Leadership doesn’t always matter. Here’s why and when it does….

Well, this begins a series of short conversations about leadership. Leadership and why leadership matters and where leadership matters. Look, leadership doesn't actually matter. If you're happy with the way things are, if you're happy with the business you have and the way the team is and the way your life is, then you're fine. But if you want to grow your business significantly, if you want to do something new in the world, if things aren't okay with your business the way it is today, then leadership is really matter. And the leader that we're talking about in this case is you. Not so much your leaders. Well, maybe, eventually. But the first leader to deal with is you. Always. Always you. It's interesting to note that time and again, when we encounter CEOs in the companies that we coach, there's a direct correlation to the things that they want to work with, the things that they want to improve, the things they want to work on, and their own habits. You see, what I've learned over time, painfully for myself as well as with our clients as a leader, is that the organization, the leader are like the front and the back of the hand. They move together, they're completely connected, and yet they're two sides of the same thing. So the leader does something, it affects the organization. The organization does something, it affects the leader. You could say, and you'd be right on, that you deserve the company you have, and you have the company you deserve. So if there's a problem going on, if there's something that you want to change in the organization, it's good news, bad news. It's definitely your fault the way that it is, right? It started with you, even if others contributed to it or whatever. But the good news is. And that's the bad news, right? The good news is that it's your fault, which is good news, because you can work on you a lot easier than you can work on. On anyone or anything else. You can work on you. So take the case. You know, I was coaching an organization a few years ago. The leader called me up. He's like, hey, I really. I want to get. Take this organization to a billion. We've already. We've got a good product, we're profitable. We've been growing. We've kind of plateaued. We've got some issues. Our people are passive, and we're late on everything. And so I worked with the company for a little while, and sure enough, before too long, we saw that the leader, this guy who hired me, was showing up late to his meetings, and he just dominated everything so passive. He dominates late to things. He's late to things. He's teaching them through his own behavior, his own examples, exactly where the problems are. So if we're willing to change things up, then there's an opportunity because we can do things with the organization. But if you won't change, you then change. Then there's not much that can be done about that. I had that kind of a conversation with him and unfortunately that was the last conversation I had with that guy. But the memory, the lesson of it has stuck with me for a long time and it's helped me to figure out which leaders are coachable and which are not. Thanks everybody. Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of our Scaling at Business podcast. We'll bring a new show, new topic to you like this at least once every week. Hope this is helpful. Talk to you again next time. Keep scaling up. I.