Before Judging Others, Do This...

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Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to the Brendan Show. This is a podcast about helping you reach high performance in your life, in every area of your life. It's about staying more motivated, more confident, more disciplined and on purpose. You know, the high performance experience is really about feeling more vibrant, more connected, more excellent, more fulfilled in your life. But it's also challenging you because you and I both know it's difficult to reach those levels of high performance without support, without ongoing commitment and dedication to your own personal development. So welcome to our HPX community. Thank you for joining us here on the Brendon Show. I'm super pumped for today's episode. Before we begin, I want to let you know that we have specials right now on our HPX nutrition line. If you didn't know it, I rolled out three specific products to help you with your performance. These are three specific supplements that will really give you the edge. Now, don't worry, I'm not starting an MLM or a downline. I'm not asking you to promote any of my products. And frankly, just like you, there's a lot of different companies and a lot of different products that I love and I enjoy and I'm not trying to compete with. It was specifically, I could not find three world class supplements that specifically helped me in these areas. So we've got HPX Optimize, which is a mental focus and energy product for your brain health. Then we've got Essentials, which is a functional multivitamin which we've basically enhanced for longevity, for joint health and for vitality and digestion. But what we did, instead of like making a multivitamin where they sprinkled a million different things in there that actually have no effect, we put in dosages here that you'll be amazed by. And then finally we've got HPX Organic Boost, which is the energy drink mix that I take because it's 100% organization organic. It's actually delicious too, I have to tell you that. So go check it out. Hpxwellness.com, everything you need to know is right there. And if you've ever wanted to know how to reach the high performance experience in terms of your biology and physiology, these products can really support you. Go to hpxwellness.com and without further ado, onto today's episode.

Effort. You know, you really have to know if you advise or coach anyone, you have to know how much effort they've actually put into something. Right? Often we berate people and we think that they're lazy and they're not lazy. But usually they have not put in much effort as they could. Your job is to understand why have they not put in as much effort as they could.

Could.

That's what great leaders and great coaches do. It's not berating them for being lazy, which is what we want to do. They didn't meet my expectations. They must be lazy bastards. Scream at them. Instead it's to say, hmm, I, I noticed you haven't done this yet. Do you need any help doing that? Do you know how to do that? Did you want to do that? But also tell me what prevented you from doing that? What you would figure was that the best you could do. And they'll often go, no. Well, what happened? Well, honestly, my son is sick and he's only three and so he's staying up all night. So I've been wiped out. So I haven't been able to take on that project yet because I'm just trying to catch up because, you know, I'm not as efficient as I usually am. My son's sick. And that's when you start to realize what a jerk you can be. You know what I mean? It's like you didn't know. They didn't put in the effort cause a competing interest, something was taking their time, attention, money, something was pulling them away from doing it. So if you're ever thinking you have a lazy team member, really question whether or not they're lazy or a, they don't know how or B, your expectations are different than them or they're just competing interests. There's something that's preventing them from giving all out. You know, I work with a lot of people who hire lots of people on teams, you know, in either network marketing or in scaling companies. And they often get so frustrated with their first line teams. You know, that first person who's in the company for six months or on the team for the six months, they get really frustrated with their progress. And we do that because we have perspective, right? You're good. And your danger in being good is how easy it is to be frustrated when you're good because you think, well, they should know how to do this. And you say, I learned it faster than they did. You don't remember how long it took. And we actually know this from competency studies. People do not have an awareness to how long it took them to learn something they literally don't. Like if I asked you, how long did it take you to learn to ride a bike? Well, Whatever you say is wrong almost 100% of the time. Even in observational studies where they put the kid on the bike, they do the work. They do the work. They do the work. They find the kid and learn how to ride the bike. Now the kid can handle the negotiations, go up and down the curbs, take the corner fast, and they can do it well. Then they ask that kid, just, just a couple weeks later, how long did it take? The kid's always wrong, always wrong. Like literally 100% of the time wrong. It's not cause they're a kid. We do that as adults. You forgot how long it took to become a weapon. You forgot. You forgot all that molding, you forgot all that fire. You forgot all that forging that life put on you to think the way that you think, to do what you do, how well you do it.

You forgot.

