Hello everyone and welcome back to the BIG Leadership Series.  I’m Brian Bratti, President of Bratti Innovation Group LLC (BIG) bringing you the final installment for this month’s BIG Leadership theme on Personal Leadership, an essential ingredient to growing yourself as a leader. As a quick recap, we’ve established that you really can’t effectively lead others if you’re not first working on your own personal leadership and growth.  Therefore, authentic leadership requires personal leadership which further requires you to first be intentional, so to avoid the various potholes (or gaps) along your personal growth road that can stall your efforts and thus take you out of the race before you make any serious headway.  We then included the need to take action because without action as a catalyst for your plan, it will always remain just that; a plan.  Next we determined that you need to establish an accountability mechanism to serve as a guardrail to keep you from veering off of your personal growth road and into the ditches of Productive Procrastination, the Shiny Object Syndrome and a host of others. (For more on these subjects check out my previous blog at https://brattiadvisors.com/2018/04/19/big-leadership-series-part-1-personal-leadership-accountability-the-guardrail-of-personal-leadership/).  Now, we’re going to address the concept of engaging in REFLECTION - The BIG Compass of your Personal Leadership.

John Maxwell’s book “The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth” dedicates an entire chapter to what John calls “The Law of Reflection – Learning to Pause Allows Growth to Catch Up to You.”  We’ll be taking some material from that book and chapter to help you take the necessary time to periodically pause and take stock of your journey.  Your growth road will inevitably have intersections and detours that come with any growth plan and cultivating the regular habit of reflection can help you continuously evaluate your journey as you as you navigate these critical junctures in your growth as a leader to keep yourself pointed in the right direction.  So let’s take a look at REFLECTION – The BIG Compass of Personal Leadership

John Maxwell indicates there is power in pausing to take stock of your experiences and recommends doing so by you using your “I’s”:

Investigation:  Finding meaning in each experience is crucial to self-reflection.  As you pause to reflect about the road on which you find yourself, be sure to seriously examine your experiences and investigate their meaning to you, how they shaped where you are right now and what they mean for you going forward.  I’ve often been told that part of the task of personal growth is the ability to realize that what may have worked for you in the past may not work for you now or in the future.  For example, what served you as an infant to let the outside world know you were uncomfortable (hungry, needed a new diaper, cold, not feeling well, etc.) was to cry, scream and become upset since without engaging in these actions, no one would have any way of knowing about your discomfort.  As you grew, you learned other techniques to address your discomfort (well, at least I hope you have!) and thus what worked for you as an infant does not serve you (or anyone else really) as an adult.  The same goes for your other areas of growth, including your Personal Leadership.  Pausing to reflect and investigate what worked then but doesn’t work now is a great way to get keen insights during your time of reflection by helping you choose your future actions when you come to crossroads in your journey.

Incubation:  John likens incubation to crockpot cooking: it allows experiences and thoughts to grow to their full potential.  In the rush and unrelenting pace of life, especially for someone charged with leading others, decisions often have to be made quickly thus the ability to make quick decisions can become habitual.  Now, I’m not saying this is a bad thing.  Quick decisiveness in leadership is an important and necessary skill to acquire and cultivate because many of the problems we face and opportunities that arise before us don’t often wait for us to get comfortable with them or allow us to examine all of the available alternatives as completely and as thoroughly as we would like.  Thus, quick decisions can be very good.  However, when it comes to our Personal Leadership Growth, the habit of making snap decisions may not always serve our best interests and thus the need to pause and reflect so ideas and decisions can incubate can be invaluable.  For example, some people I have mentored in the past have asked me about whether they should pursue an advanced degree.  As someone with a graduate degree with many years of schooling, I have a keen appreciation for higher education.  However, I’ve also learned that a degree alone is not a silver bullet for all things career and professional.  Nor is it necessarily the key to bliss and happiness.  Thus, when asked this question, I have often advised people who are considering obtaining an advanced degree to know why they want it, what it will do for them, what it will not do for them and how they believe it will be a good return on investment in terms of both the time and money it will cost them.  And make no mistake about it, education costs are high in terms of both time and money (for more on the value of time see my previous blog@ https://brattiadvisors.com/2018/04/19/big-leadership-series-part-1-personal-leadership-accountability-the-guardrail-of-personal-leadership/).  In essence, I’ve asked them to engage in deep reflection at this important crossroad decision by asking some reflective questions about their values, goals, tradeoffs, etc.  By doing to so, they stand a better chance of not having buyer’s remorse after they’ve plunked down a large chunk of change and agreed to trade what can be years of time in books and studious isolation in exchange for family time, recreation, hobbies, another career, etc.  Thus, as you move down your growth road, you’ll inevitably come to a crossroad similar to this so making time for regular reflection on matters important to you will better equip you to take the turn or detour that works best for you based on your values.

