Text us. Share your thoughts. Ask Questions. We would love to hear from you.
You know that pivotal moment in life where everything changes? For me, it was when I stepped onto a plane headed for my military training despite the fear associated with it being my first flight. That experience marked the beginning of my 'moment of truth' - a crucial decision that led to personal growth and cultivated my leadership skills, shares host John Ballinger.
We're reflecting on these life-altering moments of truth in our leadership journey in this our 25th episode, and we're inviting you to do the same. We launch into an insightful conversation about John's enrollment into the military, overcoming obstacles, and the profound leadership lessons he learned along the way.
We then venture into emotional intelligence and the importance of our early childhood experiences. We explore how pivotal moments shape us as leaders and how self-awareness allows us to unlock our full potential. We also present an acronym - TRUST - to remind leaders of the critical components of their role:
To wrap up, we challenge you to identify or determine a defining moment in your leadership journey. We emphasize the importance of tracking your growth and reflecting on these moments to measure progress.
Are you ready to continue this journey of selfless leadership with us? Let's make every moment count.
Text us. Share your thoughts. Ask Questions. We would love to hear from you.
You know that pivotal moment in life where everything changes? For me, it was when I stepped onto a plane headed for my military training despite the fear associated with it being my first flight. That experience marked the beginning of my 'moment of truth' - a crucial decision that led to personal growth and cultivated my leadership skills, shares host John Ballinger.
We're reflecting on these life-altering moments of truth in our leadership journey in this our 25th episode, and we're inviting you to do the same. We launch into an insightful conversation about John's enrollment into the military, overcoming obstacles, and the profound leadership lessons he learned along the way.
We then venture into emotional intelligence and the importance of our early childhood experiences. We explore how pivotal moments shape us as leaders and how self-awareness allows us to unlock our full potential. We also present an acronym - TRUST - to remind leaders of the critical components of their role:
To wrap up, we challenge you to identify or determine a defining moment in your leadership journey. We emphasize the importance of tracking your growth and reflecting on these moments to measure progress.
Are you ready to continue this journey of selfless leadership with us? Let's make every moment count.
And I felt someone put their hand over my hand and says and he said, buried, son, is this the first time you've flown? And I turned around and looked at him and I said yes. He said it's going to be all right. I make this flight two to three times a week.
Speaker 2:Welcome to first lead you a podcast dedicated to building leaders, expanding their capacity, improving their self awareness through emotional intelligence and developing deeper understanding of selfless leadership.
Speaker 1:Hello American, welcome to first lead you where we believe selfless leadership is essential. America is suffering a leadership crisis. Self awareness and emotional intelligence is the key to developing selfless leaders. Now here is personal growth coach John Ballinger.
Speaker 3:Mr Ford Mr.
Speaker 1:Ballinger, it's a monumental day today.
Speaker 3:It is episode 25.
Speaker 1:25.
Speaker 3:They said we couldn't do it. I think we said we couldn't do it at one point.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, this is a lot of work. No, it is. It is big Number 25 to get to this point and think we are and we've plowed a lot of ground and we really haven't just scratched the surface on what it takes to first lead you in order to lead others.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've had some good guests on that, have given a lot of good advice to our listeners Our listeners and shared their moments of truth and the decisions that they've come to in their life at what led them to be leaders, first of themselves and then of other people.
Speaker 1:Right, you know, just from a time standpoint. I think it would be good to, on episode 25, talk about what's going on in the world right now, because there's a lot of conflict going on in Israel and parts of the world and I'd say a lot of emotions have been coming into play for many, many years in those areas of our world and I often wonder, when something dust up like that, to that severity, what would have happened if we would have had better leadership in the years and years before that, that were more sound in their thinking and how they handle things emotionally and were able to sit down and talk through things and sometimes aggressions happens. I mean, you're never going to get away from. What is it a lot of people ask for when they genie in the bottle in a world piece? I like it. I think that's probably never. It's never going to happen. It's never going to happen.
