Always Do Your Best: Leadership Agreement #4

As with anything transformational or life-defining (think Ten Commandments) these agreements may seem simple at first but turn out to be much more challenging to actually LIVE! Being impeccable with your word, not taking anything personally and never making assumptions is certainly something to aspire to. Some days easier to embody than others. Now we come to agreement number four, which should be the easiest:

Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

But what does your "best" look like and do you really know when you are performing at your highest level? This agreement requires a high level of self awareness and the necessity to "check in" with yourself often to ask "am I giving my best effort right now?". I think it also speaks to the necessary balance we all seek. Because we are not just one role we have to look at how each of our obligations is affecting others and discern if we are creating anything at our highest level or are we just making everything mediocre?

It might be worthwhile to sit and consider what our best looks like. What does it feel like when we are giving our best as a parent, colleague, leader, boss, teammate, spouse, student? We should try to develop an understanding of what a level of excellence is for us personally so that we aren't constantly comparing our effort to those around us. It might mean being more conscious of what we agree to do knowing that one more thing could be detrimental to the other commitments we've made. Or maybe that extra thing you are considering will bring you some skills that will move you towards excellence in those other areas. Weigh carefully.