Leadership By Expression

‘Express yourself…’ ~ Madonna, pop-music icon

Your leadership style is based on your personality. An introvert will express himself/herself in a more inquisitive way, through questions, and actively listening. An extravert will be more inclined to share their private thoughts openly, preferring to answer questions. Our preferences do guide us, naturally, to express ourselves, and our leadership differently.

People will judge us no matter how you project yourself in public. How do you assert yourself in conversation, as well as in your writing? Are you more asking or telling? Do you offer others a chance to convey their ideas? How much do you present of your leadership when you apply the ‘golden silence’? Are you only a follower if you choose to read instead of respond?

If you initiate or participate in a discussion on social media, how are you leading? If you choose to refrain from commenting, how much of a leader are you promoting? If you correct a piece of factual inaccuracy, how do you do it without a friend (or friend of a friend) losing face? There is authority and responsibility in our role as a leader, so how do we maintain each aspect?

Leadership Lessons: How will you express your influence this week? What will you do differently when you lead? How will you lead in your written correspondence? When did you last start a discussion thread on Facebook or Twitter and lead in the process? How long did it last before you terminated it, and how did you discontinue the process?

Leading with Good Business Goals

Why would you start a business? Would it be because you get to print name-cards that read important titles like ‘Managing Director’, ‘CEO’, ‘Business Owner’ or ‘Entrepreneur’? During the Dot Com (or Dot Bomb) era, young would-be entrepreneurs had job titles that read ‘CEO’, ‘CFO’, ‘CIO’ and ‘Evangelist’.

Having established your business, how long do you intend to operate it? Established large companies have elaborate goals described as Mission and Vision statements. They may include Core Values that describe their philosophies behind their business.

It is necessary to set goals, or expected outcomes for your business. Goals create impetus and motivation to be fulfilled. Well-designed goals provide business-owners with clarity and a sense of relevance about their business. Annual revisions to these goals create a sense of progression and renewed purpose.

What could be useful goals for business?

1)    My business has to be meaningful to me and to others.

2)    My products and services that I provide can benefit others.

3)    I like to build a business that I can pass on to my staff.

4)    I like to be profitable so that I can assist greatly my philanthropic goals.

5)    I like to realize my potential as a creator, entrepreneur, and self-starter.

6)    I want to live behind a legacy that others may be inspired by, and resume my goals when I expire.

7)    I want to scale up to the next level of significance.

8)    I want to promote our brand so that it deserves a wider audience.

9)    I want to make my company attractive enough to be considered for purchase.

10) I want develop rich relationships and experiences of worth with my business partners and alliances.

Leadership Lessons: Take the time to review your goals: evaluate their achievability, relevance, meaningfulness, and if they are contemporary. This helps us reset our compass and bearings if results do not appear as expected.

7 Ways to Lead With Your Time Instead of Time Management!

Stop wasting time with time management workshops! There are numerous ways to spend your time wisely. Seriously, time cannot be saved, stored or retrieved although our language describes it as ‘save time’, ‘invest in the time’, ‘make time’ and ‘buy time’. Instead, we ‘kill time’, ‘pass time’, have ‘time-out’ and ‘lose time’.

I have been intrigued and excited by the many executives I have met over the years who seem to use their time well. The ones that amaze me most are those who can fulfill more results in each day. It is not that they have more time (24 hours is maximum), but how they utilize each packet of time. Time can be measured in discrete quantities from seconds (beating a PB), to minutes (length of an interval training set), to hours (total time spent weekly preparing for a marathon). Writing a proposal or preparing for a business presentation may take a few days (so does completing ultra-endurances like the Quadruple Ironman or Deca-Ironman).

We can model the good practices of these time-travelers:

1)    Make a daily and weekly list, and refer to it occasionally.

2)    Tick away as quickly as you complete the tasks you aim to accomplish.

3)    Challenge yourself to do more, without exhausting yourself.

4)    Check for signs of burnout.

5)    Attain an active balance of the physical-mental-emotional, with personal and professional lives.

6)    Be decisive on how you use your time. Hesitation builds delay, and consumes time.

7)    Have productive conversations. If you aren’t enjoying it, you are wasting somebody’s time.