Welcome back brew nation! “Friday Coffee Guy” coming to you with The Champion’s Brew, a weekly assembly of material I am reading, listening to, watching, or thinking about that is designed to equip and call you to uncommon leadership. I often add my own little spin based on my takeaways and would love your input as well. Any of the points especially impact you? Drop me a note at [email protected], or comment on the blog to keep the conversation going! I believe you will discover that the format is not only useful, but also that you can consume it within the time it takes you to enjoy your daily ‘brew’! Become a member of the Champions Brew Nation by subscribing here!!
Here is your weekly sip of what I have been reading, listening to or watching to equip me to:
Think & Reflect Positively – It is that time of year again. 2022 is rapidly coming to an end (How is that possible?!). The hustle of the end of the year crunch, whether it be at home or work, will make it challenging for leaders to finish strong AND prepare for a Uncommon 2023. As leaders we must have a continuous learning mindset. To do this, we should invest time in assessing, reflecting, adjusting, and creating new habits that will allow us to continuously grow ourselves and others.
Each year, I like to take the time to reflect over the past 12 months and to do that effectively, I use a 5-step process that provides a sound framework. Give yourself two hours in your calendar between now and the new year(my date is December 28!) and go through these 5 steps:
- Review Your “Why”
Do you have a personal mission statement? Regardless of whether you have formalized this ‘Why’ into a personal development plan or you simply know that you want to be ‘better each year’, it makes it easier to complete this process if you know your ‘why’. This also allows you to assess whether the things you are working on are directly aligned with your why. And, as you grow, you may want to make some additions or modifications to your why based on where you are on your journey.
2. Assess performance of your goals
Did you set goals for the year? Have you achieved those goals or are you, at a minimum, making progress toward those goals? As leaders, we are wired to win. Having a scoreboard telling you whether you are ‘winning’ is essential. In the book, The 4 Disciplines of Execution, one of the disciplines is to “Keep a Compelling Scorecard”. The principle says that to drive execution you need a scoreboard that has a few simple graphs that tell us where we are right now.
3. Identify the barriers that got in your way
To complete this simple (not easy!)exercise, take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle vertically and place a ‘+’ on the left side and a ‘-‘on the right side. Take some time to review your calendar, your journal, your scorecard, and list the things in the ‘+’ column that went well and list things in the ‘–‘ column that didn’t go as well as you wanted, or could have gone better. This step is crucial to making the necessary adjustments for success in 2023. Be honest with your self assessment. Here are a couple questions my mentor challenged ME with:
- If you were a member of the Board of Directors for your company, what would you say about your year?
- If Jesus were on your “Board of Directors, what would He say?
4. Course Correct
The fourth step in the annual review process is to course correct. What are the behavioral changes or habits and annual goals do you need to solidify or improve upon in the next year to be successful? The system I like to use for this step is relatively simple, but effective… 3 questions:
- What things do I need to KEEP doing to be more successful next year? This helps me to understand what went well in the previous year that I need to continue.
- What things do I need to START doing to be more successful next year? For example, to improve your performance, I may want to start tracking your goals in a spreadsheet so that I can see when I am winning
- What do I need to STOP doing to be more successful next year? This is an especially important step. In this step, the bad habits are the easiest to identify, but can be the most difficult to stop. I may have to give up good, to get to UNCOMMON.
5. Share
The final step is to share the process with someone who can help to hold you accountable. After completing the first 4 steps, you do not want to tuck the results of it away so that nobody will see it! Rather than that, be bold and do the following:
- Choose Different – For people to make a change, the pain of remaining the same has got to be greater than the pain of the change itself. We have a choice to make. Make 2023 the year you are going to go from underperforming to Uncommon! Get outside your comfort zone and into the learning zone. Too often, our mindset is “I’ll probably fail.”… but, WHAT IF YOU DON’T?
- Tell the World – In this case, the ‘World’ may be your co-worker, spouse, brother, friend or coach. Find someone who will hold you accountable and call you out when you are NOT changing
- Start – Once you commit and you have an accountability partner, you are ‘All in’ – There is no turning back. Now, you have to take the steps necessary to reach your goals.
Read More – I have committed to reviewing one law per week from John Maxwell’s 25th anniversary edition of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. This week’s law can be ‘polarizing’::
Law # 9 – The Law of Magnetism
Who You Are is Who You Attract
I am sure you have heard the phrase, ‘opposites attract’ Well, when it comes to leadership, that is just not the case. Who you attract is not determined by what you want. It’s determined by who you are. This seems to be a relatively simple concept, but those that we work with and those we socialize with, generally, have more similarities than differences. Those areas that we recognize it the most in leadership include (but are not limited to!):
1) Generation – At it’s most basic, most organizations will reflect the characteristics of their key leaders, and that includes age. Continue reading below, though, as that can also be detrimental or a weakness!
2) Attitude – Attitude is one of the most contagious qualities a human possesses. Do you recall the Saturday Night Live skit about “Debbie Downer”? It makes for a good comedy skit, but as leaders, we rarely want to invest time with people who have a poor attitude. They are like energy vampires – they suck the energy right out of the room. Whereas people with positive attitudes tend to inject energy into those around them.
3) Background – Want to understand who you attract with regards to your background, go take a look at your Facebook friends list, which tends to be full of names of people who have similar backgrounds!
4) Values – Leaders are attracted to people whose values are similar to theirs. People are attracted to organizations that have similar values. This law is in effect whether the shared values are positive OR negative.
5) Energy – This is easy to understand. When you pair a high energy person with a low energy person, they can drive one another crazy.
6) Giftedness – People are most likely to respect and follow someone who possesses their kind of talent. For example, football players want to follow coaches who can win championships!
HOWEVER, this law can be a double-edged sword! If you are a leader and you find that the people are around you are ‘just like you’, you need to also take the step in leadership to becoming more effective my recruiting people who are different from you. Hire people who have strengths where you are weak. This can be especially important when leading multiple generations.
Who you are is who you attract. If you want to attract better people, become the kind of person you would want to follow!!
Quote – “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us either to fortune or failure. — Jim Rohn”
What You Need to Do:
Call to Action: Stop what you are doing right now. Put the coffee cup down and open your calendar. Block off two hours in the next 10 days to do the review process that I outline above. Let me know how it goes. I believe it has the power to jump start your 2023. I know. I have seen it.
Second, I encourage each of you to take some time between now and the end of the year to rest, recharge, and connect with those closest to you. From my family to yours, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday season!
I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of Champions Brew. If you did, I would appreciate it if you would share it with someone who might enjoy it as well and ask them to subscribe! I will make sure they automatically get this email every week.
Until next time, Choose… Tell… Start… In doing so, I believe you will make 2023 the best chapter in your story… The Greatest Story Ever Told!
P.S. – Are you a podcast fan? Maybe the Uncommon Leader podcast is for you. Are you interested in being a guest on the Uncommon Leader Podcast? Do you have a story to tell? Email me [email protected] and let’s have a chat and set something up!!
