Tag Archives: Leadership

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What Stands in Your Way?

What Stands in Your Way?

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What stands in your way of achieving success? Is it immovable objects or roadblocks needing a new solution? Are you done or just beginning? How do you define success? Does success feel out of reach? These are tough questions. I have asked myself these questions many times and in challenging times looked to others for their advice.

When searching for these answers I have found it helpful to look at other models of success and see what advice they can offer. In this case I suggest looking at the accomplishments and career of the professional athlete Michael Jordan.

I had the opportunity to meet Michael Jordan several times as he was in the middle of his career as an NBA basketball athlete and found him to have an interesting perspective on what it took to achieve his success. He was relentless in pursuing his goals, but not every effort was a success.

Undoubtedly, Michael Jordan as a professional athlete specializing in basketball was a success. Take look at some of his accomplishments:

  • 6 x NBA Champion
  • 6 x NBA Finals MVP
  • 5 x NBA MVP
  • 2 x Olympic Gold Medalist
  • Career Points Scored: 32,292
  • Career Rebounds: 6,672
  • Career Assists: 5,633
  • Career Field Goal % .497
  • Career Field Goals = 12,192

(For those of you who are not sports minded, just take away that these are incredible accomplishments)

As I observed his career I kept track of some of his thoughts and ideas on achieving success and in them found a hint of the drive that made him successful. Let’s take a look at some of these together.

“If you’re trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I’ve had them; everybody has them. But obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

–Michael Jordan

This is pretty much on point to the topic we are exploring. From the perspective of being a professional athlete, there was always the challenge of training his mind and body to work together to assert skills beyond the abilities of his competitors.

For us the challenge may be more around acquiring the skills, knowledge and experience to accomplish our wildest dreams, or even just finding a way through the current crisis. The key point here is to recognize that we all have challenges; the road to success requires that we persevere and keep trying new and different ways of overcoming the obstacles.

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Rise Above the Issues

Rise Above the Issues so that you can see the entire horizon and the issues will seem smaller and easier to resolve.

Hot Air Baloon over Canyon

To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it. — Michael Korda

How many times has someone or something made you so angry that you feel like you are going to explode? It happens to me on a regular basis, sometimes it makes me so angry that I cannot stop thinking about it. I remember one incident that made me so angry that I fumed about it repeatedly over an entire week-long vacation with my family. Clearly, I let this get the best of me and needed to follow my own advice, “Rise above the issue”. In the end it was easily resolved, but I put way too much energy into being angry about the the issue compared to what it took to resolve it.

That was just one example for me. How about you? How many times has something at work or at home (or a combination) made you so angry you just start thinking of all of the ways to respond or get back at someone and just kept thinking about it over and over again? It happens to all of us and it drains our energy as we pour emotion into the issue.

The good news and bad news is that we respond by getting angry when things don’t go our way because we care about the topic, issue or outcome. If we didn’t care we wouldn’t think twice about it. When our emotions kick in to this level it is usually because it either impacts us directly, or is something we care deeply about, even if we didn’t realize we cared that much. Even if it doesn’t directly impact us even the idea that the outcome didn’t go the way we wanted and may require additional energy to get it back on track may set off this reaction.

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Meetings – Why Waste Your Time

Do you have time to waste? Neither do I, or at least I do not want my time consumed by things that do not produce results. If your experience is like mine there is no bigger waste of time in my personal and professional life than non-productive meetings. Somewhere along the line it became the norm that we need to get a group of people together to get something done and that by getting a group of people together something will get done.

Lighthouse Logo CustomIt is my experience that unless there is a leader, a structure and purpose to the meeting it is really just a gathering and its only meaningful result will be to have another meeting. This happens all of the time in the business world at a significant price. The same thing can be observed in our private lives as well. I think some of the worst meetings I have ever been in were Home Owner Association or Church meetings where the bulk of the time is spent socializing and the meetings tend to lack leadership. The meetings took forever and nothing was really resolved.

As it turns out, a significant number of people agree that most of the meetings they attend are not effective. Per research published by Atlassian, they found the following:

1.     62 Meetings attended per month by most employees
2.     1/2 of the meetings were considered to be time wasted
3.     31 Hours spent in unproductive meetings over a month
4.     91% Reported daydreaming during the meeting
5.     73% Did other work in meetings
6.     47% Complained that meetings were the #1 time-waster at the office

Meetings are also expensive. Based on the average wage rate for Management across the US according to the US Department of Labor a 60 minute meeting for 10 people costs $470 in wages. A meeting of 100 people for 60 minutes costs $4,700 in wages. Most businesses have cost control measures in place for expenditures of these amounts and yet anyone can call a meeting. Do the meetings really return that amount to the bottom line? Well that is perhaps worthy of another blog discussion at another time.

So why have a meeting? That needs to be the very first question. Is it necessary to bring a group of people together at all? What is the purpose of the meeting, building consensus, making a decision, sharing information? Considering the findings and reputation of meetings, we really need to make sure there is not some other way to achieve our goal. If we conclude that a meeting is necessary, let’s at least make it as effective as possible.

So here are some tips for running an effective meeting: