1st Lead U - Leadership Development
This podcast, now in Season 3, is dedicated to self-development, self-awareness, and learning to lead oneself so listeners can lead others well. If someone cannot lead themselves well, it will be difficult for them to be an effective leader of others. This podcast will help listeners understand what it means to 1st Lead U and build confidence in themselves and their leadership ability. Personal Growth Coach John Ballinger has spent 35 years developing the knowledge and material he shares with individuals, business owners, and leaders from a variety of areas.
1st Lead U - Leadership Development
The Approachable Leader - C.H.A.R.T. - Ep 321
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Is your leadership style creating barriers rather than bridges? In this compelling episode of 1st Lead U, we unpack the critical yet often overlooked leadership trait of approachability.
Through a revealing exploration of workforce dynamics, we discover that while only 6.2% of America's 170 million workers hold leadership positions, the impact of their approachability (or lack thereof) ripples throughout entire organizations. When leaders are open, caring, and actively listening, teams flourish. When they're sarcastic, critical, or temperamental, organizational culture deteriorates one interaction at a time.
The leadership challenge lies in what we call "gear shifting" – a leader's ability to mentally transition between countless responsibilities while remaining fully present for team members who approach with concerns. This isn't merely a soft skill but a strategic imperative that directly impacts company performance.
We discuss our powerful L.E.A.D. framework (Leaders, Educated to Lead, Agreeable Followers, Disgruntled Employees) to help you understand how leadership approachability shapes workforce dynamics. Even the most carefully selected teams will have 10-20% of challenging employees, and how you approach these individuals is just as important as how you lead your top performers.
Leaders who become unapproachable begin a dangerous cycle: isolation, surrounding themselves with yes-people, and losing touch with critical feedback. The antidote? Developing self-awareness and adaptability first – the foundation for genuine approachability.
Ready to transform how your team sees and reaches you? Join us as we reveal practical strategies for becoming the approachable leader your organization needs. Because as we always say: to lead your team well, you must 1st Lead U.
The leader must put the work in in order to change the dynamics of how they're approaching leadership. You've got to put the work in. You're not going to just change by being the same that you've always been.
Announcer:So put the work in. 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.
John Ballinger:Hello America and 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.
Announcer:Now here is personal growth coach John Ballinger.
John Ballinger:Hello leaders and welcome to First Lead you. My name is John Ballinger and I am here with my trusted co-host, mr Douglas Ford. Good afternoon, john. How are you Good? You know why I say my trusted co-host. I was listening the other day and I'm like like why do I keep saying that? Why do you say?
Douglas Ford:that because I trust you. Well, I appreciate that.
John Ballinger:Yeah, I trust you I know that's, but that's important right like through our journey as being partners and friends and confidants and all those things like we haven't done anything that we hadn't said that we were going to do, even though we've had to have some conversations through the process for communication and clarity but we've always done what we said we were going to do and that's not normal in business partnerships and relationships.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, yeah, we we've definitely had some uh struggles to get there from time to time, but uh but, uh but.
John Ballinger:But we we keep after it, we keep working on it and growth you're going to have some challenges and you got to be able to face them Like we didn't have them and just let them lie Like we, you know we leaned in on them. So that's why I'm like and it's so easy to say, my trusted co-host, because I trust you to be my co-host. And I was talking to a gentleman today that just started listening and he said episode six. And he said, man, you all are good together, the dynamics between you two. And he's a new listener. But he said the dynamics between you two are good. And then I had somebody else tell me that since season one and they're on the A's of season three that the dynamics between us have gotten a lot better, that we've matured as podcasters.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, I definitely think we've gotten better, although I do enjoy going back and listening to some of our earlier episodes, because, uh, I don't know, raw is the right word, but they're a little bit more fresh. You know that sort of thing. So, but I do think we have gotten better.
John Ballinger:So, uh, congratulations to us and some people have to explain what the nascar thing is, because that, yeah, we kind of stopped that.
