Have you ever wondered why some leaders inspire unwavering loyalty while others struggle to motivate their team? Is the lack of a caring culture in business the root of leadership crises? Join us, John Ballinger and Douglas Ford, as they unravel these mysteries and delve into the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence for effective leadership. John and Douglas dissect how the key to cultivating a culture of care lies in leaders getting to know their teams intimately.
How often do we see substance abuse masking leadership inadequacies? John and Douglas tackle this delicate subject, discussing how the Army Values and the NCO Creed stress the importance of competence, fairness, and impartiality for leaders. They also shed light on how leaders can earn their teams' respect and confidence. Moreover, they explore the significance of leaders genuinely investing in their team members, focusing on balancing self-investment and leading a team.
Lastly, John and Douglas set the stage for introspection as they challenge listeners to embark on a journey of personal development and leadership. The NCO Creed's message, "My people deserve great leadership, and I will provide that," echoes throughout the discussion as the two highlight the importance of mastering self-leadership. John underscores the significance of self-awareness and self-improvement in creating better business cultures. As the co-host team brings this season to a close, they wish everyone a happy holiday season and a Merry Christmas as they eagerly anticipate the launch of Season Two on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024. Come join 1st Lead U in this engaging exploration of leadership, care, and self-development. Until then, be careful, stay safe, and start investing in efforts that help you to 1st Lead U.
Have you ever wondered why some leaders inspire unwavering loyalty while others struggle to motivate their team? Is the lack of a caring culture in business the root of leadership crises? Join us, John Ballinger and Douglas Ford, as they unravel these mysteries and delve into the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence for effective leadership. John and Douglas dissect how the key to cultivating a culture of care lies in leaders getting to know their teams intimately.
How often do we see substance abuse masking leadership inadequacies? John and Douglas tackle this delicate subject, discussing how the Army Values and the NCO Creed stress the importance of competence, fairness, and impartiality for leaders. They also shed light on how leaders can earn their teams' respect and confidence. Moreover, they explore the significance of leaders genuinely investing in their team members, focusing on balancing self-investment and leading a team.
Lastly, John and Douglas set the stage for introspection as they challenge listeners to embark on a journey of personal development and leadership. The NCO Creed's message, "My people deserve great leadership, and I will provide that," echoes throughout the discussion as the two highlight the importance of mastering self-leadership. John underscores the significance of self-awareness and self-improvement in creating better business cultures. As the co-host team brings this season to a close, they wish everyone a happy holiday season and a Merry Christmas as they eagerly anticipate the launch of Season Two on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024. Come join 1st Lead U in this engaging exploration of leadership, care, and self-development. Until then, be careful, stay safe, and start investing in efforts that help you to 1st Lead U.
Speaker 1:
If you're in a leadership position and you have some kind of substance abuse alcohol is a thing for you or whatever it is can't quit going outside smoking or vaping or whatever it is. That's a telltale sign that your leadership inabilities is getting to you, because your people are looking at you for answers and you can't give it to them. 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 1:
Mr Ford, mr Ballinger, we are fresh from a meeting where we discussed culture and care.
Speaker 3:
We did. It was a good meeting.
Speaker 1:
It was a very good meeting. I love that company. Love that company. Episode number 30.
Speaker 3:
The big 3-0. 3-0. Another milestone.
Speaker 1:
Do you remember when you turned 30?
Speaker 3:
Yes, I remember where I was. I remember what I did.
Speaker 1:
What were you doing when you turned 30?
Speaker 3:
I was in Los. Angeles. Oh yeah, I was.
Speaker 1:
Oh, I was transitioning from corporate America and going through a divorce.
Speaker 3:
I had to work out for you.
Speaker 1:
Much better. Yeah, yeah that transitioning from corporate America that was odd because I had left the military went straight into corporate America, who realized that the military put a saddle on my back, so they just decided to go ahead and ride that saddle Like heck. We don't need to replace that and put one on him, he's got it. So, yeah, I was. I remember looking up at the age of 30 and from my time that I'd gone in the military and worked in corporate America, I hadn't had a weekend or a holiday off in almost 10 years.
Speaker 3:
Wow, I know, and my glutton for punishment.
