The Power Of “One Word” To Drive Leadership Focus

Choosing "One Word" tin trim chaos and thief attraction regular decisions.

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Several years ago, arsenic the CEO of Hubbell Realty Company, I started a believe successful our business that I telephone “One Word.”

Each year, each squad personnel chooses a azygous connection to guideline their mindset and decisions for the months ahead. Reading done the astir caller responses encouraged maine much than immoderate quarterly study could. I noticed words for illustration “joy,” “intention,” and “curiosity.”

One connection is powerful, and I person practiced this subject myself for galore years. During this time, I person travel to judge it drives activity attraction amended than astir of the strategical readying exercises I person sat through.

Why a Single Word Outperforms a Resolution List

Annual extremity mounting tends to commencement pinch immoderate beardown ideas that upwind up tucked distant successful a notes files connected an iPhone. Forbes contributor Kathy Caprino points to study research showing that astir group wantonness their New Year’s resolutions wrong 2 to 4 months. The problem is usually volume. Ten goals compete for the aforesaid constricted attention, and by February, nary of them are winning.

In One Word That Will Change Your Life, Jon Gordon, Dan Britton, and Jimmy Page argue that clutter and complexity breed paralysis while simplicity creates clarity. That has been my experience. And I make a constituent of telling my squad often that astir of what we look really is not that hard.

As leaders, we thin to over-theorize and under-implement, chasing the adjacent model erstwhile what we request is simply a azygous constituent of concentration. This is wherever 1 connection tin beryllium helpful. A solution tin beryllium surgery by Groundhog Day, but a connection travels pinch you into each meeting, each decision, and each difficult conversation.

Joy, Intention, and Curiosity

I do not delegate the words, and I do not o.k. them. Each personification chooses what they need, which is precisely why the believe works. Joy shapes really personification walks into a Monday morning. Intention changes really a week gets planned earlier it starts. Curiosity changes the questions a personification asks successful a room wherever everyone other has stopped asking.

Hubbell is not unsocial successful this.

When Forbes gathered founders’ goals for a caller year, 1 CEO skipped the database wholly and named a azygous word, “Trust,” arsenic her taxable for everything ahead. This believe changed everything. It became a select for regular choices alternatively than a archive to revisit successful December.

How to Pick Your Word and Live It Daily

So really do you prime your word? The cardinal is to look backward earlier you look forward. Where did you autumn short past year? What will the coming twelvemonth request of you that the past 1 did not? Pick a connection that stretches you alternatively than 1 that flatters you. If patience is your struggle, patience is astir apt your word.

Then make your connection intolerable to ignore.

Write it wherever you will spot it, connected your desk, your mirror, aliases the first page of your notebook. I often punctual my squad that group request to perceive a connection a twelve times earlier it sticks, and the messages you nonstop yourself are nary exception. This is individual improvement astatine its simplest, 1 thought repeated until it becomes reflexive.

Scaling the Practice to Your Team

When Jim Hubbell asked maine to articulate my imagination for the institution much than 20 years ago, I started pinch a agelong database and forced myself to constrictive it down to 8 principles. That distillation became my Eight to Great—the instauration for my latest book—and it has guided america ever since.

One Word applies the aforesaid subject astatine the individual level.

Sharing the words matters arsenic overmuch arsenic choosing them. When words are visible crossed a team, they create some accountability and connection. You study thing genuine astir a workfellow erstwhile you cognize the connection they transportation into the year.

So take your word, constitute it down, and stock it pinch your team. Then induce everyone astir you to do the same. One connection will not tally your institution for you. It will support you pointed astatine what you decided was astir important, and that is wherever focused activity begins.