The #1 Leadership Trap That Cost Me Millions

Strength without humility eventually becomes domination. When it comes down to building an organization, one of the things that I learned over the last 30 years is the importance of approaching leadership from a healthy grounded state. So one of the things that was true for me early in my early days of building organizations was a lot of fear and a lot of insecurity. What I mean by that is my executive team, the people that I encircled myself with me to help me bring to fulfillment the business we were creating, I had to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't leading well. In fact, when we started creating leadership content, I did so on the behest of my new team, who was like, you need to be talking about this so we can avoid leadership mishaps and behaviors that can be avoided, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this specific concept. Strength without humility eventually becomes domination. And if you're going to build a meaningful enterprise and a meaningful business, you've got to understand the dichotomy between an over-controlling leader and a grounded, rooted one who is protective and bold. This type of leadership specifically can tear apart your organization if you're not paying attention. For example, when I went to go build my first company from the trash piles of the construction site to upwards of 9 figures in annual revenue on a regular basis, starting with just me and a hammer and a nail, all the way scaling it to where I had hundreds of team members across multiple states, I had to do a lot of leadership growth. And when I was done that journey, I used to be very over-controlling. I'd be overly aggressive. Because I thought I was communicating passion. I wasn't actually communicating passion. What I was doing was I was constricting the very oxygen the team needed to breathe. When you look at this concept, one of the things you're gonna understand very quickly is how you show up as a leader directly affects how your team shows up for you. As a result, if we're leading from insecurity, we're gonna give ourselves a lot of issues we gotta face. One of the things that I did early on is I used to control the room and control the impact of the room because I didn't want to be seen less than. I wanted my ideas to carry weight. I wanted the structure to carry weight. But what I wasn't doing is I wasn't tapping into the combined genius of the room itself. So here's the first thing you gotta fully understand. The tyrant leader confuses fear with respect, just as I did. Fear can produce short-term compliance, but it never produces long-term loyalty or trust. In fact, it destroys it. And again, I've done this. Not to mention, leaders who rely on intimidation often mistake silence and obedience as a sign of respect. It's not respect at all, it's fear. We use controlling behaviors to incorporate fear into our team, and therefore our team can't respond effectively. In reality, people may comply outwardly while internally disengaging from the mission as a whole, or disengaging from you as a leader as a whole. So much of the content that we have to consume as leaders has to be a healthy development of a healthy identity where we're not trying to prove, strive, or otherwise take away from our own self-worth in a way that actually communicates to the team in a healthy manner. True respect is built through character and consistency and not through pressure or fear. As you shape your character, your leadership will take shape as well, which takes me to the next point for this video. Strength without humility breeds arrogance. Let that sink in. If you followed any of my content, you know I teach a concept called the Five Constraints. It's the 5 emotional triggers that control all entrepreneurial and founder behavior patterns. These constraints constrict the very oxygen of the team, the organization, and you as the leader. And the number one is arrogance. The number one constraint that gets most of our founders way is the term arrogance, because strength, again, without humility breeds it. You've got to remember that when strength is not balanced with humility, you as the leader will begin believing that your authority is stronger than it actually is. In essence, you start feeling like you're beyond correction. Every leader has to be accountable. Every leader has to learn to be a good steward. Every leader has to listen to their team to actually understand what their blind spots really are. Arrogance by itself slowly isolates the leader because people stop offering honest feedback. So let me ask you a question. As the founder, as the leader, as the business owner right now, how often do you feel misunderstood? How often do you feel like you're isolated on island by yourself? That is a telltale sign that culture work needs to happen from you as the leader, from the inside out. Without correction, these blind spots grow larger and larger and larger, and the leadership decisions become more increasingly distorted, which means you're putting in chaos and dysfunction in the business. And as you've heard me say a thousand times, and I'll continue to say it till I pass from this earth, you cannot scale dysfunction. You can fight, you can try, you can strive, but you cannot— you can't— you can't scale it. So rather than trying to scale dysfunction, why don't we start to scale integration? Why don't we begin to create a better version of you that leads a better version of a new team that is feeding off of you anyway? These teams are solving and thriving on your own rhythm. So whatever rhythm you give them to operate in is the very