Speaker 1:
My normal schedule was five to midnight and that was five am, the 12 midnight. That was just a normal day for me.
Speaker 3:
Good man.
Speaker 1:
They thought so, didn't they? They were getting their money's worth. As a salaried individual that I was, I think so. Yeah, and I think back now about that company that's gone bankrupt and think about what I know today about leadership, what I didn't know then and what would have happened to that company today had there been good leadership in it.
Speaker 3:
It was a strong company.
Speaker 1:
It was a very strong company, very strong company.
Speaker 3:
Like I would say it was a legacy company, at least in this region.
Speaker 1:
Oh, no, yeah, no doubt about that, and at the time it was the largest of their type in America as far as locations, and again I guess we could start playing. Another one Bites the dust in the background. It's sad, but it directly I would say a failure. Leadership is what took that company down.
Speaker 3:
So and a failure to change. I mean obviously that's got to do with the leadership leadership. They never really moved into the second or the next level of things that were coming their way from a competitive standpoint.
Speaker 1:
I totally agree with that. So today's podcast, a return to the original idea. Oh, you know I've discussed this, this being our last episode for the season. Season A culture of care and companies between leadership and team members. I would be remiss if I didn't read a definition, please.
Speaker 3:
Let's have a definition. I need to get some special theme music for a definition. We do need that.
Speaker 1:
No, I mean drum rolls doesn't even do anything. But we got to do something different. So I'm going to read the definition of care the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance and protection of someone or something. Serious attention or consideration applied to doing something correctly or to avoid damage or risk, that's a lot. When you say I care, if you think I've got a health welfare maintenance protection, serious attention, consideration, avoid risk, that's a lot. It is. But in a business, as a leader, to establish a culture of care if you recall in one of the episodes the 23 character traits that a leader has to learn how to utilize some of those you're doing six or seven at one time, depending on the circumstance in front of you. But it's important that the leaders in America return to a culture of care so that the teams can learn to trust them. Again, Very important. So episode 30, and our NASCAR driver is Michael Waltrip. You've heard that name before.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, it sounds very familiar.
Speaker 1:
You heard, I know we.
Speaker 3:
I know we've got a brother right. He does D W Darrell Waltrip who was the Mountain Dew Car guy?
Speaker 1:
He was.
Speaker 3:
He actually. That was my piece of NASCAR trivia A few episodes back.
Speaker 1:
You're right, it was, and that was man. It was powerful, powerful memory D W was the one that coined the term when they started the race from the when the uh checkered flag drop boogity, boogity, boogity.
Speaker 3:
Let's go racing.
Speaker 1:
Let's go racing.
Speaker 3:
Hey, there's another little piece yeah.
Speaker 1:
Well, it's his brother, michael Waltrip. Michael Waltrip who you heard drove the 15 car. He also drove the 30 car. He had more uh starch in the 30 car than he had the 15 car.
Speaker 3:
But no wins. That's rough.
Speaker 1:
I know, I think he did oh.
Speaker 3:
I looked it up.
Speaker 1:
Did he not?
Speaker 3:
Apparently, there's something out there on the internet that tells you all about these cars. I found it this afternoon.
Speaker 1:
He didn't have no wins in the 30 or the 15.
Speaker 3:
He didn't have any wins in the 30.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so in the 15, he won Daytona.
Speaker 3:
I think the 30 cars only had one win out of all the drivers that's been in that car.
Speaker 1:
Nobody wants to drive the 30.
Speaker 3:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Why? Why is it important for leaders to be invested in their team members?
Speaker 3:
That's a great question.
Speaker 1:
It is a great question. I want to read that question again. Why is it important for leaders to be invested in their team members?
Speaker 3:
Well, I think it goes back to definition. You read yeah, and it's caring and concern.
Speaker 1:
If you went into an organization which we do and you asked the leaders especially the leader tell me about your team, their immediate reaction normally is they're going to talk about their position in the company and what they do or don't do for the company in that position.
Speaker 3:
The technical expertise yeah.
Speaker 1:
I mean like, yeah, but tell me about the person. What do you mean? No, I won't tell me about the person, Like who are they? How did they end up in the industry they did? How'd they end up here, you know, and you really get a lot of blank stares.
