Lead Yourself

Watch the episode here:

• All great things are done with a team
• You have to define what success looks like
• Create your own vision for yourself
• Get the strategy of that vision
• Set the milestones on how to get there
• Slow down, take your time
• Good leadership starts with leading yourself

What’s shakin’, hey, I’m Rick Jordan. Today we’re going all in. We’re talking about a leadership thing that is really about management. And I’m gonna give you some ways today some things that you might not have thought about before, because going into some things, whether it’s, you just started a new business, and you’re actually going to be bringing on some new team members right now, maybe your first employee, maybe your second, maybe you’re on your fifth, maybe you’re on your 25th. Or maybe you’re working a job, and you just got promoted to a leadership position, a leadership role. First off, congratulations on both of those events, you congratulations on both of those, because it’s tough either way, the first time you get into anything like that, if you started a business, or if you just got promoted to a leadership role. Welcome to the freak show. I’m excited for you because you’re about to learn a lot of things. And I’m also excited for you because you’re also about to fail at a lot of things too. And failure leads to learning. But when I say failure, 

I’m really talking about temporary defeats. And I want you, I’ve talked about that in the past, the difference between failure and temporary defeats, but these things that you’re about to go through, or maybe that you are going through right now in leading people. Hopefully, they will be temporary defeats for you, and you won’t just quit, you won’t just say you know what put me back in a regular role, if you just got promoted to that, to where I’m not a leader, hopefully, you won’t shut down your business or fire all your people just because you think that it’s too much for you. Or you think that all people are stupid, right? That nobody gets it, I’m going to tell you some reasons why they’re not getting it today. And also give you some things to do some very specific applicable things to start with. And I’ve heard people do this. I’ve talked with entrepreneurs, the right ones that I’ve coached as well, you know, and it was much easier when it was just me. Well, yeah, but you were also a lot smaller. And it’s impossible to produce the amount of wealth that you want to create for yourself, as an entrepreneur, when it is just you, it’s tough that way, all great things are accomplished with a Team period. And then if you just got promoted to a management role, who knows, maybe you’ve been in management for a while nobody ever taught you these things. 

My management started when I was very, very, very young. I was in McDonald’s actually. And I was promoted to assistant manager when I was just 16 years old, almost 17 years old. And I couldn’t even close the store. Same thing with RadioShack, right, I couldn’t even close the store because I was underage with insurance and everything. But I got, I got some insight in probably to some of the worst things of management. And some of the best things about management very, very early on in my life. Even in RadioShack, when I worked there, I was the youngest store manager at the time, it was just a couple of days after my 18th birthday had already gone through their store manager training program. And mind you the store manager training program was nothing actually about leading people and have nothing to do about leading people. And this is where a lot of corporations freaking mess up screw up because they don’t teach you leadership. They only teach you their SOPs. And what’s important to them for success, they don’t teach you how to actually lead people, how to enroll them, how to get them on the page of everything else, because they just expect you to be the one that magically puts us all in place. And then if you succeed, awesome, you’re a good manager, right? If your numbers are right, if you fail, you’re crap. But they never actually teach you to really how to lead people, the human side of this stuff. And I’m going to give you some of those ways today. 

So we’re going to go through these, the biggest thing is a leader. This is the first one right, right here is even if you’re working for somebody else, even if you just got promoted to the role, or you’re a manager somewhere for somebody, you’re not the entrepreneur, the boss, the man or the woman in the organization, but you’re somebody that’s there, you’re somebody that’s in leadership, regardless of anything else, even if you’re not the top dog, you still for the first thing have to create the vision. Okay, you have to define for yourself what success looks like. And then after you do that, this is going to take a little bit of time because even like what I was explaining how I was put through management training programs, not leadership, training programs, management training programs at different companies I worked with all those are is just to teach you what the company wants for success, right? But you have to define what success looks like from the human aspect. Right? They may give you what success for the company looks like or if you’re the entrepreneur, you may have a vision in mind a dream in mind that says maybe it’s a number right when I’m making x amount of dollars. That’s success for me in my business. But still, Whatever that is, you have to define what success looks like. And then the next step is to translate that into specific goals.

