These leaders know how to have impact. Take some time to consider how you can apply their advice to yourself and your organization, for your own growth and impact.
Mentoring advice is extremely valuable, even for experienced leaders. It can be a lighthouse, guiding you away from rocky shoals and onto a clearer course.
At the end of every Work Alchemy podcast interview, I ask the highly impactful leaders that I interview to share one piece of advice with the audience, leaders like you who want to have more impact. This is a rarified group, curated for their knowledge, influence, and impact, so they’re worth listening to. Pull up a chair and listen to their advice:
Don’t see your business as separate from the rest of your spiritual life. Recognize the ethical responsibility of being in business. Will someone’s life be positively impacted by their interaction with your business?
Become very intentional about what you’re trying to do. Make sure for whatever action you take that intention resides in that moment.
Make sure that the impact you want to have is operationally material. Too often, entrepreneurs want to start a business in which the intended impact is ancillary to the operations of the business.
Look long-term. What do I want my business, community, and greater world to look like in 10 years? Work backwards from that future state. That makes you naturally expand to become an impact organization.
Take a process inside your company to identify what the collective calling is of the company, including the leadership team and you as the owner. Take the time to search the depths.
Do a self-assessment: determine what you’re really good at, your experience, and what you bring to your industry. Then focus there.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. When you do, admit it, understand what happened, and move on. Embrace that challenge of allowing people to make mistakes.
Get out of the building (a Lean Startup term). Rather than try to come up with the perfect plan, go talk to the people you’re trying to help and work with them. Learn from actually doing.
Keep a clear dream, a clear idea that your heart is fully engaged in. When you do, magical creation happens, heart and mind working together.
Be emotionally heroic. Walk into situations where conflict occurs. Have compassion for everybody, but also know that even when you don’t know what to do next, by being there and caring, that is an act of heroism that is in some sense more important than any physical heroism we see.
Make sure you’re thinking about accomplishments, not activities. It’s so easy to get caught in the day to day. Having impact is not about checking things off a list. It’s about making sure you know you understand what you have to accomplish to do what you’re setting out to do.
Keep talking to those around you. Form relationships. There is so much support you can garner from those with a like-minded desire to have impact. It’s invaluable for your growth.
Be brave. Be fearless. Really believe in what you’re doing.
These leaders know how to have impact. After reading their advice, and perhaps listening to a few interviews, how can you apply that advice to your own organization? Take some time to consider what you can apply to yourself, for your own growth and impact.
There Is Such a Thing As Too Much Free Content
When you fundamentally reexamine your marketing strategy, it’s very freeing. You can focus on what’s most important.
Do Your Prospects and Clients Really Know You?
People buy from those they know, like, and trust. How can you help them get to know your business? How can you build their trust?
Postpone Your Impact, and It May Never Happen
Life will always get in the way, if you allow it. We can put ourselves in a holding pattern too. For a long time, I put off starting a podcast. I’m not ready, I said. I don’t know how to do it, I said. I’m scared to do it, I said. I’ve got too much going on, I said.
