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.

September 5, 2014 by sereynolds

Joelle Jay and “The Inner Edge” Featured In FastCompany

I’m happy to share some exciting news with you all this Friday: today I appeared on FastCompany! In my article, Why Most Leadership Development Programs For Women Fail and How to Change That, I discuss my experience with leaders of Fortune 500 companies and the challenges that arise with leadership development programs for women. I also share a few tips that, if implemented, would make these programs more successful.

From FastCompany:

When it comes to leadership development, a focus on women is all the rage.

As an executive coach working with senior leaders in Fortune 500 companies, I have seen a noticeable uptick in the interest in developing female leaders. Companies are boasting about their efforts to attract and retain women, and we see more and more female-centric lists popping up: the most powerful women, spotlights on up-and-coming women, and companies where women want to work.

Employee networking groups for women have also sprung up like wildflowers, and with them came websites, blogs, and special programs, all of them heralding the efforts being made to bring more women into leadership.

With all this hoopla, surely women are making great strides in the business world. Or are they?

Behind the veneer of enthusiasm, the numbers of women in the top leadership positions at most companies remain largely the same. In America’s top companies, only 4.6% of Fortune 500 CEO positions and 16.9% of corporate board positions are currently held by women–numbers that have barely moved in a decade.

Statistically speaking, men still have the upper hand:

They represent 80% of the executive suite and corporate boards
They hold 87% of line officer positions
They hold almost 70% of management and top management positions
They are twice as likely as women to advance and nearly four times as likely to make the jump to CEO
Meanwhile, women hold about 14% of executive officer positions, 17% of board seats, and only 3% to 4% of CEO positions.”
Mentoring programs and recruitment efforts notwithstanding, the real status of women in corporate America reflects the status quo at best. With such a track record, even the most well-intentioned corporate leaders risk inviting the cynical perspective that what they really want is a way to pretty up their image–to show off their efforts with women without really making a change.

Presumably, some companies really do want to balance their leadership teams with greater diversity. Here’s how they can get started:

1. START AND END WITH THE NUMBERS
This isn’t about quotas; it’s about data.

Companies with a poor track record of advancing women have logically been hesitant to reveal the truth about their (lack of) diversity. Companies that want to take advantage of the significant benefits of a balanced leadership team need to get the facts and track their progress: How many women are actually being advanced as a result of their leadership development and recruitment efforts? How is the face of the company changing year over year?

CEOs who would never stand for stagnant profits need to stop standing for a stagnant population of their leadership roles.

2. GIVE PROGRAMS TRACTION
An online forum for women does not a balanced company make. Leadership development programs that ostensibly prepare women for leadership roles without ever putting them into those roles merely raise the self-image of the companies that offer them–not the women themselves.

In sponsorship programs, the sponsors of women must take action to open doors for women. In employee networking groups, women must have opportunities to network with powerful leaders who can help them advance–not just other women or lower level leaders with good ideas but little influence.

3. INCLUDE MEN IN WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP
Recently at a leadership development program being kicked off by a large international company, the program’s sponsor proudly welcomed the women and engaged the participants in a sincere dialogue about the company’s desire to help women succeed. A woman in the front row raised her hand and asked, “I think it’s great our company is helping women to advance themselves. What are the efforts being made to include the men who hold leadership and management positions, so that they will also help to advance women?” Many companies wouldn’t have an answer.

The effect of programs to advance and retain women that aren’t backed by action amount to little more than the revving of an engine, with the parking break firmly engaged.

Having worked with many executives from wide-ranging companies–on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, from Times Square to the Las Vegas strip–I can say with confidence that many company leaders spearheading efforts to advance and retain women are intentional and sincere.

Results indicate that these steps will be worth the effort. Companies with more women in leadership have been shown to outperform their competition by more than a third. A strong representation of women leads to improved organizational health, global competitive advantage, responsiveness to stakeholders, and a better public image.