This is all part of creating the vision, the first, first number one thing to do here, creating the vision means first defining what success looks like. And then translating it into very specific goals. Those could be milestones, those, those could be KPIs, those could be different metrics that you’re measuring, they could be, you know, a number of orders reaching in a month, or then down to a day when you start to really take off. Or it could be putting some kind of new strategy in place, you know, a path forward or completing a project. If you’re working for somebody else, that might be what success looks like in your leadership role. But you have to define what that looks like. And then especially translate that into very specific goals. Number two is once you have that vision, now it’s time to communicate. I call this as you probably heard before, I love the word, vision casting. That’s communication, right? vision casting is taking your vision to all of the relevant stakeholders, this could be people that you work for, it could be people above you, if you’re a manager in an organization, as an entrepreneur, this could be your customers. This could be to everybody who you just hired to be on your team. But you have to take this to all of the right stakeholders, the key stakeholders, and vision casts, which means enrolling them and helping them understand how these goals will lead to success. 

Right, you’re painting the picture for them on that number one that I gave you in the vision, which is defining what success looks like, you have to vision cast for them by sitting by painting them this mental image in their minds, what success looks like, because they’re not tasked with what success looks like you are as the leader, they are not tasked with or supposed to come up with those specific goals in order to reach success, like how you’re actually going to define what those KPIs are, and what they mean to create that success. That’s you and that’s enrolling them. That’s vision casting, which is enrolling them. As far as what that’s going to do for them. There’s a podcast I did on how to lead difficult people. And the way to lead them in this when your vision casting is first, hopefully, you understand your people at this point, at least what they want in their lives, but to lead people according to their dreams. And their dreams fit into your vision. So when your vision is casting, paint that picture according to their dreams, because that’s how you’ll be able to translate this vision casting is really like translation. It’s really like being an intermediary between your vision and their dreams. Did you hear that? vision casting is being an intermediary, a translator between your vision and the dreams of those on your team that are fighting this fight with you that are in the trenches with you. 

That’s what enrolling them is, after you’ve done your vision casting, number three is now you get to create the strategy, the actual way to execute this. And with that, you’re probably going to utilize your team members. That’s why it’s so important to vision cast first. Because now you start to gain ideas. It’s a reason you put people around you, right? If you’re a good leader, you’re not going to put people around you who are just slaves that are just going to, you know, check off boxes for a task list that you gave them. If you really are leading them. You want to be the dumbest person in the room. And now you’re putting together the right people, which are resources for you, that also have those dreams of their own. Right. So the vision is your destination. This is about the strategy, the strategy is how you get there. Okay, the vision is your destination. You’ve already defined what those metrics and KPIs are, instead, what that looks like as far as how that success is defined. But the strategy is how this is number three is creating the strategy and I’m defining those differences between vision and strategy for you.

Because now you’re going after you’ve enrolled everybody that’s on your team in your vision casting, you’re going to ask them for their ideas and throw them out there and ask them to what-if questions, stay away from wise in this but you’re going to ask what house Where’s and when? I’ve mentioned those before in sales but this applies to this what house Where’s and when will help you define what your strategy is? And then you start to create the task list and people can start taking responsibility to make sure that they achieve the visions and set the milestones for them meaning like by this time or it might not even be I’m about it’s actually better if it’s not timeout, just set those milestones. So that you can celebrate those small wins along the way, as you get closer and closer and closer. And that vision that you had that was just cast into their minds now becomes something that they can actually see happening and unfolding and building around them because you’ve created the strategy with them. 

