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It is a natural phenomenon for human beings; that particular thing to look forward to; something that gives you reasons to weather the storm of life; something that strengthens you to push thick and thin through the rigors of life. In it, you find the motivation to withstand anything life throws at you. For some people, this might be a job or career target; it is some financial buoyancy level for some. Some target a level of knowledge or spirituality to get satisfaction for their existence.
By and large, everything boils down to the personal fulfillment of a purpose-driven life; having a purposeful mind as a woman and as a leader sets you out for greatness.
People have seldom wondered why some leaders are so great at what they do, how they carry themselves, how they achieve things, and go about their decision-making, while some leaders are so inept and perform the role poorly. A lot of this is down to failing to lead with a purpose.
In this piece, I will go through how to get maximum satisfaction from your personal life and what you need to possess in your arsenal to achieve successful and purposeful leadership.
The Vision for Your Life – Personal Vision
Personal fulfillment only comes with a realistic vision – setting a dream with the end in mind. Create a vision for your life that is realistic and in tandem with your core values and beliefs. A vision that works well with everything that matters to you, one that accommodates the things that bring you joy and everything that makes you. Because at the end of the day, personal fulfillment and happiness is the measure of how you have maximized your existence; just like Aristotle said, according to The Pursuit of Happiness; Happiness is an end that encompasses the totality of one’s life. It is not something that can be gained or lost in a few hours. Happiness is the ultimate value of your life as lived up to this moment, measuring how well you have lived up to your full potential as a human being”.
Many people find it hard to achieve their goals and implement their vision because their vision is utterly incompatible with their core values. This eventually leads to frustration and a sense of failure and dejection.
The first thing to consider when setting goals and creating a vision for your life is those essential values. The following are some of the values that people put at the frontier when setting goals.
- Happy family: If you value your family so much and enjoy spending much time with your family, create a vision that allows you to spend quality time with your family. You can also set shared goals that involve family activities and participation.
- Spirituality: Are you the type with spiritual inclinations that bind and help refine your values? You should create a vision that will maintain your commitment to your spiritual life, goals that keep those spiritual aspects you draw your strength.
- Security: If you are the type that so much cherishes your security and safety like environmental protection and personal security, you can create a goal that revolves around improving your society’s security, like contributing to healthier earth or joining security forces.
Your values might be other things like honesty, freedom, hard work, compassion, and some other ones you can think of, but whatever your core values are, they should be the base and the primary determinant of your vision. This is important for you to have that unique sense of fulfillment and the required strength to filter out the noise and distractions during your sojourn.
The next thing you should consider is asking yourself what exactly you want to accomplish in your life? Is it financial buoyancy? Is it knowledge fulfillment? Is it career optimization? Or unmatched business ideals? Anything you decide on should be viewed in correlation with your core values and should not be detrimental to that which is most important to you.
Principles and Values or Underlying Beliefs Character that Lead Your Decisions
In the leadership role, people clamor for you to have a kind of presence that makes your impact felt within an organization. That is all good and fine, but the real must-have value or principle for leaders is substance or character. Your character is not just about your ethics or beliefs; it is about effectiveness. A leader with presence can only go so far with it.
But with substance and character, a leader can transform a brilliant strategy, idea, and talks into action by working effectively with others. After all, execution, most importantly, requires strength of character.
Below are some leadership character values you should look to have in your arsenal as a purpose-driven leader.
- Respect: As a leader, treating people with respect is of the utmost importance to create synergy and a positive working environment. Respect creates trust in the workplace, eliminates dispute and tension, and most importantly, improves effectiveness. Lastly, for a leader to be respected and trusted by all, you need to respect others. The respect they say is reciprocal.
- Integrity: Integrity is the act of being honest and genuine and committing to doing the right thing with consistency. A leader must be an epitome of integrity as it gives your people a sense of trust and security around you. It also builds respect and makes people feel like they can always count on you to stay true to your words and principles.
