letter six months after a workshop
letting me know the internship they
received resulted in a job offer.
What is YOUR why? What compels
you to take action?
• Choice During Change. People often
give up their power. They allow negative people or situations to seep in and
bring them down. Self-leadership and
joy occurs when you take back control
of what you think and feel, and how
you respond to those situations and
consciously choose to look for solutions
or ;ind the opportunity. Challenges
occur every day. But so do beautiful
moments. You get to choose where to
focus and what to do with it.
• Focused Action. We all have the same
number of minutes in the day. How is it
then that some people are wildly successful and others are unbelievably
stressed? It’s because of the self-leadership approach of Focused Action.
Stressed people tend to react to other
people’s timelines. They read emails as
soon as they come in and spend too
much time being distracted by social
media, TV or chatty people. They may
have a list of things they want to accomplish but do the easiest or “
loud-est” ones ;irst. Leaders always come
back to their why, make the choice of
what’s important in achieving that why
and focus their time on those things
;irst. Tell me how you begin your day.
This says a lot about the productivity
and accomplishment of a person.
I hope you use and enjoy these tips on
how to increase your self-leadership so
that you can thrive during change. Be on
the lookout for the next Leading the
Change article about differentiation for
the independent planner. And always
know I’m open to discussion and comments on these and any leadership
strategies at Heather@HeatherHansen
ONeill.com. ■
Melissa Champany, director of mem-
bership outreach and young agents for
the Florida Association of Insurance
Agents, has this to say about her dance
with change: “Change is one of those
things you have to be able to lean over,
into and around before you can call it
yours.”
Leading the Change is a series of arti-
cles to provide meeting industry profes-
sionals with insight and strategies to help
transition through and lead effectively
during changing times. The best, and
most obvious, place to begin is with
self-leadership.
Full disclosure—this was not always a
forte of mine. I used to continually get
pulled in different directions. Having
spent years working on this and other
leadership strategies, I’m happy to provide these tips for you with the assurance
that if you happen to be overwhelmed,
stressed and less-than-thrilled with your
work life right now, don’t worry. These
are learned skills.
There are three key areas to improve
your self-leadership: passion, choice
during change and focused action. Let’s
take a closer look.
• Passion. This is the driving force to
achieve success during changing times.
Do you wake up excited to begin your
day? Do your actions throughout the
day increase instead of exhaust your
energy? Does that same energy in;luence everyone around you in a positive
way? If so, you are most likely in touch
with your passion. Passion comes from
understanding your why. It’s not about
what you want, or even where you
want to go. It’s about why. I don’t spend
a tremendous amount of hours running
L-FOCUS (Leadership For Our Children’s Ultimate Success) for the pride
of putting on a great leadership summit. I do it because students come up
and hug me afterward and say they
believe in themselves more. Or I get a
As meeting
professionals you
have to not only be
able to deal with
change but drive it.
If you plan to stay
in this industry you
will want strategies
to help you feel
more comfortable
with change and
even come to enjoy
it…so that you
can lead it.
