Walk Your Talk
Do you mean what you say? It’s the clichés and the claims we make on how we want the world to see us that often catch us out. Things like, ‘I appreciate my staff, we offer great service, we care about our customers, I care about the environment, we work hard to eliminate waste’. These things are so easy to say but hard much to consistently deliver, especially when you are running a business that has multiple play makers.
In reflecting on my own performance, I thought it might be helpful to discuss six things I have tried to avoid or to do better.
1. Stop living in the past, using the word ex CEO of, ex Mayor etc
One way to avoid this trap is to reset your future vison of what you want to achieve. Have up to five current goals you are working on in your business and five in your personal life. Live in the now and aim to achieve these in a ninety-day period. This approach helps to focus you, with your relevance coming from your “now” rather than from the past.
2. Avoid talking more than you are doing
Most successful people already create a task list in the morning and just by adding a self-measure journaling process at the end of the day, you will naturally do more. This leverages the magical powers of incremental accumulation, and over a period of doing more and more every day, you will naturally change the percentage.
3. Hold yourself accountable with consequence
There are always consequences when you don’t deliver on what you say. The difference between someone who lives their own talk never allows the consequence of this to be at someone else’s expense. For example, if you tell a client a job will be delivered by Friday and you are going to miss that deadline, ring them early to let them know and if it is critical, offer to work over the weekend to have it to them for Monday. They will likely say, next week will be fine, but in the moment of offering to work the weekend, you are owning the consequence and communicating a bigger consequence to yourself.
4. If you say you appreciate something, check in with yourself and make sure that you are living that appreciation
For example, when you appreciate your job, your clients, or your employees, you strive to do the absolute best work for them every day. Some people will say, “But I don’t work for my employees, they work for me?” Consider, a good owner/boss provides his or her staff a good safe environment to work in, good leadership and clear direction, the opportunity to grow and learn, consistency of income and inspiration to deliver their best work.
5. Walking your talk doesn’t mean that you have to solve all the problems, but it does mean your actions need to support solutions
It might also mean you take a leadership role that delivers by encouraging people to reprioritise their focus. Help as many people you can on your journey through life, whilst staying on track with your own goals and you will surely help thousands. John Kehoe said something at a training seminar once that really resonated with me – “When you succeed, everyone around you benefits and when you fail, no one benefits.”
6. Find ways to leverage what you are talking about, it will significantly increase the impact and scale of what you are doing for the same amount of effort
This is the area that I am dedicating significant attention and resource and it is a very exciting prospect resetting my goals to aim to make a bigger difference.
Do this with me and commit yourself to doubling the number of people you impact positively in the next 12 months.