Douglas Ford:If you weren't if you weren't there at the beginning. If you don't listen to like episode one, that kind of kicks that off. You're kind of like why are they doing that?
John Ballinger:and then all of a sudden just stop. Yeah, but so first of all, thanks to the listeners who continue downloading the podcast and sharing it with others. Thank you so much. Subscribe, because that helps us as well, because we want to continue pushing this leadership development out into the US and beyond. We've got some overseas listeners, so we're starting to expand our reach. Thank you to our listeners.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, and we'd love for them to get our website firstleaducom. That's the number one S-T-L-E-A-D. The letter U dot com. Reach out to us, send us an email. We'd love to hear from you. If there's a subject you'd like us to talk about, please send it to us. We're obviously going through chart now, but we're going to have other episodes before we wrap up this season and before we wrap up this season, and, of course, there's season four that will be coming out soon, once we complete this. So we're open to your suggestions and comments. We'd love to hear from you.
John Ballinger:Yeah, especially challenges that you have as a leader in order to develop, or leadership challenges you have in the workplace, like this is what's going on. I just can't figure out how to tackle this situation. Send those in and we'll we'll do our best to discuss those on there yeah, that'd be great.
Douglas Ford:Um, maybe at some point, uh, we may do a facebook live, who knows?
John Ballinger:it could be coming. Uh. So I wanted to do this before we start on the third a, which is approachable. Do you have a definition? I do, but I do, but I'm going to do some figures first and then I'm going to do the definition Numbers first. So I was researching for the podcast to update our numbers. So number of workers, number of leaders and currently and these are approximate, so all you digital geeks out there that go search the Internet I've done this this weekend, so you're going to find some variation in numbers the numbers were 163 to 170 million workers, depending on what you read. If you look at the C-suite, that C-suite number ranges from 100 to 127,000. 100 to 127,000. The mid-level management so we'll go VP down to just managers that number is 27 million. So if you combine those numbers together the 27, and I just did 127, and you divide them by 170 million workers, it's 6.2% of the population.
Douglas Ford:Of the 170 million are leadership so that's pretty close to what we've said and we yeah, five percent of yeah. So if you do a plus or minus?
John Ballinger:yeah, some of it, I would say and I'm maybe too too bold of a statement but if you don't have quality leaders, sometimes you need more leadership. You'll be top heavy is what they call it, I think. I think there may be some top heaviness in leadership because of, I want to say, incompetent leader or not fully developed leader, but you could be a little top heavy, and we hear that a lot in conversation.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, and I would say a good bit of that is probably underdeveloped leaders, yeah underdeveloped.
John Ballinger:Uh, and then I also wanted to reflect, before we get started with this episode, on where we're at from a, from the chart standpoint. We finished the c's, which are coach, commander, cop and counselor. We finished the h, which are coach, commander, cop and counselor. We finished the H's, which are human, human nature, human resources and human capital, and we are on our third A, which is awareness, adaptable and approachable, which means we're at the halfway point, and I think this is good to talk about, the halfway point, because, douglas, this has been a lot.
Douglas Ford:It has been a lot.
John Ballinger:You know we're talking to leaders and saying you need to incorporate all of these into your development. It can be kind of overwhelming, which I get. I really get that this can be overwhelming. The reality is, all the research, all the the study, you can read article after article and they're saying this is what the leader of today and tomorrow needs to have yeah, all this is very dynamic, like I mean we kind of presented at the moment.
Douglas Ford:It's kind of a could be look linear, but it's all very dynamic. Everything's changing um from day to day, even from minute to minute, as you interact with team members and other management team members as well. Like, you never know which one of the C's you're going to need. You never know when you're going to need to deploy a human resource, not necessarily a department, but some sort of training or tool or something that a person needs for development. And then you know, as we talked about last couple of weeks, awareness and adaptability. I mean, those things are 24, seven, like they're when you're at work. You're, you're on with that.
