Racing, racing, racing. Push it to the limit. Racing. Quick pit stop. And then, racing again.
As I think about many of the leaders I know, racing characterizes the last few weeks of December and first week of January. Racing to close deals. Racing to finish projects or annual reviews (ha!). Racing to get the last sales contracts completed. Racing to get everything settled just enough so they can take a few days off.
And then stopping — stopping to disengage, spend time with family and rest. Stopping to take a break from all the racing. And then, come next week, first week of January, they are back to the races! Many will rush into Monday morning feeling behind already!
As an early advocate of pausing to take stock of things, Socrates declared:
The unexamined life is not worth living.
If you haven’t had a chance to catch your breath and do some self-examination, here are three steps that you can walk through in as little as an hour. So, find a place to be alone, disconnect from your email, and open a fresh Word document (or go old school with a pen and journal).
STEP ONE: Reflect on highs and lows.
It can be hard to begin this kind of reflection in a vacuum. To get started, look back on the past year and recall moments when you were at your best as a leader and when you were at your worst. By looking at the extremes of your leadership, things become more clear.
STEP TWO: SWOT Yourself.
The SWOT analysis is a classic framework used regularly by companies to pause, step back and be sure they take full inventory of their present circumstances before planning for the future.
Guess what? It is also a helpful tool for leaders to use on themselves. I’ve been using it recently with CEOs who get little or no feedback from their board.
Begin with Strengths and Weaknesses. This is the internal assessment of you, as a leader. This is also the area where you have a fair amount of control.
Strengths:
1) What are your top strengths that are responsible for your success up to this point?
2) How are you unique relative to those around you?
Weaknesses:
1) How do you sabotage yourself from time to time?
2) Where are you lacking skills, resources or relationships?
Now, shift to Opportunities and Threats. This is an assessment of your external environment – areas where you have less or no control.
Opportunities:
1) Where are there opportunities for you to increase your impact on the organization?
2) Where could you spend less time in order to pursue new opportunities?
Threats:
1) Who else could do your job?
2) How could factors that threaten your company threaten you?
STEP THREE: Commit to change.
Look at everything you’ve written in steps ONE and TWO. What theme or themes emerge?
Remember that your effectiveness as a leader is measured both in doing AND being. Doing is about getting things done. Being is about presence.
1) Doing: What are one or two areas where you can commit to changing a behavior in order to lead differently?
2) Being: What are one or two areas where you can commit to being a different leader – showing up differently — in the coming year?
My niece, Becky, came and visited us this past week. We were talking about her Dad, my brother, who passed away from brain cancer in 1998 at the age of 50. I asked her what she remembered about him – she was a high school senior at the time. The first thing that came to her mind:
He was intentional.
Indeed, he was. His impact on people’s lives was significant. And a big reason for this was that he would pause to plan and be intentional with his life.
Take a few moments to pause and be intentional about your leadership and your life for the coming year. The race will resume soon enough. Be clear about where you want to go.