• New Years, Schmoo Years.
• Resolutions or Revolutions?
• The shark that isn’t swimming forward is dead. 

All these come to mind when I think about 2016’s first post.  A constant in my business life has been continuous improvement. And since I’ve focused on strategic thinking for many years, that has come to mean continuous improvement in a focused manner, on something strategic that will make a difference leading to better results, and executed in a deliberate, organized way.  

When I first began coaching in 1992, it was usually 30 minutes over the phone for Marshall Goldsmith’s leadership excellence students. I needed something that was easily described and implemented for people who’d been encouraged to determine 1 or 2 things they wished to improve in their leadership.  

The steps contained in  D.A.R.E. turned out to be that simple but effective tool. People could grasp it quickly and the student and I could even begin an execution plan on the phone in less than 60 minutes.   The precurser step, which we completed during the coaching call, was to identify, in behavioral terms, a new and improved leadership style or practice.

D = Data: catch yourself using or displaying the “old” behavior. 

A = Analysis: be your own consultant and sort through the data accumulated in the D step.  

R = Role Play: with someone safe, act out potential leadership situations using the new and desired behavior. 

E = Execute: put the new behaviors into practice within your leadership environment.  

People reported good success using the D.A.R.E. steps.  You’ll find the process described in more detail on the freebie at my website DARE ProcessRevised’06.  

This begins a multi-part series of posts on free, useful leadership tools. What do you think?