#23: Don't Make These Mistakes

You're listening to the Proteus Leader Show with Erika Andersen, where you'll get practical tools and insights for leading, managing, and staying ready for the future. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a firm that focuses uniquely on leader readiness. A nationally known executive coach and bestselling author, you may already know her as one of the most popular leadership bloggers on Forbes.com. Ready for something you can use today? Here's Erika.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Proteus Leader Show. My guest today is Skip Pritchard, who is both a serial CEO of companies large and small and a true student of leadership. In addition to the leadership lessons that he's learned through his own career, Skip has spent decades studying leadership psychology and interviewing over 1,000 of the most successful people in the world. Welcome to the show, Skip.

Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to talk to you.

Yes, I'm really looking forward to it. So Skip, you and I have been in each other's orbit for a number of years, and I have a lot of respect for your work. So when I found out that you were about to launch your first book, which is intriguingly titled The Book of Mistakes, I was sure that you'd have some valuable nuggets to share with our listeners about leaderships and about how to avoid those Those major mistakes. So let's, let's just roll into it. So Skip, you note in your book that you want to help your readers avoid key mistakes that a lot of us make in our careers. So can you give us a couple examples of those mistakes?

Erika, sure. I will share 2 examples. You know, so often in our careers or in our businesses, we find ourselves in a place where we look back and think, How did I get here? You know, why did I major in something? Why did I major in education? Yeah, maybe my dad pushed it. Or why am I an engineer? It was that professor. It was that professor who pushed me in that direction. And the very first mistake in my book, The Book of Mistakes: 9 Secrets to Creating a Successful Future, is working on someone else's dream. You know, avoiding this mistake is, is so key to think about your own dream, not to be an unwitting participant in someone else's plan and to have a clear purpose for your own career. You know, it may have you striking out as an engineer, as an entrepreneur. You know, if you think about it, you say, oh, I have to be on my own dream. But it may not. Some people have heard my advice in a talk and they've said, you know, my job works for me, but, you know, for a whole bunch of reasons, I'm going to do more on my own dream, maybe help others, maybe do some philanthropic something. Or I may go back to school. I may change what I'm doing. It really depends on what you do, but working on someone else's dream is a key mistake. Make sure that you're working on your own dream. It really fuels everything else.

That's— that I just want to pinpoint. It doesn't necessarily mean go start your own business. You can certainly hook your wagon to a dream that resonates for you, like working for a company that your values are really aligned with or is trying to do something in the world that's very important to you. It sounds like you're just saying don't do some— don't focus on something that has no meaning for you.

Absolutely true. It does not mean day 2, I quit my job as soon as I hear this and start my own thing, right? Because you can find your own dream within a corporation. I mean, I have my whole life. You can find your dream within the constructs of something else. But what's unique about it is, is what gives you energy, right?

Right.

So if, if you're not getting energy from what you're doing, then you're making mistake Number one. I'll give you another example real quick, Erika, and that's mistake number 5 in the book is staying in your comfort zone. And such a major mistake, and your listeners will recognize this one immediately because of your great book, Be Bad First, where you talk about the need to be uncomfortable and to maybe be bad at something first to learn it and kind of push where the edges of your comfort zone— leaders consistently push beyond what's comfortable. And success is the result of consistently and purposely doing the uncomfortable. That's what I found. A mistake is just staying in your comfort zone in your career. You have to push yourself to do the uncomfortable.

Yeah. Oh man, as you know, it would be hard for me to agree with you more about that one. Why we always say, if you're not at least slightly uncomfortable, you're probably not learning anything.

I love Be Bad First for that reason. And I remember when that first came out, the title struck me as, wait, what? Be bad first? And, and yet it resonates so much with me because I've seen it as a key career mistake. Even if you're in the same job, you know, you got to push that skill set.

Yeah. So then why, why are these 9 mistakes that you talk about in the book, why do you think they're so prevalent? Why do so many of us make these mistakes?