So you are not allowed to get frustrated with people on their learning effort. You, your job is to facilitate that learning effort the best that you can not get frustrated with them. Now some people say, well, Brendan, but what if they truly do suck and they're terrible? Then you need to have the performance conversation with them where you set some real expectations and you remind yourself of who you are before you treat them poorly. Because let me ask this. First word is, is that person a jerk when trying to get somebody to improve? Second word is, is that person Impatient, mean, rude, restless with other people. Third word is, is that person someone who just completely discounts people, tells them they're lazy, tells them they don't know anything and just fires them because you didn't even ask to help them, telling you who you really are, is a much more empathetic, patient, high achieving coach. Everyone in this room, whether you identify yourself as a coach or not, that's the roles we have to play in life. We want to play dictator. To really go to the next level, we have to play coach. And soon as we get that distinction, everything shifts. Life is frustrating as hell for the dictator. That's why the dictators do genocides. That's why the dictators start the wars. That's why the dictators kill the first line. That's why the dictators cause conflicts, because they're angry. They're angry inside because they're kind of controlling everything based on their expectations. But the coach is flexible, the coach is adaptive. The coach is a listener. The coach is empathetic. And the highest rated CEOs in the world have more of a coaching mentality than they have a dictator mentality. And if they didn't, they just wouldn't make it. And the ones who do make it at the very top, they either burn out, burn out their team or they frankly limit their potential. Right. Everyone can look at Steve Jobs and go, wow, he was amazing at what he did. And you also have to ask what would have happened if he was kinder to his team along the way too? What would have happened if there was less? Could we still succeed?

Right.

Not taking any way anything from the genius, but adding to the relationships, what could have happened? There is an interesting question for people in any given industry, administration, company or team, it's always an interesting question, what would happen if there was more empathy here? And Google's work project, if you have not read it yet, just type in Google work project into Google. And they did one of the most expensive, largest data driven, I would say insightful projects in workplace studies in certainly the last two decades. No question about that. And that project was what they found is the teams that worked the best in Google when everything else was normalized, meaning in the research they took all the other factors and they accounted for them when everything came to a head. Here's the two things that made teams work together better. Number one, when that team and the team members felt like they had what they called psychological safety, they felt like they could share without being threatened or judged negatively. They just felt like it was a safe environment to share. I feel psychologically safe here. I'm okay to share my ideas without being minimized or brutalized or judged or made fun of. Right. And we all need to work on that. Cause there's some people in your lives who, they're scared to talk to you because you're so smart, because you're so good, but because you also have high expectations that sometimes they don't feel okay talking to you. I had this in my own career. When my career took off, I had members of my family who wouldn't share difficulties in their life because they didn't want to burden me as I was succeeding. But they also felt like, well, Brennan's figured that out. How come I haven't figured that out? Anyone have family or friends like that who you know that well, if you want to create a better connection with them, you need to make it safe for them to bring it up for you. And that means you need to kind of stop being so formal sometimes and let them see your warts and all. Let them see that you struggle, tell them the stories of your challenges and be casual with them so that they feel like it's okay to share. And the second big thing that they found is that great teams took turns. Took turns. Out of the five major things they found, those were the two most correlative of the success of their work groups. Number one, a sense of psychological safety. And number two, what they call turn taking. Now, they used a different phrase for that. I can't remember what it was, but it was basically turn taking in that everybody in a meeting felt like they could take a turn to share their insights and feel heard. And most of the groups that were facilitated, they did that. And so that's your job with your team. That's your job next Friday night at the dinner table with your family. Let them take turns, go around, what was your favorite part of this week? Son, what was your favorite part of your week? Daughter, what did you love about it today? Wife, Husband. It's in that sharing and the turn taking. That magic is created.

Hey, it's Brandon. I'm bopping in here real fast for you to urge you to go to hpxwellness.com and check out our products to help you get more of that mental focus and energy. You need to stay at your best, to deliver with excellence, to feel like vibrant again. Because I know we all struggle with mental fatigue and mental focus. We all sometimes get tired and sometimes we're worried about our overall health. And so I created three specific products to help you with that. Go to hpxwellness.com check out our nutrition line, and let's get you to high performance, baby. Hpxwellness.com.

