On the last episode for 2017 of The Ultimate Leadership Podcast, we bring you best-selling author and speaker Alan Zimmerman, who will introduce you his six secrets to peak performance. Find out why your attitude towards success matters, how to create your legacy, and how to achieve connective communication.

On today’s podcast:

• The number one secret to success is your attitude
• Figuring out your purpose
• How to block out mind blinders
• Whatever you do, perform with excellence
• If you give people what they need, they will give you what you need
• Asking brave questions

Links:

• The Payoff Principle: Discover the 3 Secrets for Getting What You Want Out of Life and Work

The number one secret to success is your attitude

One of the landmark pieces of research discovered that the number one secret to success is not education or IQ, it’s your attitude.

Most people have not yet figured out what happiness is to them. If you don’t know what happiness is to you, you will never find it. If you can’t define success for yourself, you can’t get it.

So many people say “I can’t help the way I feel” or “I’ve always been this way”. That is a lie. Attitudes are changeable and controllable.

One of Alan’s strategies is to see something positive in every situation. He doesn’t believe that life is totally good or bad, blank or white. Even a rotten situation has something positive in it.

It’s time to figure out your purpose

Alan’s second secret is purpose. How do you find one? Most people don’t give it much thought. They don’t go beyond thinking about getting a job and paying the mortgage. That’s survival, it’s not a purpose.

Purpose is a deeper driving force in life. When you have the purpose figured out, the amount of energy that comes with that is incredible.

In order to find your purpose, Alan suggests visualizing a three-legged stool. Each leg asks a question. When you answer all three questions you get to find your purpose.

The first question is: What are you good at? The second: What excites you? The third: What difference do you want to make?

Blocking mind blinders

Alan’s third secret is persistence. Two of his students made a research and found out that 92% of salespeople give up after the fourth no, but 60% of customers say no before they say yes.

You should refuse to use mind blinders. Mind blinders are small negative sentences that you tell yourself. When you tell yourself these kinds of things, you almost always fail.

If you catch yourself thinking or uttering a mind blinder, talk back to yourself “Stop it, just stop it” to neutralize its effect.

Whatever you do, perform with excellence

Alan’s forth secret is character. What can a person do to really build their character?

For years, we thought that character is old-fashioned and that it doesn’t fit with our society today anymore. The philosophy has been “Do whatever you want as long as you don’t get caught”.

Whatever you do, perform with excellence. Do your best, not just enough to get by. Always tell the truth.

If you have a blemish on your character, acknowledge it. Accept responsibility for it.

Knowing what the other person needs

Alan’s fifth secret is communication. Everywhere in the world, people are asking: “How do I get people to do what I want them to do?”

Alan uses the cooperation principle. To the degree you give other people what they need, they will give you what you need. You have to give the other person what they need before you get what you need. Most people have that backwards.

To achieve connective communication, a person must refrain from killer statements. Most of the time, these statements are used to shut people down.

Asking brave questions

Alan’s sixth secret is compassionate listening. This is accomplished by asking brave questions.

The average person is only tuned in to 25% of what is being said. Part of the problem is that a lot of our communication is functional communication, like “What time is dinner?”. It doesn’t build intimacy or teamwork. Brave questions go beyond the superficial. Who, what, where, why, how?

What are 3 ways we can serve our customers better? What are some values to instill in your corporate culture? What would you do differently? What was the highlight of your day?

People are very engaged with these kinds of questions. They listen better, they build connections.

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On this episode of The Ultimate Leadership Podcast we learn from leadership expert Liz Wiseman why having the mindset of a rookie is beneficial for any professional, and how to avoid becoming a diminisher leader and disempowering your team.

On today’s podcast:

• Why we tend to be at our best when we know the least
• Diminisher vs multiplier leadership profiles
• The mechanics of servant leadership
• Becoming a diminisher leader while having the best intentions
• What is the future of leadership going to look like?
• Why fluid leadership makes sense

Links:

• Multipliers Books
• Rookie Smarts

The mechanics of servant leadership

In time, Liz developed a deep understanding of followership. She came to understand what people need from their leaders and what happens when they receive poor leadership.

Being a new manager is a huge challenge. Liz understood that the leader’s mindset and talent affects the intelligence and the capability of their team.

Sometimes the smartest leaders have a dumbing down effect on their organization. They do all the thinking and heavy lifting for the group, and no one else around them gets to use their own intellect.

Multiplier vs diminisher leaders

In her book “Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter”, Liz highlights two types of leaders: multipliers and diminishers.

Multiplier leaders amplify the intelligence of their team. Diminisher leaders tend to drain the energy and capability from the people around them.

In terms of impact, multipliers get virtually all of their team’s capabilities, whereas diminishers get less than half of them.

Multipliers have the assumption that people are smart, that they can figure things out on their own. Diminishers tend to have the assumption that no one is going to figure things out without them, that they are the smartest person in the room.

In terms of how they manage talent, diminishers tend to be acquirers of resources, whereas

multipliers tend to be utilizers of people’s genius.

When it comes to the environment they create, diminishers create stress, while multipliers create emotional and intellectual safety. Teams working under a multiplier feel safe to take risks, to think differently, and to make mistakes.

Diminishers tend to give directions, they are know-it-alls. Multipliers are challengers, they ask big questions, they invite people into new possibilities.

Diminishers tend to be decision-makers, whereas multipliers tend to be debate-makers. Diminishers tend to micromanage, while multipliers tend to be investors who give other people ownership.

