Inside JLC: How to Attract Success

Foreign. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here at JLC Media. I'm very happy that you took some time to work on yourself and that'll be the focus, by the way, of today's podcast. Why does it matter to work on ourselves? But I'll come to that in a few minutes. Right now I'm going to get you to know who's on screen with us. We'll we have three wonderful JLC associates, colleagues and friends. And I'll start with you, Vince. Vince, would you introduce Terry?

Oh.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to present to you my wonderful colleague and mentor and friend, former boss Terry Moulton. He's a tremendous leader, he brings extreme capabilities and he's probably the most people centric leader I've ever had the privilege of working for.

That's great. Terry, would you introduce Colleen?

Well, thank you, Ray. I would like to introduce Colleen Sullivan on the screen here. She is a JLC associate, an executive coach and a very caring and endearing person and someone that you want to have on your team as you go down this journey with us.

I couldn't underline that more. Thank you. Colleen, please introduce Vince.

Absolutely. My friend and colleague, retired captain Vince Starks. It's an honor and a privilege to work with him. He has an amazing leadership presence and voice. He brings a tremendous insight from his experience and also just from his personal background. He, he's a wonderful executive coach and just an excellent person to collaborate and to work with.

Thank you. My name's Ray and I'm easy to find, so I don't think I need much of an introduction at this point. But if you want one, I'm sure you can. They'll tell you all about me and I'm very happy though that you guys are with us today. So this one is interesting. So let me do my cpo. So why are we talking about this? You know, we're all coaches and we've all been leaders in a variety of settings and we would like to do well, we'd like to be successful in what we do. And today I'm going to create a little provocation, a question about what's success got to do with it and how do we make sure that we find success? Actually, even better, how do we make sure that success finds us? So we will develop a common understanding about a couple of things that I think would be useful for me to work on. And I would invite those of you that are in leadership or aspiring to be leadership or teachers. Anybody who's listening to this Particular podcast, whatever your walk of life is, I think there are things that I would like to understand with you that would be useful in developing our ability to find or let success find us, let's say it that way. So when this is done, each of you will have one, maybe two things to try out and say, I'm going to do this. I think this could be something that I could actually do that would enable me to allow success to find me. So, Terry, what are you hearing me say we're going to work on today?

The big keyword there is success and how do we work to let success find us. And so today, we'll walk away with a couple of ideas that we could all practice in our future so that success finds us.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

And that we will be successful.

Yeah. There's something there that I think is interesting, and I think it'll come up in the conversation, and I'm looking forward to that. Colleen, did you hear something more different?

No, I think Terry stated that nicely. I think it's a unique way that you put it where let success find you. So I think that really resonated with me. We all talk about we want to be successful, and yet it sounds like we're chasing something. And I think you kind of flipped it where, you know, how can we allow success to find us?

Beautifully stated. Thank you so much. And I think you have kind of got the kernel of what I was attempting to bring forward. It's not easy to talk about, though. You know what I mean? It's really hard. Vince, did you hear anything more different?

You know, Ray, I'm from the south side of Chicago, third generation. I speak in simpler terms. And so as you were talking, what stood out to me was it dawned on me and I was thinking, you know, as coaches, we focus a lot of our attention on others and how to help others to get better. But I'm excited that what I'm hearing is that we're going to focus on ourselves. We're going to do something that really helps us look inwardly and enhance our own individual capabilities. So I'm excited to get into this content today.

That's a beautiful lead in to my very. To my provocation. So we're going to stay in this space of that success is something that you attract. And the position I'm going to take is the following. And then I want you to, you know, get in conversation about this. Learn to work harder on yourself than on your job. If you can, learn to learn. And sometimes it's how to Learn, but learn to work harder on yourself than your job. That will attract success. All right, anybody can go, how does that land on you guys? Because that's typically not what we hear in a coaching call. They want to know, how do I handle this hard employee? How do I. You know, so this is. Although I do think we shift into that space initially, people are asking us to help them do their jobs better, isn't it? So this is an interesting twist on the way we show up in conversation. What's landed on you guys?

