I often reflect on the wisdom imparted to me during my adolescent years and recently decided that there were two really important maxims that my dad certainly lived by and find that I now live by:

“Never, never give up”

“ALWAYS do your best”

Along the way I developed my own list of things that I found to be important and valuable, both to me and to others. It is often difficult as a woman to develop the competence and confidence to get things done through others, to tell our story, and to become fearless. I shared them with my daughter as she took over as the president of my company when I retired, and I’d like to share them with you.

• Be connected, and connect others
• Be confident, never worried that failure might happen. It will.
• Be courageous
• Be cordial; everyone likes to feel better by having spoken with you
• Be compassionate; caring about others returns 100-fold
• Be clear. As the late Dr. Stephen Covey said, “seek first to understand, then to be understood”
• Be creative; it always conquers the impossible
• Be convicted; let people know what you stand for and never give in to what you don’t
• Be consistent. Nothing is as fair as consistency or as predictable as its results.
• Be constant. There’s no off-duty for servant leaders.

Remember that ‘doing’ is always easy; it is ‘being’ that takes great care and steady development.

Building leadership capacity is a large part of what we help you do in TIAW. Take the opportunity now to qualify as globally board-ready and join the GBRW LinkedIn group. From there, all you have to do is ‘be’ the leader you are.

Lisa Kaiser Hickey

President, TIAW