Joelle K. Jay

balance

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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.

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FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!

Leah Zellner, the president of a national resort group, dashed into her office, throwing off her coat.

“I’m sorry I’m late!” she gasped. “It’s been a crazy day!”

For the next five minutes, she raced through a litany of concerns: leading her company as its first female president, finalizing a merger, launching a new global strategy, moving into a new office, speaking at a client conference, throwing her daughter a wedding, and expecting her first grandson.

“You certainly are busy!” I commented.

“You have no idea,” she wheezed. “Meetings, calls, invitations, a trip to New York…”

I watched Leah rush about her office. Here was a woman who seemed to have everything she wanted: a glamorous, high-paying job, exciting travel, and a happy growing family. But today everything that made up her charmed life seemed to be getting in the way.

I wondered, “Is this what our busy lives have come to? That our momentous life events have become items to check off a list?”

Leah flopped into the chair beside me. “You know, it used to be that it was Ready, Aim, Fire. Then it became Ready, Fire, Aim. Now it’s just FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!”

Leah’s life as a leader mirrors many I’ve seen in my years as an executive coach. Every day, I see talented, accomplished leaders struggling because they’re too stressed, too stretched, or too tired of sacrificing. As a result, many businesses are losing their leaders, and many leaders are losing themselves. It’s become a stubborn predicament: how to achieve success without sacrificing your quality of life.

There’s another way to be successful as a leader in today’s world that is more thoughtful. More strategic. More reflective. You can learn to lead in a way that preserves your talent while enhancing your quality of life. You can succeed without the sacrifice. Leading well and living well, both at the same time. In the pages of this book, you will discover a new way to be a better leader…and lead a better life.

Leah is one of many leaders I profile in the book, The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. This book isn’t about leading your organization or leading your team. It’s about leading yourself.

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!

If you like what you read, join us in The Inner Edge Book Club! We’re starting a new year this month. To learn more, click here!

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Leading on the Edge

As a leader, you have many great gifts. Your talents. Your opportunities. Your drive. What are you going to do with those gifts? How are you going to share them with the people around you and the rest of the world? To excel as a leader, it’s important to give some thought to these questions. Because the reality is that as a leader, the true gift you have to give…is you.

Sharing the Practices of Personal Leadership

Helen Keller:

“When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.”

You have already discovered what’s possible for you when you’ve come to see yourself as a leader. Now it’s time to share the wealth. How will you give your gifts to the people you lead? How will you give to your organization and the world around you? How big can you can really be?

As you consider how to give of your gifts, you create more gifts for yourself, for others, and the world.

And your gifts are desperately needed.

When I wrote The Inner Edge, this “leadership crisis” was the news of the year. Stories in business journals as well as Time, Newsweek, 60 Minutes and Good Morning America all reported that accomplished, talented leaders were leaving their hard-won careers to find more meaningful ways to live. The people featured in these stories invariably described a choice between success and quality of life – and in many cases, it was one they didn’t want to make.

Our culture, our organizations, the times we live in – they have a way of conspiring against our efforts to be our best. But better business should not come at the expense of quality of life, and quality of life should not come at the expense of business results. Work and life should be able to co-exist, happily and successfully. They can and they have.

But every day, millions of people drive onto the fast-lane and race their lives away – ironically missing the fact that everything they are doing to try to improve their life is actually running them into the ground. The work weeks get longer, the stress levels rise, and talented leaders burn out or move on.

We need a whole new paradigm for work and life, and it starts with you. My dream is that the next evolution of our ambitious, achieving society will be to learn how to get the results we crave in the easiest, most natural way – the way that feeds us personally and enhances our quality of life. But no matter how great your life becomes, no matter how well your business does, you are holding back something even greater that the world urgently needs. Part of being a leader is sharing what you’ve learned and empowering others, as well.

Maybe you will be the person who plants the seeds of leadership in the mind of the next great world leader. Maybe you will be the one to help shift your organization into a healthier, more life-affirming place. Maybe you will initiate positive changes in the world that today you can’t even imagine.

