What Does It Really Mean To Lead Strong?

02 May What Does It Really Mean To Lead Strong?

How do we lead in various, different environments?

Christopher Hart here from Transforming Lives Coaching and Consulting, I’ve titled today’s message …actually before we get started, so we’re continuing our Lead Strong series of how to build strong leaders in all sorts of different environments, how do we lead in various different environments, everything from our businesses to our organizations, charitable, churches, et cetera, to even our families.  And so much of our message and leadership points have been centered around business and various different topics, and we try and mix in some topics that can associate to other realms of leadership.  And today’s message I want to let everybody know, today’s message is kind of co-joined between business organizational and family and just what it means to actually lead strong. And so I’m titling today’s message, Lead Strong, What Does It Actually Mean To Lead Strong, and It’s Time To Step Up And Lead, reason being I’ve had some questions, and for those that watch these videos and hit me up offline thank you for your questions I think they provide the foundation for some of the content that I get to deliver and I’m very much open to your opinions, your thoughts, and your questions because it does allow me to engage some of these concepts at a deeper level.  So if there are points in which you do want to hear more about, let me know I’ll be glad to run a video on them.  

But today’s post let’s talk about what is it … there’s two topics, What Does It Mean To Lead Strong and It’s Time to Step Up And Lead.   So let’s start with the first one, this came from someone in my sphere who said, “Chris when you title the series ‘Lead Strong,’  like what does it really mean to lead strong?”  And I thought to myself that’s a really great question, I don’t think I’ve laid that foundation.  So I’d like to take the time and really cover that.

Laying the foundation to Lead STRONG.

Lead strong, you know when we look at strength, what is strength?  And what I define strength to be is strength comes from struggle, it’s an aptitude that is driven from struggle.  If you look at strong muscles, your muscles actually have to be beaten down, torn, stretched and recovered in order to grow and become strong, and that’s something that has to happen over a sustained period of time not just one experience.  So if you want to have strong muscles you can’t just go to the gym once, do some bicep curls and then walk out look like you’re going to be Arnold Buff walking the beach, it’s something that has to happen over a sustained period of time.  And something I’ve learned on my own journey with my fitness goals is learning my own body, I’m finally reaching a goal that I set out almost two years ago that it’s finally taken me to hit, and this has been a journey of consistent activity over a two year sustained period of time of really breaking my muscles down and being uncomfortable and being sore and having to rest when you really want to keep going.  

And so to lead strong means to embrace the struggle.  If you want to be a strong leader what you have to understand is that the strength in leadership is going to come from the struggles, you have to embrace the struggles, you have to embrace the beat down, you have to embrace the days where you wake up and you say “You know what, I’m not sure I have the strength to deal with what I have to deal with today.”  You know when everything’s going good and then all of a sudden everything’s going bad you have to embrace that, why?  Because that I believe is God’s way of allowing us to become strong leaders.  

You see I think what’s happening in society today is where we’re beating people down into this round hole, square peg, round hole where we’re beating people down into this round hole to make everybody exactly like everyone else.  That’s not why God designed us , that’s not what God designed us to be here on this earth.  We all have a purpose, we all have a mission, and we’re going to go through the struggles, like we …you know there’s no trophies in leadership.  And what I mean by that is in today’s society I think one of the most terrible things we’re doing is we’re conditioning kids to not be okay with failure.  So rather than teaching our kids how to deal with struggle and how to fail, we don’t keep score, we give everybody a trophy, everybody won at the end of the day.  And so I think that’s actually manifesting itself today in society with all these different socio-political issues that we’re dealing with.  It has nothing to do with politics, it has everything to do with how we’ve conditioned people to be.

Time to step up and lead.

