Next Foundation Blog

Leadership is not just the addition of more actities to a capable and faithful person’s plate.

Leadership is the muliplication of a capable persons skill and activities throught the addition of members to the team and the sharing of responsibility to achieve a shared goal.

If you have proven yourself faithful and capable.

If you are now in a place where you must now multiply yourself through the development of your leadership gift.

If you have the capacity.
The oppurtunity awaits you.

Its time to grow….

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Next Foundation Leadership Blog

The degree to which we are prepared to forgive, denotes the degree to which we are prepared to forget.

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At different times in the careers of all focused and driven individuals, we have to learn to bring balance to our life for the sake of longevity. The issues faced by most senior organizational leaders is one of either stress or burnout.

We often hear these terms, but we rarely have them defined for us.  Let me help with that.

Stress and burnout are not the same thing. Stress is the response of your body to the environmental demands that are placed upon it. Burnout is emotional exhaustion, or as Arch Hart calls it, compassion fatigue.

Here is a helpful comparison chart complied by By Arch Hart

* Burnout is a defense characterized by disengagement.
* Stress is characterized by overengagement.
* In Burnout the emotions become blunted.
* In Stress the emotions become over-reactive.
* In Burnout the emotional damage is primary.
* In Stress the physical damage is primary.
* The exhaustion of Burnout affects motivation and drive.
* The exhaustion of Stress affects physical energy.
* Burnout produces demoralization.
* Stress produces disintegration.
* Burnout can best be understood as a loss of ideals and hope.
* Stress can best be understood as a loss of fuel and energy.
* The depression of Burnout is caused by the grief engendered by the loss of ideals and hope.
* The depression of Stress is produced by the body’s need to protect itself and conserve energy.
* Burnout produces a sense of helplessness and hopelessness.
* Stress produces a sense of urgency and hyperactivity.
* Burnout produces paranoia, depersonalization and detachment.
* Stress produces panic, phobic, and anxiety-type disorders.
* Burnout may never kill you, but your long life may not seem worth living.
* Stress may kill you prematurely, and you won’t have enough time to finish what you started.

The key is to bring balance to every area of your life.
With all of our clients, this is where we start.

We help them identify where they are up to and what they need to work on and watch out for in order to get to where they desire to go. The essence of the problem is a clash between expectations and reality.

Remember that we spend far more time on the journey than at the destination so you have to learn to enjoy it.

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www.nextfoundation.org

Success is the passionate pursuit of a worthwhile goal regardless of opposition or support

Mediocrity is the acceptance of the status quo because of opposition or support

therefore

the ability to stay focused on what you are called to do regardless of the accolades or catcalls from the crowd is the deciding factor between success and mediocrity

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www.nextfoundation.org

Good Boundaries put us in charge by consciously allowing us to choose what goes on inside our life, what we allow into our inner circle.

Seth Godin said:

If you’ve got talent, people want more of you. They ask you for this or that or the other thing. They ask nicely. They will benefit from the insight you can give them. The choice: You can dissipate your gift by making the people with the loudest requests temporarily happy, or you can change the world by saying ‘no’ often. You can say no with respect, you can say no promptly and you can say no with a lead to someone who might say yes. But just saying yes because you can’t bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work. Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities.

Saying no to trivial or non-important or non-essential things gives meaning when we say yes.

Saying no keeps our boundaries in place and allows us to keep our commitments.

So how can you keep boundaries?

1) Be clear about your boundaries.

Don’t allow others to demand things of you, allow people to make requests, however, no one has a right to make demands.

Now, if you hear request that are uncomfortable, your discomfort is a signal that there’s an attempt to invade or compromise an inner value.

They might not know it.

You may not be able to articulate it.

But there is something not quite sitting right.

2) You have a choice

When you feel like you do not have a choice, you have moved from being an aid to someone to being manipulated by someone.

You have to remember you have a choice and you have the freedom to say no.

3) Have courageous conversations.

Often when reorganizing and putting boundaries in place you have courageous conversations.

You have to sit people down and talk to them about changes you need to make to achieve the goals that you have set.

