Leadership Lesson from Ian Green

A couple of what I might call my core values or priorities that I try to keep in mind every day, whether it's at work, at home, or in my role as president of MDRT. So three tips to give you here. My first one is to avoid distraction and focus on what matters most. Easier said than done. And of course, many of us are brought up thinking that multitasking is a strength, but of course there's a reason why most organizations don't employ jugglers. It's overrated. So I've learned that if I want to do something really well, I should focus on and only do one thing at a time. As I said, easier said than done these days with our multifaceted lives and multiple responsibilities, but nevertheless, important to boost our productivity.

My second is to avoid complexity and embrace some simplicity. It's often all too easy to address complexity with more complexity, but it's simplicity that enables focus. And its focus, which is critical to our success. I've found that success comes from doing the ordinary things extraordinarily well. And then doing that consistently. For me, that's been the secret to getting things done.

And my third is in conjunction with hard work, which is important, to also make time for thinking and reflection. So, every day in terms of the hard work, I also like to make it smart work. So what I do there is I ask myself every day, what's the one thing that I could do today that if I do it really well will make something else better or unnecessary. And then when I get to the end of each day, I look back and learn and reflect so I can be even better the next day.

So, there are my three things, but I will close with one, what I call a personal mantra, which I learned from the Broadway musical Hamilton, if anybody has seen that, and this is something I urge you all to practice with your teams next year. And that is to smile more and to talk less.