Joelle K. Jay

Leadership Concepts

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Beliefs of a Leader

Your beliefs are a powerful driving force that can work for you or against you. Some beliefs empower you, while others limit you. By becoming aware of your beliefs, you can keep the ones that serve you, weed out the ones that don’t, and choose the ones that will support who you want to be.

Here’s an example. A common belief of busy leaders is, “I have to work hard to get ahead.” Immediately the limitations of this belief are apparent. Working from this belief implies that you must sacrifice parts of your life (home life, health, and hobbies come to mind) to “get ahead.”

Now consider this belief instead: “I have to be my best to get ahead.” This belief is more empowering, because it opens up the possibilities. It still accepts the potential for working hard if that is what’s required, but it also allows for the fact that getting ahead sometimes means taking time for the rest and renewal that keeps you at your best.

An example can illustrate how to turn a limiting belief into an empowering belief. Andy was the president of a structural engineering firm who was raised to believe that if you compliment people too much, they become lazy. He was afraid to commend his team, because he believed that to do so would take away all motivation. His belief limited his ability to praise the people who worked for him, and they were becoming bitter and resentful.

To turn the situation around, Andy studied his limiting belief:

“If I praise people too much, they will become lazy.”

As long as he believed this, he would never be the supportive leader his firm needed. He could see that unless he tried something new, he was going to lose support. He tried this empowering belief instead:

“If I praise people more, they will become inspired.”

Andy rehearsed his new belief by trying it out 100 times. Every time he hesitated to praise someone, he stated his empowering belief to himself and gave them a sincere compliment. Before long, the results – a more agreeable, cooperative staff – convinced him to retain the new belief.

Beliefs are fundamental to the way your life plays out. The difference between a limiting and an empowering belief is quite literally the difference between a limited and a powerful life. Choose your beliefs carefully. They make you who you are.

Developing empowering beliefs is a three-step process.

  1. Become aware of your beliefs. You can go after them directly by asking yourself, “What do I believe,” or you can go after them directly by noticing your behavior and asking yourself, “What would I have to believe to behave this way?”
  2. Write down your beliefs. Take a look at them on paper with some objectivity. For each one, ask yourself, Is this belief limiting or empowering?
  3. Turn limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs. Just change the words, looking for the exact opposite of your limiting belief to find one that’s more empowering.

The process of distilling your beliefs takes time. Allow yourself time to try on different beliefs and see what fits and what doesn’t. Notice when you feel limited and deflated, and when you feel expansive and energized. Keep working with the wording of your beliefs until you’ve created the ones that you can claim with conviction—the beliefs that will help you be the leader you really want to be.

 

Exercise
Use the Your Beliefs worksheet in The Extension to identify a few beliefs that guide your thinking and actions. Assess them. Are they limiting or empowering? How could you develop new beliefs to help you achieve your vision?

The ideas in this article are drawn from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership and the accompanying eBook called The Extension. The eBook is designed to give you simple, engaging personal leadership exercises and activities to help you be a better leader, and lead a better life. Get your copy today! Click here for a Preview and to Order.

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A 360-Degree View of You

When was the last time you looked in the mirror? What were you hoping to see? Did the mirror show you how you’re showing up as a leader? As a mother or father? As a role model?

The mirror is a good metaphor for what we need as leaders to understand how we’re showing up, and what might need to change for us to be the people on the outside that we so want to be on the inside.

Think about this. When it comes to your appearance, you can get a sense of yourself with a small hand mirror. But you’ll see more with a full-length mirror, and even more with a three-sided department store mirror. Even then, there are still some things a mirror can’t tell you: the overall impression you make when you walk into a room, the way your presence makes people feel, and how you look when you walk around. For these, you need other sources of input.

Just so with the way you show up as a leader. You can get some information on your own, just through reflection and self-assessment. But the more strategies you use to find out about yourself, the more complete your view will be. A variety of strategies will help you flesh out your view.

You can reveal some things about yourself by asking open-ended questions.

  1. Where are you especially talented?
  2. What do you love to do?
  3. What do you do without even thinking?
  4. What do people count on you for?
  5. In your social life, what role do you play?
  6. At work, what are you recognized for?
  7. Given the freedom to do things your way, how do you do them?

