Leadership Re-Booted 2015

Leadership training may sound uneventful. Who would want to attend one of 'those' events other than enjoying nice buffet meals and spectacular coffee-breaks? 

Being assigned a leader can be overwhelming. Why the big fuss over leading others? After all, I may have been a class-monitor, school-prefect, student-counsillor, or class-President in school.

Who wants to be leader, anyway?

Yet, leaders are much anticipated for their decisions, clarity, confidence, and commitment. Leaders - lead. We look to leaders for instruction, guidance, direction, and a sense of purpose. The future has more premise and promise when leaders abound. As followers, we direct our actions through those of the leaders.

We can be a leader in these areas of preference and competencies: thinking/thought, business (vision and strategy), people, and personal. We have choices. We need to help others create choices for themselves. We have to be mindful and considerate of others, their fears, hopes, desires, doubts, anxieties, dreams and aspirations. It is so easy to allow ourselves to be clouded and occluded by fancy thoughts, wild ideas, and idealism.  

In this new year, we will review much about what we think we know about leadership, and innovate it. We will consider different ways to apply our leadership, with purpose, positive intent, to achieve our personal and collective goals.

The journey will be turbulent, so brace on, saddle up, and enjoy the ride!

Focus: Long & Short of It

Parkour runners claim to 'focus on the present'. Exponents of this dangerous but exciting sport, incorporate techniques of jumping, scaling, leaping, acrobatics, and climbing to achieve their goals of reaching a location in their space. It is as much about the journey, as it is the the destination for these 'free runners'.

Focus is imminent and critical to athletic or business success. By being specific in your goals, you set your goals with clarity, precision and purpose. By being frivolous with your goals and approaches, your results may elude you. By training mostly on trails, you may risk compromising your hard-spent efforts on disappointing results on a road-race. 

Saying 'I want to qualify for the Boston Marathon' and 'I want to run a sub-4 hour marathon' may be far apart, unless both are aligned as similar or exact goals. Intermediate goals, and achievements stoke our motivation and sense of purpose. Certainly, one has to be realistic with one's goals and not set a over-arching goals which may require more time, and dedicated effort. If we set ourselves up for failure, we may be distraught, disappointed, and become doubtful about ourself.

Focus is about keeping your eyes (and sense-ability) on the 'prize'. You can focus on one thing at a time. Multi-tasking create distractions, and may deviate you from your goals. Plan for a few things, set specific goals, and a reasonable timeline and success may be within our distant reach. Never distant yourself too far from your goals and potential achievements.

Well-intentioned people who offer advice may sabotage you on your goals, if they, too, have specific goals themselves. A trail-runner may not be the best source of advice if you intend to run a fast, flat, road race. They are more useful in your goals of running an off-road race, or a trail-based ultra-marathon.

Leadership Lessons: Set long- and short-term goals. Commit to a plan of action. Back these goals up with alternatives, if you miss a few of them. There are no failures, only results and outcomes. Look farther as well as nearer - re-focus and set your sights on your dreams and goals.

10 Approaches to Smarter Social Media Use

Getting my name on the cover on a monthly magazine on local multisport endurance athletes.

After three years of continuous daily blogging (thanks to Seth Godin for his clever challenge, and his dedicated daily postings), selective use of Facebook and Tweeter, and garnering recognition and treasured relationships in the process, here are my opinions and perspectives.

1) Learn from a variety of online sources. Talk to bloggers, online marketers, Tweeters, and Facebook marketers.
2) Surround yourself with experts in online marketing. Actively interview them.
3) Pay your dues. Study, apply and learn from your successes and mistakes. The wisdom from practice earned is priceless.
4) Build your brand. Build your reputation. They are both, interestingly, interchangeable. Combine it with traditional media like television (interviews, feature stories) and the press (magazine, newspapers). Engage through the mantra 'Express, then Impress'.
5) If you have something good to say, say it. If you nothing good to say, then don't broadcast it. Be an advocate for a brand, cause, challenge or crusade. Recognise others of repute, 'catch them doing it right' and share your passions and discoveries.
6) Social Media is an extension of face-to-face engagements (i.e. interviews, coffee-shop talk, Skype). Extend and expand your reach for Positive Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing.
7) Have productive and useful conversations on mobile applications (apps), Internet Messenging (IM), and the Comments box in Facebook. Expand the realm of consciousness over issues, concerns, challenges and problems. 'Sharing' extends the 'reach' to your audience and beyond.
8) Use Crowd-Sourcing and Crowd-Funding selectively and responsibly. Be, however, aware of how to 'ask' instead of using 'twisting the arm' tactics.
9) Fund-raising should be purposeful, deliberate, sensible and responsible. Avoid the backlash of becoming labelled 'unreliable' and 'desperate'.
10) Enlist assistance from your Tribes. Tribes are communities of like-minded individuals who share a common cause, and by extension willing to help achieve common goals.