Speaker 3:
Well, it's typically not something that most organizations and or individuals focus on. I mean, people work together a lot and they don't know a lot about each other.
Speaker 1:
Well, and I would say that that is a true statement. However, if a leader in the organization doesn't know his or her team, I think that's the beginning of a problem.
Speaker 3:
Oh, absolutely yeah, and you've got to kind of get your team used to that, because they're. I mean, if they're coming into your organization or coming to your team from another place, then that's not something that's normal or usual, and so trying to build that relationship takes time and effort.
Speaker 1:
Right, so there's. There's something I said the other day to a business leader If you're in a leadership position, Douglas, this is strong, you may strike this. Is this one that would you edit? We'll see. If you're in a leadership position and you do not care about people get out of it.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, that's. That's a strong statement, it is.
Speaker 1:
But not caring about people, but caring about yourself is going to really rise up and your people are going to see pretty soon that person doesn't care about me. This is about them. What about me? And I'm telling you, if you read these great resignation polls and surveys and things like that, that's what, that's what America's worker was saying. Our business leaders are company. They don't care about us. So is it the responsibility of the leader to help their team members be successful, not use their team members so they can be successful? Oh yeah, it absolutely is.
Speaker 3:
I mean, as we go into different companies, talk to different places, I think a lot of people want to care, they want to have this culture, but they don't. They don't know how. They don't know how to start the process of doing that. And then, as we've talked about in the name of the podcast, is, firstly, if you don't understand how to do that part, which is, do you trust yourself? Do you reflect on what's going on? Do you make better decisions today than did yesterday based on your reflections? If you're not doing those types of things, it's hard to really lead your team well and to get to a place where you can want them to be successful more than you want yourself to be successful. And I think that's the place where a lot of people in leadership. Leadership come from. Initially is that I want to be successful and no one's ever taking the time to show them. It's like no. As a leader, it's your responsibility to make your team successful, and I think very few leaders approach it that way.
Speaker 1:
Right, Should a leader care about themselves in order to care about their team?
Speaker 3:
You definitely have to care about yourself, and you got to do, you got to take care of yourself. But your motivating factor for being the leader of those people should be to make those people successful. Their success makes you successful.
Speaker 1:
So here's, here's that, that balance that leader must learn to lead themselves well so they can care for themselves in order to care and lead that team. And that is a balance that has to be every day worked on with the leader. You, you're balancing every day. Invest in myself, I invest in them. That's myself, so I can lead them. I mean it's and and it can be tiring, because there's some days that leaders like I don't want to invest in anything, I just want to run for the hills, but you are in that leadership position, whether you were placed there or you placed yourself there, or whatever circumstance. So we're, we're coming up. This is the last episode of the first season.
Speaker 3:
It is so we made this episode 30 and we're going to call this season done till after the first of the year.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, we'll start actually we've started already kind of putting and outlines together, but some good information. But you know it's been a journey to get to episode 30 and have people ask us questions and go into companies that have listened to us. The company we went in today there's a monitor in the office of one of the leaders that stays continuously on. Firstly, due podcast podcast that monitor. I've been in there. I've never not seen our podcast on that and when something goes on during the day oh that was episode five, oh that was episode seven and that leader will go to that episode and listen to it before they handle the, whatever the situation is. So that's that's pretty cool to go in and see the podcast on a leader's desk so that they can refer to it as they're learning to lead themselves and others.
Speaker 3:
No, absolutely, and that's what we want. We want these episodes to be resources for people. We hope that the they're able to go back and listen to them, based on what circumstances they may be in or what they're they're dealing with. But we also want to hear from our audience, if listeners, if they've got ideas about things that they'd like us to talk about or for us to explore. Please, you can reach us on Facebook and or LinkedIn. We have pages there that you can. You can get in touch with us, send us emails.
Speaker 3:
Our website, firstly, due, that's the number one ST. So like first, like you'd see it first or second. So first lead, lead and a letter, you, and then dot com, and so those are always people get in touch with us. We'd love to hear from people. Kind of in this little bit of break, we're gonna start back up on January 16th. So we typically release on Tuesdays, not always, but most of time we release on Tuesdays, and that's the first, that's the second, even third Tuesday in January, and so we will. We'll have that January 16th will be our next new episode in and starting with season 2.
