The Myth Of Leadership [Tracey Jones]
One myth about leadership is the onus of responsibility. As much as you need great leaders, great followership is what takes your business to the next level. On today's show, Dr. Tracey Jones joins Dr. Kelly Waltman of the Courageous Leadership Academy LIVE to discuss leaders' role in honing and empowering great employees. Followership impacts an organization more than any leader can, and knowing that can make you a more effective leader. Tracey also talks about her book, SPARK: 5 Essentials to Ignite the Greatness Within, and breaks down the key concepts that bring out the best in you. Leader or follower, these insights can benefit you both in your professional and personal development. Get valuable insight from Tracey by tuning in on this episode.
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The Myth Of Leadership [Tracey Jones]
Our guest is Dr. Tracey Jones. She's an author, speaker, Air Force Academy graduate, decorated veteran, international leadership expert, scholar, researcher and on top of all that, she is the president of Tremendous Leadership. She is the author of several books including Beyond Tremendous: Raising the Bar on Life and A Message to Millennials, encouraging the next generation of leaders by teaching the importance of fellowships. Those are two great books I recommend you check out and her latest book, SPARK: 5 Essentials to Ignite the Greatness Within. I'm excited to talk to her about this topic. With all the research she's done, the writing and her lifelong pursuit of learning, Dr. Jones is always looking for opportunities to help businesses invest in their employees and she's going to help us with that. Without further ado, let's bring Dr. Tracey Jones into the session. Hello and welcome.
Thank you, Dr. Kelly. It's an honor to be here.
I'm thrilled that you're here and you're sharing your time with us, I appreciate it. Is there anything else that you'd like to share in terms of an introduction before we dive into our conversation?
No, that was tremendous. I'm like, “This is a great introduction.” Thank you so much for the honor of that.
You're welcome. Thank you for doing such amazing work and giving us lots to talk about, you've been very busy. Our title is the Myth of Leadership and I love that as a title because it's like, “What the heck are we going to say for the myth of leadership?” When you say that phrase, what does that mean to you?
This started back as a young leader. When I was fourteen years old, I got my first, they call it work release, which sounds like I was in jail as a child. Back in the day, you would get work release papers because if you were under sixteen, you had to get your parents' authorization. I started working at a very young age and have not stopped since and do not intend to ever stop. What I did was I grew up with a father who was passionate about leadership. I tell people, it was a cross between boot camp and a sitcom. There was always a lot of fun because he was motivational but as a leader, it was always driven and goal-oriented. Everything had to have a purpose or a lesson.
I grew up learning that leadership is a privilege and we all are put on this Earth to lead at something, even if it's just leading yourself. I was exposed to unbelievable people from an early age talking about leadership and they taught me a very pragmatic approach to leadership. That is what we are called to do, it is an unbelievable service that we provide to others but it is one of the most daunting, debilitating, horrible things you're ever going to do. It's great but it's going to kick you and kick you hard. That’s where I was never shocked then when I got into different leadership roles. I did a lot of different things. My background always trying to hone my leadership chops, grow my experiential bag and work with people and see what worked good and what did not.
Several years ago, I entered my doctoral program on Leadership. I remember studying it and all the theory, which is all grounded research. It's based on actual research but I remember I would always hear people say things like, “If the people aren't doing well, that's on you.” I'm like, “Okay.” I've worked for many years with people and I can do better as a leader but I'm not thinking it's all on me. That's like a parent saying, “I'm completely responsible for the failures of my adult child,” or a husband saying, “It's all on my wife.” Everybody in any dyadic relationship, there's ownership on both parts. I got burnt out halfway through my studies and I'm like, “I can't take this anymore.”
I'm so tired of everybody crapping on the leader and saying, “It's the leader. If you didn't do this, you didn't do that.” I'm like, “There's got to be more to it than this.” I stumbled across a book by Robert Kelley called The Power of Followership and it reversed the lens from leadership to followership. What it taught me was if you want a better leader, be a better follower. How obvious is that? If you want a better husband, be a better wife. It was obvious but for whatever reason, when we get into the professional setting, we treat employees like they’re babies. We have to guess what they want, we have to coddle them and we have to put up with temper tantrums and stuff. It's getting more pronounced.
