Greetings!
Welcome to “Cultivating your Leadership Brand” series.
The purpose of this series is to provide tips, tools and resources to help you develop an effective leadership brand that drives high quality performance and allows you to bring your best self to work everyday while inspiring others to do the same!
Successful leaders are aware of how they are perceived and recognized in the organization by those they manage, their peers and senior leadership. Driving results in your organization is rooted in how well you can motivate, develop, and productively interact with others. Successful leaders have the ability to manage their behaviors, in the moment, as well as manage their relationships with others.
They have high Emotional Intelligence.
Do you procrastinate, postpone big decisions, or miss opportunities?
Perhaps you lack the Initiative and Bias for Action
that successful leaders possess.
Whether you are a small business owner, a new manager or an experienced leader, we all have moments where we put off the start of big projects or procrastinate, only to find ourselves up against a hard deadline.
Leaders who are high in the Initiative and Bias for Action competency are ready to seize opportunities rather than simply wait for them to arrive. They pursue goals beyond what is required or expected. They know how to cut through red tape to accelerate progress to get things done. They are consistently striving to achieve more in work and in life! Does this sound like you?
Or do you tend to resist work outside of your immediate area of responsibility? Or find yourself in crisis mode because you react to events rather than take the initiative to be proactive? Perhaps you are tentative or postpone decisions? Maybe you tend to be overly cautious and are unwilling to take risks? If this sounds more like you, then you have an opportunity to develop this competency and raise the value of your leadership brand.
Initiative is the vital ingredient of motivation that we have absolute control over. When we take the initiative, we launch ourselves into a higher plain of productivity increasing the probability of reaching our goals.
Ten ideas to seize the initiative and get into action:
- Focus on how you can do something rather than on why or how you can’t. Move from victim to victor!
- Examine what’s holding you back. Stress? Overwhelm? Resentment? A drive for perfection? Identify it and deal with the root cause.
- Just do it. Momentum is established with your first step. You gain power from starting. You break the inertia and set yourself up to begin getting results. Your results give you feedback to make the proper adjustments.
- Believe in yourself. It is easier to take initiative when you do so having faith in yourself and your ability to achieve whatever you set your mind to achieving.
- Create a plan. Be proactive. Set goals! Imagine the end result as you build your plan. Ask yourself, "how will I feel when I achieve this?"
- Chunk it down. Break your plan down into small manageable steps. Then it is just a matter of doing these steps in order of priority. This way you are not overwhelmed and tempted to procrastinate.
- Courage and commitment. Make a real commitment to seeing the process through to completion and be accountable to someone. Research shows that making the commitment publicly keeps us to our word.
- Do the worst part of a job first. Get the tough stuff out of the way and the rest will be a breeze.
- Try “time boxing”. Allocate a set period of time to a task and see how far you get (“I will outline this report and write for one hour”)
- Make mistakes. Really! Use them as learning opportunities and move on. Fear of failure can stop you from achieving something meaningful.
What actions will you take to develop the initiative and a bias for action you need to perform in alignment with your leadership brand?
How well do you cope when faced with setbacks or obstacles? Next week we will explore
Resilience
and ways to manage negative self-talk.
Ready to take your leadership brand to the next level?
Invest in yourself, your people and your organization by registering for our eye-opening and dynamic 2-day workshop designed to cultivate your leadership brand and keep you and your employees performing at their best.
