THINKING

Jan

2024

Thinking – A Leaders Weapon

As leaders, we often find ourselves caught up in the hustle and bustle of work. From meetings and calls to emails and deadlines, the noise and constant activity can be overwhelming at times. But what if I told you that the key to success may lie in the power of silence and thinking time?

At first, the idea of silence and thinking time may seem counterintuitive to the go-getter mentality we’ve been conditioned to embrace. If you are like me, you like to keep going. There is always another goal to accomplish, a task to do, and life to impact. Maybe we can go fast by slowing down. Let’s look at a few benefits of slowing down to think.

Clarity

One of the most important benefits of silence and thinking time is the opportunity for clarity. In the midst of our busy schedules, it’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae of day-to-day tasks, losing sight of the bigger picture. Taking time to quiet our minds and reflect allows us to gain a fresh perspective and see our work from a new angle. This helps us make more informed decisions and set strategic goals for the future.

Creativity

Silence and thinking time also give us the space to tap into our creativity. When we’re constantly on the go, it challenges our ability to access our creative potential. By allowing ourselves the time to be alone with our thoughts, we create an environment that is conducive to innovative thinking and problem-solving. Whether it’s brainstorming new ideas or finding solutions to existing challenges, the power of silence can be a game-changer for our businesses.

Well-being

Silence and thinking time are essential for our mental and emotional well-being. The constant noise and busyness of a leader’s life can take a toll on our mental health, leading to stress, anxiety, and burnout. Taking time for silence and reflection allows us to recharge our batteries, reduce stress, and foster a sense of inner peace. This not only benefits us personally but also has a positive impact on our leadership abilities and decision-making.

So, how can we incorporate more silence and thinking time into our daily routine? It’s all about making intentional choices to prioritize these moments. This might involve scheduling regular breaks throughout the day to step away from our work and simply breathe, or setting aside designated periods of time for quiet contemplation.

Ultimately, as leaders, it’s important to recognize that silence and thinking time are not a luxury but a necessity. By embracing these moments of stillness, we can find greater clarity, creativity, and emotional well-being, ultimately leading to more success in our businesses. What will you do in the next week to create space for silence? Need a tool to guide your thinking specifically on your business in these silent moments? Check out https://bit.ly/6WaysLead to get a free e-book on Six Ways to Think Into Your Leadership. Lead well.

Mar

2021

Leadership Thinking

Lately I have been listening to an outstanding program leadership expert John Maxwell created on How Successful People Think. I have read the book once, but the first time I read something I only mildly retain it. While I listen to John teach and his CEO Mark Cole challenge me with application ideas, it has been even more valuable than reading the book.

As I’ve been working through this, a few areas came to mind that are important for leaders to focus their thinking. These are not the only areas. John mentions eleven areas, but here are three you may want to consider reflecting on in your leadership either at work or home.

Hopeful Thinking

“Hope is about goals, willpower, and pathways. A person with high hope has goals, the motivation to pursue them, and the determination to overcome obstacles and find pathways to achieve them.”

Casey Gwinn Hope Rising

Reading this quote recently shifted my thinking on hope. This is something deeper and more action oriented than just thinking positively. As leaders we must see the positive in every situation, but what those we lead really need is hope.

These three ideas: goals, motivation, and drive are present in what Jim Collins called a Level Five leader in his book Good to Great. I think of the inspiring football coach whose team is down by a touchdown with a minute left and he calls his team to the sideline. He is positive, has a path to pursue, and the determination to overcome the obstacles in front of him. He inspires his team with the plan and the hope it will be accomplished.

As leaders at both work and home we must have hope and be dealers in hope to those we lead.

Purposeful Thinking

To inspire hope we must have it personally. How do we get hope? Purposeful thinking.

John calls this “big-picture thinking” in How Successful People Think. I will refrain from diving into the many great principles he shares. What I will suggest is that as purposeful leaders we need to know why it matters.

Many people have two questions constantly on their mind.

The selfish question: “what’s in it for me?”

The purpose question: “why?”

As leaders who want to give hope, we must answer both of these questions. We have been asking these two questions since we were young. One more directly than the other. Answering “why” helps people understand the reason behind what they are doing. The second question can be the more difficult question to answer.

I worked with athletes for years and could tell them why they needed to lift weights and how it would benefit them, but the second question was more difficult. I needed to understand what was important to them and help them see how the “why” tuned into the “wiifm” question. If they could see how getting stronger and faster would help them get more playing time along with helping the team, then they have hope in suffering through the workouts. Maybe they even eventually enjoyed the experience.

