timmilburn.com

Self-Discipline Starts With You

tim milburn — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:13:42 +0000

“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not: it is the first lesson that ought to be learned and, however early a person’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he or she learns thoroughly.” – Thomas Huxley

David continually turns work in late. Josh can’t seem to find the time to exercise. Stacy keeps maxing out her credit card and paying the high interest rates. Julie dreams of a better future, but keeps putting it off, thinking that tomorrow she’ll do what needs to be done.

What do all of these people have in common? In one way or another, they struggle with issues related to self-discipline. Huxley rightly states that one of the most valuable abilities in life is “to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.” A leader understands that there are no shortcuts to achieving their greatest potential. And greatness usually begins with small steps in the right direction.

If you want water, you’ve got to turn on the faucet.

If you want to overcome your struggle with personal discipline, you’ve got to start moving in the right direction. For me, the word start means:

Steps To Accomplishing Real Things

I know that nothing will happen until I start. The water won’t flow until I turn on the faucet. The question is: Where does one start?

I would offer these four areas:

Start With Yourself

There may be lots of reasons that you aren’t able to accomplish what you want to accomplish. But the first person you must look at is yourself. You can’t change others, you can’t predict your circumstances, and you can’t live like you only get 23 hours in a day. Take a hard look at how you spend the time given you each day. Find the things that you can change personally.

Start Early

When you start early, you provide yourself with more options than if you started late. Early gives you greater flexibilty. Late gives you stress and little room for excellence. If you constantly put things off until the last minute, you won’t be able to do the things you really want to do. Beginning early gives you breathing room for the unexpected. It also allows you to produce more excellent work and results.

Start Small

We may often become overwhelmed by the goals that we set or the projects that we are assigned. The best way to overcome putting off a big assignment is to break the project down into smaller, more manageable pieces. When we accomplish a small part of the task or project, it actually gives us motivation and energy to move on to the next piece. Break up your work into manageable sizes and tackle them one at a time. Somehow, we’ve bought into the paralyzing myth that says we have to accomplish it all at once (that is, unless you waited until the last minute!).

Start Now

I’ve never seen anyone win a race by sitting on the starting line and thinking about what it would take to finish. Every successful race began with a first step. Every task will be accomplished with a first step. Go ahead. Turn the faucet. When you do, water will begin to flow. The key to self-discipline is moving ahead in the midst of feelings, fatigue, and fear of failure.

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Interested in discovering simple and practical ways to improve your self-discipline today? Download my latest book, Leadership Starts With You. This book will assist you in developing your own self-leadership skills. It’s available for both the Kindle and the Nook. Visit leadershipstartswithyou.com to take the next step in leading yourself well.

Discipline Sounds A Lot Like Consistency

Ray Lewis Leadership In A Losing Locker Room

tim milburn — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:44:30 +0000

It may feel like a loss is based on one play. But it isn’t.
It may seem like the pain of losing will never fade. But it will.
It may look like you can’t bounce back. But you can.

Just came across this recording of Ray Lewis, middle linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens and easily a Hall of Famer, speaking to his teammates after their loss to the New England Patriots this past Sunday. The Patriots go to the Super Bowl. The Ravens go home. The Ravens lost by three points. What makes it even harder to swallow is that they looked like the better team throughout the game. Listen in.

It’s easy to lead a winning team. Everyone likes to be on a winning team. But losing exposes who you really are. When a team loses, you get to see what kind of leader a person really is.

The truth is, crisis can build character. But it also exposes it. I love what I saw out of Ray Lewis. Respect for that guy continues to grow.

UPDATE: Got a link to the Ray Lewis speech unedited.

The Smartest Person In The Room

3 Keys To Creating Consistent Character

tim milburn — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:39:18 +0000

Somewhere…someplace…someone is stepping down from a leadership position.

It’s not because they didn’t do their job right. It’s not because they went over budget. It’s not even because the majority of people no longer followed their leadership anymore. It’s something else.

There is a growing percentage of leaders who have to step away from leading others because they failed to lead themselves well first. They had all of the right capabilities but they lacked the character to sustain their leadership.

The truth is, you can be a leader with poor character…just not for very long.

In our quest to find authentic leaders, we want to follow someone who is the person they claim to be (both in public and in private). We not only want a leader with good character, we want someone with consistently good character.

In my work with student leaders, I provide a lot of space for students to make mistakes and try new ideas. Each year, students enter into their positions with a variety of strategies to make things better (depending on how they view better). For the most part, they are never required to step down because a strategy or idea failed. In fact, these provide some of the best learning moments in a student’s leadership experience.