Illumination:  This involves the process of placing value on your experiences and performance.  One of biggest enemies of reflection is going through our days (and our lives) on autopilot.  Often we go through our day unconsciously, the result of which is our experiences are just that – experiences, with no thought as to what they mean for us to move ourselves forward.  Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living.  While people can debate that statement I don’t think there is much debate about the importance of regularly examining or shining light on our lives and experiences.  The idea behind illumination is to daily and intentionally shine a light onto our daily experiences and performance so we capture their meaning while the memory is still fresh.  If you hope to use reflection to ensure your growth compass is always pointing in the right direction, place value on your daily experience and performance so you can take the next step which is…

Illustration:  This is the process of expanding your experiences into teachable lessons. As stated above, you need to shine a light on your experiences and performance so you can give them value.  However, if you were to stop there I think these steps would have been in vain.  Reflecting on your experiences through investigation, Incubation and Illumination wouldn’t help much you if you didn’t learn from them and use that information to keep your compass pointed in the right direction.  Illustration does this.  By viewing your experiences as teachable lessons, you can then use the information derived from those lessons to adjust your compass readings to keep yourself on the proper course.   Be sure to use daily illustration to as your teacher from your experiences to make sure you’re taking the right road for your Personal Leadership Growth.

Now that you have a rough outline of what could constitute elements of a good reflection, I think it’s important to drive home the idea that this exercise needs to be habitual and frequent.  John Maxwell engages in reflection at the end of each day so no day goes by wasted.  In essence, he wrings out the most value he can from each day by choosing to reflect on it via asking himself the following three questions:

1. What did I learn today?
2. How can I apply what I learned today?
3. How can I pass on what I learned today?

I’m not going to go into each question in depth in this article since I think they are pretty self-explanatory.  Suffice it to say that if you could make this exercise part of your daily regimen, it would go a long way to help you keep your growth compass oriented in the right direction and you on the right road.

In closing , bear in mind that the concepts I’ve outlined here and in previous articles are only snippets from the book “The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth.”  If you have found this and the past articles on Personal Leadership and growth helpful, I encourage you to consider enrolling in one of my BIG Mastermind Groups that cover the entire book (for more what a Mastermind Group is, see my blog of last week on Accountability @ https://brattiadvisors.com/2018/04/19/big-leadership-series-part-1-personal-leadership-accountability-the-guardrail-of-personal-leadership/ ).  By being part of a BIG Mastermind Group, you not only further invest in your Personal Leadership Growth but you also become a part of a larger online community comprised of other like-minded professionals who are eager to grow themselves as well. I’m available at brian@brattiadvisors.com to help you pursue personal excellence and growth.  In any event, I’d love to hear from you.

Well, this wraps up Part 1 of this Big Leadership Series on Personal Leadership.  I hope you found the material helpful as you seek to be intentional, action-oriented, accountable and reflective about your Personal Leadership Growth Plan while leading your team or organization towards achieving BIG results.  Next month we explore “Leading Others” which is what’s commonly referred to as leadership.  Thanks for letting me be a part of your weekly leadership odyssey for the past few weeks and I’ll be back at you next week.  Take care and have a blessed week.

Hello everyone, it’s Brian Bratti again with this week’s edition on BIG Leadership.  This is the 3^rd installment in a 3 month weekly series on Leadership with this month’s theme being Personal Leadership.  Next month we’ll delve into leading others (which is what is commonly referred to as “leadership”) and end in June on the subject of developing others – the legacy responsibility of all leaders. Initially, we looked at how not being intentional about Personal Leadership is a BIG mistake.  Last week we considered how action was the BIG catalyst in Personal Leadership.  This week we’ll look at the subject of Accountability – The Guardrail of Personal Leadership.  I call Accountability a guardrail because I believe your Personal Leadership Growth Plan is like a road that is full of potholes (or gaps as we discussed two weeks ago) and surrounded by ditches and ravines that are easy to veer off into as life throws its demands your way as you pursue to improve yourself as a person and as a leader.  Thus, if you want to keep yourself from careening into a ditch or off a cliff from the road that will take you from where you are to where you desire to go, getting involved in an accountability program is one of the best actions you can do for yourself in this regard.