To find out more about the rest of you, ask:

  1. What activities would you gladly never have to do again?
  2. What do you wish you could pass on to someone else?
  3. When do you feel dragged down?
  4. What do you dread?
  5. When do you procrastinate?

As a coach, I deeply respect the insight leaders have into their own answers, and the knowledge you discover from these questions is invaluable. But it’s not enough.
To really get a sense of what you’re like, you also need some outside opinions. Here are some ideas.

Ask your friends, family and coworkers what they notice about you. How would they describe you? Get the positive and negative take. You’ll learn more about how you strike other people and discover more about what makes you brilliant.

Take profiles, assessments, and research-based quizzes to reveal your attributes. Each assessment will yield different information.

More customized and personal than most assessments, a 360-degree profile is a survey you conduct to get feedback on your effectiveness from the people “all around you” (hence the name). Traditionally, the survey is developed by a third party – say, a coach, consultant or research group – then distributed to a group of people who know you well enough to give you input.

How to get great feedback you can use to improve your effectiveness is the topic of just one of the information-rich chapters in the book, The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. To learn more, go to www.TheInnerEdge.com. You’ll find an overview of the book, endorsements by such thought leaders as Marshall Goldsmith and Stephen Covey, and more!

When you take the steps to get good quality feedback, you’ll make the positive changes you need to make in order to like the leader you see in the mirror.

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Your Leadership DNA

You are hardwired with certain characteristics that make you you – distinctly, irreplaceably, inimitably you. The way you live, the way you learn, the way you lead – all of these are guided by the gifts you were given at birth and the ones you have collected in the course of your life. Knowing these attributes gives you tremendous power.

To be able to tap into your brilliance, you must answer the question, “What makes you unique?” You need to discover your Distinct Natural Attributes – your DNA.

Your Distinct Natural Attributes include:

  • your strengths
  • your weaknesses
  • your personality
  • your preferences
  • your virtues
  • your vulnerabilities
  • your style

Like your genetic DNA, your Distinct Natural Attributes define “what’s true about you.” What’s genuinely true about you – the good and the bad – is also what’s great about you.

Here’s an exercise:

Reflect on a time in your life when you felt most powerful. What might that experience have to teach you about your Distinct Natural Attributes?

Did you get some ideas? Would you like to find more? There’s a FREE Worksheet on my website called Your DNA Map that will help you organize your DNA – the best of you and the rest of you – so that you can more clearly and more powerfully capitalize on what makes you you.

Just go to www.TheInnerEdge.com, click on Worksheets and Audios (on the left), and scroll down until you see the FREE Worksheet called Your DNA Map.

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Get Off Crack

Are you an addict? Let’s find out. Check the statements below – which apply to you?

  • I answer my phone in the middle of a conversation.
  • I can be reached by phone, text or email 24/7.
  • I’ve been known to check my PDA in movies, at the dinner table, or in the middle of the night.
  • I attend meetings at two levels – one above the table where the action is, and one under the table with my PDA.
  • If I can’t find my PDA I start to shiver, sweat and shake.

There’s a reason so many of my clients call their BlackBerry their CrackBerry. It’s addictive. And unless you want it to take over life, you’ve got to take some control.

Because it’s not just about turning off the machine. It’s about turning off the distraction. Paul Melchiorre, the vice president of global strategy at Ariba, puts it bluntly.

Even if you were good at managing your time before PDAs came along, now you need to adjust to this CrackBerry world. You have to know when to turn it off – not turning the BlackBerry off but being able to turn off the work mindset.

Time management now isn’t about having slots of time for home and slots of time for work. It’s all in the mix. What most people have done is learn how to shift back and forth from what’s happening in the present to what’s happening on their PDA, much the way my husband is right now flipping the channels back and forth between ESPN and the news.

But if you want to be effective as a leader, you need to stop flipping back and forth. You need to focus.

I don’t care if you’re the CEO, Barack Obama’s own attorney or the highest paid entrepreneur ever to cash a check – your family wants you there at dinner. Your team wants you in the meeting with them now. You deserve to work an uninterrupted hour.

