Being at the top as a leader is quite easy, but understanding people can be quite tricky. Of course, you will work with people of the same ideals and goals, but some will go in the opposite direction. So how can you put them together? For speaker and trainer Chad Hyams, discovering the right ways to appreciate, motivate, and direct the people within your team is a huge factor in becoming an effective and inspiring leader. Together with host Dr. Tracy Jones, Chad shares the secrets of gaining an authentic following, the benefits of multitasking, and why aiming to be at your healthiest is the best vision you can have.
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Chad Hyams – Leaders On Leadership
This series is called Leaders on Leadership where we pull back the veil on leadership and talk to leaders about what took them to get where they are. You're not going to want to miss this episode. He is a leader in real estate. He's run a marathon. He has tremendous reading habits, selling habits, leadership habits. He is going to share with us the price he paid to become the leader that he is. You're not going to want to miss it.
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It is my pleasure to have Chad Hyams as my first guest of all time. I connected with Chad when he had me on his podcast. Chad is a speaker, a trainer, and a coach that brings result-based training to every opportunity. Chad is known for telling it like it is, that's why we have him on this show, with his practical, easy to understand examples through inspirational speaking. His success in the real estate industry has allowed him to apply his business lessons to all areas of his life and provide growth to his clients in various industries. Chad became the voice of reason through the Internet Marketing Specialist Designation program where he trained thousands of people on how to grow their business online. More than ever, with everything's transition to that, Chad, it's delightful to have you on with us.
Thank you, Tracey. It's exciting to be here and a pleasure to be your first guest. That's exciting.
Chad, one of the things that I wanted to talk about in this podcast is leaders on leadership and pulling back the curtain on leadership. We all have some seasoning under our belt. When you're growing up as a leader, you think, “If I'm running across problems or if people are fighting me,” I know there are things we can always do great and better. I also like to encourage leaders to know that there is going to be a price you pay. It's tough sometimes. That's why we have real-world leaders on here that have been forged through the fires. I was in the military. You get seasoned. You earn those stars and those stripes by going into battle and living to tell about it.
My father wrote that book called The Price of Leadership and he outlines four prices that you're going to have to pay to be a leader. I want to take you through each one of those. If you would share with our readers some of the things that have made you the compassionate, the tough, the wise leader, giving you that all incredible experience that we all hear and love, I'd love to talk with you about that.
I look forward to it and I hope I can live up to it.
One of the first prices of leadership that my father talks about is loneliness. He says that loneliness is when you set the pace to go and for others to follow and that there is no one who can lead the group the way that you can. I remember my dad telling me that you never saw a monument in a park dedicated to a committee. You always had to have a leader that took the reins and stepped out. Could you tell me about an experience at any time in your career as a leader where you knew the direction that you had to go and what was needed, and where you had to make your stand as a leader?
That's true, the loneliness of being a leader. Nobody wants loneliness. Nobody grows up and says, “I can't wait to be all alone and on my own.” You're right, we all have those moments. The nice thing about them, Tracey, and the ones that come to my mind is they don't necessarily have to be long periods of time. I don't want people to think, “That means for the next year or three years, I've got to put my head down and it's me.” Sometimes, that loneliness is that moment of, “I'm creating a vision. I'm casting the vision and I'm throwing it out there.” That moment of, “Is anybody even following it? I feel completely naked up here all on my own for it.”
I can remember an opportunity that I had earlier in life when it came to a business situation where I was given the opportunity to become the leader. I was given that title of leadership. It’s one of my first lessons into it. It was a time where we needed to make a massive change. We had come out of a bad market in the real estate industry at the time and I was leading a real estate office. We had come out of some poor leadership that had taken us. I had to hit the brakes. You can't turn a boat quickly. We turn them slowly and all of a sudden, we’re going in a different direction. This was one of those, “No. We're throwing the engine in the opposite direction. We have to turn the boat quickly.” There was that moment of loneliness.