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In order to come to this place each of us has to be clear about what the important things are to us and we must also be aware that all of our decisions are leading us towards our purpose or away from it.

Toward a life of integrity or away from it.

Not one of us can be all things to all people.

We have natural limitation, naturally we are not omnipotent.

In order to stay centered, to stay focused we have to establish clear boundaries.

Boundaries are the borders we create around ourselves by the limits that we set.

Limits that again…and I am not trying to be redundant, just reinforce.

I am trying to show you that all of this is interconnected.

Limits that are based upon, and driven by your mission in life and the values that you hold dear.

Limits around time, limits around whom we allow to speak into our life and occupy our life.

Boundaries: are the imaginary lines that tell people how close they can get and what they can expect from us.

They are the points of demarcation that stop areas leaking over from one to another, or relationships or non-essential commitments pulling you away from what is essential.

Robert Frost put it brilliantly when he said:

Good fences make good neighbors.

Good Boundaries put us in charge by consciously allowing us to choose what goes on inside our life, what we allow into our inner circle.

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www.nextfoundation.org/nfblog

Let’s not sugar coat this, tough decisions and persistent effort are required of those who seek to live their lives…

Present

Purposeful

and Passionately.

Your ability to say, “Yes” depends upon your ability to say, “No.”

Again…your ability to say, “Yes” to the things that are important depends upon your ability to say, “No” to the things that do not contribute to that.

Often people don’t say no because they are overwhelmed with thoughts like:

“What will they think of me if I don’t do this?”

“What will they say about me?”

“I feel I have to do this.”

Or they don’t say yes because:

“I don’t have the time.”

“Can’t fit it in.”

“I have too much to do.”

What people are doing is that which they don’t need to do at the sake of that which they want to do.

But they no longer have the time, the money or emotional resources….. they are spread too thin.

When a life is rooted in the present, based upon purpose, driven by values, then either a yes or no can be given not on the basis of what others think or out of guilt but rather out of a sense of single focus and life vision.

I was able to help myself in this area by coming to understand that my saying no to something enables someone else to say yes to it.

It creates opportunities in the lives of other people.

It is just not meant to be my opportunity.

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www.nextfoundation.org/nfblog

When facing fear…

Accept the things over which you have no control.

Focus on turning your adversities into advantages.

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www.nextfoundation.org/nfblog

Continuing to look at this one by Scott Edinger, John Zenger, Joseph Folkman, found in their study of 200,000 people across different kinds of organizations and within different cultures. The Inspiring Leader is a great book and well worth the read.

Here are the final 4 most common mistakes people make when inspiring others.

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• They provide no coaching or mentoring. The least inspiring leaders lack interest in helping other people develop new skills or capabilities.
• They gunnysack critical information. These leaders prefer to control information and share as little as possible.
• They say one thing and do another.
• They have little or no interest in ideas or input from their direct reports.
• They rarely provide helpful feedback on.

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www.nextfoundation.org/nfblog

Here is another great book for you. This one by Scott Edinger, John Zenger, Joseph Folkman, the Inspiring Leader.

The book looks at how top leaders inspire teams to greatness. It discusses the behaviors exhibited by the most successful leaders and includes advice on how to implement them.

What I found interesting was towards the back it talked about the most common mistakes made when trying to inspire others.

The authors base their research on a four-year study involving more than 200,000 respondents.

I believe that few people are born leaders. An even those of us who find leadership a natural thing, it is always beneficial to look into the mirror and see how we can improve and how we can possibly grow.

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• They lack energy or enthusiasm. When these people walk into the room, you feel the energy leave. They absorb and consume energy, rather than injecting it into the group.
• They rarely provide clarity of direction or purpose. With these leaders, team members are not clear about their goals or how they contribute to the success of the organization.
• They avoid setting challenging goals or objectives. The lowest 10 percent of leaders do what needs to be done, but they always work hard to lower the expectations of others.
• They have no plan for personal development. These leaders assume that their skills are sufficient just as they are.

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www.nextfoundation.org/nfblog