610-793-6609 michael@achievable.com

The Greatest Challenge is Going from Doer to Leader

Feb 2, 2020 | Business Owners, CEOs, Ethical Leadership, Leadership, Leadership Development

By Michael Gidlewski

The greatest challenge is going from doer to leader.

The greatest challenge I see every day in the marketplace is individuals being promoted to a management or leadership position because of their great ability to get the job done. They are the best doer (i.e., technician, salesperson, or worker bee).

They are great at execution, and we promote them to management. If they are lucky, they get the half-day workshop on everything you need to know about managing, motivating, and helping your people unlock their potential for greatness. However, most of these folks come to the table with MBAs – Management by Accident.

They have very little knowledge or training of the traits to become successful in the job. Most of the training is on-the-job training with little feedback. Thus, they are doomed to eventually fail or burn out.

Excellent managers and leaders are made, not born. We need to develop our people to maximize their talents and leverage their strengths. By focusing on your strengths, you can apply your time, effort, and energy to the areas that are most productive in your leadership role. The greatest power on Earth is the ability to discover an idea or concept that inspires people to reach their greatest potential.

Let’s look at results for a moment.

Why do you get the RESULTS that you’re getting today? Isn’t it because of your behavior or the way you ACT? Don’t good ACTIONS produce good RESULTS, while bad ACTIONS yield bad RESULTS?

Another word for action is habits. If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always gotten, right?

Wrong. The world we live in is moving at warp speed. Everything is changing fast, so if you don’t change and adjust, you’ll be left behind.

If you want to improve the RESULTS you are receiving from life, then you must look carefully at your ACTIONS. The most powerful way to shape your life is to take action.

What then determines your ACTIONS? Why do managers and leaders act as they do? We take action based on the way we think, right? How a person acts is the outcome of what that individual thinks and feels.

Psychologists tell us that THOUGHT, either conscious or subconscious, always precedes ACTIONS. If your actions are wrong, it can be traced back to how you are thinking. Most mistakes based in ACTION begin first as mistakes based in THINKING. How you think is how you do. Your thoughts will shape the events in your lives for years to come.

On Feb. 19, Peter Demarest and I are teaming up to deliver the Self-Leadership Breakthrough Workshop for business owners and executives who want to make 2020 a breakthrough year. The workshop will help you unlock the greatness that is inside of you, waiting to be set free. It’s your thinking that stands between you and the leader you were meant to be. Using the science of Axiology and the VQ Assessment, we will help you become the best leader possible to move from the doer to the leader.

Click here to register.

Effective Leaders Manage Themselves Before Managing Others

Jan 22, 2020 | Business Owners, CEOs, Ethical Leadership, Leadership, Leadership Development

Effective leaders manage themselves before managing others.

Research indicates that the No. 1 reason people leave organizations is because their direct boss is incompetent. In many cases, managers in their organization have promoted people to management levels with MBA (Management by Accident).

You are the leader of your own life. Every day, you are choosing to lead or choosing to follow. Personal leadership and personal mastery are a continuous journey toward personal excellence whereby you deliberately embark to become the best version of yourself possible. To live the life of your dreams, you need to be intentional and deliberate about your own journey. Your ability to grow as a leader is based on your ability to grow as a person. Your development program should be based on sustaining daily habits that move you in the direction of your goals.

Personal leadership is the ability to lead yourself. Far too many people just let life happen to them and then suffer the consequences. They move through life on auto pilot and blame personal and business failures on circumstances. Personal leaders decide what life they want, and then make it happen through planning and a basis for action. Personal leadership mastery means continuous growth and development in all six areas of the wheel of life. It means you are living with purpose and you are goal-oriented. It is very difficult to influence others if you have difficulty leading your own self. If you want to make things happen in your company, you need to master personal leadership.

In The Leadership Challenge, James Kouzes and Barry Posner wrote: “Leadership is an art – a performing art – and the instrument is the self. The mastery of the art of leadership comes with the mastery of the self. Ultimately, leadership development is a process of self-development. The quest for leadership is first an inner quest to discover who you are. Through self-development comes the confidence needed to lead. Self-confidence is really awareness of and faith in your own powers. These powers become clear and strong only as you work to identify and develop them.”

