Prepare emotionally

# Chapter 277

Elements of a successful life: prepare emotionally – focus mentally/intellectually – execute physically (health/exercise) – eat rationally – schedule logically. - Masterminds

That is a fine recipe for PTA. Five great points for your star of success. Today is prepare emotionally. We are emotional beings, no matter how high on the food chain you think you are roosting. You have feelings, and I have feelings and that makes us emotional beings. So prepare emotionally. For the highs and for the lows and everything in-between. Prepare emotionally for the tough times and the celebrations. Prepare emotionally for the rock bottoms and the peaks. Prepare emotionally for the betrayals and the new relationships. Prepare emotionally for those who are going to quit and for those who are going to pick up more than their share of the responsibility. Prepare emotionally for the other part of your life that keeps moving, your spouse, your kids, your grands.

Did that help you see that you need to prepare emotionally? We have feelings, we experience life events - births, deaths, graduations, weddings, and the holidays with people we love, or at least with people we are related to - and thus we need to be prepared emotionally. Those who don’t prepare, don’t get a pass, instead they just get hammered harder than those who prepare emotionally. So live it! Feel it! Experience it all as deeply as life can be experienced. Just don’t be unprepared.

Inclusion

# Chapter 276

Stop saying “I, me, my” – start saying “we, us, our.” - Masterminds

This is the way that leaders are born. When they stop thinking of the world in terms of themselves and start thinking about everyone, then we have the makings of a potential leader. Pronouns are a fine starting point. I don’t know which comes first the thinking or the pronoun usage but what is important here is that you are thinking about others and not just yourself and your stuff. This is a regular ongoing adjustment for those that make the jump to leadership. It’s not a single one time decision - be warned. This is part of the growth development of all leaders. Instead of listening to all the bad news on the television, focus down your attention on your company, your church, your community, your group that you are an integral part of, which needs your leadership.

Inclusion is a hot topic right now in the world, but honestly it has been a hot topic to me and you every single time that we were not included, each time that our leader took credit for our idea or our work, each time that someone takes all the credit and none of the blame in your work space, and a hundred other situations where we are diminished in a steady ongoing way, inclusion is a hot topic for us all. So how we think of our collective group, and how we refer to our collective group is important. It reflects where we are on the scale of inclusion and if we are fighting for ourselves or all of us.

The more difficult path

# Chapter 275

Leadership is about taking the hard way – anyone can take the easy way. - Masterminds

I would say that leadership is about the willingness and capacity to take the hard route, and the brilliance to see an equal but easier path. The hard road isn’t always required and rarely desired, and anyone taking you down that path just because they can or simply because they think that is what leaders do - is a lunatic. I don’t want to work with them and I don’t think you do either.

On the other hand, leadership is absolutely about who is willing to take the more difficult road, who is willing to work harder and longer, who is willing to aim higher and reach further, and who is willing to pay the price so that all can benefit. That is leadership in a nutshell. And those developing into leaders are already taking more challenging paths than the grunts are, building their capacities for more difficult paths in their futures. However that process of taking the more challenging path over and over, helps some realize that they aren’t really all that interested or willing to keep do this to themselves and they step back and follow. Nothing at all wrong or weak about that decision, it reveals a solid insight that can guide a person throughout their whole life. If the payoff isn’t large enough, some decide that leading at that fractional benefit, to not be worth the effort and risk of leading and they too step back. This is also good leadership for they understand their capacity and mental will to do difficult things at this price point.

PTA - Protect The Asset

# Chapter 274

It all starts with self-leadership first – self-awareness – self-discovery. - Masterminds

It is amazingly difficult to help new clients understand that their first priority has to be themselves. As Greg Mckeown says, “protect the asset - you are the asset.” The whole servant-leadership movement has unintentionally sabotaged the necessary self-care of leaders who give and give and give, they need to find a way to protect the asset. But many of these types of leaders seem to value burning themselves out completely, rather than any type of longevity or sustainability for the potential good they are doing. They feel guilty for taking appropriate time off, they feel guilty for getting enough high quality sleep, they feel guilty for taking the time to exercise, they only work work work. This is a certain recipe for a short leadership lifespan.

So the first component of self-leadership is always always PTA - protect the asset. You have to take care of yourself, before you can take care of others. To discover what really energizes you and what your best rhythms are, what your best contributions are, and when and how your best rest happens - you have to spend some time in self-awareness and self-discovery. This is more involved than you think, or at the very least I find people are surprised at how many adjustments they need to make in order to find self-awareness and self-discovery freed up to actually function in their lives. The most difficult piece of that process seems to be thinking. Thinking is the least used, least wanted, least leveraged piece of self-care. It is such hard work and few do it, and even fewer do it well. But if awareness and discovery are your goals, then you have to make space for thinking and contemplating and considering and for percolating. Otherwise it will take you much longer to gain any traction in the world of self-care and PTA.

