Sean Butner breaks down great leadership into three parts: co-creating with your team, making decisions around a clear purpose, and stepping back to let others lead. He also sorts fear into three types—loss, outcome, and process—and shows how to reframe each one by focusing on worst-case scenarios and anchoring to a bigger mission.
Questions this video answers
Great leadership hinges on co‑creating with those you lead, anchoring actions to a clear purpose (customer focus or product excellence), and adopting a servant‑leadership mindset that steps back to enable others. Examples from Walmart and Apple illustrate purpose‑driven decision making, and the book *Servant Leadership* is recommended for deeper learning.
Identify which of the three fear types you’re experiencing—loss, outcome, or process—and reframe each: consider worst‑case scenarios (often survivable), align the effort with a higher mission (e.g., helping the homeless), and remember you have support from others. This shifts focus from fear to purpose and growth.
Chapters
Morning, everyone. Welcome to Ask a Coach a Question. I'm your host, Sean Butner, certified high performance coach. And this is a weekly Friday show where we help you figure out things that you're trying to go after or struggles in your life so you can get some forward momentum and forward progress in advancing those things. Now today I got a couple of really awesome questions submitted by you folks. And just so you guys know that at any time you can go to SeanButner.com ask to submit your questions or just message me or comment below wherever you're watching this video. And also that said, please do the social media thing and share this with a couple of your friends or anyone that might be struggling with some of the topics that we're talking about today or could benefit from it. And so the two questions we have for today are, number one, what are the ingredients for being a great leader in all areas of life? Submitted by Christopher White. So awesome question. So we'll get to that. And then how can I overcome thoughts of fear and failure when I do something I've never done before? So a lot of I get this question a lot as a coach, so we'll talk through that again. So first off, okay, I love this, this question on what are the ingredients for being a great leader in all areas of life? And you know, as someone that's operated in large corporations, as someone that has, you know, set up events, does this. I think this is a little bit of a leadership thing. I think, you know, when it comes down to the components, I'm shaped a little bit about what I've learned at Walmart Corporate, a little bit about what I learned at Apple, and then some general concepts that high performance coaching is kind of helped get me clear on. Right. But I think the number one rule for leadership that most people miss is that people follow what they create. And what do I mean by that? I mean, if you imagine at work you have an idea for a project, right. And you propose that idea and you just force everyone else to do it, right? So you're doing a little bit of coercive authority versus you have an idea, your teammates collaborate and you're like, I love this, this might not work, but we could do it this way so that people are co creating with you. Right. So at the end you might not implement your idea exactly for a project, but with everyone else's buy in, everyone's going to be motivated to see it succeed because they have a little bit of skin in the game. Right. It's the same for in your Family, right? It doesn't. Everyone is leading in their family whether they believe it or not. And you know what, what energy are you leading with? How are you setting and creating situations for the kids to participate in the maintenance of the house or the fun things that you get, the vacations that you guys are doing or how are you co creating date night experiences with your partner? You know, it's. If it's always somebody pushing their idea and agenda, that's when you feel people kind of get disengaged, right? It doesn't really feel good. If you've ever been in the situation of someone saying hey we're going to this restaurant and I know you don't like seafood and it's a seafood restaurant, but that's where I want to go. So that's what's happening, right? That usually does not fly. So this idea of how do we co create, right? And you know Walmart was really great at this in Apple too. So they eat both, both had different focuses, right? Walmart was customer focused. Anything that was good for the customer was a good idea and they had that. Since that focus existed, that purpose of helping the customers, we really, you know, when it came to proposing idea, if you came at it with that angle, you had to have the ego get out of the way because either it does or doesn't and if it doesn't, we're not going to do deal with it. Right? And so that's how the decision making and the consensus building in that organization really helped. And at Apple the focus was on how do we build the best product, right. And whether that's an internal tool, whether that's one of the things on the, the iPhone or any one of their technologies. And so you could have heated arguments about what was going to be good for the product, but with that focus again ego supposed to, was supposed to get out of the way and if it ultimately wasn't a good experience for the product, it didn't get in. Right? So how can you apply this to your life, right? That's the hundred million dollar question is how can you one co create with the