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If you really want to soar in the coming year, end-of-the-year planning is not just about getting your strategy straight and your financial house in order. You also need to get your head right and that means tuning up your spirit, renewing your mental resources, and recommitting to your deepest values.

When you have a team member or potential team members stand in front of you what do you see? Are you filled with questions or thoughts of….

• WOW, I am glad they are not on my team!
• I hope they don’t ask to join my team!
• They are failures!
• Do  you see how they dress – so tacky

I want to suggest two powerful questions that will change your focus on how you view your team. These two questions will also change you action plan in dealing with your team members and how you are casting vision.

Who are they?

While literally observing your team members, do you as a leader really know who they are? Do you know their hurts, fears, struggles, and dreams? There are two great axioms of leadership;

1. Do not ask for a hand until you have touched a heart.
2. You do not get what you want as a leader, you get who you are.

If you continually ask for help and make demands upon your team without ever showing care for them as a person you risk the following:

Loss of engagement

Loss of productivity

Allow mediocrity to settle in

Every leader must come to terms with the idea that employees are evaluating you through the lens of the question – Do you know me? People desire relationships. This is where the millennials are changing the workplace by their desire to be relational. They are not looking for a boss or paycheck. They are looking for relationships and conversations.

The second axiom is, you do not get what you want you get who you are. Therefore, we reproduce our relational traits attitudes and all. Said another way, we must personalize and then model the behaviors we ultimately seek for our team. Said yet another way, people do what people see.

The second question to ask when observing another team members is, “Who can they become?” This is a question about another person’s potential. A leaders perspective then becomes, “How can I add value to this person?”

All individuals ask the same basic questions about our lives. “When my life is through did I leave a footprint that shows I helped someone! This is an issue of significance and legacy. I left something behind for others – I left my world better than I found it. I personally do not think that people wake up in the morning and declare “I want to be average” or “I want to climb my way up to middle management.”

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Music: “8^th Anniversary by Diamond Ortiz