Four Words That Set Successful Leaders Apart

0:06Hey, it's Dave from Coaching for Leaders here. I'm coming to you today to directly answer a question that I get asked all the time when we open up our Academy for Applications, as we have again this week. The question I get from applicants consistently, including several times in recent days, is this one. what helps leaders get the most success out of the academy? Now, that's a question I get in the context of talking to leaders who are applying to our academy, but it's also a broader question for all of us, which is, what's really different about leaders who are really the ones who are learning and growing and getting better at what they do and even thrive from those who don't?

0:52I've been in the business of helping leaders improve now for over 20 years, and I have a very clear answer to that question. And it comes down to four words. I'm going to walk you through those four words in this episode and how you can get better at moving forward with them right now. Before I do, we have many new listeners who've joined the podcast since the last time we opened the Academy. Welcome, if that's you. So let me first say what the Academy is. The Academy helps leaders thrive at key inflection points, which of course begs the obvious question, well, what is an inflection point? There are a lot of inflection points in life and in work, but generally I see it show up in three ways, at least for people here in our leadership community.

1:38First, it's in preparing to take on a big job. Sometimes you're about to transition into a role, or you're the heir apparent, or you've taken the final steps to position yourself for the next role in the organization. And both you and others who have influence are likely thinking you're going to step into that. And it isn't always the case, but most of the time, it's a bigger role and it requires a different skill set than the one you have today. The second way this shows up is a recent transition into a new role or a new position or a big new scope of work. And you've discovered, as most of us do when taking on something new, that it's a different skill set that's needed there too.

2:25And often, when it's a bigger role especially, it's an entirely different scope of focus and it's also a different altitude that you're showing up in your thinking and strategy. And the last way it shows up is not in a role change at all, but you've noticed that there's an opportunity to unlock a bunch more. Sometimes that's because something changed around you in a pretty significant way. And sometimes it's because you've done a great job building yourself up in the capacity in the recent past in your work, and you're ready to challenge yourself with something more. In all three of those situations, it's shifting how you do things.

3:04And almost always, especially here in our community, most of that comes down to how you're working with people. It's not really so much the technical or clinical or academic training that you've had anymore, at least. Most leaders in our listening community have a good, solid knowledge base or experience in their fields and expertise doing the things that they need to do as individual contributors earlier on and in the roles that they've been in. And many people who come to our academy have teams of five to 10 direct reports and a ton of the work is now about enabling those people to be successful and growing your capacity with people and behaviors, both, of course, the behaviors of others and your own.

3:51And just like Marshall Goldsmith wrote in his bestselling book, what got you here won't get you there. So the Academy is an intimate group of peer leaders led personally by me that work together for eight months to help each other thrive through those inflection points. And we have applications open now until this Friday, September 11th. You can get all the details at coachingforleaders.com slash academy. And of course, I've been talking to applicants over this past week about this question a lot, which again is what helps leaders get the most success out of the academy? And by the way, again, that bigger question, just success in general.

4:32How do you thrive, especially at some of these bigger inflection points in our careers? And as I said a moment ago, I think a lot of this comes down to four words, and the four words come in pairs. Here are the first two words. Show up. Now, when I say show up, I don't just mean being physically there. That's, of course, essential, but that's really a given for most leaders, especially people in our community. They're doing that well. When I say show up, I mean in your willingness to put things into action. When I see leaders do this well, here's some of the things that I see. First of all, they regularly do stuff that's a little bit scary.

5:13There's an old adage that a good professional development plan is to do one thing every day that scares you. I found that to be a pretty instrumental way in seeing people and leaders move forward too. The thing about leadership is that of course it's scary because it's broad, it's complex, it requires a ton of different kinds of skills. And that means that nobody is great at everything that we need to do in order to lead well. So that means a bit of fear coming into the work for almost all of us. Getting better at leadership means trying something each day that's a little bit scary. An emphasis, by the way, on that being a little scary.

