5 Ways to LEAD and INSPIRE People to Greatness - #BelieveLife

Good morning, Believe Nation!

Today we're going to talk about how you can lead and inspire your people to greatness.

Many talented and gifted leaders go unnoticed in the world, never had a chance to hear from them because they allow themselves to become negative. They allow themselves to become volunteer victims. They allow themselves to focus on the problem rather than the possibilities. Jim Rohn said, "When the end comes for you, let it find you conquering a new mountain, not sliding down an old one." You got to continue to stretch, continue to grow, continue to expand. Socrates says, "A man's reach is to supersede his grasp." Well, what are the heavens for? We have far more in ourselves, but we've got to challenge ourselves. We have to engage in that process. Most people just They go so far and they park and they coast out to the sunset. Who you are as a person comes out and shows up in your leadership. So I believe it's about personal empowerment, becoming aware of who you are, self-awareness, and what is it that drives you? What is it that motivates you? What is it that you want? It's cultivating a sense of goodness and greatness within yourself.

Great leaders envision a compelling and different and vibrant future than what is here. They have an alternative clear view of what the world could be like tomorrow than it is today, right? They have a shared purpose that they believe that they and others would be compelled by, interested in, inspired by, and want to work towards. And that's a big deal. And you always read about it in leadership, right? You have to have vision.

I mean, it's biblical.

Where there is no vision, people perish, right? We know the power of having that vision. So you have to sit down though and actually do it. The reason we say envision versus just have a vision is you have to sit, it's a practice of envisioning what should tomorrow look like for my team? What should tomorrow be like for my business, for my organization? What should tomorrow be like for my life? And not just tomorrow, a long-term mindset and view. The dream, right? That magnificent obsession. That bold desire, the moonshot goals and purposes and missions of life, the bigger picture, that's envisioning a different reality in the future than we experience today. And that's what everybody gets excited about in leadership. Where there's no vision, there's no leadership. Where there's no vision, people perish.

You see, the greatest motivational principle in the world, the greatest motivational principle in the world is that people do what people see. And too many travel agents, too many travel agents, they're like— or too many leaders, too many leaders are like travel agents. They're sending people where they've never been themselves. And you want to be a tour guide. You want to take people with you. You want to say, this is the area where I've been. This is the area where I live. This is the area where I lead. Come along and follow me. And at level number 3, your leadership begins to gain credibility because now you are fleshing out for the people around you and you are modeling for them things that they want to see, and you are starting to produce. Which something else happens, because you are becoming productive in your own life, you begin to attract people that begin to be productive also. In the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership that I wrote, one of the laws is the law of magnetism, and the law of magnetism just says we attract who we are, not who we want. So when I talk to leaders often when we talk about recruiting, then I'll say, well, what kind of people do you want in your company? What kind of people do you want in your department as a supervisor? And they'll give me a list. They'll write things, you know, I want somebody that's self-disciplined, and I want somebody that is service-oriented. And they'll give me a list of 4 or 5 qualities. And as soon as they give me the list, I look at those qualities, and then I ask them a very simple question. I say, okay. Do you possess those qualities? Because see, on level number 3, basically who you are as a leader is who you attract on your team.

Number 3, I call it the 3 I practice. The 3 I practice. If you want to be a better leader, understand and then practice these 3 I's. Number 1, inspiration. The job of a leader really is to inspire other people. If you look at Steve Jobs, you look at Elon Musk, you look at Nelson Mandela, you look at Sir Gary Brin of Google, you look at a Rembrandt or a Picasso, these people were incredibly inspired. They were not only incredibly inspired, they were inspirational to other people. I mean, there's that incredible story of Steve Jobs, and a lot of people say Steve Jobs wasn't a nice person, and yet if you were to poll the former employees of Apple, they would say, "My years at Apple working with Steve Jobs were the single best years of my entire career." And you say, why? And they say, because he was inspirational. I mean, when Steve Jobs was a young man, or a young kid, his father said, go out and paint the fence outside of their house. And Steve Jobs said, no problem. He went out and he started painting the outside of the fence. A few hours later, his father comes out and says, Steve, did you paint the fence? Steve says, I did, Dad. Steve Jobs' father inspects the fence. And he says, Steve, you did a great job painting the outside of the fence, but you didn't paint the inside of the fence. And Steve Jobs looks up at his father and says, "But Dad, no one's going to see the inside of the fence." And his father looks at him and says, "But son, we will." Now it's many decades later and Steve Jobs is running Apple and they're ready to launch, or ready to develop rather, the first Apple Macintosh. And he looks at his design team and he said, "Here's your deliverable. I want the outside of the computer to look so simple and so elegant, like a piece of art. But here's the real mission: make the inside so beautiful that it'll bring tears to our eyes. And his design team looked at him and said, but Steve, no one's going to see the inside of the Apple Macintosh. And Steve Jobs looked at his team and said, but we will. That's inspiration. I think the only title that really matters is CIO, Chief Inspirational Officer. So no matter what you do, whether you're a teacher firefighter, an astronaut, or an entrepreneur. Maybe you're a managing director. Maybe you're a mother or father. Be the CIO, the Chief Inspirational Officer, of all you do. The second I of the 3 I practice to make you an amazing leader is influence. Influence. You want to be so good at what you do that you influence other people. You want to use the words and the language of Leadership versus victim speak. You want to influence people by your mindset, by your heartset. You want to influence people by your thinking patterns. You want to influence people by your productivity. So you want to influence people, and that's the job of a leader. And then the third I of the third I practice, impact. Less talk, more do. No matter what your title is, you know you're leading, you know you're winning. When you are creating impact. You know, a lot of people in the world, and victims love to do this, they talk about what they're going to do. Here's the project I'm going to launch. Here's the marathon I'm going to run. Here's the life I'm going to craft. But they don't execute. Impact is about translating your ideas to execution.

