Transform One Million Realities

The confetti from New Year's Eve has been swept up or blown away. You've already had enough time to break and reaffirm your New Year's resolutions. 

Before you know it Valentine's Day will be here, Spring will have sprung and school will be out. In a year so full of possibilities and fresh potential, what are your dreams for the year?

Maya Angelou once said, "If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities."

This year will fly by, and as you gaze at 2015 in your rear view mirror, you may ask the same question then that you're asking about 2014 now.

The question is "How am I going to lead myself and my team to transform our fantasies, our dreams, into realities?"

But why wait until 2015 is in the books to ask that question? Let's start now with these simple tips...

Celebrate Your Mission

• Your calling may not be unique, but it is unique to you.
• Life is meant to be embraced. Do something better than anyone, or do something no one else has done.
• Don't ever, ever set for dull, average or common. To quote John Keating from The Dead Poet's Society, "Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary."

Celebrate Your Team

• Remind your cohorts, whether they are supervisors or the supervised, of things they did as a group that they could not have done individually.
• Challenge them to invest in each other, with time, resources and creativity. Offer specific ideas, incentives and challenges if you can.
• Remember, someone is watching and learning how you lead, so the way you celebrate your team could impact people for generations.

Celebrate Your Individuals

• Look back to individual success examples, and brag on as many of them as you can.
• Bragging privately to individuals builds self-esteem in them and respect for you, and bragging publicly about the individual to the entire team raises the bar for the organization while building up passion for their own successes.
• Spotlight individuals throughout the year by recognizing them in print, with awards and if you have the pipes, then do it in song.

Celebrate Your Failures

• Don’t run from your flops. Laugh if you can, cry if you need to, but celebrate that you tried.
• Be brief in remembering failures, but long on reminding what you’ve learned from each misstep and catastrophe.
• Embrace this truth. When you face your failure head on and learn from it, doing so mentors that skill into the life of those you lead.

Celebrate your Industry

• You and your team provide a special service or product to our way of life- celebrate it.
• Look to the big changes last year, and in the year to come, and rile your people up about the amazing future you intend to create together.
• Your team members can & will become the innovators in your industry when they are led well. Be that leader.

Celebrate your Future

• Point out specific projects, causes or milestones you believe your team can reach.
• Make the Dream and the Cause something worth working for. Little dreams make for little leaders & little victories
• The definition of a horizon is simple. It's the place where Heaven touches earth. It's the place where sunsets & sunrises remind us to put our past behind us, and that new day awaits us.

One month down in 2015, but a lifetime of possibilities are waiting on you and the people who will be influenced by your leadership this year. Make this the year of "Leading Transformation from Dreams to One Million Realities".