I'm like, “This has not been my experience of living all over the world and working in all different settings and cultures.” I did my doctoral research on a crisis event and I did a case study interview of people to find out what was it in the leader that caused you to stand with them or that you ran away and flipped out. I found out it had nothing to do with what the leader said or did. Where it was rooted was in the individual's regenerative nature, their adaptive capacity and resilience. I’m sure as a leader, we then create the enabling construct but I still maintain you can be the worst leader in the world and still have brilliant employees. You won't have them for long but it's when employees know how to self-motivate and drive themselves. I realized there is no such thing as leadership, there is only individual motivation and what we as leaders need to do to engage in leadership. We have to find those people that have a desire to be led and developed.
I tell people, “If followership is beneath you, leadership is way beyond you.” That's not taught anymore because everybody gets a prize and everybody is great but everybody is not great. We talk about bringing out the best in people. What if you're not bringing the best to me in the work environment? I hate to be mean but I'm going to be truthful because I love people. Anybody reading out there knows that they have been in work situations where there have been people that have been an absolute nightmare to work with. Tell me that everybody's great and they show up waiting for you to let them be great. That's an absolute myth.
SPARK: 5 Essentials to Ignite the Greatness Within
What I work on is dialing in what follower the leader is looking for and for followers, dialing in what leader brings out the best in you. That's going to be very indifferent as our personalities are. Culture is one thing but I never left a job because of a culture, I left a job because of a boss. I either lost respect for them or they were triggering the untremendous side of me. That's what I work with as far as the leadership-followership paradigm. That's why I say, “When you bring people on your team, you cannot motivate them. The only form of motivation that works or last is self-motivation.” You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. As leaders, we try to put salt in their roads but do you know there are many organizational horses out there that are horses patooties that just refuse to drink. You know it. If you haven't seen it, you're asleep at the wheel especially as a leader.
That's what I work on as far as the myth of leadership. Once I realized this, I was able to go, “I am still honing my chops as a leader. I am still uncovering my own biases, assumptions and blind spots on working to be a better leader but I'm a lot more clear on what I'm looking for in a teammate or a co-leader.” It's like a professional dating matchmaking service. You don't want to date somebody that has a value congruence completely different than yours. Don't bring them into your organization and say, “I'll train them.” No, you won't because that's an intrinsic part of who they are. Resiliency is something you've got or you don't got. You need to find your resilient people because talking about courageous leadership, they are going to be the courageous ones.
There are so many things I could unpack. It's true. Is there a responsibility on leaders to clearly relay expectations? Yes. If you're not doing that, that's on you. Is it on you to hold people accountable? Yes. To provide that positive and critical feedback? Yes, but to say that all of the onus is on the leader and that the employee doesn't have any responsibility is completely misguided. I agree that people are their own beings, their own entities. You can work with them and coach them and you should do those things but it is up to that individual. There are times that people are difficult.
Here's the leader's requirement but remember, there's a flip side to it. Zig Ziglar had a great quote and he said, “We were responsible to people but not for people.” I, as a leader, am responsible to give you expectations, the resources you need and whatever else requires but I'm not responsible for you. My fear is that over the years, we have morphed into almost a babyish work environment. We're allowing a lot of things to go on because this is the way it is now. No, it's not. What you said, too, the beauty of exemplary followership according to Robert Kelley is two things. Number one, there are wonderful, critical thinkers, not critical spirits. People are like, “I tell my boss the wrong.” That is a critical spirit. Critical thinking means if your boss has not set expectations, talk to them. Leaders aren't mind readers. We don't know what is ailing you. You have a responsibility. It's just like sitting there and seeing if your husband can guess what you're irritated you.
