01 Mar Consistent Purposeful Action
How Can We Improve Our Leadership?
Christopher Hart here with Transforming Lives Coaching and Consulting, and so we’re continuing our series of what we call Lead Strong, and it’s a leadership series on recurring various different topics. Up to this point we’ve covered the understanding of what leadership is, then we endeavored into understanding the five different levels of leadership that can help provide us a model for many leaders to be able to navigate the journey from how to start in leadership or how to get back to the foundation and all the way to being what we call a ‘pinnacle leader.’ And that looks like the five levels.
- The first level is to be a great follower, follow something or someone great so that you have a model by which to resort back to when need be.
- The second level was lead by self, we must understand that we have to lead ourselves before we can lead other people.
- Level Three is how to lead another; and lead another is about that one person that you lead, it’s about the one to one. You may have multitudes of people in your organization but it’s about how do I lead each person one on one?
- Level Four is leading multitudes, so if you have an organization, you have a business, charity, 501(C) (3), anything of that nature, your own family, how do you lead your family? How do you lead a group of people in the direction that you want to take them, they want to go, et cetera?
- And then Level Five, the pinnacle is how do we lead leaders. It’s about creating multitudes, it’s about duplication and expansion of your vision, your mission in life and your business and your charitable organization, et cetera. So those are five different levels and those are important to understand because as we navigate this series we’re always going to resort back to those. So I just wanted to bring that to top of mind awareness for you guys.
So How Do We Even Begin?
Today we’re going to talk about how do we get our people into consistent purposeful action. And I think two words, if you look at the headline of this post, I capitalized two …actually three words, consistent, purposeful, and action. The key in leadership is getting our people into consistent action, like time on task over time, not intermediate or every once in awhile they’re taking action like three out of five days or doing what they’re supposed to be doing, how do they do it consistently day in day out over a sustained period of time and purposeful? I think purposeful is probably the biggest word out of that whole segment of words that we need to be focused on as leaders, purposeful. It’s what they’re doing has a purpose, and I think where a lot of leaders fall short with leading people is they understand the purpose of the action but their people that come to work every day they don’t understand, they just think it’s… you know it’s just something that they’re either paid to do or it’s something that they have to do because the leader is telling them. So let’s break this down and let’s see how we can improve our leadership and really pour into people at a high level so we can help them get what they want and in turn we receive what we want, and that’s what we call success with people.
So when we look at ‘consistent’ and ‘purposeful,’ even though our English language tells us to say consistent purposeful action, we actually have to look at it as a purposeful then consistent action. And what that looks like is when we say purposeful it has a purpose, and I think sometimes where leaders tend to focus with their people is what’s the purpose of this in relationship to the job, the goal or the business goal, or the business’ big picture. And really where you have to go with it as a leader is the purpose that it has for that individual doing the job, like what is the purpose of that action in that leader’s subordinate’s life, that person’s life that’s part of your organization, your business, et cetera? So let’s take a look at that.
So when we say leadership is about helping people get what they want when they want it, it’s about how understanding people’s desires. There’s a saying out there that says the purpose… or my definition of business is the purpose of business, and when we say business you can either be role or a business, if you own a business … so if you’re an employee or if you’re someone within an organization that assumes a role, you’re maybe not the organization leader or you’re not the business leader just understand when I say business it also relates to your role. So the purpose of your role or the purpose of business is to live a life on purpose. So what does that look like?
When you wake up and you go to work every day, whether you run that business or you have a role within an organization or business, the purpose of that is so that you can generate some sort of outcome, and for most people it’s income, it’s money, and so you run that business, you perform in that role so you can receive some sort of value, most of the time income, so that you can pay for your life on purpose. Whatever you believe your purpose of your life is, whether it’s defined by your spiritual journey or it’s defined by what you want out of life you have to fund that in some sort of manner. And that’s just a reality you know there’s many people who think that money is not everything, and I agree with that to a certain degree, but money does allow us a lot more options in life and it does allow us to make more things a reality, and it also allows us to be able to do more good in the world. So we understand that when we show up every day it’s about that, it’s not about doing the job, it’s not about lead generating, it’s not about typing stuff into a computer and processing administrative information, whatever you do it’s not about that. It’s about doing that so that you can receive a result that leads to your ability to live the life that you desire for yourself or the purpose that you feel you have in your life.
So What Do You Really Want?
So when we rewind, as leaders helping them get what they want when they want, we first have to understand what is it that they want. And all too often I see leaders will go sit down with their people, or you know when I coach and educate leaders or consult them I’ll say, “What do your people want?” They’ll say “Oh well this person wants to make a hundred thousand this year… this person wants to make 250 thousand…”
I’m like, “No, what is it they want?” Remember that’s just the indicator, that’s just the income that drives really what they want or desire out of life. And leaders are missing that critical component that what do their people really want out of life. I call the income is nothing more than the result, and what they do with the income in their life is what I call achievement. And as leaders we need to understand the achievement that people want in their life because you can make a hundred thousand or a quarter of a million, half a million, a million, whatever the number is and still do nothing with it, if it sits in a bank account like what good is that unless that has a purpose? Or you can make one hundred thousand dollars and spend 99 thousand and be broke and your life still looks the same, there’s no achievement there.
So what’s important about making that hundred thousand? Is that about being able to pay off debt that’s going to release some stress in your life, or it’s that’s going to afford you more opportunities to invest for your future, maybe put a down payment, on a car, be able to save for your kids to go to college, like that’s achievement. When you can make a hundred thousand dollars to do all those things that you desire for your life and that actually comes to fruition, that’s achievement, and as leaders that’s where we have to take our people, we have to understand that. And when we understand that, that becomes the very premise and foundation of our conversations with them, and those consistent conversations I believe will lead to consistent purposeful action because people grow into the conversations that you have with them and if the conversation that you have with them is about them and what they want and the actions that they need to take or actually have a purpose like hey when I was in real estate what you always heard was, “Lead generate … lead generate … lead generate … you have to lead generate every day.”
