The Art of Seeing Potential

Watch the episode here:

• Learn the 3-step system for leading difficult and resistant people effectively.
• Discover why leading from weakness kills your leadership impact.
• Find out how to connect people’s personal dreams to your organizational vision.
• Understand the difference between coaching weaknesses and mentoring potential.
• Get the real truth about carrying emotional weight as a leader.

What’s shakin’?. Hey, I’m Rick Jordan, and today we’re going all in. I was just a guest on a show called What’s Working Now, a really awesome show. I suggest that you look that up, and I’m gonna plug this for Katie. We talked about leadership a bit, and this kind of inspired this episode today, which is around leadership. And leadership is something that is coveted by a lot, right? Because you see people that are that are up there, it’s like, Man, I want to be that too. I want to be the guy. I want to be the girl. I want to be the one who makes the decisions. And it’s kind of a mixed bag sometimes, and leadership is so freaking fulfilling to me. I’ve always strived for leadership roles even when I didn’t want them. I just wanted to impart value into people all the way back in, the example I gave was like, Sunday School in church when I was just like, sixth grade, right? That would be like, 10 or 11 years old. I asked the the volunteer was leading the class. 

I’m like, Hey, can I teach something one of these weeks? And like, wow, okay, like, I asked I was I was just 10 or 11 years old. I’m like, okay, cool. It’s always been something in me, but it’s my motivation. I remember this vividly, was that I want to do this just because I feel like I have something to bring to people. I feel like I can do something good for them. It’s not being a leader, just to be the one on the stage or be the one in the spotlight, be the one who’s looked at all the time. Because there’s emotional carrying that happens with this. You carry emotions when you’re in leadership of everybody else. You really, really do. It can actually drag you down at sometimes, but in a lot of other times, because you’re in that role and you genuinely do it, like I wanted to when I was 10 and 11 years old, just to bring value to people and be able to bring something to them that they can use. You will go far that way, and that’s one of the things. It’s like. I wasn’t even asking to be in charge when I was 10 or 11 years old. I was just like, hey, I’ve got something to say. I think this is going to help people. 

Can you put me? Can you let me please bring some value to them? Because I want to see their lives light up. I want to see something shift in their potential, all because of something that they heard, that they had never learned before, or realized that they just became aware of, because I was able to bring this value to them that’s good aspirations and intentions in leadership. Now, remember I was talking about, you know, leadership. You carry the emotional weight of the people around you too. You absolutely do, and it’s your responsibility sometimes to show them the way out of that, maybe not lead them out, or maybe not, you know, shift them or shove them out. Sometimes, you know, if it’s sports, you got to whack them a bit, but that’s okay. But generally speaking, people have to come to these realizations, awarenesses and decisions on their own in order for the change to actually happen. So if they’re going in a certain direction, leading them that way is the best choice possible, guiding them and saying you might want to try this rather than just shoving them there, because they’re going to be stubborn that way, and we’re going to dive into how to lead difficult people, okay, people that are emotionally distraught, people that are resistant, and people that might not have the same depth of awareness that you have right now, in this moment.

There’s three really, really easy ways to do this, and it’s sort of a shift, right? Because as leaders, we set the tone on things right, and we do, we absolutely do, because it’s our tone. You set the tone that way the most can receive. Can receive the best from those moments when they’re with you. You show up, you’re all in for them, that’s leadership. That’s a good intention, leadership. Then you’ve got these individuals who could be difficult, right, resistant, unaware, whatever, emotionally distraught. Here’s ways to help them. Then I’m going to give you three ways today. Right? The first, because, as you’re setting this tone, right, you obviously have a vision as a leader, and you should have a vision as a leader, but people that fit in to your vision and will become a good fit to be somebody around you and support you are individuals that, of course, they have their own dream for their own lives, but that dream can be accomplished by supporting you like you’re providing the environment for them. You’ve got the overall vision of the organization, the group, the life, whatever, as the leader, that they have a dream for themselves too, and they have to have that dream fit into your vision. So once you start to ask questions, you can be like, hey, what. 

You looking for, you know where, what’s going on in your life right now, I talked about this a previous like the magic wand. If you, if you had a magic wand, what would this look like for you? What’s your dream? When you ask these questions, yes, you have your vision, but then you can start to lead them according to their dream, right? Because you can start to say, Hey, if you show up and you do these things, you know what, you’re going to make more money. You’re going to make us money too. You’re going to make more money. If you become more engaged, you’re going to make more money, which will make us more money. If you become more accessible, you can build your network, and you can accelerate in life. And you know what? Maybe you can be promoted and come alongside me in a in a greater capacity, because you’re more engaged and accessible whatever your dream is. And then you can accomplish your dream. And then you can see these things happen in your life that you just told me you want. When you do these things, the first thing is, you lead according to their dream for these difficult people, and help them see that what they’re doing for you in accomplishing the vision you have for your overall organization will get them where they want to go in their life. 

