Leadership - Personal direction - generating ideas
Personal direction - generating ideas
Ideas
Matrix
For clarity and ease of idea retrieval you may find it easier to generate them within a matrix as above.
Some questions you might wish to ask yourself to help focus your vision could be.
Negative and Family (1)
Name 5 people that have produced negative emotions from your family.
What was their behaviour?
What characteristics do they possess that you don’t like?
Name 5 situations that have produced negative emotions from your family.
What was the underlying behaviour?
Negative and Work (2)
Name 5 people that have produced negative emotions from your work.
What was their behaviour?
What characteristics do they possess that you don’t like.
Name 5 situations that have produced a negative emotions from your work.
What was the underlying behaviour?
Positive and Family (3)
Name 5 people that have produced positive emotions from your family.
What was their behaviour?
What characteristics do they possess that you admire.
Name 5 situations that have produced positive emotions from your family.
What was the underlying behaviour?
Positive and Work (4)
Name 5 people that have produced positive emotions from your work.
What was their behaviour?
What characteristics do they possess that you admire.
Name 5 situations that have produced positive emotions from your work.
What was the underlying behaviour?
You might also consider tangible objects that you would like to attain, for example, brand of car, foreign holiday, certain property etc to help you visualise just what things may be important to you.
What activities make you feel well and relaxed, for example, painting, fishing, golf or playing the piano.
What skills would you like to develop that are away from your traditional work related areas, for example, learning a foreign language, book binding or pottery.
Your values already exist, you can’t make them up, you just need to discover them.
If you manage your career and life according to your values you will be much happier and keep stress to a minimum.
Potential values
Once you have carried out the above exercise you should have generated a large list of values.
If you haven’t then perhaps you have been too judgemental. A relaxed approach may be needed to create a list of ideas.
These may include:
Caring
Intellect
Pleasure
Play
Security
Religion
Love
Risk
Loyalty
Openness
Integrity
Honesty
Money
Stimulation
Energy
Environment
Creativity
Invention
Peace
Originality
These are just 20. You may have generated 50 or 300.
You might want to try to group some of them into ‘like’ values, for example, creativity and invention or integrity and honesty.
This may help you focus on what one really holds more weight for you.
Next steps
Then choose a small number of them that you couldn’t do without say 5 to 10.
Ask your self ‘why these?’ compared to the rest, and write down 2 or 3 satisfactory reasons.
Then think about how you presently follow these particular values and record evidence from your current behaviours.
Similarly, consider how you are not following these values. What negative behaviours are you using?
What is your plan of action to improve your behaviour?
How can you sustain and promote your positive actions and reduce or eliminate the negative ones.
Finally, set yourself a target. Choose 3 to 5 actions to implement over the next 3 months.
Make sure you identify outcomes so that you can see if you have been successful.
Basic needs
Everyone has basic needs that if not met you will be unable to perform at your peak.
Most people are a little reticent to reveal what their basic needs are and even less forthcoming to ask for them.
It may be looked upon as selfish, bad manners and demanding to try to attain these.
Needs are not all of equal status, some will hold more value with you than others.
You will not be satisfied until these are met so you ought to develop a plan to achieve them.
Identify
Be honest with yourself and list all possible needs that you consider apply to you.
For example.
Do you want to be in total control?
Do you need respect?
Is security high on your list?
Is feeling loved at the top of your needs?
Would you like people to admire and look up to you?
Do you want to be the centre of attention?
Must you feel indispensable?
Consider as many as you can.
Ask others you can trust to give you an honest opinion of how they see your critical needs.
Be careful here. Others can often see not only the admirable needs like ‘wanting to be liked’ but they may also be happy to say you demonstrate a need to ‘show off’ whilst ‘looking to be the centre of attention’.
Ideally, you want to direct your energies into fulfilling your vision. If you are constantly trying to meet your needs you will find much of this energy is misdirected and wasted.
Satisfy your needs from a range of sources. If you focus on one person he or she may feel stress trying to meet the need.
Knowing your self in terms of values and needs gives you a firm base from which to lead others.
It will build integrity and confidence leading to trust and all important influence.
Job interview
When you go for a new job you prepare for an interview.
You have already written a Curriculum Vitae so you have a summary of your career experiences.
At the interview it is good practice to prepare a 3 (maximum 5) minute speech on who you are as a person.
This will summarise key career decisions as well as covering your values, family life and interests.
This is a good opportunity to reflect upon and note your key values and promote them to others.
You can use this idea to draw up a small summary of your values and needs and link them to a specific vision if you wish.
Other techniques could include.
- Make a video of yourself talking about your values and visions. The playback will reveal to yourself and others if your behaviour and expression match these values.
- Create a pictorial representation of your inner values and needs (seen only by you) together with your external behaviours (seen by others). A typical method is to draw a circle confining the inner values with the external depicted outside the circumference.
Review
It is important to review the progress of your actions over the time period that you set.
Did they work? Do you need to modify them?
Were they good and need to be maintained.
Do you need additional action points.