Speaker 1:But I do wonder how much better we could have done if we would have positioned ourselves with better leadership throughout history. And then we had moments. Man, there are people that I read about. I'm a. I love reading history with people that are are leaders and have put their self in harm's way and done the difficult things, but I don't think enough have, and that leads us into reflection about what could we have done differently. So episode 25. That is Kenny Schrader. Kenny Schrader.
Speaker 3:Not one of those popular names. Maybe, but not Kenny Schrader.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not one of those really popular names, but Kenny raced in all kinds of different cars Arka dirt, I mean he was, he was a racer. I mean he grew up racing and racing. But Kenny Schrader was the number 25 car when I remember the NASCAR days. So, yeah, not one of the most popular drivers, but always in the hunt and the race.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel like he was around for a good, good amount of time. Yeah, a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, he was one of those racers that were around for a long time. He was one of the ones that actually knew what racing was before computers and engineers and all those things. Yeah, but good guy. So. But the title of this episode, if we're reflecting back on the previous 24, is actually that reflections. I think it's a good time where we look at like, where did we start at, why did we start where we started at, and where are we at today? And then what does? As we're working on season two of firstly, jew, where are we headed? And I thought it would be good to have kind of a subtitle to the reflection what's your moment of truth? Like, when did you, as a leader, make the decision that I want to be in leadership? I want to be a leader and if I could, I would like to. Obviously, I can't go through a whole episode without reading the definition.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:I don't think, I don't think it's possible.
Speaker 3:We need a Marion Webster sound effect is what we need.
Speaker 1:We need that.
Speaker 3:That people are alerted that we're about to give them a definition.
Speaker 1:We should get them as our first sponsor.
Speaker 3:Well, I've said that before. It would be great if they're listening. You can contact us through our website.
Speaker 1:The definition of the moment of truth is a time when a person or thing is tested, a decision has to be made or a crisis needs to be faced.
Speaker 3:All right, share that with us again.
Speaker 1:A time when a person or thing is tested, a decision has to be made or a crisis faced.
Speaker 3:And so I mean we're talking about a moment of truth specifically related to leadership, but I mean there's, those moments of truth can come in a lot of different areas of life, obviously.
Speaker 1:Oh, for everyone, they come all the time, but for the leader in this specific podcast, I want to talk about my moment of truth. So if we could, if we could discuss that just for a few minutes. Absolutely my moment of truth and for those that have listened to the podcast the first podcast I'm not going to belabor and go into all the gory details that happen.
Speaker 3:This is we're looking back at like episode one. Right, we're going to go through these first. We're going to actually re kind of go back through these first five episodes that we talk a lot about.
Speaker 1:But my moment of truth happened when I walked outside and saw my entire unit doing pushups or, in my mind, being punished because of something that I felt them at. That was really. I mean, it sticks in my brain every day that I made the decision not to listen to the person in my in leadership. Therefore, I failed my team and failed myself, and that was really a defining moment for me.
Speaker 3:So do you think there were some? I mean, obviously there was. So I'm looking for more than a yes or no answer, but what? What was leading you up to that point that made that the defining moment?
Speaker 1:I would say that my dad telling me early in my adult or early in my childhood you're, you're never going to amount to anything.
Speaker 3:So it was that kind of that mental prodding of you.
Speaker 1:You were going to prove him wrong, or what was the yeah, and I think for him, because the generation he grew up in and knowing me, I think he knew he had to be constantly challenging me. So if he said you're doing good or you're going to succeed, he, he in turn thought that that would make me, make me not try, so kind of the reverse psychology if I tell you I don't really think you can do that. And I've told people, a lot of people that have known me for years, they don't dare me to do something because I'm going to figure out how to do it. And I think dad knew he knew my nature, he knew who I was, and so he prodded me by saying those things. And so when I went to basic I had full intent that I was going to be the absolute number one soldier that came out of that cycle.
Speaker 3:So you kind of predetermined, even before you got there, that you wanted to be a leader. Like there was an intentional decision on your part then at that point, like this is going to be a marked change in my life where I'm going to be able to step, you know, look, look behind and say this is one way, one that I was here's some decisions I made. This is a big moment, Obviously, going to the military it's a big moment for anybody in their life. But you were using that catalyst to like there's something that's going to happen and I'm going to make sure that I come out a number one on the other side. And then that happened really early for you.
