My passion is to help women become Godly, effective, servant-leaders - whether in a full time ministry situation, as a volunteer serving in ministry or in a leadership role in the workplace.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

My Biggest Leadership Challenge

I love all things leadership. Whether it's practical how-to's or high-minded theories or teaching it or doing it. For profit or non-profit, if it has to do with leadership I'm interested. I love recruiting and staffing, developing talent, building teams, crafting strategies, attacking alignment issues, vision casting, even resolving conflicts - but I've met my match when it comes to one particular area of leadership.
You see when it comes to keeping others energized, engaged and effective; I'm your girl. But when it comes to keeping myself energized, engaged and effective, I stink.
I can't seem to manage my time or my priorities right now. I'm slow to get going in the morning. Then I jump from one project to another for about 3 hours. Then I realize the day is slipping away and I begin to get semi-productive on one or two things. By sundown I'm discouraged because I didn't move more balls forward.
It will help (I hope) when I have clarity on which direction I'm headed in my career/job. But I'm disappointed in myself that I can't seem to get more done when I have so much time on my hands. I am so much more productive when I have very little time on my hands!
I've decided I'm going to apply my leadership principles to myself.
  • Cast a vision for what my future could be.
  • Continue to communicate that vision to myself daily in a variety of ways.
  • Set 3-5 SMART goals for the day, the week, the month.
  • Make a list of actionable steps for each of those goals.
  • Make a list of resources I will need to achieve those goals.
  • Coach myself to take the steps necessary to achieve them.
  • Connect with people who can help me when necessary.
  • Hold myself accountable to mark progress toward my goals.
  • Reward myself for achieving each goal.
  • Reassess each goal that is not achieved on time and come up with a new realistic plan for reaching it.
  • Etc.

It doesn't look so hard when I write it out. I think the problem is that I'm a poor follower of my own leadership!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Loved that last line! Does a person need to follow their own leadership before others will follow?

lori said...

Anonymous,
I'm not sure what you're asking. The question could be several things. Why don't you tell me what you think and then I can understand what you mean.
Lori