It probably lasted a day or two when I had to stand true, when I had to stay on path on what I knew was right for the organization and that we were moving in the wrong direction. We had to start going completely in the opposite direction from the leadership that was there. I knew I had the investor support because that's why they put me into the seat, yet I didn't have the followers’ support. It was that loneliness of 2, maybe 3 days in there before that first follower started to say, “He's not changing his tune. I'm going to come along with him through this journey.” It's that early adopter thing. There are people who are early adopters and they'll jump on something. The iPhone is a great example. They're the people who waited in line to get the iPhones every time it came out. There are those people who wait to make sure it's okay.
That's when loneliness no longer feels alone when all of a sudden that mass starts moving in your direction. There will be times, you probably had a few in the military situations, where a decision had to be made that wasn't going to be that comfortable decision that nobody wanted to, “We're going to take that hill, charge.” It's that running up that hill and you don't take the time to turn around and make sure that the troops are following you and you are lonely until all of a sudden, they start passing you and you know that the vision has been created and that you're no longer alone.
Understanding People: Make your strengths even stronger to leverage your weaknesses off.
For all the leaders out there, you've dealt with this. Chad, you hit it right on the nail. My dad says that in the book. We don't want to be lonely. None of us wants to be lonely. We're not talking about being alone. Sometimes in leadership, leaders have to make the decision as you succinctly put it. He said, “Everybody is lonely, old people, young people, men, women.” Half the people in hospitals are there because they're lonely and brokenhearted. This pandemic has only made it worse. What this is about is when you see something, you as a leader have to make that call. Sometimes you have to step out. As you shared, you had the investors, but it's tough as leaders because we're told, “You're not a good leader if the followers aren't following.” I love how you put that there. Maybe a little bit of a lag time in there and yours was a couple of days.
A couple of days of doubting yourself, questioning yourself, and nobody charging up that hill with you yet. Stay true to it and they can come along with you. It’s not that you're going to be lonely for three years. It's not you're going to be lonely changing your whole life.
You need different followers. As we talked about, something's going wrong. That's a beautiful thing. Sometimes, we get caught up in this servant leadership or consensus. That's great and everything, but that is not always the case. That's what you're paid the big bucks for, to go ahead and step out and wait for them to follow on. That is huge for leaders out there. Chad, if it's three years, maybe something is not right. Maybe you are making the right decision or you’ve got the wrong team and you may need to make more changes than you did before. The first price of leadership is loneliness. There are going to be times when you're going to be lonely as a leader and that's okay because making that decision and staying on your own is how it feels.
The second price he talks about is another one that is ouchy, which is weariness. He talks about that if you are going to do anything worthwhile, I don't care if it's personal, professional, or spiritual, you're always going to be surrounded by some people that aren't doing their share of the work and other people that are doing more. With weariness, leadership is like going into battle, and it’s hard work. How do you handle the pace and the attitude from others that we need to not work hard? There's this other thing, “If it's hard, Tracey, maybe you shouldn't be doing it. Maybe the universe is sending you a signal that it's not supposed to work.” Can you share with me how you handle the burden of responsibility in leadership?
There are two types of people, there are the introvert and the extrovert. We know them, of course. I'm going to guess without knowing, you're an extrovert. I'm an extrovert. We get our energy from people. A lot of that weariness sometimes will come with that loneliness. Once we start moving in the right direction with something, that weariness can easily be washed away because I'm being filled with the energy of having people around me. The introverts, on the other hand, they're not getting their energy from the group. What they're going to probably find and what I've seen in the introverts that I have the pleasure of working with as leaders to me and as people that I've had to lead, introverts still get that energy.
It's a smaller group of people. They don't want the crowds. Introverts don't want to be alone. They want their small group of people. What you said was a great example. Some people do more work. Some people are going to do less work. I don't believe you pour into your weaknesses. I believe you pour into your strengths. Make your strengths even stronger and you leverage your weaknesses off. That's going to be the same thing. When there are people doing more work, you'll lean into those people. The introverts are going to find that's probably their group, that small group of people if they're that leader. The people who aren't doing their work, they're going to fall off.
One of the things we talked about when we did the Win Make Give podcast with you was the right followers, which was a huge thing. When you get people doing high work and people doing low work, you've got some great followers and then you've got some followers you don't need around you anymore. That weariness is not going to end up being yours, it's going to end up being theirs. When they start to get too weary, what they're going to do is fall off the race. You're going to look back and they're not going to be there anymore. You've got to be okay with that as a leader. Your job as a leader isn't to take everybody. Your job as a leader is to take those that want to go.
That is profound. Lena Horne said, “It's not the load, it's the way you carry it.” I don't mind if the weight of the world is on my shoulders as long as I have the right people coming alongside me to shift it. I read Proverbs every morning, which is the greatest book of all time. It talks about, don't bother pouring into the poor giving them more work because they're not going to do it. This is where leaders get burnt out because they keep hearing, “You're not being the leader that they need.” We talked about that. You need to be the follower the leader needs and the leader needs to be the leader the follower needs.
You got these two things. I love the fact that you hit on, it's okay. There are going to be some that are not up to the task and that is acceptable. As leaders, they may have been in the game for a section of it. When you change direction, and we're always changing direction, it may be outside the scope of something they have the capability or the intentionality to do. Do you have an example of something that was incredibly tough for you to do?
There are always things that are tough for me to do. For some people, it's tough to fire other people. That's an emotional thing. I’ve got no problem with that. A mentor and a leader had once taught me that if they are surprised you're firing them, you didn't do your job as a leader. They should know they're about to be fired. That one is not a tough one for me. The tough one for me and the toughest one I've ever had was when I wasn't the leader. I was a leader. There was seniority above me.
In the military, it would be, the general is up here, they make the true decision that has to be carried out. I don't get my ranks right, but the major or whatever, who's then taking it down to the privates and all that stuff, I didn't necessarily agree with what the generals in our situation were saying. That was where the weariness probably comes from me the most when I believed in the vision of the organization. I believed in the vision of what we were doing. I didn't believe in this choice that was being made. As a leader, I still had to support the choice. Ben Kinney, the Founder of the Win Make Give podcast, he's the one who taught me this one, we call it trickle up. I can complain upward. I can't complain downward.
You’ve got to make sure that things don't trickle down because that's what they do. They usually trickle down. Ben would always talk about this and who would I go to? I would go to the person below me that was easy to whine to or complain to about it. I can't do that. I have to complain and trickle up to the supervisor and say, “I don't agree with you on this. I don't believe in this.” When I went out into public, I had to put on the face of saying, “This is the way it's going to be because that was the choice that was forced upon me by the right leadership who I disagreed on a choice. Not the organization.” I thought the organization was run great. I didn't agree with this stance in this situation. That brings that weariness. That's hard to do when you have to support a position that's not necessarily the position you would take.
Understanding People: Anyone who's been in leadership with success has been a bad leader at one point or another in their lives.
You unpacked something that I get asked about all the time. Personally, like you, I had been through what you described numerous times in my career. It's incredibly draining. It's a different kind of weariness. Achieving success and running an organization takes work. We're physical. We're going to get tired. You talked about the kind of weariness where you hear all this leading from the second chair and I get that I'm supposed to salute smartly.
I'd like to hear your input on this, Chad, where there are more disagreements than agreement. It is not that you're still all in because we are good followers and we know that they sign the paycheck and they deliver the order so I'm going to follow them. If you start to see too much of that weariness, is that acceptable then? Do you think sometimes that's telling you that maybe as a follower, you may need to look at a leader that is more congruent with what you think? Followers get to have a say too, but then the leader gets to make the ultimate decision. Can you unpack that a little bit? I get asked this all the time, “Tracey, I'm all in. I'm doing exactly what you're doing, but my boss is,” fill in the blanks. We've all been there.
If you're saying it regularly, you've got the wrong boss. The question is, do you have the wrong boss or are you in the wrong organization? Your boss might not be the boss. Maybe the private has a problem with the major, yet there's still the general. The question could be, is the major the wrong major in that role? That might be where that trickling up comes into effect. You never want to go over your supervisors.
I agree with that. Don't jump the chain.