When we think of accountability we often harken back to the old fashion (and in my opinion completely outdated) yearly performance appraisal process with an employer.  To be quite frank, I’m surprised that employers still rely on this antiquated and generally ineffective tool to drive results and influence behavior.  It’s a process that can be can be perfunctory at best and unnecessarily painful at worst, often riddled with subjectivity, errors and documentation issues.  If an employer annual review is your idea of accountability, then I wouldn’t blame you for not embracing it as a means to help you grow.  But, I’ll leave the subject of improving that process for another day other than to say this is not what I’m suggesting when it comes to accountability in the personal growth context.  So if you are interested in looking at a more practical and user friendly mechanism for accountability, let’s take a look to see what other accountability possibilities you can consider to help you enhance your chances of staying on your personal growth road.

I believe accountability can come in one of two forms:  group and one-on-one and can be formal and informal.  Let’s take a look at the group model first:

Informal Study Groups

Generally, groups of this nature take the form of people getting together for a common purpose like a church Bible study which can involve both men and women in the same group or be segregated by gender.  I am a big supporter of these groups as they help enrich us and others through shared learning, fellowship, receiving and giving varying opinions and insights, etc.  And, as a married Christian man, I have participated and continue to participate in both men’s and couple’s Bible study groups on a weekly basis.   While these experiences have been a huge blessing in my life, I find they do not by themselves offer the level of accountability needed for me to further my Personal Leadership Growth Plan to drive the positive results I seek.  The reason for this is, as a general rule, these kinds of groups normally have informal accountability among members at best.  The main goal of these groups is learning and socializing, not accountability necessarily.  Many times confidentiality among members of these informal groups is based on the Las Vegas model (what is said in the group stays in the group) rather than a formal written agreement.  Finally, these groups are often not professionally facilitated with the intention of solving particular problems, establishing definitive plans of action going forward or creating a vibrant system of accountability for change and results.  Thus, while these kinds of groups definitely fill a valuable need in all of our lives and I highly recommend them, relying on them as your guardrail can be a bit dubious at best.  However, if you find you need more fellowship, ideas and camaraderie with others who can give you some loose level of accountability, these might be a smart choice for you.

Mastermind Groups (MMGs)

These groups offer more in the form of structure and are formed for a particular learning objective (For example, I lead an MMG that is centered on leadership and based on John Maxwell’s book “Leadership Gold”).  They normally have a definite beginning and end, the duration of which can be for as little as a few weeks or as long as a few months and usually meet for about an hour or so once a week.  Most MMGs are organized and facilitated by a professionally trained facilitator whose job is to keep the process productive and ensure the learning is not just for information but for application as well.  Confidentiality issues are usually handled Vegas style as well and the participants make personal obligations from what they learned from the material studied.  There is often encouragement for people to reach goals but goals are not formally tracked from meeting to meeting in most instances other than a general discussion among the group.  Thus, while these groups tend to have an increased level accountability over an informal Bible or book study, it is often limited to the time available for each member during the weekly sessions and when the group ends, the accountability usually ends. For those interested in pursuing this concept further, I offer some great mastermind group programs via the John Maxwell Team both in person and online.  See my website https://brattiadvisors.com/big-services/big-mastermind-groups/ for more details.  So, if you are hungry to learn and apply growth and leadership concepts to your life with a higher degree of accountability for results, MMGs might be the way to go for you.

Formal Peer Advisory Groups or Boards (PABs)

I call these kinds of groups the graduate school of accountability in a group setting because their main objective is not just learning but, more importantly, application and accountability for professional and organizational growth and solutions to particular problems.  Unlike MMGs, PABs normally meet monthly for either half a day or a whole day and are designed to continue meeting for as long as the members desire with many groups of this nature meeting for many years, growing and holding each other accountable for results.  Like MMGs, they are often facilitated by a professionally trained facilitator but follow a more rigorous and defined meeting agenda.  Unlike MMGs, they normally require a signed confidentiality agreement because the nature of the subject matter that could be discussed (such as corporate financials, etc.).  The PAB program with which I’m most familiar is the CBMC Leadership Institute Peer Advisory Board Program for which I am the Director in Charlotte North Carolina.  In this program, designed for Christian men who are CEOs/Business Owners & Senior Executives, we take these leaders out of their businesses once a month so they can work on their businesses and faith with other like-minded business leaders.  I tell people we offer MBA level business and leadership training with MDiv level theology along with a crucial meeting segment that is specifically designed to help a business owner solve a pressing spiritual/family/business problem with the help of his “Board of Advisors.”  Key to this process is the leader deciding from among the suggestions provided by his peers, a course of action the progress on which he will report to his “Board” in the following and subsequent months.  Thus, while business and faith learning and training is an integral part of the experience, the accountability of following up on next steps is likewise crucial.  There are also secular forms of this model, all of which help leaders in critical positions of authority navigate their businesses without feeling they have to “go it alone.”  If you are a Christian businessman with the title of CEO, Business Owner or Senior Executive and is interested in being part of a group of 8-12 similar Christian business leaders to help you take your personal leadership, faith and organization to the next level, then CBMC’s Leadership Institute may be something for you.  Again, feel free to check out my website at https://brattiadvisors.com/big-services/christian-ceo-business-owner-peer-advisory-groups/ or go to http://www.cbmcleadershipinstitute.com/ for more details how you can take advantage of this amazing tool available for your Personal Leadership.

