For more than two years Scott Fay has been my coach, mentor, and most importantly, my friend. When I was trying to separate who I was from what I did, and come up with a plan for the rest of my life, Scott believed in me and pushed me in the right direction.
Although the official release of Scott’s first book, Discover Your Sweet Spot – The 7 Steps to Create a Life of Success and Significance, is not scheduled until the first of the year, I have had the opportunity to be included in a group to receive an early release of the book.
Yes, this is another book that focuses a lot on leadership, but Scott provides 7 steps that will guide you along a path to success and significance in whatever lane you are travelling.
Scott is the Vice President of the John Maxwell Team and one of the team mentors. A very successful businessman in the Landscaping business, Scott parallels the ideas of DESIGN, BUILD and MAINTAIN into whatever environment we find ourselves.
This will be the first of three posts taking us through the 7 steps that will teach us how to Design, Build and Maintain a life of success and significance.
PHASE 1: DESIGN YOUR LEADERSHIP ENVIRONMENT
STEP 1 – Discover Your Sweet Spot – Design with the End in Mind
For the last 30 years I have spent countless hours reviewing construction drawings. Without fail, the better the design, the better the project and more importantly, the fewer problems along the way.
It has been right in front of me most of my life and I never got it, not until Scott showed me how just as a good design can produce a great project, it can produce the same in your life or leadership ability as well.
That design, when done correctly, will land in your Sweet Spot. Scott breaks down your sweet spot like this; “The convergence of three things: Purpose, Passion, and Plan.”
- Purpose is who you are designed to be.
- Passion is what you love to do.
- Plan is the strategic convergence of being and doing.
As Scott puts it; “Living and working from our Sweet Spot results from intentional design, not accidental disorder.” I love that! Are you living by design or disorder?
STEP 2 – Sweat the Small Stuff – The Devils are in the Design
This is a great step. Scott describes the importance of ALL the details, especially the small ones because they really represent the minor adjustments that can make a major difference.
These “Design Devils” come in many different forms and again pulling from his years in the landscape business Scott gives us the infamous five that seem to show up the most often.
POOR DRAINAGE – The people that we bring into our personal or professional life need to be intentional and not accidental. The people you surround yourself with are going to create the environment in which you wish to grow. this will determine the flow of your life. How conducive is your environment to success?
CONTEXT CONFUSION – When you add something to your life, a relationship, a new toy, a bigger house and so on, have you really considered how critical it is to your plan or purpose? It’s kind of like the shiny squirrel syndrome – we get attracted to something because it looks good, but in reality it may not serve our overall design.
HIGH TRAFFIC – There are clearly areas of our life that receive more traffic than others such as our health. Face it, everything we do consumes our energy. If the design does not allow us to refuel, eventually we will run out and … well, you fill in the blank.
AESTHETIC MISFIT – Teamwork makes the dream work, right? We have got to surround ourselves with those that as Scott puts it; “believe like we believe, but who think different thoughts.” If you don’t have a shared value system and seek the same desired outcome, it simply won’t work.
SHORT-SIGHTED PLAN – We have to design with the end in mind. Being short-sighted will result in one of two things:
- We assume something will stay the same when, really, it’s designed to change. Or
- We assume something will change when, really, it’s designed to stay the same.
I have reviewed numerous books and many have had a specific topic or targeted audience. Discover Your Sweet Spot is for everyone. We all have a Sweet Spot, but very few are living in it. If you want to get there, do yourself a favor and pre-order this book.
In the mean time, I leave you with these three questions from John Maxwell referenced by Scott in the book:
- What is required of me?
- What yields the highest return?
- What creates the greatest reward?
When you discover the same answer to all three of these questions, you have Discovered Your Sweet Spot!
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Barry Smith 9/11/13 photo courtesy of Scott M Fay © Building What Matters 2013
