Diet and Exercise
I'm trying to get healthier.
I'll be 49 years old in a little over a month. I recently had a nonthreatening skin cancer removed from my face and I'm having a torn meniscus in my left knee repaired in a couple weeks. I'm very aware that my body is not what it was in my 20's.
I have a degree in kinesiology, a bunch of exercise equipment, a fancy fitness watch, lots of athletic clothes and shoes, and a shelf full of books about wellness. I've invested quite a bit into understanding what I need to do to be more fit.
And you know what? It all comes down to diet and exercise.
All the trendy workout programs...
All the latest miracle foods and supplements...
All the apps, gadgets, and memberships...
And the vast majority of what we really need to do to improve our physical health comes down to eating more of the foods we already know are healthy, less of the ones we all know are not, and making sure we get active more days than we don't.
That will probably cover 90% of what most of us need to do; if we actually do it. I spend too much time, money, an energy chasing after the last 10% when I'm not consistent with the basics.
The same is true in leadership.
Many of us invest way too much in another leadership conference, course, coach, or consultant trying to find the latest magical tool to unlock greatness when we would be far better off to make sure we're doing the basics - the diet and exercise of leadership.
(Some of you are now anticipating me listing those basics, maybe hoping that will expose the secret cure for everything that ails your organization; but I'm not going to do that. I'm confident that you already know most of what you need to know to lead very well.)
I love developing new tools and workshops for leaders. I wrote a leadership book that I'm proud of. I'm one of those consultants that hopes to provide you with valuable insights that can help you increase your impact through greater leader and organizational health. But in the majority of the sessions I lead I explain at the start that there's probably nothing I have to share that is truly new. Most leaders could come up with these same basics on the back of a napkin if they sat down and thought about it for a bit.
So maybe the real value isn't providing some miraculous new system, but in reminding one another that the basics are readily apparent most of the time. Let's get the diet and exercise stuff right first and we can figure out the last bits afterward.
Let me know if I can help.