5:54Leaders I know who really nail this figure out something they can do each day that nudges them forward just a bit, and they do it really consistently. I read a book from Susan Jeffers about 25 years ago called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. The best leaders I know are great, especially at that last part, the do it anyway. They don't have any less fear. They just don't let it stop them. Showing up also means a willingness to accept some awkwardness. This is the hard part about learning to get better at something, especially something like leadership that's all about behaviors and people skills and things that are really complex.

6:39We all show up a bit awkwardly the first time we really deliver needed feedback or delegate something better or show up in an executive conference room to talk about the program we're overseeing that needs a lot more visibility. There's just going to be awkward stuff to do in those kinds of things. Sometimes others notice a bit of that awkwardness and sometimes they don't. But for sure, it's awkward for us. Every leader notices that kind of awkwardness in themselves. And none of us look forward to it. But the people who show up recognize that it's part of the process and that the awkwardness is actually a pretty decent indicator that they're pushing themselves just a bit.

7:28Leaders who show up also expect pushback. One of my favorite quotes about leadership is from the late General Colin Powell. He said this, The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. Either they have lost confidence that you can help or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. Leaders who show up know that no news is bad news. That's why in our academy, we talk about the kind of pushback that folks should expect when they are anticipating starting something new and trying out something for the first time. After all, if you've tended to jump in a lot in the past and tell people what to do and rescue them sometimes when they run into tough situations, they don't like it at first when you start becoming more coach-like, as one example, as a lot of folks in our academy do.

8:30And a lot of leaders try something like being coach-like, and then sometimes they stop in the early days because the pushback they get at the beginning doesn't feel great. Leaders who show up expect some pushback, and they know that it's a healthy and beneficial thing not only for them, but for growing the skills of the people they lead. And there's one other thing that leaders do so well who actually show up. They limit their planning. This is something I've changed my mind on a bunch in recent years and certainly in supporting other leaders now for two decades. I used to be a big believer in having a really clear roadmap, planning everything out, and then, yeah, you adapt it a little bit as you go, but you try the best you can to follow the plan you've laid out.

9:23I have learned that leaders who show up don't do this. They're really clear, of course, on where they're trying to go and the big picture, but they limit their tactical planning, at least when it comes to their own behaviors, to just the first step or two, because they know that they're going to discover a ton as they go and that if they adapt from what they're learning, it's going to help them to get way better results than any perfect plan or imperfect plan. Which leads me right into the third and fourth words, which also are paired together. And those words are, keep going. Let me explain. Our daughter loves the game of Monopoly.

10:06We have played countless games of Monopoly over the years together. And even though she knew the game really well early on, she would often lose. Not always, but most of the time. And the reason she'd lose is because she'd get focused on her plan to buy a particular property. Usually it was boardwalk or park place, and then try to get as many houses as she could, and hopefully a hotel, on the property so she could score big what I would land on it. And once in a while, it would work. She'd get lucky, she would land on them, she'd get both of them, she'd get enough money to buy property, and she'd win with that strategy.

10:48But most of the time, she wouldn't. The strategy would actually work against her because she was so intent on trying to buy boardwalk and park place, she would miss all the other opportunities. And after she had lost a few times in a row, we got to talking about how you win at Monopoly. The people who stay focused only on the tactical steps and planning things out do not win at Monopoly. The people who win are the ones who get going on wherever they land and start building there. A person who keeps going lands on St. Charles Place, and if they've got the money, they buy it. And they start working a strategy around that space, especially early in the game.

11:30The person who passes up on properties, especially early in the game, and waits to land on boardwalk, mostly loses. Now that she gets this, unfortunately for me, I have created a problem for myself, because she knows how to win at Monopoly, and she does a lot now when we play. Now, leadership and Monopoly the game are different, of course, in many ways. But in one way, they are exactly alike. Lots of days, the dice gets rolled, and you end up somewhere that wasn't on the plan. And you can wait for a better opportunity, where you can decide to do something with the opportunity you have. When it comes to improving leadership skills, the people that I see move so successfully keep going.