You may not talk for a week and a half. This is ridiculous. Talk to your boss, be open with them, give them feedback. The other construct is as far as critical thinking all in engagement. Leaders are so busy. I can't be your cheerleader. Get in the game or let's move on to something else. Get on another bus that you like better. Those are the two things that I tell followers. If you don't see value in the mission, find another mission. If you don't have a reasonable expectation of success at doing your job, tell your leader exactly what you need to be successful and they will do it for you. If they don't then it's time to find another leader.
In thinking about being a quality leader, what does tremendous leadership mean to you? I know that's a big word and for a good reason that you use it quite a bit.
Tremendous leadership means to me, courage, humility and regenerative nature. It’s all about creating an atmosphere that will unlock what is already inside of you. What we strive to do as a lot of people try and mold you to be something different, our approaches, you already have this innate great already imprinted on you, that's a fact. Whether you choose to see it or not, we try and get your head in the game and see where you're at and where you can be. It's not just all about you, the world needs the greatest version of you. We help people get in their heads in the game to realize what you've been through, there's only one of you and you have this zone of gifting that nobody else has.
It hearkens back to Jim Collins’ Good To Great Hedgehog Principle. What are you the best in the world at? People say to me, “Nothing.” Yes, there is. Your experience becomes your expertise. There is something you have been through in your context only you have been through. Number two, what are you passionate about? In that, we go back to our childhood when we were nine and what leadership experts say, “That's when you're most often likely to learn new languages and be in touch with what you want to be when you grow up.” Lastly, what can you do to drive your economic engine? What can you do that people will pay you for? If you're in that greatness, that zone of gifting, you are going to provide a solution or a feeling to people and they are going to resonate with you and they are going to gravitate to you. That's why it's so important for leadership and tremendous leadership, leaders know what does it for you.
There's a research theory called Implicit Followership Theory. You have to know as a leader, as a parent, as a friend, as a whatever, what brings out the best in you then you're intentional about bringing that into you. You also be intentional about pruning out anything else that doesn't make the cut. Put in but you've got to also get rid of the bat. Implicit leadership theory is for anybody out there because we all work for somebody, even I who run my own company. Everybody has people that they have to answer to. Understand, for me, who is my ideal market? Who's my ideal client? Who's my avatar? I don't want to speak to just anybody. I want to publish anybody's book, I got to know who hits and gets our value, there's a strong congruence.
When you do this, work becomes a joy, synergy, synchronicity, reciprocity versus, “It's Sunday night, I feel sick. I can't sleep. It's Friday afternoon, let's go drink.” It shouldn't be that way. If it is that way, something's wrong. It's time to either make a change or keep doing the same thing. That's not a great choice but it takes courage, soul searching and self-awareness. For our readers out there, tremendous leadership is all about helping you see the incredible value in you. You may not see it, you may think, “I can never get another job. I'm too old.” Wrong. You're just getting started. At any time, you can pivot with purpose and start the next chapter of your life. We're all living to be 90 and 100. I'm barely on the back nine of life. I'm getting started. I started figuring it out, too.
As I joke around with people, I said, “I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I'm still figuring that out.”
That’s a beautiful space to be because it means you're open and you're willing to keep evolving and growing. That's the meaning of life.
When you were speaking there about change, in the book, you had this one section where you're talking about change. There was a line about, “You need to exchange to change.” You didn't write it exactly that way but that was a note I wrote to myself because I never thought about it that way. You need to exchange your prior circumstance, feeling or whatever to change. When you talk about also that all change is death. Some part of you, your life or your circumstance needs to die so this new part can come into being. I thought that was powerful and it is scary for a lot of people. It is because of those things, those reasons. It's not easy to let go and it does take courage. I loved the way you phrased that in the book, which resonated with me a lot. I appreciated that.
Myth Of Leadership: Leadership is an unbelievable service that we provide to others, but it is one of the most daunting, debilitating, horrible things you're ever going to do.
