Great Leaders Lead Themselves Well
When we focus on our strengths and our blindspots and hone our key human skills (communication, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, negotiation, etc.), we become more impactful.
Read on to reflect alongside Melissa about how you can best set yourself up for success as a leader.
Do You Have a Personal Board of Advisors?
One of the topics we're covering on Monday in my FIRE Circle program session is the idea of having a personal board of advisors or directors to help guide you in managing your life, personally and professionally. Do you have a group of trusted advisors that you look to when you're analyzing what's next in your career or navigating a challenging set of circumstances? I do, and it's really helpful to be able to get perspectives from people that you trust but that are looking at the situation with a different lens.
Permission to Reset
When I reviewed my blog post from last year at this time, I had just finished my last long race of the year, and my physical therapist was coaching me that it was time to take a break from training. His point to me…you have to let your body rest. It needs time to recover from the stress you put on it. I admit…it was nice for someone to give me permission to not think about what kind of workout to do for a few days.
Do I Belong?
Do you ever walk into a meeting or an event and wonder if you belong there? There's a feeling you get when you walk in and don't know people but you feel a vibe that people are interested in getting to know you. There's also the vibe where you feel like you're interrupting when you try to introduce yourself.
Seven more weeks
Though the world doesn’t magically change when we end one year and move to the next, it’s good to make time to reflect on how far you’ve come and what you have left that you want to accomplish.
Let’s dive in with a set of questions to guide your reflection.
Do you know what you're looking for?
When I talk to people about what's not working for them - in their life, their career, their business, they often are clear about what they think the problem is. They want more, better, different, and they're clear on what that might look like. Assuming we end up working together, we usually find that there's also another underlying challenge they want and need to work through. It's part of the full exploration of how we best lead ourselves to where we want to go and who we want to be.
What Aren’t You Noticing?
One day the trees were green, and the next time I looked, the leaves were yellow, orange and red. One day, it was light out when I ran in the morning and then all of a sudden we needed lights to run safely. I know there were incremental changes that I wasn't paying attention to, but everything seemed to happen overnight.
This happens in life too. We're so busy doing life that we miss the small changes that are happening around us at home and work. We look up one day and…
Do your boundaries look like an open gate?
I've recently been offering fireside chats focused on setting priorities and managing to boundaries as a way to achieve your goals. In this discussion, I ask people to choose between two visuals on how they manage their boundaries - an open gate or a fence with spikes on the top. More often than not, their answer is that they don't manage their boundaries so it looks a lot like the open gate.
Do you know when it's time to quit?
For my Friday social media post, I talked about attending a professional event where Annie Duke was sharing many of the insights from her most recent book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. It was interesting to read the comments and talk to yesterday's participants who were in the midst of deciding or who had made decisions to make a change.
Slowing Down to Go Fast
I mentioned last week that I had the opportunity to participate in a great conference in New York City. I heard insightful speakers and met many new interesting people. It was so energizing to shift my energy into a few days of in-person time.
The downside was that last weekend I tested positive for Covid (for the first time). Thankfully, I've had a light set of symptoms that have not prevented me from doing virtual meetings, but I have had to lighten the expectations I had for myself this week since I've been dealing with a headache off and on and being more tired than normal.
Be the Best You
As a thank you for a fireside chat I did earlier this year, I was gifted a wonderful mug with an inspiring statement on it, "Melissa, No one is you and that is your superpower." Guess which mug is my favorite right now! I write a variation of this statement in my journal each day to remind myself that I just need to be the best me.