Good leaders: What’s the 8th F for you?

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By now, you recognize our commitment to promoting the Seven Fs: faith, family, finances, fitness, friends, fun and future, as a lever toward goodness in leadership. Since the very first speech I made after Tim Schmidt and I wrote the What Really Works book about The Seven Fs, people have been suggesting “an 8^th F.”

Football, food, fashion and a certain four-letter word that isn’t appropriate in this conversation are frequent offerings.

Life lessons

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Colleen Needles Steward, our speaker at the February 2016 Good Leadership Breakfast, offered her recommendation for the 8^th F: focus. Here’s why:

Colleen dabbled as an entrepreneur during her days as the co-anchor on WCCO TV in the 1990’s. She was disappointed in her search for wholesome, positive programming for her young children, so she created, directed and produced her own show during the early days of cable TV. When she sold that show to Animal Planet, excitement grew around the idea of “what’s possible?” for her family in the TV programming business.

What we concentrate on grows

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As cable TV blossomed, she began to see abundant opportunities…so she quit the high-paying, high-profile co-anchor job on WCCO TV in Minneapolis, and started Tremendous! Entertainment. Her story is a familiar tale of excitement to survival to significance which tests faith, family, finances, fitness, friends, fun and future.

Like other early stage entrepreneurs, Colleen freely admits: “in the survival mode, we started looking at anything and everything that could help us make money to keep the doors open.” The magic moment came when she and her leadership team recommitted to wholesome television programming as their focus.

Excellence as an outcome

With renewed focus on their compelling “why,” the team rallied around a purpose statement…Where Character Matters…as their point of  differentiation in an industry often identified for greed and selfishness. The result is a thriving organization today with enviable growth and mastery of a sorely needed skill – programming that brings alive the Seven Fs.

Good leaders often wander and struggle. And they find their way with renewed focus on the compelling reason for why they took the risk.

Please share with me: How would focus help you radiate goodness?[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]