Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] SA Foreign I am Ryan Kahn, the host of Pivotal Change, and I have a very special episode for everyone tonight. I have taken the rare opportunity to go ahead and block out this entire schedule for me speaking to you on several building platforms. What we're going to do is we're going to take a journey tonight, start to finish, on how to do a few things. I want to start off with a pretty fun topic of we now have a new president here in the United States, Donald Trump. Donald Trump is now a week or so into his new presidential term and he has done some really dynamic things up to this point. But I'm going to zoom in and focus on just first couple first few days. And I want to really emphasize what I'm doing here. I am looking at positive leadership traits. I could look at negative and positive both. I am not looking at political agenda. I'm not looking at the politics of things. I'm looking at traits that leaders can do and I'm choosing to focus on the positive. And we'll actually do later episodes with Donald Trump and other leaders as well to identify negative what not to do traits. But for tonight, we're keeping it positive so that we can build a path through the episode in all four segments. So one of the things that I want to emphasize to you is that Donald Trump did a lot of things right in his first two to three days of leadership.
[00:01:52] We need to emulate some of these things. There are other leaders, Joe Biden and Kamala and some of the people that would be on the other side of the aisle also have positive traits. But here's what I want to point out that all leaders can do. The first things that a leader can do is act quickly on their commitments, act quickly on their promises. And it is no doubt if you've watched the news even for 60 seconds, that Donald Trump was super quick in acting and and creating action, executive orders and progress on the campaign promises that he made throughout his journey to get reelected. This is very important because as a leader, you need to establish trustworthiness. People need to know that you're actually going to follow up and do what you say you are going to do. And the fact that after all the formalities were over, the swearing in ceremonies, the little processions, parades and all the handshaking and photo opportunities, he literally pulled himself up to a desk and began signing executive orders, doing in practice what he said he was going to do all along. So any leader out there acting quickly and efficiently and effectively on your promises is a very important positive trick. To do. Another thing that he did is that he did a lot of symbolic unity efforts. He did a lot of things where he was trying to knock down barriers in things that have been prohibitive obstacles for various people and various departments and agencies and entities. But even on the higher level, he invited a ton of foreign dignitaries, people that were business people, heads of state deep seated in the government, and he established relationships with them, got contracts and commitments from them. Some of them were economic deals. One of them that stands out to me was he had a platform where he challenged somebody to raise $100 billion for the effort, or the guy said, I'm going to raise $100 million for the effort. Donaldson, ball, come on. Come back with 200. And the guy actually felt the challenge, felt the positive peer pressure, and came back with a $500 billion commitment to this overseas Asian endeavor. And the other thing that he does is he sometimes can be rocky, but I'm not focusing on the negative. He can feel a little divisive, but he really is reaching out to various people in various ways and saying, here are the expectations, the boundaries that I'm setting here, what we need to do. We're going to put a pause here. We're going to put some action in in this place. And he is very much saying, I want to draw people underneath this common vision and this common umbrella. So making overt unity efforts is something that is very important for a leader. If you have a toxic culture in a place that you work, the fact that you speak out loud, that I want to build a bridge here, and I want to create a relationship here, and I want to create a working environment where there is a network. Those symbolic and or overt actions are really important as a positive trait for a leader. The other thing that he does, he gets engagement with key stakeholders. So he does this in twofold. One, he is going back and kicking a back to the American people type of thing. He is getting people in the states from governors and electoral bodies and states powers. And he says, you are key stakeholders in the American government, and we're going to position things a different way. He's also getting cabinet member positions put in the right place very quickly, Appointing cabinet members, new positions, new directives, new goals. And that's going to kind of blend in with some of the other things that are done well by a leader. Transparency and communication. We have never seen in our American history a more transparent version of signing executive orders and taking action, pulling up on a national stage in a giant forum and signing the bills right There with a person standing next to him translating to the American public exactly what this bill stands for, what the executive order does and does not do. And that was completely new. He also posts things on various media accounts. He's not relying on a traditional media source. He said, I'm going straight to the people on social media platforms. This transparency in communication removes doubt of what any intentions or any actions or inactions are going to produce. That's a key point for leaders to communicate clearly with transparency and articulate what it is you're doing you want other people to do than the work ethic and the immediate focus on the job at hand. That is incredible. Prioritize and execute is a very famous now famous saying from Jocko Willink which says, you take your list, you prioritize them and then you line them up. You put all effort into priority one, it's done. Put all effort into priority two, it's done. So he put his work ethic behind him and did the immediate focus on the priorities.
