1624 – Revealing Greatness with Gina Mollicone-Long

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0:59with us right now gina mollicone gina you are a best-selling author and you are found on the web at gina mollicone.com and you're also the founder of greatness you and that's greatness the letter u.com gina thank you so much for joining us thanks for having me i'm super excited about this. Yeah. So I'll have you explain what you do and your kind of your impact in the world today. Really at the core of what I do is, you know what, big, big, big picture, reveal greatness. And I know that sounds really trite, but if you, if that's where you start, if you start with the understanding that it's everywhere and in everyone, and it's not always being expressed, then if that's where you start, your, your attention goes to that and it cultivates that.

1:46So as a leader, that is more, you know, both within yourself, right? Being the greatest leader you can be, but also assuming greatness with every person that you meet, including everybody that works for you. And what we do and what I do is help people remove the obstacles that are between them and the execution of that greatness and then learning how to express that more fully in the world so they can, you know, leave their gift or make their mark. Yeah. And so who do you typically work with at this point? Like who are, I don't know if you work with clients or you're primarily just kind of impacting change from the stage.

2:21Right. So obviously what I said is just like super big picture and everybody who like needs a little details, like what the hell does that mean? So it's sort of, we sort of executed three ways. At the very, very far end of what I call a little bit more commodity, we do all kinds of corporate team building with teams and companies. then in on the other far end of the spectrum is is the work that i do all the thought leadership the books that i've written i work with maybe a dozen uh sea levels around the world to to personally curate breakthroughs for them to the next level and then in the middle of that we have greatness you which is our learning platform where we teach mechanistic models that literally literally help you um remove obstacles in your mind body like it could be a mental thing could be emotional, could be physical, so that you can execute on greatness.

3:13And we teach different courses. But everything's done in this mechanistic model, so that it's linear, because my undergraduate degree is in engineering. So for me, steps are very important. It's not enough to just, you know, I have a master's degree in philosophy, so I got plenty of fluff. But it's not enough to just have the big picture, which is important. We really try to break it down for people and make it tangible, so they can have actual tools to do actual things to get results faster and with less effort. What are some of the more common, either where leaders are getting in their own way or they keep experiencing this frustration and they can't really get to, how do I keep this from happening again?

3:59Are there any common things you hear frequently? Yes. Yeah, it's like so many things, my head just exploded. So there's a couple of things with respect to a leader. And this is sort of, you got to think about this theoretically first. So, you know, when you're leading a company, sure, I mean, you have to have a company that is run well with systems and structures and processes and people and hiring and all of that. That is essential. So I'm going to call that the left brain of the company has to be executed well. And then there's the right brain of the company. And that is usually in the hands of the founder, the visionary, the stakeholder, the CEO, whoever is the driver of the boat.

4:40And what I find is that, you know, you can make a huge difference sharpening the left brain of the company, right? Making it run well. But when that's running well, when there's still usually some sort of barrier. And that barrier is always in the self-perception of the leader. So the company is constrained by the leader's vision of what's possible within themselves. And that is a real thing. And we see this a lot. Now that shows up in different ways, because obviously everybody sort of expresses that differently. But it gets, you know, if I ask the leader, like, you know, you listening to this right now, honestly, if 10 is your maximum contribution, 10 is your maximum potential, where are you operating right now on that continuum?

5:29Most people that I work with, even though they've got billion dollar companies or thousands of employees, the ones that come to me who know there's something deeper, they always say like five, six, never higher than that. So they know they're kind of playing half a deck. And then what we do is we unlock these obstacles, but how it shows up. So that's just like a philosophical thing. How it shows up is, you know, they're somewhat disconnected from their people and their leadership. They either don't know, you know, they're trying to blanket lead. You know, they've read a book about, you know, be positive or something, and they're trying to blanket lead their whole company.

6:08And what we teach is, well, that's a great intention. People are different. And if you don't understand basic differences and adapt your leadership to their difference, then you're just talking, you're not talking to anybody. You're talking to a concept. So we teach leaders how to read people so that they can lead them where they're at. But that requires the leader to be flexible and change themselves. And so it's this little dance of, you know, no more my way or the highway type leadership. It's about, but it's also not about placating people and being, oh, I'm going to be so nice and everybody's going to like me.