If you don't understand someone's environment they come up in, be very careful about making any requests to them. Let me say it again. If you don't understand the environment someone came up in, be careful about your requests to them. You know, you start dating somebody and you ask them to talk to you in a certain way or. Or how many of you have ever been in a relationship where their style of conflict was different than yours? Raise your hand. Right? Wasn't that painful? That was so hard. Right? And that was so hard. And what happened is if you didn't understand that that was happening, because you know what, Maybe they grew up in a family where everything was aired out, everything was talked out, everything was put on the table. But you grew up in a family where you didn't bring up conflict, then it's different, right? Or maybe they grew up in a family where anger was okay. Anger was just part of the process of resolution. You grew up in a family where anger was not okay. And now you come together and what you try to do is you try to impose your environment on them without understanding their environment. But once you understand someone's environment, See, when I was a peer mediator, one of the things I would do as soon as it got hot and heavy, where it was just like lots of argument, I mean it was a lot of fire. And remember, it's like, it's a very awkward situation. I sit here, husband or wife sits there, or couple. I also did student on student, what we call peer mediation or professor to student mediations. And I mean inevitably, I mean, they're only there because they can't resolve it themselves. So I'm working with them, right? So they're screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming, they're going at it. And every single time I interrupt them, I say, excuse me, can I ask you guys a quick question? When you grew up, was it okay to scream? It wasn't when you grew up, was it okay to scream? It was now that you know about each other, can we try this in a different way? And everything would shift once they knew that about each other, right? If you grew up in a place or if you know someone who grew up in a place and they were minimized all the time, you know, when you make a request of them, you have to be a little bit more delicate, you have to go a little more slow, you can't take it so strong because for them, you know, they've got a small self esteem. And you speak to a person with small self esteem because of their childhood or where they grew up or what they've been through in their life than you do with somebody with a high self esteem, right? So it's important to know the environment. If they grew up in an environment where education did not matter and now you're trying to push education on them. That's what happens in the US school system and why we have such a struggle, right? So many kids grow up where education doesn't matter before they get to, you know, first grade. And so then we throw them into, it's like, hey, you've never had any sort of education at home and now we're going to throw you into a place with a bunch of random kids. You need to be there for five, six, seven, eight hours with an authority figure you do not know and then you can come home. And it freaks them out, right? It freaks them out. But those who had education and teaching and book reading and had other people read to them and have conversations and doing math and doing little games at home when they go in, they socialize easier. So teachers are taught to know, well, what's the home environment like? Because if I know what this child's home environment is like, then I can teach this person better. Now we all know that with kids, but we forget it with adults. If a woman just came out of a shitty five year relationship and just got divorced and I'm coaching with her, it's a little bit different conversation. If she is in a strong, supporting, loving, powerful relationship, raise your hand and follow. So how do you know these things? You ask questions. Great coaches ask great questions. My coaching program, that's what I focus mostly on, is giving you the great questions that I've worked through in parsed to help you figure out the best questions in the coaching environment. But in regular life, it just means asking people questions like this, right? If you ever find yourself in a conflict situation with somebody, say, tell you what, what's your style of handling this conflict? Seems like we're not doing really well here together. What's your expectations? How much work do you want to put into solving this thing? And what's your style? Like, how should we go about this? And soon as you say, what's your style? How should we go about this? It takes the edge off the conflict. They go, oh, she's willing to meet me here, he's willing to listen a little bit here. And it changes the whole conversation. And the last thing is this middle one, enthusiasm. You need to know the enthusiasms of the people you are working with, serving with, dealing with, fighting with, loving with. It's huge. If you don't know what your kids are enthusiastic about, you don't know your kids. If you don't know what every person on your team geeks out about or is enthusiastic about, you haven't started leading yet. You're in the game. But if you don't know each person's enthusiasm, you don't know each person's lever point. Because with enough enthusiasm, a person will be able to take on the rest. Enough enthusiasm, they'll give more effort, enough enthusiasm, they'll right the environment or correct it with positivity. Enough enthusiasm, they'll learn enough enthusiasm, they'll have better expectations in that regard. So I put enthusiasm in the middle. Cause it's a simple little like once you know enthusiasm, all those other levers can get pulled real fast, right? It's like the heart of things. It's like Paulo Coelho taught me the most. Two powerful human forces are enthusiasm and love. And I always love that one. Ralph Waldo Emerson who? I hope you've read a lot of Emerson in your life if you haven't read a lot of Emerson. I remember one of my favorite quotes of all, he said, the world belongs to the energetic. I was like, wow. And the energy that he is talking about is ultimately a reverence for life. That is ultimately an enthusiasm for this moment, an enthusiasm for the next moment, and enthusiasm for the future. So if you don't know what draws your people's enthusiasm, you might be a great leader already. This is gonna make you a superior world class leader when you get into what makes them geek out, what makes them come alive, what makes them excited for tomorrow. Now you got a lever point that opens up everything else. If their performance review sucked last quarter, don't spend your time talking about last quarter with them. Managers, leaders in the room. That's what we're taught in our society. Oh, they sucked for three months. So let's talk through the last three months and every point in which they sucked and give them feedback on every single point in which they sucked. And let's start the con, let's start the conversation there. Well, Bill, you know, we all know that you've been underperforming for the last three months. Oh, yes. Yeah, Bill, we all know. We've seen it. We talk about you. We talk about you in the stalls, the bathroom. We talk about you at the microwave. You suck, Bill. You know it, right? I thought you knew it. So, Bill, let's talk about why you suck. Now, do you remember last month when I gave you this specific project? Yeah, you do remember when I got mad at you? Yeah. Let's talk about it again. Cause you really sucked there, Bill. Tell me, why do you think you sucked at that? You know, and I really agree with that. That is why you suck. Now there was another incident, Bill, and that's the BS we were taught to do. That is not the lever point for change, is it? But that's the metaphor of what really does happen. The lever point for change doesn't come from the past. The lever point for change comes from the future. We need to find out what Bill is excited about. We need to find out what Bill wants to contribute and give. Where does Bill want to add value? Because maybe where he wants to play, meaning his expectations do not align with any of the things that you're asking him to do. Which hey, that may be fair or not fair for you as a leader. But I always tell people, if you're a leader on a team, stop caring about whether it's Fair to you or not, and start addressing reality. See it as it is. It's okay. You might think, but they're not giving me anything here. It's like, okay, I understand that. Let's have that performance conversation, but let's lead the performance conversation. Leadership is about the future, not about the past. So let's guide them. Let's understand, what are you excited about here? What do you really want to contribute? What do you want to give? What could you get excited about? What are your passions?