Speaker 1:
I look forward to it. I think during this hiatus it would be good for any of the listeners to re-listen to some of the old podcast. I think that's healthy to begin absorbing information. You know, listen to it twice and then it starts clicking. It's like, okay, that's my, that's how I'm supposed to react, or journal, or things like that. So I think listening to those older episodes and catching up on those would be greatly missed. And we also have some exciting things and the original content for season 2.
Speaker 3:
Yep, this is if some of the plans that we're working on come to fruition. That's gonna be some great announcements as we kick off season 2 and get rolling there, and we've already got a couple of guests lined up for season 2 that I think people will really appreciate hearing from once we get there.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so we're gonna take a break, We'll come back and we'll wrap up season one. Welcome back to the final episode of season one. We are talking about culture of care caring about your team, caring about yourself, caring that you lead yourself well so that you lead others. Well, first lead you. So let's talk about the purpose. I know what we're talking about. First lead you. Let's do you know a few minutes on that. We talked about it in the first half. But what is first lead you here to do? Help leaders learn to better lead themselves so they can lead others. Well, that seems like such a basic statement and there's a lot of meat to that statement. And if you don't do that, if you don't lead yourself so you can lead your teams well, you're gonna see retention go up or go down. You're gonna see profits go down. There's a preponderance of things that you're gonna see in a company when teams aren't led well and the people aren't operating efficiently.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and I know we're gonna get to this in just a minute but this idea of leading yourself, I think a lot of people might have questions about how do you start to lead yourself well, because you may feel like I'm doing a great job. So what are some indicators that people might look to to say am I actually leading myself well, am I not leading myself well, and what should I be doing in the either case to make sure that I am on the right path?
Speaker 1:
If you're in a leadership position and you have some kind of substance abuse alcohol is a thing for you or whatever it is can't quit going outside, smoking or vaping or whatever it is. That's a tell-tale sign that your leadership inabilities is getting to you, because your people are looking at you for answers and you can't give it to them.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I certainly think that some form of substance abuse would indicate that you're having a problem or dependency.
Speaker 1:
I mean it's just a dependency on something, because you run to it instead of run towards your team to fix the issues, you run to the whatever it is to escape it, and that's a telltale sign.
Speaker 3:
So what would you suggest that somebody does? Let's just say that they have a slight dependency, A big problem. They probably need to do some other things, but they have a dependency on it. They use that as an escape mechanism for some. What would be a step in the right direction for that?
Speaker 1:
You're going to ask me that question. I just did On the air.
Speaker 3:
I did. I mean we could edit it out, but people want to know.
Speaker 1:
If they do, I'm going to ask them the question that just paralyzes half or more of the people Some of your earliest childhood memory and how old you were when you remembered. That is a foundational question and you've seen this happen. That spurs conversation. That gets to a lot of the root cause analysis of why someone reacts emotionally the way they do. And I would start there like right, we got to unpack that that's causing you to be dependent on a substance because you are in this position that you either volunteered for, someone placed you in, you accepted, and now that you're there, it's causing you to run to something, and a lot of times those things are not good for you or your family or your friends or whatever, and you're running away from your team and your team recognizes it. So you got to recognize it first and then you got to look at that. All right, now I need help and we've talked about this and episode, maybe the last one. Now find you someone that can help you learn how to kick the habit and then identify what's going on that's causing you to want to need that habit, so that you can learn how to overcome that, and that's a critical piece to learning to lead yourself well. Find you someone that can help you. It's always good, and it could be someone that kicked the habit that you're dealing with. That's always good too. So how did you do it?
Speaker 1:
Um, leaders, leadership and companies must realize that their team members want to be led well. Another simple statement but the masses out there are looking forward at the leadership and saying we want to be led well. Can you imagine going in and you're you've got 25 people and you say hey, do you all want to be led? Well, we don't. We like it when it's chaotic. We like it when the boss screams and yells. We like it when payroll doesn't get done. I don't worry about payroll on Friday, we'll get it to you whenever we get to you. Can you imagine people? That's not what people want. They want to know that they're fed, closed, how they're paid, and that they they they're cared about. That's what they want to know and they'll go to battle for you.