You've got to go to your supervisor and say, “You and I have been doing this. I've been having this.” You've got to be into the position where you're ready to have that conversation because it might be them and you might have to end up over them, but you can't go around them to get up there. You'll now know the organization is right for you. How many times do we see it? Without getting into specifics, companies that are fantastic companies that have the wrong leadership to them.
We can go back to the old story of Steve Jobs, the first time he led Apple. Was he leading it well? He wasn't leading it well. He was amazing at what he did, but he was not leading the company well. He was leading the company in the wrong direction. Out he had to go. What happened? He goes off. He becomes a much better leader. He learned some more powerful lessons. He comes back in to re-lead the company again. You might believe in the Apple vision, but you had a problem with Steve Jobs as the leader of it. In that case, I’ve got to keep going and moving forward in the right direction because I believe in the vision of the team. If I'm looking at that boss, Tracey, and that boss is the one who's creating the vision, that's when I’ve got to pack up and go.
Have you ever done that? Have you ever taken up to the CEO level and had them say, “It is what it is?”
Yes.
For the readers out there, use your chain. I have no sympathy for anybody that jumps the chain. You have to give the individual the opportunity. I never disliked anything I did. I served the country. I was in high tech, but I have left bad bosses. I would only leave after I went to the tippy top and then realized it's not a good congruent fit and I have to go someplace else. Chad hit on Steve Jobs. There is a big difference between being a leader and being in leadership. Steve Jobs was a leader. He was brilliant, he had it tight.
The problem with companies is we see a lot of companies have great leaders. They are leaders. They're visionaries. Leadership is about getting stuff done through other people and that's where they miss the boat and have to learn how to do it. That's where I see a lot of people come to me struggling and saying, “My leader.” I'm like, “They can't be brain dead. They grew a huge organization, but they don't know how to motivate and get rid of the bad and motivate the good,” so to speak.
That was me. I'm not saying I'm a great leader because what good leader would stand up and say, “I'm a great leader.” Anybody who's been in leadership with success, at one point or another in their lives, has been that bad leader. That's always one of those questions, Tracey. I had a general idea of some of the questions you might throw at me and yet at the same time, I'm like, “I don't know where she's going to go on this. We're going to have to see how this plays out.”
The question that I always get asked is, “Can you be trained to be a leader?” Are you either born a leader or not? I don't believe leadership is a born thing. It's not in our DNA, leadership. Anybody can learn leadership. I've seen some amazing people that you probably never would have picked out that became amazing leaders through training and learned how to become leadership. I believe in charismatic. I believe the presence that comes with it. That stuff in your DNA. That person who people radiate to be around. That person who can stand up in front of a room and recite some speech without writing it down and everybody wants to charge the hill and all that stuff.
Understanding People: Leadership is something that's trained and taught.
That doesn't mean they're good at leadership. That means they can motivate people or inspire people and yet then the question is, what happens to them after that? Do the people run up the hill and get to the top and look around and that leader is still sitting down on the bottom going, “Look at what I did.” That's not leadership. Leadership is something that's trained, something that's taught. It's something that we focus at. That's one of the things on our podcast. One of the things that you do that we focus a lot on is making sure that we're teaching people how to be better leaders to provide that leadership.
That's a real gut check for a leader. In my early 50s, I had to look at myself after reading all the literature and saying, “That's where you missed it many times because you are a leader. I'm conscientious. I'm organized. I'm efficacious. I'm tenacious.” Leadership is different. It was a humbling thing. I'm glad I realized it because then you can start working on it. It's such a slight nuance thing. I'd love to explore more with you in a future episode about how you make that transition to it's not about you anymore. It's not bad because you have to lead yourself first before you can lead anybody else. We know that. That transition that will lead yourself to somebody else, it can be taught. Like you, I believe there are some innate gifting and coding that we are born with but the rest is definitely the things that you can be taught, getting in the leadership literature, and things like that. Thank you again for bringing that out.