John Ballinger:So, yeah, and we say you're on because you literally have to be on because you never know what's coming at you. So now we're under the third A, which is approachable, and I will tell you that to understand approachable, you have to really be good at awareness and adaptability. I mean you really you have to be on your journey to understand those and how to incorporate them. To be approachable. Now the definition of approachable easy to meet or deal with, secondary, accessible well, those are shorter definitions than we've had previously.
John Ballinger:Very short I mean, and you can go look at the like oxford and webster's, but they're very short. This is this is what this means. So what does what does being approachable as a team member mean, and so as a from a leader to a team member? So I did kind of I used a little bit of ai here, douglas, I'm gonna, I'm gonna admit I've kind of del, I used a little bit of AI here, douglas, I'm going to, I'm going to admit I've kind of delved into the dark world with you and I used a little bit of AI. But I wanted to take articles and so I used Harvard, forbes, inc. And there was one more, uh, business, business insider. So those are what I used and here's, here's what they said You've got to be open as a leader. Here's what they said.
Douglas Ford:No-transcript that sounds pretty it's pretty simple. I mean the definition of that or the explanation. That is simple, but it's not simple.
John Ballinger:It's not, because what's going on and what most people don't understand is, while you want the leader to be open, easy to talk to, caring, listen to you, don't tense up when they see you coming and try to evade conversations. They've got literally hundreds of things going through their mind, so you're asking them to press pause on where they just came from or they're headed to, to be able to be open, easy to talk to, caring and listening and all those things. It is gear shifting. We use that term quite often on the podcast, but it it is gear shifting. We use that term, uh, quite quite often on the podcast, but it is literally gear shifting. Not and I'm not talking about a five speed, I'm talking about, in a big truck, 13, 18 speed, constantly up and down, pulling hills, level ground, going down hills and through valleys and mountains. The leader is constantly shifting gears all day long, while they're also open to being approachable.
Douglas Ford:Douglas, you know that's not an easy skill no, and and I think part of what makes that more difficult is quite often the person that is approaching you doesn't really care what's been going on with you, like they've got their.
John Ballinger:I say a big zero care, like none.
Douglas Ford:They've got their own agenda Right and they're they need. They've need to be heard, or they want to be heard, or uh, and so they, they come. They come to you and in some cases, come at you, uh, as the leader of, like, you've got to fix this problem. Or you know, I have a problem and I don't know what to do about it, and so they're bringing it to you fixed. And so if you are any level of approachable, that's what you hope is people bring you problems and that you can help them fix Right. But but they're very, they have very little concern about what you may have been dealing with. They just want your attention for that amount of time.
John Ballinger:Right, and you don't know, as a leader, how long it's taken them to get the courage to come up and talk about it. Right, exactly, there are some people that you think, man, they're going to gripe about everything, but there are a lot of people that literally will wait. There's a fear factor to approaching a leader. I have people who have said, man, I've been thinking about this for like a month. I'm like, why'd you wait a month? And I'm I'm a very approachable person. You know that from being around me. I do not.
John Ballinger:I don't come across as somebody that you can't just come up and talk to, and but people will still, which means, even as our approachable leader, they still struggle with coming up to the leader and saying I've been thinking about this. And you have to like blowing that person off and act like you don't care when they've spent four or five weeks thinking about what to say, how to say it, and then now they are, they're in front of you and they might kind of stumble on what they're wanting to say and give them some grace. Give them some grace because most of your people aren't those people that are just constantly nitpicking. The other thing I did is put what character traits leaders are that are not approachable. So these are not approachable people.
Douglas Ford:These are not how they would act. They're not approachable?
John Ballinger:yeah, they are. They overreact, they're sarcastic. Can you have you ever heard somebody in leadership, the sarcastic Douglas? Never, oh was that?
Douglas Ford:was that being sarcastic?