All significant change begins with telling yourself the truth about you!

The bottom line is this: If you want to lead a successful business that achieves its goals, you must first be able to achieve your own personal goals. You set the example for your people. If you want your employees to grow and aim for continuous improvement, then you must do it first. Remember: Leadership is a modeled behavior. You must walk the walk, starting with yourself. If you want your business to grow, if you want to increase revenues and bring in new clients, then you must grow with these changes. It is not always easy to reflect on where we are compared to where we want to be.

Growth can often be painful. As leaders, it can also be easy to make excuses why we do not have the time for personal growth and development but staying stagnant will destroy you and your business. If you take the time to look at yourself regularly and apply effort to personal development, perhaps through a formal program or one-on-one with a coach like me, I promise you will see tremendous results in your personal life and in your business.

On Feb. 19, Peter Demarest and I are teaming up to deliver the Self-Leadership Breakthrough Workshop for business owners and executives who want to make 2020 a breakthrough year. Click here to register.

You Are Better Than You Think

Jan 14, 2020 | CEOs, Happiness, Leadership, Leadership Development, Success

Guest Writer, Peter Demarest, Axiogenics, LLC

As humans, we have a strong need to control things, including other people. We tend to believe that if we’re not in control of things, then we are vulnerable to being manipulated, used, hurt, or dominated and won’t succeed in getting what we want. The brain quickly habituates thought patterns and strategies associated with self-protection, well-being, and preserving or advancing our social status. Ironically, our need to be in control of things ends up taking control of us in the form of habits.

Our subconscious habits of mind dominate 85 to 95 percent of all our decisions, emotions, actions, reactions, and interactions. Many of these habits are also rooted in self-centric cognitive biases that we have subconsciously developed over time.

These cognitive biases are also the ways of thinking that tend to cause us the most trouble in our life, ranging from emotional stresses to underperformance and from relationship problems to health issues.

How much of your life (your daily choices, actions, and emotions) do you believe are either controlled by or greatly influenced by your subconscious, self-centric, need-to-control, cognitively biased habits of mind?

Researchers estimate it to be between 85 and 95 percent. Think about that a moment. On average, we are “in control” of just five to 15 percent of our thoughts, actions, and emotions. The rest of the time, we give up control of the ONE THING we can actually control – our choices – to our bias-driven, self-centric habits of mind.

Are you getting the picture?

Our need to control creates self-centric cognitive biases
Our biases become our subconscious mental habits
Our habits end up controlling us

The truth is:

You cannot control what other people think or do
You cannot control how other people think or feel about you
You cannot control the future

The only thing you can control is your conscious choices.

But you can influence all of the above by adopting a different mindset that will enable you to make more good choices.

To reclaim the full power and freedom of choice, rather than seeking control of things outside of you (which you can’t control anyway), claim control of your own thoughts. Become a self-leader; a thought-leader of your own mind.

How? Rather than focusing on maintaining control, focus on creating value. We know from neuroscience that we’re actually at our best when we are engaged in doing good things that create greater value and not just for ourselves.

The first and simplest step in adopting a “valuegenic” mindset is to make a practice of asking ourselves a question called, The Central Question of Life, Love, and Leadership:

What choice can I make and action can I take, in this moment, to create the greatest net value?

This not a rhetorical question. Let your mind do the work to answer the question. It is far more capable of answering it than you might imagine. It’s a question to ask yourself whenever you are in any state of stress, overwhelm, upset, or confusion, indecision, or procrastination – or, I dare say, when you “feel out of control.”

Great leadership begins with self-leadership. Adopting a “valuegenic” mindset with The Central Question is the first step in regain control of your own mind and becoming a master of Self-Leadership.

If you take this practice to heart, you’ll be less controlled by the need to control and, instead, be guided by the innate wisdom you already have. Your stress levels will decrease, and your performance and happiness will increase. You’ll gain a new perspective on your life and work and will be able to make meaningful and lasting changes you likely struggled to make for a long time.