That’s awesome, isn’t it? And then once you’ve created the strategy with your team, number four is now put the right people in place, maybe even underneath them, because you’re gonna find out as you’re creating that strategy. If it’s by yourself, maybe you didn’t hire the team yet. But if you already have a team in place, of course, you want to be the dumbest person in the room. But now you have to make sure that those are the right people that are in the room to execute. Or that you even have the right people to begin with. Maybe they’re not even on your team yet. So now you’re finding the right people to execute the strategy. This could be as simple as dividing the appropriate workloads into their lanes of expertise of their abilities, and capabilities. And even according to their dreams, as I said, you might be able to give somebody the best fulfillment in their own dream by helping you accomplish your vision, by giving them the right things to execute on delegating the right tasks to them that fit within their dream, it’s amazingly powerful when you have people in the right spots, and giving them the right work in the right workload. That’s incredible. 

So when you have the right people, this is number four, have the right people to execute on your strategy. You have to identify what traits each of these people has that actually meet their dreams, according to your vision and those milestones and strategy items that you just created. Then as you’re looking, it actually gives you very, very specific things to look for people on this one, too, if you need to add more team members to accomplish this. Or if you need to just add team members period to accomplish this. It’s pretty awesome. And then the next step, here’s the thing right? After you’ve got all the right people in place, number five, is now it’s time for coaching. Now it’s time for training. And you know what, here’s the secret, right? As the person who’s in charge and leadership or the entrepreneur, it’s your business, you probably don’t even know the right ways, like the actual step-by-step instructions, because you’re probably doing something you’ve never done before. That’s where it gets really cool. Because before remembering, I was talking about the difference between management and leadership, leadership comes down to coaching and just guiding their energy guiding their efforts toward the things that they’re supposed to get done. They might have the competencies already that you don’t have. And that’s what you hired them to begin with. There’s nothing great ever happens without a team. I said that earlier. 

But now you get to just direct their energy. Leadership, true leadership is about people, about humans, about guiding them about coaching them, management is just making sure that they get the tasks done. That’s it. And that’s why so many corporations tend to fail in a lot of areas and don’t really develop true leaders, they might get great results on the bottom line. But they don’t really develop true great leaders when they just have a management class versus a leadership class. I’ve been on both sides of the coin and the leadership. One is the reason why I’m where I am today. And I still have coaches and mentors to lean on for these things. And you know what I talked to them about the most, not about the tangible things that are going on in the business, the things I talked to my coaches and mentors, the most are about the people in my business, not the things about and happening with my business, I mostly talk to my coaches and mentors about people that are in my business, because that’s the most difficult part.

 All right, as your coaching and everything. Now we’re gonna move on to number six, which is putting a process in place. And this is something that you build as you go as it was talking about, you might not even know the proper steps, right? But this is so important because you’ve got your measurable goals, you’ve got your KPIs, right, and you’ve got the work delegated. Now, in order to hit these goals with the right team members, we’ve got all that in place, you’re monitoring their performance, which means that you’re coaching them along the way. We’ve got all these things in place, and you’re identifying what isn’t going well, in order to fix it. You’re doing all those things in the coaching aspect, but now you’re putting processes in place to ensure high performance in those processes to enable repeatable performance. So the first time you do something, there’s a phrase that I’ve had in my company for a long time, and it’s slow down to speed up. When you slow down and you take the time, this is what this means to actually Write down what you’re doing step by step, the first time that you do it. Now you can give that to somebody else to execute on.

You don’t have to keep doing it yourself and, you have to demand this, as a leader, you have to demand this of your team of your people to have that mindset to put these processes in place, not just to do the work, but to create the work and document what they are doing and what they have done. So that it can be repeatable when and when it’s repeatable, that’s when it becomes scalable. It’s powerful. This is how you’re going to continue to grow because now you can hire people just to execute. And now you’ve just empowered other leaders within your company because they’ve created the methods. And they’ve documented the procedures to make it repeatable, which means it’s now scalable, it’s powerful, empower them to do that, that’s your biggest task, as your leader is to make sure that your people have a culture of making things creating a repeatable process. Then as you’re going through all this, I talked a little bit about my coaches and mentors, and this is number seven today. 

