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Intentional Leadership — D4, W2, M3 — Excellence

As you’re aware, nothing of significance happens overnight; this is true with excellence, as well. Internalizing excellence, and truly embedding it in everything you do in your business takes time, effort, and intentionality.

What are some ways you could motivate, inspire, encourage your employees to further its commitment to excellence?

Sharing some examples of excellence in practice may be helpful. What organizations or leaders do you know who are well-known for demonstrating excellence either in their products, their services, or both? What do they do within their organizations to keep excellence top of mind? Who could you contact to learn more about how others do it?

Once you’ve done that, what have you learned, and how can you put those lessons into play in your organization in a meaningful way that fits your culture?

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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 — D2, W1, M3 — Excellence

If you talk with or listen to me for any length of time, you will hear me say this: The two keys to success are self-awareness and intentionality.

As we focus on excellence, these two keys are still important. Achieving superior quality requires your commitment, intentionality, strategy, and hard work.

What does your team/organization produce or provide?

What thought have you given to the “Five P’s of Marketing”: Product (goods or services you provide), Price (profit and competitors), Promotion (communications), People (employees), Place (channels of distribution). Get out a piece of paper and make three columns. This first is your Five Ps, the middle column is your Existing Strategy, and the third column is your Focus on Excellence.

Now, go through each item and summarize your effort in each area with respect each of the Five P’s. Reflect on your current situation in each area and what you could do to move further into excellence.

As you know, we can focus on only a few things at a time, and do them well. So, pick a couple of your P’s and really dive into what you can start doing or do differently to really move those facets of your business into Excellence.

What changes will have to take place within you to move to that next level?

You see, you are the driver, and where you’re at internally will permeate where you are with your team/organization. So be clear with yourself, so you can be clear with them, as well, and you can then move forward together into Excellence.

Back to self-awareness and intentionality.

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