People like you who see themselves as leaders aren’t just leaders in their jobs. They are leaders by definition, wherever they go. You will always be the one people look to for help and support. You will be the one who asks the questions, has the answers, or creates the opportunities for incredible things to happen. At home, at church, at work, among your friends, in your political party, when you’re with your kids, when you’re giving to charity, you will be seen as a leader.

What will you do with that potential?

It’s an honor and a privilege to be a leader – a real gift. What kind of a gift do you want to be?

In order to answer that question, you’ve got to lead on every level: your inner edge, your outer edge, and your leading edge. Then you’ll be truly leading on the edge.

For encouragement along the way, be sure to listen to the free coaching Audio, called A Parting Gift – available on the website at www.TheInnerEdge.com.

Please join us for The Inner Edge Book Club! This month we will be looking at the legacy you are leaving as a leader, and looking to the next level of leadership ahead for you. For more information, click here or email info@TheInnerEdge.com.

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Three New Shortcuts to Maximize Your Time

One of my favorite topics to write, coach, and speak on is Maximizing Your Time. It’s not just a topic for me – it’s an obsession! Your time is too precious to waste. I’ve started a collection of good ideas for maximizing time (which is the Sixth Practice of Personal Leadership). Most of these are available in The Inner Edge, and even more in The Inner Edge Extension. Here are a three more for today.

A New Kind of Balance
Paul Melchiorre, VP of Global Strategy at Ariba, once reframed for me the topic of “balance.” He said, “It used to be that there was office time for your work and down time with your family.” Now, though, our PDAs, laptops and cell phones bring the office right home. Flex time, telecommuting, and compressed work weeks likewise bring family life right into the workweek. “It’s not like you have a work life and a play life anymore,” Paul went on. “It’s just your life.”

Paul had a good suggestion for managing the co-mingling of the various parts of our lives: Set Rules. Don’t answer the phone during dinner, for instance, or schedule a family breakfast if you know you’ll be working too late to make dinner. If work and home are to share your time, make sure they both get an equal part.

Fun on the Run
It’s not just that our work and home lives are so integrated that we have trouble maximizing our time. It’s also because we’re so busy. Who has time for the full work day and the homemade meal and the family time and the workout all in one day, everyday? (It can be done, mind you…I coach people how everyday!) In a full day, sometimes you’ve just got to double up.

My friend and client, Saly Glassman at Merrill Lynch, often has creative ideas for Maximizing Time. She once told me a very funny story about how much fun she and her daughters have as they run errands. A trip to CVS might not sound like the typical Family Fun Night, but given all the laughs they have, it can be equally as good! Exercising with your spouse, taking your kids on business trips, or cooking dinner as a family all offer ways to get in quality down time in the middle of a busy day (or life). You really can do more with less.

Interruptible Time
Personally, I find peace of mind in compartmentalizing. I like to separate my work life and my home life. It’s my way of finding focus and relaxing into the moment.

But I am coming to realize more and more how much people can make interruptible time work.

“Interruptible Time” is time that is scheduled for one thing but doesn’t require so much concentration that you can’t switch to something else that comes up. I am convinced that this how executive search consultant Christine Heidenreich can work seven days a week and feel perfectly balanced, or how the CEO of a health care association can enjoy a long day at the zoo with his nephews right in the middle of the week.

To practice interruptible time, it’s best to plan a bit ahead. Make a list of the tasks you have that you can easily “switch into.” For many people these include phone calls, but could also be reading or making simple decisions. Then look at your schedule to see when those tasks could be intermingled with others for an acceptable balance – for instance, on a low key Saturday or some evening after dinner.

As the world changes around us, we are all learning to adapt. Technology is transforming the human experience. Suggestions like these are surfacing where the people who have found peace with the changes can show the rest of us what to do.

Don’t worry. I’ll keep looking for more great ideas, and I’ll post them as I do!

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. For more information email Info@TheInnerEdge.com.

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10 Techniques to Make More Time

One universal barrier to living and leading well is time. Being your best takes time – time to think, time to plan, time to align to your most important priorities. Here are Ten Time-Saving Techniques to get you that time.

