Leadershift

Those are actually the very last words of the book. I’m pretty sure this is the first time (in 577 of these Notes!) that we’ve started at the very end, but it seems like a good idea so here we are! :)

“The 11 Essential Changes Every Leader Must Embrace.”

Here’s the super-quick look then we’ll drill into a few of my favorites and see how we can apply John’s wisdom to our lives TODAY.

• Soloist to Conductor—The Focus Shift.

  Can we do great things as a “soloist” rocking it on our own? Sure. Will we achieve our leadership potential that way? No.

  That requires the first leadershift in focus from “me to we”—acting more like conductors than soloists.

• Goals to Growth—The Personal Development Shift.

  Goals are great. And… GROWTH is better. By making the leadershift from Goals to Growth we think bigger + longer-term and seize the opportunities to get better. When? You know that story. TODAY. And every day.

• Perks to Price—The Cost Shift.

  Are you into leadership for the “perks”? Well, congrats on the power and prestige and big paychecks.

  Now it’s time to make the shift to being willing to pay the price required to be your absolute best.

• Pleasing People to Challenging People—The Relational Shift.

  Isn’t it nice to have people like you? Sure is! And… That’s not at the heart of true leadership. We need to be willing to

  prioritize serving over pleasing

  —challenging people to be their best.

• Maintaining to Creating—The Abundance Shift.

  Maintaining prior levels of success is one thing. Constantly (!) pushing ourselves to exit our comfort zones and create the next-best version of ourselves and the people/places we lead requires a leadershift.

• Ladder Climbing to Ladder Building—The Reproduction Shift.

  Climbing ladders is great. And, an important part of the process. We need to prove our competence and ability to succeed. And… Helping others build THEIR ladders is ultimately what it’s all about.

• Directing to Connecting—The Communication Shift.

  This shift’s all about moving from being authoritative to collaborative; from talking to listening; from top down to side by side; from giving answers to asking questions. We need to make the communication leadershift.

• Team Uniformity to Team Diversity—The Improvement Shift.

  It’s time to celebrate our differences while, paradoxically, looking for common ground.

  “

  If we can connect where we’re similar and contribute using our differences, we can accomplish great things.

  ”

• Positional Authority to Moral Authority—The Influence Shift.

  Moral authority is the highest form of influence (aka leadership).

  The best leaders don’t lead from a place of

  positional

  authority. They lead from a place of MORAL authority. Their integrity lights the way.

• Trained Leaders to Transformational Leaders—The Impact Shift.

  This, John says, is the most important. Want to change the world? Become a trans

  formational leader—

  “

  inspire people to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more.

  ”

• Career to Calling—The Passion Shift.

  “

  A calling moves us from the center of everything in our world to becoming the channel through which good things come to others.

  ”

  Your destiny is CALLING. It’s time to answer it and make the final leadershift.

That’s from our second leadershift: “Goals to Growth.”

Layered learning.

<- That’s how John describes the incremental Optimization we talk about all the time.

What happens when we show up every day committed to and looking for ways to get a little better +1 +1 +1 style?

Well…

As we aggregate and compound those incremental gains over an extended period of time, we get some magic.

Which is why John also says: “What did Albert Einstein call the greatest mathematical discovery of all time? Not Arabic numerals. Not calculus. Not the theory of relativity. Compound interest—wealth that grows based on continual reinvestment. And what’s the secret to compound interest? Consistency! It never stops growing.”

Which leads us to the next Big Idea…

(But, first: How about we count and celebrate those rings on our trees and honor the natural rhythms of nature!)

That’s from our third leadershift “Perks to Price” in which we learn the importance of embracing reality and PAYING THE PRICE.

First: I grew up admiring Cal Ripken so I especially appreciate the fact that his record-setting game is considered the most memorable in Major League Baseball history.

So…

How do we pay the price and layer our learning and reap the benefits of compounded growth?

C O N S I S T E N C Y.

