Will Humphreys on Revealing His Mistakes Before Becoming A Leader

In 2012, I told my wife that I was going to walk away from my practice. I had two locations at the time as a physical therapist. One was in Florence, one was in Maricopa, and I was. Drowning is the only way to describe it. I was so overwhelmed and burned out. I walked into my wife where she was sitting in the living room, and I said, heather, I can't do this anymore. I can't do it. I am unhappy, like, miserable, and I don't want to do this anymore. This isn't fun. I have to just walk away. I'll get a job as a therapist somewhere, but anything I do has to be better than this. And she looked at me lovingly and was very supportive. And she said, if that's how you feel, I've got your back, which to this day means so much to me. And she paused and said, but before you do, why don't you go get a coach and join a network? And if you've heard, if you're listening to this, you've heard versions of this story numerous times. This was a pivotal moment for me because this was the moment that got me to my first coach. And for me, I didn't know what to expect with coaching. It was something that felt very nebulous to me and kind of like voodoo magicy, if that makes sense. Where it was kind of like, people are getting paid and there's authorities online or are spewing knowledge like they know it all. And I just wasn't into it. But I didn't have any other choice because I thought, well, what else do I have to lose? I'm going to walk away and lose what I've built. Why not just try this thing called hire a coach? And I met this amazing coach called Carrie Maughan. She's still here in Arizona, and I highly recommend her to all. But she was the beginning of this journey for me of understanding how to develop leadership. Today's episode, we're going to talk about leadership and the concept of what it is in a way that I'm hoping you can really be open to, because ultimately, in any podcast or coaching, I've learned there's only two things that we need to be successful. We need the person who's listening or being coached to be open to it and then willing to take action. As a matter of fact, I had a coach tell me once, he said, will, you're not naturally good at almost anything in owning a company. And what's so funny is that didn't even hurt my feelings, because he was telling me what I already knew. But he said, you have this ability to be coachable and take action. He goes, you'll be capable of great things. And all of the great things I've achieved in my life are direct reflections of working with great people, building my network, and being open and willing to change. So I hope that as I talk today in our solo episode on leadership, that you'll be open to what I'm about to say. Because this cost me millions of dollars before I learned this and has made me millions of dollars once I've learned the concepts that we're going to be talking about today. But first, I just want to talk about what leadership is. Guys, I think we hear this term so much that it's, it doesn't even make sense. So listen, there are three elements of leadership. Obviously, leadership is a person who's leading a group of people and there's concepts like self leadership or whatever. But I want to identify leadership in three distinct areas. The first is the vision holder. A leader is someone who has a vision of how things can be better or some sort of outcome that they can see as possible for a group to achieve. The second is building a team. And the third is learning how to problem solve and make decisions. So leadership in terms of like the what they do is pretty much broken down it in those three components, vision, team creation, and problem solving. Because at the end of the day, the top of the bottle is where the bottleneck exists. It's the leader that creates the most opportunity or the greatest limitation as well as the greatest options for growth. So when we think about that, I want to share a couple of quotes right out of the gate that I love about leadership. My favorite one is by John Maxwell. A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way. A lot of times we hear concepts in leadership about. A leader is someone who teaches leadership in all that they do and sometimes uses words. Our actions are one of the most significant ways that we lead people by showing an example of how we operate. Another great quote that I love comes from Simon Sinek. He says leadership is not about being in charge, it's about about taking care of those in your charge.

