Hello Leader,

It's time for a spring clean-up, tune-up and reboot to make 2012 the year of dramatic improvements. What got you here may have served you well but it will not be sufficient to create the future you are capable of realizing. You need to build new practices, engage new "muscles," embark on new possibilities and open new ways of looking at your world. Discover in this KEY eight levers to create renewal and momentous progress. To produce breakthroughs choose your most pertinent lever and act on it immediately.

Click here for the Spring Reboot podcast. Please forward this KEY to friends, family and associates.

Sincerely,

Aviv Shahar

Your Spring Reboot

  1. Possibility - Begin your day with confident optimism about the possibilities in front of you. Develop a ritual of generating positive attitude and energy. Be confident that you can create positive progress and results today. Foster the Self-Empowering Mindset. Be determined to realize possibilities and shape events you can control. Be surprised by nothing. Prioritize and organize the main things you will work on today.
  2. Learning - Engage in new learning. What new skills do you want to learn? In what areas do you want to expand your horizons? What new investments are you making in your development? The opportunity that scares you most is the one you need to pursue first. New learning creates new synaptic growth in your brain, rejuvenates you, and offers new ways of seeing the world.
  3. Completion - Complete half-done ventures and initiatives. What writing, design or building projects did you start but haven't brought to completion? Incomplete projects take up valuable physical and mental space. They clog your energy. Clear the space. Clean out distractions from your work and life. Put that set of tools back in its place. Complete efforts you started. Celebrate your completion and move on.
  4. Improvement - Reboot how you approach work. Work smarter not harder. You are not paid to be busy. You are paid because you create a difference and deliver value to your clients. Spend an hour every weekend or at the beginning of the week focusing and planning your week. Identify the three vital things you will do this week to accelerate developments and create value. Focus on these top opportunities. Determine the desired outcomes and path to producing these results. Be present. Do not waste your mornings. Focus on doing high-value work first when you are fresh. Realize your opportunities.
  5. Leadership - Tune up your leadership style. Lead with confidence. What new results do you want to create in the next six months? Expect people to offer their best ideas and talent. Leadership is about helping people liberate their strengths, not fixing their deficiencies. You ask Lance Armstrong to ride the bike, not to play chess; you leave that to Bobby Fischer. Take the initiative. Demonstrate that you care. Do not settle for average.
  6. Accountability - Reintroduce accountability. People are accountable when they: 1) understand what success looks like; 2) trust and believe the desired outcome can be achieved; 3) take responsibility; and 4) lead with action to create results. If you don't get the results you expect and accountability is weak, you need to be diagnostic first. To identify where the breakdown occurred, you need to ask:
    1) Do you understand what success looks like? Do you see the vision I see?
    2) Do you believe in what we are building? Do you believe we can create this success?
    3)Are you prepared to own this? Will you see this through to success by (define time window)?
    4)What help do you need to take action and deliver results?
  7. Relationships - Inventory your key relationships. Clear the air and reboot the conversation where necessary. Blame is the greatest waste of energy known to man. Don't obsess about being right. Get interested in building shared understanding. With mistakes: 1) acknowledge (with a little humor, if you can); 2) apologize, if necessary; 3) rectify the mistake; and 4) move forward. Relationships, like your garden, are a fertile soil to germinate anew, grow and then to bloom. The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your thoughts. The quality of your relationships is fashioned by the quality of your conversation.
  8. Self-respect - Believe in yourself. If you don't why should anyone else believe in you? If you've internalized criticism and rejection into doubting yourself, delete that 'file', lose the memory and download an updated self-view. Stop using your past as an excuse. Trust what you bring to the table. You can take charge today and chart a new course. You build self-respect, dignity and a sense of purpose by doing what is right. Renew the sense of meaning. You create meaning by making the higher choices. You are your first witness. Make choices that make you proud. Build your self-respect.

    9. Now it's your turn. Turn the key. Reboot. Clean up. Tune up. Drive to completion. Engage new learning. Work smart and focus on high-value efforts. Lead with confidence. Create.

    © Aviv Shahar