It would be too easy . . .

# Chapter 273

Most employees do not want to be accountable. - Masterminds

And neither do most leaders. Accountability is only embraced by the ruthlessly honest and the enthusiastic continual learner and the insatiable developer. These three kinds of people don’t mind accountability because it is just another tool to help them accomplish what they already want to do. For everyone else accountability seems to be designed to make me do what I don’t want to do but should do. And thus we have our opening statement this morning, because most employees don’t fall into those three categories above. On the other hand, we could hire these kinds of people on purpose . . ..

Nah that would be too easy, nobody is interested in too easy. At least none of the places I have worked at in the last 46 years. Accountability is not all that difficult to put into place and make its application even across the organization or church or community. I think that employees would be less resistant to accountability if they felt or saw their leaders be more accountable. I have heard this conversation many many times as a grunt in any job. In fact the reason many aspire to leadership is so that they can forego accountability and embrace privilege. These are the poor models of leadership they have seen their entire work life and these conceptions are deeply entrenched. The best way to break them loose is be accountable yourself.

Congruence

# Chapter 272

As a leader, you must live the values of the organization. - Masterminds

Actually if you want to be the leader at the organization, then the values of the org are sacrosanct. And if you want the values to grow and take root and expand across the company or church or neighborhood then you would bode well to actually have these values as YOUR values. That is by far the easiest solution, because then you will just live out those values everyday and others can follow. Otherwise you have to decide over and over to follow this value or that value or remember that you are following this set of values or that set of values. This is a difficult way to live honestly. Either you have the values or share the values of the organization or church or community or you don’t.

So perhaps our statement of the day should read, “as a leader, find an organization with values which you resonate with and can live everyday.” This is by far the right way to live and the less disruptive and the most natural. Then you can further those values by being true to them. Otherwise leave. Leave now. I did. You should. In my previous org their primary value was to be quiet and be grateful for their meager offerings. My primary value is to be free from the worry of finances and be free to say what I think and not be quiet. Yeah exactly, it was time for me to leave. You can’t live the values of the org if you don’t have the values of the org.

Wait until they do something important

# Chapter 271

Celebrate when new employees join the company – be 100% ready to get them going strong from the beginning. - Masterminds

This is a twisted continuation from yesterday’s chapter. But I am probably the only person that sees that irony. Having processes and systems in place to get newbies off and running is just definitely smart business. And more importantly it will deflect and reduce the previous chapter’s subject, of letting the unhappy and unhelpful go somewhere else. But I am personally ambivalent about celebration for new people, I would rather celebrate when they do something important or significant. Celebrating their arrival makes celebration meaningless and unimportant, especially if these celebrated individuals become the ones you help out the door tomorrow.

Onboarding people is important, hear me well, and if you have hired well then you need to have the tools in place to help them be in the right seat on the right bus so that they can make their best contribution. On the other hand, you can’t expect people to walk in the door and knock it out of the park without reference points and helps. Your systems are not going to be the same as what they had at their previous org. Make some transitions possible and easy for them. This will make life easier for everyone.

Own your part

# Chapter 270

As soon as you realize someone is not doing well and is likely not going to get better – remove them from the organization. - Masterminds

Yeah hire slow and fire fast, we all get that, but the statement above has lots of room for improvement. Especially the “is likely not going to get better” phrase. There is lots and lots that you can do inside of that idea. You can help them get better first of all. You hired them for a reason, now get to work on that reason and help make it happen. When we use a phrase like this it sounds like we are really saying, “yes I hired this person, but they are too much work and I want to let them go rather than get off my wallet and help them.” That is precisely what this sounds like to me. Where is your effort in this situation? Opportunity alone is not enough for everyone to find a way to succeed. When I transitioned from one big small org (they think of themselves as big when in fact they are still small) to another org I discovered the transition had a large number of gaps in it. While I had the experience and education and context in which to manage those gaps, lots of other people don’t.

And please do not misunderstand me here, if you have a saboteur, a hater, a toxic poisonous person in your company, fire them as fast as possible. On the other hand, own your part of the process and fault. You hired them. Make the policy or develop the systems which will minimize repeats.

Discipline?

# Chapter 269

If you are undisciplined, you cannot require it from others. - Masterminds

A continuation of yesterday’s theme. And sure you can, though you may find your efforts less than successful. You can require anything from people if you are the designated point person, but what you receive from those requirements, likely will be far different than you had hoped.

