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Intentional Leadership — D5, W1, M10 — Strategy

Good morning and Happy Friday! It’s been a great week for me; I’ve been productive and focused and moving forward. This progress didn’t simply happen, and it certainly wasn’t immediate. It’s taken a lot of work over many days, weeks, months, and I am building momentum. It feels great! So nice to be centered in my purpose, operating in my passion zone, and focused on what matters most.

So, as I prepare for my weekend, I know exactly what I need to focus on: First, family time. I think we need a field trip to the farmer’s market or the WV Zoo (yes, I was surprised to discover this, but apparently there is a zoo in WV). Second, preparation for a couple of workshops I have booked  mid-October — one focused on communication fundamentals and one on Laws of Growth and Laws of Leadership. Third, catch up on bookkeeping. Fourth, some reading, writing, and studying. Oh, and yoga!

Next week, I will spend time planning for an upcoming team building and communication workshop, hold several coaching appointments, and prepare for a new Mastermind Group on John Maxwell’s newest book (to be launched October 10th with a live webcast — more on this in a separate post) Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn.

You know what’s coming next, right?

What’s your plan for the weekend?

Whom do you need to spend time with?

What do you need to do for yourself?

Do you need to focus on work, learning, projects, or rest?

What do you need to do to prepare yourself for success on Monday, in the coming weeks, and even months?

How much better do you feel when you are intentional about how you spend your weekend time and how you prepare for the coming days and weeks?

I would love to hear if you are following this practice and what affects it’s having on your life.

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Intentional Leadership — D4, W1, M10 — Strategy

There are two key components to a strategy — the vision and the plan to achieve it. It truly is that simple.

As a leader, its your responsibility to not only dream the vision and be able to articulate it to your team / organization, but also to create the plan and inspire your team / organization to achieve it.

This is another area in which it is important that your level of self-awareness is high. In all honesty, are you better at the dreaming part or the achieving it part?

Explain your answer to that question.

Now that you are focused on your personal strength, and have been giving thought to the importance of strategy in achieving goals, what are the keys to an effective strategy?

What are your weaknesses around strategy?

How do you compensate for them?

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.   ~Sun Tzu

Having spent a considerable amount of time and energy reflecting on this, and having undergone a broad variety of personal assessments and 360 reviews, I can easily say I’m good at creating a vision and laying out the strategic plan. From a tactical standpoint, I am perfectly capable of defining specific tactics and carrying them out, but this part of the process is not my primary strength, consequently it is a much more taxing part of the process for me. I, as well as my team or organization, am better served if I have within my resources someone whose strength lies in the tactical work.

What about you?

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Intentional Leadership Month 9 Wrap-up — Attitude

As we get further along into this Intentional Leadership journey, it feels as if I am moving through the months faster and faster. I know, rationally, it isn’t real; each month has the same amount of time (give or take a day depending on which month we are in), but it seems as if we just started this month’s exploration into attitude, and now we are at the end!

I’d like to share this thought from inspirational author and speaker, Charles Swindoll:

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. And so it is with you…we are in charge of our attitudes. As a leader, embrace the opportunities change gives and lead and grow through it.”

His ending sentiment about the 10 and 90 percents, falls right into line with the yoga program I’ve been doing these past three months. The founder of DDPYoga, Diamond Dallas Page (yes, I’m doing a yoga program developed by a former World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion! And, it’s making a huge difference in my life!), talks about living life at 90% — the 90% that is our choice of how we will react to the 10% of things that happen.

This is also a lesson I teach about being intentional in all areas of our life; mindfully giving consideration to the potential risks, benefits, implications, and consequences of any given action — whether it’s through written or spoken communication or action / behavior. When we are thoughtful about these things, we allow ourself the option of responding (thoughtfully and intentionally) rather than reacting, which is emotional and immediate, and often does not turn out as well as we would prefer.

This feeds right into attitude because, as Swindoll, and so many others before him have said, we get to choose our attitude. When things happen in life, they aren’t inherently good or bad until we assign meaning to them. According to the Law of Polarity, you can’t have a good without there being a bad…so we get to choose.

In closing, this is one of the principles I was fortunate to be asked to teach this week, on how “choosing your attitude” can make a huge difference in how your life experience happens.

The my closing question is, are you ready to take charge of your attitude and take charge of your life? Remember, it doesn’t affect only you…Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching?

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