Hello, my friends. I want to share some tips that can help your leadership.

Here’s a question for you.  How much thought do you give to your thoughts?  I confess there was a time in my leadership journey that I never considered my thoughts.  You’re making a big mistake if you think there’s only one kind of thinking. 

I’ve always been a pretty positive person when it comes to my thoughts but I didn’t even realize I could become more strategic in my thinking which would make me a more effective leader until I read New York Times bestselling author John Maxwell’s book, “How Successful People Think.”  In it you’ll learn about the 11 thinking styles John believes are critical for us to truly become good thinkers.  I’ve only got space to write about three of them today.

Here’s my challenge to you.  Take a week and truly dissect your thinking.  How many thinking styles do you implement daily?   Our leadership benefits from our ability to use all 11.  With intention you could be ready to take part in the decathlon of thought, but it won’t happen without training for the race.  Chances are you can name your favorite thinking style.  It’s probably the one you’re best at.  For me it’s a tie between bottom line thinking and possibility thinking.  Possibility thinking helps me be a good problem solver and isn’t that the core of what we leaders do… solve problems?  I’ve often said my title should be “PROFESSIONAL PROBLEM SOLVER.” 

Every day I work through problem solving in my business and with my coaching clients.  John’s definition of possibility thinking is, “the ability to unleash your enthusiasm and hope to find solutions for even seemingly impossible situations.”  That may or may not come naturally for you.  What I love about it is you can get better at it through practice.  It’s not rocket science.  It really doesn’t require any special skill beyond intention and practice and I know you can do that.

 Now, let’s tackle bottom line thinking.  This didn’t come as naturally for me as possibility thinking.  Often my head would be swirling with a million different thoughts about a thousand different problems and I struggled to decide which to tackle first.  I found exercising this muscle of bottom line thinking produced extraordinary results.  John defines bottom line thinking as “the ability to focus on results and maximize return to reap the full potential of your thinking.” I find that incredibly powerful.  Don’t you?  Maximizing your impact as a leader can produce incredible results.  I tend to have a leadership bias for results and bottom line thinking gets me there. 

 Finally, let’s explore my third favorite thinking style, “questioning popular thinking.”  This in my opinion is truly an art.  Again, nothing’s stopping you from developing it for yourself, except perhaps, you haven’t thought about it.  I think John's definition of this is genius. “It’s the ability to reject the limitations of common thinking and accomplish uncommon results.”  Who doesn’t want to be able to do that? Uncommon results are a leader's fuel to innovation.  I bet you can’t name an innovation that didn’t start with someone questioning popular thinking.  It’s how to build a better mousetrap.

 It’s why Blockbuster (a former video rental company) lost to Netflix.  The sad thing is Blockbuster had three chances to buy Netflix but leaders didn’t question popular thinking.  If you’re old enough you remember Atari was one of the first gaming systems.  It could have owned 33 percent of Apple, but it didn’t because company leaders there weren’t good at questioning popular thinking either.  Then there was Kodak the leader in film for cameras.  Kodak invented digital photography in 1975 but didn’t adapt and went bankrupt.  I hope you see how questioning popular thinking can make the difference between your company surviving and thriving or going out of business. 

 Sorry but you’ll have to go read John’s book for yourself to learn about the other eight thinking styles.  Before I run out of space I want to give you some tips I learned from John to help you improve your thinking every day.

1.  Focus on the positive
2. Gather good input
3. Spend time with good thinkers

I hope in the future you’ll be able to say you give a lot more thought to your thoughts and you’ve exercised your thinking muscle and thinking styles so that you're ready to compete in the thinking decathlon to maximize your leadership.

More Leadership Tips Coming Soon, my friends,

Amy