Try this trick every time your PDA rings. Imagine the person trying to reach you is actually physically present. Feel the sense of intrusion when they barge through the door mid-sentence in the middle of meeting, or tap on your shoulder incessantly as you’re trying to work.

Do you have the power to turn away from the spectre of efficiency and take back your life?

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here for more information.

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Moving from Chaos to Control

It’s 3:00 in the afternoon. You’re standing in the middle of your office. Hands on your hips, you deliberate about what to do now. Do you sit down and sling out a rash of emails? Do you return a few phone calls? Or do you close your door and somehow try to concentrate on the big project you really need to work on? Frozen, you are immobilized by the possibilities. You drift off for a minute, staring off into space. Then you catch yourself and snap back into action.

The rest of the day you spend busily working. You pull out a project, then the phone rings and sets you off in another direction. You keep on top of your emails and other people’s requests as best you can in an attempt to keep the deluge at bay. Head down, you fly through tasks and manage the crises, barely looking up to notice the time until finally, the day comes to an end.

Driving home, you’re spent. The day has been intense and full; you take satisfaction in enumerating all you’ve done. Then you realize even though you’ve been busy all day, you haven’t really done anything. You’ve been so buried, you’ve lost sight of your grander vision. You find yourself being haunted by vague, unanswerable questions. Could I be doing better than this? Is this what I wanted for my life? Am I making any difference? Somehow answering these questions never gets to the top of the list. Why is that? Your mind drifts off, hypnotized by the traffic and whirring about what you need to do tomorrow.

Have you ever had this experience? Ironically, even though you may be working all day, you never feel like you get anything done. You’re busy but not necessarily productive. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you wonder if you’re doing the right things. Not that you have a choice; you’re too swamped with what you have to do today to dwell for long on what you want to do or ought to do to be more effective. Still. You know there’s something wrong with this picture.

And you’re right. There is. What’s wrong is that when you bounce along from task to task, you’re not choosing where to put your attention. You’re living by chance and not by choice. You may be ignoring the most valuable parts of your life – the parts that are going to help you achieve your vision, possibly in the long term and definitely for today. Or, you may be doing many of the right things, but you’re not really sure. You haven’t stopped moving long enough to check. Plus, there are so many priorities, you find it hard to keep them all straight, much less stay on top of them all at once.

In order to get what you want, in order to be who you want to be, in order to live the kind of life you want to live and lead the way you want to lead, you need to be more strategic than that. You need to find focus.

Finding Focus is one of the ideas I share with leaders in the book, The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. To learn more, go to www.TheInnerEdge.com. You’ll find an overview of the book, endorsements by such thought leaders as Marshall Goldsmith and Stephen Covey, and more.

By finding focus, you’re going to pull your thoughts out of the crowded rabble of your mind and give them the attention they deserve. Get ready to move from chaos to control.

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Snapshots

In my work as an executive coach, I often work with leaders around their visions – their visions for their companies, their teams, even themselves. However, in the stress and striving over the years, sometimes that vision can seem awfully far away.

Here’s a process you can use to rediscover to your long term vision and connect it to your reality today. I call it “taking snapshots,” because the process is akin to taking in a panoramic view and then snapping a photo to take with you as a reminder.

  1. Remind yourself of the long-term vision you want for your life and leadership in the future.
  2. Zoom in on the near-term vision of your life today.
  3. Ask yourself, how does what I’m doing today connect to the overall picture of my vision?

You can even take this one step further. Ask yourself a handful of questions as a follow-up.

  • Where am I now with respect to my long term vision?
  • How will things be different then – when I reach this vision?
  • When I do finally reach my vision, how will I know? What will be the indicators that I’ve arrived where I wanted to be?

In the same way you can snap a photograph to get a concrete reminder of something you’ve seen, by writing these answers down you can have a concrete reminder of your vision. This is your “snapshot” of your vision.
There’s a FREE Worksheet on my website that you can use to organize your thoughts. You’ll find it at www.TheInnerEdge.com – click on Worksheets and Audios (on the left) – and scroll down to the Worksheet called The Snapshot.

