

With Character, On Your Way To Leadership!
In Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want, Michael Hyatt & Daniel Harkavy suggest that we define a plan for our lives.
They introduce us to the concept of Life Planning and show us how to implement the process.
According to Hyatt and Harkavy, “A Life Plan is a short written document, usually five to fifteen pages long“.
The Life Plan is personal, describes your priorities, the steps to reach your goals and the legacy you want to leave.
It is a life long process, that can continually be adjusted and improved. A Life Plan doesn’t shield you from life challenges and failures. Instead, it will help you create intention for your life.
It is common to have a career plan but no Life Plan. The Life Plan enables you to:
Most people drift away from their dreams because:
When you drift away from your dreams and when you don’t have a Life Plan, you tend to:
To design your Life Plan, it is necessary to outline your legacy, to set your priorities, get clarity on your objectives and to reserve one day to build your Life Plan.
To design your Life Plan, keep in mind that everybody leaves a legacy, face your mortality and begin with the end in mind.
It is critical to write your Life Plan like you are writing your eulogy, to imagine how you want others to remember you and to stay committed to the process.
Getting more clarity on your objectives will definitely increase your commitment. To do so, you must steer clear from external expectations and do what is right for you.
Hyatt & Harkavy recommend that you schedule one day to create your Life Plan. Needless to say, the Life plan should be implemented starting the next day.
It is necessary to allow yourself to dream, to not expect perfection and to not get distracted.
Implementing the Life Plan is the most challenging part. It is necessary to:
Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want by Michael Hyatt & Daniel Harkavy is an easy to read self-help book that is based on some of their traumatic experiences.
It is destined to increase our focus, to helps us find out what matters most, to acquire meaning and fulfillment in our everyday life, to allow us to prioritize our lives and to contribute effectively,
This book is written for people who are looking for a better direction for their life because they are either:
The earlier we start creating and implementing a Life Plan, the better.
Living Forward will heighten your sense of what’s truly possible for you in life. If you feel out of balance, aware that your current pace is unsustainable; if you are making great gains professionally but don’t want to neglect personal priorities; if you want to have better focus to succeed financially; if you have gone through a recent tragedy and suddenly become aware that life is short; if any of those are true, this book is for you.
I know that how we lead ourselves in life impacts how we lead those around us. Self-leadership always precedes team leadership. We must have a balanced approach to accumulating net worth in all of the critical accounts in our lives, not just one or two. Ultimately this allows us to make the greatest difference and adds the most value to those around us. It is possible to grow at work without diminishing other areas of our lives. Living forward helps us find and maintain our balance.
In Daring Greatly, Brené Brown explains the reasons why we are afraid of being vulnerable, the different ways we protect ourselves from vulnerability, and how to become more vulnerable in our society.
Daring Greatly means being vulnerable, being engaged, being exposed and avoiding being perfect.
Many researchers have shown that the American culture has turned into a narcissistic influenced culture, a culture of scarcity, a culture where people put themselves first, think that they are special, are always connected to social media, go after money and power, chase beauty and other vanity, compare themselves, are disengaged and concerned with the idea of lacking.
Instead of putting sown narcissistic people and showing them that they are not special, it is better to seek understanding and find the root of the problem.
Being narcissistic stems from a feeling of not being enough and of being ordinary.
The feeling of not being enough brings about shame and stops us from being vulnerable. Shame is a universal emotion, is corrosive, “keeps us small, resentful and afraid”.
Furthermore, we become disengaged when we are too afraid to be vulnerable, when we are ashamed, when we lack purpose, when a social contract is not met.
It is critical to speak out on your shame, to be self-aware, to know your self-worth, to ask and receive feedback because knowing your worth will help you become more vulnerable.
To eradicate the feeling of shame:
We are thought not to be vulnerable, not to show our emotions, to look down on those who do. There are several misconceptions when it comes to vulnerability.
The reality is vulnerability is not a weakness, is not good or bad. Vulnerable is the origin of all emotions.
It therefore becomes important to acknowledge your vulnerability.
Besides, the people who think that they are impenetrable are in fact the most vulnerable.
Vulnerability is unavoidable. When we try to avoid it, we often exhibit unusual inconsistent behaviors.
You cannot be vulnerable with everyone. It is important to build trust and boundaries before being vulnerable.
Otherwise, more times than ever, you will end up getting betrayed and hurt.
Individualism and going it alone are highly regarded in American culture.
In this case, it is essential to construct a support system, to ask for and receive help
Most of the time, shame and the blame game are used as management tool, yet is ineffective.
Subsequently, the situations that we face on a daily basis, in the education system, in the workplace, force us to keep our head down and our mouth shut which doesn’t encourage innovation, creativity or the learning process.
Our protective mechanisms are survival strategies, used to shield our vulnerability. Those shields can go from foreboding joy, to perfectionism to numbing down your emotions.
To avoid shielding vulnerability, it is critical to:
Some people go through life with a victim or perpetrator, win or lose mentally and subsequently fall into one of these categories.
Surprisingly, the people who have been through the most trauma, demonstrate the most resilience. And, people who don’t feel like victims or perpetrators, see themselves as thrivers.
Floodlighting is essentially oversharing and stems from a need for confirmation and validation.
We have to be careful not to share vulnerable stories too soon with people who have not earned the right to hear them.
The people on the receiving end often shut down, lack empathy or feel disconnected.
With this shield, some people use vulnerability as a manipulation, sensationalizing tactic that is common in celebrity culture, as an attention seeking tool.
Serpentining is a draining and an avoidance behavior.
