Timeless Leadership Principles | The Better Than Rich Show Ep. 4

Turn Uncertainty Into Progress

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Turn Uncertainty Into Progress 〰️

Timeless Leadership Principles

What does it mean to be a leader? Contrary to cliché definitions and belief, we at Better Than Rich know you don’t need to be in a leadership position to lead. Being a leader can be difficult at times, but there are some timeless core leadership principles to go by. These principles are good for becoming a leader and learning how to be a better one.

What is the Definition?

Leadership produces progress. You can be a leader in any context if you are committed to improving things. Being a leader is not the same as being a manager. Managers are in charge of managing systems while leaders manage people and energy. A leader wants to win the long game not just fix things for the moment.

Relationships

A leader’s relationships are extremely important because generally, those are the people who are being led. A good leader should be able to know what people want. It’s important to know your own end goal but also those of the people you lead. Then you can make educated decisions to ensure your relationships are always win-win.

There are several kinds of relationships. One where you win but the other person loses, another where you lose and the other person wins, and the best where you both win. A win-win relationship is equally beneficial for both parties involved.

Step One: What do I want?

To keep a win-win relationship intact there should be a solid foundation where boundaries, wants, needs, and outcomes are discussed.

Then, there is no confusion on the next steps and there is always a shared goal. The more questions and understanding the better. And if the relationship becomes less than win-win it’s much easier.

Playing The Long Game

As a leader you need to know that you won’t win them all, not everyone is going to be happy with every single decision you make… and that is fine. A good leader is always open to the possibility of transformation. A leader’s mindset is always that anything and everything is possible. A leader’s presupposition is always that they are limitless.

We at Better Than Rich know there is always another game. Give yourself whatever serves you now, because leaders can’t lead on rocky foundations.

Leaders also solve things for the long run, not for the moment. Instead of just doing, they teach so the people who they lead can learn to solve their problems. Leaders lead… to create self-sufficient individuals and that can hopefully then do the same.

Being a leader isn’t about who you are leading or if you are in a traditional leadership position. It’s about the progress you create, the energy you bring, and the relationships you make.