Everybody keeps talking about your comfort zone. Why people are reluctant to leave their comfort zone because they know comfort zones are acquired matter. They haven't identified their strengths zone and that's what in SPARK is an acronym, Singularity. When you dial in your strength, you have a hard time sleeping because now you know what your purpose is. When we find our purpose, we can deal with anything. You talking about that exchange, I'm going to use a real-world example.
For those of you that know me, I have a pup that we have dealing with something unknown and scary. We have taken him to four specialists, for ERs, four different doctor appointments, we have been on antibiotics, antifungal, prednisone, Mylicon, revolution, you name it and still no relief. Here I am, I'm putting all the good on this dog that typically, he's eating steak, salmon and eggs, we're going raw. He's eating better than my husband. This dog, this is it but still something is wrong.
As a researcher, I'm up all night like, “There must be something else in any of you that have dealt with particularly dermatological issues or auto-immune, you keep looking. You never know what triggered it but you've got to figure it out and you have to find out what you need to do.” Finally, at the last minute I'm like, “There's still something wrong. How can there still be something wrong when I'm waiting for the skin biopsies to come on back. I'm going to try one of the things. I'm going to give them a sulfur bath.” I gave him a sulfur dip. For those of you that have rescued cats and kittens or half cattle, sulfur dips.
Anybody out there with dog issues, I highly recommend this. I get in there and I'll be darned, he has had skin scraping, he's on revolution. There is no way any little bugger could have been living on him and yet something came out of him, tiny termites. None of my dogs have them. I wash his bedding every day. How is this? The point of it is that I could have done the greatest things in the world for him but until you eradicate the bad.
Ruby Red wrote a book called Saucy Aussie Living and she’s getting a second leash on the light. Her quote was always, “Let a single flea stay on me and soon you'll be in misery.” That's what it reminded me of. No matter how much good I did, until I eradicated and got to the root source, maybe it's a fear and a negative person, maybe it's this bull crap story you keep, this lie, either real or perceived thing that happened to you. Let it go, get flea-free and now that was two days ago, I can already see we have a long way to go in the recovery process, but I eradicate it. I will have to keep eradicating that. That's the thing about getting out the negative people, the toxic people, the negative self-talk distinct and think.
Zig Ziglar has another one of my favorite quotes and he says, “They say positive thinking doesn't last, neither does bathing. That's why we recommend it daily.” Every day, you got to cut the crap. Your mind is a vacuum. That’s why I tell people, “Turn that crap off.” If I'm in a restaurant and listen to incredibly toxic disgusting conversations, I'll move someplace else because stuff comes into your mind. Guard it because whatever is in there, if you don't eradicate it right away just like those little mites that you got digging in the soil, you get an infestation.
I love that you say that because it does require that intentionality and that vigilance. Sometimes, it's easy to become passive consumers to so much negativity that we don't even realize it's coming at us from all these different angles. Whether it's television, conversations or whatever we see online. We can't completely avoid bumping into it but we can be intentional about redirecting ourselves and being aware of how powerful the messaging that we take in, both consciously and subconsciously. I love that you share that because it's true. It does make a difference.
From critical thinking skills. I learned a lot from my PhD and I got a book out of it, too but the greatest thing I learned was how to critically think. Remember I talked about critical thinking. I tell people, “If you can't cite it, don't write or speak it.” You can't go back and show me the grounded research where you got that. That's why I live at peace. I recommend to people all this stuff you're reading about, you know that's completely fiction or editorialization or a narrative. Are you going to live in a fear space based on a lie? What was the one where they were living in the woods and they were scared all the time? Unpack it.
I grew up in the woods so I remember watching that movie thinking, “People are scared of the woods. I don't understand this.” I'm like, “Whatever.” Maybe we should get out in the woods and see and see the woods thing. If something is vexing you or stressing you, get out there and unpack it. When you shine the light of fact and people are like, “I can't find facts.” You can. You just got to be diligent. There are certain websites. Even for COVID there's a certain med page, in the New England Journal of Medicine where I go on where I get to listen to doctors talking about real issues then I get to make informed choices about it. It takes intentionality. Don't be a lazy thinker.