I’m typing this the week after our Heroic Coach – Class I graduation weekend. 500+ of us did a Spartan Race together. Alexandra and I finished with an awesome group that included my favorite elementary school teacher Mrs. Kuehnast and one of our Optimizers who is a great-grandmother and who has—get this—exercised EVERY DAY (!) for over 4,700 (!!!) days in a row.

You know how long that is? Over 13 years.

(Nearly as long as Cal Ripken’s epic consecutive-game streak for those keeping track. This picture of us at the Finish Line doesn’t do her Sparkling awesomeness justice. She’s AMAZING.)

P.S. Back to paying the price. John quotes the poet Rudyard Kipling who said: “If you don’t get what you want it is either a sign that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price.”

Reminds me of Scott Adams and his wisdom from How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Bigwhere he tells us: “One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard goes something like this: If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. It sounds trivial and obvious, but if you unpack the idea it has extraordinary power.

I know a lot of people who wish they were rich or famous or otherwise fabulous. They wish they had yachts and servants and castles and they wish they could travel the world in their own private jets. But these are mere wishes. Few of these wishful people have decided to have any of the things they wish for. It’s a key difference, for once you decide, you take action. Wishing starts in the mind and generally stays there.

When you decide to be successful in a big way, it means you acknowledge the price and you’re willing to pay it.”

That’s from our ninth leadershift: moving from “Positional Authority to Moral Authority.” But… You know what? I actually STARTED reading the book here. On page 193 to be precise.

When I first got the book, I did my normal thing. Read the back cover. Then the inside flaps. Then I scanned the Table of Contents. The phrase “Moral Authority” literally jumped off the page and high fived my daimon. :)

Moral authority. <- John tells us that it’s the highest level of influence.

He says: “Moral authority has the implicit power to transform what is into what can be. It takes people to higher levels of living and leading. It’s inspirational, yet at the same time it is grounded and credible. It makes leaders better because they desire to do better. Moral authority brings out the best in teams because of the respect team members have for the leaders and the desire team members have to live up to and follow their example.”

I read this chapter and asterisked and underlined pretty much the whole thing—writing in the margins “SOUL FORCE!!” and “RADIANT EXEMPLARS!!”

I smiled as I thought of our #1 goal of our Heroic Coach program: To help our Coaches coach THEMSELVES first so they can become radiant exemplars of their deepest values.

Why? Because that integrity is what leads to the highest form of influence.

How do we cultivate our moral authority? John tells us that it’s grounded in four things: competence, courage, consistency, and character.

We need to be good at what we do and show up with excellence in the small things. That’s the essence of competence.

Then we need to have the courage to do the right thing. John tells us that “Leadership authority shrinks or expands with a person’s courage. Author and professor C.S. Lewis said, ‘Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” (<- Brilliant.)

Then we need that consistency we talked about before—“doing well all the time, not just sometimes.”

All of which leads us to character. John tells us this is a blend of integrity (“the alignment of your values and actions”), authenticity, humility, and love.

Moral authority.

One more time: It’s the highest form of influence.

How’s yours?

And… What’s ONE thing you KNOW you could to Optimize this a little more TODAY?

P.S. Remember this: “What do you want to do with your leadership? I think every leader wants to make an impact, a difference. It’s the reason we get up in the morning. It’s why we work with people. It’s why we create teams or build organizations. Do you have it in you to do something big? Do you want to change your organization, or your community, or your culture, or your country? How big are your dreams? The bigger they are, the more you need moral authority to accomplish them.”

That’s from the final chapter on our final leadershift: “Career to Calling.”

We talked about the shift from Job to Career to Calling in our Notes on Martin Seligman’s Authentic Happiness where he tells us: “The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power, or goodness.”

John gives us some tips on how to discover and live our calling. Including: “I like the advice of author, philosopher, and civil rights leader Howard Thurman, who said, ‘Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Here’s to coming alive. Living our callings. Cultivating moral authority. In service to the world.

Consistently.

TODAY.