Your leadership goal is to create a personal and professional filter for all the noise that is out there.
That noise bounces around your head, reinforcing what you “aren’t” or what you “can’t”. It’s rarely positive. This noise is so pervasive, that you can’t recall the last time you had a singular, clear thought to ponder.
Your leadership goal is to create a personal and professional filter to evaluate the value of all the folks evaluating you. Your performance and output is weighed against your company’s KPIs, sales goals, strategies. Their measurement of your professional worth can tsunami your ability to discover, develop and optimize what you have to offer others. In the future, if not now.
What are your personal and professional core values and KPI’s?
Your leadership goal is to create a personal and professional filter to cut through all the digital noise that is out there. Your filter will resemble a minesweeper. There is so much noise, so much information, and so many lists. So many self-proclaimed experts clouding your personal and professional radar screen.
Who and What are on Your Own List? Who are the small folks making a joyful noise and coaching you towards clarity of purpose?
Your leadership goal is to take the training wheels off your personal and professional bicycle. You not only have the attributes, skills and values that you need to pedal forward with confidence. You also understand where you might want to go. You comprehend that this choice is yours. You sense you will meet like-minded individuals along the way.
Where are the multiple places you will travel to?
Your personal and professional leadership filter allow you to step back from the situations that overwhelm you. Your goal is to evaluate them from a 10,000 foot eagle’s eye view.
Your leadership goal is to say to yourself: “So What”? Your leadership goal is to walk away from the toxic stuff preventing you from becoming who you are meant to be.
When you start to integrate Who You Really Are into marketing messages, sales processes, business silos and academic curricula, these begin to serve you. Not vice versa. These are the components and tools you will utilize along the way to gaining professional mastery of your career.
It takes a while to figure this out. And once you figure it out, you nurture yourself daily. At that point, saying “So What?” to the flotsam and jetsam of life becomes second nature.
Here are some quotes I keep front and center each day, to keep me pointed true. Perhaps you will find them helpful as you chart your own course.
“I wake up every morning determined to change the world and have one hell of a good time. It makes planning my day difficult.” ~ E.B. White
“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
“Be impeccable with your word. Don’t take anything personally. Don’t make assumptions. Always do your best.” ~ Don Miguel Ruiz
“The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in someone else’s imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real.” ~ Thomas Merton
If you want to liberate yourself from your, and everyone else’s, status quo, start by liberating your own imagination.
Is it time to say: “So What?” ??
Babette N. Ten Haken, President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers®, LLC, is a professional development coach and management consultant. She develops Playbooks for startups and small to mid-size companies experiencing unpredictable revenue streams. Then she brings these Playbooks to life. Her Playbook on leadership, business development and sales collaboration strategies, including tools, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com.
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