5 Ways Super Successful Leaders Operate

“I want to know God’s thoughts, the rest are details.” Albert Einstein

Einstein believed that God’s thoughts were accessible and that he could hear them if he got himself into a certain state of mind, the mind of imagination. When he said that imagination is more important than knowledge, my guess is that he came to that insight after he experienced what many of us have experienced: Knowledge can only take us so far.

The world of genuine discovery lives beyond our egos and thinking minds. Accessing it requires a leap of faith into the unknown where possibility, intuition and potential await. Leaders courageous enough to take this leap themselves will experience levels of performance that they never dreamed of, including having an extraordinary capability to enable their teams to do the same.

Here are 5 Ways Super Successful Leaders Operate:

1. They establish a practiced leadership state of mind that creates great results. This includes having a clear vision of what they want to achieve, who they want to be as leaders and how they want to operate, communicate and coach others. It comes from the inside, not the outside. Change is constant, so they train themselves to stay centered and focused and to respond mindfully to external situations, not react from a place of surprise or imbalance.
2. They have developed the art of listening for inspiration. They believe in the power of possibilities. They know that insights can show up as subtle intuitions or thunderbolts of creative innovations, so they take the time to tap into this realm in order to hear them. They create the opportunity for solitude or a walk in nature or for meditation. They quiet their minds in order to cultivate the expansiveness where new ideas are awaiting their discovery.
3. They focus on what they want, not on the absence of it. This is not easy. Even when, perhaps, revenues aren’t growing as fast as desired or team members aren’t engaged or investors aren’t willing to fund another round, they don’t keep asking, “What is wrong?” They don’t let their thinking take their emotions into worry, defensiveness or fear. Instead, they keep their thoughts focused and they have developed the habit of asking, “What are the other possibilities here?”
4. They focus on seeking, finding and nurturing the best in people. Peak performance is never achieved by leaders who are skeptics and critics. It is achieved by leaders who see potential, not fault, and who love and have fun coaching people to achieve what they are capable of accomplishing.
5. They understand that adversity is the catalyst for finding greatness. They know its sole purpose is to clarify the pathway to achievement. They don’t let themselves get distracted by the event itself. They know that if they get stuck on the problem, the problem gets stuck with them, so they let them go, always moving forward toward discovery.

Sometimes leadership can seem elusive, but it really is not. It is a practiced discipline of opening fully to “God’s thoughts” and letting the successes unfold.

Sheila Madden is the CEO of Madden Coaching & Consulting. She is an Executive and Career Coach and an Organization Effectiveness Consultant. For exclusive coaching promotions, conversations and events with Sheila click link: http://bit.ly/1ypxQzm