High Performance And The Bottom Line
Celebrating Wednesdays With Wayne BLOG POST NUMBER 200. Every single week for 200 posts! Thank you for being with me on this journey! Today we’re exploring how to boost your bottom line through High Performance (what I call DynamicLeader®) tactics and strategies.
Boosting your bottom line through high performance strategies and tactics in whatever role you're playing means you’re becoming the DynamicLeader®. Yep, my clients take on the world a little differently than most. The first thing they do is to identify, then align everything with their values.
People forget that we're not the same person we were. When you pause to think about it, you wouldn’t want to be the same person you were 20 years ago. In fact, you would probably cringe at thinking you could even be the same person now. Obviously, you're not. Your values have changed. The way you live your life has changed.
If your new values don't come through in the way you conduct business – personal or professional, then you're operating out of alignment. Both your personal and professional values need to align not only with who you are, but also how you are. You shouldn't be that different at home, at work, and in the community. Your values are where to start. Who are you? And how are you living into those values and most important, how are you expressing them? And so the very first strategic action to add to your bottom line is to do an inventory of what do you value now? And are you living into that? And if not, then you're in the wrong direction or you're in the wrong job or maybe you’re in the wrong relationship.
Or maybe you’re in them the wrong way.
They might not be wrong, the way you show up might need some adjustment.
The first step in making sure that you have a positive bottom line is making sure you're living the life you want to be living, showing up in the world as the authentic you. That sounds so simple, but really is harder than it seems because there are a lot of stories going on in our heads. And those stories come from wayyyyy back. We believe that we should be this thing or that. We were told to be good; be good, do this thing.
Back to checking on your current values – you move ahead and let go of old stories that have you distracted and not focused on your personal growth or business health. Old stories include the need to work hard every day, even to the exclusion of all else. If that’s one of your stories, you're going to be miserable, I have no problem with people working hard. I have no problem with working hard myself. I have no problem with having a direction and heading towards it. Just make sure that “working hard” isn’t the only tie you have to reward or self-worth.
The next way to grow your bottom line is to engage in great discernment. Knowing your values allows you to say what’s in and what’s out. That’s the filter. When you start saying yes to the right things and no to the things that no longer matter, it's an amazingly powerful place to be.
That's how you increase your bottom line: values, clarity, certainty, all of those help you define your direction. They help you to find your strategic direction.
When I first began doing leadership work, it was because a man called me and thanked me for the work I'd done with him and his wife. He was thrilled that I had been able to get them to communicate together. And he asked me if I would come to his office and help him and his vice president. It turns out that he was the president of a major company in South San Francisco. I began doing communication work with him and his vice president. This turned to helping them clarify working agreements. And then we looked at their values and we looked at the company values. And by doing that, we fine-tuned their strategic direction. And about the fourth time or so that I would show up the line staff was outside applauding my arrival. What they told me was that because the senior leadership had begun speaking the same language; they were talking better together and they'd set a strategic direction based on what they believed in. It made their jobs easier. It made everyone’s jobs easier as they all aligned with the values that came from and were communicated from the top. They knew what to do. They knew where they were headed. They knew what was expected of them.
ALL OF THAT is based on clarity and certainty. You have to be able to communicate your values, but first you have to be able to understand what they are for yourself and then live into them consistently.
That last statement has several lessons in it. Read that again and lock it in.
See you here next week!
~ Dr P ~