Initiative
Do today what others won’t so you’ll have tomorrow what others don’t. - John Addison
Initiative is the starting point with believing and having a burning desire that you can do whatever you set out to do or become what you want to become. Self-belief is necessary and required to have initiative. You must do the things you think you can't do to help activate your belief! It’s your greatest gift. The power in your PPC only activates once you believe 100% in yourself, more than anything else. Not 85% or 99%. This belief is first and foremost! You must have 100% because nothing can break your belief at 100%, and action happens when you have it. You must know you’re good, smart, and talented enough to achieve your vision (dreams and goals).
BELIEF = POWER ACTIVATION
Your self-belief starts with courage. Courage isn't the absence of FEAR, but your judgment that your vision is more important than FEAR. There are 2 types of courage to act on with initiative: (1) the courage to get started and (2) the courage not to quit! Once you understand that, know your real courage will show itself best in hours of adversity. All the fire, power, and thrust in a launch happens in the beginning, and the beginning is where you have the most courage.
Initiative involves your drive, which combines your courage, ambition, energy, tenacity, leadership motivation, integrity, self-confidence, mental proficiency, and business knowledge. It’s part of your decision-making process that helps you obtain positive results. If your situation isn't good, you must create an internal drive to get out of where you come from. Initiative also creates an achievement drive, high effort, ambition, and energy to exhibit. You learn to act. It’s a key to leadership self-awareness, too. This self-awareness also promotes your decision-making process. It’s also an underlying emotional competency with a conscientious drive for leaders to achieve different leadership styles while achieving their goals. The military even works to produce and sustain agile, adaptive, and innovative leaders who act with boldness and initiative to execute missions in dynamic, complex situations. When you enact initiative, you encourage positive energy worthy of an investment in time and energy. It’s an essential dimension of empowerment. Empowerment allows you to build networks, relationships, and teams to create new structures and organizations for success.
Before the devastation from the destruction of what was called Black Wall Street in 1921, the Greenwood community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, encouraged Black people to exploit initiative economically through entrepreneurship, and they thrived more than White people on Wall Street did. Initiative is powerful! It’s the beginning point of all your actions to accomplish anything. Without initiative, you’re inactive, stagnant, and unsuccessful. You’re worth as much as the actions or tasks you busy yourself with. You start to gain knowledge without arrogance. You seek to find counsel, not opinions. You gain confidence because you started your actions, and your confidence begins to build your competence. You shake off the FEAR that keeps you stagnant. There’s that emotion, FEAR! FEAR clouds your future thoughts. FEAR is your enemy’s product designed to destroy your creative imagination. FEAR costs you to have success in your leadership because it doesn’t exist until you make it live. When that happens, FEAR is dangerous to you.
I discussed a little of this earlier in the book, and it’s just as relevant to discuss it again. You’re programmed for success but get conditioned for failure. The conditioning can come from many acts of FEAR. For most who grew up in disadvantaged environments, these acts of fear are promoted more than ever, and they’re the death of your initiative. For others, they used these acts of FEAR as fuel to persevere through them to succeed in their lives. I call them Initiative Killers!
Initiative Killers
STATUS QUO BIAS (safe zone): You are often hard-wired to do nothing, even when your instincts or data say otherwise.
LOSS AVERSION: You have a deep-rooted feeling that avoiding the loss of $100 is much more valuable than gaining $1000.
DECISION PARALYSIS: Since everything isn’t understood, you don’t make a decision.
REGENCY BIAS: You have a habit of believing your future will resemble the recent past.
REGRET AVOIDANCE: This leads you to follow the crowd. If things turn out badly, you feel better knowing that you did what everyone else thought was smarter rather than stand out doing the opposite.
Failure to act is a serious issue or situation that kills your initiative. Keep in mind that two significant mistakes can happen with initiative. Sitting still when you should be acting and acting when you should sit still are mistakes to avoid with your initiative. Improving your initiative takes proper self-leadership development.
Act on your initiative and prepare to take full responsibility for all your actions. One of the primary differences between an extraordinary executive leader and a leader who manages only to get by is that extraordinary executive leaders learn early in life and their career they are responsible for their own actions. No one can make them successful or keep them from becoming an extraordinary executive leader but them. Taking the initiative means assuming a leadership role that positions you for praise and criticism. The extraordinary executive leader is going to be the one who shares the credit for success with others and assumes full responsibility for the failures or temporary setbacks. They know when they accept responsibility for their actions, they gain the respect of others while forging their future. You must intentionally work on your initiative to succeed in your life and leadership.
The opposite of initiative is good intentions and procrastination. Good intentions are useless unless they're followed up with the right action. They might be an appropriate mental starting point but will go nowhere unless you follow those thoughts through with action. Don’t confuse good intentions with initiative. Acting on most of your average ideas is far more valuable than the flash of genius that resides with good intentions. Initiative is the launching pad towards your DMG. Your DMG determines your legacy. Today, you’ll move to where you aim your initiative. Tomorrow, you'll be heading where you aimed your initiative today.
Procrastination is a bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what you should've done the day before yesterday. The most dangerous and destructive habit to develop in leadership is procrastination. It robs you of your initiative. When you put things off once, it's easier to put them off again and again until the habit is firmly ingrained in your leadership character that it's difficult to break. The effects of the procrastination habit are cumulative. This means that you can build on it, but the obvious cure is action. You'll be surprised how quickly you begin to feel better about yourself and your environment when you get moving! Action doesn't bring happiness, but you guarantee there's no happiness without action.
The habitual procrastinator is always an expert giving excuses. If you search long and hard enough, you can always find dozens of reasons why something can't or shouldn't be done and a few reasons why it should or could. It's easier to rationalize that it's too difficult, too expensive, or too time-consuming than to accept the idea that if you’re willing to work hard, smart, and long enough, you can accomplish anything. Instead of making an excuse, make a commitment. If you find that you frequently invent excuses for why you don't do something or have a million reasons why something didn't work out as you planned, it's time for a reality check. Stop explaining and start doing!
Don’t Delay! Do it Today!
Nothing much can be done for a leader who will not take initiative. Personal and leadership initiatives are the same and keys to success. A little initiative will improve your leadership 9 times out of 10. Understand people will not give you their full assistance and support unless you take the initiative first.
Excerpt from The BlackPrint of Leadership by Dr. No Days Off (Dr. NDO) (www.drnodaysoff.com)