Content is still king! Share ideas, perspectives, opinions and recommendations. Add value to each 'share'.

Hopefully, these considerations may help you reconsider and review your overall strategy for building your brand, reputation, garner sponsorship, and monetise your communication platforms.

Re-Booted and Re-Loaded

It has been a while since I updated this blog-site. I have my reasons and excuses, however they are irrelevant and not useful. As we have proposed, time and again, excuses can limit us in many ways especially through our behaviors. Our actions and inactions can lead us to outcomes and results that we vary in their impact on our expectations.

The first three years, I blogged almost daily. When Seth Godin suggested this challenge, I was intrigued and curious. Would it be possible? How would I begin? How would I sustain it? What if I missed a day or more, due to other commitments and priorities? These questions were answered in due course as I initiated the process of blogging, content development, content management, learning to use Social Media 2.0, and more.

Having accomplished this major challenge, I embarked on a journey of physical challenges that rode parallel with my writing and reporting. The purpose of this blog was to be a frontispiece for leadership through sport - endurance sports, in particular. Most of these challenges were accomplished, save for several others that I would have to reconsider and decide on. In the process, I met more amazing athletes, innovators and people who live a life of excellence.

We will continue to operate as a platform for sharing, but extended actively and deliberately into teaching and coaching. You can pose your questions, concerns and feedback and we will respond accordingly. Remember our mantra: Pay it forward. More to follow. Cheers. 

Race-Travel Considerations (Interview on SBR Singapore)

This was the latest interview I had with a magazine. Swim Bike Run Singapore is a local magazine that focuses on Singaporean endurance athletes. I trust that you will find this piece of sharing useful.

Be The Best YOU You Can Be

I was having a conversation today with good friend, Alan and we discussed the books we were reading. As I recently introduced to him the writings by Seth Godin, and Alan is a businessperson, I mentioned 'Purple Cows'. Purple Cows was a term coined by marketing-guru, Godin and he referred to uniqueness and outliers in business and industry. 

In other words, how do you stand out in your business or profession?

One national-leader once spoke of this approach: 'We must continue to reinvent ourselves in order to stay relevant.' I took these words seriously and have applied it to my vocation, advocation and recreation. Traditional thinking promotes traditional businesses. Contemporary thinking promotes current and future businesses. How do you run your business differently? How are you managing your career differently?

Pop-icon Madonna had a future-orientated mindset when she kept her brand simple, with her first (singular) name, plus an avalanche of revamps of her vampish looks. She adopted diverse roles including (the profitable) songwriter, choreographer (step up from a dancer), singer (a major shift), actress (a natural however challenging career shift), fashionista (read: fashionable, fashion-expert, fashion-authority), videographer, and much more. Lots of study, thinking, creative thinking, and reinvention took place. Thus, her wealth and fame still trails her trailblazer career even in her fourth decade of entertainment career.  

Purple cows are blended solutions. Purple is born of the colours blue and red. Which blends are you? How versatile are you? What else can you do? How do you stand out from the maddening crowd? Being different means having choices. Move from a follower to a leader. Break the rules. Make the rules. Define yourself. Refine yourself. Avoid grazing too long at a spot, for the grass must re-grow as the soil must regenerate. Have you explored 'the grass is greener on the other side'?

Leadership Lessons: How do you establish your own 'purple cow'? What are you doing to reinvent yourself? How do you stay relevant? How are you progressing from good to great? Deep questions with deeper answers. May you discover your 'uncommon sense'. 

Measurements & Measuring Up To Your Excellence

Excellence. That is a word that tends to be used carelessly and callously. The word denotes an ability to 'excel', to do better, and progress.

To be excellent, you have to identify with something that you excel in. It may be a field of discipline where you demonstrate an aptitude for, or a natural ability in. It could also be an area of deep interest, study, research, and practice.

With the pursuit of excellence (pursuit seems to be a word that suggests a motivation towards), comes a need for measurement. How do you know that you making progress? How do you know that you are exceeding yourself in that field? How do you know that you are excelling? Being at the top of your game is merely a measure of results. After that, how do you stay at the top of your game? How do you maintain your position or ranking?

Annual ranking is one way, be it in sports or in employment. Ranking determines (from a panel of judges, or from relative measure as in benchmarking) your relative place in the universe. Based on the Olympic ideals of altius, fortius and citius - athletes are ranked according to their performance. They may have excelled to get into the finals of the Olympic Games, yet another measure of their actual performance is their placings on the podium, or near the three prestigious spots.

