In our candid discussions, the fears and concerns that whisper to leaders in the quiet moments come to light, challenging the notion that strength lies in solitary achievement. We dive into the heart of inspiration—how it's less about fearing the rise of others and more about nurturing the seeds of greatness within them. The narrative is enriched as we explore the magnetic pull of surrounding ourselves with remarkable talents, and how, paradoxically, feelings of inadequacy in their presence can ignite an unquenchable fire to ascend to new heights.
In our candid discussions, the fears and concerns that whisper to leaders in the quiet moments come to light, challenging the notion that strength lies in solitary achievement. We dive into the heart of inspiration—how it's less about fearing the rise of others and more about nurturing the seeds of greatness within them. The narrative is enriched as we explore the magnetic pull of surrounding ourselves with remarkable talents, and how, paradoxically, feelings of inadequacy in their presence can ignite an unquenchable fire to ascend to new heights.
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You. This is Unleaching Leadership and I'm your host, travis Moss, and welcome back to our Replay series. There's five of these episodes that we're doing between the Infinite Game and our next season, but during our season on the Infinite Game by Simon Siddink, we talked about taking on the huge challenge that is the just cause itself, and the biggest component of this challenge revolves around providing the people around us the tools necessary to be successful. And here's another episode we did back in season one when we covered a team of teams that was called Fear, where I get more into this topic. This is a different style book report. I am not just regurgitating what's in the book. I am taking the messages from the book, the tone from the book, the things that I've learned through the book, the things that resonated with me, that matched up with some of the stuff that I was doing or some of the stuff that I implemented. That has to do with the book, and I'm sharing those stories so you can read the book yourself. You don't need me to read the book to you. All I'm doing is I'm doing the practical part. I'm saying, hey, here's what I got from this, here's how I've implemented some of these things, here's my influences, and so if you're sitting there saying, well, travis, how do you support a certain idea, where does that come from? You're probably going to pick up the essence of whatever that idea is from these different books that we're talking about, and I love that because it's not just me, it's not just my word you got to take for it, it's real life, real people that are out there doing real things and saying you know, this is also work for me. So I'm trying to do the practical part and say how do we take an actual idea and get it in motion in our lives, and then all the mindset and everything that we need around that. So we talked about corner office. We talked about how you got to get out of corner offices, and then we talked about if you're going to eat shit, don't nibble. If you're going to be committed to something, be committed and don't procrastinate. Just get stuff done.
Speaker 1:
Today we're going to talk a little bit about fear fear in general, really what leaders fear and so I'm going to start out with a little bit of a story about superhero movies. So if you watch the Marvel movies, so that's all the well, and any, really any superhero movie or any action movie, right that villains always getting stronger and bigger. You ever notice that Like we go from the first Marvel movie where there's an evil guy and a superhero and they're fighting and then all of a sudden there's two superheroes and a bigger evil guy and then all of a sudden there's an evil guy so big that he can swell the world with one bite and we have an army of superheroes fighting it. And now we have like plot designs where you know the superhero is going through a lot of emotional trauma or they're really trying to develop and get over a personal issue and the evil doers getting bigger and bigger and more and more powerful. Well, why do we have movies like that? Because we want to see struggle, we want to see fight and we want to see growth. We don't want to see a bunch of superheroes mop in the floor and bozos without breaking a sweat. We actually want to see people overcome and that's what leaders do.
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Leaders don't fear competition. They don't fear strong team members. They don't fear being second best on their teams or not getting their due attention. They just go and attack. They just go and grow. They, when they're committed, they're 100% committed. They're going to overcome, no matter what they what, what, what shows up in front of them. And if they lose, that doesn't mean that they don't overcome. That just means that they have another obstacle they have to climb around. That's what leaders do.
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But leaders do have some fears. They do have some things that they are concerned about, and I think that this is a good test. If you're there's so many things to be afraid of, there's so many little things, right. It's the reason why we don't commit a hundred percent. It's the reason why we nibble around the edges and you need to be thinking to yourself is this something I'm supposed to be afraid of? Or is this something I'm afraid of because of feelings? Or, you know, I'm exacerbating a problem, making it much bigger than it really is.
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Here's what I think from, in my experience, the real concerns of people who are doing a good job in leadership. The big worry is. The big fear is I can't find, or I can't inspire other people who can step up and turn themselves into examples for all the other team members to follow. That's what I worry about. I know that if I develop great teams and great team leaders, that after doing that for a couple of rounds, that starts to manifest and starts to duplicate itself. I know that if I teach leadership, if I teach good teamwork, that that will duplicate. So I fear not being able to do that. Everything I do is how do I do that better? How do I do that better?