people that you're trying to lead at work, in your community organizations, in your family, your friends, all that kind of stuff. And then how can you kind of make sure that you're communicating the purpose of each group so that if the family it's to like love each other, right? That's the number one thing. We gotta make sure that through thick and thin that we love each other. How are you co creating that experience? With everyone in the family, right. Hey, Brittany, what's going on? And then, so that's kind of the basics on basic premise on leadership. I think most people miss. There's an awesome. There's a bunch of awesome books. I can't remember who the author of the original one was, but there's a book called Servant Leadership that I think is really, really helpful. And then also, you know, the role of the leader is to not dictate, but to kind of get out of the way and problem solve for folks. So I love that book, so I recommend you check that out. Okay. On to question number two. How can I overcome thoughts of fear and failure when I do something I've never done before? And, you know, I think this is an experience so many people have had before. I know I have. And really, like, you know, we talk about how to deal with fear and the high performance stuff all the time. And, you know, the first thought that comes to mind with this is you miss 100% of the shots you never take. So your chance of failure if you don't do anything is 100%. You're not going to succeed at that big idea that you have if you don't put forth the effort and try, right? But. So you get past that and you say, okay, I gotta try. But I still am afraid I'm gonna fail. I'm still afraid that I'm going to be judged. I'm still afraid that. Afraid, afraid, afraid. And you know, we always talk about the three different types of fear in high performance, right? In the coaching work I do. And, you know, the fear of loss, that if I start this new thing, right, I'm gonna lose out at something that I really love. So if I start the new diet, I'm going to lose out on eating delicious pizza, which is my favorite food, or cookies or whatever. If I start this thing, I'm going to lose time with family and friends because it's going to take a ton of time. And failure is such a frame of mind. You are attachment to outcome. That's the second fear. Brittany, you're. You're right on it. Second is outcome fear, right. That either we fear that the outcome is not going to be as rosy as we want, or it's not going to be as awesome as it is in our mind, right? So like training for a marathon, that's the. The metaphor I use all the time. Like, you don't see crossing that finish line after 26.2 miles as being something that you're proud of, as being worth all the effort, the pain, the toil, the sweat, the blood. Hopefully not the blood, but sometimes that happens too in marathons, you know, getting across that it's not going to be as great, great. The third type of fear is the process fear, right, that it's going to be hard as you do it. So if you're starting something new and you know, sometimes people don't like uncertainty, right? Probably understated right there. But when you don't like uncertainty and you have to figure things out on the fly, you can doubt yourself. You can say, maybe I'm not enough to do this, maybe my mission's not strong enough, my vision isn't, isn't clear enough. And we can get caught up in how tough it is to figure things out. And then each one of these types of fear, you have to remind yourself that you know, maybe number one, like worst case scenario, you're probably not going to die. You know, we activate that same part of the brain where it's that fight or flight sometimes. So knowing unless the fear is like a lion is chasing you, that's legit, be alarmed, avoid that giant cat. But if it's not, what's the worst case? Okay, the idea doesn't work out, but I learn and now I have more experience, now I have more insight, now I have a clearer vision of what doesn't work. To know what does work also, like focusing on the purpose, the mission, what you gain from this new endeavor. Like the person that submitted this question was wanting to start homeless shelters, which is an amazing, such a heart filled thing, right? And to honor that, that your heart is calling you to do something amazing, right? As to, you know, help people out in that way. You trust in that, don't doubt that and know that you know, with a strong mission like that, you will have people that will cheer you on, you will have people that will encourage you, you'll have people that want you to succeed. So it's such an important thing to just think of like the good you're putting in the world. Like if you ever doubt yourself, if you ever have that fear, double down on the good you're putting out in the world. Because one, we need it, you know, but two, don't underestimate how powerful your, what you do for good is. So I hope you enjoy this, this video. I love doing these again. You could go to SeanBugger.com ask to submit your questions or just direct message me or reply or comment below these videos. We'll do this again next Friday. Ask a coach a question, then we have our normal start your day with a coach, you know, Monday through Thursday at the same time, same bat place. So with that, all, really great to see you, Brittany. I'm so glad you're here. Everyone else out there so glad you're here, too. Everyone else watching, go out there live with more joy, more personal growth, and more impact in your communities, and I'll see you guys next week.