1. Start with what you want to do, not what you have to do.

With all of the different systems out there for helping people organize their time, I have found the most effective tool to be a blank piece of paper. Every day, get out one small blank sheet. A 4×6 note card works great.

1. On the top half, write in the appointments you have today.

2. In the spaces between the appointments, schedule uninterrupted time to work on your most important priority.

3. On the bottom half, write no more than three to five actions you must accomplish – or want to accomplish – before the day is done.

You will start every day focused and end it having moved on your goals.

2. Open and close up shop.

The beginning and end of the day are the most critical for saving time, because you use them to get your thoughts organized. Reserve the first and last hour of the day for yourself.

At the beginning of the day: Take the time to consult your action plan, assess your schedule, and plan your day.

At the end of the day: Tie up any loose ends, put away projects with a note about what to do next, revisit your action plans, schedule time in your calendar for important tasks, and ready your desk for when you return.

3. Set the boundaries.
To get extra hours for yourself, try these suggestions:

• Refuse to schedule meetings when you need time for yourself. Don’t make excuses. Your time alone is just as important as your time with others. You will be more available and present for them when you return.

• Extend your day. If your meetings usually start at eight, your hour for yourself starts at seven. If your day usually lasts until five, the “last hour” you reserve goes from five to six.

• Shrink your day. If adding two high-quality hours to your day is impossible, try cutting the time you make available to others. If you need to start your day at eight and end at five, then you’re available for appointments from nine to four.

• Sweeten the deal. Make your time for yourself nurturing. Treat yourself to a good cup of coffee and some music, or some other special indulgences, routines, and niceties to remind you that the time you save is special time for you.

• Get out of there. It’s easier to resist temptation if temptation can’t find you. Try taking your hours to yourself into private, either by closing your door or by getting away from the office.

Are there barriers that sometimes make it difficult to do this? Of course. But if you can discipline yourself to make it happen, you will learn that these hours do more to help you stay on top of your work and enjoy your life more than any other hours in the day. With just a little time to get focused, you will feel complete, clear, rested and renewed.

4. “Go to the library.”
When you look back on the times you’ve had to study – really study, for something important like your hardest exams – where did you go? For many of us, it was the library. You can recreate the space and silence of the library in your everyday life.

• Turn off the phone.
• Leave your PDA, Internet connection, pager and so on behind.
• Turn off your email.
• Escape to a quiet place, alone – a conference room, an empty office, a café, your kitchen table.
• Don’t tell anyone where you’re going. Just slip away.

It is so hard to concentrate in our beeping, buzzing, urgent, ever-available world. But you will accomplish exponentially more if you can escape even for an hour at a time to a place where you can think and get things done.

5. Give yourself permission.
The most common words I hear when I help leaders look for time is, “I can’t.”

• “I can’t turn off my cell phone.”
• “I can’t schedule time for myself during the day.”
• “I can’t get out of work any earlier.”

Ask yourself: Whose permission do you need to do any of these things? Chances are the one who is holding you back is you.

6. Get permission.
If there really is someone who keeps you from getting the time you need to work on your inner as well as your outer edge, ask them for time.

• Ask your boss: “I need to find at least an hour a day of uninterrupted time to concentrate on important behind-the-scenes work and stay aligned to our/my priorities. When would be the most convenient time for me to do that?”

• Ask your employees: “We could all use time to get our work done. What time of the day or week would it be possible for us to agree not to schedule meetings?”

• Ask your family: “I need some time for myself to work on some of my personal priorities so that I can be my best here at home and also at work. Let’s make a plan for when I can have that time.”

As a mother of small children, I can tell you even toddlers understand that grown-ups need some time alone. Surely reasonable people around you (who also need time for themselves) can respect your needs to get time to yourself. Give them credit. Ask for their help.

7. Lop something off.
One reason it’s hard to get big chunks of good quality time is that we’re nibbling around the edges. An hour here, fifteen minutes there, squeezed between a hasty lunch and the nagging To Dos.

Think bigger. If your time for yourself is important, what is it more important than? Look in your life for a whole area that you can eliminate, saving you several hours in one fell swoop.

The trick is to find those activities that are less important than you really thought. You can do this both in your personal life and at work.