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Leaders loathe. So this loathe and fear maybe not the same thing, but I was gonna say leaders fear this. But I don't know if it's a so much a fear but just a loathing of giving their time to someone who doesn't appreciate it. When I think of what makes me sick the most, you know that pile of shit that just sits in the stomach and rots it. It's when you have somebody on your team that you give time to. Instead of giving time to somebody else that would appreciate it, instead of getting time on a project that would be important, you give your time to somebody who doesn't give a damn. They don't appreciate the time. They do not use the time wisely, they waste it. It's like being spit in the face. You know what I'm talking about. It's not one of these like well, if we don't develop our people, you know what happens if they stay, type of thing. It's one of those things where it's the wrong person. It's the wrong person on the bus.
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You've already done, remember, the three pillars. You've already done the training and coaching. You've already done the education and and and the procedures and all that kind of stuff, and you've gotten to the point where you've eliminated all the excuses, except for the fact that it's the person. You looked at the structure and processes, you could that training in the education. You said, nope, this is just the person now, and so you give your, give your heart and soul to that, your time, which, for a leader, that's the same as their heart and soul. That is the most valuable thing they have and they don't respect it. So, whether it's fear or loading or combination of both, that's what keeps leaders up at night. All the other stuff, those are just details you got to deal with and you got to have that mindset. Just details you got to deal with. Notice what the focus is it's all about somebody else. It's all about developing somebody else, developing people, developing teams.
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That's the biggest concern, the biggest worry, the fear in the back of the head is maybe my team is not going to be strong enough, maybe I don't have the right team members, maybe I need to get more team members. Maybe I need to provide more education, more structure, maybe I need to be better. Leaders know that they can only grow vertically, like without a ceiling, without without a glass ceiling. They can only grow vertically if they have an ability to replace themselves at each level. The thought process has to be if I'm going to rely on somebody taking this job over so that I can move up, they need to be as good or better than me at the job. Think about it. If you're going to move up within an organization, you replace yourself on level down. You're now relying on them to do a good job, even if you're in a different department. You know if one part of the business starts to stink, it's going to spread. So you rely on the the people who take it over after you to do, and you want them to do as good or better than you, because you don't want to have to worry.
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And if you say, well, I'll just go to a different organization. Well, so you leave an organization and you leave a giant black hole. That's your reputation. That will catch up to you something If you say, well, the organization was that bad. I was a great leader, but the organization was that bad. That doesn't make a lot of sense.
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First of all, if you're a great leader, were you team oriented? Did you develop the team? Did you work on education and coaching? Did you work on systems and procedures? Did you do everything you could do there? Did you work on developing leadership and successor leadership within the organization? And if you did everything you possibly could there be honest with yourself you did everything you possibly could in the organization still block you from being successful. Ok, maybe you need to just leave that organization and that's a failure. That will stay with you, the fact that you were there and you couldn't make it work, and that will haunt you and that will drive you. It will make you sick when you think about it, but it will drive you to become even better. When you get an opportunity to flourish and shine and when you get an opportunity to do it right, when you get an opportunity to treat your team correctly, that will follow you. But the ones who go well, it wasn't my problem, I had to get out of there. I was a good leader, but they wouldn't let me do anything and they don't feel any remorse for that. They don't feel any guilt to that, like not saying that that guilt or remorse is fair, but it's there. Why would you leave a mess behind that will catch up to you someday. Trust me on that.
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We are inspired by the people who are better than us. We talked about superhero movie. We are inspired by people who overcome challenges, people who have great successes, people who work together. That's what inspires us as individuals. We don't like look at people and say, well, they have a really crappy life. That inspires me. We say look what that person did, holy cow.
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So surround yourself with amazing people. It will sometimes make you feel small. Everybody's moving vertically fast. You surround, you invest your time back to what I don't want, to what I love. I love wasting my time on people who don't care.
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So I have to surround myself with people who I find are amazing, because if everybody is moving vertically, I can't help but move vertically. There's nothing I can do to get out of the way. They're gonna push me forward, no matter what. Gotta stay, I gotta keep up right, and some of them might shoot off and become even better in different things. Guess what I helped create that. That's an amazing accolade. That's something to be when they someday write books about it. That's something that they'll write books about that person, helped that person launch their career. This is the person who writes the book about the successful business that they created. Is that person the star, or is the star of the mentor that got them there? Because the mentors are revered.
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So I wanna surround myself with amazing people. I need to not be afraid of feeling small, because when you feel inadequate, that's where your hunger comes from, and inspiration leads to inadequacy. If I'm inspired by something, I'm feeling inadequate. Look at how amazing that is. Why aren't I that amazing? So inspiration leads to inadequacy, which fuels hunger. Well, I wanna be there. I wanna get there. That's where it all comes from. Inspiration you got in order to get it. Surround yourself by amazing people. They're gonna make you feel inadequate because they're so amazing, and that's gonna make you hungry because, damn it, you wanna keep up with them because it feels so darn good.