The third price of leadership is another wonderful one, abandonment. In the book, my father says that we need to abandon what we like to think about and what we want to think about in favor of what we ought and we need to think about. We all know the greatest thing for leaders. I love Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited, it’s my favorite. How do you get clarity and focus so you can stay focused on what you need to need to think about? One of the things was my dad was like, “I'm not going to define success because for all the good things that I did today that guaranteed success, I had twice as many that I did that could guarantee me a failure.” How do you stay focused on what you need to think about? How do you get that clarity and that singularity?
Staying focused is surrounding myself with the right people. Leadership requires followership. It's the old Jim Rohn, “You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” That's how I keep my focus, “I want to go over there and do that. The sun is out. I want to get outside today. The restaurant is opened. I want to go out and eat.” It's those people that I've put in my life that say, “This needs to be done.” You're the one that's leading it, getting it done, or you're the one that was responsible for this. We're looking to you to do this.
The easiest way to abandon all those other things is to have the people holding you accountable. I'm not a horse racing fan in any regard, yet I understand it. When the horses are running, what do they do? They got these blinders on them. The horse sees straight ahead. The horse run and it's not supposed to see the other horses in its peripheral vision. How often is our peripheral vision distracting us? There might be somebody beside you attempting to get your attention, waving their arms over at you and you're doing your best to stay focused on what you're doing and talking to me.
It's having that accountability of other people that say, “Put the blinders up. We're going to be your blinders so that all you see is what's ahead of you and what's coming because your role is to get us there. Your role is to lead and pave that path or get there first to show us how to do it or push us along the way or lay the foundation with this so these pieces can be attached.” Whatever it is, you've got to surround yourself with the right people, and then you don't feel like you're abandoning anything. You feel like you're living up to the people that you've put around you and what they're holding you to and it becomes easy to not look at it as the word abandonment. If I say the word, what's the first thing you think? You’re like, “There's that loneliness thing again. I'm going to walk away from it. This leadership thing sucks with all these words that are coming.”
It becomes easy to abandon the things that are distractions because there are many things all day long that our brain doesn't even process what we saw. It's saying, “I can't let you even realize that bird flew by. You'll never know it.” How many times have you said to someone, “Did you see that?” They're like, “See what?” Their brain did not even recognize it because it was focused on something else at that same time. It’s the people in our life, Tracey.
I love the accountability partners. It is important. The natural tendency is you take these calls or somebody sends you this, “I can do this for you.” Peter Greer has one of my favorite books, it’s called Mission Drift. In flying, one half a degree off and you are in Timbuktu. I love the accountability partners. You have to slice your time and when people call you and say, “Let's meet for lunch. Did you hear about this? Do you weigh in on this?” Don't even go there. This is the only stuff I'm letting in my brain right now until we can move forward on this thing. A lot of the leadership literature says you can only focus on one thing at a time. Sometimes, we think as multitaskers, “My strategic plan is I'm working fifteen different things.”
That's BS. You can't work on more than one thing at a time. You can walk and talk at the same time. Why? Walking is not something you consciously have to do. Think about the old exercise we used to do as a kid. Pat your head and rub your belly in circles. How often you'd end up padding both because you were attempting to control and think about two different things. You can't do two different things at one time. You have to be focused on that one thing and you have to have that ability to abandon all those other things so that you can focus on that one thing of priority.
That doesn't mean you can't later shift gears and focus on something else. Right now, I'm focused on you. My phone is blowing up. I've put it on quiet, but I can see it lighting up because I wasn't smart enough to turn it over out of my reach. I can hear sounds outside of where I am and stuff, but I have to be focused on the conversation I'm having with you right now. When I'm done with this, then I can focus on the next things that need to be done.
How many times have you written an email to somebody while you're on the phone with someone that you cared about? In the email, you typed, “I love you,” because you were saying it. You're not being focused on the things that you're on. You have to be to a power where you do one thing at a time and abandon all those other things. Accountability is the only way you'll ever get it done. You tell other people what you're doing so that they're holding you accountable to get there.
Chad, let's delve into a little bit more of that. You need that accountability team. They need to be as dialed in as you are. I've had this happen on a couple of boards where they thought, “Maybe we should move off into this area or do this.” Have you ever had that happen with the team and what did you do? It has to be 100%, everybody all into the same thing and not just you. Sometimes, as leaders, you're going to have people in your tribe that all of a sudden start saying, “We should go in this direction.” How do you handle that?
