The Personal Transition from Personal Initiative to Leadership Impact
Impact Leaders facilitate this kind of growth in their people.
The Path from Personal Initiative to Leadership Impact
Personal initiative becomes leadership impact when our actions influence others to act with us in a shared, coordinated fashion. This is a key to understanding leadership in the 21st century. It is both personal and social.
As a consultant and coach, I have conversations every day about what it is like to work in a business or a community organization. Just by listening, by asking respectful questions, people tell you about their experiences. Over the years, it has been fascinating to hear about the negative experiences that people have had at work. The most common complaint concerned how the organization made their work harder, not easier. They would speak about ways that things could be different. I’d silently think, “I wonder how much of her potential she is reaching?”
Our potential is not a fixed amount of good that we can produce during our lifetime.
There is no box out of which we draw our potential.
Rather, our potential is the opportunity that comes from a culture of openness to create impact through personal initiative.
There is no limit.
There is only the next opportunity.
Many of us live quiet, respectable lives of meaning and service to people and places that we value. Yet, there are obstacles that keep us from realizing our potential. Others have never even thought about their potential. Want to know your potential? Think about what matters to you and the difference that your actions would make. Focus on that. Your true potential will begin to show itself in the actions that you take.
Down deep within us are desires that constantly suggest to us that we are made for more than what we are doing.
We join projects of community service, like campaigns for health awareness, or work at a soup kitchen for the poor and homeless. We want our lives to matter beyond the mundane exercise of our daily duties. We look forward to getting away from work to do that which is fun and meaningful. As a result, even thinking about making a difference that matters at work is not even considered.
Removing Obstacles to Fulfilling Our Potential
Personal Obstacles
The path from personal initiative to leadership impact is achieved by removing the obstacles of mind, body, and spirit. Obstacles caused by a lack of clarity about our values and purpose. Obstacles of poor discipline in how we live. Obstacles of relationships holding us back from believing that we can make a difference that matters. These are personal obstacles that we can change.
Organizational Obstacles
There are also obstacles of structure and organizational purpose. When a company makes it difficult for workers to perform their duties, the leaders may believe that they do so to maintain order. Yet, order can’t simply be imposed and expected to make a difference that matters. Genuine order emerges from each person giving their best in the context of taking personal initiative to fulfill their potential for impact.
The reality is that the people who do have the desire to make a difference that matters and the talent and discipline to do so may also decide to leave. When the culture of an organization limits the potential for what people can contribute, the longer-term effect is the loss of capacity to excel.
If you are at a point of decision about whether to leave or stay in your current situation, think about your life as a story. Generations from now the story that is told about you will not be about the results of your work. Instead, it will be about the character of your life and the difference that you made in other people’s lives.
All this may sound absurd. If it does, you have now identified one of the obstacles that stand in the way of reaching your potential. You must believe in yourself. Believe that you can be a person who can make a difference that matters. Believe that your best years will always be in front of you, not behind you. Let that sink in. Imagine a year from now or ten, your legacy of impact is taking shape. You see the future. And it is a future of impact.
Please grasp the idea that there is no limit to your potential
It does not mean that you can just go do anything. It means that your potential for impact is greater than your imagination right now can visualize. This is true today. It will be true on the last day of your life on this earth.
Consider the following questions:
“Do I want a life where I can make a difference on an ever-ascending scale of significance? Or do I want to live a quiet life focused on satisfying my own interests?”
“What is that thing within me—a belief or a feeling, my passion—that is so important, so powerful a force that I can no longer ignore it and be happy?”
Your motivation to make a difference that matters is determined by how you answer these questions.
If there is a deep desire that is calling you to step out of your place of comfort and security and take some creative action to make a difference that matters, then it is calling you to fulfill your potential as a person.
If you are an executive in a business, this is the kind of leadership impact your people want from you. The potential benefit to a company grows each time personal initiative is taken. Remove the obstacles to people working together, innovating, and solving the immediate problems of their work situation, and you open the possibilities for growth and strength that were locked away in the people of the organization.
From Potential To Impact
However, for this shift in perception of our human potential to work for the people in your business, it must begin with you. Your own self-perception as a person taking leadership initiative is where you must begin. Your change of perception will lead the way for others to follow in joining you to create a leadership-rich organization.
Impact is a change that makes a difference that matters.
It is a word of affirmation and gratitude when no word was expected. It is the identification with a family’s suffering at the loss of a child that creates a shared community of grief that begins the healing. It is the refusal to let declining results demoralize a team. It is a belief expressed in action that the past doesn’t define the future.
Impact is not business as usual.
It is being finally free to say, “Stop! This is not working.” It is the supervisor respecting his direct report’s concern by listening and collaborating with all those touched by the problem, taking collective initiative to fix it. It is the owner or general manager going to the line to personally thank the team for their leadership. Expressing gratitude in full view of everyone else.
Impact is not the system working as it always has, but just a little better. It is changing the system so that each part can reach its potential.
Impact isn’t just about fixing problems or working for better communication or figuring out new ways to do what has been accepted as tried and true.
Rather, it is going to the root and foundation of everything about us as persons, and the organizations where we spend our lives, and asking the questions,
“What difference can I make?”
“What difference can this product make for the customer?”
“What difference can we make for our community?”
Then, we can solve our problems, communicate better, and create innovative ways to work.
What, Then, is Impact?
In talking about creating impact, we are talking about cultural change. The traditional measures of profit and loss, market share, and growth over time are still relevant. In addition, we ask, how do those numbers represent the impact that we are creating as a company?
Change begins with our perception of what the impact of our lives and the work of our companies can be.
Imagine that you are flying across the continent. You have three to four hours with the person in the seat next to you. Taxiing out to the runway, she asks what you do. You could tell her exactly what you do. Talk on the phone, fill out forms, answer emails, and sit in meetings.
Or you could describe to her how your work is different. You tell her how you are making a difference in the lives of your customers. In telling her that story, you are telling her the impact that your company is creating in the marketplace.
At the end of your journey together, you are showing her how her life and work can reach its potential for impact
Impact is why things fall apart.
Impact is why they hold together when they shouldn’t.
Impact is the impetus for all that we love and hope for in the world.
Impact is why we invest in people, businesses, communities, and ourselves.
Impact in the Circle of Impact model stands above everything else.
Impact is the ultimate measure of our ideas, our values, our purpose, our relationships, the social and organizational structures of our businesses, our society, and in the end, what defines our legacy.
When we know something is not quite right, we don’t settle for things to remain the same. We take initiative to change it. The result of our initiative is the impact that makes a difference that matters.
I enjoyed the read.
It made me think of one of our staff members in my wife's company. "A" comes to work each day and goes about her job duties in a quiet, calm, unobtrusive manner. Standing in the office where she toils daily, there is a sense of peace which surrounds the place. I have commented to her about that and why it is. She attributes her attitude towards others to her brothers and Father, and her relationship with God.
For "A", her impact is not so much a collision with the world of business, but a sowing of the fruit of the Spirit of God in her life, into my wife's company. It is of an incredibly high value. And as the CEO I do my best to make sure this is recognized and honored.