Strategic Thinking

John provides a great process of how to think strategically in the How Successful People Think program so I will not cover that here. Allow me a moment to suggest why this is so important.

In his classic book Think and Grow Rich Napolean Hill shares multiple secrets on becoming “rich.” One is having an organized plan. Depending on the stage of your leadership, your organization, or size of your team this plan may vary in complexity. A strategic plan does not have to be fifty pages thick. Quite honestly that may be too confusing to implement and remove hope from your team.

You have the purpose which reinforces hope so how do you move forward? That is the one question strategic thinking answers. As the leader you are strategically thinking when answering the question “how can we . . .?”

Remember the football coach? If he gives the team hope but forgets to tell them the next play, then everything is pointless. Strategy is informed by your goals and purpose and at first may be the next step such as make fifty sales calls over the next number of days.

The strategy will grow in complexity but remember not to get attached to the plan. As we all have learned in the past twelve months, the plan WILL have to be adjusted so take the next best step to keep hope alive and move toward the purpose.

Which of these areas of thinking do you need to work on? Comment below and let me know. If you want to take a deep dive into the same program I have been working through go here and you can invest in it yourself. If you want a thinking partner to help expand your leadership thinking, contact me for a thirty-minute thinking partner session at no cost to you. Lead Well.

Sep

2020

Advanced Attraction?

Many years ago I was a strength and conditioning coach. One young man I coached was not particularly athletic, but he knew how to work hard. This young man did something unique going into and during his Senior year. He always signed his name on his schoolwork and wrote “state champion” after it.

What was he doing? Since then I’ve realized he was applying the Law of Attraction. Stay with me a moment. Answer the following questions.

Have you ever wanted something really bad and eventually you received it in some form?

Have you ever worried about something so much and it came to be . . . such as getting sick?

Have you ever had a vision for something in your life and kept thinking about how to make it occur until eventually it did occur?

If you answered yes to any of these then you were unconsciously putting this law into action. Another way to think of this is what we focus on expands. For an illustration of this idea go here.

What does all of this have to do with leadership? The young man I mentioned ended up becoming the first state champion I had the opportunity to work with. He held the vision of what he wanted in his mind and daily reinforced it. As leaders I see two big takeaways from this principle to help us lead ourselves and others more effectively.

Faith

This young man would not have considered writing that on his paper without the faith to believe it would occur. Faith in this situation is the belief we can accomplish something without evidence proving it will occur. Leaders understand this reality. Whatever you are pursuing started first with an idea. After that idea flashed into your mind you had a choice to either believe it and act on it or discard it.

You obviously did not discard the idea, but in faith held the belief and continued to think into how to make this a reality. Over time this law of attraction has brought to you the resources, people, ideas and what you have needed to make it happen. Now I am not suggesting positive thinking alone will help you accomplish your vision because hard work, strategy, skills and things out of our control all play a part as well.

You can skip this brief thought, but as a person of faith I believe these ideas and resources ultimately come from God. Whether that statement resonates with you or not, faith is required to turn an idea into reality.

How we think

As leaders we may get stuck thinking into the how so much we get analysis paralysis. This young man knew he had to train hard and more often than others and he did, but his thinking was the tipping point. Bringing our vision into reality starts in our mind. David Schwartz in his book The Magic of Thinking Big says:

“Big thinkers are specialists in creating positive, forward-looking, optimistic pictures in their own minds and in the minds of others.”

This big thinking brings the ideas into every person’s mind to make them into reality. Surround yourself with other big thinkers who are willing to help you think into how to turn the idea into reality.

Be Careful

This idea can lead us down both a positive or negative path. As we keep first things first in our lives and seek to add value to others over selfish gain the outcome of our focused intentional thinking will be positive. May I challenge you to ask others to question your ideas enough to help you decide if this is one that will add value to others. If the answer is yes, keep focusing and growing that idea to help others.

As a leader where is your focus going? Are you focusing more on problems or solutions? Need someone to help you or your thinking? Contact me for a no-cost thinking partner session. Lead Well!

Apr

2020

Three Ways to Handle Adversity

Life is not selective. I was talking to some friends and the impact of the present global crisis varies.

Some are impacted economically . . . some are minimally impacted.

Some have family they are grateful to be with . . . and are driving them crazy.

Some people are alone and isolated in their homes fighting to stay mentally healthy.

Some are angry . . . some are scared. . . . some are content.

All have life going on.

Whether in crisis or not adversity comes through unforeseen circumstances that may impact us financially, emotionally, socially, or at a deeper level.

About a month ago I heard leadership expert John Maxwell highlight principles on dealing with adversity.¹ From my notes these are a few ideas which I hope encourage and/or challenge you today.

