The Higher You Want to Climb

The higher you want to climb, the more you need leadership.

The greater the impact you want to make, the greater your influence needs to be.

Servant leaders look at leadership as an act of service. They train, coach and develop or mentor their people. They empower their people and welcome feedback as a source of useful information on how they can provide a better service. They recognize others for their achievements, not themselves.

Leadership may take place when things go right; it’s critical when things go wrong. When things go wrong, it’s important to take a look at what occurred and recognize what went wrong. Leaders help shape their team to work together to “change the process, change the result”. So, it’s important to have key performance indicators (KPIs) in place as a baseline guide to leveraging your overall success.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are metrics that make your departments and business successful. Typically, leaders in organizations track the current or weekly results of KPIs related to their short and long term goals. Business unit leaders will often refer to this data to create action plans, overcome roadblocks, come up with solutions or identify areas where support is needed. Incorporating KPIs within a CQI focused culture is a sure way to orchestrate your goals and practices together and operate like a fine tuned machine.

CQI environments lead by servant leaders and KPI systems understand they need to balance their priorities and concentration to reach the right level of focus. Priorities without concentration = Knowing what to do but not getting it done. Concentration without priorities = focus without progress. Priorities + Concentration = Focus. Many leaders use a focus formula to align their time management properly to this concept. Strong leaders will focus 70% on strengths; focus 25% on change; focus 5% on weaknesses and opportunities.

Take a look at your daily agenda to determine if you are choosing to spend enough time leading.

Leadership is about articulating visions, embodying values and creating the environment in which all things can be accomplished.

Leaders cast the mission, vision and values of a company throughout its people. They know how to effectively influence people and act as change agents that initiate growth. Leaders are innovators and creators. They don’t accept mediocrity and they are always pushing the status quo.

Commitment to leadership separates the “doers” from the “dreamers”. What does it look like to be committed to a project, a person, or an idea? When is your commitment tested? How do you maintain commitment when something takes longer than expected or something is more difficult than anticipated?

To the marathoner, it’s running another ten miles when your strength is gone. To the soldier, it’s going over the hill, not knowing what’s waiting on the other side. To the leader, it’s all that and more because everyone you lead is depending on you.

The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda: How do you articulate your vision? What does it mean to embody your values? How do you create an environment in which things can be accomplished?

What am I doing to invest in myself? What am I doing to invest in other people? Cast your vision daily... Develop yourself personally and professionally.

As leaders, how do we cast our vision daily? We must have unfiltered evaluation. It’s a form of respect and necessary if you want to succeed. Employees need to be able to communicate what’s really happening in their world. Then, we can serve the needs of employees, helping them to accomplish our vision to exceed customer expectations in everything we do.

Today matters! We over exaggerate yesterday. We over estimate tomorrow. And we under estimate today. Remember, the secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.

Assume nothing.

Train and coach everything.

Above all, inspect what you expect.