[00:06:32] The other thing that he did really well is he's establishing a new culture. So we have a new administration and therefore new culture happens every four years, obviously sometimes eight. But he put in America first policy. Whether you agree with it or not, he is telling you that this is going to be the culture. We have to make sure that we are taken care of first so that when it comes time to help other people, we are in the best, strongest position to do that. Direct communication versus social media, as I did before, that is a new culture. He will be directly speaking out as the president, not in traditional media hearings and press conferences and things like that, but straight from, from his mouth, his, his X account, his, his various social medias and then of course the other media platforms as well. So that's a new culture. He's streamlining government. He is going as his new culture is to eliminate inefficiencies, eliminate redundancies and eliminate programs do not support the basic function of what the federal government was designed to do. Again, I am reporting not in agreement with policies, but what he is setting out to do in this new culture, it is clear that it is different from the culture that was just in office, right, wrong or indifferent, agree or disagree, it is clear there is a new culture in there and he's challenging the status quo as it has been done over the last, in some cases decades. So he is not being shy about saying that there is a new culture. Leaders need to be bold when trying to rebrand, change culture or pivot into a new area of life. That is a positive trait, to be bold in establishing a new culture. Delegating power is another very important thing that he has done very well so far. Leaders can only go so far if they refuse to delegate and only rely on themselves. So delegating is essential to bandwidth expansion and growth. So he is empowering his vice president, he is empowering his cabinet leadership with new appointments and even new positions. He's reinforcing the military leadership. And anything that he has identified as toxic or dangerous, he is removing. So delegating and replacing power into the mission and vision that he has established is an important positive trait for a leader. And then the other thing that is really important that all leaders must do is set clear boundaries, clear expectations. And of course, setting goals is a huge part of that. So there has been the goal set of huge job creation and huge economic growth. We have all felt the sluggishness and the inflation of the economy. Whether he accomplishes the job or not, he has set a goal that he is going to tackle that and fix it. He's talking about regulatory reform up and down a list of all kinds of regulations and reforms about how to do that on the federal level and hand certain things back over to the state. So again, he is being very clear and what he is doing, everyone should be able to do a quick Google or watch a quick media outlet and understand what his goals and expectations are. He's revising trade policies again, right, wrong or indifferent, he's imposing possible tariffs. He's talking about new networking and new trade agreements with various countries that we exist with, changing how they operate, establishing new ones. So his goals are that he is going to change how our economy functions, health care reform, building a stronger border, looking out for various organizations to be declared as criminal, taking a stance on justice. We know that we can go through and probably look at a real quick checklist 10, 12, 15 of the highest priority goals that President Trump has set in place. So I ask you, if you take the name Donald Trump out of the equation and you have any leader in any position, whether it be a kids softball team, it be one of the largest running corporations, or it be the landscape business in your region, if you had a leader that came into quick action on their promises, they did their best efforts to unify everybody under a single mission and vision. They engaged with the key stakeholders that make everything possible. They were very transparent and articulate in their communication and they had obviously displayed work ethic with immediate focus on goals. You would probably be pretty proud of that. Leader. If you had somebody that had a very difficult situation, maybe the team wasn't functioning as well as everyone wanted to and they set out to change that culture into a culture of positivity, initiative and accountability, that would be a good thing. Take the name Donald Trump out of it. If you had somebody that could delegate power and they did not hoard all of the authority and all the decision making powers, but they appointed highly intelligent people with lots of experience and gave them permissions to then go conquer in their individual and assigned areas like a defensive coach, a running back coach, a pitching coach, things like that, and let them go run with their skill and expertise, you'd probably say that was a good leader. If they laid out an entire agenda of goals, expectations and timelines and everybody knew exactly where we were going and when we were hitting these markers, you would probably say those were pretty good leadership characteristics. So again, I'm not sitting here trying to brag and boast on Donald Trump. I'm just taking a relevant historical moment and picking out and choosing to be positive about what we just saw. So go back and look at Donald Trump's first two to three days in office and that's going to relate to our next segment that we're getting ready to jump to. I've written an e book and I've talked a lot about your first four hours. In any business, obviously the presidential job is a little bigger. So those first four hours stretch out definitely to 472 right here with us. We'll be back after this break and we're going to talk about how this applies to your situation and not my the presidential scale. We'll be right back with more pivotal change right after this.
