Have you ever stood at the helm of a team, questioning yourself as a leader? That's a crossroad I've faced, and trust me, the journey to self-assured leadership is both challenging and essential. Join me, John Ballinger, and my astute companion, Douglas Ford, as we tackle the often-overlooked foundation of all great leaders—self-trust. We share stories, peel back the layers of emotional intelligence, and urge you to probe the depths of your own self-awareness.
In the realm of leadership, growth is non-negotiable. My own brush with the pitfalls of self-doubt serves as a cautionary tale illuminating why leaders must cultivate both self-trust and self-love. It's not just about confidence in decision-making but also about embracing the ethos of genuine self-appreciation. This episode is your opportunity for a heart-to-heart with yourself—to uncover the imprints of past experiences on your leadership style and to explore the profound personal development that fortifies your role at the forefront.
Finally, we examine how your leadership impacts your teams and the thriving of your enterprise. Authenticity isn't a buzzword; it's the lifeline of loyalty and dedication within your ranks. We dive into the essence of leadership that goes beyond mere transactions, building a culture where every interaction deposits trust into the 'bank account' of credibility. So, arm yourself with insights, and let's embark on a transformational quest to not only refine your teams but to revolutionize your approach to leading with this 1stLead U.
Below are the key questions that are asked throughout the episode and questions that you should consider on a regular basis if you are leading a team of any size.
Do I trust myself as a leader?
Do I like/love myself?
What is the definition of a leader?
What is the definition of a manager?
Do you manage tasks, or are you leading people?
Do you consider yourself a leader?
Do you want to be a leader?
Do others see you as a leader?
Do you truly/sincerely care about the success and development of each of your team members?
What are you regularly doing to make yourself a better leader?
Do you prepare daily to be a better manager or a better leader?
Do the people you lead feel they are being led well?
Join us on a journey of self-discovery with our FREE Personal Development Assessment.
Evaluate your leadership beliefs and learn how to inspire trust in your team. Plus, receive a FREE personal call with John for tailored guidance.
Have you ever stood at the helm of a team, questioning yourself as a leader? That's a crossroad I've faced, and trust me, the journey to self-assured leadership is both challenging and essential. Join me, John Ballinger, and my astute companion, Douglas Ford, as we tackle the often-overlooked foundation of all great leaders—self-trust. We share stories, peel back the layers of emotional intelligence, and urge you to probe the depths of your own self-awareness.
In the realm of leadership, growth is non-negotiable. My own brush with the pitfalls of self-doubt serves as a cautionary tale illuminating why leaders must cultivate both self-trust and self-love. It's not just about confidence in decision-making but also about embracing the ethos of genuine self-appreciation. This episode is your opportunity for a heart-to-heart with yourself—to uncover the imprints of past experiences on your leadership style and to explore the profound personal development that fortifies your role at the forefront.
Finally, we examine how your leadership impacts your teams and the thriving of your enterprise. Authenticity isn't a buzzword; it's the lifeline of loyalty and dedication within your ranks. We dive into the essence of leadership that goes beyond mere transactions, building a culture where every interaction deposits trust into the 'bank account' of credibility. So, arm yourself with insights, and let's embark on a transformational quest to not only refine your teams but to revolutionize your approach to leading with this 1stLead U.
Below are the key questions that are asked throughout the episode and questions that you should consider on a regular basis if you are leading a team of any size.
Do I trust myself as a leader?
Do I like/love myself?
What is the definition of a leader?
What is the definition of a manager?
Do you manage tasks, or are you leading people?
Do you consider yourself a leader?
Do you want to be a leader?
Do others see you as a leader?
Do you truly/sincerely care about the success and development of each of your team members?
What are you regularly doing to make yourself a better leader?
Do you prepare daily to be a better manager or a better leader?
Do the people you lead feel they are being led well?
Join us on a journey of self-discovery with our FREE Personal Development Assessment.
