“What do I/we need to shed?”

I invite you to apply this question to these different parts of your professional life…

Marketing Strategy —  Much more than market conditions and competition can be slowing you down or holding you back. What’s going on inside your department or organization that you need to cast off? What’s not working? What is consuming an undue amount of time for you and your team? What’s preventing you from thinking big?

Persuasive Leadership —  A wide variety of factors effect your ability to be a persuasive leader. Here are a few: relationships; attitudes and emotions (those of others and yours); how and when you meet and communicate; confidence; mutual respect. Just as it’s helpful to think of and act on what you must gain, it’s valuable to think of and act on what needs to be shed.

Presentation Skills —  Whether or not you’ve received communications skills training, chances are, you know exactly what needs to be jettisoned so that you can excel. Consider these: unproductive presentation tools (burdensome or unprofessional slides, video and scripts); team members who aren’t working like team players; criticism (self inflicted or from others); letting your mind focus on the unproductive “stuff” and not on your audience and content.

So, what do you come up with? What do you need to shed?