Posts Tagged ‘leadership’

Today has been a busy day… balancing business and being a mom – and it has been a great reminder how important it is to be present and focused on what’s going on in the moment, rather than being distracted by what’s next on the agenda.

For those of you who know me, you are aware that I take my daughter to my office with me and that my transition from mom to entrepreneur doesn’t happen much on a schedule, but rather that my day is a constant flow from one role to the other.

At one point today I made it back to the office with about 4 minutes to spare before an important meeting with a client. My daughter needed to be changed (I’ll spare you the details; let’s just say I’m glad to be carrying an extra outfit for her) – as funny as this may sound, these times of the day are a great time for her and I to connect for a couple of moments; I am fully focused on her and present in the moment.

In a perfect sync of timing, my client ran a couple of minutes late and came in just in time for me to give my daughter a hug and hand her over into my husbands arms where she would be looked after during our meeting. Shifting my focus to business, listening to my client, making creative suggestions is what my clients deserve when we choose to work together. Being present, not concerning myself with what’s going on outside my office doors while I am in those meetings allows me to do just that.

My time is my most valuable resource I can share – with my clients, with my friends, with my family. With many distractions in our lives it’s easy for minutes, hours and days to just get away from all of us, but I am becoming more and more conscious that life is too short to not make all moments count.

Welcome to my new blog! I am looking forward to sharing my insights, thoughts and experiences on business and leadership topics with you here.

In my workshops I often ask “are you a leader or a follower” and almost always, the answer is “both”. And while this may hold true on a situational basis, I ask the question again, when it comes to your core character, are you a leader or a follower? Are you an individual who prefers to not have to take on the responsiblity of leadership or are you a leader who is willing to step aside to let others lead and follow by choice, well informed and doing so while looking at the big picture.

As a leader, when we follow, it should be by choice, not because somebody else tells us it’s the only way, everybody else is doing it, or because it’s more convenient. Being from Germany it’s engrained in me to never blindly follow a leader, as our history sadly shows what can happen when many, many people choose to follow without asking the right questions. Staying with this same example, it’s equally important to me that those whom I lead are individuals who are capable of speaking up when the direction I lead them is not right.

I want to encourage you to check in with yourself… and leave me a note - how do you lead, how do you follow?