Coaching Fundamentals: The Foundation of Leadership - Part 3

Building a Coaching Culture - #101: Coaching Fundamentals: The Foundation of Leadership - Part 3 === J.R. Flatter [00:00:00]: There's a kind of power that we call referent power, and it's I follow you because I believe in you. I believe in your vision. I believe in your principles. You're listening to the building a coaching culture podcast. If you need to compete and win in the 21st century labor hit as an employer of choice, this podcast is for you. Each week, we share leadership development, coaching, and culture culture development insights from leading experts who are developing world class cultures in their own organizations. And now here's your host, JR Flatter. Hey, welcome back, everybody. J.R. Flatter [00:00:43]: I'm JR Flatter, and this is building a coaching culture. And on our journey of Reintroducing the fundamentals, talking about core values, ethics, core competencies, all the fundamentals of coaching. This session is dedicated to the courage to lead. Lucas and I are primarily leadership coaches. The knowledge, skills, abilities, and experiences that you gain in our programs are applicable to any style of coaching that you might choose, but we focus on leadership, and we believe leadership comes from a place of courage. And so we're going to talk about that during this session. As always, we want to stop what we were doing, get ready to learn, You're ready to grow. We all have lives and professions outside of coaching, outside of education, So I always like to take this this reminder to get ready, talk about heart, spirit, mind, body, All the above, get ready to coach, get ready to learn. J.R. Flatter [00:01:57]: So whatever you do to do that, whether you close your eyes and take a couple of deep breaths, We engage in meditation, stand up and shake it out, whatever your practice is. Let's take a couple minutes and do that. Alright. Introduction to the house of leadership. So I've been leading for 45 plus years. Every time I say that out loud, it kind of frightens me. Been a scholar of leadership for the past, do the math, 25 years in a scholastic environment, learning about leadership, so the practice of leadership for 45 years and the scholarly study of leadership. I've been a coach for quite some time now as well, and this house of leadership comes from that education, those experiences. J.R. Flatter [00:02:51]: And our methodologies continue to grow. I just had a session with our mentors. You have a team of mentor coaches, and talking about these very things, the fundamentals and the 12 months, our methodologies and our knowledge of coaching and our own growth as coaching has been pretty significant, But I think this house of leadership only gets stronger and stronger in my eyes. You could argue about any of the particular characteristics, any of the particular definitions, but I think it's a pretty solid framework upon which we can talk about leadership And talk about coaching leaders and living a principled life, living a life of vision, being bold, being driven, being humble, all of the above. What do you think about when you think about the house of leadership, Lucas? Lucas Flatter [00:03:45]: I think I mean, Courage being the baseline is something I think a lot of us can identify with, not wanting to, You know, rock the boat or not wanting to stand out and get criticized or not wanting to step forward and take that risk, It's something probably natural in terms of humans wanna get along in a group, and it doesn't always pay to single yourself out. But With these other skills, abilities, competencies, along with that courage to stand out, It shouldn't be as, you know, risky. It should be a positive experience where you you make an impact on people. J.R. Flatter [00:04:28]: Yeah. And then you've just described why we believe and teach that courage is the foundation of leadership. Because all of the things it takes to be a leader, boldness, humility, drive, principles, Vision to communicate those requires courage. So to tell somebody, I wanna Learn to play the guitar. I wanna learn to be a cartoonist. It takes a lot of courage because The world loves to observe and comment, and that's one of the things as we walk through this house of leadership, we're gonna talk about a lot. Do you have the courage to be in the arena, to borrow an analogy from Teddy Roosevelt, getting bloody and sweaty and dirty while the world sits comfortably in their seats commenting on your performance. And when they do comment, and your principles are challenged, or your vision's challenged, you come back to your courage, and so all of the characteristics, Badly paraphrase, C. J.R. Flatter [00:05:37]: S. Lewis, who most of the world knows is the author of the Narnia Chronicles, But he was also a theologian. He was a prolific author, professor. He says, courage is not simply one of the virtues. It's the virtues from which all others, when they're tested, are held up. So when your vision's tested, your your principles You go back to courage to come back and say, no. This is what I believe, and this is where we're going. One of the reasons I think that this house resonates so loudly with me personally is that our students Very quickly grasp onto it and begin using it in their own language, in their own