Understanding People: You have to be in power to do one thing at a time and abandon all other things.
It's going to depend on the situation and it's going to depend on the person. Sometimes that person is right. Sometimes they're the one saying, “You're not paying attention. I'm seeing the obstacle that's coming that none of you are paying attention to because I have my own personal history. I've been there and I've done that. I have failed at that before. I'm telling you, stop doing what you're doing.” If you truly are surrounding yourself with the right people, sometimes you have to stop and listen to that voice because sometimes they're right.
Also, sometimes you've got to be able to have that hard conversation where I say, “Tracey, I appreciate you sharing the opportunity that you think we should be advertising on television instead of the radio. We know that radio is the prime form of advertising. Give us three months. Lean into this with us for three months. If it's not working, then let's look at your approach, yet this is what we believe needs to be done.” It's bringing those people on board and yet it's making sure that those people are still a part of our world because we put them there for a reason. We’ve got to remember, sometimes they could be right.
That is a beautiful way to put it as I study followership. For our readers, what Chad described is how you prevent critical thinking followers which you want. Not critical spirit, great critical thinkers, but how you prevent them from becoming alienated. It’s like, “They're not going to listen to my input, why am I even on this organization?” I've felt that and I'm sure I've done that to people before too. It's like a kid, “Mommy.” “The adults are talking. Let me finish this conversation and then we're going to come over and address your concerns.” That's a beautiful thing to say, “We started this. We’ve got to give it at least three months, 90 days, and then we'll regroup and reevaluate.”
However beautiful the strategy, you have to look at the results. Let's look at this and then let's table that. Sooner, if need be, if we find it out. Decisions are made, but then you can always go back the next day and say, “Here's another piece of information. Now we get to tweak that a little bit.” I love the fact you brought that up. As you march along, yes, we're all in sync, but we're going to have different voices and you want that. You always want different voices that all come together, but you don't want to alienate them and have them then go, “Why do I even serve on this board? Why does Chad have me as his mentee or mentor when he doesn't listen to anything I say?”
Tracey, if you're surrounded by yes people, the term is obviously a yes ma'am. In today's day and age, there are enough women that belong in those roles and we should all make sure there's at least one in our world so we're not getting a biased view as you put together almost your board of these people. If you're surrounded by yes people, you’ve got the wrong people. If everyone is, “Yes. That's good. Do that. We'll help you make that.” If you don't get that person who says, “What about this? Don't do that. I see this opportunity.” You've got the wrong people around you if they're not helping you point out and see those other opportunities that are there. You don't want to surround yourself with yes people. You don't want people who are going to argue everything with you all day long, yet you need people who are strong enough to be able to say, “Here's a different viewpoint.”
Inevitably, whenever we hear about these catastrophic falls from grace or these CEOs, and there's never a shortage of them, I always sit there and they always point to the CEO and I'm like, “Where is their board? Where was their collective tribe?” If they sat there and let this guy or gal drive it into the brink because of money or passivity, shame on them. People knew, they just didn't say it and that's why I'm like, “Everybody always sees it. People aren't stupid. They're in it. They're aware of the organization.” That whole part of this price of leadership is to bring people in there that stay honed in on that clarity and are always able to speak to you in truth and love. Tough love is still love. It may be tough, but we sure need that as well.
The last point, this one sounds better. The fourth price of leadership my father talks about is vision. I can remember as a little girl hearing this and I'm like, “I'm not going to be a Steve Jobs or an Oprah.” You think vision is for Nostradamus. They're out there in the wilderness, these visionaries. What he said was, “Vision is simply knowing where you are going and doing it, seeing what needs to be done and doing it.” I can remember as a little girl, I was always like, “Quite frankly, I could see what needs to be done.” Many people see it and they don't do anything about it. Can you share with me what's been one of the greatest epiphanies or a vision thing that you saw that finally came together that you got clarity on and it needs to get done? We're going to put together a plan and we're going to execute.
