Become a leader in 90 days.
How’s that for an offer you can’t refuse?
You can. What’s more, it’s much easier (and obviously faster) than you probably imagined possible. Here’s how:
First, think: Is anybody born a leader?
Was Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Susan B. Anthony, born a leader? I was not. Were you?
We may inherit intellectual, emotional, spiritual or even physical characteristics, which are useful for becoming a good leader – but a born leader… Nah. Leaders are made, not born. And fact is…
ALL leaders are self-made leaders.
Let’s agree then that people become leaders through some kind of process. So, what’s the process people have used before successfully for becoming great leaders?
Well, there are leadership trainings. Do people emerge from these weekend/week-long workshops as card-carrying leaders? Hardly. I don’t think you can workshop yourself into being a leader. But I am convinced you can be trained, or train yourself to become a good leader through leadership management.
The most common leadership development process I’ve observed is the emergence of a leader from a person who performs “leadership” actions consistently over a period of time. In other words, leader development or leader training results in leaders.
The military, even the Scouts, have proved this to be so.
Now, what do you call human behavior that results from a person taking consistent action over time? A habit. And that’s the key to becoming (or creating) a leader in just 90 days:
Leadership Development through Habits
How You Create A Habit
In his pioneering personal growth text, Psychocybernetics, Maxwell Maltz claimed that you could make a new habit in 21 days. Tribal people, relying on more “natural” sciences, say it takes 28 days – one complete cycle of the moon.
So, give or take a week…
You should be able to develop a new habit in about a month. With two more months of practice-making-perfect, it should be a very done deal in 90 days.
Now, the way you develop a new habit – any habit – is to repeat the desired behavior over-and-over-and-over-and… until it moves from being an action you think about before you do it, to one done without your conscious attention. Putting on your directional signals in your car before making a turn is an example.
Okay, you develop a habit by repeating an action consistently. How consistently? For this exercise in creating the habit of leadership, let’s consider taking daily actions.
Your 10 Daily Habits
To develop the Habit of Leadership, I recommend you make a list of 10 Daily habits, which you commit to doing day in, day out, every day for 90 days.
Now, if you are a master of the will, you may not need to do these things each and every day. However, I have yet to meet a person who has such mastery. But, on the odd chance you are one… fine. Do the actions whenever. For the rest of us – especially in the beginning – these actions MUST be taken day in, day out, seven times each week, as if your life depended on it! (And your life as a leader does…)
If you are really serious about your leader development using this habit method, and you’ve been known to get a little lazy and even sneaky sometimes about getting out of doing things, I recommend you “hire” an accountability partner, a business coach, or just someone with whom you can check in every day so you can report that you did or did not be, do, have your habits.
If you did, hear – as in deeply and generously experience on a feeling level – your coach or partner’s praise and acknowledgment of you.
If you didn’t, you send him or her a $100 bill IMMEDIATELY! (Upping the ante works! And it’s okay to manipulate yourself for a positive outcome. Just don’t do it to other people.)
So, what are some “leadership” actions or leadership skills you can take and make into habits?
Well, let’s see – what do leaders do?
For one thing, they READ (or Listen). So, one habit you can do is to read (or listen) 30 minutes every day. (I’ll leave it to you WHAT to read. As a guide, ask yourself, “What would a leader I admire be reading?”)
A good leader is healthy and fit, right? So, two more habits you might use: Exercise 30 minutes every day and cut your previous fat and refined carbohydrate intake in half… minimum. (By the way: Make up habits that you can measure. “Eat right,” doesn’t make it. “Cut out burgers or dairy food for a month,” does.)
How about the habit of spending one full hour every day with your spouse or life partner. Is that something a leader would do?
My mentor, Dr. Carol McCall, has identified “Six Areas of Life Planning,” and I say you would be best to have at least one leadership habit to work with in each of the following areas: Career, Health, Relationships, Recreation, Finances, and Personal Growth.
I suggest you restrict yourself to developing 10 and only 10 leadership habits. This process is tough enough thank you, so do your best to make your leadership habits easy. (You heroes and sheroes can wait and create more, harder habits in the fourth month for extra credit.)
That’s it. That’s “How to Become a Leader in 90 Days.”
Make 10 daily leadership habits and do them with a life-or-death commitment for the next three months. In 90 days you will be a leader.
Try it with a select collection of people on your team, too, as leadership development training. Have them all check in with you to report via email or voice mail each night. Come together on a teleconference line weekly to check in, share experiences and resources and, above all to celebrate your successes.
And yes, this is probably too simple and easy to really work. Why? Because the secret is – you have to do it.
As self-made world leader Jim Rohn says:
It’s easy to do… and
It’s easy not to do…
Whether you do, or you do not do, is up to you.
So, it’s not really a Network Marketing secret. You can become a leader in only 90 days. And now, you know how…
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Thanks.
I appreciate you.