coaching, And we'll talk about how to do that as we go through this house, always coming back to courage. J.R. Flatter [00:06:31]: Courageous coaching, so we're gonna ask you to be courageous coaches is that you have to not only communicate to self and others, but you are a coach, but you have to demonstrate the willingness and the ability to coach with courage, to help them accomplish their goals and their objectives and their key results personally and professionally, and it's a lot easier said than done. It's very easy to sit in a comfortable chair, in a comfortable office, and say, I'm going to coach, and I'm going to be courageous while I coach. But then when you get out there and and begin coaching and you're presented with Somebody, please just tell me the answer. You know, you're gonna have to make a courageous decision. Is that the best thing to do in this circumstance? And when you come up to a boundary or an overlap of coaching and some other practice, therapy, or clergy, or mentoring, and you're gonna have to ask yourself, do I have the courage to continue coaching? Coaching is similar to battlefield courage, valor on the battlefield, but it's not the same thing, So we're not talking about that kind of courage where you stand up and engage in mortal combat. And they come from the same place, but they're demonstrated very differently. The kind of courage that we're talking about in in, coaching is a very quiet courage, and it's demonstrated through action, not battlefield action, but the questions that you ask, keeping in a coaching mindset, not wandering into other aspects of leadership, other professions, the humility. If I asked you, are you a humble person? You're not going to be able to demonstrate in any definition or any conversation that you're humble, you're going to go out and demonstrate it in the world, and be humble, and and allow others to see your humility drive. J.R. Flatter [00:08:44]: Yeah. I'm a driven person. I don't mean 247 work, but you're driven towards a vision, and you're willing and able to do the actions necessary to make that vision come real. That's the kind of courage we're talking about here, personal and professional courage. So we talk about this intersection of personal and professional a lot. Personally, if you have a certain morality, and your family has a certain ethics, do you demonstrate what you say professionally? If you say, yes, I want to be part of this team, the Parameters of joining the team are explained to you, and you agree to those. Do you then have the professional courage to demonstrate them? Teamwork, hard work, commitment, many of those characteristics one might describe of a successful team. Patrick tells us, There are 5 dysfunctions of a team, but really, he's telling us how to be a functional team, and at the foundation of that Functional team is the courage to be professional, the courage to work together as a team. J.R. Flatter [00:09:57]: What do you think about personal and professional courage. I know you're a father, a professional husband. Lucas Flatter [00:10:05]: Yeah. And I think, It's also the courage like, this reminds me, like, the personal and professional. It's the courage to Kind of get into these problems and and issues that don't have really easy answers. Like, you're in the realm of ambiguity where, you know, it's like we said before, coaching is a creative process. So, You know, if there was just one way to do a creative thing, then all the songs would be the same. All the paintings would be the same. In I think, like, from a nerdy perspective, it's like a complex system has so many variables that You can't track all of them. So even though we can model the weather, we can't predict what's gonna happen with a 100% accuracy. Lucas Flatter [00:10:57]: So, yeah, like, a 1% difference in my priorities or my beliefs versus another person Can manifest as, like, a gigantic difference on the outside. So having the The humility and the courage to kind of go into the unknown, I think, is important to this. J.R. Flatter [00:11:18]: Yeah. Absolutely. I want to take a minute, well, more than a minute, a couple minutes, maybe 10 minutes, and talk through each of these and the construction of the house itself. So courage is the foundation, and so if you thought of any house you've ever lived in, it's probably setting on a foundation of cement blocks or cement or something that was holding it up and holding it in place, and so this house of leadership is standing on a foundation of courage, but also as part of that house, there are walls that are holding up the rest of the house. And for us, those walls are what we call the 4 pillars, 4 pillars of the house of leadership. And if you think about the heart and soul of leadership comes down to these 4 pillars And then 6, what I would call enabling characteristics that enable us to fulfill our pillars on this foundation of courage. And then finally, it's the idea that this is a lifelong journey, that we're going to learn and and grow for the remainder of our life, if we have a growth mindset, which is certainly part of coaching. So the 1st pillar, and these are ordered in a specific order because they inform each other. J.R. Flatter [00:12:45]: So they're sort of interwoven, and it's hard to define anyone Without defining all 4, so I'll do my best