We've talked a little bit about your book, SPARK. Let's talk about the five components because your subtitle is 5 Essentials to Ignite the Greatness within. You mentioned the first one, S because SPARK is an acronym, Singularity. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that as a concept and then walk us through the other components?
I am an engineer by trade. Although you can tell me conceptually what's going on, I am the type of learner that if you don't give me a construct or the tools to do it, I'm just like, “How are we supposed to get this done?” I can figure it out but I need the means to get it done. I am a big believer in construct. Like you trying to grow a business, trying to determine what to go next, there are some things I'm doing right but there were some things where I'm like, “It's still not firing. Why am I not getting traction?” I was in quality assurance on fighter jets as the maintenance officer. When the jet would come down non-mission capable, you don't swap out everything or trash it, you go through and troubleshoot and figure out, “This is what it is. These are the parts, this is the testing and this is what I need to do to get it back to fully mission capable.” I came up with a construct of five P’s and there's an intrinsic and an external component to it.
Where a lot of personal development fails is they start with getting you all fired up and you're ready to declare the world, “This is what I'm doing.” You go out there and tell the world and the world's like, “Shut up.” I'm like, “We got an intrinsic thing going, now we have to talk about what are the external she needs. Like leadership and followership, two sides of the same coin. You can't put her on the boss because you, as the employee, there's more of you than them. You have a bigger responsibility for creating success in the organization. Remember that. Followership is about 80% of the success in an organization because unless the leader is doing something illegal, immoral or unethical that now get found out, followership is responsible for the success or failure of any enterprise. Although we like to blame leaders, we're all in this together. We're all drawn a paycheck so we should all show up.
Myth Of Leadership: Followership is about 80% of the success in an organization.
SPARK is Singularity, Persistence, A is for Advocates, R is for Resources and K for Knowledge. The first two S and P are Singularity and Persistence, this is what you bring to the table. People will say to me, “Should I write this book? Should I marry this person? Should I go back?” I don't know. I'm not you. Only God knows your heart. I can help you, there are many tests and constructs out there. This is why life coaches are wonderful, to help you dial in what is the best use of time. I tell people, “If you had a microphone to the world for 30 minutes, what would your message be? That's your singularity. That's what you're most passionate about. That's what you put on this world to do.” That's not enough. Persistence, I can't do the work for you.
They say some people are like blisters, they show up after the work is done. A lot of people sit back, “The taxpayer is paying me to do nothing.” That is dangerous. You cannot outsource work. You have to know your anointing and when you do then you become relentless. Singularity is the most important one because when you dial that in, everything seems to follow because you don't care about people saying you're an idiot. You're like, “Too bad so sad. I know what I'm here to do.” You become almost relentless. You don't mind the noes and the setbacks, you become very all-in and tenacious. That's the first two but we are not coded either from a theological or an evolutionary standpoint to go through life on our own. We are meant to be in a collective and you can't get it right without the right people, processes and products.
That’s why the Law of Attraction was always people would be like, “This is ridiculous. I can't just wish a red Porsche to be in my driveway.” I can but it's not going to happen. There are certain things that must be done. A is for Advocates. These are the people that want your success more than even you want it. These are your Earth angels, your benefactors, your prefects. These are the connectors. You say, “I don't have any.” I'm like, “You do. You just haven't made yourself open to them. You have to ask them what you want specifically and you have to authorize them to act on your behalf.” That's a big thing.
People are like, “What traits do you have about all these connections?” I'm like, “I cultivate them and I ask them.” This is your networking. R is your Resources, these are your website, your contractors, your marketers, your logistics, your brand people. These are people that you exchange money with. Your employees. They give you the means to get it done because without people doing the technical aspect of it, nothing gets executed. K is Knowledge. What you know now is not going to be enough to get you through next week or next month. You have to be constantly in the state of open learning, researching, unlearning, relearning because you can't keep growing up. You got to go. “Oh.” Zig Ziglar said that we don't change people's minds, we just add new information and they come to a different final conclusion. This argument on social media is so idiotic. Stop.
