Читать книгу The 7 Minute Leadership Handbook - Paul Falavolito - Страница 3

I am a firm believer that if you create a plan and stick to your plan, you can be successful at anything. Leadership is no different. You have to start somewhere. So let's start slow. Let's take day one of the journey and dedicate seven minutes to looking in the mirror. Go ahead – take a look in the mirror. What do you see? How do you feel about the person you see? While you are looking at yourself in the mirror, I want you to imagine the things you want to be successful with in life. Picture yourself celebrating that success, getting that degree that you've always wanted, or getting the promotion you have worked so hard to earn. How do you look in that moment? Trust me – it matters, and I will make my point soon enough. Now I want you to imagine you are someone else meeting you for the first time, and what they see right now is who you are looking at in the mirror.

How is your body language, your smile, and your posture? Do you look approachable, pleasant, or inviting? Would you want to meet you? Would you feel comfortable walking up to that person and introducing yourself to them for the first time? Or would you feel intimidated by what you saw, or perhaps even frightened? So the point is obviously this: leadership is all about you. It begins with you and ends with you.

As a leader, you are accountable for everything and you have to be the role model for the desired results you want. You can't be late and expect your people to be on time. They are going to mimic your actions all the time. Trust me, I have lived in a world of watching leaders be late for work and then try to write someone else up for being late. All that does is create so much animosity from the employee towards the manager that they quickly become the punchline to every joke around the office. So it all begins with that first look in the mirror, the first impression. Make sure you constantly re-visit this skill often. Consider this your visual check-up. It keeps you accountable to the most important person you have to be accountable to – you.

Make notes of what you see the first time you do this skill. Make a list of what you like and what you don't like with what you see. You have the power to change everything that you dislike. If you take this action plan seriously, then the next time you do this particular skill, make sure you re-visit your notes and see what has changed. If you have moved things off of your dislike list and now you have more items on the like list, then celebrate your achievements. You have just mastered the art of setting goals and achieving them.

Congratulations, you may not have realized it, but setting goals is one of the fundamental core concepts for all leaders.

Later on, I will tell you the story of how Garth Brooks inspired my love for photography. He also inspired my love of music and achieving my personal goal of learning to play the guitar. I didn't like the person I saw when I looked in the mirror back then and needed an inspiration. I was out of shape and suffered from chronic back pain and had no real motivation to do anything. I purchased my first acoustic guitar almost immediately following my first Garth concert in 1997. I didn't even know how to hold the guitar properly. My EMT partner at the ambulance base was a professional musician and had the musical gift. He could sing, write, and play guitar like you couldn't believe. I can remember the day when I walked into the ambulance station carrying my guitar and showing it to him. He said, "What are you planning on doing with that thing?" I laughed and said, "You are going to teach me how to play it." We both had a few minutes of laughter and then he broke the bad news to me: "I can show you the basics, but you are going to suck for two years." That wasn't the news I wanted to hear, but it was true. I would spend the next two years plucking strings, hacking, and beating on this guitar. It was hard. In fact, it was painful at times. I started to pick up certain strumming patterns and became steadily more comfortable. We would write parody songs that were specific to EMS and play them for our fellow first responders. We had some great times playing and creating music during some very difficult shifts together. Somewhere around year three of my guitar lessons, we thought it would be a great idea to go to a recording studio and record a few of the EMS songs just for fun. I got busy on the phones trying to find a place that would accommodate us. After a week or so, I found a studio and we saved up our money and went to our first recording session. We had no hopes and dreams of hitting it big or doing anything other than just laying some tracks on a CD for our friends and family. The guy who owned the recording studio was a pretty famous musician here in Pittsburgh. In fact, he was part of a band that had written songs for Kenny Rogers, Hank Williams, Jr., and Alabama. He was the real deal!

We had a lot of fun and learned a ton during that first recording session. At one point, the producer said to us: "You guys are really good. Did you ever think about putting a band together and playing out?" I said, “No” and my partner said, “Yes,” that he had been in bands in Hawaii and didn't really have a desire to go down that path again. On the way home, he explained to me all the typical band horror stories and I could tell he didn't have any interest in pursuing this any further. Over the next year or so, he introduced me to some of his original songs that were just brilliant, and I kept telling him that it would be a crime if we didn’t get back to the studio and record them. We wrote a few songs together and a short time later, we were back in the studio recording our original music. Over the years, we would finally assemble a band called Shades. We did the whole club circuit locally and even opened for a few national acts at a music festival in Ohio. The goal that I had never dreamed of was not only recording one music CD, but two of them. They are still available on iTunes today!

I could write an entire book on the band years because we had so much fun, as well as many struggles, and I finally understood why my partner didn't want to go down that path again musically. Nevertheless, we set small goals for ourselves and accomplished all of them. Before I knew it, I liked the person I saw when I looked in the mirror.