While systems create behaviors, culture establishes the soil in which those behaviors are planted.

Lead Up Line: Where honor is practiced, honesty is present.

Lead Up Line: What is in you will not come through you until you invite others around you.

When you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Here are a few exercises that you can do yourself, or with your team during this stage:

• Go 7 "Why’s" Deep.
• Explore how your own life experiences as well as the history of your organization or team in conjunction with it’s current reality have helped shape this vision.
• Clarify the unique opportunities and threats that could be good or bad with the implementation of the vision.

Integrity establishes confidence in those you lead about where you’re leading.

• Be accountable.
• Be intentional.
• Be authentic.

So if you find yourself today lacking courage, here’s one thing I’d encourage you to do:

• Start stretching your courage muscle in small ways.
• Look for little ways you can overcome circumstances...maybe even put yourself in uncomfortable situations on purpose to stretch that courage muscle.
• The reality is Queen Esther marching into the King’s Throne Room unannounced wasn’t the first time she exercised courage, it happened in a lot of smaller ways first.
• Stretch and exercise that courage muscle and what you’ll find is the big steps of courage become more realistic for you.

What excites you about leadership?

How would your leadership change if people were a priority?

When we lead with humility, we will lead people toward what's best for them, not just us. Here are three simple ways to begin leading with humility:

1. Identify who are you actually influencing or leading.

2. Ask those you’re leading what a win would look like for them.

3.  Learn to celebrate other’s wins more than asking them to celebrate your wins.

We often define leadership as a title or position. But leadership that’s only found in a title or position is defined better as a dictatorship than as leadership. Over the course of this next year, I would love to invite you to journey with me as we explore 12 core components of leadership on this monthly podcast. Each episode will be only 10-15 minutes and be packed with a short leadership challenge to help you lead better in your home, workplace or community.