What?

Let's start the conversation. It does not mean we can't course correct. But look, when you're doing a performance review course, correcting something three months ago isn't helpful. You should have course corrected three months ago. Like, when it happens, manage it. When it happens, deal with it. Say, hey, I see this is going on. Let's talk through this. What were your expectations in this situation? Never start a conversation ever again with your spouse, with, why did you do that? Don't do it with your kids either. Why did you do that? Just banish that phrase from your mouth. No longer will you say, why did you do that? Instead say, okay, here's what I saw happen. Let me ask you a question. What were your expectations in that situation and what were you trying to do? That's just working the left hand side here. What were your expectations and what were you trying to do? The effort. Oh, then they answer, and then if you don't agree with it, then you say, well, why did you think to do that? Which is getting to their education or environment, Raise your hand and follow. I'm just working the box. I call it, I'm working the box. Hey, I saw this situation. So if I'm frustrated, I say, I saw this situation. What were your expectations there and what were you trying to do? That's expectations and effort. As soon as they answer that, if I'm not aligned with it, then I go, oh, well, why did you think to do it that way? And that gets me into how they've been educated or the environment in which they thought they were in. Because a lot of people say, well, I was taught to do it that way. Or they say, well, everybody else seems to be doing that way. And so it's a cultural problem, not an individual problem. But you don't know that until you ask the questions.

All right. Hey, it's Brendan. I hope you enjoyed that episode and I hope it helped you reach another level of high performance in your life, whether it's just a shift in your mindset or shift in your habits or a shift in your intention for the day. I really honor you for listening to the Brendon show and I'm deeply thankful. So could you do me a favor? Could you just go onto itunes or Apple Podcasts and rate and review this episode or any of our episodes? And also while you're there to help me, just download the last five episodes too onto your phone. Because you know, Apple really cares about the downloads and the rating and reviews and I've never really asked for that in six years of podcasting. And finally my friends convinced me to ask you to do that for me. I've never asked anything on my podcast community ever, but I really, really appreciate if you could do that. Also, if you would like some more in depth training, please don't forget that every single month I go live for two hours and teach new and original personal development research new frameworks to my entire virtual community in our HPX Coaching program. And you can just go to hpxcoaching.com that's hpxcoaching.com to learn all about the different options there. But, but listen, I'm live two hours every single month with literally thousands of high achievers from around the world who tune in to get these new frameworks for reaching high performance in their life. Sometimes we talk about relationships, sometimes we talk about breaking bad habits. Sometimes we talk about achieving another level of confidence or discipline or goal attainment. But we are there every single month and I'd love for you to join us. Just go to hpx coaching.com to see all of your options and really join us. Dedicate yourself to personal mastery. Dedicate yourself to this journey. Not just once in a while with an episode here or there or a book there, but literally a program that could change your life. It's called HPX Coaching and you can go to hpxcoaching.com until next time, my friends, please remember every single day you can choose to to be average or ordinary or just kind of go through the motions. Or you can be more intentional, more disciplined, more excellence driven what you do because you know you need to serve those you love and those that you lead. You can choose to be extraordinary. So my friends, go out there today and be extraordinary. It.