Evaluate your leadership beliefs and learn how to inspire trust in your team. Plus, receive a FREE personal call with John for tailored guidance.
a leader that doesn't trust themselves in their decision making. Their team members can. They can feel that they know it, they can spot it and they can actually expose it.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to First Lead U, 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 U, 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.
Speaker 2:
Now here is personal growth coach John Ballinger.
Speaker 1:
Hello world, this is John Ballinger, and I am here with my trusty sidekick, douglas Ford. Hello John, how are you this week? I am well, and we are here at First Lead U to help you. First Lead U, mr Ford.
Speaker 3:
That's a creative name we came up with.
Speaker 1:
We worked a long time on that, so this season's been different in that we're digging in deeper into what it takes to learn, embrace, to get someone to really dig into learning to lead themselves so they can lead their teams better. The topic today is difficult because we talk about do you trust your leader, do you trust these people, and things like that, but we're going to be talking today about the word trust, which is our word for the day, by the way.
Speaker 3:
The word of the day. We need a sound effect for the word of the day.
Speaker 1:
We got to do that we do.
Speaker 3:
we need something. Maybe we'll have that for next week.
Speaker 1:
But the title? The title today's show is do you trust yourself as a leader?
Speaker 3:
Do I trust myself as a leader?
Speaker 1:
Do you trust yourself and do you mind if I have the definition of trust right here, by the way?
Speaker 3:
Oh, thank you, Please do yeah.
Speaker 1:
Affirm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something. So now and I know we've talked about trust in the past with you know the speed of trust in the book that we've suggested that people one of the books we suggested people read. But I want the leader, the listener, to put this, this whole podcast, in context of themselves. So now we're going to say that definition with thinking about yourself. Do you have a firm reliability in yourself, like I? I know I'm reliable, I know I'm truthful, I know I have the ability and the strength to get things done, and I want you to really think about that as yourself, as a leader, because this, this podcast, is one and I wrote the note down I said today you will need a pen and paper If you're driving, listening to this.
Speaker 1:
I want to challenge you to be at a point where you're listening to this at home, at your office. Have a pen and a piece of paper, because today we're going to ask the leaders a lot of questions that we want them to reflect on. We want them to look at their selves in the mirror, literally. When I say look in the mirror, literally look yourself in the mirror and say do I trust me? Do I trust my decision making, especially in the heat of fire? So we're going to be digging through the trust yourself as a leader topic today, mr Ford.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and as you mentioned, I mean this season we are doing things a little bit differently and we're trying to dig into some things. So the first four or five episodes we really dug into kind of that early childhood, how things impact you, and then, of course, you into that kind of block with your story about what has motivated you to be a leader, to be a better leader, to be better for a company, for the employees, for team members and for yourself, and so now we're really going to be looking over the next few episodes at personal development. So we get to this topic today of do you trust yourself as a leader? So yeah, there's some different angles. We're taking this season.
Speaker 1:
I want to jump back to that last block that we finished, when you talked about what we were talking about, my last. Do you read the contracts to you, son?
Speaker 3:
It depends on the contract.
Speaker 1:
I mean, if we just think through that process, because one of the things that caused me pain in that episode if people listen to that, is I didn't thoroughly read and if I had thoroughly read that I even know that that point in the contract was so important to even be put in there. If it was missing that I think, oh, I need that something, some verbiage in there, to protect myself and my intellectual property and my interest and all these things. So when I didn't, I wrote it trust and faith in myself.
Speaker 3:
Right, yeah, and that's key. I have a conversation with someone in my household about that on a regular basis being able to trust yourself, because that's key. If you don't trust yourself, you're in a bad spot to start with.
