Last week, I attended the annual convention for the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS) in Montreal QC. In addition to being a proud member of this professional association, I also sit on their National Board where I head up the Branding and Visibility portfolio. Much to my surprise and absolute delight, I received a great honour at the awards ceremony on closing night — the highly-coveted President’s Award was given to my committee for some key initiatives we undertook this past year! As hard as it might be for many of you to believe, this tribute left me completely speechless! 🙂 The truth is I had absolutely no idea that our work was so highly-regarded. I just thought that we were doing what we were supposed to do!
Since then, after several conversations with our President and other key players, I think I’ve finally figured it out. Without even realizing how significant and instrumental it was to our ultimate success, I made a key decision early in the year. I went out to our membership of over 450 professional speakers, each one a specialist in their area of expertise, and sought out the four best experts I could find in the fields of marketing and branding — a business marketing expert, a branding expert, a former marketing executive and a university marketing professor — and using my superior persuasive powers :), I convinced them to join my committee. And you know what? It’s totally amazing what a group of people can do when they put their minds and talents to work for the collective good. As a team, bringing a variety of talents and skills together, we made great strides in moving our association forward. And now I get it — that’s exactly why our President recognized us with this distinction.
Good leadership means recognizing the importance of getting the right mix of talent and skills together in order to accomplish a goal. I just love it when I’m a good leader without even thinking about it!! What about you? Have you put this leadership principle to work yet?