One of my professional passions is working with parents and childcare providers on how to model and teach patience skills to children. I speak to them about the three elements of patience: empathy, mindfulness and self-leadership.

Self-leadership, I explain, is about being comfortable enough in your own skin that you can focus on being of service to others every day. If you are too wrapped up in your own “stuff,” you won’t have the mental energy to devote to leadership.

Self-leadership has two aspects: modeling and guidance. You can be a leader by example and you can be a leader by managing people well. For those of you who don’t manage people yet, I’m going to focus more on modeling leadership traits.

A good leader is powerful, but not in the traditional sense of exerting his or her will on others. A leader sets the expectations and builds a culture around those expectations that are clear and easy for others to follow. A good leader does not look over everyone’s shoulder to make sure that things get done because the expectations have been clearly established. The team also trusts that the leader is competent and will support them in a crisis.

If you can imagine a famous conductor of an orchestra, you will see strong leadership in action. The conductor might look as though she is just waving her arms around at the musicians while the musicians do their thing. But a talented conductor does more than simply mark time and beats on the podium. She has the impulse of will to draw a peak performance from the musicians through her preparation, energy, enthusiasm and conducting skills. The musicians learn to trust the conductor to cue them on entrances and cut-offs, rhythms, tempos and dynamics.

To translate self-leadership and impulse of will to your career today, set the intention each day to be of service to others—your colleagues as well as clients. When you say that you are going to do something, follow through in a timely manner to build a sense of trust. Acknowledge and draw out the strengths of the people around you by relying on those strengths in a project.

When something goes wrong or doesn’t meet expectations, leaders also take responsibility. There aren’t fingers pointed or excuses. A true leader sees his responsibility in the situation and is willing to improve and move forward.

Question: How can you take on self-leadership in your career?

Ephemeralization isn’t the winning word in this year’s National Spelling Bee or how I won Scrabble last weekend, but it is a concept relevant to business as much today as it was when it was coined decades ago.

Recently I attended the Winning is Everything conference in Las Vegas. I sat in on a CEO panel discussion where Steve Samek, CEO of UHY Advisors, tax and business consultants, talked about ephemeralization. His peers snickered, thought he made the word up and awaited his definition. He described ephemeralization as “doing more with less.”

Dictionary.com doesn’t even have a definition of the word so I looked it up on Wikipedia. To summarize, ephemeralization is a term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller, an American visionary. It refers to the ability of people to use technological advances to continuously do more with less. Think sending an email blast in comparison to handwriting 50 letters.

Because UHY is a newer firm with limited resources, Steve described how they took one marketing campaign and used it to grow their business through an integrated marketing approach; a great example of ephemeralization. Of course, I was asking myself how I could relay this concept in a blog which young CPAs, attorneys and financial representatives could grasp and then implement in their own firms.

Let’s first revisit the definition, “Using technology to do more with less” or let’s just think about it as accomplishing more with less. At your level within your organization, growing your power through marketing, even with limited resources and control, is still possible and definitely beneficial. Consider these five effective marketing ideas which can help you not only “power-up” but use ephemeralization. The ideas are pretty basic but it’s taking them a step further using technology that really makes a difference.

1. Public Relations - Write an article for your client newsletter, association newsletter or local business publication. Once it’s written, post it on your website or send it via email to your firm’s clients, referral sources and prospects.

2. Take referral sources out for coffee. Ask about them, the industry trends they see and learn how they can be a resource for you and your clients. Then tell them about yourself and what type of clients you are looking for and decide how you can best work together. Put the information in your contact database when you get back to the office and commit to following up with them on a regular basis.

3. Come up with cross-selling ideas for the clients you work on. Use the trends that are happening within their industries and determine how you/your firm can make their lives easier. Once you’ve come up with some ideas, meet with your managers/supervisor and tell them your suggestions, then design a plan for implementation.

4. Network and meet new people. Take some time to research organizations that you can join which can be of benefit to you. If you don’t like general networking, get involved in an industry association or a charity that you feel a lot of passion for or try an on-line networking group such as LinkedIn.

5. Offer to help recruit talent. This is huge! Especially in today’s market. Tell people why you love what you do and what is great about your organization or firm. If they have a formal recruiting process, such as on campus college interviews, offer to go. Encourage your marketing and HR department to update the careers section of the website – include videos of staff talking about the culture at the firm.

These are just a few suggestions but you get the idea. Look for ways to produce results using even less resources – progressively accomplishing more with less.

Question: What are some ways you can find within your firm to use ephemeralization?