Self-Leadership Questions (Key Principle: Leverage)

Self-employed mentality: The business owns you (immersed in the day to day details—control freak)

Business owner mentality: You develop systems so that the business runs itself. Delegate/hold accountable

1.Focus: work only on things that will make a great deal of difference if you succeed. Increase the proportion of your time on the few things that produce the most benefit. Ask yourself often: What is the one thing I do that really matters to this organization?
2.Invest a minimum of 30 minutes thinking critically about your business daily. Are you focusing on the items that will yield the greatest results? Are you majoring in the minors or majoring in the majors? Are you leveraging the 80/20 principle?
3.Take small steps of action daily on big ideas. Good intentions are nothing, action is everything. Have a strong bias toward action. Initiate, Catalyze, Stir it up. You can’t solve big problems with incremental thinking (2% gains), take action on breakthrough ideas. Are you acting as a change agent?
4.Model success—duplication and repetition. Continually seek advice and look for successful models. Are you modeling best practices?
5.Engage and maximize all available resources. When you delegate a decision, take full responsibility if it goes wrong. What can be delegated? What can be leveraged for greater gain?
6.Accountability: what gets measured gets done. You get what you manage for. Track and measure the key variables. What is my business? How’s business?
7.The things that get rewarded get done. Set up worthwhile incentives for everyone. Always give public praise and recognition. What incentives do you have in place right now to drive your key variables?
8.Relentless prioritization of time and resources. What is the best use of my time right now? What is the best use of my budget right now? Am I focused enough on the key drivers of my business?
9.Become a perpetual learner and a student of your industry. Study ways to become faster, better, cheaper. Knowledge is infinitely more valuable that busyness. Never mistake activity for results. What are you studying and learning that will lead to increased results?
10.Rigorous execution of ideas. Creativity without implementation is irresponsibility. Are you spending too much time on ideas and not enough on execution?
11.Discipline—develop habits, routines, systems, processes. Leaders make their habits and then their habits make them. Are you building catalytic mechanisms that will help the business run itself?
12.Continually evaluate risk and reward. Achievers take more risks and yield more rewards. Are you taking bold calculated risks?
13.Practice the strategy of testing and experimenting. Before launching any new marketing strategy test the idea on a small scale with a test group and control group. Measure and analyze the results closely. Test lots of ideas and keep what works. What new idea are you testing?
14.The most critical responsibility of any leader is picking the right people and putting them in the right place. Leaders focus intensely and relentlessly on people selection. Do you have the right leaders on your team and working on the right opportunities?
15.Developing your people: great leaders genuinely care about developing their people. Poor leaders see people as a means to an end. Do everything possible to help your direct reports succeed. What am I doing to develop the people on my team?
16.Window & Mirror philosophy of great leaders: Look out the window for crediting success and look in the mirror for failure. Pin the blame of success on others and pin the blame of failure on yourself as the leader. 17.Are you passing the credit to your team? Are you accepting responsibility for failures?
18.Consultants: use them for knowledge transfer. Use them for calibration.
Leadership = Influence. Speed of the leader, speed of the team. Are you leading by example?

Bottom line: James 4:6 God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Ask yourself daily: Is this leadership thing about me or is it about results?