P+ Yourself & Your People

05 Jul P+ Yourself & Your People

The One Thing That Every Leader Must Do

Hey leadership nation Christopher Hart here, welcome to our daily Lead Strong Leadership video series where we look to raise the leadership lids of those leaders out there who are looking to be more influential and be able to be more impactful in those that they lead and the world around them.  So welcome!  Once again my name is Christopher Hart with Transforming Lives Coaching and Consulting and I come to you as a organizational and leadership development coach who also specializes in the area of the psychology of success through peak performance.

So today is the first day out of our leadership video series, five part video series that we did last week that culminated yesterday titled The Five Deadly Sins of Every Leader; and so I believe that was a very impactful video series, I got really good feedback from that.  So if you’re just joining us just know we do these videos every single day on Facebook Live and we also keep them up for replay on both Facebook, our Youtube channel and our website, so you can go back and look at any of our videos, join the journey with us, we’re not selling you anything other than influence and impact in the world around you as leaders to make you better and stronger leaders.  So I highly recommend you go back and look at those because there are some people out there that share some really good stuff with me and it made me realize the power behind those five deadly sins and how it’s affecting our leadership out in our environments today.

But anyway today’s video is titled The One Thing That Every Leader Must Do, and my question for you is are you doing it?  And so I’m going to preface the topic with a model that I speak a lot about whether it’s on these videos I speak you know relatively fairly amount about it, definitely preach on it and teach to it in classes that I teach as well as coaching, and definitely go a lot into it into my course that I teach, The Power of Influence.  And it’s the model of psychology that’s an acronym which is PTFAR.  PTFAR is nothing more than a five letter acronym that are key words of understanding the structural model by which all human beings operate, and what that is is programming that’s the P, so what you’ll notice is all these words the first letter of the word is part of the acronym model.  So our programming affects our thoughts and the thoughts that we have; and the thoughts that we have are going to determine the feelings that we experience thus the actions that we take and the results that show up in our life.  And interestingly enough it’s a cyclical model and the results will then effect the programming that you have, they’ll either reinforce it or it’ll create a new one and then the cycle continues itself.

And so one of the things that I teach in the Power of Influence is a concept see the P, because what we believe about influence is if you don’t know what influences people you don’t know how to influence them.  And we’ve said time and time again if you’re a follower you know that leadership is what?  Influence.  John Maxwell says nothing more nothing less.  Leadership is influence, nothing more nothing less.  So if leadership is influence and in order to influence people we need to know what influences them and the model of psychology PTFAR tells us that programming influences everything else.  Then we must see people’s P, we must see their programming, we must understand their programming.  Because when you understand their programming then you understand one of the elements that’s influencing them and therefore you can obtain and create a better and more significant chance of influencing that person.

Now with that understanding here’s what we need to look at:  There are many leaders out there, there’s many individuals that embrace the growth journey, we’ve heard of stuff like make learning base the foundation of your action plan.  What is growth?  What is learning?  Learning is growth, but when we learn what we’re doing is we’re in essence we’re growing our P… Good morning Rebecca thanks for joining us again…we’re growing our P, and in leadership what I want to bring to you guys today is the concept of the P plus.  Leaders you must be plussing your own P because that’s going to raise your leadership lid.  But the big thing that I want you to take away from today is you must be plussing your P and you must be plussing the P of your people. 

So one thing that all leaders, not some, not a few, not many, not only if you’re leading in this environment, “Oh that’s only if you’re leading people in the business world as opposed to your life.”  No no no, all leaders.  And we understand that we must lead our self, we must lead the team and we must lead organizations; or we do lead ourselves, we lead in teams, we leading organizations.  Whatever facet of leadership you’re leading I want you to hear this, all, A-L-L, capitalized, bold, underlined, put some emojis around it, I don’t care… all leaders must be on a P plus journey for both themselves as well as their people.  Let me say this again, all leaders must be on a journey to plus their own P as well as the P of their people.

Now here’s the thing, it must be a conjunctive …not so much simultaneous but here’s I want you to look at, let’s say for instance we start on this level playing field, maybe you’re above here… maybe you’re here as the leader and your people are here and you’re like, “Hey I’m going on this growth journey, I’m going to plus my P.”  You see what happens here is you plus your P and your people stay here, you create a gap and inside that gap a lot of bad things start to happen.  We start judging people, we start having opinions about them, “Oh this person is…” and you will say stuff like “stupid,” or “My people, they’re not the right people anymore.”

