To be a great leader, we need to be self-aware. We need to understand how we are doing personally, and professionally both in the short and long term. One useful tool can be to perform an audit of our lives. These audits allow us to have a good picture of where we are succeeding and where we might have room for growth. While audits might sound like time consuming activities, many can be done quite quickly, and provide valuable insight.
Goal Audits
This is a great season to sit down and do a goal audit. This allows us to get a big picture view of what our focus was and determine if any of our goals need to be changed for the new year. The clearer we are on our goals the easier it is to foster relationships and lead people well. There are several ways we can do such an audit. We might simply write down what our goals for the past year were, our major accomplishments on each goal, and what challenges we faced. Once we have audited our current goals, we will be in a good position to choose our goals for the next period in our personal or professional lives.
Time Audits
Time audits help us understand exactly what we are spending our time on. Many of us find that our time is a limited resource, but we do not have a good idea where all our time goes. Good time management means understanding our own relationships with time. A time audit can look like recording everything we have spent time on over a 24-hour period.
A time audit can also help remind us that we must make time to take care of ourselves by eating, sleeping, relaxing, etc. By looking at where we spend our time over the course of a day we could see if we spent all day on emails and need to create a system where we only check our email at certain times throughout the day, or if our periods of flow kept being interrupted by meetings and we need to make sure to only schedule meetings during certain periods of the day.
Service Audits
It is also important to understand if there are services that can help us reach our goals faster. For example, if we have a wide range of shipping needs we might perform an UPS audit in order to make sure there are no discrepancies and that we are getting the best shipping rates possible. Or if we deal with marketing, we might do a social media audit to understand where exactly we are marketing and if those channels are the best use of our time and energy. We may even find that by doing other audits such as a goal or time audit we find that there are services that could be useful to us such as hiring one to help plan an event or help do a product launch. No matter what type of services we use, doing an audit can be useful and help us make sure all the services we use align us with our goals.
Personal Audits
As leaders we can get so wrapped up in our work that we forget to check in with ourselves regularly. The best leaders are aware of exactly how much they can do, and when they are pushing themselves too hard. If we do not pause to audit our health, wellness, personal connections, and passion projects we can burn out. To be an amazing leader, it is important that we make sure that we take care of ourselves. There is a classic saying that an empty cup cannot fill others.
We cannot lead well and help others reach their full potential if we struggle to get enough sleep, if we have a poor diet, or if we are so stressed, we struggle to think clearly. Personal audits are important because they help us know how we are doing and spot issues when they can still be easily changed. Audits are power tools which can help us get a clear picture about how we are doing personally and professionally. Understanding where we are can help us be better leaders to others.