In a team mentoring session I was asked this question, “You have been leading teams and mentoring people for over twenty five years.  How do you keep it fresh and exciting, how do you stay engaged?”

I answered the question with a sales strategy; focus on the benefit, not the feature.  Here’s how it works: If I were selling picture hooks, the features could be the weight each hook can support, or the number of hooks in the package.  But as a customer when you go to the hardware store to buy a picture hook, you are not just buying a picture hook.  You are actually buying the feeling you will get each time you pass the picture of your children hanging on the wall in your family room; that’s the benefit.

I view leadership the same way.  I focus each day on the benefits not the features.  Here’s how this works:  Some may view leadership as successfully completing projects using people’s strengths; that’s the feature.  I view leadership as successfully developing people who use their strengths to complete projects, and that’s the benefit.

The successful completion of projects brings short-term rewards, but when you build people, you have an everlasting accomplishment.  Each day in everything I do I am not just completing projects, I am changing lives.  I love what I do.