Well what happened?  Like six months ago, a year ago, three years ago?  “Oh the organization outgrew them.” 

We can have all these judgments.

We can have all these…I love what’s starting to happen now in kind of the leadership world, we’re not using judgment anymore we’re using evaluation, assessment.  “My assessment of my people are they’re no longer the right people.” And we cast that on the people as if it’s their fault and quite frankly it’s a leadership fault. I think one of the biggest downfalls of leaders today in the world whether you’re leading yourself, leading a team, leading an organization, your family, whatever, is the victimhood of leadership where leaders are not taking accountability for their own leadership failures.  But I think it’s a blind spot, it’s not your fault, that’s why we do these videos. But what we have to understand is any failure of our people and our organization is a failure in your leadership and I learned this when I was 26 years old and I was assigned to my very first platoon in the 82nd Airborne Division and when I reported to the battalion commander for my assignment I stood at the position of attention while he sat in his chair and he said “Lieutenant Hart before I assign you this platoon, Second Company” …or excuse me, “Second Platoon Charlie Company, first of the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, are you willing to assume the success and failures of this organization?”

And I said “Yes sir.”

And he said, “Let me ask you one more time and make it clear, are you willing to take responsibility for all the successes and failures of this platoon?”  Meaning that I don’t care what you achieve you’re accepting responsibility for that and I don’t care how you fail or what failures happen in the platoon, it’s your responsibility.  And you know I accepted because I just thought conceptually that was the right thing to do as a leader but I didn’t really understand that until I actually experienced it in Iraq, in Baghdad, I was on a patrol, daytime patrol with half of my platoon. The other half of my platoon was back at this house thing, it wasn’t really a house but it was kind of a structure and our military had hired some Iraqi civilians to kind of fit close in these houses and put some wall units so we could have some tempered air, AKA air conditioning.  And while I was out on that patrol, we’re doing the right thing, I’m the leader of the patrol, I come back and my medic lost his nine millimeter.

Now in the military there’s two things you don’t ever lose, it’s your night vision goggles and a weapon, any weapon for that nature.  And so this medic who wasn’t assigned to my platoon, he was attached to my platoon, loses his weapon.  Long story short, I got relieved as the platoon leader.

Now it wasn’t so much a relief as it was “Hey it’s time for Lieutenant hard to go take another position,” and they kind of tucked me in the corner. I took it as I got relieved. You can call it whatever you want but ultimately I had to take responsibility for that action.  And my first blink initial reaction to that was “Hey I was out on a patrol!  You can’t put that on me, like I had no influence.  I was out on patrol, doing the right thing, I wasn’t back there making sure my medic’s nine mil wasn’t going to get stolen when he fell asleep and left it next to him and an Iraqi civilian contractor steals it.”  But I learned at that moment that that’s when we need to take ultimate responsibility because I remember the conversation I had with my battalion commander, “Lieutenant Hart are you willing to assume all responsibility, all successes and failures of this platoon?”  And I had to assume that.

So what I want you guys as leaders to understand is in your journey of leadership a lot of times people start to become the wrong people in our organizations or the wrong person.  Understand this leaders, nobody’s wrong, you’re not God, you don’t get to determine who’s right or wrong, we’re all made in His image, there is no wrong people.  There may be a non match to the role, there may be a non match to your organization, there may be a non match to your leadership but they’re not the wrong people.  But where we start to determine whether we evaluate, assess or judge or opine people to be the wrong or non-matches happens in these gaps.  It happens where you as leaders… I see it a lot in the real estate community that leaders of teams, agents that are looking to grow into growing a team or an expansion organization et cetera, they go on these massive growth journeys and you see them at these events, you see them at these classes, and you go “Where is your team?”  And they go “Oh they’re back at home base out there selling.”  Like “I’m doing a good thing, I’m learning and my people are out there selling.”

That’s fine, nothing wrong with that, but leaders here’s what you must do, you must come back and plus your people’s P.  If you’re on this journey where you’re growing and you’re not bringing your people along on the journey, that’s a leadership fail, and what you’re doing is you’re creating this gap where inside that gap failure can happen and you’re going to blame it, opine it, judge it, assess it on your people; and quite frankly you’re pointing at them and you’re forgetting about these three fingers that are pointing back at you.