to define each 4, and then we'll talk about them together So the 1st pillar is principles, Being a principled person The first thing I'd like to talk about is in a very non judgmental way being principled This goes back to our core values and ethics that we talked about in previous sessions We're not judging others We're not judging their morality. We're not judging the ethics of the organizations they might belong to. We're coaching to their house of leadership. The ethics tell us very clearly, the International Coaching Federation ethics tell us very clearly that we coach to the house of leadership of the person we're coaching. And so this is why ethics and morality are so important to talk about because your ethics and your morality are embedded in this definition of this pillar of principles. And principles is literally a set of beliefs and then demonstrated actions that you have as an individual and that the world knows about, you know about. And as a coach, it's very important that you hold these beliefs in a nonjudgmental way. And Lucas has mentioned the platinum rule in a couple of our sessions. J.R. Flatter [00:14:16]: You treat the leader as they want to be treated. As we dig into the core competencies in a future session, we're gonna dig into a lot of specificity. They demand of us to coach to the house of leadership of the person. And so we have this set of beliefs that are our own. The ICF has a set of beliefs that they call their ethics, and we've aligned ourselves to them, we say our morality can align with those ethics, And we've said pre coaching that our morality can align with the morality and ethics of the individual, or if we're being hired by an organization, the ethics of that organization in a very non judgmental way, but to be principled, this is probably the most important part, even more important than being nonjudgmental because our mind does judge. Daniel Kahneman reminds us we have a fast brain and a slow brain. The fast brain judges. It's instinctive. J.R. Flatter [00:15:17]: It's fight or flight, but the slow brain slows us down and asks, let's think about this, just like the right brain and the left brain, we have a fast brain and a slow brain, you have to decide you're going to live a principled life before you can be a leader I rarely speak in absolutes, and this is one of those times I want to speak in an absolute. You cannot be a leader until you've decided there are boundaries of right and wrong, for me personally and us as a team, because if you think about what does a leader do, A leader says, here's where we're going, and here's why we're going there, and please come with me. It's impossible to do that without setting some parameters, and you can do that in a nonjudgmental way. If it's an ethics discussion and it's a clash of morals and ethics, You have to ask yourself, do I wanna be part of this organization? If it's a class of morals, your morality to the Morality of the individuality you're coaching it's probably your challenge, and not the leader's challenge because you've already agreed to align yourself to the ethics and core values of coaching. And one of those ethics and core values is you teach, treat each one equally. But because an organization says, Here are our ethics, if you want to be part of this, you have to align yourself to this Doesn't mean they're judging the rest of the world as right or wrong, they're just saying to themselves and the world, here are our boundaries, and almost every organization in existence, I can't imagine having an organization without a set of principles that says you'll show up on time, you'll do your work, You'll treat each other with respect. You know, some form of that golden rule or platinum rule, that's all we're talking about when we're talking about being principled. What do you think about when you see this pillar? Lucas Flatter [00:17:16]: The introspection that is required to do this because Do we have principles that, you know, we pick up along the way, you know, from leaders and family members and experience, but Maybe you've never, you know, written them down and thought critically about them and ranked them and said, oh, these are the 5 that really matter. So I would say that If you haven't done that, then that's helpful for the that particular pillar. J.R. Flatter [00:17:47]: Yeah. And one of the things we'll ask of you If you join one of our training programs is to write down your principles, and we call them an individual mission statement, and it is hard. It's very hard to do. And we call that 1st iteration a draft, and it's a draft into perpetuity because you're always revisiting your principles and saying, are they still central to my life? Mark Twain is famous for saying that when he was 17, his father was so ignorant, he could hardly stand to be around him. But by the time he turned 22, he was surprised how much his father had learned in 5 years. And his father hadn't changed. Mark Twain's view of the world had changed, and so his principles have matured along with him. The next one, technically cognitively, emotionally aligned. J.R. Flatter [00:18:39]: What I revisit the most often is still relevant. Should it be part of the house? And I continue to say yes. And it sounds academic at first, but it really means, what do you wanna do? Do you wanna focus