[00:12:55] We are back and we're going to keep rocking and rolling on tonight's episode talking about leadership expectations. And we just had a good first segment talking about the positive, choosing to be positive and picking out the quality traits of a leader from the first three days of Donald Trump. And now we're going to transition over to how does that apply to you? The entrepreneur, the leader, the person that wants more influence on your team or in your organization or the business that you're running. And I'm going to break that down simply, you heard me end the first segment talking about the first four hours. There's an ebook that I've written through CS Business Consulting and there is a couple of speeches and processes that I give. What I want to talk to you is how you can take actions with great leadership traits and put them into practice in the first four hours. You know, we oftentimes think of these timelines. There's the famous TV show the First 48. And if you look at the First 48 TV show, they're telling you that statistically, if you're trying to solve a murder, you got about 48 hours to identify a suspect and really get your hooks into the investigation or it's likely going to go Unsolved. You have 1 hour to respond inside of a heart attack to get to the hospital, to really increase your chances of living and surviving through that heart attack without any permanent damage. So there's these timelines where we can see statistical effectiveness. And in the business world, the leadership world, the first four hours of taking on a new position, coming into a new team, or for example, I'm going to focus on bringing on new team members or teams in general. That first four hours is pretty crucial. Timing is kind of everything here. So I want to walk you through this process during this segment right here and tell you about how you can systematically set yourself up for success in your team in that first four hours. So we're going to play here's the first day on the job for a new hire. This person has gone through the process, everything is done, and they are officially reporting to duty for the first time. One of the things that you want to do is you want to have a warm welcome for this person. You want to give them introductions into their workspace. You want to give them introductions and familiarity with the building, where the bathrooms and the lounge is located and where maybe the different departments and divisions are. Familiarity, little comfort. Let's get rid of those quick, confusing question marks right away. Then you're going to also give introductions to teams, whether it's their team or a neighboring team, a division or a department. You're going to introduce them to people, walk them around, say, hey, here's the new girl, here's the new guy, and have them go through, provide them some comfort. It's a really good idea to have a cup of coffee or maybe some donuts or a healthy snack available so that they can be welcomed on their first day. And it feels a little bit more like a celebration. Congratulations on bringing yourself on board with us. One of the things that does it helps set the tone of a solid welcome, of getting to have some comfort, knowing all those little nitty gritty things that some people may be afraid to ask. You're just going to go ahead and answer the question without making them ever have to ask. Another thing that is really obvious is that you want to give them access, various access. So this could be something like giving them a key fob or a key to the front door or access to their division. If you live in a much larger corporate structure, give them their keys, give them their logins, give them their permissions to access what they're going to need to be accessing. So immediately they feel like they're welcome and part of the team. They've been introduced, they've been shown around, they know where the break room is and now they know how to log in, get into the building by themselves and start feeling like they belong. This is the part of the process that kind of makes them official. I've got my first password, my first login, my first set of keys. That's really important because it's a mental hurdle that has to get over that I belong here now, I'm part of this team. The other thing that is really important is now you want to start some sit down conversations with them and you want to get into a discussion with people where you're talking about who we are as a culture. This can be done as you're walking around and settling back into the office. So if you're some type of team leader, office manager, that is giving this person their first day welcome and first day to set the tone, you are going to set the tone on your culture. This is the day where you say, we are these type of people. We show up, we laugh, we make fun of each other, but we work hard, we stick to the grind and we enjoy producing good, hard work. We enjoy being the people that can beat a deadline. We enjoy being the people that can have a high five from the client or the customer when they leave our presence. That's where people really get that like, okay, these subconscious goals that I'm having is I get to celebrate when something good happens. I'm trying to beat deadlines, right? If this is a culture, culture of everybody here beats deadlines, well, I better from day one jump on and comply with having the mindset of beating deadlines and celebrating success and high fiving customers. How much is just those couple of simple sentences going to change how they start? They're not going to learn some secret culture in the organization because you just told them what the overt and obvious culture is supposed to be. You're going to tell them about the work ethic and the internal community that you have. Oh, we like to do this fun thing. We're on birthdays, we all go around the table and everybody has to say one thing they love or like about that person whose birthday it is. So we're going to shower them with compliments on their birthday. That's a little bit different of a culture than probably what most people do. And you can say all the little fun activities, oh, every Friday we all go eat Mexican after work or for lunch or something like that. Oh, during this time of the year, the boss always orders barbecue and we have a big cookout barbecue thing and you bring them into the culture saying that we belong together, we involve ourselves together, and we do this. After that step of setting the tone on culture and going into the dynamics that are usually not spoken. Now you can go into a little bit more of the formal stuff. You're going to start setting clear expectations. These are the formalities that we would now