Speaker 1:
You are and I've always said that a leader that doesn't trust themselves in their decision making, their team members can. They can feel that, they know it, they can spot it and they can actually expose it, which makes it that much worse for the, for the leader, because when the, when it's exposed by someone that's kind of needling at you or pushing your poke in you, it can cause you to blot, I'm gonna get out of here, I don't want to deal with that, and we've all got those people in our lives that can poke us, you know. So I want I want the leader to listen to this and write these questions down, study these questions, and this is a. This is a more of a mental study, kind of a reflection. I'm not asking you to get out a bunch of books and things like that. I mean, this is really a self assessment process when it comes to do you trust yourself as a leader.
Speaker 3:
So that would be one of the early steps in personal development is having the ability to do some self reflection and develop some self awareness.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So these first two questions are kind of weird, and I don't. They're not meant to be weird, they're just I'm just trying to start the process and this doesn't really have the thing to do with just the leadership part of it. So I just want to ask two personal questions, if I may. Do you just trust yourself? And, as you just set back and reflect on that, keep it, keep out of the mindset of, do I trust myself as leader? Let's start with do you trust yourself and think about what the word trust me, Do I feel like I'm reliable? Do I feel like I'm trustworthy? Do I feel like I make good decisions under? I mean, that's the trust part of it, and I want you to ask yourself, just as a person, do I trust myself? Okay, and then the second question. This is even tougher, probably a little bit more weird, but do I love myself?
Speaker 3:
If you don't do the first one, it's going to be hard to do the second one.
Speaker 1:
It's going to be very difficult. Yeah, conversely, I think if you don't do the second one, the first one's difficult. I mean, these two really play hand in hand with each other, absolutely.
Speaker 1:
But I really want you to the leader, the listener, from just a personal standpoint. Do I love myself? Now, here's what I get into with people. Well, I could lose 15 pounds, or I wish my nose was this, or I know no, no, no, no, you were built how you were built. You are who you are. Could we all improve Absolutely? But everybody automatically goes toward an appearance when they start asking, when they're asked the question do I love myself? I want you to take this. Is this is an internal thing?
Speaker 3:
More character yeah.
Speaker 1:
I want you to look at your heart. I want you to look at your soul. Do I trust myself? Do I love myself and do I love like the decisions I get to make and the people I surround myself with and the things I get to do? I mean, how many people that we know they're in leadership positions that just hate what they do? You know they. I wish I could go do something else and we've talked about it in previous episodes, with the great resignation where people just got completely out of their field that they were in and had been for years, and even what their degree was in, and started wanting to do something that they really enjoyed and that they love to do. So I want you to think about that from a listener standpoint. Do I trust myself and do I love myself?
Speaker 3:
So if the answer to the either one of those questions is no, then what? What's my next step?
Speaker 1:
Yes, so that's, that's even. That's an even deeper discussion, because if there are trust issues with yourself and there are um, you're self conscious about yourself and your decision making and you don't love yourself, then you really need to dig a little bit deeper as into why. And that goes back to I hate to do it, but we're have to go back to, like the first episode, those foundational episodes, because there's something that happened there that actually is an impediment to today.
Speaker 3:
And it may have happened later in life. I mean could very well, and most likely is maybe an earlier life issue, but it could be something you've been dealing with more recently. I mean, I know that personally, I've walked through a season where those two things I would have answered no, because of things that happened in, you know, my professional life that caused me to not trust myself, not trust the decisions I was making for for a period of time, and so, um, I think it could be any any point in life where you've gotten stuck and now you're at the moment, you're in a position where the answer of those questions are no.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I, I, I can agree with that.
Speaker 1:
Um, and I think there's like two I talked about, you know, the DNA and early childhood development and things like that, but then life circumstances when you pack both those on top of each other, it can weigh you down.
