Leadership Fitness in 5 Minutes with Gary Slyman

Every industry has seasons. How much of an expert are you at the seasons your industry has? Think about the different seasons of YOUR industry. We will focus on you and the expertise you need. What are the specifics for your industry and your team? What are the metrics to measure by? How do you define success? Preparation. What are you doing to prepare for each season? How are you working through the seasons of you industry?

Do you need a coach or a mentor? Are you a coach or a mentor?

Are they different? YES! Let's build clarity around that.

Mentoring, think about knowledge, experience and advice. When you are getting mentored it is from someone usually senior that has been there and done that.

Coaching, think no or little advice, a partnership, a coequal relationship, thought provoking process to maximize your potential professionally and personally.

Where do you need coaching? Where do you need mentoring? Where do you need to be coaching? Where do you need to be mentoring?

Have you been a good investment to your organization? How do you know? How have you been measuring your return on investment?

In the business world we are all about return on investment. Can you measure yours? Let's take a look at ways to measure your ROI.

Let's look at the formula to calculate.

Do you want to measure how well you have developed professionally this year? Take inventory of you behavior changes. How do you know? Measure your behavior changes. They will tell you how well you have progressed. Think of yourself and those you lead as I walk you through these examples. What were some of your professional development goals you set for this year? Measure yourself. What behavior changes have occured?

This week we took time to remember those that gave the ultimate sacrifice.

I want you to think specifically about Gold star families? What do they need or want to help remember their family members? How can you support a Gold star family?

Share your ideas below.

This Memorial Day Remember & Honor Someone You Are Connected With

Memorial Day orginiated as Decoration Day to honor the fallen soldiers of the Civil War, but eventually was declared as Memorial Day in 1971.

How are you honoring those that gave the ultimate sacrifice? You can start by looking around you, seeing how you might be connected. You can start with even looking at the bridges and street names in your community, look at your local schools or your Alma Mater. It's important to speak their names.

Take time this week to honor those you are connected with.

When was the last time you celebrated a success you had?

3 areas to consider in celebrating YOUR successes.

1. Celebrating yourself is celebrating others, you're celebrating your team
2. Celebrations are a measure of growth. They shown how you've grown. Celebrate the smaller successes. Measure progress.
3. You need a strategy. What is your strategy for celebrations for you. Daily standup? Weekly meeting?

What could have been celebrated over the past weeks and months and how would it help you and your team?

Leaders need to celebrate their successes too.

How does your team describe you when it comes to celebrating their successes as a team? How do you want them to describe you? What has happened since January that could be celebrated? If you haven't, maybe you should. What gets celebrated? Who gets celebrated? And how?

Are your greatest leadership strengths actually derailing you?

Play to your strengths, work in your strength area, is that always the best advice? Let's explore a scenario and think of yourself and someone you're developing or mentoring.

What are your top 3-4 leadership strengths? How could that strength be making you less effective as a leader?

Hopefully exploring this will help you decide if you need to adapt your leadership? or do you need to just be aware of your leadership strengths.

See you next week!

How much of your executive presence is representing your authentic self?

How much should it? Think about yourself and maybe a subordinate you're developing and their executive presence.

Executive presence is what you are representing and presenting to others AND what they actually receive.

What are you trying to put out? How do you want them to see you? Define that. Think about your organization and your position in that organization? Does that dictate it?

How much of your authentic self should be revealed in your executive presence?

Think about the following to work through that:

1. How much do you trust at the beginning? What does it take to build that trust? Over time it gets revealed.
2. What is professional to reveal? Use that as a guide.
3. If you are not deliberate when is your true self revealed? You see your real self in stress and comfortable/complacency.

Use the above as guidelines to work through how much of your authentic self should be or is revealed in your executive presence.

See you next week!