What Have Your Learned as a Leader from This Pandemic?

Hello and welcome to episode number 41 of the Strategy Corner, where our goal is to get you to take action. I’m your host, Michel Zink, the owner of Intentional Solutions Corp. On today’s strategy, we’re talking about, what have you learned about yourself as a leader from this pandemic? We’ve all been going through something we’ve never gone through over the last three months. You’ll be listening to this podcast in June. And we started this pandemic in March. So it’s been a long time. So as owners of businesses, executives and leaders, we’re always learning and growing either consciously or unconsciously or subconsciously. Today, I want to bring forth the conscience and have you think back over the last three months and dig into what you have learned about yourself as a leader during this pandemic. Why? So that we can learn from ourselves so we can be more intentional with our growth as a leader. So we can get comfortable with examining and evaluating our performance actions ourselves in a way of learning and growth, not beating ourselves up or talking down to ourselves and how we did.

This isn’t helpful to you, your company, your employees. No one. I don’t know about you guys, but I can easily fall into the hole beating myself up because I didn’t do this or should it and done that. And over the next couple of weeks, I want you to sit back and I want you to think about things from different perspectives and from an open mind of possibility and reflection so that you don’t come from a place of less or doubt or ineffectiveness, but you come from a place of well, that’s curious, huh? Wonder why did that? Being very open to what you’ve done and how you could’ve done better and what things you really did do great. So this is the first part of a series I’m going to be doing over the month of June to get you thinking about what happened, what worked, what didn’t, what you want to make sure of some changes that you’ve actually put into place that you want to keep where you can improve or continue to grow.

But today, we’re just starting with the simple question of what have you learned about yourself as a leader during this pandemic? To dig in, you just need a clean sheet of paper and some open time in your calendar. You can do this exercise in one sitting. I know for myself; I give myself one time a week where I sit for an hour and I utilize questions. So this would be great for someone who wants to get up early and who wants to take that, you know, hour before their family gets up and answer these questions. That would be great. Or you could be someone who is going to the office and knows that you like to break things up. You like to do things in small chunks so you can go ahead and do this in short sprints. You could do four 15-minute timeframes to work through these questions. You want to give yourself enough time to get through the surface answers and to start feeling uncomfortable, start to feel and think. I don’t know what I should write down because that is where the good stuff lies. All the true answers we’re looking for are never the first ones we think of. It’s always those things that bubble up to the top where we’re like, Oh my goodness, I have ten more minutes. I don’t know what I should write down for this question. What’s the answer? I’m not sure that’s when all the good stuff comes up. And that’s where we tap into our real true insights and things we haven’t even thought of yet.

So there are five questions that I want you to ask yourself, and you can respond to these both personally and professionally or just personally or just professionally. It’s up to you. So here they are. Number one, as a leader, in what areas did I grow personally or professionally that surprised me? So, again, you can answer these for personal and professional or just one or the other. It’s your choice. Number two, where as a leader did I excel personally and professionally, in my opinion? Where as a leader did I miss the mark personally or professionally in my opinion? And again, you can use these questions for even doing a monthly review. My goal here is for you to sit back and think about the last three months and take that perspective. But you can do that and also use them monthly to kind of reevaluate and see where you’re coming from. Number four, what actions or reactions did I take over the last three months that I’m not proud of and don’t want to repeat the future personally and professionally? So I want to read that one more time. What actions or reactions did I take over the last three months that I’m not proud of and I don’t want to repeat into the future personally or professionally? And number five, what traits did I admire about myself and want to bring forth into the future personally and professionally?

So the call to action this week is it take one hour or to take four 15-minute breaks or take how many breaks you want, but to actually give yourself a full hour to get clear and journal about these questions so you can easily try to answer them in your head. But the better thing is to write them down so that you can review them. You can go back because I’m going to be offering you questions to be asking yourself from different perspectives over the next couple of weeks. And you’ll want to go back and look at your answers. So again, here are the five questions. Number one, as a leader. And what areas did I grow personally and or professionally that surprised me. Number two, where as a leader, did I excel personally and or professionally, in my opinion, over the last three months? Number three, where as a leader, did I miss the mark personally and or professionally, in my opinion? What actions or reactions did I take over the last three months that I’m not proud of I don’t want to repeat in the future personally or professionally? What traits did I admire in myself and want to bring forth into the future personally or professionally?

So there you have it. You’ve got your five questions. You’re going to take your hour and you’re going to answer them. And then you’re going to set them aside and we’re gonna get back to looking at them in about four weeks where I show you how to move forward with your answers. So until then, please go to i-Tunes, Stitcher, Google Play and subscribe to the Strategy Corner. You could also go to my website and sign up for my weekly blog post and the latest podcast. So you’re signing up actually for a weekly newsletter that comes to your inbox. And you could do that at IntentionalSolutionsCorp.com. Until next time, remember, through action and growth progression happens. Let’s take action together. Thank you and create an amazing week.