Andrew Biggs 2:00
All right, all right. All right. Good morning everyone. Welcome to the better than rich Show. I'm so excited to be here with you and I am again joined by my co host, Mike Abramowitz. Mike, how you doing this morning?
Mike Abramowitz 2:13
Feeling good. South Carolina right now, making our way up.
Andrew Biggs 2:18
All over the place as we're getting this thing started. I was in Dallas. Where are you at in South Carolina?
Mike Abramowitz 2:24
We're outside of Colombia on our way up to what's Virginia.
Andrew Biggs 2:27
So what is the purpose of this trip?
Mike Abramowitz 2:30
This is the three year anniversary that my wife and I are celebrating. So awesome,
Andrew Biggs 2:34
man. Congratulations. excited for all of you guys have a blast. I heard you have some, some pretty, you know, kind of cool stuff on the docket in West Virginia. Like what? What's the plan?
Mike Abramowitz 2:46
Yeah, we're going to a place called the Greenbrier. It's a very, very bougie uppity type of experience. We're gonna do like a horse and carriage play a $500, round the golf, send the wife to this, get a facial and, and have I gotta wear my tuxedo to dinner, put it that way. So it's gonna be royalty type of treatment. My wife deserves it. And it's been it's been a great journey these last couple years. So it's gonna be nice,
Andrew Biggs 3:15
awesome, man. Well, congratulations, enjoy your third wedding anniversary. And yeah, I can't imagine what a $500 round of golf is going to be like, but I can't wait to hear more about it. So today, our topic is leadership. And we're gonna be talking all about leadership principles, timeless leadership principles that can help you go from being average to being great. You know, obviously, that's a journey that I think every leader at some point needs to take, obviously, Mike, you can talk a little bit about your journey from, you know, average to being number one in your category and winning a bunch of prizes and trophies, and trips and everything that you've been on. But really, these timeless leadership principles don't change. And we're going to talk to you guys about many of them. We are live. And if you want to jump in the chat and ask some questions about leadership. You know, I definitely feel like this is one of my areas of expertise, and I can't wait to dive in. But I'm kicking things off, you know, we have to ask ourselves, what is the idea of leadership in the first place? So I want to give kind of a definition, I want to see what you think like, when I think about leadership, leadership is that which creates progress. Leadership is what creates progress in this world. There's problems, leaders turn problems into progress, leaders turn uncertainty into progress. And so really, it's the energetic of making things better. Whenever we are attempting to make something better, we're exercising leadership. Now sometimes people say, Hey, I'm not in a leadership position. I'm an individual contributor, or maybe I'm a member of a team. I'm not even in business or sales. But here's the thing. leadership has nothing to do with your position and it has everything to do with how you show up on a daily basis. You know, I've run companies where there's leaders in all facets of the organization in logistics and planning and I Variations in strategy, of course, in sales and marketing and business as well. But you don't have to have a leadership title to be a leader, all you have to do is be committed to making things better than they were before you got on the scene. Mike, what do you think about this definition of leadership? And what's coming up for you so far?
Mike Abramowitz 5:20
I can't say I've ever heard that definition. But I love it. I think that it's spot on. You know, and the reason why I think it is spot on, because it's relevant to what a lot of the cliche leadership definitions might be, like, you know, some of the cliche definitions are like, managers manage systems where leaders manage people, you know, leave today better than you found it. You know, in fact, I asked a question on my Facebook a couple weeks ago of like, how would you define a leader, and there's all these a lot of cliche aliy. A leader knows the way he shows the way and goes the way. You know, like, there's all the different cliche definitions of how to define leadership. But I really like what you just said, which is, is to make move progress? How did you say what will say one more time that was so eloquent?
Andrew Biggs 6:12
Yeah, it's just that that which produces progress, so leadership produces progress. And if we are committed to making things better than then we found them, then we're practicing leadership, whether we're in a leadership position, or we're just a member on a in a club or a committee, or, you know, practicing just being a great neighbor, you can be a leader in any sort of context, if you are committed to making things better. So yeah, man, I love it. And, you know, talking a little bit about leadership principles, one of the things I was thinking about leading into this, and I teach my community is that ultimately, when we're thinking about next level leadership, we need to be committed to playing the long game. And that's something that you've been committed to, I want to hear your thoughts on this as well. But playing the long game really means just, you know, I like to use this analogy, to help people understand what it means to play the long game in business. And the analogy I like to use most most frequently for this is the NBA. And a few years ago, Gregg Popovich, who's kind of one of the best coaches in the NBA, he's known for getting the most out of his talent. He's also known for like making stars, you know, kawhi, Leonard really wasn't much of anything until he worked with Popovich and Gregg Popovich, Coach of the San Antonio Spurs, he started thinking differently about how to win championships. And here's how it here's what he did. Of