Proactively build an emotional bank account with your team through daily deposits of trust and credibility, ensuring you have reserves for inevitable tough decisions or mistakes without running on empty with employees.
Tend to your personal foundation and convictions to be incredibly well-anchored and courageous when facing tough decisions about people and performance, especially when pushed to the edge.
Adopt a philosophy that prioritizes both performance and people, understanding that by taking care of your people, they will in turn drive performance for the organization.
Practice ’tough-minded on standards of performance and tenderhearted with people’ leadership, setting high expectations while showing genuine care for individuals.
Develop a deliberate ’leadership plan’ for managing people, rather than leading by the seat of your pants, recognizing it as the most important thing you do.
In the first 100 days as a leader, establish a principle-centered framework and then lead primarily by listening extensively until everybody feels heard and exhausted from talking.
Start slow in leadership transitions to ensure everyone feels heard and is part of the process, which allows for faster execution later on due to shared ownership.
Build the emotional bank account proactively by tangibly demonstrating care for employees, their work environment, and how supervisors treat them, ideally over a period of years before major tough calls are needed.
Make inspiring trust the number one expectation for leaders, as it is foundational for inspiring performance and maintaining their position within the organization.
Declare your cultural values, live them daily, and if people cannot align, kindly, gently, but firmly move them out, honoring the individual in the process.
As a leader, operate in three time zones simultaneously: honor the past, deliver in the present, and set the table for a more prosperous future.
Simplify decision-making by creating a clear framework that defines what matters most, ensuring everyone knows what is expected and making choices easier.
Implement an annual strategic planning process: assess the situation, revisit the 3-year strategy, determine annual implications, create an annual plan, and break it into quarterly expectations.
Establish a simple intervention process to continuously assess ‘what’s working, what’s not, and what’s needed’ in the present, complementing the strategic planning process to navigate almost anything.
Constantly remind yourself to balance performance delivery with the development of people, ensuring both are prioritized rather than compromising relationships for immediate tasks.
While 75% of leadership might be reactive, dedicate 25% of your time daily to intentionally focus on what matters most and be attentive to it.
Start building your leadership blueprint by envisioning the leader you want to be and reflecting on your life story, as your life story is your leadership story.
Combine self-reflection and external study to build a personal mental model for how you want to show up as a leader, making it incredibly useful.
Integrate tangible practices into your daily life that actively bring your personal leadership model to life, ensuring it’s more than just talk.
Commit to a continuous improvement process, regularly refining and enhancing your leadership model to get better at your craft.
Align your personal leadership model with the expectations of your organization to find a fulfilling and effective approach that serves both you and the enterprise.
Create a leadership blueprint by first defining how you want to lead, then understanding organizational expectations, and finally developing an approach that integrates both for success.
Integrate leadership development into your busy life by working on it in ‘small chunks’ with a continuous improvement mindset, ensuring it’s practical and sustainable.
Cultivate a morning habit of waking up an hour earlier to find quiet time for reflection, centering yourself and preparing for the day’s demands before they begin.
Prioritize quiet time and personal space to anchor yourself in what matters most before the day’s chaos begins, finding it to be a real important part of your life.
Prioritize family by being present for breakfast and taking children to school, especially when afternoons and nights are risky for availability.
Identify your core ‘cylinders’ (e.g., work, family, personal well-being, community, faith) and manage them intentionally to ensure balance and well-being.
After an interview or meeting, handwrite personalized thank-you notes to each person (including support staff), delivering them the same day and mentioning specific details to be distinctive.
Clarify your convictions to gain the courage needed to stand firm in challenging situations, as it’s hard to have courage if you don’t know what you believe.
Engage in ‘inside work’ to define what you want to stand for and how you want to operate, ensuring you can contribute, perform, and maintain self-respect daily.
Own your personal story to avoid constantly seeking external validation or ‘hustling for your worthiness,’ instead walking inside your own narrative.
Write your entire life story by hand, including every detail, to reflect on past experiences and understand their profound influence on you.
Show genuine care for your team members, as the more you care about them, the more they will care about your agenda and the better the team will perform.
Assemble a world-class team, provide them with necessary tools to ‘fight the fight,’ and offer ‘air cover’ (support/protection) when operating against prevailing norms.
Combine tough standards with genuine care for people, as these are not mutually exclusive and are characteristic of the best leaders who create enduring value.
Tangibly demonstrate that you value your employees’ agenda before expecting them to value the organizational agenda, as commitment is reciprocal.
Ensure leaders and employees align with both the ‘what’ (business performance standards) and the ‘how’ (comportment as leaders) to ensure they are in the right roles and committed.
Be upfront about tough calls and give leaders a clear timeframe (e.g., a year and a half) to align with the new program, being prepared to make significant personnel changes if necessary.
When making personnel changes, offer alternatives like individual contributor roles or help in finding new employment, while remaining tough-minded on performance standards.
Be compassionate and supportive when moving people out of roles, learning from past negative experiences to ensure humane transitions and honoring the individual.
If you declare a commitment to a culture of tough standards and caring for people, ensure you follow through and get the ‘right people on the bus’ who align with this culture.
Ground all your actions in a commitment to honoring people, as this foundational principle guides decision-making in every situation.
Develop a comprehensive plan by the second 100 days, following the initial period of extensive listening and situation assessment.
Allocate the first 100 days to understanding the situation, the next 100 days to operationalizing a plan, and be prepared for continuous course correction.
Clearly declare your leadership identity and intentions, then create a concrete plan to bring those intentions to life within the organization.
Begin by clearly defining what you want to stand for as a leader, as this self-awareness is fundamental to effective leadership.
Establish clear performance gates and commit to constant improvement, ensuring undeniable progress in both the workplace and marketplace annually.
Be so well-anchored in your principles that you are willing to risk your job rather than compromise on doing things the ‘right way’ or betraying your convictions.
Avoid leading with a mindset of saving your job, as this compromises effectiveness and integrity from the outset.
Foster a board culture where all points of view are comfortably shared and heard, allowing for comprehensive deliberation before issues escalate externally.
As a board member, constructively engage in dialogue, contributing to discussions rather than merely observing or critiquing.
Understand that a board member’s role is oversight and governance, ensuring proper management and standards are met, not direct execution or day-to-day management.
As a leader, make expectations crystal clear, and if a choice between performance and people arises, ensure you have organizational alignment on the priority.
Once a clear plan is collaboratively established and executed, focus on modest course corrections rather than drastic changes, as everyone is already on the same page.
Recognize that leading people is a profound responsibility (‘sacred ground’) and requires intentionality and a plan, not just improvisation.
Approach leadership as a mastery model, continuously learning, studying the craft, and practicing to improve your abilities over time.
Apprentice at leadership by continuously learning from it, studying the craft, and practicing to get better at it, just like any other skill.
Be intentional and reflective about your leadership approach, going beyond reactive management to truly think about what matters most.
Supplement self-reflection by studying other leaders and mentors (like Stephen Covey and Jim Collins), observing practices that align with your desired leadership style.
Be true to yourself and your convictions while also considering and adapting to the needs and expectations of others in the world, building bridges between both.
Avoid solely trying to meet others’ needs, as this leads to ‘hustling for worthiness’; instead, walk inside your own story while still being effective within your organization.
Cultivate patience and understand that wisdom is accumulated through experience over time, resisting the societal pressure for instant change and quick fixes.
Create space for personal growth and patience, focusing on continuous daily improvement for both yourself and the enterprise, rather than seeking a quick fix mindset.
Adjust your wake-up time earlier if it helps you manage personal well-being and family priorities, as the speaker found moving his wake-up time up worked for him.