When will your finest hour come, and how will it arrive?

Do you really think it will materialize without an act of supreme confidence, audacity, or boldness?

So, what bold initiatives are you planning for?

When you are facing a decision to act, consider it an opportunity to prove your worth. The first thing you must do is to decide whether you want to take action or not. This is where the spirit of boldness comes into play.

The leader who consistently displays bold behavior will far outperform the person who does not. Boldness helps propel a person beyond what he or she might otherwise achieve.

In fact, it has such a profound impact on the effectiveness of one?s performance that I find it curious that this trait is not talked about more frequently as a fundamental ingredient of success.

You don’t have to be a big shot to be bold. Often the most normal people suddenly achieve great heights because they learn the power that lies in acting boldly.

When David faced Goliath, he was more than just the underdog, he was potential road kill. But you know how that turned out.

David acted boldly, even though everyone else thought he had a screw loose?and slew the mighty Goliath.

The story is now legend; an example to the world, which shows that it’s the bold who make history.

The timid. Well, they can read about it in the papers and live their lives in agonizing mediocrity.

What to Do Now? Comment and share your experience on the awesome power of boldness. I’d love to hear your comments on this post.

The answer to that question depends on your character. A strong leader sets a strong example.

No one, under any circumstances, should ever be appointed to or accept a leadership role unless they are willing to have his or her character serve as the model for others to emulate.

Observing what leaders DO is the true litmus test of what’s important as behavior NEVER lies.

People definitely are watching YOUR behavior to judge and determine the type of leader you REALLY are.

With that in mind, what are the specific leadership behaviors that you demonstrate and which shine a bright light on what really matters?

Follow The Leader

1. The Things You Pay Attention To – these are the things you look for, notice and comment on.

2. The Things You Talk About – these are the things you emphasize and discuss in meetings, around the kitchen table and mention in written communication.

3. The Example You Set – these are the actions you take, and the behaviors, patterns and habits you demonstrate.

4. The Standards You Enforce – these are guidelines of what you expect and demand from yourself and others, as well as what you hold people accountable for and assign consequences to.

5. The Way You Use Your Time – these are the priorities you establish along with the deadlines on your activities.

6. The Things You Spend Money On – these are the things and activities you budget for and allocate resources to.

7. The Way You Keep Score – these are the true performances and results that you actually monitor, track, and provide feedback on.

8. The Things You Brag About – these are things you are proud of and cite as examples of achievement.

9. The Things You Reward – these are the behaviors, achievements, and results that you recognize, reinforce and celebrate.

Let’s face it, leadership is everybody’s business; it is an issue that affects each and every one of us. Not only do we look to leaders for guidance and direction, but also we are all called upon to exercise leadership in any number of temporary situations.

Whether we are called upon to be involved in leading government or business, coaching a team, educating young minds, running a family, organizing a dinner party/carpool/household, or standing for “what is right” everyone participates in leadership roles at one time or another in their lives.

What to Do Now? Evaluate and benchmark your performance against these nine points, and ask yourself if these are the types of behaviors that others want to follow. If not, what behaviors will you begin to actively change?

I’d love to hear your comments on this post.

Connecting people in need.

Wish Upon A Hero is a very special site which was conceived by a very special man, Dave Girgenti.

Shortly after the September 11th attacks on New York City and from his home in NJ, Girgenti watched as thousands of people posted pictures of missing loved ones throughout the city.

He thought there had to be a faster, more organized way to connect people in need. That was the moment in which the idea was born.

Less than five years later, Hurricane Katrina created a similar catastrophic event in New Orleans where hundreds of thousands of people needed immediate help.

This time it wasn’t just about locating loved ones. Hurricane victims needed everything from health care services, food, fresh water, clothing and shelter.

It became clear that Wish Upon a Hero needed to become more than an idea. Over the next two years, Girgenti exhausted every resource at his disposal to create an online community that offered a platform for people to help people.

The site has grown from helping to reunite families to granting wishes big and small ? so far, more than 34,000 requests have been granted.

Cast a Wish

Wish Upon A Hero is completely free to its users, allowing everyone who registers the opportunity to cast up to three wishes at a time.

Because Wish Upon A Hero is designed to help everyone, wishes can be big or small, elaborate or simple, based on financial need or just asking for a simple favor.

Be a Hero

Wish Upon A Hero is a unique venue for any individual, organization, or company looking to make a difference in someone?s life, or the lives of countless people.

Heroes come in all ages and from all walks of life. All of us, from our nation?s most powerful corporations to individual philanthropists, and those with limited financial means, can be someone?s hero:

• A man who buys uniforms for his town?s little league team.
• A plastic surgeon brings his skill to the aid of an uninsured breast cancer survivor.
• A national appliance retailer that donates a refrigerator to a single mom with a newborn.
• A groundskeeper at Yankee stadium who helps a woman fulfill her father?s lifelong dream of throwing a single pitch across home plate.
• A group of 8th graders that rally behind a fellow student whose home was lost in a fire.

Once a wish is granted, the hero can choose to remain anonymous, or be formally recognized on the Wish Upon A Hero website.

To become a hero, you can visit Dave?s website, www.WishUponAHero.com

Leadership

The chief strategist of an organization has to be the leader!

A lot of business thinking has stressed the notion of empowerment, of pushing down and getting a lot of people involved. That’s very important, but empowerment and involvement don’t apply to the ultimate act of choice.

To be successful, an organization must have a very strong leader who’s willing to make choices and define the trade-offs.

There’s a striking relationship between really good strategies and really strong leaders.

The critical job for a leader is to provide the discipline and the glue that sustains the key goals and strategy over time.

Another way to look at it is that the leader has to be the guardian of trade-offs. In any organization, ideas pour in every day – from employees with suggestions, from customers asking for things, from suppliers trying to sell things.

There’s all this input, and a good share of it is INCONSISTENT with the organization’s goals and strategy.

Great leaders are able to enforce the trade-offs. At the same time, great leaders understand that there’s nothing rigid or passive about goals and strategy — it’s something that a company is continually getting better at — so they can create a sense of urgency and progress while adhering to a clear and very sustained direction.

A leader also has to be vigilant by making sure that EVERYONE understands the company’s goals and strategy.

The most fundamental purpose of strategy is to inform each team member of the many thousands of things that get done in an organization every day, and to make sure that those things are all aligned in the same basic direction.

If people in the organization don’t understand the company’s focus, how the company is supposed to be different, how it creates value compared to its rivals, then how can they possibly make all of the myriad choices they have to make in order to be achieving goals?

Every salesman has to know the strategy — otherwise, he won’t know whom to call on. Every engineer has to understand it, or she won’t know what to build. Every person is important, therefore everyone and everything counts!

The best leaders are teachers, and at the core of what they teach is goal setting, strategy, and implementation.

They go out to employees, to suppliers, and to customers, and they repeat, “THIS IS WHAT WE STAND FOR!” So everyone understands it. This is what leaders do.

In great companies, strategy becomes a cause. That’s because a strategy is about being different. So if you have a really great strategy, people are fired up: “We’re not just another run of the mill company. We’re bringing something new to the world and this is it!”

People follow the leader and YOU are the leader!