It’s fair to say that quite a lot’s been happening over the last month or so! We have had a new King, a new Prime Minister, energy prices, currency issues, interest rates and market turbulence. Add to these more local factors affecting individual sectors and regions, and there’s plenty for leaders to be concerned with even before you factor in the very specific needs and challenges of your own business and the people you lead, work with and live with on a day-to-day basis. Life as a leader can sometimes feel a little overwhelming, especially with big external factors at play that seem outside of our control.
How leaders respond in such times makes a huge difference to themselves, and to those around them and the starting place is always to look at the elements over which we can exert control. Attitude is always on this list!
We hope you enjoy this issue of The Total Leader® newsletter and it helps you to respond to the challenges of the day with resolve, resilience, and a renewed sense of vision for the future that you are working to make a reality.
Attitude is everything
LMI’s founder Paul J. Meyer was well known for his unquenchably-positive attitude. His unswerving conviction was that every situation could be improved with dedicated, consistent action towards achieving worthwhile goals, supported by self-belief and positive-expectancy.
Like so many others, Meyer was inspired by Victor Frankl (Psycotherapist & Holocaust survivor) and often used this famous line in his personal development programmes:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”
Paul J. Meyer embodied this sentiment. His life-long mission was ‘motivating people to their full potential®’ and he pursued this with passion right to the end of life. As Ray King (LMI UK MD, 1997-2019) recounts,
“I met Paul on many occasions and was always impressed by his capacity to listen and show interest in everyone he met. After just a few hours in his company, you were aware how sincere was his ambition to help everyone be more successful in their business and family life.”
LMI continues today in line with Paul’s original principles and at the heart of every LMI programme is the Plan of Action for goals achievement, refined through decades of research and testing, to help people develop the attitudes and behaviours that enable them to become more successful in all aspects of their lives.
Read more about Paul J. Meyer and the incredible impact of his ‘attitude is everything’ philosophy in this 2009 Success Magazine article
Bite-size Total Leader®
Leaders are faced continually with multiple, diverse situations and developing in all four core leadership elements gives a distinct advantage - like an actor who can convey the whole range of emotions, or a golfer who is brilliant from the rough or a bunker as well as off the tee.
In this section you’ll find practical ideas that can help sharpen your own leadership skills.
1. Personal Productivity
What are your most important current goals? In light of these, what are your top 3 priorities? And what activities do you need to spend time on in order to make progress on those priorities? We call these High Payoff Activities. In the urgent, crisis-mode firefighting that you may face each day, it’s these HPAs that often get squeezed out, hence the feeling of never quite having the time to do what’s most important.
The answer? Schedule blocks of time at the beginning of each week to work exclusively on your HPAs. Tell everyone that needs to know. Protect these times with as much rigour as you possible can.
2. Personal Leadership
Behaviours such as the one described above, need to be supported by attitudes. Noone can consistently behave in a manner inconsistent with how they see themself - personal leadership is taking responsibility to set the course to become the person you want to become. If, for example, you want to get better at avoiding distractions and focusing on priority work but you are regularly telling yourself and others that you are a terrible procrastinator, your ‘affirmation’ of being a procrastinator will win the day.
When you identify a limiting belief that you’d like to change, stop, think and choose the different belief that you’d like to replace it with. Then build some infrastructure that will help with changing that belief. Replace the old affirmation (I’m a terrible procrastinator) with a new positive one such as,
I commit focussed, dedicated time every day to work on my most important priorities.
Put it somewhere you can see it and read if regularly. Visualise yourself as a positive and proactive person and, over time, it will help in your efforts to change that belief about yourself and, in turn, your behaviour.
Motivational Leadership
People tend to be at their very best and experience most fulfilment in their work when they have:
Something to believe in
Someone to believe in
Someone to believe in them
Reflect back on the opening of this newsletter and let’s focus on the third item on the list.
Who would most benefit now from knowing that you believe in them and that you’re confident they have the reserves of courage, resilience, creativity and skill required to be successful?
Strategic Leadership
Good strategy always begins with asking the big questions. Why do we exist? What is our purpose and values? What is our vision and mission?
During testing times is when we are most liable to getting blown off course as we focus on the very present issues of the day. Now is always a good time to review the big picture and make any necessary (re)adjustments.
Upcoming events
25th October
Total Leader® Part 1 - Effective Personal Productivity Online Open Programme Kick-Off. Life-changing productivity improvement for you and your team.
“Of any course I have taken in my career, this is the most transformative.”
Full money-back guarantee offered at the half-way point of this programme. It’s a 100% risk-free opportunity!
21st October & 18th November
Foundations of Success Workshop. 2-hour online course. 8.30am - 10.30am
Two complimentary places to every UK organisation. See link for details.
“So helpful. An amazing amount of useful tips delivered in such a short time!”