Is it lonely at the top? It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a long-endured myth. 

No, leaders aren’t necessarily friends with their team members or line staff. They can be friendly without being friends. That doesn’t mean that they should isolate. Specifically, if you’re finding yourself lonely, alone, and frustrated, you’re doing it wrong.

Surrounding yourself with people who are also pushing to serve greatly acts to inspire and propel. When you seek coaching to get an outside perspective on your personal and professional processes (yes, both), you begin to excel past where you’ve been.

The language choices here are deliberate.

• Push.
• Serve Greatly.
• Excel.

The reason that leaders get burned out is that… they don’t actually lead.

That’s a surprising truth you may not have wanted to admit. You’re busy trying to run your organization, division, unit, section,...

In my #1 Best Selling Book, The Significance Factor, the reader gets to journey through an assessment of personal values, the way one leads, and what makes for success. 

The assessment of personal success is often a moving target.

What you thought would make you a success 20 years ago seems like such a meager objective now. We, therefore, need to look to our future. 

Think about a time that you wanted to be noticed for the work you did, the thoughts you had, or the thing you created. Getting a virtual parade and “likes” is great! It feels good. And, it’s a way to measure how far your message is moving. The thing is, for some, the “likes” become the objective. Influencers often seek likes as a measure of success.

For me, success can be measured not by what you’ve gained, but by what you’ve given. Not by how many likes you’ve gotten, but by how many lives you’ve lifted.

My aim is to move from...

Procrastination is your barometer of commitment.

The truth is that you have completed the things you truly believe in. 

There are things we don’t like to do. Those are tasks and the outcomes are more essential than the distaste of doing the things we don’t like. I don’t like getting into the muck and yuck of waste pipes, but you know what… if the outcome is that I have to run a snake/auger down an outside trap to open a line, that’s better than having yucky stuff bubble up through the plumbing. (Yucky stuff is the technical term, by the way.)

That example is to say that I’m more committed to the outcome than I am thwarted by the process.  And yet, there are things we don’t do. We tell ourselves that they’re too hard. We tell ourselves we’re scared of what might happen.

I’ve worked with some amazingly talented people over the past three and a half decades: some organizational leaders, some...

The Language Of Leadership is direct and uplifting. 

Organization development starts at the top.

“Well, that’s one ugly baby!”  

You would never say that. You may or may not think it, depending on your relationship to the baby or its parents. And again, you certainly wouldn’t blurt that out.

So what happens that personally affrontive language is leaked out across our organizations? In the three and a half decades that I’ve worked with leaders across countless organizations, I have heard thoughtless remarks too numerous to count:

“Are you stupid?”

“This report is the worst I’ve seen!”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Why can’t you just do your *&%$#!* job?”

“What ARE you wearing?”

“What WERE you thinking??”

Worse than hearing this in the workplace, people say this kind of stuff to their kids.

Reading this here, you may be...

So you’re sick of being shut in and you’re fed up with the rules that we’re having to abide by. You’re an introvert and still feel like you miss people? You’re an extrovert and want to Velcro yourself to someone, anyone, at the grocery store?

Can you imagine what would happen if, tomorrow for example, it was announced that we were all okay to get back out there? Go on, get back to your “normal” lives!  

There’d be pandemonium.

Most people have actually found things they like about their new schedule. We’ve been practicing this for four+ months now. Personally, I appreciate that I can be called to do a television segment and don’t have to get on an airplane to do it. My commute is 30 seconds to my home studio. (Google my name and at the top of the page, hit the “News” tab to see what’s up.)  I also like exercising at home more than I thought I would. Weird stuff; and there are...

Your Wednesdays With Wayne now regularly ties to the One Sharp Sword podcast! Click the link to get there and listen in!

Let’s focus on the true cost of serving everyone. I think, you know where we're headed with this. And so this is kind of fun because it's a chance just to lock in your thinking around it. 

What does it mean when you try to be everything to everybody? You know, there's so many businesses out there that fail, and there are so many individuals that fail because they're trying to be everything to everybody. The people that I work with have had experience like that, where they've tried to serve pretty much everyone. Luckily, most of the people that I work with get through it and recognize that living that way is a killer! It'll kill you individually and it'll kill you as a business. When you try to anticipate the needs of absolutely everyone, you end up losing yourself in the process.

The thinking drowns you: What if they don't like...

Some people like to listen in addition to reading! If you’d like to hear more about this subject and other topics, be sure to check my podcast, One Sharp Sword – Cutting Through To What Matters Most!

And now, this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne - 

You know those leadership development changes that you have been making over the past several months? Okay, some are larger than others, yet you have grown and evolved. You’ve done the “pivot” thing. Here’s how to lock them in, even during these odd times. 

You are  a leader at home where people are looking at you, in your workplace, where people are looking at you, or in the community where people are looking at you. You are a leader, no matter what role you're in. My hope is that you've been taking care of yourself and those around you, your family, your team, because you have a solid vision and your vision is based on your values. 

My hope is that you’ve discovered...

Celebrating Wednesdays With Wayne BLOG POST NUMBER 200. Every single week for 200 posts! Thank you for being with me on this journey!  Today we’re exploring how to boost your bottom line through High Performance (what I call DynamicLeader®) tactics and strategies.  

Boosting your bottom line through high performance strategies and tactics in whatever role you're playing means you’re becoming the DynamicLeader®.  Yep, my clients take on the world a little differently than most. The first thing they do is to identify, then align everything with their values.

People forget that we're not the same person we were. When you pause to think about it, you wouldn’t want to be the same person you were 20 years ago. In fact, you would probably cringe at thinking you could even be the same person now. Obviously, you're not. Your values have changed. The way you live your life has changed.

If your new values don't come through in the way you...

Let’s look at what true transformation looks like. I promise, I’ll only use the “butterfly” analogy once and it’ll be quick!  

Transformation… trans-formation. What does that even mean? More important, what does it mean to you? 

Transform has its roots in Latin and French and trans literally means across or beyond and form is the shape of something or the way it looks or appears. When you transform, you end up being different. 

What's interesting to me is that when I've worked with organizations, teams, individuals, there's almost an allergic reaction to the word change. They’ll say, “Oh, I know we need to change.” And then they hold their breath. They know that doing the same thing over and over, they're going to get the same results. They know that, you know, they need to do something different, “but does it have to be change?” And so it makes me laugh a little bit as a consultant, as a...

We have the opportunity to take on a powerful perspective about this year. This is mid-year. Treat it like New Year’s Day and take inventory of where you’ve been and how you’ve been. No, don’t just think about the struggle, but really reflect on how you’ve responded to that struggle!

And now, recognize that it's time for you to look ahead. 

You'd need to look back and you need to look ahead and what I want to focus here is with a wave of my wand (see it?) you have permission to transform!

2020 wasn’t out to get you.  We have this sense that it's persona. “Oh, just when I had such and such lined up and all of a sudden, you know, this pandemic happened.”  Guess what! You're not the only one. That's the definition of pan for pandemic. it's global. That means we're all affected by this elusive virus. So it wasn't done to you. 

And if you make it personal, then just know that kind of thinking sets you back. 

...