How do you inspire others to do what needs to be done, to achieve the impossible?  

You have faith.  You embody faith.  It’s a part of who you are.  When you hold faith beyond the moment, you instill that faith in those around you; and, with that unwavering faith you can lead people to greatness.

Winston Churchill had this ability. When people were around Winston, they felt like they could do anything. That’s the mark of a great leader. No one thought it was possible for Great Britain and the Allies to win the war but win WWII they did!

Faith is about knowing that no one is an island, that together is better, helping you accomplish what you couldn’t do alone.  Great leaders use faith motivated by the highest good of all concerned to galvanize those around them to action.

How do you get faith? You instill it in your heart; you convince your subconscious mind perhaps by reading affirmations aloud everyday with passion, until your subconscious mind returns your belief to your conscious mind and your heart as faith.  You can deepen this process by acting as if the object of your desire, faith, is a reality now -- feeling, seeing, and knowing that you have faith.

Be careful. . . your subconscious mind will just as readily translate into reality destructive thoughts as uplifting ones. Whether it’s true or not, you will believe whatever you repeat to yourself over and over again.  If you always tell yourself that you’re stupid, you will believe it.  If you believe that you are doomed to failure, you will fail.

You experience with vary based upon your beliefs. Whether you are bitter or better for an experience is determined in large measure by your faith.  Your dominating thoughts mixed with emotion magnetically draws similar thoughts to you. Like attracts like.  If you believe you are successful, you are. Even in the face of failure, you will feel optimistic and see your situation as an opportunity to learn and grow.

Faith is the starting point for making your desires and goals a reality. Faith is the basis of all miracles which cannot be explained by the rational, thinking mind. Faith connects you directly with Infinite Intelligence, and gives life, power, and action to your thoughts. 

Follow Winston Churchill’s example, make faith your antidote to failure, your key to success, your basis for inspiring others in a way that makes the world a better play because you are in it.

What does it mean to lead from the heart, to lead from a space of equanimity, kindness, or calm assurance?  It means motivating people from love, not fear.

When we motivate people with fear, "Get this down now or else!", we make them feel small and useless, afraid of doing something ‘wrong’, afraid of giving it a go and making a mistake, afraid of doing anything that could make leadership or their immediate superior mad.

Fear causes people to doubt themselves, to feel anxious and alone.  Fear encourages your people to be suspicious of one another, not knowing who might be a back stabber or tattle tale.

When we motivate your people with love, they feel more belonging, that they fit in and have a purpose at work.  They feel more valued and respected.

People want to fit in, to belong, to feel like their contribution matters. When people feel like they belong, they participate and become a part of the community.  They reach out and work as a team. They have each other’s backs and have the backs of the ones directing them, because their leaders, bosses, superiors have their backs, and that’s their natural, genuine response. Kindness and consideration beget more kindness and consideration. 

This is about being a doormat. When we lead from the heart, we still need to have clear, strong appropriate boundaries. The people and teams that work for us still need to know what's expected of them, the standards of excellence that they need to uphold, individually and collectively.

When we as leaders are responsible to all members of our group and they are individually responsible to and for each other, everyone learns from one another.  It saves time and supports success on all levels, from financial success to mental health success to emotional maturity success. 

More prosperity, more happy and content people, more acting like responsible, caring adults instead of kids having a tantrum or demanding to get their way.  This is about honoring our ability to lead, our unique gifts as well as the positive qualities, strengths, and abilities of everyone who works for or with us.

It's about recognizing and rewarding value, acknowledging your own strengths and weakness and have a healthy sense of humility, being willing to learn from and listen to others.  Knowing that we don't know everything, that we still have a lot to learn, and being open to learning from those around you; practicing and living this is a huge step forward on the road to excellence as a leader.

It's about having the courage to face whatever presents and trusting in our ability and the ability of those around us to succeed.   The only thing others can use against us is our own fear, and we can choose not to buy into that.  We can choose and re-choose to be motivated by love.

Love can move mountains in business and life.  It can inspire, uplift and motivate everyone around us simply by the calm, self-assured presence that we hold.

Simon Sinek's books, Start with Why and Leaders Eat Last are great reads, giving us the specifics we may need to have a clearer, more grounded picture of the long-term benefits of leading from the heart.  Leading from the heart may mean not following the crowd, debunking the theory of strength in numbers and learning to more deeply follow and honor the guidance that comes from within.