course, the question is, what's the point of an NBA game? Well, obviously, the point of the NBA game is to win. But then if you think about it, what's the point of an NBA season? Well, the point of an NBA season is to win the championship. And if I'm leveraging my teams health, if I'm leveraging my team's energy, if I'm leveraging, you know, things in the short term to win this game, add at the expense of losing the championship, then I've lost the season. So Gregg, Popovich started thinking about this, he said, Okay, how can I actually make sure, especially with some of my older stars, that we have enough energy and health for the for the for the postseason. And what he started doing is resting his players from time to time, and actually strategically losing gains in the middle of the season, so that he could win the long game. And as leaders, we need to be thinking this way, we need to be thinking, Okay, here I am, I'm in a relationship with somebody. If I try to win every single exchange, if I try to win every single interaction with them and and get the better of the exchange, and try to leverage all my social capital with them in this moment, I might be sacrificing some long term gains. And obviously, in any relationship, especially in any business context, where someone's getting better at a job over time, most of the gains are to be had much later, down the road. So I'm curious what you think about this idea of like playing the long game, winning the meta game of leadership, and not trying to win every exchange but just trying to win the long game that you're playing here in life? What do you think like?
Mike Abramowitz 9:20
It's very relevant to me right now in my business with vector and Cutco because our our district team is on the verge of doing something that's never been done before. give some context. This year, we're going to be number one, and we're over $2 million in sales as a district team right now. And the record all time for our district team is 2.6 million which has been standing for the better part of 10 years. And we have a chance at doing that next year. We have, we have 10 managers that are ready to open up offices next summer. We're going from essentially including mine, we're going from offices to 11 offices. So we're going to grow exponentially. As a district team next summer, we are going to go from four, maybe five assistant managers working in my office to better part of 15 or 16 assistant managers in my organization. So we have a lot of development. So in order to build towards something that's never been done before building a division inside my district, we need to, I need to think differently. So right now in this in this season, our busy season is next summer, we'll do you know, out of the 3 million that we want to do, we got to do about 2 million of that during the summer. So in order to build towards that, each individual conversation I have every week, I have anywhere from 18 to 22, individual one on 120 minute conversations. A lot of it is about you know, next summer, and sometimes taking your concept to the metagame of they might not have a good sales week this week, they might not want to do anything this week, they might be overwhelmed at school this week, they might be having a challenge at home this week. So I'm not going to press them. I'm not going to, you know, oh, if you don't get to that $500 this week, you know, you're going to you know, miss out on next summer. You know, it's like, that's not the conversation this conversation is like, I you know, I get it, you got a lot to do. Let's handle it. We got 25 weeks from now until season. So hey, no big deal. When you're ready to recover, no big deal. But let's talk about you know, what, what do you need right now what's going to serve you at the highest level right now. And being willing to say, I might not get the extra sales or the extra recruits or whatever it might be right now. But it's going to build towards this big beautiful, unbelievable vision for 2021 and beyond because then that's foundational, where we can recreate what it means to think big as a district team, you know, if next year 2021 I mean, we just opened up Tampa in 2019. So within two years to go from a million dollar district team to a $1.5 million district team to over $2 million district team this year and then take a quantum leap to over $3 million district team next year. Who knows what the next Quantum Leap could look like? I know we have it mapped out and I have like a three to five year vision of what that could look like. Which you know, we could get into at another point but it's it's pretty exciting.
Andrew Biggs 12:30
Yeah, that's amazing man. That's amazing. And you know, what I found is that when you respond that way to people when you treat people that way and you don't treat them as these items to be used you don't treat them as numbers on a balance sheet you don't treat them as some sort of like capital like human capital that you have on your squad only to have every bit of sales squeeze out of them every single week, then they respect that they appreciate that they say wow, this person actually really appreciates me they care about me and my journey and what we you know, what's actually in alignment. And what I see a lot of managers do or would do in that situation Mike would kind of go into scarcity mode and say, Yeah, well we did really well three months ago but now we're kind of starting to drop off and sales aren't exactly where we'd like I gotta I gotta get in people's faces and I got to rile them up and I got to challenge them and hey, you know there's definitely a time and a place for challenge when you see like somebody is not exactly showing up the way they need to we can talk about that a little bit later. But a lot of times what someone needs is just more curiosity, right just to lean in and say hey, look what's going on here How can we figure this out? what's what's a win win sort of look like for me and you not just this week, not just this month? But what about this year? What about in the next three years? If you're having these sorts of conversations with people you know, they really respond they appreciate that and then they they don't want to leave not just because they don't have options of course they have options because you've trained them really well but because you've created the best option for them and and I think that's really cool so anything else you want to say on that when you when you say okay, giving people the benefit of the doubt giving people space to go on their on their journey and playing the long game? How do they tend to respond when you do that for them?
