Perhaps your most important responsibility as a leader is to get a clear sense of direction. Sometimes when you are caught up in the day by day operations, putting out fires and concentrating on the tasks in your immediate sight, you can miss the big picture.
And that’s not for lack of trying of course. As a business leader you are no doubt pretty busy. Maybe you are going to bed at night thinking ‘Gosh, I am exhausted’ and you didn’t nearly accomplish all that you needed to move the needle.
You may be operating at a level 10 but you don’t have the results that you want. You may frequently think that you and your business are capable of more that you’re achieving now. If you recognize that you are very busy, but not necessarily productive, then read on. These steps or for you.
In order to improve your results, you have to back up a few steps and follow this sequence:
Step 1: Quality of Mentors
It all begins with the value of your direct teachers or mentors. Someone who is inclined to share with you their professional knowledge and expertise. A coach may be one of your mentors, but you likely have (or need) various mentors in different areas and seasons of your life.
Step 2: Quality of Knowledge/Education
As you can imagine, the quality of your mentor directly impacts the level of the education you receive. The quality of your knowledge impacts the vision you create for your dreams and beliefs.
Step 3: Quality of Beliefs and Dreams
The more you learn, the more your dreams become expanded, along with your belief about what is actually possible.
Step 4: Quality of Questions
When you know better, you do better. And thus you are able to ask better questions. Once you are knowledgeable in an area you are able challenge your own status quo. To dig deeper and ask high level, informed questions about what is possible.
How can I do this better? How can I be capable of more? How can my business accomplish more? How can I keep more of the money that I am making? How can I generate more leads? How can I develop a stronger team?
Step 5: Quality of Decisions
When you ask higher quality questions, you get higher quality answers. All of the steps you have taken to get here are reflected in your answers. You have gathered the meaningful facts, learned from them, challenged them with thoughtful questions, and now you can engage in an informed decision-making process.
Step 6: Quality of Actions
From those answers or decisions you can now laser focus into defined actions. Determine what actions are of the highest priority to move you closer to accomplishing your goals and place your energy there. When you focus on high quality actions, you always know what the best use of your time is. You are aware of what is of the highest priority, and no longer end your day exhausted, yet feeling as if you accomplished nothing.
Quality of Results
An accurate portrayal of your vision will be defined in your results. As one of my mentors said to me (a la Step #1), “You are exactly where you’ve chosen to be.” Good or bad – the steps above have worked for or against you to deliver the results you have now.
Everyday turbulence can leave you focused on the short-term problems, and the answer to getting back on track lies somewhere in the sequence above.
Action Steps:
- Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 in each of the steps above.
- Identify which area has the most potential impact.
- List 3 actions you could take that would increase your score in that area.
Getting momentum in one area will naturally help you to improve in the subsequent steps, and even small improvements will soon manifest in increased results over time.
