The year's over and now is the time for New Year's resolutions, especially for leaders, who can learn from the last twelve months and decide what to do differently in the year ahead.

The differences I'm concerned with are not related to strategy or operations, but rather to the personal learning that leaders inevitably accrue through the year as they grapple with the challenges of leadership which can help them to see themselves more clearly. In particular, I'm concerned with the self awareness that leaders develop through their work that enables them to recognize strengths and weaknesses, predispositions, and the natural opportunities that arise in the business to improve their effectiveness.

A few examples.

My older son, Chris, is a marketing manager who is looking ahead into the New Year and planning to make a difference built on his recognition of his strengths and weaknesses. His organization recognizes and needs one of his core strengths - the ability to identify and implement products and services that improve the business's understanding of, and ability to respond to, their clients' needs. He's using that knowledge to improve the marketing department's reputation throughout the firm. This serves several objectives - it helps the firm, it helps his career, and it helps his boss reach her objectives for the marketing department.

Chris also recognizes his weaknesses. And one of those, in particular, he is going to work on diligently. He realizes that he's not as focused on execution as he needs to be. So, he's going to focus time and energy on how to become more adept at executing his initiatives through his staff. This will help him address a weakness he sees and at the same time help him to develop his staff's ability to get things done and expand their skills.

Several leaders I know rely on a predisposition for getting things done, which is a good thing. However, this also predisposes them to focus more on getting the job done than on keeping their bosses fully informed. They consistently fall short when it comes to making sure their bosses know what they're up to, the progress they've made, and the problems they've run into, preferring to rely on the one thing they know they can rely on - their ability to get things done.

It's no surprise, then, that their bosses are concerned about their lack of communication and their tendency to go it alone. Predispositions such as this are a double-edged sword - a strength that contributes to their success and a self-limiting tendency.

Sometimes natural opportunities arise in the course of work that beg for attention by leaders who can leverage them for everyone's benefit. I've seen good leaders take advantage of the following opportunities:

The loss or gain of a major customer can provide the opportunity to rethink the products and services offered in order to refocus and reprioritize what the firm provides its clients.

High turnover can provide the opportunity to re- evaluate the deployment of existing staff and decide what new competencies and experiences are needed in the new staff to be hired to better serve the firm's strategy.

A change of leadership in the firm can provide an opportunity to refocus the firm's resources to align with the new direction and institute long-delayed (but known to be needed) organizational improvements.

Even the loss of a job can provide leaders with the opportunity to re-evaluate their careers in order to decide what changes should be made in direction or focus that have been ignored or obscured by the normal demands of work.

What personal lessons might you have learned during the past year that will help you in the future? What strengths and weaknesses, or predispositions, or natural opportunities has this past last year brought to your attention through work that will help you chart a new and better course for the year ahead?

Recently, I was talking to a group of business leaders about how they can influence the culture of their companies. It soon became apparent that their previous efforts to change their companies' cultures suffered the same fate as so many New Year's resolutions - well-intentioned initial bursts of energy followed rapidly by frustration and a rationalization for why the resolution didn't really matter in the first place.

Has this ever happened to you as you tried to influence your company's culture? If so, what might you do differently this year so that your efforts don't grind to a halt before Ground Hog Day?

Casey Stengel once said, "Finding good players is easy. Getting them to play as a team is another story."

All too often leaders assume that all they need to do is bring good talent on board and then the natural ability of that talent will lead necessarily to success. Not so. It takes attention and effort to mold any group into an effective team.

Casey understood that. Do you? What additional steps might you take to forge a high performing team?

email: archie@archietinelli.com archie@archietinelli.com