Executive/Leadership Coaching

Now all of the above programs offer tremendous personal growth opportunities and I highly recommend you consider exploring each one for yourself.  As indicated, each has varying levels of accountability and all serve a great purpose in our lives.  However, I strongly believe if you really want to increase your chances of accountability and take your Personal Leadership Growth Plan to the next level, a formal Executive/Leadership coaching arrangement cannot be beat.  In a formal coaching relationship, the sessions are all about the person being coached (namely, you) but unlike athletic coaching, you are not “taught” or “trained” in the classical sense (remove the picture of a barking, yelling, drill-instructor type football coach from your thinking).  Rather, you are coached to think for yourself, look for answers inside yourself and come up with solutions and accountabilities that only you can provide with the help of a dedicated and professionally trained coach who is only focused on one thing – you.  While group coaching and the others mentioned above can provide varying levels of accountability, you are still sharing a resource for this purpose and thus your results will be limited to what that resource is able to provide to the group as a whole.  In a personal coaching format, all the focus is on you, your goals, aspirations and agenda.  It is similar to having private golf lessons vs. group golf lessons with the major difference being that you are not being “taught how to” do what is you want to do but are encouraged to think for yourself and explore the resources already inside you for taking your game to the next level.  Moreover, if you are simultaneously part of a MMG or PAB and in a formal coaching relationship with a professionally trained coach, you get the double benefit of receiving sound training and advice from others along with the assistance of a coach to help you sort out where it all fits into your growth and plans.  So, if you want to ratchet up your accountability to the highest level, consider engaging an Executive/Leadership coach to help you grow in your Personal Leadership.

That’s about all I have this week on accountability.  While certainly not exhaustive, these are some of the many options available for you to keep yourself safely on the road to Personal Leadership by avoiding potholes/gaps and steering clear of ditches and ravines awaiting you when you face the inevitable curves and bends that comprise every personal growth road.  At Bratti Innovation Group (BIG) we offer Mastermind Groups, Executive Coaching and Christian CEO/Business Owner Peer Advisory Board Programs to help you establish accountability guardrails as you navigate this terrain.  Again, check us out at www.brattiadvisors.com for more details.

Next week, we’ll finish up this month’s topic on Personal Leadership by looking at the topic that safeguards us not by keeping us on the road but by making sure the road we’re on is still the right one:  The Law of Reflection from John Maxwell’s book, “The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth.”  Thanks and have a blessed week.

Last week we kicked off this series on leadership by beginning with the proposition that to properly lead others we need to begin with ourselves.  Moreover, if we want to lead a successful and growing organization or team, the members of that organization or team must likewise be successful and growing which includes you and me.  But, if we give ourselves a pass on personal growth while expecting it from our teams, we are then committing the leadership sin of “do as I say, not as I do”, which damages our credibility as leaders.  Therefore, to be effective leaders, we need to have an intentional Personal Leadership Growth Plan in place for ourselves.   We then outlined eight pitfalls or gaps that can keep us from establishing such a plan.  We’ll now take a look at one of the next steps in our journey to grow ourselves, lead our organizations and subsequently grow others. Last week I also indicated that our next subject would be Accountability.  However, I jumped the gun.  So, I’ve decided to step back from Accountability for this week and be true to BIG’s KAAIR Formula:  Knowledge + ACTION + Accountability = Improved Results.  Therefore, I’m dedicating this week’s subject to Action - The BIG Catalyst for Personal Leadership because without action, your Personal Leadership Growth Plan is nothing more than that; just a plan and plans without action are merely wishes or pipe dreams.  So, let’s take a look at action and some of the pitfalls that we all can experience as we put our plans into ACTION.  We’ll dive into the subject of accountability next week.