Speaker 1:Well, it actually happened earlier than that. I'm going to go off script a little bit because it really happened earlier, when I was sitting on the runway at McGee Tyson airport in Knoxville getting ready to fly to Atlanta to catch a plane to Fort Dick's basic and I had never been in an aircraft before and here I am. Know my MOS is aircraft power plant repair, that's what. And I had paperwork right.
Speaker 1:I'm taking with me. I had my folder and I'm sitting on an aircraft and it's. I called a puddle jumper now and I'm sitting next to the wing and the window and I look out and I see the propeller just moving. It's oscillating but it looks like it's getting ready to fly off. It's coming loose. It's coming loose and I'm sitting there watching it move and there's a, there's a gentleman sitting next to me and I have literally I mean I know that I have got to be putting a finger nail marks in the, in the vinyl that I'm just, I am literally gripped on that thing, and I felt someone put their hand over my hand and say and he said, buried, son, is this the first time you've flown?
Speaker 1:And I turned around and looked at him and I said, yes, he said it's going to be all right. I make this flight two to three times a week, so we get in the air If you've never flown before and you take off the first time in an aircraft. It's, it's a little bit uh, nervous, racking. And I find out that the person sitting next to me is Alex Haley.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, yeah, oh, you've. Yeah, I think you've talked about this before. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that moment that he put his hand on my hand and said it's going to be all right was a defining moment of calmness for me, because he said I make this trip two to three times a week. He said we're going to get airborne and we're going to start going down and for me, fear. So, as leaders, guess what? We're going to have situations that that create fear in us, right, and we're not going to know. Are we making the right decision? Am I leading myself well so I can lead others well in that fearful situation?
Speaker 1:So the the determination I had mentally going into it, I had to overcome the fear of flying to go to Atlanta, to get on an aircraft, to fly to New Jersey, and so I was actually starting my journey of overcoming fear before I ever hit Fort Dix, new Jersey, and ended up messing up that first day of basic training. In a leadership position, you're constantly going to be faced with obstacles and crisis and I think you know we talked about this moment of truth definition. I think you continually have moments of truth in leadership.
Speaker 3:Right. Right, but it was a it was kind of a conscious decision on your part, though it's kind of Absolutely when I was going with. That is like, like you made a defining decision of like, from like this point forward, things are going to be different. Yeah, I am going to change. And then you were looking really for that opportunity to kind of mark that.
Speaker 1:Well, I've said this before Even if I had regressed and let that day just paralyze me to the point where I didn't do anything, I mean there's a great likelihood, if that happens, I'm not sitting in this chair talking to others about leadership and how to first lead themselves. I mean, there's a I mean I think it's a great likelihood I'm not sitting in this chair, right, absolutely. So you have to take those moments and not just yourself. Look internally, but we've talked about getting that mentor and having that mentor mentor help you through, or that coach help you through, cause you're going to be faced with obstacles and fear of things that if, if you just set them aside like they're not there, guess what? They're going to come back because there's going to be another situation that you're put in that's going to elicit that fear that you've got in you.
Speaker 3:And that that really kind of takes us into what we talked about for episode two, which was a great resignation, and we have explored that a lot. But answering the question, why is leadership important for both you and your team?
Speaker 1:Before I answer that, can I talk about some irony for a second?
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:The fact that I was scared, slap to death and ended up spending 21 years in aviation. There's got to be some irony there somewhere, because there were periods of time where I were taking aircraft up in the air and shutting them down on purpose to let them free fall, to start them again so that we could do maintenance test. What I mean? There's got to be some irony there somewhere that I was scared, slap to death and then years later I was like, yeah, no big deal.
Speaker 3:Was there a parachute involved in that?
Speaker 1:Zero parachutes involved in that. So I want I say that for people to know that once you overcome obstacles, the growth that you can have is really tremendous. Because I don't even think about it now. I get on an aircraft now and I'm so attuned to that aircraft that I'm more conscious probably of that aircraft than the person flying it, about the sound, the engine, the hydraulics, when they do the flaps, all the pre flight. I mean that's so second nature to me that I could do a walk around almost and smell, where I'm at on an aircraft, of the type of fluid that's coming out of the aircraft. But it started out with Alex Haley putting his hand on mine. I said, son, it's going to be all right.