on the technical aspects of life Be the best, fill in the blank, technically. I don't mean information technology, but do you wanna be the best programmer? Do you wanna be the best Cop, do you wanna be the best teacher? And those are all noble and worthwhile pursuits, but you might also ask yourself, do I wanna be a leader of those people in those professions? If you wanna get beyond the technical aspects of life and get into this cognitive space where you're now using the left brain and the right brain to Conduct analysis and gather data and make decisions, that's a cognitive space. Again, no right or wrong, We need good teachers and good street cops. Doctors is a good example of this. Do I wanna be the best fill in the blank, or do I want to run the hospital? And that's where you would really get into being an executive leader and leaning more on emotional intelligence. So that's why it's a continuum of sorts where We revisit each one, like I've spent the last several weeks doing very technical stuff because it's, I was the right person to do that technical, those technical tasks, but I gotta get my head up out of the fighting hole and do cognitive and emotional stuff too, and the preponderance of my responsibilities in life right now involve my emotional intelligence, not right or wrong, Not good, bad, or, you know, good, better, best, and this is where the platinum rule really applies. J.R. Flatter [00:20:36]: All of these pillars, treat the leader the way they wanna be treated, support and encourage their technical, cognitive, or emotional decisions This is where they wanna be on that align or that continuum. What are your thoughts? Lucas Flatter [00:20:52]: I'm thinking about, Like, maybe if you're working in that cognitive and emotional level and and you've Kinda forgone some of the technical. Maybe now, you have responsibilities over more people. And and so at that point, It becomes kind of more important for you to focus because maybe there's people that are relying on you For advice and and leadership and and your time. And if you suddenly have to, like, Go back to the technical for, you know, a long time, you could be leaving other people. So I guess with technical, it's Easier in a way because a lot of the times, it's based on my own personal competence. But once you're enabling other people, it's Necessary for you to give that time. J.R. Flatter [00:21:46]: Yeah. And it's an opportunity cost discussion as well. So if you wanna run the hospital, you're probably not going to be practicing medicine very often, and those technical skills are going to erode a bit. You're not gonna be the best doctor of that profession from someone who's doing that every day, day in and day out. Your cognitive talents are going to be applied to running the hospital versus the cognitive decision to operate or use physical therapy or whatever decisions might be necessary. And so there's 24 hours in every day, and you've decided on the next pillar your work family self balance, so how many of those hours am I going to sleep and exercise and commit to my profession? No right or wrong. And so it becomes an opportunity to cost how much time can I dedicate to technical and cognitive If I wanna be the owner of the garage and run a business versus being the best mechanic in the garage, It's unlikely that you can be the best mechanic and the owner over a period of time? Your technical skills, and the technology advances. Do you have the courage to be the 2nd best in the room? Is to some extent what we're asking ourself when we're looking at that pillar. J.R. Flatter [00:23:17]: Work family self balance, lot of controversy around this pillar, a lot of conversation, a lot of unfulfilled what do we call them at the beginning of the year? Oh, resolutions? Yeah, yeah, resolutions, New Year's resolutions. I'm going to do this this year. Finally, I'm going to spend more time with my family. I'm starting to get to take care of myself. So it really is, Do you have the courage to stick to that? You and I have said we're gonna meet in the gym 3 days a week, and we've been pretty committed to that. Do we have the courage to continue demonstrating that we're apart a lot? And do we have the courage to continue that when we're not in the same room because we've promised ourselves we're gonna take care of ourselves. And so this becomes a balance, and some people prefer harmony. Some people only use 2 words, work and self. J.R. Flatter [00:24:11]: I think it's important we think it's important to break it down into 3 and separate family from self, but it's asking yourself at this point in my life today, perhaps, or this year, For even 5 years 30 years into the future, how important is my career to me? How necessary is my career to me? How important is my family and necessary is my family? How important am I to myself? Am I important enough myself that I'm gonna get up when the alarm rings and go to the gym. I'm gonna eat well, not, abuse alcohol or drugs, Get enough sleep. Again, our human frailties, we fall short of these ideals all the time, and that doesn't mean you stop trying. The reason I call it balance is it doesn't mean a 3rd, a 3rd, and a 3rd. Never will be a 3rd, a 3rd, and a 3rd on the rarest of circumstances. Most of us have a gigantic w in our life for most of our life. I was just