John Ballinger:constantly critical, very temperamental, and I thought this was. They take their teams on an emotional roller coaster ride with them, but the worst trait is every problem that comes to them. They're agreeable to everyone that they're confronted with, even if they just agreed on something and the next person is what they just agreed to which they really disagree. But they'll go to the next person and agree with the next person, which is who. They just go to the next person and agree with the next person, which is who. They just disagreed with this person.
Douglas Ford:So they're constantly changing their opinion based on who they're talking to.
John Ballinger:Yeah, from a psychological standpoint, that person is a passive, aggressive person. They're constantly just telling somebody what they want to hear and each time they're building up pressure and steam, and pressure and steam, and so passive in that nature of just believe, listen, agree and all that, and then all of a sudden something triggers and then they explode, which goes back up to very temperamental and emotional rollercoaster ride. So that's what these articles are saying that a lot of leaders possess those character traits and they're saying like, how do we get people that are open, easy to talk to, caring, listening and don't tense up or try to evade? Well, I want to say this again, I've said it before and I will continue to say it the leader must put the work in in order to change the dynamics of how they're approaching leadership. You got to put the work in. You're not going to just change by being the same that you've always been.
Douglas Ford:So put the work in and we've talked about this before too, and I mean the last couple weeks is like if you don't work on the first two A's the awareness and the, and the adaptability like the approachable becomes extremely hard extremely hard.
John Ballinger:So before we go on break, I want to say being approachable means that as a leader, you're seen by your team as being real, Even though you're in a much higher position than your team. That you come down from the C-suite or you come down from the mid-level management and you can go walk on the whether it's the manufacturing floor or the job site, out in the trenches or wherever it's at. The leader can take themselves from the top down to the middle, down to the bottom and talk to whoever's inside the company. That's when people start being seen as real. So we'll get back from break. We're going to dissect what makes a D a D, because an L doesn't embrace the H.
Douglas Ford:Hello First Lead Youth listeners, douglas Ford here. I want to take just a few seconds during this break to say thank you for spending a few moments with us as we discuss the challenges and opportunities of being a leader. We hope that in every episode, you find some bit of information that will help you on your own personal leadership journey. In order to reach more people and to improve our positioning on all the podcasting and social media platforms, it's important that you subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcasting platform, like Apple, spotify or any other platform where you listen to First Lead you. We would really appreciate you clicking on the subscribe button to help us reach more people and expand the message of First Lead you, and please take time to visit the First Lead you website. That's the number one S-T, the word lead and the letter Ucom Firstleadyoucom. Number one S-T, the word lead and the letter Ucom. I hope you have a great day as you continue to learn to first lead you. Welcome back to First Lead you.
Douglas Ford:Today we are talking about the third a in our chart, acrostic, which is approachable, and we have gone through a lot of information about what it means to make you approachable and just as we went into the break, john left us with a little bit of a mystery. If you haven't been with us, uh, through some of other seasons, you may have wondered what a, d, a, l, e and A. What was all that? And so, just real quickly, I want to go over that. So John talks a good bit about the idea of leadership and the different positions of leadership and how. You may be a born leader, or you may be someone who has been educated to lead. You may be a follower and you may be a disgruntled follower. So if you put that together in some sort of leadership another acrostic so you have l's, the people who are natural born leaders, have e's, those who are educated to lead, a's who are agreeable followers, and d, like I said, the disgruntled or disenfranchised, or employees or team members. And so as an L, as a leader, you may be there because you had the capability to be there, or you may have been promoted into that position because you were the last person standing there, or you may have been promoted into that position because you were the last person standing.
Douglas Ford:A lot of times people get into leadership position because they're really good at a task or a certain aspect of a job and so they're like well, you can be the leader and you can, so you're a manager or team lead or whatever it is. You may not really want to be the leader but all of a sudden you are kind of given the choice either do this or maybe you have to move out if you don't want to move up. And so you want to be trained but you're in an L position as educated to lead. You are working on developing yourself. Maybe you're going through some official curriculum or courses to develop your leadership. Maybe you've got a mentor that's helping you learn to lead. But people are helping you learn to lead and be an effective leader as an A, as an agreeable follower.