Speaker 3:That's a good story.
Speaker 1:So and then number two why is leadership important for you and your team, and how can failing or succeeding in leadership create events that either push you through the great resignation or cause your company to succumb to the great resignation? I think episode two was critical when it comes to leadership and understanding the importance of leadership and being able to identify yourself as a leader and what you need to do in order to overcome, possibly, the great resignation type of events that go on, because that again, that's not going to be the last type of event like that that happens in society while most people are leaders, and you've got to learn how to deal with those things.
Speaker 3:Well, we've talked. We talked about this before the idea of being a leader and the definition of a good leader, and if I remember correctly how we, how we laid that down, we laid that out, was that if you, it's important for you to lead yourself well so that you can lead your team well, and that being a good leader means that you are developing yourself to be a good leader, a positive leader, but you're also developing your team, like you're drawing out of your team the things that you see in them, that a can contribute to the team but a can benefit them as they progress.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to use a different word than good, effective and effective leader. I want the listeners to look at their selves and ask themselves do I see myself as an effective leader and does my team see me as an effective leader? Because you constantly have to be developing yourself as a leader in order to be an effective leader for your team. So if you're going to number three and this is, this is one of those that are it's difficult to get through number three. Zero to five, six to 10 early childhood development events that take place in early childhood that stunt your personal and professional growth, and recognizing those and then actually addressing them. That that's a tough place to be when, when we talk about that with with leadership and we go back into you know what's causing possibly some of your stunted growth and leadership. I go back there and start because and you know yourself I usually find right right, but people don't want to go back there.
Speaker 1:They want to stay up here at college and above. But I start back here and it and I did this last week to someone that's an accomplished teacher and we were just going through some things and ask the earliest childhood memory and I mean I just asked the question and it took 40, 42 seconds just to come up with which. That's a problem.
Speaker 3:And then, yeah Well, why would you say that's a problem?
Speaker 1:Because your your earliest childhood memory that you remember is usually something that within 10 to 15 seconds, just come into your head and you just know what it is.
Speaker 1:And so 42 seconds and it was seven years old. And so when you, when you listen to the podcast, you'll learn that the further forward you are when you remember, the more something was going on between the ages of three, which is when we normally start remembering things. You start you think all right, what was happening between three and seven? So, but zero to five, six to 10, that episode is really impactful as a leader in developing yourself. So I want, I want the leaders if you've not gone by, if you've not gone back and re-listen to those, go listen to them. If you're a new leader, start at the beginning and work your way forward and listen not only to the, the foundational episodes, but listen to the leaders that we've had on here. They were, they've had their moment of truth, because it's impactful when you hear somebody else say that was my moment of truth, that I knew I needed to do something.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Well. We were talking about, as we were, we're planning and and discussing through this. It doesn't necessarily have to be a pattern of events that happened in your life that could be holding you back or or stunting some of your development. There could be one or two pivotal moments Uh, somebody said something to you that stuck in your brain, uh, that you can't seem to get past. Or maybe you experienced, you know, had just one or two experiences that's really holding you back and you've not addressed those. And, and especially those, you know those haunting voices, so to speak, like they, just if you're just replaying those in your head over and, over and over again, those can really hold you back, absolutely can.
Speaker 1:Um, we're going to take a break and when we come back, we're going to be talking about episode four and five, and then we're going to finish with what I feel like is the pivotal piece that needs to be tackled with as a leader.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Welcome back to first lead you. Today we are on episode 25 and we're really looking back at all 24 episodes, but specifically the first five episodes that we did when we launched the podcast, and we refer to those as our foundational episodes because they really cover some of the key, essential information and uh, leadership Qualities that we think are important If you are a leader, that you need to know and understand, and a lot of that content is content that you develop, john, over course of 25, 30 years of working with individuals, being in the military, doing risk assessments, doing business, consulting I mean it's it's drawn out of a lot of your life and career experiences. And so we've covered the first three episodes in terms of reflecting, looking back, trying to identify moments of truth, and now we want to cover episodes four and five briefly, and then we've got some other things that we're going to get into. But, in terms of looking back over these 25 episodes, 24 episodes, what would you say are some of the, the key things that you have taken away from them?
