Mashup: Leadership Principles and Practices That Are Crucial for Your Success

If you want people to follow you, they must create with you. They must feel enabled, trusted, empowered, autonomous, capable, rewarded for participating in the journey in what we'll call the vision today. Right? If they don't have any hand in shaping it and if they have no reward on autonomy or trust in participating in it, they got no skin in the game. They got no reason to be enthusiastic, excited, hard working, excellent. Hey, my friends. It's Brendon Burchard, founder and creator of Growth Day. Welcome to an awesome session where we're going to talk about the leadership principles and practices that can help you have a greater impact in the world, in your family, with your teams, in your community. As you're somebody who wants to be a person of influence, you want to help people, you want to serve people, you want to do something significant with your life that really matters, you got to start working these practices and principles in leadership. Without leadership, we don't make our impact. So I'm pumped to be here today with, with you and this Growth Day community because that's what we are all about. Our mission is how do we enable you to have a home for personal development, how do we make self improvement a way of life for you so that you keep getting better and better and better at what you're doing about who you are so you can reach your full potential and so you can serve your highest purpose here? I always begin with principle number one, my biggest belief, my biggest teaching in all of leadership. And it's five simple words. People support what they create. People support what they create. This is the defining leadership principle of my life. Every time I'm working with a leader and they're frustrated with the coworker, they can't get the team to be motivated and energized. The downline isn't performing, the upline isn't listening. We got this problem where you can't mobilize a movement or you started a political action committee and it didn't stick, or you started your nonprofit and no one could contributed. It always comes down to a fundamental misperception about this topic of leadership. Leadership's fundamental principle is that people support what they create. If you want people to follow you, they must create with you. They must feel enabled, trusted, empowered, autonomous, capable, rewarded for participating in the journey in what we'll call the vision today. If they don't have any hand in shaping it and if they have no reward, autonomy or trust in participating in it, they got no skin in the game. They got no reason to be enthusiastic, excited, hard working, Excellent. So what happens? Well, as you see around the world, it's like we have these command and control old models from, you know, the past, these dictatorial ways of leading where it was like, do this, do this, do this. You know, bury like, you know, early 1800s stuff that should have been done by the 1950s, but people are still learning. And so you have this situation where a lot of people still think of like, oh, I have positional leadership, I'm the boss, or I'm this leader. Everyone needs to only do these things and it becomes a one way street or it becomes something where the leader doesn't have the connection with everybody else because no one has a part in it. They can't play yet, they don't believe in it yet. Even if they like you, even if they think you're an okay person, even if you had great successes in the past, if you don't get them collaborating to create where we're going, how we're going there and how we'll be together, they're not interested. They'll pretend they'll take the paycheck, but they'll be gone in six months. Or when the tough times hit or the stock price goes down, they're bailing, man, because they're thinking, you know what? I'm not part of this. I'm not part of this. The new buzzword of the last decade was certainly culture in organizations, even in our homes. Create a culture, create a culture of openness, of diversity, create a culture of enthusiasm, create a culture of accountability. Culture, culture, culture, culture. What does that mean? Culture is the outcome of the philosophy that people support what they create, that we're collectively shaping a culture. Well, we collectively shape the leadership journey too. And so if you don't feel like you have buy in from people, which is the number one complaint of all leaders worldwide. In my research at the High Performance Institute, the number one thing I ever found was that leaders are disappointed, discouraged or demotivated because they don't get buy in from their teams. Most of the time they blame the teams, they blame the organizational structure, they blame the old leaders, they blame their spouse, their partner, they blame anybody they can. Why won't the school board listen to me? Why won't this person, they won't do this. I had this idea. No one comes along. It's because you have this idea and you didn't invite anyone to come along. You just told people what to do, you told people how to think, you told people how it's supposed to go. And I'm Telling you, we live in a participative global culture now where people want a voice. And so much of leadership is understanding where to open conversations, to allow diverse voices to come in, have a perspective on something. Even if you or the leaders maintain that decision making authority, the active participation and enrollment of conversation is the difference maker. And your job as a leader, listen to this, Is to hold that space, to set the standard, the expectation, the structure for, for that space for other people to participate. Now I know some of the leaders out there like, yeah, but that's super hard, the timing of that and when. And some people have a voice, but they don't know what the hell they're talking about. They're not an expert, Brandon, why would I listen to them? And oh my gosh, does this mean more meetings for me? Don't worry, this isn't about you doing more meetings. Just to listen casually. The principle I want you to write down. People support what they create. The five most important words in all of leadership. People support what they create. If you get that principle, we can change the world. When you don't get that principle, you don't get the followers. Now with that, I want to introduce a concept that I've literally been teaching for 21 years now. I don't like the word followers. I don't like the word leaders versus or the position leaders versus followers. If you studied with me before, I really believe you have leaders and instead of followers you have collaborators. It's just a different way of defining things. Unfortunately, in our world, because of popularity and ego, when someone follows you on the Internet, it all became about a one way street. And so now we've ingrained in people's human behavior this idea that I broadcast my world and you should follow it, that's coming to organizations. I tell you what to do and you should follow it versus hey, we're co creating this organization together. We're co creating this team, we're co creating this marriage, we're co creating this family. Soon as you get that you're co creating your family together, you're a different styled parent. Most troubles in parenting relationships and familial relationships come from an old model that it's the parent versus the kids and you do what I say or you're not loved, you're dead to me. That really didn't work so good. We've learned that to have healthy and adaptive children, they need to feel part of the family process. They need to feel connected, cared for and collaborative, literally in how their day goes, how their Life goes, they need to have a voice in it. Or later in their life, they're more passive towards chasing what's important to them. They never develop that autonomy early enough. So now, unfortunately, they do. They follow whatever's happening at school, they follow whatever's happening with that peer set, and they follow it often right into places you didn't want them to go. And so by controlling them too much, it removes their autonomy. By removing their autonomy now, they'll follow often the wrong people at the wrong time, stay in the wrong relationships because they didn't develop personal autonomy. Why? Because someone in their life, too late, failed to realize that this person had to be participating in shaping their life, their days, their weeks, their dreams, their destiny, earlier. I think that's so important in this world