Author: Mark Brown

Protect Your Goal

A friend of mine explained to me the importance of protecting my goal. It took a few minutes of explanation to grasp the full effect of what he had said. But it has changed my daily outlook.

Most people don’t reach goals in their life because they let them die. My friend suggested that once your goal is crystal clear, you can reach it. But along the way, you must protect it. Here are three required strategies when you are considering your big life goals:

1) Let tomorrow’s goal inspire today’s action. If you are to reach your goal, let your inspiration come from the clear vision you have for success. Take daily actions based on the steps needed to reach your goal. Keep the goal clear in your mind every day.

2) Don’t let distractions blur your goal. There will always be distractions. If distractions make you question or change your goal, then they are negatively impacting your success. If you let distractions fill your day, then your goal will become blurry. Over time your vision for tomorrow will lose clarity.

3) Continuously adjust, but don’t divert. You will encounter failures, losses, mistakes, and obstacles. It is unavoidable. All of these are the cost of success. If you let them stop you, you have failed. But if you keep learning, adjusting, and moving towards your goal, you cannot fail.

If you are going to achieve big goals in your life, you need to clearly define them, and then protect them every day.

3 Steps to Powerful Empowerment

A strong leader empowers their people. An empowered team will always out perform a team that is led by intimidation. But empowerment is both an art and a science. It is usually a mixture of intuition and fact that guides us to begin empowering others. It is also a skill that you should never stop developing.

Here are three key reminders on empowerment:

1. Recognize you can’t empower everyone. This is usually a mistake of an inexperienced leader. Many have a desire to become an empowering leader, and immediately want to empower everyone on the team. It does not work. Not everyone is ready, able, or deserving to be empowered.

2. Choose people to empower carefully. If you want to empower someone, their success becomes your success. Invest in people that have the knowledge, skill, and desire to be empowered. If someone only possesses two of these three traits, they will be lacking in their success.

3. Invest your time and energy in their success. This is the most critical step. Many times we empower, but fail to follow through. Consider the first time you empowered your son or daughter to drive the family car. How did you know they were ready? How did you train them? How did you help them and transition them to be a successful driver? I am sure you did not just throw them the keys, say “here you go”, and walk away. When you empower anyone, you must take the time to verify they are ready, prepared, trained, and have a proper transition plan before they are on their own.

The rewards for empowering others can be great. Every empowering relationship should result in a win for both parties. You cannot maximize your leadership without it. As James B Stockdale has said, “Great leaders gain authority by giving it away. “