12:16They notice where they've landed, and they start from wherever they're at to make the most of the moment. When Adam Bryan came on the podcast a while back, he said that some of the best leaders he's seen know how to, quote, bloom where you are planted. That's part of what keep going means. And it also means you don't stop when you fail. Anissa Ramirez was on the show a while back. She's a leading scientist, and she pointed out that scientists have a great word for failure. Data. Failure doesn't feel good, but objectively, it's just data on what didn't work. Failure is an obstacle for a lot of us because we say when we fail, oh wow, that didn't work.

13:05I better not do that again. Leaders who keep going say, oh wow, that didn't work. I better not do that again. Instead, let me try this. And then they do. And sometimes it changes everything. The leaders I know that are so good at keeping going know that they can't climb a smooth mountain. Think about that for a second. Imagine trying to climb a smooth mountain. You can't do it. The biggest rocks and crevices are the things that you actually latch onto to move up a mountain. Leaders who keep going get that. They don't like it, just to be clear, but they get it. And when they run into those obstacles, they use them to keep going.

13:55They look at the giant rock in their way and they decide what they need to do to get over it, or go around it, or move it out of the way, or whatever. And sometimes how to step on top of it in order to get to the next thing down the road. And the final big thing that they do to keep going, they don't do it alone. 15 years ago, a leader I respected invited me to join a community he was forming. All of the people he'd invited had established themselves in some sort of meaningful way in their fields, and virtually everyone was at some kind of inflection point at that time, just like I was. He created a space for all of us to help each other to get better.

14:38And once I'd experienced that, I had a singular thought coming out of it. I am never going this alone again. And ever since, I've been in at least one, sometimes more, professional groups myself of leaders who are supporting each other and pulling for each other. Just this past Friday, I met with four friends who also run businesses and host podcasts and leadership and career space, and we work to help each other out. And we've all been meeting together virtually every month for almost a decade. and then we get together in person for a few days every year to hang out and invest in each other and cheer each other on.

15:18And I do that one-on-one too. My friend Scott and I both run businesses and we have a daily tactical call. It's just five minutes to keep each other on track. And I have a weekly call with my friend Jackie. We spend about 20-30 minutes. She also runs a business. We help each other stay accountable to the big stuff that we're working on. Most of the really successful leaders I know do some version of that. And they keep coming back to these four words. They show up and they keep going. A lot of leaders figure this out along the way. They learn that they need to show up and then they discover over time that they need to keep going.

15:58And they also fall into the trap that I did the first half of my career, which is where this happens gradually. That's why when people ask me to describe what I do for our members in the academy, I often say one word, acceleration. That's because the kinds of people who show up to work with me and us are really smart, talented leaders who will figure it out and get where they're going, no doubt. But it doesn't always happen as quickly and as easily as they want it to, or sometimes that they really needed to. My job is to speed that up. What you might have done on your own over a few years, we're aiming to do in way less time in the academy through a framework of support that makes it so much easier to show up and keep going.

16:49Everything in our academy, the assessment process, our visions that we draft, the focus areas we get strategic about, our problem-solving discussions about the situations that are coming up in real time, our accountability partners, they're all designed to accelerate our growth and make it way easier to show up and keep going. So today I'm making that invitation to you. If you're at an inflection point right now because you're preparing for a new opportunity or you're navigating a big shift in the recent past or what worked before just isn't working as well today, I hope you'll consider applying to the Academy.

17:30We have applications open now until just this Friday, September 11th. There's a lot more detail about the Academy, the logistics, and how to apply at coachingforleaders.com slash academy. If accelerating your growth right now through an inflection point is helpful, make sure you get over there before the end of the day Friday, since applications will close at the end of the day. Again, that's coachingforleaders.com slash academy. Thanks as always for listening and allowing me to support you. The next regular episode, of course, is coming on Monday, and whatever's in front of you right now, whether you're at an inflection point or not, show up and keep going.