finally think is more part of the first day. Oh, and by the way, during your hiring process, you also hinted and told a little bit about the culture and who you were so they could immediately determine that, like, hey, if this is a high relationship area, I was hoping to just be a backroom data entry person. I really didn't want a lot of human exposure. Well, that might not be the culture and they may not want to take the job and you may identify that on the front end. But now that you've reestablished your culture on the actual first day after the hiring, you can move forward. In this part, the setting of clear expectations is really important. This is where you do the normal stuff of, hey, here is your sop, your standard operating procedures or your policies. Here is the general job responsibilities for what you are going to be doing while you are here. And you get to explain to them that, hey, I hired you to do this exact purpose and to follow these exact rules. This talks about time off. This talks about dress code, everything from sexual harassment and drug and abuse policies to confidentiality and how you get to use company equipment and things like that. So those SOPs have to be gone through. That's an essential portion of the job. That's part of your first four hours. So think back to the last segment. Donald Trump said, hey, here's our new operating procedures. Here's our new responsibilities. Here's this new person I've appointed to a cabinet and what their job response responsibilities are. And they're doing all of these things. Okay, so this is now the business side of it, not the political, government run side of things. A fun part of this is that when you get in here and you share these expectations, you can also tap the brakes just a little bit. And give them some reassurances. I'm going to expect you to work 40 hours a week and accomplish this many projects or this many hours in client interface and this many hours and behind the scenes sales, whatever the job may entail. I may have you go and you have to do three irrigation jobs a week. Okay? You have the expectations set and you have those boundaries and you tell them how to clean up after themselves, properly prep and maintain safety protocols, how to keep client information confidential and when to do and not do certain things. But the fun part is you also get to say, hey, I'm going to assign you mentors. So even though I'm the team leader, even the boss of the company or an office manager, I'm not going to be your one stop shop for answers. This person's going to ask you or mentor you in some of the bookkeeping areas. If we're talking about accounting firm. And this person here is going to start leading you through tax code and tax law and educating you there. And this person right here is going to teach you about the administrative procedure. So you know exactly how to get the ins and outs of our softwares, what our workflow and what our systems look like. And you're going to be expected to follow the workflow and rely on the systems that we've put in place. So this is a great way to develop somebody from day one and how they're going to produce, how they're going to progress and how they're going to learn over time. After you get those boundaries and expectations, one of the expectations would be I expect you to try to answer things yourself by looking it up. And then I want you to phone a friend, use a peer. Before you go up to management, before you go up to upper management, where you walk into the partner's door and just say, hey boss, what do I do here? There should be a chain of command, a five to 15 minute rule that you've heard me talk about. Well, that comes in, in the first four hours, then you go and you give them their first assignments and hey, on this first assignment I am going to slowly increase your workload. We're not going to kill you from day one. It's not one of these baptism by fire situations. We're going to go ahead and you actually feel a little bored in your first few days at work. So we start adding workloads, we start making sure that you're understanding and you're grasping all the basics, all the concepts you're able to get logged in, all those technical Issues are worked out. Now here's your first assignments. It's due here. Make sure it gets reviewed. Make sure you do X, Y and Z. Here's your second assignment, fourth assignment, tenth assignment. Here is your permanent or recurring workload and we're going to give it. So by the time a week and a half to two weeks is over, you should be filling up your workload to 80% plus of what you're actually going to be maintaining at capacity. And then what I like to think is one of the most significant parts of this is you have to redeliver your mission, your vision and your core values. Now, these things should have at least come up during the hiring process. This is the mission of Shelton Associate CPA or CS Business Consulting. Here's the vision and where we see ourselves going and the people that we want to support this and all of the workflow clients and systems support the daily mission and the accomplishment of our eventual vision. Here's our core values of what we rely on to execute all of these things. These are written down workable tools that you're going to hand to these people. So at the end of the four hours, they're going to sign off that they receive the SOPs, they're going to sign off that they have any policies, job responses, responsibilities, copies of the workflow, things like that. They're going to understand that your mentors are these your boundaries and expectations are here that I received a copy of the mission, the vision and the core values. And then lastly, you deliver that very important leadership philosophy to your new person that tells them exactly who you are as a leader, how you think, how you believe and how you act. And that is a tool where they can take it and they can hold it up and examine it and they can take any decision that may show up in the work life and say, here's my leader's brain. I can now answer that question based on having a reference tool, the leadership philosophy of my leader. And if you examine back to what Donald Trump did and what other great leaders do, you'll see that somewhere this first four hour process is followed again. Large government may take several days. Smaller company may take four hours. But if you can get this system in place, read the ebook, start implementing those things, you'll have a much more successful implementation and a much more defined culture and productive working staff underneath you. Sit tight. We'll be back for more about developing People right after this. Commercial break on pivotal change.