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Look Under the Rug

Have you ever wished you had more time to do what you need to do?

“Ha!” You say. “How many times a day?!”

Me, too. And then I remember – oh, wait. I do have more time. I have all the time I need. And so do you.

So where is it? You’ve got to find it. In you.

There’s a process for increasing your productivity. In order to get more out of your efforts, you’ve got squeeze every moment out of your energy. Find the shortcuts. Eliminate the distractions. Expand the time you need for the things that really matter.

To do this, you’ve got to be creative. It’s the same process you’d use to look at your expenses if you suddenly decided you wanted to go on vacation. You look closely at the details and find that little extra – and a little more – and maybe a big chunk over here – until you amass the money you need and Hawaii, here you come. Only now, you’re trying to save up your time.

Saly Glassman, Senior Vice President-Investments at Merrill Lynch, is a master of this. She is a financial advisor who has been listed consistently in the top third of the Barron’s 100 Financial Advisors. With a successful family business, two daughters, dogs, horses, and a few little hobbies (like enjoying a lovely 60-mile bike ride), she knows what it means to make the most of her time. Here’s what she says.

You’re looking for every angle you can get more productivity. You have to go into every little corner and look under the rug to see if there’s anything in here.

So where do you look? Try here.

Time checking email Time cooking and cleaning Time on the phone
Time in traffic Time shopping Time reading
Time running errands Time in meetings Time writing

Every single one of these can be eliminated – not just reduced; eliminated – if you get creative.

What are you waiting for? There’s no time to lose.

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here to order.

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The Five Ways Leaders Lose Their Edge

A leader’s ability to sustain a high level of effectiveness is one of the biggest contributors to the company’s overall success. Unfortunately, not every leader can maintain that commitment. Why? Here are five indicators that leaders are losing their edge..

1. They ignore the vision.
Having a vision means you’re clear about what you want. You can connect to an inner source of inspiration that will call you forth and compel you to achieve your goals. Who do you want to be as a leader? What do you want to achieve?

2. They lose their focus.
Once you know your vision and what you want to achieve as a leader, stay focused on it. Finding focus is about choosing where to put your time, energy and attention. If you really want what you say you want, what areas do you have to focus on to get it?

3. They take inefficient action.
After you decide where to focus, make sure your daily action plans reflect that priority. Stop asking, “How can I do everything I need to do in a day?” and start asking, “What are the most effective actions I can take to move toward my vision?” Take those actions now.

4. They do things the hard way.
In business and in life, you always have a choice. You can continue to do things the hard way, the usual way, the way you’ve always done them. Or, you can do things your way – the way you were made to do them. Find and leverage your strengths. Where are you especially talented? What are you recognized for? What do you love to do?

5. They become disconnected from their work.
Finding fulfillment and alignment with your work means understanding what you’re striving for. The meaning. The purpose. When you lack fulfillment, you lose your edge. Your energy goes down while your stress goes up. To reconnect, consider what you want from your work. Do you want to be happy? Are you trying to reach your full potential? Do you hope to make a difference? Do you want to feel at peace? These are some of the experiences leaders seek when they seek “success.” The key to finding fulfillment at work is to identify what success means to you – not the results but the spirit of a life well lived.

Reclaim Your Leadership Edge

Avoiding common mistakes like these helps leaders lay the foundation for exceptional leadership results. You will put yourself on the path to becoming the kind of leader who changes the world … the kind of leader others will follow … the kind of leader you were meant to be.

You can join other leaders in “getting an edge” by reading The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. Join the Inner Edge Community and be a part of the book club!

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Identification, Please?

Who are you as a leader? I don’t mean your title, I mean, what kind of a leader are you?

At IBM, Senior Vice President of Human Resources Randy MacDonald shares this advice: “Do not cast yourself in the image of what a leader is supposed to do.” What makes you powerful is developing the image of who you want to be as a leader.

As an individual, it’s important for you be clear about what kind of a leader you are. Everyone is a leader in some way. Throughout this eCourse, I will be referring to “leaders,” and I do not just mean presidents and CEOs. I mean you.

