Simon Sinek

Mentoring – Share your story

Mentoring – Share your story

Have you ever heard someone say, “I’ve seen this movie before, and I know how it ends?”  This statement rarely refers to a movie, but to a situation, challenge, opportunity that previously ended badly for the person who says this.  Well I have been to movies where the ending was great.  I have also been involved in situations, challenges, and opportunities that went very well.  When I think of mentoring, I think of it as an opportunity to share my story; those that didn’t go well, and those that were a success.  Both in an effort to provide direction that can be used by others as they work to achieve their goals.

Mentoring provides an impact in three areas:  Providing options, Describing the landscape, and Inspiring movement.

Provide options. When I begin a new activity I sometimes think, “I don’t even know what questions to ask, let alone the answers.” My first activity then is to find out what I don’t know so I can learn that before I start.  For mentoring to be successful it needs to provide both direction and directions.  Direction entails the big picture that we will discuss in describing the landscape.  Directions is the movement that is inspired to arrive at your destination. Both are essential and as Simon Sinek said, “There is a difference between giving directions and giving direction.” My first mentor in writing and publishing my book The Leadership GPS provided guidance in what impact I could make, what I needed to do and who I needed to meet to learn how to be successful, then introduced me to those who would help me in my endeavor.  When I mentor individuals, I look to set the stage with the big picture before moving on the tactical advise.

Describe the landscape.   If you travel to new places, it’s hard to imagine what is around each corner until you have been there.  You can research the major tourist locations, but you really don’t know a city until you walk its streets and interact with the people.  This is why many people have tour guides for new locations.  A mentor is a tour guide to success.  The landscape of publishing was a mystery to me when I was ready to launch my book.  I had a great mentor that described publishing to me up front so I could navigate my way through.  I have traveled many places in my career and can describe the landscape to others who have not yet experienced it for themselves.  John Maxwell put it this way, “One of the greatest values of mentors is the ability to see ahead what others cannot see and to help them navigate a course to their destination.”

Inspire movement. Oliver Wendel Holmes said, “The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.”   Movement, that is an important step in any situation.  When I was being mentored in book writing the first question to me was, “How many pages have you written today?”  That was followed it up with, “It’s hard to be an author if you haven’t written anything.”  When I mentor an individual, we talk about where they want to go then we discuss practical steps they can take now that will move them in that direction.

Mentoring is an opportunity to share your story and expand the opportunity for success to many.

How will you respond to a tough situation?

How will you respond to a tough situation?

We are all faced with tough situations in our life.  They’re unavoidable.  You don’t always have the choice to avoid the tough situation – but you do have the choice on how to respond and achieve the most positive outcome possible.  Over the years I’ve found that if I plan the steps to take ahead of time – when I am not in a tough situation – I can rely upon them to get through.  Here are the steps I take each time:

Relax and take a breath. What is the real risk?  In stress our first response is to tense up.  Our muscles tighten, our field of vision narrows we’re looking for the immediate danger. In these situations, we can often miss the big picture.  The first step in responding to a tough situation is to take a breath – literally.  Pause before you react then inhale slowly and exhale slowly. Now calmly assess the real risk.

“Panic causes tunnel vision. Calm acceptance of danger allows us to more easily assess the situation and see the options.” -Simon Sinek

Decide how to respond. What do we do now?  Now that you have calmly narrowed in on the real risk, you are ready to decide on the best move for the short term – then do it.  Don’t keep analyzing, don’t second guess, just take action to resolve the immediate danger in the most beneficial way for all involved.

“It’s not the situation, but whether we react negative or respond positive to the situation that is important.” – Zig Ziglar

Use it to improve. What do we next? Once you face the immediate response that is needed at that moment, it’s time to evaluate.  You and others will be energized to solve the long term issue.  How did we get in this situation to begin with?  What can we change in the future to not be faced with this same situation again?  It is time to adjust for the next time.  Learn from what happened and build something better.

“When you’re in a situation, you can complain about it, you can feel sorry for yourself, you can do a lot of things. But how are you going to make the situation better?” – Tony Dungy

It’s Really Just Life Balance

Life provides many opportunities to fill up our limited time. For the most part, the activities we partake in are worthwhile and beneficial.  In and of themselves no one activity is necessarily the best or the worst. It’s just that we can’t possibly do everything all the time.  When it comes to work activities and non-work activities, we all talk about achieving a work-life balance, when it’s really just life balance.