talking to my doctor this morning who plans to retire at 55. For most people, that's just not even something they could conceive, something neat to think about. J.R. Flatter [00:25:22]: I tried it and failed at it, And now here I am. I'm back at work again, working as hard as I ever did because it wasn't as cool as it sounded when I was 35. The closer I got to 55, I'm like, yeah, this might not be what I wanted or, you know, what it was all cracked up to be. But between you and other significant people in your world, whether it's a life partner or a family member, a parent, you know, talking about how important it's worked to me and us. There have been times in my life where this gigantic w was literally 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. You could do that for years, but you can't do that for decades. And not years at a time, but a couple years might be necessary. I could think of a couple specific examples, Well, that was the reality. J.R. Flatter [00:26:09]: But in rowing, we would call that a power ten. You're already rowing as hard as you can. And the will ask you, give me a power 10, which means row 10 strokes, absolutely as hard as you can, and then we'll go back to race pace. And you ask yourself, how could I do that? Well, the average human being, and I took this from David Goggins, thinks they're exhausted at 40% of their capacity. So you still got 60% left in the tank, and a 100% is death, so you don't wanna work yourself to death. That would be a 100%. But you certainly could get 50, 60% of capacity If you're driven, which is what we'll talk about in a few minutes, if your vision requires that, which we'll talk about that next, but then you can't Ignore your family, and you can't ignore yourself. And so in those times when you got this gigantic, this gargantuan w, You need to ask yourself some really hard questions. J.R. Flatter [00:27:08]: Can I sustain this? Is this the smart thing to do? If you show up It's a finish line, and you're alone. You probably didn't win. If you show up and you're broken, you're not gonna be there to race the next day, So you gotta take care of your family, and you gotta take care of yourself. And however you define that and as a family, However, you define family, you decide that part of our development across our training programs is conversation with self In your journal, conversation with the significant others in your life, spouses, partners, parents, best friends, and conversations with other leaders about how their journey was going and what insights they might offer you, And then conversations with a coach, and work family itself is part of that conversation. What are you saying, and then what are you demonstrating? Lucas Flatter [00:28:07]: Yeah. I guess, in a way, it's kinda resource management. Like, why do we wanna work? It's because we need resources To sustain our our life, you know, buy food, buy shelter, and then To bring people along in the family aspect, but then also the self, you need to have, you know, the capacity, the resource to provide energy to the other 2. Maybe the family provides, like, more of a meaning a resource of meaning that you can't necessarily get from work. And just, Yeah. Deciding how I think if you focus on something, you're gonna be thinking about it a lot. So, You know, what do you wanna be thinking about all the time? When you go back to your family, are you still thinking about work? Like, what Ways can you make sure you're really serving the self and the family and the work when the time comes to do so? J.R. Flatter [00:29:06]: Absolutely. Final pillar, vision. In some ways, the definition of a leader and the differentiator from a leader and a manager's vision. Can you and are you willing to think decades and take action decades into the future. I'll put my academic hat on for a second, and we very clearly define the difference being goals and objectives and key results. You may have read about OKRs in, Measure What Matters from John Doerr. We have a g on to the front of that because we want to talk about lifetime goals. And so if you close your eyes right now and think about where are you in 30 years, that I would be asking you a question about your life's goals and no matter what happened in your life, those things wouldn't change So being a CEO is not a goal it's an objective. J.R. Flatter [00:30:05]: Having financial independence when I'm 91 years old is a goal, So being a chairman, being a CEO was part of that goal, but it was an objective toward that goal. Being a parent is an objective Being surrounded by people who love you is a goal You might not be blessed with children. You might choose not to have children. As you grew a few years older, it thought, this might not be right for me. So that's not a goal, it's an objective Being married is an objective Something might happen in your marriage For me, it's a goal. I'm 40 years in and counting, so my goal when I close my eyes 30 years from now is I'm sitting next to my bride somewhere. I'm not sure where because that depends on where my children end up and my grandchildren end up. Those are visions in a visionary person to think and act. J.R. Flatter [00:31:04]: You might have philosophically heard planting a tree today, in which shade you shall never reside that's a visionary, that's a leader, thinking