Yet, I don’t think discipline begats discipline. Your discipline doesn’t naturally foster discipline in other people. But if you lack it, you certainly will find it nearly impossible to encourage it in others. Undisciplined actions on your part will be the base line for the behaviors of others on your team, in your group, in your company. People follow the leader and what you are is what you will get.

Side note here, this is the most undisciplined Mastermind principle so far. Way too ambiguous and vague.

Reaching high

# Chapter 268

It takes a high level of discipline to be a leader. - Masterminds

Yeah like it takes a high level of discipline to be good at any task or body of knowledge. Like it takes a high level of discipline to write these chapters for 1000 straight days as I have. But compared to Seth, who has written for 10,000 consecutive days, what I have started is nothing. Each and every field of study or expertise demands discipline. Discipline is not a leader specific trait, and that is where this statement gets skewed and misleading. However if you wish or desire or aspire to great leadership, then the discipline demanded expands to the level of leadership that you are reaching for and expecting to accomplish. To be super clear here, leadership like all other endeavors, it requires discipline.

But there are other traits that are far more critical to the quality of leadership, than mere discipline. Clarity gives the best returns to the leader, of any other characteristic. A leader with clarity is worth more than any other in my opinion. A leader that has care and concern for people is super valuable. Such leaders inspire loyalty and initiative and so many other positive actions in their peeps - it is a superpower of leadership. And then there is communication, another superpower of leaders across the board. As Art Petty says, “You can only go as far as you can communicate.” Discipline is important for sure, as it is for every role, but there is more to leadership than discipline.

Family

# Chapter 267

Get to know your employees personally and get to know their families. - Masterminds

This is the path or the tool to accomplishing the previous chapter. And I personally think this chapter should have come before the previous chapter, but I did not do the Mastermind compilation and therefore I did not put these in this order. But if you ever plan to connect emotionally with your peeps, then this one is non-negotiable. You will never be able to empathize and understand what is going on outside of work that affects work unless you know at least the basics about spouse child and parent. Of course this is of limited value, knowing that Barbie has a soccer game on Thursday is of little help to either you or your employee. However if you go and watch the game and cheer for Barbie, now that is another category altogether! If you decide to become the coach of Barbie’s team, that would be two more categories higher. There is clearly a scale here, as in most things in life.

This opening statement almost implies friendship. Those are the only people you are gonna let close to your family anyways, right? But a scale for sure, and I honestly have no idea where on the scale Masterminds intends for you to be. I can say this, if you are responsible for lots of people (more than 25) then you are going to have an impossible time doing this. I think this could only possibly work on small teams with long histories and curious, inquisitive, and helpful leaders.

Emotions and feelings at work

# Chapter 266

Connect with your employees emotionally. - Masterminds

Unfortunately most just need to connect period. Most don’t know our families and situations well enough to connect emotionally. Most just want our families and situations to behave well enough that it doesn’t affect our work, our families and situations are just “factors” and “events” in the background that have little importance to the peeps up the food chain. My parents taught me that you show up for work every day no matter what is happening in your life and no matter how you feel. This view is such a statistical minority as to be non-existent. I try to surround myself with people like this and consequently I have few friends.

Lets be honest, what happens at home and in life is emotional and the vast majority of us bring that emotional-ness to work with us. It overlaps and impacts what we are trying to accomplished or are being paid to accomplish, all day long. These are called feelings and they are real. We have them and we bring them with us wherever we go. That includes the workspace, to our teams, to our networks and beyond. People are less compartmentalized than in the past I think. This is certainly true of me and most of those around me.

So yeah, connecting with your peeps is really important and if you can connect emotionally - mentally feel what walking in each of their individual shoes may be like and what the experience may be like for them, and how it impacts them - then all the better. If you can do this, then you will likely find production taking a big upswing.

How NOT to do it

# Chapter 265

Talk to everyone about their personal goals and how you can help them be successful. - Masterminds

My daughter is a highly motivated and very accomplished professional. She just had her annual review. What a disaster. Not because my daughter is a disaster, because the leaders are a disaster. First of all they only used the template my daughter’s boss had been compiling. The boss that they just fired!! Yeah that incompetent boss you just fired because she was incompetent! And you are using her vicious vitriol against my kid, against any of your employee’s, in 2022? Seriously? The one and only documented tick against my kid, was “you left work 15 minutes early once.” ONCE! In a whole YEAR! And it was because her hubby had COVID, she had to get the meds for him from the Pharmacy and then pick up the baby from the sitter, and ALL HER WORK WAS COMPLETED FOR THE DAY. This was the ONE tick documented in a whole year. (Let it be noted that said daughter did not take any personal days or miss any days of work for the entire year) While there are reams of patients and co-workers who have a much better life because of my daughter and her investment in them, did any of that come up in the review? Not. One. Single. Word. This is a model in how NOT to do an annual review. I am just getting started!