• Gina figured out most of her clients came from referrals. She lopped off networking events and saved several hours a month.
• Mahendra chose the most valuable of her social groups (five college friends) and lopped off book club, her parenting group, and the gourmet group and saved at least two hours a week.
• Tony realized he spent hours on yard work every weekend, and he didn’t even enjoy it. He hired the neighbor kid to mow and weed, lopping off a time-consuming chore and buying him half a day every week.
• Mik recognized how tense and grumpy all his meetings were making him. He made a list of the meetings he had to attend. They tallied up to over forty hours a week. He lopped off half of them by getting off two committees and finding more efficient ways to communicate. Then the meetings only tallied up to twenty hours.
• Brian counted up to three hours a day in traffic. He lopped off drive time by shifting his schedule for a less conventional commute, saving him over two hours a day.

Whether we want to admit it or not, we’re the ones who fill up our time. Lop off a hunk of the time you spend on lesser-value activities and you’ll suddenly have all the time you need.

8. Bring it in.
Many of us drive all over town out to do our errands. We drive out of our way to get to our favorite gym, then swing back across town to hit our preferred supermarket, then head all the way out the other way to meet friends for dinner. This unconscious habit eats up your time, adds to your stress and hurts the environment. To eliminate the waste, think about the places you go and experiment with ways to bring them in closer – closer to each other, closer to home, or closer to your route to and from work.

A client of mine who was a master at this technique changed her entire community from all over the city into a two-mile radius. She pulled her dry cleaners, gas station, bank, drug store, doctors, mechanic and gym all closer to home. You can do the same by filling in this sentence as many times as you can: “My is too far away. How can I bring it in?” Quality services are everywhere. Give up the need to travel for miles to get them.

9. Farm it out.
Just as effective as bringing your community in closer is the strategy of farming things out. In your personal life, have you ever considered farming out:
• your cleaning?
• your laundry?
• your errands?
• your personal accounting?
• your plant care?
• your cooking?
In your professional life, have you ever considered farming out:
• your filing?
• your phone calls?
• your meetings?
• your writing?
• your sales?
• your marketing?
• your travel?
If you have ever delegated any of these items, you know it’s possible to let others do some of the work so you can get more time to yourself. Challenge yourself. What else can you farm out? Put the word out. See who’s out there to help. Save yourself time.

10. Do the hardest thing first.
It’s stressful not to get to the things that matter to us, and it exacerbates the feeling that we never have enough time. Turn that situation around by doing the thing it’s hardest for you first. Whether it’s exercising in the morning, or working on your most challenging account first thing in the day, or making the difficult decisions before doing anything else, you will feel like you’ve saved time because the pressure is off. You will actually have saved time because you won’t waste it worrying and procrastinating.

What are your best techniques for saving time? Send them to us at www.theinneredge.com. Look for updated postings on the website to help you get the time you need for the practices of personal leadership that help you live and lead well.

Please join us for The Inner Edge Book Club! This month we will be “making more time” as we apply techniques that will reduce your stress and leave you feeling peaceful and able to achieve everything that’s important to your life. For more information, click here or email info@TheInnerEdge.com.

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Opening Pandora’s Box

I had an interesting conversation with David Rodriguez, Executive Vice President of Global Human Resources at Marriott International, recently. He made me think.

All the time I spend executive coaching, what I’m really doing is helping people think. I am asking them provocative questions. Expanding their thinking. Challenging them. It’s also my role to support them when the thinking is hard, sometimes push them off the cliff of their limitations and then cushion their fall. The result is growth, and the result of growth is peak performance and an improved bottom line.

I thought that was a good thing.

But David showed me another perspective. He reminded me how hard it is to reflect. How unready sometimes leaders are to learn. He said,

Most people I find shy away from being introspective. Even if they have the capability they shy away from actually practicing introspection.