Yeah, I'll start just thinking off the cuff as you made that statement. I was thinking, you know, back when I was a lieutenant, you know, I took this class, the psychology of Personal and Professional achievement, right? And what I walked away with is, this is how you. This is how you tick, and this is why you tick. You know, things that influenced you as you were growing up is causing your behavior in this. In this world at this time, right? And so that intrigued me to learn more. And so as I've gone through my career in working on myself, how do I start to learn more about myself? So that how I learn, how that impacts others, right? That's about relationships. So in the Navy, we did things like Myers Briggs Process Communication, Predictive Index, and I think learning things about yourself, how you tick, are you a persuader or are you a pacesetter? You know, you learn, and then you can use that in your interactions with others. And even more important, by learning that you now learn about others and how they are ticking and you can pick those things out, and then you use that in your relationship with your. With your staff, and that makes things better, and it makes everyone more successful. In my mind.

Yeah, that's practice. So there's a piece there that you just bit at the very end. You know, I coached for a long time, and one of the statements that I took eventually from those that were trying to teach me how to be a better coach is when I worked on myself, I realized I was designing practices that didn't feel like game. And all of a sudden, when that. That was like, wait a minute. And once I learned that, that was an opportunity for me to reflect and say, how do I adjust this? Because if you can practice in a space where it feels like the lights are on, so to speak, as a coach would say, your progress will occur. But that's me working on myself. Either I didn't go left well, or one of my kids didn't go left well. They didn't shoot free throw. It's under pressure on and on and on. There were all kinds of things that I needed to work on inside of me that would enable me to better support and coach the kids that I was coaching. So there was. That's a very powerful opening for us, either one venture. Colleen, what are you guys thinking about this?

Well, for me, I really like what Terry alluded to. And as he was talking again, it gave me an opportunity for some self reflection. I can remember as I was working through my leadership development individually, there was a period of time where you want to be perfect, right? You don't want to make mistakes. You don't want your boss to see your flaws or your subordinates to see your flaws. And at a certain point, you get to a point where, or at least for me, where I realized it was okay not to have all of the answers and to be vulnerable and something in the ability to be vulnerable and to be comfortable with that really was not a weakness. It really helped enhance my leadership capabilities and I was able to grow to a great extent. And so as Sarah was laying out that importance of the course, you know, the coursework that he did and what he learned, I was reflecting during his comments about what change in myself as a leader really was a tipping point for me. And for me, it was that ability to not have all the answers and to be vulnerable as a leader. That certainly was a tipping point and a change point for me. That's what I was.

I love it. Colleen, what are you thinking about what Vince said?

I like how he. Well, it's a good. It's a good example of self reflection. It's a good example of his leadership presence and awareness to really pause and to recognize that he needs to work on self. And I think when you were talking about and introducing kind of the concept of working harder on yourself and then it will attract success, it made me think of something as simple as sports, right? Many times if you play golf, you're out there and you want to hit a bucket of balls and you want to play as much as you can to refine your swing and your skills and your game so you can play well. And yet many times to your point, Ray, in your introduction, we don't think of leadership or success or working on ourselves in the same way. Sports is one thing, but then we don't necessarily approach ourselves and that self reflection piece as intentionally as we might a sport.

So stay right with that sports analogy just for a second. I think leadership is a performance art. It's the art and practice of leading. And I think it's actually a performance that's going on. And I think about my own self being placed in I don't know how many performance environments. Since I'm just a young man, a boy, and early on, if I made mistakes in my performance, I defended myself. I would tell them now, you guys did it wrong or you went too soon or it was too fast, or I would, you know, I would not look toward myself. I would look toward others to say, I'm not doing well because of what you did. Eventually, that sensibility that Vince gave us around vulnerability, it's everything. And even today, after all these years of playing on stages and speaking at events and running conferences, doing workshops, the best critic is me. As long as I don't BS myself and I can go afterwards and think through the performance as it unfolded, what are areas that I can work on to improve myself. And again, perfection will not occur for me. I don't believe in my lifetime unless some enlightenment occurs I don't know about, I don't think it's going to happen. And I can get better. And the better I get personally, the more opportunity exists for success to find me. And if I'm not careful, I can really screw that up with my self talk and start being upset with myself or defending myself against others that are out there or the situation again, the situation is the situation. It's the same for everybody in a command and activity, an office. I can't change the situation, change myself. That's the critical component. I can change myself. Do you guys have an example of a time when you actually did change something about yourself and success found you?

Yeah, I'll come back to that, Ray. But I was going to reflect a little bit more on what Vince has said and I really like that story where, you know, he realizes, hey, I don't. In reflecting on myself and being vulnerable and realizing I don't know everything, he can then, you know, work with his team and ask questions that then results in engagement by the rest of the organization and a better commitment from the organization on achieving whatever the desired results was. So by Vince having that vulnerability, it really opened the door for him to be successful and for the rest of the organization to be successful as well. So I think that's a really good story that he told.