[00:25:16] We are past the halfway point and I'm going to keep pushing us forward in this direction where we are building a process based on leadership traits systems. And now we're moving into developing people. So we talked about just identifying great leadership qualities and how to implement them under big changes or new endeavors. And we referenced just Donald Trump and chose to be positive about that conversation. Then in segment two, we talked specifically about the first four hours and the mechanics of the first four hours that set up your culture. Set up your culture, your expectations and your productivity and can completely get everyone in alignment from literally the first half of the first day being on the job. And now we're going to talk about, you have these people, they're working in your teams, in your company and you have to develop them. And I want you to hear a quote real quick. Millionaires develop incredible systems, but billionaires develop incredible people. So you heard me talking about the first four hours. You have to give SOPs and job responsibilities and workflows to hold this person accountable to you. That's your new hire. But what you really want to do, if you want to ultimately expand your bandwidth in your company, you can't just have these awesome systems that people rely on and then they become zombies. Fulfilling a role inside of a system and a workflow. But instead you develop incredible people. So let's take a little quick journey on about. I'm going to pick five ways for us to really develop people. And I have previously on the show talked about the tetrahedron. Okay, the tetrahedron is just a three sided pyramid. Instead of your normal Egyptian pyramid that has four sides and a base, this has three sides in a base and it is the best way. This one of the most strongest structures found in nature. And this is how you build somebody and expand yourself. One side of the tetrahedron is going to be mental toughness and emotional regulation. Another one is going to be skill set. It's going to be some type of education and skill that can be utilized. Then another one is going to be the physical side of things, your health and fitness. Another one is going to be spiritual or faithfulness and fortitude in that capacity. And so those make up your four sides. And then there's going to be a fifth way that we wrap that all together together. So let's Talk about Area 1. Building some mental toughness, some resilience and emotional regulation. You can teach people in your staff the mechanisms for emotional regulation. Anything from breathing exercises to learning how to take things professionally and not personally. You can give them little scenarios or little opportunities to experience stress and build that emotional character, the ability to Go perform a challenging task and do hard things and get frustrated, but still get a resolution. And an answer is one of the things that does it as well. You can take tests and do online courses about self awareness, about emotional intelligence and things like that. And if you do this, you will start finding that people will want to learn more about themselves, learn more about their neighbor and their teammate, and therefore figure out how they can be a better teammate, a better servant, and also manage your own stress. So stress techniques, like I said, like some breathing exercises, just mindfulness type of activities, like journaling, that's a really good one. Those can build emotional control under pressure. And then I always like to provide perspective. So in my career in law enforcement, there's some pretty critical days somebody could get shot. You can violate somebody's civil rights and have an incredible federal lawsuit on your hand. Those are like the worst case scenarios that actually very rarely occur. But in the accounting world, we might have a little freak out moment and I just give perspective. Hey guys, did anybody get shot? No. Has anybody violated civil rights? No. Well, then we can fix this. And that perspective can train emotional regulation as well. Not everything is the biggest deal. Don't make mountains out of molehills. Another one is in developing core competencies. So that's education and skillfulness and the ability to, through mentorship and through cross training, have professional development of the actual hard skills. This is generally what we focus on in the professional world. And we forget the other three categories. We want somebody to be, let's say accounting world, a better bookkeeper and be certified in this and have a quickbook certificate and have a credential here and an EA and a CPA and all these things and just really develop their skills. When that is definitely a piece that adds value. It's not the only part. We're selling ourselves short if we only look on skill building. You know, think about a boxer who only learns technique and they can throw the perfect technique and have the perfect system blocking, but they never develop speed and power.
