I heard Jim Burns of Homeword talk earlier this year about being intentional in marriage. This led me to talk more about being an intentional leader, which I am now hearing more often from other leadership experts.

Why not consider giving a Thanksgiving gift this year by becoming more intentional in your personal relationships? If you do, you will find many of these habits will also help you in your professional career.

BIG IDEA: If your marriage(s) and/or relationships have not been the success you had expected, do not focus on failure. I believe in your potential, more than your past. You should too. So join me in exploring how you can improve your existing and future relationships.

1. Choose to live a high maintenance, intentional marriage. The rewards of a long-term marriage far outweigh the single life according to every study I've see. Similar benefits apply to long-term, fully engaged employees.

2. One starting point is to review your marriage or key work relationships:

• What is right?

• What is wrong? (Give each equal time.)

• What is missing?

• What is confusing?

3. BIG IDEA

: Here is the killer idea. Jim Burns recommends three separate meetings with your spouse to have an intentional marriage:

Business meeting

- discuss finances, problems with kids or other people, home repairs, schedules... all the stressful items

Spiritual meeting

- discuss what each person is learning (spiritually)

• What was each person's greatest joy?

• What was each person's greatest struggle?

• Affirm each other

• Each person shares a wish or a hope

• Each person shares a physical goal

Date night

just enjoy each other.

Have FUN

! Postpone and "business" discussions to the business meeting. As long as you diligently have a business meeting weekly this is not a problem. Jim and his wife have proven it for 25 years!

In business three meetings might be a 5-10 minute daily confirmation of key objectives; a weekly innovation meeting to consider how your team is performing and identify ways to improve; and a weekly meeting with each direct report to coach them on a specific soft skill or opportunity.

Sorry I can't dive deeper on this one, but I have limited space in this newsletter. If you have questions, send me an email. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Be an intentional leader.

Meeting Ideas

Intentional Leadership and Marriage is about strengthening your most important personal relationship and applying what you learn in business.

I suggest you share how this can impact people's marriages, but do not discuss it as a staff. Even if people want to discuss it, marriage is personal and those thoughts are not proper in a business environment.

Here are some ideas for discussion during your next staff meeting about how to be more intentional as leaders:

1. Start with the review questions above to consider how intentional your leadership is, or the leadership of each member in the meeting:

• What is right?

• What is wrong? (Give each equal time.)

• What is missing?

• What is confusing?

2. If we were to have three meetings or three types of meetings weekly with our key reports, what meetings would have the most impact on fully developing our natural strengths and achieving results that are meaningful?

3. What distraction is holding you back from achieving your absolute best?

What habit can you start developing today to eliminate that distraction?

4. What is the most significant way you could become more intentional on the job?

What results will occur when this happens?

5. What is the number one thing you will achieve intentionally in 2010? How?

Why is this important to you?