All right, so I'm now going to ask you to do an assessment of yourself on these 18 skills. I'm going to describe each one and then I'm going to ask you to rate yourself, which is something that you can also do on a free site. I'll give you the link to it in just a bit, but right now I'd like you to just pay attention to what I'm saying as I describe each of these 18 skills. And then I'm going to ask you to assess whether you believe that this is a particular strength of yours. Whether you agree that this is a strength of yours and to rate on a scale of one, you disagree, to five, you agree, that this is a particular strength of yours. Growing as a leader requires that you take a look at yourself. That's where it begins. And so this is just for you, you're investing in yourself here. Don't worry about what anybody else thinks about this. This is your information and it's going to be helpful to you. You're going to get more out of this course if you take this seriously, think about it, and are candid about your own self evaluation, even though other people might see you differently. Which is an idea that we'll talk about when we get into some of the exercises where you, if you want, can ask other people to rate you on these skills and some other things as well. But, for now don't worry about your score. The goal that I would ask you to try to pursue here is to be open and to be curious and candid. So let's start, the Skills For Integrating Work and the Rest of Life, what I call total leadership skills. The first six skills correspond to the principal of being real, to act with authenticity by clarifying what matters most to you. What does that look like? Okay, so there you can see it on the bottom of the screen there, do you agree or disagree that the particular skills are strengths of yours, 1, strongly disagree, to 5, strongly agree. The first one, know what matters. Do you know what matters most to you? As you think about the different roles in your life, how important is each one to you? Are you clear about that and honest with yourself about what really does matter? Is this a strength of yours or is this something that you're not very good at. Rate yourself. Do you embody your values consistently? Do you have a sense of confidence that comes from feeling comfortable in your own skin. Knowing what you care about and being free to express what you care about really wherever you are. Do you embody your values consistently? Is that a strength of yours, or is that something you're not very good at? Again, rate yourself. Do you set priorities, according to what you care about, with respect to how you spend your time and energy, where you invest your attention? So do you align your actions with your values? 1, disagree, 5, agree, or somewhere in between, once again, how true is this statement of you? Are you able to convey who you are and where you've come from through the stories of what's actually occurred to you in your real life? So do you convey what matters most to you through being able to describe the real episodes in your history that have shaped your values and beliefs, and made you into the person you are. And compel you, drive you to move in the direction that you want to go, is that something that you're good at or Not? Are you able to envision your legacy, to look to the future, to look to the point when you're gone. And when others will think about your life and its impact, and to say now what you expect that legacy will be. Some people are really good at that, and spent a lot of time on it, others don't think about it at all. But it is an important skill for leaders who are growing, not just at work, but in all the different parts of their lives as what I call total leaders. So can you envision your legacy with respect to your impact in the different parts of your life, or not? Again, rate yourself on that scale of 1 to 5. And finally, the last of the six skills that bring to life this principle of being real, do you hold yourself accountable? Do you actively reflect on and evaluate whether you are living in a way that's in accord with what you believe and what you value most in life. Do you ask others to help you to do that, or do you not? The second of our three principles is to be whole, to act with integrity by respecting the whole person. And those skills that illustrate or that bring to life this principle are the following six. And once again I'm going to ask you to rate yourself on a scale of 1, strongly disagree, to 5, strongly agree, as to whether this skill represents you as a particular strength or not. Clarify expectations, are you good at both letting other people know what you expect of them and listening to them and inquiring of them as to what it is that they expect of you. This is a really important skill, and you'll see that, like all the other skills, how it comes to life in the stories of the six remarkable people I'm going to be telling you something about. How important it is to have the courage to listen to other people tell you what it is that they need from you. What they see when they look at you. And you're thereby taking what I call the leadership leap, where you look at yourself through the eyes of other people, get inside their heads and see yourself. So clarifying what other people expect of you and what you expect of them. And not just one person, not just your boss, not just your spouse, not just your best friend. Not just your child, or what you expect of yourself, but all the important people. And continually practicing and seeing how each one requires something different in your ability to clarify expectations with them. Are you good at that, or is that something that doesn't describe one of your strengths, rate yourself again. The second skill for bringing to life this principle of respecting the whole is helping other people, which is pretty straightforward. Do you help different kinds of people to give them the support that they need, resources, time, attention, encouragement, whatever it is that you can do to be helpful, or not? We know that people who are good at leading the lives that they want are perhaps paradoxically always looking for ways to help other people. Without spending too much of their time and energy and burning out, but still being thoughtful