EDITION 19: DELIBERATE AND PURPOSEFUL LEADERSHIP

This month we focus on Purposeful and Deliberate Leadership. In my early years of business and leadership development, I had the privilege of learning from one of the great thought leaders of our time, Stephen R. Covey. I was in my early twenties, attending university, and working in sales for a publishing and marketing firm when I first met Dr. Covey. In 1979, I began my sophomore year as a business major, and started to choose my elective courses. One of the elective courses was Organizational Behavior, taught by Stephen R. Covey, the same who years later would author the famous book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Soon thereafter, Dr. Covey became an advisor to the company I was working for and would remain an advisor for the entirety of my work experience there. His teachings made a major impact on me, my mindset, my thinking and would impact me for the rest of my life. In fact, for the past 40 years, I have been teaching and extending his concepts as I have strived to convert the 7 Habits into practical applications for the thousands of sales and support people, professionals, and entrepreneurs that I taught over that period of time. Those extrapolations and extended teachings would become the inspiration for my book, Influential Leadership Books: Become a Super Leader & The Power of Strategic Influence! 10 Success Factors of Highly Influential Leaders.

Begin With The End In Mind

As I advanced through the company as a sales rep and later as a sales manager, then sales director, and finally as VP of Sales, Dr. Covey introduced to me and my sales teams important habits, one of which was Habit 2, Begin with the end in mind, to be published years later in his 7 Habits book. Though all seven of his habits are instrumental in helping someone become an effective person and leader, this Habit 2 stuck with me. In his words, Habit 2 is “…based upon imagination—is the ability to envision in your mind what you cannot at present see with your eyes.” What I garnered from that principle and habit is that without having a vision of where you want to go, you will have no purpose or sense of direction. You must first create in your mind the objective, the product, and the result of what you want before you can realize it. Though I’ve never considered creativity to be one of my strongest assets, learning how to envision what I want and then taking that vision to reality has become one of my strong suits.

Personal Driving Forces

In my book, Success Factor 7, I coined the concept of Personal Driving Forces (PDF’s for short) and explain the importance of assessing those elements that drive and motivate you towards achievement and success. A PDF is the passion, motivation, and purpose for doing what you do. To gain a personal driving force or purpose, you must first envision what you want and then identify the WHY that will compel you to pursue some end goal. Armored with vision and purpose, the end goal will be resolute and will allow you to actualize your objective.

Deliberate Practice For Mastery

Another modern-day thought leader, Malcolm Gladwell, for more than a decade has been teaching the concept of how to become an expert in something. He teaches that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice (meaning with purpose and focus on practicing in the correct way) to become known as a world-class expert. The key word in his teaching is “deliberate,” or in other words doing something consciously and intentionally. The word intentionally signifies doing something deliberately and on purpose. When we do something intentionally, it means we thought about it before proceeding, envisioned the end result, and then pursued it with purpose. Malcolm goes on to say that the highest level of expertise, “… involves goal setting, quick feedback, and countless drills to improve skills with an eye on mastery.“

Be Who You Are On Purpose

One final living thought leader who is well known in North America is Dr. Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil), an American television personality, author, clinical psychologist, and best known for his talk show, Dr. Phil. Recently he was interviewed by Mike Huckabee, and was asked to share his thoughts regarding life and purpose. His answer was inspirational. He said, “You can't wake up each day and be who you are, reactively by default. You need to decide who you are, and be who you are, on purpose!” In other words, we each have the responsibility to be intentional on our journey through life, and determine a purpose to ensure we end up in the right place, otherwise, our future and destination are happenchances.

My parting thought is from a quote by the great Lao Tzu who puts all of this into perspective. He once said, “If you?do?not?change direction,?you may end up?where?you?are heading."

Summary and Takeaways

1.?To become a successful person and leader, “Begin with the end in mind.” -- Stephen R. Covey

2. To achieve an end result that is fulfilling, focus on being purposeful and deliberate in your actions. Malcolm Gladwell shares that on average you can become a world-class expert by deliberately practicing something for 10,000 hours in the correct way.

3.?As taught by Dr. Phil, a favorable outcome and exceptional results are not happenchance, they happen “On purpose.”

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