Author: christinawilder

Every Christmas morning, General Krulak and his wife delivered homemade cookies to marines on their post. One year, as he arrived at Quantico, and was looking for the officer on duty. Turns out it was General Mattis. Krulak asked Mattis why he was there and Mattis replied, “The officer who was scheduled has a young family, and I thought he should be home with his kids on Christmas morning so I took his position. Just remember, I work for them.”

When you serve your people, you have to have the same mentality as Mattis. You work for them. This is critical, especially in today’s environment when our attention is being pulled in so many directions with the pandemic, yet the walls may feel like they’re closing in. Being mindful of your words and actions will help you get through this time stronger than how you entered it.

There’s a simple tactic you can put into place — at work, home, anywhere –to help you remember this. It’s called the PTS Method and stands for:

Every time you switch gears, or change your environment, say to yourself, “Prepare to serve,” and live it out through your actions.

Say it to yourself…

• When you put on your teacher hat and help your kid(s) with their schoolwork
• When you hop on a call with your team
• When you’re entering a Zoom with a client
• When you close your laptop for the day and come together with your spouse
• When you talk with your friends and family

Try it today.

Join the Next Ultimate Leadership Academy If you are ready to elevate the way you lead, join the next virtual Ultimate Leadership Academy.

What’s Your Leadership Style? Join over 40k leaders and discover how well you are leveraging love and discipline as a leader and find out your current leadership style for free.

“They’re NEVER going to change!” exclaim frustrated bosses/employees/coworkers.

This mentality is simply not true. People grow, evolve, change and improve every single day.

The challenge is, you can’t make someone change, but here are a few things you can do to help them along the way:

Be a Catalyst, not a Complainer. Many times people are completely unaware that they’re doing something that negatively impacts others around them. It’s up to you to have the Difficult Dialogue with them that requires both courage and evidence. Evidence should be presented in a way that puts you both on common ground and clearly states the impact of their negative behaviors.

For example, “We both want this team to be successful so we can win the marketing award this year. I’ve noticed something that might stop us from getting there. May I share it with you?…. Last week you dismissed several ideas during the meeting. When ideas are dismissed, people stop participating. If they stop participating, you will be the only one coming up, with ideas and we all know when we collaborate we come up with the best ideas.”

Give them Grace. Change doesn’t happen overnight. Often frustration comes when they’re not changing fast enough for your liking. Instead of judging them, help them along the way. Allow people time to change and grant them grace when you see them taking steps in the right direction.

There’s a caveat: There’s no magic time for how quickly a change should happen, but there are clues that the person is trying. If it’s completely obvious they aren’t working to make the change at all, then it’s time for you to move on.

The next time you find yourself frustrated by someone who continues to repeat behaviors that hurt you, your team or even their own professional growth, don’t wave your white flag and think they’ll never change. Instead, do something to help.

Get the #1 Best New Management Book to Read by Book Authority: Building the Best: 8 Proven Leadership Principles to Elevate Others to Success is published by McGraw-Hill. Learn the stories, principles, and tools to help elevate the way you lead others.

What’s Your Leadership Style? Join over 40k leaders and discover how well you are leveraging love and discipline as a leader and find out your current leadership style for free.

Join the Next Ultimate Leadership Academy If you are ready to elevate the way you lead, join the next virtual Ultimate Leadership Academy.

There are many people out there, leaders and professionals alike who have a fixed mindset. They think they’ve achieved their position and they’ve reached a level of complacency in their development. They’ve lost their thirst for knowledge. They’ve stopped being curious and instead become “know-it-alls” with antiquated perspectives.

The very best leaders we’ve studied do things differently. They’re the first to admit they don’t have all the answers. Their quest for knowledge never ends. But to take it a step further, they’re constantly applying their new knowledge.

Words mean nothing unless they are put to use because power is not in the knowledge, but rather, the application of knowledge. This became a reality when a mentor shared an important lesson: 

Knowledge is Information

Understanding is Comprehension 

Wisdom is Application

Information is more readily available to more people than at any time in history. That presentation of information is accompanied by the opportunity to comprehend it. Sometimes we can understand the information on our own, other times we might need a teacher, instructor or expert to help us. 

While understanding is an important step, the true test is the ability to apply.  Wisdom and application are supreme as there is so much one could understand, but never apply. A dentist who smokes cigarettes or a music student who can read music but cannot play an instrument are both prime examples of comprehending but not applying.

What you should be striving for is gaining a level of wisdom that creates ease of application. I understand this is simply written and difficult to execute.

The Growth 20
If you’re interested in remaining a student of your craft, you can practice what we call the Growth 20. Take 20 minutes a day to focus on learning and applying something new. How you spend those 20 minutes is completely up to you – you can read, watch YouTube, listen to an audiobook, attend an industry event, etc. Here’s an idea: 20 minutes is probably less time than it takes for you to commute into the office. Maximize your time by pulling up your favorite podcast and start learning!