You’re cannot change everybody's mind by adding to the comment.
They couldn’t even change their mind. I have known dear people that have an addiction problem, “If you don't stop, you're going to die.” They don't stop. I'm not going to change their mind. Unless you get that pleasure or pain point there, no behavior is going to change. That's what SPARK is. It's a mental cycle, you constantly do it. In the book, I help you dial in which of those are you missing. Here I am many years back and I realized I need to keep honing my singularity, which singularity needs to be honed all the time. Persistence is not a problem. I'll die before I quit. I'm not quitting. My dad taught me that, “You could want to quit, just don't quit. You make a decision, make it yours and die by it.”
Honestly, I want to work twice. I don't care. I'll pivot but I'm not quitting. I'm like, “I have so many unbelievable advocates.” Many of the people reading are huge advocates for us. Knowledge, I got my PhD but I am resource-constrained. I need to get the right systems, processes and team members in place because you can't do it on your own. I don't care how brilliant of a leader you are but that's where we get into. I've had many people that I've worked with throughout many years in various industries. I could count on one hand the ones that got me and I got them but that's because I wasn't being intentional about who to bring in and make sure it was a good fit. Now, I take my time and when you get those right people that are all in for the mission and not just exchanging time for money or navel-gazing, punching the clock until they get to go home or retire then you get to spark your singularity and make a difference in the world.
That's so spot-on in thinking about there are these five components, these five ingredients. I love that you said if you're feeling stuck and you're not getting traction, take a look and see what you're missing, where are you constrained, not quite there. If it's the singularity, if it's the resources, where are you not at an optimal level that's preventing you from moving forward? That's tangible. People can take that information, read it, take a look at it and do that self-assessment, that introspection or get some help. If they're not able to do it themselves, they can get somebody else to say, “This is where it seems like you're stuck.” To move forward, it's insightful but also actionable. That's huge.
That's what they tell people, life is poetry and plumbing, esoteric and beautiful but if you don't roll up your sleeves and execute strategy, everything has this duality to it. A lot of people want to talk about success, that's great but it's not where the rubber meets the sky when you got to make systems, processes and plans. The book helps you dial in what are you feeling. If you're feeling exhausted, frustrated, isolated or indecisive, depending on that number one feeling then we dial into the root cause so we can unpack. We have the online course, which has a lot of great online test and deeper dive questions where you can continue to mind and figure out, “How do I dial this in?”
You need to have the systems and strategies to move forward but if you don't have that focus and that mindset, the vision piece, that feeling, that excitement, you need both to make any progress. It's not just enough to have the mindset and the vision. That's great but if you don't have the systems and the accountability and the how, you're not going to move forward. That's a fantastic point. With all of these things, there's that duality. If you don't have both of those components in play or in balance then you're going to struggle.
It's the feeling and the knowing. I feel it in my heart when I want to do it but I have to have a reasonable expectation of success. That means there are going to be things I need beyond me to help me get that done but you need them both because your feeling will help you hone when you dial in your singularity and you know it then you know what conversations to have. You know who to talk to and who your ideal client is. You get very focused on, “This is the best and purest use of my time. Who's going to get me in who I can become the most help to?”
This relates a lot to the S, Singularity but I still want to ask this question. Thinking about this idea of vision, one of the quotes that you have on your website is that context is critical when communicating vision. Bringing it back to thinking about leadership, vision and effectively communicating that. Talk to us more about the idea that context is critical. Share more about that.
Myth Of Leadership: Take your time, do your research, let cooler heads prevail and really observe the lay of the land.
All this started was when I saw Darkest Hour, the movie on Churchill. It was Winston Churchill. It came out a few years ago and it was right before everybody else had pretty much given up because Hitler was sweeping through. I remember Gary Oldman who was playing Winston Churchill and Ben Mendelsohn who's another one of my favorite actors. He comes in and Churchill has been ostracized, kicked out and only brought back into power because everybody else was uncourageous, wimpy and they don't stand by him at all. He's trying to be courageous on his own, which no leader can do. You need at least one other person in your corner. You don't need 1,000, just 1, preferably 2, 3 is ideal. At least you have one because then you know you're not losing your mind.