today, where you get a lot of blind followership to ideology or darker, kind of like the darker side of humanity, where people don't question or they don't think because they haven't been participating in shaping their life. And we have to be aware of that as leaders. It's like, oh, you're going to have some people on your team who are super participative and. And other people, they were never given autonomy or trust or a voice, and they're super smart, but you're not getting enough from them. They just need to be enrolled to participate in a different way than the person who's always had the benefit of being in communities where they were heard. We live in a world right now where so many people have never actually been heard, then we expect them to perform as high performers in their organizational settings. And it's like, oh, you have to be aware of these things. Some members of your team and some members of your family haven't been heard, haven't felt heard, haven't been allowed space for it. And I don't just mean listened to. I mean being allowed space to make decisions together about what's important. And that's just so critical. People support what they create. So you gotta be thinking, I would love for you to evaluate yourself as a leader. Go. Okay, on a scale. This is the workshop part. This is personal development, right? We're going to do the work. If you wrote down, people support what they create. I'm curious on a scale of 1 to 10. One. Yeah. You don't get that. One's a bad number. Okay, one's the worst. I won't give you a zero. We'll give you a one. And then there's ten. I'm going to ask you two questions to Score yourself here, one to ten, first score. How conscious have you been about this principle? Like when I say people who support their crate, you're like, oh, yeah, I get that. I've been doing that. I'm aware of that. That's important to me. One has not been on radar. Ten, that's been on my radar. Did you know the higher you score on that, the higher life satisfaction you have, the higher connection you have with your employees, the longer your employees tend to stay employees. I know that's not, you're not all organizational leaders, but it basically means that the better you've been conscious about this and practicing it, the happier your culture, your team and others are. They want to be on that journey. So put that front of dashboard, I call it front of radar. That's on your radar. That's on your dashboard. Have I been leading in this style or at least aware of this? People support what they create. Okay, got it. The second way I'd love you to score that is to take a look at the most critical members of your team. Maybe this is your executive team or the most important people in your life, your family. And look at each of them individually through this lens. It's like, oh, has this person been co creating the experience with me? Have they been active in that or passive in that? And not as a judgment to them like a one, they're bad. It's that, oh, if they are a one, I as a leader need to create a process, a rhythm, a meeting, an opportunity for this person to get some decision making authority, to establish some trust, if anything, to be heard more in meetings. Maybe this person is never called on. They never get the opportunity. And you're going to like, oh, I'm going to be aware this person has not been participating and I need that participation from them if we're going to have long term success and we need to participate together. So let me have that. So I'm always thinking about that. And when I work with leaders and I coach them in high performance, it's always about, okay, let's work through your team. Let's walk through this principle and let's talk about each of these critical team members and do they feel empowered to be part of the process because people support what they create is ultimately people being part of the process because guess what? When they're part of the process, they've helped come up with decisions. They're working towards something they had a hand in. They fight for it, they stay focused on, they have ego and decision making in that process. And they want to protect it. When someone has an idea, you know what they want to do. They want to own that, they want to protect that, they want to perpetuate that. They want to ensure that that idea lives. And they'll do that sometimes sanely and unsanely. You could look at across humanity the worst of the human conditions and human actions. The world came from people who had an idea and they believed it and they shaped it and they fought for it till death when it was destructive towards others. And the most beautiful parts, the better angels of our nature came from those times in which we had an idea. We were participating in that idea, continuing, shaping it, evolving it, making it even better. And as we made that even better, oh, okay, we made it better together. We'll fight for it, we'll participate in it, but we'll do it for positive ends. It's a difference maker, isn't it? If you look around the world even today, like at higher political levels as an example, like I happen to be doing this today on July 1st. So we're not too far away from, from an upcoming Independence Day in the United States. And that idea of democracy, of a participative democracy, that's a different way of thinking. And it changed the shape of history. And you saw people still, we're still refining what our republic is and how it works together. We're still trying to figure out our systems and our rules. We're still working on an active democracy. And that's an incredible thing and an incredible blessing. And it's one reason why the country, at least globally, as I'm filming this leads the world, right? People support what they create. Now, I don't want to get political with you where people are like, oh, I don't agree with this or I love Americans or whatever. I'm just here to say there is definable, demonstrable and great examples across organizations, across political systems, across, across socioeconomic systems that when people are allowed to participate, better ideas come up, people have more buy in, People stay committed. Over the long term, humans become more resilient themselves. It's important. It's so important. So please take an active role in this day. Score yourself, be honest and think about this and how you can amplify this. If all you did is understand this principle and you practice this principle at the deepest levels, you would so far surpass almost everybody you're working with. I promise. Hey everybody, it's Brendon Burchard. And welcome to your growth day training. We are going to talk about advanced Communication skills so that you can deepen your relationships, survive this very tumultuous time in cultural conversations, and finally have the confidence that you need to show up and live the life that you desire. When you feel like you can communicate well. Right. I always say communication is the number one most important skill, and we all know that. But very few people practice it at an advanced level. Most people could just kind of go through the motions and they wreck their relationships. They go through the motions. They don't lead well. They go through the motions. They don't express their deepest truth. They don't express who they are. They're scared to set boundaries, scared to say no, scared to speak up and be vulnerable. And so they watch their life not come to magic, not come to life. This is one of my very favorite topics, communication. Because the way that I grew up, I was not surrounded by a lot of great communicators. You know, I grew up in an old Irish mining town and had been, you know, economically depressed for 100 years. You know, so people didn't really communicate and share that much, especially the men in my life. There was not much vulnerability. The only expression of vulnerability was when they got really mad and smacked you and then felt bad about it and apologized later. If you got an apologetic look, it was a good day. So there wasn't a lot of that around then. When I went into high school and college, I recognized I was lacking in the ability to express myself. I recognized I was lacking in confidence. I recognized that I was always in arguments with the girl that I was dating at the time, with my friends. And I was always like, why am I always arguing with people? Why am I always upset? How come they don't understand what I'm saying? And I realized my friendships were superficial. And so I just wonder if any of you ever been in relationships