Elevate the Leader in You

Would you like to elevate the leader in you? Whether you lead only yourself or thousands, these four actions will help you be a successful leader.

1. Develop your vision for what is possible. See it in your mind’s eye in detail. Hear it. Smell it. Taste it. Feel it. Make it so clear, it makes you smile. Vision it every day for one minute. (Longer is better, but one minute can make difference.)

2. Communicate your vision. Talk about it in ways that stimulate others to want to help you make it happen. This is the hardest of the five practices of exemplary leaders, according to Kouzes and Posner in The Leadership Challenge. If talking about it feels uncomfortable, continue visioning. The clearer your vision, the easier it is to talk compellingly because you’ll be excited about its possibilities.

3. Collaborate. You can’t do it alone. One of my clients wants to make things happen and has great ideas and energy, but has not talked with his team about his vision for what is possible. Sure, he could do some things himself, but the outcomes will be enriched with collaboration. Plus, by collaborating with his team, he models what he wants them to do when working with other departments to make things happen for the good of the organization.

4. Believe in You. This is probably the most important. No one becomes truly successful without believing in themselves and their possibilities. You don’t have to be effusive. Just remind yourself every day that if you can think it, you can do it. Then go back to #1 and vision yourself doing it.

To learn more about what you can do to be a better leader of yourself and others, contact me to discuss coaching or arranging for one of my seminars:
Believe in You
Elevate the Leader in You
The Leadership Challenge
Streamline Your Time with Outlook

Keep in mind: “Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.” ~Warren G. Bennis

Prioritizing saves time

Are you doing what is most important today? You made a list, right? And prioritized it? I made mine but didn’t add the #s. So, each time I looked at it, I picked what to do next. What a waste of time! If I had prioritized it, I would have breezed through the top 5.

Prioritizing ensures that you tackle the most important first. As interruptions occur throughout the day, you quickly weigh whether they are more important than your next highest priority. If they are, take care of them and then return to your list. If a crisis hits and you can’t get back to what you planned, you’re OK because you already tackled 1, 2, 3.

Most people want to be more organized. One way to test if you’re on track is to check in with yourself. Listen to your inner voice. Is it saying “What are you doing?????” Or, “Sure, this is good. Do it.” Trust your inner guide to help you focus on what is most important. Sometimes shifting gears is the best thing to do. It just happened to me.

I started to write this message about my seminars: Believe in You, Elevate the Leader in You and The Leadership Challenge. But I was interrupted, and my inner guide encouraged me to shift my message to the importance of prioritizing.