I remember, Ben Mendelsohn comes in who's King George because everybody was telling him, “You need to negotiate with Mussolini.” Knowing full well that this is not a negotiation. This is a hostile takeover and decimation of the UK, which I lived in for a couple of years when I was in the military. Ben Mendelsohn comes in and says, “You did not like Winston Churchill.” They thought he was a drunk and he was nuts. Churchill is one of my favorites, an unfiltered leader and for a crisis like that, you need an unfiltered leader. King George said to him, “I'm not running an exile to Canada. If Hitler's afraid of you, I'm going to throw my back in supporting you.”
At that moment, you see Gary Oldman almost like, “The blood comes back into him in the life.” That's why I say context is when people talk about tough situations they're going through, you have to understand all the different things that led up to that. All the baggage that Churchill had, all of the failures from beforehand that he had to carry and deal with. He had to talk about all the political sides.
When you're looking at leadership and people are like, “I can't believe they did that.” You don't know the context of anything going on and that's why we vilify leaders. Do you even know what happened? Do you even know the whole context or the dialogue? All you hear is a snippet and what you're told. That's why I tell people leadership is very nuanced. We'll see a five-second review of something and automatically, “I know everything about it.” You don't know anything about it. You have to not jump to conclusions and make sure in leadership before you do, make a knee-jerk reaction as a leader, engage in great sense-making strategies, which means you stay calm, cool and collected. Unless you're stopping nuclear weapons from coming over into our land, take your time, do your research, let cooler heads prevail and observe the lay of the land. They're called sense-making strategies, you get a lot more clarity and knowledge.
K is Knowledge as a leader. Context is important. Don't let people say, “You’re a leader, you should do this.” It's like telling people in marriage counseling, “You should do this.” You don't know where they have been and what they've done. It's like me taking my dog to the vet. You know me, I have a book. This is everywhere we've been, I sent it to him ahead of time, review everything so you know the context of what I've been through the last five weeks. Sure enough, I'll get there and they'll be like, “What's going on?” I'm like, “I spent half an hour filling out forms online so you can get the context so when I show up to you, you don't look at me and go, ‘What's going on?’”
As I tell people, don't jump into the stream, look at what's going on, understand the leadership context before you make any decisions. If anybody calls you and said, “You need to talk to this person about that or you need to call your sister about that,” you also need to understand different people's motivations and why people may be saying different things to you. They may not always be in your best interest and most people are self-serving by nature.
That’s so good thinking about the question was framed, context with communicating vision but I love the idea of taking the time to get and appreciate context across the board both as a leader but also as a follower and a general person. I joke around that my sixth-grade teacher, one day we were in a class where he was talking about something and somebody must have made a comment about assuming. He stopped everything and said, “Never assume. Do you know why?” He walks up to the chalkboard and writes the word assume and strategically places two lines down through the word.
I think about that all the time. That's such a key piece with that idea of context. Don't assume you understand. Take the time to get the context. If you're a leader and one of your employees or team members is having an issue, take the time to get the context. If there needs to be accountability or skill-building but take the time to get the context. If you are the follower, take that time to get the context, don't jump to conclusions, don't assume. Even in our personal relationships, taking the time to get context is great advice.
Context is tremendous and vision. I just brought a new person to my team. In order for me to communicate the vision, I have to show them the context of when my father started the company and what I've been doing for many years. Inevitably people will come in as great followers and say, “Have we tried this?” I want to make sure I understand and say yes and here's what did or didn't work. I'm not saying it's not a different time and we did everything right. I want them to understand the context of we're not at square one. We're at square 1,099 and we're trying to get to 2,500 so they can understand where we've been so we don't waste a lot of time, energy and resources. That's why context is so important.