or are in a relationship right now where you feel like they. The communication sucks. Raise your hand. And now can you also admit that maybe you haven't developed the communication skills you need yet? Raise your hand. I also recognize that when I got into business, I would go into these meetings, and I was nervous, and I couldn't speak up for myself, and I was awkward, and I wasn't able to convey my ideas. I'd have an idea for the business, what? Or for the company I was working for, and no one would really listen, and I couldn't figure out how to persuade them. And worse, after the meeting, I'd be upset, and I'd go to people. I'm like, well, no one Understands me in there. And people would say, well, you know, you're not really arguing for what you want here. And I realized I was holding back. Can any of you guys raise your hand to this? That you hold back your own thoughts, your own desires, your own dreams, your own goals, that sometimes with a spouse or with a partner or with somebody you are even actually leading or serving, you don't say what you mean. You don't express your truth. And so the communication between the two of you or the group of you falters. And you're not able to put your ideas forward. You don't feel as engaged in that community or with that team. And you just wonder, why is this not getting any better? Some of you have been in relationships or marriages, and year over year over year, you couldn't break that communication pattern. Either they didn't communicate the way that you wanted, or you don't communicate the way they wanted. And it was like night and day. And you kept thinking, well, something will change. So you tried things, well, maybe we need more date nights. Maybe we need a vacation. Maybe, you know, we need to go to the spa together. Maybe we should take more walks. But what has to happen on all those things? Better communication. That's it. See, people try all the time to change their environment. They try to change their relationships, and if they don't change their communication skills, nothing really changes. Who's ever experienced this before? Right? You think, oh, I'm going to move to a new city and have a whole new friendship circle. And you showed up in a new city. No, new friends. Communication style. What happens? Or communication approach. What happened? Oh, I'm going to change that job and my next team will listen to me. And you went to that team and it was also full of more idiots. It was also full of more people who don't get it. It was also more full of people who didn't support you. Why? Communication. Right? We have to recognize we are the source of our own pain so often because we don't develop our communication. I'm not going to go to the junior varsity route of just saying, well, you should listen more, reflect back to what people say, you know, and just ask them lots of questions. Because I think there's a specificity in doing those things. There's a certain way to approach a relationship or a communication situation. There's a certain intention to have. There's a certain process that helps you become better at those things. So I'm going to share the 10 with you. And these are going to come from A perspective of both research. Some of you know, that's my master's degree is in organizational communication with an emphasis in leadership. Trying to help people communicate better individually and on teams and organizations. So this is part of my academic career, but on the other side of things, I spend every day of my life being compensated for how I communicate. And so I've learned so much about that, so much about doing it through here through live casts and videos. And we're all on video on Zoom. How many of you feel like you work for Zoom now? Who's logged in more hours for Zoom this year than you did in almost any other system last year? It's like we all work for a communication platform now, it feels like. Or you're on social media, you, you're doing that work to reach people and to communicate something, right? But today's emphasis, I'm really gonna go and try to make it personal for you and really break it down to that individual one to one relationship for advanced communication skills. Because the principles I'll share with you today, I think they come to life when we're talking about one to one communication. But you'll immediately see how they apply to your team. How do they apply to major groups? How do they apply culturally as well? Number one, you must start with having the ambition for great relationships. Have ambition for great relationships. I know that might sound common sense, but it's not common practice. That's why so many people who could achieve greatness do not. I want you to think about this. Your ambition for the quality of relationships in your life is the umbrella principle. It's the umbrella value ethic that is driving how your relationships are right now. I can't tell you how many people I've coached and worked with in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s who never, ever set a true, genuine ambition for great relationships. Relationships that were vibrant, relationships that were deep, that had depth to them. Relationships that made them feel engaged, happy, joyous, fulfilled. What most people do is they take the relationships to show up in front of them and go, I guess that's the way it is. I guess my parents are like that. Why have any ambition for anything better? They're never going to change. They get, they start dating or they get married and they go, well, I guess it is what it is. I've been with her for five years. She's not going to change. And you get this idea that people don't change. And what you do is your ambition keeps falling and you allow your dream, your desire, your ambition for great relationships. To continually get knocked down. Every time someone doesn't understand you, you've let your ambition for vibrancy and intimacy and sexiness and fun and joy in your partner relationships fall down. Every time you get in a fight, it stacks on. Every time there's trouble, it stacks on. And you keep getting more and more frustrated with the person. Your frustration grows into closed down communication. And now there's this distance, there's this block. And what people do is they immediately stop keeping their ambition for great relationships alive. I had the blessing of horrible relationships. Anyone else? I mean, I had terrible relationships. Just awful, just the worst terrible relationships. When I was a young man, right? Just came up like, I had this terrible relationship. I grew up in a town where everybody beat me up. I grew up in a town where everyone. There's a lot of really, really, really awful adult behavior. Grew up in a place where there wasn't a lot of good communication. My first relationships with people I dated were just horrible judgment, just off, just like negativity and just huge demonstrations of anger. And it was just like, whoa. And the blessing was sometimes we need a change. For me, it was, I got a knock in the head with my car accident. Made me realize, actually, I don't like that. I want phenomenal relationships. I want phenomenal relationships with everybody around me. And so how many of you ever had that ambition before? And maybe you picked up a book like how to Win friends and influence people, right? Or, or how to Talk so people listen, or how to, you know, argue and win every time. Or you picked up these books and you're like, oh, I need to learn how to share and communicate. Well, that was me. I was that dork my whole life. When I struggle with something, I go to books and I just start reading on things. And one of the blessings was I read about these people who had great relationships. And I never had that, but I kept my ambition. Here's the hardest thing to ask anyone to do in this particular year. Raise your ambition for your relationships. Especially now. Some of you have been shut in with your family for so long because of the pandemic that you're just like, we're trying to survive. And you're trying to blunt out the difficulty by just turning on the TV all the time or handing over devices all the time. And the ambition to have great relationships with the kids, with the spouse, with everybody else has kind of faded into, I'm just going to survive. But I'm here to warn you as your coach that I'm just going to survive. In this relationship, just trying to get through the days with this family, that ambition is lower than your potential, that ambition is hurting your intentions. That low ambition not