[00:30:00] So with perfect technique, that will serve you well. But if you have no speed or power, you can land a jab and even a hook on this guy all day, but never truly land the impact. You need to wholly develop your skill set. So your skills are simple. You take a mentorship program and you teach them how to execute this component of the job, how to then learn this component of how to lead a client meeting, how to execute a sales pitch, how to literally install the mechanism that controls the entire irrigation system. Right? How to dismantle and reassemble an engine so you can perform a full diagnostic depending on your industry. So skill training is very important and you should concentrate on it. But it's not the only tool. Find people that have expertise in their areas and then teach them how to teach, develop presentations, attack the multiple ways of learning that adult facilitated learning again, where you can see something, hear something, you can touch something, you can do something, you can write something down and imprint, imprint, imprint your skills and grow your skills as fast as possible. You want to enhance intelligence and skill along the way. Allowing this person to excel in their field and also helps them plan for long term success.
[00:31:10] That is great. Now there's another side to this tetrahedron. It is the lifestyle of physical health and fitness. So I like to compare this one very, very well. Think about. Most people are familiar with pastors and preachers and you have this pastor, this preach that is incredibly articulate, knows the ins and outs of scriptures, they're a wonderful speaker, they dress nice, they've got literally a beautiful family, they've got their financial endeavors in order. They seem to be firing on all symbols. But that preacher weighs 400 pounds.
[00:31:44] Do they lose some credibility in your eyes when the preacher comes to talk about, you know, self control and the sin of gluttony? Do they start to lose some credibility? So you need to develop yourself in all areas. A leader should be physically fit, emotionally fit, mentally fit, skillful, and they should be able to put all this stuff into practice and they should have a series of mechanisms in place that help them develop all of them. But you do have to in order to develop your people. Encourage them to have healthy lifestyles. Don't let them work double and triple shifts and work a 24 hour shift and then crash their, their system and be, basically be, be worthless as an employee for two or three days as they recover their sleep cycle. Don't sit here and just stuff cake and cookies down their faces all the time. Offer healthy snacks and healthy options. If you're one of the people that likes to buy lunches for your employees, get incentives and benefit programs that let them build their health and fitness and that of their families as well. Well, if you get healthier people, you get healthier employees. There's more energy, there's more positive thinking, there's more productivity and then they're going to develop their skill and emotional regulation better. It all fits together. The more somebody becomes strict and disciplined in their skill or strict and discipline and emotional regulation, the more likely they are to be strict with Their fitness and their diet. And then another thing is the faithful side, the spiritual side of things. You need to develop that somebody is working outside of themselves. Regardless of being faithful or not to whatever religion or God you, honor. If you do not work outside of yourself for any type of higher purpose, you are self serving only. And you cannot formulate relationships, you cannot formulate things that are going to be long term and significant. You have to serve outside of yourself for something greater than you. So generally in the United States we see the, the Christian faith, or maybe the Jewish faith are two of the most predominant. And you see that people are worshiping and doing something for a greater purpose. They need to have fortitude in whatever their faith system is. They need to have integrity in their morals. If you can encourage your people without crossing all of these civil boundaries, just to be people of integrity, to have a moral code, whatever that code may be, that person will expand themselves. They will now have that foundation that they can stand on when something terrible happens in life, because it will happen happen when you have a death or a loss or an injury or a sickness or something bad happens to you. People with no foundation here really take a serious impact. They really have a hard time. So don't let your people experience that. Encourage them to go out and grow themselves in all four areas. Now as you grow people in all four areas, the mental toughness, the skillfulness, the education, you get the physical and health side of things, you get the spiritual fortitude. Now you have to present real world challenges. This is the fifth way for them to go and excel. Create a scenario, create a client relationship, create a project or something that needs to be done and I'm going to go test you and you put them out there and let them use in a practical exercise or maybe an actual real world problem where they can go solve this. They can build the confidence, they can have these decision making abilities grow because they're ready and applying all of their learning and their skill. They take on larger responsibilities and they go from leading small projects to medium projects to full teams and large projects. Give them the real world application. If you just sit here and actually take a really good effort to develop people over time, but never give an outlet for application. You're selling yourself and them short and you're never going to truly delegate. So develop people so that you can now have these well rounded people that can go out and in any four of the presentations that show up in light, they are ready, they are solid and they're good to go. Then give them that chance and let them succeed and surprise you with the results. If you do that, your systems and your people that have been growing and developed over time are going to lead everyone to success. Stay tuned for our final segment. We're going to see how this applies to a specific set of people. We'll be right back with more pivotal change in our final segment of the night right after this.
