Mindset Monday - T.E.A.M Culture Part 3

This is episode 196 of the Empowered Team podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team podcast, where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport, and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. Happy Monday, everyone. Welcome. Welcome to Mindset Monday. We are launching our week with a powerful mind and we are continuing on with our team culture because as I believe it was Peter Drucker who said, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Love it. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. So within the Empowered Team, our group coaching program, we created our team acronym. And as you've heard, we've gone through the table and the A or sorry, the T and the E portion of team so T was together, E was empower. And now we're on to A. So what does A mean in our team Empowered acronym? A is action. And if anyone knows me, I am all about the action. I'm so much about the action that sometimes I'm taking actions that are not the best actions for the outcomes that I want, simply because I love taking action so much. Now, if you're an achiever or a leader in that type of role or you're an overachiever like me, then sometimes you find yourself caught up in taking actions that maybe are the ones that are not the best actions. Or you might be caught up in taking too little action. It's hard to say. But this is where we get really specific on our action in the action part of our culture so that we can define what type of action are we committed to taking in order to create the culture that we want. And we are massive action focused, more massive action focused than passive action. So what's the difference between the two? Massive action are those key actions that get us to the outcome that we're trying to achieve, the desired outcome. So, for instance, I was. I was talking with someone at an event not long ago, and they were telling me about how they were going to really get going on their finances. Now, we were at a financial event, and in this financial event, we had to spend a lot of time planning out what actions we were taking to shift our financial outcome in our own lives. And this meant understanding exactly what types of investments we already had. It meant bucketing certain things in low risk or medium risk or high risk, looking at alternative investments, looking at uncorrelated investments. Like, there was a lot of work that we were doing in just understanding of where we currently were, let alone deciding where we wanted to go. And so the person was sitting next to me and I asked how, how Is this going for you? What's happening? And they replied by saying, I'm going to do this later when I get back from the event. And I said, well, but what, what's the, the thing you're looking to achieve? Like what's the outcome you want? And they told me, and I said, well, how are you going to get there if you aren't doing the things where the exercises that we need to do right now? And they said that they had a whole bunch of books that they were going to read. And I said, well, that's passive action, that's not massive action. And they asked me what I meant by that. And it's exactly this, that preparing to take the key actions seems like big action, but it's actually passive action. So when we are preparing to do something, that's really going to make the difference, that is, seems like we're busy, seems like we're doing the things, but it's actually passive action. So for instance, if it comes to something like a workout, setting your clothes up, choosing your clothes are passive actions. Whereas actually going and doing the workout, if the desired outcome is a certain time in a race or a certain size in clothing, let's say that's the ultimate outcome. But the action, the massive action is doing the workout. Passive action is setting out the workout clothes, thinking about what workout to do. That's passive action. So the preparing for the massive action is passive action. We get caught up as achievers so often in taking way too much action overall, and it leads to being a manager of actions instead of a manager of results. And what that means is that to be a manager of, of results, we have to actually be taking the massive action more so than the passive action. So what this looks like is clear. Goals, practices and strategies. There has to be clarity around what are the key things that really matter and making that that the priority. Another part of our action component in this part of our culture is also seeking growth. What seeking growth looks like is being able to coach yourself. Now, some people call this self talk, some people call this ridiculous. But coaching yourself is a critical part of self awareness and that is a critical part of being able to go in the direction that you want to go versus being stuck in sabotaging the success that you could have. So coaching yourself, getting coached by people who are qualified, people who have what you want, people who have more knowledge in the area that you want to understand better, people who have done the thing that you want to do, and you get coached by them, you're far more Likely to get out of your own stories and get into the action that will really make the difference for you. Creating the state that you need to take action, that's part of coaching yourself. If you have conversation and dialogue back and forth with yourself about whether to do something or not to do something, or maybe it should be done later, those types of things are this background negotiation that won't get you where you want to go. So making sure