Mike Abramowitz 14:25
They know I care. I mean that's that's a lot of what leadership is it's leadership is is leading, we have a hashtag in our organization leaders lead. It's a very simple hashtag, but you know, what does it mean to lead it doesn't necessarily mean to follow me. It means to think differently, oftentimes think with with the other person's, like, think with empathy, and sometimes I need it I need to do that and in order for me to show up and give empathy to them, and for them. I also They need to show up and give empathy and Joe for myself hence why we have previous conversations on this podcast about meditation and self care and self awareness. Because if I'm not taking care of myself, then I might project onto them. If I'm playing injured, see playing injured, it's good. It's it's, it's a good solution. Sometimes it's not a long term solution. But it's good, it's good to play injured, we learn a lot. But man fatigue, it makes cowards of all of us. So if I'm playing injured emotionally, and I go into a conversation with someone who's also playing injured emotionally, there's a chance that I'm going to project some of my own insecurities or tendencies onto them, and I'm not going to serve them at the highest level. So that's why I got to handle my stuff on my own time, so I can show up and serve them hence, hence, hashtag leaders lead, I gotta lead myself before I can lead you. And, and in order for me to lead you, I need to empathize with you. And that takes more energy that takes that takes a little bit more focus that takes more intentionality that takes the ability to listen, that takes patience. That takes a desire to understand. And sometimes that is, that is tough stuff to do, which is why the price of leadership sometimes isn't isn't is sometimes a costly one.
Andrew Biggs 16:23
Right? I love what you said, playing injured is okay sometimes but but not as a long term strategy. It's like playing injured is good. If it's game seven, and you need to win. But let's face it in business, there's always another game, there's always another, you know, play to be had, there's always another way to go. And so we really shouldn't be playing injured, almost ever in business. Unless it's a super, super, super busy time in our business, and we're experiencing massive growth. So yeah, I love that idea. You know, one of the principles I was going to talk about here that I wrote down, that I really believe is like a presupposition of a great leader, and what a presupposition is, it's like a core belief. And it's a lens that we look into the world with, we look into our relationships with I was talking to my community about this last night. And I was saying, okay, hey, let's say you and your dog go on a walk, and you're going on a hike, it's this beautiful landscape, you're walking up the mountain, and he gets to the top of the mountain, and you look out, and all of a sudden, you see this amazing, beautiful rainbow out in front of you. Now I asked him, I said, Hey, who's going to enjoy the rainbow more you or your dog? And of course, they said, Well, I will. I said, Why? They said, well, the dog is colorblind. And so the idea here is that, well, the lens that you look into the world is going to shape your perception. And a great leader has certain belief systems that they look into the world with, that they look into their relationships with that is very different than the average leader. It's very different than the non leader. And one of the one of the belief systems that I see great leaders have is that everything is possible, everything is achievable. And by the way, I'm not some sort of rah rah guy, I don't really love to, to hype things up too much. But I really love this, this idea that everything is achievable with the appropriate strategy. And if we can look at the world that way that, you know, every time someone comes to us and says, Hey, I want to accomplish this, or I want to start my own business, or I want to, you know, make a million dollars next year, I want to I had someone come and say I want to be one of the 100 most influential people in the world. You know, when I'm older, I said, Okay, cool. Like, what are we going to do to get there? What's step one? What's step two? What's step three? How are we going to make it happen? You know, you're talking about doing a $3 million district at some point 2.6 million is the record. Like, you know, the question isn't, is this going to happen? The question is, how are we going to make it happen? And that's a very different question that I think leaders ask that non leaders don't, a lot of times they're simply going to write things off because it seems impossible, or because someone coming to them with a big goal. They're actually thinking bigger than the leader is themselves and they feel threatened, and they want to throw cold water on it. What do you think, Mike?
Mike Abramowitz 19:19