“Life balance isn’t about doing everything for an equal amount of time. It’s about doing the right things at the right time.”- Christy Wright

If we want to do the right things at the right time, we need to prioritize our activities; and prioritization means making choices, sometimes difficult ones.

Priorities. That which is urgent is not necessarily the priority.  Before even looking at due dates, divide your to do list into three sections: that which must be done, that which should be done, and that which can wait to be done. Let your priorities drive what you focus on and invest your time in the activities that are most important.  This should be completed across your work and non-work activities.  Their all part of your life.

“Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.”  – Stephen R. Covey

Choices.  Recognize that choosing not to complete an activity that is on the lower end of your priorities will not always be easy.  These delayed activities might be on the top of someone else’s list, or you may enjoy participating in the activity. Either way, be prepared to stand firm in your choices. And when you do this, you can give your best to your top priorities.

 “There is no decision that we can make that doesn’t come with some sort of balance or sacrifice.”– Simon Sinek

How do teams work?

Teams work best together when they work to accomplish the same objectives.

Stewart Butterfield is the founder and CEO of Slack – a cloud-based service that brings teams and tools together in one place. Their website says, “It’s the foundation for teamwork.”  Butterfield interviewed Andre Iguodala of the NBA champion Golden State Warriors on teamwork at a Slack sponsored conference and his answer on how teams work was, “You should have the best talent, but everything fails if everyone’s just out for themselves.”

Butterfield summed up the talent versus teamwork discussion in this thought, “You can take a team of absolute all-stars in terms of their native abilities, but if they are not working together, they are much less effective than a team where there is less native ability but a higher degree of teamwork and cohesion.”  

Teams work best together when they work to accomplish the same objectives. If you want your team to work, you have to define the objectives, align the objectives, and assign the objectives.

Define the objectives.What are you trying to accomplish?  That is the most important question you can answer for a team.  Before you start anything, you have to define success. From the biggest goal to the smallest goal, the purpose of the team, its objectives, and the work it does must be established.

“When you’re surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible.”– Howard Schultz

Align the objectives.The goals are set, but is the team aligned with the plan to achieve the objectives?  This is the second most important question in teamwork.  Notice, I didn’t say does everyone agree with the plan, that is a different bar. There will be many ways identified to achieve the objectives.  Once the plan is set, it is important that the entire team execute the same plan.

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford 

Assign the objectives. A team is made up of individuals. These individuals are unique and bring different strengths and abilities to the team.  It is the best teams that look for ways to capitalize on this breadth of talent and allow each person to give their all in the way they do best to support the objectives.

“We can’t all be good at everything. This is partly the logic behind having a team in the first place, so each role can be filled with the person best suited for that role and together, every job and every strength is covered.”– Simon Sinek

You Belong

You belong because your you.  You don’t have to change who you are to belong. You don’t have to act a certain way to belong.  You just need to be you and let people see the real you. Certainly, there are always activities that must be completed, goals to be achieved, and deadlines to be met.  But have you considered that perhaps you can do all of those things, and be you?

We all want to belong.  Do you remember the TV show Cheers?  The theme song had this great line that perfectly captured why people came to Cheers “Where everybody knows your name, and we’re always glad you came.”  Wouldn’t it be great if the room lit up when you came in and people stopped to shout your name? “Norm” was the refrain on Cheers.  This is what we all want.  It’s in our DNA to want to be connected to other people.

“The most basic human desire is to feel like you belong.” – Simon Sinek

The world wants you to fit in.  If you’ve ever applied for a job you have undoubtedly seen that each opportunity had a thorough description of the candidate’s desired skill, experience, background etc…It’s unlikely that you, or anyone else meets all of the descriptors as laid out.  But, this is what we compare ourselves to.  Instead we should find the role that allows us to do what we do best that also fulfills the needs of the employer.  Alternately, you could confidently aspire to achieve success in roles in different ways than they have always been done by being you.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

You should want to stand out.  If you subscribe to the use of tools like Strengthsfinder you are aware of the statistics that accompany the output.  In Strengthsfinder, the participant receives a report of their top five strengths in order out of 34 possible strengths.  The math behind those numbers says there is a 1 in 33 million probability that any one person’s top five strengths, in order, are the same as anyone else’s. So, if you allow yourself to be you, you will stand out. And your unique perspective will be a key aspect of why you belong.

