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Intentional Leadership — D5, W1, M4 — Focus

Good morning and Happy Friday!

Another week has flown by and we are at the end of our first week of Month Four — Focus.

This topic is a good one for me right now. I am working through the Deeper Path process, as I’ve mentioned, and it’s all about gaining clarity, developing a crystal clear plan for where I’m headed with my life’s work, which requires a lot of reflection and focus.

What about you? What are you thoughts on this month’s topic, so far?

What do you need to focus on?

Now for our Friday ritual, let’s focus on the weekend and the weeks ahead…

What really needs your attention this weekend? Is it projects, people, rest, , fun, relaxation…?

We’ve had a lot going on in our family this past week, so rest and reconnection are definitely in order. My son wants to spend his tooth fairy money on a wind-up turtle for the tubby, so we will go to Toys R Us.

Continuing preparation for the Women in Leadership Luncheon; it takes a lot more preparation than one might imagine to deliver an awesome keynote speech, and that’s my intention. I don’t want anyone attending the luncheon to walk away disappointed. I also just committed to sponsoring the Chick-Fil-A Leadercast being hosted at University of Charleston on May 10. So, I have some work to do polishing up my marketing materials for Empowerment Mentoring and a couple of Mastermind Groups (15 Invaluable Laws of Growth and Everyone Communicates Few Connect). I am still working my way through content in the John Maxwell Online University; this material is so good on so many levels, I will go through it over and over and over and over, and get something new out of it every time! Finally, I applied to be part of the team John Maxwell is taking to Guatemala in June to teach Transformational Leadership. This is an opportunity of a lifetime and I’m so excited! Can’t wait to hear if I will be included in the team. If the answer is “yes,” I have a lot of work in preparation for that, as well.

What’s in store for you this weekend, next week, and in the coming weeks? Are you taking the steps to set yourself up for success and fulfillment?

Have a great weekend, and I’ll “see” you Monday!

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Intentional Leadership — D1-W1-M4 — Focus

This week we will spend some time studying the big picture — getting the lay of the land and understanding what it means for us in our teams and organizations. If you are a detail-oriented person, this could be a stretch for you, but I encourage you to work on this, because it’s critical to your success.

In order to be strategic in whatever you are doing, you need to be able to see the big picture. Once you have some understanding of the what’s happening in your industry, with your competition, and within your organization, then you can channel your energy and activity toward achieving some clear objectives designed to help you achieve your big goals. Only then can you shift your attention to the details.

Working as a professional communicator for the past 20 years, this is how I approach my work, whether the work at hand is in support of a corporate long-term strategic objective, or a one-time communication effort. I always ask my “client” what they are trying to accomplish? What end are they trying to reach? What do they want the audience the know, understand, and do as a result of the communication?

Once they are able to answer those questions, I am able to design a communication plan that will help them reach their goals. This includes segmenting the audience (I strongly recommend a precision targeted approach, rather than the shotgun — spraying your message over everyone hoping it will hit some of the right people — approach), gaining some understanding of what they know and what they need to know, defining key messages, identifying the best communication vehicles to use, outlining a timeline, and specifying who will deliver the message. Only then do we actually begin to craft the communication.

For those who are focused on the details or are impatient about just sending the message, it can be a painful process. But, I can attest that after 20 years of approaching my work this way, the results are worth it (proven by  both the clients who have taken my advice and achieved the results they sought, as well as by the clients who thought I was simply wasting their time and forged ahead with poorly developed communication and were significantly disappointed by their results).

I believe it was David Grossman who said (in his book You Can’t Not Communicate) that effective leader-communicators spend 80% of their time, with respect to a communication effort, actually planning for the communication and only 20% of it on delivery.

So, what’s your big picture?

What goals have you set in support of achieving that big vision for your work?

What about the goals you’ve set for the rest of your life?

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Intentional Leadership — D1, W4, M3 — Excellence

Please forgive me, faithful readers, for being so late with today’s post. I allowed myself to “unplug” over a long weekend, and didn’t think to take my material with me for today. I apologize! That said, let’s get started with Week Four of Excellence.

Excellence is doing small things in a big way!

If you had the chance to interview successful leaders, any number of them, I’m confident they will tell you they have developed and follow habits, systems, and processes daily, regardless of what they are working on, and excellence is no different.

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.   ~Booker T Washington

I am reminded of stories of moms and dads who take the time to write personalized notes and slip them into their children’s lunches every day. Very thoughtful! It takes time, energy, and discipline to maintain this kind of schedule five days a week; but any child who has been on the receiving end of this practice will tell you what an enormous difference it makes in their life!

I am reminded of the time I participated in a FranklinCovey workshop called Focus — all about setting priorities and making our time intentionally productive. The facilitator shared that he flew a lot, facilitating classes all around the country. He said that on one particular flight, the Pilot took the time to write a note (on the back of her business cards) to each passenger flying first class, thanking them for choosing that particular airline and trusting her and her crew to get them to their destination safely. He spoke with her about it, because he was very impressed she had taken the time to do it. She explained that she felt blessed to have her job and wanted her passengers to know this. Because during flight we are often on aut0-pilot, she had a lot of time during a flight that she could choose how to spend, and she chose to spend her time connecting with others.

I am reminded of my mother. She was a server in coffee shops for decades. On occasion, she would leave one restaurant and take a job in another. Consistently, her customers followed her from one place to another. Turns out their loyalty was to her, not the restaurant! I was too young at the time to ask any of these people why they followed her, but clearly they valued something she offered…attitude, service…I can only guess, but clearly she was doing something with excellence!

Each of these people put their “signature” on what they did, focusing on excellence. Today, think of ways you can put your personal signature on what you do, by modeling excellence.

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