Here's another one I love from Ronald Reagan. The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things. So it's one of those concepts when we think about leadership that again, it's still pretty nebulous, but I'm hoping you're starting to generate this idea of who you are. Because if you're listening to this podcast, the only reason you would take time out of your crazy day to listen to me talk at you is that you are a leader and you understand these concepts of like, I have to learn as a leader to grow. And so the concept I'm going to share with you, that's the most significant came from this institute called the Demartini Institute. The guy who founded it is Dr. John Demartini, and he had the single greatest impact conceptually of helping me lead others. So in today's episode, we're specifically talking about how you, as a leader, can help lead other leaders. I'm hoping that I'll develop myself as a leader to where I get made fun of for saying certain things all the time. Great leaders repeat themselves over and over again on the key concepts because they want the people they love, the people they serve, to really embed that into their DNA. So the concept that I want you to remember that I hope I say all the time, is that the number one job of a leader is to build more leaders. Remember how I was talking about the vision holder, the team creator and the decision problem solver? We're focusing on that team builder. And that's the number one purpose that we hold, is to create more leaders. So how do we do that as parents? How do we do that as leaders of companies? Well, it goes to understanding what it is that we're trying to produce in people. At the end of the day, it's independence. We want people to be self reliant. The irony that I found both as a parent and a business leader is that when I helped other people become self reliant, they loved me more, they gave me more credit when really it was easier, at least in the end, to help them take charge of their own problems, their own area of expertise in a business or whatever it is. When they were able to independently manage those things on their own, their confidence grew. And then they loved me because I was the guy that was trying to help them get there. And so today we're going to talk about how we get there using this information from the demartini Institute. So when we talk about developing leaders, there's two main ways that we do that. We support our people and we challenge our people. So what does supporting mean? Supporting means that we nurture, we educate, we comfort, we encourage. For most people in healthcare, this is a very natural form of leadership because we do this with our patients. We see the wins and we celebrate the wins. Right. We're very good about helping people see the path and encourage them along the way. We model a gait pattern or we teach them what the right range of motion is. And as we teach and we support them, we empower to a point. And then as these patients of ours get better, they start to feel more confident. Remember, competence breeds confidence with the people that we're leading. And so as we're helping patients learn to walk again, it's one of the favorite, my favorite things of all time is seeing the look in people's eyes when they can walk, when they've had a severe accident. For those of you who haven't been listening, I got into therapy because I fell off a mountain when I was 17 and broke both arms and both legs. 21 bones in my body. And my therapist, Connie, she was there the day that I first opened the door in my platform walker. After months, I had casts on all four extremities. I was partial weight bearing on my left lower extremity, and I was just hobbling to the front door. And when I opened the door for the first time, I was beaming so brightly that she started to cry. Like, is there something, is there anything better than we can experience as leaders than to see the people that we are working with grow and gain confidence in their capabilities? Right? And this is true for us in every aspect, whether we're at home with our kids or with a company leading other people is that we are there to help them become self reliant. And that requires support. But on its own, just support isn't enough. The other side of that coin is challenge. So on one side it's support, the other side it's challenge. If all we do is support, then we enable people and prevent them from growing. And this can show up like, a lot of different ways as a parent. It can show up like a child who continues to ask for help tying their shoes and now they're 12, right? Like, at what point are we helping them by tying their shoe for them? Think of it in medical terms like a brace, right? If we have a brace on an arm initially, right after the injury, that's so great because that support protects the extremity from additional damage. It allows the right pressure gradients so that scar tissue can heal in the right form, so that the bones can heal in aligned ways. The support is a huge part of growth. But what if that cast or the brace was on the extremity for two years after the injury? The muscles would waste. There'd be no utilization of that arm beyond a certain base level function because that cast or that brace is going to limit its ability to grow. What it needs is to be challenged. And we do this in physical therapy all the time with our patients, don't we? We, we always ask, like, are those patients? Are those exercises getting too easy for you? And the reason we're asking that is because we see what happens to people when they're not being challenged. They get disinterested. They kind of just go through the motions. And so it goes with our leaders that we're building within our own company. Our employees oftentimes are just going through the motions and frankly, getting used and comfortable at throwing things at us to solve when it's their department or theirs to own. We train people, all of our people, to treat us the way that we're being treated. So if we're not happy in how we're being treated, then we have some work to do around retraining them on how to operate with us. And obviously there is a difference, I think when we're looking at leadership from a place of overseeing a team versus a partnership, right? Like a marriage or an actual business partnership, the concepts still apply. But there's an inherent equality that exists in those relationships that requires additional communication to establish agreements to where we both feel supported and challenged in our relationship. And it's an interesting thought too, if you think about, like, marriage. What if the marriage was only supportive and there was no challenge? If the spouse that we end up with only just said good job to everything we did and laughed at all of our jokes and thought everything we did was amazing? Where's the challenge in that? Where's the growth as a marital partner? For me, right? And obviously, I think what's cool about how God operates is that he bakes in us enough imperfection to where there's going to be challenge. It's oftentimes dealing with our own crap or our spouse's limitations and weaknesses, right? And so it goes with learning as a leader from our people. As we're building more leaders and we're supporting them, we also have to challenge them. So what does challenge look like? Well, it depends on the situation, but I can tell you it looks like someone trying hard. Like if an employee is bored, they're under challenged. If a child is bored or entitled, they're under challenged. And so it's our job to create the challenge. So what's interesting about these concepts of support and challenge is that all of us inherently are better at a certain element of this than the other which one are you better at? I would love, love for you to comment on whatever form you're listening to this to in the notes or whatever about what is it that you're struggling with or what are you great at? Right? Like are you a good supporter or are you better at challenging people? The way that you'll know this is that if you challenge a lot of people, you may not feel a lot of connection from them because they're fearful of you, or they're constantly complaining that they're burning out because that's the consequence of over challenging. Now we talked about support and its negative consequences when it's not balanced by challenge. But let's talk about challenge just for a minute. When we over challenge, we overwhelm, right? And this by the way, these concepts also apply to us as individuals. Self leadership is how we support and or challenge ourselves. But when we're looking at other people, we can see it more clearly. And that's the gift that we get as leaders. When we build more leaders, it forces us to become better leaders ourselves. We can't help someone up on a rock that we're not already standing on.

