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book excerpt

September 14, 2014 by Joelle Jay

How to Develop Your Inner Edge: An Interview with Skip Prichard

“If you want to be your best, you need to build on what’s brilliant about you.” -Joelle Jay

Leading On the Edge

Dr. Joelle K. Jay is an expert in personal leadership.  She has coached executives in numerous companies, written several books and numerous articles, and is a principle with the Leadership Research Institute, a global leadership development firm.

Reading Dr. Jay’s new book, The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership,  I felt like I had hired a personal leadership coach.  She shares practices and principles that are enduring.  I had the opportunity to ask her a few questions to introduce her thinking to you.

 

“Better leadership equals better results – higher profits, bigger market share and a global advantage.” -Joelle Jay

 

What does it mean to lead on the edge?

“Leading on the edge” is about challenging ourselves to take the leadership position in our own lives – pushing ourselves not to sit back and hope for things to happen but getting out in front and making them happen with our own intent and effort.

 

“Most true happiness comes from one’s inner life.” -William Shirer

 

What are some of the benefits of mastering personal leadership?

I believe that everyone is a leader – if not the leader of a team or a company, at the very least the leader of his or her own life.  Strong companies have learned that better leadership equals better results – higher profits, bigger market share and a global advantage.  Personal leadership helps us get the results we want for ourselves – a more fulfilling career, a more rewarding experience, a happier life.

TheInnerEdge_CoverYour book outlines ten practices of personal leadership. Let’s discuss a few of them. The first is “get clarity.”  How do you help leaders understand who they are and where they want to go?

 I recently heard a speaker say, “Clarity is   everything.  Confusion is the enemy.”  In our  fractured and distracted world, leaders need to learn to cut through the noise to hear their own voice.  They do this by asking themselves powerful questions – chief among them, “What do I want?” When leaders can get clear about what they want, they can outline the steps to get there.

 

Tap Into Your Brilliance

I love “Tap into your brilliance” because I am often amazed at people’s strengths.  How does a leader encourage an environment where everyone is operating in the strong zone?

 

 

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart.” -Confucius

 

When leaders learn to leverage their strengths, they positively burst into action. Suddenly their efforts are infused with energy as they discover they can finally do things their way – the way that comes naturally to them and the way they do them best. That has a contagious quality, so strengths-based leaders are naturally encouraged by their own successes to help the people around them – their managers, direct reports, their teams – to organize their activities around the strengths in the group. It’s a more satisfying experience for everyone – but more than that, it’s also far more effective.

“See possibility” is another practice. One technique you call is “Let it be easy.” Would you elaborate on this practice for us?

10 Practices of Personal Leadership

  1. Get clarity.
  2. Find focus.
  3. Take action.
  4. Tap into your brilliance.
  5. Feel fulfillment.
  6. Maximize your time.
  7. Build your team.
  8. Keep learning.
  9. See possibility.
  10. All. All at once.

Especially for highly-driven achievers, goal-attainment is all about making it happen.  That can be exhausting.  Sometimes a better answer can be found by sitting back and observing, watching for patterns, being open to opportunities. The answers may simply present themselves.

To give one example, a client of mine who was toiling endlessly to try to get herself promoted worked herself into a frenzy of activity with no result.  She decided to stop pressing so hard for a while.  When she did, she was able to see a unique and exciting opportunity (that she had been ignoring) as a possibility.  Maybe this was actually an opportunity she’d enjoy.  She opened her mind to the idea, and soon she found herself being swept into a new adventure in her career that not only got her promoted but led to a renewed sense of enthusiasm.  It all happened when she stopped trying so hard and took advantage of the opportunity before her.  She let it happen.  She let it be easy.

 

 

“Good leaders are, by definition, voracious learners.” -Jack Welch

 

 

“Take the complexity out. Make it simple.” -Howard Putnam

 

Time to Re-energize

Leaders need time to reflect and re-energize.  Would you share just one technique that you have seen work for busy, overworked professionals?

The easiest – and also, sometimes, the hardest – shortcut to peace is to power down.  We power down when we literally turn off the power of our devices to distract us.  (Yes, that smart phone has an “off” button.)  We also power down when we unplug ourselves by closing our eyes for a moment and sitting in silence. Take a few minutes to close the door and rest for a moment.  Give yourself the gift of a few minutes of solitude.  Gaze out the window or walk into the yard.  Even amidst the constant din of daily life, we can find a sense of peace by shutting off all the input and reconnecting with ourselves.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: book excerpt, business leadership, getting an edge, joelle k. jay, leadership, personal leadership

September 9, 2014 by sereynolds

Tips To Build Your Dream Team

Your dream personal support team is made up of leaders you admire who advance you, elevate you, and make it possible for you to do more/better/faster than you can do on your own.

Today I want to help you do just that. As an exercise for building your team, just follow the initials I.A.B.:

 

I: Imagine the people you most admire. Write down the names you would like to have at your  table.

A: Ask your questions. If your imaginary advisers were sitting with you now, what would you ask them? record your ideas.

B: Be with them. Let their energy and wisdom remind you of who you are and who you want to become.

 

And remember, when you build your personal support team, you are no longer the solitary leader trying to go it alone. You are collecting an entourage. Together with your team, you are a veritable force.

From myself I am copper, through You, friend, I am gold. -Rumi

 

 

For more from The Inner Edge you can purchase the book here.

Related: Tap Into Your Brilliance Now: An Excerpt From “The Inner Edge”

 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: book excerpt, leadership, leadership development, leadership team, the inner edge, tip tuesday, tiptuesday

August 22, 2014 by sereynolds

Tap Into Your Brilliance Now: An Excerpt From “The Inner Edge”

The following is an excerpt from The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership, and discusses the fourth practice – tap into your brilliance.

 

You are hardwired with certain characteristics that make you you – distinctly, irreplaceably, inimitably you. The way you live, the way you learn, and 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 personal characteristics like these:

  • Strengths
  • Weaknesses
  • Personality
  • Preferences
  • Virtues
  • Vulnerabilities
  • 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.

 

To tap into your brilliance, you need to understand your distinct natural attributes (your DNA) and be able to leverage them in the most powerful way.

Tapping into your brilliance involves three phases. First, you identify your distinct natural attributes. Second, you investigate those attributes so you see their full promise. Third, you learn to leverage your DNA to reach your vision and goals. Eventually, this process won’t feel like a process at all. It will be the way you look at who you are and what you can do.

THE BEST OF YOU AND THE REST OF YOU

The first step in tapping into your brilliance is to identify and map your DNA. Your DNA map is a simple list of your strongest positive and negative attributes. Your strengths and weaknesses. The best of you and the rest of you.

To map your DNA – at first, anyway – you write down characteristics you’ve discovered in yourself so you can see them at a glance. When you do this, you’ll want to include a mix of distinct natural attributes: your characteristics, behaviors, talents, learning styles, and so on. Other self-evaluation tools sometimes focus specifically on one aspect of your attributes – either your activities or your skills or your behaviors. For our purposes, that would be too narrow a view. We want to know it all. So we will take a very broad view of your attributes. Everything counts. Your talents, your activities, your character traits, the way you think, the way you behave – all of it is fair game at this stage for mapping your DNA.

You can get started identifying your DNA by using your own insight and self-awareness.

EXERCISE

Off the top of your head, write down what you believe to be a few of your positive and negative traits. This will give you a glimpse of the attributes you can leverage in the service of your vision and goals.

 

 

Related: Leading on the Edge: A Quick “How To”

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: book excerpt, fridayreads, joelle jay, joelle k. jay, leadership, leadership development, the inner edge

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