Come on – just give it a crack

I’m on a pretty intense development journey at the moment. I’m learning a lot about myself and challenging some stuff I used to think about myself (yep – both over and underrated!)

One thing that keeps blaring at me is the many times I’ve thought an idea was really great, told heaps of people just how great it was, and then got myself very well organised to do it. Pretty cool eh? Oh – yep, you’ve spotted it, the actual doing it is missing. Getting a regular blog going might be one example of the above. My incredibly patient and supportive wife might be able to tell you about a few others – cheese making, photography, setting Wellington’s mountain biking trails alight.

Then there were the times at work. The conversation I decided I was going to have with a senior leadership team about talent management getting in the way of creating true diversity…but never did. The feedback conversation I was going to have with a person in my team who was choc full of potential but also annoying the heck out of people by talking her ideas over the top of theirs (sorry about that – you know who you are and it took me too long to share that feedback with you. And of course when I got to it someone had already told you, you’d taken it on board, and were already starting to make some changes).

I’m challenging myself to Actualise. That’s the bit where the rubber hits the road. Where I move from knowing that thing to doing it, and from it having an internal impact (ie – only I know about it) to an external impact (others know about it and feel the impact of me doing it, and will tell me pretty quickly how I’m going).

It’s making me think differently about leadership development too. In the years I’ve worked with leaders, I’ve seen plenty of enthusiasm for an idea, commitment to do something and then a bit of a stall when we come back for the next session. I reckon if we change our mindsets towards more of a focus on running experiments back at work, we’ll see much more actualising. And a shout out to the people who do get out and give things a crack. Your courage is what changes our world.

How about you? What’s your Actualise challenge?