Ready to achieve more with less stress?

This month’s Leadership Tips I Swear By includes:

1. The launch of a brand spanking new video to highlight what your people can experience when they bring me in to speak and spark new ways of thinking.
2. A better way to define success for you and your team.

I hope you like both.

Cheers,

Adrian

Do you want your people to think, talk or act differently this year?

One of my focus areas this year is the “Speaker Game” (i.e., I’m keen to do more conferences or offsite talks).

To help you or someone from your organisation get a better feel for how I help spark meaningful thinking, talking and action, here are three items to show you how! :

1. Check out my brand new speaker showreel in action:
2. Head to my motivational speaker webpage for a rundown on how I inspire and instigate the winning mentality to create winning teams:
3. Download my speaker kit to find out how I can bring my keynotes to your stage to inspire, entertain and help audiences think differently.

Setting goals can suck; this is better.

Are you a lover or a fighter?

A sprinter or a marathoner?

A goal setter or a focus setter?

Are you on track to achieve your 2024 goals?

Or if you have yet to set them, don’t stress. You are not alone; according to Harvard Business Review, 91% of the top performers in the world don’t lock down their goals until the beginning of March.

Well, not really. I made that stat up, but it makes me feel better as I am one of those still finalising my areas of focus.

You may have noticed I used the term areas of focus. Not goals, objectives or targets. Areas of focus sits better with me.

Areas of focus allows me to play many games that matter to me without the pressure of having to hit my targets or goals. My days of being a retail area manager and having to justify every day why daily, weekly or monthly sales targets have scarred me. The idea of a finite or zero-sum game also does not sit well with me.

Don’t get me wrong - I love playing games. I love competing, and I love winning. However, there is something about “goals” and “targets” that, over time, resonates less and less.

That doesn’t take away from my desire to evolve, get better and, as I said before, win. 2023 was a year I won—committed and amazing clients and new products, and we continue to grow and evolve.

All of this was achieved without annual goals or targets. I know some of you will not agree with that approach.

Hear me out. Here’s how areas of focus helped me win last year and how this approach could help you.?

To help identify what I wanted to achieve in 2023, I kicked off by asking these three questions to help identify which areas to focus on.

Where did I want to get better?

What did I want to put into place?

What games did I want to win?

I wanted to improve and evolve how Teams That Swear? was run by lifting my thinking, finding new ways to help leaders shine, and thinking more like a business owner rather than just a team performance enhancer.

“If I can lift out of the weeds more, people like you will benefit more from what I offer”, was my thinking.

Once I had my area of focus, it then allowed me to identify which games I wanted to win.

Warning: This could sound like a brag list. Although we should never shy away from what we are proud of, the intent is not to make me feel better by sharing these with you.? The examples below demonstrate what can be achieved when you get crystal clear on what you want to focus on and what you can learn about yourself.

As a reminder, my area of focus was to run Teams That Swear?, more like a business, and not just running workshops or doing talks. To help my people more, the company and I needed to change how we went about things.

Once I locked in my focus area, I identified the following games to win:

1. The “Launch your book properly to the world game.” The book was launched as COVID hit, so it felt like too much was going on to gain traction. So in 2023, I focussed on ways to get the word out, undertaking a PR campaign that saw the book's work featured in nine podcasts, three radio interviews and 13 articles in publications such as Fast Company, CEO World and the Global CEO Magazine: boom, a win in my books.?
2. The “Help leaders better understand their team’s dynamics game”. This resulted in the creation and launching of the free Teams That Swear Team Dynamics Assessment. If you haven’t done it yet, have a go.
3. The “How to get leadership teams talking about how they do teamwork game”. This resulted in the development of a soon-to-be-launched team 360-degree tool to help leadership teams focus on enterprise leadership, influence beyond the teams they lead, and identify what exactly they can do to improve team cohesion.
4. Lastly, the “Bring in the experts game” expanded the Teams That Swear? team by adding to my team. Rachael Ziccone joined in August 2023 to help ensure more tips and thought provokers are shared consistently to help teams shine. She is an expert in her space and has made a world of difference.

The reason I share this with you today is because

If you have yet to set your objectives for you or your team, don’t despair. But don’t delay. Get onto it. Use these three questions.

What area(s) do you want to focus on improving in 2024?

Identify which games you could play to improve your focus.

Dig and do the work.

See what you learn about yourself. My biggest takeaway is when I have short-term projects or games to play, I crush it.? I realised that sprints work well for me.

Or re-discovered.

Growing up, I could run like the wind. I was a sprinter. And I still am.

That doesn’t mean you have to be a sprinter. You may be a marathon runner and like longer-term games. Or something in between.

The key is to choose your area of focus, choose your game and start to play. Then, see what you learn.

Good luck, and enjoy the ride,

Cheers,

Adrian

*Three pretty cool organisations are currently trialling the soon-to-be-launched tool for leadership teams. Hang tight; there is more to come next month. If you’d like to learn more about how this tool can help your leadership team focus more on leading the business than just their functions, let me know by clicking here, and I’ll be in touch.