The Three Principles Exercise

Three principles govern your success as an ethical leader who gets things done:

• Treat everyone with integrity
• Align activities to deliver what matters most
• Engage stakeholders to commit their time, talent and trust






Exercise:

Divide your activities each month or week into three groups:

1. Treating people with integrity: All the things you do specifically to communicate the core purpose of yourself and your organization, set your values and demonstrate your principles in action. This is how you shape Why things are done by you and your organization.

2. Alignment: All the things you do to set and support business goals that focus on what matters most; your activities to drive results, and actions you take to cascade accountabilities to all levels. This is how you shape What is to be done in your organization.

3. Engagement: All the things you do to encourage people to commit their time, talent and trust; the things you do to provide recognition, build morale and encourage effort. This is how you shape How things are done in your organization.

Review:

Do the review at a high enough level that you start to see themes in your activities. Don't be too concerned if you assign some of the activities to more than one of the principles.

What can you learn from how you spend your time? Given your Strategic level, what things are you doing that don’t contribute to the three principles? What things do you need to do more of and less of?

For Advanced Discussion:

Compare how you spent last week/month/year with how you plan to spend next week/month/year. What are the differences? When are you most successful? What are the barriers that prevent your time being spent the way you plan?

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