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Starting a new leadership role, or even reassessing your current position, can present challenges when it comes to stepping back and pinpointing where to direct your focus.
In my previous post, I delved into David Peterson’s Development Pipeline. Peterson, who served as the Director of Executive Coaching & Leadership at Google for an extensive period, sadly passed away last year. I had the privilege of learning from him during a coaching program in which I participated.
Drawing from his wealth of experience, Peterson identified five fundamental agendas crucial for successful leaders.
While these themes are not exhaustive, he observed that they consistently emerged as areas requiring growth and attention among the leaders he worked with.
It's important to note that these agendas aren't always equally prioritised.
The allocation of our time and focus depends on various factors, such as personal preferences, strengths, urgency, and where we derive our energy.
For example individuals who value supporting others and fostering relationships to enable growth, investing more time in the Relationship Agenda may come naturally. Conversely, those driven by results and personal achievement might find themselves drawn towards prioritising the Business Agenda over learning or relationship-building.
Preferring one agenda over another isn't inherently problematic, but maintaining harmony and balance over time is crucial.
Yet, amidst the hustle and bustle of daily life, carving out time to pause and reflect on where our default settings are taking us (or not taking us) can prove challenging.
This week's issue will help you take a moment to pause and do just that.
Keep reading to dive in and get started.
Review: Take a look at the five agendas:
Then reflect:
Begin by looking back and rank them 1-5 according to how much you have prioritised each one during your career to date.
Next think about today - or this week. Which have you prioritised the most/least during your working week? What has driven that?
Then think forward. Which do you need to invest in the most during the year ahead to achieve the success you want?
Reflect: From his wonderfully titled People are Complex and The World is Messy piece, this is how Peterson describes the question that each agenda poses:
Business agenda. What are the business priorities you need to accomplish to be successful?
Leadership agenda. Who do you want to be as a leader, and how will your actions reflect that?
Relationship agenda. How will you establish and manage positive working relationships with important stakeholders?
Personal agenda. How will you manage your time and your priorities in the face of multiple demands and expectations?
Learning agenda. How will you learn from your experience and build new and better capabilities?
These are not light, or necessarily easily answered questions, so take each one in turn.
You might choose to use one question per day over the next five working days as a question to reflect on. Write down your responses, then step back and review.
Plan: The Development Pipeline model can be used to help you identify how to make real progress on your development and assist in real long term behaviour change.
David B. Peterson; A Behaviour-Based Approach to Executive Coaching; Evidence Based Coaching Handbook 2006
Look at each of your responses to the five agendas above and identify whether you need more insight, motivation, capability, real world practice or simply more accountability.
Focus: Jim Collins, the management thinker, advocates creating a stop doing list, as well as a start doing list. To make real progress with what you want to focus on ask yourself:
What do you need to stop doing?
What will you do instead?
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