Well, as you mentioned in the intro, I've interviewed over 1,000 people and I've seen it time and time again. And I've seen these universal mistakes. I think back to a plaque on my grandmother's kitchen wall that said something like, too soon old, too late smart. And, and, and that's what the book is all about, right? Changing that. If you look at a lot of research into people who are at the end of life, who are dying, and you interview them and you talk about their regrets, most will say the number one regret they have is not being true to themselves. You know, and what's interesting is that finding seems to be consistent across the world and across generations. And even if you do a study 10 years later, because these mistakes endure. And what I found is the most successful people look at some of those mistakes, look at some of those regrets, Talk to people who've been there and learn from other people's experience. I mean, you know, there's a whole industry that talks about other people's money, right? Making money with other people's money. Far more valuable is when we learn to use other people's experience. So we don't have to make all the mistakes, right? We can watch them and say, hey, I'm not going to do this. I'm going to change the course of my direction of my career because I'm learning from what other people are doing so that one day when we're interviewed and they're asking us what our regrets are, we, we don't have the same. Hopefully we, uh, we can invent some new ones.

That's great. So, so if you had to answer why, it's just kind of, kind of human nature, which we can, uh, we can break out of those unfortunate habits by learning from other people and what they've done. I mean, just to hear that I suspect that just to hear that the most common thing people say when they're toward the end of their lives is, I'm sorry, I wasn't truer to myself. That takes you right back to mistake number 1, right? Don't live somebody else's dream. So—

It really does. It really does. And, and, and that's so true in our career, in our lives. Are we really in this space as a leader? And we can all be leaders. It's not an organizational title, as we've talked about, but That place where we have the energy, where we're in our purpose, where we're doing what we're uniquely gifted to do, that is so key. It's so fundamental to everything else that we do.

So I always, uh, promise our listeners that they will get practical takeaways. So what's one practical thing that, that people can do right away to avoid some of these mistakes that you cover in your book?

Well, of course, I must say, I must start out with saying get the book at thebookofmistakes.com. But, but, but really what it is, is I think about the late Jim Rohn's advice, something he said that made a real difference to me when I heard it all those years ago. And it is this: work harder on yourself than you do on your job. I mean, it's so practical. when you really think about it. I mean, he said, if you work hard on your job, you'll make some money. If you work hard on yourself, you'll make a fortune. And it's really not about money. It's really about fulfillment and value and happiness and success in a much broader way. And it's very practical when you think about it. Work harder on yourself. And how do you do that?

Yeah.

Sure, you can go to the gym and work on physical things, but really it's about listening to great podcasts like yours. about filling your mind with things that are going to take you to where you want to go. It's about reading the right books that will enhance your career and take you to where you want to go. You think about to be an expert, there's, there's people who have studied this. If you want to be an expert on any subject, read 10 books. That's all it takes, right? 10 books in one subject area, and you will become one of the top echelon in the world on that subject because it's so rare. For someone to read 10 books on a subject. And so, be deliberate about yourself and your own personal development. I tell that all the companies I've run. I've started there and I've told people, I want you working harder on yourselves than your job. And they look at me like, wait a minute, the new CEO is saying to work harder on myself than my job? That makes no sense. But it does because if we're all working on ourselves and getting better, sharpening the saw, as Stephen Covey would say, then we get more effective at our jobs. We, we can do things in less time. And that to me is the real power.

I love that. And I, and I, in my mind, as you're speaking, it connects back to your mistake about get out of your comfort zone, don't stay in your comfort zone. Because, you know, you can read a lot and listen a lot, but you can do it from a kind of intellectual place that it doesn't really affect you. But I'm— if you listen to a podcast or read a book and really let it in and think, okay, if I am really going to incorporate these principles, what am I going to have to do differently? And then start to do it differently, then you will almost certainly get out of your comfort zone. So I think it's— I love that you're acknowledging that working on yourself is not going to be an entirely comfortable process because you're going to come up against impediments and resistances.

No question. And that's another reason why I love this last question that you ask your guests is that practical next step. You know, what are we going to do? Because it's about taking that practical step to work on me, to work on my goals. And that then kind of feeds that circle to make you go and establish the momentum that you need.

I love that. So as you know, these— we always make these That was short and sweet. So I— we could keep talking for another couple hours, but we won't. So, so thank you, Skip. This is such a, as you said, practical approach. I love, I love the frame of the 9 questions and how to avoid them. And I'm, I'm really looking forward to reading the book. And listeners, if, if you are interested in finding out more, The Book of Mistakes has just been released and is available at Amazon and in bookstores. And it's, as Skip said, it's at thebookofmistakes.com. And for additional support in overcoming the hurdles that we've been talking about, you can go to ProteusLeader.com. where you'll find lots of great resources for self-development. So thank you for listening, everyone. And until next time, here's to creating the life you truly want.

We hope you're feeling better equipped to create the career, the business, and the life you want. For more insights and tools for leadership and management, join us at proudestleader.com. Have an excellent day and thanks for listening.