and acting decades into the future, planting a tree today that you're never going to enjoy the shade from. Objectives are 1 to 5 years, and they do change. They change often. Like, I think it's several times in my life where my objectives changed. Being a CEO was never a life goal, but it was certainly an objective necessary. One thing I forgot to mention, goals usually center on 3 things: love, so I wanna be surrounded by people who love me Finances, I certainly don't wanna be living paycheck to paycheck when I'm 91 years old, and health. The reason I was at the doctor this morning nothing's wrong with me. Matter of fact, my resting heart rate was 46 this morning. J.R. Flatter [00:32:03]: That's an objective. On my way of being as healthy as I can be, I measure my resting heart rate regularly. And if it's not in the forties, and I do something about it. That's where I want it to be. That's where I think a fit person can and should be, low fifties, or even in the forties. 1 year, you could really measure, what am I going to accomplish in the next 12 months? What are we going to accomplish together? In 5 years, you can really put some meat on the bones at 5 years. Beyond that, there's just too much unpredictability. Key results, usually Monthly, quarterly, daily, when I lay my head on my pillow this evening, I'll be able to say I fulfilled 2 key results for today. J.R. Flatter [00:32:49]: I went to the gym with my son. I went to the doctor to check-in, see how my health is doing. So that's what key results are, those things that you can measure that contribute to your objectives, which contributes to your goals. And so one of the things that we'll ask you to do if you join our training programs is to define what those 30 year goals are for you right now, no matter what happened in your life, even if you passed away, that's why we buy life insurance, People say, I can't even tell you what I'm having for dinner tonight. How could I possibly tell you what I'm gonna be doing in 30 years? Well, if you have children you're thinking 30 years into the future if you've bought a house you probably have a 30 year mortgage if you wanna retire someday you're thinking 30 years into the future So you're already doing that, we're just gonna ask you to be a little more specific and focused, And then create actions to fulfill that vision, and those are objectives and key results that fulfill the objectives. Lucas Flatter [00:33:57]: Yeah. I mean, just the idea of what is a leader, it's, you know, choosing a direction. And if you don't have That imagination to kind of be able to create a vision or a plan for other people, then it's gonna be hard For somebody to wanna follow you. And also, I think, probably, you're asking people to be technical, do technical tasks In order to achieve that goal, and in a way, you're asking them to kind of be technical, forego your, like, Maybe your vision a little bit, you know, follow my vision, put your head down, get the work done because it's like a goal that we all agree to. So, You know, being confident in that vision and having a clear vision that other people can get behind, I think that's like a leadership True. J.R. Flatter [00:34:51]: Yeah, you and I talk a lot about this global virtual labor market, and wanting to become the employer of choice, if you're going to attract and retain the world's best talent, you better have a vision of where you're going, you better be able to tell them why they want to be a part of that team, and how it's gonna be meaningful to them. We're not judging them, they're judging us as to whether or not they wanna be part of that, whether they and align the morality with our ethics. In the 21st century, at the speed of technology, And this is not a judgmental observation. It's simply something I think I've observed of generations younger than myself. There's a loyalty to craft and self, and the the last thing we'll talk about today is lifelong learning and development. The speed of technology today, you know, what we're doing today versus what we'll be doing in 30 years from now, and you, especially, Declan, your son, when he starts his working life and becomes an adult and perhaps a spouse, and The technology that he's using absolutely will not be the technology he finishes with, and you better be a visionary leader to describe how you're going to adapt to the ever changing world that you're inviting them to be part of. So you could See how all 4 of these inform each other. Your vision is informed by your principles. J.R. Flatter [00:36:27]: Your principles might morph, but because of your vision, your work family self balance might more to fulfill an objective. Those years that I worked 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, we're fulfilling a 1 year objective, a 2 year objective, certainly isn't something I anticipated or could sustain beyond that, Technical, cognitive, and emotional, I can distinctly remember having a conversation with my 1st customer that I was no longer gonna come and sit in that chair that was mine because I was fulfilling a technical and cognitive role because I needed to go build a team and how much courage it took to do that. And to begin that very moment deciding I was not gonna be the best Analyst, technically competent person on my team, I was always gonna