Knowing David to be a brilliant leader in the arena of leadership development, I was a little surprised. I thought leaders loved this stuff! Here’s what he said:

The times we’re living in today are tough. Everyone is under a lot of pressure. There’s a lot of uncertainty. A lot of emotional energy is devoted to coping with things outside our control. We can’t control the economy. We feel like victims. Everyone is trying desperately to stay calm and focused in the face of external pressures. This is supposition, but I think the average person does not look to add to the pressures they face. While introspection is great as a catalyst for growth and fundamental to growth, in essence what it really is is going to a zone of discomfort. It’s finding out things about yourself that may not make you feel in the moment good and in control. Especially in these times when people have such pressures, [reflection] could be a Pandora’s box.

And I suppose he’s right. When you open the lid to your potential, who knows what demons lurk inside, just waiting to jump out and grab you? Do you really have the energy to rally now, of all times, to fight the status quo? Can’t you just suffer through the challenges in peace?

Of course you can. Many do. I’ll admit that since David and I talked, I have met a few people who seem truly bedraggled by the impact of a negative economy. It would be cruel to unleash on them Pandora’s box.

Or would it? What I want you to remember it that practicing personal leadership is not just about facing your fears. It’s about finding your strength.

In Pandora’s box you may find old habits, destructive patterns, or hidden fears.

But you will also find a clear, inspiring vision of who you want to be.

You’ll find new focus on what you want to achieve.

You’ll find new strategies and tools for progress.

You’ll find fulfillment.

New ways of spending your time.

A stronger, smarter, more motivating team.

A whole new universe of learning and possibility.

You’re going to find yourself.

The Fifth Practice of Personal Leadership is Feel Fulfillment. I’ll admit that perhaps the process of getting there may present challenging questions, but those questions are the doorway to a satisfying life.

When you sit on the lid of Pandora’s box, you lock your real self inside. Go ahead. Open up.

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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The Golden Life

One established principle of leadership is to know your values. I disagree. Values are indeed the raw materials of a golden life, but just knowing them is not enough. You also need to decide how to use them. You do that by looking at the role your values play – or could play – in helping you achieve fulfillment. We call this living your values. You are living your values when you’re not only clear about what you value but use it a basis for action.

To what degree are you living your values now?
When you live your values, they define who you are, not just who you want to be. If family is one of your top values, to what degree are you prioritizing your family? Are you spending time with them? Are you enjoying them, helping them, involved with them? If trust is one of your top values, are you being trustworthy? Are you trusting others? Are there any ways in which you might not be, or are there ways trust is being violated in your life? Questions like these aren’t meant to grill you or shame you; just to compare. Asking this question helps you hold up your life against your values to see how well they match. Then you know where to make adjustments to feel more fulfilled.

How would life be different if you were living your values?
When you live your values, they become an integral part of your life. How would it look for you to live your values? How would your personal life be different? How would your professional life be different? How would you act and be different as a leader? Knowing the answer to questions like these helps you make positive changes in keeping with your values. Practicing this kind of thinking, you can give up complaining about the parts of life that seem meaningless and actually bring them some meaning.

How can you live your values now for a more fulfilling experience every day?
When you live your values, you use them to make decisions. Your values are like the gas in a car. When you apply your values to your life, you drive positive energy into everything you do. Otherwise you’re are just idling and wasting power. Your values are especially helpful in making decisions, choosing perspectives, and resolving conflicts.

• Using your values to make decisions. Your values can help you make the big and small decisions that define your life. When you have to make a decision, big or small, ask yourself: How do your values influence this decision? Being explicit about your values gives you a basis for comparison when considering the opportunities that come along.

• Using your values to choose your perspective. Fulfillment doesn’t just come from using your values to decide what to do. It also comes from using your values to decide how to think. When you’re feeling challenged or struggling with a difficult situation, the question to ask is: How could your values enhance this moment? Even a chore like raking leaves takes on meaning when you connect it to a value of having a pleasant, comfortable home, and working for hours on the copy for a web page seems more palatable when you realize it fulfills your value of having a professional presence in the market. The right perspective can be the difference between a mundane and a fulfilling life.