to have something great is cheating you from fulfilling the destiny you were probably meant to have, but would require great relationships. And as your coach, I'm here to say be wary of the fact that you are so wary in your relationships. Be attentive to the fact like, oh wow, we are just trying to survive right now. Because that's a slippery slope, isn't it? How many know that, like when you just try to survive, Imagine you run a business, right? You're a CEO, you're an entrepreneur, you're running your business. If you allow just surviving to last for months or years, that company never survives, right? Someone in that company must have ambition. For what? Growth? For better service, for better relationships with the customers. If you don't have that in the business, that the business flat then dies. That's the same thing in marriage and relationship. The same thing in child parenting. The same thing every time we don't keep an ambition to challenge ourselves to do better, we end up hurting the very thing. And so I'm here to say have ambition for great relationships again. And I know your first impulse can easily be, well, you don't understand my husband. Well, you don't understand these crazy kids. You don't understand this team. You understand my business. You know what? Don't be a you don't understand person because that stops you from learning. People say you don't understand, they cut off the very advice they need to hear because they want to self justify. Does it make sense that it's hard? Does it make sense? It's much more difficult with someone who doesn't listen. Does it make more sense when you have an obstinate husband, team or person in your business? Sure, those are roadblocks, those are difficulties, those are struggles. But just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible to improve. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's impossible to improve. You can improve your relationships and I think you're going to find that and we're going to start it right now. Do you want to improve your relationships? Let's do a gut check. How much ambition have you had recently for great relationships? Have you woken up about it? Have you journaled about it? Have you thought about it? Is it in your goal sheet? If I paraded in your house, show me the piece of paper that says improve this relationship. Show me the piece of paper that Says, create great relationships with everybody I meet. Show me the paper. Show me how often that piece of paper got journaled on. Show me how often you wrote that down, and then we can have a conversation that I don't understand. Right? So let's start with, have you had the ambition? And if not, let's reignite that today. Let's reignite your desire for deep, compelling, beautiful, awesome, fulfilling, intimate, zesty, fun relationships. Again, you can have them. And if you stopped yourself from believing that, it only means you disengage from the skill set. You just disengage from the development here. And that might sound, like, harsh or judgmental, a way for a coach to kick off with it, but I'm a high performance coach. I'm supposed to hold your feet to the fire a little bit and challenge you and say, this should be an area that you love working on. Raise your hands if you love communication. Yeah, you guys, I know. I get it. This is a great and a fun and a fulfilling and a great place to focus. So please, let's up level our ambition together. My friends, let's start with strong ambition for great relationships. That's number one. Without that one in place, everything else is a principle. But it's unmoored from growth. It's unmoored from greatness, and we want to be connected to those things. All right, Number two, as I've learned in my life and many of you have, too, everything's about intention. Like, what is the intention of my communication with this person? And I believe there's three intentions we have to set. Okay? So this is what my idea is. You got to set intention for learning, honoring, and improving. This is my modus operandi when I sit down with somebody. My whole thing in sitting down with people. And this is not just my coaching career. This is life. Like, if we go to, like, breakfast together, right? Go to lunch together, hang out. My whole mode is I want to learn about this person. Notice I don't say I want to show I'm awesome. No, I want to learn about this person. Meaning, has learning been your primary mode of operation with your spouse recently? Has learning been your primary mode of operation with that team member? Has learning been your primary mode of operation in communicating to groups or when you're talking with your partner or the person who you love? Is it always just about? You got to tell them what you need. You got to tell them what the to do list is. You got to tell them what the agenda is. And you live in communication land. That is what I Call agenda based, not learning based. Some people only talk at their kids. We're doing this, this, this, and this and this. But they never learn from their kids. So it's a different relationship. Right. Agenda based communication, which is usually to do list what are we doing, where we're going versus the first primary thing is learning. I think this is so important. If we can just shift everything. Listen. I always tell people listening skills without the very primary intention of learning is just a tactic. Does that make sense? I know in junior varsity levels of conversation about communication, be a great listener. Well, what does that mean? Well, the intention is to learn. Listening is one of the vehicles for that. So set intention to learn more. We stopped learning from each other as a culture. And that's how you get tribalism and division at the epic levels we face worldwide now. Because the intention to learn from another went out the window and the intention to persuade or argue at or accuse other people went up. Right. So let's remember the setting, the intention for learning. Think about this. If your umbrella intention is to have ambition. I want great relationships and I want to learn from others. That frames every method, every tactic and every principle underneath. Okay, learning. Here's the other one. Honoring. I love this one. Very few people talk about this, so I think it's important in a relationship, in your communication, your communication style should be honoring of other people. What does that mean? Honoring means you hear what they say, you reflect it back, you honor that. That's a great idea. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate you. I really value that you shared that. I respect that you're participating right now. I'm thankful that we're having this conversation. Also saying very simple things like, I appreciate you did this. Good job at that. Honoring the other person so they feel heard, valued, respected and appreciated. Honoring the other person so they hear, they feel heard, valued, respected and appreciated. That's like everything, right? How good have you been at honoring your partner, your spouse, persons that you care about? If your parents around have been speaking to them and honoring their difficulties this year? The people who you love in your life, your family, have you been honoring their unique and difficult journey through what is a crazy and wild year? I mean, think about your last 10 major conversations. Were you honoring of the other? Now, my bet is in our community here, you do all around the world, we got people communicating and participating right here. And if you think about it, that's a beautiful thing about our community here, right? You're more likely to be people who show up for a session like this. You know, who usually isn't here? The bad communicators. Because they go, I already know it. You know? No, you're the learner. You're the person who wants to develop in this way. So I'm honoring you as, as a community for caring enough to develop this skill. But this is a very key principle in your communication patterns with other people. Is learning there as your intention, is honoring the other there as intention. Even when I go into a place where I know I'm going to have a conflict with someone, my whole mindset shifts. Make sure they feel honored and respected in this process. Make sure they feel that. Honor them. Honor them for showing up. Honor them for trying. Honor them for a good job when they do a good job. Honor them for sharing their voice. Honor them for participating. Honor them for giving you the time of day. Really, like, if we can remember the