Speaker 3:
But very few people are going to walk in and on the opposite side and say I want to be led. Well, they're going to say other things that you, as a leader, need to understand and interpret that they're actually asking you to be a better leader because very few people are going to walk in and said you need to be a better leader.
Speaker 1:
So I think there's an expectation that if someone has risen to the level of leadership, that there's an expectation from the workforce that all right, it's on you, lead us well.
Speaker 1:
Which which brings me to we mentioned this on one of the other episodes the army values, and we've got the what's called the NCO creed non commissioned officers creed and we were reading through this and it's like, if you replace the word soldier with leader, there's a lot of things that are appropriate and one that just jumped out at me as I'm reading through this competence is my watchword.
Speaker 1:
If you can't look at yourself as a leader and don't lie to yourself, because your team knows when you are lying to yourself, if you can't look at yourself and say I am competent in my position, I'm confident in myself and the way I lead myself, stop and get help or look for an alternative position because you're going to run yourself and your team, I think those, those four words, that is a strong statement. To be able to look at yourself as leader, as competent, is my watchword. Here's another one that's extremely difficult, since I will be fair and impartial when recommending both rewards and punishment. One of the most difficult things that we encounter in leadership is not being able to have tough conversations and have a consistent measures of counseling and discipline across the company. People will pick and choose based on who they are, how well they know them, how long they've been with the company, and you cannot do that because of the minute that you treat or don't treat someone differently than the team, the rest of the team is going to be looking at you, picking and choosing.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, there's a. There's another one on here too that we talk a lot about, which is communication. That says I will communicate consistently with my soldiers or my team members and never leave them uninformed. We talk a lot about the advantages of clear communication with your team.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, what about this one? I will earn their respect and confidence. Man, can you imagine, with a leader going into company and saying I've come in in the door, my job is to earn their respect and confidence, while I'm in the middle of this firefight and learning to learning to learn my team who they are, as I'm doing my job inside the company as a leader? So you're learning your people, you're having to operate the company, you're having to deal with all the vendors and issues and things going on and could be government compliance issues. All those are going on while you're learning your team and learning yourself in that organization.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, there's one more that I think is as good. It's uh, starts off. All my team members are entitled to outstanding leadership. I will provide that leadership. If you got up and said that to yourself every morning, that'd be a great way to start the day, reminding yourself that that's what you're sitting. That level of expectation for yourself, outstanding leadership yeah, that's a when you use the word entitled.
Speaker 1:
Of course I'm not going to look it up in the dictionary, but I can tell you what it says they're owed. They're owed outstanding leadership. So, if you can, and those, maybe we just throw this up on the website, the NC, the NCO Creed, so that our uh, we'll put it in as part of our blog, a link to it from our blog?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think that'd be great, you know tried and true statements that we made throughout this first season Learning to lead yourself starts with learning to develop a plan To lead yourself to develop yourself. We've talked about journaling, understanding what emotional intelligence means and how to start developing and increasing emotional intelligence. Reflection Personal development leads to professional success. Did we, did we trademark that? I don't think we have.
Speaker 3:
Phew we should, we should, and here's one that we are. I put it in here.
Speaker 1:
It's not on here. I threw it in on you and here's one that we are. Yep, the real you AI the real AI is authentic intelligence, not artificial intelligence, and so we are big on authentic leadership and authentic intelligence, and it's self reflection through self awareness results in self improvement. Self reflection through self awareness results in self improvement. Now did we those?
Speaker 3:
are some good things we tried market.
Speaker 1:
I'm.
Speaker 3:
We've, we've. Maybe we've copyrighted them in our podcast.
Speaker 1:
Maybe we do that. We need to this. This is good stuff. I mean this is you know, I've read a lot of leadership books, been a lot of leadership courses, military and civilian, and I'm I'm maybe maybe I'm biased, but I'm. I think we're putting out some great content that, if embraced, will truly change a leader's life and change those that they're in charge of leading.
