Effective leaders transform interpersonal activities into creative exercises. They orient their followers to focus on reflecting, learning, thinking, questioning, resolving, creating, discussing, debriefing, playing and interacting.

You would involve and join your stakeholders - partners, associates, peers, suppliers, constituents and others who might a part or vested interest in your venture - to build a shared vision with as broad a group of your stakeholders as possible.

Logical Action-Step Five: Capitalize on Wise Synergism

Perhaps you have heard of principle of master-mind - it's where two or more people harmonize their thinking around a specific project or problem for express purpose of forming a mind that is greater than sum of its parts.

Great inventors and leaders like Thomas Edison, George Washington, Alfred Nobel and many others used their master-mind groups to generate fantastic innovations, policies and achievements for all humankind.

You can leverage collaborative activities of your team through strategist's approach to leadership. You can expand time horizon of your strategies to encompass a range from 3 to 21 years.

The benefits that strategic leaders provide is that their groups enjoy opportunities to:

- Share their reflections on your mission and vision

- Openly disclosure, support and confront any differences between organization's and their personal values

- Conduct corporate and personal performance appraisals

- Creatively resolve paradoxes or contradictions in productivity versus inquiry, autonomy versus control, and quality versus quantity

- Interactively develop self-amending and self-correcting structures

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You can multiply your creativity and creative leadership skills just by applying these strategies to all of your problems, situations and decisions.

Experts in psychology, management and organizational sciences call these strategies, "action-logic" - their studies reveal that professionals generally fall into one of three different behavioral categories: 1) Reactive - 5% 2) Preventive - 85% 3) Creative - 10%

This article has described "creative" forms of action-logic - by using these strategies people will be moved to call you an "individualist", a "strategist" or a "magician"!

"I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a "transformer" in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader." Stephen R. Covey

Are you ready to leverage, empower and energize your creative leadership? Are you willing to be that catalyst, agent of change or provocateur who inspires others to contribute to growth of your organization?

Ensure success of your "Strategically Wise Synergistic Process of Creation" with these 5 "Logical Action Steps" - your teammates and organization will be so glad you did.

Mustard Seed Investments Inc. Copyright © 2004, All rights reserved

------------------------------------------------------------ ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bill Thomas produces "The Leadership Toolkit" - a web based training program that improves your leadership skills, energizes creativity and transforms you into a persuasive, empowering leader. Inspire Confidence, Be Creative, Enhance Your Leadership Influence - Get "All Tools You Need To Lead!" http://www.leadership-toolkit.com/info.html ------------------------------------------------------------

Spend a minute or two exploring your senses and familiarizing yourself with this special place. Really develop this place to tiniest details. If it helps you, write a description of it. It is very important to bring it to life in your mind in a way you can always go back to it and see it in its fullest details and unique beauty. This place is center of your soul, a sanctuary where you can relax and be free from everyday worries.

Affirmations:

Affirmations are brief, positive statements developed to help us to reprogram certain parts of our subconscious. We have all heard that inner critic kick in with “ You're not pretty enough, you're not smart enough” etc. This can be a very powerful voice and more negative thoughts we have more we feed it.

Many people are not aware of just how much negativity they consume, self-inflicted or otherwise. I recommend keeping a pen and paper close to you for one hour. During this hour be conscious of your thoughts, as well as external influences. For every negative statement you take in, make a mark on your paper. Once this exercise is finished multiply number of marks on your page by at least 16, which will give you a small idea of amount of negativity you are continually bombarded with.

One of most powerful tools to use against this ingrained negativity is to reprogram our thought patterns. Our subconscious minds don’t care what they are programmed with, negative or positive. When you hear something enough you start to believe it and those negative thoughts can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Our goal here is to fight fire with fire so to speak, and come back at negatives with positives, almost like reprogramming a computer.

An affirmation should have following qualities:

· Must be brief · Must be concise · Must not have word no in it or any negative connotations · Must be easy to remember · Must be repeated

An example of a good simple affirmation would be “I have all I need and I am thankful”, or “I love myself unconditionally”.

As a general rule I say to keep same affirmation going for at least a week. Learn to say it with conviction. Pay attention to what you are saying every time you repeat it. When you have a few minutes to yourself go look in mirror and say it to yourself and mean it! Yes, you will tell yourself you look silly, that's OK, do it anyway. The more you do less silly you will feel and more empowered you become. When we face ourselves we find our true strength!

Journaling:

I cannot say enough how much writing helps. There are many different ways to do this, and best method is to find your own method - one that is comfortable to you, as this is a very intense, very personal experience. When you first start just write ype whatever comes into your head, no matter how silly it might seem. This is key to unlock floodgates. Gradually as you get into it and time progresses you will open many doors of self-discovery, and through this begin to regain your balance.

To develop a habit of writing set up a 5 – 15 minute period in your day where you sit and write. You can make this a part of your nighttime ritual, or do it first thing in morning when all is quiet.

With a little self-discipline and practice you can make yourself a happier more balanced person by incorporating just a few simple practices. I know from personal experience that taking time for Self is vital to overall health. It is easy to get so involved in our “roles” that we forget to remember our true Spirit. Take some time for yourself and get to know your own best friend, he/She has been right there with you all along.