Q: If your team is ready to go, do they know where they're going?

Everything's impossible until you actually do it.  
 
During WWII, Easy Company had a platoon leader named Lt. Dick Winters. 
 
One of his first missions involved leading a small group of men to take out a cluster of four German howitzers manned by a whole platoon on Utah Beach. Winters directed some to lay down cover fire, some to flank with grenades, others to move around a hedge - one man even perched in a tree. A complete success, the battle is taught at West Point as a textbook example of strategy.  
 
Great leadership is more than simple motivation.  It involves planning, delegation and creativity. In other words, strategy.  Motivation is great and necessary.  But strategy allows our teams to funnel their motivation into reasoned, definable actions.

Q: Is the intellect of your work grounded in your spirit?

Remember the movie Robocop?  While more a pop-culture than meaningful film, there's an interesting conflict with the main character.  After his transformation into Robocop, the character of Murphy finds himself in a moral conflict.  More machine than man, he's been programmed to follow a prime directive that serves his creators rather than the greater good.

However, the spirit of Murphy is still deep inside him.  His values and purposes were different once before.  Eventually, his spirit breaks through and he is able to combine his new programming (head) with his original values (spirit).  This is necessary for the heroic defeat of the villains.

While this example is lighthearted, the problem is real.  Increasing our own intellect and the competencies of our teams is great.  But, the purposes and values behind our work, the spirit, gives us our reason for being here in the first place.

Q: What breakthrough can you imagine and engineer for your life?

Today we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s  contributions to a free America -- a country that he guided in a new direction, with a new set of possibilities.  It was Dr. King who imagined America as a place where a person is judged by their character's content.
 
The power of Dr. King's personality is undeniable.  Even when people had trouble believing in the dream, they believed in Dr. King.  People certainly knew where he wanted to go, a new America with a new level of freedom for everyone.  And, the possibility would have seemed unattainable had he not consistently believed in it himself.
 
Dr. King imagined and engineered a breakthrough.

Q: What becomes possible when you connect to the real reasons you do what you do?

Leading to me means expanding the capacity of ourselves and others to create breakthrough results. To do that fully we engage in four areas: heads, hands, heart and spirit.

The spirit part is often missed or misunderstood. It's the reason we do what we do. When we leave the spirit out of what we do, we leave the reason for doing it out as well.

The FIFA 2011 Women's World Cup Soccer Final between the United States and Japan provided a wonderful example. Throughout the tournament we saw plenty of instances of athletes using their heads (strategy and decision-making), hands (tactics and execution), and hearts (teamwork and connectedness). But the Japanese squad, playing for something larger than themselves, a nation recently ravaged by a tsunami, nuclear meltdown and economic disaster, displayed their true spirit in the final minutes that seemed to elevate their play...all the way to the World Cup title.

Usually our reflections focus on things missing, where our reach exceeds our grasp. More prosperity, peace, health. More. Different. Better.

May I offer something better, a better question?   Try this one - what are you doing, today and every day, to express your gratitude for the blessings in your life?