The last one today Lucky number seven, is to make sure that you are always working on yourself. The biggest thing is you have to create awareness, for yourself, yourself. That is the toughest thing to do as a leader and it takes practice. It takes time. It takes having your own coaches, takes having your own mentors, takes having a sounding board of people that you trust. Because good leadership is not good management. But good leadership starts with leading yourself. That’s being self-aware, to understand and looking in that you don’t have it all together, even at the things today that I can say with confidence, not arrogance, with confidence that I am really, really good at which by the way, it’s perfectly okay to say that it’s perfectly okay to talk with a customer, a team member, somebody who’s close to you and say, I’m really good at that. It’s okay to say that because it’s fact, when something’s fact and your intentions are good, it is not arrogance, it is just truth. It’s as simple as that. That is also part of being self-aware. So when you get to the point where you can say yes, I’m good at that, or I’m really good at that. And it’s true, the good intentions have to do with moving that situation forward, not with self-praise, it is perfectly okay. And you should do that. Because this is being self-aware. Number seven is being able to truthfully say that I’m really good at that. And at the same time, being self-aware, which is what I still do today is saying you know what, I’m not really good at that. And that’s where I go to my coach my mentor and say, help me through this. Even if it’s regarding people, like me, I know that I’m not good at hiring people, but I know that I would like to get better at that. 

But at the same time, a lot of times my compassion takes over. And I just want to help that person and make them something because I love it fulfills me to help people grow. It fulfills me to help people see their dreams realized, I lead according to the individual dreams of those people as it fits into my vision. But it fulfills me that’s actually part of my vision is I want to see that person grow and see their dreams realized. So because that compassion is so strong in me, it can take over the rationalization and the logic of being able to hire the actual right person. Because I connect with people on an energetic level on a heart level, and I want to be able to help them. But sometimes, you know, people just don’t want to be helped. And that’s the part that I have trouble realizing in interviews, and I’m trying to get better at it. So I asked my coaches and mentors to say, Hey, I’m self-aware, I realized this, I recognize this about me, give me you’re Give me your ways of doing things, please, maybe I can incorporate some of those things as tools to be able to do this the right way. And then you know what?

Here’s the last part of number seven and being self-aware. Once you recognize the I’m really good at and you recognize that I’m not so good that good at I was just telling you that I’m trying to get better at hiring people. But you know what, that only really has one and involves me directly and I have chosen to keep myself out of the hiring process as much as possible. That’s it, that the individuals even like an EA that I was just hiring. The only thing for me to do is actually what I like doing which is what I was just telling you about, is actually getting with that person and connecting with them on a heart level to see if there are good people fit for me. That’s it. They’ve already been through to other individuals in my company that have grilled them on their competency, and on their culture fit overall as a company, so I don’t have to, because I recognize that that’s a weakness of mine, and I’m just not going to do it. So I’m going to tell you today as the last part of being self-aware, is the biggest part of leadership. 

The last and biggest and most important thing about being self-aware is to understand what your strengths are, and weaknesses are. But even more importantly, I’m not going to feed you BS and say work on your weaknesses, make your strength stronger, and find somebody else to take over where you’re weak. In building a business, make your strengths stronger. If you’ve built up muscles and biceps really hard, metaphorically in business, keep working those. If you suck at legs, metaphorically speaking, don’t do that. Have somebody else work on that crap for you. Your weaknesses should be delegated. Not trying to raise that up, a lot of people will give you this BS and these coaches will give you this BS of trying to make your weaknesses stronger, fix your weaknesses, and then it lifts you up as well. But if you don’t practice your strengths over and over and over and over again, you’re never going to go from being good at something to being an expert at something, you’re never going to go from being pretty awesome at something to being literally the best at that thing. Unless you continuously work out and improve your strengths, your talent, and the areas in which you are naturally gifted. Those are the areas to focus on as a leader. Now your weaknesses, put people in place to take those spots to fill those gaps that you lack and focus on your strengths that will allow the entire organization to continue to lift up because you are focused on being strong. Not on everything that you’re weak at. Focus on your strengths. Number seven, the biggest part of being self-aware is focusing on your strengths.

Go ALL IN…