Speaker 1:I've actually gone and we've talked about this on other episodes. I've actually gone and listened to us and learned some things that I needed to work on continuously, not just, you know, oh, I've worked on that, so I don't need to work on that anymore. No, it's a continual process and I listened to them. Now to challenge myself to continue developing to be the best leader I can be for my team, but more than that, be the best teacher, the best coach, the best mentor I can be, so that someone else can be, so that they're leading. Uh, we've we've talked about me learning better how to lead the ones so that they can pour into the twos that pour into the threes that don't that, that prevent the force from taking place, and I'm really leaning into the ones who are. I will tell you, the most difficult of all those to learn, to adapt to is the ones, because they're the ones that think I don't need anybody to tell me what to do. Yeah, I don't need help.
Speaker 3:We're going to go through that one, two, three, four in just a minute to give people some additional context to that. Uh, but, uh, yes, absolutely. I think there's been several places where we've gotten feedback, and that's been some of the feedback we've gotten, which is, uh, I don't know uh, for you as a uh coach and a mentor, personal growth coach uh, to really focus on the ones and the number you know in in our vernacular, the, the ones that can, uh really make the biggest impact on the largest number of people, right?
Speaker 1:So, and to do that, guess what? They have to have. Number four episode. They have to have a lot of that and they have to develop it and they have to mature it and they have to lean in on it, and that's emotional intelligence.
Speaker 1:One of the reasons I personally believe that leadership has not been as effective as it should be is because we put such an emphasis on someone's intelligence when it comes to what they know, versus their emotional intelligence and how they respond and deal with crisis and how to learn to lead themselves. You know you, you go to MBA school. You don't learn about leading yourself. You learn about P and L statements and you learn a lot about you know the business structure and organizations and things like that, but you know MBA school or even getting your PhD and your doctorate. It's, it's not. What did you learn? To better lead yourself, temper yourself in order to lead your team better.
Speaker 1:So emotional intelligence is critical. It's a critical piece. It's a critical piece, and we recently did a podcast where we said it was the number two thing communications first, uh, and emotional intelligence too. We did a McKenzie study that they said it was growing to be a top 10 item. It's evident that it's far surpassed a top 10 item, it's a. It's a top two item and, since we've started this podcast, the amount of articles that have come out on LinkedIn books that are being published about emotional intelligence and how critical it is is just skyrocketing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that I see new articles every day in Forbes Inc. A fast magazine there. This is certainly something that's becoming more and more prevalent and you know you could see a slow growth over the last probably five years, but I would agree in the last year to six months it's certainly the pace at which we're seeing those conversations related to emotional intelligence has certainly increased.
Speaker 1:You know one of the things I think. So I was reading one I did an Inc, a Forbes and a Harvard business review article about emotional intelligence. You know the pieces that I. The piece that I saw that was missing on all three of them is they didn't tell you how to do it. They said the importance of it, they gave you statistics behind it, they said what it would happen if you did it and all this and I'm like, but they're not telling you how to do it, and the how to is the most difficult part.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And so we're. We're attempting with first lead you to help you start your emotional intelligence journey, because it is the most difficult part, and put it in place. But I'm telling you, once you do, the impact it can have on your life as a leader, personally and professionally, and your team is you can't, you can't even put a dollar amount to it. There's not a dollar amount you can put to that.
Speaker 3:And a great place to start with your emotional intelligence journey is emotional intelligence 2.0, which is a book that we've recommended multiple times. You want to read the first chapter of that book. You're going to take an assessment and then they're going to tell you how you did and they're going to offer some solutions and things that you can work on, based on your emotional intelligence score.