A business or corporate leader. Corporate leaders often hold leadership positions in their organizations: president, vice president, director, manager, or supervisor. You may even own the company. But you can also serve as a leader in your company even without the fancy title by the way you act and interact.

A professional leader. You can be a leader in your profession whether you are a consultant, entrepreneur, or an independent professional like an attorney, speaker, or physician.

A community leader. You may have a leadership role in public service, as a non-profit board member, in your church, with the Girl or Boy Scouts, or in your neighborhood.

A family leader. As a mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter, grandparent or cousin, you may take an active part in creating your family environment.

An inspirational leader. You may be a leader among your friends, family and fans by the way you conduct yourself – as reflected by your character, your choices, and your demeanor.

A thought leader. You could be leading change with original ideas and new ways of thinking.

An action leader. Maybe you’re the one with the energy to make things happen and the charisma to get others to do the same.

The leader of your own life. No matter who you are or what you do, you get to take the lead in your life. No one else will do that for you. No one else can. You may or may not have a fancy suit, a name plate on the door, and an assistant just outside. But every single one of us is leading a life, which may be the most exciting kind of leadership of all.

In what ways are you a leader?

Did you enjoy this profile? You may be interested in the eCourse, Getting an Edge: 21 Ways World Class Leaders Share Their Secrets for Leading and Living Well. Each of 21 profiles just like this one comes in a separate email – once a day for 21 days. Click here to order.

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Look for the Perfect

“Everything works out for the best.”

“If it’s meant to be, it will happen.”

Have you ever uttered these words? While many people believe at some level that “things happen for a reason,” they act as though they don’t trust the idea. If it really is true that that everything works out for the best, then every situation is perfect in some way.

Here’s an example.

Zach, an attorney, discovered this when he learned his business partner, Kareem, was leaving the practice. Zach and Kareem had built a business from scratch; he thought growing it big was what they both wanted. But people change. Kareem changed. He didn’t want a business anymore. He didn’t want the headache and the pressure. Now he just wanted to join a bigger firm, not build one.

Zach was determined to talk him out of it. He tried everything to help Kareem see the possibilities, and he tried to see every possibility for himself. But Kareem’s answer was no. He had decided. He was leaving.

After the emotions subsided (anger, resentment, denial, and determination), Zach took the practice over by himself.

“Well, at least one positive thing came out of this,” Zach thought as he signed the documents. “Now I get to be president.”

But Zach got to be a lot more than that. As he started to shoulder the practice on his own, he became more confident as a businessman. He took the practice in his own direction. He made bold decisions, branched out and hired more attorneys. The business grew, as did his reputation and profits. Best of all, he maintained a friendship with Kareem, who stayed in his corner – no longer employed by the business but still rooting for its success.

Zach didn’t know when Kareem said “no” to the business that the business was saying “yes” to Zach. A situation that at first seems to be a disaster can actually turn out to be perfect.

Looking for the perfect is especially helpful when you get an untimely surprise.

  • Benjamin got the promotion he wanted a year before he felt ready.
  • Enrique was awarded a giant contract the same year he was planning to retire.
  • Martina, the next-in-line for a public office, had to step into the job when an elected official had to step down for personal reasons.
  • Neal found out that after years of family planning, he and his wife were about to have not one, not two, but three babies.

In each of these situations, leaders were able to reframe a situation that initially felt wrong by believing it must have to be right. They looked for the perfect.

Believing life might be perfect as it is doesn’t mean you play a passive role in your life. You are still leading your life; you are still becoming the leader you want to be and creating your vision. But you’re doing so with an open mind, realizing that for reasons we don’t understand, some things might be “right” for us that we wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves. Other things might be “wrong” for us even if we thought they were right.

Sometimes we find the opportunities we’re looking for, but other times those opportunities find us.

Exercise

  • Recall a time in your life when you got a “no” or “yes” that you weren’t expecting – maybe unanticipated (good or bad) news or a surprising change in direction.
  • How did the situation work out?
  • In hindsight, what was perfect?

The ideas in this article are drawn from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership and the accompanying eBook called The Extension. The eBook is designed to give you simple, engaging personal leadership exercises and activities to help you be a better leader, and lead a better life. Get your copy today! Click here for a Preview and to Order.