So we have to self lead. We have to grow. Listening to shows like this, reading the right books, helping and being in the field and practicing these elements constantly, and by the way, failing constantly. I see a lot of the people I've worked with over the years, it's their failure that limits them because they put a story around it that it defines who they are or an element of their ability. I can't do this because this failed. Well, that's just a failure in and of itself. It has nothing to do with us as a worthy individual. It does have something to do with our effectiveness though. So changing our mindset to be more evaluative. Like a physical therapist on an eval day, let's evaluate our actions objectively and pull as much emotion out of that as possible because it doesn't serve. We're looking for validation elsewhere. When we're doing that, the only thing that builds validation internally is confidence. And that comes from becoming more capable. And the only way to become more capable is by failing constantly. Constant failure builds capability, builds confidence, which we generate internally. So we don't need the plate of cookies from our patients. We don't need an employee to go, wow, you're such a great boss. None of that matters. It says more about them than it does about us. In the end, it's the results that matter. And so as we develop ourselves as leader, we challenge ourselves or we support ourselves. Some of us really struggle in that we all have a natural ability that we tend to be better at than others. So what is it that you are great at? Maybe you're a decent balance of both. But I want to just give you a minute to ponder where it is in space that you could make improvements on one of those two sides. Challenging or supporting. And ultimately, as. As you focus in on those, one of the easiest ways that we can get feedback is by simply asking people for feedback. Here's an activity that I challenge all of you to do. This is not for the weak at heart. This is for people who are really serious about being the best leaders they can be. This is an exercise given to me by an amazing coach.

An amazing coach who loved me very deeply. His name was Brandon Craig. Very powerful coach. He had me go to everyone in my immediate, closest circle, friends, families, so my wife, my parents, and then my leadership team at my company at the time. And I had a couple of questions that I sent with them. So I first called them and said, hey, listen, I'm doing some self work and I really need your help. And everyone's like, you got it. It's amazing because people are inspired by individuals who are working on themselves. It shows vulnerability, which Brene Brown has shown is one of the greatest ways that we can connect with other human beings is through our weaknesses and our vulnerabilities. So when someone's improving themselves, it's like a deck of cards and you're showing all your cards saying, hey, listen, I'm trying to be better, but you help me. And everyone's drawn to that. That in and of itself was a powerful experience. But I've done this with people I've coached in the past as well. And this is a transformative response, realization on our effectiveness as leaders and where we can stand to improve. The first question is, what is it about me that you love the most? Now that's for family, for employees, it's like, what is it that I do that helps the most? Where do you think my strengths are as a leader? And of course, people who care about us are very free and loving with that. That information.

Then we go the harder question, which is, what is it about me that's hard to be around?

That's a different question than what my weaknesses are as a leader. It's like, what? What's hard about being with me? What's challenging for you to work with me, be married to me, to be my son or daughter?

