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! 

You need to be a good story teller if you are going to interview well.  

Where are you in your career?  Where are you going next?  Chances are you are going to have to interview to make that change. 

If you want to be an authentic, credible and memorable when you are interviewing you need to be a good story teller. 

Here is a simple framework from “Signs of a Great Interview” by Scott Vedder

1! - Look back on your career, what was a significant event?  

2@ - What are the specifics of the above?  People, place, things, dates. 

3# - What are the numbers? Leading how many? Time it took to complete a project? Affected how many people? 

4$- Dollars are always attached?  My budget? What you delivered impacted by this amount? 

5%- Growth or improvement? Deliver on time? Exceed? 

An authentic story, shows your credibility and a story makes it memorable. Need help? DM “interview” for more resources. 

How focused are you on personally and professionally on the destination of where you are going. 

Let me help you build clarity on your destination. 

Do you want to make sure you're going in the right direction?  or Wonder why am I doing this?

Help get focus and clarity on your destination by thinking about the following celebrations:   

1. Short-term career - you are headed to a new position and celebrating 2. Middle-term career change - retirement; big change; how do you and others speak about that journey 3. 90th Birthday - who is there; what are they saying? 

Hopefully this exercise will help you know where you want to go and gain clarity on how to get there.

Consistency!

It's our 100th episode! Thank you to you my listeners and clients.

Thank you to Freedom Makers Virtual Services for freeing up my time and allowing me to consistently produce this weekly video and podcast. 

If you were more consistent in one area of your leadership what would be the impact?

  Think of yourself and those you lead:   1. Identify what you need.  What do you need to be more effective and consistent. Education, training, resources? 2. Identify who can help you? It might be a peer, mentor, sponsor, a virtual assistant. 3. What structure do you need to put into place?

Structure will be a real foundation for building consistency across the board.