Mark S. Brown

Every once in awhile I feel defeated. Things don’t happen the way I want or the way I plan. This is especially defeating when you spend a lot of time, effort, and sweat on a project. Failure is a fact of life. We all face it. But you can make those failures temporary.

True failure only happens when you give up. Other failures can be turned into temporary set backs, or learning experiences. Take your new found knowledge of your project (what did not work), and start planning the next step. The step to success.

Great leaders share a trait. They are unwilling to accept defeat. They find a way to win. They take the resources and the situations given to them, and they find a way to keep going.

“Every action we take, everything we do, is either a victory or defeat in the struggle to become what we want to be.” said Anne Byrhhe. A leader will find the actions to take to move forward.

So when you have those dark days, practice reaching inside and pulling out the courage to continue on to success. Find the resources, find the time, find what you need to adjust and succeed.

 

List three things you wish your people did better than they currently do. Take a minute and a sheet of paper and capture the three things.

Improving the performance of your team can sometimes be accomplished by improving your performance. Reexamine the three areas you want your people to improve, and grade yourself on those three things. How are you doing? Use a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best.

At what level would you like them to perform? Are your expectations higher than your own performance? If it is, then you need to focus on improving yourself. If it is not, then are you providing the proper mentoring and training for your team?

This simple exercise should help you define what action you need to take to drive your team’s performance. Write it down, and put it on your agenda! Improved performance will follow.

 

John Maxwell has said, “It’s easier to teach what’s right than to do what’s right.” So if we want to be a good example for those around us, we need to be as good as we think we are. Intentions alone do not set the example.

Setting an example also requires being visible, and interacting with people. If you are the best you can be, but working alone, then who are you an example for?

Those two thoughts deserve some reflection time. We would all like to be good, and set a good example. Review your activity in the last week. Have you had opportunities to be visible, and be engaged, and yet you choose actions that isolated you? Have you chosen actions that were easier, and maybe not shown how good you can be?

Colin Powell said, “You can issue all the memos and give all the motivational speeches you want, but if the rest of the people in your organization don’t see you putting forth your very best effort every single day, they won’t either.”  People around you will only give their best if they see you giving your best.

What are you going to do the next week that reflects your best? What are you going to do to make those actions more visible to those around you?

I recently had the opportunity to watch Stone of Destiny, a 2008 film about the story of Ian Hamilton. He was a dedicated Scottish nationalist who reignited national pride in the 1950s with his daring raid on the heart of England. His goal was to return the Stone of Destiny to Scotland. Near the beginning of the movie Ian’s father tells him, “This country needs doers, not dreamers.” It made me think about the difference.

If you were to construct a sliding scale with one end being doing, and the other end being dreaming, I imagine all of us would fall somewhere in the middle.

At the extreme of 100% doer, a person would be focused on routine. Happy doing the same things every day. Never stretching or growing beyond their current level of awareness.

At the other extreme, a person that is 100% dreamer, would spend their days filled with ideas and whimsey. They would never get anything done because they would only be thinking about what could be done.

So I think, we would all be in the middle between those two extremes. The question is where. How much time do you spend doing, and how much do you spend dreaming? And are your actions linked to your dreams?

Successful people dream big. They reach for big goals. They act on those dreams. Successful people are both dreamers and doers. You must do both to pursue your purpose, with passion, and with a plan.

Stone of Destiny is a fun little film. If you have not seen it, you might enjoy seeing a dream become a reality. For each of us, success usually begins with a dream.