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Intentional Leadership — D3, W2, M3 — Excellence

Now that we’re really thinking about excellence within our teams and organizations, let’s broaden our circle and expand our perspective by learning what it means to others.

Spend some time with your team today and ask them to describe what excellence looks like in each of their respective roles. Then, ask each one for two concrete ways to measure excellence within his/her performance. You might be surprised with what they come up with; often times, we will set much higher standards for ourselves than someone else will.

Now, take some time during your regular meetings (Weekly? Monthly? What’s your frequency for team meetings?) to review how everyone is progressing.

It’s important that you recognize and reinforce the behaviors and level of performance you want from your team members, so be sure to ask them what comments and actions will be positive reinforcement for them; what would they like to hear when you notice they’re doing an excellent job?

Write down the comments so you will remember them…and be sure to use them at all the appropriate times. Feedback is critical, and more effective when it’s personal, timely, and specific.

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Intentional Leadership — D5, W1, M3 — Excellence

Good morning and Happy Friday! How was this, our first week in Month Three, focused on Excellence?

As has been the case for the last three weeks, my week has flown by. Yes, I have been much busier; working with some new coaching and mentoring clients, working on a couple of other projects, and preparing for a speaking engagement today through my local Chamber of Commerce. Also, tonight, I will finish a Mastermind Group I’ve been facilitating, with a group of supervisors in a manufacturing facility.

We’ve been studying and discussing John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Tonight we will go through Chapter 21 — The Law of Legacy. Essentially, the message is that when you get to the end of your life, people will describe your life with one sentence, so you should choose it now — and embody that message, whatever it is that you want to be remembered for, to truly live each day as that person. It will be another busy day.

But I digress! Shall we move forward with what’s become our Friday ritual? Are you in the habit of thinking about and preparing for your weekend ahead of time, yet?

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

All of the above, for me, as usual, but perhaps in different measures than in previous weeks.

And I do need to spend some time really thinking about and planning for the next few weeks. There are some significant events coming my way in May, and I have a lot of work to do to ensure I am fully prepared. I’m getting ready to launch a new mentoring program, so there’s some “back office” work to do for that.

What thoughts do you have about the level of quality of your products and services, after this week’s exercises?

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 — M2 Relationships — Review

We’ve just spent the last four weeks focusing on relationships and the critical role they play in our success as leaders. As the poet John Donne said, “No man is an island entire of itself; every an is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

Each and every one of us is a piece of a bigger whole. While we might like to think we can do it all ourselves, we cannot. And it leads to a very isolated and lonely existence. I speak from experience here, as I think I’ve shared in previous blogs. I used to believe I could be “Superwoman” and do it all myself…but it’s exhausting, disheartening, and discouraging. The results were never as good as they would have been had I involved others. And I often found myself feeling resentful of others for not stepping up and doing their part; why would they, when I made it clear I didn’t need or want them!

We do not live in isolation, but in relationship to others. Real connections with others offer joy and give our lives meaning. They push us to be better than we would be alone, to reach greater heights than we could ever climb alone. Rich and lasting relationships require time, commitment, and self-sacrifice, but their benefits more than compensate for the investment.

If you take some time to think about leaders you respect, you’ll realize they have built rich “relational” bank accounts; they have developed strong relationships with a variety of people and get energy and sustenance from them. When you truly invest in others and nurture your relationships over time, they are sometimes the only stable, consistent thing you can count on in uncertain times.

In fact, when times get tough, experience, hard work, and talent alone will not save you. If you need any kind of external support — a job, money, advice, hope, mentoring, help, or even a client…your extended circle of friends and associates will be the place to turn to meet those needs. However, if you have not invested in relationships, you may find yourself standing alone.

My questions to you are these:

What did you learn about yourself with respect to relationships over the course of this past month?

What are you doing differently as a result?

How are your relationships changing as a result of your taking different actions and demonstrating different behaviors?

How different are your results, with this new perspective?

What will you do to intentionally invest in the lives of others?

On Monday, we will move into Month 3 of this Intentional Leadership Journey, focusing on Excellence. Again, I am sharing this with you as I walk through this same journey, based on the Intentional Leadership booklet I received through the Chick-fil-A Leadercast (created by Giant Impact) that I attended in May 2012.

Let me know how this journey is changing your thinking and your performance.

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