What Will You Accomplish This Year? (#235)
The Confident Leader
BOOST YOUR LEADERSHIP IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
It’s the end of the first full week of February. By now, most leaders have finalized their annual budgets and adopted the strategies they believe will help their organization fulfill its goals for the year. But what about what they want to accomplish in their leadership?
“Activities x Effectiveness = Results.”
This Week’s Edition
Once you’ve prepared what you want to accomplish for your business this new year, remember your own leadership goals.
Clarify Your Thinking
Now is the time for leaders to focus on their leadership by asking themselves:
“What do I want to accomplish in my leadership this year?”
What do I want/need to focus on to take my leadership to the next level, ensure my team performs well, and support my organization in accomplishing its goals?
All too often, leaders are exhausted at the end of the year. They barely muster the energy to gear up for the coming year when a new set of challenges emerges in the first few weeks of what was a promising, clean start to the new year.
This leaves little time to focus on setting a plan to uplevel their leadership from the previous year.
Old Thinking: Is this year just going to be a rinse and repeat year? I want to prioritize my leadership, but the day-to-day keeps me too busy. I’ll focus on that next quarter, although I’ve been saying that for years.
New Thinking: How can I expect my team to improve if I am not on a journey to improve myself? I must improve my leadership. I’ll focus on one area where I can make significant strides by the end of the year.
Thoughts Lead to Actions
I was listening to a podcast recently and the host was grilling the guest on his focus on improving himself. The conversation went something like this:
“I just can’t seem to generate the growth in my business that I want,” said the guest.
“What is the one thing you want to accomplish?” said the host.
The guest babbled for a couple of minutes, providing no clear answer to the question. The host interrupted him.
“Your problem is you don’t know what you want to accomplish. What is the one thing you want to achieve? If you get to the end of the year and nothing else is accomplished except this one thing, what is it?” said the host.
He went on to say, “You need to do something every day in service of that one thing. You must be determined about what you want and take action daily to achieve it.”
The podcast host is providing excellent coaching. Here is a summary in three steps:
Step 1: What’s the one thing you want to accomplish in your leadership?
Step 2: What are you doing every day to accomplish that?
Step 3: Who is supporting you? Or what accountability do you have in place?
Here are some examples of what the leaders I work with are focusing on:
- Creating a successful succession plan for leadership team roles
- How to better lead general managers of the business units
- How to increase their skill level across two crucial emotional intelligence skills
- How to increase verbal and written communication skills to better influence
- How to present more confidently and persuasively
Don’t let another year go by without accomplishing that one thing you know you need to do to take your leadership to the next level. You can do it.
Boost Your Performance
Watch this week’s video to learn more about how to take your leadership to the next level this year.
What’s Your Opinion?
What are you focusing on to improve in your leadership this year? Share it with me at robin.pou@robinpou.com.
If you are going to be a leader, you might as well be a good one. Don’t let doubt count you out. Have a confident week!
Robin Pou, Chief Advisor and Strategist
We live to make bad leadership extinct so forward this newsletter to others who strive to be confident leaders.
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What is “The Confident Leader”?
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, I began a video series called “Panic or Plan?” It was designed to equip leaders to navigate the doubt they experienced and to rise in the confidence they needed to lead during turbulent times. It took off. I then started this newsletter to equip leaders in the same fashion each week for the doubt that crashes across the bow of their leaderSHIP.
