Research has shown that if you don’t believe your actions can produce change, you probably won’t try. Those who think they can, often do. Some call this positive thinking. I call it faith. Without it you will not go far.

The Impossible 4-Minute Mile

It was considered humanly impossible to run a 4-minute mile. Everyone knew this. Those who tried failed, again and again. In the early 1940s two Swedish runners got close with a 4:01.4 time.

Nearly 10 years later, on May 6, 1954, Englishman Roger Bannister ran a mile in 3:59.4. He broke the “impossible” barrier that runners had been chasing for decades.

Now here’s the interesting part, only two months later

Smart leaders don’t give people answers to their problems. They help them discover answers for themselves. These leaders know that if you discover it, you own it. That’s one reason, I’ve got 6 more below.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways we learn. The most common way is for someone to tell us information or how to do something.

A more powerful way of learning is discovery. Receiving what someone tells you is not discovery. The discovery process requires more effort. You’ve got to think and look and search. Telling short-circuits the discovery process by settling for someone else’s learning instead of pushing forward with our own learning.

Change is essential in life. Growth is change, so is decline. There’s no avoiding change. Most people try to change things “out there”, but real power comes from “in here” change.

Goals and problems can be approached from different directions. Some approaches seek to change things “out there” and some to seek to change things “in here,” that is, inside us. The real leverage are “in here” changes.

Mentoring is a gift to others. It’s also a gift to yourself. More than that, I’d say if you are not mentoring, your leadership is suffering. 

Recently, I spent a couple days with a mid-level leader. It was life-on-life. He wanted to work on how to develop interactive workshops that produce mindset and behavioral changes, that is, impact, in participants. He’s good at it, and wanted to get even better.