Now there are many aspects to action.  I don’t intend for this article to be exhaustive in that respect.  However, I’ve included some critical action elements you may want to consider as you seek to increase in your Personal Leadership:

• SMART Actions from SMART Goals: I would be remiss if I left out the time tested SMART acronym for action steps since SMART goals should create SMART actions.  For those of us who need a refresher or are new to the SMART acronym, it states that, for goals to be effective, they should be Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.  I believe this applies to actions that come from the goals as well.  For application purposes, let’s take Specific as an example.  Let’s say you have determined that you would like to grow in the area of listening this year (check out John Maxwell’s book “Leadership Gold” Chapter 6 that is entitled “The Best Leaders are Listeners” for some insights on this.).  For this very worthwhile goal you could establish specific actions that would help you improve your listening skills.  As outlined in the book, you could make as a weekly action step to be more attentive to small issues or choose to utilize your intuition more during discussions, or pay closer attention to what is not being said, etc.  The idea here is to take your specific goals from your Personal Leadership Growth Plan and assign specific action items to them.  You can then apply the remaining elements of Measurable, Attainable, and Relevant & Timely in much the same fashion.  When you assign SMART actions to SMART goals you increase the likelihood of implementing them and achieving your goals.
• Line of Sight to the Plan: This may sound elementary, but your action steps need to be tied directly to your Plan.   I can’t tell you how many times I’ve witnessed people who had great goals but then were engaging in activities that did not have a direct line of sight back to their Personal Leadership Growth Plan.  The result of that is they get down the road a bit and then wonder why they haven’t realized any change or improved results.  Sometimes the most obvious things are neglected.  Make sure you tie your action steps directly to your plan and do them, plain and simple.
• Focused on and supportive of plan results: Having desired results that drive the plan is what differentiates action steps from mere activities.  Personal Leadership Growth Plans are goal oriented and therefore the action steps that derive from them are focused on and supportive of the desired results. A good way to make sure this is happening is when you devise your action steps, answer this question for each action item:  how does this action support the results I desire that drive my Personal Leadership Growth Plan?  And, when you’re engaging in those actions, make it a point to remember how they support your goals as you reinforce yourself being on the right track.  You can’t go wrong if you focus on and engage in the execution of the action steps that support your Personal Leadership Growth Plan.
• Time limits and milestones: This is covered under the SMART acronym but because I think the lack of this feature is often a major culprit in dooming many plans before they get any traction, I am singling it out here.  If we don’t put a time limit by which we will take action or include milestones/checkpoints along the way so we can pause and see how we are doing in our actions, we probably won’t take action at all.  Other pressing matters will steal our attention.  We’ll get caught up in the urgent and leave the important (like our personal and professional growth) out in the cold.  We’ll be reacting to our environment instead of being a force in it.  Therefore, we need to make sure those plans don’t sit on a computer somewhere, taking up space on a server or hard drive rather than in our lives.  To ensure our actions actually take place, we need to establish due dates, checkpoints and timelines for them.
• Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize! If it is location, location, location in real estate, then I think it’s prioritize, prioritize, prioritize in personal leadership.  I heard Albert Einstein once said “the only reason time exists is so everything doesn’t happen all at once.”  Without prioritization of action steps it can seem as if everything is happening at all at once leaving us unsure of what to do next.  That’s why when creating our plans, prioritizing our action steps is so vital.  By predetermining which steps come first and in what order we stand a better chance of putting them into action since that decision would have already been made beforehand and not in the heat of the moment when the world and all of its demands come bearing down on us.  After all, that’s one of the hallmarks of being a great leader:  the ability to prioritize.  If we believe we can prioritize for our team or our organization, we should be able to prioritize for our Personal Leadership growth and the more we exercise the prioritization muscle in our actions, the more developed it will become.  Don’t forget prioritization when taking action.
• Sense of Urgency & Emotions: Personal Leadership growth must come from a deep desire for change in ourselves so the action steps associated with our growth plan must likewise be tied to that desire.  When taking action, don’t forget the value of your heartfelt desire when you established your action steps.  It can help you later on when you don’t’ feel like taking those steps.  For example, want to create action steps to lose weight?  Consider writing down how you felt about your weight and yourself when you started your plan, how you believe you will feel when you’ve achieve your goal and then refer back to those feelings when you are engaging in your action steps.  Don’t be shy here.  Write it out in rich and vivid detail.  Take pictures.  Do whatever it takes to keep that desire fresh.  It could make the difference between the decision to jump on the treadmill or the sofa!
• Value, Risks & Tradeoffs: People value different things in life.  Some value having a big home, others want a smaller home but the ability to go on cool vacations.  Some people value expensive cars while others would rather have an inexpensive car but a nice boat (Having owned a boat myself I now tend to favor having a friend with a really nice boat but that’s just me).  So, not only do many things in life involve tradeoffs but they also have relative value depending on the worth a person ascribes to them.  However, there is one thing that I think we all can agree on as being truly priceless because once it is gone, there is no amount of money that can bring it back and that’s time.  As a side note, I recall hearing a story of a person who complained about not having enough time and wanting more and the response to that complaint caught me by surprise.  The retort was we all get all the time there is – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  There simply is no more time to be had or given, so asking for more time is not a worthwhile way to spend our time (isn’t that ironic?).  Well the same can be said about actions relating to our Personal Leadership Growth Plan.  Engaging in the action steps to grow yourself personally will require risks and tradeoffs of this invaluable asset we call time which will take you away from other things that might not necessarily be bad.  In fact, these other things might be very good but not very great.  Thus, there are costs that need to be weighed when mapping out these personal growth action steps which also need to be remembered when actually engaging in them.  Remember why you put yourself on the path you are on and it will help you maintain the actions you need to take to achieve what you have planned.