about what other people need and providing it. That's a way, that's part of the process of what it takes to build supportive networks. So that is the third critical skill for being real, build supportive networks, are you good at that? Connecting people to each other, people that you know who don't know each other, bringing them together, so that you can help them get the help that they need from other people. By doing so, you enrich your, what's called social capital, or the access that you've got to the resources of the world through the people that you know and the people that they know. Building supportive networks, is that something you're good at, or not? Are you able to apply all your resources? That is, are you able to think creatively about how to take what you have, let's say in your community life, friends and contacts? And when you've got a goal that you're pursuing, say in your private life, or in your work life, or for your family, To take advantage of those contacts and relationships that you've got in the community, and to use them to support your business goals or your family goals. So that's one example of applying resources from one part and applying it to goals in the other part. Another way to think about bringing the pieces together in a smart way. The 5th of the be whole skills is to manage boundaries intelligently. And by boundaries I mean, well, two things, one is physical boundaries and the other is psychological boundaries, and the 2nd one is more tricky. A physical boundary is time and space. Are you able to create the time and space to focus? Boundedly, without interruption on one thing at a time, or however many things that you need to work on at a time, but, focused, and bounded in a particular time, and place. Do you go to work, and only do work when you're at work for example, or do the pieces mesh in a way that's confusing. Sometimes meshing or merging the different parts is a good thing, sometimes it's not. And we're going to be exploring and you're going to be becoming more conscious and aware of how you can set those boundaries in a way that works, whether is to merge them or to bound them. There's no one best way, although you may have some preferences. So that's physical boundaries, but then there's psychological boundaries, and that has to do with whether thoughts, feelings, interfere and distract you. You're at work, but you're worried about your kids, that's psychological interference of your family on your work. Are you prone to being distracted in that way, or not? Managing boundaries intelligently in a way that works for you and the people in the different parts of your life, that's another skill. Are you good at that, or not? And finally, there's the skill of weaving the disparate strands. So you've got these different strands in the fabric of your life and are you conscious of how they weave together and look to find ways of creating coherence and connection among the different parts, or is that something that you don't really think about or try to act on? Rate yourself on that scale, too. Finally, the third principle is to be innovative, to act with creativity by continually experimenting with how things get done. What does that look like and how skilled are you in making that principle come to life in your world? The first is to focus on results and not so much on the way those results are pursued. So it's about understanding and clarifying goals, but being flexible about where, when, and how they are pursued. Is that something that you're good at or is that something that you could use some practice in developing? Really clear focus on goals, flexibility with you and the people with whom you might be interdependent in how you pursue them. The second is to resolve conflicts among the different domains of your life, the different parts of your life. Are you good at that or is this something that you're not good at? And this really has to do much with negotiation. Are you skilled at seeing others' points of view, being flexible about coming up with creative solutions that work for them and that work for you. Or is this something that you think is not possible and that life is as zero sum game and that you have to trade one for the other, rather than seek the possibility of gains in all the different parts, what I call four-way wins. The third and really important skill with respect to being innovative is the capacity to challenge the status quo. To be innovative requires that you look at the way things are and realize this isn't right, this has to change. Is that something that you shy away from or is that a challenge that you rise to, again, please rate yourself. Right along with challenging the status quo is looking forward to the possibilities for doing something new. That requires the capacity to imagine and to see new ways of doing things. Some people are really good at that and naturally are just bubbling with ideas for new ways of doing things, others can't [LAUGH] do that very well at all, which are you? Are you someone who's good at seeing new ways of doing things, or not? To be innovative requires a skill of embracing change courageously. Anytime you try something new, even if it's something small, there is going to be anxiety or fear that it might not work out. That other people might think you're doing something wrong or stupid, that you might fail. So that fear is a natural part of trying something new. And to embrace change courageously is a skill that enables you to pursue with the change that you're trying to make happen, even though you're afraid. Is that something that you're good at or is that something that you want to work on? Finally, the last of our 18 total leadership skills is to create cultures of innovation. And that simply means inspiring other people through your example of being someone who is interested and committed to continually learning and trying to make things better, for yourself and for the world around you. because when you do that, anyone who looks up to you or who looks at you as a peer, anyone who sees you in action trying something new, trying something new that's going to make things better for yourself and for others, that tends to inspire other people to do the same. And that's what we mean by creating cultures of innovation.