value of each relationship, everything can change. All right, so our intention is for learning, honoring, and the last thing is improving. You want the most advanced communication skill in the history of the world? Try to improve another person's day. Listen to what they're saying and try to ask questions or give advice when it's sought or share an idea to help them improve their situation, their day, their feeling, their mindset. My mode is whoever is here, I am here to be of service. Whoever's in front of me, I'm going to try to really learn about them, to honor them as a person and to help them reach whatever goals that they're after. Hey, guys, it's Brandon. I'm jumping in here real quick. First, I want to make sure you've gone to progressmode.com to join the newsletter because I have a resource for you related to this episode and I have an upcoming meetup with my private group, Ultra. If you've ever liked to be in a private group with me where I help you get more progress towards your passion projects or to build your business or your brand in a bigger way. Just go to progressmo.com, click on Private group to apply to see you can get into Ultra and we can take it to the next level by getting in person and meeting up virtually once a month online as well. Just go to progressmode.com we're going to talk about your confidence and I am really excited to break down a framework for you and I hope in doing this help you realize where some of those dark days come from, where you lose faith in yourself, where those dark days come from, when you know you have a lot to do but you Just don't feel like you can figure it out where that when you get to go out in the world again or when you're on a zoom and you got to show yourself to the world, you feel awkward or weird or insecure, that you tap back into that authentic strength, that truth of who you are. And that as you go through your life, you feel confident that no matter what life is going to throw at you, you're going to learn, you're going to figure it out, you're going to develop your capabilities. And many of you are going through really hard times right now. Sometimes it's just hard to even be positive. You can be so consumed and so overwhelmed by the negativity of other things out there. You just go, oh, my gosh, this is just hard to feel good, let alone confident. I'm going to break down a framework that I hope some of you are familiar with, but today we're going to talk about it with a different lens of how to overcome insecurities and what specific daily and monthly habits you might set up for yourself to feel more strong. So this is a piece of paper. It's a framework for confidence that I have on a board in my office. See, we need reminders. We are visual humans. We need to look at something to remind ourselves of something. And so you see, I have this. I will share this with you in a minute, but I want to get the practice in your mind. The practice in your mind is you should have instructions to yourself on a wall somewhere. So you're like, if you walked into my office and say, brandon, why do you have a framework for confidence on your wall over there? And I go, well, because sometimes I don't feel confident. And what do we do when we don't feel something? Well, when we don't feel something that we want to feel, we tend to feel not good because I don't feel this. So I feel bad about myself. Or we tend to distract ourselves. I don't like this feeling. So I don't know what to do. So let me just scroll through the Internet. So to me, what I've done is, I've got a board over here and there's my framework for happiness. Do you have a framework for happiness on your wall yet? So that when you don't feel happy, you go, I don't feel happy. What's going on with me? And you can just go look at it and go, ah, I've got my checklist for happiness right there. I forgot point number three. No wonder I'm not Happy. What I'm trying to suggest to you is maybe you give yourself a checklist, a framework, a set of instructions for the feelings that you really want to experience in life. And when you're not feeling it, instead of retreating into the comforts of distraction, you go back to your instructions. You know what makes you feel good, and it's time to write that down and look at it more consistently. Here we go. This is my confidence checklist. This is my framework for confidence. I'm going to break down each of these areas. And even if you've seen this maybe before with me, what I'd love to do is break down where these grow into trouble, where these are developed and strengthened, where these can be applied in your life, financially, in your life, in your marriage, or your relationship with your partner, with the kids. So I'm going to break down each of those things, each of those areas. I'll use a card here for you. We're going to start with that very first card here. Clarity. Human beings are a goal directed species. If we don't have clarity on what we want, if we don't have clarity on who we are, if we don't have clarity on what our intentions are in social relationships, it's unnerving to us. Well, if you ever felt lost in life, you know that feeling. It's coming from a lack a often of clarity. We'll talk about this. You just don't know who you are, what you're about, what you want anymore. And it's unsettling when you lack clarity. It's really unsettling. You're like, ah, I don't know what I'm about anymore. And this is where midlife crises come in. Clarity is something that, it's like knowledge or a goal or an aim, but it's loosely held. What I mean by that is like, okay, that's important to me. But I can be flexible and adaptive as well. It's not this idea that you have total 100% complete certainty and you're total certain all the time. Bah. It's like, that is a adolescent dream. There is no absolute certainty in anything in life. Right. And so we have to go, oh, okay, I can have clear direction or I can be strongly committed to this thing. But lots of people who are absolutely certain about something shifts months later. So here's my question for you. On a scale of 1 to 10 in the last 60 days, how clear have you been about what you wanted in life? Did you start the day with some clarity about how you wanted to live that day, show up that day, treat other people that day, serve that day. So let's think about where sometimes you feel insecure. You're going to go to that party or that networking function, you feel insecure about yourself. Why? Because in your mind the insecurity in that moment, in that situation of the networking situation or the party is coming from. I don't know who I am in here. I don't know these people and who I'm supposed to be with them. I don't know where to go or where to stand or who to talk to. And so just it's unnerving. The insecurity is I don't know what to do in the situation. Now that type of confidence or lack thereof is something that psychologists call self efficacy. Self efficacy is about I don't know what to do in this situation. That's where the insecurity comes from. Positive self efficacy means I believe that I know what to do in this situation. I can handle this. Even if I don't know how yet. I believe I can handle this. I have the competence to take this on as an example that's positive. But a lot of things in life you don't know how to deal with. You don't have self efficacy because you don't know how to handle it yet. This is a new party, you don't know anybody in it. It's a new networking event. You've never met any of these people. How do you get more confidence in that? Well, one simple thing you can do is start with clarity. Okay, I'm going to go talk to people. What's something I'd love to share about myself with every new person I meet? Oh, okay. Lock that in. Okay, got it. What's one question I could ask every new person I meet? Okay, let me lock that in. Okay, just those two things have been found to dramatically increase people's sense of confidence in social situations. I know what I'm going to share about myself. I have clarity on it. I know what I'm going to ask them. I've clarity, just those two simple things. The problem with clarity is it's a double edged sword. A lot of people, their clarity is I'm awful, I'm worthless, I'm no good. And they've stacked up all these experiences to strengthen that belief. And, and their clarity is, well, I'm a jerk, I don't deserve success, I won't have success. They've got clarity, but they got the wrong kind of clarity. See, confidence requires positive clarity, not negative Self defeating clarity. So clarity is