Creating Focus with One Word, for One Year.

Creating Focus with One Word, One Year.

Recently I had the great opportunity to accompany 40 graduate and undergraduate students to the World Leaders Conference held in West Palm Beach, Florida. Now if you ever tried to organize that many students, it is a lot like herding squirrels because cats are too tame! Seriously, this was an incredible time of growth both for me and the students. The focus of the conference was on building Servant Leaders and we were able to hear in person speakers such as Dr. Ben Carson, pro quarterback Drew Brees, leadership expert Ken Blanchard, and many more.

At the conference, author and motivational speaker John Gordon introduced a fascinating tool to drive personal and organizational FOCUS. Essentially, the strategy is to pick ONE WORD to act as a theme or direction for one year that will drive efforts, focus energy, and affirm values. For instance, John gave the example of his word for the current year was “RISE”. To him, it meant rising above challenges to flourish, grow and achieve as well as bring others along the way. Obviously, this got me thinking out loud about what my ONE WORD would be. I looked around at all the wonderful young people I was with and landed on the word “multiply” as in I want to use this year to multiply leaders. This goes beyond just throwing out opportunities, it is about INVESTING in young (and maybe not so young!) leaders to help them flourish and teach others.  

What could your ONE WORD be? This is not easy to do but try first to create a short description of what you WANT TO DO this year and then boil it down to ONE WORD and FOCUS efforts on that theme. That one word must have meaning to you but I have listed some examples below:

• Grow
• Move
• Impact
• Thrive

To learn more about the World Leaders Conference, visit http://www.worldleadersconference.com. As always, if I can help you Get Better, Be Ready and LEAD OUT LOUD, I would love to hear from you. Also, as a bonus, if you go to my Out Loud Strategies website (www.outloudinc.com) and enter your contact information, I will send you a FREE guide to establishing a mentoring initiative program in your organization! Such an initiative would be critical in order to add value to your organization!

Yours in Leadership,

Bill Faulkner

Co-Founder – Out Loud Strategies

Independent Coach, Speaker, and Trainer with the John Maxwell Team ^TM

Email = bill@outloudinc.com

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