FINDING YOUR PASSION

In my time studying leadership and evaluating effective leaders, I have stumbled across a leadership shortcoming that amazes me. Leaders will manage a team, work with the same individuals every day, yet hardly know anything about their people! These leaders have never prioritized acquainting themselves with the dreams, thoughts, hopes, opinions, and values of those they lead. How powerful it is to know what makes our fellow workers tick. The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense. I have found that leaders overestimate the amount of time and effort needed to get to know someone. In fact, in only one hour with you in private conversation, I could, probably by asking three questions, find the passion of your life: What do you dream about? A person’s dreams are powerful revealers of passion. When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words. What do you cry about? Passion can be uncovered by peering into the hurts deep inside a human soul. The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force. When listening to a story of grief, you hear a voice thick with emotion, you see watery eyes flooded with feeling, and in that moment you glimpse the intense connections between a person’s deepest pain and their greatest passion. What makes you happy? I have fun hearing what makes people tick and seeing the smile that comes when they talk about where they find joy. Enjoyment is an incredible energizer to the human spirit. When a person operates in an area of pleasure, they are apt to be brimming with life and exuding passion. If you can uncover a person’s dreams, hurts, and joys, you’ve discovered the central dimensions of their life. Igniting the fire within www.fraserstirling.co.nz

What makes a leader?

I have been thinking about how I can become better in a leadership capacity.
Like anything we can always improve.
This is a list that I like to use and reflect on and ask how am I measuring against them.

• Personal initiative.
• The adoption of a definite major purpose.
• A motive to inspire continuous action in pursuit of a definite major purpose.
• A Master mind alliance through which you may acquire the power to attain your definite purpose.
• Self-reliance in proportion to the scope and object of your major purpose.
• Self-discipline sufficient to insure mastery of the head and the heart, and to sustain your motives until they have been realized.
• Persistence, based on the will to win.
• A well-developed imagination, controlled and directed.
• The habit of reaching definite and prompt decisions.
• The habit of basing opinions on known facts instead of relying on guesswork.
• The habit of going the extra mile.
• The capacity to generate enthusiasm at will, and to control it.
• A well-developed sense of details.
• The capacity to take criticism without resentment.
• Familiarity with the ten basic motives that inspire all human action.
• The capacity to concentrate your full attention upon one task at a time.
• Willingness to accept full responsibility for the mistakes of subordinates.
• The habit of recognizing the merits and abilities of others.
• A positive mental attitude at all times.
• The habit of assuming full responsibility for any job or task undertaken.
• The capacity for applied faith.
• Patience with subordinates and associates.
• The habit of following through with any task once begun.
• The habit of emphasizing thoroughness instead of speed.
• Dependability, the only requirement of leadership that can be stated with one word – but no less important to success on that account.

Food for thought.

Fraser

Thinking

When are the times that you feel most special? If you look back throughout the week and or past few months I bet the times that you have remembered is when you have been with someone 1-1 and you felt like you were the most amazing person on the planet. Why were you feeling like that? I believe it is simply because you were being listening to on a deeper level.
Level 1 thinking is the general thinking and idle chit chat that is used int he cafe etc. This is fine for many of our conversations. At this level the mind is thinking of how to reply, whats for lunch, what clothing they are wearing. The inward chatter is very loud and can distract us from solely focusing on the other person.
Level 2 is where we are more tuned into the other person. We are noticing their body language, things they refer to without stating it. It is a place where their voice is louder than the chatter in our mind and they are becoming more of the focus.
Level 3
This is were we focus solely on the other person. We are in tune with them. Our total focus inward and outward is on them. They feel like they are the most important person in the world. This week I challenge you to reflect on what depth of thinking you are displaying?
Are you moving through the different levels or are you always at 2-3?

Remember there is a time and place for all 3. Its just a matter of being aware of what we are doing and noticing how we can adapt to the different environments we encounter.

Till next time.

Fraser