A positive attitude brings much gratitude. Think positive, be positive, speak positive. Do it every day, make it a HABIT.”
This isn’t some touchy, feely kind of a thing. It’s more intentional, purposeful, tactical and strategic. As we enter a brand new year – another year of uncertainty – it’s urgent that we incorporate optimism, hope, love and fun into our leadership. And gratitude. After all, we’re hotting pursuing high performance for ourselves and our teams.
Lisa texted me the image below and asked, “What do you think about this quote as a show topic?”
I read it quickly, then I read it more carefully.
There is a purpose for everyone you meet. Some people come into your life to test you, some to teach you, some to use you, and some to bring out the very best in you.
Within minutes I responded to her texted question, “I’m in.”
We both felt like it’d be a great end of the year conversation. Today is show #37 for this iteration of the Grow Great Podcast. We’re happy to be doing this together with each other – and with all of you. Lisa and I are both optimistic about the future. Hopefully, we can serve to influence your leadership optimism, too. This podcast is our aim at helping bring out the very best in you – and in ourselves.
Bum Phillips was a quotable NFL coach, a good ‘ol boy from Texas. We’re fans of this quote Bum uttered about failure. It speaks to the excuse-making that is so easy to do, and shows how blaming others (or anything really) isn’t the path toward growing great.
“You fail all the time, but you aren’t a failure until you start blaming someone else.”
Join us for the conversation about how great leaders shoulder the responsibility to create a high-performance culture. Great leaders happily accept responsibility…for everything. It’s empowering and provides leaders with the liberty to get on with helping their organization reach new heights.
This quote serves as today’s conversation starter. “Great leaders are not the best at everything. They find people who are best at different things and get them all on the same team!”
Keep in mind that Lisa and I define leadership in a few simple terms:
• A focus on others
• Doing for others what they can’t do for themselves
• Positive influence
We’re tempted to surround ourselves with people mostly like we are. “Birds of a feather,” and all that. Great leaders figure out how to identify what others may be best at, and put them into a place where they can be most successful in helping the team achieve more. It’s how high-performance cultures are built.
Connections are most easily made with people we can relate to. Trust only follows connection. That’s why displays of humanity prove some of the most fruitful leadership work. Today, we talk about how our own experiences of showing our humanity paid off in building high-performing teams.
There’s a specific place where each of us can find our greatest growth. It’s the corner.
The corner is a metaphor for a place we all must go in order to move forward. It represents a place where we’re no longer relying on excuses. Once we paint ourselves into the corner we suck all the oxygen of our excuse-making out of the room. We stop being victims. We’re uninterested in blaming others for our circumstances. Instead, we make up our minds we’ll accept full responsibility for everything.
Lisa is producing a “Walk The Talk” series for Grand Prairie, Texas (her employer). Here are the links to the current episodes (she continues to produce new episodes for city leadership and emerging leaders):
Clarity is important. Sometimes we need to be caringly challenged to see things more clearly. We each figure things out when we figure them out. Sometimes it’s difficult to see things…but once we do, it’s impossible to not see it. In the picture below, do you see the young lady or the old woman? Now, find the other one – the one you didn’t see at first.
You don’t see it…until you do see it
That doesn’t mean everything is our fault. It just means we no longer care that much about blaming ourselves or anybody else. Rather, we decide that we’re going to work hard to see things as clearly as possible so we can figure out what our next move should be.
“If it is to be, it’s up to me.” That’s the mantra of today’s show. It’s one of the times when we’ll encourage you to be self-focused. Daily we’re urging our team members to improve. It only makes sense that we expect the same of ourselves.