Speaker 3:
Well, I think what we have the advantage of of is that you're right. We both read a lot of leadership books. We've heard a lot of people talk, we've experienced different types of leadership, been in different types of leadership roles. We're at an age now that we've been able to distill a lot of that information down to kind of some of the core truths of it, because there's a lot out there and a lot of systems will work If you're able to stick to it. But what we are trying to do, I think, is give you some core principles that you can use, no matter what system you use, as you move forward.
Speaker 1:
I also think that we found some voids that we're filling, that haven't been filled in the leadership industry, which is billions of dollars a year, and we looked at them say yeah, but nobody's doing this.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean certainly the concept of firstly you is much more internal focus than what we hear most people talk about.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so if you've you've been a regular listener to this podcast, you know that we consistently encourage you to start your own personal development journey to critical. And what a great way to start off the new year saying I'm a look at myself in the mirror and say you know what? I am not going to lead people the way that they need to be led until I really self assess myself, make sure I'm leading myself well so I can lead them well.
Speaker 3:
And we're close to the beginning of the new year, it gives you plenty of time to start thinking through that. What might that look like? What are some things that you could put in place? Um, atomic habits. A lot of people probably read that book, but it talks about doing making some micro changes. To read lead lead to some bigger results, and so if you just think about what are some small changes I can start making the next six weeks as we get toward the new year. That can really put me on, you know, supercharge me to leap into the new year with a full develop, develop plan of self improvement Right.
Speaker 1:
So over the next month and a half, start planning and preparing for 24. So you can have the best opportunity to have that personal development plan. Listen to the earlier podcast or re listen to them. Those first five that are foundational. I got a text message the other day from a leader said hey, I listened to first three. Man, that was great stuff. I can't wait to get to the next two.
Speaker 1:
A lot of foundational things when it comes to self reflection, self awareness, self development. Challenge yourself by finding someone to challenge you. Challenge yourself by finding someone to challenge you. Remember the journal, the day's event. You lose your cool, you get up tight, you withdraw, you go on the office, slam the door, you go into self protection mode. Find out what's causing that. Those are triggers. Write these things in your journal the situation with the person that's challenging you, kind of talking through those. What's causing that?
Speaker 1:
You have to assess yourself, prepare ahead of time, thinking through interactions with people or in the circumstances when dealing with the people. That's knowing yourself and knowing your team. It shouldn't be a big shock if one of your team members reacts a specific way To a certain circumstance. You should look at that and say, well, based on their weakness or their strength or whatever it is. I get that, so I need to. I need to be aware of that. Going into it, they're going to react this way.
Speaker 1:
Accomplishing the personal development leads to professional success. Doing it through self reflection and awareness so that you can improve yourself are key, critical steps to starting your own leadership journey, and we have worked, I feel like, diligently over the past year to try and illustrate that as best we can on a podcast. We do have a lot of success face to face, one on one, but in order to reach as many as possible to be able to help keep a another great resignation from happening and to keep the leaders from resigning and going was like what happens if, all of a sudden, we woke up one day and it's like nobody wants to be a leader and the only ones that were in leadership positions had no leadership ability whatsoever. Oh dang, I believe we're almost there, aren't we? I mean, we're really looking at that.
Speaker 1:
We're getting close, yeah, so I feel like it's our job to help wake those people up that can be in leadership, are in leadership, that want to know how to be great leaders. And the first great step in learning to lead yourself Is learning to lead yourself. Think about that the first great step to leading yourself is learning to lead yourself. And it's not easy, mr you know. I've been in leadership for a long time and it's not easy, mr you know it's not. It's not easy to look at yourself in the mirror and say I got to learn to lead you Cause I'm really not doing a good job.
Speaker 3:
Well, if you just go back to that statement we read earlier from the NCO Creed, which is my people deserve great leadership and I will provide that, I mean that's a good challenge for yourself just to start down this journey.
Speaker 1:
So, mr Ford, I've enjoyed this season with you.
Speaker 3:
It's been a fun ride.
Speaker 1:
It has. Uh, we hope everyone has a Joyous holiday, A great Thanksgiving, A merry Christmas, a happy new year, and we look forward to uh spending some time with you in 2024.