Leadership and strategic thinking

Grant Leboff: Pete, one of the things you focus on in the book is key skills, four key skills that you need to be able to implement and follow through and achieve whatever you want to achieve. What is interesting is, because you are talking about personal plan, one of the things you talk about is leadership. I think, often people think about referring to leading others rather than themselves. I just want you to talk about little bit more about leadership and what that means to you.

Pete Wilkinson: For me leadership really does start with yourself. I think that you are right, everyone when you think about leadership, thinks about the great leaders who have led hundreds of people. For me, if you are going to become the very best version of you, the very first thing you need to do is lead yourself better. Self leadership is so, so important. You need to think about four real areas of that.

You need to think about strategic thinking, and this is just spending a little bit of time looking ahead, most people don’t do that. You need to think about relationship building, because if you are going to become the very best version of you, if you are going to execute your plan, other people are going to have to help you. There is no such thing as a self made millionaire, everyone had people to help themselves. Then you need to think about influencing in an ethical way, about communicating with people well. Then, finally, you have to be good at execution. You have to really execute. People have strategic plans and unfortunately they just don’t execute.

For me, those four areas of leadership are what you need to think about so that you become a better leader of yourself, to allow yourself to reach your potential. It really does start with self leadership.

Grant Leboff: I am going to talk about strategic thinking, I think that is really interesting because, again, when people talk about themselves, I think people think about strategies for their business or strategies for something else, but not for themselves. When you talk about strategic thinking on a sort of regular basis, what are the type of processes one should be going through to achieve that kind of strategic thinking, with regards to themselves?

Pete Wilkinson: I think one of the first things you have to do Grant, is make it a priority. Really, you should have, what I call, time blocks in your diary or your calendar, or whatever you use. That should be set aside for strategic thinking. You should literally pause 30 minutes and just think about the future. Where you are going, how you are getting there? Is what you are doing making progress? Are you happy with the progress you are making? I think you have to make that a priority.

Part of the problem is that people fit in strategic thinking when they are not busy, but really, what I am saying is it should be one of the very first things you should do. In fact, you should build your week around your thinking time. By doing that, it just brings it to the front, and you would be surprised how much progress you could make by actually improving your strategic thinking. You have to start thinking about yourself.

Grant Leboff: You talk about 30 minutes, is 30 minutes a week enough? Do you need more?

Pete Wilkinson: I think if you can start by regularly having 30 minutes a week will be great. It would be good that you had some time set aside each day for this, but I realize people are very busy and people are taking on lots of things. If you could start with 30 minutes a week, I think that would put you in a minority of people who commit to this. You are going to be pulled around, you are going to be enticed to do other things, you have to protect this time because this is all about you becoming the very best version of you. You deserve to have 30 minutes of your own time as a priority to start thinking about what that looks like.

Grant Leboff: How does that strategic thinking then link back to this idea of leadership and self leadership?

Pete Wilkinson: I think it links back to the strategic thinking is clarifying the outcomes that you want, looking at where you might want to get to. It also, Grant, links back to the goals because you are thinking about, “Is what I am doing working.” Some people do certain things, they don’t work for them, but unfortunately they just keep doing it. Part of the strategic thinking is saying, “Actually, I am going to build this To-Do list, which is my goals, but I am also going to build a Not-To-Do list. These are things I am not going to do.” Often, you get more progress made by having a Not-to-Do list, rather than a To-Do list. That comes from having a block of time for strategic thinking.

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