Leading With Honor – It begins with clarity

Follow this link to download a free worksheet from my Seminar on Living a Life of Excellence.

I ended my last post with this question – Are you leading with honor? More importantly, how do you know? To answer this question requires us to define both leading and honor. I don’t want to approach this question academically, but from a perspective that will enable you to take something away that will improve your life, your business, and the lives of others.

The first step towards Leading With Honor begins with you. Why do you want to lead with honor? Good intentions or doing the right thing are not acceptable here. Why? Because good intentions and doing the right thing, along with $1.70, will only get you a great cup of coffee at Peets. While admirable, these reasons won’t cut it in the real world. Shocked? Don’t be.

To Lead with Honor, you have to have purpose. Purpose begins with Clarity. Clarity – A clear understanding of where you are along your life’s journey, and, where you are going. For example, different paths might include developing your family or it might be to develop your company, department or team. It may be to create a product or deliver a service. The point here, is that you must have some goal in front of you in order to lead others towards it. Without clarity of purpose, it makes no sense to focus on leading.

Think about it. What leader can you think of, that didn’t have clarity and focus? On the 50th anniversary of his death, I was listening to Buddy Holly’s widow, Maria Elena, describe his work ethic. She said she had to pry him away from his music. He ate, slept, and lived – music. Buddy knew what he was trying to do. Do you?

Another way to look at this is to ask yourself the following question – Where are you going, and is it a place that others will find worthy to follow you to? Clarity. If you don’t have purpose – you won’t be able to Lead With Honor.

The best way to find clarity in your life, is to be in a state of relaxation and to let your mind quietly wander. The busy-ness of life often clouds our ability to think clearly. Our fears, anxieties, troubles, and the general pressures of life prevent us from focusing on clarity. So do yourself a big favor, go and relax. If you can afford the luxury of a weekend retreat somewhere – then treat yourself to some down time. If that is beyond your means at the moment, go to a quiet place like the beach, a park or the mountains. If all you have is a few hours, take a hot bath or go down to your local coffee shop and just hang out.

While relaxing just ask yourself what you want to accomplish with your life. I have found it helpful to keep a journal to jot down what comes to mind. You don’t have to write in it every day – but you should write down what your goals in life are, and what you want to accomplish.

If you want a worksheet to help you with this, follow this link to download a free worksheet from my Seminar on Living a Life of Excellence.

Purpose – Vision – Excellence!
JT