Before/After photographs are the pride and joy of clients who have reshaped their physical structures. Aesthetic improvements as well as athletic performance are dramatic shifts in one's persona, mindset and paradigms. Wanting to look their best, feel their best, perform at their best are strong motivators to continue in their pursuits. As long as their approach is sensible, reasonable and legal then excellence is never far from the grips and grasps of the eager, desiring and hungry.

In endurance, multi-sport, excellence may translate to working on one's weakness. Training to perform at a heightened state of physical and mental expression is measured through one's final timing, pacing (at regular intervals), split-times (at specific intervals), efficiencies (less wastage, delays, or hesitation), mindfulness, situational awareness, and more. Comparative measures on a monthly or annual basis, reveal data and information that can be applied to future performance, and thus, excellence. Pure timing might be reconsidered when the route/course changes, or weather becomes inclement, or when overall ranking shows progress, or when you beat certain competitors that you look to/look up to. [My results for the AHM/SBR shows a markedly slower 21km timing, yet my ranking improved. I must admit that this was my off-season, and my performance was not as strong as I was when I earned my second BQ timing in the Gold Coast Marathon in July 2013.]

Leadership Lessons: What does excellence mean to you? How do you activate your value of excellence? How do you demonstrate your sense of excellence in your profession and your pastimes? What drives you to excel? 

Update on Endurance Challenges

To wit, since early-August I completed Ironman 70.3 Philippines on Cebu Island. I scrapped through just under six hours with a nutritional malfunction. My lost bottle of fuel led me to digging deep, and learning abject lessons in the process.

I did reasonably well for the Army Half-Marathon/Singapore Bay Run. I was off my personal best by four minutes, yet considering my off-season/running-averse program I arrived within the top-1 percent. I learnt that to do a better BQ timing (for Boston Marathon 2016), and be near the 3-hour mark, I would need to consider an intensive (but still mileage-light) approach, with more strength and speed work.

Having skipped last weekend's Olympic Distance triathlon, due to illness, I may do the Yellow Ribbon Prison Run 10km (Competitive). I am curious to see what is left in my tank after a period of forced rest.

Good news is that my major sponsor came through for me, and I have received generous support for Ironman Lanzarote 2015. I have also signed up for my first triathlon in Phuket, Thailand. I look forward to this race, and my new race attire. I wear my sponsors colours with pride and purpose. I am grateful for synergistic collaborations and partnerships.

The 5-Minute Challenge or the 30-Day Challenge

When was the last time you challenged yourself? It does not matter if it was big or small, gargantuan or miniscule.

I read with great delight, 30-day challenges for physical fitness. For instance, doing one push-up on Day 1, and adding one more for subsequent days. By Day 30, you would be doing 30 pushups; cumulatively, that is a great number of pushups altogether. You can substitute the exercise for another of choice or circumstance.

Or, you give yourself five (5) minutes, and challenge yourself to write as much as you (as I am doing now). You tease your brain to make mental connections, will your fingers to type as rapidly as your thoughts form, and edit at the same time. It is a good exercise that can urge you out of your 'box', whatever your 'box' is. It compels you to do something different; or at the least, something. Procrastination can be the thief of your time. Better to do something (even annoying or unattractive) than not to. 

Once, I wrote one blog a day for three continuous years. Thanks to marketing guru (of 'Purple Cows' and 'Tribes' fame) SETH GODIN, I am still on this blog. Many good and great things have emerge from this personal challenge and indirect challenge, and I intend to keep at it for as long as I am ready, able and willing.

Make New Excuses

It has been weeks since I posted on this platform*. I regret my tardiness and procrastination. No excuse on my part, however I felt I did not have much to share by way of usefulness. However, some thoughts crossed my mind. These are:

1) If you have to make excuses, make them count. Use them, and commit to them.
2) If you want to make excuses, make new ones. Make up new excuses nobody has thought of before. Be bold, be brave, be unique and conjure new excuses that astound others into a state of awestruck. [I learnt this from a quotation by author Neil Gaman.]
3) If you have no excuses, then stand up, take a walk, and do something useful.

If you are an overweight motivational speaker, you may want to consider point 3). As my close friend remarked: 'Walk the talk. Lead by example.' I am reminded by it, and I am motivated to do so. I am going for a walk now...

Movement is life. Live. Move. Move on...

*I have been overwhelmed by Internet marketers who have attempted to hijack various threads. I take that as a compliment. It is alright to ask me. Cheers.