Coach Dan Foster

At Building Champions we help leaders develop and communicate a vision for where they want to take their business, team, or company in the future. Often we will coach clients who have written a vision and articulated it to their team at a special meeting, but are still struggling to get buy-in and desired results. Experience has taught me that creating a vision is a fun, exciting, and motivating process for a leader to engage in over the course of a few days. Whereas, communicating a vision requires a leader to be purposeful, intentional, and consistent every day as long as they hold the title of leader. In short, it is hard work and many leaders fail to communicate vision effectively.

In the past I have shared with you the importance of working from a priority management plan. One of the key elements of a successful priority management plan is dedicating time in your schedule to focus on targeted areas for professional growth and development. This routine is what coaches refer to as ON TIME. Unfortunately, it is an important block of time that often gets pushed aside or never scheduled by professionals. However, the professionals that do make and keep a commitment to ON TIME regularly are much more likely to succeed in reaching their long-term vision for success.

The best leaders at some point in the their career realize they cannot do it all alone. The late nights at work, the juggling of responsibilities, and the expectations for performance in all key areas of life and business become too much for one person to handle. A failure to realize this can lead to burnout, poor performance, the ultimate demise of your company. In the past I’ve written and spoken about the attributes of a great leader, and one of these attributes is that a leader has the support of a great leadership team. Defining the attributes of this leadership team is the first step in developing a cohesive group which a leader can rely on to delegate responsibilities and achieve the overall vision of the company.

Not long ago, I wrote a post entitled, Filling the Space Between Where You Are and Where You Want To Be. The space between our current reality and where we want to be never has a shortage of activities, feelings, or people waiting to fill it up. I am often reminded of how important it is to be mindful of what I allow into this space. The choices we make have immediate and long term consequences that either widen this gap or bring us closer to the life we want to live and the goals we are striving to achieve.

Have you ever reflected on your actions and discovered that they go completely against everything you’ve always stood for? Its difficult to have the words we say and the things we do always be a positive reflection of our values and convictions. In my experience, it does not just happen naturally once you state your guiding principles in a vision or mission statement. Rather, it takes dedication, discipline, and hard work to stay faithful to what you believe in and hold true. What do we do then when we find our actions do not match our beliefs?