You see that failure that I had in Baghdad that I assumed responsibility for was because I didn’t establish the culture of what the right thing to do, I thought I did but I didn’t establish it strong enough. I made an assumption and I say this every time, assumptive leadership is leadership fail.  If you assume people are growing when you’re growing you’re failing as a leader because assumptive leadership is leadership fail.  So leaders here’s what all leaders must do, you must grow your P and you must plus the P of your people as well.  You can put them on their own growth journey but make sure that their growth journey is not doing this.  If you’re going to learn about certain things you must come back, even in families, like I see… you talk to spouses you’re like “Oh where’s your spouse?”

“Oh they’re out at a business conference.”  My question for you other spouse that’s out at the business conference, when you come back are you sharing that information?  Are you sharing what you learned with your spouse and with your family?  So that on your relationship, your personal relationship you may be here but in your professional world they’re growing you to be this great leader and then you come home … we’ll kind of put this over here… you come home and here’s where your P is at and your family is still down here and then all of a sudden you start opining, judging, evaluating, assessing your spouse and going “We just grew apart.”  Really?  You grew apart, whose fault is that?  You’re the leader, it’s your fault.  Don’t forget those three fingers.

So leaders here’s what I’m here to tell you, it’s a P plus concept, it’s a P plus ideology, you must plus your own P and you must come back and share what you’re learning with your people.  See Sherpas don’t climb the mountain and leave people at the base camp, Sherpas climb the mountain with the people, sometimes they go ahead, check out the terrain and make sure it’s still the way they expected it to be and then they bring their people with them, and they understand that “Hey sometimes we may have to stay here for a couple of days or a day or couple hours whatever to acclimate to the elevation.”

Sometimes guys your growth journey is actually putting your people in a disadvantageous position because you just want to keep going going going going growing and you don’t ever stop and allow your people to acclimate to the growth and then it starts to create massive stress in their brain through which we’ve talked about them plenty of times, go back and watch the previous videos, and it stresses them out, and that stress will cause them to either break contact with you and leave your organization and then we just tell people “Oh you got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.”  That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.  You don’t just tell people to …I’ll punch you in the face, “Oh you’ve got to get comfortable with pain?  “Duh!”  That’s dumb.

Be a Sherpa on the journey of your people’s success. 

Learn the terrain, go out before them, grow your P so you can come back and influence your people.  But understand something, if you’re out there growing and you’re not coming back and bringing your people with you you’re not a leader, you’re just on a growth journey hoping some people follow you.  So leaders, best advice I can give you, plus your P for you and come back in plus your P for your people.  Don’t just keep sticking them in classes say “Go learn, go learn, go learn.”  You have to go learn and come back and teach your people.  You must learn and teach, learn and teach in order to lead.  If you’re just learning you’re just learning, it’s for you sake, that’s selfish leadership, it’s egotistical leadership.  Learn and teach and lead, basic formula, it’s how you can learn to grow your leadership lid and grow your influence amongst the people that you’re leading thus creating a greater impact in your life, your families, your organizations, and in the world as a whole.

So hopefully this information has brought value to not just your business, your organization, but also your lives, your personal lives, your families, as well as your own life.

Guys thank you for joining me today.  Couple things, if you like this video drop some thumbs up, hearts, emojis, whatever.  If you’re watching this on replay on YouTube like this video, subscribe to our channel, we’re posting videos every day and if you’re watching it on Facebook as either live or replay click on that little bell up top and that will allow you to be notified every morning when we go live to participate in the video live. 

So my question for you is, are you doing it, and it is what?  Are you being that leader that’s creating gaps that creates opines, judgments, assessments, evaluations to only find out your people are not the right people and you’re consistently having the turnover in your organization, or are you being the leader that’s plussing your P and plussing the P of your people?

Hey I’d love to hear your comments, I’d love to hear your ahas in the comment section below.  If you want to find out more about either my coaching or our organization and our mission that we’re on and our vision, go to our website chris@transforminglivescoaching.com. Thank you for joining me today, remember one thing, God loves you, so do I.  Lead strong.  Have an impactful day. 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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