that you can create the state that you need to get into action is critical. This might look like some of the things I love to do to create state is move. I love to walk, I love to work out, I love to lift. And when I say that, people think, oh, well, lucky for you, I wish I loved to work out. Now, the truth is, I don't actually love to work out. I love the result of working out. I love the state that it gives me. I love the state that walking outside gives me, even if it's chilly out. So, no, I don't want to go out for a walk. No, I don't want to get into the gym and do the workout. I'm not jacked to do it every time. What it looks like is I am in love with the feeling that being strong gives me. I am in love with the feeling and the focus that I have after I go for a walk. I'm in love with the energy that I get from doing those things. So it is a critical skill that to be able to get in the state, to take the actions. It is a critical skill to be able to have the conversation, be in the meeting, communicate what needs to be communicated, and that takes state. And this is why I focused on making sure that when you seek growth, you have the ability to coach yourself. And that in part lends to getting into state. So when we say state, we're meaning the right physiology, the focus and the language that are going to give you that physical state, that overall mental and physical combination to be able to perform well. In science, being stressed is a state. In science, being sleepy is a state, or excited is a state. So we can actually study those states hormonally and physiologically, Whereas we can have all kinds of states. But there's certain ones that are studied in research. These states make a huge difference on the action that you will take. So if you notice that you're down, you notice that you're quiet, you notice that you're low, then it might be time to elevate your state. If you notice that you're too agitated and you're too wired or stressed, then it might be time to reduce your state and get into a state that's more functional for the action that you want to take. So these things are key. And what it allows, when we're really skilled at creating the states that we want, is that it allows us to take more action. And in this action category, we want to be responsible for our own transformation, for our own standards. So part of taking action is really understanding that we're not depending on anybody else for it, we're depending on ourselves. It doesn't mean we don't delegate, it doesn't mean we don't have other who's in our lives to draw from. What it does mean is that we know that we have our own back. It means that we're responsible for our own transformation, our own standards. And this is a necessary part of optimal action. We're not looking for suboptimal action or passive action or, or partial action, which I would call being half assed. We're looking for massive action that gets the results. So in action as well, this is another part of a key action. Especially when we're working on group culture and it's candor. This means that we say what needs to be said. The question becomes, is there anything left unsaid and are we using intelligent curiosity? So candor is a part of our action as well as part of our team portion of culture, our team action in culture. If we don't have candor, then what it means is that there's a massive inaction happening instead of a massive action happening. If there is something that's bubbling under the surface that's not been said or hasn't been shared or isn't effectively communicated within the group, then we, not only are we suffering from, well, it's worse than passive action, we're suffering from inaction. And sometimes an inaction can be a good thing. But the reason that this falls under our action category is that an inaction of leaving things unsaid, an inaction of non communication, an inaction of not questioning further, can be very, very destructive to a culture. And that's why we include it in the A line of our team culture. We include action, we include candor. But the kind of action is massive action. The kind of action is not relying on passive action. And we're certainly not going to be without action or doing inaction with regard to candor. Candor is going to be one of the key areas that is critical within a group. It's one thing to have massive action as an individual, but without candor in a group, our action can be really misguided. We need to have the group's understanding the group in touch and engaged with each other in order to have the actions that are going to be functional instead of actions that are going in the wrong direction for the outcome. So that is bringing you to our A line of team culture. So we've got T as in together, E as in empower, A as in action and our next one is going to go on to the M. So with that in mind, have a beautiful rest of your Monday. Let this kick you off powerfully into your week and ask yourself what's left unsaid? Where am I taking passive action that's compromising my massive action? And how can I take action that's really going to elevate the culture of my team? Whether that team is your workplace, your family, those in your community, your friendships, how is your action impacting the culture of your team? Have a beautiful rest of your week, everyone. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. The Empowered Team runs year round. It is our group coaching and accountability program where we take mindset and physical performance concepts and break them down to usable action steps that optimize results. To learn more about our Empowered Leadership coaching.