When I’m helping clients through difficulties, whether it’s internal or external challenges, there’s usually a series of consecutive steps we take together. I call it the Leading Spirit Success Cycle, for obvious reasons. What this cycle represents is the idea that success can happen in any situation; it’s always possible to create something new and different no matter how big the mess.

There’s no single entry point into this circle, and no two clients start in exactly the same place. It’s up to me as a coach to listen and up to the client to articulate their situation and feelings in order to properly place them inside one of the six steps. Once they’re placed, off we go …

The key is understanding it’s a continuous creative process for most leaders. They need to know where they are and what they need to move forward.

See if you can take a step back, view yourself inside your current situation and place yourself on one of the following Leading Spirit Success Cycle steps. Subsequent posts will go into each step in great detail, so you’ll know what to do once your “location” is identified.

1. Engage emotional intelligence – It’s time to access and use emotional intelligence, grieve disappointment, learn from emotions and ventilate anger. My clients use the power of emotions to motivate change and help staff deal with the emotional impact of recent events. That’s the job of a leader.

2. Engage systems intelligence – Become aware of all the systemic parts: human, programmatic, procedural, structural. Step back and consider the “bigger picture” over distance, time and populations. When leaders see how all the parts fit together, they can see the possibilities. There is opportunity in every situation. What is it in this one?

3. Vision – Which new possibility has the most potential for success? What does the ideal outcome look like in the greatest detail imaginable? Courageous leaders are willing to suspend disbelief and engage all their senses in this exploratory pursuit.

4. Plan – I help my clients take that vision—their desired end result—and work backward to “now” with milestones in mind that will lead to the desired result. And to those milestones, we attach a concrete time frame, action plan, budget and other necessary details.

5. Execution — It’s time to put plans into action, and I hold my client accountable to their plans. Modifications will be needed along the way, in response to changing circumstances. Leaders build relationships with allies and involve others who will play key roles.

6. The Cycle – I help leaders to engage their intuition to instinctively know it’s time to look for that next change that’s wanting to happen … or to look at the change that’s already happening whether they like it or not. This could be at home, work, with friends, in community or some combination of them all. Change is a continual process, so leaders must become flexible and skillful with change in order to work with it and influence the outcome. Once a leader recognizes what that “next change” is, it’s time to return and Engage Emotional Intelligence (Step 1).

That’s the process in a nutshell. Where are you? Think about it so you can fully benefit from the posts that follow.