But I am going to stop because you of course, would never do this. If you were the kind of person or leader who do this, then you would not be reading this document right now. This space is dedicated to helping people do 10,000 times better than my daughter’s company did, each and every day. It is pretty astonishing that these things still happen, but they do. Just let’s make sure not to us or ours.

Resistance

# Chapter 264

Give responsibility to resistors, and they will change or leave. - Masterminds

But you may wish you were anywhere on the planet except where you are before it finally happens. The tension these people can cause is immense. Because they are resistors, even with responsibility they will still try to force you and me down the road they travel each day, until they finally break. And they will change or leave but it won’t be painless. And to clarify here, by resistors, we are talking about people who are reluctant to change or get on board with the new direction of the company. Resistors are actually in the middle of the spectrum of apparent resistance.

There is also an entire different category of worker which seems like a resistor, but is actually a loyalist, and there is an entirely different category of a worker which seems like a resistor but is actually a saboteur. So you need to be aware and you need to be careful. You give responsibility to a loyalist who seems to be a resistor and they will make things better or more productive. You give responsibility to a saboteur who seems like a resistor and you will have chaos. If you think that two out of three isn’t a bad option then you haven’t lived through the saboteur. And the saboteur will neither change nor leave willingly, they can only be forced out. So be careful and pay attention. And as a former loyalist, I would suggest that you listen so hard you sweat, and find these gems in your org that want to make things better, even though they most often look like resistors.

A better plan

# Chapter 263

There must be a plan for change. - Masterminds

Continuing from yesterday, plans aren’t bad if the leader shows and does the plan. But plans that the leader has only for others, that is really poorly executed change. I remember the seemingly endless hours I sat in uncomfortable chairs, discussing and designing plans for change. The leader cheerleaded all our efforts and massive hours we were logging because this was leading us toward “change”. Nothing happened in the end, of all those top-down, you-shall-do-things-differently commands, never once were the leaders intending to do anything differently. They only planned and intended the grunts and managers to do things differently. This is not change in the growing and positive and better sense. It is change in the different sense.

The growth change that needs to occur in most every organization and team can only be led by the leaders, showing us and doing in front of us, what the plan demands in order for growth change to happen. Otherwise the inherent organizational resistance to any change will grind it all to nothing in the end, unless the leader shows and does. And the bigger the org the more natural resistance there is within. As Dr Tophoven once told me, “structure is inherently a no.” The bigger your organizational layers and structure, the more difficult it will be to say yes to change. And a master plan for change from the head office won’t cut it, trust me. I have seen this maneuver tried over and over and never once have I seen or experienced it working at all.

In one parent group we spend 10’s of thousands of dollars making sure that all the stakeholders were there for all the international meetings so that they could buy into the change that the leaders were pushing for and basically demanding we all accomplish this proposed change. The leaders had no plans of doing any of it. They neither showed us, nor did it, and it went nowhere. So much money. So much waste. Especially our stakeholder’s time. And no change. Have a better plan.

Its personal!

# Chapter 262

The senior leaders must lead change personally. - Masterminds

Unfortunately what seniors leaders invariably do, in my experience, is lead us in telling us the changes that are going to be. They themselves rarely if ever change a single thing. The Masterminds quote above is about showing and doing, not telling. Showing and doing is actual leading. Telling is more about power and control, far less about leading. I would add to the above statement that the senior leaders much change personally.

If you have been in the workforce as long as I have, then you have definitely spent far too much of your life sitting in meetings attempting to fill in all the blanks on the newest change coming to the organization. Seriously, I have logged 100’s of hours in this process! AND have yet to see and live a single moment of the promised change that would come from all our efforts! Don’t get me wrong, I have experienced change in organizations, but not by the leaders telling, only by the leaders showing and doing. That becomes a change that we can all live and breath and experience. Leaders don’t need to guide us through some proposed change in vision or mission, they need to live it, model it, share it, teach it, inspire it, be the change themselves. Then watch it happen across the org!

Our current organization is a great example. Once the telling leader got fired, we have a showing and doing leader in charge. The changes are slow and steady and wonderful. The org has never had less problems nor more revenue. Not sure that it always works out this well for everyone, but am certain that it begins, if it is to ever start, with leaders that lead by showing and doing.

