A Mission Statement Clarifies Purpose

Clarifying your personal mission as a developing leader will enable you to aim and hit your "target" in life! Having a personal mission statement built on personal values clarifies your purpose in living and pursuing 21st Century Leadership! How can you be an effective leader without first clarifying what it is you are trying to be and accomplish?

Here is what Coca-Cola has posted on their website for their mission:

"Our Roadmap starts with our mission, which is enduring. It declares our purpose as a company and serves as the standard against which we weigh our actions and decisions.
To refresh the world...
To inspire moments of optimism and happiness...
To create value and make a difference."

Go to the following website and fill out the questionnaire that will help you get started on developing your mission statement.

http://www.franklincovey.com/msb/

Once you have your list of answers to the questions, create your own mission statement and post it as a comment.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain

Image taken from: http://lidbd.com/images/mission1.jpg

Modern Values in Today's Leadership

Examine the picture and read the following before posting comments.

Author and Speaker Stephen Covey stated, "Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and your values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them."

Integrity can be defined as the consistency of our character, especially when no one is looking over our shoulder. The Law of Core Values states that what is really important to us, our values, drives our leadership and determines our actions. What does this cartoon reveal about this man's values? How does he justify his decisions?

What principle what you share with this leader/employee to motivate him to change his values and therefore, his productivity? WHY SHOULD HE CHANGE?

Developing a Personal Plan For Growth

NOTE: This is an article by John Maxwell copied and pasted from his website.


Read the following portion of an article by John Maxwell:




Do you have a personal plan for growth?
February 8th, 2010

"Growth is does not happen by chance. If you want to be sure to grow, you need a plan—something strategic, specific, and scheduled.Motivational speaker Earl Nightingale said, “If a person will spend one hour a day on the same subject for five years, that person will be an expert on that subject.” Isn’t that incredible? It shows how far we are able to go when we have the discipline to make growth our daily practice.
So if you want to follow a plan, recommend that you start by identifying an area or two in which you desire to grow, such as leadership. Then start gathering useful resources – in print, online, on video, etc. Now your goal is to schedule learning time EVERY DAY. Here’s the rule of thumb I’ve used for years: read one book a month and digest one article/podcast per week.
As an example, this is the weekly schedule – 5 days a week, 1 hour a day – that I recommend for personal growth as a leader:

Monday: Spend one hour with a devotional to develop your spiritual life.
Tuesday: Spend one hour listening to a leadership recording.
Wednesday: Spend one hour filing* quotes and reflecting on the contents of Tuesday’s material.
Thursday: Spend one hour reading a book on leadership.
Friday: Spend half of the hour reading the book and the other half filing and reflecting.

The average American adult watches close to 30 hours of television per week, with little positive return. What do you think would happen if you devoted just five of those hours to personal growth?
Why not start acting on a plan today and find out? Then let me know if it was worth it."

Discuss why planning for growth is necessary for leadership and how you plan on planning on it? :)

21st Century Values Experiencing Change

(If the video does not play, watch it on youtube by typing in, "Did you know? 2.0)

Poet and Writer George Bernard once said, "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people."

What's impressive about this quote is that this influential writer lived 100 years ago! How true this principle still remains for us today!

Leadership not only involves influencing and motivating people to achieve a goal for the success of the team but it also involves personal change. Change for the 21st Century involves adapting to changing environments. Learning is changing. Technology is changing. Communication is changing. Therefore, we as leaders must change as well!

As leaders we need to be able to adapt. Our information-aged society is quickly and constantly changing. Leaders need to be able to communicate effectively in the information-technology age and maintain effective influence through our character and leadership.

Consider the thought-provoking video in commenting twice on this blog:

First, discuss what truth "impacted" you the most?

Second, discuss what values do we need to develop to be successful leaders in the 21st Century?