Of course, like intentions, there are also pitfalls that lay in the path of the actions we endeavor to implement as we seek to grow ourselves.  Again, this is not an exhaustive list by any means but some of the more prevalent ones I have witnessed in my coaching experience.  Aside from the 8 gaps mentioned last week which can also apply to actions, here a few more to consider as you move forward on your Personal Leadership Growth Plan:

• Productive Procrastination: This gap or pitfall is probably one of the most insidious of them all because when you’re engaging in it you actually feel like you are accomplishing something.  If you are allowing yourself to slip into Productive Procrastination, you are technically moving the ball forward but only by inches or millimeters at best.  The actions from your plan, however, are designed to move it yards, gets you first downs and ultimately a touchdown (an analogy for my fellow football fans).  An example of this pitfall in action is deleting junk email (which admittedly needs to be done and is a good thing) but doing it during your most productive time of the day rather than making sales calls or analyzing data, or whatever it is you do that moves your ball the most.  When this gap or pitfall creeps in, remember the actions from your Personal Leadership Growth Plan and what they mean to you in terms of achieving your goals or what you have determined to be your “touchdown.”  Will deleting that junk email right now when you should be making your next sales call really get you where you need to be?  Beware of Productive Procrastination’s feel good illusion and remember your growth action steps when it rears its ugly head!
• The Shiny Object Syndrome: This is a phrase I learned from the John Maxwell Team and is akin to productive procrastination.  But, rather than seeming productive, the shiny object is merely more interesting.  It can affect everyone from those just starting out in business to the seasoned CEO of a large corporation.  The Shiny Object Syndrome involves dabbling in other interesting and desirable ideas, tasks or activities that pop up in the midst of implementing our Personal Leadership Growth Plan action steps that, at first blush, seem more appealing than what we originally planned to do.  They’re new, fresh and alluring but designed to take you off track and torpedo your growth and goals.  They are a candy bar and not a healthy and nutritious meal.  Sure you get a momentary good feeling from them but they don’t move you forward toward your goal.  They sideline you, waste your value time (see the above) and undermine your Personal Leadership Growth Plan.  Beware of the Shiny Object Syndrome as you take action in your Personal Leadership.
• Fatigue: So you’ve created a really cool Personal Leadership Growth Plan.  It contains some very smart action steps and you’re growing yourself as a leader.  You may even be seeing some positive improvements out of the gate.  You’re not quite where you want to be but you can definitely see some results.  And then, reality hits.  Days and weeks get long, deadlines press down and the world (which is not remotely interested in your Personal Growth Plan by the way) pushes against you and you start to feel fatigue.  You will get tired of working on yourself even though it’s in your best interest.  It’s coming.  So what do you do?  Sure, part of the answer lies in your own perseverance and discipline.  A leader needs to be focused and self-disciplined, no questions there.  However, could you use some help?  Sure, and that’s the next bullet point and subject for next week.
• Lack of Accountability: Again, this is one we’ll address next week.  Suffice it for now to say that actions stand a whole lot better chance of actually taking place when accountability is part of the growth and improved results equation.  Stay tuned for more on that next week.

So, as I wrap up this edition on Personal Leadership, I have to ask you, where are you with regard to action?  Are your goals pretty amazing but your results not so?  Are some of these pitfalls or the ones we discussed last week tripping up you or members of your organization and thus preventing you and them from moving forward as quickly and effectively as you would like?  Check out my website for some information on how BIG Coaching, BIG Training or BIG Mastermind groups could help you and your organization at www.brattiadvisors.com or drop me a line at brian@brattiadvisors.com.  I’d love to hear from you either way.

