How to Lead Leaders

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 Lead On Purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now executive coach to global leaders and high performers. Each week I'll publish a solo cast where I'll share my top high performance habits and methodologies to supercharge your life and career. If you enjoy the show, please take a short moment to subscribe and leave a rating and review. I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

Did you know that 83% of organizations believe that it's important to develop leaders at every level of the company, yet only 5% of businesses have implemented leadership development at all levels. There's a big disconnect there, right? That's talking the talk versus walking the walk. Look, for every year a company delays leadership development, it costs on average 7% of their total annual sales. That's a huge chunk of profit loss there. And look, I'm going to share some more statistics from the World Health Organization, the American Psychological Association, Forbes, Harvard Business Review and Bloom. 79% of employees said they have quit due to lack of appreciation. Yeah, you heard me right. Almost 80%. That's Pareto's principal at play there. Have said that in their lifetime they have quit their jobs because they feel lack of appreciation. How simple would it be to fix that for your staff, for your team, for your family, for your people? Just appreciate the people around you. How do we show appreciation? We spend time with them. We invest in them. We invest in their learning, we invest in their lives. We get curious. Only 33% of employees report feeling engaged. Yeah. So there you've got around 70% of a team or organization that feels disengaged. Wow. What's that costing in productivity? What's that costing in staff churn? It's significant, right? Companies with high employee engagement are 22% more profitable. Imagine if I could say to you right now, hey, your team, your organization, or even your family, you could be 22% more profitable this year, that's a significant increase. And just by engaging with your people, that'll make the difference. And that's the difference to me, that makes the difference. Here are the top five key leadership skills that kept showing up time and time again in these research studies. Number one, self development. So self leadership. And for me, that's what my high performance leadership framework is all around. It's about learning to lead self at Biff. When you're a best in field leader at what you do and how you lead yourself, your life, your thoughts, your skill set, your heart set, your physical set, then you can lead others. And that's. Number two is team development. That's the second key leadership skill. But you cannot develop teams unless you've actually done the work on self. Number three was strategic thinking and acting, right? That last bit's important. Strategic thinking is one thing, but thinking doesn't get the job done. Strategic action and acting so crucial. Number four, ethical practices. Really thinking about others and doing the right thing. The right thing is not always the easy thing. Number five, innovation. Now, when companies are successful, success often leads to failure. Why? Because they then just keep repeating what they've always done and what happens other competitors, whether that's on the field in industry, you know, in relationships, other competitors are leveling themselves up and are more appealing and more attractive and therefore you lose business. So innovation is key. But go back to the start. People cannot innovate until they learn to lead themselves so that they have the confidence and the conviction. So it comes back to really investing in your people, giving them access to leadership development. And that's, you know, getting them books, that's suggesting podcasts or shows for them to watch, that's actually investing in their development month on month, year on year. Now look, as always, I'm a big believer in tactics, right? You've got to have go to tactics that help you to move forward. And I really want to help you lead leaders. I want to help you grow more leaders around you. This world relies on more leaders and we could sit here and pick apart all the bad leaders, but actually what's better is if we can look around at some of the great leaders that we have and we do and go, why are they great? Well, they're great because they're curious. They're great because they invest in the people around them. So I want to give you three strategies, three tactics that you can take away and I'd love you to implement today. And again, you can apply this at whatever element, whether it's at an organizational level, whether it's in your life, whether it's in your relationships with family. But look, number one, you must as a leader create space, time and if needs be, a budget for leadership development at all levels. Look, I work with some incredible high end clients, people that are running multi billion dollar organizations, the top sports team nationally and internationally. Look, the one thing that I see with them is that they're continually investing in growth, continually investing in learning new strategies and they do it at all levels. You've got to do the same for yourself. You've got to look and go, hey, how much time and space and budget am I putting into myself and my leaders? You know, as a coach, I often get asked, hey, how do I find the right coach for me? I always say the first question you have for a potential coach is who's your coach? How many coaches have you had? How much have you invested in the last year in coaching? And when the answer is I don't have one, or I invested a very small amount, then I don't think that's the coach for you. You want to be working with people and being mentored and coached by people who are truly committed to the philosophy of coaching and learning and developing oneself. Number two, bring in industry experts. Don't try and be a lone wolf. Don't try and do everything in house. If you're privileged enough in a position where you can make decisions around leadership development, get the best. If you want to bif be best in field, then you've got to make sure that you bring bif coaches, leaders, trainers in. People who can connect, people who can get past the theory, people who can go deeper than the page, further than the PowerPoint slide. You want people that can move your people. That's so important. It's got to come from the heart to land in the heart. And if you truly want to see leaders around you, you've got to talk to the heart, not to the head. So if you're bringing people in, make sure they've got energy that's passionate, they've got a vision to help you and your team. Bbif.

And just before I share the last one, I'd like to ask you for one small favor. And you know, I love this podcast. We have now three episodes a week, got one feature length interview each week which is with, you know, one of the world's leading experts in their field. Then we've got a recap which is the highlights from that interview. And also we've got the solo cast, the mastery session where I Go deep, which is today. And it's very tactical. That's what this session is. Now, for me to continue to do that, what I need from you is just a really simple request. It'll cost you about 30 seconds of your time. Just hop over to whatever you're listening on Apple or Spotify and leave me a rating and a review. If you love it, please leave me a five star rating. It really helps me to reach more people and impact more incredible leaders like you. Now, let's get back to it. Last but not least, if you want to lead leaders, if you want to grow a leadership team and you want people to be more innovative, more independent, then you've got to model a learner's mindset. Always you've got to model the fact that you're curious, that you're a learner. Always you're asking questions. You know you don't know it all. You're reading the books, you're listening to, the podcasts, you're going to, the events, you're bringing in trainers. When those trainers are training your staff, you're there in the room, taking notes, asking questions, learning, showing vulnerability. I don't know how many times I've been brought in to work with corporates and other organizations where the CEO and in fact most of the C suite are not there. They take the time to go and do their own strategy session while the rest of the staff are in doing leadership development. To me, if you're a high performance leader, you're there in the room, shoulder to shoulder with your people. So that's last but not least, model a learner's mindset. Always. Well, folks, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.

Thanks for tuning in today and investing in your own personal leadership. Please hit that subscribe button and I'd love if you'd leave me a rating and review. I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks. And leaders, it's that time to get out there and lead your life on purpose.