Get the #1 Best New Management Book to Read by Book Authority: Building the Best: 8 Proven Leadership Principles to Elevate Others to Success is published by McGraw-Hill. Learn the stories, principles, and tools to help elevate the way you lead others.

What’s Your Leadership Style? Join over 40k leaders and discover how well you are leveraging love and discipline as a leader and find out your current leadership style for free.

Time after time, we hear about people who are horrible leaders. It seems like everyone knows it, except for the leader themselves. Why are organizations so afraid to address the elephant in the room?

Organizations are leaving people in positions of leadership who aren’t leading effectively and hoping things change. As the late Rick Page said, “hope is not a strategy.”

There are two choices and they should be followed in this order:

1. Help them grow and develop. Invest in them and their development. There are so many programs you can implement, coaching, mentorships, etc. Whatever the modality, the point is to do it.

If you’ve invested the time, energy and resources and they don’t change, then should you move on to the second option.

2. Find someone else who can. When you’re looking for someone else to fill the role, provide clarity.

It’s never easy, but the cost of not addressing poor leadership outweighs the cost of tackling it head-on.

Get the #1 Best New Management Book to Read in 2019 by Book Authority: Building the Best: 8 Proven Leadership Principles to Elevate Others to Success is published by McGraw-Hill. Learn the stories, principles, and tools to help elevate the way you lead others.

According to a Holmes report, the cost of poor communication is $37 billion.

Communication is one of those skills that can always be improved upon. The challenge is most people believe they’re great communicators. Instead of asking what poor communication is costing you, think about what you have to gain by improving your communication.

By implementing these 3 C’s, you’ll elevate your communication:

Clear. Is it obvious what you’re asking? Is it less than 3 things?

Concise. Keep it brief. “Twitterize” your emails, and don’t be repetitive.

Conclusive. Communicate why it’s important to them — what pain will they experience if they don’t do it or what do they have to gain. Don’t leave these to chance.

Ask yourself if you’re doing these 3 things… they’ll elevate your communication to the next level.

What’s Your Leadership Style? Join over 40k leaders and discover how well you are leveraging love and discipline as a leader and find out your current leadership style for free.

Preorder the Book: Building the Best: 8 Proven Leadership Principles to Elevate Others to Success is being published by McGraw-Hill and is due out on November 15th. Preorder today and receive over $200 in gifts including the first two chapters immediately, Acts of Accountability Online Course, and a live webinar taught by John.

In every workshop, we ask participants to share a book they’ve read to help with their professional development. You’d be shocked by the number of people who admit they do NOT read (or listen to) books. Yet, everyone claims they want to improve.

“True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.” – Karl Popper

Everyone wants to develop and grow professionally, but few are willing to commit to doing what’s required. It starts with acquiring knowledge. The mistake some people make is assuming they know all there is about their role and they stop learning.

Invest in your development. Pick up a book today. Whether you like to read or listen to books is up to you. Might we make a suggestion? Our new book, Building the Best is coming out in November. You can preorder your copy today and receive $200 worth in free stuff by doing so. Just head over to our website and share your receipt.

The old way of viewing standards was to set the bar to “good” or the “check the box”. People are prone to meet (and rarely exceed) the bar that’s set for them. When the standard is set low, people won’t stretch themselves to go above and beyond. Instead of setting your bar to “average” set your bar to “great” and watch everyone, including yourself, strive to meet it.

Here’s an example we implemented when we realized our weekly team meetings were becoming a poor use of our time:

Old standard: Everyone attends the weekly meeting on time.

New standard: Everyone arrives to the weekly meeting on time and prepared to present 3 things:
1. One thing they did last week to move the needle
2. What they’re going to do this week to move the needle
3. Where they need help

What’s Your Leadership Style? Join over 40k leaders and discover how well you are leveraging love and discipline as a leader and find out your current leadership style for free.

If you search “leadership” over sixty thousand definitions will come up. While some of them are great, others are completely off base considering the current state.

Through our research, we’ve created the most accurate and modern definition of leadership that anyone, no matter their role, should live by:

A leader is defined as someone whose actions INSPIRE, EMPOWER & SERVE in order to ELEVATE OTHERS over an extended period of time.

These words are chosen carefully and for great reason. The word inspire has its origin from Latin, and it means “to breathe life into.” Empower means “to give control over another’s life and the authority to do something.” “Serve” comes from the Latin word servant, and in today’s context it means “to devote (part of) one’s life or efforts to others.” All three are critical to elevating others.  If what you are doing to proactively elevate others results in them being more inspired and having a better life, empowers them with control and authority, and serves their heart, then you are on your way to true leadership. In addition, you must help others move into a more permanent state of improvement.

The world needs more leaders. Learn it. Live it.

What’s Your Leadership Style? Join over 40k leaders and discover how well you are leveraging love and discipline as a leader and find out your current leadership style for free.