Speaker 1:
I mean, you can, you can, you can look at yourself and feel like, and you see how people are walking around, just kind of droopy in their shoulders and they feel like they're like you look at people, like, and people aren't walking their wreck shoulders back, confident. The more I go into places, the more I see people are just walking like bent over. I'm thinking we're, we're, so it's almost like we're just, I don't know they're, we're wrought with pain and anguish inside of us. It's causing us just like our stomachs aching and we're bent over because we're just, we don't feel well and, um, I, I hate seeing society like that. So I, I, especially from a leadership standpoint, you want your leaders to feel confident, walk with a purpose, be able to walk in a room and own the room from a confident standpoint, but also with humility, and get people motivated and get their shoulders back up and their their chins back up and say I want to be back in the game, because I feel like we're just in a kind of a numb state right now, Mr Ford.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and so I offer this, as if you ask yourself those questions and the answer to either one or both of them is no, and you don't really know how to deal with that. You need to find somebody to talk to.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah. That's how many times have we said through these podcasts find a mentor, a business coach or someone that you can just unpack life with. And I know that's difficult. I had somebody the other day tell me when I was talking to them. They said I just I think that's weird to go talk to somebody and societies made it weird that think that you feel like you got all your stuff together, so why would I want to talk to somebody? You know, but we've said this in the past professional organizations, professional athletic organizations they have psychologists on staff. Corporate psychology is real. Sports psychology is real. Coaches in both of them are real.
Speaker 1:
But people think, well, you've got to be way up here and do these things to need that. No, you don't. You can just have somebody. You become a battle buddy with that. They're going probably through some of the similar things you're going through and you have to be vulnerable enough to just say you know what? Why don't we just start trying to do life together? That's just healthy in the days, difficult circumstances of society that we're dealing with.
Speaker 1:
So that's two big questions, mr Ford, and those are personal questions for the, for the leaders. I want you to think about that now from your perspective that we just asked you to look at, and now I want you to look through your team's eyes at you. So the leaders now thinking through that themselves, and now they're having to take their focus and say now how does my team see that? Do they see trust in me? Do they see love and care and concern coming out of me to them? Because here's the reality If you don't trust yourself and you don't love yourself, guess what your team is going to feel it? Because you can't fake care and concern about other people if you don't have care for yourself and you don't have love for yourself.
Speaker 1:
That's true, and your team is going to sniff that out in a second. So I want you to think about that from a leadership standpoint. We've asked you that question. Now you turn around and look through the lens of your team members and think about how they think about that. These are some deep subjects, deep questions, probing questions, but the ultimate go is to, once you've unpacked these things and repacked them with okay, I'm starting to learn to trust myself. Okay, I'm starting to learn to love who I am.
Speaker 1:
My team sees me walk in differently. They see me making decisions differently. They see me interacting differently with them. Someone blew up in the company. I didn't react like I used to react. My team members see that all of that starts happening on the personal side and the professional side, because I've had spouses say something happened and a year ago here she would react to totally different than they acted. Thank you for helping them overcome whatever it was that was impeding that. So as we work through this episode, we're going to go into the second part of the episode and we're going to ask more questions. Mr Ford, these are this whole podcast is a reflection to the business owner or the leader, the executive, on what they need to do in order to learn to trust themselves and the decisions they're making every day for their employees and team members.
Speaker 3:
That seems like a great place to take a break, and we'll be back for more questions and more in-depth reflection after the break. Thanks, sir. Thanks, sir, welcome back to, firstly, you. Today we are asking some probing questions as we go through this episode. The title of the episode helps kind of determine the direction we're going to go, which is do you trust yourself as a leader?
Speaker 3:
And we've asked a couple, two very point questions at this point in the podcast, which is do you trust yourself and do you love yourself? And so we had some good discussion about that and what you might need to do if the answer to either one of those questions or both of those was no. And so now we're going to go into another series of questions, and John's challenges does to listen to this episode with a piece of paper so you can write down the questions and then reflect on those. So this next block of episodes will be about personal development, and we're digging in deep today with giving you some questions that you can look at, you can think about and you can use as reflection questions. So, john, you got some more questions for us.