Okay, you are a leader, you've done a lot, you've got people depending on you, but are you coachable?

Why does it matter?  The only certainty in this world is that everything changes.  If you are a leader and you are not open to change, if you are not willing to self-reflect, look inside, be willing to be wrong and make changes, maybe it's time to consider a 180.

Coach-able leaders engage in regular self-reflection. Reflection is more than careful thought, it's a meditative activity. Reflection is about reviewing your actions and beliefs for the purpose of learning, learning from your mistakes, learning by taking an honest look at yourself and what's working in your personal and professional life, and what could use some help.

Perhaps that's why some companies have retreats to revitalize, refresh, invigorate and energize their people.  Retreats give us a chance to unwind from the grind and breathe and feel and think and maybe see the world and our lives a little bit differently.

So, take some time. Maybe every day or every week to relax and reflect, not from your busy mind, more like a pondering in the heart, feeling. This gives you the opportunity to come to a new understanding which can result in more harmonious decisions and actions in the future. Your personal ongoing development and growth, in short, is key to your personal contentment and success.

We can take a lot of our cues from what others say and think, not really valuing our own knowing, looking outside of self for answers.  In the long run, that slowing down and looking within yields a whole different caliber of results.

How do we start?  Review you day before going to sleep.  How could you have handled things differently or better, what would that look like, how would that feel?  Where were you at you best?  Where could you have done better, and what would that look like?

When we review at bedtime something happens while we sleep, like all the better ways of acting and handling things gets uploaded to apply and use the next time something similar happens.

Be curious.  Some people journal, some ponder, some close their eyes and relax back in their easy chair and contemplate, some meditate and ask for guidance.

Self-reflection takes courage, courage to look within and be honest, courage to be open vulnerable.  No matter what we see, mistakes are just opportunities to learn and grow; they don't mean anything about us, and best of all we can choose to learn from them.

Self-reflection is courageous and can feel confronting.  If we feel defensive or irritable as we review our day, we can simply acknowledge that all of our feelings, everything we feel is valid.

Self-reflection is about dropping the need to always be doing something, always getting something done.  Self-reflection is a Being experience.  Even if we don't see an immediate return on our investment, self-reflection is a wise use of our time and energy. It's about balancing the wisdom of taking action with the wisdom of looking for guidance from within.

Be coachable. Coach yourself, or work with a coach that you trust and has your back, that is passionate about helping you be the best you can be, to reach your goals in a way that resonates with who you are and what you're about, who partners with you to discover the wisdom within.

Integrity matters in leadership, having an integrated body, mind, and spirit.  There's congruency.  Your actions match your words, which reflects who you truly are.  

Saying one thing and doing another is not integrity.  Having the same set of operating instructions, the same code of ethics, rules, and guidelines no matter where you are or what you are doing is about being in integrity.  Having one set of rules for you and another set for everyone else is not. 

A brilliant test for integrity is The Foxhole Test:  Would I want to be in a foxhole with you?  It's all about trust, trusting someone to have your back. How well do you fair with this test?

Integrity is about taking responsibility for our actions as they happen, no matter if anyone is looking or not, not waiting to get caught.  It's about minimizing the fallout of our mistakes, being proactive and learning from what we've done so we don't repeat them.

Our people will respect us; we will gain their loyalty and trust if we promptly admit to doing something wrong and accept responsibility for the consequences of our action, role modeling what we want to see in them.

It's not about being right or wrong.  It's about being honest and accountable.  It's about telling our people what they need to hear with tact and kindness, not necessarily what they want to hear.

We, all of us, have an amazing capacity to come together in times of economic crisis and personal loss.  We can handle the truth, especially when our leaders instill hope and walk along side of us each step of the way.   An amazing example is Winston Churchill.  The first thing Churchill did as prime minister was to instill hope in the people of England!

When our people, our teams, divisions, colleagues, staff, know that we care about them, they feel safe, secure, and protected.  We set the tone and direction of those ones under your charge.  Being in integrity, being honest and forthright lays the foundation for a culture that values the same. 

It's not magic.  People follow you as the leader.   Take the privilege of being a leader to heart; watch the pulse of your integrity, keep holding the bar high, and continue to lead by example.