If you’ve been a subscriber to our Monday Morning Stretch for any length of time, I hope I have inspired you to be consistent in your effort to grow and strengthen your personal leadership skills. If you’ve done so, then you know already that you must first up-level your own mindset and leadership thinking prior to elevating your ability to speak from a strong leadership platform. You’ve been practicing mindfulness in your leadership thoughts, actions, and communications. You know that your actions, reactions, decisions, and all that you speak into existence is 100% within your control.
So, now the BIG question: Exactly what do you think all this work and attention was preparing you for? Well, it wasn’t for the best of times. It was for the worst. It was for when we find ourselves in our next crisis. In this case, COVID-19. What you have prepared for is here.
This is where leaders like you suit up, rise from the bench, and take the field. This is what you’ve been training for. This is where leadership takes action. This is when it is needed and where it counts the most… When we and everyone around us are engulfed in a crisis, real or imagined.
Fear makes people do strange and abnormal things. But leaders know that they will never make their best decisions or speak most persuasively from fear. Great leaders have practiced monitoring their thoughts and directing them toward ideas that are helpful, hopeful, strong, and consistent with their core values.
Now is our time. This is exactly when people who have not been practicing these skills will need us to rise and take the lead for them. And, we can.
Here’s a reminder of our marching orders as Leaders of our Pride:
- When others speak of fear, reply gently with hope.
- When others panic, bless them and respond with calm and thoughtful action.
- When others are consumed with doom, think about and speak of the evidence of resiliency, creativity, and our ability to thrive against the odds.
- When others feel unstable, insecure, and disempowered, remind them of their limitless personal power and the heart of the warrior within.
- When others fill their ears, eyes, and minds and drain their reserves with increasing evidence of failure and fear, fill your reservoir with all the available evidence of success, compassion, and adaptability.
- When others take on the cloak of rigidity and fragility, be the example of fluidity, flexibility and quiet, sure strength.
- When others see no available options before them, remind them of the sweetness of freedom and the powerful nature of choice.
- When others feel despair, sit with them, love them, and show them they are not alone.
This is how we show up as leaders. We hold the space of those who have not developed the tools. We help guide those who are on the path with us. We choose carefully those from whom we accept counsel and humbly receive what we need from them in order to continue the good work we have been called to do.
For LionSpeak followers and members of our “Pride,” join me in selflessly, humbly, and totally stepping into the leadership position which calms those who are frightened, balances those who are spinning out of control, and gives hope and strength to those who feel disempowered, pessimistic, and weak.
They need us now. And we’re ready.
“Optimism is a duty. The future is open. It is not predetermined. No one can predict it, except by chance.
WE all contribute to determining it by what we do. We are all equally responsible for its success.”
~~Karl Popper