I think that oftentimes, the leaders are sometimes they put pressure on themselves. And they lead from ego sometimes. And like a self righteousness where they have because like, kind of like what you said like they have a title so they don't, you don't necessarily need so so they're a position based leader. So so so they're leading from a position or they're leading towards a direction so the directional leaders, so a directional leader might say, this is so directional leader might sound like this. I'm building a $3 million district team. If you are really good at working with people, I need you, in my vision to build this $3 million district team come with me, let's go in this direction. So it's like a directional leader. And that that works. It's like I have a vision, you're coming with me, and we're gonna go. However, I don't know if that's the if that's sustainable for a long period of time, because that person might develop resentment, if it's directional leadership, if it's only based upon my direction. So I want to also know what their lens is, I want to know, what do you want? What is what is important to you? What what what what are qualities that you currently possess? And what are the qualities that you want to strengthen, and you want to get better at? You know, what is it that you see for yourself in the future? If life played out perfectly? What could it look like? Cool? How could this be a vehicle to get you closer to where you want to go? Instead of further away from where you want to go? Who do you need to become? And can this vehicle help you get there? That way? They're going to be anchored to my direction, by their reasons versus mine?
Andrew Biggs 21:10
Totally. What I hear you saying there is that great leaders know what their people want, right? can't even tell you how many times I've talked to leaders and people in positions of leadership and business owners and people in high power positions, and I asked, okay, I'm struggling with with managing this person, how do I how do I fix it? And I said, Well, what do you think they want? Well, I don't know. Okay, well, why not? Like why didn't you ask them? Like, wasn't that like the very first conversation you had with them? No, I didn't. You know, and everyone is hiring to fit someone who did their vision, as opposed to saying, What's your vision? Mike? How can we align our visions and find a win win? You know, I think this is something you're really good at is Win Win relationships. I, you know, I'll kind of kick it to you and let you ramp on this or vamp on this a little bit. But yeah, talk to me about Win Win relationships. How do you approach a relationship to ensure it's Win win? How do you make sure you don't settle for less than Win win? What does that mean to you talk to me a little bit.
Mike Abramowitz 22:21
In order to know what a win win relationship is, I think it's important for you to also know what is not a win win. So the concept is, I win, you lose. That's one type of relationship. And then there's a you win, and I lose, that's another type of relationship, then there's a you win, and maybe I win, then there's an eye win, and maybe you win, then there's the win win. So I think it's important just to give context of, Okay, if you're in a relationship, there's several different types of relationships, it could be, but a true Win Win, is that my needs or your needs, your needs, or my needs, were in this together, we're both going to win, we're both going to thrive because of this. And I want to make sure that you're equally benefiting as I am. Now, how does that work? Well, that comes from number one, I need to know what winning looks like for me. So I need to make sure that it's very clear. And I created almost like standards, or expectations, or a box of like, how do I define winning for me? I would also need that other person to clearly define what does winning look like for them? I want to make sure there's clear definitions of what does winning look like? How do we describe it? What does it feel like? How do we quantify it? So that way, the rules of engagement are clearly stated in the beginning, I think that's really important to get as close to that as possible. So that way we have we have boundaries, once those boundaries are created, then we can go and say, Okay, this is what I'm willing to tolerate. And these are my expectations and standards. What are you willing to tolerate? What are your expectations and standards? Great? Do we have agreements that if and when one of us are not following suit with us, it's no longer a win win. Okay, and if it's no longer a win win, then it's going to need to be addressed. And I think setting setting that framework in the beginning of a relationship is really critical. And that way, we have something foundational so that way, when if and when someone is not holding the line and doing their part, we can revisit the original agreements of what we discussed in the first place. And I think oftentimes it's overlooked, because sometimes it's uncomfortable, or sometimes we don't know, because we're so so so often just go go mode that we don't take the time to actually think and we don't quantify and we don't actually look at what what do I want and that's sometimes is is is step one, when it comes to being a leader. It's like what do I want and what do you want So I think that's the fount that's that, in my opinion, that's a foundation for the win win concept and the win win relationship.
Andrew Biggs 25:06