Becoming a diminisher leader without realizing it

When she started her research, Liz thought that diminisher leaders had an ego problem. She saw narcissistical, tyrannical leaders.

In time she realized that most of the diminishing that’s happening in organizations, and even in our homes, is coming from really well-intended leaders who don’t have an ego problem. They have an awareness problem.

They don’t realize that people can end up diminishing others while holding the best of intentions.

Liz saw this in church organizations. The more noble intentions are, the more likely we are to end up diminishing.

What is the future of leadership going to look like?

A new model of leadership is emerging. Millennials are helping to lead the way.

A lot of millennials come to the workplace not aspiring to be leaders. They bring a bit of disdain for leadership that is in some ways extraordinarily helpful.

Liz sees the future of leadership going towards a very fluid model. Where there is a tide, a rise and fall movement.

In the fluid model of leadership, workers can step up and down several times every day. They can be strong and lead the team when necessary. Later they can step down and become followers.

Why we tend to be at our best when we know the least

People have a generally held belief that we get better with experience. Years of practice equates to mastery, and we think that we are better at something the more we know about it.

We are now working in a world where that perhaps is no longer true. Our technology has allowed our business cycles to spin very fast. Change is coming at us so rapidly, that best practices don’t matter so much anymore.

In the current environment, it’s not what you know that matters, but how fast you can learn. How quickly you can face a new problem.

We need to find ways to stay perpetual rookies, despite having years of mastery. We need to work with the same level of hunger and curiosity that we had when we were doing something for the very first time.

As leaders, we need to lead people in the dark. We might not know where we’re going, but we have to be able to recognize it when we get there.

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Adversity is inescapable. We have an inner drive for comfort, and when we encounter something unpleasant or uncomfortable, our initial reaction is to reject it. We don’t want to deal with things we don’t like, so we try to push them away from us.

But what if the unpleasant is actually an opportunity? What if adversity is a gift? How could this be?

We turn to Marcus Aurelius Anderson, who conquered his worst nightmare. By overcoming what he thought was an unsurmountable obstacle, he has come to realize how much potential lies in the human spirit. His greatest adversity turned out to be a gift with lifelong value.

On today’s podcast:

• How Marcus overcame paralysis from the neck down
• The insights the experience gave him
• How hard work must be combined with the right mindset to achieve success

Links:

• http://www.marcusaureliusanderson.com/
• Marcus’ book, The Gift of Adversity

It began with the military.

Not long after his uncle, a Vietnam veteran, passed away, Marcus wanted to honour his memory and service to his country. So he decided to join the military; specifically, in the infantry.

His professional background and skillset gave him, effectively, whatever choice of role in the military he wanted. But he wanted to be the best soldier he could be, and get into the midst of protecting his country. So he joined the infantry.

A childhood nightmare made manifest.

One day after training, he felt some numbness in his extremities. He explained it away to himself as a natural consequence of the physical stress of military exercises.

But the next day, he woke up and realized he was paralyzed from the neck down. He tried to get out of bed and he could only move his head a little.

As a child, he had nightmares of not being able to move his body. This was his worst fear, and it was happening to him, now. Luckily, military personnel were near his quarters and were able to get him immediate medical attention.

A terrible prognosis.

After being rushed to hospital and examined, a disc rupture was discovered in his neck. Marcus was prepared for surgery.

He flatlined twice during the operation, but made it out. Unfortunately, the doctor told him he would never be able to walk again.

This plunged him into a deep depression. He thought about committing suicide, but couldn’t actualize it because of the paralysis. He raged at everyone he came across during his early recovery.

But mostly, he was furious at himself for what he felt was wasted time on tasks with no meaning to him.

“There’s got to be something here for me to learn.”

Marcus decided to try to just go with his new reality, to try to find something positive in what had happened to him. To see if, maybe, there was a silver lining to all this.

About a week later, after he changed his mindset, he started feeling movement in his fingers and his toes. He used that remarkable progress as a cornerstone, onto which he could build up the rest of his recovery.

It took three months before anything moved, and almost an entire year before he could walk with the aid of a walker. Eventually he was discharged from long-term care, and still needed occupational therapy to maintain his progress.

But he had done the impossible. He was walking when the experts said it was impossible. He had lived through and overcame his greatest nightmare.

Sharing his story to motivate others and to close the dark chapter.

Marcus wrote his book, “The Gift of Adversity” because he hoped that others suffering from major setbacks could take benefit from it. Even if only one person took any comfort or motivation from the book, that would’ve been enough to make Marcus feel that he had done his job.

Marcus also shared his story for catharsis. By putting his awful experience – and the profound growth he found as a result of it – down on paper, he found he could create closure for himself, and move on to the next chapter in his life.

“Nothing is worth having until you pay a price.”

Through his work as a Mindset Coach, Marcus shares the core insight from overcoming his greatest setback: that hard work must be underlined with the right mindset, and the right mindset needs hard work to drive it forward.

Human beings have remarkable potential. But we can’t draw on our tremendous reserves of strength unless we have something to push us forward, to challenge us.

And when you see that challenge, when you encounter that adversity – whether it’s a dissatisfied customer, an argument with a manufacturer, or a catastrophic injury – if you see it as an opportunity for learning, not as something to be avoided, you will grow. You will become stronger. You will find a way to overcome, and tap into your hidden potential

That’s the gift of adversity.

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