---

I think most of us would agree that effective leadership comes with its share of challenges. And I think we’d also agree that our overall leadership success often hinges on whether or not we find success in our daily agenda. Leadership mentoring helps aspiring and seasoned leaders alike navigate their daily agenda and find team success. Leadership mentoring can be an invaluable tool in overcoming these challenges.

I’ll admit, I sometimes struggle to stay focused on the present. Through leadership mentoring, I have learned that I tend to lean too far forward into the future, or get caught looking back. Either way, when my attention is pulled away from today, I miss the opportunity to find success in it.

Leadership Self-Reflection

How often do you find success in your day? Is it the norm, or the exception? So far, how’s today going for you? Has it been a win, or does it feel like a miss? And how do you even measure that? Is it by how many items you cross off your to-do list—or by whether you’ve made a meaningful impact on someone? If you’re anything like me, your sense of success can swing from one day to the next. Leadership mentoring often highlights the unexpected obstacles—some within our control, others not—that tend to throw us off.

Think about a current problem you’re facing. Maybe it’s on your team, or maybe it’s at home. Maybe it keeps coming back, no matter how you try to fix it. On the surface, it might look like a quality issue or a people issue. But more often than not, it’s a systems issue where leadership mentoring could assist.

I was recently reading something by Craig Groeschel, who said, “As leaders, we tend to blame people for our problems when the real problem is the systems.” Whether we realize it or not, we all have systems. Some work well. Others are broken. And sometimes, we don’t even realize we have them. But we do.

Maybe your day starts with checking email, followed by putting out fires, only to end feeling stressed and wondering what you actually accomplished. That’s a system developed unintentionally.

In Conclusion…

Whether we design them intentionally or they form by default, systems shape our agenda. They’re either things we’ve carefully created or routines we’ve slowly come to tolerate. If you want more success in your day, take a hard look at the systems guiding it. If you want better outcomes, build a better system through structured leadership mentoring.

In the book Today Matters by John Maxwell, he reminds us that when success feels out of reach, it’s tempting to give up—or go hunting for that elusive magic bullet. But as you and I both know, great leaders are built like great companies: bit-by-bit, step-by-step, little-by-little.

Until next time—lead empowered, and keep fighting for the highest possible good of others.

“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” — Theodore Roosevelt

Sources:
Maxwell, John C. Today Matters: 12 Daily Practices to Guarantee Tomorrow’s Success. Center Street Press, 2004.
Groeschel, Craig. Six Steps to Your Best Leadership. Life.Church, 2019.

You may reprint this post in your own print or electronic newsletter, but please include the following: “Reprinted with permission from the Lead Empowered Blog: For a free subscription, go to http://www.LeadEmpowered.com. Copyright 2025 Nathan R Mitchell – Lead Empowered.”

---

Looking to increase your self-awareness and have a better understanding of your leadership behaviors and tendencies? Take the FREE 5 Voices Assessment.