be the 2nd best in those because I had the courage to be in a room filled with people more capable than I was. So we'll walk Through the enabling here, it's just relatively quickly. Humility, we've talked about a little bit already. How do you prove to the world that you're humble? You demonstrate it. How do you know you're humble? It's like the definition of being principled. Only you know when you're being principled and living up to your own principles. J.R. Flatter [00:37:52]: Only you know within your heart of hearts whether you're truly humble, powerful. A lot of People, I don't define it by any generation or age. The thing is this is pervasive across the 8,000,000,000 of us in the world. Because of the abuses of power, hesitate to create, collect, and use power in a constructive way. And if you think about how do you change an organization, how do you lead an organization, the only mechanism you really have is power, And there are many kinds of power. Most of us are familiar with positional power, which is because I'm the CEO, that's why. If you're a father like you are, because I'm dad, that's why, but you see how far that gets you with a 4 year old, And it doesn't get you much farther as a CEO. You better start using other kinds of power, reward power. J.R. Flatter [00:38:49]: Course of power is the one that most people hesitate using, but I just used it a couple of days ago and very necessarily. It's the hardest thing I do, but oftentimes the most necessary thing. Reward power, expert power, all of those other kinds of power fade as soon as another expert walks in the room, your power is cut in half, because now you're not the only person they can ask, they can go ask the other person. There's a kind of power that we call referent power, And it's, I follow you because I believe in you, I believe in your vision, I believe in your principles Boldness, I think this is best described by Teddy Roosevelt, man in the arena. Do you have the courage and the boldness Step into the arena and say to the world, These are my principles, I'm not judging you, please don't judge me Here's my vision, This is where I'm going, and I want you to come with me. Do you have the boldness to do that? Drive one of those potential conflicts between work, family, and self, and drive, if you want above average results in your personal and professional life, You're gonna have to give above average effort. There's just no 2 ways to get around it. If it's professional, you're gonna have a bigger w. J.R. Flatter [00:40:10]: If it's personal, you're gonna have a bigger f or a bigger s, family of self, but you're gonna have to be driven. Average is my least favorite statistic because all it tells us is half the world's above that number or that line and half the world's above it or below it. But if you want above average results in your life, I'm quite confident you're gonna have to have above average drive. And then the last 2 are a bit controversial, and I mean them to be that way. I want them to be a bit provocative. People are hesitant to be charismatic because charisma has been abused, and oftentimes they think you're either born without it or you're not, or you're born with it or you're not, but it really is a skill that you can work on, and it's something you can be very purposeful about walking into a room and filling it with your leadership, Being that person, when you walk into the room, the room changes That's what leaders do That's what courageous, bold, driven, humble leaders do They come in the room, and the atmosphere changes that's what I mean by charisma it's not charisma that an actor has, or an athlete has, or even a musician This is a very superficial charisma, but it's a deep, broad charisma gained by your demonstration of the other characteristics of your house of leadership. So gained by being courageous and being principled and visionary and driven, and it's one of those you can't really say, yeah, I'm charismatic. I could tell you a story, probably will some other time, about a charismatic leader, then when I finally met them, Is this the person I've heard described all of this time? The stories that were being told about this leader to me didn't match the figure that I had in mind that walked into the room. J.R. Flatter [00:42:04]: Then finally, probably the most controversial and the most provocative is unreasonable. This comes from Ralph Waldo not Emerson. How come I always forget this guy's name? Lucas Flatter [00:42:16]: Thoreau? J.R. Flatter [00:42:18]: George Thoreau. Yeah. Thank you. I have this mental block who wrote man and superman in 1901, and he talked about 2 kinds of people, reasonable people and unreasonable people. Reasonable people align themselves to the world and are comfortable aligning themselves to the world. Unreasonable people expect that the world will adapt to them and follow them And therefore, all change in the world is due to the unreasonable person Well, as a leader and as a coach, I certainly want you to expect you can change the world. I told you earlier session that every learning deck we have starts with this journey is going to change your life I'm unreasonably expecting. Lucas is unreasonably expecting that a coaching journey with us is gonna change your life. J.R. Flatter [00:43:12]: And when you engage in leadership and