Perhaps instead of glorifying the efforts of companies trying to showcase their programs for women–the beauty contest approach to public relations–we should be spotlighting the companies that truly make a change.

Companies that don’t risk becoming dinosaurs in the eyes of their customers, who expect corporate leadership to step into the times. If companies don’t hold themselves accountable, the public will, as talented women choose to work elsewhere and consumers choose to work with companies that reflect a diverse and changing world. A focus on results will ensure companies’ efforts to promote women are not just a trend, but a transformation.

If we haven’t already, let’s connect on Twitter and Facebook!

August 26, 2014 by sereynolds

Best of the Blog: August Edition

As we move into the fall months, it’s important to maintain focus, channeling our drive and motivation to make our vision a reality. Fall is a time of change for many, so it’s the perfect time to take action and potentially shift to the right path that will help us reach our goals!

The three blog posts from the last month, highlighted below, reflect actions that can be taken to achieve just that: get clarity, use your imagination, and tap into your brilliance. When practiced in that order you can move forward with a course of action that highlights your strengths and creativity, as outlined in The Inner Edge.

Are you ready to embrace change and follow your new course of action? Let’s explore some the steps that can be taken, featured on this blog over the last month:

In Getting Clarity on Your Vision: An Interview with Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com I reveal my conversation with Patrick, and the insights he gives on how to refine your vision as we move into the last quarter of the year. Patrick is an inspiration for me, and words are something to keep close at hand if you’re having trouble narrowing your focus. When it comes to helping a vision materialize, he shared with me a powerful personal anecdote:

“But just as I have to help other people see that vision, I have to stay committed to it myself. In this role, I become the entrepreneur constantly reaching for that next horizon and driving toward it every day.

I’ve had cancer three times. Each time I recovered I took a bike ride across the states, from California to New York. As I was bicycling I used to think about the Atlantic Ocean. I’d think to myself, “As along as I’m pointed east and I’m still pedaling I have to be getting closer.”

In business, this same kind of ongoing commitment to following the right direction has to be a habit, a personal characteristic. We don’t have that same kind of concrete destination, but we do have a vision, and we have to keep moving towards it. Entrepreneurs have to overcome insurmountable obstacles. We have to keep on pushing ourselves. Once in awhile someone invents something that’s intrinsically a brilliant idea, but it really is the perspiration that makes it happen. It’s perspiration in the face of not knowing if you’re going to succeed. It’s not knowing how high the rock face is that you’re going to climb, but you’re going to keep climbing anyway.”

You can use imagination to refine your vision, and to develop creative ways to achieve it. In The Role of Imagination in Business: An Interview with Michael Gerber, founder of E-Myth Worldwide I shared a conversation I had with another CEO, Michael Geber, who founded E-Myth Worldwide. When discussing how imagination plays into leadership and business, Michael said: “The imagination, the spiritual self, has nothing to do with business, but it has everything to do with business. No one can expect to lead any venture or opportunity with any success to the degree they leave out the soul of the process. It’s the soul of the process that brings leadership to life.”

Now that you’ve isolated your vision and channeled your imagination, it’s time to understand your distinct natural attributes and be able to leverage them in the most powerful way. In Tap Into Your Brilliance Now: An Excerpt From “The Inner Edge” I give an excerpt and exercise from one of the practices in The Inner Edge. The philosophy behind the practice of tapping into your brilliance is that you are hardwired with certain characteristics that make you you – distinctly, irreplaceably, inimitably you. If you don’t know what those characteristics are, don’t worry. I also provide a quick exercise to help you “map your DNA,” or map a simple list of your strongest positive and negative attributes.

You can connect with Joelle on Twitter and Facebook.

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.

August 13, 2014 by sereynolds

The Role of Imagination in Business: An Interview with Michael Gerber, founder of E-Myth Worldwide

Are you familiar with The E-Myth?