[00:36:35] We are going to have a strong finish here. We've been talking about great leadership traits. We've been talking about how to implement great leadership in the first first four hours. And we've been talking about how to grow and develop your people to rely on your systems and grow them in four ways and then challenge them with those four areas of growth in a fifth capacity with real world examples. But now I want to talk and transition to how all of this applies to a certain segment of people. This is going to be people for that are young or newer or looking to really get into a world an area that they're not used to. So I want to kind of take my context. I talk with a lot of young entrepreneurs, a lot of young business people, everyone from teenagers to college years and just out of college is a niche area where people rely on me and I help set their paths. So I'm speaking to a lot of these people. But listen, you can be 40, 50, 60 years old and changing to a new environment and this message applies for everyone and you as well. But if you are young, you are in the youthful category of people and you wish to increase your influence and try to open your pathways. Listen closely.
[00:37:38] First, Timothy 4:12 says, do not let anyone look down on you because you are young. Young. But set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity. So this verse is very significant because it actually gives you a path of empowering yourself as a young person. It gives you a path to lead and to inspire others regardless of your age. This one hit me really hard when I was about 15 or 16 years old because it is predicted that Timothy, the person receiving this message was possibly 15 or 16 at the time.
[00:38:16] What I want to do is I want to see how embodying these traits can help you in your business life. It can help you in your life at school, it can help you in your relationships and take it into a capacity that is really all encompassing. And I want you to really keep in mind here that tetrahedron that I just talked about in the last segment, those three sides with a base. Okay? So one of the ones that we want to do is your speech. I want you to use your words wisely. You need to consciously make an effort to control your speech. That means become more articulate, expand your horizons, expand your vocabulary and how you speech and talk to different types of people. But also, instead of just developing a clear, kind and confident communication, you need to eliminate things from your speech as well. The most professional and disciplined people speak with integrity, with positivity, and without vulgarity. Some people have made themselves famous through it from a different facet of society. But I challenge you that the most disciplined people in the world have the most disciplined tongue. Scriptures also teach us that a man who can control his tongue can control his whole body. Well, by golly, I want to control my tongue. Then I want you to go out and you should not sound like your peers. If you are a young person in high school, college, or early career, you should not sound like your peers. You should remove cursing, you should remove coarse joking, you should remove a bunch of slang and derogatory terms. You should remove anything that could ever make somebody raise their eyebrow at you. If you can take those things out, the cursing, vulgarities, of course, choking and perverse speech, you're going to really stand out. You want to take these communication skills then, and you want to apply them to a network and build a network and advocate for yourself as a clear and articulate person that can present your ideas and thoughts clearly. If you can present your ideas and your thoughts clearly and you can present your history and what you're capable of through the the experiences that you gained, you have just become more valuable and more influential. The next thing is conduct. You need to be able to control your conduct. This is leading by example. Simply put, work on self improvement. Build up your reputation by demonstrating discipline, by demonstrating taking on responsibility and ethical behavior. You do not want to go out and run around and do all of these terrible things that you see. Stop living some Hollywood version of your Life, some Instagram TikTok version of your life. Your actions speak louder than your words. So if you're sitting here sounding really well, but you're acting a different way, you're fighting your own progress. You should be able to easily be separated from your peers when employers look at you and mentors are willing to sign up and help you because they see what you're trying to do. Leaders will gravitate towards you if you act with professionalism, if you act with reliability. You should not be one of the people that goes around and sleeps around, lies, cheats, steals. You need to control that Conduct, you need to control that behavior. You should not be reckless and doing all of these mischievous activities on the weekends, going out to parties and nightclubs. I'm telling you right now, the top tier people are not living the nightclub life. They are not going out and drinking and doing drugs and sleeping around with tons of people. Is there an avenue of that in society? Yes, there is, but it comes back and it pays them back in a very negative way. Your conduct must speak for itself and it must match your speech. Now the next one is love. This is one of the most misinterpreted words in the English language. Love is the commitment to someone else's betterment. The sacrificial love means that you're going to sacrifice to serve the benefit of another. Think about the marital relationships. Brothers and sisters, fathers and children, mothers and children, grandparents. This is a sacrificial love. If you truly love someone, you're going to give up a desire of your own to make their life better.
