NAPMA member and first-time contributor Chris Millares has authored a Black Belt Management Report that includes both action and motivation to drive you toward your goals, your vision. “A New Year: Taking Action Toward Vision” provides action in the form of a four-step process that can help you improve the professionalism and performance of your school, students, staff—AND you.

According to Mr. Millares (and a considerable amount of research) simply writing one’s goals on a sheet paper is the first step toward a successful realization of one’s vision. It’s the next three steps in the process that put action behind your goals.

Although motivation should come naturally to martial arts professionals, Mr. Millares suggests a practical motivational tip that can become an excellent exercise for your students. Once you write your goals on a sheet of paper, make copies and put them in various places where you must see them everyday. Making your goals part of your active life may just help you take action on your vision.

The fourth installment of NAPMA’s Edge Mixed Martial Arts Program is The Stand-Up Game: Leg Kicks, which is the featured segment on the NAPMA Innovations DVD. That content is provided in outline form in NAPMA NOW. There are four action-packed leg-kick drills in this month’s lesson. All of them will generate more excitement in your classroom and more focus on the benefits of mixed martial arts.

In this month’s G.O.L.D. Team Leadership Report, “The 7-Day Leadership Team Challenge,” Tom Callos asks you and your leadership team to be examples of excellence for your students, not just as teachers, but also as students. When you demonstrate your willingness to face this challenge and succeed, it will be obvious to your students that you want them both “to do as I say” and “do as I do.”

Often, the best motivation for your students is for them to witness and be influenced by highly motivated instructors and leadership team members. Mr. Callos has selected a variety of challenges that include physical fitness, nutrition, mental exercise and service.

He also explains why he selected these challenges and relates them to the concept of leadership to help you emphasize their importance to your G.O.L.D. Team members.

Words of the Week author Solomon Brenner is also focused on leadership this month, as that is the word for this month’s report. Leadership is one of those concepts, one of those character qualities, that you can’t stress too much or too often with your students.

These four lessons provide you with new approaches to this topic. First, you can explain that leadership is a process of learning and growing, not something with which one is born. Second, leadership is a matter of doing the right things. Leaders lead followers to shared goals because those goals have an honest purpose.

Third, leaders must learn how to balance realism with optimism, or hope. The fourth lesson states that leadership is really a hollow character trait unless your acts of leadership are driven by a vision.

These lessons in leadership are so compelling that you should be able to adapt them easily for use with your G.O.L.D. Leadership Team, as well.