4 Powerful Ways to Elevate People Around You

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to One to One with James Laughlin. I'm a former world champion and now I work with and coach professional athletes, entrepreneurs and CEOs of billion dollar companies. I'm going to share with you in this episode some of the insights and strategies, some of the tools that I use with my clients. Every week I'll bring you an insight, an action or a tool that will help you go from great to greatest. My mission is to cut through the noise and help give you the tools that truly transform your mindset and help you to take the right actions towards your desired outcome. So let's dive in. I want to take you behind the scenes of a very special event that happened recently. I was very fortunate to sit down and be the host for the All Blacks. Razor Robertson, the current world champion boxer, Miyamotoo, the head of banking at Giardin Silvana Scinone and former former Adidas CEO president Zeon Armstrong. You are in for a treat because I'm going to let you know one of the takeaways from each of them. And the whole idea of this event was around elevating other people and they all shared who elevated them and what that looked like. So I want to elevate you by just simply sharing some of the takeaways that they shared. So please grab a pen and paper or make some mental notes. You're in for a little treat. So first, Miyamoto, current world champion boxer, the female in New Zealand that holds the most titles ever of all time. She's so passionate and from stage she moved 200 people through her passion for elevating children, giving children a voice, showing them love. She spoke of some of the horrific experiences she's had in life and how her child actually saved her life. Her child jumped in front of her to stop her, then partner stabbing her. So Mia said that it was her child that elevated her and elevated her to fight. And now she's one of the most unstoppable boxers on the planet. She's only ever lost one professional match. Pretty inspirational. So a couple of things I wrote about her. Her message really was that we need to love, love fully and be authentic and be yourself. She was just trying to let us all know that sometimes we're a bit buttoned up and that we put on a mask and I don't know about you, but I can certainly attest to that and just let it go. Sometimes just be yourself. Say what you're actually thinking, show what you're actually feeling. She was really, really passionate about us being more authentically ourselves. And she said she now feel lives her life with no shame and with no fear. And I think there's a lot of humans that have shame and fear. Ruling their decisions informs what they do, what they say, what car they buy, what area they live in, who they hang out with, what they post on social media. Imagine living so freely where you could be truly who you want to be and unapologetic about who you are. MIA was just so inspirational. She moved the room. She really did okay. Silvana Schinoni, co head of investment banking at Jardine. An incredible, passionate leader and her mission is to elevate other incredible females and give women an opportunity to step up and step in because often they've not been given fair, equitable opportunities. And she's all about that. And one thing she mentioned was really nudging people gently into their zone of discomfort. That's something that she does intentionally, purposefully, and I think that's something that we need to do for others, is help them to be more uncomfortable in a kind way, in a caring way, in a way that's helping them grow, but also for ourselves. Maybe you don't have a Silvana Schinoni who's doing that for you. So how can you do it for yourself? Where can you step up and try something and do something that's outside your comfort zone? What's that post that you've been meaning to post but you're worried about what other people think? Do the post. What's that job that you were thinking of maybe applying for? But, oh, I only know 50% of the skills apply anyway. The greatest leaders I've sat with, the people who are at the Top of the Pops in the biggest roles on the planet often talk about the fact that when they apply for roles they go, I only know about 30 or 40% of that role, but the rest of it, confident I can learn it. Take a swing, give it a crack. Okay. Razor Robertson, former head coach of the Canterbury Crusaders super provincial Rugby team and of course, current All Blacks head coach. I've sat down with Razer many times over the last year or two, explored conversations around culture, around high performance. But something that he said this time I just wrote down. He was talking about the importance of playing freely and how from a, you know, a rugby standpoint, being able to be free and flowing with your play, it just allows you to play at your best and tap into potential and seek opportunities. But often you and I, we don't play freely. We're uptight, worried, stressed, anxious, trying to impress others, try not to let others down. How can we play more freely? Well, for me, when I listened to that from Razer, I was like, okay, we've got to care a little bit less about the commentators, we've got to care a little bit less about the gossipers and bickerers. We've got to carry on and do what's right for us. So play a bit more freely today. Do what you want to do. Do it the way you do it. Dress the way you want to dress, Use the words that you want to use. So honestly, that was such great, a great little insight from him. And he talked about theming how powerful it is to have a theme in a team when you're leading a team, to have a really clear theme, whether that's theme of a historical figure, the theme of a sporting icon, the theme of the country.

I've worked with sports teams where we've had, you know, what does it mean to be a Canterbury man? You know, it was the Canterbury rugby team and the whole season it was like, what's the theme? You know, Canterbury men, like two and then they come up with different things. Fishing, hunting, dancing, singing, working hard, all those things. So what's your theme for you? What's your theme this year? Come up with something that inspires you, that excites you. Does your family have a theme for the year? Does your team have a theme? Why not? Let's think about the importance of theming. And last but not least was my great friend, Zion Armstrong. Zion is the current CEO of Jimmy K, an incredible Christchurch based company doing amazing things globally. He's the former CEO president of Adidas North America and he's just masterful in connecting with humans. And there's something that he talked about in South Korea when he was running Adidas there, and there's this idea that if you were 26, 27 year old female who wasn't married, you were kind of disowned by your family. And he went against the cultural norms and actually promoted some of these 27, 28 year old women who weren't married and gave them opportunities to go and run large companies in Boston and all around the world. And that went against the grain, but he knew he was doing the right thing for the individual. And sometimes being unpopular is important. Sometimes standing up for what is right is important. In fact, always standing up for what's right is important. And we're not seeing that. We're not seeing that globally right now. We're seeing some leaders shy away from bullies, shy away from tyrants. That happens right at our community level, at our family level, you know, stand up for what's right. You know what's right. I never need to tell you what's right. You know that all of us know what's right and what's wrong. All of us know what we shouldn't walk past. But Zion, his story was a great reminder that you've got to stand up and do what's right. If you'd like to know what Zeon's story was, which is mind blowing by the way, I'll make sure that we put that in the show notes. I interviewed him about a year ago. Phenomenal story. I promise you, you will not want to miss it. Go, go check it out. Amazing episode. So that was my last Thursday night, an amazing charity event listening to these incredible people MCing it. It was a ton of fun. Incredible people giving back, elevating others. And guess what, you have the opportunity to do the same. My challenge to you is how are you going to elevate people around you who most needs elevation right now Helped, supported, helping hand. I want you to think about that because that's what leading life on purpose is. It's how can I help someone else? And it doesn't need to be grand gestures. It could be tiny things, opportunities, chances, a seat at the table, whatever it might be. So folks, all of you who have pre ordered a copy of my book, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you. It means a hell of a lot more than you'll know if you haven't pre ordered it, please consider it. Go over to thehabitbook.com, grab yourself a copy, let me know that you've got it. And I'm giving you a ton of of incredible bonuses, almost $500 worth of bonuses if you pre order. The pre orders will close once it launches, so please do that. But for those that have done it already, I sincerely appreciate you folks. For now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose. Thanks for tuning in to Lead on Purpose. If you find this episode valuable, please share it with one person that you think might benefit from it. And if you're serious about leveling up, please make sure you're subscribed to the show and continue to lead your life on purpose.