Speaker 1:
I do, and I was thinking when you said probing. Anytime I hear that word, I think about a lot of people that know me know I've got some pretty severe back issues from days in the military and when I hear the word probe, I always hear the words coming from the person right before they stick the epidural needles in my back to and it just kind of cringes. I cringe, but when you ask a probing question, you do something probing. A lot of times that's not a positive thing. Right Like that four inch needle going into and it's 16 gauge, by the way. I mean it's a it's, it's not, it's not a little bitty thing and it's probing in and it's injecting these pain killers in your back.
Speaker 1:
But it hurts and I know these questions are something that most people would say. I'd just like to skip that episode or let me just turn that off and hopefully they'll. They're going to talk about something rosy on the next episode. But these questions are meant to help you grow as a leader. So I want I want you to truly understand that you cannot grow as a leader until you learn how to deal with probing yourself in order to find out how you can be a better person which makes you a better leader. Okay, so thank you for using that word, because it just reminded me of an epidural.
Speaker 3:
Sure, anytime I can talk about things that bring you discomfort, pain, let me know.
Speaker 1:
So so here's, we got eight questions, mr Ford.
Speaker 3:
Eight questions.
Speaker 1:
Again, remember, we're trying to make everyone have a piece of paper and a pen so they can define a leader. So I want, I want the audience just sit down and say you know, what do I consider a leader? You know we've asked the question in the past podcast would you want to be led by you? And I asked that questions a lot of times, a lot of times to leaders and they just literally look at me like they don't know how to answer that question.
Speaker 3:
There's usually a long pause after that long pause.
Speaker 1:
They're like, and then they want. They want to say yes, but they know if they say yes, they've opened up the door for me. I mean, I didn't have to kick the door in, they just opened it up, break it out, walk right through it. Because now I'm really going to ask them some questions Do you manage task or do you lead?
Speaker 3:
people. That's a big question. We talked, we spent almost a whole episode kind of talking about that. That was in the transactional versus relational episode that we did a couple of episodes back and that's a big distinction and difference that people need to understand when they're in leadership positions. Which one of those are they actually doing?
Speaker 1:
Yep, yep, here's one. Do you even want to be a leader? I mean, that can make it just stop.
Speaker 3:
I mean I want to make more money. So maybe that's why I'm a leader, because I'm trying to increase my financial standing. But if I start asking myself some of these other questions, do I want to actually lead people? Do I want to have care and concern for people who are on my team? Do I want to see them develop to be better team members and start developing themselves as a leader? That starts to get pretty weighty as you go down that list of questions.
Speaker 1:
What about that leader that's, I'm going to be in a leadership position because I'm going to prove to people that they were wrong about me. Not that they have a desire to lead. They have a desire to prove a point when people says you know, there's no what you'll know and never amount to anything, you'll never be able to, you'll never. And so they're hell bent on putting themselves in a leadership position without being able to actually be a leader.
Speaker 3:
And there's a difference between being in charge and leading, which we don't always distinguish either.
Speaker 1:
Define a manager.
Speaker 3:
As opposed to the early question of defining a leader. That's correct. There's a difference between the two.
Speaker 1:
Could be. Do you consider yourself a leader?
Speaker 3:
That's a good question.
Speaker 1:
Mm-hmm, it is. And then when you, when you think in that context, if you're reflecting, cause your immediate response, if you're in a leadership position, to that, that question is well, of course, until you have to start thinking about the 25 character traits the leader has to have every day. And this, listen, I'm going to, I'm going to drop a little plug. This next episode that we're going to do, which is coming soon, what took a couple of weeks from now, we'll make you pause. As a leader, you think this is making you think we're, we're fixing to go, we're going to probe that that needle that epidural needs is going to go from about four inches to about eight inches to probe and dig, dig around a little bit.
