by Shawn Stratton | Feb 9, 2018 | Blog Posts
In the TEDx talk that I gave, I highlighted the power of teamwork during a recounted expedition that I led deep in the Indian Himalayas. On day 24 of the mountain expedition, a client fell down one of the slopes and suffered an open fracture of his lower leg. For 19 hours while we waited for help to arrive, we fought to save the patient’s leg. I firmly believe that our team thrived during this period because of the proactive leadership our team of instructors displayed on the expedition up to that point. I was brought to tears with pride for our team once help finally did arrive in the form of a massive Indian military rescue helicopter. We had selflessly pulled together to manage the intense situation in a hostile environment. You can use these types of situations as a learning experience. While carrying out your duties as a leader, there are a few questions to ask about your performance to determine whether you spend most of your time in a reactive or proactive role. As a leader do you… Find yourself putting out fires most of the day? Dread Mondays because you have no idea what mess you are about to walk in on? Feel like you are losing the respect of your team members? Get behind in writing or conducting performance reviews? Only think about doing a team building event when your team is not working well together or because you just haven’t done one in a while? If you answered yes to any of these questions you probably spend more leadership time in a reactionary mode...
by Shawn Stratton | Jan 25, 2018 | Blog Posts
As I prepare for Mondays much anticipate launch of the LiveMore Mastermind program, this week I wanted to lighten up the blog a little by sharing with you a recent challenging (and comical in retrospect) flying experience and a few lessons I am sure many of you can relate. — Four weeks before Christmas we decided to bring our family of five to my hometown of St. John’s, Newfoundland from Ottawa because of some extenuating family circumstances. This was not our original plan as my wife, was due to be working from December 27-30. The plan was to have the whole family fly to St. John’s on December 22nd and my wife would leave early on the evening of the 25th to give herself a day of flexibility in case there were weather delays. It was a good thing that Alexandra built in flex time as her flight was canceled and it took her 24 hours to get out of St. John’s. She arrived home at 3:30 a.m. in time to start her on-call shift at 8 a.m. That’s not exactly how you want to start four days of being on call. Once Alexandra left I would be parenting solo on our flight home scheduled for December 30th with our three girls (Aspen, 5 months; Trinity, 4; Sierra, 6). Our itinerary from St. John’s to Ottawa had us take two 2-hour flights with an hour-and-a-half stopover. We were flying in the mid-afternoon so at least it wasn’t a super early flight or a red eye. I honestly hadn’t given flying solo with the girl’s much thought until a couple days...
by Shawn Stratton | Jan 15, 2018 | Blog Posts
Several years ago I was asked to do a 3-hour seminar on leadership for a group of 12 senior executives who ran companies with revenue ranging from 10 – 100 million dollars. I was 35 at the time and their average age was 62. I had been vetted for almost 6 months from the organization who hired me to deliver the seminar to be absolutely sure I was a good fit and wouldn’t waste their precious time. I had been prepped that this group had extremely high expectations for their presenters and could be quite intimidating. Several days before the event, the organizer asked me if I was nervous about my upcoming session. My reactionary response was, “Nooo, I got this.” In actual fact, I was extremely nervous. I thought, “Who am I to present to these successful senior leaders about leadership?” I was suffering from a case of the dreaded Imposter Syndrome (IS) and it almost held me back from taking on this outstanding opportunity. What is Imposter Syndrome? IS is an all too common feeling amongst public speakers and leaders in new positions. “It is an overriding feeling that you are not worthy of the job you have been asked to do based on your skill, experience or expertise. It is based on intense, secret feelings of fraudulence in the face of success and achievement. If you suffer from IS, you believe that you don’t deserve your success; you’re a phony who has somehow ‘gotten away with it’” (Harvey, 1984, p. 3). Syndrome may be too strong a term, but many of us experience these feelings with...
by Shawn Stratton | Dec 22, 2017 | Blog Posts
Hi folks, I am back to wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday and provide you with a tool to kick-start your success in 2018. I have had a productive few weeks off from writing my regular blog. I have been able to find some help to free up time and develop systems for me to be the best version of Shawn as a father, husband, business consultant and athlete. My next book manuscript is now oh-so-close to being finished and I have been developing a few very exciting projects that will launch in the New Year to bring more value to YOU, my faithful blog reader. One of the projects I will be launching is an exclusive small group Mastermind focused on accountability, personal growth, and leadership development. You will hear more about this in a few weeks. If you know you are interested in joining this type of group just send me an email at info@livemoregroup.com with “INTERESTED IN THE MASTERMIND” as the subject title and I will be sure you receive the registration information. This past week I was working on my 2018 list of goals. This is something I do every December but as I was writing them I was thinking how each year it seems harder and harder to set realistic yearly goals with the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely) method of goal setting. In my current state of rapid change with family, personal and business interests and demands it is difficult to set accurate goals a year out. Too often, elements in my world change throughout the year making many of my...
by Shawn Stratton | Nov 13, 2017 | Blog Posts
I am going to stop blogging on a regular basis for the next couple months. I know I don’t need to justify my personal actions to you but I thought that by explaining them, you may learn something or look at your own life from a different perspective. In his outstanding book, The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, author, and real estate giant Gary Keller encourages the reader to think of work-life balance not as being balanced at all. He would rather think of your time and attention sitting on a pendulum moving back and forth. For a while, you really need to focus on one area of your life, i.e. family, and then there will be a time your family life is stable and you can really focus on another aspect, i.e. starting a new business project, training for a marathon or in my case right now, completing a book. I have been two weeks from finishing my next book since June because I haven’t made it my One Thing. My personal view of balance is an object suspended in time, not moving at all. When things aren’t moving at all, they usually get run over and besides if you are in perfect balance, you are not moving forward and for me, I always want to be moving forward. This is also the reason why Lance Armstrong called his hugely popular podcast The Forward. This is not acceptable to me. For me to be at my best, I want to be riding the wave or at least climbing near the top of it. I may...
by Shawn Stratton | Oct 30, 2017 | Blog Posts
How to prevent your meeting from going off the rails The purpose of meetings is not to talk – the purpose is to arrive at ideas, solutions, plans, and decisions. Before I discuss meeting agendas, I want you to think long and hard about the next meeting you are organizing. Ask yourself these 3 questions Is this meeting absolutely needing? Is there another way to accomplish the meeting purpose? What will happen if the meeting doesn’t take place? If at all possible, cancel the meeting! We’ve all been in meetings where participants are unprepared, people veer off-track, and the topics discussed are a waste of the team’s time. These problems, and others like it, stem from poor agenda design. An effective agenda helps set you up to run a successful meeting for all participants. Last week, I had the privilege of delivering a webinar to 1000 project managers from around the world. When I asked in a poll “what is your greatest pain point in meetings”, the number one answer by far was “lack of quality agenda and direction”. At the end of the session, several of the audience questions were about creating effective agendas so I have decided to write this post to help you develop and execute an effective agenda for your next meeting. According to a study conducted by Verizon Business, meetings are the #1 time waster in the workplace. They are often unorganized, have no purpose and go off-topic and end with decisions or action items. It’s no mistake that most of these meetings are missing a clear meeting agenda. Creating a concise agenda is the...
