Leadership Activity: How Leadership Agenda, Strategy, and Behaviors Shape Your Success!

"Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it... Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle." - Marcus Aurelius

The slightest leadership activity creates occasions for growth, progress and well-being - that's why effective leaders set ambitious agendas, follow solid strategy and act through honest behaviors.

Three ways your leadership activities shape the paths to your success are through powerful leadership agendas driven by disciplined strategy and acted out in consistent behaviors.

Leading With A Robust Agenda

Your primary leadership activity involves setting a worthwhile agenda. Your agenda should identify the key priorities required to transform your vision into a successful, prosperous and viable reality.

Your leadership agenda focuses the team's attention on growth and shared beliefs - it enlarges your ability to:

1) Manage visions,

2) Order strategy,

3) Direct work patterns,

4) Select your styles and

5) Perform various roles.

When your agenda acts like the central nervous system of your leadership, it will keep you informed on the health, stability and wellness of your organized activities.

I recommend you use your leadership agenda to oversee, optimize and organize your enterprise. Your agenda should strive to address seven broad, yet crucial areas: Security, [Universe-oriented] Frontiering, Power, Guidance, Wisdom, Syntropy and Conceptualizing.

Leadership Strategy Gives You Discipline and Will-Power

Well constructed strategy defines your approach, direction and intent for every situation you encounter. Your leadership strategies must fulfill all three of those definitions to ensure the success of your vision.

Transform your strategy into your guideposts, navigational charts and maps for your journey towards a tangible realization of your plans.

While your strategy is not the actual terrain, a competent strategy does provide disciplined support for executing on your important objectives.

Strategic intents serve as an inspiration to others and can encourage them to become leaders for your cause.

Generally, the leadership activity of strategic planning must help you:

- Engender trust and positive self-regard

- Define responsibility

- Exercise control

- Judge performance and progress

- Guide the process of change

Adapt Your Leadership Behaviors To Serve The Vision

Leaders serve the needs of multiple constituents. Your leadership services demand that you work with different environments, people, resources, plans and dynamic situations.

Your duties force you to be consistent, fair and honest in all that you do as the leader. However, there are essential attitudes, behaviors and focus you must incorporate into your activities.

There are occasions when you must act based on different motives.

For instance, you may need to build something new - yet at other times, you may provide charity to others or yield to the pressure of a merciless timeline.

Regardless of your leadership activity - your motives will be fully tested during your lifetime.

You should sincerely question the state of your mental attitude - is your outlook positive or do you have a negative, defeated mind set?

Are you being flexible or dynamic enough in your nature and intensity, are you open to various viewpoints?

The more positive your attitude the greater your capacity for seeing and believing in someone's potential or for accepting change and being open to new ideas.

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The future potentials of your leadership activity are easily gauged through Sir Winston Churchill's wise observation: "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

Mustard Seed Investments Inc. Copyright © 2005, All rights reserved.

Bill Thomas presents "The Leadership Toolkit" - serious leadership training for professionals, managers, executives, entrepreneurs and specialists. Discover how to energize your leadership skills, boost your confidence and get new knowledge through our articles, newsletters & programs at: http://www.leadership-toolkit.co m/Leadership_Toolkit.html

In The News:

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Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Dec. 1, 2008. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)AP - Most Americans sorely knew it already, but now it's official: The country is in a recession, and it's getting worse. Wall Street convulsed at the news — and a fresh batch of bad economic reports — tanking nearly 680 points. With the economic pain likely to stretch well into 2009, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Monday he stands ready to lower interest rates yet again and to explore other rescue or revival measures.



President-elect Barack Obama, left, stands with Secretary of State-designate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., center, and National Security Adviser-designate Ret. Marine Gen. James Jones, right, at a news conference in Chicago, Dec. 1, 2008. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)AP - Barack Obama announced a national security team Monday headed by Hillary Rodham Clinton, who fought him long and bitterly for the presidency, and Robert Gates, the man who has been running two wars for George W. Bush — striking choices by a president-elect who declared he wanted "strong personalities and strong opinions."



President George W. Bush speaks as he participates in the Saddleback Civil Forum on Global Health, Monday, Dec. 1, 2008, at the Newseum in Washington.  (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)AP - President George W. Bush says history will judge him, but he is getting his own crack first. Bush is using his final 50 days in office to tout his legacy, hoping to leave a lasting impression of overshadowed progress. On Monday, World AIDS Day, Bush was heralded for his leadership in fighting the disease, a point that even his Democratic critics readily concede.



This undated file photo provided by the Illinois Department of Corrections shows Jennifer Hudson's estranged brother-in-law William Balfour. Balfour has been arrested Monday, Dec. 1, 2008 in Illinois in the deaths of the singer's mother, brother and 7-year-old nephew. (AP Photo/Illinois Department of Corrections)AP - Police arrested the estranged brother-in-law of Jennifer Hudson on Monday in the deaths of the entertainer's mother, brother and young nephew, taking him from a prison where he had been held on a suspected parole violation.