Seeing

# Chapter 261

Vision creates alignment. - Masterminds

To continue from yesterday, seeing is your primary tool or lever to make this easier. Vision is seeing. Seeing a preferred or different future. Seeing a change. Seeing justice. Seeing peace. Seeing the possibilities of what could be. Seeing something more or better than exists today. Seeing something different than the current reality everyone is experiencing. This is vision. Vision is your superpower. Vision is the tool, the wrench that helps you make alignment happen.

Vision has been properly executed when it enables us all to see the direction we are moving, the future we are reaching for, the needed actions to get there, the part we play in making it happen, the cost and effort of delivering this future, what can be different, what could be better, what can bring our wishes into reality, what success will be! Vision has other names: dreams, hopes, fantasy, plans, imagination and more. Most of all it is a change of perception, a different perspective, the changing of how we see what is before us and beyond.

So when you and I as the leaders cast or share a compelling vision that is readily embraced by our teams, that is one of the most powerful moments of alignment. It literally morphs your group from one thing into another thing - that can reach your collective goals. You are aligned! Vision moved you there!

All in the same direction

# Chapter 260

You must create alignment of interests across the entire company. - Masterminds

This is the getting all the right people on the right bus going in the right direction to the right destination! That is what alignment looks like in the real world. If you live and work in the idea world or knowledge work world, then it is gaining consensus about where you are going and what it takes to get there, and agreement on when you have arrived. This is alignment. This alignment is critical otherwise you will be working at cross purposes and wasting resources. Few companies or organizations can move toward two goals at one time, especially radically different goals. There is profit, efficiency, investment and focus at stake here at the very least.

One of my clients in the recent past, generated new businesses within their primary business on what seemed like a daily occurrence. That is stretching the truth, but not by much. The fractured misalignment this caused was exhausting and not all that productive. Not to mention it was practically impossible to become profitable when we continually changed directions and financed new directions. It wasn’t controlled chaos, it was just plain old chaos. You can’t run your life like this and you can’t run your business like this and your employees don’t want to work for a company like this.

It is time to spend intentional energy on getting things moving in the same direction all across the board.

Make space for the really hard stuff

# Chapter 259

Create space to think. - Masterminds

Most difficult best practice out there. I even had to expand this from my usual routines this past weekend while with a client in Florida. It took three miles. I think best when moving. So I went for a walk. After about three miles I had resolved all that could be resolved with the situation and the information that I had to work with at that point, and so then, the conversation could continue. You have to create space in your life, or systems in your life, where you can STOP and think. It seems to be the very last practice that my clients incorporate into their lives, each and every one of them.

There are a number of reasons for this. First and foremost, thinking is hard difficult work. Even after reaching 60 plus years of age I am still surprised at how much effort it takes for even a small bit of progress. Thinking is seriously the most difficult labor I have ever undertaken and that even includes learning two foreign languages and gaining my doctorate degree. So first of all its really difficult work. Second of all it has the appearance of doing nothing. I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence, but the people who need to be thinking more than most, are highly averse to the appearance of laziness or doing nothing. They need/want/ to be seen as people of action. And the third thing is the funniest/saddest of all, other people won’t allow you the time to think, even if they are the ones asking you to answer a really challenging question that requires some mental wrestling. Heck I only know a few who will be patient enough for me to answer. Thinking is hard. Create space for it!

Where we want to be

# Chapter 258

You have lived more than half of your life – are you where you want to be? - Masterminds

Best question ever, no matter how much you of your life you have lived so far. No one can decide how much of their life that they have lived because we don’t know how long we will live beyond today and that alone is another great reason that this is an awesome question. Of course the question /assumes/ that you are going to live a typical number of years and that you are at a certain place that you can calculate based on that assumption. So then the assumption is just that, an assumption, and that is ok, and that is focusing on the inconsequential part of this equation and we will not waste anymore time today on that.

The real question is, are you where you want to be? Whoa, slow down and think a few minutes before answering that question, or heck, take an hour or two if you are really wanting to unpack that question! Are you where you want to be? The question is not, are you where you thought you would be, but given all the circumstances that no one could have ever predicted two years ago, are you pleased with where you find yourself? I think most people that read these kinds of blogs or books will say no to this question, because we intrinsically believe that it shows some kind of lack or weakness to be content at this moment, that erroneous and insidious idea that we need to be hungry for more all the time, which simply is not true.

Some of us may have to alter the question to read, are you going in the direction that you want to be going? And that is a fine question too, though not as good as the original one. We all need to ask this question of ourselves, maybe even daily.