It happens when people are not facing a situation head on for fear of being vulnerable, of not being present.
In this case, people use criticism, cynicism and mean-spiritedness to protect themselves.
They are mean to people who dare demonstrate vulnerability.
Daring Greatly is essential to leadership, parenting, relationships, finding your purpose and your passion.
Daring Greatly by Brené Brown gives insight into the corporate and the western culture where being vulnerable equals being weak and lets you open to different attacks.
Through Daring Greatly, Brown has gathered data from people from different walks of life so we can somewhat self diagnose and become more aware of some of our toxic behavior.
Brené Brown makes some pertinent point and writes exactly like she speaks. Furthermore, Brown is very open and authentic, shares her anecdotes, fears and doubt.
For example, she is vulnerable with us, mindful of the stories to share, lets us into her conversations with her therapist.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Vulnerability is not weakness, and the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure we face every day are not optional. Our only choice is a question of engagement. Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose; the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection.
Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences.
Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.
We live in a world where most people still subscribe to the belief that shame is a good tool for keeping people in line. Not only is this wrong, but it’s dangerous. Shame is highly correlated with addiction, violence, aggression, depression, eating disorders, and bullying. Researchers don’t find shame correlated with positive outcomes at all—there are no data to support that shame is a helpful compass for good behavior. In fact, shame is much more likely to be the cause of destructive and
hurtful behaviors than it is to be the solution.Much of the beauty of light owes its existence to the dark. The most powerful moments of our lives happen when we string together the small flickers of light created by courage, compassion, and connection and see them shine in the darkness of our struggles.
Usually, leadership development boosts employee morale, engagement, alignment and productivity.
“Earn trust, earn trust, earn trust. Then you can worry about the rest.” – SETH GODIN
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy
“You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” – Lee Iacocca
“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Theodore Roosevelt
A leader’s attitude is caught by his or her followers more quickly than his or her actions. – John C. Maxwell
There are several leadership programs out there.
It is important that you find the right one for you to gain the ability to inspire, influence, improve your performance and cope with challenges.
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Since 2017, Journey To Leadership is more than privileged to:
Leaders reach their highest potential and identify their best selves by essentially working on these 5 leadership skills.
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Society has long tried to establish what makes a good leader.
Gerard Seijtsat, a professor at the Ivey Business School at Western University in Canada, has interviewed more than 30 leaders around the world.
Seijtsat tried to understand what it takes to make a truly great leader.
He came to the conclusion that good leaders are really the product of a never-ending process of skill and character development.
In other words, they learn all the time, from everything and everyone.
I am now more convinced than ever that good leaders develop through constant learning about their personalities, relationships and careers, not to mention the kind of leader they want to become. - Gerard Seijtsat. Click To Tweet
Below are a few reasons why leaders should never stop learning.
Among business leaders, there is probably no bigger proponent of constant learning than Charlie Munger, the longtime business partner of Warren Buffett and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.
His family has described him as a “book with legs” because of his constant quest for wisdom.
I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help,… Click To Tweet
Munger is also known for his insistence that good thinking requires the destruction of your own ideas and the consideration of new ideas.
According to Munger, “We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side.”
Furthermore, constant learning will not only make you a better leader, but it will also stave off cognitive decline.
There is ample scientific evidence that learning promotes brain health.
Dr. John N. Morris, director of social and health policy research at the Harvard-affiliated Institute for Aging Research, says: “Eventually, your cognitive skills will wane and thinking and memory will be more challenging, so you need to build up your reserve. Embracing a new activity that also forces you to think and learn and requires ongoing practice can be one of the best ways to keep the brain healthy.”
In today’s fast paced world, staying ahead of the curve is of paramount importance.
Imagine leading a company in an industry that is being upended by technology and the advent of all kinds of aggressive young competitors.
Such a leader should be open to new ideas and have the ability to learn quickly.
Refusing to change would be tantamount to surrender and ultimately lead to failure.
The world today is much more susceptible to change than it was before and leaders should adapt correspondingly.
Howard Marks, the 75-years-old founder of Oaktree Capital, says: “When I was a kid or even a young man, the world felt like a static place, nothing ever changed. We didn’t have inflation, we didn’t have changing prices, and we didn’t have a rapid technological change or communications that changed everything so rapidly”.
Indeed, “The world didn’t change and events played out in front of an unchanging backdrop, shall we say, today, the world changes every day”.
Universities and business schools have long recognized that leadership is a major concept.
That is why they offer business management programs such as MBA and Masters in Management .
Some business schools are even embracing lifelong learning.
Students now have access to training, expertise, and support from faculty and fellow alumni that help them overcome challenges and seize up opportunities throughout their career.
Eric Yaverbaum is the CEO of Ericho Communications, a communications, media, and public relations expert.
Eric Yaverbaum is also the best-selling author of Leadership Secrets of the World’s Most Successful CEOs.Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2021
Indeed, people now think, consume data and goods differently than before the pandemic.
Furthermore, there is a shift in the way people perceive leadership and their job.
No situation is permanent and to every negative situation, there are always lessons that every leader can use.
It serves to think about these unprecedented times as a way to grow, to learn and to strengthen your leadership.
Below are 10 lessons that will crisis-proof your leadership in uncertain times.
A lot of people have lost their jobs and have started their own business during the pandemic.
Undoubtedly, they have discovered numerous ways of making money and have realized that there is no point in putting all their eggs in one basket.
Creating several streams of income allows them to become robust to every situation and to take more risks.
No matter what you have endured during these past few months, there is always room for improvement, opportunities to grow and to adjust to these uncertain times.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
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