Awesome Leadership Skills Training

Defining The 3 Core Concepts of Your Leadership Agenda
By: Bill Thomas

Each one of us has a finite amount of time to make our contributions of significance. We can use our time to ‘go-through-the-motions’, to ‘sit-and-wait’ for time to pass us by or for something good to happen or we can take time ‘by-the-proverbial-horns’ and make it pay back our investments in time with profitable dividends.

So what are the essential imperatives every leadership agenda has to address? Should your leadership agenda enable you to accurately evaluate the potential of proposed ideas, new opportunities and the future needs of your people (hey, remember this question from the “How Effective Is Your Leadership” post)? How will the core concepts of your agenda energize your usage of time?

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
- Dr. Stephen Covey

Knock-Knock, Who’s There?
Imagine that Time lives in a house, as he hears a knock-knock on his door, he shouts by asking “Who’s there?” and comes the response, “it’s me, pry”, so Time asks, “Pry who?“, and the guy at the door, says, “Priority 2, that’s who”

OK, I confess that it wasn’t a great joke but I think you see the point, it’s as Dr. Covey says, we have to fit our priorities into our schedules, and not the other way around. The finite nature, supply and substance of time compels us to respect the limitations it puts on us. If we ever hope to make our significant contributions we must first determine what we want our endeavors to produce.

Since we want to be producers of significance, we need to embrace goals and achieve outcomes which reflect our highest ideals, our loftiest principles or our grandest designs. Striving for sustainability, aiming at the audacious, tilting towards the tremendous are a few of the aspirations that are worthy of our best efforts.

How you use your time, how much and which contributions you need to make, knowing those areas where your strengths can be most productive, putting first things first and learning how to increase your effectiveness are just a few of the priorities every knowledge worker has to manage, regardless of your duties or responsibilities.

Therefore, your agenda must help you easily, elegantly and religiously identify, organize and satisfy your strategic priorities, everyday, in every eventuality, and using every available resource.

Striving for Sustainability
“You’ve got to stick at a thing, a particular thing, until you succeed. I feel that’s the only way to succeed – by concentrating on something in particular. Once you know what you’ve got to do you will succeed, you will succeed.” – Betty Cuthbert, Olympic and World Champion Athlete

Any agenda which fails to commit your time, your efforts and your imagination to realizing a course of sustainable success is useless. Put another way, your agenda for taking leadership actions must concentrate and focus your attention, your intentions and your competencies on those areas where the potential for strategic, innovative or entrepreneurial results are the greatest.

Aim At The Audacious
“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”
- Sun Tzu , philosopher

Jim Collins popularized the notion of setting “big, hairy audacious goals (BHAGs)”. While his idea seems a bit too male in its implications, you must admit that the more aggressive your goal-setting, the more success you are likely to attain than others would with less flamboyant goals.

An audacious goal is an objective which is “extremely bold or daring, extremely original, brazen, lively, unrestrained or uninhibited (Dictionary.Com)”

If your agenda is always looking, aiming and pushing at those boundaries where the opportunities for realizing audacious, bold, daring and completely unrestrained gains in productivity, resourcefulness and growth are greatest, then you’ll see how those opportunities keep multiplying beyond measure as you keep seizing them.

Tilt Towards The Tremendous
“Leadership and learning are indispensable (and absolutely necessary) to each other.”
- John F. Kennedy, USA President, Senator, Author

Leaders, knowledge workers and customer service specialists must be consistent, uncompromising and curious learners. Of course, you have to learn, update and upgrade the skills, expertise and discipline you need for your work. You also need to discover ways, methods and forms for effectively transmitting your knowledge, ideas and directions to others.

Your daily agenda can use the tremendous catalytic (the change-inducing, progress-accelerating) properties of training, coaching, consulting and facilitating to provide thought, innovative and entrepreneurial leadership to your colleagues, partners and stakeholders.

Can you think of other catalytic techniques, processes and strategies to further the success of your agenda?

Define – Describe – Design
“Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department.”
- Tom Peters

We have talked all around the core concepts of your daily agenda, now what you need to do is define, describe and design your own version. You’ll need a compelling vision, some strategic and tactical goals, and a few key priorities which address the issues discussed in this article.

Be sure to shape an agenda that strives, aims and tilts you up to the highest possible plateaus of success everyday and you’ll certainly surpass your wildest expectations.

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