The E-Myth is a term coined by Michael Gerber in 1985, when his bestselling book The E-Myth first came out. If it’s new to you, here’s a snippet from Wikipedia to catch you up:

E-Myth in the business vernacular refers to the Entrepreneurial Myth, and refers to the idea that most businesses fail because the founders are technicians that were inspired to start a business without knowledge of how successful businesses run.

The mythic and often disastrous assumption is that people who are experts regarding technical details of a product or service will also be expert at running that sort of business. Many small business owners eventually realize that just as they had to learn their technical skills, they have to learn business growth and management skills.

You may have encountered the challenge of the E-Myth in your work, and you don’t have to be an entrepreneur to come across it. The same “myth” applies to leaders in any field or organization who have been promoted into leadership positions based on their technical skills, then found themselves unprepared to lead in their new roles.

Much has been written about leadership skills, management, and career growth. But one element of success as a leader that Michael Gerber promotes may surprise you. It’s an aspect of leadership I think of as being part of the Ninth Practice of Personal Leadership: See Possibility. It’s called imagination.

Listen in as Michael Gerber and I talk about the role of imagination in business success:

Joelle Jay: One of the least concrete aspects of leadership I teach is what I call Seeing Possibility. It’s about being open to serendipity and learning to take advantage of opportunities – to let things happen instead of making them happen.

Michael Gerber: Most people don’t see the miracles.

JJ: Why is that?

MG: What I’ve noticed is that some people are open to possibilities and some people aren’t. Everything that we do, and everything that we create, is enriched, inspired, colored, and flavored by our deeper, more imaginative, more spiritual self. To the degree we’re disconnected by that we create and live in a very flat world.

JJ: Sometimes leadership development is detached from the spiritual self. Does that mean leaders are trained to perpetuate a “flat world?”

MG: The i magination, the spiritual self, has nothing to do with business, but it has everything to do with business. No one can expect to lead any venture or opportunity with any success to the degree they leave out the soul of the process. It’s the soul of the process that brings leadership to life.

JJ: I coach people to reach into the soul of their leadership, and I give them tools to find that deeper, more spiritual side. Some people are comfortable with it, and some people clearly aren’t!

MG: Talking about the soul of a leader is a difficult conversation. It’s bringing people to a level of openness and vulnerability and questioning that they typically don’t engage in, certainly not with each other in a company. It’s now time for that.

We’ve seen what happens in a world without soul. The world is in economic chaos. Leadership in all of the major industries – bank ing, financial services, and on and on – have in almost one moment in time failed us. It’s been a failure of imagination and a failure of soul.

They knew everything about their business and yet they knew nothing. The world is speaking to us as a product of our lack of imagination, and the imagination is the spirit of our soul.

What would it look like for you to bring more imagination to your work as a leader? How could imagination open you up to greater possibility?

In The Inner Edge, you will find a series of Invitations that are part of the Ninth Practice of Personal Leadership, See Possibility. Each one will help you explore more further what Michael calls “the soul” of leadership – the part of leadership that is so deeply and uniquely true to you that when you find it, the magic just seems to happen.

August 6, 2014 by sereynolds

Getting Clarity on Your Vision: An Interview with Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com

As we wind our way toward the end of summer my team and I have spent time working with leaders in defining their visions for the last quarter of this year. Since so many of you are continuing to think about your visions, I thought it would be a good time to revisit an interview I had with the CEO Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne. He’s an inspiration for me, and I hope he will be for you, too!

As the CEO of Overstock.com, a billion dollar business and the number one shopping destination online, Patrick Byrne is a leader with many different hats. He sees himself as a teacher and a student, a coach and also a player, the head of a major corporation and yet still an entrepreneur. I talked to Patrick about his views about these different roles to learn more about what it looks like for him to practice personal leadership.

Joelle Jay: How do you view your role as a leader?

