I recently trained a team on the concepts of time management and organization.
I kept trying to correlate these functions to personal leadership. I know to deliver on both time management and organization you have to be able to influence yourself to stay disciplined on those fronts.
But when it came down to connecting the dots and explaining how the concepts connected, the linkages illuded me.
Have you ever had that happen?
You know that 2 or more ideas or concepts are tied together, it’s on the edge of your brain . . . but you just can’t quite connect it all?
That’s what happened.
I didn’t want to get frustrated, but they say when you are frustrated, you are about to learn something.
So I let myself just continue to marinate on it and process the pieces.
Meanwhile, the date of my training event kept getting closer and closer.
Finally, on the morning of my training event, I grabbed my journal and just started writing out “if this, then that” statements to see if I could finally connect the dots.
BOOM!
I had it!
So let me share it with you and let you also learn the flow of personal leadership and why we need to practice it.
The Personal Leadership Flow for Success
What I came up with was this flow:
- Personal leadership: influencing yourself to be disciplined
- Discipline: Taking action and using the proper tools to build self-confidence
- Confidence: the psychology of success
- Success: Focusing on influencing the client because when I focus on them, I’m not focusing on my fears/weaknesses
- Focus: adding value to the client on their terms
What does that flow mean?
Our goal in our own personal leadership is to influence ourselves by instilling discipline into our actions, thoughts, and feelings. Personal leadership means we are in control of ourselves.
We don’t negotiate with the terrorists (i.e., the thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. that try to take over and derail our purpose).
When we influence ourselves and build that discipline, we are then able to commit to actions around time management and organization because we know those strategies will help us gain our confidence in what we want to accomplish.
That confidence is truly the psychology of success. When we believe we can, we do. Success means that we are focusing on the client and what they need, because we aren’t distracted by our own fears, worries, or shortcomings. Why? Because we are confident!
Our focus allows us to be fully present with the client and add value to them based on their wants, needs, and goals.
This is an important psychological process, wouldn’t you agree?
Why Does This Personal Leadership Flow Matter?
We are told throughout our lives that we must manage our time because it’s the only asset we cannot make more of.
We hear that organization is the key to success.
Leaders, parents, friends, mentors, you name it, have all told you this about time management and organization but what they haven’t told you is why.
WHY!
Why do these disciplines matter?
This can’t be one of those things that you just accept in your life as truth because the reality is that most people don’t manage their time well nor are they organized.
They just don’t see the personal value in applying these strategies.
This means in all actuality, no one is accepting the value of these two disciplines as “truth!”
Did you ever do anything your parents told you to do simply because they told you, “Because I said so!?”
I know I didn’t.
I had to understand what I was going to get out of it before I committed.
So if you struggle with time management and/or organization, now you know why these two strategies are valuable to you, your career, and your overall measure of success.
These disciplines build your confidence so that you can show up and serve your client at the highest level. That confidence allows you to generate success by focusing on the client instead of yourself (“Oh no, I’m going to be late. I forgot about that meeting. I didn’t bring that document, I forgot.” These are all self-focused concerns.) Once you put your focus on your client, you can zero in on providing them value on their terms.
As a leader or business owner, that’s why you exist; to add value.
When you have confidence, focus, and success, you are able to excel in your role.
You are one step closer to mastering The 1 Rule.