Speaker 1:So can I put a disclaimer in there? Absolutely, please be truthful with yourself when you take that assessment. Don't answer it as what you want to be or what you think people want you to be. Answer it truthfully. You can't start this journey by lying to yourself, because the reality is and we've seen this in companies and we've seen this with individuals. Your team knows when you're telling the truth and when you're lying about something like that.
Speaker 3:We use three different assessments. Typically, when we go into an organization, the key piece of information for each of those is to answer them as honestly as you can as yourself, not in the roles that you play, whether it be a worker or a spouse, or a brother or sister, son or daughter. Answer them for yourself, about yourself, as honestly as you can, because that's when you're going to get the best results and you're going to know truly where the areas are that you are strongest and where you need some development.
Speaker 1:Spend some time emotional intelligence 2.0, start your journey. Send us questions, happy to respond, but again, just because you're reading that it's important doesn't mean anything if you don't put an application process to it.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Number five, and this is one that really took years I mean, this is a lot of research and study and statistics but that episode our leaders born or made, and out of that I came up with a kind of a numbering system of one, two, three at the time People that are born to lead or in leadership position.
Speaker 1:So you found yourself in a leadership position. However you find yourself there, or it was your intentional like me, I intentionally wanted to put myself in a leadership position, and so those are the people that we find in the one position. In the two position, you find people that have the ability to be taught how to be a leader, with the responsibility of the teaching coming from the person in the leadership position, that one. And then you have number three, which is someone that is a pusher, a worker, someone that's in the trenches every day doing the tasks that need to be done in order to move the organization forward. And that's the threes. And over time we started identifying a fourth category of disenfranchised, disenchanted, distrustful, disengaged team members, and we started looking at that and I noticed it happening way before the Great Resignation and we really saw it coming to fruition of what we'd been talking about, even before COVID happened, that the leadership in America and the four pillars was failing so miserably at leading people that the people were just disenfranchised.
Speaker 3:And the four pillars being government, well faith family government and business In general.
Speaker 1:If you look historically at any society, you're going to see those are four pillars that hold up that society. And I was talking to somebody the other day and they said so what is it? Why do you need a government? I mean, I literally guess what? Because you need law and order. Any society that doesn't have law and order is going to have what Chaos? That's exactly what it's going to have and you need law and order.
Speaker 1:But what you need is law and order that you trust, that's competent and capable, so that when something happens you're told we need to do this or that, that you can say, okay, I get that. You want that from business. Families want that from the leader in the family. You want that from your faith. You want to know that you can trust the person that you're putting your faith in in your spiritual world. You want to know that I can trust that person.
Speaker 1:And what we've had is a degrading of leadership, which means we've had a degrading of trust, which means this fourth category has really just risen to be a substantial part of society. I talk about being the it's the you're not the boss of me category. I've got to protect myself. Nobody's going to protect me. I'm going to do what's best for me and it becomes very selfish and you're not the boss of me. The reality is, if the ones, however they're in that position, whether they're there through competence or convenience, if they are not pouring into the twos, then the twos aren't going to be able to lead the threes, which causes the four, and I want to be clear that at any point I could take a four and develop that person into a one.
Speaker 1:We've heard stories and I've wrote it on my notes from the mail room to the boardroom there have been stories that you could go look at that. People have started in the mailroom and made it all the way to the boardroom and organizations, but they had a desire, an initiative, a work ethic, and one of the things you have to do is you have to balance all that. You can't go in like I have been guilty of in the past and just work your fingers to the bones and neglect everything around you. One of the things that I tell leaders is there has to be a balance between what I call your faith, family, friends and business in order to effectively be the leader that you need to be in all those categories and I have been guilty and anybody that knows me knows I'm guilty of that bee cropping up in between those Fs and I have to cram that bee back down because I will really get busy doing business.
Speaker 3:Well, I want to go back and talk about something that you mentioned in relation to that kind of system that you came up with one, two, three and four, as you said, convenience or competence. Could you break that down a little bit more force, just so people have a better understanding of what that means? If you arrived in a leadership position not necessarily by the intention of you wanting to be a leader and pursuing that, but there could have been some convenience or other competence issues that put you in that position.