rhythm that they're going to follow in order to build the organization to begin with. And if you want peace of mind, you want to get rid of isolation, you want to get rid of being misunderstood, you want to get rid of being burned out, overwhelmed, then it starts with you. Where are you housing arrogance? Where are you housing "I know better than anybody else"? Where are you not listening? Where are you not actually showing up for yourself? What needs to be learned? The great thing about humility and being a humble but confident leader is it keeps strength grounded. Reminding leaders that authority is responsibility and not a privilege. It's not a privilege that you're a leader. It's a responsibility of stewardship. It's an identity. It's a character-driven, capacity-raising identity that you get to create along the way. Why? Because you are in the seat. You are the founder. You're the leader. You're the person that is being called on to create from. If you want to bring this vision to life, you've got to get yourself to a place where you understand you can't scale dysfunction and humility is required and arrogance is at every turn., and you have to be aware of that. As if that's not strong enough, I want to tell you something else. Teams shut down under tyrants. They don't thrive. They shut down. Again, I know because I've done it. I've been the over-controlling leader. I've been the overly aggressive leader. I've been the person who shut everybody down who didn't want to listen to advice, and I'm telling you, it cost me time, energy, and millions of dollars for my own foolishness, and I don't want that for you.. I want your teams to thrive. I want your teams to thrive because your leadership, not shut down because of your leadership. Fear-based leadership discourages initiative because people worry about being criticized or punished. If your team feels like they're going to be criticized or punished, they're not going to respond. They're not going to voice their innovative ideas. They're not going to want to connect. They're not going to be part of what you're building. You've got to understand that creativity and problem solving disappear when team members feel unsafe to speak honestly. So much of your job as a leader is to create safety within your organization. Clarity and safety. If you create clarity and safety consistently, then those in your stewardship are going to create their own version of improved processes and systems and accountability structures because you chose to lead them with wisdom rather than control. So now that you understand how vitally important it is to understand where you're leading from and how you're leading and how you're showing up, Now I want to help you understand what it looks like in strength, because healthy strength, healthy leadership, becoming the mature lion, the mature lamb in our one part lion, one part lamb framework is understanding that healthy strength protects people. True authority protects both the mission and the individuals responsible for carrying that mission forward. Strong leaders set clear standards, boundaries, while also creating an environment that fosters collaboration, fosters autonomy, fosters freedom where people can grow and develop. Courageous leaders develop the organization over time. Great leaders create more great leaders, as well as the values needed to operate that organization with excellence. So in essence, you create the values and you defend it, and for the people within it. When strength is healthy, it becomes a source of stability rather than intimidation. So I want you to begin to ask yourself when you go into these different circumstances, whether it be a client, a team member, etc., Are you coming from a place of stability? Are you coming from a place of control? Are you coming from a place of intimidation? If you don't do X, this is going to happen. That sounds an awful lot like punishment, rather than let's sit down and understand what's not working, how we can improve it, and join forces together to make sure this moves forward in a healthy manner. As we wrap up today's video, I want you to understand that integration keeps strength clean. The lion represents courage and direction and conviction within leadership. The lamb represents humility, compassion, and the emotional awareness needed to execute with excellence and build a team and not destroy a team. When strength operates without compassion, it becomes domination. So let's make sure your strength has compassion filtered in, because when the lion is tempered by the lamb, strength becomes protective rather than oppressive. And people love to operate in environments like this. They thrive in it. Don't waste decades figure out what I figured out the hard way. Take this word of advice, take this information and apply it immediately. Because strength is necessary for leadership. You're not going to get it— you're not going to hear it any other way. Strength is necessary for leadership. But strength without humility eventually becomes domination. That domination ends up destroying your organization from the inside out. Leaving you isolated, burned out and overwhelmed. When courage is tempered by compassion, leadership, it becomes powerful without being destructive. I hope you enjoyed this video. And if you did, I want you to check out the One Part Lion, One Part Lamb podcast right here where amazing leaders and amazing guests come to share their insights on what it means to rise, lead, and last. And if you want more content of the how-to mechanism, I want to go ahead and invite you to watch this video right here. God bless. I'll see you soon. Take care. Peace.