6:51That's not what it's about. It's about saying, what does this situation need from me right now? And that requires a certain level of self-awareness that the new leader really needs to have. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Gina, obviously one thing I think I hear pretty frequently would just be those moments or seasons of just exhaustion or burnout. Is there, like, if someone says, all I know, Gina, is I do not enjoy going to work. I just, like, I'm just dragging. I'm just not motivated. But yet I have to keep that game face on. Otherwise, you know, I don't want my, you know, negativity to seep down into my organization.

7:31like how might you have that conversation? What might you ask in that conversation next? Well, you know, it's interesting because I might ask how, like really chunk down because there's the engineer in me, chunk down. How are you actually leading? How are you doing it? Because my suspicion is it's completely ineffective method, right? And so again, back to this conversation, it seems like a lot. When I say I'm going to teach people how to read people, it's like, oh my God, I'm really gonna have to change every time I talk to someone. Oh, it seems like a lot. But actually, if you streamline your leadership, and you lead people the effective way in which they need to be led in order to understand you, then it's actually going to make your job easier, you're going to have more success, faster and with less effort.

8:18And that's really the name of the game, because the burnout comes from being inefficient, working too hard and doing things that don't work, right? Because you're like, oh, God, it's so much work. It's so much work. So I actually would analyze how they're leading. And it always comes. They don't understand. I'm telling you right now. I mean, we've all heard of something like a Myers-Briggs or a DISC or something like that. And those are very powerful models for understanding differences in behavior and thinking. But if you don't do anything to adapt your leadership style to the type of person, then all it does is create a difference.

8:55It doesn't actually, it's not for leverage, right? So something as simple as this. One of the most basic ways you can understand your people is their preferred system of representation. What that means is when we're representing the world, because in the world, there are millions, billions, and I even argue nowadays, trillions of bits of information available for our brains to process. And back in the 1950s, a group of scientists, Pribbim, et cetera, calculated the brain could handle about 126 bits a second. So the brain is filtering constantly. And people filter via their representational system.

9:30So you're going to prefer to filter visually, auditory, kinesthetically, or digitally. That's just a big bucket. And if you know that about someone, you alter your language to speak their language. So, you know, here are four sentences that express the same sentiment as a leader. Does this project look good to you, right? Do you see what you need to do to get going on it, right? Or how is this project sounding to you? Is it starting to resonate? Or, you know, does this feel good to you? Are you starting to get a gut feeling of what you're going to need to do and how you're going to need to behave in the situation?

10:04Or do you really understand what's happening here and beginning to process the steps that you're going to need to take to get this project done? Now, see, I've just communicated the same package of communication four different ways. And if you know which way your employee that you're speaking to is likely to filter the world, and it'll go in like an arrow. But if you say it your way to somebody who has a different way, then you would meet that barrier in communication. And so that's an example of the practicality of the type of leadership we're talking about, right? This is not pie in the sky, everybody's going to like you.

10:44This is effective, functional leadership. leadership if somebody spoke spanish and you only spoke english you'd learn spanish if you wanted to get through to them so it's that it's that kind of practicality that we're talking about now once you start to do that it's less effort once you expend less effort you'll have more energy that'll equal less burnout so that's that's the practical side the other side has to do with all of the mental barriers all of the limiting beliefs all of the you know garbage that the CEOs carrying, because all humans do, that they aren't addressing. That has to be addressed, right?

11:21All those limiting beliefs that come to your face when you have to lead people. We do that too. Yeah. What a great example of what you just said there. And, you know, when I think about, you know, the effectiveness of a leader or the greatness of a leader, and I think I agree with you where, you know, great leaders are great communicators, but great communicators communicate in the way that their audience is going to be receptive, right? That's it. So it's not just, you know, listen, lofty, inspiring speeches. That might be good for 15 % of the population, but, you know, not your director who you're talking with right now.

11:58They're going to hear that and go, you know. Exactly. Like you're bang on. And the more ways you learn that the world could be chopped up, right? In fact, what you just said is true. about 15 % of the population really does like a super lofty conversation. And then the rest of them want more, right? So the more ways, and that's what we specialize in, chopping up the mechanisms, right? We take the machine and we chop it up every way to the moon. And then we go back and we teach people, you know, if you had like, you know, in school, they used to have a file on you right well you need your permanent record as a leader you should have a file on people but what it should say you know aside from like maybe likes a soy latte okay is um visual rep system fast talker close talker uh prefers fast action external processor here are their values here is what's important to them here are their decision making strategies so these are all right here their meta programs, Myers-Briggs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

13:05The more you know about someone, the more you chameleon yourself. And then what that does, here's what happens fundamentally at the neurological level is the other person, the employee goes, oh my God, this person gets me. And that removes all barriers to communication. The process is called rapport. The minute you have a direct line to someone, they will follow you without objection. That is how you lead. People don't understand it's a mechanism. It's a process. And we just break down the processes chunk by chunk. And are we the only ones? No. You know, you and I were talking about this before.

