The 80-year-old Japanese master softly utters these words:  

It looks like I’m doing nothing, but I’m doing it very well.

He smiles wryly and we all get it.  Leadership takes so many forms. 

He’s amazing and if you’ve ever been in the presence of a true master of his or her environment, you’re spellbound.  They demonstrate their craft effortlessly.

True mastery comes when you practice your craft and hone it over time.  

Leadership is a craft.  Allow yourself to practice and hone on your way to mastery.

I’ve studied magic and I’ve studied martial arts.

I’ve studied leadership, transitions, relationships, and communication.

I’m studying public speaking.

And, I can proudly say that I’m pretty good at each of those.  

I’ve studied guitar and I’ve studied Spanish.  I can modestly say that I’m not very good at either of those.

What makes the difference?  Practice.
...

As a leader, you’ve got goals for your company, division, unit, department, family, and self.  

You have a pretty good idea about what you want to accomplish this year.
You know what you have to do.

It’s Simple.  

To avoid failure just after this first quarter (yep, the hiccups that happen in March), you MUST recognize this one concept NOW:  

Simple isn’t always Easy.

People slip, fall off of goals, or miss targets because they lose focus.  

That’s other people.

You know that it might take some effort to refocus, recast, and reset.

That’s simple, and again, it’s not always easy.  Your job is to get feedback so that you can keep on track.  Hey! Your weekly dose of Wednesdays With Wayne is here to keep you on track and to remind you who you are.  

You’ve worked really hard to get here.  We’ve barely stepped into 2019. Look at all you’ve done previously.  Think about your...

This is the week of lie-preparation.
Good-bye 2018.  Boy oh boy, 2019 is going to be something.  This is the year that I…

What…?  What is 2019 the year that you do, become, or live into?

I call this the week of lie preparation.  We don’t mean to lie to ourselves. We just get used to it.  And then we get complacent.

Hey… it’s Wednesdays With Wayne and you’re here to snap out of it!  

You don’t get to wish that things get better.

Wishes aren’t resolutions.
AND
Resolutions aren’t real until you make them real.

Please do yourself a favor.  Make them real.

What is this the year of?  

I always name my year.  For me, 2018 was the year of implementation.  And, while I learned a whole lot more (I always invest in my personal and professional development by joining masterminds, going to retreats, and seeking high-level mentorship), I got a ton done this year.  In doing so, I laid a...

You’ve GOT to be looking to the year ahead right now, right?
Over this past week I’ve heard people talking about just making it through to the end of the year.  

You, a leader, are designing the end of your year.  You’re leveraging the time you have to make your difference now AND in the future.  

The turning of a calendar page really is THAT significant.  While it doesn’t have to be, what it represents is closure. And it represents starting anew.  


YOU GIVE IT SIGNIFICANCE

Leverage That

Here’s the point:  You can give ANYTHING extra significance.  

Deadlines and end-goals add significance.  That’s their purpose, by the way. Leverage them for yourself, for your team, and for your personal relationships.

Whether you produce one unit more of whatever it is you do or you do one more squat or take one more step or clean up one more thing or eat one less bite to get to whatever goal you’re after…...

(source unknown)

You overcome multiple obstacles daily and, in doing so, you have developed strengths that have gotten you through.  Congratulations… Yes, there’s more.

Leaders become GREAT leaders because they continue to build character.  Leaders who reach a level of success and stop working on themselves, fail.  They fail themselves, in the process letting down their organizations, their families, and their community.

Your character isn’t something that stops needing work.  The person that you see that is a man or woman of good character isn’t born that way.  Character is chosen by every decision, every single day.  

Your choice to engage on a particular path for your products or services says a lot about you.  Your choice in how you communicate that to your prospects, your current clientele, and your colleagues says a lot about you.  How you engage with your family pet before engaging with your family member as you...

YOU are in my circle and whether or not we’re on the same path (of course we’re not, you have your own path), I’d like to think that we can both challenge AND support each other along our different paths.  

Having just watched a compelling video released by Trent Shelton, I was struck by the part where he talks about people who say they support you but aren’t really there for you.  It’s a tough one to think about.  I think the message needs to be that they’re not really there for you in the way YOU want them to be there for you.  When you invest in growing yourself, people don’t tend to celebrate that. It can feel as if you are being dragged backwards or anchored to where you were.

Remember that people pick their own paths.  Sometimes their path of growth isn’t your path of growth, so what feels like being dragged back or lack of support is simply a fork in the road.

What support do you really need?
And, as a...

Whew – Thanksgiving is behind us.  We survived round one of family get-togethers. Now what?

In this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne, we’ll have some fun.  You get to observe the madness around you.  Because, here come the winter holidays.

Watch as the people around you become manic buyers and planners.  Watch as the people around you, who just celebrated “giving thanks” become focused on a practice that looks like not having enough.

You get to watch because you are blessed with the gift of perspective.

When you see it, you get to choose whether to participate in it or not.  

Here, I’ll urge you to think differently.

Keep that kindness you felt last week alive just a little longer.

Be a little nicer in the lines at stores and in parking lots.  Look at the faces of the people who are frantic and choose not to be one of them.  Relax your forehead and your jaw. Your life is different because you choose to make it...

We each have a lot to be grateful for and this week, Thanksgiving here in the U.S., gives most Americans an opportunity to give thanks and then, to binge-eat.  It’s a strange tradition that either brings families together or makes them want to cringe and hide out. You can admit that some people in your family treat you in ways you can’t understand.  You might also admit that you find yourself falling into patterns with family members that might actually cause them to respond in ways that you wish they wouldn’t. But they do. And they do because, well, you started it.

In fact, your relationship is up to you.  All of it. What you stand for, what you agree to, how you engage with others, how you let them engage with you.

A young woman just reached out to me to ask about how to respond to someone who is always right or, really, always needs to be right.  We encounter these people at family gatherings. It’s harder when that’s the person...

The world has been a mess since, well, since it has been around.  There has always been competition. Think about any era, any country, any snapshot in time.  There have been winners. There have been losers. There have been bullies. There have been heroes.  And a lot of who has been what has depended on which side you’ve been on.

Through it all… there have been people like us.

In this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne, I’d like to celebrate you – the builders, the supporters, the ones who give-a-poop.   (It doesn’t sound quite as strong that way, but you know what I mean!) You care. In fact, you go out of your way to show that you care.  You don’t do it for the accolades, the applause, or the parade. You do it because it’s right.

So with all the noise out there, with the world in chaos, be that center of calm, kind, love.  Be that oasis. Draw people toward you, not because you want them to come to you,...

My dad’s car flipped last week.  He’s 96. He went to the hospital.  He’s out of the hospital. And, he’s doing okay.

This kind of image gets you thinking.  You think about connection to others. You think about the fragility of life.  You think about resilience. You think about circumstances and who else was (or wasn’t) involved.

This picture of my dad’s car stirs something deeper and it had me going through a range of emotions… a really wide range of emotions!  Think of one, I probably felt it.  

And so, this Wednesdays With Wayne is for me.  AND… it’s for you.

As I cleared through the array of “feels,” I landed on one.  Sure, there’s synchronicity in that this month is November and (at least in the U.S.) we tend to focus on Thanksgiving.  

The emotion that continues to resonate through me is that of gratitude.

Yes, I’m grateful.
I’m grateful for my...