Posts

Intentional Leadership — D4, W1, M2 — Relationships

Good morning, and Happy Thursday!

Today is another day for reflection. I encourage you to spend some time journaling about what you learned through your colleague, yesterday, about external perceptions of your skills in building the foundational elements of relationships.

What did you learn?

How can you use this new insight to help you improve?

When you are done with that, shift to thinking about the people you lead or interact with regularly. In each of the foundational areas, write down an action step you can take to promote these behaviors and strengthen your relationships.

Honesty

Reliability

Relating

Empathy

Time

Now, we know that if we don’t make these actions a priority, they won’t likely get done. So, let’s look at your schedule…fit these actions into your schedules on specific days and times. You will have a much greater chance of success then.

After all, your calendar is one telling measure of what your true priorities are.

Have a thoughtful Thursday!

/by

Trumpeting the Vision — D4, W3, M1 — Intentional Leadership — Vision

As we near the end of the week, let’s work on the communication plan you began to think about yesterday.

If you haven’t gotten that far, why not start with a plan for the next month?

Again, you’ll need to define the key messages — what do your people really need to hear, know and understand?

When do they need to know? Creating key messages tied to your key milestones will help you lay out your timeline.

What vehicles can you use to spread the word? Remember, anything printed or visual needs to be a secondary or even tertiary form of communication — reinforcing messages you’ve already shared in person. After all, if something is really important, shouldn’t your team/organization hear about it first from you? Then you can use memo’s, newsletters, posters, and other visual communication tools to reinforce what you have shared in person.

Define how you will reinforce the actions and behaviors you need your people to take and demonstrate.

Give some thought to the celebrations you will have (they don’t need to be super-spectacular spectacles!) as your team/organization reaches those critical, initial milestones.

Be sure to put all of these things on your calendar. As you know, if you haven’t made it a priority and blocked out the time to take care of it, all that other daily stuff will become your priority. It will be easy to get to the end of the month and realize you haven’t accomplished all you wanted to — so take the time to schedule your actions now.

Create your vision.

Articulate it simply.

Share your passion for it.

Demonstrate your own commitment to reaching it.

Reinforce the behaviors you see in others striving for it, as well.

Drive to completion.

Celebrate along the way.

/by

Trumpeting the Vision — D3, W3, M1 — Intentional Leadership — Vision

So, what did you learn yesterday about the communication methods you are using to share your vision?

Spend some time today to reflect on what you’ve learned, what it means, and what you now need to do to communicate your vision more consistently and effectively, so it sticks, with your team/organization.

Is it time to refine your vision statement more clearly and simply?

Have you clearly articulated the “Why” behind your vision? What’s the compelling reason for you to strive for it? What will happen to your team/organization if you don’t reach it?

If you haven’t heard this already, it might be helpful to know that the most popular radio station in the world is WII FM (or What’s In It For Me?). You need to be able to help your people make the personal connection between themselves as individuals–then the team, then the organization–to your vision. If you can do this effectively, you will be way ahead of the game. And the way to do this is to really get to know your people, what inspires them? What motivates them? What do they want to do, be, or have more of?

Do you need to put different benchmarks in place to measure your progress along the path to your vision? If so, what are they? And what are the key milestones you will need to reach along the way?

Once the measurements have been clearly defined, how will you celebrate when you reach them? And how will you reward your team members for their efforts?

Next, it’s time to thoughtfully map out your communication plan: Audience, Key Messages, Vehicles (primary and secondary), Timing, Owner, Outcome, Status, and Review. Successful leader-communicators consistently spend 80% of their time (with respect to communication) planning the communication and only 20% actually communicating. While it may seem counter-intuitive because it’s so easy to open our mouths and speak, truly effective communication does not just happen!

Your plan is nearly finished! Now, outline the key action steps needed to implement the plan, including who owns each action, what the expected deadlines are, and what the outcomes should be.

Now that you have an initial draft of your plan put together, who can you ask to review it? Find a trusted advisor or mentor and ask for their candid feedback before you take the plan to your team/organization.

It may sound like a lot of time-consuming effort, but I promise you the time you spend thoughtfully considering and planning your work will pay off in the end, with a more thorough, thoughtful, carefully crafted approach and it will show in the results.

/by