That would probably be leading myself and it would probably be my health being in the dumpster. I’ve got to believe that 50% of our country either needs to get their health in gear or they're extremely committed to it. To me, it was self-leadership on that and it was the vision of, “I'm going to fix this.” It was the vision of, “I have a wife. I have a daughter. They deserve that I'm around. I have friends. I have people that deserve to have me in their life as much as I deserve to have them in their life. What am I doing by not taking care of myself?”
It was that vision of becoming a healthy person. It was that vision of becoming someone who you'll look at on the TV. It's not the ripped muscles, Arnold Schwarzenegger thing, it's the healthy. That person looks extremely healthy about it that it was the commitment to that and then it's looking up one day and going, “I'm there.” I'm not perfection. I'm not Michael Phelps with 0.2% body fat or whatever he's got on him or something like that. I'm to a point where I’m healthy and that vision came together.
It’s that leadership of marriage. You're leading somebody, yourself, and your spouse in marriage. Here's the fun thing, what a great leadership lesson marriage is because sometimes you're the leader and sometimes you're the follower because you've got to be able to juggle that and have that proper balance. If one of you is the leader and one of you is the follower, what kind of relationship is that? At some point, that becomes no. That’s the older generation if you forgive me. Going back to our grandparents, maybe yes. The husband led the house. That's not the world today and thank goodness it's not anymore.
What a great vision to have of what a beautiful marriage can be and then you look up and all of a sudden, you're on your ten-year wedding anniversary. You're on your twenty-year wedding anniversary. You're on your 30-year wedding anniversary and being able to always say, “We're never going to reach the end of this vision because we won't know we've reached it because our lives will end. We're always progressing and we're always moving along towards what we always thought and maybe even we're past where we thought we would be. All we've done is reset that vision for what this marriage in this life could look like.”
Chad, you hit the nail on it. Vision is about us seeing it and us doing it. It's this weird thing, “I can't be a leader because I don't have a vision.” No. You get up. You lead your life. You lead your finances. You lead your spiritual life. You lead your healthy life. Don't tell me you're not a leader. I reclaimed my health years ago when I was like, “How am I going to finish running this race and I intend to run this race until I'm 120 if I have let my health gone?” Everybody was saying, with the Coronavirus, “Stay healthy. You’ve got to get healthy to stay healthy.” I hit that years ago and I was like, “It’s mid-life. It’s this, it's that.” I'm like, “No.” I looked around and I saw other people that we see in their 60s and 70s that were a height weight proportionate and fit. I saw them and I still maintained. Even with marriage, and I've been married. You can see all the four and a half months. I'm seasoned at this.
Understanding People: Every day you're leading yourself and you're leading somebody, whether you know they're watching or not.
Stop looking at what everybody else is going to do for you. It's healthy habits in your marriage, your relationships and vision. I go to church and one of the things was you be the Bible that people need to read. In other words, you model the behaviors of Christ. When you model a good relationship, a good husband or a good healthy person, that draws people together because then they can look at you and go, “He's leading himself.” You can show other people how you model those leadership behaviors. That's a great component of vision.
Tracey, we never know who's watching and someone is always watching. There are the old quotes and the old things about, “Character is who you are when no one is watching.” Someone is always watching in today's day and age. I'm not talking, “Your webcam is always on and they're spying on you.” I'm saying they're always watching you. Probably the biggest health thing that people want is they all at some point say, “I'm going to run a marathon.” For somebody, I don't know what it is about the marathon. I've done two. I have no desire to ever do another one again. It's that thing. Here's the thing, you've got to lead yourself through it. The vision is the finish line.
It's going to take you more than from the start line to the finish line because you have to do months and months of proper training if you think you're going to finish a marathon. You then get to race day and you get to run. Here's the thing, there might be people cheering you along and they're probably your closest friends or your family who are there for you. You've got this vision of that finish line. Once you cross that finish line, you might be done, like me, to say, “I'm never doing that again.” I did it, check. I don't need to go that far without any good reason for it ever again.