Perspective

John pointed out life is full of both good and bad, but we can choose our attitude. Let me illustrate this from a different perspective. Tim Grover was the personal strength coach for elite basketball players like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. In his book Relentless ²(NOTE: if you do read it be warned the language, etc. can be strong) he describes three types of athletes: Coolers, Closers, and Cleaners.

Another way to describe these people are good, great, and unstoppable. Kobe and Michael were the last, but why? Because they had an attitude that “it” was going to get done. Nothing was going to stop them from achieving their goals. Grover had to work harder to prevent them from overtraining than to get them to train at their highest level. These two athletes continually chose an unstoppable attitude and their results demonstrate the effect.

Thinking

You may be believe perspective and thinking are the same . . . kind of, but stick with me. John highlighted in this talk that what we focus on expands. During this time you may have heard the idea “feed your faith, starve your fears.” Where our thinking goes so goes our results.

Maybe right now money is a concern either personally or from a cashflow standpoint for your organization. If we focus our thinking on worrying “will the money come?” We are feeding worry and will eventually get ourselves stuck.

On the other hand, if we add one word: “how will the money come?” or even better change the question entirely to “what need can we meet?” We have now shifting from feeding fear and worry to feeding faith and hope. This is not easy but pay attention to which you are feeding and shift to feeding the one which will move you forward.

Action

I have heard it said that emotion is simply energy in motion. We’ve all heard and even felt the “I don’t feel like it” excuse. Have you ever tried something new and worried excessively at first only to realize it wasn’t that bad after all?

Think about it, when we learned to ride a bike, we didn’t think and have the best attitude to make it reality . . . we got on the bike. We maintained the proper perspective and thinking whenever we fell, got back on and eventually one day could ride with no hands. None of that happens unless we get in motion.

Friend, I am not sure what you are going through beyond the common struggle we all are having right now but know this. You have what it takes to lead your team, organization, family, and yourself through this. What is an adjustment you need to make today in one of these three areas? If you want me to come alongside you and your team to help process leading through adversity, contact me. Lead well!

Leading Through Adversity talk by John C. Maxwell https://youtu.be/UZp7nCLICyc
Grover, Tim S. Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable. Scribner, 2013.

Nov

2018

Fighting the Voice of Self-Doubt

Confession here. . . I talk to myself.

If you are honest, you know you do too. But the problems come based on the voice I listen to.

No, I am not insane, but I do fight the voice of self-doubt. . . maybe you do too or you have figured out how to neutralize it . . . or you are busy and don’t hear it or . . .

What do we do about this voice? It’s amazing isn’t it? I spend some of my time doing youth leadership training especially during The John Maxwell Team Global Youth Initiative and I talk to youth about this idea. We discuss how self-esteem impacts our leadership, but here I am many years along and it still can be a battle.

About a year ago I was at the International Maxwell Certification and listening to Seth Godin who mentioned the author Steven Pressfield so I went on Amazon, of course, and purchased one of his books.

As leaders we have to create in some form or fashion, but the voice of self-judgement creeps in and this is what Pressfield says:

“Suspending self-judgment doesn’t just mean blowing off the ‘You suck’ voice in our heads. It also means liberating ourselves from conventional expectations – from what we think our work ‘ought’ to be or ‘should’ look like.”

He continues on with the encouragement to follow your unconventional crazy heart. What does all this have to do with self-doubt? . . . . everything.

A few ideas:

Suspend the need to know how. When a crazy creative idea comes, think on it and process it with your team. Many times the need to know how gets in my way when it comes to taking risks. Sometimes we evaluate the risk/reward equation enough to make sure we aren’t being too foolish and then jump in and figure it out as we go. . . . just like when we learned how to walk. We take a few steps, stumble, fall, learn, get back up and try again.
Kill the Gremlin. One of my mentors calls this voice of self-doubt a “gremlin”. If you don’t know what a gremlin is then google it . . . and I’m not talking about the car. Once you kill the thoughts the gremlin feeds you then replace those thoughts with truth. What are you good at? What ways do you lead well? Is a “no” a rejection of you as a person or simply a “no”?
Get feedback from the right sources. When we are starting a creative new venture we want to be sure the voices we are listening to are honest, but also encouraging. These voices should not amplify the “should” and “ought” voices Pressfield talks about. These voices should be both honest and visionary to spur on your creative growth.

Leading is hard. The hardest one to lead is me. What helps you suspend the voice of judgement and doubt as you lead? Share with me. Stay connected and get my free e-book by signing up to receive updates, just click the button on the menu. Lead well today at work and home.