a double edged sword. If you believe the wrong thing about yourself, that's gonna hurt you too. So what's the opposite of that? Well, I'm gonna start viewing myself positively. How can we do that? Well, you know what? Maybe each day for the next, I'm going to write down a strength that I have. Write down 10 positive things about yourself every day for the next 10 days. Watch what happens for you. It starts shifting your perception of yourself. Here, my little framework, we're going to go from clarity now to congruence. Congruence is living in alignment with what you know is the best of you. Living in alignment with the best of who you are, living in alignment with your values. When you are not congruent, your brain logs that and what it says in that log, that log entry. Not living your word, not living your truth, not doing what you said you would do. And too many of those negative withdrawals sucks away your confidence. But here's what you need to be congruent. What do you need? Clarity. You say, okay, these are my values, these are my beliefs. This is what I think is important as a human being, as a parent, as a caregiver, as a leader. Congruence measures whether or not you're doing what you said you're going to do. And that's important. So here's the simplest fix. If you been pulling too many withdrawals out of that bank account, it's time to put some back in. And so today might be the day you go, where have I been incongruent? Where do I say something and I don't do it? Where are you out of congruence? And can you do the simple acts? Sometimes when you're out of congruence, first you just apologize to yourself. You say, you know what? Gosh, Brendan, I haven't been honest with myself. Let's make a change. I think the fastest path back into congruence is an apology. An apology to yourself, an apology to other persons. It takes a lot of guts to say you are wrong. It takes a lot of guts to acknowledge you could do better. This one's fundamental. You get to decide today what to be congruent with. You get to decide who you are and you get to decide to show up and live into that. Third big idea. Competence. Competence. It's a collection of knowledge, skill, talents and abilities. The good news is you can increase this. So here's what I want you to do every day. Every day I want you to have clarity on what skills you are working on in your life. That's how we're going to get competence. Competence for too many people comes two years too late. Why? Because they wait too long to start developing a skill every day. I'm very clear about what I'm trying to improve every day I'm learning something, but I'm learning not just casually or passively. I'm going, I'm trying to get better at this thing. I want you all to have an ambition, to have one or two or three skill sets that you're literally world class in, that you're world class in. Not because you need the ego that I am world class. No, no, no. Because you need the challenge. You know why a lot of people lack confidence? They never engage challenge. You want more confidence, engage in challenge more often. The more challenge you engage in and you incrementally improve in it, the more your brain goes, yep, there I did. I did it again. And what happens when you don't have confidence, you don't engage in challenge. When you don't engage in challenge, you don't get more competence. So you don't get that competence confidence loop we were talking about, the flywheel you all follow. So for those of you, if you're like, brennan, I just lack confidence. Like, challenge yourself more. But you're like, but I'm lacking confidence. I'm like, exactly, exactly. See, you're going, well, I'll get confidence, then I'll do the challenging things. I'm like the other way around. You want more confidence, do challenging things more often. When you do challenging things more often, you learn. When you learn competence, confidence, connection. When you don't have a connection with yourself or others, confidence goes down. So you want to feel more confident in life, Reconnect with yourself and others with yourself. That's your morning routine. Lock in that morning routine. The more you feel connected to self, the more confident you are. But you need the time to connect to yourself. Away from the email, the social media, the obligations for the kids, the family, the husband, husbands, the spouses, the team, everything else. You need that moment where you're, like out and connecting with yourself, with your thoughts. You need time to think and to feel again. So turn off the tv, go for the walk, put down the phone, do the meditation, get away from the social thing 110 minutes earlier so you can sit in the car and just think before you go home. You need more space to be thinking and connecting with self. So build that in your life. Self connection. Second part, the most important part. We know environment dramatically shapes your confidence. The connection you have with the people around you. This means be around positive people. Contribute around positive people. Learn from positive people. It means create great relationships in your life. I want you all to improve this one. Simple action. Simple daily, weekly, real life action. You must start sharing your real thoughts, feelings, desires and goals with the people around you. You got to do it more often. Here's where you lack confidence in life. When you won't share your truth because you're worried what everyone else thinks. That's what high schoolers do. You don't do that anymore. You're too damn old. Now you share your truth with other people and realize most of them won't get it, won't understand why it's important, won't support you, won't care, or at least won't get in your way and say anything at all. But the less you speak your truth to other people, the more superficial your connections are with them. Number five is capability. Competence is the knowing. The knowledge, skill, talent, ability. Capability is you can do it. You can do it every time. It is like a strength, if you will. It is something that is. You are highly capable at that thing. You are at another level of skill that it shows up every single time. But here's the truth. Capability. Capability is as much as a mindset as a competence. Let me give you an example. A lot of extremely smart people who can handle the problem don't handle the problem because they don't feel capable. It's like, yeah, I know it, but I don't do it. See, there's a difference between knowledge and execution, which is often the difference between competence and capability. See, competence is like the foundation and a stored value, but it's expressed through execution. Capability, you want to develop capability. It means you get in the mix. You do the work, you show up, you try. Capability means I know I will execute. That's what to me, confident, capabilities, I will execute. How do you do that? You have to be more consistent in your execution. You need to be way more consistent in your execution. We talked about decision earlier. Decision is great. Action is required. We've got to get you to execute more of those to do lists. You want more success, you want more joy, you want more confidence, you got to execute more of the plans. Capability is self trust to take the action. It's not just do I know how to take the action, it's I'm an action taker, I'm going to show up, I'm capable to handle this, I will do this. I trust in myself to handle this. To execute. To execute again and again and again and again and again. That's capability. And I really want you to develop that in your heart and in your soul by checking off the simplest of things each day. If you have a list of three to do, lists, if you wrote down your three top priorities for the day, do those first. Before you do your social media, before you reply to everyone's DMs, inbox, voice message, texts, it's like, listen, I have so many people who they spend all day just checking their email to reply to everybody else. Now that's fine if that's your job, if that's customer service, do that. That's your job. But if you're an entrepreneur as an example, or you have a whole list of other priorities and you're just checking into other people's agendas all day to meet all their obligations, and you keep missing your key priorities day after day after day after day. Your brain doesn't feel like you're capable anymore. Even though you might be smart, you're competent, but your brain doesn't believe you're capable. Last big idea today. Contribution. You want confidence? Give more. You want confidence. Make