How to Develop Personal Leadership Mastery

Aug 6, 2019 | Goal Setting, Happiness, Leadership, Leadership Development, Motivation, Productivity, Strategic Planning, Success

First, you need to define what “Best Year Ever” means to you; you have to know what you want in order to achieve it.

 

Step 1.  Know what you really want in life and in business. Know what goals and outcomes you would like to achieve by the end of 2020 and know exactly what you don’t want. Create a list of personal goals and business goals for the next 12 months. Start with what  you really want to accomplish for yourself by focusing on “what really matters most in your life” so that you can say yes to that list and no to everything that is going to try to derail you from you goals program.  Create goals for personal health and well-being. Spend more time on your most important relationships. Stay connected with your kids as they grow up and/or pursue their college or post-college adventures? Pursue that special hobby or interest you have been putting off. Block more vacation time in your planner right now? This is the most important time you will spend if you want next year to be your best ever. Take time out of your busy schedule before January rolls in to recharge, relax, and re-energize with powerful and meaningful goals for next year.  Get the pen to the paper right now and start mapping our your future. 

 

Step 2. After you create your goals schedule an appointment with yourself every week to work on the action steps to move your goals forward.  Our lives are built on the foundation of these six major areas: Family & Home, Financial & Career, Mental & Educational, Physical & Health, Social & Cultural, and Spiritual & Ethical.  These areas are the foundation, the pillars that you will build a totally integrated life on. So make sure you are spending at least  1 hour a week in your plan of action. Your personal plan of action is the master plan for the rest of your life. Your planner should contain a master list of priority business and personal goals.  Success in life is the result of progressive realization of your predetermined goals. The world is infested with distractions and noise designed to take us off our goals program and put us on someone else’s goals program which is why we have to continue to work in our personal plan of action weekly and continue to crystallize our thinking about what really matters most in our life. 

 

Step 3. Develop a relentless focus on what really matters most, what is most important and significant in your personal and professional life by setting up ironclad boundaries so you are not interrupted with the tyranny of the urgent which usually isn’t really important. Focus on what you want and not on what you don’t want. Everything that isn’t important figure out a way to simplify, eliminate, delegate or outsource the activity. Then take massive action on your goals, make this a daily habit and you will be guaranteed to achieve your goals. Continue next week…………..

Mid-Year is Approaching, Are You Ready?

May 21, 2019 | Business Growth, Business Owners, CEOs, Goal Setting, Leadership, Leadership Development, Productivity

Over the past few weeks, we really hammered down the importance of goal-setting and planning and how it is essential to success both personally and professionally. This is something I know to be true from first-hand experience and working with clients. Equally important is reflection on these goals and the progress made toward achieving them.

The process of reflection gives business leaders necessary insight to make strategic decisions. It creates opportunities for celebrating successes and examining weaknesses. The current environment we live in is fast-paced, ever-changing, and global. Regular reflection and realignment of goals is a requirement to stay on track and ahead of the competition. I recommend taking the time to do this regularly but especially at mid-year.

Here are five questions to consider:

What are the major successes so far this year?

Take a look at what you and your company are doing right and have a party! When successes are celebrated, it increases motivation and engagement, resulting in higher productivity. You also need to know what is working because these are the high-payoff activities that you should focus the majority of your time doing.

What were the biggest challenges?

Review the areas where you and your organization are struggling. What goals have you made the least progress toward? Was there an unexpected catastrophe that could have been prevented? Did the original SWOT analysis underestimate your competition? If you want continued success, you need to be proactive in identifying obstacles and plan for them. When you fall short, you want to understand why and avoid repeating the same scenario in the future.

What have you learned?

This is self-explanatory. Look back at the past six months and think about what you know now that you did not know before. Apply what you have learned to your future goals and plans.

What are your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) saying?

Look at the numbers, analyze and interpret them, and then make necessary changes. Measuring KPIs is worthless if you do not utilize the insight they offer.

How can you improve results?

Once you answer the first four questions here, this should be clear. What can you do to increase revenue, bring in new clients, grow your business?

Automobiles start breaking down without regular oil changes and maintenance. Computers and electronic devices need to be updated and restarted regularly or they will fail to operate. Businesses (and business leaders) need the same attention. Take some time at mid-year to refresh, refocus, and recharge.