“It sounds so simple, but if you just be yourself, you’re different than anyone else.” Tony Bennett

Help one, help many

The theme on my blog page is: Change The World Through Leadership Now. I chose that to represent the impact I want to have through my passion for Leadership. Every article, Instagram picture, Tweet, LinkedIn post, or FaceBook post is designed to reach as many connections as possible. My desire is to Change The World, one person at a time, through the sharing of leadership insights.

In his bestselling book, The Go Giver, Bob Burg stated, “Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interest first.” The impact of your helping one person is far reaching. The residual effects of helping one person can truly change the world.

Help them help themselves. As a leader, your help should not be in the form of micromanaging. Sure, you will set the vision and work to align the goals, but your employees need to experiment, build experience and learn to excel using their strengths to accomplish the goals and achieve the vision. Doing it for them is short lived and offers no value beyond the immediate.

“A leader’s job is not to do the work for others, it’s to help others figure out how to do it themselves…and succeed beyond what they thought possible.”– Simon Sinek

Help them help you. There are two personal benefits to helping others. First, it’s rewarding to be part of someone’s success – it feels good to help. There’s a Chinese Proverb that says, “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.” Second, the people you help will want to help you in return; they want that happiness for themselves.

Help them help others. Changing the world is a big endeavor. And if we are being realistic it’s hard to think of a way to do that. Steve Jobs got really close with Apple and his personal goal of, “Making a dent in the universe.” One way we can all think changing the world is by helping one person at a time who will also help one more person at a time – eventually it will reach the world.

“We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.”– Ronald Reagan

What are you doing with your strengths?

using-strengths-to-succeedStrengths are gifts meant to be used to accomplish greatness. You are strong in ways that others aren’t. In order for greatness to be achieved in the best possible way, we all need our individual strengths working together.

This doesn’t mean that goals can’t or won’t be achieved if you aren’t fully invested with your strengths – it just makes it more difficult for everyone involved. The work will get done, but think how great it would be if your strengths were part of the process.

If you want to be fully engaged in success using your strengths, here is how you do it:

Identifying them. There are lots of different tools you can use, and many are great, to help you understand your natural gifts. The real test, though, in understanding your strengths is do you love what you’re doing? When you can’t wait to begin a project, that is likely a strength.

“A strength is an activity that before you’re doing it you look forward to doing it; while you’re doing it, time goes by quickly and you can concentrate; after you’ve done it, it seems to fulfill a need of yours.” – Marcus Buckingham

Developing them. That which we are drawn to because we seem to be able to achieve success effortlessly. Knowing your strengths and being great at your strengths are two different things. It takes work to be the best, and that should be your goal.

“Focusing on our own strengths is what, in fact, makes us strong.” – Simon Sinek

Using them. Take part in activities that you can’t wait to begin. Volunteer for the tasks that excite you. Step forward and offer your opinion, time, and strengths before you are asked. Identifying and developing your strengths means nothing unless you put them to work for your success and for your team’s success.

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers

 

 

 

Lessons on how to lead from being childlike

childlike leadershipWhen we think of what it takes to lead a project, or lead a team, or how about lead a company, what is the first thing that comes mind? I going to guess that we don’t think of being childlike. As we grow into adulthood, being childlike is usually not our goal. The experience and wisdom that is obtained through our lives is important, but there are some lessons on how to lead from being childlike that bear remembering:

Have fun, be excited.  Children have a knack for making everything fun. Leadership can be hard work but it doesn’t have to be boring. Enjoy talking with your team. Celebrate successes. Encourage and empower new ideas.

“You can be childlike without being childish. A child always wants to have fun. Ask yourself, ‘Am I having fun?’” – Christopher Meloni

Be curious, ask why. Children aren’t afraid to admit they don’t know something, and are willing to dig to find out. Leaders don’t and can’t know everything. Learning should be a life-long pursuit for the leader and for the team.

“Don’t pretend to know all the answers – quite the opposite, in fact. Ask loads of questions of everyone.” – Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why

Say wow, be in awe. Children are impressed with things that seem larger than life. Leadership is a big responsibility. Never take it for granted that you can have a huge impact on the people you lead.

“To be more childlike, you don’t have to give up being an adult. The fully integrated person is capable of being both an adult and a child simultaneously….and being full of awe and wonder at this magnificent universe.” – Wayne Dyer

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