But there’s not as much room for error, mistakes, or failure when it comes to a student leader’s character. Adding up the numbers incorrectly is different than lying about the numbers. Giving people bad directions to an event is different than allowing one’s life to head in a bad direction.

At the beginning of each student leadership year, I challenge the students in my care to start strong and to finish strong. Starting strong is easy and depends on your excitement level. Finishing strong is a lot harder and depends on the strength of your character.

To keep your character consistent throughout your leadership experience, I encourage you to develop these three insights into your life.

1. Focus on your own character before you focus on the character of others.

It is easy to see character flaws in others. But it’s hard to see them in ourselves. This is because we tend to be black-and-white when judging the decisions of others and rationalize the decisions we make. It’s so easy to make a promise to be a certain kind of person. What’s difficult is keeping that promise when it feels easier to let it slide (just this once). The minute a leader begins to think, I’m not as bad as him (or her!) that leader’s character is in danger.

2. Grow a bigger heart and not simply a better filter.

From an early age, each of us has learned how to manage our behavior. We develop the ability to know what is appropriate behavior in a variety of situations. We compartmentalize our lives – acting one way at school and another way at home or with friends. We know what words we can use when we’re at work and which words we shouldn’t use at church. We are behavior modification experts, relying on our filter to keep us appropriate wherever we’re at.

Character isn’t formed through a maturing filter as much as it’s developed from an authentic heart. We often define good character as the ability to be the same person in both public and private. But I would expand that to include all of the different environments we are a part of in our public and private worlds. If you operate from a pure heart in all areas of your life then you can spend more energy on meeting the needs of other instead of managing your appearance in front of others.

3. Work on the parts you see, not just the parts others see.

I think we all know where our character is most susceptible to damage. If you don’t, then you’ve probably filled your life with just enough noise that you are unable to hear the inner voice inside that speaks who you really are. Some call it a conscience, others call it a moral compass. For me, it’s the voice of God’s Spirit that convicts and gently prods me in the right direction.

The thing is, it takes quiet, intentional reflection to tap into it. That’s why some leaders are afraid of the silence.

When a person’s true character comes to light, it typically reveals a pattern of poor decisions that have been made over a period of time. It gets to the point where our poor character becomes too obvious not to notice. At some point, a leader starts to work more on covering up the result of bad character than spending the necessary time working on developing good character. The leader is fooled into thinking that character doesn’t matter…until it does.

It is your responsibility to develop your own character. No one can do it for you. But others can help you. Perhaps the very first thing a leader can do to protect him or herself from the devastation that is caused by poor character choices is to find some people to get honest with. I would encourage you to find a few people who meet the following two requirements:

1. You trust them.

2. They want what’s best for you.

It’s typically our private lives that mess up our public ones. Marie Beyle (1783-1842) stated, “One can acquire everything in solitude – except character.” Don’t let the secrets of your character derail the success of your leadership. Let’s do the work necessary to make sure that doesn’t happen.

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Interested in discovering simple and practical ways to develop your character consistently? Download my latest book, Leadership Starts With You. This book will assist you in developing your own self-leadership skills. It’s available for both the Kindle and the Nook. Visit leadershipstartswithyou.com to take the next step in leading yourself well.

Change Is Coming…Ready Or Not

tim milburn — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:46:18 +0000

Have you ever found a story that is so good that you created a blog post – simply to share the story?

I have. This is it.

The focus of this story (which I believe is true) deals with change. While most paradigm shifts within history used to take thousands of years (bronze age, silver age, iron age, etc), now they take place in less than a decade. The truth is: change is coming no matter how hard you fight against it.

Here’s the story:

From the Voter’s Assembly Minutes – June 19, 1908

Mr. Grueber introduced the following to be discussed: Nine reasons not to introduce the typewriter into our church.

1. The paper must be put into the machine and aligned properly, tabs must be set. This is not easy. When writing by hand, one simply begins, exactly where you want with no restrictions.
2. With a typewriter, you have to constantly remember to capitalize and put in punctuation. It is easy to forget, and to go back and change things is hard. When writing by hand, such things are automatic.
3. With the typewriter, you have to have been trained to find the proper keys. This takes time. We already know how to write.
4. With the typewriter, you are limited to the size and spacing of the type. When writing by hand, you can use any size letters or style you want.
5. With the typewriter, centering and setting margins is not easy; when writing, it is no problem.
6. A typewriter breaks down and costs to be fixed. Writing does not.
7. Correcting a mistake after something has been typed is a problem; when writing by hand, it is not.
8. The church has gotten along for over 1900 years without a typewriter; why do we need this now?
9. Instead of learning a machine with all the above drawbacks, time should be spent on penmanship.