In today's day and age, there's no way people haven't watched you. There is no way people around the office, in your neighborhood, on social media if you're posting it, haven't watched you train, haven't watched you post those things, haven't watched you celebrate yourself, haven't watched as you finish and cross that finish line. You might be impacting and changing somebody's life as a leader, even though you think, “Who am I? I'm a clerical person at some organization that nobody knows. I'm employee number 7490328. Nobody knows who I am.” Meanwhile, you lead somebody to a life-changing decision by what you've done. We have to remember, every day we're leading ourselves and every day we're leading somebody, whether we know they're watching or not.
Your success inspires other people's success. When you get lonely, weary or have to abandon, eating cake for your birthday because you made a promise that you're not going to do that anymore, we understand that in the end, circling back, vision is the thing that you see. The price of loneliness, weariness, and abandonment is all integral pieces that get you to executing that vision.
It’s all worth it. It’s a price you'd pay every day if I showed you what the vision looked like and said, “Here's the price you have to pay.” It's going into the store and saying, “I would pay $5 for that.” You’re not asking for cash. You're asking for some loneliness. You're asking for some weariness at times. You're asking to have to abandon some of those things along the way. You know that when you cross that finish line, it is all worth it.
That's the exhortation at the end. Thank you for bringing that up. This is tough stuff. I can remember as a little girl and I remember watching my dad probably mid-career and he was brilliant, world-renowned. You talk about that star quality and charisma, outpouring, in taking and taking. I remember I was a teenager and I saw him one time with his head in his hands and he looked at me and I'm like, “Dad, you're the greatest individual I've ever known in the entire universe.” He's like, “I'm tired and I wonder sometimes if it's worth it.” That was poignant to me.
For leaders out there, I want to encourage you. It's tough. Like Chad said and my dad realized and I saw too, this is a daunting price. The more you pay it, I'm not going to say it gets easier, but you get better and stronger. The healthy habits in leadership, you get more clarity on who you need in your life and who you don't. Your habits don't become such a struggle. You start burning new synapses in your brain that suddenly let you know, “I don't even go back to thinking like I used to think. I'm not going to pick up a cigarette anymore.” It's gone. That's the beauty for leaders and leading yourself and others. You do eventually dial in that right tribe, the right dialogue, the right everything. The price is a small thing to pay for what you get in the end.
You’ve got to lead yourself, Tracey. You talked about it well and I would challenge anybody reading this to hear your interview that you did for us on our Win Make Give podcast where you talked about the power of followers. The one thing that I personally walked away when I got to have that interview with you was, I got to be the follower that I have to lead. I'm always leading myself. Am I the right follower to be the right leader as well? It always comes back to us. We hear leadership. We want to be Steve Jobs. We want to be Oprah. We want to be these people who are leading massive organizations or the politicians that are leading cities, states and whatever it is. It all starts with us. It all starts inside. If we're not leading ourselves and following ourselves, why would anyone else follow us?
Chad, where can people get in touch with you, hear all about this podcast? Share with us how to get in touch.
For the podcast, they can go to WinMakeGive.com. That's the name of the podcast and we made it easy. You can get yourself to the podcast from there and catch up on any news that's happening. Me, it’s Chad Hyams and they could find me on Facebook. That's probably one of the easiest ways to go there, find me there, message me there or reach out to me there if there's anything I can help you by.
Chad, thank you for the time that you gave us. Thank you for your insights on your leadership journey. I've written down a lot of notes too. Thank you for being my first ever guest. You have set the bar high. I can't believe it.
I can't wait for future episodes and all the other people what they've got to say and learn from them as well, Tracey.
Important Links:
Chad Hyams – LinkedIn
Win Make Give – Podcast
Ben Kinney – LinkedIn
Interview - Win Make Give episode with Dr. Tracey Jones
Facebook – Chad Hyams
About Chad Hyams
I will challenge what you won’t say or you don’t know…yet
My mission is to assist people in facing challenges and breaking through them and to be a catalyst for change
There is no wrong way to grow and failure is just a step in the right direction
Specialties: Inspirational Speaking, training, coaching, consulting, recruiting