We all have times when we feel a little off, that’s natural. Maybe even times when we’ve dropped the ball costing ourselves and our companies dearly. These losses can shake your confidence and have you second guessing your decisions and splintering your focus.

Feeling shattered is no way to start the New Year.

A more resourceful state is that of strategic optimism. An optimism supported with a plan. How will you improve this year? An athlete trains, not just shows up on game day to perform. What is your training regimen?

A good development plan starts with an awareness and acceptance of weaknesses and opportunities. If you are blind to these two forces, I suspect new learning opportunities will be seeds sown on barren soil.

This brings up a couple of key questions. How to spot these areas for growth and where to get the input, insight and feedback necessary to improve.

Identifying these growth areas could be surfaced from conversations with your mentor, quality feedback...

I was speaking with a fellow coach recently and she spoke of how she was uncomfortable with her wedding vows including the phrase “ A woman leads by walking ten paces behind her husband”.

A few years later as she was preparing for her start in an Alaskan dog race she noticed she took exactly ten steps from harnessing the lead dog to her place of command at the back of the sled.

She was in fact – Leading from behind.

This reminds me of the “servant leadership” concept.

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of...