[00:42:27] You need to set an example in love is what this says. So if you can make self improvement to yourself and by making yourself more compassionate and more empathy and more serving towards others, this is going to enhance your emotional intelligence. It's going to enhance your network and it's going to build loyalty and capital of trust with people around you in the community. They will absolutely see you as somebody that takes care of their fellow and their friends and their family. That is huge. There's a wrestling coach that I as a wrestling coach, I help get kids recruited into college. There's one college that we have a good connection with. And the first question he asks his kids is how's your relationship with your parents?
[00:43:10] Do you mouth off to your parents? Do you do your chores? Do you serve your parents well? Are you respectful to your mother? The second one he asks is how was your grade?
[00:43:18] About number nine on the list is how's your record? How's your athletic career? Because those things really don't matter. We need to know that you're going to be a good, decent person.
[00:43:29] I think that echoes of what I'm talking about right now. Clean speech, good ethical behavior, and you're practicing love and care to somebody else. So let that be genuine. Let yourself be servant minded. If you can do that, your relationships are going to grow stronger beyond your beliefs. Have some gratitude and find yourself connected to somebody that is willing to love you and sacrifice for your betterment. Some mentor, some family member, somebody you can collaborate with. If you can do these things, you're going to shine Brighter than anyone in your group of peers. And then the other thing is, set an example in faith. Stay committed to your beliefs. Have that core of who you are. Stop this wishy washy going back and forth with society, with whatever new trend is, with whatever new idea is. And I'm supposed to be here to do this because I'm just a kid after, after all. No, that's not right. Stay core to your beliefs. You stay pure. You have fidelity, you have trustworthiness. You need to ask yourself a question, okay? Are you a trustworthy person? If you can ask yourself and say, I'm a trustworthy person, then other people will see that as well. Don't fool yourself. You look in the mirror really hardcore and ask that question, am I doing what I say I'm going to do? Are people asking things of me? I'm following through. If you can do that, then you can stay solid in your faith and people will see that. Because that is one true sign of discipline as well, is that you can stay significantly attached and involved to something higher than yourself. It demonstrates faithfulness in your abilities, faithfulness in your purpose to your cause and your why behind things to a higher calling outside of yourself. If you have strong faith, you can then take calculated risk risks. You can then persevere through adversity. You can then create a vision for your future and possibly carry other people to that vision with you. So your faithfulness is going to say a whole lot about you. And then another one is purity. Okay, I mentioned a little bit about this because they all play with each other, but the purity to self improvement, the purity to not tainting yourself with the world, getting caught up into drugs which are going to drag you down, and alcohol and sexualization and other distractions like addictions to gambling and online social media platforms. Don't be a person that's looking for shortcuts, but instead you're going to do the right thing at the right time. You can't be drunk, high and overly sexualized. You can't be promiscuous. You can't be an uneducated knucklehead and expect people to look at you as, this is a pure person that I want to attach myself to. I feel safe with them because they demonstrate purity. If you can do that, you don't have to ever be questioned about, oh, they're going to lie, cheat and steal their way to the top. And your circle will become much purer as well. You will surround yourself with people that emphasize purity as well. So if you can emphasize these traits, any young person, any person at all. You can shatter the mold of having people say, ah, this is just a kid. They don't know what they're talking about, ah, this is just a young person. I want somebody with a lot more experience and they are absolutely going to take a chance on you saying they have got their act together because they are following First Timothy 4:12 and they have these things in order. Who would not want to attach themselves to a person that demonstrates those five characteristics? Write it down or answer that out loud in the room by yourself if you know that you would refuse to attach yourself to somebody that demonstrates those five characteristics. And that's my point. You have now established yourself with a higher level of influence. You have integrity and integrity is magnetic. If people know that you're going to hold fast what you say, do live the walk in the talk. People are going to respect and follow that regardless of their age and position. They will be honest and genuine with you and they will see you as that trustworthy person. Talk about. So look for opportunities to establish your reputation, to uphold your integrity. And doors are going to start opening. Relationships will start showing up and growing stronger and collaborations will be there. And then you can step out into those roles and take that calculated risk. I hope this helps you and I hope the progress that we follow tonight is valuable to you. I want you to take everything we said today, review it, write down the high points for you. And in the meantime, I want everyone to go out into the world and I want them to see the change and be the change. And we will catch you next week right here on PIVOTAL change.
[00:47:53] This has been a NOW Media Networks feature presentation. All rights reserved.