That’s all for me this week.  I look forward to being with you again next week when we look at one of the most effective safeguards to your Personal Leadership – Accountability (no, I really mean it this time).  Thanks and have a blessed week!

Hello everyone I’m Brian Bratti with Bratti Innovation Group (BIG) where we help you achieve BIG Results.  Welcome to my weekly BIG Blog Series.  This month I’m kicking off a 3 month series on the subject of Leadership.  For the month of April, I’ll be discussing Personal Leadership, the foundation for all leadership pursuits.  In May we’ll address the topic of Leading Others, the primary calling of a Leader.  And finally, for the month of June, I’ll be discussing the topic of Developing Other Leaders, which involves the legacy responsibility all great leaders embrace.  For each week I’ll tackle one aspect of these three subjects in hopes that it will “Help You Achieve BIG Results!”

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the Subject of Personal Leadership.

Leadership assumes that you cannot effectively lead others if you cannot lead yourself.  As a former military officer, I remember learning the leader’s mantra: “don’t just do as I say, but do as I do” and believe that statement applies to anyone in a leadership role.  This is because leadership by example creates legitimacy in the eyes of those you lead so if you struggle with leading yourself (Personal Leadership), you most assuredly will struggle with leading others.  In fact, John Maxwell, the author of numerous books and the founder of the company for which I am licensed and certified to Coach, Speak & Train says there are two questions every leader must ask himself or herself:  1) What am I doing to develop myself and 2) What I am doing to develop others.  This month, we’ll tackle the first one.

One of the foundational principles of leading yourself is the idea of being intentional about your own personal growth.  If you lead others and are not intentionally growing yourself, you will soon be left behind in terms of ideas and cutting edge thinking, resulting in the loss of credibility with those you are trying to lead.  This is because those you lead who are on intentional growth plans will grow and you will not.  Moreover, if you are not intentional about your personal growth, you leave your own personal well-being and growth to chance and, chances are, when left to chance you don’t stand much of a chance in succeeding in being the person and leader you are meant to be (try saying that five times fast).  So what does being intentional about personal growth as a leader look like and what are some of the pitfalls of choosing to not being intentional about investing in yourself?

In his book, “The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth” John Maxwell discusses 15 laws that we must learn, live and master if we want to reach our true potential, the first of which is the Law of Intentionality.  The Law of Intentionality states, quite simply, growth doesn’t just happen.  And by growth we mean getting better.  By not improving ourselves through personal growth, we remain as we are with the only difference being we’ve added to ourselves more years but not more wisdom and improvement.  I’m sure you’ve seen examples in your own life where a person can have 10 years of experience and another can have 2 years of experience five times.  That’s the difference between growing and aging.  They can take place simultaneously but not necessarily.  Unfortunately, many of us are not intentional about growing ourselves and this could be due to the 8 gaps that John says stand between where we are right now and the action needed to get us where we want to be.  So, to be intentional in our Personal Leadership and growth, we need to identify and avoid or get ourselves out of these gaps which are:

