When I was a kid my mom would tell me I needed to eat more carrots to improve my vision. If I wanted to be able to see with clarity, her wisdom of the time was for me to crunch on a few orange root sticks. Mom’s advice, while heartfelt and well meaning, did not ultimately keep me from becoming farsighted and needing sight correction to be able to see clearly.
Many of us will get well meaning advice as we approach the new year, reading and listening to experts drone on and on about goal setting and how you must have a goal if you want to accomplish anything.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with setting a goal, it can be a bit meaningless if not aligned with the vision of who you want to be as a leader.
Envision Your Future You As A Leader
As the calendar changes from 2019 many of us will begin tithing about what we want to accomplish in 2020. Most of us will make some kind of resolution to make a change as the new year rolls in.
A resolution is “a firm decision to do or not do something”.
Like you, In the past I have made many types of New Year’s Resolutions:
Personal: Eat right, exercise more, and lose 10 pounds
Professional: Increase sales by 20% by becoming more customer centric
Family: Become a better listener when talking with my wife
Spiritual: Read through the Bible in a year
All good stuff. I am sure many of you are making resolutions and talking with your friends and family about them over the next few days.
I thought I might challenge you to add a category this year. In addition to your personal, professional, family, and spiritual resolutions, think about a resolution to improve your leadership. Envision yourself becoming the leader you want to be in the future.
Leadership
Here are 10 Ideas to get your thinking started on what you could resolve to do or not do in 2020 when it comes to your leadership. I pulled this list from some of our more popular blog posts we have done over the years.
Reflect on being a great leader and what is keeping you from being great. Who among us doesn’t want to be seen as a great leader? And yet, so many of us have some barrier that we just don’t want to see or do anything about.
Work on your values before your vision.
Spend less time working and more time thinking. This idea runs counter culture to our “doing” mentality. Perhaps you need to work less and think more to enhance your ability to lead.
If you were a brand (like Kleenex or Toyota), what would your value proposition be?
Who in your organization do you need to network with.
What piece of FeedForward advice do you need to seek out? In our organizations we are so good at feedback. We just love telling people what we observed them doing. Why not start a culture of FeedForward? Perhaps we could all get a little better at offering some solutions in addition to what we see in others that we don’t like.
What cycle of negative thinking will you break this year?
How are you resting in the middle of your work day? Studies are showing how important rest is for leaders to maintain their effectiveness. How are you cycling your work to maximize your performance?
Take your emotional intelligence temperature. Are you able to choose how you react or are you “slave” to your knee jerk reactions?
Whatever change you make, put a plan in place to sustain it and get some coaching to keep you accountable.
I am looking forward to being with you on your leadership journey. If there are subjects you would like tackled on these pages just drop me a line. i am happy to do the research and write about what interests you.
My prayer for you is that you have a productive and effective leadership year.
Blessings to you and your families.
PS. If you know someone who might be interested in growing as a leader, why not forward them this blog and have them sign up? It’s free and easy and we guarantee they will gets tons of value.