Wouldn’t this be a great year if you started out by taking time to see yourself clearly? What if you applied what you learned about yourself to your unique success formula?
There are tons of articles with clever titles related to the year 2020. My take is in exploring the concept of 2020 vision as it pertains to clarifying your purpose and creating your 2020 success formula. This month’s thoughts focus on a few key clarifying questions for you to ponder.
What are your values? What matters most to you?
Here are two questions, and they are big questions. I like this definition of values: “a person’s principles or standards of behavior; one’s judgment of what is important in life”. When you are clear on what matters most to you, you are able to view your options through a clear lens and make choices that align with your values. We often know something is not right for us and are not sure why. Sometimes it’s because the role we are in, whether that is our career or in our personal life, does not match the values that we hold. At one point in my career, I chose to leave a role that was important to me and felt fulfilling to go to a role that paid more. Since the new role didn’t make me feel like I was contributing to a greater goal or purpose that mattered to me, I was not at all fulfilled and the extra dollars in the paycheck had little value for me. I don’t think I really understood at the time why I was unfulfilled. I did learn a great lesson and I’ve never accepted another position that didn’t align my values with the mission of the organization.
Today in my work with clients, we start with a few exploratory exercises that focus on revealing the answers to these questions. One such exercise is a simple values exercise; another is a life satisfaction survey. Using tools like this helps to quickly identify areas to focus on when setting goals and beginning to define your 2020 success formula.
Are you living your values in your current role(s)? What is your level of awareness and engagement?
I’m a firm believer that what you think drives what you feel and that drives how you approach everything you do. Just as you need to believe that what you are doing is important and worthwhile, you also need to believe in yourself and what you offer. It’s never easy for us to hold up the mirror and take a close look at ourselves. In order to have real confidence, you must know who you are and you must accept who you are and be YOU, the best YOU, maximizing your strengths and addressing your challenges.
A great way to see yourself clearly, with 2020 vision, is to take a snapshot using a proven assessment tool. In my practice, I utilize a variety of assessment tools. One that provides a clear snapshot in time is the Energy Leadership Index (ELI) TM assessment, developed by Bruce D. Schneider and ranked 3rd in the Forbes Coaches Council article “11 Assessments Every Executive Should Take” I like this assessment because it is an attitudinal assessment, rather than a personality assessment, and it measures a leader’s consciousness or level of engagement and awareness under normal, day to day circumstances as well as under stress. What is revealed as a result of this assessment becomes the basis for a leader to grow and develop. Research shows that knowledge of your stress triggers, your reaction to those triggers and your ability to shift from reaction to response mode correlates directly to greater satisfaction and success in whatever you’re doing.
I’ve used a few words and phrases here, from living your values, to how you show up, to engagement and awareness. Now I’ll use one more phrase: emotional intelligence. In your career and your life in general, what differentiates you from others with the same skills and IQ is your emotional intelligence, or your awareness of your own strengths and challenges. Investing your time in understanding yourself is the first step in moving you forward, aligning with your values and creating your unique success formula.
What does success, or excellent performance, look like to you?
Once you have clarified your values and have an awareness of how engaged and aligned you are with those values, it’s time to create a clear vision of what success means to you. As Lewis Carroll said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there”. When creating your individual success formula, you have to have a destination in mind. To get to that destination, you gain insight by viewing your past performances, good and not so good, and understanding what influenced them.
Here’s what I mean. Performing really well can be influenced by both internal and external factors. If you have spent time understanding your attitudes and your internal influencers, you are ahead of the game. We are masters of sabotaging ourselves! External factors can influence us as well. Haven’t we all experienced difficulty focusing when we multitask? One of the keys to your individual success formula is defining what success looks like to you, down to the details of what you can and cannot control, what responses you can have, and what preparation you can do to recreate that successful performance you remember so well!
Stay tuned in the coming months as we further explore performance influencers and tackle ways to increase your potential to achieve performance excellence.
As a CORe Leadership Dynamics Specialist (CLDS), I can help you discover and execute your Individual Success Formula to increase your confidence as a leader and drive your overall performance and satisfaction.
This blog contains my interpretation of the copyrighted work of Bruce D Schneider and the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC).