Okay? And the next thing right? This is a tendency of leaders, and I’ve seen this a lot with with any sort of leadership, if it’s pastors, if it’s bosses, whatever you know, if it’s a group leader, I don’t know, of a nonprofit, or Boy Scouts, a lot of people, and I’ll do this, but not necessarily from this, bad places, unintention Place of kind of like leading from your weakness, right? Because you’re trying to shore up things by yourself, and then you start to talk about your things and that you’re struggling with. It’s good to have some tactical vulnerability as a leader, but you don’t lead according to your weakness. You lead according to your strength when it comes to you, because other people you fill around with you and fill in those weaknesses. However, the individuals that are those difficult people, or the ones that are maybe a little bit resistant or unaware that needs some extra help, you coach according to their weakness, right? So you identify these things, you acknowledge their strengths, you acknowledge their strengths, so that you can start to find these areas of weakness. Because what I’ll tell leaders that work for me, or leaders that are underneath me, and things that I’ve had is like, you know what? You’re really good over here, yet in this area, you’ve got some growth to do, and that’s cool. So I’m gonna help give you a road map so that you can become more engaged, you can become more productive, so that you can make more money, so that you can make us more money. 

And maybe sometimes it could be, hey, you know what? It could be time for a realization that this is just not something that you’re either good at or interested in. It could be a function of what you’re supposed to do, yes, but that’s okay, because you can bring others around you to fill in those voids. That’s another way of coaching according to their weaknesses, teaching them how to build teams and people around them so that they can accomplish their dream, even if it’s a part of your vision. As an entrepreneur, you can coach them according to their weakness. That’s the second one. And then the third one. This one is freaking powerful, right? Because coaching is saying, like, Hey, we got to shore some things up here, right? But then the last one, the third one, is mentor them according to their potential mentor them according to their potential. I love this because this is one of the biggest things that fulfills me. I like to spend more time on mentoring people according to their potential than actually coaching them on their weaknesses. It’s more fun. Of course, it’s more fun because it’s something that I actually feel that I’m really, really good at, is seeing where people can be and seeing the potential in them that they don’t even see themselves. 

It’s freaking awesome to be able to look at someone and be like, Wow, you’ve got something. And it’s even more fun to tell them, wow, you’ve got something. And I love seeing the surprise responses in these moments too. Like, what really like, yes, here’s what I can see you doing if you want. Here’s what I could see you doing. And that if you want is an important part too, because even though somebody has potential going all the way back to the first one in leading them according to their dream, it might not be something that they actually want, right? It might not fit, because, you know, I think of like sports when I was younger, when I was playing everything, it’s like, wow, you’re like, really good at almost everything it’s and I was right. I just had a natural aptitude and natural ability for those things, and actually in everything in life, because I learn and I educate myself, and then I can do things. I truly believe that I could do most things that exist on this planet. You. It if I wanted to. You know, that might not be true for for some because you may be super hardcore niche in this one area that’s pro This is probably why I get like, 27 new ideas every day, because I believe truly that I could probably accomplish most of them. 

You know, some of them might not be a good use of my time. Might not fit in with my own dream, my vision for my organization, whatever. But still, I know that I have the potential in all those areas to be able to do something awesome. And when you see that in somebody else, and you start to lift them up and say, I can see you doing this. I can see you be really, really good at this, if you want to. And that’s something I actually had from a leadership perspective. I’ve had to learn and shift over the past couple of months, just recently, really, because I used to see people’s potential, and I used to get excited for them, like, overly excited, more excited than they were themselves, because I didn’t actually care to find out if it fit in with their own dream of what their life looked like. So I’d be like, Oh, you can do this. And then just throw them into a role. I’m talking in business, right? Just throw them into something, and then they would just procrastinate or they wouldn’t be good at it, and only they didn’t apply themselves, engage or become accessible to these things. And in those moments, I’m like, you know, maybe I just made a mistake. But you know, the mistake wasn’t identifying something that could be really awesome in them. The mistake was actually not giving them the ability, the allowance, or communicating with them, opening that doorway for them to say, You know what? 

This is something that I might not want to do, and that’s okay. But when you mentor them to their potential, and you take into place the first two that I talked about, about leading them according to their dream, coaching them according to their weakness, then you can start to really figure out where to put in your time and mentorship with them on the things that they get excited about me, I get all giddy over just seeing potential in people. I get super excited, pumped up. I’ll jump around, literally. I will jump around, you know, and be like, Oh man, you’re gonna be great at this. And then now I have to make sure that I’m doing those first two that I mentioned, in order to make sure that the time is well spent, because it’s that thing called if you want to as a leader, you have to make sure that it’s right for them, according to them, these are ways to lead, just people in General, maybe even some difficult people, some stuck people, amazing talk on leadership today, I had fun. I love you. Take this to the bank tomorrow, share this with three people and go all in you.