And that's where people, when they feel safe, can share with you the most valuable information. I had this as a conversation with each person directly, and I would encourage you to only do this in person because the conversation itself was magical. When I was with my wife, I remember we were in our bathroom, this larger bathroom off of our maid bedroom, and I was sitting kind of on the edge of the tub, and we had those moments where we were just connected and we were just talking very deeply about things. And I said, hey, listen, can I ask you a couple of really important questions? And I won't share with you what she said, because that was sacred to me. What she said to me about what she loved about me and what she loved most about being around with me. But what I really appreciated was what was hard for her to be. What was it like for her, what was hard being married to me? Like, what was that like for her? And it was like being shown a mirror, what she said. And it was cool because it's not like she went on a rant of all the horrible things that have been pissing her off, like, that wasn't what this was about. And the heart set was so clear that when she shared all those wonderful things with me and then she pivoted into these hard things, she was able to find language in a way that was clear and loving, even though it was hard for me to hear. And boy, did I hear it. You know, I didn't get defensive because I was truly open. And as I heard that, it changed me as a leader more than any other discussion I had. Even though I remember learning a ton from my leadership team at the time. They told me some deep things, but they also told me some superficial things, like, yeah, man, you can't control your facial expressions. When someone's pitching a good idea, you light up. And when someone's pitching you a bad idea, you look like you're about to throw up, even though you say, well, thank you for sharing that idea. And it makes people feel horrible inside. I had no idea I was doing that, by the way. But more important than those visual cues are these deeper impacts that we can learn about as we have these heartfelt discussions with the people we lead. Now, here's the craziest part of this exercise. Be ready. No one prepared me for this. But the second someone can really share with you what is in their heart as they see you as a leader, what do you think happens next? Rockstars, they immediately want to know the same information. I mean, it's powerful because they feel free. They say something to you in a way that's like, wow, I was able to tell them that and they could handle will increase closeness at a level that you will not believe, both in the personal relationships as well as the professional. It's one of the coolest connecting activities that, that also improve our leadership. But you have to be ready for them to come back and say, yeah, and what do you love about me? It's hard being married or working with me and you've got to be ready. And I trust that if you have the courage to take this exercise on that you will find the language in that time. But it might just two words of advice. It might serve you just to give that a little thought of what that might might be in return. Especially the part about what you love about working with them or being with them. Now listen, rockstars, for many of you as you're listening to this, you might be thinking, yeah, I don't operate on that emotional level. That's fine. Like, this exercise doesn't have to be anything other than what it does for you. Like if your style of leadership is more objective. I have a partner, for example, who I can tell sometimes he'll make comments about like, my leadership style is more on this emotional side of things. That's just where I live. His isn't better or worse, it's just different. His communication style is a little bit more objective, a little less emotional based. So in that case, look at it more like a science project, right? Be more prepared to get the five or six data points that you need that you can apply to yourself to upgrade performance as a machine called leadership. For me, I use terms like heart set because it changes how I feel. It helps me understand how I help others feel. But language in this case is more personalized and it doesn't matter as much as the impact and the change on performance. And so leaders, thank you so much for spending some time with me in this solo episode as this has been on my mind as I've coached people. And I think when I'm talking in these podcasts, especially in these solo episodes, I'm imagining you right now as you're listening. This isn't like I'm thinking about what I'm saying. I'm seeing you in front of me, sitting in your car, driving to work or coming home or on a walk or fitting it in while you're exercising. I see and feel connected to you as you're going through this journey and I just want you to know that what you do makes a difference. It's taken me some time to look back on my journey when I was in that space to realize how big of an impact it is that leaders of companies make. But you make an incredible difference. You're the biggest impact on our economy. You create jobs. You have the greatest impact on your families as you navigate this self leadership and becoming the type of leader that can grow their income and their impact and their freedom. And so don't waste time second guessing yourself or head trash or whatever those terms are, right? The imposter syndrome and all these terms that are coming up. Think of it in terms of impact and outcomes because what you do has a huge impact and it makes a huge outcome. And it's about enjoying the journey. Let's just take some time and realize there is no such thing as perfection. This is a summitless mountain that we're climbing together. So right now, in this space together, thank you for what you do and thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. Until next time, guys, thank you for taking time to listen to today's episode. If you found today's information to be useful, could you take a minute and help me? I would love it if you could leave a podcast review in your app so that other people who are looking for this information can find it. Plus, my dream is to have the largest network of medical entrepreneurs and leaders in the world so that together we can change healthcare to make it better for all. So in addition, if you can think of anyone that you could send this to, not only would that mean a lot to me personally, but it would build this network so that we can make healthcare the way that we want it.