By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to stay focused on your primary goal. Reading time: 3:09

He was content -if not happy- with himself. Content to stay in the background, hidden from any and all leaders or leadership opportunities.

He settled for less than his personal best. And he did even less.

Lifting the pop-top of a beer can was always enough exercise for him. And dieting? Well for all he knew Count Calories was some monarch in a far off country.

By settling for less, he didn’t flirt with the frustrations of failure or threaten his couch potato comfort.

In fact, being a little chunky gave him an excuse when he played his usual lousy game of tennis or golf or when he failed to win the bid or get the promotion.

He was like T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men:

“Shape without form,
shade without color.
Paralyzed force.
Gesture without motion.”

He was like the Beatles’s Nowhere Man:

“A real nowhere man,
living in his nowhere land,
making all his nowhere plans for nobody.
Doesn’t have a point of view.
Knows not where he’s going to.
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?”

But then he became a leader. With a vision.

He decided to add form—a muscular form- to his shape and color—a vibrant, lively brilliance- to his shade. He accepted personal responsibility. He renounced the status quo. He established a goal. He created a compelling plan that shaped the future. And he colored his present behavior to stay on track. One step at a time.

The newly-minted leader took his daily dose of exercise as if it were medicine that tasted so bad it had to be good. Continue reading →