Tape covers bullet holes in the windows of the newly-reopened Refresh Cafe in the landmark Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station, in Mumbai, India, Monday Dec. 1, 2008.  This scarred and traumatized city struggled back to its feet Monday, reopening schools and businesses, as residents tried to come to terms with the string of terror attacks that brought bloodshed to the heart of Mumbai. The owner of the cafe said he had little choice but to reopen the fast food restaurant in the station, even though its glass wall is scarred with bullet holes, half his staff refused to come back and his brother is on a ventilator in the intensive care unit after being shot in the abdomen by the attackers. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)AP - India demanded Monday that Pakistan take "strong action" against those behind the deadly Mumbai attacks, and Washington pressured Islamabad to cooperate with the investigation.



Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, center, speaks to a crowd during a campaign stop for U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga, Monday, Dec. 1, 2008 in Savannah, Ga. Chambliss and Democratic challenger Jim Martin are  in a Tuesday runoff that will shape Democrats' hold on power in Washington. (AP Photo/Stephen Morton)AP - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin urged Georgia voters to back Sen. Saxby Chambliss in Tuesday's runoff in an election eve appeal that underscored her popularity within the Republican Party and the GOP's efforts to stave off erosion of its shrinking Senate numbers.



In this photo released by KATV Television, news anchor Anne Pressly, is shown in a June 26, 2008, photo in Little Rock, Ark.  Pressly died Oct. 25, 2008 as a result of an Oct. 20 attack, and Little Rock Police named a suspect in the case Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008. (AP Photo/KATV Television)AP - A television anchorwoman killed in her home had been sexually assaulted and beaten so badly in a suspected burglary that her jaw shattered and she broke a hand while trying to fend off her attacker's blows, her parents said Monday.



AP - Almost one in five young American adults has a personality disorder that interferes with everyday life, and even more abuse alcohol or drugs, researchers reported Monday in the most extensive study of its kind.

AP - A man who rammed his truck into a woman's vehicle on a highway early Friday told authorities he crashed into her while going more than 100 mph because God told him "she needed to be taken off the road."

New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress, left, leaves the courthouse with  his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, in New York, Monday, Dec. 1, 2008. Burress appeared in court on weapons possession charges. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)AP - Taken to court in handcuffs, Plaxico Burress posted $100,000 bail on weapons possession charges Monday as a frenzy grew around the case of the Giants star receiver who accidentally shot himself in a nightclub.



Senator Hillary Clinton speaks to the media after being announced by President-elect Barack Obama as his choice for Secretary of State along with General Jim Jones as his choice for National Security Advisor during a news conference in Chicago, December 1, 2008. (Jeff Haynes/Reuters)Reuters - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama named former rival Hillary Clinton as secretary of state on Monday and said Robert Gates would remain defense secretary in a national security team charged with recasting America's leadership role in the world.



Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, December 1, 2008. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)Reuters - Stocks tumbled on Monday as signs of a deepening economic slump around the world erased much of last week's sharp gains, with banks and retailers among Wall Street's biggest casualties.



Members of ZAKA, Israel's non-governmental rescue-and-recovery organization which specializes in collecting human remains to ensure a proper Jewish burial, speak with policemen after performing religious rituals in front of Nariman House in Mumbai's Colaba area, December 1, 2008. (Jayanta Shaw/Reuters)Reuters - India demanded Pakistan take decisive action over deadly attacks in Mumbai it said were carried out by militants from its nuclear-armed rival, while the West urged cooperation to ease tension.



President Bush and first lady Laura Bush walk to make a statement on the attacks in Mumbai on the South Lawn of the White House, November 29, 2008. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)Reuters - President George W. Bush said the biggest regret of his presidency was flawed intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and told ABC "World News" in an interview airing on Monday that he was unprepared for war when he took office.



A woman watches as people shop in the Time's Square Toys 'R' Us store on 'Black Friday' in New York, November 28, 2008. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)Reuters - The U.S. economy has been in a recession for a year, the nation's business cycle arbiter declared on Monday, while European leaders vowed to step up public spending to try to cushion a deepening downturn.



Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi speaks during a news conference in the U.S. Capitol in Washington November 21, 2008. (Molly Riley/Reuters)Reuters - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi met leading governors on Monday to discuss the size and shape of an economic stimulus package that one Democratic aide said was likely to cost around $500 billion.



Birmingham Mayor Larry P. Langford in an undated photo. (Handout/Reuters)Reuters - Federal authorities arrested the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, on Monday in a corruption probe surrounding a sewer bond debt that could lead to the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.



An anti-government demonstrator chases after a suspected pro-government supporter in Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport on December 1, 2008. (Kerek Wongsa =/Reuters)Reuters - Thai protesters prepared to end their three-month occupation of the Prime Minister's office on Monday to consolidate their grip on the main airport ahead of a court verdict that could dissolve the elected government.



Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, President-elect Barack Obama's choice for homeland security chief, speaks at a press conference at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. Obama on Monday nominated Hillary Clinton to be his AFP - Barack Obama on Monday nominated Hillary Clinton to be his "tough," "smart" secretary of state as his former foe vowed to give her all to steer America through a storm of international crises.



Map locating the attacks in Mumbai. India has formally accused AFP - India on Monday formally accused "elements" in Pakistan of being behind the devastating Islamic militant attacks in Mumbai and demanded that Islamabad take "strong action".




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