Practice & Play Your Position

Introduction

Leaders, we need to practice and play our position. In 2020, the definition of a “Leader” has changed so much. Everyone seems to call themselves a leader these days. How many times have you heard someone say “I’m not a leader”? Yet somehow people who consider themselves not a leader are leading entire teams! They are managing budgets and have reports on the org chart that report to them! I feel like the term leader needs to be defined again! Leaders don’t sit around and wait for things to happen. Leaders make things happen.

You don’t have to do it all.

Remember: you don’t have to do it all. You don’t have to be the lead and play every single position on your team.

You can play one role in a variety of ways, and that's perfectly fine! Don't worry about what other people are doing, or how they're playing their positions—just focus on the best way for YOU to play YOUR position.

You can’t do it all.

• You can’t do it all.

• Focus on what you can do.

• Focus on your strengths. Give up on the things you can’t do, or will never be able to do as well as someone else would have done them anyway, such as: coding for the website, building a house from scratch and doing all of the garden work yourself, making all of your own clothes out of organic cotton and vintage fabrics – just to mention a few examples.

• You can’t do it all alone; get help from others! Tribe up! Don't try to be perfect at everything yourself (we already know this is impossible) - instead ask others for help whenever necessary and delegate tasks when possible!

Just do your part!

It’s easy to get bogged down in all the things that might be holding you back from achieving your dreams. The list is long:

• You don’t have enough money to do what you want.

• You don’t have the right tools for the job.

• The market has changed, so now it's not a good time to start your business.

• Your spouse isn't supportive of your new idea/career path.

And on and on! But think about this: What if none of those obstacles are real? What if they're just excuses for not doing something great with our lives?

Know your purpose.

The Player's Pyramid

Knowing your purpose is a key first step in learning to play your position, because it helps you make better decisions and focus on what matters most. To be able to achieve this, you need to know what your purpose is at all times. The purpose of your life is not to get what you want. It's to become who you're capable of being. When you know your purpose, it will make all the difference in how you view and approach your life.

Know your position.

You should know your position in the organization, what your role is, and what your responsibilities are. You should know what goals you are supposed to achieve on a monthly basis as well as on a yearly basis. You also need to know the objectives for each year, quarter and month that help guide decision making at all levels of the company. Knowing priorities and keeping focused on them can help avoid distractions that may waste time and resources.

If you take time every day (or week) to ask yourself these questions: What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Who benefits from this work? Then you will have put in place some very important checks and balances before starting any task.

Next Steps

The next steps are to start looking at what your purpose is and what position you can play. There are several ways to go about this, but the most important thing is to be honest with yourself.

Ask yourself: “What do I love doing?”

The answer might be that you love writing code, or designing websites. Ask yourself: “What problems do people have that my company can solve?” The answer might be that people need help creating better websites or engaging with their audience in a new way. These two questions will give you some direction on where to go next and how your efforts will add value for others, allowing them to achieve their goals even faster than before.

Conclusion

Ultimately, we are called to steward the gifts and talents that God has given us. We need to learn to focus on our personal purpose, and operate within our position. Rather than trying to be and do everything, thinking you can do it all is a trap that can lead you into confusion, frustration and defeat.