Your Leadership Life Map

Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Kathryn Cramer as my guest blogger. Her recent release of Lead Positive: What Highly Effective Leaders, See, Say, and Do, was one of the easiest to read and implement leadership books I've read. I highly recommend you running out (or to your computer) and getting your own copy.

YOUR LEADERSHIP LIFE MAP: DISCOVERING YOUR MIGHTY CAUSE

What is your mighty cause?  People crave a greater sense of purpose, and being able to

link your goals to a noble and mighty cause is inspiring.

Authentic communication, what I call “saying it with soul” is about meaning what you say–and saying something meaningful. When you can speak soulfully about your values and your personal investment in the vision, your mighty cause, it builds trust and commitment. It lowers the bar for your team to get on board.

Your Leadership Life Map

It is not as difficult as you may think to discover the mighty cause underlying your vision for your organization. Using the Leadership Life Map tool from my upcoming book Lead Positive: What Highly Effective Leaders, See, Say, and Do, you can start by identifying patterns in your leadership path about what most motivates and inspires you.

For example, when I worked with my client Matthew, an operations manager, to develop his Leadership Life Map, we discovered that his deepest passion was from mentoring others, not efficient operations. Getting results was of course rewarding, but his greatest satisfaction came from watching people grow and excel.

From there, it was a short step for Matthew to identify his noble cause of employee growth and to link it to his organization’s vision of higher performance. His ability to speak soulfully about his dedication to this noble cause did more to inspire those he served than a powerpoint presentation on operational improvement goals ever could.

Download the Lead Positive Leadership Life Map tool here.

The Leadership Life Map exercise, which I have provided here as a free resource from the Lead Positive book, asks you to:

•  Map the chapters of your life as a leader
• Identify the major life-shaping forces in your leadership career
• List your most significant leadership experiences–positive and negative–and the key assets you used or noticed in others

Once it is all laid out, you can begin to identify themes and patterns regarding your leadership values, your mighty cause.

Kathryn D. Cramer, PhD, is passionate about possibilities and potential. Emmy-winner, business consultant, psychologist, and author, Dr. Cramer has written nine books, including the best-selling Change the Way You See Everything. She created and has dedicated her life to asset-based thinking (ABT), a way of looking at the world that helps leaders, influencers, and their teams make small shifts in thinking to produce extraordinary impact. Her latest book, Lead Positive: What Highly Effective Leaders See, Say & Do (Jossey-Bass, 2014), shows leaders how to increase their effectiveness through her revolutionary mindset management process, Asset-Based Thinking.

Follow Kathy on Twitter @drkathycramer and connect on Facebook.