Patrick Byrne: There are different modalities for being a leader. Good leaders can not only lead in different conditions, but they also change the kind of leaders they are under different conditions. For instance, in a perfect world I view my role as a coach. We have the right people in the right jobs, and I’m spending time with people to coach them and help them develop.

However, there are times when you come under stress where you have to step to the fore and get in the game yourself. You can’t be the coach at that moment. You have to be out on the playing field, grabbing the ball. You have to be able to show your players that you can step in and play different roles and do them well.

JJ: How does your view of the vision change as you take on these different roles?

PB: I remember Zig Ziglar once said, if you’re not clear about what your purpose is or what your target is you have no chance of hitting it. As the leader of a big organization, it’s up to me to know and communicate that target. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to do that. Maybe the target seems impossible, or maybe people understand that it’s going to be costly and difficult to get there. As the leader of the company, I have to have almost a comfort with confrontation and with the challenges to the vision. The act of leadership means you’re going to demand that people strive.

But just as I have to help other people see that vision, I have to stay committed to it myself. In this role, I become the entrepreneur constantly reaching for that next horizon and driving toward it every day.

I’ve had cancer three times. Each time I recovered I took a bike ride across the states, from California to New York. As I was bicycling I used to think about the Atlantic Ocean. I’d think to myself, “As along as I’m pointed east and I’m still pedaling I have to be getting closer.”

In business, this same kind of ongoing commitment to following the right direction has to be a habit, a personal characteristic. We don’t have that same kind of concrete destination, but we do have a vision, and we have to keep moving towards it. Entrepreneurs have to overcome insurmountable obstacles. We have to keep on pushing ourselves. Once in awhile someone invents something that’s intrinsically a brilliant idea, but it really is the perspiration that makes it happen. It’s perspiration in the face of not knowing if you’re going to succeed. It’s not knowing how high the rock face is that you’re going to climb, but you’re going to keep climbing anyway.

JJ: How do you do that? How do you keep going with that kind of commitment when you can’t don’t even know how far away the destination is, or whether you can make it?

Patrick: I definitely think visualization is important. It’s a key ability, because if you can’t visualize what it is you’re working toward its hard to stay focused and driven.

I’ve used visualization in sports. Now I tend to visualize meetings and rehearse meetings in my head before I do them. In business, you’re on a high wire without a net. You’re not just following through on someone else’s vision. You have to create and follow through on your own.

Practicing visualization as Patrick describes it is one of the most powerful habits a leader can develop. As you can see from Patrick’s description, following through on that vision takes doggedness, commitment, and active ongoing participation.

That’s why getting clarity is such a vital part of personal leadership. You’ve got to get clear on your vision so you can head towards it, and you’ve got to get clear on it again and again on every step of the way. That can be tricky when, as Patrick points out, the role you play as a leader is constantly shifting.

Look at the different ways clarity can help you succeed in those roles:

As a business owner or president, are you clear about the direction of the business?

As an organizational leader, are you clear on about how to align people toward the vision?

As a coach, are you clear about what people need from you in order to be successful?

As an employee, are you clear about where you should be putting your efforts and when?

As an individual, are you clear about what you are doing right now and how it is getting you to the long term vision?

As a leader, you play all of these roles. Practicing the skill of getting clarity will help you succeed in every one.

You’ll find more strategies of visualization in The Inner Edge. Also, be sure to check back here for more practices, and three different audio visualization guides in the “Resources for Readers” section.

Lastly, feel free to connect with me on Twitter! Tweet your questions and comments to @JoelleKJay.

July 29, 2014 by sereynolds

Best of the Blog: July Edition

It’s always funny how fast the summer months fly by. Between work travel and family vacation it’s easy to blink and find yourself surrounded by fall! In the spirit of the first practice I outline in The Inner Edge, it’s important to get clarity before we transition into something new – in this case, August. By taking a look back at some of the lessons we’ve already learned we can fully process them and take them forward with us.