• Using your values to resolve conflicts. Values serve a practical purpose in relationships: they help you resolve difficult issues. Many conflicts stem from a values clash. One person values speed, the other values meticulous correctness. One person values serenity; the other values excitement. One value crashes into another, creating tension and slowing progress. Simply by naming the values (“It seems like we have a values clash. I value loyalty, and you value freedom.”) you can move quickly into more productive questions (like “Is there a way we can meet both of our needs?” and “How can we get around this issue?”). Often these questions will lead to answers. If not, you’ll need to consider which values are worth taking a stand and which must be subjugated for the sake of a solution.

It’s not always possible to honor your values; that’s why feeling fulfillment is a practice. You practice aligning your choices with your values. The more you practice, the better you’ll become at creating a life of fulfillment everyday.

Take some time now to reflect on your values.
1. To what degree are you living your values now?
2. How would life be different if you were living your values?
3. How can you live your values now for a more fulfilling experience every day?

There’s an ancient Hindu story about the gods arguing over where they should keep the secret of happiness. Afraid that humans didn’t deserve or couldn’t handle this secret, they debated where to hide it. At first they considered putting it at the top of a high, high mountain, but reasoned that humans would eventually be able to find it. Likewise, they might find it in the darkest forests or at the bottom of the ocean. Finally, an idea struck one of the gods:

“I know the perfect place. We will hide the secret of happiness in the deepest depths of their own hearts. They will never bother to look there.”

It’s not easy to find the secret of happiness and fulfillment. But you have the ability to do it; the answer lies within you.

An entire process for identifying and living your values including a free audio Values Visualization and a companion worksheet is available at www.TheInnerEdge.com.

Please join us for The Inner Edge Book Club! This month we will be talking about the process of living your values, and learning to shift your current reality into an experience of joy and fulfillment. For more information, click here or email Info@TheInnerEdge.com.

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Have Two Lists

Busy high achievers often see themselves as people of action, but they’re not always as efficient as they think. Check your own efficiency with this question:

How many To Do lists do you have?

Do you have one gigantic list that’s so long you can’t even read it in one sitting?

Do you have dozens of sticky notes plastered all over your desk?

Do you not even have a list at all?

If your answer to any of these question is “yes,” the better answer is “no, NO, NO!”

To excel as a leader, you’ve got to get the system down. There are many ways of list-making and action planning that are far more strategic than the To Do list. You can find some of them for free on the website (www.TheInnerEdge.com).

But for starters, consider how Adam Barnes, vice president of External Affairs at AT&T, makes his lists.

“You have to come up with priorities that are realistic. You can’t make every single thing a priority. You have to be disciplined in your rankings. I have two lists: the list of stuff I need to get done and the list of stuff I want to get done.”

Right now find a piece of paper and divide into two halves. On one half, write one list by answering the question, What do you need to get done today? On the other half, answer the question, What do you want to get done if you can?

Follow this system for 21 days. If you do, you’ll soon find yourself with no list at all. As one of my clients recently reported, “I never have a To Do list, because everything’s already done.” Imagine. That could be you.

Taking Effective Action is the Third Practice of Personal Leadership. You’ll know you’re taking effective action if:
• You know exactly what to do today to attain your vision, and you’re doing it
• You end every day feeling energized and fulfilled
• You’re getting the results you want.

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. For more information email Info@Pillar-Consulting.com.

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Your Leadership Shapes Your Life

In The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership, I talk about something that I passionately believe: The way you lead shapes your life. By this I mean much more than simply creating life-to-work balance. I’m talking about leading from the inside out.

I explain this concept in The Inner Edge. We work together on it in our Inner Edge Community, and I’ll be blogging about it over the coming months right here, with you as my partner. I invite you to submit your thoughts, discoveries, experiences, successes and challenges as you familiarize yourself with the practices in The Inner Edge.  I encourage you to experiment with the practices described in the book, the workbook and other materials, and I hope you’ll share your ups and downs with us here on The Inner Edge blog.

Join us on our Facebook page, too, as we do our utmost to connect Inner Edge readers and participants. Also, I invite you to sign up for the free Inner Edge Newsletter. I want to make sure you have all the tools you need to help you find your Inner Edge.

Your leadership is a gift. Your world – whether it’s your personal sphere of influence, your business organization, or the world at large – will be bettered by you being your best. I’m here to support you in that effort. So, please join me, and we’ll work together for your greatest success.