Isn’t this awesome? I wish I could attest to the validity of this. If Mr. Grueber were alive today, he probably wouldn’t be on Twitter either.

I came across this story in a resource from John Maxwell. All I know is that it clearly illustrates the lengths many will go to in order to avoid a necessary change.

“Every new idea goes through three phases: It will not work, it will cost too much, and I thought it was a good idea all along.” – Anonymous

Camp Won’t Change Your Life

Learning To Lead By “The Rhodium Rule”

tim milburn — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:03:57 +0000

Put on your chemist hat because I’d like to introduce you to RHODIUM.

Rhodium is a rare, hard, silvery-white, lustrous metal . It is highly reflective and extremely resistant to corrosion. It is not attacked by most acids. Rhodium appears on the periodic table with the atomic number 45 (don’t you just feel smarter knowing that?!).

One of the most important leadership lessons I’m learning and teaching right now is influenced by this precious metal. You might not be familiar with Rhodium unless you’ve recently purchased some jewelry made of white gold. Rhodium is used to both protect and add brilliance to white gold. Rhodium-coated white gold is better protected from scratches, tarnish, and makes it look more white and bright.

Basically, Rhodium enhances other elements.

Now I know you’ve heard of the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) and perhaps you’ve heard of the Platinum Rule (do unto others as they would have done unto them). I would like to offer The Rhodium Rule…

Do unto yourself what will inspire the best in others.

The Rhodium Rule focuses on leading yourself in such a way that it enhances the lives of others.

It’s all about the power of example…your example.

A familiar principle is that people do what people see. With that in mind, a leader will do the kinds of things that can be observed and emulated by one’s followers. If you want to create a culture of service, you will engage in personal and public practices of service in your own life. You will serve so that others will be inspired to serve.

One of the greatest barriers to trust in an organization is caused by a leader who tells his or her followers to behave one way and then personally behaves in contradiction to that. In simple terms, the leader doesn’t practice what he or she preaches. The Rhodium Rule emphasizes personal responsibility.

How many times have we seen a leader fall or fail because of a character issue? More often than not, there is a disconnect between leading others and leading oneself. The leader has forgotten or hasn’t focused on the necessity of leading yourself first.

You leading you is the entrance exam to you leading others. If you pass the test of leading yourself well on a daily basis, you’ll find you can advance to the next stage of leading others well. But you can’t skip this class. If you do, you’ll become a hollow leader. You’ll lack depth and credibility. Your words will be shallow. Your influence will lack substance.

The Rhodium Rule requires that I make the kind of promises (and keep them!) to myself that I want those whom I lead and influence to keep. My motivation for following this rule is to make promises not only for my own benefit but for the benefit of others. As I keep my promises, they offer inspiration to those who are trying to keep similar promises.

• I keep a promise to be honest so that it will inspire honesty in others.
• I keep a promise to be physically fit so it will inspire fitness in others.
• I keep a promise to do my work with excellence so it will inspire excellence in others.
• I keep a promise to build healthy relationships so it will inspire healthy relationships in others.
• I keep a promise to keep my promises so it will inspire others to keep their promises.

Once again, it’s the power of example at work. If I’m not leading myself well, how can I expect those in my care to lead themselves well?

You leading you means you investing in you.

This sounds selfish. It isn’t.
This sounds arrogant. Yet it’s one of the most humbling acts.
This sounds like a waste of time. Then don’t lead.

It’s difficult to be a great leader if you can’t be great at leading yourself. Too many step into a position of leadership and do not make self-leadership a priority. When that happens, they’re not in leadership for very long. They burn out or they implode. They end up making an error in judgment or behavior they can’t recover from.

I encourage you to take time today (and every day) to “do unto yourself” those things that will lead to your own growth and development. If I could speak for your followers I would say the following:

We need you. We need you on a regular and consistent basis. We need you to lead yourself well so you can lead us well. The investment you make in you is actually an investment in us.

How will you apply The Rhodium Rule to your life today?

____________________________

Interested in discovering simple and practical ways to apply the Rhodium Rule to your life? Download my latest book, Leadership Starts With You. This book will assist you in developing your own self-leadership skills. It’s available for both the Kindle and the Nook. Visit leadershipstartswithyou.com to take the next step in leading yourself well.