when you engage in coaching, we want to unreasonably expect that you're gonna change the lives of those you lead, Change the lives of the organization that you lead in due course changed the world, and that takes a lot of courage. Of these 6, you could probably swap out 1 or more. The 4 pillars, I'm absolutely convinced, foundation I'm absolutely convinced As I've studied leadership and practice leadership, these are the 6 recurring enabling characteristics that I've come across. People are introverts who say I could never be charismatic, they're logical thinkers that can never be unreasonable, I'm gonna push back pretty hard, say, can you think about this a little more? I don't know. What do you think about when you see those 6 characteristics? Lucas Flatter [00:44:03]: Yeah. I mean, I guess I would ask people, and and and now I'm trying to think of, like, what is an example of this Leader that that you have wanted to follow in the past, and then and then think about the ways that they might manifest these different things. So it might be like 1, 2, or 3 different people, but certain people express these in more obvious ways than others. But I think it'd be Hard to find somebody that you've followed in the past that you've respected as a leader that doesn't in some way encapsulate each of these. So And even personally, I I see things that, oh, yeah, I'm I'm gaining more understanding. Like, that charismatic aspect of My natural personality is to kind of be more in the background and listening and not being as bold, and then that's another one. But But I think, like, now as I'm maturing, I'm thinking it's not necessarily noble to just, oh, like, not Express yourself if it could benefit people. So that's something that's been changing with me over time. J.R. Flatter [00:45:14]: Yeah. Yeah. Lucas Flatter [00:45:16]: That's something that's been changing with me over time. J.R. Flatter [00:45:19]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we could talk about this. We're gone Way longer than we anticipated in this session, we could literally talk all day about this house of leadership, and and we'll continue to revisit it as we continue our sessions. Last thing I'll talk about is lifelong learning and development. We are on a life journey towards mastering whatever crafts it is that we decide to, seek mastery, and I'm never going to be a master golfer. It just takes too much time. J.R. Flatter [00:45:53]: I love the game. I love watching it, but the amount of time it would take to shoot a decent score just isn't in the cards for me, but that's my house, and I'll never judge a golfer for their house. I have a lot of people in my world that love that game and play it regularly, but they're always trying to get better, and they make they celebrate, and they shoot certain scores or reach certain objectives. There's a thing called the rule of 72, and it's a trick compound interest. If you divide a growth rate into 72, it'll tell you how long it takes to double something. So if I have a dollar that I've invested and I have a 10% growth rate, I'll have $2 in 7.2 years. And the same is true of growth of people. If I get 10% better at something every year, I'm gonna be twice as good in 7 years. J.R. Flatter [00:46:55]: And you might think that's a long time, but if your team gets 10% better every year at what they do, Your entire team is twice as good as it was 7 years from now. And if you do compound interest, you can be 4 or 5 times as good as you are right now by the end of your career. But it takes continued investment, continued growth. So that's what the roof of this house of leadership is all about. You have the courage, the willingness, the ability To be a lifelong learner, finally, before I pass it over to you to take us home, to be a lifelong learner means you're volunteering to be a lifelong novice. You're learning to play guitar. You're becoming proficient. A year ago, year and a half ago, 2 years ago, you certainly weren't. J.R. Flatter [00:47:48]: But you had the courage, the willingness, the ability to keep going. I see your growth and strength in the gym. You're starting to notice it. It takes a lifelong commitment. Just to Lucas Flatter [00:48:01]: end on the talk about lifelong learning and personal growth, I'm starting to believe that it's pretty necessary to Reflect and document on the growth. Otherwise, it's hard to say whether you're making progress. It's hard to say whether, You know, if you're not getting feedback from other people. So thinking about not just improving all the time, but But celebrating your wins by looking back, looking forward to see how far you wanna go. Like, do I wanna become a master, or do I just Am I comfortable at the level, and I just wanna keep expressing that skill, or, you know, do I wanna move on to another skill? Being introspective and kind of checking in on those things over time, I think, will help you get that Self efficacy that I am improving and I can improve in other things. J.R. Flatter [00:48:56]: Thank you for that. Alright. Well, that concludes this episode of building a coaching culture. I truly hope that this episode was helpful to you. If it was, Be sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. Maybe stop and give us a rating or a review and share this podcast with someone who might find