My work with professionals as a strategist for projects and careers allows me to see behind the scenes, the PR curtains, and portals into the personal and professional lives of my clients. Many of my clients face thousands of individuals daily watching their tweets, their social media output and their very public and private choices. Today’s social media has in some ways further relieved the temptation to believe you can live a masked life and be someone else at home…and for some it has simply revealed that trait in others.
The old Lone Ranger series highlighted a masked hero whose identity elsewhere was never revealed. He lived a persona of doing good, fighting evil where ever he went. On the show he had a few friends and one kimosobe, Tonto. Most professionals I work with not only have a public life, but they own a very very real private one as well. Learning to balance and support the two is important. If the Lone Ranger had a family, he certainly never was home long enough to support it. Our politicians, public personalities, and leaders have so many demands placed on their time and choices, but I often wonder…
Branding is such a popular word and a reality as a tool in marketing, but how many of us in our daily lives focus on making sure our actions where ever we are support our beliefs brand as people who stand before God with our actions and choices as well? I personally find with my own life as well as with my client’s professional life it takes concerted effort to ask the hard questions?
- Are you making choices you would support for your home or family and those that support your own family in your business choices?
- Are you protecting your head and heart, as well as in consideration of your households and others households?
- Are you using your success to support the values you honor in others? in leadership? in mentoring?
- Are you actively re-evaluating awareness of what your time says is important to you on a weekly or monthly basis?
- Whose input do you value? Who are the people you can trust to tell you the hard things?
- What barriers have you installed on your scheduling to protect your need for time to focus on rest, on self, spouse, or children?
- What would an intern with the ability to track you 24/7 and see all that you do have to say about the integrity of your transparency of character?
- How does the life you’re involved in daily align with the beliefs you honor daily through your actions?
- How many of the activities you engage with are more for ego than for effectiveness?
Heart leadership requires a continual maturing of the self discipline of the mind. It is a process of letting go of ego and focusing on obedience. In each of our lives there is a steady vertical learning curve of opportunities to become who God intended us to be. We are promised that not one human will “arrive” at God’s destination for us in this lifetime. How we use our gifts and tools to love and serve others shows up more clearly in how we facilitate our life in business. Is your business defining who you are, what you stand for, what your beliefs support, or is the definition of your beliefs lived out in the way you go about your business?