Speaker 3:
But when you start asking yourself, do I consider myself a leader? That speaks to a lot of things. That can create stress and anxiety, because if I don't, but yet I'm supposed to be now, every day I'm fighting against what you know. I don't really feel that way inside, I don't really have that trust in myself, and that's can create a lot of issues and it's going to create issues in how you deal with your team. And so, and I and while we're here, and and we talked about this, uh, the manager and the task and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:
We said this before. We say it again there's nothing wrong with being a good task manager. You may be a project manager, you may have a list of things that you have to get a team to accomplish every day. We're not talking about that. We're not trying to downplay that Sometimes that role also coincides with being a good leader, but we're specifically talking about the idea of leading people. So don't don't miss here what we're saying. We're folks trying to focus on the first lead you aspect of this and what you need to do to be that leader for yourself and for your team, exactly.
Speaker 1:
Exactly, are you leading versus pushing or pulling people? We we had a discussion with a team the other day and and there was some question or comment made about somebody Uh, he said this my team just willingly follows me because I did these things and the other the other people in the room were looking at him like well, how'd you get him to do that? And he started talking about. He just sat down one day and said you know what? I need? To listen better to the team and listen to their cares and concerns and actually listen to the point where they know that I am care, I care and I'm concerned about them as people and their families. And it can't. You know, some of the things he talked about is knowing their kids and what kind of games they played, and you know sports and things like that. And he said I just it wasn't difficult and all of a sudden they just started following me. So, like, some of the things that we talk about is not that difficult to do, you just have to stop and do it.
Speaker 3:
You have to make an intentional choice to move in that direction. A hundred percent agree.
Speaker 1:
What? Uh, this is tough one. Be truthful with yourself. Would others define you as a leader? It?
Speaker 3:
goes back to the first part of this episode where you asked that question like how does your team see you?
Speaker 1:
Uh-huh.
Speaker 3:
Same type of question Do your peers see you as a leader?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so, and then this is uh, this is probably the one that just I see less and less of. Do you truly sincerely care about the success and development of each of your team members? We, we're so caught up in this. I hired them to do a job, I pay them on Friday, they've got benefits and they should just do their job. Well, I think we've seen that that doesn't work. Now do we want people to work and do their job and get paid on Fridays? And not? Yes, but what people are asking for is for their leaders to care about them.
Speaker 1:
And when you, when they do and I've seen this happen and, like I said, other examples in companies when the team knows that their leader cares, guess what? The leader really doesn't have to focus so much on the task that they're doing, because they're going to do them. They, they respect and trust the leadership. They don't want that, they don't want to fail that leader, and so they'll do their job, which means productivity goes up, that means absenteeism goes down, that means that turnover goes down. I mean, the, the multiplier of good leadership is, is something I don't. There's some time we talked about it. You can't gauge the value of that If you had to put a dollar amount on the balance sheet, it'd be hard to define that, but I think there are. There's a huge, huge profit center and great leadership in a company and what it can do to define the profits and the and the control of the losses and things like that inside a company.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I mean this is books a little bit older, but Jim Collins wrote the book Good to Great and you know he says in there that almost all of the companies that made the leap from good to great had CEOs who were what he called level level five leaders. I think it's level five, maybe level six, but it's level five, okay. Um, we're the ones who kind of had a humble spirit but showed that they cared about their company. They showed they cared about the team. They showed they cared about their customer. It was, you know, this kind of list of qualities, and none of them had to do with making sure they were the best this or the best that or had the most this or that. It was all about their interpersonal interactions with people.
Speaker 1:
Right, so I just forwarded. So, if you take those eight questions, write them down, put your answers, and not just these aren't? Yes, and I want you to really, as the as the listener, spend some time and reflect on them and write some uh comments down about those uh questions and then ask yourself in order to perform as the leader that you need to for your team, show them you care, you care what, what's your, what's your exercise routine that you've put in place in order to be a better leader for yourself and your people.
Speaker 3:
Do I really need to do it every day?
Speaker 1:
Every day, like every day, yeah, every day. You know this. I'm always walking around thinking about how to be better. Did I make that right decision? I'm troubleshooting myself, you you may not need to be as intense as I am, cause we got into this today with, uh, with my assistant, where she was kind of peppering me with well, yeah, you're different, you're like no, I have worked for years to continue to develop myself and when I see someone that has potential, that kind of just sluffs off and says I just don't want to do it, I don't have a lot of respect or regard for that person.
