NEW YORK NURSE: January/February 2009

Encouraging the best in organization leadership

Excerpted from a presentation by Lorraine Seidel, director of the NYSNA Economic & General Welfare Program, at a meeting of the Delegate Assembly in September 2008.

Leadership is a choice, not a position or a title.

We are each designed to be brilliant, not to shrink from our potential. We create the world we live in by making choices that determine the quality of our lives and the significance of our contributions to the world. There are seven personal choices that will determine whether you will be indispensable or hardly missed.*

Be a player. Players charge onto the field with passion, energy, and a desire to win.
Be accountable. When people refuse to shift responsibility to others, they stop being victims.
Choose service over self-interest. If you walk into work with an unwavering desire to enrich the lives of others, your ability to make a difference will be far-reaching and profound.
Focus forward. You can focus on what isn’t working, why it can’t be done, and who’s to blame, or you can focus on what is working, how it can be done, and what we want to achieve.
Play to your genius. Your work is your signature; make it a masterpiece.
Get it done. No one is paying you today for what you did yesterday. Choose results over rhetoric and red tape.
Risk more to gain more. You will never discover your true capabilities unless you explore the boundaries and test the limits of what you can achieve.

Make no mistake: After all is said and done, in the end, how you lived your life was 100% your choice.

There is a revolution underway. When men and women refuse to be victims, reject a sense of entitlement, and choose to take charge of their lives at work, there will be a revolution that will blow the doors off business as usual.

This is our moment – we are ready to reach beyond the mediocrity of dead people working and grab hold of something new. We want to do extraordinary things with our gifts and talents.

If you accept this call to gutsy leadership, at least three things will happen:

You will expand your influence.
You will become a positive force for change.
You will live with fewer regrets.

Whichever way you decide to go, keep in mind that the moments of opportunity you miss can never be regained. Your life is not a dress rehearsal. It’s your move.

*From Boom! 7 Choices for Blowing the Doors Off Business-as-Usual by Drs. Kevin and Jackie Freiberg. Used by permission.