Speaker 1:Well, one of the examples I use in one of our podcasts, I believe, is the salesperson that was just knocking it out of the park great salesperson and the sales manager left, and the leadership's looking around like well, who's our best salesperson? Like, well, john is well, that's our guy. And what the company has done is they've taken their best salesperson, not completely assessed their ability to lead the sales team, put them in a sales management role, in a leadership role, and so they possibly and a lot of times they have they've hindered the company in two ways. One, their best salesman's no longer in their doing their best sales work, and the salespeople that are left they're being led by the best salesman can't stand the guy because he's a horrible leader, and so that's a. That's a convenience, that was an easy one, sit down, we just looked at numbers, that's our guy. And a lot of times in business we will make a convenient move out of necessity, instead of assessing the person to see if they fit the model or the role for that position.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think one of the things that I've enjoyed hearing the most or was, like that's a great idea.
Speaker 3:We've talked to some companies and they talk about the tracks that people can go down.
Speaker 3:And people can go down the technical track or they can go down the leadership track, because a lot of times people move into different leadership roles purely for that's the next step to get higher, a bigger raise or, you know, be in an area of influence.
Speaker 3:But they don't necessarily focus on what the real leadership part of that is. And so organizations that take that approach where you can advance in your career, you can still advance in influencing, still advance in your financial gains from a technical standpoint, I think that's a brilliant move on their part to give those people who don't really want to be in leadership the opportunity to continue at advance. And then those people who want to be in leadership and who want to take those responsibilities and who intentionally want to develop not only themselves but other people, there's a track for them to go where they can make those advancements as well. So I think that's great and I appreciate you clarifying that. I think that's good for us to remember and talk about and understand as we talk about these ideas of making intentional decisions to be leaders.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So as we round this episode out, we I talk about like the key to leadership is trust. That's trusting yourself and trusting your team. Trusting yourself, trusting your team. So I've got an acronym I don't have a definition. Maybe I've got an acronym for trust.
Speaker 1:So the first T top level commitment. Man, you've got to make a top level commitment as a leader. I want to give it my all. You can't go into leadership halfway or, like you said, I just want more money, or I want the name on the door, I want the corner office. It can't be a selfish decision. It has to be a commitment and I've talked about it in the past. It has to be a commitment so strong Sometimes it hurts If it doesn't.
Speaker 1:You need to seriously give yourself that gut check about whether you should be in a leadership position or not. The R is risk assessment. One of my favorite things to do Right, I'm a. I love risk assessments because it gets to the root cause analysis of what we should do to prevent an accident or what should what we should do to help mitigate accidents. But I want you to do a risk assessment on yourself as a leader, like where are my flaws at? What do I need to do in order to be the best leader and, from a risk standpoint, what are some of the things that caused me to be a risky leader? I want you to do a risk assessment on yourself as a leader.
Speaker 3:What are some of the steps someone could take to do a personal risk assessment?
Speaker 1:I would say that the emotional intelligence assessment is probably the first best place to start at, because it's such a key to the building block of where you're at as a leader, and so I would say that's number one journaling. We've talked about that, you know, and we're going to be coming up with, I think, a very unique document that helps outline, because we've been, we've been asked for that, all right, so how do I do that? So I would do that, but, but I think the the first step is absolutely doing the emotional intelligence assessment.
Speaker 3:And would you recommend that people really think through those early childhood days and see, is there something that could have happened, whether it was a series of events, a, you know, a, a a kind of a long term, um, effort, uh, that impacted you, or was it one or two single events? Would I mean, is that something that people should can look back for themselves and do?
Speaker 1:it's health. And you'll remember, we were on another podcast and we were talking about leadership and I said uh to the, to the uh person that we were on the podcast with, and I said tell me your earliest childhood memory and how would you were? And he said second question remember that?
Speaker 3:I do remember that.
Speaker 1:I would like that to be part of it, because once you figure out what that is, it's so impactful that it will help start putting a frame of reference about around early childhood development, gotcha.
Speaker 3:So that's, uh, that's some steps that people can take to do their own personal risk assessment. Of course, we there's corporate risk assessments or team risk assessments. They can go along with it All right. So now we're to the you trust, undertake control measures.