Speaker 1:
I mean, you got to lean in on this stuff. If you don't, then you're just telling me and your team you really don't care about them. It's more just about you. It's a very selfish decision you're making. So I want the the leader, listener person in a position to ask themselves what am I doing every day to prepare myself to be the leader I need to be for the people? Because if you don't, here's what's going to happen, mr Ford Trust will begin to erode. If you've, if there's, any trust at all that the team had in you, it'll start eroding and trust erodes due to pervasive big word which is unwelcome suspicion and disappointment when a leader's integrity and credibility can be looked at and by the people and say I don't know if we trust them anymore, but they question the integrity and the credibility of the leader and all of a sudden you're guilty until proven innocent.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I heard a example one time about the idea of trust in. They said it's kind of like a bank You're either making deposits or withdrawals and sometimes you may have some, some trust. Maybe you walk into a situation and you're afforded a certain number of credits of trust because of maybe who you are, the position you're in, maybe your background, but you have to continue to make deposits into that trust, account for that trust to continue to grow and build up, because if you don't, you're going to start making debits, and maybe little debits at a time, not little debbies, but little debits at a time, until it kind of reaches a typical point and you've lost trust with your team. And so that erosion of trust has happened slowly, but it could also, as we know, happen with a single decision, because of the way the decision was made, the lack of input that was gathered for the decision or the lack of, you know, an unwilling us to reexamine the decision.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, One of the examples we were talking about before we started recording was the leader made the decision Bad decision. Still listen to the people Ultimately had to make the go forward plan, did it? It's not working and they don't stop it quick enough and they continue to let the bad decision continue, moving throughout the company which rolls out. We've seen recently where that's happened it was going to be bad, ended up being really bad and then, when it was really bad, everybody's looking around like, well, we know it's going to be bad. Well, what did you do To mitigate or, at least you know, make it tolerable? Saying, yeah, there's a bad decision, let's suggest fire, let's go back into it and figure out a new plan of action, but continuing to let it just play out throughout the organization, it'll road trust quick. So these this is a difficult episode, absolutely.
Speaker 3:
Absolutely, especially if you take the time to do what we've asked you to do with, just to go back through some of these questions. So that gets us to our one action item or homework for this episode, and that is before we do that.
Speaker 1:
If there's a leader out there that will genuinely answer these questions, I will take the time myself to unpack your questions and answers with you, if you'll just do it. I want to see. I want to see a leader out of all the listeners that we've got. I want to see a leader that will actually do this. Email me. Here's my responses, here's my challenges, and I will not charge a nickel. I will talk to that person. I want to see somebody do it.
Speaker 3:
So you can reach us on Facebook, firstly, do on, firstly docom, so that's one ST lead the letter youcom. And also on LinkedIn. So different ways to get in touch with us and reach out to us and we can make sure that we get you connected with with John as well.
Speaker 1:
So the knot to the gauntlet down. Let's see if somebody picks it up, says I'm going to do something.
Speaker 3:
So the final homework assignment is Mr Ford is to go through this episode One more time, write down the questions, and we're going to run, run through the questions real, real fast. So first question was do I trust myself? Do I love myself? How do you define a leader? Do you want to be a leader? Do you manage tasks or do you lead people? Define a manager. Do you consider yourself a leader? Are you actually leading? Would others define you as a leader, and do you care about people that you're leading and their success and development?
Speaker 1:
I truly want, and I mean if we get 10, 20, whatever we get, it will make me smile if people that are in leadership positions actually stop and answer these questions, because they are defining questions that need to be answered in order to grow as a leader. So we'll see if somebody picks it up, mr Ford.
Speaker 3:
Yep. Well, thanks for the challenges this week, thanks for the questions and we'll look forward to seeing everybody next week.