In the book I also note that in order to get clarity we first must explore the answers. Following that sentiment, let’s explore some of the answers we’ve discussed on this blog over the last month:

How to find what kind of gift you want to be. In “Leading on the Edge: A Quick ‘How To’” I offer a definition of what personal leadership is, and give a few quick tips on how to lead in a way that uses your own unique strengths, or “gifts.” Essentially, as a leader you have many gifts to offer. The real gift you have to give is yourself. What kind of a gift do you want to be?

Spreading your enthusiasm to your team. You’ve begun to tackle personal leadership, and you’re feeling more motivated than ever. So how do you spread that motivation to your team of employees? In “3 Ways to Extend Your Inspiration to the Rest of Your Team and Employees” I offer three unique ways to get the initiative going. The first method I mention is perfect for summer as we tackle summer reading lists: start a book club. If you’re reading a leadership book that’s inspiring you, why not invite your team to read a chapter with you each week? You can meet to discuss important takeaways and brainstorm on ways to apply what you’re reading. In The Inner Edge there are specific exercises included with each chapter – why not invite everyone to participate?

Learn from a leader, ways to be more engaged in your work. I shared an interview I conducted with the wonderful Stephen M.R. Covey, who says that there are direct economic rewards that go along with functioning in a “high trust environment.” Learn more about what he means, and how you can cultivate that kind of environment in the workplace, from Why Leaders are Losing the Love and How to Get it Back: An Interview with Stephen M.R. Covey.

I hope this exploration of June gives you the clarity you need to take on August! Check back weekly for more leadership practices, tips, and more.

You can connect with Joelle on Twitter and Facebook.

July 22, 2014 by sereynolds

Why Leaders are Losing the Love and How to Get it Back: An Interview with Stephen M.R. Covey

Lately I’ve been concerned about leaders’ engagement in their work – the degree to which they feel motivated and inspired by what they do, and their commitment to doing it well. It’s always been my view that talented leaders thrive when they get to leverage their strengths! A leader’s sense of engagement is the foundation for a rewarding and successful career.

However, the news on engagement lately is grim! I read once that not counting a few cases of high-profile fraud, companies lose more to employee disengagement than they do to theft! Let’s talk about what it would take to help leaders reconnect.

Celebrity speaker and advisor to business leaders worldwide, Stephen M.R. Covey, was gracious enough to speak to me at length about personal leadership. We share a similar philosophy – so much so that he even endorsed The Inner Edge. Read on for his take on personal leadership, trust, and more:

Joelle Jay: What role do you think personal leadership plays in our current business environment? Is it really relevant?

Stephen M.R. Covey: I absolutely think that, in times like we have today, this type of approach is more relevant even than ever before. It always was relevant. The fact that we are in this current environment puts a greater premium on inner work and personal leadership. The essence of leadership is really to inspire trust. Personal leadership requires leaders to also trust themselves.

JJ: What does that mean, to “trust themselves?”

SC: Trust is sustained from the inside out. We need to return to that foundation for us to succeed. Leaders who trust themselves make the decisions that are right for them, based on their values and character. Then they extend that trust to others. The leader goes first.

JJ: How do leaders learn to trust themselves?

SC: We start with ourselves. It takes humility to have integrity. It takes courage to have integrity. We try to be congruent with what we stand for. The sense of power and self-trust that comes from that is extraordinary. That’s why I like your idea of the inner edge. You work inside first.

JJ: Sometimes I worry that people think fulfillment, or engagement, is a “soft skill” of leadership and is therefore dispensable. What do you think?

SC: I am approaching this topic as a business practitioner first. I come from a world of running a business, reporting to a board, and trying to make payroll, so I approach it very practically. But I’ve learned that this inside work and the process of creating trust is not just social issue; it is economic. Trust is a hard edge issue. You can quantify and measure the results of a high trust environment, and an environment in which people are fulfilled and engaged. I have seen the economic impact when people move from low trust to high trust – as individuals and in organizations. The difference is profound.

