A New Year's Challenge for Your Leadership Growth. I dare you to...

Hey leaders, I got one for ya. I challenge every leader reading this right now to take this personal growth challenge in 2011. I call it a "Thinker Saturation."

Here's what it is:

When you find an author, leader or communicator that you admire in some area (finance, leadership, marketing, team-building, etc.) make a decision to "saturate" yourself in how they think for 3 months.
For an entire quarter of your year, dunk yourself in everything that leader writes, says, blogs, records, or tweets.

This information is so easily available on the internet and costs next to nothing to acquire.

Over time, you'll start to pick up on themes in how they think, how they make decisions, etc. You'll also pick up themes of how you listen to them.

A Real-Time Illustration:

I did this recently with Author and Thought-Leader, Seth Godin. (SethGodin.com) For several years now, I've really admired the thoughts & writings of Seth Godin. Seth is what I consider to be the premiere mind in the marketing world today. Brilliant.

So, for 3 months, I decided to saturate myself in how Seth thinks. I did a google search for "Free Seth Godin Audio" and then spent an hour downloading every podcast and interview I could find, putting them in a file on my iTunes that sync's to my iPod.

Then, for the next 90 days, whenever I would work out, or was in the car, I listened to those audios. I'll end up listening to each one 2 or 3 times. Sure, it is redundant, but repetition is a phenomenal teacher.

In addition to listening to Seth, I subscribed to his blog and read or re-read several of his key books. After 90 days, here's what I learned:

1.  How Seth processes information for decision making.

2.  How Seth sees ideas everywhere.

3.  Seth Godin is Courageous. The main reason I love Seth Godin is because he is courageous. He breaks all the rules & succeeds at it very well! I need more influencers in my life who do that!

Now It's Your Turn:

So, here's the challenge... pick 4 thought-leaders and saturate yourself in each one for 90 days next year. I'll even give you the homework for the first one (if you want to use Seth Godin) click here. That's all the audios I downloaded in an hour.

Imagine what your personal leadership growth could look like a year from today if you saturated yourself in 4 premiere thought leaders this year.

I dare you to take the challenge. It could be the most valuable decision you make this year.

Dimension #2: The Thinker

The 2nd Dimension of the Entrepreneurial Personality as described in Michael Gerber's book, Awakening the Entrepreneur Within is: The Thinker.

Michael says that the Thinker is the "HOW" behind the "WHAT" of the Dreamer. In my experience, it really is true that every Entrepreneur must have some Thinker in them as well as a healthy dose of Dreamer.

At some point in the vision of your start up, a leader has to cross a line in their mind to "Getting Stuff Done." I have met many leaders who have been so in love with the vision of their new organization that they have completely forgotten about the work that needs to be done.

There is a delicate balance in this b/c to the true Dreamer, actually thinking and working kind of stinks. So permission has to be granted in the Entrepreneur to float back and forth between Dreaming and Thinking about your Vision.

In addition to being a Dreamer, I am a Strategic Thinker as well. I enjoy the discipline of drilling down and finding how all the puzzle pieces will fit together. But I must admit that too much Strategic thinking and not enough Dreaming wears me out.

No dream ever becomes a reality without a lot of time spent by the Entrepreneur in the Thinking Dimension.

? How comfortable are you transitioning from the Dreamer mindset to the Thinker Mindset of your vision? ? How willing are you to get your hands dirty in the Thinker Dimension of your Vision?

Tomorrow is the 3rd Dimension. This is one of my favorites...

Matt