results you desire for your life.

Give a little thought today, if you haven’t already, to whom you need to spend time with this weekend.

What you need to invest your time and energy in over the weekend?

What do you need to do to care for and nurture yourself this weekend?

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

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Intentional Leadership — D1, W3, M9 — Attitude

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , , , on September 9, 2013| Leave a Comment »

If you’ve been in any kind of leadership role, and I suspect you have — or aspire to, since you’re reading this blog — you know what it feels like to be doubted, assaulted, ridiculed. You’ve likely faced embarrassing moments, ridicule…had your decisions and judgment questioned by others.

The question is, how do you respond? And, I do me an”respond” — meaning thoughtfully, intentionally choosing what you will do or say, rather than reacting, which is immediate, emotional, and usually thoughtless. The point is, you get to choose your attitude during these trying times.

Consider one who has gone before us…

President Truman faced his share of doubt, rejection, and failure…let’s consider his story for a few moments:

When he first proposed to his girlfriend, Bess, Wallace, she rejected him. He pursued her, anyway, and eight years later they married.

He was rejected when he tried to join the Army because his eyesight was poor. Refusing to be kept from serving his country, he memorized the eye chart so he could pass the test! He later won distinction for courageous leadership in battle.

After WWI, his business failed. He moved into a career in public service, as a judge and later was elected to the US Senate.

Although he was considered unfit to be a US President, he successfully led us through the end of WWI; he is now regarded as one of the greatest presidents!

Expected to lose the 1948 election, newspaper printed that his opponent, Thomas Dewey, had won! Imagined Truman’s delight in their misprint the next morning!

If you stay the course, and I hope you do, you will go through these trying times, over and over. You will have to filter and choose the messages you will listen to and the stories you believe. You will have the opportunity, several times a day, to choose your attitude. I hope you choose well.

Spend some time in reflection today: How do you deal with assaults on your attitude?

Describe a time when you felt as if your attitude was under attack. How did you respond?

What did you learn?

What would you do differently today, as a result?

How can your choices influence your attitude?

How can your attitude influence your choices?

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Intentional Leadership — D3, W4, M8 — Change

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

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

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , on August 20, 2013| Leave a Comment »

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

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 — 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 — M8 Intro — Change

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , , on July 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Change: The process of becoming different.

In this, our eighth month of this Intentional Leadership* journey,  we will closely examine the process of change; which is, oddly enough, the only thing that seems to be consistent in today’s world! If you can count on any one thing, it’s that change is either on its way or already here! And how we adapt to and manage change will make an enormous difference in our path to success and satisfaction.

Change is happening at a dizzying pace that appears to be moving faster all the time. This is true in all aspects of life, including business, and if you aren’t able to anticipate, recognize, and adapt to change, as a leader, you will certainly fall behind. Not only is change a requirement for growth, it is actually necessary for survival.

Think back over the course of your lifetime and remember some of the things that have come and gone. I grew up in Southern California, and I remember buying actual ticket booklets at Disneyland. The “E” ticket was the most desirable, as they were for the best, most exciting rides in the park. If I remember correctly, there were a lot more tickets in the book for the “A-D” rides, and if you wanted to go on more than one “E” ride, you had to buy more “E” tickets! I remember rotary dial phones; cell phones as big as a shoe, and heavy as a boot! I remember when you could actually buy “penny candy” and a bag of M&Ms was 10 cents! This list could go on and on…and I’m sure you have one of your own, possibly similar to mine, or very different if you are from a different generation.

The point is, change is inevitable and we must be able to work our way through it, and remain committed to it, even when it appears as if nothing is happening. This requires leaders to be steadfast, holding tight to their convictions, willing to sacrifice for what they believe to be the right thing. Eventually, the transformation will happen and we will all easily see the benefits of having stayed committed.

To be truly successful in these ever-changing times, we must not only adapt to change, but we must welcome and embrace it. Our most valuable skills in these times are flexibility, resourcefulness, and resilience. To take it one step further, leaders who are able to anticipate change, and prepare for it before the need becomes obvious, are much better prepared for what’s to come.

As we get started with this new month, new focus, take some time today to ask yourself these questions:

How can I be more flexible to the changes happening around me?

In what areas do I have opportunities for growth in terms of changing the direction of my leadership, that will allow me to work through change more effectively?

What changes have you made in your life, to-date, and what growth do you attribute to them?

How has your self-confidence changed as a result of successfully navigating change?

Much more to come on this topic. “See” you tomorrow! In the meantime, have an intentional day!

 

*From the Intentional Leadership booklet by Giant Impact. 

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Intentional Leadership — D1, W4, M7 — Legacy

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

As this is our fourth, and last week focused on Legacy, it’s time to get serious about what we can be doing to ensure we are developing a sustainable legacy.

Yes, I’m talking about not just developing a positive, long-lasting legacy in terms of what people remember and say about you when you are gone. I’m talking about developing successors who will carry on the work and culture you put in place while you were the leader.

John Maxwell talks about this in the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, when he talks about leaders developing leaders rather than developing followers. It’s about helping others grow, along with your business.

You can see this in real life when you study businesses or other organizations after a particularly effective leader moves on. One example you might read up on is Southwest Airlines. Beyond building a successful airline, Herb Kelleher left a legacy of developing leaders within his organization. He had a unique style and developed a unique culture within the organization, and he didn’t want it to just be a cult. He wanted it to survive him and continue to thrive.

To make that happen, he brought in strong, talented people and helped develop their skills and leadership abilities. You see, it wasn’t all about Herb; he wasn’t doing what he did just so he could stand in the spotlight alone; he enjoyed training others so they could shine, too. It was intentional on his part.

The technical training is important, but it’s not what will allow people to step confidently into their potential. It takes much, much more than that.

To build the foundation for a lasting legacy, one must embed mission and culture in the lives of their successors.

Your action for today: What can you do to convey the mission and culture of your organization to its future leaders?

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Intentional Leadership — D1, W3, M7 — Legacy

Posted in Leadership, tagged , , , , , , , on July 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »

We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever; the goal is to create something that will. ~Chuck Palahniuk

I believe I’ve mentioned the idea, before, about how with every interaction we have the opportunity to build or damage trust (earn trust dividends or pay trust taxes, as Stephen MR Covey would say). Well, there are other types of capital for leaders; in addition to trust, there is personal capital (ability, time, and influence) — things you have control over, and corporate capital (brands, product lines, etc…). Every day, and throughout your career, you will have the opportunity to make trade-offs with the various types of capital you have within your control. As we would with our money, we might make a withdrawal of one type of capital in order to invest it in another area, with the expectation of a positive pay-off at some point in the future.

In many ways, your legacy as a leader will be defined by your ability to shift capital from unproductive ventures to more profitable areas.

For an example of this, take a look at Indra Nooyi, chief strategist of PepsiCo, Inc. She was the driving force behind Pepsi’s transition from just being a soft drink company to becoming a more diverse producer and distributor of some healthier fare. Under her direction, the company bought Quaker Oats, which brought Gatorade and Quaker Oatmeal into Pepsi’s portfolio. She also drove the acquisition of Tropicana, which allowed Pepsi to add a well-known fruit juice to the portfolio. Later, she persuaded the company to sell Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, essentially getting out of the “fast food” (or Quick Serve) industry.

Because of her efforts, only 20% of Pepsi’s sales wee from soft drinks by 2006, compared with 80% for Coca-Cola. Based on her accomplishments, Nooyi became CEO of PepsiCo.

What do you think she said when asked about the legacy she hoped to leave? She wanted Pepsi to be regarded as “both a commercial and moral success — turning profits while combating obesity.”

That’s a tall order, one might say, but it’s clear the woman is not easily discouraged by circumstances and conditions. She has a vision, she has the capital — both personal and corporate — to use at her disposal in crafting the company she dreams of…

Let’s transition now, and look inward. In what area of your life / business do you think you are wasting capital?

What can you do differently to reinvest your resources for a more favorable outcome?

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