It’s worthwhile for leaders to consider Stephen’s point. Are you experiencing the economic rewards of a high trust environment? Are your employees fulfilled and engaged? Are you?

July 15, 2014 by sereynolds

3 Ways to Extend Your Inspiration to the Rest of Your Team and Employees

As someone who has been practicing personal leadership for a while, you have become extremely engaged – which is excellent, because both you and your organization are benefitting from the results! So how do you extend that inspiration to the rest of your team and employees? To help others get there too, you can encourage them to do exactly what you’ve done.

The following are three tips to help you spread your inspiration:

Start a book group. Learn the practices of personal leadership one at a time. Every month, you have read a chapter from The Inner Edge and focused on a specific exercise to improve your leadership results. Could you host a lunchtime book club and invite others to read a chapter with you?

Love your most valuable leaders. Think about how you’re attending to the best leaders around you – the ones who contribute to your success and that of the organization. Are you taking their dedication for granted, or might they deserve more time and attention? Many organizations are using The Inner Edge as a basis for unique leadership development programs designed for their most powerful leaders. Can you do the same?

Spread the news. You know that self-awareness and inner passion to achieve are ingredients vital for successful leaders, and the research backs it up. But personal leadership – the behind-the-scenes work leaders do to advance and excel – is often hidden. Can you be more open about your reflection? Can you share more about your efforts to improve and inspire yourself, so that other get ideas about how they can get motivated too?

However you choose to extend the inspiration you’ve taken from The Inner Edge, you’re asking the right question! Leadership is about leading others toward a positive vision. Personal leadership will help you all get there together.

July 7, 2014 by sereynolds

Leading on the Edge: A Quick “How To”

When it comes to leading on the edge, first ask yourself: What kind of a gift do you want to be?

At first blush, personal leadership may seem self-serving. After all, aren’t we supposed to be serving the organization? Isn’t our role to lead everyone else?

Well, yes and no. Certainly the most emphasized aspects of leadership tend to be external – as in leading a company, leading an project, or leading a team. But personal leadership is another aspect to leadership that is equally important. Again, it’s about leading the self, which is the source of a leader’s success.

First, let’s take a look at what personal leadership is: Personal leadership is ability to define a direction for your life and leadership, and to move in that direction with consistency and clarity over time. In a positive, unselfish way, personal leadership means putting yourself first. Literally speaking, personal means “about you;” leadership means “coming first.” When you practice personal leadership, you “lead from the ‘inside out.” The process involves asking yourself, “How do Ineed to be and act and think in order to be my best?” – a kind of self-driven style well-suited to dedicated leaders who will carry business into the future.

When it comes to efficiently leading others, leading ourselves is critical – just look at the effects of neglecting the leader behind the work. Employee depletion, disengagement, and attrition cost the business world dearly. As Gallup researchers Rath and Clifton report,

This rampant negativity is not only disheartening, it’s expensive: It costs the U.S. economy between $250 and $300 billion every year in lost productivity alone. When you add workplace injury, illness, turnover, absences, and fraud, the cost could surpass $1 trillion per year, or nearly 10% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These costs are not specific to the United States; they exist to varying degrees in every country, industry, and organization we have studied.

As reported by the American Society for Training and Development, “The cost of replacing a senior executive averages about five times his or her annual salary” For economic reasons alone, organizations have a vested interest in encouraging the aspects of leadership that sustain and support the leaders themselves.

Of course, that’s only part of the picture. Personal leadership doesn’t just save companies money. It taps into that part of the human soul that longs to add meaning to life. As Stephen Covey writes, “Deep within each one of us there is an inner longing to live a life of greatness and contribution – to really matter, to really make a difference.”

As a leader you have many gifts to offer, and the real gift you have to give is yourself. What kind of a gift do you want to be?

By practicing personal leadership, you will discover what’s truly possible for yourself as a leader. Suddenly “leadership” won’t be just part of your job. It will become a way of life.