Yeah, I liked it a lot. Success found him when he was willing to work on himself. I find this interesting. Don't you find this interesting? Because most of the books you read and everything that's out there, it's like, you know, you're out There leading this group. And I want to care about them. Yes, I do. But no one ever really talks about what am I personally doing to adjust my capabilities so that success can find me. I find this fascinating and I'm looking forward to this going forward. Back to you, Terry.

All right, so I think thinking about that, ask one of the things I think in my career I was told that, hey, you, you are excellent at execution, right? So when they said execution excellence. Okay, got it. But there's got to be more to it, right? And so I think back in my younger days through my professional organization, I took a class on vision. How do you set vision for the organization? Revision for your department or whatever. And so I was able to sort of listen to what they said and complimented me. But on the other hand, I wanted to be. I didn't want to. That's not where I wanted to be. I wanted to be where. How do I set vision and let the others achieve? Because you're going up in the chain of command. So that's the role that changes. And so I realized that, hey, I'm good at excellence and good at execution. I want to be better for the rest of the team to be successful. So setting visual advice, just execution, it's really good.

Actually. One of my boys just went through an onboarding and a new job. And what he said to them, and he said to me kind of in a conversation before he went, is that creative tension is everything. How do I put it in place? Well, if I don't have a vision of the desired future state, then the way things are right now are just fine. If I can feel the distinction between current reality and desired future state vision, vivid description of the future, all of a sudden that creative tension starts to unfold. This is. This is fascinating. So again, goes, what can I do to create that picture of success so that people feel. And I feel the creative tension for me to get better so success can find us in that vision. Terry, that was magnificent. Vince Collien, can I respond to that?

I like what Terry said, and I think that it's important for individuals. But there's a piece in there as I kind of look around, I also think it's equally important. Sometimes you are a manager and you are the executor, right? And depending on where you are in your development in the system, the organization, that is your job. Your responsibility is to go get it done. But as you continue to strive to get better, you are enhancing capabilities. What I think Terry's laying out. So you need to understand how to look at vision and look at things outside that tactical paradigm. But at some point between operation and vision, it may not be your job to set the vision, but you certainly need to be able to understand the vision and what it looks like for your people and then be able to communicate that vision in alignment up and down so that you can then create that creative tension that you talked about and move the organization forward. So as people listen to this, I was just thinking that I may not be immediately in a position of setting a vision, but I need to understand what it is and how to talk about it and how to align myself and the people that I'm responsible for so that we can together get the team moving in that direction. So I thought it was a great point. It was just a way point that I wanted to. That I really want to bring to the surface.

Yeah, awesome.

There's a sensibility here about. So I love these questions. These are some questions I've given to CEOs and high level leaders in other places. First question is what are we doing around here? What are we doing? And then what are you doing? It's kind of what you were bringing forward Vince about. Is what I am doing moving us toward the desired future state or am I simply hanging on and just doing my job and getting a little better at my job that requires that personal introspection so I can think about my daily work? How does it contribute to that larger picture of success that's out there? This is interesting, isn't it guys and.

Gal, it is actually fun stuff.

Colleen, where are you? What are you? What's unfolding for you? This has really been a great conversation.

I think that one thing that's unfolding to me is that that just the reflection piece but also being open to feedback you mentioned. You know, you've got to really be honest about yourself, no bs, about your current reality and being open to listening to people giving you feedback. Because many times we ask for it and I know for me it depends on who it's coming from, right? Whether or not I really open to hearing what someone has to say. So in many ways I'm limiting myself by considering the source and then filtering the feedback. And I look back in my leadership journey and it wasn't until that I made a conscious decision to let go of that filtering of the feedback and let go of consider the source and just be open to listening and suspending certainty around that person or that particular individual and just be opening to listening, to actually listening to what they have to say.

Wow. Well, I think this has been for me, this is a stimulating conversation for me because I am thinking about getting better myself. You know, that, you guys know I read, you know, I do all that stuff. So I am now my journaling has dropped into another level and I'm actually doing it multiple times a day. What am I getting out of this particular event and what could I have done better so that this constant introspection about how to get personally better to work on myself so that I become a better guy. I bring, you know, the language is jargony, bring your best self forward. I like it. It's just more of that. Okay, I'm not sure who that is right now. So I'm just trying to bring a better self forward because I don't know what my best self really is. I'm just trying to get better. I'm just trying to get better. But I think I'm going to ask you what we always do. Give the listeners one thing that you would invite them to do, and I'll read the piece again. Learn to work harder on yourself then on your job and success will find you. And I would say to anybody out there that's listening, if you're not reading, read there's. And find the things that are interesting to you and read, learn about them. It is just so, so important to expand your knowledge and application of knowledge. Knowledge is not enough. We need to know how to apply it. So I'll go to you guys. Who wants to go next? What's one thing you would say to the listener about working on self?