your difference. You want confidence? Do things that matter. Why? Because a those things are celebrated in the world. Generous giving people tend to have greater, what connections with other people. Generous, giving, caring, hard working people tend to have what more clarity about who they are. They're more congruent, these things. They feel more capable, like generosity. Doing things that matter. Giving strengthens the whole rest of the model. The whole model drives itself. When you've got each of these pieces running right, each of these pieces touches one another. Contribution is a key. It really is. Sometimes when you feel so bad about yourself, you're not going to shake yourself out of that, but what can shake yourself out of that is service. Sometimes you got to get out of your own head. And to me, what has created a great confidence and reverence for life in my life has been, I've been volunteering most of my life. When you're a volunteer, when you show up for others, when you volunteer to help out, whether it's as simple as helping a friend move, or going down to the local soup kitchen, or volunteering for that nonprofit cause that you like, or running that fundraiser, even though you don't know how those contributions make a difference, maybe your contribution is your art, maybe your contribution is your time. Maybe your contribution is financial. Maybe your contribution is mentorship. Maybe your contribution is your content or your book or your work, whatever that is. If you can do the same thing where you can give generously to it, give to your work, be generous to that contribution. Be in the moment when you're serving someone who is in need. You get a little more spirit inside. And when that spirit of goodness is inside, you can share it more too. Hey everybody, it's Brendan. I want you to make sure you write the date in your journal or in your piece of paper or your napkin, wherever you're writing, okay? I want you to write the date. I want you to write advanced emotional intelligence. Because this is going to be a changing day for how you manage your emotions, the emotions of other people, and how you really sense and feel this life. I'm going to begin with just a few points about why I believe most people don't have more emotional intelligence and why this topic isn't more valued in not only, you know, the greater world or educational system or our political system or, or in some of our organizations around the world, or even some of our teams, some of our families. But I really believe that comes from just a few ideas here. Number one is the unfortunate reality that a lot of people think emotional intelligence is a touchy feely, over sharing, sense of vulnerable, weakness stuff. And they don't realize emotional intelligence is the secret to better decision making and better influence. It is the secret to overall mental health. It's the secret to mental strength, mental toughness, mental resilience. You want to be awesome in life and feel awesome. You want to care for others and set the tone and the energy of your culture or those that you lead and you serve. You need emotional intelligence. Because emotional intelligence isn't just about how I feel. It's about tapping into a deeper understanding of what's happening in your biological system, what's happening neurobiologically and what's happening in the social environment so that you have greater mastery of it. Not just to be aware of your feelings, which is absolutely critical, but also to know the difference between emotions and feelings. To also know the difference of what when someone is sad versus when they're discouraged. And knowing what to do with all of that. That's the power of emotional intelligence. So this is not just some, like, you know, I think what has happened in pop culture people think emotional intelligence is just like, ugh, you know, touchy feely, cotton candy hype stuff. No, it is literally the foundational principle of having a great life. You have to be more and more engaged, aware and greater in your personal power related to your emotions, especially now. Can I get an amen it's like, these are difficult times. So we're going to really dive deep into this and we're going to make it about mental toughness and mental resilience in this year. Not just about, like, touchy feely. Second big thing is, I really believe the reason and most people aren't more emotionally strong, intelligent, resilient, is because there is this dynamic in our culture that is often avoid difficult feelings, avoid difficult conversations, avoid those times when we don't understand our feelings. So let's drown it out with, you know, addiction, alcohol, distraction, Instagram, scrolling, whatever it is, right? It's like, oh, I don't feel good. You know what happens for a lot of people? They don't feel good about themselves or their relationships or their businesses or their teams or their life. So they pick up the phone, they go scrolling for life. Do you know what that is? That's an emotional intelligence thing. What's happening is they don't know how to cope. And so they pick up tools for coping versus understanding. Coping is here. They externalize coping, seeking coping mechanisms outside without understanding how to navigate the difficult emotions of our lives. And so I think more people, you know, haven't mastered this area of their life better, because the easiest answer is to avoid it. You know, think about all those difficult emotions you've had in personal relationships. Somebody, maybe you have a relationship right now, you know, who you really you love somebody you're, you know, in a relationship in an intimate way, or you're a parent, or you're, you know, leading a team. And there's all this difficult emotion to manage right now. You know, people are discouraged. There's a lot of vitriol and outrage out there. There's a lot of just fear of all this unknown. How have you engaged that? Have you had conversations with them? Have you checked in? Did you understand where they were at? Did they feel heard and seen, validated, appreciated by you? Or are you so struggling just to deal with yourself that you even forgot other people? Because that happens too. But we're going to go from this conversation of avoidance to engagement. Today, the foundational tool in all of emotional intelligence is engaging it, right? Engaging those difficult emotions, engaging those difficult conversations, engaging those difficult people instead of hiding. This is that important time to be doing that. You know, I get how easy it is to say, I don't want to deal with that. You need to learn how to deal with it straight up. You need to get at level 9 out of 10 in order to navigate these next few months well and lead Others. And you got to give yourself an assessment. I'm going to ask you to do that right now. I know so many people, they don't understand the importance of scoring different skill sets of their lives, and so they just kind of go through life hoping to get better. But one thing that we know from high performers is they're willing to score themselves. They're willing to, on a consistent basis, they give themselves grades or scores about how they're doing. How have you handled your emotions this year, on a scale of one to ten? One. You just not good. I mean, okay, let's call zero dead. Okay. One. It's been a struggle and just. It's been terrible. Ten. You feel, like, impressed by yourself. This year has been pretty good. Like, you've handled all of this emotion pretty well. Where have you been? 0 to 10. Sometimes just sharing is the first step here. Okay, now let me ask you about, how have you dealt with the emotions of others on 0 to 10? 0. I totally. They freak me out. I don't want to deal with them. 10. I've been doing pretty good, Brennan. Thank you. I've been a great leader, a great parent, a great caregiver, a great manager. I've been doing real good. Where have you been? You know, you got to think about that constantly, like, personally, how am I managing my emotions and socially. And the more that we're aware of these things and evaluating these things, the more our brain's gonna go, let's get better. Like, your brain is great at gamifying, right? When you give yourself a score, your brain goes, I want to get better. I would like a higher number here. Especially if you're on something like this with me here at Growth Day. I mean, it's like, duh, like you want to work on yourself, right? So I know that sometimes it can be discouraging when we talk about measuring yourselves or giving yourself a score here. Some people say, brennan, I've been a level five with my emotions for a decade. I feel crappy. Thanks for making me score myself. Okay, but listen, that's going to lead to this next point. Many people confuse emotional intelligence with a conversation about who they are versus skill set. What do I mean by that? Well, emotional intelligence is a skill. It's not about yourself or even just your overall personality or identity. It's a skill, right? It's an area of your life to be managed, improved upon, navigated, and it doesn't represent you. So many people think when they're, you know, they have or experience sadness that, oh, I'M a terrible person. I have all these reasons to be happy. Why can't I just be happy? But I'm feeling sad right now. What a piece of crap I am. And they literally start speaking negatively of themselves because they have or experience or feel an emotion. But an emotion is not you. An emotion is not you. And what most people do in this category of emotional intelligence in their life, they say things like this. They say, oh, well, you don't understand. That's just how I am. I'm just not one of those joyous people like you, Brendan. I'm not like your students who are so heavy. And what they do is. I'm not like that. Thinking that managing your emotions, navigating your emotions and activating a full suite of positive emotions in your life is related to their identity and who they are. No, we're talking about a specific topic in personal development. There's lots of things we can talk about that isn't you, right? Your car is not you, and your emotions are not you. Your dog is not you. The things you own or control or have are not you. It's okay when you have an emotion that you don't like not to hate yourself for the emotions you're experiencing. Some of you had a really tough year, right? I hear all day long from this community. It's like, this has not been an easy year. And so many people get down on themselves. Down on self versus recognizing. Oh, I don't have a real strong skill set here to navigate this difficult emotion. You follow. You don't need to get mad at yourself or down on yourself. If you score yourself in a way you don't like, you say, oh, I need to develop more skill here to be able to do that better, right? If I go out and you and I go out and we hang out to play tennis and I'm not good at it at first. I don't say, oh, I suck at all sports. I say, I'm not good at this tennis thing. I need to figure out how to hold this racket and make sure this ball gets over that net. And when it comes back to me, you don't hit me in the eye. You know, it's like you have to realize your emotional life, navigating it. It's a skill set. And when it's a skill set, you can get better at it. Obviously, that is why you're here. But I want to remind you of that because I'm going to hear, I can tell you right off the bat how good you are with emotional Intelligence. Are you ready? Okay, some of you ain't going to like this, and I know you're all going to light up here in a minute here, but you might not like it. Your emotional intelligence is directly correlated with how hard you have been on on yourself this year, Right? If you've been so hard on yourself this year, then this is a great session for you because you need to develop greater emotional acuity, greater emotional strength, greater emotional resilience, greater emotional intelligence, right? And if you've always been hard in your life, but you're like, no, no, no, but I understand my emotions, then. No, because if you're constantly hard on yourself, that's coming up because of emotions. You feel an emotion you don't like, you take the emotion and you describe it to self. This is why you keep getting it wrong. I'm here. I wanted to help you do this. Separate yourself from the skill set of managing emotions and just go, you know what? I'm kind of not managing that well today. I can understand that. I don't manage things great every day and every time without saying I suck. Okay, parents out there, you know this, right? You can be a great parent, a good parent, a loving parent, a caring parent, but sometimes when little Johnny or Sally or whoever comes in and you lose it, that moment in dealing with that child right there, it might not be your best, but it doesn't take away from the fact that you're caring, giving parents, parent, right? You don't take individual interactions with that child when it doesn't go right and globalize it into you're terrible. That's globalization and catastrophizing, you follow? Well, don't do that with your emotions either, right? Don't do that with your emotions. There is days don't tell nobody but Brendan Burchard, the motivation manifesto guy, which is currently the best selling motivation text so far of this century. With motivation in the title. There's days I'm not motivated. That doesn't mean I'm like, oh, I'm a terrible person. Look how incongruent and awful I am. Oh my God. It's like, you know, I didn't manage my focus and my energy well today. I wasn't clear with my intentions. I didn't energize my mind and my body to get excited about my purpose. I didn't do the things that are necessary to summon and sustain the emotion I wanted. Instead, I just accepted what landed on me. Feel crappy. And now what do you do when you feel crappy? These are the things we're going to talk about today. So I hope this is helpful. And I'm kind of going over why people really struggle with this. And I know it might feel really negative up front, but I'm trying to tell you this is why more of our culture doesn't talk about it. This is difficult. When I'm asking people to score themselves, they're like what? How can you do that? Well, I'll share with you one last big idea about why I think people really struggle with this topic is because they think the conversation about emotional intelligence is some way that like emotions are irrational or not as important. You know, it's some of those people who quote unquote feel way left brained or. No, I'm more of an engineering mind, Brendan. Emotions don't get into my thinking process, you know, and they're more like they feel like emotions are irrational or not important or not a priority or are weak. When the reality is your wellness and your decision making and your interactions with others is predicated upon your ability, your ability to have holistic contemplation. What do I mean by that? You can't make a decision if you X out emotion. There's the logical and the emotional and these things are always talking to each other. You can't separate them. And the more you try to separate them, the more life becomes miserable because what happens is you become an incredibly analytical person who doesn't feel anything or you become an incredibly feeling oriented person who's not taking the time to think through things and so consequences on either side aren't good. We want you to be incredibly holistic in your contemplation, you, your decision making and that means your whole body, mind, life comes into how you live and experience life. We want you fully activated heart, mind, body, soul to enjoy a great life. That's part of emotional intelligence, right? But we don't say that often. So people go ah emotions. And it's like oh no, no, no. If you've been a person like ah, emotions, I bet your happiness meter is lower than you think it is. I bet if you took a life satisfaction score or you really contemplated about where you're at, you'd realize life should feel better. Do you know how many people I know and coach who they're so successful? I mean they have it all and they're so smart and they're completely unfulfilled. They're unfulfilled, they're disengaged and they can't quite explain why. It's because they haven't been managing their emotions well. They haven't brought emotion into life. It's like they have relationships, but the relationships don't have pop and vibe and spirit and joy. Right. It's like they do tasks every day, but they don't feel the day. And that's what I'm always sharing with you guys. It's about feeling the day. After you have everything you wanted in life, what do you want more of? You want to feel the day more? A sense of connection and meaning and fulfillment and satisfaction and intimacy and joy and vibe and pop. Right. That's what we want. So emotions aren't something to crowd out. Emotions are something to navigate. Emotions are something to summon. Emotions are something to spark with others. And emotions are something to. To utilize to sense the wholeness and the beauty of life.