Douglas Ford:95% are agreeable followers, meaning that they are happy to be there. They want to do their job, they want to do it well, they want to go home, they want to live the rest of their life. They don't want to deal with kind of the hassles and the struggles that come with leadership roles. They just want to do their life. They don't want to deal with kind of the hassles and the struggles that come with leadership roles, they just want to do their job.
Douglas Ford:And then the disagreeable followers or the disgruntled or disenfranchised followers are people who are upset with the way things are going. It may have something to do directly with the job, the company, their coworkers, or it could be something that's completely outside of the organization, that's bleeding into that, that's causing them to have a change of attitude and character and processing of how they interpret their job. So if you've not been with us before, that's real quick L-E-A-D. So if you've not been with us before, that's real quick L-E-A-D. And so now, john, won't you tell us a little bit more about how do we get from an L, which is a leader, to a D, which is a disenfranchised leader, this, uh, disgruntled team member who is like I don't really want to be here and I'm not going to go along with anything you say?
John Ballinger:Yeah, yeah, this is the hard part about leadership. We go in and do the evaluations. Um, just doing some more calculation. If you back out the number of leaders that we had that one 27, that 27 million, you back that out, that 170, means that you've got 143 million workers. So that'd be in the A position. So they're the adaptive, agreeable, they're the follower.
John Ballinger:However, because of failed leadership that we discussed over the decades, you have the D position which are disgruntled, disenfranchised. That's 112 million. Of that, uh, 170 million. So you wonder why the workforce is out of balance. Or you're griping when you go somewhere and you don't get good service, and there's there's not good, uh, quality in products that are being assembled, uh, there's just so much that doesn't happen because of that d. And when you have to tell leaders that the reason that D exists is because you as a leader aren't doing your job, that doesn't set well.
John Ballinger:But the reality is, if you use the LEAD, the leader's responsibility is to educate those that were born to be what I call the mid-level management, that which is that 27. That's a big number. And remember, we're just 127 on the c-suite. When you take that down to the 27 million, that means that there's a lot of training and development needs to be done by the c-suite in order for it to reach down from VP level to management level. Now that C-suite's not developing all that 2070. They're developing the ones directly below them so that there's kind of a waterfall effect that happens to where it goes down to. The l's have failed to properly educate the e's in order for them to effectively lead the eights and I hope this doesn't get lost. I mean, you may need to write this down on a piece of paper to truly follow it, but it in on a whiteboard in a conference room. This will make total sense.
John Ballinger:A lot of times, as we're discussing it, people start shaking their head up and down because they're like oh, so the leaders truly have to develop those that are educated to lead in order for the A's to effectively do what needs to be done every day in order to move the organization forward. Otherwise they do become D's every day in order to move the organization forward. Otherwise they do become D's. And so I wanted to talk to the leaders that you and this is this is tough to hear you are responsible for that D category. Now, is that D category always going to exist, yeah, and we're going to talk about that.
John Ballinger:So historically in companies you're always going to have 10% of your population. That's always going to be a challenge. That number goes back. Sometimes in companies it'll go up to 20% of the organization. Even with the selection process, you're still going to have at least 10% of your population. That is always a challenge.
John Ballinger:And people ask me well, john, if you go through the selection process, why should you have anyone that's not pulling from the front of the wagon? Because of life circumstances, because of circumstances in the company? You don't know what's going on outside someone's life and someone's life that causes them to possibly become a disgruntled worker. You may not know that they have a personality clash with their manager that causes them to be a disgruntled worker. Because you're you're too far removed to know that those day to day things happened. But you could have selected the correct person and circumstances outside and inside the company and put them in that D category.