Yeah, I'll start. And I think Colleen, I think we all said it, but I think Colleen said it. You know, it's that reflection. You know, you need to take time for yourself. Stop and reflect on the day activity. What did I do today to make myself better so that success can find me? So that, you know, we have a tendency not to do that. So we really ought to take time to reflect and be your own coach and identify things that you might want to look at and to practice to make yourself better so that success can find you.

That's beautiful, Terry. The too busy syndrome is everywhere. And a lot of times we distract ourselves. We make ourselves busy, and we don't even sometimes recognize it unless we take a look and look and see what we really. That was really, really good. Vince, what will you tell the listeners out there?

So Terry just laid out a really nice application of what you should do. And I guess my closing thought is I want to share with the audience in terms of what that actually could look like and the way it looked to me, and it's an example that Terry set for me for many, many years. He's a now standing leader, retired admiral in the Navy, and I would watch him. Whether we were on teleconferences or in the office, he always took the time to write down the things and write down committed actions and to close the loop in his little green book. And in passive conversation, whether he was sitting, having a chat with you or having lunch with you, as you were just talking, he would just open a book, go, hey, yesterday, this. And here's what I captured, or this morning, this. And this is what I captured. And what it taught me was he was very intentional in capturing committed actions and ways to move forward without telling you and sticking it in your eye to say, I know this is what you're supposed to do, et cetera. He would just kindly remind you of what he captured and what he understood. And just having it in writing was something that was masterful. And just being able to document things for yourself, I think is an extremely powerful tool, and it really helped my leadership capability. That's something that he talked about doing, but that's what it looked like in practice as he demonstrated that each and every day. So thank you for that, Terry.

All right, well, thanks, Dennis.

It's that story about, I know the path, but I'm not sure I'm walking it. I know the path, but I'm not sure I'm walking it. And that constant reflection is big. You're going to add something, Terry.

No, no, I was just saying thank you. And, yeah, I think I learned a lot of that writing in the journal from you, Ray, and that's been very beneficial. And the committed actions, I think, are very important. And as we grow up in our organization, begin your meetings with the ending of the last meeting. Right. Connect the dots for people. And that journal writing in the committed actions allowed for some of that work to happen in that way. So I think that's a good technique and a good practice for people.

Yeah, it's good practice for me. Even in my journal when I'm working on myself, I read my previous entry before I write the next one, so I try and connect them. What Vince and Terry have spoken about is an incredible practice. Otherwise, meetings tend to live in isolation. People forget they have connection to one another. They sometimes even forget what the promises were that were made and what I noticed that. I don't know if Terry noticed this, but I sure did when he started to do this practice, people didn't make as many wild promises during the meeting because they knew somebody was going to say, how did you do with that? Not how'd you do with that? How'd you do with that promise you made last time? Is it working out? Do you need anything? Do you need a resource? Interesting. Interesting. Colleen, what will you tell the listeners?

Well, I really like the example, you know, that Vince shared about Terri. Right? Because that was creating creative tension.

Correct.

Many times we say, oh, I'm going to take time at the end of the day and I'm going to journal and then we don't do it. Or we say, I'm working on myself. And then we don't ever pause and create a moment for self reflection. So my invitation is, if you choose to work on yourself, perhaps share it with someone, hey, this is what I'm doing and this is why. And then they can, as Vince said in a very kind way, just check in with you on occasion. Hey, how's it going? It creates a tiny bit of creative tension that perhaps will help motivate you to keep you on the path.

This is probably one of the more interesting practices. But notice listeners, Terry was working on himself. Now, he might have got an elbow in the ribs about possibilities, but he was still working on himself. So he knew there was something to do and then he did it. Very often we have knowledge. We know where to go and how to go, but we don't. Knowing the path is different than walking the path. Thank you for being with us today, everybody. We really appreciate you. Hope you enjoyed this one. I sure, sure did and I love that sense. Again, work harder on yourself than on your job and success will find you. Thanks again. Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode.

Of the Everyday Leadership Conversations podcast. The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety of programs for individuals and organizations to enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and updates, upcoming webinars, check out our events page@gojlc.com.