You may have heard me say before that Leadership is not about title.  In essence leaders inspire, connect and serve others.  To do this leaders must develop their personal leadership effectiveness (PLE).  This means a leader must be able to govern themselves first!   One way of increasing your PLE is to be a leader who delivers results.

I realised that in this season  I’m  expectant; longing to see my God-given dreams fulfilled and so I decided I needed to prepare.  I need to do what I can to expand my capacity to steward well what God is entrusting to me.

Getting focused

Delivering results means getting focused, no more spinning plates!  So earlier this year I did a webinar on Time with Dr. Joseph Peck. His book”I was Busy now I’m not” is one of my on-going reads, as I’m actually trying to apply what I am learning.

An invaluable key from the book is:

Rest leads to reflection, which in turn leads to revelation, inspiration, and illumination. Together; rest, reflection and revelation form the tricord of leverage. Leverage is being able to accomplish more with less effort.

I’ve spent the past 4 months creating new habbits which include going to bed much earlier, so I can wake up earlier. This gives me more time not only to pray but to reflect with Papa God.  I have always journaled but now I have more time it’s truly a conversations as I am taking time to listen for his revelation.  It has certainly helped me become more focused and I added to that a planner.  I love it as it helps me to focus on the important things, another strategy I am learning.

Time Wasters

But this month I learned the biggest lesson of all!  That FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real) is truly the biggest time waster of all!   This month was difficult month as I was waiting on others to make some key decisions for a project before I could decide what to do.   It potentially involved another move.  That was daunting as I’ve only been back in Barbados 14 months and I moved to a new house 2 months ago!  I found myself getting anxious about the uncertainty and frustrated that the decisions were taking so long.  It became so anxious that I was grinding my teeth (AKA Bruxism) and ended up with such bad muscle spasms that I could not function for a few days and had to take pain killers.

Despite this I am thankful.  I learned that fear, and that’s what was at the root of my anxiety, truly is a time waster.  After a few good nights of sleep I woke up one morning and as I was reflecting it became clear.  Papa God is the Alpha and Omega, so he knows the beginning from the end.  He knew I would get this project, that I would get it having moved and that I would have choices to make once others had made their decisions.  So there is no uncertainty for him.  So if I would simply ask him what is his plan, instead of stressing because I’m trying to work it out myself, he would ‘order my steps’.

I realised that as always fear comes from forgetting whose child you are, the child of a good good Father, and who has given us a wonderful counsellor  if we will just ‘lean not on our own understanding, in all our ways acknowledge him and he shall direct our paths”.

This revelation really restored my peace and thankfully I’m off the pain killers!

So what are you doing to increase your personal leadership effectiveness?  I’d love to hear from you either here or via email  felicia@purposed4leadership.com