‘The Pursuit’ Blog

NOTE: Please enjoy this guest post from Dan Foster with Building Champions!

At Building Champions, we believe leadership is a life-long journey. Successful leaders know they’ve never truly arrived and are humble enough to admit there’s always room to grow and improve.

For over 25 years, we’ve worked with leaders, at all levels, using a five-step process to help them create and achieve their development goals and increase their leadership effectiveness. This process works for individuals, teams, and organizations who are looking for a process to help them move from where they are to where they want to be in the future. Let’s take a look at each of the five steps.

Step 1: Start With Vision

You must have a clear picture of what success looks like before you begin your leadership development journey. Start by asking yourself these key questions:

• Why is achieving these leadership development goals so important?

• What does success look like when your goals have been achieved?

• What is new, different, or better?

• How does achieving these goals positively impact those you love, lead, and serve?

• What is at risk if you fail to achieve these goals?

Starting with vision gives you, your team, and your organization a clear picture of what you are striving to achieve. It leads to deeper levels of commitment and purpose, which are essential when challenges arise along the journey.

Step 2: Define Current Reality

With your vision for leadership development in place, you can now assess your starting point. Before you rush out to set goals and create plans it is important to pause and assess yourself, your team, and the organization.

• How are others experiencing your leadership right now?

• What are you doing well?

• Where are your opportunities for growth?

• What challenges are you struggling to overcome?

• What areas of leadership require growth and development if you are going to achieve your vision?

Look at all facets of your life and leadership, your team health and performance, and your organizational impact, as a whole. This type of assessment can be difficult and requires brutal honesty. You’re busy—so the temptation will be to skip this step because you believe you have examined the issues from all angles. However, taking time to reflect on your current reality saves you time and money—and will help you avoid setbacks in the long run.

Step 3: Set The Course

Setting the course is where you create your plan to bridge the gap between current reality and your envisioned future. The plan looks different for individuals, teams, and organizations but the most successful plans answer the same four questions:

• Why is this plan being created?

• What are the specific and measurable objectives you must achieve to be successful?

• What high-payoff activities will you consistently perform to reach your goals?

• What resources do you need to achieve your goals?

You must have a clear and compelling plan to achieve your leadership development goals—without one you risk wasting valuable resources, making poor decisions, and losing influence with key stakeholders.

Step 4: Evaluate Your Progress

As you begin to execute on your leadership development plan, it is important for you to evaluate your progress every 90-days. Schedule time to pull up and review your overall vision, the plans you’ve created, and how the execution of those plans is having an impact on yourself, your team, and the organization.

• How is the workload impacting overall well-being?

• Are you seeing a shift in mindset as well as behaviors?

• Are you on track to achieve your objectives for the quarter?

• What do you need to keep doing, start doing, or stop doing to get back on track to achieve your goals?

• What additional resources are needed for this next phase of your plan?

The most effective leaders create plans, review those plans, and make adjustments along the way. Remember, achieving success does not happen by default, it happens by design. Take the time to courageously review your progress and make the necessary changes to ensure long-term success.

Step 5: Celebrate Success and Learn From Failure

The final step in this process is to celebrate the wins along the way and to learn from your mistakes and failures. Taking the time to reflect on your key achievements, learnings, and the things you know not to do again will help you be a more effective leader. Be sure to write them down and share them with others.

This step is essential if you are using this process with a team or an organization. People need to know the investment in leadership development is paying off and contributing to the overall success of the team and organization.

Go Further Faster

We believe in these steps, and we also believe it’s incredibly beneficial to have someone working alongside you to be a sounding board, accountability partner, and coach who challenges you in meaningful ways. Do you have someone you trust to help you stay on track and achieve your leadership development goals? If not, we want to help!

At Building Champions, we create customized coaching engagements that focus on both the beliefs and behaviors of great leadership. We guide leaders, teams, and organizations to be healthy and high-performing so they can have a greater impact on everyone they serve. Reach out today and let’s see if we can help you achieve your leadership development goals.