John Ballinger:So as the leader, you're always going to have to deal with that 10 to 20%. But you can't stop developing people. You need to be developing and you can't concentrate on that 10 or 20% and leave that 80 to 90% out of the equation. Too many times we see that happen and the focus goes on to the, to the underperformers. You're loading the proverbial wagon to the ones that are performing, while you're either trying to develop or deal with or counsel or whatever you're doing with that 10 to 20%, and the entire time somebody is having to pull up their slack and that's not fair to those people that are in that 80 to 90 percent category, especially if you just hope that person in that D category goes away, which is a lot of times what we do.
John Ballinger:So you need to understand, as a leader, they're always going to be there and, no matter what you do, you've got to deal with it as you're dealing with day-to-day operations and be approachable. And guess who? You've also got to be approachable to Mr Ford. The days, the days. Yeah, you can't separate yourself from it. Not being approachable to them means that you you're just going to hope it goes away and your team members will see that They'll say, well, I wonder why Mr So-and-so is not dealing with that, why Ms So-and-so is not dealing with that. It's because they can't, they don't know how to deal with it, so you just don't deal with it. You have to be as approachable to that D as you are the A's in the LEAD. A leader cannot allow the 10% to change the dynamics of them being approachable. They have to learn to deal with that, which ultimately means they either have to rehabilitate that person or discharge them. Now that's the difficult thing, because you have to navigate through how do I discharge that person? Did I give them? Have they been written up? Have they been counseled? Have they been put on a personal improvement plan?
John Ballinger:Today's Department of Labor challenges that we find ourselves in, even though that there's a lot of states that are right to hire in fire state, there's a lot of nuances inside of that protected classes and discrimination and things that you have to navigate through, which means you have to be very careful about how you're dealing with the D's, which you should be careful about how you're dealing with people, period.
John Ballinger:But when it comes to the challenge of the D's because when they leave disgruntled they go do just things that disgruntled people do, which causes challenge with and with the leader that means you're going to have to spend significant time dealing with that complaint from the EEOC or the Department of Labor or wherever they go.
John Ballinger:So now you've got your own internal things you've got to be dealing with, along with the outside complaint that's going on, and that's always a challenge in itself to a leader.
John Ballinger:So one of the things that I thought was probably as difficult as being real is learning to be a great communicator.
John Ballinger:Part of being approachable is the person that's approaching you wants to know that there's going to be communication back to them, and you have to learn who that person is approaching you, because how you communicate to one is not how you communicate to possibly someone else. And we've talked about you know the leader leaving the accounting department, having just dealt with an issue, and going into the engineering department and then leaving there and going into the manufacturing department and leaving there and going into the engineering department and then leaving there and going into the manufacturing department and leaving there and going into the human resource department. Each one of those people in leadership position needs to be communicated to differently, based on what their responsibility in the company, and so the leader is shifting the gears. Learn to be approachable by those different leaderships in those departments so that they communicate effectively to the person that they're talking to, and this must be done taken in consideration personality types, situations and how they deal with conflict resolution throughout the day.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, and even though communication is not necessarily part of our chart across it, it really is baked into all of them, and that was something we were actually talking about as we were prepping for this that sometimes the communication is the issue. As a leader, you may be able to process the situation, you may not know what you need to do, but you found yourself in a couple of different situations where you've not been able to communicate effectively, and that's created its own set of problems. And so being an effective communicator, taking the time even though it may slow a process down or two, but taking the time to make sure you're able to communicate your thoughts effectively and or situations that have come up, is better than trying to rush through it, get the communication wrong and then have to deal with that again later.
John Ballinger:So this is important, what Mr Ford said. So an approachable leader has to have the ability to share good news, bad news, corporate direction, corrective action corrective action. They have to listen actively in order to assemble information that's going to make decisions. Their decisions they have to make throughout the day and they have to do that while that 10 outlier that's always criticizing them is kind of nibbling like a mouse at a piece of cheese. All that has to be done and recently we've talked about this in the past but part of what our risk management company does is we'll go in and normally it's my.
