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Intentional Leadership — D5, W2, M10 — Strategy

Another week gone by…the air is crisp in the mornings, soft in the evenings, and the leaves are turning amazingly beautiful colors. I love this time of year! I hope wherever you are on this Friday morning, you are surrounded by beauty as well.

It’s been a full week for me, with several coaching and mentoring sessions, working on developing some meeting/workshop agendas and materials, and planning for some lessons I will teach next week around self-awareness, intentionality, influence, connection, communication, personal styles, conflict resolution, and relationship building.

I will spend time over the weekend continuing to prepare for those upcoming lessons/workshops, as well as having fun with my family attending a local annual festival. In addition, I need to read John Maxwell’s newest book: Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn. John will officially launch this new book next Thursday, October 10, via two live webcasts (one at 4 PM EDT and one at 9 PM EDT), accompanied by special guests, Dave Ramsey and Nick Vujicic. You are welcome to attend; you don’t want to miss it! Here’s the link (webcast.johnmaxwell.com).

I will be following up on the webcast by offering a Mastermind Group (facilitated in-depth study) on the book, so if you’re interested in joining us, connect with me via comment, email, phone, or Facebook.

Further, my weekend will include some time and focus invested in the three areas of discipline I’ve committed to work on through the Maxwell Plan for Growth: exercise – yoga at least three times per week; writing – a minimum of 15 minutes a day, in addition to this blog; and getting more intentional about budgeting.

What are you doing with your weekend?

Whom do you need to connect with, nurture, spend time with?

What do you need to do to nurture yourself?

What can you do to prepare yourself for a great start to next week?

What can you do to set yourself up for success in the coming weeks and months?

Enjoy your weekend; I hope however you choose to spend it, you’re intentional about it.

“See” you Monday!

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Reflecting on life-changing decisions…Here’s one of mine

As part of the growth plan I am working my way through, I have recently spent some time reflecting on my association with the John Maxwell Team and the value it’s brought to my life.
Several people have told me they wished they could do some of what I’m doing and asked me about my experience with the John Maxwell Team. After returning from Guatemala my (already great) opinion about the JMT is at a new level. What we took part of in Guatemala was “Historic.” John’s Influence and his team at Equip ( his other company) along with two other organizations ( LaRed and Guatemala Prospera) are the reason this amazing Transformation has begun in Guatemala.
Think about this: Three people trained 150 of us coaches over two-and-a-half days. We were then deployed, along with a translator, to go out and teach four-hour work shops sitting in small circles with military, city and country government officials, faculties of schools, clergy, hospital administrators, doctors and nurses, business men and women, and community leaders; we taught them how to facilitate interactive roundtable discussions on the the topics of Laws of Growth and Values, like forgiveness, listening skills, and others.
Gua Natl Civil Police June13 sm  (Me with the National Civil Police, Guatemala City, Guatemala, June 2013, at the end of our session)
In three days we reached ~19,000 people and left them trained and equipped to facilitate a 30-week follow-up using this same process in their areas of influence and with their families.
It was an amazing, life-changing experience! I don’t know if you can imagine but each one of the participants (captains & generals of armies in uniform, city mayors, doctors, clergy, etc) had to get “real” and be “transparent” rating themselves from 1-10 on how they were at, for instance, “listening” or “forgiving others. ” Then they had to say aloud what specific action steps they were going to take in the coming week to improve their performance in that area.
I’ve never seen such transparency. The stories of what happened were crazy-awesome! When people get real and want to grow, TRANSFORMATION begins.
As of mid-August, 45,000 (yes, 45,000!) others were going through this transformation process in small groups led by the people we taught in June.
I’m still on ‘cloud nine’ about the whole thing. Our own country could so benefit from this process. Third world countries don’t have the distractions we have and they want help to bring hope to their future generations. From the president down to the young people, the whole country is in pursuit of hope. Although this was not a faith-based effort per se, all the principles, laws, and values we taught come directly from the wisdom found in the pages of the Bible.
If you are looking for a personal leadership growth track (speaking, coaching, teaching, etc…), want to move toward growing a business, or be a part of a transformational, powerful organization, you can make that a reality for yourself by joining the John Maxwell Team. Give me a call. I can walk you through the process for enrolling, the investment, and the amazing benefits of joining this team.
It truly is the best thing I’ve done for myself in at least 10 years!
I look forward to hearing from you.
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Intentional Leadership — D3, W4, M9 — Attitude

We all know someone who is currently having a hard time with some aspect of their life. Spend some time today thinking about someone specific who is in this situation…discouraged due to difficulties they face.

Ask them how they are doing. Spend some time and energy in encouraging them in their areas of strength, giftedness, and passion.

If you have the opportunity, encourage them by sharing one of your stories about a tough time you went through and the lessons you learned as a result.

I know, it makes us feel better to share stories of our successes, but the truth is, we learn more from others when they share stories about the times they have stumbled and how they worked through whatever it was. Those are the times we discover what we are truly made of, what we are capable of, and learn the lessons that will help us move forward.

Afterwards, spend some time with your journal and write down some thoughts from your conversation. Write down how it felt before, during, and after.

Write about the impact you were able to have on the other person.

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