Totally, totally. And it's also being willing to let people go, if it's not a fit, you know, sometimes something's just not a win win, and there's no way to make it happen. And that doesn't mean that that relationship has to end that doesn't mean that, you know, there's anything that is there has to be any ill will there, it might be a little disappointing, it might be a little sad sometimes to see a relationship change or move, or watch someone move on from your organization, because there's no way to find a win win anymore. But that's okay. And having an abundant attitude means I don't need any single person on my team, I'd love to have them but I don't need any single person. And I think that somebody will get attached to keeping people inside their organization, simply for familiarity or comfort, or the cost of change. And they kind of settle for something less than Win win. And I see this happen all the time, I think we really need to raise the standard, if we're going to be great leaders to say, I want everyone in my organization to be winning, and winning as much as possible. And everything that I have a conversation, everybody I have a conversation with everything that I'm talking about is really aimed towards that Win Win relationship. So super important to have that abundant attitude to say, you know, we're going there with without you, this is my vision, I'm gonna get there. I don't know exactly what the timing looks like, but I know where we're headed. We'd love to have you on the team. Here's why here's how I could potentially seeing you fit in. But what do you think? Do you think this is a win for you? Okay, if not, what what would you need to make it a win? You know, what, what do you value what's important to you. And also understand that people have different values. So the exchange to make it a win win is not simply a monetary exchange, sometimes people just think time for money, or they think how much money am I making in a month or in a year. But there's a lot of ways that people can be compensated people can be compensated in the form of experience, people can be compensated in the form of fulfillment with their work, people can be compensated in making an impact, which is important to that people can be compensated with flexibility, right? People can also be compensated psychically, maybe you have like a title or a position that denote allows you some status or prestige, or allows you to make a better resume. So understand that there's a lot of different ways that someone can be compensated, and be willing to, to help them, get that compensation and make it a win win in somehow, in some form or fashion. So by the way, we lost Mike, hopefully, he'll be back on soon. I will go to my next, my next one that I was going to talk about, which is the idea that the past does not equal the future, the past does not equal the future. And this is really just the idea that I don't care where you're out today, I don't care where you came into this podcast, from, if you've been thriving, or if you've been struggling, either way, it's okay. The past does not equal the future. And a great leader has that lens, a great leader thinks, okay, at any point in time, I can shift and my people can shift. It doesn't matter if I've tried to, you know, lose weight five times in the past, this time, it can be different. Doesn't matter if I've shopped for this goal five times in the past this time, it can be different if I simply make a decision. So the past is not equal the future simply means that at any point in time, Mike is joking in the chat here. He said he got kicked off. Hey, I shot you another link man if you want to jump on. But basically, the the idea here is if I am willing to truly decide a decision means to turn away from all other options. And once someone truly makes a decision, there's nothing that can stop them from making that vision a reality. So we have to be cognizant of that and aware of that, and challenge ourselves and challenge others. Because a lot of times people get caught up in their stories, they're stuck in the past, hey, I, you know, I'm just not an organized person, or Hey, I'm just not great at this or I'm just not great at that I'm just not consistent. That's just how it is. Like that's not how it is. That's the past. If we made different choices, we made different decisions today, we could change that for the future. So just realize that one of the lenses one of the presuppositions one of the core beliefs that I see great leaders have is that the past doesn't equal the future. So they're always open to the possibility of transformation.
Always stay open to the possibility of transformation. This also makes sure that people aren't fixed in your mind that people aren't permanently broken. If people aren't permanently flawed. Anybody can change at any point. In time, it's a foundational principle of what it means to be human. We all have a personality, but it also changes over time. And we grow and mature over time. And, and not giving people that opportunity. Seeing them as fixed entities where the past does equal the future limits that possibility of transformation. The next one that was going to talk a little bit about was that empowerment comes via responsibility. Empowerment comes via responsibility. Hang on one second, I'm going to go ahead and make sure that we can get Mike back in here. All right. Hold tight, hold tight. If you're in the chat, you know, go ahead and tell me what your plans are for the day. as we as we figure this out. I don't want to get them in here.
We might just have to roll without your mic. I don't know. All right. Well, if it's not gonna let me do it, then we might have to roll without your mic. Unfortunately, as much as I would love to have you. Yeah, I can't seem to get you in here, buddy. But, uh, we'll, we'll roll without you today. And we'll we'll kick we'll circle back later. Oh, here we are. Okay.
All right, Mike, you're back. Mike, you're back. How are you? Hey, we can't hear you. So fix your mic, and then we'll we'll keep rolling here. But