John Ballinger:My seat inside the company, depending on the severity of the issue, is I'll have to go into as a fractional C-suite for the company, and I had a what I'd call a mid-level manager. Get nose to nose with me and one of these companies that I'm the CEO in and I'm the acting CEO right now and told me I was incapable of being the CEO of that organization. I mean his nose was touching my nose. I'm looking at him because I mean, like I could, I could just blast at him. I'm looking at that, that person that's in mid-level management saying those words, like hearing the words come out of his mouth thinking you have zero idea what it's like to sit in the seat of a CEO in your position. You have zero idea, but I still have to listen to what you're saying. Try to communicate effectively to you to help you understand how to continue doing your job in the company so that things can move forward.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, that's what we were talking about before the break, about the people that come to you as a leader quite often have very little concern about what's going on in your day. They just want to share with you what's going on in their day.
John Ballinger:Right, yeah, so, as a leader, as we, as we wrap up that this approachable, I want you to to to journal these things and just kind of think through, remember what it means to be approachable and remember what the character traits are being unapproachable, and I want you to write down here's what I think I am. I may tend to be sarcastic, I may tend to be this, I may lean to this, but put down your the approachable character traits that are needed in today's leadership, and then what unapproachable character traits are in leadership that turn people off. Okay, I want you to do that. Remember people that are in leadership positions that are unapproachable. This is what happens and I've seen this, and so this is not from AI Douglas, this is from me. Okay, this is authentic intelligence.
John Ballinger:This is well I I'm gonna call it authentic intelligent.
Douglas Ford:If you're unapproachable, what's going to happen is you're going to begin isolating yourself that's going into your office shutting the door, shutting the door, or you see somebody coming, you know they got a problem. You're up I'm turning, turning around.
John Ballinger:You're going to tend to tell people in the organization only what they want to hear. So, as you're isolating yourself, you're also just giving people yeah, this is what you want to hear. Just stay away from Then you'll soon start surrounding yourself with people that think just like you, which is one of the most dangerous things you can do in leadership is surround yourself with yes people Just because you don't want to change and grow yourself as a leader. So let me surround myself with yes people. So it seems to me like I am the best leader in the world, because all these people are saying yes, I am, and what happens is the ones that are the team members that can give you valuable information stop communicating with you. If you just take those and start looking at them, you start seeing the downfall of companies and, as a leader, that's going to reflect right back on you, because you were at the tip of the spear, in a position when the company started going backwards, and you hold direct responsibility for being isolated, not listening to people, giving people what they want to hear and surrounding yourself with people that are just like that. That is the beginning of the end and leadership.
John Ballinger:So why do we do what we do at First, Lead U Because we want leaders to help identify where they need corrective action at, where they need work at, where they need to place their efforts of change at.
John Ballinger:And while it's a tough process, if you evolve and we've seen this and we've said it on other episodes when you see someone truly get past seen this and we've said it on other episodes when you see someone truly get past their challenges and evolve in leadership, how much easier it is on them and their teams to effectively fulfill the mission of the organization, we see it right. So a leader must embrace the first two A's, and that's awareness and adaptable, to truly understand what, being approachable. And if you can't because remember, we're the midway point, Mr Ford if you can't embrace awareness and adaptability in order to be approachable, what we see happen at this point in development is the person runs away from the training and development and becomes more isolated to their team and they can't finish the rest of the acrostic because they're gone, they're not dealing with it or they lean into it and they get to the end of the acrostic and they are much better for themselves and their team.
Douglas Ford:Yeah, and if you're in a situation where you need some help developing your leaders or you need some help yourself, reach out to us. We'd love to talk to you, share with you, see what we can do to help give you some advice. So visit us at our website and let us know what's going on with you, sure, and remember, in order to lead your team well, you must first lead you.
John Ballinger:Thanks everyone, We'll see you next time. You.