13:49This is open source. People say, well, does this work? Sure. Yes. The point is that as the leader, you recognize the most important quality for the leader to develop is flexibility of behavior. That's what they come up against because they come up against a change that isn't part of their neurology and then they don't want to do it. Right. They go, no, no, I don't want to do it. I can't. I won't. I shouldn't. Whatever the objection is. And then that's where the block happens. And then that's where all the energy leaks and that's where they end up burning out. So they're up against their own shit.

14:24Pardon my French, right? They're up against their own stuff. They're up against their own blocks. And as a leader, if they're not growing,

14:34they're stagnant. Yeah. All right, Gina, I'm sold. All right. How can we get more Gina? Because I know, again, you've written some great books. You've got great masterclasses. Let's start talking about all the ways that folks can really start learning more from you, working with you, that sort of thing? Well, you know, in the true nature, I try to offer my information in the ways that people want to consume it. If you're a book reader, get my books. You can download them. You can buy them. If you're a visual person, we've got some video webinars. They're short, they're sweet. You know, there's two or three.

15:13And our whole game, just so you know, and I think you get this, is we just provide value. Just give lots of value. And if you want more, there's always more. We teach courses. We teach them self-study. If you're a self-starter, we teach them live taught. If you need a little bit more interaction with the teacher, we also teach them in the flesh. If you want to be in a meat suit to a meat suit situation, right? So all of that can be found in various capacities on my link tree, because, you know, yes, you could go to my website, but that'll take you through our courses. Yes. You could go to the other thing, you know, social, if you're a social person, right here, flexibility of behavior.

15:48I'll just share this because it's super valuable for leaders. But three, four or five months ago, they told me I had to go on TikTok and I didn't really want to, but in the name of flexibility behavior, I did it. I did a video on TikTok about having a difficult conversation. So it's one minute, 45 seconds long. It's trending so viral. It's over 300 ,000 views. And every leader who sees it tells me it's one of the most effective tools they've ever been taught. it's called the agreement frame if that's something you need a conflict uh conversation or difficult conversation or having a hard conversation go watch that video it'll change or it'll change everything in one minute yeah how do we get to that tiktok okay yeah i mean tiktok whatever tiktok slash gina mollacone most of my handles are gina mollacone yeah except for instagram is gina dot mollacone because sure yeah i got your tiktok pulled up right now yeah And it's a 300 plus thousand view video.

16:44Oh, yeah. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. And it's really like leaders. I had no idea. Honestly, I didn't want to go. But there's a lot of conflicting conversation going on right now. And leaders don't know why their words aren't working. Well, I can explain a little bit in a minute, 43 seconds. But Linktree, you know, linktr.ee slash Gina Molycone always has the latest and greatest of what we've got to give. So I've got that to our podcast listener. Never fear. We've typed it for you. So all you have to do is click on show notes, click on a little information, click on more. Just click around. Keep clicking on stuff until you find where we've got, Gina, all of your notes and links.

17:28We've got to your Linktree. We've got a link to your website, greatnessu.com. And then of course, your personal website, ginamollicone.com. Gina, one more. I just wanted to point out your book too, for those who are looking for a good read. What is your book? There's two. The first one I wrote was called The Secret of Successful Failing. It's not a book about how to fail, obviously. It's a book about how to use adversity and turn it into an advantage. So it's the original pivot. And I wrote it like 15 years ago. Yeah. And then Think or Sync, which is another pivotal type book. Both books were written during global crises a while ago.

18:08So what they do is they put the power back in your choices, right? You can choose how to view the world. And once you make that choice, then the choices for your next steps will determine your outcome. Yeah. Awesome. Again, Gina, mollicone.com, greatnessu.com, and all the other links we've got linked up as well. Gina, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for the insight that you've shared and for the impact you have in the world. Thank you for having me. I really hope it provided value to everybody listening.

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