so basically, what we were just talking about was this idea that empowerment comes to the responsibility. What I see what I really mean by this is it's our job to actually help people become autonomous individuals. It's our job to help people become autonomous individuals. What that means is that our job is actually to empower them to take responsibility for themselves, not to solve their problems for them. And a lot of times, we want to give people answers as leaders. A lot of times we have the answers. And so all we're gonna try to do I see this is a is a rookie mistake for leaders. And they mean well, it actually is somewhat effective, but it's not effective in the long term. What they do is they actually probe to find where the problems are, and then they tell the person what they should do. Hey, what are your problems? let me figure it out. Okay, here's what you should do. Here's why. This is somewhat effective as a leader, but it's not ultimately effective because what you've just done is you've given given the man a fish, as opposed to taught him how to fish. And we all know that if you teach a man to fish to fish for a lifetime, so instead of just giving answers, we need to actually make sure that we're asking high quality questions to help people arrive at their own answers so they can actually understand and apply this principle cross contextually to other situations in their life. And that's what it means to empower people via responsibility. Mike Are you with us Can you hear me and can we hear you?
Nope, we can't hear you. So nice try but not sure what's going on with your mic. But anyways, empowerment comes to your responsibility. This also means we avoid codependent relationships, codependent relationships or relationships where obviously there's there's a dependency on each other. And a lot of leaders like to be needed for by their team a lot of leaders like to be needed by their staff. And unfortunately, what this does is it actually artificially suppresses the limit that someone's able to reach in their life and in their business and so anytime we're getting a little ego boost as leaders to whenever we help somebody out whenever we say okay I taught that person this or I thought that person that you know, then we're actually still in a codependent relationship with somebody as opposed to simply operating with the with the idea to create them, help them become autonomous. So this is going to help you avoid codependent relationships and help you actually create independent autonomous individuals that are gonna be able to go out there on their own. Cool did Mike Are you still with us or no? Why don't you try unplugging your mic and maybe just going with the standard you know, microphone on your computer. We're rolling with the technology. We're getting everything figured out. It's all an experiment. thanks for bearing with us guys. We got about probably 10 more minutes today anyway, but yeah, everything else By side looks like it's working for you, Mike. So we just need you to figure out the mic situation. But the next thing I'll bring up as far as leadership principles is simply the idea that congruency is king. Right? congruency is king means whenever we are congruent in our lives, then that's going to translate in our business. Whenever working grew in with ourselves, people can feel that people can sense that and they respond accordingly. So we have to ask ourselves, how in alignment with my own values, am I? And you, you know, you can reflect on this in a number of different ways. But how in alignment with your beliefs? Are you with your attitude? How in alignment with your belief systems in your values? Are you with your actions? How in alignment? Are you with your health? How in alignment Are you with how you treat people with how you think, with your willingness to go above and beyond. And if we aren't actually committed to being in alignment with what we purport to believe, then that creates a an in concurrency, and people can tell. So one of the biggest things that I've always, you know, practiced or tried to practice as much as possible is to try to be as concurrent as possible, and to not ask anyone on the other end of the line, to do something that I wouldn't be personally able to do or willing to do myself. It's a really tall order, sometimes we all fall, fall short. But if we can hold that standard that congruency is king, then we can, you know, obviously, be more attractive to people and get them there. The last thing I'll kind of bring in, and then we can move on and wrap up for the day is simply presence. great leaders practice presence. they slow down. They strategically, will practice awareness. They read between the lines when someone's talking, they listen to not just what's being said, but also what's being said, That's not being said, they pay attention to the tone, they pay attention to the body language, they pay attention to what's going on with the other individual. Too often leaders are listening just to the language that's being spoken to them. And they're not listening to the subtext. It's our job to pay attention to the little signs and subtleties and clues that our people are giving us. That is saying, hey, something's going on, that I don't feel comfortable sharing just yet. Hey, I actually have a limiting belief about my capacity to perform this task. And I'm afraid to tell you, when a leader chooses to become present, and listen and pay attention, and be curious enough to ask the follow up question, hey, I'm sensing a little hesitancy what's going on, man? Hey, do you mind if I asked you a follow up question there.
You know, I think there might be a blind spot here for you that you're unaware of, are you open to some feedback, we're able to deliver messages that other leaders aren't able to receive, that are able to give, we're able to give them in a way where it actually can be received. And the person can integrate the feedback rather than getting defensive. So practicing presence is the last thing I'll leave you with. I know we had some technical difficulties today. Thanks for rolling with us as we continue to perform this experiment of 75 podcasts in 75 days. It's been a fun ride. We're only on day four. Tomorrow, we have a special guest Andrew Evans. So if you can join us live, we're gonna be live at 1130 Eastern here on Facebook. So if you want to join us live for that. That'd be great. Thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure. And I will leave you with that. Enjoy the rest of your day. And enjoy your journey to becoming better than rich. Thanks.