• The Assumption Gap: This gap arises from the belief “I assume I will automatically grow.” As stated above, the problem with this assumption is that meaningful growth does not happen on its own and if it does by some miracle happen, the obvious question is how will we know it?  If we haven’t set a desired outcome beforehand and have not been intentional about growth, how will we know when we reach it?  Many assume we just grow naturally.  We don’t.  Don’t fall into the Assumption Gap.
• The Knowledge Gap – This gap arises from the belief that “I don’t know how to grow.” Because many of us haven’t had the structure of formal education for a long time, we aren’t in the habit of setting aside organized time for intentional learning and growing.  Therefore, we might have forgotten how to grow ourselves.  If you find yourself yearning for growth but not knowing how to do it, consider becoming more intentional in investigating how to put in place a plan for your personal growth today.  It will be one of the wisest investments you can make in yourself.
• The Timing Gap – This gaps involves the idea that “It’s not the right time to begin.” This is the gap that may be one of the worst of all because if the timing is never right (and it often isn’t), then the growth never starts.  Many of us are constantly starting to start and that normally gets us nowhere.  He’s the reality: it is rarely convenient to start anything meaningful because those activities often require effort and personal growth is one of those activities.  If you’re waiting to start, then you might be struggling with the Timing Gap.
• The Mistake Gap – This gap centers around the notion of “I’m afraid of making mistakes.” Admittedly, no one likes to make mistakes.  They can be painful and often embarrassing.  However, we often have a wrong viewpoint on mistakes (for more on this, please see my other blog post on this subject entitled “Give Yourself Permission to Fail” or consider joining my online mastermind class based on John Maxwell’s book “Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn”).  Suffice it to say that if you aren’t willing to make mistakes, you aren’t willing to grow because growth doesn’t happen without mistakes.  If a fear of making mistakes is holding you from pursuing the creation of a personal growth plan for yourself, you’re in the Mistake Gap.
• The Perfection Gap – This gap is formed around the belief that “I have to find the best way before I start.” This is akin to the Timing Gap.  Being intentional about your growth will never be perfect nor will there ever be a perfectly straight line between where you are right now and where you want to go.  If you’re waiting for the perfect way or timing, you’ll probably be waiting for a very long time.  Don’t wait for the “best way” to magically appear before you put in place a growth plan for yourself and avoid the Perfection Gap.
• Inspiration Gap – This gaps arises from the emotion “I don’t feel like doing it.” Here is where we need to address our feelings head on by acknowledging feelings can be unreliable.  Ask any professional athlete if they train only when they feel like it and I’m pretty sure they will tell you absolutely not.  In fact, often the most growth and improvement an athlete may experience is precisely when they “don’t feel like doing it.”  The same is true for you and me if we want to grow beyond where we are now.  Chances are, there will be many times we “won’t feel like doing it” but the ability to push through those feelings is absolutely essential to growing both as a person and as a leader.  If you don’t feel like putting a growth plan in place for yourself right now, that’s probably the best indicator that you should do precisely that – start creating a growth plan for yourself right now!
• The Comparison Gap – This gap comes from thinking “Others are better than I am.” Here’s another truth: there will always be someone better than you and me at something.  No champion gets the title “Champion for Life.”  All wins are temporary and all trophies tarnish.  Also, you probably don’t have all the facts concerning what that person did to get to that champion status.  One of the cures for this gap is the ability to cultivate the discipline of rejoicing for those who are in front of us so that we might not only be able to now shift our focus from them to our personal growth plan (where it belongs) and thus actually move ourselves forward but also be able to help those who are behind us and watching us as examples to follow.  Comparisons never help us in our own growth.  In fact, they stymie growth.  Do you want to get out of the Comparison Gap?  Start by being happy for those who do well around you so you can move on to working on your own growth plan by staying out of theirs.
• The Expectation Gap – This gap arises from the expectation of “I thought it would be easier than this.” We all know that nothing worth having is easy so it’s no different when we look at our own personal growth.  As Henry Ford said, “Most folks miss opportunity because it’s usually dressed in overalls and looks like work.” If we want to grow, we’re signing up for work, plain and simple.  John Maxwell says the difference between a winner and whiner is a whiner wants to feel good before they do something and a winner does something and then feels good.  The winner understands that the right emotions follow the right actions and not the other way around.  Therefore, if you’re thinking you need to feel good to create a growth plan for yourself you run the risk of abandoning it when the going gets tough (and it will) and thus forego the chances of it doing you any good.  Growth plans cannot rely on expectations that growth will be easy.  Don’t allow your personal growth to be held captive to this illusion and resolve to make yourself an effective growth plan today.

So now that you’ve seen these gaps I have to ask you – do any of them resonate with you right now? Below is a chart taken from John’s book where you can measure where you are with regard to any gaps in which you may find yourself.  Go ahead and take a moment to see where you stand in the intentionality gaps:

Accidental Growth                                                                                          Intentional Growth

0              1              2              3              4              5              6              7              8              9         10

Plans to start tomorrow –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Insists on starting now

Waits for growth to come –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Takes responsibility to grow

Learns only from mistakes –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Learns before mistakes

Depends on good luck –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Relies on hard work

Quits early and often –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Perseveres long and hard

Falls into bad habits ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Fights for good habits

Talks big –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Follows through

Plays it safe ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Takes risks

Thinks like a victim ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Thinks like a learner

Relies on talent –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Relies on character

Stops learning after graduation ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Never stops learning

If you’re like most people who do not have a growth plan in place, your scores in one or more of the above areas may indicate where you are being held back and where you may need to become more intentional about taking control of your Personal Leadership.  So I commend you to use these scores to become intentional about creating a Personal Leadership growth plan today.  Next week we’ll address what I believe is one of the most effective safeguards to your Personal Leadership – Accountability.

Finally, do you want to put your Personal Leadership growth on the fast track?  Email me at brian@brattiadvisors.com or check out some of my coaching, training and mastermind group services on my website www.brattiadvisors.com for more information on how I can help you and your organization achieve BIG Results.  Thanks and I look forward to being with you again next week.