Posts

Intentional Leadership — D1, W4, M6 — Perseverance

Perseverance offers a number of rewards, some of them may even be sweet!

Think about Milton Hershey. Yes, THE Milton Hershey of Hershey’s chocolates fame. He was fired from his first job as a printer’s apprentice, for lack of attention to detail. Next, working in a candy store, he discovered his passion and opened his own shop in Philadelphia. Although he had plenty of financial support, he went bankrupt. He moved to Denver to work in his father’s mining venture, but missed the opportunity.

Again, he went to work in a candy store. Learned some new things, and moved east, again. He opened another candy store in NYC; again, he went broke!

No one would have been surprised or would blame him had he given up and gone to work, again, for someone else. But he didn’t. He summoned his courage and tried, again. (There’s that word, again — “AGAIN”!) And aren’t we all thankful he did? Personally, I’m partial to the semi-sweet variety of his chocolate and am enjoying some now, as I write!

The key is, he was persistent. And his name is synonymous with chocolate.

And what about Walt Disney? I believe he went bankrupt seven times before his dreams for Disneyland were realized. I’m sure we could all think of several other similar stories of passion, adversity, perseverance, and eventual success.

Leadership and failure are inseparably linked. When you attempt to bring your vision to life, you will experience bumps in the road, you will find you have fallen into a pot hole or even a giant sink hole along your journey…or you may be blazing an entirely new trail, with all kinds of unforeseen obstacles ahead. The trick is to learn from these setbacks, grow through them, and move beyond them. You will feel the amazing sensation of satisfaction — along with your success — when you do. And my friends, there’s not much like true satisfaction in knowing you stuck to it and accomplished what you set out to do.

Spend a little time today thinking about your greatest setback in your life to-date. What was it?

How did you get through it?

What was the bittersweet reward?

What did you learn from it that you have carried forward and use in other situations?

/by

What window are you bumping up against?

Perception = Reality.

IMG_0169

This beautiful bird spent the better part of four weeks fluttering up and down this window. You see, it thought it was flying into a tree. And it was persistent! It literally fluttered up and down this window most of the day; occasionally flying off into the trees you can see beyond it. The window has reflective film on it, to keep the heat of the sun out of the office. If you look at the window from the outside, you see the trees and bushes (which you can see as you look beyond the bird in this photo) reflected in the glass — pretty clearly, too. No wonder the bird thought it was flying into a tree…and behaved in a frustrated manner that it couldn’t get into the tree. It’s perception was that the window was a tree, and so it continued to try to find a way into the tree, because that was its reality.

Clearly…it wasn’t a tree and the bird was unsuccessful!

This is one of the key concepts I teach when I’m teaching communication skills. It fits in nicely with my two key lessons — self-awareness and intentionality are key to your success.

Understanding the power of perception is important because someone is always watching you, especially when you are a leader. And they make up stories about what’s going on based on snippets of information — often incomplete — combined with their beliefs, values, past experiences, and rumors. What they come up with may be accurate, close to accurate, or a million miles away from the truth, but because they don’t have access to the whole story, the one they create makes sense to them, and they move forward based on it.

My question to you is, how is someone’s else’s perception of you affecting your performance and chances of success? How is it impacting  your relationships?

What about your own perception about yourself? About your abilities, skills, and talents?

Whether you believe you can or your can’t, you’re right. ~Henry Ford

This quote says it all. What you believe to be true about yourself will determine your future. Knowing that, it’s important to examine how you perceive yourself and understand why it is so. Then, what can you do to make it different, if you need to make some changes to move forward into your potential?

And, what perceptions do you have about others that may be affecting your path forward?

Please, don’t waste your time and energy fluttering up against a window that is NOT a tree, and expect it to magically become what you want it to be! Make the effort to have clear vision and understanding about who you are and what’s going on in your life…and then move forward with confidence!

/by

Are you just going along for the ride?

I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks now. Originally, my thought was “are you hitchhiking through your life?” But as I thought about hitchhiking, it didn’t make as much sense.

You see, hitchhikers often have a specific destination in mind, as they step out onto the road and stick out their thumbs, or hold up their sign about where they want to go. And they accept rides with folks, usually headed in the same direction…getting at least a few miles closer to their chosen destination. But, truly, they are pretty much at the mercy (in more ways than one) of whomever’s car/truck they climb into when they accept a ride. Meaning, they may get closer to where they want to go, or they may just get farther away from where they want to get away from…and may simply end up wherever the driver happens to be heading.

What spurred this line of thinking was a number of conversations with people in recent weeks — some of whom I work with in coaching or mentoring relationships — about where they are headed in their careers. One conversation with a young woman about 3 weeks ago, really brought this idea into the front of my thinking. I worked with her, planning an event, and asked her how long she thought she would stay in event planning. (As an aside, if you’ve never been in this line of work, it’s very stressful — being responsible for a lot of details to pull events together, when often times you have little to no control over many of the pieces required for your event to be a success. And event planners often do not allow themselves to actually enjoy the event they have exchanged so much of their life energy to plan!)

She shared some thoughts on things going on in the organization she works with, and hopes to have the opportunity to move up, as her manager will be retiring in the next 12-18 months. She talked about her education and previous work experience and then said the thing that raised my alarms!

She said, there might be some opportunities in other departments of her organization, but that she would probably wait to see what the others above her thought she would be good at and what positions they might consider her for.

I said that was well and good, but wondered what she thought she was good at and what she was interested in…what was she striving to accomplish in her career? She seemed surprised by the question and it was obvious she’d not given it any thought, but said she probably should think about it.

I’m not sure why this particular conversation struck me so, as I have similar conversations with many people at a frighteningly frequent rate. I’m astonished by the people who give very little thought to what they want to do in life and are so willing to just go along for the ride, allowing someone else to define who they are, what they are good at, and what they should be doing with their time and life energy!

So, my question to you this evening is this: Are you the driver and navigator on your life’s journey, or are you just going along for the ride?

If you aren’t clear about what you long to do, are called to do, are passionate about doing, find satisfaction in doing…someone else will plan your life for you, but he’s the scary part: What they plan for you will be more focused on meeting their needs, not yours, and while you may be capable of doing certain things, and may even be quite good at doing them…they may leave you feeling empty, dissatisfied…Just because you “can” doesn’t always mean you “should.”

Clearly, the choice is yours. I encourage you to make this decision thoughtfully and intentionally. The answer is really the difference between choosing to be a victim or victorious, choosing to live your passion or just passing time helping someone else live theirs.

I look forward to hearing what you decide.

/by