I LOVE the holidays. This year is even more special since my husband and I added the birth of our first child into November. So we got to celebrate his birth, then on to Thanksgiving, my birthday, and then on to Christmas and soon we’ll have New Year’s! I just wonder how January first is going to feel when we don’t have an impending holiday on the horizon until Valentine’s Day... There’s one tradition over Christmas that I treasure, my parents have always given us a brand new ornament each year we’ve been alive. At this point our tree is about to fall over from the ornament overload, but it’s such a special sight as you stroll around it looking at old family pictures, ornaments telling a story from year to year. That tree has been transformed from year to year, and it pours out the story/legacy of our family.
On a related note, it’s always at this time of year that I’m now conditioned to do a little reflection. At heart I’m a manager, and very little excites me like seeing growth and development in the efforts of those I get to manage. It’s so fulfilling to me to walk through a list of core competencies and determine where strengths and opportunities exist and then make a plan to get to the next level. If I didn’t do this for myself, I wouldn’t be good at doing this for other people either, so at the end of the year when I’m in reflection mode, and reenergizing for the next great year of challenges, I like to evaluate what it’s going to take to do a better job than I did the year before. I STRONLY encourage this practice in leaders to be taken periodically – even if you got just 5% better at your job per year, by the end of 5 years you’d be 25% better as a leader than you were before, and this will impact you personally, it impacts your team, and it impacts your company. I do this for my personal priorities and my business efforts, and it has never been a waste of time.
So let’s carry this over into the role of a sponsorship professional. Here’s a few examples of some questions to ask yourself:
1- How does sponsorship touch my organization and what specific role do I play in the mix in terms of expectations?
2- Did I meet the expectations? Where did I perform the best and where could I improve?
3- What am I specifically going to do to see change in the area I want to see improved?
4- What is the root cause of my greatest successes?
5- What are my specific goals for next year, and what action plan should I have in place to see that happen?
6- How have I impacted the team I work with? How are they better at their jobs because of me?
Now, most of those questions have to do with your own growth and development as a professional, but if you’re doing your job right in the sponsorship world, you really should be impacting people. Or I should say, you ARE impacting people, it’s a matter of how. I had a great superior tell me once that if I were to leave a company and it were to fall apart, I’m not doing my job. Your legacy, the touch you leave on a sponsorship portfolio, your vendors, the team you activate with, the partners you work with; they all get something out of their interaction with you. So, what is it? Do you motivate and inspire? Can you see growth in the talent of your team? Does your sponsor partner see more value out of associating with your property as a result of your leadership? Why or why not? Your legacy is as good as a resume, it points out why you are valuable and why you would be an asset. And you don’t necessarily need a resume polished when you’re looking for work, you need it polished to support your current value with some integrity. So what does your tree full of ornaments from year to year say about you? What legacy are you leaving?
So as you’re munching on turkey sandwich leftovers or considering where you’ll be celebrating the New Year, start thinking of the legacy you’re creating/leaving, and what you’re going to do to build on that. And get SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timebound).
From all of us at SponsorPark to you – HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! I have a feeling 2011 is going to be a good year…