- Service: Great leaders are always leading from the front and making themselves of service to their team. Service is the act of helping someone else with an activity. Being a servant leader allows you to motivate and gear up others to work towards a common goal with top-level commitment. Also, by putting your team’s needs at the frontier of your priority, you build a loyal team ready to make sacrifices for others and the organization.
- Influence: Influence is the present aspect of leadership that allows you to motivate, drive, and encourage people to work or think in a specific way to achieve a common goal. This value is significant as it enables you to empower people into following certain beliefs and work out of their own volition rather than forcing it on them.
- Empathy/caring: This is one of the major components of emotional intelligence. It is the ability to understand the plight, emotions, and feelings of people and to be able to give a befitting response that depicts genuine concern and understanding. This aspect of the broad scope of emotional intelligence is essential in leadership as it helps you build authentic and strong connections with people. These connections allow you to help them with their challenges, which leads to higher productivity and efficiency.
- Resilience: Resilience can withstand misadventure, obstacles, challenges, and setbacks and recover quickly and better from them. Having this thick skin and strong mental fortitude is vital in leadership as you are bound to face a series of obstacles in achieving goals. How you deal with them and make them an enabler will be down to your resilience.
- Fairness: This is the act of treating people equally and justly. It also involves a leader taking responsibility for actions on his part and not unjustly blaming it on others. Fairness breeds a positive work environment as people tend to respect and trust your judgment, leading to a festive team spirit.
Negative Paradigms Hampering Your Personal Leadership Development
Without a doubt, there are lots of set-in-stone thoughts and actions that limit and stall personal leadership development. Most of these are down to the environment you find yourself in, while some are personal. In this section, we will look into the general paradigms that hamper your leadership development.
Paradigm One: I need you to tell me I am OK
This involves looking to others (loved ones, colleagues, audiences) to give you validation and affection, trying to satisfy people, wishing to be what they want you to be, and striving for their approval and appreciation at all times.
To counter this paradigm, you need to believe in your sense of wholeness. Trust yourself more and your ability to assess things and make the necessary changes. Put your values and self-satisfaction first before every other thing. At the end of the day, your opinion about yourself is the most important.
Paradigm Two: I have got a hold of it
With the speed at which things are moving due to the advancement in technology, more things are required of us by the day. This causes you to plan excessively for the future, holding on too tight, looking for certainty and control over the end, leading to delay or losses.
To beat this paradigm, you need to learn skills that have to do with expanding your perspective, multi-tasking, and broadening your capacity to allow more without being overwhelmed. With this, you get immense benefits as you have more control and hold without holding too tight.
Paradigm Three: It is OK
Many people’s common traits and features are saying “it is OK” or “Everything is OK.” Sometimes, you might even decide to be contented with something a little bit less or have a feeling that you do not deserve more at the time. This paradigm comes in different ways; sometimes, in small tolerations, you exude daily, saying, “It is OK, I can let that slide.” The fact is that this paradigm is different from one individual to another and only limits purpose-driven leadership values.
A solution to this paradigm is to desire more. To crave for better for yourself, others, and the world at large. Don’t settle for anything less; don’t tolerate anything below the usual standard. And most importantly, be ready to put your foot down and invest your time and resources to achieve what you desire.
Paradigm Four: I’ve got it covered
Do you stop a learning process or pay little to no attention to something once you think you have gathered enough information about it? If you do this, you are caught up in this paradigm. An example is leaving a course you are learning for another after attaining a certain level of competence. Or you even forget mindful listening because you think, “you’ve got it”.
To counter this paradigm, you need to choose to focus on one thing at a time. Choose to be a master in anything you are involved in. Being a master in a single activity is far better than being so-so in a series of activities. As a personal leader, the more attention you pay to things and the higher your standard levels, the more fulfillment you get and the more you have to offer to the world.
Until the next time when I will share tips on how to focus on your personal vision and goals and finish and start a new year with a new focus goal-driven mindset.
Remember to Be Quality and Be Agile. Be Blessed.
Hugs, Adalyd xoxox
