Peter Anderton Recap: Two Rules every leader should know

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 back to the show. Peter Anderton is the founder of Internal Alignment. We had him on in our last episode. He was absolutely phenomenal. And I just wanted to share some of the key takeaways. And I hope that some of these takeaways will really serve you today and this week, this month, in your own leadership and in your own life. Look, he's a well known TED talker. Great Leadership Comes down to Only Two Rules was the title of that TED Talk, which has been viewed millions of times. And look, there's some key takeaways that I thought were just really, really powerful. But before I do that, as always, I'm gonna ask you for a favor. As you know, we removed ads from the show. I'd love to ask you right now to please share this show with two people. Could you just share it with two people today? That's gonna help me reach more incredible people like you, and it will allow me to keep growing the show and to keep bringing on incredible guests. So please, if there's one thing you can do for me this week, please share the show with just two people. So you gotta check out lead on purpose. And as you know, there's people from presidents to prime ministers to Formula one teams, to thought leaders to scientists, we have all different people on the show sharing their insights around leadership. And at the end of the day, leading on purpose is about intentionality. And it's my intention to keep bringing you great thought leaders from around the world. So here's a few different insights from our interview with Peter Anderton. So in reality, there's no such thing as the perfect leader. Right. And that was in Peter's exact words. In reality, there's no such thing as the perfect leader. Wow, what a relief, right? None of us want to feel that we have to be the perfect leader. And it's interesting, sometimes at my events I'll say this, and it can shock people, but I ask everyone to say, who's a perfectionist? Put your hands up and often about 40 or 50%, maybe sometimes more. Put of the room, put their hands up. I go, okay, so you guys have no standards. And, like, there's a look of shock. How dare you, James? But what I mean by that, and I do explain it, is that perfection is not achievable and therefore it's not measurable. Therefore, it can't be a standard. Because standards are things we can measure. Perfection, we simply can't. So I believe in extraordinary, excellent, great, good even. We could all agree that something is good. Hey, that, that piece of art, that's good. But we might not be able to agree that it's perfect. So from a leadership standpoint, just know that you don't have to be the perfect leader, but you could be a good leader. You could be a thoughtful leader, you could be a really empathic leader, but there is no such thing as the perfect leader. Now, some of you might be saying, what are these two rules of leadership? Well, look, Peter believes there's just two rules of leadership. Rule number one is, it's not about you. It's not about your plan, your strategy, or your solutions. Leadership is not about you. It's all about your team. Rule number two is realizing that you can't change anybody's behavior. It's not possible. The only thing as a leader that you can actually control is your own behavior. Therefore, if you're going to change anything, change yourself as a leader, you need to walk the walk and talk the talk. Eventually, in leadership, the team you have becomes a reflection of you. Great leaders show that, and not so great leaders show that. People who tell their team, hey, you should be leveling up, you should be innovating. But if the leader themselves, they're not exemplifying that, why would anyone listen? I've seen it time and time again.

Look, there are lots of leaders out there who lift their teams, edify them, and really empower them. But there's also leaders out there who make their teams miserable. Those are the leaders who are constantly micromanaging. Those are the leaders who are gaslighting. Those are the leaders who don't back their people. Now, what kind of leader are you or what kind of leader do you want to be?

Think about that for a moment. Be intentional with that lead on purpose. What does that look like for you? Peter spoke about how you compare your worst boss to your best boss. Who is your worst boss? Who comes to mind right now? Think back to a time. Maybe you're there right now. Maybe your worst boss is your current boss. But Think back to a time when you work for someone and they were just the absolute worst. What was it about them that made them the worst boss? I can think back to one of mine and he was nice as pie to everyone around him until they weren't around him and then he would talk about them. He was all about how he looked. He had to control and manage everything. Peter said the chances are your worst boss was focused on themselves. Now I want you to take a little moment and go back and who is your best boss? Who's that? Who's coming to mind right now? The best person you've ever worked for? What made them the best? Well, look, Peter said, the best boss would have been focused on you. The best bosses and leaders don't make it about themselves. They make it about their team members. So I want you to have a wee think about that. What kind of leader do you want to be? Do you want to be remembered as the worst or the best? And you could replace leader with parent, right? Parenting is a great leadership role, challenging one. Peter also said, look, the key to high performing teams is giving every member of your team the ability to be the best version of themselves each and every day. So if we know every member of our team on a deep level and we truly know their strengths, then we can guide them correctly and help them to be the best that they can be. And in turn, naturally, right? That creates a high performing team. Now just to wrap up, here's the three secrets of high performing teams. And this comes down to what Peter shared in our last episode. Number one, the messy bit in the middle. This is the connection within a team. It's what makes or breaks them, right? The key is that messy middle part. We've got to make sure it's deeply respected, valued and connected. Number two, potential. This is the skill set, the resources, the ability. You need a, a team who can actually do the job. And then you as the leader need to make sure that that happens and allow them to thrive. And thirdly, the reason why. So your vision, you know, where are we going as a team? Why are we going there? What is the reason for the individual to get out of bed to come and contribute to this greater collective vision? Those are questions I want you to think about in your own life, your own leadership, your own team, whether you run that team or not. I want you to think, does that team know where they're headed, why they're headed there? Sounds like a simple question, but I can tell you right now, I work with hundreds and hundreds of leaders from all different sorts of backgrounds. Many of them struggle to articulate their company vision, their team vision. Many of them have never articulated to their team. And if they have, often it changes time to time. So I want you to really think about that. And look folks, we're only about a month out from our hpl, which is our annual live event High Performance Leadership Event in Christchurch, New Zealand. We've still got a few tickets left, but we'll cap it at 80 people. And we've got leaders coming in from all over Australasia. Plus we've got incredible guest speakers with Amy Carter, the CEO of the Christchurch Foundation. We've got Matt Brown, founder of the global anti violence movement called she Is not yout Rehab. And of course, returning for the third year is Sir John Key, our former Prime Minister. So if you'd like to come and join us or learn a little bit more about it, head over to jjlochlund.com HPL2023 and HPL is all uppercase. Well folks, looking forward to our next episode. I hope you enjoyed today, but please get out there and lead your life on purpose.

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