Welcome to week 1 and day 1 of the 21 Day Leadership Challenge.
We have designed this to practically support you as leaders, particularly if you are leading change that is complex, messy and uncertain. Who am I kidding – that’s all change!
But this isn’t about change management. This is about you, as a leader of change, and how you support yourself to show up as the best version of you for this work.
This 21 Day Challenge encourages your daily reflection, action and growth. It is designed to help you as leaders stay focused, adaptable and effective as you guide your people through change.
And just like building any other muscle in our body the practice of reflection is building a critical leadership muscle. Through September, we will help you to reflect on your leadership and therefore build and strengthen this muscle and build good habits along the way.
Each challenge will be conveniently delivered to you, via your inbox or social media stream, however you currently read our content, each working day morning throughout September. Starting today! Week 1 is focused on your self-awareness and mindset
Day 1 - Start a journal today!
Don’t overcomplicate this – 10 mins each day writing your thoughts will give you significant reflection by the end of the month.
Reflect on how you are leading today. How would others describe your leadership and your impact?
In the context of the change you are leading, progress or impact you are wanting to make as a leader - what is and isn’t working right now?
Reflect on areas where you feel your leadership capacity is limited and identify one way to raise it.
We would love to hear from you about your progress. What’s working, where you are getting stuck and what else you need.
Building a community and doing this work as a collective is far more powerful than doing it in isolation. So, share away as you build your leadership fitness – it’s powerful!
We get more of what we pay attention to. The way we choose to speak to ourselves has the capacity to empower or destroy us. Never is there a more important time to choose our words, and thereby our moods, behaviours and results carefully, than when we speak to ourselves.
According to the web, the average person has anywhere between 50,000 – 80,000 thoughts per day and 95% of these are the same as the day before. It has also been reported that, on average 65% of these thoughts are negative.
This is best illustrated by the movie ‘Groundhog Day’, where the main character played by Bill Murray, endures the same day over and over again. His experience doesn’t change until his perspective changes. He lashes out at those around him and even makes numerous suicide attempts before making the empowering decision to re-examine his own thoughts and behaviour.
He surrenders his habitual ways of thinking and reacting and decides to shift his focus entirely. Finally, it is revealed to him how he affects his relationships and can experience meaning in his life.
Day 2 – Assess your leadership strengths
What are you great at and what gives you energy?
Think back to something you’ve achieved that you’re really proud of. What is it that you’re naturally great at, that energises you and bring you joy? What are you doing when you feel at your best and your performance is at its peak?
Leaders need a robust set of strengths to navigate an environment that is constantly changing. As this often means the need to do things differently tomorrow from how you are today, a narrow view of our skills and strengths is not enough. The ability to draw from different strengths and the courage to try new things, to take on risks are crucial.
If you’re not familiar with the terminology “unrealised strengths”, you have not done the strength profiling work with us yet. It shows a number of strengths you perform well and bring you energy, but you are not using as much as possible. There are unrealised strengths. An amazing untapped resource for bringing renewed energy and higher performance to you and how you lead.
Once you have identified a set of unrealised strengths to draw from, the opportunity to use them may not be as obvious as you’d like though.
Taking sometimes what feels like a sidestep from best performing strengths to make room for those you don’t use as often can be daring. But so is leadership. Remember Brene Brown, in her book Daring to Lead, telling us to “stay in it when you’re uncertain, in risk, in the arena and put yourself out there when you can’t control the outcome.” That is when confidence partners with strengths for best results.
Strengths are not fixed attributes. They’re dynamic elements that with focus and work can be leveraged, dialed up or down as needed. This is what makes them such great boosters of potential and ultimately performance. They serve as catalysts for taking your leadership to the next level.
Day 3 - Identify limiting beliefs or self-talk
We get more of what we pay attention to. The way we choose to speak to ourselves has the capacity to empower or destroy us. Never is there a more important time to choose our words, and thereby our moods, behaviours and results carefully, than when we speak to ourselves.
According to the web, the average person has anywhere between 50,000 – 80,000 thoughts per day and 95% of these are the same as the day before. It has also been reported that, on average 65% of these thoughts are negative.
This is best illustrated by the movie ‘Groundhog Day’, where the main character played by Bill Murray, endures the same day over and over again. His experience doesn’t change until his perspective changes. He lashes out at those around him and even makes numerous suicide attempts before making the empowering decision to re-examine his own thoughts and behaviour. He surrenders his habitual ways of thinking and reacting and decides to shift his focus entirely. Finally, it is revealed to him how he affects his relationships and can experience meaning in his life.
Today’s reality is a result of yesterday’s self-talk.
Quite often I hear a person justify their negative perspective with the phrase: “I’m not being negative, I’m just being realistic.” Here’s the thing with ‘reality’; today’s reality is a result of thoughts, emotions, behaviours and actions belonging to ourselves or others from the past. Unless we want to repeat the past, we cannot afford to create momentum in an emotional state that created the problem.
So, does this mean we bury our head in the sand? No, but it does mean we avoid indulging in the emotions that created the problem. It means keeping our power to make informed choices without getting carried away with the drama.
So, the question is what momentum and reality do you really want to create and lead?
Today, and for the rest of this week, pay attention to your self-talk. If you find yourself in a negative loop then practice reframing to more neutral or, if possible, positive ways to think. Catching up with a positive colleague that can help you with a different perspective is always a good option too.
Day 4 – Check your Vision and Values Alignment
Review your core values.
- How aligned are they with your organisations values?
- Are you living these values as you lead?
- What does this look like?
- Where are you compromising your values?
Values drive our behaviours, they motivate the choices we make both good and bad and serve as the filter we use to make hard decisions.
When reflecting on your values you become more aware of the reasons why you find yourself exercising leadership as you are today.
The values that form the basis for leadership come from our beliefs and convictions. It is really easy to list your values and live by them when things are going well. I can do a values exercise with a group of leaders in half an hour and they can come up with a pretty clear list on what is core to them. When your leadership, your success or your career is under pressure and put to the test you learn what is most important.
Your values are reflected in every facet of your leadership style. By defining your values, you lay the foundation for a grounded and confident leadership approach. You determine what matters most to you and you establish a framework by which you make decisions. Until leaders become clear in their own minds about what they value, it’s virtually impossible for them to become clear to others about what matters most.
By defining your values, you allow your teams, your clients—and more importantly, you—to know what you stand for.
Day 5 - Ask a trusted colleague, leader or mentor for feedback on your leadership.
Focus on areas that may need adjustment in the context of the change you are leading. The more specific you can be when asking for feedback the more likely you will get something of real value back.
It’s Friday today and the end of the first week of your 21 Day Leadership Challenge. Reflect on the week and how you are making progress. What are you proud of? Where do you need to make some changes so you can pay attention to this for next week?
And as always, we would love to hear from you about your progress. What’s working, where you are getting stuck and what else you need.
Follow us on: LinkedIn Instagram Facebook