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Inspirational Leaders Are People Of Action

Guest post by: Michael Hume

Article Overview: You might be the most empathetic listener and the most confident speaker in the world, but without strong, principled action, your other skills are unlikely to inspire a great followership. People follow those who inspire them, usually because they see the leader herself as inspired... and because they've seen her take on difficult challenges and turn them into inspiring accomplishments. Here are a few ideas for jump-starting your renewed activity for the new year....

Inspirational Leaders Are People Of Action

Worried? Anxious? The Prescription Is Activity How is 2011 treating you so far? By now, most everyone who's serious about their New Year's resolutions has started their campaign to improve life for the next twelve months. If you're like many of my clients, and your goal is to become a more inspirational leader in the next year, you might have taken my suggestion for three key, basic resolutions: Listen with empathy, Assert your viewpoint with confidence, and Act with integrity.

You might be the most empathetic listener and the most confident speaker in the world, but without strong, principled action, your other skills are unlikely to inspire a great followership. People follow those who inspire them, usually because they see the leader herself as inspired... and because they've seen her take on difficult challenges and turn them into inspiring accomplishments.

Here are a few ideas for jump-starting your renewed activity for the new year.

First, surround yourself with positive, successful people who will both encourage you and hold you accountable to your own goals. Find a community of like-minded people to help you with this - folks who understand your goals and challenges and who would benefit, too, from your support. Give some thought to how you can set goals that are tough, but realistic, and then make sure you are clear about your goals within your support community. If the milestones toward your goals are not obvious, make them up, make them public, and then... well, make them!

Plan your work, and work your plan. You should be devoting some time here in the early part of the year to planning out the "hows" of your goals. Do you have a sales revenue target? If so, spend enough time to do your math: how many buyers do you need, how many prospects, how many "eyeballs" on your offer? If you don't know, make cautious assumptions regarding how successful you'll be in converting readers/viewers to prospects and prospects to buyers. Then compute how many specific activities you need to take, based on conservative estimates of success, to generate the kind of business you need. How many sales calls, how many follow-ups, how many ads? By breaking a large goal into the smallest unit of specific, measurable action, you can make it happen... and the same logic will extend to any type of goal.

One note about planning - spend the time you need, but not more. Too many people get stuck in "analysis paralysis." Remember, planning is an important investment, but only executing will make your goals a reality.

Finally, have a plan for how to deal with things that could derail your work. For instance,does someone in your family need a lot of attention these days? How can you funnel that important part of your work as a human being into your weekly schedule so that it doesn't impede your day job? Emergencies do happen, and sometimes you have to interrupt your work to deal with something even more important. So plan for that. Plan on making more calls than you need to, so that short-term "have-to" things that suddenly emerge can be absorbed.

Whether your goals are business-related, such as sales targets or team development, or are more personal, such as health, fitness, and vitality... take action now. Do a few things toward your goals every day, and try to capture momentum. Whatever you do, don't spend your life worrying about what will happen if you don't meet your goals - that won't inspire anybody. Instead, focus on making it happen. That's your personal responsibility, and it's also what will help make you a more inspirational leader in 2011.

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Article Tags: goal setting, health wealth and happiness, inspirational leadership, personal responsibility



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