Thinking of an important person in your life—someone who matters to you and who you believe has a stake in your future—and imagining how he or she would answer the question, “What are the main things you want or need from me?” can help to strengthen your skill in:

 
 
 
 
 
Other Questions Of This Category

Identifying three or four significant events in your life that taught you something about yourself or shaped the person you are, identifying the tension in each experience and how you dealt with it…

Finding someone you can make a commitment to about reaching a goal and then asking that person to regularly inquire about your progress, and offering to do the same for him or her, can help to…

Keeping a journal or log for a few days of any hypotheses that occur to you for new ways of getting things done, choosing one such idea to implement, and thinking about the assumptions about the way…

Thinking of a skill you could teach to someone and offering to do so, or telling someone about a recent accomplishment and what you had to learn in order to succeed, serves to create opportunities for…

Thinking expansively about how a task you do contributes to the well-being of others, reflecting on the meaning of what you do, and recognizing how even mundane tasks hold meaning can inspire you to…

Listing the names of the three to five people who matter most to you in each domain of your life, describing one thing that you can do to provide some kind of help for some or all of these people or…

Selecting a one-hour time slot in which you will not use any technology—no internet, no smartphone, no electronic connectivity—and then considering how both you and others were affected by this…

By identifying a goal that either directly or indirectly benefits at least one other person, discovering how your efforts might help them, and then committing to providing that help, you can…

Identifying the important roles you play in each area of your life, thinking about the type of person you wish to become in each of those roles, and then identifying the one or two main features of…

As the founder of the Julie Foudy Sports Leadership Academy and a spokesperson for Global Girl Media, Julie Foudy works to empower young women and teach them lessons on leadership, volunteerism, and…

When Obama stated in an interview, “What I do in my life defines me. A career is one of the many things I do in my life. I am a mother first,” and then followed this up by making public choices in…

Creating visual images of the connections among different strands of an idea in ways that allow you to look at a large amount of information about a subject on one page in a holistic way in order to…

Picking a few important stakeholders—people you believe are important to your future—from different areas of your life and asking them to describe you briefly in order to discover how others see you…

Transferring skills or talents from one area of your life to another by first identifying your talents and then applying them in new areas, thereby enhancing the initial competency and enabling you to…

When Tom Tierney, at the peak of his powers as CEO, chose to leave in the prime of his career and launch a small non-profit start-up he demonstrated the skill of: