Ep 154 | Preparing to Lead

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it. Today I want to talk about preparation, preparing, uh, preparing specifically to lead. Now this, uh, this topic is a result of a recent episode, episode 149, that we aired probably about a week ago. And in that episode, I went through a leadership audit, a leadership assessment, where I asked 10 questions and had our listeners kind of rate where they stand on, on each one of these characteristics that great leaders possess. And I've since taken probably 100+ people through the assessment in webinars or in, in team meetings. And I noticed some themes and one theme specifically, one area of, of, of lower score was actually on question 5, question 5, and that question or that characteristic was about preparation. Specifically, the statement was, great leaders prepare relentlessly. How well do you prepare? And what I found on a scale of 1 to 10, the average score has been somewhere around a 4, which again makes it one of the lower scored characteristics of the 10. So I thought, you know what, this is probably one to address since there's been this common theme. Let's talk around How great leaders prepare. Let's start though by defining leadership. Cause I think we have to level set. When I think about leadership, it's real simple for me. The definition at least is simple. When I think about leadership or to lead, I think means to influence. To me, leadership is, is influence. You're either influencing in the right direction or you're influencing in the wrong direction, whatever the case. You're leading. And so I want to level set there because when I think about character characteristics of a great leader, I'm thinking quite a bit around how does that individual influence? What does it take for them to influence? And if they want to be a great leader, influence in a positive way. Now, when I look at preparation for leading, I think you could kind of really break it down into kind of two pillars or two segments. How do you prepare yourself as a person to lead? So maybe overarching or like a global view, how do you prepare yourself as a person to lead? Maybe strategically, how do you plan to lead? And then I also look at tactically, how do you prepare? Like day to day, what do you have to prepare to tactically lead? Okay. So let's start with how you, how you should consider preparing yourself. I don't think this is an exact list. This is my list. So take it for what it's worth and build from there. When I think about how you should prepare yourself as a person to lead, first place my mind goes is on education. How are you educating yourself to be a better leader? What are you reading and who are you listening to? What are you attending? In my mind, when you think about reading and listening and/or attending, I think from an education standpoint, in order to prepare to lead, be an effective leader, it should really be anything that improves your vision, your emotional intelligence, your ability to think, your decision-making, things that raise your, your, your confidence, increase your courage, your resilience. I also think about confidence coming from subject matter expertise. So in terms of your education, preparing yourself as a person to lead, what are you reading? What are you listening to? What are you attending? And is it improving or giving you greater confidence, uh, as a result of what it is you're learning? The next thing I think about in terms of preparing yourself to lead globally, I think about just self-awareness. I think 360-degree feedback assessments, these different sorts of tests that help you recognize where you excel and also help you understand or identify where your opportunities for improvement live. I think these things are critical in terms of your preparation to lead. So where do you excel and how do you go about doubling down on those areas? You got to assess or have self-awareness in order to determine that. Likewise, where do you find your opportunities for improvement? That's also through self-awareness. The next area I'd look at preparing myself to lead, communication skills. I've been in a number of different leadership positions, had a number of different opportunities to lead, and I've succeeded and I failed. And I'll tell you, oftentimes the breakdown or the acceleration has occurred as a direct result of my ability to communicate, communicate the vision, communicate, you know, the, the direction or the moves that need to be made. Maybe it's just simply in motivating and encouraging, whatever the case, communication skills are critical. And like anything else, they've got to be practiced. So repetitions are critical. So when you're preparing yourself as a person to lead, it is essential that you're learning and continually learning at that, How to communicate. Last thing I think about around when I'm thinking about how to prepare yourself as a person to lead, I think about your team building abilities. I think it starts with defining your core values, which oddly enough, or I guess just to say, not that ironic. That was one of the questions or characteristics on that, on that assessment at episode 149. It was around defining, or do you know your core values? Great leaders understand their core values. So in terms of team building, I think you've got to be able to define your core values. You've also, from a team building perspective, you got to learn how to ask great questions because great questions lead to greater understanding. It also leads to seeking collaboration, which is what team building is really about. So from a global perspective, from a strategic perspective, preparing yourself as a person, I think you've got to make sure that your education is on point. You're self-aware, you know how to communicate, and you focus a bit of your time on developing your team building skills. Now, how do you go about preparing tactically? What does it look like day to day? How do you prepare to lead day to day? It starts with planning and scripting your day, literally scripting your day. I think about a, a, a basketball coach or a football coach. You know, those leading teams that play sports, oftentimes you'll see they script, they literally write out the first 10 or 20 plays that they intend to call. Now, does the game play out exactly as that? No, it doesn't always play out that way, but they're scripting out different scenarios. And I actually think from a leadership perspective, when it comes to day-to-day tactics, you should be planning and scripting your ideal day. On that note, you should also be asking what-if questions, what-if questions. So if you're planning and scripting your day, once you go through that exercise, say the night before, I'd be asking myself, well, what if this occurs? How will I react? What if that occurs? What's my pivot? So you are contingency planning on a day-to-day basis. Next thing I'd be looking at from a day-to-day, uh, perspective as to how you lead I think about prioritizing tasks specifically. I think about the 80/20, 80/20 everything. If you're going to plan for a leadership conversation, say a one-to-one meeting, 20% of that conversation yields 80% of the results. So what is the 20% of that conversation? In other words, what must you nail to have the greatest impact? When I also think around prioritizing tasks, it's not just 80/20ing, you know, our conversations, but your day at large. I think about the Eisenhower Matrix, which is something we covered on episode 99, how you manage your time as a leader. Are you working in the important but not necessarily urgent areas? You want to get to that quadrant. Take a look, uh, listen to that episode if you want more detail. And as far as preparing tactically day to day, I think you also have to, uh, move up your bigger decisions to earlier in the day. So you're making the more important decisions first thing, so you don't have decision fatigue. And I also think you've got to prepare to model. So if I'm planning out my, my day, my say tomorrow, I'm thinking through, okay, I've got to lead, I've got to communicate, I've got to influence, but how, what activities do I have to take part in? What behaviors do I have to model? How do I show up nonverbally? And influence others. The, the last few things I think about in terms of preparing to lead on a day-to-day basis, I think about self-care. Am I preparing myself? Is my, is my fitness, mental and physical fitness, where it needs to be? Are my energy levels where they need to be? Self-care is critical when you think about preparing tactically to lead. Which also includes, of course, breathing, which is code for lowering your stress, lowering your anxiety, removing emotion to the greatest extent possible from what you've got to lead around during that timeframe. In other words, an emotional being, someone who reacts emotionally, tends to lead a little less than the person that could be even-keeled and calm. Lastly, I think in terms of preparing to lead on a day-to-day basis, I would encourage you to reflect every single day on what it is you learned. Take a moment each night to jot down some thoughts, some learnings. Hell, that's a lot of what this No Days Off podcast is about. I mean, these episodes, a lot of them come from what I've learned or what I've experienced every day that I think I need to better understand, or that I think maybe others need to understand. So when you think about preparing to lead, you've got to prepare yourself as a person, which means getting smarter, becoming more aware, and learning specific high-level skills like communication skills and team building skills to prepare yourself, to set yourself up for success. Then tactically, on a day-to-day basis, as you get more in the weeds, planning your day and managing your time Preparing to model things and making sure you're being strategic around when you're making big decisions, contingency planning, and then self-care, of course, removing emotion to the greatest extent you can and making certain you reflect at the end of the day. These are the keys to preparation. I'm hoping that if you went through the audit at episode 149 and you found yourself to be lower ranked on leadership preparation, that today's conversation will in fact help you take your score from, say, a 3 or 4 to a 5 or 6, or a 5 or 6 to a 7 or 8. That's the objective here. So the focusing question for you as we wrap up: where are your areas of strength with, with respect to preparation for leadership, and where are your opportunities for improvement? What did I cover today that you could immediately implement in your world so that you're better prepared when you lead tomorrow? That's all we have for today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.