And so the second topic of is it time to step up and lead I think it’s… there’s a dire message that needs to be sent today about leadership, and I went on this journey a couple years ago to really learn and understand and dig into leadership and master it, whatever that looks like because I understand how inept and how defunct we are in our society today of leaders. I think you see more … I don’t know, maybe it’s just my world but I’m seeing more single parented homes than ever before.  Where do men and women… and it’s not just men, I see women leaving their own families as well.  Who said it was okay to just pick up and leave your responsibilities?  But you know why people do it?  It’s because in order to lead in that facet of their life, their struggle, and that’s where the strength is built.  And so it’s just easier to just walk away from marriages, walk away from families, walk away from businesses, walk away from your house when your house is no longer worth what you paid for it.  

So guys it’s time to step up.  Man it’s time to step up and be the leaders of your own self so you can be the leader for your family, so you can be the leader for your marriage.  Women same thing, this is not a gender-specific thing, women it’s time to step up and lead, it’s time to teach our children what it means to struggle, what is the value of struggle.

I can go on and on about gender-specific leadership, and maybe that’s a video for the future but the message I really want to drive today is that non gender specific it’s time for all of us to live to step up and lead.  We need to dig into leadership, we need to dig in to lead strong, why?  Because guys the struggle is coming, it doesn’t matter who’s president.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the left or the right or they’re co-joined, we have people across the aisle, who runs the Senate, who runs the house, blah blah blah.  Once again you’re putting your power to lead your life into other people’s hands and that’s where we have to stop, we have to stop that very thing and understand that we have the power to make a change in this world.  Gandhi said, “Be the change that you desire to see in the world.”  That starts with you, it starts with your own life, it starts with your marriage, it starts with your family, it starts with your responsibilities.  And when the struggles show up you have to change the meaning.  The meaning is that struggle is sharpening your iron, it’s allowing you to be that sword, that weapon in life.

You see in the military we had this saying that you’re the weapon and what you think is the weapon is just the tool.  Your mind, your strength, your psychology, that’s the weapon.  And that, I believe, is the weapon of life and that’s the weapon of leadership is how do we step up and become strong leaders?  We become strong leaders, we embrace the struggle; we embrace the struggles of life, we embrace the struggles of relationships, we embrace the struggles of parenting, we embrace the struggles of organizations.  The mindset about “Well this leadership thing why don’t I just go back and be a solo agent or just run my business at a low level again?  It was easier, I was making more money.”  Well you know you could do that but you’re running away from your problems, you’re not becoming a strong leader.

Same thing in our marriages, “Why am I married?  Like things have changed, he or she’s no longer the person that I married.” Well no crap Sherlock.  If you thought at the age of 20, 25, 27 when you got married that the person was going to be the same person at 47, and you didn’t change or your relationship didn’t evolve, that’s a you problem.  That’s not of them problem, that’s a you problem.  See in leadership when it comes to these various different facets of our life where we fail is it’s a you problem.  And I think we’ve conditioned society today to point the finger at someone else.

Look at politics today, people are rioting because they’re pointing the finger at someone else.  People are saying nasty vulgar things to other people, judging them based off of their race, color, creed, national origin, that’s a you problem, and those you problems are generational people. The generation before us was conditioned to just sit back and expect things, and I think it’s manifesting itself today, we have 47 million Americans on subsidies, on government subsidy.  People are not taking control of their lives.  The government is 19.5 trillion dollars in debt.
Look, it doesn’t matter who is president, 2017 is going to bring some trying times, and I’m saying this because those trying times are going to determine whether you get the opportunity to lead strong or you’re just going to cower and quit.  It’s up to you, you get to be the change that you want to see in the world, and so it all starts with you.  And so the reason why I have the second message in today’s video is it time to step up and lead, I think it’s time to step up and lead more so than ever.  You can’t be worried about people’s opinions; you can’t be worried about whether you’re going to lose business.  Look, you can have your opinions about what is said on Facebook or what is said or shouldn’t be said in society, that’s fine; but if you have something that you truly believe in, step up, step up and lead, make your opinions heard.  You may meet resistance, you may meet opinions, but guess what?  Strong leaders make stuff happen.  If you look at some of the best leaders in the world over time they met resistance, they fought through it, it was the struggle and then they broke through it and then they became the leaders of many.  

