Get People On Board
As you sketch out ideas for your reinvention strategy, you’ll want a crackerjack team to help you launch it. That is why you need a Reinvention Board. It is a handpicked coterie of advisors, each of whom has a particular skill or field of knowledge, all of whom have your best interests at heart.
Even contestants on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” are allowed to call a “lifeline” when they’re stumped; this group is your lifeline.
Like a traditional board of directors, this advisory group helps you brainstorm, facilitates your development, connects you with key people and serves as an impartial sounding board. Its members are there to offer guidance and advice, wisdom and opinion; they can calm you down or stir you up as necessary.
One important point: Your board is there to help you analyze and vet your plans, not to address the big questions of your life. If you go to them with a “Should I . . . ?” question (“Should I turn down this highly prestigious job with a fat paycheck and move to Belize to become a dive instructor?”), they will help you analyze the pros and cons (“I have to admit, Belize is nice this time of year . . .”). But the yes or no decision is ultimately yours, and for that, you’ll have to use what you learned in Law 2 (Body) to tune in and see what your body says about which is the right path for you.
Your Reinvention Board can be more of a concept than an actual group that meets once a month. They don’t each have to know the other members or be located in the same place. They’re just the people you know you can call (or take to lunch) when you need help hashing out the details of your reinvention.
You’ll want your board members to be successful enough and experienced enough to offer sound counsel. Ideally, they should have been through ups and downs of their own and lived to tell the tale.
The members of your board should all be helpful individuals who are rooting for you yet who are willing (and brave enough) to give you the unvarnished truth, whether or not you take it well.
They’re not afraid to tell you who you are.
They keep you honest.
Coaching Action Steps
Click on this link to download the Assembling Your Reinvention Board Action Guide for tips and exercises to help you to Assemble your Team.
