New Year - New Horizons

We are already into the second week of 2011 and I’m wondering how many of you set New Year resolutions? If you did, how many of you have broken them already and decided to give up?! To be resolute is to be determined, bold, not vacillating or shrinking – yet I wonder how many of us really understand this when making a New Year Resolution. Instead entering into it out of ‘tradition’. If you really want to set goals/targets for the year that work – read on.

I was one of those people who would make one or several New Year resolutions and rarely would they last the year. However, I have come across a couple of processes over recent years that have had more meaning for me and really helped me think about what I want from the year ahead. They have become a bit of a ritual for me between Christmas and New Year and more often than not I stick with them. What I've learned from putting this ritual into practice is that INTENTION is extremely powerful. Resolutions are fine, but they are often motivated by what you should do and therefore remain in our heads as just that. So the key to making this work is to have a very clear intention of making them happen.

Other critical elements to making these work and achieve what you set out to do are:

CLARITY: Be really clear about what it is that you want to the point where you get a very clear picture in your own mind as to what it looks like and how it will feel to have it. When you are unclear it’s hard to create the outcomes you desire. This does not mean you need to know the how of getting it. So the clarity of your intention is the first step.

CONGRUENCE: Another way of looking at this is to be truly authentic to who you are. This means doing it because it’s what you want not what someone else thinks you should be doing, or because everyone else seems to be doing it.

COMMITMENT: This is about pledging or promising to yourself to take action to get what you want. This is not about planning out every detail. This often leads to frustration and people giving up before they have even begun. It is about taking the first steps and then to keep going, being open to opportunities that come your way. If you have the clarity of your intention and it’s congruent for you you are more likely to commit to action around it.

So having set the scene let me give you an overview of the two processes.

Your Best Year Ever

I first came across this through the Performance Partnership.

1. Identify the areas of your life that you want to set goals for e.g. career, family, health and fitness.

2. Write some SMART objectives against these. It’s important here to ensure they are written as if you already have them and are simple and as specific as they need to be for you. Give some real thought to what it is you want and once you have written your goal review it and ask yourself are they clear to me, do I know what it will look and feel like to have this? Is it congruent with who I am? Am I really committed to achieving this?

3. Apply the creating your future process® to put them into your future.

Word of the Year

This process comes from Christine Kane.

1. Identify the word (or words) that you are choosing for the coming year. Choose a word that has real meaning for you e.g. Creativity, Pioneer, Courage. Be clear about how you need to be in ‘living’ this word and how you will embody it.

2. What old patterns or unhelpful beliefs have you been living that have stopped you from ‘living’ this word. Identify what triggers these and what you want to do/be instead.

3. List at least 5 goals you’d like to accomplish based on this word.

With both of these processes this is simply the start, remembering that once established you have to take action so be clear about what the first step is. If you find you are not taking action, or lapsing into old behaviours ask yourself what you need to do to get back on track. I find this a much better approach than beating yourself up over it.

At the end of the year review your success and learn what it is about you that allowed you to achieve it. Recognizing this will allow you to build on whatever it is and be even more successful the following year.

So Good Luck! I trust you will get all you set out to achieve in 2011.

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."

Leonardo da Vinci

Leading with Authenticity

The term authentic leadership has been around for a while and a key starting point for any leader to be truly authentic is to know what your values are. Why is this important you might ask? Well, the word authenticity means a particular way of dealing with the external world, being faithful to internal rather than external ideas; being truthful of your commitments and intentions.

Our values are in essence our internal compass and give us clues to our internal standards and measures. They are what we hold dear and are what’s important to us and are therefore pivotal in what motivates us. They are often unconscious and I am often surprised by how few people really know what their values are.

When we are clear about our values we can make decisions more clearly and often faster, understand what motivates us and when we are being true to our values we will be more energised.

So what is a value?

Values are something we naturally move towards or away from, they are the things we are willing to spend energy on. They are largely unconscious and drive a persons true purpose. They provide the push, or motivation to take action and serve as an evaluation criteria, or judgement about our actions. They are the way we judge good or bad, right and wrong, appropriateness or inappropriateness.

We organise our values hierarchically, so those higher up the hierarchy we search for first in terms of decision-making, evaluating etc. Once the higher values have been satisfied those lower down the hierarchy are then satisfied. It’s not automatic that once you have fulfilled the higher values those lower down are satisfied.

They also determine our behaviour. Someone with a values hierarchy of adventure, family happiness, health, pleasure, and wisdom will handle a situation very differently from someone with a values hierarchy of order, loyalty, freedom, achievement and friendship.

The relevance to leadership?

At every moment of every day someone in your team or peer group is watching you – a scary thought! Consciously or unconsciously they are looking at how you behave and how consistent you are being in your approach. They are also looking at whether your actions are congruent with your words. Leading your life, as well as people, from your values, is more likely to have you be authentic and consistent in the way you make decisions, evaluate performance and go about your routines.

You are also more likely to begin to understand others values and therefore what motivates them, and through practice will learn how to motivate them and influence them more effectively. We are all unique individuals and even though some of us may use the same term to describe a value such as achievement what it means to us may be very different.

How do I know when I’m not living my values?

If you are not living by your values you are likely to be unhappy, and if you don’t know what your values are you won’t be able to pinpoint exactly why you are not happy.

If someone violates one of your values you will also feel a degree of discomfort, hurt, annoyed or angry and it won’t always be obvious why you feel this way.

How do I determine my values?

If you have not yet identified what your values are at work, what is important to you about the work you do, talk to someone who knows how to elicit your values with you. It’s a fairly quick exercise to do. Alternatively, find a good coach or mentor who can do this with you or you can go to this website: www.valuesonline.net and complete an online questionnaire.

So if you truly want to be an authentic leader embody your values in daily life. It won’t always be easy, particularly when faced with decisions that may not match your value set, however it will be more energising and rewarding.

How Not to Make the Biggest Mistakes in Leadership

Harvard Business School recently held a symposium entitled Imagining the Future of Leadership and asked some of the expert thinkers on Leadership to say what was the biggest mistake a leader could make. These were:

• Putting themselves first
• Betraying trust
• Being certain (acting as if you know)
• Not living your values
• Overly focused on your own vision
• Personal Arrogance
• Acting too fast (executing before evaluating)
• Being inconsistent
• Not being self reflective

This is all well and good, however, if you pay attention to what not to do you are more likely to do it. If I tell you not to think of a pink elephant the one thing you will do is think of a pink elephant!!

There are thousands of books on Leadership, which would probably take a lifetime to read, and numerous development programmes. Today most managers, aspiring leaders and well established leaders struggle to take time out to read these books or attend the relevant development programme. So, with the aim of keeping things simple I've come up with my own top 5 things to do to stay on track as a leader:

1. Know your values and live by them; these will guide your decision making and if you live by them you are more likely to be consistent and authentic. It's also important that they match with the organisation you are working with
2. Be clear about your vision; both your personal vision and that for the organisation or area of the business you are working in. Pursue this and take others with you.
3. Not knowing is OK; in a world where change is constant you need to be open to change and agile in adapting to the environment. Not knowing provides you with an opportunity to explore and experiment to find the best possible solution.
4. Be passionate about your business; love what you do and consider all your stakeholders first. Without them there will be no business!
5. Be reflective; evaluate your decisions before acting in haste, sometimes slowing down a little can help you speed up. Take time out to reflect on how you are doing, learn form your mistakes and build on your strengths. If you make it a habit it will take only minutes.

How well would you say you applied these?

Where is the opportunity for growth for you?

What can you start doing differently tomorrow?

' To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs, and it is necessary to follow in order to lead.'

William Hazlitt