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Shawn Stratton works with organizations to strengthen leadership skills that translate into powerful teams. Founder of the LiveMore Group, an organization that helps people maximize their potential and productivity, Shawn has designed presentations and retreats for both small businesses and large corporations, offering teams of all sizes the inspiration and tools to flourish in this unpredictable, exciting economic environment.
15 Ways to Lead Proactively
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...
Lessons From Flying Solo – A Travel Experience to Remember (or forget…)
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...
5 Strategies for Managing Imposter Syndrome
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...
Shawn Stratton, Leadership Motivational Speaker and Consultant
“His use of story telling, humor and photography delivered a powerful message on the importance of finding our true passion as an indicator of success. ” -Ian Shortall read more
