I once had a fantastic opportunity on an airplane flight to Los Angeles when I found myself seated beside a Fortune 500 CEO.
I asked this impressive and quietly spoken gentleman what he felt was the key to his company’s success.
“That’s easy” he replied, “I just seek counsel from guys brighter than myself.”
What humility and wisdom.
He wasn’t threatened by asking for help and being led by someone else he regarded and respected.
This attitude freed him up to be able to access a wealth of knowledge and experience he would otherwise not have been privy to.
It allowed him to grow as an individual and grow his organisation.
It assisted him in cultivating great personal and professional momentum.
This is one of the key Leadership principles I challenge everyone with, (as this is how I’ve grown over the last 30 years).
Who leads you?
To create momentum, you need to allow yourself to be led.
You won’t create momentum by leading yourself.
Every leader needs to be challenged.
Every leader needs to seek counsel.
Every leader needs to seek wisdom.
Most people lead themselves and that’s why they don’t become successful in business or life and that’s why they don’t create momentum in business or their personal life.
Who’s leading you?
Can I encourage you to identify someone you trust and respect who could mentor and lead you?
Schedule a time in to talk soon.
Another factor critical to creating Momentum is you the leader must think about current personal issues you’re dealing with in your life.
What are those issues?
What do you need to deal with?
What do you need to clear out of your life?
What do you need to simplify so you can focus on your Leadership responsibilities to create momentum?
Momentum is a deliberate focus. It takes a lot of time, energy and motivation and you need clarity and 100% focus to get it.
With momentum, followers become more effective than without it. Without momentum, leaders will actually look worse than they are. Creating momentum is a key component to building a successful organisation. Momentum brings about change – it will change the direction of your organisation and effective leaders are obsessed with creating momentum.
Creating momentum is all about unity.
How unified is the team you lead?
Do you have their trust?
Are they allowing themselves to be lead by you as the leader?
You need to get your key team members around you tight, together and cast vision. Great leaders implant the vision into the team they lead.
Have you developed a plan?
Is there clarity in relation to what the team must do to create momentum?
Do individuals know their responsibilities?
Have they accepted them?
Do they want to be part of the team and accept those responsibilities??
Have you shared the vision with the team and have they taken ownership of it?
Without sharing the vision, it’s not possible to create momentum because you can’t build anything successful on your own. For you to create momentum you need people around you with energy who are sold out to your vision.
How confident are you when you stand in front of your team that they see your belief?
Can they see your confidence?
Can they see your conviction?
Can they see through your eyes that you can see where you’re going and that nothing’s going to stop you?
To create momentum you need to look to the future. Too many people live in the past. Forget the past. You can’t change it. All you can do is focus on today, moving forward, with your vision and plan, focussing on the future.
What do you want the future to look like 12 months from now for you as the leader?
Does your team know your 12-month vision?
If you don’t know 12 months from now and your team doesn’t know, it’s not possible to create momentum. When the team you lead turns up each day to go into battle with you, they need to be fighting for something. They need to know that day, that time they’re spending really counts for something, towards a much bigger picture.
Do you know what the big picture is?
Do they?
Do you value momentum?
Do you really value it?
It is imperative when you create momentum you truly appreciate it because you won’t always have momentum. You need to be even more focused and more driven to keep it once you’ve created it. Momentum is the difference between growing and not growing, winning and not winning. Without momentum, you can’t lead for growth. You need to desire it. You need to appreciate momentum. You need to understand its power and value it. If you value it, you’ll protect it. Momentum doesn’t last forever so you need to do everything in your power to protect it and keep it going.
What are you going to do to protect it?
How are you going to drive it?
How are you going to grow it so that it takes you, the team and the business as far as you can possibly take it in the shortest period of time?
Momentum always begins with the leader. It comes from inside the heart. The leader must crave momentum. The leader must want to create it. You build it inside of you first. You’ve got to want to create it. You must be obsessed to create it. You might not have it right now but you can have it. You can create it if you desire it but it comes from inside of you. It’s an inside job. It’s a decision you make that you are going to do whatever it takes to create momentum. It starts with you as the leader. It always starts with the leader. You make the momentum.
You need to be enthusiastic at all times, no matter what’s going on in the business. You need to be always enthusiastic. You need to be positive and have high energy levels. You need to be always “up”.
Do you have high energy levels?
How enthusiastic are you?
Are you “up” all the time when you are around your team?
When they look at you what do they see?
If you want to create momentum the team that you lead must see energy, enthusiasm, belief and conviction at all times no matter what is going on.
Are you excited about where your team and business is headed?
Are you excited about the people you lead?
Are you excited about the business model you’re involved with?
Are you excited about the opportunity to increase the morale in the team you lead?
Is your enthusiasm contagious?
When you look at the organisational culture, the environment and it’s atmosphere, is it contagious?
When a new team member comes to team, do they catch that energy?
Do they catch the belief?
Do they catch your team’s hope?
What do they catch when they come into contact with you and the team you lead?
How tight is the team you lead?
What sort of spirit exists in the team?
Is there a good vibe?
Is there unity?
Fun?
Joy?
Expectancy?
What is the level of expectation in relation to the team you lead?
How confident is the team you lead?
What is the level of commitment in the team when it comes to wanting to create momentum?
Being the leader do you accept the responsibility to create the momentum for the organisation you lead?
You, the leader, build momentum.