Now who in the world likes to be told what they have to do every day, especially when it’s something that nobody really likes to do? I mean let’s be real, nobody really likes to lead generate, I never like to lead generate. But you want to know why I did it? Because I understood that lead generating created leads for me to continue the conversation with people to acquire appointments to be able to meet and consult people on buying or selling a home so that they can hire me, and by hiring me we can either sell their home or find them a home and go under contract, and contracts lead to closings and when we have closings we made money and when we made money that’s when we were able to actually live out the purpose or desires for our life.
So I tied that all the way back into understanding that that lead generation activity had a purpose, it was the igniter for the end result which is what I desired in my life. So it’s no longer that I liked or disliked lead generating it’s I understood it was the catalyst for what I truly wanted in my life and what I understood every single morning that I showed up to my real estate business was if I did not do that activity then the reality of all those other activities, of appointments, agreements, contracts, closings and money, the likelihood significantly declined. And yet when I did it I basically did the one thing that makes the biggest difference in what I really wanted for my life. So guess what? I did it. I didn’t do it because I like to do it, I didn’t do it because some coach or mentor or someone that I worked for told me I had to do it, I did it because it was what I wanted to do, it had a purpose, and the purpose was to achieve the end result of income that was the very catalyst to the life that I get to live.
It Is About Understanding The Purpose
So when we talk about consistent purposeful action it’s about understanding the purpose of the activities that your people have to do, and even if it’s just like an admin that works for you, that activity that they show up and do every single day has a purpose for the business to be able to achieve income so that the business can pay their salary so that their income can support the life and the expenses that they currently have in their life. So that’s the purposeful end of it.
When we talk about consistent we understand that in order to achieve the results that we want it’s time on task over time. Look at and study any successful person they will not get up on stage, write a book, or preach from some sort of video or platform and tell you “I achieved success because I showed up every once in awhile and do what I was supposed to do.” Like that whole four-hour work week, that’s a lie, like let’s not lie to each other, I understand the premise of the book but let’s not lie to each other and understand that you can achieve success in four hours. What Tim Ferriss is talking about there is he did four hours of purposeful activities but in that it was every single day, it wasn’t “Oh I do it four hours on Monday and I’m done Tuesday through Friday or Tuesday through Saturday.” It’s showing up time on task over time. And I’ll tell you something right now what I understand about success both in my studies and in my experience is, is time on task over time is what’s going to cause you to win, it’s what’s going to cause you to outperform your competition because the reality is if we all struggle with how to get our own people into consistent action every single day then most likely our competition’s doing that and we ourselves struggle with that every day, like diets, or gyms, or your business.
Are you doing what you’re supposed to be doing every single day? And that’s where we covered in Leadership Level Three, how do you lead by self. So just understand there is two components, time on task over time, just that alone, time on task over time consistency will trump skill and talent every single day because the person with skill or talent is most likely not going to show up every single day, and if you show up every single day over a sustained period of time you’ll gain the skill, you’ll gain the talent, you’ll gain the experience, and you’ll be kicking your competitor’s you know what.
Now tie that with understanding why you’re supposed to do what you’re doing. Real estate agents understand that lead generation is not to just leave generate because someone at a higher level is telling you to, it’s because that’s the very activity that’s going to lead you down the path to achieving the goal, the income that you desire for your life that’s going to allow you to then in turn to afford the life that you want. We all want to be rich but we don’t want to do the things that rich people do. See that’s where we fail, and as leaders we need to tie people into the purpose of the activities that they’ve been hired to do, and the key to that is you recruit them to that. You don’t recruit them to some phantom, “The world’s going to be wonderful place,” and then all of a sudden, “Oh you got to lead generate.” No, you help them understand, “Are you willing to wake up every morning, show up day in and day out even when you have the sniffles and your tummy hurts and your head hurts and maybe you didn’t sleep that well that night, are you willing to show up every single day, fight through the pains of life, because they’re going to show up, and do what you’re supposed to do because it has a purpose for either the business that’s going to support your income or your activities that’s going to support your income and help you live the life that you want to live?”
Time On Task Over Time
So take those things into consideration people, it’s about consistent purposeful action, helping them define the purpose of their actions and as a leader you help them understand that doing this day in, day out, time on task over time is what’s going to cause them to win.
Hey if you have any questions about anything we’ve covered up to this point, the understanding and definitions of leadership or the levels that we talk about, the five levels of leadership, or about how do we really dig into like what are those conversations sound like, checkout part 2 of this post, we’re going to talk about what do those conversations sound like that help people keep top of mind awareness of the purposeful action that drives them, it also becomes an internal drive for them to show up and want to do it every single day and not be told to do it every single day.
We’ll talk about leadership conversations that keeps people’s activities that’s purposeful actions top of mind, that creates their self motivation, that causes them to do the things that they need to do, that we want them to do, that drives the results and makes us better leaders in their lives and in our own lives. So thanks for joining me today, I hope you all have a blessed day and just remember God loves you and so do I. Be blessed. Take care.
About the author:
Over the course of 8 years, Christopher Hart went from an enlisted Private First Class to a Commissioned Officer-Captain. In 2005, Christopher chose to move on from his military career to focus on starting a family and embarking in the world of entrepreneurship. Christopher’s passion is now working to help others be the BEST version of themselves and helping them Lead others to the same!
To learn more about Christopher Hart or to get in touch with him regarding a coaching program you can email him at Chris@TransformingLivesCoaching.com
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