See leadership’s not easy people, you’re going to meet resistance, that’s where we build strong leaders.  But just understand the meaning, the new meaning associated to that struggle is that it’s sharpening your sword, that sword that becomes the weapon in the fight of leadership.  Fighting for your own life, for your own well being, fighting for your marriage, fighting for your children, fighting for a difference in this world.  See that’s where I think leaders show up, and as much as I say level-one leadership’s about being a great follower, level-two, three, four, and five are about being that leader.  Follow someone great so you can gain their strength in that time of uncertainty and that time of struggle so you can step up and lead thyself, lead another person one on one, lead other people and lead leaders. Where does it start?  It starts with you.  It starts today, not tomorrow.  Today.

If you need to go on a diet, if you know that you need to go on a diet, that diet starts today.  
If you need to make amends in your marriage, that starts today.  
If there’s something that you need to say or do with your children, that starts today.  
If there’s someone in your organization that is not right for your organization, maybe there’s a conversation that needs to happen today.  

Guys stop waiting till tomorrow, stop waiting for someone else, stop putting your faith in the president, the CEO, the House, the Senate the local government, and then going on Facebook and bitching and complaining about why things aren’t going your way.  You want things to go your way, take control, step up, lead, and make it happen.  

Guys we’re about to enter…well I think we are in it, we’re entering some really trying times, the face of America may change, who knows what that looks like; our economy is almost guaranteed to go through its struggles in 2017.  Those of you in the real estate industry, man people been screaming left and right from stages that we’re in a shift.  If you don’t want to believe it, that’s fine, go back to sleep under your comfortable blanket of false economy, but you’re going to face a shift. Your businesses are going to change.  People are going to start losing their homes again and it’s either going to be you that’s going to step up and lead or someone’s going to step up and lead you.  Your choice, your choice.  

So what does it actually mean to Lead STRONG?

So just understand something about today’s message, what does it mean to lead strong?  What it means to lead strong is that you step up and embrace the struggle, when there’s struggle you run to it.  In the military one of the greatest lessons of strength I ever learned was hey how we entered the battle was we jumped out of airplanes and we chased the people shooting at us.  

Are you chasing the people that are shooting at you or are you running away from them?  In business and in life embrace those challenges because it’s when you embrace those challenges and you can actually lead yourself and lead other people through those challenges that’s when you become a strong leader in your business, in your churches, charitable organizations, volunteer, families, relationships, et cetera.  And now is the time to step up, not tomorrow, not next week, not “Hey I’m just going to enjoy the holiday season, when 2017 comes along I’m going to make that new year’s resolution.”  And you know as well as I do that New Year’s resolutions never makes it past February, and for those that do, congratulations!  You’re the one percent, but I’m talking to the other 99 percent.  It’s time to step up and lead.  Go become a great follower of something or someone else so you can gain the strength and understanding through the uncertain times and struggles, so you can lead thy self and lead other people one on one, lead groups of people, and then eventually be that leader that leads others… that leads other leaders so they can go off and do the same thing and thus in turn at the end of your life you get to look back and say “I was the change that needed to happen in the world.”

Guys thank you for this opportunity to bring this message.  I know today’s message probably wasn’t an easy message to hear, it may have stepped on some toes, but that’s okay.  As leaders that’s what we understand needs to happen, sometimes we need to say the things that people need to hear, and though uncomfortable it could be life changing, they get to choose which direction they go.  If they go backwards and point the finger at you, be okay with that.  If they go forward and point the finger at you, be okay with that.  If they go forward and don’t point the finger at you, be okay with that because leadership is not about you.

Hey remember one thing… well first off, I hope this brought some value to your life, your relationships, your businesses, your organizations.   I’d love to hear your comments in the comment block, good, bad, indifferent, I’m open to it all. If there’s any messages about leadership you guys would love to hear about specific topics please feel free to hit me up either in the comments below, offline, email.  You can email me at Chris@transforminglivescoaching.com.  Just remember one thing, you’re a child of God, God loves you, so do I.  Lead strong.  Time to step up and lead. Have a great day!

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