Speaker 1:So now you understand from a risk assessment where you're at and undertaking measures in order to develop yourself and control. All right, here's where I think I could be detrimental to myself and my team. First yourself. Uh, we've talked about the amount of executives that are just ready to leap because they can't handle the stress and the pressure and things like that AC after COVID is going to force leaders to be stronger, better, faster, more emotionally intelligent than they've ever been.
Speaker 1:So you've got to lean into this or make a decision to take yourself out of it and go somewhere else and just get a job, get a, j O, b, but it's going to. Once you understand who you are and you undertake and you're under undertake control measures it's going to be less stress. You're going to be better equipped to make decisions, you're going to have less mental chaos, you're going to have better mental health. And all of those not only affect you and your personal and professional life. It affects your team.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And those aren't, those?
Speaker 3:aren't day one changes those are, oh my gosh, no these.
Speaker 1:These are developmental changes. That takes time, and that's why I think the articles are easy to read articles that are out there with ink and Harvard and all these other because I'll tell you this is why it's important and this is these are the impacts Once you do it, but you got to do it Right as systematic reviews. I made this statement when we were making our notes for the leader. It's a continuous review and you're going to see that in the documents that we are going to have in season two as we come out is it is a continuous review of yourself as a leader, cause you have to have continuous improvement. We encourage you to do annual reviews, risk assessments on the entire organization and the team, but do a continuous review on yourself, and that's daily. Daily, you're challenging yourself.
Speaker 1:What did I do well today from a leadership standpoint? What did I not do well from leadership standpoint when I didn't do something well? Why did I not do something well? What was the cause of it? When you did something well, put it down. This came up. This is how I handled it and this were the results of it, so that you can look back on it. You're after, you're in your leadership. And then the T, the last T, the truth. It reveals the truth of who you are. Once you do these things, you'll you'll determine am I a leader because I want to be there for the title, for the money, for the corner office, or am I? Am I in that position because I truly want to take the talents that I believe are inside of me, have them pulled out of me with myself, my mentor, my code, so that I can be the best version for me and my team. So you want to go back through those again real quick.
Speaker 3:So you are UST trust Top level commitment to a risk assessment on yourself to find out where you could, potentially, where you need improvements at, undertake control measures.
Speaker 1:Once you find out those items that need a development, make a systematic review, continuous improvement as a leader, and then, last once you do that, you're going to be able to do, that You're going to be able to be a leader, and then, last once you do, you'll find out what the truth is about you yourself and your leadership abilities. So, douglas, why don't you take us out with the action item that we want to leave on episode 25 for our listeners?
Speaker 3:Yeah, based on some feedback we've gotten, one of the things that we're going to start implementing a little more frequently and try to do more in a basis on in season two is we'll try to leave you with an action item that will help you put into practice Maybe some of the things that we talked about during that episode, and so with this one, I think it's really goes back to what we started talking about at the very beginning of this episode, which is identifying that moment of truth for yourself.
Speaker 3:Like, when did you decide to become a leader? And if you can't really pinpoint a exact time or even maybe a season of life that you went through that really helped you start thinking about that, I would encourage you to start thinking about that today and what that means to be a leader, not only developing yourself, as we talk about a lot here on Firstly, ju, but how are you leading other people in terms of drawing them out, encouraging them to utilize their gifts and talents to benefit your team, your team and themselves going forward? So maybe, maybe there's an opportunity for you to make that decision. Like, I'm in a leadership position, but I didn't really decide that I wanted to be here. Maybe I was put there for some convenience, but I've grown into the desire of wanting to be a good leader, an effective leader, and so so there's a moment in time that you can, you can kind of mark on that. So that's our challenge to you is to identify that moment or create a moment for yourself going forward as a leader.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I appreciate that and giving that challenge to our listeners and these challenge documents that we're going to be coming out and the documents that kind of track your growth and things like that. I think they're important for leaders to reflect back on and see where they started at and where they were there improving at. So, but it's been, mr Ford has been a good first 25.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I look forward to the next 25.
Speaker 1:All right, thanks you.