Often, that gets lost, as you were talking about sound bites and some of the information that we consume. Not only making sure we're trying to weed out the negative toxic information and messaging but also not getting so wrapped up in the sound bite society and digging into that context that you were talking about. Doing our homework, our research and making informed decisions. That's gold advice in general for all of us. What are some of your key do's and dont’s or dont’s and do’s if you want to end with the positive thing? What are some key things and anything else that you would like to share?
One of the biggest dues that go along with leadership is to maintain your physical health. No matter how brilliant we are, we are still flesh and blood. Make sure that you are getting the right amount of sleep and you are not engaging in destructive tendencies. I haven't touched sugar in five years. I just can't. It gives me brain fog. I do other things. When you dial in your health, everything else is so much more clear and it's tough to get singularity when you're tired, sick or poisoning yourself. This whole thing is about COVID and stay healthy. It's people telling me when I was single, stay married. “I got to get married before I stay married.” I tell people about dialing in your health and there needs to be a way more robust discussion on that because your body is an unbelievable resilient thing. All you got to do is take care of it a little bit and it will respond in kind.
The other do is you build that advocate network and you build it now. I am amazed at how many of my friends, even family members, go through a trauma or a crisis and they got no safety net. I'm not talking just finances, I'm talking even people to come to sit with them and take them in. It's unheard of. You'll see it. So-and-so passed away and they have nothing. How do you have nothing? You need to go out there and make sure you have on your Rolodex. I have different areas of my life. I have my financial mentors, my spiritual mentors, my personal mentors, my business mentors but I have this cod. When I need it, that's my army that comes to my support. You build that because the time to prep for the crisis is not when the bullets start flying, it's well ahead of time.
When you have that robust networking and one of my favorite chapters in the Bible is Ecclesiastes 4, the one I had at my wedding, “A cord of three strands is not easily broken, people weren’t because they go it alone.” A lone sheep is a dead sheep. I talk about that in the book, find those people and don't tell me you can't find them, that's being lazy. Don't sit there and throw up your hands and be histrionic and go, “Whoa.” We are so connected. You want to make sure that you got that network because there are going to be times when you're going to have to pass some stuff off to people. Your advocates want to be there to support you but just like your leader can't read your mind, your friends can't either so let them know. If they're not going to be there when you need them, you need to find ones that will be. Those are the two things that I would do.
Myth Of Leadership: One of the biggest do’s that goes along with leadership is maintain your physical health.
Those are great pieces. The first one especially for me, anybody who's talked to me, I was having all kinds of nutritional issues and it took me a year and figuring it out and I feel so much better. I was tired all the time and you can't be productive and focused, you can't do those things when you're not feeling your best so I love that you said that. Now it's easier than ever to be connected and expand your network, there are no excuses. You can live anywhere in the world and be connected with anybody anywhere in the world.
Congratulations on that. It takes work. People want to pop a pill or not change their lifestyle and I'm like, “It is what it is.” Nothing's going to change until you change. That's what SPARK is about. What is that initial source of combustion when you finally go, “I'm making the decision and I'm going to take action.” We got to dial in where that happens because once you're sparked then you're on your way. I reclaimed my health about a few years ago but decades before I was like, “I knew I needed to,” but I didn't. What eventually hit me where I finally went, “That's it. Done. Now, it's time for action.”
Dr. Tracey Jones, thank you so much for spending time with us. What a real pleasure and treat. I enjoyed it. Where's the best place for people to connect with you?
For the bookstore and free online webinars and stuff like that and if you sign up on our website, you get two weeks of free eBook downloads, which is pretty powerful, it builds out that knowledge. That's TremendousLeadership.com. If you want to go over from my blogs on my leadership podcast, that's at TraceyCJones.com. Both of those things. One is more the speaker course side and the other one is more of the publishing if you want to publish with us too and the book side.
I encourage everybody to check out SPARK and all the other resources that Dr. Jones has available. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Thank you, Dr. Waltman. It was an absolute honor.
Thanks for reading and for all your wonderful comments. We'll see you next time.