So leadership is not about personality. Sure, in fact, some of the greatest leaders we studied had a charisma bypass. And we should never confuse charisma with leadership. They're very, very different ideas. Some of them are even odd and eccentric. One of the great chief executives of the last 30 years is Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines. He solves a trademark dispute with an arm wrestling contest. It's just not normal. He would talk about wearing a flowered hat and a feathered boa around the office. Just strange. So it's not personality. The key to the great leaders that we studied was their humility. But it was humility of a very special type. It wasn't humility in just in a weak sense. It was in fact just the opposite. It was what I would describe as an absolute, obsessed, burning, compulsive ambition that wasn't about them. An absolute, burning, compulsive ambition for a cause, for a company, for the work, for a set of values, not themselves. And an ability to translate that ambition, that subjugating themselves to something that is not about them, into a series of decisions, very willful decisions. And this is why I look to Lincoln as our great president in the United States, because he was ambitious first and foremost that the nation must endure or, and he had the will to endure the most brutal war in all of our history, with all of it during his tenure, and to lose his life.

You become a motivational leader by motivating yourself, and you motivate yourself by striving toward excellence, by committing yourself to becoming everything that you're capable of becoming. You motivate yourself by throwing your whole heart into doing your job in an excellent fashion. You motivate others by continually looking for ways to help them to improve their lives and achieve their goals. You become a motivational leader by becoming the kind of person that others want to get behind and support in every way. Your main job is to take complete control over your own personal evolution and become a leader in every area of your life. You could ask for nothing more, and you should settle for nothing less.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because William Chilton asked me to. So if there's a topic you'd like me to cover in the next edition of Believe Life, Leave in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of the clips had the biggest impact on you and why. What issues you're facing in leading people to greatness or leading yourself to greatness. Leave in the comments below and I will join in the discussion. Finally, I have to give a quick shout out to Anna Baranowski from whatisptsd.com. Anna, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book. It really means a lot to me. For you guys watching, if you want your chance at a shout out in a future video, make sure to grab a copy of the book and also email in your receipt so we can keep track. Thank you so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.

Speed of the leader, speed of the group. You have got to buy into it. You've got to believe it. The difference between leaders and people that are followers— leaders, it's a whole different standard for them. You know, they— it's the difference between being in the business and the business being in you, that it has to be who you are and that you set the pace for the organization. If the leader becomes cynical, if there's any doubt, if you don't have absolute faith that you can make it happen, if you become cynical, if they sense that you don't believe that it can happen, if you start complaining about the fact that you can't get your higher-ups to answer, or there's so much political bureaucracy that we have to deal with, that you'll that you don't know what to do, that you're pulling your hair out, that you can't sleep at night because of the fact that it's out of your control. If you have that victim mindset and feeling powerless, that nonverbal communication, your facial expression, your energy, the spirit of who you are, that will permeate and contaminate the spirit of the organization. Many leaders, their effectiveness with their people, their impact, their influence begins to diminish because they don't take the time to sharpen their minds, to build their faith, to build their skills, to empower empower and increase their confidence in themselves. So part of what we have to do, all leaders, you have to take time to pour into yourself and you've got to also reach out. You've got to have a board of advisors and, and it's your support committee that will give you a home court advantage. More teams win on at home than they do on the road, 87%. Why? Because they have people cheering for them. I think that all leaders should have people around them, their group, their mastermind group that will help to pour into them. There's safety in counsel that they can talk to. One of the things I always tell leaders that ask for help, not because you're weak, but because you want to remain strong and ask for help and don't stop until you get it.

The best leaders on the planet grow other leaders. So if you're not growing leaders faster than your peers, you're not leading you're following. I'm going to repeat that again. The job of the leader is to grow more leaders. So yes, do your work. Yes, become more creative. Yes, innovate. Yes, optimize your personal life. And yet at the same time, make the time to develop leaders around you. What that might look like at the office— celebrating a teammate. At the office, that might look like modeling mastery. At the office, it might It might look like collaborating with someone who needs some collaboration. At home, what does growing leaders look like? Well, it might be mentoring your children, exposing them to art, giving them great books. It might mean being a positive force in your home life. So the job of the leader is to grow more leaders.

You can't lead others until you lead yourself. I think it's a Manfred Kitt de Vries phrase, and I believe it. This purpose, your resilience, your ability to absorb shocks, disappointments, you know, there's a— you can— how to manage your energy. I now believe in you got to manage your energy, not your time. Forget time. It's hard to manage your time. I think it'd be good if you could, and I wish I could do it better. I think actually what's more important is how you manage your energy. What's a source of energy for you? What sucks energy away? Away from you and making sure you've got that right balance in a day to be able to deal with it. Your physical fitness— I mean, you, you know, this is a— Carlos Ghosn has talked about this. You know, he's a guy who's been a CEO for 12 years. He's sort of, in my view, straddled both eras, the old era and the new era. And he talks very eloquently about, you know, the, you know, the disciplines he has to have. It used to be the case, you know, you'd do an overseas trip, and he's you got living in sort of 4 cities around the world, you get a day to recover. You know, now there's no way. All leaders today, you, you land, you operate, you know, you're scrambling, you're trying to pick stuff up. How do you keep your, your energy there so you don't make any rash, crazy decisions?