Friday, September 10, 2010

Manage Yourself

I've talked about The Nine Critical Leadership Skills: Manage Yourself; Learn to Communicate; Think and Act Strategically; Learn to Be Creative; Take Action, Risks and Initiative; Learn to Motivate; Handle conflict; Build Teamwork; and, Persevere.

I've talked about The Quick and Dirty Strategy as a quick way to develop a strategic mental attitude. I will return to that in the future. Today, I want to start talking about managing yourself.

Manage yourself.

Unless you’re the King of the Universe, the only person you control is yourself. Manage yourself. There are many books that deal with this, and I can't cover it all, but I want to share a few quick points.

1. Set priorities

•Take some time and think about what your priorities are (See The Quick and Dirty Strategy earlier.)
•Write them down
•Develop a mission statement if it helps you clarify your priorities (I will deal with this in my next post!)
•Develop some specific goals for this year and the next few years
•Figure out how you are going to meet those goals

2. Develop your skills set
•Identify what skills you need to improve
•Develop a specific plan to improve your skills
•Develop a specific plan to practice your skills (See the Power of Practice earlier.)

3. Develop your career path
•Decide where you want to be professionally in a year, three years, five years and ten years
•Work back from each point to today and figure out how you will get there
•What do you need to do: education, training, move, find a new job, expertise, etc.
•Who will you need to help you: spouse, family, friends, coworkers, mentor, etc.
•When will all this happen: give yourself some deadlines to meet each milestone
•Develop some partners to help you get there.
•Caution: the plan will need adjusting along the way. Don’t sweat it. It will happen. Just keep working at it.

4. Keep working at it

•This is an ongoing process
•You will have setbacks
•You will make some changes
•Don’t sweat it.
•Things will get better.

The Nine Critical Skills are interlinked and they work together. Start on it.

No comments: